by Per Holbo
***
The shutters of the large panorama windows At the bridge at Alfheim slid slowly upwards like a theater curtain, revealing a rare performance with five large eddies of stars and gas tangling in criss-cross patterns. At the edge of the streams entire solar systems slowly distorted and careened out of themselves making them monstrosities against the pitch black nothingness in the middle of each of the five vertebrae. It was a beautiful sight! And a terrifying one! Even for the four seasoned Aseir warriors At the bridge, it was a sight almost taking their breath away and it reminded them how small they were in relation to the gigantic forces of the universe. Here, in the middle of a war that had significance for billions scattered throughout the galaxy, the feeling of being utterly insignificant sneaked up on them. What little importance all their efforts would have in ten thousand years. Thor was almost overwhelmed by the thought that all of this didn´t matter - not in the long run, not in the vast time line of the universe. But then he reminded himself that no matter how big the universe was, and no matter how short a life, he and his comrades had, when compared with the big nothing filled with stars and planets out there, what they were about to do out here would have quite an impact on all those who just now were exposed to the brutality of the Yetten and their lust for power. He thought of Tjalfe and Roeskva, who were currently sitting in a dark and cold cell as he himself had just a few years ago been sitting when he was captured during what should have been a peace mission. Had it not been for Loki's skill and courage, Thor wouldn´t be standing here At the bridge at Alfheim, but had probably been put to forced labor in one of the numerous mining operations where the Yetten built the foundation for their oppression. The peoples´ oppressed by the Yetten, were frequently used as cheap labor. Thor could have been there right now - and that even only provided he had been among the lucky ones who survived. The vast majority of slave labor in the mines worked less than a year before they succumbed to the hard work, the toxic gases and the poor food.
The idea that Loki could be the traitor was crazy and Thor couldn´t get his head around it. He and Loki had been in battle more times than he could count and Loki had gambled his life , not just for Thor, but even for complete strangers fighting hard to save them from the claws of the Yetten forces. On the other hand, he had to admit that Loki had always been a complicated battle companion and it wasn´t uncommon that he and Loki had quarreled, especially on the subject of other races. Loki felt that the Aseir, the Vanes and the Yetten were superior to other people. How often had Loki not claimed that other breeds´ lack in technology in some way made them inferior? And Thor had occasionally wondered how Loki again and again could escape the most ingenious traps set up for them by the Yetten. And afterwards Loki couldn´t - or wouldn´t? - explain how he had done it. There had previously been rumors that Loki was in possession of technology, which he never shared with the Aseir, but it had never been investigated and there had never been even fairly solid evidence that it was true.
“We´re here.” Of course it had to be Freya breaking the almost sacred silence At the bridge with her straight forward approach. Thor shook off the unpleasant thoughts from his mind and asked her to explain one more time how they were supposed to get past the strong gravitational fields in and around Skrymers glove and into the free area.
An illustration of Skrymers glove with the five black holes appeared on the screen. The black hole was a skewed semicircle and a vast number of gravitational fields were drawn up in blue. “Right,” Freya began, “the gravitational fields around the paradox form something similar to the fingers of a hand.” She pointed to a red oval shape drawn in what looked like the inside of a palm. “There we have the non-gravity pocket,” she continued, “our most recent scans suggest that it extends to roughly the colored area here and is about the size of the solar system of Earth give or take about 20%, but even this is highly uncertain. Remember, that our scanners can only detect so much and the distorted gravitational fields make it quite difficult to get trustworthy readings.”
She drew a sharp angle into the space between thumb and forefinger of the hand like shape. “This is our point of intrusion and this...” she drew a half circle inside the sharp angle, “this is the point of no return. As soon as we pass this line there is no going back and we have to deal with whatever we meet. But this is also the line, where gravity should be minimal and directed toward the non-gravity pocket.”
“And if that´s a wrong estimate?” Baldur asked.
Freya looked at him in silence and her eyes made the seriousness of such a situation quite clear. “If our estimate is wrong, we´ll never find out,” she finally said, “we call it the ‘point of no return’ for a reason.”
Again a short silence, before she went on.
“Okay, our next challenge is going through here..”
She pointed at the ‘skin’ between ‘thumb’ and ‘index’ on the hand, then she sort of came to a halt. Almost froze like a character on a screen when you push the pause button. Thor noticed and he could have sworn she seemed uncertain, maybe even nervous, which wasn´t like her at all. Freya was usually cool and calm in even the most chaotic of situations and for her to even hesitate... He didn´t like it. He didn´t like it at all. Maybe this mission was a bad idea? Maybe they should try to find some other way? But Thor didn´t have the time to reconsider, because suddenly Freya seemed to regain her confidence and went on with the briefing.
“When we get to this point we will go through a passage of unknown length. We don´t know the actual proportions of this area and our scanners can tell us nothing about any other characteristics in there. All we know for sure is that the gravitational fields inside are extremely distorted and we should expect to be dragged and pulled in any direction imaginable - maybe even in directions unimaginable - we have no way of predicting these forces and even the slightest miscalculation on the pilots behalf will potentially smash us to particles.”
Baldur sank his spit and breathed in deep.
“I feel no pressure,” he sighed sarcastically, “no pressure at all...”
“That´s not even the worst part,” Sif commented.
Baldur looked at her in disbelief. “There is something worse?” he asked, “what in the whole wide universe could even remotely be worse than the occasional being ripped apart by gravitational forces of superseding magnitude???”
Sif couldn´t help smiling, even if it was only for a second. She thought it through in her mind trying to find the right words.
“Forces of time,” she finally said, “Forces of time are worse.” She got up and drew a couple of circles on Freya illustration.
“All these gravitational fields are so extreme that not only light is being distorted. So does the curvature of space - and thus time.”
“???”
“Well, it means that the speed of time changes rapidly going faster or slower than normal. Instead of taking 6 hours to get through the passage, it may take a million years or 14 seconds, depending on which direction the time speed changes.”
She paused as the look in Baldur´s eyes became even more distant and bewildered. Then she explained it in a different way.
“If time suddenly goes faster inside the gravitational field, you will enter the non-gravity pocket as an old man - at best - and if it is slowed down, all people you know will be dead and gone before you can drink a horn of that mead you have come to like so much during our time on Earth.”
To this point, Baldur had looked quite indifferent, but as soon as Sif mentioned the mead, he woke up. With a jolt he sat up his face wide open and his jaw dropped. Before he managed to come up with something funny to say, Sif interrupted him.
“Thor has been working on something that should improve our chances of success,” she said, but was interrupted by Thor, who didn´t want to take all the credit for himself. “Sif and I have working on it,” he said, “and if it hadn´t been for Sif´s amazing mathematical skills, I would most likely not have succeeded getting the m
ini generator to work at all.”
Sif smiled at this declaration of love and acknowledgement from her husband, as she elaborated their plan.
“The Fyrkat experiments have shown us that it is indeed possible to generate wormholes using our transport technology, but there are still issues to be solved. For one thing, it has been virtually impossible to get the bubble around the test subjects to work anywhere else than on Earth - and even then, it has only been successful on exactly the spot, where we´ve placed the Fyrkat device.”
She lashed out her arms in a questioning gesture. “In fact, we can´t even begin to understand why the device works only at this particular place in the universe,” she continued, “however... the latest data we´ve analyzed, mostly from the incident with the disappearance of Tjalfe and Roeskva, have given us the means to find a temporary solution as long as the elements being transported are small enough - more specifically: the size of humans. Unfortunately there is a side effect to this solution. The Fyrkat device does not merely generate a wormhole. It generates a wormhole with a bubble of distorted time inside. When it comes to using our solution in a transportation device, this is a huge disadvantage, because it poses fatal danger to whoever or whatever we want to transport. But... to our mission this side effect could be the key to success. We can exploit this effect by using the mini generator to establish a pocket of distorted time around ourselves. This way, we should be able to go through the narrow entrance of Skrymer´s Glove with a fairly certainty of not getting ripped to pieces by the time distortion that may be present there.”
“Fairly certainty?” Baldur said, “sounds interesting... but as I understood what you just said, this pocket is too small for anything larger than our own bodies? How can we get Alfheim to fit in such a pocket? I mean, we can´t exactly just fly through that entrance in nothing but a space suit, right?”
The silence and Sif´s eyes being fixed on Baldur´s eyes made him realize. This was exactly their plan. This was the thing that was ‘worse.’
“You got to be kidding me!” Baldur´s voice revealed a mix of fear and excitement at the thought of looking death in the eye. His jaw dropped as he leaned back in his chair. “You people are raving mad!” He looked at Sif, then Thor, then again back at Sif. Finally he put his arms over his head holding his hands behind his neck and lit up in a crooked smile. “I´m in!” he said cheerfully, “I don´t know about you guys, but I´m in!”
