The Interstellar

by David Lund

  “How long will it take?”

  “At this distance, it would take about half an hour to get there.”

  “Do it.”

  *

  Michael was in his office again. From his window, he had a view of the distant Earth. It’s blue shine gleamed in the dark sky around it. He remembered his dream, dolphins swarming around him in the warm Indian Ocean. He was excited about being in space. It was after all, his lifelong dream, but something about this phenomenon made him nervous. They had never seen anything like it. It seemed to be invisible, but it was creating a gravity well. What could do that? The only thing he could think of was a black hole; a mass so enormous that it crushed everything around it. But Caitlin had said that it was 5km in diameter, and it had just suddenly appeared. Black holes would usually show up after a supernova. It just didn’t make any sense. He knew one thing though: coming into contact with it was certainly not a good idea. If it was creating a gravity well that could pull a ship towards it from this distance, it would probably crush anything than came into contact with it, black hole or not.

  Scientifically, he was curious, but he was also afraid. Afraid that he was powerless to prevent the death of his crew, and to prevent another failed attempt to reach Mars. Humanity had tried too many times and lost too many lives trying to get to the red planet. If this failed also, they might give up on human space travel altogether. He did not want that. He had hoped that by now, humanity would already have been to Mars and further. But fate had prevented them from stretching their legs. Maybe they were not destined to move beyond their home planet. But that just couldn’t be true. The Universe was so mind bogglingly enormous that they had to be able to explore it. And the goal of humanity, the big question they’ve asked for millennia remains unanswered: are there others out there? Is Earth an exception to the emptiness of the whole Universe? Michael simply couldn’t

  believe that. He had always been interested in space exploration, ever since he was a child. His dad had bought him a small telescope when he was five, and he had spent hours staring up at the moon, Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. For as long as he could remember, he had always wanted to be an astronaut. Now, facing an unknown, possibly lethal threat, he began to wonder what he had gotten himself into.

  A buzz from the comm on his desk roused him from his thoughts.

  “Captain, the probe is approaching the edge of the phenomenon,” Caitlin said.

  Michael got up and walked out onto the bridge.

  “Time to impact?” he asked.

  “Two minutes,” Caitlin replied. “The probe has sent back only readings of its size. There is no other information, Captain.”

  “Do we have a visual?”

  “There is nothing to see, it seems to be invisible.”

  “Put it on screen.” The empty space from the main screen changed to show an external view of the probe. Caitlin had been right. There was nothing to see.

  “Thirty seconds.” The bridge crew watched as the probe approached the invisible phenomenon.

  Then the screen went dark.

  “What happened?” Michael asked.

  “We’ve lost the signal.” Marshall said quickly. Then he added, “The probe has disappeared.”

  “What do you mean? Was it destroyed?”

  “No,” Marshall replied, his voice shaking. “There is nothing left. Captain, it’s gone.”

  “Gone.” Michael repeated quietly. It wasn’t a question but Marshall answered anyway.

  “Yes, Captain.” Michael ran a hand through his dark hair.

  “There is no debris? Could it have been vaporized?”

  “By what Captain? There was no explosion, and our sensors aren’t showing any types of gas emanating from the object. It just completely disappeared. It has vanished.” The bridge fell silent.

  Everyone was looking at the screen where the vanished probe should be.

  “How far are we from the object.” Michael asked finally.

  “About forty thousand kilometres, Captain,” Lindsey replied. “At this speed, we will reach it within the hour.” Michael pressed a comm button.

  “Jean, how are you doing?”

  “We are preparing to fire up the engines, Captain.” came the Frenchman’s reply. “The warm up sequence will take ‘alf an ‘our.”

  “Can you make it any faster?”

  “No, they cannot work until they are warmed up.”

  Michael sighed.

  “Let me know as soon as they are ready. Edwards out.” He turned off the comm. Suddenly the ship shook again, and Michael had to grab hold of his chair to prevent himself from falling.

  “Report!”

  “We have accelerated Captain,” Lindsey said. “The object has increased its pull on us. We will reach it in less than half an hour if we keep up this speed.” She was trying to stay calm, but Michael could tell she was panicking. Michael thought he knew what she was thinking. If it pulled them faster this time, it might happen again. Michael walked to his office without a word to the crew, sat down at his desk and recorded a message to TEC.

  “To the commander of operations. We have sent a probe to the object. It has vanished. It seems to have been swallowed by the phenomenon. There is absolutely no trace of the probe. Also our distance to the object has diminished, and it is pulling us even faster towards it now. We will reach it in twenty minutes or so. I doubt you will have time to respond in that time. We are trying to get the engines up and running but as you know, that takes time. If we go the same way as the probe, I’d just like to say it has been a hell of a trip and this should not deter you from sending other men to Mars.” He was speaking fast now. “Please tell the families of the crew that we love them and they should not -” The screen on which he was recording went blank and the lights went out, and the ship started shaking violently. Michael got up and ran quickly back to the bridge as the emergency lights came on. They glowed dark red around the bridge, making Michael think of blood. Caitlin saw him come in.

  “We’ve lost everything Captain,” she yelled over the noise of the vibration. “Navigation, communication, the works. Just before the loss of the computer, our speed spiked. We should be very near the object.” Her voice cracked slightly. The vibration got stronger and Michael sat down.

  He grasped the straps on his chair and fastened himself in.

  “Brace for impact.” was all he said.

  2

  James Henderson was staring so hard at the screen that his eyes were watering. Ever since this had started, he had been having kittens. This project was his baby, he had dreamed about it for years. Watching it fall apart was crushing him. He sat, with the rest of TEC, in the large offices of the building, on the outskirts of San Francisco, watching, in horror, powerless as The Interstellar got nearer and nearer the object. They had been trying to work out what it was but had come up with nothing better than its size. It only appeared on radar because of its gravitational pull. It was otherwise invisible.

  “Forty seconds to contact,” one of the technicians said. Henderson felt like weeping. Not just because of the probable loss of the ship, but also because the people on the spaceship were people he had known and worked with for many years; especially Michael Edwards, who was a long time friend of his, and who he held with high esteem.

  “Twenty seconds,” said the technician.

  The screen in front of Henderson wasn’t in great detail. It showed a 3D version of the ship working its way towards an orange dot that represented the phenomenon. He wondered what was going through their minds. There was no way TEC could do anything to help them, as they were simply too far away to communicate directly, and even if they could have, TEC was at a loss of how to help.

  “Ten seconds. Nine. Eight.”

  Henderson’s eyes were still glued to the screen. He watched as the ship drifted ever closer to the dot. As the technician’s countdown reached zero, Henderson blinked and the ship was gone.

  “What – what happened?” he asked the
room, without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “The ship has gone,” someone answered.

  “Destroyed?” someone else asked.

  “The readings are coming in. There doesn’t seem to be any debris. They’ve just vanished.”

  Orders were being barked in every direction. A suggestion of a probe sent to the location was brought up. People were to start analysing data. To Henderson, it all seem to be happening somewhere else, to someone else. The noise was overpowering: everyone was speaking at the same time. Henderson sat, still staring at the screen, without really seeing it, thinking about the crew.

  Some of them had been really young. The pilot, Lindsey Highcliff, the beautiful blond girl every man at TEC fantasized about, had been barely twenty six.

  Suddenly, Henderson focused his eyes, something on the screen was bothering him. The ship had disappeared, and everybody on it too, but he noticed that the orange dot had also gone. He tapped a few keys on the computer, it wasn’t a glitch, the object should still be there, but it was nowhere to be

  seen.

  “Where’s the object?” he asked the room quietly, sure that nobody had heard him. To his surprise though, a stunned silence fell over the room. One of the technicians ran to his computer.

  “It’s gone,” he said astounded. He started tapping furiously on the keypad. “It disappeared thirty seven seconds after the ship.”

  Silence fell once more. There was no point in sending a probe now, there was nothing left to scan.

  Henderson bowed his head, a single tear fell from his eye.

  “Goodbye, old friend.”

  3

  Michael Edwards, who was well and truly alive, woke up slowly, his head pounding. He was slumped in his chair. He opened his eyes, winced, and looked around. He was still on his ship. His crew mates seemed to be waking up, like him. It took him a few seconds to remember what had happened. When he did however, he tried jumping to his feet, forgetting that he was strapped to his chair. Cursing, he undid the nuisance straps and stood up wearily. The bridge seemed to have suffered during their sleep: consoles were overturned or broken, the screen was showing grey snow, like a broken television. Michael quickly strode over to Caitlin, who was a few feet from him. At least the gravity is still working, he thought as he tried to rouse her. Caitlin slowly opened her eyes.

  “Are we dead?” she muttered.

  “No,” Michael answered, in no mood to joke. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so, my head is killing me.”

  “I know the feeling.” Satisfied that she was going to be okay, he moved to a console while Caitlin roused the others. It had blown. It could probably be mended but it would take time. He tried a comm, it wasn’t working either.

  Everybody on the bridge was awake now. The emergency lights were still glowing red, giving everyone a haunted look. Michael looked around at the confused faces before him.

  “What happened?” Marshall asked from his corner.

  “That’s what we need to find out, Lieutenant,” the Captain answered. “First we need to check that everyone is okay. Lindsey, I want you to go to the medical bay, find Doctor Hensen, and see if there are any injuries.” She left without a word. “Marshall,” he resumed. “Try and see if we can get power back online.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Michael turned to the fifth member of the bridge crew, John Browning, a tall and stocky security officer.

  “Corporal,” he said. “Can you help with repairs?”

  “Yes sir.” Michael motioned for Caitlin to follow him and entered his office. As soon as the door had closed, he dropped into his desk chair and sighed. The office was better looking than the meeting room. It had a large desk on which sat a couple of photographs of Michael’s family. His wife was smiling at him from their garden, holding Jade, his nine year old daughter. The walls were a soft brown, with various older ships painted in canvas along them, and Michael glanced briefly at the picture of the Mars Man One before turning to Caitlin, who had sat down opposite him without permission. He mentally forgave her for this small omission, as these were troubled times. She wasn’t looking at him but gazing out of the window, frowning slightly, she seemed to be thinking.

  “Caitlin,” Michael said gently. She did not look at him, but continued to stare out the window. “Any idea on what happened?” She glanced at him quickly, then stood up and moved to the view of space beyond.

  “Michael,” If he had not seen her lips move, he would have thought it was someone else who had spoken. Caitlin had spent her early life in the military and had joined TEC ten years previously. She had seen and done things in her time that no one could possibly imagine. She was rock solid, nothing ever seemed to shock her. But the voice that came out of her mouth was soft and shaky. It scared Michael more than anything else they had done so far.

  “What is it?” he moved towards her. She turned away from the window and sank against the wall.

  “The stars,” she moaned in the same strange, high pitched voice. “They’re all wrong.” Michael was confused. He looked out of the window himself. He understood as he searched the dark space.

  During the last month, they’d had ample time to gaze at the stars beyond the windows of the ship, and had grown accustomed to their position relative to their speed. Michael did not recognize a single star. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. He left his first officer where she was and ran back out onto the bridge.

  “Hayes!” he barked at Marshall, his head pounding. “Can we get the view screen on?” There weren’t any windows on the bridge, as the screen usually sufficed. “Are the cameras operational?”

  Marshall tapped a few keys on one of the hastily fixed consoles.

  “I should be able to get them working, I’ll need a few minutes, but the comm is back online.”

  Michael walked to an intercommunication button.

  “Captain to the doctor.” A few seconds later, came the panted reply.

  “Here, Captain.”

  “Report.”

  “Lindsey and I have searched the whole ship, three people are dead, two are severely injured and there are several minor injuries. I’ve got my hands full here Captain, I’ll get back to you. Hensen out.”

  Michael collapsed into his chair. Three people were dead. Two more might soon be too. What the hell had happened? What had caused the stars to shift, the ship to suffer such damage and make them all faint? He needed an aspirin.

  “Sir, power is back online,” Marshall said. Michael stood up again.

  “Get me all cameras on screen.” The different views came on. Everyone on the bridge gasped.

  Glinting from the screen was not one, but two suns. Lindsey entered the bridge as they all sat gaping at the balls of fire in front of them.

  “Wow,” she muttered softly. “What -?” She seemed unable to speak any more. They were all lost for words. After a few minutes of numb silence, Michael spoke.

  “Where are we?” It was the question on everybody’s lips.

  “In another solar system.” Caitlin had come back. She seemed to be her old self again, composed and ready for anything. Of course, the statement didn’t really tell them where they were. They had all suspected something like this. There was no other reason for there to suddenly be two suns in the sky. Two different ones at that. One of them was similar to their own star, a brilliant orange ball; the other was twice as big, and a deep red.

  “Can you confirm we are no longer in our solar system?” Michael asked Hayes.

  “Yes sir, we are nowhere near Earth, or Mars or indeed our sun. The composition of the one similar to ours is almost the same; however, this sun is slightly larger in diameter.”

  “How did we get here? Was that thing some kind of wormhole?” Lindsey asked from her station.

  “It must have been,” John said quietly. “It’s the only explanation.”

  They all thought about this. Wormholes were something from science fiction. TEC and NASA had always imagined th
at they probably exist, but one had never been observed before. Also, they had imagined them different; visible, like a giant hole in the middle of space. Nothing like the phenomenon they had encountered.

  “Scan the area,” Michael ordered. “Is the object still near us?”

  “Negative, Captain,” Caitlin, who had resumed her seat, answered. “It’s not on sensors.”

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “How are we going to get home?” Lindsey asked, her eyes wide.

  “We’ll worry about that later. Caitlin, are there any planets around here?”

  “The system contains fifteen planets, sir. Six of them rocky planets.”

  “Fifteen?” Hayes said in astonishment.

  “Are any of them in the habitable zone?” Michael inquired, his heart beating fast.

  “Two planets, similar in size and mass, very close to each other,” Caitlin said. “Wow what a sight that must be.”

  “Are you suggesting Captain, that there might be aliens in this system?” Marshall Hayes asked.

  “Who knows?” he answered simply. “Do we know anything of the composition, do they have an atmosphere? Space stations, or anything else that would suggest life has evolved on either of these planets?”

  “I’m afraid we’re too far away to tell. We would need to get nearer. We are on the middle side of the solar system, somewhere near the 7th planet.”

  “Okay. Well, while we figure out how we ended up here, I suggested we get some rest. We are in no immediate danger. Get some rest all of you.”

  *

  After most of the crew had gone to get some sleep, Michael wandered down to the medical bay.

  There were only two beds in the area. TEC had not counted on there being many sick personnel during the mission. The two beds were occupied by the severely injured people. At a glance, Michael saw that they were two crewman who worked in the Engine room: Frank Jameson and Abigail Wither. Doctor Adrian Hansen looked over as he entered. The doctor was fifty years old, and long, wild grey hair filled his head. He always had a stern expression. His grey eyes often gave Michael the impression he was being X-rayed, but he knew that Adrian had a soft side and was usually someone who gave good advice, and he was an excellent doctor.