TWO

 

 

Chairman Peter German woke three hours later, feeling much better.

He washed off his face, once again changed to a clean shirt, and went back to the kitchen to finish the other half of the turkey sandwich he had made earlier.

As he ate, he pulled up some of the data they had worked out earlier.

If a support crew was going to have enough food to survive a five-year sub-light trip to the nearest planet that would sustain a human population, he had to order all but three hundred of the eighty thousand on board into suspended animation. They would lose around five hundred people if he did that, but the rest would survive.

Sub-light drives worked, but something had blocked the Pale Light’s hyper drives. Everything showed fine on all engine readings, just something stopped the ship from jumping.

It was as if hyper space, real space, and everything else around them had just stopped existing.

They had done every reading of the empty space around them that they could and some that no one had even tried in centuries. Nothing was there.

Nothing.

Empty space surrounded them.

But he and all the scientists on board knew that empty space, really, truly empty space did not exist. Space was always full of so many things. But it seemed empty space actually did exist and they were parked solidly in the middle of a large bubble of it.

With that, he went to his private research computer in his office. That computer gave him access to many confidential reports in the Seeder’s network and command structure that had been stored on board and updated every time they returned to the leading edge with their reports. He was the only one on board that had access to the confidential files, although if something happened to him, Rose Marie, his second in command, knew where they were and how to get into them.

He looked up the reference to “empty space” to see if other ships had run into this kind of thing before.

What he found scared him more than the idea of putting almost everyone who worked for him into suspended animation.

It seemed that major studies, all highly classified, had been done on Empty Space or Void Space as it was called. It seemed that nothing existed in the space, including time.

Empty Space was basically a void in time and space. The voids were small and no one in his main records had figured out how they were formed. But it had a very real warning. If caught by one, get out quickly.

Another scientist called Empty Space the only reliable time travel machine into the future in the universe.

“Oh, shit,” German said, his stomach twisting down on the turkey sandwich he had just finished.

He touched a button on his wall. “All command crew return at once to the bridge.”

He instantly teleported there.

A young man by the name of Moore was at the helm. He had a head of bright red hair and freckles. He usually only saw duty in the night shift.

“Moore,” German said, “ease sub-light drive up to full at once.”

Moore nodded and focused on his panel.

German turned to his second in command, Rose Marie, who had just appeared on the bridge. Her short brown hair was still wet and she looked as if she had missed a button in getting her light blue blouse on in a rush.

“Head us toward that planet we found earlier that’s five years out,” German said to her and she nodded and stepped to navigation.

German turned back to Moore. “We at full speed yet?”

“We are, sir,” Moore said. “Eighty percent of light.”

“Then push it harder.”

“But…” Moore started to say.

German nodded. “I know all about time issues at sub-light. Just do it. I want this ship going at 95 percent of light speed as soon as you can get it worked up there. When we get out we’ll reset all the clocks.”

Moore only nodded and turned back to his controls.

Davis was now back at his panel, so German turned to his friend, “How far to the edge of Empty Space?”

“At 95 percent of light, we should get there in twenty-two hours.”

German took a deep breath. That was a very, very long time.

Maybe too long.

“Davis, Rose Marie, I need you both in my cabin in ten minutes.”

With that he jumped back to his cabin suite, got himself a glass of apricot juice, and dropped onto his couch in his living room. There was an image of Kathy on the end table.

He reached over and turned the image off.

He would let Rose Marie and Davis look at the classified files on the studies of Empty Space when they got here. And then they could talk about it.

And decide exactly what to do or not do.

But now he knew why Seeder Scout Ships vanished at times.

Empty Space.

They didn’t vanish. They just took a trip into the future.

How far into the future was now the question.