“Jumping Jive?” Rocardo queried off circuit.
“Um-hum, Marta replied absently. “It’s a long story. Let’s just say I’m running a personal cultural exchange program with our Furry friends.”
Her mouth tugged down momentarily as the command link indicator with River-’Tween-Worlds control blinked off her communications display. When they dilated the gate to move a cargo barge through to the Wolf system, they temporarily lost their ability to push a modulated data stream through the wormhole to the opposite gate. Thus, each transfer had to be accomplished as a pretimed sequence of events.
That loss had always made Marta Lane just a little bit uncomfortable.
“Raft positioning?” Tarrischall tossed the question over his shoulder, not shifting his keen jet-eyed gaze from the distant-vision displays.
“Raft anchored at channel approach,” Marrun-of-Gray-Lake growled back from the Voice-of-Raft-Guidance position. “Drift canceled on all vectors and holding stable.”
On the overhead displays the panning vision of the seer units verified the burly Gray-Laker’s words. The cargo raft, a huge round-ended cylinder with its sides marked with the odd angular writing and insignia of the Uprights, hovered beyond the gaping mouth of the perimeter grid, poised for the opening of the channel. Remotely guided Pusher units clung to its flanks like leech shrimp, their propulsor vents flaring intermittently.
“Raft Functions?”
“Internal functions verified to the sixteenth level,” Varess-of-Storms-Bay replied crisply.
The slight, golden-furred Voice-of-Raft-Guidance was the newest member of the watch and still somewhat self-conscious among Tarrischall’s veteran crew. “Ready to assume entry guidance.”
“Very good. We will be ready for you in a moment.” Tarrischall’s eyes flicked to the disappearing time dots on the sequencing display. “Voice-of-Physics, channel status.”
“Plus on all channel systems,” Narisara replied crisply. “Nominal to the sixteenth level.
Primary and crisis reservoirs at fifteen point six. Prepared for route sequencing on posted marks. Prepared for last phase safety block clearance.”
“You have it, O elegant black-furred one. Let’s crack her open.” Once more Tarrischall grinned at Narisara’s fastidious snort.
“All voices prepare for channel opening.” she called. “Safety blocks are clear. Flow increase on my notice. Portion one… portion two… portion three…
“Four… three… two… one…,” The Gate Systems Manager droned from his workstation, calling off the last disappearing millimeters of the bar display. No matter how many times she sat through it, Marta still felt her throat tighten as the countdown reached its conclusion.
“Zero… we have power up.”
There was no overt physical change within or without the control center beyond a shifting of light patterns on the control displays. But within the gate accumulator arrays huge supercooled fluid state switches closed, bringing the largest single power system the human race had ever created online. Focused negative energy fields of mind-boggling intensity converged and intermeshing within the worm cage. For a brief moment mankind warred with the very physical structure of the Universe… and won.
A blackness came to be in the heart of the perimeter grid.
A blackness deeper than that of the surrounding space itself. A slowly growing sphere of absolute nothing, a nothing with a density, a dimension, a nothing that the stars couldn’t be seen through, a nothing that twisted the stomach when looked at. A midnight void darker than the human comprehension of dark.
As he always did at the opening of the gate, Rocardo murmured, “One of these days I’m not going to want to look at that damn thing anymore.”
Marta nodded in understanding. She was in love with the possibilities of the wormhole and of interstellar communications, but there was always a discomfort in looking at something human eyes had never been designed to see.
As it was, they were only seeing the wormhole’s event horizon, that portion of its structure that extruded into the human-experienced three dimensions. There was much, much more to it than what was visible and likely just as well.
Bad as it was looking at the hole through a live video pickup, it was worse via a viewport or a space suit faceplate. Lane found it rather like standing on the edge of a high cliff or atop a tall building. A … pulling.
Others felt it as well. There had been a number of suicide attempts over the years involving the wormhole. One or two had even made it in. Marta had often mused that it probably was a rather interesting way to go.
The sphere of ultimate emptiness expanded until it just filled the center of the girderwork cylinder.
“We have full dilation and stability,” Rocardo reported from below, “All boards read green. Reception tugs are positioning. T minus thirteen and counting to projected barge entry and acquisition.”
“Very good. Maintain monitoring. Stand by for reception.”
For the moment all of the action was taking place out at Wolf 359. Tarrischall and his gang would be busy popping the sixty-thousand-metric-ton transfer barge into their end of the hole.
“End” was a purely subjective reference, of course. While the actual state of existence within the wormhole could be described mathematically, it could not be visualized by a mind designed to operate in three dimensions. On one level, the concept of “distance”
had become irrelevant within the perimeter grid of the gate, all points within its contained “universe” being equidistant. On another, it was time that was irrelevant and all of the space between Wolf 359 and Sol still existed, the materials in transit being dispersed across those quadrillions of kilometers.
However, even locked within this trans-state, individual atoms still maintained inertia.
The barge’s entry momentum would be enough to carry it through the region of irrelevancy from one “end” of the hole to the other.
Emerging Earthside, the barge’s systems would reintegrate and it would be recovered for unloading.
Simple and foolproof.
“All pushers unbound and clear,” Marrun reported. On the far viewers, the pusher units could be seen scurrying away from the massive cargo raft, propulsor vents glowing brightly. The raft was on its own now.
“Voice-of-Physics?”
“The channel is smooth,” Narisara replied, using the formalism. “The river flows between the stars.”
“Voice-of-Raft-Guidance?”
“The raft obeys on all standards. Ready to voyage.”
“Very well. All Voices, stand by for transit-of-channel. Varess, send her through.”
On the far viewers, a double belt of dazzling sparks flared into existence at the bow and stern of the cargo raft as its own vents lit. Ever so slowly it began to gain way, the propulsors struggling to inch its bulk forward into the mouth of the perimeter grid.
“Raft entry velocity to first level… second level… third level…” Varess chanted. “Drift remains null on all vectors… fourth level… fifth…”
Tarrischall tried to keep his attention focused on the raft. It wasn’t easy with the black sphere of the channel mouth tugging seductively at the edge of his vision. The Ecstasy-of-the-Great-Dark-Current they called it. That near overwhelming urge felt by some of the People to take that longest dive down the channel. Tarrischall often felt the tug himself.
The dream of doing so and surviving, of reaching the exotic and mysterious world of the Uprights and beyond was a favorite theme of the spinners of projection fictions.
Tarrischall enjoyed such yarns and in spite of what Narisara and the other joy-smashing Voices-of-Physics might say, he was certain that someday a technology would be found to permit a living being to ride the currents to another star.