The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  "Forever?" said Morrison.

  "Beyond my lifetime," said Pandi. "It might as well be forever."

  "Your life is more important to me than this discovery," said Morrison. "All of our lives are more important than this thing that might just kill us. Now get out of there."

  "Wait, captain," said Zhokov, slowly moving toward the shimmering mouth. "She's right. This is too important a find to leave. With a working wormhole, who knows where we might go, almost instantaneously. At least where this ship came from. Who knows what technology we might find. We could conquer space," he said, fascinated by the shimmering field, like a rodent drawn to a snake, unaware of the danger, "and time."

  "Don't touch the exotic matter, Zhokov," yelled Pandi.

  Zhokov seemed to realize where he was, drawing his hand back, but continuing to stare at the source of so much power. She realized he knew a little about wormholes. But he did know that an astronomical source of energy was needed to inflate or create one. And that kind of power could get one Sergi Zhokov whatever he wanted. More than he had ever dreamed of.

  Pandi also stared at the shimmering rectangle. But other dreams moved through the neurons of her brain. Dreams of exploring strange worlds, seeing by the light of strange suns, meeting creatures undreamed of by man. Traveling to the stars in an instant, not in the lifetimes needed with current technology. Even the Nemesis mission would take twenty years to reach the closest stellar body known to man. Alpha Centauri would take more than twice as long. But this gateway, this door through space, and maybe time. This...

  "Oh my god," said Pandi, the knowledge of what they faced now becoming clear, "this wormhole leads into the future. Paradox. That's what's causing the distortions. Paradox, and the Universe won’t allow it."

  "What are you talking about, woman?" yelled Morrison. "Calm down and tell us what you know."

  "The time paradox," she said. "It all makes sense now. This ship came from the future."

  "How?"

  "I don't know how," she said. "But it all makes sense now. The huge ship, with Terran vegetation and humans on board, as well as creatures we've never heard of. The wormhole. We are not supposed to know about this. Every discovery we have made has disturbed the balance of time, and caused a disruption."

  "Then let's get the hell out of here," yelled Morrison. "Get moving."

  "It's too late," she said. "It's too late."

  Space shuddered around them, a rippling that made what came before seem like a mere quiver. Pandi scream in agony as her body wavered through the compression and distortion effects that the human animal had never evolved to face. She held on to consciousness, fighting the pain, knowing that she had to think her way out of this, somehow.

  Zhokov screamed as his hands flew to his helmet, as if that could drive away the pain that assaulted his every nerve ending. His foot hit the floor as he writhed, propelling him slowly toward the exotic matter that held the mouth of the wormhole open. He didn't notice his trouble until his out thrust elbow gently touched the rectangle. A rectangle made of thousands of tons of compressed negative matter, exerting its antigravity effect on the wormhole to keep the link open, but too low a repulsion to keep Zhokov's momentum from carrying him into contact. Negative matter, the opposite of matter. The material of his suit, his skin, muscle and bones were canceled in an anticlimactic fade of several kilograms of matter and negative matter. Atom for atom canceled, a kilogram of the negative matter rectangle for a kilogram of Zhokov, the cosmic ledger balancing out.

  The massive rectangle shrank imperceptibly, the mouth of the wormhole following suit. But it was perceptible to Zhokov, as pain flooded his nervous system from the ruin of his arm. His forearm floated into the wormhole, as the man drifted back out into the room, where the compression waves moved him screaming across the chamber, air and blood jetting from the perfectly smooth opening in his suit.

  The compression waves moved instantaneously from the wormhole, growing stronger as they radiated outward. Niven was designed to never approach a strong gravity source, at least not out of free fall. She could accel at .1 G for a very long time, with the force along her primary axis. She was not made to withstand a dozen Gs of pulsating gravity waves, energies released in a manner never dreamed of by her creators. Her hull plates crumbled, atoms excited to the point where the metal began to melt along the seams. Fuel tanks, filled with water for the most part, ruptured along their own seams, sending Niven into a hard spin on a trajectory for interstellar space. Girder frameworks bent and tore, bulkheads ripped, and air was jetted in crystals to join the expanding cloud of water around the vessel. Several crewmen joined the stream of flotsam, helmet less spacesuits dooming them to a quick and relatively painless death. Those not so lucky spun into space with helmets on and oxygen packs working, their training serving them not so well as they screamed in agony for minutes, before the compression waves shattered face plates and sent them on the same path as their more fortunate brethren.

  The shaking stopped, and Pandi felt the pain leaving her head like a rush of water from an overturned bucket. It took her a moment to regain her ability to think, but soon the enormity of the situation lay upon her. From the sounds that had come over the com link during the last eruption, the Niven was destroyed and the rest of her crew dead. No way home by that route. Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned in time to see the lifeless suit that contained the mortal remains of Zhokov bounce from a far wall, the momentum carrying it slowly back across the room. How I hated the you, with your bad breath and constant propositioning, she thought, and then he had turned out to be the closest thing to a kindred spirit on the Niven. Even more so than her lover, Captain Morrison. That thought, of Michael drifting dead forever through the depths of space, brought a catch to her throat.

  The air was pregnant with barely contained energies. She didn't have time for emotions right now. She could deal with them later. A silence hung over the ship that she couldn't put into rational thought, the silence of a disaster about to happen. That last shock was the worst, strong enough to destroy her vessel and kill her crew. But even worse was waiting she knew. For she was still alive, the strange vessel from the future was still here with its open gate through space-time, and the danger of a paradox still existed. The Universe would not allow it to exist for long.

  "Son of a bitch," yelled Chavis over the com link. "Son of a bitch. They're gone. Zhokov's gone. What the hell are we going to do?"

  "Calm down Chavis," she yelled back, using his own panic to pull her into the realm of calm, trying to think her way out of this.

  "We got to get out of here," he screamed, moving toward the still open portal. "We got to get out of here."

  "Wait," she yelled, too late, as he shuffled out the door and jetted down the hallway. She could hear him hyperventilating on the com link, laughing hysterically and cursing under his breath. She could reach him on the com link, but she could no longer reach into the man, a panicked animal with no thought but to put as much distance between himself and this cursed place as possible. It would not be distance enough.

  She looked back at the wormhole, the source of the paradox energy that threatened her existence. Any second now it would again spread out through this space, and this time nothing would survive. Not her, not the ship, not even the wormhole. But she didn't see any problem with her traveling into the future, through the wormhole. It was her only chance, the unknown. How do I know it's a Wormhole? she asked herself. How do I know it's a gateway to the future?

  Only one-way to find out, she thought, slowly jetting herself into a position to make a run through the center of the hole. No fucking with negative matter for this southern girl, she thought, her hands grasping tightly on the attitude control joysticks. Before she could move the sticks forward for a powered straight flight, space began to expand and contract behind her. Pain invaded her every cell, wearing spiked jack boots. Her vision began to blur, and she knew, with her last coherent thought, that time was running
out. Hands pushed forward and the thrusters in her backpack pushed her forward at full power, 1.2 meters per second per second, right to the middle of the hole in space-time. The suit quickly picked up speed, flying straight and true. Pandi felt consciousness leave her with a last thought, will I ever wake up, and if so, where? Then the suit was through the entrance of the wormhole, down the long tunnel with a flash of light.

  Compression waves grew swiftly in strength, the diamond hard hull of the ship rippling with the waves, crumbling into dust like dry plaster in a strong man's hands. Chavis was gripped by the waves, trying to find his way to any kind of safety, ripped to pieces as if by a giant clawed hand. Fusion took place between the atoms pulled apart and pushed back together with terrible force, melding light atoms into heavier atoms, releasing torrents of energy like the heart of a star. A star that flared for long minutes as matter went beyond fusion, converting to total energy as particles picked up velocity and sped off in random directions. In a little over four and a half hours, the first photons of the great explosion would reach Harrison Base. Many hours later the outposts of the inner system would note the great flare of light as a new star was born in the heavens, only to die moments later. Other photons, in a steady stream over two billion kilometers long, carrying the information transmitted from the Niven to Harrison Base, changed from participants in a coherent beam of light, becoming a muddle of incoherent quantum particles that told nothing of what had happened. The Universe had righted the wrong, preserved causality, and maintained the flow of history as it was meant to be.

  Chapter 2

  I was willing to give anything to face the unknown.

  Anything, but the lives of my crew. Pandora Latham.

  I made it, was Pandi's first thought on exiting the mouth of the Wormhole. What's coming after me? was her second thought, as the blast of superheated air threw her across the wide room and to the floor. She raised herself on an elbow as she checked to see if her body still worked after all the punishment. Her head swiveled in time to see the still open mouth of the wormhole, a sight out of the ancient visions of hell. Fire raged in the still intact ship, hot enough to burn the very hull, which was glowing white and gushing great gouts of black, oily smoke into the vacuum. The waves of imminent disaster still radiated on some unconscious level, and Pandi was on her feet in a second, looking for the quickest way to put something more substantial than air between her and the cosmic disruption that threatened to come blasting out of the shimmering mouth of the wormhole.

  And then it was gone, so quickly she blinked her eyes and it had faded from existence before they had reopened. The wormhole was gone, whether cut off by the mass of printed circuitry now revealed in the empty alcove, or a natural action of the energy that was preparing to flow from past to future, she didn't know. All she truly knew was that the danger was gone, for the moment at least, and the chances of her survival had been greatly increased.

  But where am I? she thought, looking up at the quadruple gallery of wormhole gates that stretched across the long wall. All in the shape of a, a Torii, if she remembered the name right, the traditional Shinto gateway whose horizontal bars reached toward heaven. Golden in color, with strange symbols etched into the lower crossbar, and glowing with some unknown radiation from the squares between crossbars and centerpiece. At least some were glowing; the ones with a shimmering red wall of, something, over what would be the entrance to the gate. Many were as dead as the one she had just passed through, walls of circuits and shapes of unguessable purpose in the alcoves the wormhole end would inhabit if working.

  All of the gates that she could see seemed to be of similar dimensions, with an opening about eight meters wide by four meters tall, able to pass even small vehicles with ease, it would seem. Set in cells, three on the first and third levels, two on the second and fourth, with what looked like lift tubes and stairs between each cell. Pandi craned her head up to look at the wall that continued up to an arched marbled ceiling, centered over a hundred meters above. Swiveling her head as her mind tried to take in all the strangeness around her, she noted with some detachment that the near end wall was about a half K to her right. Her head shifted swiftly to the left, and her breath left her lungs in a rush. The wall went on for what must have been at least three kilometers, holding hundreds of gates, if not thousands. Still in shock, she stumbled around till she was facing the parallel wall, over a hundred and fifty meters away. Another endless wall of gates, across an open area of benches, planters filled with flowers familiar and strange, low structures that reminded her nothing more than underground station entrances, long pools of water. A tremendous structure, she thought through a confused mind. But, where?

  The helmet's heads up display indicated that the air was breathable, and of a very comfortable temperature. Gravity seemed about Earth normal, and she didn't feel the characteristic unsteadiness of a spinning structure, so she thought it had to be a planet. Then she thought of the wonderful technology of the gates, and a natural feeling artificial gravity no longer seemed so far fetched.

  Pandora Latham sat on one of the benches, near a large planter of strange purple flowers, and cracked the seal of her helmet. Fresh, sweetly fragrant air greeted her olfactory sense, as she shook the sweat out of her hair and reveled in what felt like a cool breeze on her face. I'll live, she thought, since whatever this place was seemed to be fully functioning, even the miniature gardens perfectly tended. If the natives are friendly.

  The tears caught her off guard, pouring freely down her cheeks well before the images manifested themselves in her mind. The images of her crew mates. Morrison, her lover, not the best she had ever had, but his practiced and gentle touch would be missed, as would his dry British wit. McIntyre, the efficient but unimaginative engineer. Chavis, the good-natured man from her neighboring state of Mississippi. Even Zhokov, the lecher, who had turned out to be a kindred spirit at the end. All gone, gone before their time, on the edge of the greatest adventure possible. By what right did she have to be the only one to make it through? She continued to sob like a little girl for a long time, oblivious to the world around her.

  * * *

  Watcher awoke as the alarms sounded, ringing from the walls of his quarters and through the bones of his head. It had been a long time since he had heard this kind of klaxon; the steady whooping that meant something had come through one of the Donut’s many gates. And since most of them were long since sealed with a barrier that could not be traversed, and almost all of the rest were inactive, it wouldn't take long to locate the gate, and with it the origin of the intruder.

  His tall, muscular form leapt from the bed and he walked toward the center of the large, tapestry-hung room.

  "Computer," he said. "Project a hologram of the security system in the center of the room."

  Instantly the great artificial intelligence complied, a multicolored panel of lights and view screens appearing in the center of the room. It had even been more convenient, thought Watcher, when I could simply think the display into the visual centers of my mind. But that would mean opening the inner recesses of his brain to the computer, and he might be waiting for any chance he might get to invade and conquer the mind of his greatest enemy.

  Views were given of dozens of open and unblocked gates, all leading to destinations he had assumed were unoccupied. Recognition numbers appeared underneath. A couple had numbers he did not recognize, his total recall realizing that these must have been opened by the computer at random since last he had checked. Well, he thought, the power has to go somewhere, and I can always shut the gates down anytime I need to. One gate caught his eye immediately, its view screen box blinking to attract his attention. The gate to the lost ship. But that one had gone through a dimension of subspace, where time ran in another direction than the four-space humankind was most familiar with. It should be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of years in the past. And the gate was no longer open.

  "Computer," he said quickly in his melodic voice, "what
came through gate number 1,347,902?"

  A screen blinked into existence in the center of the panel and expanded quickly until it formed a four-meter square that occupied most of the panel. A space suited figure came through the open gate. A bulky, white and red suit such as he had never seen, with a spout of material coming from the large backpack that looked suspiciously like a chemical thruster. It looks very old, he thought. Very old and of very low technology. He continued to watch as the opening of the wormhole revealed a vision of white-hot hell. He almost cringed along with the figure in the forefront of the screen, and then the wormhole was gone, the figure collapsed on the floor.

  Watcher observed the figure looking around the room, still unable to tell what kind of being it was. Probably human from the shape of the suit. But very unrevealing of age or sex. Then the figure walked in a shuffle over to one of the benches and sat down, the hands going up to the helmet seal.

  "Computer," he ordered. "Focus on the helmet."

  The helmet grew on the screen, as the five fingered hands pulled and twisted at the seal. To his surprise the computer followed the helmet as it was taken off and placed on the bench.

  "Computer," he shouted, realizing that he shouldn't have been so literal with the enormous idiot savant, "bring the focus to its face."

  His breath caught in his throat as the picture resolved on the virtual screen. She's beautiful, he thought, remembering that he had a fully functional glandular system no matter the advanced complexity of his brain. Not one for the scrap heaps after all, like all the other intruders.

  Long hair the color of fire, skin almost as pale as watchers own, but covered with a constellation of freckles. Full lips, with laugh lines around mouth and eyes, although they were now curved into sobbing agony. Husky voice crying softly. And the eyes. His own pink orbs stared into deep blue pools, tear streaked and surrounded by the red of sorrow.