Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier.

by Doug Dandridge

"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.

  The Universe turned out to be one in the last stages of its life, as Lucille had surmised. The only living stars were red dwarfs. Trials showed that it had a hyperspace array similar to the human Universe. The place could support human life for however many thousands of years it took to find another home. There was still no reason to think it would come to that. But humankind had not gotten along in the Cosmos by being trusting. It had learned that paranoia was a healthy state in an unhealthy Universe.

  * * *

  Universe five hundred and forty-nine opened just as easily as most before it. But the blast of hard radiation that came through the opening and fried the portal room chamber sensors told them from the start that something was different.

  “Electromag field to maximum,” yelled Rodrigue. The field covered the wall of the portal chamber, and was always kept at half strength when the hole was opened, allowing all the instruments to look through it with minimum interference. Now it was strengthened to its maximum power, stronger than that of an Imperial battleship. All charged particles were stopped by the
multilayered field, while the uncharged ones were absorbed by the liquid insulation layer built for that purpose.

  “Residual radiation is at a minimum,” called out the tech who was monitoring those systems.

  “Send through the probe,” ordered Rodrigue. “We might as well get a look at whatever hell we opened.”

  The probe went through and started to transmit. It was immediately apparent that the robot was not going to function very long, not with the radiation sleeting through its destroyer class electromag screen. But they did get some information back, enough to tell them what they were dealing with.

  “It’s only a couple of thousand years since this Universe went through a Big Bang,” said Yu, looking over the data through the link that allowed her to get a comprehensive overview. “It will be hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions, before we can live in that space. Billions before there are planets we can claim for terraforming.”

  “So it’s another dead end,” said Rodrigue, glaring at the holo as if it was a personal affront.

  “The probe is dying,” said Lucille, looking back at her boss. “Should we close it?”

  “This Universe is of great scientific significance,” said one of the other scientists. “We can gain a lot of knowledge about how our own Universe formed from this place, if nothing else.”

  Rodrigue sat and thought for a moment, while the data from the chamber sensors faded over time from the radiation overload. “Send through another probe. We’ve got thirteen more. We’ll keep sending them through one at a time until we’re out. Then we can requisition more from administration for the next opening.”

  And so it went through the day, as they looked at a Universe that was still in its infancy. From all indications it would become one such as theirs. Some put forth the proposition that it actually was theirs, just in a different time. That maybe the dying Universe was also theirs, at a later time.

  That’s one of the problems here, thought Lucille as she was monitoring probe number thirteen, the next to the last. We really don’t know what we’re dealing with. We’re making it up as we go along.

  At least it was a good day at the Other Universe Project, as no one was killed or injured, and new information was gathered at the cost of fourteen robotic probes.

  * * *

  Universe six hundred and one was an unmitigated disaster. The day started off ordinarily enough. The last twenty-five openings by this team had been uneventful, or as much as opening a portal into another reality could be called such. Twenty-one of them had been Universes of nothing but academic interest, not capable of supporting their form of life. Four had the proper physical laws to allow carbon based organics to survive. They just didn’t contain anything that could be properly called matter. One was an antimatter Universe, while one was made up, as far as could be told, of negative matter. That would have been useful as the source of a scarce resource, if that Universe hadn’t been empty for millions of light years past the portal, and there seemed to be no dimensions of hyperspace to use to get to the negative matter. Only the characteristic radiation of negative matter reactions gave an indication of what lay across those millions of light years.

  “Are we ready?” asked Dr. Rodrigue, looking at the holo of the chamber that showed the black hole ring ready to go.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” whispered Lucille under her breathe, wondering what might come out of this particular rabbit hole. I have a bad feeling about this one, she thought, trying to hold her hands steady. She didn’t think she was precognitive, like some members of the Imperial family were said to be. She had never had a vision before. But last night she had suffered through a dream that showed something dark was waiting for her. And her mind could think of no darker place than the holes they were opening up into other realities.

  “Open her up,” yelled Rodrigue.

  Lucille glanced back at the man, and could tell that he didn’t feel at ease either. Too many uneventful openings recently. So now he’s waiting for the other rock to fall. She looked around the room, seeing tension everywhere. In the set of shoulders, the roaming of eyes. This can’t be real, can it? she thought. I’m a scientist. This is just a feeling. It’s not real.

  Despite the rational thinking the disquiet grew. The holes moved away from each other, ripping the space apart. As the hole opened what was revealed was anticlimactic.

  “It’s another null,” said one of the techs with a sigh.

  Yu nodded her head, feeling the same relief. The hole was black, the complete absence of light. There should have been no radiation coming from that hole to a Universe that had no matter. But when she looked at the readings she hissed in her breath. There was a lot of radiation coming out of that hole, more than had been coming out of any other but the new Universe they had opened a half year ago.

  “We’re getting unknown radiation,” called out the tech who was monitoring the chamber instrumentation.

  “What do you mean, unknown?” called out Rodrigue, standing up and walking over to the tech’s console.

  “There are fast moving particles,” said the tech, looking up with a frightened expression on her face. “But they don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “Electromag field to maximum,” called out the senior scientist, turning toward the scientist in charge of the defense team.

  “It’s at full,” said the tech that Rodrigue was standing over. “But the particles are still coming through.”

  “My God,” gasped Lucille, looking at the holo image that showed what shouldn’t have been possible. The darkness was moving out of the portal, like a liquid or gas made of pure black absorbing, something. And she could feel something there, some intelligence that was intent on coming through the opening. An intelligence that was hungry, and sensed what it needed in their Universe.

  “What the hell,” yelled out one of the techs as the blackness spread through the portal chamber.

  “It’s alive,” said Lucille, feeling the evil of the thing through some kind of connection. “And it’s coming to eat our Universe.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Rodrigue, running over to her console, his eyes locked on the holo. “It’s just some kind of physical phenomenon.”

  Lucille looked in the man’s eyes and could tell that he was whistling past the graveyard. He knows it's more than that. He just doesn’t want to admit it.

  “Close the portal,” he yelled.

  Most of the crew was paralyzed at their stations, held by fright, or possibly something else. There were screams coming over the com link, the exploration team and the marines that were just outside the portal chamber, exposed to the thing even more than the people in the control room.

  “Close the portal,” screamed the chief, running to one of the tech stations and pushing the man out of the way.

  The black holes began to move inward, more slowly than they should have. Suddenly they lurched to a halt, pressed against the black substance that was pushing back. Flashes of Gamma indicated that the holes were absorbing some of the substance of the invader, but not enough.

  “What the hell is it?” yelled Rodrigue in a panicked voice.

  “It is that Universe,” said Yu, knowing she was speaking the truth. “Whatever it is absorbed everything there was in that place, now it's coming for us.”

  “That’s insane,” yelled out another tech.

  It is, thought Lucille, staring at the holo as more or the thing came through. How many years did it take to absorb that Universe. How many billions will it take to absorb ours. She looked down at her trembling hand and saw that the veins were standing out on it. It’s taking in all the energy it can reach. Our electricity, the electromagnetic fields, even our biological energy. Then it will take in everything that it can. And all that will be left will be the husks, the black holes, maybe neutron stars.

  “Why won’t the holes close that damned portal?” yelled Rodrigue.

  Lucille couldn’t move her hands on her board. Somethin
g in that thing was reaching out and controlling them. Preventing them from linking into any of their systems. Even the chief was doing nothing but sit at a console and yelling.

  Lucille was already in the link. Her mind was what controlled the system, that opened the portal. Her mind, linked with the computer to perform the equations to open a hole between Universes. And she still had control of that system. It took seconds to run through a dozen simulations, to know what needed to be done. And with a thought she shut off the electromagnetic fields that held the black holes within the cups of the arms. At the same time she overrode all the safety protocols and blew each arm from its wall mounts with the fusion charges placed there for just such a possibility.

  The black holes pulled the twelve arms into themselves with a flash of Gamma radiation, each hole increasing its mass by two hundred and fifty million tons. The force of twelve two hundred megaton fusion blasts imparted their momentum to the holes. The holes collapsed together into a much more massive hole. If left on its own it would have fallen into the center of the planet, dooming it to eventual collapse. Fortunately, there was someplace else for it to go, through the rabbit hole into the other Universe, pulling the mass of that Cosmos back into itself. Along with it came most of the force and radiation of the fusion blasts that had propelled the black holes, the only thing that save the people in the control room. The hole closed with a flash, and a sound much like a scream of anger and agony combined came over the few sensors that had survived the destruction.

  It took minutes for the people in the control room to come out of their shock, while the planet around them shook with the vibrations of the explosions and the collapsing space of the portal. Lucille stared at the holo that showed the ruined portal chamber, wrecked at the cost of a half trillion Imperials. And a bargain for saving the Universe, she thought.

  “Was that real?” asked Dr. Rodrigue, staggering over to her station.

  “It was real,” agreed Lucille, nodding her head. “I wish it weren’t. I thought I didn’t believe in evil. Or hell. And then had both proven to me in one day.”