This Episode
Episode #41: The Rapture Corridor
Glancing morbidly at the control panel, the shadow slumped and emitted the equivalent of a sigh. Electrocuted during the last attempt, this time, it would have to work or death would stake a claim. Weakness and dizziness had overcome as with diminishing strength, the crude circuitry leading to the device was completed.
The feedback light glowed...then, extinquished.
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It was vast. It was a glowing achievement and the end result of hard work from several groups. The newly rebuilted, double story Main Mission was probably an indulgence of the human spirit but, no more indulgent than the building of the pyramids or the ancient Mayan temples.
Or even the stone images on Easter Island, though, Main Mission had far more functionality.
Emma Black stepped into the lower level left and within seconds she began to materialize on the upper level. First the top of her blonde/gray hair, then her head, neck, shoulders, torso, legs and feet. The novelty of the lift had worn off as she busily flipped through her green flimsie, frowning, and crossed to Angelina Carter's desk. She hardly paid attention, though, as her concentration was focused on the big screen. To the right, Helena Russell was monitoring the life functions monitor, one labelled "Koenig" and the other labelled "Carter". Paul Morrow sat routinely at his controller station with Bergman beside him, a long register tape computer readout unfurled in his hands.
"Docking successful," Koenig announced, the image of the command module of Eagle 1 filling the big screen. The Commander was in the foreground while Captain Carter was in the background. "How does it look, Victor?"
"Still no life forms but there is a weak power source." He rubbed his hands eagerly. "I can't wait until you bring it back. The potential technology, information, that we could gain from that abandoned ship is exciting.
"Assuming its abandoned, Victor," Koenig cautioned from the other end.
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"Grave?" Russell laughed ironically (because the memory of bodies falling, and breaking twice, and thrice, terminally to the floor from upside down lunar firma hung heavy in her gravitationally extended, stretched, plastic brain...screaming...the BLUR...the MIST...the horrendous, carmel on the chin laughter of the Galaxy Children, taunting them in passage...it made her wail...and she did....). "For at least two of us, it was 'grave.'"
She wondered what the colonel was getting at, but as much as she disagreed, she found equivalent concurrence.
Not that she had any desire to become Petrov's acolyte.
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"G'day, sir." Technician Glass greeted the section head ostensibly. He felt he would fail.
"Uh-oh." Ostrog mocked. "Better zip it up."
"Schmuck." Technician Forbes blurbed. "First we get one who thinks he's Mel Gibson in space. Now, we get one who looks like Moby Dick, and neither knew anything about design, and propulsion."
"Chief Carter did." Technician Wycherley contended.
It sounded like a eulogy.
Pierre Danielle was oblivious to the assistance, and the resistance.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP." Bram Cedrix upbraided Ostrog openly from high on the spine of Eagle 5-1. He shook the wand of the torch.
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"Ten billion astronomical units." Paul Morrow leaned on the command desk. "TOO GODDAMN FAR."
"Yes, and that's a conservative estimate. Incidentally, you need to get your act together." Bergman wished it weren't. "You've received your report. Accept it, or reject it, but before doing anything, we all have to accept the fact that they're 'there,' and we're somewhere else. The minute--THE VERY 'SECOND,' THAT SINGULARITY TOUCHED US, OUR INDIVIDUAL FATES WERE SEALED."
"Professor, you surprise me," Angelina Carter ventured with calm exterior from her seat at the conference table. Calm on the exterior, but seething with rage and grief on the inside. She glanced at Helena Russell. For the first time, ever, she and the physician shared a similar emotional state and a similar, overriding desire. "You have obviously discounted the last recorded conversation we have from Alan and the Commander." She took a sip of her tepid coffee. "They had found some sort of device, some navigational instrument which, the Commander's last sentence before we hit the singularity was 'something that could in practicality be used to navigate a rapture corridor and control the outlet.' Suppose they really did find the way to sail through the rapture corridor and get back here?"
Bergman glanced at her sympathically though not completely dismissive.
"Absolutely absurd," Morrow scoffed.
"How would you know?" Ang jumped to her feet, the inner emotions beginning to leach to the surface. "LAST TIME I KNEW, YOU DIDN'T HAVE A BACKGROUND IN RELATIVISTIC ASTROPHYSICS." She realized she was shouting and slowing sat down, mumbling, "Sorry, Paul."
The controller-turned-administrator kneaded his fingers together so forcefully that joint popping could be heard. He rested his case, silently and with arthritic indolence.
Even a trip wire, hypertensive harridan like Sandra Benes had nothing to support, or defy. The tragedy, and filled coffins--all that it took to shut her mouth.
Numbers were the letter of the law in all space, and warped continuims.
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"Look, Ang," acting Commander Paul Morrow swivelled the high back leather chair around to face her. He stood up and in a moved that surprised Angelina Carter, reached out and held her hands. Helena Russell stood neutrally by the viewports, staring out at the blackness. "I understand your grief. If you need to, take a day or two off to sort your thoughts. But the fact is, they are gone. To send a ship out there would be a waste of resources."
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Russell gazing at her, nodding slightly.
"Sure, Paul," Ang faked by putting on the grieving widow sad face and shaking tone. "I'm just...very upset." She gave his hands a squeeze and pulled away. "I need to come to terms with this and help Nicky do the same."
She turned and left the office.
Thirty seconds later, Helena Russell left the office as well, heading in the same direction as Ang, toward Hangar 3 where Pierre Danielle was waiting to meet them.
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"If we can get this going, I see our biggest challenge is fuel," Koenig sat at the bizzare piece of furniture which most closely resembled a table. In front of him, papers were scattered out with his writing, loaded with relativistic quantum mechanical equations. His bone rimmed glasses had gradually slid down his nose, such that, when he looked up, he looked very old and very tired.
"Bollicks." Carter sweated, and refuted. The lavendar, and the spidery shadows from the neo-gothic, alien rafters made him look like the unshowered con from Cell Block-C. The pilot was a tired hombre, an annoying person. He looked like he had slept in a Zero-G couch aboard an Eagle, which was in turn, docked to an extraterrestrial spacecraft, that was, by definition, 'lost' in the infinite straits. "It can't be done, commander. Fiddle around, Nero. We've got time, but calculators, and ink pens won't patch it up. Even if by some miracle, we could circumnavigate that thing without being crushed, we don't have enough propellant. We can fire the SPS engine one more time, and I guarantee that won't be enough to reach Alpha because that 'celestial event' shot the Moon out of there like a hollow point bullet.
"And what if it blew us into the past, while they were blown into the present. Eh?"
Either way, the situation blowed.
They were mummies already, and the astronaut thought Koenig should know this.
"That is exactly what this device is for, Captain," Koenig replied without looking up. "The moon and all matter associated with it would leave a quantum trail through the singularity. Find the singularity and find the exact quantum trail and we would exit the singularity in the precise point of time and space the moon exited, much like following a trail of breadcrumbs." He scratched his head. "What concerns me most is the exit velocity of the moon. We would match that velocity but if it was much larger than our velocity prior to entering the singularly, then the moon would be out of range for us when we exited."
Carter thought Koenig was the one who was 'out of range,' but decided to grin, and bear it.
Helpful, this astronaut was not.
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"So here is what I was able to record, " Dick Southby inserted the CD into the CD audio player. The other person stood behind in the shadows, now interested and listening intently.
"Moonbase Alpha, this is Commander Koenig. If you receive this message, we will attempt to navigate the singularity using the alien apparatus. When we emerge, however, we will have exhausted our fuel and will require fueling assistance...."
"That's it," Southby turned down the volume as it became static jumble. "I checked it out and it's genuine. The signal comes from the same coordinates where we exited the rapture corridor. I think it's good news, some hope, don't you?"
He turned around smiling but the grin quickly disappeared as the knife plunged into Southby's throat. He tried to scream but instead, air bubbles gurgled as a gushing river of scarlet blood poured down his chest, staining his tunic and flares.
The other Alphan, still masked by shadows, removed the CD from the tray and left the room.
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She was never so ashamed. Never so embarrassed. She wanted to choke him, and almost did.
"YOUR PLAN IS DISGUSTING" Sandra Benes growled, and foamed, and brandished fangs.
Her red, enraged eyes were not a welcome addition to Paul Morrow's team. His first day as executive of operations, and she was humiliating him, and making him miserable. Ed Malcom would find such abuse fruitful, but controllers could not give up their need to control. Even when he was wrong, he was right.
"ONCE MORE." He risked violent acumen. "THIS BASE IS UNDER ATTACK BY WHATEVER IT WAS THAT WE DRAGGED OUT OF THE GOPHER HOLE WITH US. KAY'? IF WE'RE LUCKY, A FEW MAY SURVIVE BECAUSE WE REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING. KAY'? NOW, AMIDST ALL OF THIS, WHATEVER RESCUE OPERATION WE MAY ATTEMPT TO LAUNCH WILL BE A MANGLED DISASTER, AT BEST. COOPER, AND EVERY ASTROPHYSICIST ON ALPHA HAS CONCURRED ON THAT ONE, KEY POINT.
"IT'S THE BLIND, LEADING THE BLIND.
"KAY'?"
KAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY'?
Both would fall into a ditch.
The Data Analyst deemed the commander elect unworthy of this new, spacious office. He deserved Gorski trinkets, and nothing else.
Victor Bergman, sitting unusually rigid in his conference table chair never looked up from the red flimsie in front of him as he capped his pen.
Through dark circled, red eyes, Angelina Carter watched Sandra Benes storm angrily up the spiral stair then heard her stomp through the Commander's office and out the privacy door unto the Main Mission mezzanine level.
"Paul," Helena Russell spoke from her chair next to Bergman, her hands carefully folded. Red eyes also marred her otherwise porcelien complexion. "The people on this base need a leader, a strong leader, at least on the exterior. Are you sure you are up to this job?"
"We find you lacking." Ouma clarified. "It's alright to share that with you, isn't it?"
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"There is the entry into the rapture corridor," Koenig pointed to the transparencies, filled with geometric, astrological figures and advance relativistic formulas. He walked to the Eagle's onboard computer and typed a few keystrokes. The register tape printout unfurled 30 seconds later.
"Speed, vector, position, acceleration, everything we need is right here," he handed the slip to Carter, then, something on the transpancies caught his eye. His expression dropped.
"Sir, I'm with you every step of the way." The pilot swore. "Even if we are cheating off of someone else--someone who may have already 'failed' the test, if you get my meaning.
"It will take about an hour to download this data into the command module computers." He scratched his sideburn, and summoned the gumption to ask yet another, fatuous question. The response needed to be 'yes,' even if the truism was 'no.' "You really think we can follow them? Alpha?"
"Not a problem with following them but...something else came out with them," Koenig elaborated, comparing the calculations of the quantum trails. "It could be anything. It could be a meteorite the size of a grain of rice; or it could be something else."
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Angelina Carter, in a fog of mental exhaustion, wrapped her arms protectively around Nicky, who slept restlessly next to her.
The hatch slid open to the docked Eagle 1.
Angelina Carter jumped through the boarding tube and bear hugged an exhausted and unshaven Alan Carter. "Don't ever do that again," was all that she could whisper, her cheek brushed softly against his scratchy cheek. Two tears worked out of her closed eyes. She was extremely gratified and in her thoughts thanked God over and over again.
Beside her, Helena Russell had embraced an equally weary Commander Koenig and now, he had his arm around both Russell and Bergman.
The group did the musical chair thing and Angelina embraced Koenig as Russell hugged Carter and Bergman, now grinning ear to ear, shook the Captain's hand vigorously.
Darla Lomax joined the meet and greet fray; laughter and ebullience filled the boarding tube, the thin connection between Eagle 1 and its alien ship and the rescue Eagle 4.
Darla's head turned at the sound of the alarm from Eagle 4. She frowned and turned back toward the ship, the rest of the group curious. She was first in the command module and instantly froze.
"Commander," her voice was quiet. She stared, a mixture of shock and growing terror, out the viewport. "What in the hell is that?" She slowly raised her finger to point.
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(...Tarantulas in the heart of death...)
Ryokan was in the sun room now. The windows without advantage, and impossible to see past in the curtain of dissolve that irradiated the laboratory. The white mice scurried away, hiding beneath the chips; concealing themselves in the cubes; working the stress out in a Gerbil's wheel that reminded them a lot of circular, infinite fatalism. Cracked skin chiseled his scorched lips; his retinas were extinguished. The wool tunic he wore began to singe at the seam, and the smell the tendrils of smoke emanated from his own blackened flesh, and burned body.
"OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR." Bob Mathias cried.
The gesture of sacrifice was not appreciated. Petrov drew his laser after knocking the commlock from the physician's hand.
"There's nothing we can do...." Dot Sullivan did not have to accept it, but rage at the dieing of the light was not the answer either.
"OPEN THE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR.'" Mathias bellowed. Blind now himself, it still took two harness bulls, and Raul Nunez to arrest his movements.
Inside the chamber, Bostwick was a granite statue, his head bowed in interminable solemnity. Then dissolution set in.
(...because all that we can be...all that we can dream...)
(...ashes to ashes...dust to dust...)
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