The Time Traveller's Ball (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 1)

Chapter 1

I

They say you can never see a thing when you teleport.

A few of the transport techs like to joke that this is probably a very good thing. Watching yourself being broken down to sub-atomic level and then fired in a stream of particles through the gulfs of inner space at light speed plus would have a really bad effect on your self image, your digestion and your willingness to do it again. They assure first-timers that they will hear and feel nothing except rushing energy, and see nothing but white light. But I always could see. Every time.

            We left ChronOps Headquarters on the moon; streaming out of the accelerator like two bursts of dragon fire. We climbed upwards, rising high above the grey and craggy Luna surface into the sunshine. Dawn was breaking over Earth's eastern hemisphere. The illuminated side was crowded and buzzing with satellites, atmosphere craft, slow orbiting space stations and the great Eco Engines, constantly at work; making the sky clearer than even the first Luna explorers would ever have seen it. But we didn't linger there. We only stayed long enough to achieve escape velocity.

            We blasted away from Luna, riding on a combination of gravity waves and residual propulsion energy, across the first great chasm between the planets; vast and black and silent. The stars – light years distant – seemed to surround us, close enough to touch as we streamed across the void. Then the gigantic sphere of Mars came rising into our paths. The fourth planet looked like it always did on a ship approach; a rolling, scarlet-swept ball, tipped with shining ice at both poles, the surface scattered with the spider web domes and linkways of the cities.

            But the pink wastes were not our destination. We were aimed at the two moons; neither of which I had ever visited before. They were small, crater-scarred but otherwise smooth lumps of rock; ancient asteroids captured in Martian orbit; devoid of atmosphere or interesting metals. But they were there; so humanity had found ways to live on them. The settlements glistened and glittered like diamond barnacles clinging to the dirty brown surface as we swept down towards the second moon, Deimos, and homed in on its largest settlement and the single tallest building.

            This I had seen before in pictures. A squat, but towering building of a hundred floors. With a wide square base, sloping sides and a flattened roof; it looked like a pyramid with its point missing. It was big enough to contain the administration of a nearly a quarter of the Solar economy. Above its grandiose main entrance, gold letters gleaming in the distant sunlight, was the sign welcoming us to CODEX BANK.

            It might all have been in my imagination. If so, my first real view of the bank was the senior manager's teleport suite; where Mirabi and I arrived at 9.52pm local time, January 7th 3010.

            Materialising – De or Re – is rarely a pleasant experience. One minute you are weightless and effortless, floating like a carefree ghost. You don't appreciate this experience until the next minute when it ends. All of a sudden your feet solidify, they feel as heavy as mountains and they land on the transport pad so hard your knees would buckle if they had reformed yet. They, and the rest of you, reassemble at speed as you are literally pulled back down to earth. G-Force kicks in as the process proceeds; so one second your stomach contents is in freefall; the next it lands hard and with a splash. There is always a moment of relief when your eyes reform and you can see that you still have all your fingers and toes.

            Mirabi and I stepped down from the teleport pads into a wailing maelstrom of alarms and sirens. That first step off the pad was always important to me. We might have been a hundred floors above the surface, but the moment my boots landed, it felt like I had arrived on Deimos. Two men were waiting for us by the control console. One was a tall, sword-blade slim gentleman in his fifties; with a narrow, creased face, pale blue eyes and wiry grey hair, wearing a butler's uniform. He stood tall and still, with perfect composure and bowed politely to both of us. The other man was twenty years younger, dark skinned and with black hair worn in salon-styled dreadlocks. The rest of him was wearing a Solar Union diplomatic service uniform and – from the trembling posture, wringing hands and near electrified eyes – he was extremely upset.