“That was cool,” Bloom purred.
“Now all we have to do is fly the thing out of here unnoticed,” Brubaker said, “Just how do we do that?”
“That would be where I come in,” They all turned at the new voice. There in the open doorway of the launch bay stood Major Benedict.
“Major,” Bloom said when she’d climbed from the Bug, the fluttering shock of discovery still fresh in her stomach, “What are you doing here?”
“My job,” Her security chief said with grim authority. He stepped forward as Bloom and her engineering crew gathered together in a nervous group. Bloom watched him carefully, wondering what was going to happen next, not particularly caring to find out.
Benedict toggled his headset and spoke: “Go central security voice command link,” He said, waiting for the connection to establish itself. Within seconds, it had.
“Run Blind Eye program,” Benedict said. As Bloom opened her mouth to speak, Benedict cut her off.
“The security field is running a pre-recorded loop, now,” The Major said, “You can dick around with the launch bay mechanisms and hopefully fly this thing out of here to your rendezvous. I’ll clear a path for your team back out. To Fort Arapaho it’ll look like you’ve gone back to the surface with them.” Bloom studied Benedict long and hard before heading back down into the launch trench. About halfway down, she turned to look back at him.
“Major I once told you that one day we’d have to sit down and talk about all the things we’re not supposed to talk about,” She said, “I think that day has come. Meet me in my office tonight, at nineteen hundred hours.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Benedict said, “Will do.”
♦♦♦
The biology archives were gigantic. The scale described by the Ship hardly did justice to the vast, warehouse-like structure. The floors and ceilings were polished black, lit from above. Gold Columns every few dozen meters supported the construct. They’d studied several specimen cases already. Reports from his team members had yielded many surprises: among them a number of dinosaur species that bore feathers; not just crests or rills of feathers but from head to tail. Then there was never-before imagined colour patterns of the dinosaurs: camouflage to blend in with the jungle; wild colours to stand out. They weren’t simply mottled green or brown reptiles as had been imagined. But the most dumbfounding discovery was only about to be made.
“Doctor Kodo!” the urgent cry over his linx made Kodo immediately think that someone had been injured.
“What?” Kodo asked, “What is it?”
“This is Doctor Perkins,” came the reply, “I’m at section Five Twenty One. Doctor, you’d better come see this.” Kodo rode a transport platform to the ascribed section. There he found several of his scientists gathered around a workstation staring at the holographic image of one of the creatures in the Ship’s bestiary. When Kodo got a good look at what they were watching he was struck dumb. He approached, his head dizzy, his face struck into an expression of incomprehension. He asked the Ship a question, then another and another. Finally, looking at the image before him, he was only able to utter two words:
“Dear God,”
♦♦♦
Pope Simon Peter licked his lips nervously. Only three times before in his life had he felt this anxious: On the day he was married to his late wife; on the day, years later when he was ordained a Priest in the Holy Roman Catholic Church and then much, much later, when he had been elected Pope. The Fourth Vatican Council had come to an end. Its findings were being printed by the Vatican Press for mass distribution in over two hundred languages. The Vatican’s Grid Spar was being updated with the news. But he would make the first announcement of what was to be revealed today. There were no cheers, no applause, as usually greeted the Pope when he stepped onto the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica to say mass or make announcements of importance to the faith. Instead a hive-like buzz of anticipation issued from the crowd. As the Pontiff emerged from within the Basilica, the buzz died.
“My Brothers and Sisters in Christ and to our brothers and sisters among the world’s Faithful: May the peace of the Lord our God be with you. Ladies and gentlemen I am here today to announce the findings of the Fourth Vatican Council into the Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Faith,” Pope Simon-Peter paused, listening to his voice echo from speakers concealed throughout the square. “Two weeks ago,” he continued, “The Ship was opened to us, to the world and the greatest exchange of cultural and technological data in the history of the whole of Humanity began. This much the world has known since the beginning. However what has been kept secret until now so that the World Ship Summit and the members of the Fourth Vatican Council could study the issue was the catalyst for this great event.
“Two weeks ago a delegation from the Fourth Vatican Council was sent to the World Ship Preserve to examine the Ship and if possible communicate with the Ship to question it in regards to spiritual matters. It was these questions that opened the Ship to the world. It was this dialogue that made the Ship decide that we are advanced enough as a species…as one species, to be allowed access to its secrets.
“One of the inevitable questions asked of the Ship, was whether or not there is a God. The Ship answered in the positive: that there is indeed a God, and that God is known by many names and through many systems of belief throughout the known universe. The next question that was asked was if there is a God, or a ‘Creation Entity’ as the Ship refers to it, is there therefore a meaning to life? Indeed, the Ship answered this in the positive as well. Our best interpretation of what the Ship said is that Life’s purpose is to serve Creation and the purpose of Creation is to serve Life.
“This Council sat down with this new information from the Ship, this strange and mysterious Divine revelation, the New Truth and began to debate its meaning. We have spent every moment of the last two weeks trying to determine what the weight of this message means. We can come to only one conclusion, a conclusion that will affect all religions; a conclusion that can only validate all religions and not favor any one faith over another.
“The greatest question that has confronted us all as faithful of one religion or another has been how do we know that the way we follow God is the way God intended? All of us have been taught that ours is the way to salvation and that everyone else must hope for Divine Mercy in order to reap the rewards of God’s Graces. I tell you now that this is only a half-truth. The way to salvation is as it has been revealed to each of us! As you have been taught to worship God is how God intends you to worship Him!
“We, Christians have been taught to believe that Jesus Christ is our Lord and that He died for our sins and rose again to ensure our place of communion with God. I tell you now that this is true: Christ was indeed the Son of God and God sent Him to us so that another pathway to salvation could be found. Similarly those of the Jewish faith believe in the laws of Moses and that they are the Descendants of Abraham and the Chosen of God. And indeed they are and God calls upon them to preserve the way of life He revealed to them. Muslims follow the teachings of the prophet Mohammed and the laws and the ways God revealed to them through him. Allah’s way is the way for those who have been called to Islam, for that is the way God calls you to follow. God is revealed to the Pagans as the Mother of Creation and the laws of Wicca and the traditions and history of the Goddess are the way that they are called to Divine Reward. God does not want us to all be alike! God gave us different races, different cultures, different histories and different religions not to find out who is the best among us but to teach us that it is our differences, our diversity that unite us and make us great. Too long we have all turned away from God by resenting our differences and turning our backs on one another. This is not what God wants. God wants us to overcome our differences and to celebrate them, as one people of many voices, of many cultures, and many paths to Salvation!”
Now Simon Peter had to shout to be heard even with the loudspeakers. The uproar had begun. Many of those assembled were
outraged; horrified at the perceived blasphemy in his words. Many more were discussing animatedly what the Pontiff was saying. Others exclaimed shock. The Pope knew that as with any great revelation a period of turmoil was beginning with his words. And it pained him and pleased him that God had chosen him to herald this news.
“Ignorance is to not learn all that we have to teach one another!” he bellowed as if to counter the outrage he was hearing, “This is why the Ship was sent here! And this is the message God had for us! This is why the Ship has asked for a representative sample of humanity comprising all customs and all peoples: so that they can show us the way to unite into one world of many cultures. The time has come to end a million years of fear, of hate and ignorance. The time has come for us to make Heaven on Earth by learning to love one another as we are, by celebrating our differences as God has called us to. This is God’s message to us and this is why He so long ago sent the Ship here to wait for us: so that we now might learn this final truth of God’s existence and of His love for us all: different, as He intended us to be!”
♦♦♦
The Ship Survey Expedition was meeting after their first full day within the Ship’s archives. The expressions on the faces of the members of the expedition told Bloom they had all discovered much. At Bloom’s direction Peter started off by telling them all a little about the history and culture of the Eoulf, the people who had built the Ship. They were a millions-year old civilization that had evolved a gerontocracy: the eldest among them led. They were peaceful, having known conflict and war only ever as a last resort. What was more, the Ship had told Peter that it had been hundreds of thousands of years since the last recorded death of an Eoulf.
“Apparently they found a way to beat death,” He said, “At one point the Eoulf simply…disappear: the individual beings vanish, apparently into some higher existence. Hence the gerontocracy; the older you are, the wiser you must be. Death by accident or disease were normal occurrences but also rare as their technology advanced. The Eoulf who were within the Ship died as a result of the Death Star impact sixty-seven million years ago.”
“Then it’s possible the Eoulf are still out there?” Bloom asked.
Peter nodded. “They were only one of many thousands of worlds in the League,” He said, “And the Eoulf civilization was tens of millions of years old before the Ship even came here.”
“Incredible,” Bloom said, ponderously.
She turned to N’banga. “Doctor, you said that you and Professor Andrews discovered the means the Ship uses for propulsion.”
“Not exactly,” N’banga said, “What we uncovered is how the Ship would be able to traverse deep space so apparently quickly.”
“The rune looks astonishingly like the letter K,” Andrews said, “And has several stand-alone meanings, including the verbs to voyage and to decide, the state of the present, as in the temporal state of being, and it also means time. It is this last definition that would seem to concern us most.”
He used a remote control to lower the large display screen facing them. On it a rune in Shiplanguage appeared:
“The rune actually serves as part of a diagram,” N’banga said, “The diagram shows the mechanics of what the Ship does, to travel the vast distances of the universe. Apparently the Ship has been grown and or designed to live indefinitely. It does not age and it does not break down. It has been built to cross the vast distances of space. But the question is: how does one bridge these distances effectively? If it takes a million years round trip to get to the next galaxy space travel is impractical. The problem for the Ship isn’t crossing that distance but the time it takes to cross that distance. Even at its fastest speed, which the Ship indicates is one hundred times the speed of light, it would take millennia to travel some extragalactic distances. What the Builders of the Ship have done is removed time from the equation relative to the point of origin and the point of destination of the travelling object.”
“How have they done that?” Bloom asked.
“It’s…complicated,” N’banga said, “But this diagram might help, a little:” He switched the image on the main viewer:
“What the Ship does is remove itself from time relative to the points of origin and destination,” Andrews explained, “Essentially it enters into time warp. The Ship still experiences the time it takes to travel between those two points, but for all intents and purposes it reaches its destination instantaneously. The equations the Ship described are actually quite sound.” But their fellow members of the SSE still didn’t quite understand what they were saying. N’banga intervened:
“Imagine if you will that passengers and crew boarded the Ship on Earth for a voyage to Andromeda, the nearest galaxy,” He said, “To an observer who was monitoring both Earth and Andromeda, the Ship would appear to travel between the two places instantaneously, appearing at Andromeda the exact moment it disappeared from Earth. However, relative to the Ship time would elapse normally between point of origin and destination. It would still experience the full measure of time as it travelled between the two points.”
“How could the crew survive such a journey?” Peter asked.
“In hibernation,” Andrews said, “More precisely, in perfect stasis.”
“Stasis?” Bloom asked. She’d heard the term bandied about during her time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when they would talk about deep space exploration. She never quite understood it.
“An advanced form of suspended animation,” N’banga said, “In which the crew of the Ship are essentially frozen in time, becoming non-event masses with no quantum probability. Time stops for them. They experience nothing; do not age, do not even technically exist until the Ship removes them from stasis as it reaches its destination. Neither the passengers and crew nor the people at point of origin or destination would be aware of any passage of time. For them the trip would be instantaneous. Given the time it would take to cross the galaxy or to cross extragalactic space the Eoulf’s solution is quite ingenious and practically applicable; especially if you have a power source as unlimited as the Ship’s.”
“About that,” Bloom said, “The Ship described its power source as a torroidal black hole. What exactly is that and how is it possible for the Ship to even contain a black hole?”
“Essentially a torroidal black hole is a black hole which has been stretched into a ring shape,” N’banga said, “By rapidly spinning it on its polar axis until it starts to flatten and expand, its own gravity field pulls it into the ring shape. The outside ring would have one magnetic polarity and the inside ring, another. The energy released from a spinning, ring-shaped or torroidal black hole would take the form of vast amounts of Hawking radiation and could then be collected and focused, probably in the chamber you observed, Colonel Bloom.”
“I thought that it was impossible for a black hole to be anything other than a point,” Benedict said.
“It is,” N’banga replied, “At least, it is, according to everything we understand. But some theorists still insist that a torus-shaped black hole is possible. Such a captured object would be able to generate nearly limitless amounts of energy; certainly enough to provide the Ship with the power to warp time away from itself and just as easily accelerate the Ship to one hundred times the speed of light. However, even I am forced to admit that I have no idea how any of this is possible. The technology behind the Ship must be millions of years ahead of us.”
“Thank you,” Bloom said.
She turned to Doctor Kodo. “Doctor, you said that something important was discovered in the biology archives.”
“Yes,” Kodo said, “And I’m surprised we didn’t figure it out, sooner. We know that the Ship came to Earth in the hopes of making contact with intelligent life and bringing that life into the League. We all knew that the crew of the Ship was so keenly impressed by the variety of life on this world that they began an extensive exercise to catalogue the life they found.” Kodo took the remote from Doctor N’banga. He keyed up an image he’d
taken from within the archives.
“The Ship came to Earth with the goal of making first contact with intelligent life,” Kodo said, “And, they did. About seventy million years ago.” Onscreen, was a reddish-green, bipedal dinosaur. Its snout was short to the point that mouth and nose were very nearly separate structures. It had narrow shoulders, wide hips and thick legs, standing on its toes so that its ankle acted as rocker and spring. The creature had a short stump of a tail, which apparently served to help it keep its balance. The large eyes faced forward and the brainpan of the skull was large, ovoid in shape and sat on the end of a thick, elongated and powerful neck. Its tiny hands were articulate, with opposable digits at either end.
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