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The shuttle descended gracefully onto a landing pad dug out of the largest and central crater of a cluster of five. Within minutes the shuttle had been taken down below the lunar surface, then started rolling into a large open bay carved out of the lunar rock. While waiting for the bay to pressurize before disembarking, Dane felt the sudden return of near-Earth gravity.
“An artificial gravity well? Below the surface?” he asked inquisitively. “The power involved must be enormous!”
Rijkard nodded. “It is. But it is a resource we have no shortage of.”
“I don’t understand. An unlimited renewable power source? What is it? Solar?”
Rijkard shook his head. “I doubt you would understand, I’m not sure I do fully. Suffice to say that this base provides us with all the energy we would ever need to run our operations, both here and on Earth.”
“But there must be a source!” pressed Dane. Rijkard crossed his arms in front of him and looked sternly at his companion.
“Do you believe you are ready, truly ready, to know?” Now Dane crossed his arms in response. The two men sat staring at each other across the cockpit.
“You must believe that I am, otherwise why would we be here at so critical a time?” said Dane. Rijkard nodded his response.
“The answer, young Sire, is that the energy is created by a device that we found here, on Luna. It doesn’t function as our common technology does. It doesn’t obey the laws of physics as we have understood them. It is a doorway.”
Dane shifted, not understanding. “A doorway? To where?” Rijkard shook his head again.
“Not ‘to’, Dane. From,” he said. Dane flailed his arms in exasperation.
“Will you quit teasing me and get to the point, man?”
Rijkard pulled at his beard, displeased with Dane’s impatience. “Very well then. When a Starliner passes through a jump point it creates a quantum doorway. It uses massive expended energy to force open a pinpoint of existence, a hyper-dimensional gateway from one place in our universe to another. Then it pushes itself through that pinpoint to its destination at a great expense of dissipated energy,” he said.
“But this technology is different. Using the devices we have discovered, here and at the Sanctuary, we don’t expend energy to force our way through space. Instead we use a set of quantum equations to send out a vibrational wave, which opens a pinpoint to another dimension, the very source of existence. A dimension of pure energy. Then we allow the tiniest bit of that energy into our dimension, and run everything we have off of that energy. We tap into an energy field as bright as a burning sun, only vastly more powerful.”
Dane took this in. “That does violate most of our quantum physics laws, as they are now stated. But I’ve no reason to distrust your honesty. Still, a dimension of pure energy? Can we access this dimension? I mean, have you ever been there?” Rijkard smiled at his curiosity.
“My young man, imagine a dimension where what we see as dark space was as bright as the sun, and what we see as suns and stars were the tiniest bits of darkness. I imagine beings such as you and I would have little chance of surviving there.”
Dane nodded as if he understood. “Manna from heaven, then. Is this how the Defensive Shield is operated? Do you run it from here? From Luna, I mean?”
Rijkard adjusted a dial on the shuttle dashboard. “You certainly ask a lot of questions.”
Dane shrugged. “You have my curiosity piqued. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“You’re right,” said Rijkard, reading a dial on an overhead control panel. “I didn’t. I’ll try to explain. You’ve noted the inner hull of this vessel? That it matches the outer skin exactly?”
“Yes. It appears to be some kind of ceramic material, like the pyramid in the war game, though I can’t discern its like. This is the key, then?”
Rijkard nodded. “This is the conductor. Simply put, it never loses any energy. What is taken in is constantly recycled to the ship’s systems, wherever needed. If the vessel requires greater thrust and speed, the ship’s ‘mind’ knows just how to transfer the power necessary, and from where. It is always in perfect balance, always monitoring the needs of its passengers for food, or heat or medical treatment. And we have never been able to measure its ultimate capacity for storage. We’re not sure that it has any upper limit.”
“What about weapons? Surely it expends energy then?”
“We have never been able to measure a noticeable drop in power levels, even during the fiercest combat. All remains constant, or grows. As near as our science can tell us, the vessel is constantly recharging or recycling energy. From the very molecules of space for all we know.”
“Pure energy conductivity at the molecular level?”
“Our best scientists cannot tell us.”
Dane was growing excited. “And the propulsion system? I heard no jets or rocket fuel on takeoff.”
“Again, fusion power of a kind, we believe. It has no harmful effects. A man can stand directly in the line of an engine outlet in full generation and not be harmed.”
“But how is that possible? And why is it that your people know so little? Didn’t you create the shuttle?”
Clearly Rijkard wished to avoid further discussion, but he answered anyway. “There is a time for everything to be explained, and a time for things simply to be experienced as they are. Let me show you our treasure, and then you can decide for yourself what to believe.”
Rijkard swiveled his chair around and freed himself from the acceleration couch. Dane did the same. Rijkard motioned for Dane to follow him to the rear exit of the shuttle. At the bottom of the ramp Rijkard waited a moment, then pressed a single button. The shuttle hatch swung outward and a gantry extended to meet the shuttle. The two men stepped out into a vast underground bay.
Directly in front of Dane stood a vessel of the same ceramic material as the shuttle, but darker in tone and nearly one hundred meters tall, he estimated. The pinnacle of the ship stood a hundred meters high over his head and resembled a medieval stone tower projecting upward toward the heavens. Three connecting pylons attached at the base, nearly a third the height of the vessel itself. The base of the ship itself was wider than the central funnel, the pinnacle wider as well, but thinner than the base. And all done in the style of a gothic church spire.
Dane looked down to see the inside of the bay was a rush of activity, with what seemed like thousands of men and women preparing a row of identical ships curving away into the distance and out of his sight. A phalanx of thirty soldiers dressed in Sanctuary whites stood on either side of a large ramp leading into the vessel. They snapped to attention when they saw the two men in the shuttle port and then saluted. The gold cross and sun symbol of the Sanctuary was on the ship’s side about halfway up. Emblazoned just above the Sanctuary insignia was the blue and orange standard of Quantar, with the Cochrane family crest in the center.
“My God,” said Dane, his voice cracking in awe as he gripped the gantry railing, “What is that?”
“That,” said Rijkard, placing his hand on his young friend’s shoulder, “is a Lightship.”