Chapter Twenty-Four

Bullam strapped herself into her seat on the bridge of the carrier. Summoned one of her drones to bring up a simple communications panel. She nodded and it established a link to the scout ships. The faces of the pilots appeared before her, all in a row.

“I want you to know that Centrocor salutes your bravery,” she told them. “We’re all in this together.”

“If we can get on with it?” Shulkin asked.

She studied the way he sat in his command seat, leaning forward, hands on his knees. Looking perfectly composed despite the absence of gravity. The man was a machine purpose-built for this kind of work. His eyes were like the diamond tips of industrial drills.

“All right,” she said. “Good luck, pilots.” Then she cut the connection.

On the big display above the navigator’s position, three blue dots moved steadily forward, fanning out in three directions. Ahead of them lay three hazardous paths. The detour to Avernus meant Lanoe had a week’s head start on them. It was possible he hadn’t taken any of these wormholes, and that exploring the hazardous tunnels was a waste of time and fuel. Bullam had studied the map a dozen times, though, and she had to believe that Lanoe hadn’t doubled back just to throw them off the scent.

The problem was they had no idea which of the three tunnels was the right one. It was Shulkin who had pointed out they had a simple solution to this dilemma. The carrier had dozens of scout craft in its big vehicle bay, tiny, fast ships perfect for this role. Three pilots had been chosen at random to try the tunnels.

The first tunnel looked perfectly safe and normal as far as their sensors could reach. All three of them did. Radio communication was impossible in a wormhole, but as long as two ships were within line of sight of each other, they could stay in touch by communications laser. The three wormholes, as hazardous as they might be, ran unusually straight ahead. They expected to be able to receive regular updates from the scouts for at least the first few million kilometers of the mission.

The pilot in charge of exploring the first tunnel sounded relaxed as he streaked onward, reading off data as he went. “Temperature normal, geometry normal. The ghostlight in here is a little strange—it looks like something might have stirred it up.”

Bullam looked over at the information officer. “Could Lanoe have done that?” she asked.

The IO looked like he wanted to shrug but he fought down the urge. “Unclear, ma’am. If a large amount of mass hit the tunnel wall all at once … maybe.”

“You don’t think Lanoe crashed his ship,” Bullam said, turning to Shulkin. “Do you?”

“He’s no fool,” Shulkin replied. He twitched one shoulder. “Accidents happen. But no, I don’t believe he died here.”

“One point five million kilometers in. Temperature’s rising a little,” the scout pilot said. “Are you seeing this? Looks like … like …”

“IO?” Shulkin barked.

“Imagery is … inconclusive. I’ll bring it up.”

The navigational display showed a forward view from the scout, the same thing the pilot saw. The wormhole tunnel ran straight as an arrow away from him, ghostlight spearing out from the walls in long, spiky plumes. Without warning one of the spikes thickened and then lurched across the tunnel, twisting around itself like a tornado of light.

The view rolled sickeningly as the pilot maneuvered hard to avoid that plume of energy. For a moment they had a good view of the tunnel wall and Bullam saw the ghostlight roiling and spitting, far more energetic than the quiet, smoky radiance she would have expected.

“Evading,” the pilot said, his voice rising in pitch. “I see three more of those flares. Requesting permission to return to vehicle.”

Everyone looked to Shulkin. He might have been made of stone, his eyes fixed on the display. He didn’t say a word.

“Activity is increasing, repeat, activity is increasing, reaching dangerous levels,” the pilot called, almost shouting now.

On the display a prominence of ghostlight smashed across the tunnel, an arch of quivering light that entirely blocked the way forward. Spears of bright ghostlight jumped out of the walls from every direction. None of the activity looked coordinated, it wasn’t actively targeting the scout, but it was just a matter of time before one of them struck his tiny ship.

“Captain Shulkin,” Bullam said. “Recall the scout.”

Shulkin didn’t even look like he was breathing.

“Captain! That man is going to die! We don’t gain any data from letting him get burned alive. Recall the—”

Shulkin spoke over her. “Pilot, I want you to pick a spot on the wall, well ahead of you, and fire a one-second burst of PBW into it.”

Bullam wanted to jump out of her seat and throttle Shulkin. “You’re running experiments now? You’re using this man as a guinea pig?”

The scout pilot did as he was told. PBW fire lanced out from the single cannon mounted in the nose of his ship, drawing a line of radiance along the wall of the tunnel. Its light was lost in the storm of ghostlight that followed, the wall exploding with fury every time one of the particles struck home.

The light was bright enough to make Bullam’s eyes hurt. The tunnel ahead of the scout filled completely with raging, spectral fire.

But perhaps there was a limit to how much activity one tunnel could produce. The flares and prominences around the scout receded, pulling back toward the walls.

“Now you may return,” Shulkin told the man.

The pilot wasted no time twisting around and burning toward home. In a few seconds he was free of the tunnel and calling for clearance to dock in the vehicle bay.

“You knew that would work?” Bullam asked.

Shulkin did not look at her, nor did he answer her.

“Tell the second scout to proceed with his mission,” he said.

The second wormhole didn’t run quite as straight as the first. Communications would be impossible after the first million kilometers. Anything could be hiding in there. A naked singularity. A dozen branching paths, each of them more deadly than the last. Some kind of wormhole-native cyclopean monster that subsisted on human spacecraft.

Well, that last was unlikely. Bullam’s stomach knotted with dread, though, as she watched the second scout race ahead down the wormhole’s length.

“Conditions normal,” the pilot called. “Temperature and geometry as expected. The ghostlight in here doesn’t seem particularly active.”

“Understood,” Shulkin said. He inclined his head forward to drink some water from a straw hidden inside his collar ring. Any of the carrier’s crew would have been happy to fetch him a squeeze tube if he wanted it, but instead he chose to sip at his own recycled fluids. Bullam, whose suit did not include a reclamation system, turned away and watched the screen.

Ahead of the scout the wormhole spooled out exactly as a wormhole should. Ghostlight flickered along the walls, occasionally reaching out with a vaporous arm toward the scout, but never coming close to touching it.

“Temperature hasn’t changed,” the pilot called. “All conditions nominal.”

Seconds ticked by. Bullam couldn’t forget that the charts labeled this wormhole as somehow extremely hazardous, but she couldn’t see where the danger lay. The pilot’s voice became a lulling drone, and she started to reach behind her, to snap her fingers for one of her drones to bring her something to eat.

“Temmperrrature norrrmal,” the pilot said.

At first Bullam didn’t catch it.

“Alll conditionss nommminnnalll.”

She looked up. No one on the bridge seemed to think it was odd that the pilot’s voice had deepened so much, or that he had slowed down to a drawling cadence. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe there was just interference on the line, some kind of lag.

Though—Bullam had never heard of interference on a communications laser. The beam either connected or it didn’t. If there was a problem with a comms laser, the signal simply cut out.

“Captain,” she said.

Shulkin gave her a nod. Just a tiny inclination of his head. “Pilot. What is your physical state? Are you feeling ill?”

There was no answer for long seconds. When it did come, it was hard to understand.

“Fffiiinnneee,” he said. “Iiii’mmmm fffffiiiiinnnnneeee, aaaaalllll condittttttttt—”

The final t-sound stretched on and on, sounding like waves crashing on a beach.

“IO,” Shulkin said. “Give me a signal analysis. What’s going on?”

The information officer shook his head. “It’s … it’s weird, sir.”

“I need data, Officer. Not your opinion.”

The IO took a deep breath. “The signal’s still coming in, just as strong as ever, only—the wavelength is all stretched out. It’s like—”

“Time dilation,” the navigator said.

They all turned to look at her.

“Time dilation, like when a ship travels close to the speed of light, or it approaches a black hole. That’s my best opinion, sir.”

Shulkin didn’t bother telling her that he hadn’t asked for it. “IO, has the scout craft accelerated to near the speed of light?”

“Not at all, sir,” the IO replied. “It seems to have slowed down, actually. It’s … hellfire.”

“There are civilians present,” Shulkin said. “Please avoid that sort of language.”

The IO nodded. “Sorry, sir. Just—when the scout entered the wormhole it was moving at approximately a thousand meters per second. My sensors are telling me it’s now moving at a velocity of approximately ten centimeters … per hour.”

The wormhole, Bullam thought. The wormhole had slowed down time for the scout pilot. She remembered from when she was in school, the day her science instructors had taught her about wormholes. One of the mysteries about them was that they connected distant planets while conserving local time. She didn’t understand all the math, but she remembered them saying that a wormhole didn’t just move through space, it traveled through a timelike dimension as well. The equations that governed wormholes didn’t recognize any difference between time and space, treating them as identical kinds of dimensions. Just as a wormhole could connect two star systems, it could just as easily connect the distant past and the far future. It had surprised the early explorers that the wormholes they traversed didn’t send you back into the distant past, or accelerate you toward the end of the universe.

In all their explorations, though, humanity had never found a wormhole that traveled through time. It just didn’t seem to be something that happened naturally. Maybe the universe just didn’t like the kind of paradoxes that time travel might create.

This wormhole apparently didn’t get the memo.

“He’s slowed down in time,” Bullam said. “And the further he goes, the slower he’s going to get. The poor bastard’s going to get stuck in there if he goes any further. Time will slow down so much it’ll be millions of years before he even realizes he’s in trouble. How do we get him out?”

“Sir,” the carrier’s pilot said. “We can dispatch a rescue vehicle. I can have one ready in a few minutes, and—”

“We don’t,” Shulkin said.

“Sir?” the pilot asked.

“Any rescue vehicle we send after that pilot will be slowed down in time as well. Rescue is impossible. Ready the third scout.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Bullam said. “You can’t just leave him in there!”

Shulkin turned his diamond gaze on her.

“I am the captain of this vessel,” he told her. “I can do as I please. I gave an order. Ready the third scout. Let’s find out what the third wormhole has in store for us. And let us all hope it’s something we can survive, because I intend to take this carrier through it, and I intend to catch Aleister Lanoe. Would any military personnel like to comment on my orders?”

The bridge crew all looked to their displays.