by Toby Minton
“Keeping the brass happy is the means, my friend, not the end,” Hale had said to him. “We smile, salute, and show them what they want to see so the coffers stay full. And with that money, we do the real work. We’re on the threshold of what could be the greatest discoveries of our lifetime, Marcus. Yes, we must sing for our supper, just like everyone else. Don’t let this one melody distract you from the fact that we’re remaking the world as we know it.”
Hale was right. The Gateway project had already breached barriers beyond Gideon’s dreams. And if all went well today, yet another door would be opened, so to speak.
“Five days ago, we sent SETI VII through the Gateway to search for evidence of life on the other side,” Gideon said, effectively quieting the room. “With any luck, Seven has the evidence we’re seeking in its sample tanks right now.”
“When will we know?” a reporter directly in front of him asked.
“Within the hour,” Gideon replied, nodding to the technician and directing everyone’s attention to the screen. “In a few minutes you’ll be able to watch as we open—”
“Excuse me, sir,” a staff sergeant touched Gideon’s shoulder and leaned in to say quietly, “you’re needed in the lab. We have a situation.”
* * *
Two minutes later, Gideon was alone in the elevator heading down to the lowest sub-level of the facility, staring at the doors and wondering what was happening in the Gateway lab.
A situation. That term meant nothing. Everything and anything was a situation. Why people chose to be ambiguous instead of just stating the issue, especially in times of crisis, was beyond Gideon. But such was the way with the military. In an environment where operational security was paramount, where everything had a code name and was need-to-know, he couldn’t expect clarity. He could only assume. Considering they interrupted the official press conference, he assumed the situation was a problem.
The lights flickered and went out. The elevator lurched to a stop. Almost immediately, the lights came back on and the elevator resumed its descent, but Gideon frowned at his blurry reflection in the doors.
Loss of power shouldn’t occur. Their primary power source was a dedicated facility barely a kilometer off site. In the highly unlikely event of its failure, two backup reserves, both sheltered inside the facility, should detect the loss at the source and take over with no drop in power. Something was very wrong.
When Gideon walked into the lab, his gaze went straight to the Gateway, which should have been an empty frame quietly humming on minimal power. Instead, the capacitors were buzzing and crackling with electricity routed through the maze of wires and conduits connected to the thick metal frame. Even from his extreme angle, Gideon could see the reddish light and sere landscape of the alien planet through the fully energized doorway.
As Gideon rushed around to the dimly lit workstations, his gaze jumped to the main display screen hanging in the darkness above the Gateway. The display crawled with data from the sensors on and around the device: input and output energy, atmospheric comparison, thermal conversion, field stability, and of course genesis energy levels. Nearly every level on the display was spiking above acceptable tolerances.
“What happened?” Gideon asked the handful of technicians frantically trying to maintain control at the consoles facing the Gateway.
“Primary utility’s gone,” Bradley reported. Despite being one of the younger members of the team, the stocky technician seemed to be the only one truly maintaining his composure.
“What do you mean gone?”
“I mean it dropped off completely,” Bradley replied, pushing the chair out of the way at the next station and stepping over to key in a command sequence, his eyes on the monitors and never Gideon. “The lag before the backups took over threw our levels out of spec. We’re trying to compensate, but—”
“Why didn’t the backups detect the power drop and kick in sooner?” Gideon asked, leaning over Bradley’s station to check the current power flows.
“Don’t know. I didn’t get a response from any of the sensors at the site,” Bradley said. “None of the cameras there are working, and—wait. Holy Mother. Colonel?”
Gideon glanced over at the monitor Bradley turned to face him. He was looking at the view from an external camera on the northwest corner of the main building. In the distance, a thick plume of roiling black smoke rose from the main power station.
“Are we under attack?” a technician behind Gideon asked. In front of him, Daniels started pulling up camera feeds from the main building. She stopped on one showing the conference room where the press and representatives were crowding the windows. All except three. The angry representative and his two guards were still calmly facing the podium and security camera.
“That’s not our concern,” Gideon said, pushing his glasses back into place and looking around the room at the small staff. “Our focus is in this room. We must stabilize the Gateway so we don’t lose our connection. Where’s Colonel Hale? We need to get Seven back through while we still can.”
No one responded. All eyes that he could see either looked back down at their monitors or up at the Gateway.
Gideon turned. Through the Gateway, approximately forty meters out across the red-hued, rocky terrain, he could see part of Seven around the edge of the frame. He stepped around the workstation in front of him to get a better angle and saw Seven crouched on the ground in low-power mode. A man stepped out from behind Seven and bent to continue working on an open panel on the ASR’s side. He was in partial dress uniform with a strip of cloth tied over his nose and mouth, his wavy blonde hair whipping in the dry wind.
“That’s why I called you down here in the first place,” Daniels said. “Colonel Hale had us open the Gateway to make sure the ASR was in position. When he saw Seven was out of power, he grabbed the boosters and… We couldn’t stop him, sir.”
“My God, Christopher,” Gideon breathed. “What have you done?”
He knew how much the search for life meant to Hale, but Gideon never imagined the man would step through a virtually untested Gateway. Seven’s bio-mechanical processor was the only organic material they’d sent through, and until they got Seven back and analyzed its systems, they had no way of knowing how it had been affected.
“He has to have his com unit. Have you tried contacting him?”
“No response, sir,” McNair said from his left.
“Bradley, regulators three and four just overloaded!” Daniels shouted.
“What? How?”
“Now five!”
Gideon pulled his gaze from the Gateway to the display above it. Energy input was at one hundred and twenty percent and climbing. “What’s happening?” he said without looking back.
“I don’t know. Those regulators shouldn’t be failing unless…” Bradley trailed off.
Gideon looked back to see the stocky technician squinting at his monitor. Bradley’s eyes went wide, his face paling. “We are under attack,” he said, “but that explosion was just a way in. It’s a tunneling spike in the power system.” He met Gideon’s gaze, his composure finally cracking. “This thing will overload each regulator one at a time. Then it’ll dump all the power in our backups straight into the Gateway.”
Gideon’s stomach dropped. If the Gateway destabilized with that much power flowing to it…
“Can you stop it?” Gideon asked.
“No. Well, yes, if we shut everything down,” Bradley said. He looked up at Gideon again. “Sir, we have to shut down the Gateway.”
Gideon looked back at the Gateway. Hale was still hunched beside the unmoving ASR, working on installing the booster cells.
“How long?” Gideon asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Minutes,” Bradley replied. “Maybe less.”
“Sir, we have to shut it down now,” Daniels said, standing.
Gideon didn’t respond. He stared at Hale struggling against the heat and wind on the other side of the Gateway. He sometimes forgot, g
iven all that Hale had accomplished, that he was barely over thirty. He had so much of his career, so much of his life, still ahead of him. With the weight of the decision he had to make pulling him down, Gideon felt every year he had on his friend.
“Sir,” Daniels said, touching Gideon’s arm.
“I know,” Gideon breathed. He had to do it. He had to sacrifice his friend to save everyone else. It was simply a matter of numbers. But the certainty of the numbers didn’t make him feel any better.
“Clear the lab,” he said, his low voice blending with the hum of the machinery around them.
“Sir?” Daniels asked.
“Evacuate. All of you, get to the surface,” Gideon ordered, finding his voice again.
“Sir, we have to shut down the Gateway,” Bradley repeated.
“No, I have to shut it down,” Gideon said, turning to face them. “You have to get clear. I’m giving Colonel Hale as much time as I can, but I’m not risking your lives to do it. Now go, all of you. That’s an order.”
Most of them complied, heading for the airlock with quick glances back at the main display and Gideon, but Bradley and Daniels lingered. Bradley stood but continued typing at his console. Daniels just stood and stared at Gideon, her eyes wide. She swallowed and clenched her jaw like she was about to argue.
“I’m putting my best guess for the point of no return on the display, Colonel,” Bradley said. “But it’s not a definite. You should shut it down before this. We can’t risk—”
“I understand,” Gideon said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “Go, both of you.”
Bradley went, but Daniels continued to stare at Gideon until Bradley was in the airlock. She opened her mouth to say something but choked it off with a grunt. Then she threw herself at Gideon.
He was too surprised to get out of the way before she latched onto him, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing, the side of her head pressed tightly against his chest. Gideon had no idea how to react. He just stood and stared down at the top of her short black hair and tried to breath against the pressure of her arms.
Finally, she let go and stepped back quickly. “Just—don’t do anything stupid,” she said. Then she ran to the airlock and badged through without looking back.
“I have no intention of doing anything stupid,” Gideon said to the empty lab, his confusion distracting him for precious seconds.
Particle physics, string theory, quantum mechanics—Gideon understood them all without a problem. Human relationships, he did not. Now was not the time to start trying to figure one out though. He turned back to the Gateway and stepped closer to the emergency shutoff.
Gideon stood before the Gateway, his hand hovering near the shutoff lever, dividing his attention between Bradley’s countdown and Hale out in the alien desert. Each time he glanced at the countdown, he thought time seemed to be moving faster than normal. Hale had to be getting close.
Through the Gateway, the wind started to die down, and Gideon could see Hale more clearly. If only he would look toward the Gateway behind him… But the man was focused on his task. He didn't glance back once. And he was running out of time.
“I believe I am going to do something stupid after all,” Gideon said to himself, wondering how Daniels had known.
Before he could think too much about what he was doing, Gideon set his watch timer to match the countdown and walked quickly toward the Gateway, shedding his dress coat and lid. He took a shaky breath as he reached the crackling frame. Then he stepped through.
It was like walking into an oven, a stinging, windy oven. The light wind pelted his exposed skin with tiny grains of rock and sand. His first breath burned all the way down. He squinted against the wind and the diffused reddish light that still managed to hurt his eyes despite its low intensity.
Steeling himself, he ducked his head and rushed across the rocky ground to the ASR, feeling the heat radiating up through his dress shoes.
“Hale!” he shouted as he closed. “We have to go!”
“Marcus?” Hale responded, his voice muffled by the makeshift dust mask. He turned as Gideon jogged closer. His eyes over the strip of cloth were red rimmed from the dust and sun but still filled with boyish excitement. “Marcus, look at this.”
Gideon coughed against a lungful of burning dust as he stumbled to a halt. “We have to go,” he grated when he got a breath.
“Here,” Hale said, rising and waving for Gideon to step closer to the side of the ASR. “Look,” he said, pointing to four parallel gouges in Seven’s metal side and underbelly. “Something attacked him, Marcus.”
“Christopher!” Gideon shouted, grabbing his friend’s arm. “We have to go, now!”
“We can’t leave without Seven,” Hale said, shaking his head and pulling his arm free. “His sample tanks are full. Whatever attacked him, he got samples of it before it crippled his power supply. There’s proof of life in there.”
“We’ll come back,” Gideon shouted even though the wind had died enough for normal speech. “If we don’t go now, the Gateway will collapse, or worse.” He shoved his watch in front of Hale’s eyes. “We don’t have time to fix Seven.”
Hale looked at the watch and then Gideon’s eyes. He hesitated. They didn’t have time for this. Gideon reached for Hale’s arm again, but his friend stepped back.
“The sample tanks,” Hale said. “Marcus, we have time to get the tanks at least. We can’t leave them. If you help me, we have time. Please, Marcus.”
Gideon knew it was a mistake. He knew it in his core. But when he looked into his friend’s eyes, he couldn’t deny him. He’d never been able to. Hale was right. If Gideon helped, they could get the sample tanks off and get back to the Gateway in time to shut it down.
He nodded once and hurried to Seven’s other side where Hale’s toolkit sat in the rocks under an open side panel. He knelt by the panel and started unscrewing the harnesses on the four connected tank, checking his watch every few seconds. They could make it, if they hurried.
A shadow passed across the open panel in front of Gideon as he started on the last harness. “Are you done?” he asked, keeping his eyes on his work.
Hale didn’t answer at first. When he did, his voice was coming from the wrong direction.
“Marcus, stand up slowly and walk to the Gateway,” Hale said.
Gideon looked up to see Hale backing away from Seven toward the Gateway, his hands out in front of him, a screwdriver clenched tightly in one fist. He was staring at the other side of the ASR, his look an incongruous mix of menace and exhilaration.
Gideon stood and stepped toward Hale, looking back over his shoulder to see what could make his friend abandon the sample tanks he’d been so determined to recover.
And there, crouched next to Seven was the life Hale had been so desperately seeking.
The creature was almost man-shaped but armored with a chitinous exoskeleton like an insect. Its carapace was solid black but glossy enough to reflect the reddish light, making it blend with the desert. Its red eyes shifted and fixed Gideon, draining the blood from his limbs. Despite the heat, he suddenly felt cold enough to shiver.
“Don’t run,” Hale said, his voice strong and calm, with no hint of the fear suddenly quivering through Gideon. “Don’t run, Marcus. Back away slowly.”
Gideon took a numb step backward, unable to pull his eyes from the predator’s. Biology wasn’t Gideon’s forte, but he knew a predator when he saw one. With the hooked black talons, the lean and powerful frame, the pointed teeth and deep jaw, this creature was made to take down prey.
Gideon took another step back, more of a stumble. With another lurch of his heart, he realized he’d completely lost track of their deadline. He jerked his hand up to look at his watch.
“No sudden—” Hale started to order, but he was drowned out by an ear-rattling roar from the predator.
Gideon recoiled from the sound, catching sight of the countdown as he did so. They were running out of time. We have to make a r
un for it, he thought. His pounding heart agreed. He turned for the Gateway, sliding on the loose rock as he did so, and ran.
“Marcus, NO!” Hale shouted.
“Go, go!” Gideon shouted back, running straight toward Hale.
Gideon felt a sharp burn across the back of his knee, and his legs bumped together, tangling and tripping him. He crashed into the ground hard, rolling and sliding across the sharp rocks, feeling them cut into his arm and side in countless places.
As soon as he stopped sliding, Gideon tried to get up, to keep running, but something was wrong with his right leg. A searing pain answered when he asked it to move. Gideon rolled to his other side and looked down. He’d lost his glasses in the fall, but even with the blurriness, he could see the blood and the long clean cuts across the back of his knee. He choked down the suddenly rising bile. The predator had hamstrung him like a wolf would its prey.
Gideon looked up. Like a wolf, the creature was standing over him, guarding its kill. It hissed and rumbled at a blurry Hale standing between them and the Gateway.
Its kill. Gideon swallowed and took in a long, burning breath. He knew he was going to die here. He could see no other outcome. That realization, or perhaps the blood loss, slowed the pounding of his heart. He felt a warm sense of peace, of acceptance. He was going to die now, but Hale didn’t have to. Hale could still shut down the Gateway.
Gideon lunged up as far as he could, which wasn’t far. He tried to grab the creature’s neck, but he fell short and caught its arm instead. He wrapped his other arm around the creature’s leg and squeezed with all the strength he had. “GO!” he croaked as the creature roared and slashed at him.
Gideon’s arm went numb with one jerk from the predator’s, but he held on to its leg as its claws savaged his side again and again. Then it dropped onto him, and its jaws clamped down on the side of his neck and held. The pain was too much for his system to process. His brain gave him warm numbness instead.
His wrist and watch were pinned to the ground close enough for him to see the countdown even without his glasses. Only forty-eight seconds left, but Hale was running to the Gateway. He was going to make it. He was going to shut it down in time.
