Star Runner

by Mark McDonough

  Chapter Nine – Flying Blind

  Nick stared. Space was supposed to be black. This. . . wasn’t. Instead, it was a weird dark bluish-grey colour. And there were supposed to be hundreds, thousands of tiny white pinpricks of light – stars. They’d just completely disappeared. If those things weren’t bad enough, the space around them was crowded with ships. Just in the tiny part of space that he could see in front of him, Nick counted eight.

  Ace’s eyes were glued to the ships. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before. One had a huge wheel-like shape at what he guessed was the back. Another was a startling red colour. Three others looked more like a five-pointed star than anything else. He drank in the sight, craving a closer look.

  “I’ve never seen space look that colour before,” breathed Alexander.

  Pete leaned over his brothers shoulders, staring at the sight.

  “What happened? Where are we?” Pete asked.

  Alexander’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. All he could do was shake his head. This was a totally unknown phenomenon. His brain was struggling to process what was his eyes were seeing.

  “Alex! Snap out of it!” said Pete, giving his brother a sharp jab to his arm.

  Alexander pulled his eyes from the viewport and forced them down onto his console.

  “I. . .I’m not. . .I’ve got no idea what’s going on,” Alexander finally stammered out.

  “Where’s the station?” Pete insisted.

  “It’s not here. . .there,” Alexander answered, bewilderedly.

  “Would you look at those ships,” Ace whispered, finally finding his voice.

  Pete stared out the viewport in front of him. The ships looked like they’d be an engineer’s dream. New technology and machinery to play with and to take apart. What he wouldn’t give to get a closer look at even just one of those ships.

  “These readings just don’t make any sense,” Alexander said, finally starting to sound somewhat more like himself. “Does this thing have any other sensors?”

  “It’s a Work Pod, Alex, not a science shuttle,” Pete reminded him.

  Alexander looked at his brother. “Hmph,” he snorted. “Maybe you should install some.”

  Pete ignored him. “What is that space out there?”

  “No idea. It’s as though what readings I’m taking are just . . . bouncing? . . . straight back at us,” Alexander threw his hands up in frustration.

  Nick’s fingers danced over the console in front of him. His head was almost like a yoyo, bouncing from his console to the viewport and back again. He needed to see his readout, but at the same time, taking his gaze from those ships was the last thing that he wanted to do.

  “I’m not getting any power readings at all from any of those ships,” Ace stated.

  “Are we. . .are we in the black hole?” Pete asked, almost afraid of the answer.

  Alexander slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’d be dead if we were.”

  “Then where are we?” Pete asked again.

  Alexander looked down. The only explanation that he could think of was so outrageous, so ludicrous, that he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “Come on Alex, spit it out,” Nick insisted, reading the signs in his brother. “Where are we?”

  “Back on the station, I was doing some work with Alana. She had this theory,” Alexander began softly. “She. . . she believed that black holes could be. . . could be. . . connected by wormholes. . . tunnels . . . to other black holes somewhere else in the universe.”

  Pete stared at his brother.

  “What, you think she’s right?” asked Pete in as high-pitched voice as he’d ever used. “You think we went through the black hole and ended up on the other side of the galaxy?”

  Alexander nodded. “We were being hit pretty hard by something just before everything went crazy.”

  “But shouldn’t space on the other side of the galaxy be at least the same colour as it is on our side?” Pete asked after an eternity of silence.

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Alexander answered grimly.

  “Does that mean that those ships out there are alien ships,” Ace asked in wonder.

  This time it was Nick’s turn to be stared at. In all the years that humans had been out in space, not once had they ever encountered extraterrestrials. Most people didn’t even believe that aliens even existed any more. Pete collapsed back into his engineering chair.

  “I think I need something to eat,” Nick said at last.

  In the end, it was Pete who ended up going to the food slot and bringing back a tray for each of them. He handed over some bottles of juice before leaning back and swinging his chair around so that he could stare out of the viewport.

  “What do we do now?” Ace asked.

  Alexander shrugged. “Take a look around?”

  “You sure you can you fly this thing?” Pete asked his brother.

  Nick smiled. “Watch me.”

  Ace turned to his board, handing his tray back to Pete. It’d been a while since A.B. had given him a lesson piloting a Work Pod and he usually practised on larger shuttles and small cruisers in the simulators. Still, he figured that piloting the pod would be easy.

  “Navigation, SIF, thrusters and engines are on-line and ready to go,” Ace reported, letting his fingers fly over the board.

  “Uh, Nick, how many hours of flight-time do you have?” Alexander asked, unwilling to let his youngest brother take their lives into his hands. It was all very well for their dad to call him “Ace” and to say that he was a fantastic pilot, but that was mostly just a game.

  “Over two hundred,” Ace replied casually.

  Alexander frowned. “And how many hours of real flight? Simulators don’t count.”

  “Eight,” Ace grinned at his brother from the corner of his eye. He flicked his hair out of his eyes and gunned the engines, sending the pod flying.

  Alexander gulped, but kept his mouth shut. It was too late to stop him now and he did not want to distract his brother from piloting the shuttle.

  Nick headed straight towards the heart of the strange ships ahead of them. Correcting his course, he aimed more towards the large ship with the ‘wheel’ at the back. His engines were at maximum, but it still felt to him as though he was just crawling. He almost regretted all the time he’d put into piloting the larger ships. Almost.

  Ace glanced down and frowned. His navigation display seemed to be having a hard time keeping up with him. As he watched, the display seemed to jump forward in detail and then freeze. Nick stared at it anxiously. Piloting without the navigation console was something that he’d never practised before. The display leapt forward again, but nearly on a thirty-second delay.

  “Uh, Alex, could you check navigation? Mine doesn’t seem to be working properly.”

  Alexander called up the nav display on his console. He leant forward to compare his with the pilot’s board. Identical.

  “No go, Nick,” Alexander reported. “My display’s just as bad as yours.”

  Ace slowed his approach. Theoretically, he knew that he’d be able to pilot by looking out of the forward viewscreen, but it was not something that he was overly keen on trying.

  “Diagnostics checks out,” Pete reported.

  Nick pushed his hair out of his eyes, peering out in front of them. He kept his distance from the ships, going as close as he dared, but nowhere near what he would have tried if he were in one of the simulators or with his nav display working.

  The ships they passed were nothing short of wondrous. They were all full of strange angles and bizarre colours and many had bits jutting out of them that just seemed totally wrong.

  They sailed on in silence, Alexander constantly glancing down worriedly at his console. What they were seeing just shouldn’t exist as far as he was concerned. He recorded as much data as he could, but the pod’s memory was already dangerously close to full capaci
ty. It just wasn’t designed for the type of science work that he was trying to put it through.

  “Nick! Stop her here!” Alexander ordered.

  Ace brought the engines to a stop, kicking on the station-keeping thrusters as he did so.

  “What is it, Alex?” Pete asked.

  “Look at the space over to starboard,” Alexander said.

  Nick squinted with his head slightly cocked in that direction. The space over there did look slightly different.

  “What is it?” Pete asked. From where he was sitting, he couldn’t make out what it was that his brothers were seeing.

  “The space over there looks . . . thinner, brighter,” Alexander finished lamely.

  Nick nodded. “Yeah, it’s like someone’s put a curtain across space.”

  Pete leaned over the cockpit, trying to see.

  “I think . . . I think I can see stars through there,” Alexander breathed.

  “That’s got to be the way out of this weird space!” Ace said.

  “Punch in a course, Nick. Let’s get out of here,” Alexander ordered.

  Nick’s fingers raced over his board.

  “Ready.”

  Beep beep.

  Ace jumped and stared, his fingers poised over the controls.

  Beep beep.

  “Someone’s hailing us,” Nick said, looking bewilderedly at his big brother.