Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

“No, sir, that’s true,” the captain admitted.

It was rough getting used to the ship’s motions, too, particularly as time passed and people needed to move from one part of the ship to the other for various purposes. Some of the old-timers, including both Woodward and Cromwell, likened it to experiences on larger ships on big and rough bodies of water, where the whole environment was going up and down and side to side at one and the same time. Some people could never get used to it; some got violently ill. Most learned to compensate as time went on.

Still, by three days in, everybody was royally sick of the sensations and the vibrations and all the trouble they were going through just to do the most normal of things. That included Woodward, who, nonetheless, used the intercom systems and screens to keep morale up, speak on faith and the future, and also incidentally remind them that this uncomfortable ride was much better than the alternative, which was striking the wall and shattering into a million tiny pieces.

The countdown timer was on every screen, but it was based upon the Three Kings data fed into the navigational computers. It had worked out up to now, but there was simply no way to tell if Sapenza had given them the goods, or perhaps not all of the goods, or if it was going to work out.

With three days to go, Eve tried on a smart body suit that was kind of embarrassing in how it clung to every curve but which allowed her to move, use her arms and legs fully, and also give them the kind of stimulus and energy they needed to keep building. It allowed her to actually move much like everyone else, and with confidence, although with the ship’s yawing motions and severe vibration she wasn’t about to practice much in the way of long distance walking, not yet.

As the last day clicked over and they were counting down hours, time seemed to suspend, even drag. It had been so long that it seemed as if this trip would never end, that they would be passing through this nightmare umbilical forever.

And then, almost on the nose of when the countdown timer finally reached all zeroes, there was a massive bang and thump, the entire ship shuddered, and they were in normal space.

Almost at once every single alarm on the bridge went off, and the computers struggled for control of the ship. It took several minutes before there was anything approaching normalcy, but even when the data streams stabilized there was a terrible rumble all around and sounds like metal twisting and breaking.

Captain Lime and the engineering officers brought down small headband units and did a mindlink with the computers so that they could instantly go to where the problem was and have an understanding of it.

What they saw wasn’t good.

“Four of the six main tubes are cracked, one crack going for forty-two meters,” Lime reported to the Doctor and others who’d gathered on the bridge. “There’s also one whole huge section of engine thirty degrees on the port side that’s simply, well, missing . I’ll put it on the screen.”

The damage was obvious to anybody who looked, and the nearest place for any repairs was…?

“Sir, computers report zero reference point matches,” the captain told him. “Either we’re on the other side of the galaxy or, well—there’s nothing to reference. We might as well be in another galaxy, and maybe we are.”

Woodward let out a breath. “You’re saying that we’re here to stay?”

“Sir, take a look at what we just came out of—or, more properly, got ejected from.”

The wormhole signature was gyrating so fast that it was nearly impossible to get any sort of shape for it before it changed. It was a whirling dervish of a signature, and it didn’t stay in one spot. As the navigational data had warned, it was a spurting high pressure hose, moving over half the sky.

“We’ve got about thirty percent power, at least temporarily,” the captain told him, “and I’m using that to put some distance between us and that— thing . I would suggest, though, that we begin an evacuation of Sinai immediately except for essential personnel, bringing everybody into Olivet . At the moment, now that we’ve stabilized, I’m going to allow us to continue to use the full Mountain to bring us in-system, but we may have to hop out fast at any moment.”

“Do you have enough power to get us in-system to be able to use Olivet exclusively?” the Doctor asked.

“Oh, sir, once I’ve managed this acceleration maneuver we’ll have no problems getting in. The real question is going to be whether or not we can stop. At a guess, I’d say we’re going to have a very quick exit.”

The screens changed, and everyone throughout the ship, from the Doctor on the bridge to Eve and John back in medical gasped at the same moment.

It was one heck of a solar system.

The G-class star was slightly larger than average but not outside the range of such suns in the database of known systems; what was spectacular was the fact that there was a series of debris rings where solid planets might be expected, and, beyond, well out from its star, was a single gas giant so massive that had it ignited there would probably be nothing else around at all. At a diameter of almost three hundred thousand kilometers it dominated everything, and it had not one spectacular ring but two, eerily paralleling one another above and below its equator.

“That thing is impossible! ” the navigator exclaimed. “There is simply no logical explanation why gravity hasn’t torn this whole system to pieces. Something we can’t see or measure as yet has to be balancing this. Either that or we’re in a parallel universe where things just don’t work the way physics says they must!”

Woodward shook his head. In other circumstances, the physicist in him would have truly loved this sort of mystery, but he didn’t have the luxury. He had a crippled ship that, with what acceleration it could muster, would almost certainly be pulled towards that giant planet without sufficient force by then to break away.

“Most likely we have some sort of odd balance involving some sort of dark massive object,” the Doctor told them, “and somehow all this has come together just so to keep it remarkably stable. Still, some of the forces generated explain the nature of that wild hole and the lack of obvious smaller solid planets. What a great laboratory for research! It’s places like this that throw what you know into a cocked hat and make science fun. Too bad we can’t take the time to do it.”

“Sir, it’s weirder than you think,” the navigator reported. “There’s a constant heat coming off that thing, although it’s pretty stable. The gas mixture is giving off a kind of weak starlike corona even though there’s no obvious source for it. It’s not going to become a star, but it’s acting like, well, not a failed sun, but a sun that was frozen in the instant before it blew. Very, very weird. There’s nothing like this in all our data. It’s as unlikely as, well…”

“The emergence of humanity on ancient Earth,” Woodward finished. “Yes, I can see that. If anything, we might be more probable than this . How wonderful that for all our knowledge God continually surprises us.” He paused for a moment, thinking on that, then asked, “Satellites?”

“ That thing? Yes, sir! Hundreds. Every shape and size, and that’s not counting the double rings. Most follow the rings’ angle at about fifteen degrees off the elliptical, but a few actually go through the rings and probably look it, and a number seem to be in their own orbits, a couple running counter to the rest. Captured, most likely.”

“Give me large ones in any theoretical life zone that maintain relatively stable orbits,” the Doctor ordered.