The Deep Dark

Well

A Novel of the Far Future

By

Doug Dandridge

Pandi caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.  Something in motion among the stillness of the station.  Her body tensed as she slowly turned toward the movement, not sure what to expect.

Some kind of animal was her first thought, as she watched the thing moving in her direction.  It was all the way across the long room, a hundred meters or more, and she wasn’t sure if it had even spotted her yet.  It behaved as if it hadn’t.  Its six legs moved in a most peculiar manner, rotating up and over as the long body slid forward.  Not like the movements of a beast.

Its skin seemed to be made of a series of small scales of equal size.  It had no discernible head, just a continuation of the long body.  No mouth, no ears.  Spots on the forward scales could be eyes, or something else?

A robot of some kind was her second thought, though like nothing she had ever imagined.  She couldn’t guess its purpose from its configuration.  Slowly she put the helmet on her head, not wanting make sudden movements that might alarm it.  She pushed a button above the faceplate, engaging the helmet sensors.  The creature leapt forward in her vision, as the faceplate magnified the image.

Definitely some kind of robot, she thought, wondering if it might be dangerous. On infrared it glowed an even orange color, no apparent power-generating center, as if the entire robot was equally power producing and using.  Suddenly her faceplate went blank, opaqued over as if struck by a bright light.  That was when she knew she was under attack.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to writer Charles Sheffield.  Your words of

encouragement kept me going through the hard times of putting my words on paper.  Thank you.  You will be missed.

BrotherofCats@gmail.com

http://dougdandridge.net

Copyright © 2011 Doug Dandridge

All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Twinkle twinkle little star

I only see you from afar

Up above the world so high

Before I reach you I will die

Deep space astronaut's ditty

July 9, 2087.  Kuiper Belt, Sol System.

"Look at the size of that friggen thing," growled Zhokov, his sour breath washing over the crowded bridge of the Niven as he leaned over to get a look out the view port.

Damned Russian bastard, thought Pandi Latham, shrugging a shoulder in an attempt to get his big paw off of her.  Always making overtures toward her, all the way out here from Harrison Base.

"Just how big is it?" asked Captain Michael Morrison in his clipped British tones.  "I have never seen anything that big outside of one of the habitats."

Pandi still thrilled to the sound of that cultured voice, even as the Captain said he was enchanted by her soft, Alabama drawl.  Luckily they had paired up early in the mission, and he had made his claim to the only available female clear to all of the other males of the crew.  All the other males with the exception of Zhokov that is.

"Almost 2,900 meters in length," said Pandi, looking at the display of her Doppler laser station.  She looked up and out of the viewport at the dark bulk of the ship illuminated by the running lights of the Niven, and the faint rays of the far distant yellow dwarf star they called home.

"Nobody in the system ever put anything that big into space!" said Morrison.  "At least nothing that was meant to travel."

"What about the deep space freighters?" said Lee.

Yeah, right, thought Pandi.  Nobody even bothered to comment on that statement.  Sure, some of the ion freighters were well over three K's in length.  But those were stick figure ships, shaped much like the three hundred meter length of Niven, with a long boom protecting the crew compartment from the fission reactor, and the length of the particle accelerator tubes making up much of the rest of the ship's length.  This thing is massive, she thought, at least four hundred meters along its narrowest dimension.  It appeared like what one would imagine a space going passenger liner to look like, some centuries into the future.

"Start transmitting video back to Harrison," ordered Morrison, as the Niven jerked with the push of its lateral thrusters, making the last adjustments to match vectors with the strange vessel.

"Aye, sir," said Lee, making sure the com laser was aligned on the base, four and a half billion kilometers away and moving farther every second.  "They should receive our first transmissions in 4.28 hours."

Suddenly the Niven shuddered, as if all of the attitude thrusters had fired in a sequence intended to cause the most disruption possible.  Pandi looked over at the pilot console in front of Morrison.  No indicator lights were on.

"Engineer," shouted the captain, "check on the attitude subsystems."

"Aye, sir," said McIntyre, the engineer, looking over his board. "No activity on the thrusters."

"Illumination, captain?" asked Pandi, hands hovering over the spotlight controls.

"No sign of activity, is there?" he replied.

"No sir," replied Pandi, looking over her passive scan displays, "Still a small flux of gamma radiation.  Either fusion or MAM."

"Ma'am?" asked Zhokov, looking at Pandi with a leer.

"Matter-antimatter," said McIntyre.  "The annihilation of the two opposites gives off energy in the form of gamma radiation."

"But no change in its status, Pandora?" asked Morrison.

"No, sir," said Pandi, grimacing at the use of her given name.  Morrison was normally very proper with her, she knew.  But he must be using the name that only her lover could get away with to relieve the tension.  Of course it was a two edged sword, she thought. The use of her real patronym also reinforced the fact that the attractive redhead, the only woman on board the cramped ion explorer, was sleeping with the captain.  As much as Pandi loved sex, and sex with Morrison was very good indeed, she was still only a one-man woman, at least one at a discreet period of her life.

She looked at the small mirror she had set over the upper display screens.  Her long red hair was set in a braid to keep it out of her way in the zero gee environment.  Laugh lines around her deep blue eyes, heart shaped face covered with fair skin and a light dusting of freckles. Not bad for having had her forty-fourth birthday just five days ago. Michael said her body was still fine, athletic with small perfect breasts, even if her coveralls disguised her shape.

"Go ahead," said Morrison, still staring intently at the shape framed against the bright cloud of stars that made up the disk of the Milky Way.

Pandi's fingers flew over the touch pad, flooding space with bright illumination as she maneuvered the banks of lights to bring the mass of the intruder under coverage.  Her breath caught in her throat as the beams of lights played across the hull of the ship.  As impressive as it had looked looming out of the darkness, it was even more so under the glare of the lights.

"Looks like somebody or something didn't mean this baby well," said McIntyre, nodding at the huge cylinder of the spacecraft.  Huge half globes of silvered metal lay at one end of the long vessel, a curved prow at the other.  An enormous oblong of shimmering transparency, half a kilometer long, lay near two thirds of the way from the bow.  The cause of the lifeless condition of the ship was also apparent.  For almost two kilometers along the near side of the ship ran a pair of gaping wounds in the skin, where supporting ribs were exposed to the vacuum of space.  The far tract ran over the transparency, leaving a gaping hole in the dome.  Further across the hull lay another gaping hole, this deep into the hull itself.

"What the bloody hell would do that?" asked Morrison.  "Meteors?"

"Not likely," said Zhokov. "They would have to be two of them, both traveling in parallel and striking just right to cause such a pattern."

"Shells?" said Pandi, letting the excitement of the moment get past her revulsion of the Russian.  But he had fought in the Geneng Wars.  He knew better than any of them what were the capabilities of weapons of heavy destruction.

"The lines are too even," said Zhokov with a smile.  "Shells would have left a line of holes joined at the edges.  Those lines are too straight.  More likely a beam weapon of some type.  But something a lot more powerful than anything we know of."

"Is it Alien or human?" asked Lee.

"Based on the level of technology apparent in its size I would vote for alien," said McIntyre.

"Me also," said Zhokov.  "Based on the damage done by the beam weapon."

"I would say human," said Morrison, "based on the improbability of another species using English as their primary language."

Niven had drifted up over the top of the ship on her plotted path to circumnavigate the intruder.  A bank of lights illuminated the hull to the front of the control bubble of the huge vessel, and all eyes strained to make out the arch of letters across the hull, as well as the line of letters and numbers to the front.

HERNAND

C7942

Niven shook violently yet again, as if all the thrusters had gained a magnitude of power and were determined to shake the ion explorer apart. Crew grabbed for whatever they could to steady them, as eyes searched displays to see what was happening.

"What the hell is causing that?" yelled the captain.

"Nothing on the monitors," said Pandi.  "Doppler laser shows that the alien is also shaking at the same resonance."

"Some kind of energy our particle detectors can't pick up?" asked Morrison.

"That's impossible," said McIntyre.  "All energy is is fast moving particles.  We should be picking them up."

Narrow minded fool, thought Pandi.  Even her Professor of Biophysics father, with his Southern Baptist upbringing, knew that humanity didn't know everything about the Universe.  It was likely to be stranger than any of them could imagine.  But many scientists thought that everything there was to know was known.  Anything not possible according to current dogma was not possible period.

The shaking stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving them none the wiser for its cause.

"Captain," said McIntyre in a quavering voice, "I suggest we get the hell out of here."

"I agree, sir," said Lee.  "We are at a disadvantage here."

"Afraid of the unknown," said Pandi in her best angry voice, eyes glaring and lower lip quivering. First contact with the unknown, she thought, what she had been waiting for her whole life.  She had volunteered for the thankless duty of a Kuiper explorer/miner because it offered the greatest chance to be the first to make an on the scene discovery, as unlikely as it was.  Damned if she was going to run away at the first little shudder of the space-time continuum.

"I'm with Panda," said Zhokov, purposely mangling her name.  "This is a chance for immortality."

"Or sudden and swift mortality," said McIntyre.

"This may be the only chance humanity will have to get a look at this thing," said the captain.  "But this is a civilian vessel, and you haven't signed on for this kind of hazardous duty.  So we'll put it to a vote."

The vote came out six for and five against among the eleven member crew.  Only those who voted for staying would consider leaving the relative security of the Niven for the unknown dangers of the Alien.  They still considered it Alien, for whether it was from another time or another space, it was still beyond their ken.

*    *    *

One hour and twenty-eight minutes after first contact.  The airlock door slid open on a scene of unrelieved strangeness for those born to the comfortable confines of Earth, or even the farms and corridors of the off planet colonies and habitats.  Stars everywhere, in limitless numbers, their light unpolluted by sources natural and artificial that reigned in the inner system.  Objects existed in their millions out here, but space was enormous, and the distances between Kuiper objects were enormous as well.  Humankind had been out here for only a couple of decades, and the billions of ice balls of the Ort Cloud were still only known from the pictures or radar images of the nearer and larger few.

The Ort Cloud, thought Pandi as she jetted her way from the airlock towards the gaping hole in the stranger.  The Santa Maria was in the inner system getting ready for the flight out to the Nemesis system, on the way becoming the first vessel to really penetrate into the Ort.  She had been really disappointed that she hadn't made the cut for that mission.  The chance to be on the first crew to visit another stellar system, even if it was but a small brown dwarf in far orbit around the home star.  More qualified computer techs had been the excuse, though she was still sure it was due to her less than glamorous background as a working class spacer, PhD in Aerospace Engineering notwithstanding.  Now she felt more than happy to have been passed over, because if she had been in the inner system with the Maria, she wouldn't have been out here in the Kuiper when this monster ship appeared on radar scan from Harrison, skirting the edge of the system on an path that would lose her forever in several months.  Blind luck, she thought. Or is it fate?

Her suit felt hot as she drifted across the hundred meters separating Niven from this Hernand, following the lead of Zhokov, who had almost reached the transparent dome. Crewman Chavis, a large black man from Mississippi, followed twenty meters or so behind her.  The temperature out here was only a couple of degrees above absolute zero, she knew.  In the inner system heat was more of a problem on EVAs than cold.  They normally didn't have to worry about cooling systems this far out.  And the bulky suits were insulated enough that their own body temp kept them toasty.  It must be the adrenaline shooting through my system, she thought. She did feel pumped.  Even her breathing was strained, the sounds of inhaling and exhaling through her com circuit heavy in her ears.  She had more than five hours of air at her normal usage rate, maybe three hours of hyperventilating.  They would surely be back at the Niven before that.  It was still good to know that the diamonoids injected into her blood stream would give her twenty hours of oxygen if needed.

"You alright back there, Panda?" asked Zhokov in his heavy accent.  Couldn't cover up your physiologicals on an EVA.

"Yeah," she replied with a calm voice as she repeated a mantra to herself to calm her heart and breathing rate.  She caught a flash through the transparent bubble of the helmet out of the corner of her eye and turned her head to the right.  A harsh pinpoint flare in the far distance, a nuclear blast.  Another Kuiper miner boosting a comet back toward the fires of the sun.  Volatiles for the terraforming of Mars, or fuel for the space industry around Earth.  Carter, the ship that had been closest to the stranger when radar contact had been made.  The laws of physics had ordained that the Carter would not be able to make contact.  Her velocity was too great, and by the time she decelerated enough to change her vector, she would be even further from the stranger than Harrison base.

It has to be fate, thought Pandi, as she turned in time to watch Zhokov catch himself on the edge of the hole in the dome.  She was approaching fast herself, and panic shot through her for a second at the thought of bouncing off the dome and drifting back into the cold depths of interstellar space.  She dismissed that thought as she reached out for Zhokov's extended hand, conveniently separated from hers by the twin layers of suit glove they each wore.  Of course she was in no danger.  She had her own suit propulsion system, as well as the proximity of two other spacemen, and the twin shuttles back at the Niven were ready in case something went really bad.

"We're here, captain," said Zhokov over the com, as he passed Pandi over so he could reach out and grab Chavis' hand.

"Everything OK?" came Morrison's voice over the com.

"Yes sir," replied Pandi as she slapped a transponder link onto the dome with molecular glue.  It stuck, meaning that the material was at least something they could understand, even if it didn’t look like anything she had ever seen. "We're preparing to enter the ship right now."

"Be careful."

"Aye, sir," said Zhokov, “I think Panda has us covered.”

Her hands reached to pat the butts of the twin forty-five automatics she had set in the holsters attached to her equipment belt.  She had brought them aboard Niven with her personal effects, to the laughter of the other members of the crew.  “Do you think you’re gonna run into aliens?” they said.  Now she was glad she had them, and she didn’t care what anyone said.  The filled magazine pouches added to her sense of security.

Zhokov pulled himself into the gap in the dome, his bank of lights bringing the interior into a stark contrast between bright illumination and total darkness.  Pandi and Chavis followed, suits set on station keeping, attitude jets firing short bursts to bring them into the center of the enclosure, where they could get the best view of the whole area without getting too near to any kind of trouble.

Lights picked up the frozen remains of plants set in the soil beds of the floor of the area.  A large empty depression lay in the center, probably a pool that had exploded its contents out into space when the dome was pierced.  No bodies around, so no way of telling what had used this huge recreation area, thought Pandi.  Probably blown out into space as well.

"Dammit," exclaimed Chavis, as he maneuvered his way down to the deck, looking at the trunks of dozens of plants that stuck out of the soil, "but I'd swear that was a palm tree."

"Come in, Niven," called Pandi over the com link, "come in."

"We hear you Pandi," came the reply from the captain.

"No bodies here, but Chavis thinks there are the remains of terrestrial palm trees.  It looks like some kind of recreation area."

The ship shuddered slightly around them, shaking them in their suits as some of the dead trees fell from their shattered trunks that broke like glass in the vibrations.

"How in the hell are we being shaken in a vacuum?" yelled Zhokov.

"Some kind of energy we don't understand," said Pandi.

"Bullshit," yelled the Russian.

"Then you explain it."

"Pandi," came the voice over the link, "are you alright."

"Yes Michael," she said.  "It looks as if this area was filled with terrestrial vegetation."

"Convergent evolution, maybe," said Chavis.

"And what about these?" said Zhokov, hovering over what looked like a very human chair, one of hundreds built into the deck.  "These look pretty terrestrial to me."

"And these?" said Pandi, moving towards some chairs that looked to fit an entirely nonhuman anatomy.

"Maybe they had guests," said Zhokov.

"That we had never heard of," said Chavis.  "You think someone made contact with aliens and just left the rest of the human race out of it?"

"Nothing like this ever came out of the system," said Morrison's voice over the com link, as pictures of the outside of the Hernand were projected onto their faceplates.  "We sent one of the shuttles around the ship on remote, and we've found some very interesting things."

"What the hell are those holes on the side?" asked Pandi, looking at row after row of open round ports, some still holding the rounded noses of some kind of capsule.

"We think they're escape pods of some kind," said McIntyre.  "Maybe we'll find some remains in the ones which didn't get away."

Pandi shuddered at the thought of looking for bodies, even as she admitted to herself that it was one of their primary tasks.  That thought was interrupted by a picture of the stern of the ship and the two big globes that occupied the rear.  One had been obviously damaged, as if a big scoop had been taken out of it,

"Is that the ship's drive?" she asked.

"That's what we're guessing," said McIntyre, "though we surely can't guess on which principle it works.  No exhaust, fusion tubes, ion tubes, anything that we would consider an engine."

"Maybe it is a warp drive," said Zhokov with a chuckle.

"Whatever it is, maybe we can find out more about it from the inside," said Pandi. "That gash in the lower deck looks like a good opportunity to explore.”

“Just keep in touch,” said Morrison.  “Make sure to keep putting relays LOS.  I’m still not sure if we can transmit through whatever that hull is made of.”

“Aye, sir,” said Zhokov as he set another relay on the gash in the deck, whose melted sides attested to its origin as a burn through from those beam wounds on the outer hull.  Then he propelled himself through the gash and into the darkness beyond, followed by his two teammates.

*    *    *

"Damned if this thing isn't spacious," said Pandi, her helmet spot reflecting off the walls of the wide corridor.

"Just make sure we stay together, sirs," said Chavis.  "We don't want to get lost in here."

"We can do that just as easily together as separately," said Pandi, shuffling across the floor which refused to allow her magnetic boot soles to stick. "But you're right.  We want to stay together in case we run into some kind of trouble."

The corridor ended at a large, bivalve door set into the thick walls of the ship.  A set of buttons were placed on a pad to the left, dark and dead.  Pandi pushed a button, and then another, with no result.

"I wonder how long the power has been off around here?"

"I don't know, my Panda," said Zhokov, "But I have feeling it has been a very long time."

Zhokov pulled a motorized opener from his belt and pushed the prongs into the small gap between the valves.  With a push of a button the motor started twisting the screw that moved the prongs apart, slowly pulling the valves open as they slid into their slots in the wall. Zhokov reversed the opener and returned it to his tool belt, as his helmet lights picked up the flotsam and jetsam that floated around the room.  Flotsam and jetsam that included a number of frozen bodies, some only partially dressed, many only partially complete.

"They look pretty damn human to me," said Pandi, pointing to the stiff form of a bare chested, mini-skirted woman close to the door.  Many other doors opened onto the large room, the furnishings of which indicated some kind of banquet or gathering hall.

"Very human," said Zhokov, running a deep radar scanner over the woman's form, "and dead a long long time.  Looks like a lot of them ran into this room during the attack."

"But why here?" said Pandi, looking at the staring eyes of the woman, her mouth open in the scream that had emptied her lungs into the decompression that struck the room.  First unconsciousness and then death from asphyxiation, followed by freezing as the temperature in the dead ship dropped.  "Why not run to the escape pods?"

"Panic, maybe," said Chavis.  "Kind of like people running into the center of a burning building seeking a way out."

"Hell, we don't know enough about this vessel to even guess," said Zhokov.  "This may have been the main interchange on the path to the escape pods.  Or maybe the people didn't have enough time to react."

"And maybe some of the not people," said Chavis, shining his helmet light on a floating body that was not what one could call anthropoid.  Thick muscular legs filled the creature's coveralls, a thick stubby tail thrusting out to the rear.  Reddish brown fur covered the exposed parts of the creature.

"It looks like a kangaroo," said Chavis, pulling a sampler tube from his belt pouch as he approached the creature.

“No, not really a kangaroo," said Pandi, moving in on the creature from the other side.  The arms were much bigger, ending in hands with three triple jointed fingers and a triple jointed 'thumb', obviously the appendage of a tool-using creature.  Shoulders broader than a kangaroo, much flatter face, cat like eyes.  Facial hair, a goatee underneath the chin, whiskers sticking out of the side of the nose, again like a cat. Cat like ears surrounded by a fine mane of black hair that flowed down the back of the head.

"Not an herbivore, either," said Chavis, the amateur biologist of the group, sticking a probe into the creature's open mouth.  "These plates must be the animal's teeth, and those are the teeth of a carnivore, or at least an omnivore."

"Not an animal," said Pandi, looking at the broad brow of the creature.  "Unless you consider us animals."

"But of course, my beautiful creature," said Zhokov with a leer thrown in her direction.  "It seems as if we have made first contact with an alien intelligence."  He laughed at the end of that statement for a moment.  "But he doesn't seem to be in a mood to communicate."

Space again rippled around them as they fought with station keeping thrusters to maintain their positions and not be forced into a collision with walls or each other.  The alien was not so fortunate, as it was moved through the room toward the nearest wall, striking its head against its solidity with a silent mist of ice crystals as its skin and skull shattered.  The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started.  The shaken explorers went quickly to their find to assess the damage.

"No brain like I've ever heard of," said Chavis, looking at the now exposed organ.  "It isn't separated through the middle."

"Convoluted like ours, though," said Zhokov.

"Niven to exploration team," sounded Morrison's voice over the com link.  "Status report, if you would please.  Are you OK?"

"We're fine, Captain," said Zhokov.  “A OK, and no damage."

"We've found an alien, sir," said Pandi excitedly.  First discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence, she thought, looking again at the frozen body, sure that there would be more around the ship.  Her name would go into the history books after all.  No one cared how many Kuiper objects you prospected, but a truly alien life form.

"What kind of alien?" asked the Captain, as Pandi zoomed in with her suit camera, boosting the signal.  "My good god," he exclaimed, "what in the world."

"Worth the trip, huh?" said Pandi.

"Worth the trip," he agreed, "but we may have to cut this one short."

"Because of a little shaking?" she asked, trying to hide her own fear in the face of this opportunity that might never come again.

"It might be more than that," said the captain.

"That's right," said Engineer McIntyre over the com link.  "Doppler laser indicates the distances between us and the other ship are expanding and contracting along with those shudders.  We think that's why we felt the shaking through the vacuum.  Space itself was vibrating with the force, whatever it was."

"This thing came back through time," said Pandi under her breath.

"What was that, Ms. Latham?" said the captain.

"It's just, it's just that this ship," she said, "built according to what we would consider a graceful form, manned by humans. It has to be from some other space-time."

"Creatures that appear to be human," said Zhokov, "maybe the product of convergent evolution."

"Oh come on, Zhokov," said Pandi in exasperation.  "What do you think the odds are that something exactly like us, down to the structure of every bone and muscle, would evolve someplace else?"

"Maybe god made intelligent creatures alike," said Chavis.

"And what about our not-kangaroo man?"

"This is a very interesting discussion," said Morrison, "but the question at hand is how much danger we are in.  McIntyre would like to get you all back to the ship and accel out of here."

"Not away from a find like this," said Zhokov.  "Please, sir.  Something like this may never come along again, and we can't allow the secrets of this ship to leave human space."

"You suggesting we try to use the Niven to slow its velocity, maybe put it in orbit around Sol."

"Maybe, sir," said Zhokov.  "But at least let us find the power plant of the ship, and see just what wonders we may be passing up."

"OK, Zhokov," agreed the captain, over the disapproving hiss of his chief engineer, "go ahead on for another fifteen minutes, while we decide what to do about this thing."

"You're risking our lives, captain," said McIntyre.  "They must come out now."

"Shut up, Mr. McIntyre," said the captain in a loud voice.  "We are in the business to take risks, and I agree with Mr. Zhokov.  This may be the most important find in the history of the human race."

"Thank you, sir," said Zhokov. "We'll try and hurry up and find something that we can't pass up."

"Thanks, captain," said Pandi, her voice full of devotion to the man who would allow her to continue to pursue her dream.  No, she thought, I'm not in love with the man.  But she was very fond of him, which might be all she had to offer anyone.

"Which way should we go?" asked Chavis.

"That way," said Zhokov, pointing to the stern most central passage from the room, "assuming that the engine is in the stern of the ship."

"Sounds like a reasonable assumption to me," said Pandi, looking at Zhokov with more respect.  Another man helping her to achieve her dream, a famous explorer into the unknown. "Lead on."

*    *    *

Even the interior of a familiar ship could become disorienting in a zero gee environment.  The only cue that told Pandi and her team that up was up and down was down was the carpet on the floor of the long corridor they found themselves shuffling down, and the dead light strips along the ceiling.  An occasional door opened to the right and left, but they knew the target they wanted had to be in the direction they were traveling.  Then the wide corridor began to slope up.

"Damn engine room shouldn't be more than a couple of hundred meters from here," said Zhokov, looking around for an egress from the path they were committed to.

"And how will we know what the engine room looks like?" asked Chavis.  "This thing is how many thousands of years ahead of us?"

"It should be a room with lots of huge machines in it, maybe a reactor or two," said Pandi.

"What reactor?" said Zhokov.  "Maybe they found the zero point vacuum energy."

"They would still need some kind of equipment to process and convert the energy to a useful form," said Chavis.

"And just what would that look like?" said Pandi, swinging her light beam along the seemingly endless corridor to her front.

"Who the hell knows," answered Zhokov, moving ahead, his light penetrating the pitch-blackness.  "But maybe it’s behind that half opened door."

Ahead, at the end of the corridor, lay a large double portal, at least four meters across, one side locked in closed position, the other half open, leaving a meter of opening through which darkness still reigned.  Smatterings of different scripts were plastered on the open portals, some with a Sanskrit or hieroglyphic look.  Others like lettering systems that looked somewhat modern, but still not familiar, along with signs of universal intent.

"That looks like a warning to me," said Pandi, looking at the round circle with a line bisecting it, the figure of a man and woman within the circle.  "No admittance."

"What do you think they kept in there?" asked Chavis.  "Their green, slimy flesh eating monsters."

"Well, they're frozen dead green slimy monsters," said Zhokov, "if that's what they were.  Whatever it is, it's probably not too dangerous now.  Why don't we have a look?"

The large room was empty of equipment and furniture, though not totally empty.  The single construct in the room grabbed their attention immediately, and held it unwaveringly.  A large rectangle was suspended in the center of the room, a rectangle of some shimmering substance, like water held in a tunnel.  The eye beheld the rectangle, but the brain refused to comprehend, as if this were made of matter or space or something that the mind was not able to grasp.  Colors seemed to run along the watery substance, but not colors that they could describe.  A slightly smaller rectangle of some dark substance sat within the opening of the rectangular tunnel, for their minds gave it a depth that seemed to go forever.  Another slightly larger rectangle sat outside the opening, a rectangle that shimmered with some kind of energy, what they couldn't say, suspended by mirrored cables from the ceiling and floor of the chamber.

"What the hell is it?" asked Chavis, his natural instincts pulling him back from such an unnatural object.

"I'm betting it's a wormhole," said Pandi, her own instincts moving her toward the unknown, and this was as unknown as it got.

"A wormhole?" asked Zhokov, moving up beside Pandi.  "I thought wormholes only existed within a heavy gravity field."

"They can exist in a heavy gravity field," she answered.  "But it may be possible to create one, or open up a microscopic natural wormhole, with enough energy."

"Niven," called Zhokov over the com link. "Niven, can you see this."

"We sure can," said Morrison, "though our pickup doesn't seem to be giving us a clear picture of it."

"It may be giving you as clear a picture as is possible," said Pandi.  "You may have to see it with your own eyes to really get the full effect."

"A wormhole?" said Morrison.  "Are you sure?"

"From the shape I would say something like a Visser Wormhole," said Pandi, "though not exactly."

"What do you mean not exactly?" asked Morrison over the link.

"A Visser Wormhole should be square," she said, "and held open by exotic matter, which may be the dark rectangle holding this one open, balanced by the ring of regular matter on the outside."

"I thought Wormholes were unstable," said McIntyre over the link.

"Morris-Thorne Wormholes are, spherical wormholes," she said. "Visser Wormholes can be very stable, and safe to traverse.  But this seems to be a new geometry."

The ship shuddered yet again and the explorers with it.  Pandi shook her head, trying to clear the pain that shot through it, maybe an effect of the compression of time-space within her body, her very nervous system.  Yelling came over the com link as the more fragile Niven was also shaken.  Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

"God dammit," said Zhokov.  "That was the strongest one yet."

"Damn right," yelled Morrison in return.  "You are to get out of there immediately.  That is an order."

"At a guess," said Pandi, excitement straining her voice, "this seems to be the source of the distortion.  This may be the most important single find in the history of the human race."

"I don't care, Pandora," said Morrison.  "Get the hell out of there, now.  All of you.  We need to get out of this space before those distortions take us out."

"But the wormhole?" said Pandi.

"How can you be sure it's really a wormhole?" asked Morrison.  "Be reasonable.  If we know it’s possible, we can make one of our own eventually."

"We can tell it's a wormhole by traveling through it," she said.  "And it will take forever to reach the level of technology to make one of our own."

"Forever?" said Morrison.

"Beyond my lifetime," said Pandi. "It might as well be forever."

"Your life is more important to me than this discovery," said Morrison.  "All of our lives are more important than this thing that might just kill us.  Now get out of there."

"Wait, captain," said Zhokov, slowly moving toward the shimmering mouth.  "She's right.  This is too important a find to leave.  With a working wormhole, who knows where we might go, almost instantaneously.  At least where this ship came from.  Who knows what technology we might find.  We could conquer space," he said, fascinated by the shimmering field, like a rodent drawn to a snake, unaware of the danger, "and time."

"Don't touch the exotic matter, Zhokov," yelled Pandi.

Zhokov seemed to realize where he was, drawing his hand back, but continuing to stare at the source of so much power.  She realized he knew a little about wormholes.  But he did know that an astronomical source of energy was needed to inflate or create one.  And that kind of power could get one Sergi Zhokov whatever he wanted.  More than he had ever dreamed of.

Pandi also stared at the shimmering rectangle.  But other dreams moved through the neurons of her brain.  Dreams of exploring strange worlds, seeing by the light of strange suns, meeting creatures undreamed of by man.  Traveling to the stars in an instant, not in the lifetimes needed with current technology.  Even the Nemesis mission would take twenty years to reach the closest stellar body known to man.  Alpha Centauri would take more than twice as long.  But this gateway, this door through space, and maybe time. This...

"Oh my god," said Pandi, the knowledge of what they faced now becoming clear, "this wormhole leads into the future.  Paradox.  That's what's causing the distortions.  Paradox, and the Universe won’t allow it."

"What are you talking about, woman?" yelled Morrison.  "Calm down and tell us what you know."

"The time paradox," she said.  "It all makes sense now.  This ship came from the future."

"How?"

"I don't know how," she said. "But it all makes sense now.  The huge ship, with terran vegetation and humans on board, as well as creatures we've never heard of.  The wormhole.  We are not supposed to know of this.  Every discovery we have made has disturbed the balance of time, and caused a disruption."

"Then let's get the hell out of here," yelled Morrison.  "Get moving."

"It's too late," she said.  "It's too late."

Space shuddered around them, a rippling that made what came before seem like a mere quiver.  Pandi scream in agony as her body wavered through the compression and distortion effects that the human animal had never evolved to face.  She held on to consciousness, fighting the pain, knowing that she had to think her way out of this, somehow.

Zhokov screamed as his hands flew to his helmet, as if that could drive away the pain that assaulted his every nerve ending.  His foot hit the floor as he writhed, propelling him slowly toward the exotic matter that held the mouth of the wormhole open.  He didn't notice his trouble until his out thrust elbow gently touched the rectangle.  A rectangle made of thousands of tons of compressed negative matter, exerting its antigravity effect on the wormhole to keep the link open, but too low a repulsion to keep Zhokov's momentum from carrying him into contact.  Negative matter, the opposite of matter.  The material of his suit, his skin, muscle and bones were canceled in an anticlimactic fade of several kilograms of matter and negative matter.  Atom for atom canceled, a kilogram of the negative matter rectangle for a kilogram of Zhokov, the cosmic ledger balancing out.

The massive rectangle shrank imperceptibly, the mouth of the wormhole following suit.  But it was perceptible to Zhokov, as pain flooded his nervous system from the ruin of his arm.   His forearm floated into the wormhole, as the man drifted back out into the room, where the compression waves moved him screaming across the chamber, air and blood jetting from the perfectly smooth opening in his suit.

The compression waves moved instantaneously from the wormhole, growing stronger as they radiated outward.  Niven was designed to never approach a strong gravity source, at least not out of free fall.  She could accel at .1 G for a very long time, with the force along her primary axis.  She was not made to withstand a dozen Gs of pulsating gravity waves, energies released in a manner never dreamed of by her creators.  Her hull plates crumbled, atoms excited to the point where the metal began to melt along the seams.  Fuel tanks, filled with water for the most part, ruptured along their own seams, sending Niven into a hard spin on a trajectory for interstellar space.  Girder frameworks bent and tore, bulkheads ripped, and air was jetted in crystals to join the expanding cloud of water around the vessel.  Several crewmen joined the stream of flotsam, helmet less spacesuits dooming them to a quick and relatively painless death.  Those not so lucky spun into space with helmets on and oxygen packs working, their training serving them not so well as they screamed in agony for minutes, before the compression waves shattered face plates and sent them on the same path as their more fortunate brethren.

The shaking stopped, and Pandi felt the pain leaving her head like a rush of water from an overturned bucket.  It took her a moment to regain her ability to think, but soon the enormity of the situation lay upon her.  From the sounds that had come over the com link during the last eruption, the Niven was destroyed and the rest of her crew dead.  No way home by that route.  Movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned in time to see the lifeless suit that contained the mortal remains of Zhokov bounce from a far wall, the momentum carrying it slowly back across the room.  How I hated the you, with your bad breath and constant propositioning, she thought, and then he had turned out to be the closest thing to a kindred spirit on the Niven.  Even more so than her lover, Captain Morrison.  That thought, of Michael drifting dead forever through the depths of space, brought a catch to her throat.

The air was pregnant with barely contained energies.  She didn't have time for emotions right now.  She could deal with them later.  A silence hung over the ship that she couldn't put into rational thought, the silence of a disaster about to happen.  That last shock was the worst, strong enough to destroy her vessel and kill her crew.  But even worse was waiting she knew.  For she was still alive, the strange vessel from the future was still here with its open gate through space-time, and the danger of a paradox still existed.  The Universe would not allow it to exist for long.

"Son of a bitch," yelled Chavis over the com link.  "Son of a bitch.  They're gone.  Zhokov's gone. What the hell are we going to do?"

"Calm down Chavis," she yelled back, using his own panic to pull her into the realm of calm, trying to think her way out of this.

"We got to get out of here," he screamed, moving toward the still open portal.  "We got to get out of here."

"Wait," she yelled, too late, as he shuffled out the door and jetted down the hallway.  She could hear him hyperventilating on the com link, laughing hysterically and cursing under his breath.  She could reach him on the com link, but she could no longer reach into the man, a panicked animal with no thought but to put as much distance between himself and this cursed place as possible.  It would not be distance enough.

She looked back at the wormhole, the source of the paradox energy that threatened her existence.  Any second now it would again spread out through this space, and this time nothing would survive.  Not her, not the ship, not even the wormhole.  But she didn't see any problem with her traveling into the future, through the wormhole.  It was her only chance, the unknown.  How do I know it's a Wormhole? she asked herself.  How do I know it's a gateway to the future?

Only one-way to find out, she thought, slowly jetting herself into a position to make a run through the center of the hole.  No fucking with negative matter for this southern girl, she thought, her hands grasping tightly on the attitude control joysticks.  Before she could move the sticks forward for a powered straight flight, space began to expand and contract behind her.  Pain invaded her every cell, wearing spiked jack boots.  Her vision began to blur, and she knew, with her last coherent thought, that time was running out.  Hands pushed forward and the thrusters in her backpack pushed her forward at full power, 1.2 meters per second per second, right to the middle of the hole in space-time.  The suit quickly picked up speed, flying straight and true.  Pandi felt consciousness leave her with a last thought, will I ever wake up, and if so, where?  Then the suit was through the entrance of the wormhole, down the long tunnel with a flash of light.

Compression waves grew swiftly in strength, the diamond hard hull of the ship rippling with the waves, crumbling into dust like dry plaster in a strong man's hands.  Chavis was gripped by the waves, trying to find his way to any kind of safety, ripped to pieces as if by a giant clawed hand.  Fusion took place between the atoms pulled apart and pushed back together with terrible force, melding light atoms into heavier atoms, releasing torrents of energy like the heart of a star. A star that flared for long minutes as matter went beyond fusion, converting to total energy as particles picked up velocity and sped off in random directions.  In a little over four and a half hours, the first photons of the great explosion would reach Harrison Base.  Many hours later the outposts of the inner system would note the great flare of light as a new star was born in the heavens, only to die moments later.  Other photons, in a steady stream over two billion kilometers long, carrying the information transmitted from the Niven to Harrison Base, changed from participants in a coherent beam of light, becoming a muddle of incoherent quantum particles that told nothing of what had happened.  The Universe had righted the wrong, preserved causality, and maintained the flow of history as it was meant to be.

Chapter 2

I was willing to give anything to face the unknown.

Anything, but the lives of my crew.   Pandora Latham.

I made it, was Pandi's first thought on exiting the mouth of the Wormhole.  What's coming after me? was her second thought, as the blast of superheated air threw her across the wide room and to the floor.  She raised herself on an elbow as she checked to see if her body still worked after all the punishment.  Her head swiveled in time to see the still open mouth of the wormhole, a sight out of the ancient visions of hell.  Fire raged in the still intact ship, hot enough to burn the very hull, which was glowing white and gushing great gouts of black, oily smoke into the vacuum.  The waves of imminent disaster still radiated on some unconscious level, and Pandi was on her feet in a second, looking for the quickest way to put something more substantial than air between her and the cosmic disruption that threatened to come blasting out of the shimmering mouth of the wormhole.

And then it was gone, so quickly she blinked her eyes and it had faded from existence before they had reopened.  The wormhole was gone, whether cut off by the mass of printed circuitry now revealed in the empty alcove, or a natural action of the energy that was preparing to flow from past to future, she didn't know.  All she truly knew was that the danger was gone, for the moment at least, and the chances of her survival had been greatly increased.

But where am I? she thought, looking up at the quadruple gallery of wormhole gates that stretched across the long wall.  All in the shape of a, a Torii, if she remembered the name right, the traditional Shinto gateway whose horizontal bars reached toward heaven.  Golden in color, with strange symbols etched into the lower crossbar, and glowing with some unknown radiation from the squares between crossbars and centerpiece.  At least some were glowing; the ones with a shimmering red wall of, something, over what would be the entrance to the gate.  Many were as dead as the one she had just passed through, walls of circuits and shapes of unguessable purpose in the alcoves the wormhole end would inhabit if working.

All of the gates that she could see seemed to be of similar dimensions, with an opening about eight meters wide by four meters tall, able to pass even small vehicles with ease, it would seem.  Set in cells, three on the first and third levels, two on the second and fourth, with what looked like lift tubes and stairs between each cell.  Pandi craned her head up to look at the wall that continued up to an arched marbled ceiling, centered over a hundred meters above.  Swiveling her head as her mind tried to take in all the strangeness around her, she noted with some detachment that the near end wall was about a half K to her right.  Her head shifted swiftly to the left, and her breath left her lungs in a rush.  The wall went on for what must have been at least three kilometers, holding hundreds of gates, if not thousands.  Still in shock, she stumbled around till she was facing the parallel wall, over a hundred and fifty meters away.  Another endless wall of gates, across an open area of benches, planters filled with flowers familiar and strange, low structures that reminded her nothing more than underground station entrances, long pools of water.  A tremendous structure, she thought through a confused mind. But, where?

The helmet's heads up display indicated that the air was breathable, and of a very comfortable temperature.  Gravity seemed about Earth normal, and she didn't feel the characteristic unsteadiness of a spinning structure, so she thought it had to be a planet.  Then she thought of the wonderful technology of the gates, and a natural feeling artificial gravity no longer seemed so farfetched.

Pandora Latham sat on one of the benches, near a large planter of strange purple flowers, and cracked the seal of her helmet.  Fresh, sweetly fragrant air greeted her olfactory sense, as she shook the sweat out of her hair and reveled in what felt like a cool breeze on her face.  I'll live, she thought, since whatever this place was seemed to be fully functioning, even the miniature gardens perfectly tended.  If the natives are friendly.

The tears caught her off guard, pouring freely down her cheeks well before the images manifested themselves in her mind.  The images of her crew mates.  Morrison, her lover, not the best she had ever had, but his practiced and gentle touch would be missed, as would his dry British wit.  McIntyre, the efficient but unimaginative engineer.  Chavis, the good-natured man from her neighboring state of Mississippi.  Even Zhokov, the lecher, who had turned out to be a kindred spirit at the end.  All gone, gone before their time, on the edge of the greatest adventure possible.  By what right did she have to be the only one to make it through?  She continued to sob like a little girl for a long time, oblivious to the world around her.

*    *    *

Watcher awoke as the alarms sounded, ringing from the walls of his quarters and through the bones of his head.  It had been a long time since he had heard this kind of klaxon; the steady whooping that meant something had come through one of the Donut’s many gates.  And since most of them were long since sealed with a barrier that could not be traversed, and almost all of the rest were inactive, it wouldn't take long to located the gate, and with it the origin of the intruder.

His tall, muscular form leapt from the bed and he walked toward the center of the large, tapestry-hung room.

"Computer," he said. "Project a hologram of the security system in the center of the room."

Instantly the great artificial intelligence complied, a multicolored panel of lights and view screens appearing in the center of the room.  It had even been more convenient, thought Watcher, when I could simply think the display into the visual centers of my mind.  But that would mean opening the inner recesses of his brain to the computer, and he might be waiting for any chance he might get to invade and conquer the mind of his greatest enemy.

Views were given of dozens of open and unblocked gates, all leading to destinations he had assumed were unoccupied. Recognition numbers appeared underneath.  A couple had numbers he did not recognize, his total recall realizing that these must have been opened by the computer at random since last he had checked.  Well, he thought, the power has to go somewhere, and I can always shut the gates down anytime I need to.  One gate caught his eye immediately, its view screen box blinking to attract his attention.  The gate to the lost ship.  But that one had gone through subspace, where time ran in another direction than the four-space humankind was most familiar with.  It should be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of years in the past. And the gate was no longer open.

"Computer," he said quickly in his melodic voice, "what came through gate number 1,347,902?"

A screen blinked into existence in the center of the panel and expanded quickly until it formed a four-meter square that occupied most of the panel.  A space suited figure came through the open gate.  A bulky, white and red suit such as he had never seen, with a spout of material coming from the large backpack that looked suspiciously like a chemical thruster.  It looks very old, he thought.  Very old and of very low technology.  He continued to watch as the opening to the wormhole revealed a vision of white-hot hell.  He almost cringed along with the figure in the forefront of the screen, and then the wormhole was gone, the figure collapsed on the floor.

Watcher observed the figure looking around the room, still unable to tell what kind of being it was.  Probably human from the shape of the suit.  But very unrevealing of age or sex.  Then the figure walked in a shuffle over to one of the benches and sat down, the hands going up to the helmet seal.

"Computer," he ordered. "Focus on the helmet."

The helmet grew in the screen, as the five fingered hands pulled and twisted at the seal.  To his surprise the computer followed the helmet as it was taken off and placed on the bench.

"Computer," he shouted, realizing that he shouldn't have been so literal with the enormous idiot savant, "bring the focus to its face."

His breath caught in his throat as the picture resolved on the virtual screen.  She's beautiful, he thought, remembering that he had a fully functional glandular system no matter the advanced complexity of his brain.  Not one for the scrap heaps after all, like all the other intruders.

Long hair the color of fire, skin almost as pale as watchers own, but covered with a constellation of freckles.  Full lips, with laugh lines around mouth and eyes, although they were now curved into sobbing agony.  Husky voice crying softly.  And the eyes.  His own pink orbs stared into deep blue pools, tear streaked and surrounded by the red of sorrow.

"I have a match on the spacesuit," said the computer, breaking his lustful concentration.

"Report," he ordered.

"Late Twenty-first century commercial deep space explorer," said the computer.  "High probability of occupation as Kuiper Belt or Ort Cloud explorer."

"From Sol," exclaimed Watcher, "before the race expanded out of the System."

"Affirmative," agreed the computer.

"She must be preserved," Watcher stated.  "Control panel front."

“She is not currently in your territory,” said the computer.

“Do we have a local gate open in that region?”

“Negative.  All local gates to that territory have long been sealed.”

“How fast can we get some agents there by tram?”

“Approximately distance 770,000 kilometers along the arc,” replied the computer.  “Eight hours travel time.”

Damn, thought Watcher.  It had always been intended for people to go from one part of the station to another by gate, instantaneous travel.  The tram system had been built for short-range transport, and emergencies.  But that was all he had at the current moment.

The virtual screen closed to a meter square as the virtual panel expanded in front of Watcher.  Six fingered hands of more than human dexterity flew over the virtual touch panel, sending commands to Donut components to execute his orders faster than he could have sent by voice alone.  The last virtual button pushed, he stepped back and sat on his soft bed, looking at the newly expanded screens that ranged the room, observing his mechanical minions as they hurried to fulfill his wishes.  Soon, he thought, and I will have company, real live company for the first time in ages.  Visitors used to come frequently, in millennia past, but Watcher had felt more in the way of fear for his safety in those days than loneliness.  Time had changed the magnitude of the feelings, and he had to admit that the woman fascinated him, a beauty from the days before humankind stretched its hands to the stars.

*    *    *

An hour of crying got it out her system, at least enough where she could function.  Pandi looked around once again, taking in her surroundings with her mind now set on survival.  She meant to land on her feet, no matter where she landed.  And the wonders there must be to behold.  She felt almost like a child given the keys to the toy store.

What about the employees of the store? she thought.  Were there any?  And where were they?  They might not like her poking her nose around, the unsupervised primitive.  This place had an uninhabited feel about it, but there was no use in taking chances.

How much of her suit and equipment to keep?  She didn’t relish the thought of trying to move around in a one gee field wearing the heavy spacesuit.  She also didn’t relish the thought of leaving behind anything that might make a difference in her survival.

Pandi stripped from the heavy survival suit, unbuckling buckles and unzipping zippers.  She took quick stock of the utility of her undergarment.  It was of tough synthetics, and the black fabric would keep her reasonably comfortable in most environments.  It covered her limbs and torso, and the built in stockings covered her feet.  She took off the gloves, thinking they might be more of a hindrance.

The outer belt of the suit was adjusted quickly to fit her slim waist, and the holsters and magazine pouches were a comfortable weight.  The water bottle came easily out of a zipper pouch of the suit, and would serve well as a canteen until something better was found.  She inventoried the med and repair kits, and anything not of use was left behind.  The useful contents she put in the holding pouch that had been attached to the suit’s backpack unit.

She separated the boots of the suit from its legs and fitted them on her feet.  A few steps showed that they would serve to protect her feet, and she liked the thought of keeping the extras built into the boots with her.  The helmet was the last thing she was determined to keep, not wanting to leave behind its sensors, lights and electronics.  And she could use it to carry things as well.

On last thought she detached the backpack unit, unbuckling it from its mounts and attaching the straps.  The O2 bottles went to the floor, until all she had left was the propulsion unit and the fuel cells.  The straps went over her shoulders as she adjusted it for comfort, folding the control arms back into the unit.

She stowed the rest of the suit under the bench.  No use leaving the thing out where any passerby could see it.  Jacking rounds into the chambers of the pistols, she holstered them again and prepared to explore.  Where to? she thought.  So many choices.

The entrances to the low buildings, the ones with the look of subway stations?  That is where she thought most of the people who came through here would go.  Why not?  She walked into the entrance and down the steps.

*    *    *

The flagship Orca shut down its space warping engines as it came to a rest in relativistic space once again.  Space was no longer being destroyed to the front of the massive warship, nor created to the rear, the space cycling drive offline for the first time in weeks.  Within seconds a dozen more huge vessels slid into place in a distant circle around the flagship, negative matter pylons using magnetic tractor beams to pull the thin shielding of anti-gravity generating material back into the dual storage bottles.

The huge vessels sat motionless in space, seven burning stars to its front, the nearest, an M5 red dwarf, over eighty billion kilometers off the port bows.  Weapons systems were off line, the leaders expecting no threat so far out of the supersystem, as antimatter conversion engines powered down from the immense energy requirements that had been provided for the warping of space.

"Admiral," said the captain of the Orca to his superior, both men still moving stiffly from the effects of the cryotanks all had emerged from just before the transition to relativistic space, "Nav Computer indicates target dead ahead at two hundred and twenty-four billion kilometers."

"Coordinates?" asked the tall, cadaverous man in the highly decorated uniform, strutting the Admiral's walk to the rear of the bridge.  "Of course," he said with an evil looking smile, "Galactic Standard Coordinates 0 mark 0 mark 0.  The center of everything."

"Yes, sir," agreed the thickly built Captain, Valari Midas, as the screen expanded the view of the object at the center of the system.  The ultra-thin ribbon appeared to be in orbit about nothing from here, though both men knew that an object denser than thousands of stars sat in the center of the ribbon.

The white haired man on the Admiral's walk stared at the ribbon in the distance, the target of this mission that had been so costly to their worlds.  His brown eyes squinted and attempted to bring the object into even greater focus, trying to make out details from so far across the matter filled system of multiple stars in orbit around the hole.

"A great number of systems, indeed, sir," said the captain.  "Each star with at least one terrestrial planet, some with over a half dozen."

"Plus the worlds of the dirty methane breathers," said Admiral Mikas Gerasi.  "At least a dozen of those, as well as the filth who live on the couple of hot planets.  We will make this system ours, captain, after we have secured the 'Donut’ and its star spanning technology.  Then we shall bring the purifying flame of the Nation of Humanity to these fallen worlds."

"Truly god has sent us here, captain," he continued as he looked intently at the view screen.  "I have heard that man commingles with aliens on many of the worlds ahead, treating with the evil that threatens their very souls."

"The Donut will be a tough nut to crack, admiral," said the captain, calling up information from his command console.  "According to our agents' report we have already lost over a dozen scouts trying to get near it.  Automatic defenses, the experts say, though I wouldn't be surprised if sentients weren't still on the structure."

"Probably damned Maurids," spat the admiral, "the blood thirsty spawn of Satan.  Well we didn't bring scouts with us, now did we," he said, looking over at the ship's commanding officer.  "We brought thirteen of the most powerful ships in the known Galaxy with us.  We are the supreme naval power in this region of space."

"And if the Donut," said the captain in a low voice, walking over to where the Admiral paced, "the supreme example of the power of the ancients, turns out to be more than our match?"

"Why then, my good captain," said Admiral Gerasi, "we tear the system apart if need be, till we find the door that opens up on the Donut, and drop a couple of thousand marines through the wormhole."

"Signal the fleet, captain," ordered the flag officer.  "We move at maximum accel toward that structure.  Plot decel so that we stop approximately four billion kilometers from it.  That should be a safe enough distance to scout from, don't you think?"

"Yes sir," agreed the captain.  "At least the reports are that the scouts were still fully operational out to two billion kilometers."

"Then we move," said the fanatical admiral, “and may the spirit of the righteous lord move with us."

The Orca leapt ahead in space, a field of inertia shielding energy springing into existence around the vessel, as she moved at fifty gees accel toward the Donut, the other vessels following in her wake.  The men on the bridge continued to walk and talk in a perfect one gee field, a luxury of the ancients that very few worlds still enjoyed.

*    *    *

Watcher sat in his chair, the intruder vessels centered on his projected screen.  They moved in deep space, surrounded by the field of stars, one of the orbiting suns providing a back lighting that made the shark shapes appear even more sinister.  As long as they kept their distance from the Donut he would not molest them.  But he was sure they would do as those had done before them.  Move in on the station and try to take its secrets back with them, to whatever system they came from.

He would then destroy them, with the same technology they came to steal.  Their home stars would never hear from them, and maybe that would keep others of their kind from coming here to threaten Watcher.

He had seen something like these before, though they had been fewer and smaller.  They looked more advanced than what had come from the planets of the supersystem.  These looked hyper capable, probably from outside of the multiple star system that made up the local space around the Donut.

“Computer,” he ordered.  “What kind of hyperdrive do those ships carry?”

“From schematics the probability is a Space Destroying Warp Drive.”

Idiots, thought Watcher.  That type of drive was a hazard to anything in the direct path of the ship, and could be a hazard to the ship itself.  A Space Destroying Drive traversed space at a pseudo velocity much faster than light by destroying space in front of the ship, and recreating it to the rear.  Anything in the space that was destroyed was annihilated as well.  Unless it was a massive object, like a moon, planet or star.  Then the ship was obliterated by the energy feedback.

“Let me know the instant they move into two billion kilometers of the station,” he ordered.

“The human you asked me to watch has started to move,” said the computer.

Watcher swore again under his breath.  It would have been so much easier if she had just stayed put.  There was less likelihood she would have wandered onto something dangerous, or attracted his attention.  And his attention was something she didn’t want to attract.  It would be doubtful if lust or loneliness would blunt his sadistic tendencies.

“Put her on screen.”

The woman was dressed differently now, no longer in the bulky suit.  The black fabric of her garment fit her tightly, showing off her luxurious curves.  Boots were on her feet, and it looked as if she carried some kind of weapons in holsters on her belts.  Lasers would fit with her technology, he thought, or maybe even primitive projectile weapons.  Not enough to protect her from the terrors roaming the station.

She moved with a grace that bespoke an athleticism born of health and practice.  She looked at everything, her eyes constantly on the move.  Intelligent and curious.  A fitting companion for him.

A small, furry bundle jumped into his lap as he watched the object of his infatuation.  His hand began to gently stroke the soft fur of the creature.  It flicked its tail as a musical purr issued from its throat.

“You’ve been a good companion, Hannibal,” he said, looking down at the small silky cat.  The creature dug its paws into his lap, its solid red eyes looking up into his as it purred its pleasure.  “But I need another kind of companionship.”

Hannibal meowed slightly, the pet sensing the combined excitement and sorrow of its master.  Watcher continued to stroke it, his soft hands working the fur of the creature.  His hands tensed as something else moved on the screen.  Something he had hoped he would not see.  A robot, of the kind he used.

*    *    *

Pandi caught the movement out of the corner of her eye.  Something in motion among the stillness of the station.  Her body tensed as she slowly turned toward the movement, not sure what to expect.

Some kind of animal was her first thought, as she watched the thing moving in her direction.  It was all the way across the long room, a hundred meters or more, and she wasn’t sure if it had even spotted her yet.  It behaved as if it hadn’t.  Its six legs moved in a most peculiar manner, rotating up and over as the long body slid forward.  Not like the movements of a beast.

Its skin seemed to be made of a series of small scales of equal size.  It had no discernible head, just a continuation of the long body.  No mouth, no ears.  Spots on the forward scales could be eyes, or something else?

A robot of some kind was her second thought, though like nothing she had ever imagined.  She couldn’t guess its purpose from its configuration.  Slowly she put the helmet on her head, not wanting make sudden movements that might alarm it.  She pushed a button above the faceplate, engaging the helmet sensors.  The creature leapt forward in her vision, as the faceplate magnified the image.

Definitely some kind of robot, she thought, wondering if it might be dangerous.  On infrared it glowed an even orange color, no apparent power-generating center, as if the entire robot were equally power producing and using.  Suddenly her faceplate went blank, opaqued over as if struck by a bright light.  That was when she knew she was under attack.