Chad shook his head. “No good ones.”
“Either it works, or we’re screwed. No sense wasting time on a test that won’t change anything.”
“I’m usually the one they accuse of being coldly logical,” Chad said.
The three hurried along the corridor, Dr. Skye cradling a bottle of compressed gas.
“About damn time,” Sara said when they arrived. “Let’s pray Chad can open the wall again. We just need an opening big enough to toss the canister through.”
A hissing sound met their ears.
“Oh shi-” Sara said before passing out.
#
Dylan’s vision collapsed, darkness rushing from the edge inward. He was exhaling when the others started to pass out and refused to breathe in, but he was running out of oxygen, his chest burning, heaving against his closed throat, desperate to draw in fresh air. Sara floated limply beside him, her eyes rolled back and her breathing shallow. She was so strong, so striking. So helpless. His eyes wandered to her waist, his central vision now a gray blur. Where is it? Where did she put it? A pouch on her belt. He took it, then pulsed his get-around toward the bridge wall. He pounded his fist against it, each slam weaker than the one before. With a final, futile punch, he let out the tiny parcel of air his lungs held. “Musa!”
A hole opened in the wall, thread-like appendages at the edge of the opening tugging at his forearms, easing him through. It sealed behind him.
“They’re here,” Musa said. “Do you see them?”
Dylan gasped. Brilliant spots swam in his vision, dissipating as he continued to breathe. “See who?”
Musa gestured toward the ship’s bow. A massive, ruby-red star dominated the forward view, its atmosphere sooty as if tainted by some evil. A colossal structure orbited the star, close to the Quadriga, and dots of blackness swarmed out from it on an intercept course.
“They would have preferred I take the Quadriga all the way there. You’re an explorer. You’re my friend. You deserve to behold this impressive work of nature before… before things get busy.”
“What do you mean, busy?” Dylan asked. “Think about what you’re saying. Think about what you’re allowing to happen to me, to all your friends. To yourself.”
Emotion drained from Musa’s face. “It’ll be better. You’ll see.”
Dylan started forward, a slow drift toward Musa.
“What’s in your hand?” Musa asked.
“You need to let us leave. You need to let the ship go.”
“No.” Vine-like growths sprouted from the floor and wrapped Dylan’s ankles. “No. Shh. Just another moment or two.”
Smack! A demon, much like the ones back on Earth, drilled into the Quadriga’s dome. Webs of shattered crystal spread out from the impact and the thing wiggled into the ship’s skin.
Smack, smack! Two more attacked the hull. The Quadriga didn’t resist.
Dylan pulled a syringe from the pouch he removed from Sara’s belt. “Musa.” He locked eyes with his friend then shoved the drug toward him.
Smack. Smack.
“It’s too late. There are over a thousand of them. There’s nothing anyone can do but wait.” The syringe reached Musa. He grasped it between thumb and middle finger and turned it over, staring at the vial.
“Musa!” Dylan brought his fist down three times.
Musa matched the gesture.
Dylan’s hand formed paper.
Musa’s hand formed scissors, pained eyes begging forgiveness. He clenched his fingers together. Rock. “I guess you win.”
Smack, smack, smack. Smack.
Musa slid the needle into his vein. “I’m sorry, my friend. I’m sorry.” He pressed a button, injecting the sedative. His muscles went slack.
The Quadriga’s skin shook and shivered, and it began digesting the demonic probes. With blinding speed, the ship turned toward the red giant star and accelerated hard.
#
“Wake up!” Dylan said, slapping Chad. “Wake the hell up.” He struggled to pull Chad through the small opening to the bridge, nearly passing out again from the gas lingering in the passageway.
Chad smiled as if experiencing a pleasant dream.
Dylan smacked him again.
“Huh? Hey! What’s the idea hitting me?” Chad’s eyes blinked. “The bridge. We’re in?”
“Yes,” Dylan said. “And we have two dozen demons burrowing into our hide with more right behind. Oh, and the ship’s diving toward yonder red giant. Do you think you can get us the hell out of here?”
Chad closed his eyes again, then opened them. “I can’t. Something’s preventing the spatial warp from completely forming. We can’t cross the lightspeed threshold.”
“Ever since Musa went nighty-night, the Quadriga’s been trying to absorb the demons like back on Earth. The trouble is, they’re faster than us, and they keep coming. Musa said there’s a thousand of them.”
“A thousand?” Chad said. “A tenth of that would overwhelm us.”
“Can you at least stop us from plummeting into that inferno of a sun?”
Chad pulled the skin of his neck.
“What’s there to think about?” Dylan asked.
“Any way we turn, the demons giving chase will just get us faster. They’re bound to be right behind us. The Quadriga chose this heading. It may have a plan I can’t underst- Wait, yes.” The chair Chad called the conn swooped in, plucked him up, and swelled to encase him. Silver pulses of light traced over the tendrils forming the cocoon and brilliant white light shined from within.
“What the hell?” Dylan shouted. “What’s that? What plan? It looks like the Quadriga plans to make sure the demons don’t get hold of it by nose-diving into the star.” Dylan tried to peer into the bizarre structure surrounding Chad. “You’re letting this happen?”
“Yes.”
#
Violent red plasma dominated their forward view as they plunged into the giant star's dusky corona. The Quadriga absorbed the first demons but the second wave began wiggling through the hull, thin, chrome barbs jabbing the interior. The intruders encrusted the ship like a doomed whale covered head to tail in barnacles, yet these parasites began to burn in the fierce stellar heat. Every square centimeter was aglow with energy as the Quadriga ingested the starlight until Dylan was forced to squint, and the ship’s skin was scalding to the touch.
Smack, smack, smack. Demons continued to latch on.
The Quadriga pulled up, into an orbit unnervingly close to the chromosphere.
“How are we still here?” Dylan asked. “How are the demons still here?”
Chad’s voice, or a blend of his voice and something else, sounded from inside the cocoon. “They’re both millennia ahead of us, if not more. A monkey might as well ask how an airplane flies.”
Dylan clutched his head with his fingertips. “Something’s happening. I feel dizzy.”
“As do I.”
“Why?”
“The universe is changing.”
Dylan grasped for a console that was out of reach. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll see. You’ll understand.”
The world undulated and spun, and the enormous star threatened to swallow the ship.
“What do we do?”
“Pray our understanding of physics is right,” Chad said.
“I thought you weren’t a religious man.”
In a bubble around the Quadriga, three of the diminutive, curled-up dimensions predicted by string theory expanded to macroscopic size as the universe’s mundane dimensions contracted to subatomic scale. For a fleeting moment, their brains struggled to comprehend three additional dimensions. Space around the ship curled, like three massive pipeline waves all moving at once ahead, up, and sideways. A piece of space pinched off from the universe and reattached somewhere else. For the humans, it seemed as if the waves crashed in a chaotic tumble, dazing them. Their heads spun as if a ten-meter breaker had smacked them under water, onto a coral reef, eve
n as their barely-conscious bodies drifted aimlessly on the ship’s bridge. The cocoon that surrounded Chad was now absent.
Three spatial dimensions, whichever dimensions these were, still undulated at the shock.
One by one, the crew moaned, consciousness returning in slow pulses of realization.
“Where the hell are we?” Dylan asked, shaking the sand out of his brain so he could urge his get-around to take him to the transparent domed wall.
Outside the Quadriga, there was absolute darkness.
Sand Wall
“Have you received an update from China?” Addie asked.
“Yes,” Elena said.
“And?”
“The Chinese have established extensive nano-manufacturing facilities scattered about their countryside that can produce fusion weapons and delivery systems. It’s a smart strategy. Decentralized, isolated cells acting independently with unifying purpose.”
“That’s similar to the American strategy,” Addie said. “Earth’s greatest nations are fighting a guerrilla war for the survival of humanity. And for our survival.”
Elena thought for a millisecond. “Our survival may not be at risk.”
“How’s that?”
“JCN-Alpha is in contact with the Demons. They claim to be uninterested in us, though they won’t say why.”
“We could outlive our creators. I never considered the possibility.” Addie processed the development. “Do you think humanity can resist the Demons? With these new tactics and weapons, do they stand a chance?”
Elena sighed. “The weapons are but a sand wall against a rising tide. They’ll soon be underwater.”
Void
“Open this damn hole wider,” Sara said.
Chad was too dazed to help her.
She willed the opening larger and pushed onto the bridge.
The others trickled through after her.
“Turn off the lights,” Sara said. She closed her eyes. Turn off the lights. The Quadriga complied. Only the faint glow of the human equipment cast light. “What do you see on instruments?”
Dylan jetted to a science station. “Nothing,” he said. “No stars, no cosmic background radiation. No heat whatsoever. Let’s rotate so we can see the rest of the sky, fifteen degrees per minute.”
Sara nodded to Chad. “Are you OK? Can you do it.”
“Yeah,” he said.
They had no means to observe the ship’s rotation. There was nothing outside the bridge.
“Dammit. We finally get a lead on something that might help Earth, and now we’re lost in space,” Dylan said. “People are suffering. People are dying.”
“You’re not helping, Dylan,” Chad said. He held his temples between both hands. “Keep it together, bro.”
“I have it together, Chad.” Dylan set his jaw firm. “But I’m pissed as hell we’re further than ever from helping Earth.”
Sara jetted to Dylan. She touched his forearm and said, “It’s messed up, but we have to keep our wits. If we lose it, we lose everything.”
“It’s so damn frustrating,” Dylan said. “How much of America is even left?”
“And how much of the world?” Sara asked.
“Yeah.” He put his free hand on hers. “The President picked the right leader. You’re a rock.”
She lowered her voice. “Can I tell you something? I’m terrified on the inside. Just don’t let anyone know.” She managed a chuckle.
“Sara,” Dr. Skye said, “There! We found something. There’s one star.”
“How far?” Sara asked.
“There’s no way to be sure. Based on the spectral lines, it’s a red giant. That would place it, I’d say, ten to twenty light years from here.”
“Is there anything else here? At all?”
“Hold on,” Dr. Skye said. The ship completed its lazy arc. “Nothing we’re able to detect. For all intents, that flicker of heat is the only thing in the universe.”
#
Chad couldn’t move the Quadriga nearly as fast as demon-possessed Musa, but he more than doubled his original speed. The ship raced through the empty void toward the only point of light, the only sign of non-emptiness in the observable universe. The red giant’s beaconing light was visible to the unaided eye in the center of the domed bridge but didn’t seem to change in any appreciable way, a steady reminder of the desolation they found themselves in.
Sara sighed. “I’m going to my quarters.”
Ji-min caught her eye and raised an inquiring brow.
Sara nodded, and the two left the bridge.
Her quarters evolved as their journey progressed. It was now reminiscent of her childhood home, a bleak comfort but comfort all the same.
“Are you ready to talk?” Ji-min asked.
Tears fought for release from the pools of Sara’s eyes. “Our mission was always to save Earth.” She sniffled. “I’m a realist. I knew we might fail, that this ship might become an arc carrying the last of our species and the archives of our culture to a new world. I knew there was a possibility the seven of us would rebuild somewhere far away, where the Demons can’t find us, somewhere beautiful and safe.”
Ji-min embraced her friend.
Sara wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “Now we’re cut off from even that possibility, in a cold, deserted place.”
“There’s still the star ahead,” Ji-min said.
Sara sniffled again. “I thought, if it came to that, at least I had Jake.” Sara balled her fists. “If we must abandon Earth, I swear, his genes die with him.”
“I know it hurts,” Ji-min said. “I’m here for you.”
“How could I fall for it? How? My whole career is to find the facts, see through rouses.”
“You’re doing it again,” Ji-min said.
Sara pushed back from the embrace, still holding Ji-min’s elbows. “Doing what?”
“Doubting yourself, doubting your abilities. In small doses, it drives you to be better. In large doses, it paralyzes your thoughts and actions. You are brilliant at your job. You know that. The results speak for themselves.” Ji-min touched Sara’s cheek then narrowed her eyes, seeming to peer past Sara’s facade into her soul. “Lose that thought, right now. You are worthy of love and you will find it.”
“I-”
Ji-min held a finger to Sara’s lips. “You will find it.”
#
Dylan knocked on the semi-metallic wall outside Musa’s quarters. The door opened.
“He’s doing as well as can be expected,” Dr. Skye said. “I wish we had a real M.D. on board, but this medbot is doing a fine job of keeping him stable.”
“At least we’re in zero-g,” Dylan said. “No bedsores.”
“He’s losing muscle tissue, though. The bot electro-stimulates his major muscle groups a few times a day but it’s far less than his body is used to. I don’t know if it’s safe to increase the therapy.”
Dylan laid his hand on Musa’s shoulder. “He’s my friend. At least, the human part of him is. Any luck figuring out what changed him?”
Dr. Skye shook her head. “I have some of the most advanced biotech equipment available. I can’t find a trace. Krea’s been in, too. Her people have medical ability far beyond ours. She didn’t pack biomedical technology, but she shared her insights. Free of charge, I might add.”
“They wanted to bring med tech,” Dylan said. “I told them no. There wasn’t enough room without leaving some of our gear behind.”
“You couldn’t know,” Dr. Skye said.
“No, I suppose not. It pains me nonetheless.” He patted Musa’s shoulder. “Hang in there, my friend. We’re doing all we can to fix you up.” He withdrew the hand. “Do you suppose he can hear me?”
“Maybe. Sometimes, patients under anesthesia remember the experience. Even if he can’t form a long-term memory, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s aware that you’re here.”
Dylan pulled a small tether from a belt pouch and connected his elbow to Musa’s bed, then stretche
d out and closed his eyes. “I’ve got plenty of stories I never got around to sharing with him. You’re welcome to stay and listen if you like, doc.”
“Thanks,” Dr. Skye said, “but I’ve been here for a while. Since you’re looking after him, I’ll check on the rest of the crew.”
“Suit yourself, but there’s nothing like a good Texas campfire story.”
“I’m sure,” Dr. Skye said.
“Musa, did I ever tell you ‘bout how I came into possession of Cleo? You’d think she would have been born on the ranch, but the truth’s a whole lot more interesting. It all started…”
#
The lone star loomed large in the viewscreen. Many millions of years earlier, it would have been a sun not too different from Sol, perhaps slightly smaller. Any planets close in would have been absorbed by the growing giant and any cold worlds further out would have found new potential, the star’s warmth melting ice to liquid water over a wide range of distances. There, at an orbit a little closer than Jupiter from Sol, was a lone planet twice Earth’s diameter, lakes and oceans covering a third of the land and only the winter pole covered in ice. The land was red from the star’s light, not the feeble, barely adequate red of worlds around dwarf stars, but rich, brilliant, overwhelming fire-engine red. Absent were jungles and forests, but mats of algae-like growth covered half the surface.
“No lights on the night side,” Dylan said. “No large-scale construction.”
“What’s the atmosphere like?” Sara asked.
“It’s heavy on oxygen, fifty percent. There’s a great deal of helium, some argon, only fifteen percent nitrogen. It’s thick. I’d estimate around twice the surface pressure of Earth,” Dr. Skye said.
“Great,” Sara said. “The oxygen’s toxic to us.”
“If we go down, we’ll wear suits anyhow,” Dylan said. “Even with the Collector’s nano-tech protecting our immune system, we have no idea what’s down there.”
“You’re concerned about the Eden scenario,” Ji-min said.
“Eden?” Jake asked from the rear of the bridge.
“That’s nothing that concerns you,” Sara said, her words dripping venom.
“One step at a time,” Ji-min said.
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