Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

“Except?” Ursula asked.

“Except,” Wolf said, “except we have utterly lost control of events. We, here, on Earth, we in this institute—you and I here in this room, have lost the initiative. Now we must merely watch from the sidelines, wait, hope that word will come.”

Ursula smiled. “There may be hope for you yet, Wolf. Not many autocratic, authoritarian leaders would be willing to admit that.”

Wolf looked to Ursula, but did not return her smile. “Indeed? So, very well, I admit it. But I find it remarkably small comfort.”

He stood up from behind his desk and turned around. He looked out, up into the sky, to where the great ship was preparing for its passage. “Now,” he said, “it is up to them.”

“There, there, there, and there,” Sianna said, stabbing her finger down on the display screen with each word. “Debris clouds, all lined up nice and neat, one right after another. You can run a single track through all of them. And there, there, and there , bright radar images, what have to be SCOREs running with their own internal radars turned off. One flight of twelve SCOREs still fairly close in, and others further enough out that we can’t get a precise count. Each flight of SCOREs on a precise intercept course with the projected sky track you get by running a line through the debris clouds. We figure the debris is what’s left of the SCOREs that tried and failed to smash whatever is moving in on that track.”

“We can’t see it?” the Maximum Windbag asked.

“Either it’s too small, or too nonreflective, or it’s using some sort of stealth technique,” Sianna said. “And I don’t think it’s stealth.”

“What for why not?” Eyeball asked.

“That thing’s moving in a straight line right for the SCOREs that are moving to intercept it,” Sianna said. “It’s not trying anything evasive or tricky, just barreling right through. Besides, it’s obvious the SCOREs can see it, even if we can’t. It’s not hiding. It just doesn’t care.”

“How they see it?” Windbag asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Sianna said. “Obviously some sort of sensor we don’t have.”

“What’s more important is where the object is heading,” Wally said.

“Wherzat?” Windbag asked.

Sianna pointed at the display again. “Right there. Straight for the wormhole we came through. In other words, straight for Earth—and Earth’s Sphere—on the other side. It’s coming for us, Charonians and humans.”

“Say what?”

“We’ve got to assume this—this object is what’s been scaring the hell out of our Sphere,” Wally said. “We’ve got to assume this thing, whatever the hell it is, killed the Sphere here. It’s going to try and kill the Sphere in the Multisystem. And that will kill Earth.”

Windbag stared at the screen and nodded thoughtfully. “You know,” he said, “this isn’t good.”

Dianne Steiger sat down in the pilot’s control station and started working through her checklist. Normally, the bridge team sat at their consoles, fed commands to the computers, and watched the computer fly the ship. Not this time. Too many uncontrolled variables. Too many unpredictables and imponderables. Computers could react faster than humans could, of course, but the ship’s computers could not think , and quick thinking might be necessary to get them through this. If something went wrong, she would have to be ready to take over fast .

It had been a long time since Dianne had flown the Terra Nova manually, and she was more than a little nervous. But she was a pilot first and foremost, trained to fly spacecraft long before she had been called upon to command a crew.

She powered up the navigation display and confirmed the flight path. Manual thruster controls on-line. Auxiliary engines at go. No need for main engines on this one—just a few light taps on the thrusters and the auxiliaries and they would be on the beam.

It wasn’t necessarily a one-way trip, of course. The folks back on Earth were learning a lot about manipulating the Charonian command system. NaPurHab’s passage showed that the folks at MRI knew how to open and shut a wormhole. Sooner or later, humans might well be able to shoo the COREs and SCOREs out of the way and pass freely through the wormhole to whatever lay beyond. Ursula Gruber’s cryptographic and linguistics staff seemed quite confident about the matter.

But confidence was no guarantee. After all, the Terra Nova had cast off from Earth five years ago, eager to explore the Multisystem, confident of return, never dreaming that she would not make planet-fall in all that time.

No. They had to assume this was to be a one-way trip. No looking back.

The relay satellite had been launched. It was programmed to perform highly precise station-keeping, keeping in exact alignment with the wormhole aperture. If all went well, they would launch an identical relay on the other side. The two relays were equipped with radio and comm lasers. In theory, they would be able to contact each other whenever the wormhole was open. With a fair amount of luck, Earth and the Terra Nova might be able to retain at least some sort of intermittent contact.

Dianne checked the countdown clock. Almost time.

Just a pilot , she told herself. You’re just a pilot moving a hunk of iron around the sky. Just get it where it’s supposed to be. Don’t think about all the people aboard, or that you’ve got their lives in your hands. Don’t think about what you might see on the other side, or how you got into this mess. Just fly this thing .

The clock moved down, moving too fast and too slow, both at once, the way all countdown clocks did. But then the numbers got to zero, and it was time. Back on Earth, some computer sent the commands to the Ghoul Modules, and the wormhole bloomed into being, dead ahead.

Dianne fired the engines, and the Terra Nova moved in.

Gerald MacDougal watched the wormhole getting closer, surprised at how calm he was. He should have been terrified, his pulse pounding, the sweat thick on his body.

And yet he was not. Was he serenely confident they would make it? Was he so certain they were doomed that he had given himself up to death with calm and dignified resignation? Or was he so terrified that he could find no other reaction than absolute, blanket denial?

As the blazing un-blue-white circle of the wormhole aperture swelled forward, rushing toward them, like a wall in space they were just about to slam into, Gerald braced for the impact, his instincts telling him the ship was about to crash into the barrier that was not really there.

Gerald glanced up at the status displays. Dianne was flying at a much higher velocity than NaPurHab had used. Maybe that was wise. No sense remaining inside any longer than necessary. Or maybe it was downright suicidal.

But then they were in. No turning back. They had crossed their Rubicon; they were committed. The ship hit the un-blue-white, and dove into the wormhole. Gerald felt a sudden thrill of excitement. At last, at long last, the Terra Nova was living up to her name. She was off in search of New Worlds indeed.

Dianne Steiger drove the ship in, her whole attention, her whole soul, focused on the job of getting her ship in and down and through and out. The ship bucked and jittered as the complex tidal and gravitational forces inside the wormhole grabbed at it. Dianne was flying by the seat of her pants, the joystick in a death grip. Easy now , she told herself. No heroics. Just get it done . But hell, getting done would require heroics.