“Nine minutes,” said François.
“For God’s sake, François. Give us a break.”
“What do you want me to do, Ben?” He was having trouble keeping the anger out of his voice. Did they think he wouldn’t have saved the thing if he could? Did they think he didn’t care?
He listened while they tried to get a better look at the bulkhead. The object was tumbling slowly as it moved, and the dust had been crawling around inside it all this time. It would have long since wedded itself to any apertures, openings, lines, anything on the bulkheads. “It’s hopeless,” François said.
It wasn’t going well. He heard mostly invective, aimed at the dust, occasionally at the omega. “Can’t be sure of anything,” Leah said. She looked around. A few pieces of metal were bolted into the connecting bulkhead.
“Might have been cabinets,” said Ben, “or shelves, or an instrument panel of some sort.”
“Better start back,” said François.
“We can’t just give up.” Ben sounded desperate. He literally stabbed the bulkhead. “We may never find anything again as old as this is.”
“Before the dinosaurs,” said François.
Leah was breathing hard. “Before multicellular life.” The comment was punctuated by gasps. “Think about that for a minute. Before the first plant appeared on Earth, something was sitting here, in this room. We can’t just leave it.”
François was getting a creepy feeling. The black patch behind the Jenkins kept growing.
They gave up. Ben had found a plate fixed to the bulkhead. He’d been trying to break it loose and he finally took a swipe at it with a wrench. It broke away and disappeared into the darkness. “Maybe the name of the place they came from,” he said.
Leah touched the spot where the plate had been. “Or maybe the Men’s Room.”
They went through an opening into a connecting tube. Toward a cube several times the size of the one they were leaving. “No,” said François. “Your time’s up. Come back.”
“It’ll just take a minute, François,” said Leah. “We’re just going to take a quick look. Then we’ll come right back.”
He wondered whether the tubes had originally been transparent. They looked different from the interior, a different shade of gray, and were smeared rather than flaking.
He took a deep breath. “Bill, I don’t much like the way this is going.
“Nor do I, François.”
He counted off another minute. “Ben,” he said, finally, “that’s enough. Come back.”
“We’re on our way.” They’d entered the new cube, which consisted of another chamber and several doorways.
He wondered if, in some oddball way, they felt secure inside the object. Maybe if they were on the bridge, where they could see the omega closing in, they’d hustle a bit more. Behind him, Eagle and Tolya stood watching, saying nothing, hanging on to each other. François couldn’t resist: “Doesn’t look like such a hot idea now, guys, does it?”
“Nyet,” said Tolya.
He turned back to the AI: “Bill, put everything we have into a package and transmit to Union. Everything on the cloud, and on this damned thing. Whatever it is.”
“It will take a minute or two.”
“All right. Just do it.”
The omega brightened. A series of lightning bolts.
“Nothing here,” said Ben. He swept his light around the interior. Some objects were anchored to the deck. It was impossible to determine what they had been. Chairs, maybe. Or consoles. Or, for all they knew, altars. And boxes on either side of an exit. Cabinets, maybe. Leah cut one open, flashed her light inside. “Ben,” she said, “look at this.”
She struggled to remove something. “Maybe a gauge of some sort?” She brushed it carefully, and held it up for inspection. François saw corroded metal. And symbols. And maybe a place that had supported wiring.
“François,” said the AI, “the cloud is close. Our departure is becoming problematic.”
“That’s it, guys. Time’s up. Come on. Let’s go.”
“There’s something over here,” said Leah.
François never found out what it was. Lightning flared behind him.
Ben got the message. “On our way,” he said. They started to move. Finally. But Ben tripped over something, and bounced along the passageway. “Son of a bitch.”
Bill responded with an electrical display, the sort of thing he did to show disapproval.
“You okay?” said Leah.
“Yeah.” He pushed her away. “Keep going.” And he was up and running, pushing her before him.
It’s hard to run in grip shoes and zero gravity. Especially when you’re not used to either. They hurried back down the connecting tube. François urged them on. Maybe it was his voice, maybe it was inevitable, but, whatever the cause, Ben and Leah had become suddenly fearful. Panicky.
“The data package has been dispatched, François.”
“Good,” he said. “Bill, be ready to go as soon as they’re on board.”
“We can proceed on your direction.”
“Ben, when you guys get into the lock, shut the outer hatch and grab hold of something. We’re not going to wait around.”
“Okay, François. It’ll only be a minute.”
Bill rattled his electronics again. He was not happy. “Electrical activity in the cloud is increasing. It might be prudent to leave now.”
François considered it. The idiots had put him and the ship in danger.
Moments later they left the object and clambered into the air lock.
“Go, Bill,” he said. “Get us the hell out of here.”
A team of astronomers announced today that the omegas appear to have originated in the Mordecai Zone, a series of dust clouds approximately 280 billion kilometers long, located near the galactic core. They are unable to explain how the process works, or why it should be happening. “In all probability, we will not know until we can send a mission to investigate,” Edward Harper, a spokesman for the team, said during a press conference. When asked when that might be, he admitted he had no idea, that it is well beyond the capabilities of present technology, and may remain so for a long time.
1115 hours, GMT. Jenkins reports loss of main engines. Damage apparently incurred during hurried acceleration. Details not clear at this time. Rescue mission scheduled to leave tomorrow morning.
Chapter 2
Matt Darwin filed the last of the documents, accepted the congratulations of his senior partner, Emma Stern, sat back in his chair, and considered how good he was. A natural talent for moving real estate. Who would have thought? That morning, he’d completed the sale of the Hofstatter property, a professional office building in Alexandria. Its owners had come to him after months of trying to move the place, and he’d done it in a week, even gotten two prospective buyers bidding against each other.