Felix sat heavily at his desk, trying very hard not to move in any direction that his aching body might object to. Unfortunately, because of the circuit training Harris had finished their workout with, that was every direction.
Two weeks ago, Harris had approached Felix out of the clear blue sky to start a light exercise routine. It had seemed like a good idea, until Felix had a better picture of what a marine considered light exercise.
Felix pored through fresh experimental data from Magellan’s crew. Captain Ridgeway, Chief Billings, and, oddly enough, the flight ops officer, a woman named Dorsett, had turned out to be standout researchers. Despite the fact that only Ridgeway had any experience conducting field research, she had groomed a great group on her cycle. The ground-based ARTists had taken to calling them Magellan’s A-team. Felix was relieved that they had thawed out again.
It was an odd sort of relationship. Here were people born before his grandparents, who might not see Earth again in his lifetime, whose faces Felix had only seen in pictures. Yet he felt he knew them better than some of the people he saw every day, especially Dr. Kiefer and his squad of QER techs. Their quirkiness seemed to grow like kelp.
The last year had seen progress in fits and starts. The ARTists program’s current crown jewel, the advanced gravity projector, had come early in the process. Now Felix had been tasked with unraveling the paradox presented by the power-sucking transmitter.
He was sure it was getting around the universe’s speed limit. The appearance of the fuzzy anomaly, as Ridgeway had called it at the time, was too convenient otherwise. But knowing something was happening was very different from knowing how.
There had been several breaks, however. One of Magellan’s techs had stumbled upon the lines controlling the buoy’s maintenance panels, which now all lay open. This gave them access for all manner of scans and experiments on the transmitter.
Felix stood up from his desk, carefully and slowly. It didn’t really stop his muscles from hurting, but he had never been one to rip off a Band-Aid either. He walked sort of hunched over to the permanent holographic reconstruction of the buoy, which was spinning lazily through the air at the far side of his office/lab.
Someone had drawn a meter-long infinity symbol on the floor with black chalk and left a pair of rechargeable batteries inside the loops. It wasn’t the first time. Last week it had been a pentagram made of fiber-optic cables surrounding a plastic dinosaur skull. Felix wasn’t sure if it was the work of a prankster or if one of his compatriots really was going nuts.
He cleaned up the … offering and set upon the hologram, trying to devise new tests that could give him much-needed insights. Right now, he was vexed by what seemed to be the heart of the transmitter. The metallic sphere, about the size of a softball, was the source of the radio frequency leak. Whatever was eating up all that power was happening in there.
The office door slid open and disgorged Jeffery.
“Good morning, Felix,” he said enthusiastically.
“Hi, Jeff. Forgive me if I don’t get up.”
Jeffery surveyed the room and spotted a pile of damp workout clothes. “Thomas is still running you into the ground, I see.”
“Oh, we passed ground last week. Now we’re rapidly approaching mantle.”
“I just can’t imagine what a sixth-grav lunar native was thinking agreeing to work out with a marine. Are you trying to induce a heart attack?”
“No, I was … I don’t know what I was thinking, honestly.”
“Well, whatever doesn’t kill you only leads to irreparable joint damage.”
“Thanks,” Felix said. “But you haven’t seen the half of it. Two days ago, he tricked me into playing racquetball.”
“How’d you do?” asked Jeffery.
“Before or after the concussion? So what brings you here, aside from predicting my imminent physical collapse?”
“I just wanted to see if you’re making any headway on the radio here.”
“Not really,” answered Felix glumly. “I can’t study what I can’t test.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m sure the little metal ball here”—he pointed at the hologram—“is the core of the transmitter. Magellan’s people have used voltmeters to get a good picture of the power flow through the system. Most of the energy is going right into this thing, and these two nodes connect directly to it, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what they do. The ball absorbs everything we throw at it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything. Infrared, x-rays, acoustics—they all disappear into it once they pass the casing. The scans just come back with a hole in the image, like they’re scanning nothing at all, not even the inside of the case. It doesn’t even emit any heat! In fact, it behaves like a heat sink. All that power going in, yet it’s cooler than the components surrounding it. It’s just…”
“Impossible?” offered Jeffery.
“Improbable,” answered Felix.
Jeffery sat down and absently stared into the hologram. “What if it is just a hole?” he asked after several long moments.
“Literally?”
“Well, yeah. You said from the start that it was like the energy was just pouring down a hole. What if this is one?”
Felix turned the suggestion over in his mind. It had the potential to answer a few questions, like where the rest of the signal strength was going, not to mention their scans.
“Okay. A hole leading to where?”
“That’s the real question,” said Jeffery.
Felix leaned on his elbows and laced his fingers. “How would we test it?”
“That’s easy,” answered Jeffery. “Drill a hole and stick a camera into it. See where it ends up.”
“Well, that’s pretty brutal. Think of the damage we might do if we just started boring holes anywhere we pleased.”
“Felix,” Jeffery said flatly. “We’ve been scanning, measuring, and inspecting this thing for over a year. Everyone is amazed at what you’ve deduced from it that way. However, I think it’s time you consider the possibility that you’ve reached the limit of passive research. I know you’re afraid of breaking something, but no one’s going to blame you if that happens. Well, no one that matters, at any rate.”
Felix tried to take a deep breath, but that ended when he realized how badly his rib muscles hurt.
“Eugene asked you to give me a pep talk?” Felix asked.
“Something like that.”
“All right. I fold. But you’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“Down to the QER center. I don’t want to go alone.”
“You want me to hold your hand, too?”
“Just you wait and see, funny man. Things have gotten … weird down there.”
* * *
The two men walked down the short white hall in silence. They passed the Mk VI battle android, which still intimidated Felix. Jeffery presented his palm, and the heavy door slid open. They walked through the antechamber and paused while high-speed wind machines blew any loose particles from their clothing. They reached the inner door and stepped into a dimly lit makeshift shrine.
“Who dares defile the consecrated sanctum of the—” came the booming voice of the Keeper over the intercom.
Felix interrupted the well-rehearsed litany. “It’s just me and Jeffery, Dr. Kiefer. You can drop the man-behind-the-curtain act.”
“Oh, right, then. Carry on,” said the voice.
Jeffery’s eyes lingered on the red, backlit drapes that had been hung on the walls.
“What the hell’s going on down here?” he whispered to Felix.
“I told you it was getting weird.”
Dr. Kiefer appeared out of the artificial dusk blanketing the center. His beaded grid necklace clinked against bulletproof glasses as he walked.
“You’ll be ’ere to speak with the Magellan, then?”
“Kiefer,” injected Jeffery, “what’s with the redecorating?”
“Well.” Kiefer paused, apparently searching for words. “We wanted to spice things up a bit. It can be a bit dreary down ’ere.”
“Well, turning the lights up might help.”
Felix walked over to a table that had been set up in the corner. A blue crushed-velvet sheet betrayed the outline of something underneath.
“Oh, never you mind that,” said Kiefer. “Very sensitive piece of equipment, that is.”
“What’s with the sheet?” Felix asked.
“Oh, for the dust. Likes I says, very sensitive.”
“This place was upgraded to a class-three clean room. Everyone gets blown before coming inside.” Felix realized what he’d said a moment too late, but no one took up the torch, so he pressed on. “You’ve got infrared lasers built into the ceiling to vaporize any hair or skin cells floating around. How much dust can there be?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised how much powder and stuff gets tracked down ’ere,” Kiefer said unsteadily.
“All right, then.” Felix took the opportunity to break up the budding conflict. “We know the way back to Maggie’s QER. We’ll leave your team to their duties.”
“Jolly good,” Kiefer said curtly.
Once they were walking alone down the long rows of consoles, Jeffery leaned in close to Felix. “Well, I think we know who’s been setting up those creepy little pagan altars in your office.”
“The thought had occurred.”
“We’ve got to find a new QER crew.”
“Good luck. There are machines in here almost a century old. Where are you going to find someone else with Kiefer’s experience maintaining them? And it gets worse. Any replacement you find will also need to pass the background checks to get clearance for the ARTists project.”
“I know.” Jeffery shrugged. “Still, it’s something to bring up to Eugene. By the way, who’s Maggie?”
“Who?”
“A minute ago, you said that we knew the way to Maggie’s QER.”
“Oh, it’s just Captain Ridgeway’s nickname for Magellan. I guess I must have picked up on it.”
“I wonder which one the ship prefers,” said Jeffery.
“You could ask her.”
“Her?”
“Well, she’s named Maggie, isn’t she?” countered Felix.
Jeffery ignored the perfect circle of logic and kept walking. The machines grew large and clunky as they approached their destination.
“Ever stop to think how many machines are in here?” asked Jeffery.
“Well, we have one hundred and ninety-three yank ships in space at the moment, along with a dozen colony worlds, another seventy-eight deep-space mining operations, and the Unicycle. Multiply that number by two QERs for each, and that’s almost six hundred machines.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jeffery said. He waved a hand in front of Magellan’s primary QER, and a virtual keyboard sprang to life. Jeffery readied his hands by the keys.
“So what did you want to say?”
* * *
“He wants me to do what?” Chief Engineer Billings said carefully.
Allison looked back at her data pad. “Just like I said, Steven. Fletcher asked us to drill a hole in the spherical casing at the center of the buoy’s transmitter and scan through it.”
“We dunno what’s in there. It could be hazardous. Even if it ain’t, we might break sumthin’.”
“Actually, he doesn’t seem to think anything’s inside it.”
Billings threw his hands in the air. “Well, ’en, what’s the point of drillin’ it to look for stuff?”
“I don’t entirely know, Steven,” Allison responded patiently, “but I do know that this kid has had pretty good instincts so far. You’ve said so yourself.” Billings mumbled something, but Allison ignored it. “So I’m inclined to give him some latitude here. What’s the matter, you skeered?” she asked, playfully imitating his accent.
“No, I ain’t skeered,” he answered. “Just … tryin’ to be cautious is all.”
“That’s a first. This one is on my head, Steven. Take any precautions you think are necessary before getting started.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
An hour later, Billings loomed over the exposed sphere, holding his trusty plasma cutter. He had surrounded the casing with blast-absorbing tiles sourced from the engine tray of one of Jacqueline’s shuttles. In the off chance the sphere didn’t explode, he had a fiber-optic snake camera and a millimeter wave radar on standby to start scanning.
“Everyone go stand by the airlock and keep yer eyes peeled!” Billings yelled to the bay in general.
Everyone reluctantly took a step or two back. Personal safety almost always takes a back seat to being close to the action.
“All right. It’s yer hides.”
Billings pulled the trigger on the plasma cutter. A tiny blue arc leaped out and immediately started sublimating the alloy. The casing lacked whatever thermal protection the outer hull sported. Billings pressed on, creating a tiny cloud of metallic steam. Careful to track his progress, he paused frequently to check the depth of the hole.
Suddenly, the steam cloud disappeared into the hole. It was accompanied by a distinctive whistle that grabbed Jacqueline’s attention from across the room. Face ashen, she started backing toward the airlock door.
“Hull breach!” she shouted. “Hull breach! Everyone out!”
“No, wait!” said Billings, putting a hand up in the air.
He placed a gloved finger on the hole in the sphere. The whistling stopped. He removed the finger. It started again. Channeling a small Dutch boy, Billings put his finger back over the hole.
“It’s all right,” he said, looking straight at Jacqueline. “It’s just a vacuum chamber.”
She didn’t exactly relax, but her anxiety ratcheted down a few notches.
Billings reached back and grabbed the snake cam to start the examination. He tested it quickly to make sure it was recording properly and that the built-in light worked. Satisfied that everything was in good order, he fed the lead through the whistling hole.
He turned back to the small display screen to begin recording, but the screen was black. Billings toggled the light, but the screen remained dark. Frustrated, Billings pulled the lead out of the sphere and turned it to inspect the light, which obliged him by burning a bright orange spot into his field of vision that would last for half an hour.
Eyes still squinting, it was instead his ears that spotted the problem. The whistle hadn’t changed its tone. They had established through previous scans that the sphere was sealed. There were no pipes or other holes leading in, except for the one Billings had just burned through it. There was no outlet to pump air out of it.
Well, then, thought Billings, why hasn’t it already filled up with air?
“Is anybody chewin’ gum?” he asked the crowd.
Specialist Mitchell stepped up to the gantry. He spat a small pink blob into his palm and handed it to Billings. The chief rubbed his makeshift patch over the hole and listened for any leaks. The integrity of the jerry-rig confirmed, Billings looked over his shoulder.
“Get the captain down here. Now!”