His attempt at cleanup yielded good results. The board was alive and functional, operating in standby mode. He tapped keypads and was rewarded by the appearance of a variety of readouts.
“The reactor’s still hot,” he said, putting pieces together as he gathered data from the console. “Coolant level is on reserve, but within the safe-line.”
He tapped in more commands.
The lights came up abruptly, almost blinding him. “I did it!” he crowed, feeling pleased with himself for a moment.
The air was thick with lead-gray balls of coolant. He looked around, finding that the viscous fluid had indeed coated just about every surface.
He turned his attention away from the control area and looked out towards the larger chamber. That chamber had lit up too, lights coming on at all angles.
Justin stood and stared for a few moments, his mouth hanging open in awe.
He had expected a large open area here, but this was off the scale. There were baseball stadiums smaller than the Second Containment. The curving walls rose for dozens of meters overhead, sank for dozens of meters below, a rippling darkness studded with the spiky forms of control rods.
“Holy shit,” Justin said, trying to take it all in.
At the center of the Second Containment, as black as midnight, was an unholy-looking construction. Justin estimated it to be at least ten meters in diameter, perhaps larger, a broad torus covered on the outside by a series of spikes, occupied on the inside by a huge dark sphere that resembled nothing more than a rotted, mottled orange. Trying to make sense of the construction, Justin felt his sense of perspective being twisted around. He felt faintly sick.
Parts of the device seemed to be moving, shifting, the surfaces slick and oily. He had the feeling that there was enormous power here. Time and space were under siege.
His gut clenched.
“Justin?” It was Cooper. The voice jolted him back into place, letting him grasp his professional state of mind.
“I think I found something,” he said.
He could not stop staring.
Starck, Weir, and Smith were huddled around the monitor carrying Justin’s video feed. For a while the images had been smeary, thanks to the coolant, but Justin had managed to remove most of it, clearing the image up considerably.
The addition of decent amounts of light had helped.
Weir felt relaxed. The Event Horizon was not in the best shape, but it was still flightworthy, perhaps even capable of carrying out its intended function of warp flight.
“What is that?” Starck asked, pointing at the construction hi the middle of the screen. It was tricky to watch—even seen through a relatively poor vid feed, the device seemed to shift and twist, playing hell with rational perspective.
Weir sat forward, not bothering to hide the pleasure he felt in his creation. “That’s the Core—the gravity drive. The heart of the ship,”
Smith turned to look at Weir. “You built that?”
“Yes.”
Smith was silent for a long moment, watching Weir. “You didn’t have a very happy childhood, did you?”
Justin eased past the main console, and down onto the gantry that led out into the center of the Second Containment. From this point of view, the containment unit was even more impressive, even if it did feel a little like being on the inside of the universe’s biggest Iron Maiden.
He looked upward, having to strain to do so, seeing lights overhead that appeared to be barely more than twinkles in the night. He had to wonder at the design ethic behind all of this—Weir and his team had to have lived by night alone to have created something as grim as this section.
He did not want to consider what it took to create something like the strangeness lurking in the heart of this darkness. The human mind was not meant to go around such corners, even if the corporeal form could make the journey. He was used to the notion of crossing between the worlds, but this was a doorway it would be safer not to go through.
He closed on the construction, focusing on the sphere inside the torus.
Something rippled across the surface, vanished, rippled again. The last thing they needed now was for this thing to crack open and spill itself all over the ship.
“I think I see something,” he said, and reached down to his belt, pulling out a tool, a sensor unit that would give him a better idea as to whether or not there was a rupture in the Core.
He leaned in toward the Core.
Starck jerked back, startled as Justin’s monitor went to static. The radio link hissed like a snakepit for a moment, before the filters cut in and squelched the racket.
“Hold on a sec,” Starck said. She did something with the console, but Weir could not get a clear view. “You’re breaking up.”
The monitor cleared for a moment, then static took it again. Starck gave Weir a worried look.
Justin activated the sensor unit, trying to maintain his position as he pushed it out toward the Core.
There was a hiss of static in his earphones, then Starck’s voice breaking through for a moment “… Justin… ?” Her voice vanished again.
His helmet light flickered off, on, dimmed down. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should deal with it before going on. Probably just a result of the coolant splashing into his helmet, either the lamp terminals or the battery unit getting crocked by the flying sludge. He reached up and tapped the lamp.
Justin, come in,” Starck was repeating. Weir sat silently now, watching her, while Smith leaned down between them, his face ashen.
There was a beep from the console next to Starck, startling Weir. Starck looked around. The bio-scan display, frustrating in its quiescence until now, was displaying readings into the red sector of the scale.
Something was awry, Weir thought. Then again, something had been awry with this mission since they had located the Event Horizon.
“What is it?” Weir said.
Starck shook her head, going over the displays. “I don’t know. The life readings just went off the scale.”
“Something’s wrong,” Smith said, his voice forceful. Weir almost spoke up in agreement, but chose to remain silent instead. “Pull them out.”
Starck looked at Weir.
Weir said nothing.
Justin’s monitor flared with static.
Justin pressed the sensor unit up against the side of the spherical unit.
He had expected it to be a firm contact, but the surface felt soft, spongy, almost as though it was composed of some kind of organic material.
The shifting sensation stopped.
Justin looked up from the sensor.
In front of him, the Core darkened, somehow taking on the color of nothingness. All around, the containment unit seemed to be sharper, clearer, as though everything around him had focused, revealing incredible amounts of detail. Even the arm of his suit, the hand held out with the pressure sensor against the Core, had an unreal clarity.
Justin was aware of light. There was no sound.
Then the power, a force beyond reckoning that reached around him, intruded into his universe, enveloping him without pause for consent or complaint.
The void rose up around him, embracing.
Unresisting, Justin fell into the space between the worlds and was gone.
Reality began to tremble around the Core.
Chapter Fifteen
Cooper was not in the mood for this, not in the slightest. Baby Bear, you’d better be kidding me….
Justin’s safety line was unreeling at an insane, impossible rate. Cooper had tracked the line usage from the start, watched it pay out fast and slow.
Now it was paying out at a rate the counter had problems tracking.
“Three-fifty meters, four hundred meters,” he read off. He grabbed his helmet, got it on, the adrenaline starting to pump now. Justin was in trouble.