‘…then history never gets rewritten,’ nodded Pierre. ‘With any luck, everything will revert back to the way it was before.’
‘Because we’ll have removed that one variable. Got it. But, Pierre… what do you mean when you say, “put a stop to them”? It sounds very, well, final, doesn’t it?’
Pierre leaned back in his chair and contemplated this for a moment.
‘If the Council agrees, then it might have to be,’ he replied, shrugging.
‘But that would be genocide, wouldn’t it? That’s worse than locking them away!’
‘Oh, it’s awful. I’m in complete agreement. But look at the bigger picture, George. How many trillions of trillions have been killed or erased by the hand of the Torri-Tau? When you weigh all that against one species, and the species causing the calamity at that, it seems pretty black and white to me.’
‘I don’t know if it should,’ I said, rubbing my hand over my mouth in disbelief. ‘What if…’
We never got to finish our conversation. All of a sudden a loud horn blasted out from the ship’s speakers, and the lights in the cockpit turned a frightful red. I came very close to falling out of my seat.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said the calm and radiant voice of the computer, ‘but it appears we are being chased. Please fasten your seatbelts.’
Chapter Nine
Pierre and I scrambled to pull the belts across our chests as our seats automatically rotated to face the windscreen. The deafening horn sound had been a one-off, at least. It had been replaced by its younger and more irritating cousin; a shrill and persistent beeping noise, like a smoke detector with an empty battery. I don’t know if the ship’s computer thought that without such a noise chipping away at our sanity we might forget about our predicament and go back to eating leafy meatballs, but I would have thought the pulsing, nightmarish red lighting was enough of a reminder. It was like being strapped inside a giant, high-velocity heart.
‘Are we going to get blown up, Pierre?’ I asked, glancing up from my fumbling attempts to clip the buckles of my seat belts together. I was hoping he would look more confident than I felt. He didn’t.
‘Well that probably depends on whether whatever’s chasing us has guns or not, doesn’t it?’ he replied. ‘Computer, what’s happening out there?’
‘My sensors have picked up three small entities approaching from the rear,’ replied the ship, no sign of terror in her voice. ‘Their velocity is quite high.’
My eyes grew wide. ‘Oh God,’ I blurted. ‘They sound like missiles. Has somebody fired missiles at us?’
‘I’m still trying to determine their exact nature,’ replied the computer. ‘Would you like me to deploy evasive manoeuvres as a precaution? Warning: should our visitors come in peace, evasion may be seen as impolite.’
‘Yes, evade!’ shouted Pierre, gripping the arms of his chair. ‘Of course you should evade!’
The ship boosted and lurched sideways. A flash of pain shot through my skull as my head hit the back of my chair, and all the stars in the otherwise empty panoramic of space began to spin. Whether this experience was the result of the ship performing a barrel-roll or the onset of a mild concussion was hard to tell.
‘George, are you alright?’ came the sound of Pierre’s voice. It seemed to take a long, foggy route before reaching my ears.
‘Yeah,’ I said, nodding. ‘Yeah, I’m alright. Did we lose them?’
‘Erm, well we’re in the middle of empty space,’ he replied. ‘I’m not sure where we can lose them, to be honest.’
‘Alert: collision imminent,’ said the relaxed computer. ‘Please brace for impact. Five, four, three…’
‘Jesus Christ!’ I yelped, covering my head with my hands. I caught a glimpse of Pierre doing the same.
But as the computer reached zero, no explosion came. The hull didn’t twist and break, the window didn’t shatter, and neither of us were sucked out into the terrible vacuum. We opened our eyes, lowered our hands from the top of our heads, and looked at one another.
‘Did the-’
And that’s when they shot past us - three silver-black devices, round like beach balls. They weren’t much larger than a family-size suitcase, maybe as big as a postbox. Each had a thruster firing out from its back and a thin antenna dangling underneath. On the end of each antennas was a blinking red light. They missed the ship by only a fraction - one to either side, and another below - and carried on ahead of us.
When they were almost so far away we could no longer see them, they looped around and came back at us.
‘They’re coming round for another pass!’ I shouted. I felt a desperate urge to unbuckle my seat belts and run to the back of the spaceship - not because I thought it would do me any good, just so I wouldn’t have to watch those rockets come rocketing towards me. ‘Doesn’t this ship have any guns, or flares, or something? Can’t we shoot them down?’
‘This is a luxury-class yacht, and as such the installation of any sort of energy, kinetic or explosive-based weaponry is strictly prohibited,’ the computer answered. ‘However, for the sake of my continued existence as anything other than a smouldering black box, please pull the lever under the dashboard to your right.’
Pierre and I peeked under the dashboard in front of us. There was nothing under my side, but a handle dangled down in front of where Pierre was sitting. Luckily for us, it was designed for someone with only slightly smaller hands than a human. Pierre stretched forwards as far as his seat belts would allow and yanked it down hard.
For the first time since Pierre had been pressing random buttons prior to takeoff, there came a grunting, grinding sound from somewhere in the bowels of the ship. Then a panel slid aside on the front of the ship’s hood and a colossal gun rose up from the opening. It had two barrels like the sort of anti-aircraft guns found on battleships; each was nearly as long as I am tall. It swivelled up and down as it calibrated itself.
‘Christ almighty!’ I shouted. ‘That’s a bloody cannon!’
The cannon swung to the left as the first of the three objects came hurtling back towards us. It fired off two shots. Both lasers covered the great distance in a second. The first tore through the object, the second turned it into a microscopic, quickly-snuffed fireball.
The other two objects were still making a beeline for the ship.
‘Oh, God…’ I groaned, clasping at my temples. ‘There aren’t any people in these things, are there? Like, teeny tiny people?’
‘That is unlikely,’ replied the computer as the gun swivelled round to the right. ‘The scenario with the greatest probability is that these are drone scouts sent to track us down, perhaps even deactivate my thruster engines. Still, you never can be too careful.’
Another two shots, and the second drone was reduced to shrapnel.
‘I guess somebody really wants their ship back,’ said Pierre.
The last of the three drones was still coming towards us… right towards us, with no sign of slowing or altering its course.
‘Or really doesn’t want us to have it, at any rate,’ I moaned. ‘I mean, what sort of person has an AA gun hidden in their vehicle? Who in the multiverse did we rob, Pierre?’
The gun fired twice more, but one laser missed and the other did nothing more than cleave off the drone’s antenna. The drone lost its balance a little, rolling the way a bullet rolls out of the barrel of a gun as it’s fired, but it maintained its perfect trajectory, close enough to us by that point that I could see the blinking red light of its antenna as it spiralled away.
A hundred metres, ninety, eighty…
Pierre was fishing his key out of his pocket, presumably with the idea that if all else failed he could abandon ship and take a door to somewhere else in the same universe. I’d like to think he would have taken me with him, if it had come to that.
Luckily it didn’t. The gun turned to face the drone head-on and decimated the silver-black orb with two final shots. I winced as fragments of metal bounced off the
hull and windscreen.
Pierre and I sighed, sinking into our seats as the gun retreated back into its secret compartment under the hood. With another, lighter burst of acceleration the ship boosted onwards once more, and the red lights of the cabin faded away.
‘Unfortunately, that diversion has added two minutes to our journey,’ said the computer, as if nothing had happened. ‘I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.’
We saw it through the window a good seven or so minutes before our arrival. Pierre and I had stayed in the cockpit following our ordeal with the drones - we didn’t fancy being blown into space without at least seeing what was going to do it first. It grew from a dull speck amongst the stars to something the size of an asteroid, and then finally to a grand, grand planet.
Ophenia Four.
‘Ooooh,’ I said, sitting up in my seat.
I’d say it was the colour of dusty bricks, but that doesn’t sum up the sheer sense of majesty and awe the planet conjured. Perhaps… perhaps it was the colour of the great Terracotta Army instead. It was hard to gauge without something against which it could be measured, but it looked bigger than the Earth. A lot bigger. It was a giant, I later found out, but made of earth and water rather than its breed’s usual gas. A large and purple storm swam peacefully across its cloudy surface. Far to its left shone a small, distant sun.
‘Almost makes you forget everything else that’s going on, right?’ said Pierre, rising from his chair so he could lean against the dashboard and admire the view. There was a sad smile on his lips. ‘Almost. And to think - nobody down there suspects a thing.’
He snapped his fingers and looked up at the ceiling as if searching for something.
‘Computer?’ he said. ‘Don’t take us into Ophenia Four’s orbit. Is there, erm, one of those cosmic crack things around here?’
A pause.
‘Do you mean the WeiKing-Co Fissure?’ replied the computer. ‘That syphon station lies beyond the dark side of the planet. Would you like me to designate a suitable landing point?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Plotting a course now.’
The ship listed to the right, giving the planet a wider berth than I would have thought necessary. Perhaps it was avoiding its gravitational pull to conserve fuel. Perhaps Ophenia Four wasn’t all that safe a place to fly unless you really had to. I looked out at it as we swept past. Little twinkles marked the position of orbiting satellites and space stations. The surface of the planet went by so quickly. How fast we must have been going, and yet from up there it was like we were the only ones standing still.
‘Woah,’ whispered Pierre from beside me. ‘I’m guessing that’s it then.’
Out from behind the planet it loomed, this snake of perfect, depthless white. Longer than any human eye could see, the crack stretched from a point of nothingness to a conclusion the size of a moon - a gaping maw, pulsing with energy. It wore a clumsy, deformed exoskeleton of scaffolding and construction; it resembled a dragon chained to the earth. Ships buzzed around it like flies in the African heat. But despite all that it shone; it shone like a beam of light passing through a prism of a thousand diamonds.
‘A crack from the birth of the universe,’ I said, my legs trembling. ‘Splitting both time and space.’
‘A source of limitless energy,’ replied Pierre, unable to tear his eyes away from it as we continued our approach. ‘And a backdoor to the Space Between Worlds. I’d recognise that endlessly empty shade of white anywhere.’
‘Just to be clear: we’re planning to fly into that thing? Will this ship survive that sort of journey? More importantly… will we?’
‘Well let’s find out, shall we? Computer, have you found somewhere safe to set us down?’
‘Without prior clearance by the WeiKing company, there is nowhere on the station approved for us to dock,’ replied the computer. ‘However, there is a vacant landing pad on the starboard side of the station. Will this suffice?’
‘It’ll have to,’ replied Pierre. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, George. I’ve got a really good plan. You’re going to like it.’
Chapter Ten
I wasn’t a great fan of the plan.
We settled down on one of the various starboard landing pads without incident. The ship wished us well and reverted back its - or was it her? - silent hovering mode as we descended the ramp. I started to panic when, with no spacesuit on my person, I saw no barrier between me and the vacuum of space. I even began to gasp for air before realising that some sort of invisible forcefield had been erected around the mining station.
‘The ship’s computer told me there was an artificial atmosphere around the facility before we left,’ laughed Pierre. ‘Don’t worry. I’d be feeling just as embarrassed as you if she hadn’t.’
‘I’m not embarrassed,’ I croaked, rubbing my throat. ‘I’m just relieved.’
It was hard to look at the fissure up close. It was too bright - not as bright as the sun (or at least not as damaging to one’s retinas, I hope), but more like the bulb of a high-intensity desk lamp. It ramped up the contrast on everything. Shadows were as black as night, yet the spaces around them where the crack’s light fell were sparkling and brilliant… even if every surface was as industrial and grey as those back in Port Iridium.
Little spacefaring forklifts chugged by overhead, transporting crates of syphoned antimatter from the great cosmic tear to what I presumed were storage warehouses towards the far end of the station. Each of the three warehouses looked like a cross between a grain silo and a mushroom head. There was a floating, cuboid office not too far from the mouth of the fissure, suspended about fifty metres above the rest of the mining platform. Through its windows I saw workers typing away at computers. Now we were closer, I could also see that the exoskeleton-like construction around the fissure was actually a great many clamps, holding the syphoning equipment in place. Engineers of all shapes and sizes were clambering around them, inspecting them or switching out one tube of rubber piping for another.
We paused at the end of our landing pad to let another forklift go by. It was carrying a nest of old tubes and wires on a wooden pallet. The driver looked like an amphibian in a hard hat; she also looked too bored to notice us.
‘Okay, first step of the plan,’ whispered Pierre as we descended the steps connecting the landing pad to the rest of the facility. ‘We attract as little attention as possible, we find out the best way of getting into that crack thing, and then we do it. Hopefully all without having to move on to step two.’
‘God, I hope so. Where do we start?’
Pierre shrugged. ‘How about over there?’
He pointed to a domed structure at the far end of the station, half obscured by large excavation lights. Tankers were being carried back and forth along rails that linked it to the storage warehouses. Some sort of on-site processing facility, I assumed. The energy had been extracted; it needed to be bottled somewhere, too.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Good a place as any.’
We followed the open gangway in front of us. Each step on the metal grating rang out with enough gusto to give the game away, and likely would have if it hadn’t been for the incessant din of motors and drills emanating from everywhere else. Despite the air being artificial, nobody had discovered a way to remove from it the smell of oil and copper. It mixed poorly with the nervous bile rising in my throat. I fiddled with the hem of my jacket and tried to concentrate on how wonderfully clean it felt, rather than on the nagging dread of being caught.
Not that I needed to worry - not then, at least. The funny thing is, if you act like you’re supposed to be somewhere - even if you stand out like an orangutan in a snowstorm - most people assume you’re supposed to be there. It’s one of the few instances in life in which anyone is willing to acknowledge the possibility of their own ignorance. And the few remaining people are usually too busy to worry themselves about it. It’s someone else’s problem. It always is.
&
nbsp; ‘Mornin’,’ said another toad-faced worker as we passed, tipping his helmet and proving my point. Was it morning? I suppose it could have been.
‘Good morning to you too,’ replied Pierre, and the worker went right back to tightening a random bolt.
There was a whine and a crackle as a loudspeaker atop a tall pole to our right kicked into life. ‘Will Milty Bootka please report to the sanatorium for a code Three Dash Two,’ announced the nasally voice on the other end. ‘I repeat, Milty Bootka to report to the sanatorium for a code Three Dash Two. Thank you.’
‘Oops, that’s me,’ chuckled the bolt-tightener, picking up his toolbox. ‘Better run.’
‘Hey, before you go,’ said Pierre, hurrying round to the front of the poor engineer, ‘I don’t suppose you could tell us where we’d find the depot with all the syphoning equipment, could you? You know the hazmat suits, the maintenance crafts - that sort of thing?’
The engineer wrinkled his podgy green nose and eyed Pierre with a skeptical sort of confusion… and then broke into a smile.
‘Sure, you mean the equipment depot over by the energy silos,’ he said, nodding and carrying on down the path away from us. ‘It’s only a hop, skip and a jump from here but the gravity lifts can give people trouble. I can give you a ride, if you’d like?’
‘A ride?’ Pierre turned to me and grinned. ‘Why, that would be fantastic. If it doesn’t put you out too much, that is.’
‘Oh, not at all,’ replied Milty, beckoning us to follow. ‘I’m going past the depot anyway. No skin off my nose, right? Here it is. Best if you two climb in the back there.’
He’d brought us to a banged-up buggy parked behind some tarpaulin-covered boxes. It looked like one of NASA’s moon rovers. It also looked cramped. There was a seat up front for the driver and a shallow bay in the back, like the type you’d expect to find on a pickup truck, only much, much shorter. I guess it was usually used for ferrying tools from one job to another. I suppose not a lot was about to change.
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