Rockets and Ray Guns - An Anthology of Sci-fi short stories

Part 2

The simanoid was as good as his word. As soon as they cleared the medical quarters where Blaine received treatment after their primary transition knocked him unconscious, they wove through the Summer Twilight's interior to the crew deck to stow his equipment and confirm his placement on the crew roster. Then it was a quick trip up to the observation deck, set along the ship's dorsal spine.

There, Blaine immediately staggered to a halt at the vista spreading before him seen through the deck's panoramic bay windows.

It was a great space, so vast, he couldn't quantify it. Yet he could see that it was separate from the actual void of space, a shimmering bubble of some kind of energy encapsulating the whole of it, and casting a pale light over everything inside. And hanging in that space were dozens of giant, oblong shapes, some with darkness within, others with a soft indigo light.

It was then that Blaine noticed the ships. Hundreds of them, of all shapes and sizes, moving from one purple-lit shape to the other, back and forth.

"The first explorers that found this place, called it a transfer nexus," Thaddeus said as he came to a halt beside Blaine. "One of half a dozen that have been discovered since. We got here by passing through the entry point that hangs just beyond Pluto's orbit in the Sol System."

"I remember," Blaine said distractedly as his eyes drank in the incredible sight.

Ensconced in the ship's crew section, he hadn't actually seen the great oblong that hung in space two light minutes beyond the dwarf planet's ellipse when the transport carrying him passed through it. But he remembered getting knocked unconscious by the transfer process itself, a matter-to-energy and back again process that converted the substance of his body into energy to make the jump from one point in space to another hundreds of thousands of light years away via a gargantuan network of subspace transmission nodes.

According to the subject experts that spoke to him at his jump orientation, no one actually knew who created the network. Dating technologies put it at some two or three hundred million years old, a number that was difficult to comprehend even by the most powerful of minds. However, that didn't stop those same minds from theorizing that the network was originally built to connect a few select systems in a vastly smaller universe.

Held in place by powerful dark matter anchors, the network became subject to stellar drift fueled by the universe's continuing expansion. That drift pulled the nexuses and their entry points further and further away from each other until, instead of only being light years apart, they were hundreds of thousands of light years distant from each other. Some were even located in different galaxies from their original placements.

Despite the mind-boggling distances that now lay between each entry point, somehow most were still networked together. While the exact mechanisms involved were still largely a mystery, investigators reasoned the network was still active due to powerful AI's inhabiting each portal.

Tasked by their ancient masters to maintain the network at all costs, the AI's had adjusted the energy streams connecting the portals through subspace, gradually increasing their power over time until the streams had become quantum filament conduits, making subspace shiver with their power. It was along these conduits that travelers on the network went, converted to energy, then shot along the conduit to their target locations where they were converted back to matter.

At least, that's how it worked when the portals were active, as indicated by their event horizon glowing with a pale indigo light. Portals with darkness inside led to a portion of the network that was no longer active.

That didn't mean they didn't work, however.

"All hands, this is the captain," a woman's voice said over the observation deck's intercom even as the view began to slide rapidly past the window. "The Summer Twilight has been cleared to egress through the Epsilon Gate. Please be advised that Epsilon is a dark gateway, so we will be initiating dark gateway protocols immediately. Contact with the gateway's event horizon will be in t-minus five minutes. All active duty crew to their ready stations. Everybody else, stand by for transition!"

"Well, that's my cue," Thaddeus said with a toothy smile. "I'm heading to Engineering. How about you, Blaine? What's your position aboard our illustrious craft?"

"I, ... don't know yet," Blaine admitted.

"Fair enough," Thaddeus said with a nod. "Most of the crew doesn't know what they'll be doing until we discover what awaits us through the gateway." He gave Blaine a pat on the arm.

"See you on the other side!"