The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  Zhokov pulled himself into the gap in the dome, his bank of lights bringing the interior into a stark contrast between bright illumination and total darkness. Pandi and Chavis followed, suits set on station keeping, attitude jets firing short bursts to bring them into the center of the enclosure, where they could get the best view of the whole area without getting too near to any kind of trouble.

  Lights picked up the frozen remains of plants set in the soil beds on the floor of the area. A large empty depression lay in the center, probably a pool that had exploded its contents out into space when the dome was pierced. No bodies around, so no way of telling what had used this huge recreation area, thought Pandi. Probably blown out into space as well.

  "Dammit," exclaimed Chavis, as he maneuvered his way down to the deck, looking at the trunks of dozens of plants that stuck out of the soil, "but I'd swear that was a palm tree."

  "Come in, Niven," called Pandi over the com link, "come in."

  "We hear you Pandi," came the reply from the captain.

  "No bodies here, but Chavis thinks there are the remains of terrestrial palm trees. It looks like some kind of recreation area."

  The ship shuddered slightly around them, shaking them in their suits as some of the dead trees fell from their shattered trunks that broke like glass in the vibrations.

  "How in the hell are we being shaken in a vacuum?" yelled Zhokov.

  "Some kind of energy we don't understand," said Pandi.

  "Bullshit," yelled the Russian.

  "Then you explain it."

  "Pandi," came the voice over the link, "are you alright?"

  "Yes Michael," she said. "It looks as if this area was filled with terrestrial vegetation."

  "Convergent evolution, maybe," said Chavis.

  "And what about these?" said Zhokov, hovering over what looked like a very human chair, one of hundreds built into the deck. "These look pretty terrestrial to me."

  "And these?" said Pandi, moving towards some chairs that looked to fit an entirely nonhuman anatomy.

  "Maybe they had guests," said Zhokov.

  "That we had never heard of," said Chavis. "You think someone made contact with aliens and just left the rest of the human race out of it?"

  "Nothing like this ever came out of the system," said Morrison's voice over the com link, as pictures of the outside of the Hernand were projected onto their faceplates. "We sent one of the shuttles around the ship on remote, and we've found some very interesting things."

  "What the hell are those holes on the side?" asked Pandi, looking at row after row of open round ports, some still holding the rounded noses of some kind of capsule.

  "We think they're escape pods of some kind," said McIntyre. "Maybe we'll find some remains in the ones which didn't get away."

  Pandi shuddered at the thought of looking for bodies, even as she admitted to herself that it was one of their primary tasks. That thought was interrupted by a picture of the stern of the ship and the two big globes that occupied the rear. One had been obviously damaged, as if a big scoop had been taken out of it,

  "Is that the ship's drive?" she asked.

  "That's what we're guessing," said McIntyre, "though we surely can't guess on which principle it works. No exhaust, fusion tubes, ion tubes, anything that we would consider an engine."

  "Maybe it is a warp drive," said Zhokov with a chuckle.

  "Whatever it is, maybe we can find out more about it from the inside," said Pandi. "That gash in the lower deck looks like a good opportunity to explore.”

  “Just keep in touch,” said Morrison. “Make sure to keep putting relays LOS. I’m still not sure if we can transmit through whatever that hull is made of.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Zhokov as he set another relay on the gash in the deck, whose melted sides attested to its origin as a burn through from those beam wounds on the outer hull. Then he propelled himself through the gash and into the darkness beyond, followed by his two teammates.

  * * *

  "Damned if this thing isn't spacious," said Pandi, her helmet spot reflecting off the walls of the wide corridor.

  "Just make sure we stay together, sirs," said Chavis. "We don't want to get lost in here."

  "We can do that just as easily together as separately," said Pandi, shuffling across the floor which refused to allow her magnetic boot soles to stick. "But you're right. We want to stay together in case we run into some kind of trouble."

  The corridor ended at a large, bivalve door set into the thick walls of the ship. A set of buttons were placed on a pad to the left, dark and dead. Pandi pushed a button, and then another, with no result.

  "I wonder how long the power has been off around here?"

  "I don't know, my Panda," said Zhokov, "But I have feeling it has been a very long time."

  Zhokov pulled a motorized opener from his belt and pushed the prongs into the small gap between the valves. With a push of a button the motor started twisting the screw that moved the prongs apart, slowly pulling the valves open as they slid into their slots in the wall. Zhokov reversed the opener and returned it to his tool belt, as his helmet lights picked up the flotsam and jetsam that floated around the room. Flotsam and jetsam that included a number of frozen bodies, some only partially dressed, many only partially complete.

  "They look pretty damn human to me," said Pandi, pointing to the stiff form of a bare chested, mini-skirted woman close to the door. Many other doors opened onto the large room, the furnishings of which indicated some kind of banquet or gathering hall.

  "Very human," said Zhokov, running a deep radar scanner over the woman's form, "and dead a long long time. Looks like a lot of them ran into this room during the attack."

  "But why here?" said Pandi, looking at the staring eyes of the woman, her mouth open in the scream that had emptied her lungs into the decompression that struck the room. First unconsciousness and then death from asphyxiation, followed by freezing as the temperature in the dead ship dropped. "Why not run to the escape pods?"

  "Panic, maybe," said Chavis. "Kind of like people running into the center of a burning building seeking a way out."

  "Hell, we don't know enough about this vessel to even guess," said Zhokov. "This may have been the main interchange on the path to the escape pods. Or maybe the people didn't have enough time to react."

  "And maybe some of the not people," said Chavis, shining his helmet light on a floating body that was not what one could call anthropoid. Thick muscular legs filled the creature's coveralls, a thick stubby tail thrusting out to the rear. Reddish brown fur covered the exposed parts of the creature.

  "It looks like a kangaroo," said Chavis, pulling a sampler tube from his belt pouch as he approached the creature.

  “No, not really a kangaroo," said Pandi, moving in on the creature from the other side. The arms were much bigger, ending in hands with three triple jointed fingers and a triple jointed 'thumb', obviously the appendage of a tool-using creature. Shoulders broader than a kangaroo, much flatter face, cat like eyes. Facial hair, a goatee underneath the chin, whiskers sticking out of the side of the nose, again like a cat. Cat like ears surrounded by a fine mane of black hair that flowed down the back of the head.

  "Not an herbivore, either," said Chavis, the amateur biologist of the group, sticking a probe into the creature's open mouth. "These plates must be the animal's teeth, and those are the teeth of a carnivore, or at least an omnivore."

  "Not an animal," said Pandi, looking at the broad brow of the creature. "Unless you consider us animals."

  "But of course, my beautiful creature," said Zhokov with a leer thrown in her direction. "It seems as if we have made first contact with an alien intelligence." He laughed at the end of that statement for a moment. "But he doesn't seem to be in a mood to communicate."

  Space again rippled around them as they fought with station keeping thrusters to maintain their positions and not be forced into a collision with walls or each other. The alien was not so fortunate, as it was
moved through the room toward the nearest wall, striking its head against its solidity with a silent mist of ice crystals as its skin and skull shattered. The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started. The shaken explorers went quickly to their find to assess the damage.

  "No brain like I've ever heard of," said Chavis, looking at the now exposed organ. "It isn't separated through the middle."

  "Convoluted like ours, though," said Zhokov.

  "Niven to exploration team," sounded Morrison's voice over the com link. "Status report, if you would please. Are you OK?"

  "We're fine, Captain," said Zhokov. “A OK, and no damage."

  "We've found an alien, sir," said Pandi excitedly. First discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence, she thought, looking again at the frozen body, sure that there would be more around the ship. Her name would go into the history books after all. No one cared how many Kuiper objects you prospected, but a truly alien life form.

  "What kind of alien?" asked the captain, as Pandi zoomed in with her suit camera, boosting the signal. "My good god," he exclaimed, "what in the world."

  "Worth the trip, huh?" said Pandi.

  "Worth the trip," he agreed, "but we may have to cut this one short."

  "Because of a little shaking?" she asked, trying to hide her own fear in the face of this opportunity that might never come again.

  "It might be more than that," said the captain.

  "That's right," said Engineer McIntyre over the com link. "Doppler laser indicates the distances between us and the other ship are expanding and contracting along with those shudders. We think that's why we felt the shaking through the vacuum. Space itself was vibrating with the force, whatever it was."

  "This thing came back through time," said Pandi under her breath.

  "What was that, Ms. Latham?" said the captain.

  "It's just, it's just that this ship," she said, "built according to what we would consider a graceful form, manned by humans. It has to be from some other space-time."

  "Creatures that appear to be human," said Zhokov, "maybe the product of convergent evolution."

  "Oh come on, Zhokov," said Pandi in exasperation. "What do you think the odds are that something exactly like us, down to the structure of every bone and muscle, would evolve someplace else?"

  "Maybe God made intelligent creatures alike," said Chavis.

  "And what about our not-kangaroo man?"

  "This is a very interesting discussion," said Morrison, "but the question at hand is how much danger we are in. McIntyre would like to get you all back to the ship and accel out of here."

  "Not away from a find like this," said Zhokov. "Please, sir. Something like this may never come along again, and we can't allow the secrets of this ship to leave human space."

  "You suggesting we try to use the Niven to slow its velocity, maybe put it in orbit around Sol."

  "Maybe, sir," said Zhokov. "But at least let us find the power plant on the ship, and see just what wonders we may be passing up."

  "OK, Zhokov," agreed the captain, over the disapproving hiss of his chief engineer, "go ahead on for another fifteen minutes, while we decide what to do about this thing."

  "You're risking our lives, captain," said McIntyre. "They must come out now."

  "Shut up, Mr. McIntyre," said the captain in a loud voice. "We are in the business to take risks, and I agree with Mr. Zhokov. This may be the most important find in the history of the human race."

  "Thank you, sir," said Zhokov. "We'll try and hurry up and find something that we can't pass up."

  "Thanks, captain," said Pandi, her voice full of devotion to the man who would allow her to continue to pursue her dream. No, she thought, I'm not in love with the man. But she was very fond of him, which might be all she had to offer anyone.

  "Which way should we go?" asked Chavis.

  "That way," said Zhokov, pointing to the stern most central passage from the room, "assuming that the engine is in the stern of the ship."

  "Sounds like a reasonable assumption to me," said Pandi, looking at Zhokov with more respect. Another man helping her to achieve her dream, a famous explorer into the unknown. "Lead on."

  * * *

  Even the interior of a familiar ship could become disorienting in a zero gee environment. The only cue that told Pandi and her team that up was up and down was down was the carpet on the floor of the long corridor they found themselves shuffling down, and the dead light strips along the ceiling. An occasional door opened to the right and left, but they knew the target they wanted had to be in the direction they were traveling. Then the wide corridor began to slope up.

  "Damn engine room shouldn't be more than a couple of hundred meters from here," said Zhokov, looking around for an egress from the path they were committed to.

  "And how will we know what the engine room looks like?" asked Chavis. "This thing is how many thousands of years ahead of us?"

  "It should be a room with lots of huge machines in it, maybe a reactor or two," said Pandi.

  "What reactor?" said Zhokov. "Maybe they found the zero point vacuum energy."

  "They would still need some kind of equipment to process and convert the energy to a useful form," said Chavis.

  "And just what would that look like?" said Pandi, swinging her light beam along the seemingly endless corridor to her front.

  "Who the hell knows," answered Zhokov, moving ahead, his light penetrating the pitch-blackness. "But maybe it’s behind that half opened door."

  Ahead, at the end of the corridor, lay a large double portal, at least four meters across, one side locked in closed position, the other half open, leaving a meter of opening through which darkness still reigned. Smatterings of different scripts were plastered on the open portals, some with a Sanskrit or hieroglyphic look. Others like lettering systems that looked somewhat modern, but still not familiar, along with signs of universal intent.

  "That looks like a warning to me," said Pandi, looking at the round circle with a line bisecting it, the figure of a man and a woman within the circle. "No admittance."

  "What do you think they kept in there?" asked Chavis. "Their green, slimy flesh eating monsters."

  "Well, they're frozen dead green slimy monsters," said Zhokov, "if that's what they were. Whatever it is, it's probably not too dangerous now. Why don't we have a look?"

  The large room was empty of equipment and furniture, though not totally empty. The single construct in the room grabbed their attention immediately, and held it unwaveringly. A large rectangle was suspended in the center of the room, a rectangle of some shimmering substance, like water held in a tunnel. The eye beheld the rectangle, but the brain refused to comprehend, as if this were made of matter or space or something that the mind was not able to grasp. Colors seemed to run along the watery substance, but not colors that they could describe. A slightly smaller rectangle of some dark substance sat within the opening of the rectangular tunnel, for their minds gave it a depth that seemed to go forever. Another slightly larger rectangle sat outside the opening, a rectangle that shimmered with some kind of energy, what they couldn't say, suspended by mirrored cables from the ceiling and floor of the chamber.

  "What the hell is it?" asked Chavis, his natural instincts pulling him back from such an unnatural object.

  "I'm betting it's a wormhole," said Pandi, her own instincts moving her toward the unknown, and this was as unknown as it got.

  "A wormhole?" asked Zhokov, moving up beside Pandi. "I thought wormholes only existed within a heavy gravity field."

  "They can exist in a heavy gravity field," she answered. "But it may be possible to create one, or open up a microscopic natural wormhole, with enough energy."

  "Niven," called Zhokov over the com link. "Niven, can you see this."

  "We sure can," said Morrison, "though our pickup doesn't seem to be giving us a clear picture of it."

  "It may be giving you as clear a picture as is possible," said Pandi. "You may have to see it with your own ey
es to really get the full effect."

  "A wormhole?" said Morrison. "Are you sure?"

  "From the shape I would say something like a Visser Wormhole," said Pandi, "though not exactly."

  "What do you mean not exactly?" asked Morrison over the link.

  "A Visser Wormhole should be square," she said, "and held open by exotic matter, which may be the dark rectangle holding this one open, balanced by the ring of regular matter on the outside."

  "I thought Wormholes were unstable," said McIntyre over the link.

  "Morris-Thorne Wormholes are, spherical wormholes," she said. "Visser Wormholes can be very stable, and safe to traverse. But this seems to be a new geometry."

  The ship shuddered yet again and the explorers with it. Pandi shook her head, trying to clear the pain that shot through it, maybe an effect of the compression of time-space within her body, her very nervous system. Yelling came over the com link as the more fragile Niven was also shaken. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

  "God dammit," said Zhokov. "That was the strongest one yet."

  "Damn right," yelled Morrison in return. "You are to get out of there immediately. That is an order."

  "At a guess," said Pandi, excitement straining her voice, "this seems to be the source of the distortion. This may be the most important single find in the history of the human race."

  "I don't care, Pandora," said Morrison. "Get the hell out of there, now. All of you. We need to get out of this space before those distortions take us out."

  "But the wormhole?" said Pandi.

  "How can you be sure it's really a wormhole?" asked Morrison. "Be reasonable. If we know it’s possible, we can make one of our own eventually."

  "We can tell it's a wormhole by traveling through it," she said. "And it will take forever to reach the level of technology to make one of our own."