by Mark Wandrey
The portal had sprung to life. That was impossible, all their tests proved it. Someone had to have stepped on the dais. Then, someone walked around the perimeter of the portal and came into view. None of the bright lights were on, so he couldn’t tell who it was. He could see a woman’s figure, mostly obscured by a lab coat, her hair tied into a ponytail. The lab coat was black, and there were silver stripes running down both arms. It looked like a professional lab coat, but the material’s colors were unlike any he’d ever seen.
“Excuse me?” he said, and the figure turned, revealing a rather beautiful woman. For a second, he thought it was Mindy Patoy. They could have been sisters. He took a few steps toward the dais as she took a few toward the edge. As she stepped away from the glowing portal, he got a better view of her face. This woman was older than Mindy, probably in her fifties. She had graying red hair that had once been the color of burnished copper. Her eyes gave him pause. They were the brightest shade of jade green he’d ever seen. They had the haunted look of someone who’d seen too much and done far more than any one person ever should have. Now that she was closer, he could see she wore a one-piece uniform with a strange camouflage pattern under the coat.
“Are you with the NSA?” he asked. She looked him up and down, and he felt like she was weighing him. “I didn’t see you when I came in.” She finished looking at him and scanned the room, her eyes moving quickly, picking out details. “I don’t see your identification.” She turned away and walked back to the portal. “You need to be careful—” he started to say, holding up a hand. Her movements struck him dumb.
The woman held out a hand and touched the ethereal portal. He couldn’t see her hand, but it appeared as if she twisted one of the symbols. The icons stopped moving, and his jaw dropped. She touched a second, then a third icon. The entire portal flashed green, not blue, and became a mirror instead of a portal to Bellatrix. If Osgood had looked in the mirror, he’d have seen a middle-aged man, eyes wide, jaw hanging open.
“What are you doing?” he asked. The woman didn’t respond, instead she repositioned herself exactly in the center of the portal, reached across her body with her right hand to the left edge of the portal, near the bottom, and touched it. The icon she touched pulsed, but she maintained contact and made a sweeping motion with her arm from left to right, tracing the edge of the portal, the symbol under her finger stuck there as if glued in place. The symbol left a glowing trail of white light that faded shortly after it passed.
The woman dragged the icon around to the opposite side, where she slowed and carefully picked a spot before stopping. With a little twist, the symbol rotated and pulsed once more before she removed her finger and the portal flashed green again. The symbols changed once more and resumed oscillating. She reached out again and tapped once, twice, thrice, each time on a different symbol. On the third one the portal pulsed green, and returned to its previous shade of white. The portal swirled from its mirror surface to show darkness.
The woman examined the perimeter of the portal with a slow, deliberate sweep of her head in the opposite direction from which she moved her arm. Apparently liking what she saw, she nodded and put her hands on her hips. Osgood hissed in amazement, and she looked over her shoulder, fixing him with her piercing green eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” he barked, his surprise taking on a slightly hysterical edge. She turned partly around and gave him a slightly lopsided grin before speaking.
“Honestly, even if I told you, you’d never believe me.” And with a wink, she stepped through the portal.
“No!” he started to yell, and ridiculously reached out from 20 feet away, as if he could have physically restrained her. Of course, she was already on the other side. The light from the portal dome lit her dimly as she looked both ways, and quickly descended the dais steps. In a moment she was gone from view. “Oh no,” he said, and shambled up the steps. “I hope Wilson has somebody watching the portal. No, no, no,” he kept repeating. He reached the top of the steps and looked through, trying to find her. There was no sign. It was almost completely dark.
He looked around for a flashlight or other portable light source. Nothing came to hand, so he grabbed one of the headsets sitting on the laser communicator and pressed the ‘Alert’ button, which would cause it to squawk loudly on the other side. Nothing happened. He looked down at the communicator on its tripod, wondering if the strange woman had moved it. He was about to look for the laser transceiver on the other side when the portal dimmed. He blinked in confusion. It hadn’t been 10 minutes, not even close.
Osgood turned and began walking down the steps. He stopped just before reaching the bottom when he realized something was wrong. It took him a long second to realize what it was. The ring of glowing lights around the perimeter of the portal weren’t lit. None of the 144 lights that had been there only minutes ago were glowing.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, and ran to the nearest phone.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty
May 11
The portal dome hadn’t been that crowded since shortly before they built it. Osgood had to banish dozens of people, regardless of their position, to give those who needed to be there room to work. Every team was running tests, all of which confirmed nothing substantial had changed. However, lots of unsubstantial things had.
As Osgood had noticed, the lights were no longer lit. No trace of their existence remained. The portal still popped up when someone stepped on the dais, though it only stayed there for two minutes. The symbols flashed and changed just as before.
A dozen men and women were analyzing the strange woman’s movements on a pair of high definition images projected on a blank section of portal wall. As he was a witness to the event, the NSA grilled Osgood for more than two hours. They were still questioning the guards. He knew the strange woman’s appearance wasn’t their fault, the camera covering the door didn’t show her arrival. However, neither did the camera covering the side of the portal facing the communicator.
A review of the footage showed the portal coming on by itself, and eight seconds later, the woman walking around from the far side. According to Occam’s razor, there was only one possible conclusion, the woman had arrived through the portal. The soldiers on Bellatrix had stated dozens of times that was impossible. The device only went one way. Yet, there she was. The cameras captured perfect facial images, both from the front and in profile. They could find no match in any government database. Osgood, slightly suspicious, checked the images against Mindy Patoy’s, whom the woman resembled. Results showed a 79% match. Plus, the young astronomer had been in her hotel room, a half mile away, under lockdown when the event happened. Whoever she was knew far more about the portals than anyone on Earth.
“Portal camera and light rig are ready,” a tech announced.
“Good,” Osgood said. “Let’s find out what’s going on over there.” After activating the portal, and confirming it only stayed open for two minutes, they’d confirmed the laser transceiver was missing from Bellatrix’s side. Osgood had a deep sense of foreboding about what they’d find.
A man holding a high speed digital camera mated to multiple directional LED lights quickly mounted the dais and approached the dark portal. He shouldered the rig and activated the camera and light. Brilliant illumination flooded through the portal, none reaching the back wall of the dome. That much hadn’t changed, at least.
“I can see detail,” the man said.
“Put it on the projector,” Osgood barked, pointing to one of the big wall projectors frozen on the strange woman’s face. The image switched to the camera view, which showed a pattern of white broken by horizontal gray lines. The operator panned around, and occasional vertical lines broke the pattern, though only between two lines, never proceeding. “Pull back,” Osgood ordered, and the man did. Further back, the pattern made more sense, it was bricks. They saw a brick wall as the view panned as far as it could to the left. To the right, the wall went a way, before turnin
g to make a second wall.
“Up,” Osgood urged, “quickly now, you’re almost out of time.” The man pointed the camera upward to show beams and stone or a concrete ceiling. The beams looked corroded in places, and there were cracks in the roofing.
“Looks old,” someone said. After a few seconds more, the portal went out. Osgood cursed. The two-minute limit sucked.
“So, it’s true?” he heard the familiar voice of agent Mark Volant. “Someone broke through security and fucked up the portal?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Osgood said, waiting impatiently while the man with the camera clambered off the dais, then back on to restart the portal. He explained to the NSA agent what had changed.
“How are our people over there?” Volant asked.
“We have to assume they’re still there,” Osgood replied. The images coming from the portal distracted him. Not much was visible of the floor. It looked like the portal was in a room slightly larger than the dais. They certainly couldn’t see a forest grove anymore, and there was no sign of the military people who’d gone over. Damn it, he thought, what did that woman do?
“What now?” Osgood glanced at the man. His body language was skeptical.
“We send someone over,” Osgood said.
“Is that smart?”
“You’d rather sit here and wait for the killer lawn dart?” Volant narrowed his eyes and considered his answer. Osgood decided he had better things to do.
Volant had spent most of the morning trying to write a report for his superior about what he’d seen. In charge of the security side of the operation, he’d gotten the image files immediately from the portal dome server. Like Osgood he’d thought the woman looked like Mindy Patoy. He’d sent a pair of agents to verify that the woman was in her room. The security bugs confirmed she’d been sitting on the couch working on her computer, and the tap on her internet access showed nothing unusual. She’d been reading accounts of the survivors closest to the New Delhi explosion and something about global temperatures dropping by a degree. Volant didn’t care, he knew it wouldn’t matter, even in the short term. Still, a nagging suspicion lingered in the back of his mind.
“Could NASA be playing a game?” he wondered aloud.
Volant’s director was livid, as was whoever sat above him. After the Excalibur fiasco, a lot of powerful people were lining up to come to New York, a visit that was now in limbo. He was completely behind the idea of sending someone to the other side to see what was going on. It was an easy way to validate the scientists’ story. Had the portal moved? Where on that alien world was the portal now? Was it close enough to resume operations? He’d advised waiting to see what happened. The others didn’t agree with him, but he had broad discretionary powers from the director.
His report completed, he returned to the portal dome. An hour later, a soldier trained in reconnaissance and survival was ready and waiting just off the dais. His pack wasn’t nearly as humongous as the one carried by Steve Edwin, and he carried an M4 carbine with a full load of ammo in one hand and another laser transceiver in the other. The transceiver was an improvement over the previous one, with better instruments. He wore a headset under his hat. The name patch on his uniform said “Wells” and he had first sergeant stripes velcroed to his sleeve.
“Tim,” he said, shaking Osgood’s hand. “I understand there’s some question about the destination?” Osgood nodded and explained the situation. The soldier listened attentively, nodding his head in places. “Okay, got it,” he said when the scientist finished.
“You’re still good with going?” The man looked down at the U.S. Army logo embroidered on his chest and tapped the emblem with a gloved hand.
“This doesn’t come without risks.” Osgood gestured toward the portal, and First Sergeant Tim Wells mounted the dais. The handling team moved into place, and he stepped through. He put the laser transceiver down, aiming it at the one on Earth before moving clear. The handling team maneuvered to the front of the portal, picked up a crate, and let it fly. With a resounding KLANG the crate rebounded from the portal and clattered across the dais and down the stairs, coming to rest next to Osgood, who looked down at it with a mixture of surprise and amazement. Well that never happened before, he thought as he activated the headset.
“Are you okay?” he asked through the laser.
“Yeah,” came Tim’s reply, “I guess no extra supplies, huh?” Osgood shrugged. It was all he could think to do. “The air has a strange, sharp smell here.” Osgood cast a questioning look at one of his science team to see if they had heard that before. He knew they hadn’t, as all previous reports said Bellatrix smelled like the California redwood forests, with a hint of cinnamon. They shook their heads, confirming what he already knew.
“Okay,” Osgood said, “look around and get back to us as soon as you can.” On the other world, the man nodded. “Next contact in 20 minutes.” The man looked down at his watch, gave a thumbs up, and turned and stepped down from the dais. The portal deactivated at exactly two minutes. The science team began analyzing the data from the sensors on the laser station the sergeant took with him. “What do you have?” he asked them, walking over.
“It’s not the same planet,” the team leader concluded, and began listing items. “The temperature is considerably higher. Humidity is almost non-existent. Oxygen is 26% lower, and carbon dioxide is 10% higher. There’s a lot of argon, and background radiation is 200% higher.” Osgood’s eyes widened. “The radiation detector can’t tell if it’s ionizing radiation.” Out of view, Volant scowled.
“What’s the probability of using this planet anyway?” he asked. The team consulted each other, and one after another shook their heads.
“None,” the leader summed up for him. “There are too many strikes against it. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the planet is at least partly sterile, maybe from a nuclear war.”
“Guess that place is off the list,” Volant said, turning to leave.
“What do you want us to do?” Osgood asked him out of frustration.
“Fix it if you can,” he growled as he left. “I need to make another report.” Osgood stared after him in anger.
“I hate that man.”
Five minutes later, Osgood met with Skinner and explained the situation.
“There has to be a solution,” Skinner said, watching the video of the mystery woman on his laptop. He’d been in the middle of non-stop planning meetings until the wheels came off a few hours ago. Osgood was a good scientist, but he had no idea about the level of the powers now involved. Skinner watched the woman’s movements several times. “Figure out what she did and reverse it. I’m going to make some calls and check on contingencies.”
Back in the dome, 20 minutes after SGT Wells passed through, Osgood stepped on the dais and brought the portal to life. The other side was dark, as before, the only light cast by a bank of LED floods aimed at the other side. Nothing else had changed, and there was no sign of SGT Wells. Osgood spoke into the headset anyway, as the transceiver had a Bluetooth connection with a range of 50 yards.
“Sergeant Wells, are you there?” There was no reply. He tried repeatedly every 10 seconds until the portal disappeared after two minutes. “Anything recorded from the other side?” he asked the communications controller. “It’s working correctly?” The controller patted the laser system and gave a thumbs up, then indicated the recorders and shook her head.
“We’re getting atmospheric telemetry,” the science team said. “It’s gotten five degrees hotter since we last checked, and the radiation level is climbing with the heat.” He tried five more times before he gave up and handed the headset to someone else.
“Get me someone who understands cryptography,” he said. “We need to translate these symbols.” He thought it would take a miracle to do so, and he also wondered what Skinner meant by contingencies.
* * *
Officials tried to keep the details of what happened the night of the 10th secret. Mindy found o
ut about them on the afternoon of the 11th, at about the same time as rumors began to speed through the village. Stories varied from the Followers of the Avatar breaking in and hijacking the portal again to someone coming back through and closing it so no one else could follow.
Mindy knew something was up when the guards denied her entry to the dome. Returning to the trailer, she shifted papers, and slowly did ‘other stuff.’ She bided her time and dug for the truth. The rumors were mostly crazy, but she knew something big had happened. The looks of concern on the faces of the science staff supported that conclusion.
Confirmation came when she got an ‘all portal team’ email. She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to get it, but her clearance made her a member of the group. The intended recipients were a group of cryptographers joining the team. The email included a video of the strange woman’s visit. In an instant, she forgot about her real job, and became completely absorbed in the video. Who was the woman? Where had she come from? Judging by her actions, she obviously understood what the symbols meant.
For the rest of the day, she found herself silently observing the email exchanges between the cryptography team and NASA’s people in the dome. The back and forth exchange was full of anger, resentment, and frustration. The cryptography team wanted to know why NASA was just now consulting them, as officials gave them one week to decipher the symbols. NASA offered precious little detail, editing the images to control what the cryptography team could see. The cryptographers were intelligent people, and between the stories about New Delhi and various news reports, they knew something big was happening.
Mindy had just checked her watch to see how long it would be before their escort arrived to take them back to the hotel and was copying files onto her handy little jump drive when he opened the door and stuck his head in.
“Be ready to leave in five minutes,” he barked, his face etched with concern.
