Beyond the Event Horizon (2 page)

One of them,
hearing Steve’s footsteps, turned round and took a quick glance at
him. Steve, who was looking round the interior of the cockpit with
interest, met his eyes. He nodded in greeting, but the pilot simply
turned back, ignoring the gesture. Oh well, armies have their own
ways of doing things. Not so much formal courtesy, but, on the
other hand, more respect when things got serious.

After shaking
the water off his clothes and wiping his face with his sleeve,
Steve went further into the lounge and sat down on one of the
seats. He found and fastened his seatbelt and lowered the
stabilising bar, which clicked into place. Cushions immediately
inflated themselves on either side of his back, fixing his body in
place completely. Cool! There were no such devices on civilian
ships.

Steve took a
quick look back at the entrance, where the others were still
hurrying in. The water was not just trickling off the roof of the
shuttle and the engine nozzles, but pouring down in streams. The
bright glare from the floodlights lit up the rain, blinding Steve’s
eyes as it dispersed. Because of this, it was impossible to see
what was going on outside the ship from inside. Shadows
periodically appeared as if from nowhere, breaking through the
downpour and momentarily opening the curtain of water to the world
outside.

The torrential
rain forced the team to get from the bus to the shuttle amazingly
quickly. Some coped with their seats at once, while others fiddled
about for a while trying to strap themselves in. Kimble walked
along the rows of seats, strapping in those who couldn’t manage it
themselves. Only then did he flop himself down onto a free seat and
strap himself in with lightning speed, an action he had obviously
done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

Once firmly in
place, the captain made some sort of gesture towards the ceiling.
Steve followed the gesture with surprise, and only then noticed the
dark eye of a small camera above them. It seemed that the pilots
had been using it to observe them. There had been no need for them
to look round from their seats.

“Roger,” said
a voice from one of the loudspeakers above Steve’s head. He was
sitting quite close to the cockpit, and could hear the pilot’s
voice even without the intercom.

At that very
second, a deafeningly loud hissing noise was heard from outside.
The ship was blowing out its nozzles with compressed air to eject
the water that had drained into them and any other detritus. The
solid wall of water cutting the interior of the ship off from
events on the launch pad disappeared immediately. The water gushing
out of the nozzles could be seen for dozens of metres behind them
as it swirled around and away into the night sky.

From the
direction of the entrance came the sound of hydraulic amplifiers,
straining. The entrance door, which also served as the floor, thus
making it easier to enter the shuttle, began to rise, sealing the
entrance behind it. Once in place, it slammed sonorously, moving
sideways slightly into slots that locked it in place. The deafening
hiss from outside fell silent immediately.

A small
monitor came down to a position just in front of Steve’s face and
relayed the image from the external cameras. He could see the water
from the rocket engine nozzles still shooting off into the
darkness.

Suddenly, from
somewhere behind them on the other side of the hull plating, sharp
sounds like discharges of electricity were heard. At the same
moment, the water from the nozzles stopped flowing in uniform
streams, and diamond-patterned shock waves passed through it. The
frequency of the waves kept increasing, and, with a bright flash of
light, two plasma exhaust jets shot out of the ship’s tail. The
shuttle was instantly filled with a low roar, incomparably noisier
than on civil ships.

Steve took his
eyes off the screen to look at Kimble. It was hard to make out in
the semi-darkness of the shuttle, but he thought Kimble looked
pleased. The lift-off in the military shuttle must have brought
back some pleasant memories from his past.

The violet
plasma jets changed their focal length several times, then the
engine nozzles were lowered. The ship shuddered noticeably and rose
vertically into the air. It was shaken from side to side almost
instantly, with gusts of wind trying to throw it on its side and
back to the ground.

After gaining
only a few dozen metres of altitude, the nozzles changed direction
again, and Steve felt the acceleration inclining him to the right.
The side cushions were good shock absorbers, preventing his body
from bumping painfully against the harder parts of the seat.

The shuttle
stopped being thrown from side to side, and, instead, started
vibrating like mad. The noise of the turbines continued to
increase, and Steve felt the ship accelerate even more. Yes, it
seemed the pilots had never heard of passenger comfort.

Steve looked
at the image from the front camera, but his eyes could make out
nothing but onrushing drops of water. Suddenly the drops were no
more, and the amazing sight of the starry night sky and the bright
moon shedding its soft light on a dense blanket of cloud opened up
before him.

The ship’s
acceleration increased significantly. This is really too much,
thought Steve. The excess G was beginning to make him feel
uncomfortable, and the shuttle was now gaining altitude at an acute
angle to the vertical. Under the pressure of such acceleration, the
blood was beginning to leave his head and his vision was blurred
and fading.

After a few
minutes, the ship suddenly changed position sharply, so that its
ceiling was now the floor. The shaking had almost stopped, and the
shuttle was moving along smoothly and steadily. Describing a huge
arc, it left the atmosphere and went into orbit to meet the
expedition ship.

“Visual
contact with destination point,” one of the pilots said over the
intercom.

Steve woke
from his half-asleep state and looked at Kimble, who nodded to the
camera.

“We’ll soon be
there,” he said to Steve.

Steve again
turned to watch the images from the cameras displayed in front of
him. The ship waiting for them was still just a bright spot in the
distance. It was difficult to tell which way was up and which was
down, but it seemed as if the shuttle would have to gain a few more
dozen kilometres of altitude to reach the ship.

Steve felt the
shuttle turn a little and lower its nose, and the expedition ship
was lost from view. About 15 minutes later, however, its belly
suddenly came into view floating right above the shuttle.

The expedition
ship was enormous. Steve was not very good at recognising types,
but it looked like a medium class cargo ship. He had to admit he
had been expecting something more compact, but so much the better.
The bigger the ship, the more room there would be in the cabins.
They were facing a long flight, and he didn’t fancy spending it in
a space the size of a broom cupboard.

The space
flight proceeded smoothly, and the shuttle seemed to be floating on
clouds. It was apparent from the screen that the ship receiving
them had already opened its cargo compartment ready for their
arrival. The shuttle flew into it with its engines idling and
landed softly on the stamped steel floor. After its legs had been
clamped in magnetic traps, the shuttle switched off its engines and
opened its exit door.

The side
cushions deflated, and Steve immediately felt his body floating in
his seat, rocking from side to side in the conditions of
weightlessness. He unlocked and raised his seat’s security bar and
released the straps. Instinctively putting his feet on the floor to
get out of his seat, his body began to float up at once. He managed
to grab something and stop himself just in time before he hit his
head on the ceiling. This was not his first experience of
weightlessness, but he still hadn’t been in it very often, so his
movements were rather clumsy; he had none of Kimble’s automatic
reflexes.

“Take the
magnetic soles from under your seat,” Kimble told the team.

Leaving the
shuttle and looking round, Steve finally realised why the ship was
so big. Half the capacious cargo compartment was filled with
various containers covered with camouflage-coloured tarpaulin. He
chuckled at his own thoughts: when mankind first discovered radio
waves, transmitters and receivers were the size of a large trunk,
whereas today they could fit into a pinhead. It was the same with
gravity waves, though they were more complicated. Dozens of
containers of cumbersome equipment were needed to register them.
Maybe a hundred years from now, they too would be reduced to the
size of a pinhead.

Walking in
magnetic soles was tiring, at least for Steve, but perhaps they
just took some getting used to. The floors, walls and ceiling of
most of the ship’s compartments were covered in magnetic material.
The soles only had to be close to them and they would grip at once,
holding the body firmly in place. They automatically adjusted the
power of adhesion depending on the load, and switched off as soon
as they registered a neural pulse in the muscles of the foot trying
to take the next step.

After walking
with heavy tread to the exit, which left them very short of breath,
the team reached the lock separating the cargo compartment from the
compartments with artificial gravity. The lock was in the form of a
large-diameter tube divided into sectors, each of which rotated at
different rates. The further they were from the weightlessness
compartments, the quicker they rotated.

The principle
for creating artificial gravity was quite simple. Part of the ship,
which included the command compartment, living compartment and some
technical compartments, rotated constantly round its own axis.
Centrifugal force created acceleration, which in turn created
artificial gravity indistinguishable from the natural kind.

This design
made it possible to change the artificial gravity inside quite
easily; the rotation of the wheel just had to be speeded up or
slowed down. For long flights, the doctors recommended Earth
gravity, but to extend the life span of the rotation mechanism, it
was often reduced to the level of that on Mars or even the Moon
when there were no people on board.

Now the ring
was almost at rest, creating only minimum gravity, approximately
the same as on the Moon. The ship had recently left the servicing
dock and been taken by the AI into low orbit to receive the team.
There was no sense in wasting the ring’s life span on creating
artificial gravity. Energy isn’t free, after all.

Lunar gravity
wasn’t particularly comfortable, but was sufficient to keep objects
from flying chaotically around in the ship. They stayed were they
were put. There is a rule in space, however, that in
weightlessness, and in a ship of sufficient size, no matter how
thoroughly you fix objects in place, there will always be something
floating about, hitting everything it can. Another rule is that the
heavier this object is, the more likely it is to hit something
fragile, while a third rule dictates that this something fragile
will be either an important sensor monitor or the last bottle of
the very best wine or spirits.

Kimble seemed
to know his way around the ship. He was the first to pass through
the gravity lock, before helping the others.

“I expect you
all in the conference room in 20 minutes,” he said, when the last
expedition member had successfully passed through the lock. “Any
questions?”

There were no
questions, and the team members dispersed to their cabins. Steve
called up a map of the living accommodation on his tablet and
lifted his bag from the floor. It was pleasantly easy to carry a
heavy bag in a weak field of gravity, but you had to remember that
it still had the same inertia. If inexperienced, lifting, lowering,
throwing or catching it could give you a nasty bump or a sprained
joint. Unaccustomed gravity is a tricky thing.

“Attention,
gravity increase in 30 seconds,” warned the voice of the ship’s AI,
as Steve was on the way to his cabin. The AI had detected that
there were people on board, so had decided to make them more
comfortable by bringing the gravity up to Earth level. The bag
Steve was carrying became heavier.

Once again, he
was the last to enter the conference room. Kimble switched on a
small holographic projector which stood in the middle of the table,
and signalled to the computer to dim the lighting.

“We all know
the aim of our expedition, but that is not the whole story. What
you are about to learn is classified ‘Top Secret’. No kidding.”

The captain
picked up his tablet from the table and read aloud the text on its
screen.

“All
information entrusted to or acquired by those present from this
moment on is a state secret and must not be divulged to third
parties without written permission from a higher authority. Any
violation of this rule is punishable by a long term of
imprisonment. This directive has no time limit.”

Kimble looked
up from his tablet at the team, for most of whom this turn of
events was unexpected.

“I am asking
the ship’s computer to record the reading of this directive, and
each member of the team to confirm by a biometric scan that it has
been read and understood.”

The captain
passed his tablet round the circle, so that everyone could leave
his or her biometric signature. When the tablet was given back to
him a few minutes later, he transferred the data to the ship’s
computer and turned to Steve.

“You have the
floor.”

Steve stood up
so that they could see him better.

“Yes, thank
you...” he said hesitantly, and then fell silent. In such
situations it is always hard to decide where to begin.