Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (11 page)

At
the end of the allotted time the black holes were moved back toward each other,
and the portal to elsewhere closed.  The crew started talking among themselves
as they filed from the room back to the tube car that ran to the main base,
pulling off helmets and gloves.  They reminded Lucille of condemned prisoners
offered a temporary reprieve.  And tomorrow would offer another chance of
execution.

*     *     *

Lucille
wondered what kept these people performing a job that obviously terrified
them.  She asked one of the scientists one day after they had opened a portal
to an antimatter universe that had destroyed the probe in spectacular fashion. 
Fortunately, the recon robot was millions of kilometers into the strange space,
having catalogued that all the laws were not exactly the same as in our
Universe, but close enough where our form of life could exist.  Until the probe
touched down on a comet and obliterated itself while blasting the iceball
apart.  The human exploration team had been called back post haste.

"It's
the contract," said Dr. Joseph Jakarta, the leader of that last
exploration team.

"You
could break the contract, couldn't you?" asked Yu, having trouble
remembering what her own contract had actually said.  "It's a free
society, after all, and they can't force you to work a job you find
disagreeable."

Some
of the other members of the team laughed when she said that.

"Yeah,
the pay's great," said Dr. Jakarta.  "But they bank most of it for
us, payable when our contractual period is over."

"Well,
yes," said Lucille, remembering how that had seemed very attractive when
she had signed on.  She was paid six times what she would have expected from an
academic job.  Her room and board was paid for, and she was given ten percent
of her pay for personal expenses.  The rest would make a tidy sum when she
moved on.  Now her face dropped as she heard the small print she had ignored
when she signed her contract.

"If
you don't fulfill the terms, they take away everything you have banked,"
said Jakarta.  He looked around at the other nine members of his team, who all
nodded vigorously, or cursed the administration.  "That's not all,"
continued Jakarta.  "They can make sure that you have a hard time getting
another position."

"How
can they have that much power?" asked Yu, feeling horrified.

"This
is a Priority Imperial Project," said Jakarta, emphasizing each word. 
"And the Imperial Science Council controls a lot of the funding the
Universities and research tanks receive.  Add to that the influence of the
military, and anyone who would hire someone who reneged on their contract risks
losing all of their funding."

"That
still shouldn't make it impossible to get a job," protested Lucille.

"Not
impossible, if you're good enough," agreed Jakarta with grudging
acceptance.  "There are some willing to buck the system.  But for most,
why take the risk?  Not when there are so many other scientists and technicians
out there who can fill the slot on a team."

"And
you know what's funny?" asked one of the techs, her flat eyes staring
straight ahead.  "We still lose half our techs and scientists before their
term is up."

"But,
why?  I know the work is dangerous.  But so are a lot of other high paying
jobs."

"You
haven't been here all that long," said Jakarta after taking a swallow of
his beer.  "Sure, there are other jobs statistically as dangerous.  But
you don't have to look the wrongness of other space in the face.  That wears on
any sentient being after a while."

"You'll
see," said the woman who had talked before.  "It will get inside your
brain too, Dr. Yu.  And then you will know one thing, that you don't want to be
here."

*     *     *

"Open
the portal," ordered Rodrigue.

Lucille
did the last second check and sent her acknowledgement over the link.  She
glanced at her people, seeing the anxiety on their faces.  Everyone was
thinking about what had happened to the other portal crew just a few days
before.

That
Universe had looked promising.  The robotic probe had gone across and continued
to operate within all parameters.  Even the biologicals had seemed to handle
the new space with no problem.  So the human exploration team had gone across,
and things still looked good, for about fifteen minutes.  That was when the
humans had started acting, bizarre was the only word for it.  Word salad on the
transmissions.  The exploration vessel sent into nonsensical gyrations.  And
finally a murder.  The ship had been recalled on autopilot, something the team
seemed completely unaware of.  They were isolated, and molecular probes had
shown that their actual central nervous system tissue had been changed.  It was
not known if they would recover, or if they would have to go through complete
neural restructuring by nanotech, which would basically make them different
people, devoid of all the memories since their last upload.

So this exploration team has gone through mind upload, and their brains
can be restructured if necessary
, thought Lucille,
shuddering at the thought of losing herself the way the members of that other
team had.

Then
she had no time for thoughts of past disasters, as the black holes moved apart
and the space between them ripped open.

The
first indication that something was wrong was the thick yellow gas that jetted
from the hole.  The second indication were the life forms that followed.  They
were like nothing that anyone had ever seen.  Scans immediately showed that
they were not made up of any kind of biological matter that had ever
encountered.  Instead, they scanned as some kind of metallic construct, though
definitely not robots.

"We
opened on a planet," said Rodrigue, staring into the holo.

"How
often does that happen?" asked an alarmed Lucille, watching as animals the
size of small dinosaurs flew around the chamber in their native atmosphere.

"This
is the seventh time, which is well above what would be expected by random
chance," said the other scientist.  "Possibly something to do with
the gravitational pull of large bodies."

Lucille
shuddered at that thought, wondering when they would open a portal into a star,
or a black hole.  And knowing the result would be the end of this world the
project was based on, along with all the personnel and their families.

The
weapons deployed in the huge chamber went into action, firing lasers and
particle beams at the fast flying animals.   Hits were scored.  Many hits.  All
with no effect to the creatures, who were soon tearing into equipment, ingesting
it.  Lasers simply hit them and were absorbed, while particle beams bounced
away.

"Close
the portal," yelled Rodrigue, a trace of panic in his voice as creatures
smacked into the gateway arms.

"What
good will that do?" asked one of the techs.

"Just
do it," yelled the senior scientist.

The
black holes came back together and the portal closed.  One of the creatures
flew into one of the black holes and disappeared in a flash, the hard radiation
of its passage over the event horizon flooding the chamber.  There was no
effect on the animals, but half the sensors in the chamber burned out.

"Set
resonances to this frequency," yelled Rodrigue.

Lucille
looked over the frequency, cross referencing it to a Universe that had already
been explored in the preliminary sense. 
That should work
, she thought,
seeing that it was a null Universe, a natural vacuum of the most empty sort.

“Open
it,” yelled the chief scientist, and Lucille started the process of opening the
portal, something normally not tried so soon after one had already been opened.

The
huge arms that controlled the black holes creaked and stuttered as they moved
apart from the over strain, and Yu was sure they would collapse, and drop the
holes through the floor and into the planet.  They held, and the holes ripped
open space again.  This time the pull was from the other side, and the misty
atmosphere was first sucked from the room, followed by the animals that no
longer had air to flap through.  The creatures twisted and turned as they
floated away from the opening, starting to become more insubstantial with each
moment, until they were gone.

“Close
it,” yelled Rodrigue, and the ring of black holes came back together, closing
off the human Universe from the other.

“What
happened to them?’ asked Lucille, trying to keep the scream that wanted to
erupt from her mouth under control.

“Matter
as we know it can’t exist there,” answered the other scientist.  “We found that
out when we sent a probe into it.”

Rodrigue
stood up from his chair and looked around the control room.  “Good job,
people.  Way to keep your heads.  Everyone except the senior scientific staff
can leave.  We will try again in two days, so everyone relax.”

“How
the hell can we relax?” said one of the techs as he got up from his seat.

“I’m
going to pray,” said another tech, a grimace on her face.  “Don’t really see
how it will help, or hurt.”

I wish I could just get a drink
, thought
Lucille, wishing she didn’t have to sit and discuss what had just happened. 
But there was no help for it.  She was a trapped audience to this discussion of
a nightmare.

*     *     *

The
chapel was set up for a Christian service, of any and all of the denominations
of that religion.  There were other chapels on the base for the other major
religious groups, Moslem, Judaism, Hinduism, all the isms there were.  Lucille
had been raised Reformed Catholic, the dominant religion of the Empire.  When
she had turned to science she had not had time for the church, and her faith
had lapsed.  Her father, the eminent scientist and Buddhist, didn’t really push
her to stay with the church.  It was her mother’s wish, the good Reformed
Catholic from Norje, who made sure her daughter was raised to observe the
ceremonies and strictures of that denomination.

Are you really there, God?
thought the
physicist, kneeling in front of the altar and looking at the image of a man
hanging from a cross.  An image from a world that had been totally destroyed by
the aliens that had sent humankind fleeing across the Galaxy. 
And if you
are, do you only exist in our reality?  What about these other realities we are
opening?  What happens to us if we die in one of those realities?  Do we still
find our way to you?

All
disturbing questions, even to one who was more Agnostic than anything.  Would
death in another dimension mean obliteration of the soul, if there was such a
thing?  Were the natural laws of the other dimensions such that a soul was not
possible?  Lucille shook her head at the last.  Her rational mind told her
there was no such thing as a soul, while her religious upbringing told her
there was.  And what about the strictures against clones, who all tended to be
psychopaths?  Those with a religious bent said it was because they were
unnatural creatures, not possessed of a soul.  Those who did not believe in the
supernatural said it was because?  Well, they really didn’t have much of an
answer.

Whatever it is, I’m stuck here.  At least until my contract is over.
  She had been on the project for two months, which gave her twenty two
months to survive.  Lucille was still shaking her head when she got up from
before the altar and walked away, her head still swirling with questions, but
no definite answers.

*     *     *

The
portal to Universe number five hundred fifteen opened easily.  It opened on
vacuum, it opened on space that seemed to obey the natural laws of the human
Universe.  Lucille counted it off as her fifty-seventh portal.  The probe went
through, and seemed to function perfectly.  The readings coming back from the
biologicals indicated that they were functioning perfectly as well.

“Something’s
wrong with this place,” said one of the techs, about the same time that Lucille
started getting a feel for the place on her link into the instruments.

This place is old
, she thought, looking at the
star map the probe was beginning to develop.  The opening was in a Galaxy that
was being absorbed by another Galaxy, which itself was in the process of
colliding with yet another.  What stars still existed were all of the red dwarf
variety, and the sleet of radiation showed that this was a Universe of black
holes and neutron stars, swallowing up all the matter that came their way.

“It’s
a Universe in its last days,” she said, looking back at Rodrigue.  “In another
billion years it will have shrunk to a point.”

“We
don’t need a billion years, if it comes to that,” said the senior scientist. 
“If we need someplace to run, this may have to be it.  Send in the exploration
team.”

The
team went through the portal with no problems.  All readings came back normal,
all communications rational.  Everything checked out, and Lucille knew they
would be looking at this Universe for at least two weeks, maybe longer.  The
relief in the control chamber was palpable as everyone realized they would not
be opening another gate during that time.