The White-Hole Situation

Steady as she goes

With a crash and a bang, the starship Kathandra came to a dead halt. Everyone in the main cabin staggered and had to grab hold of the nearest solid anything to keep them from falling or smashing into the walls. Geronimo was flung into his chair and Jai, still at the screen, was flung right into that.

"Status!" Geronimo barked.

"Something's seized the ship," came a panicked voice through the speakers that September only slowly realized was Roddy calling up from Engineering.

"A beam of some sort," he continued, "extremely powerful."

"Can you shake it?" Geronimo asked.

"Highly doubtful," said Jai as he returned to his station. "The beam is made of Peroctium Anodyne, the heaviest substance known."

"Wait, didn't we invent that?" Pisco asked from the seat where he ostensibly steered the vessel from time to time.

"Maybe we just thought we did," Pagan piped up. "But anything we can do, we can undo, right?"

"Computer," Geronimo talked over his crew, "what is the antidote to, what did you call it? Hydrogen Peroxide?"

"Peroctium Anodyne," Jai said.

The computer did not respond.

"Computer?" Geronimo asked again, and after another uncomfortable silence he glanced over at Jai and asked if the computer was offline.

"All systems appear to be functioning normally, sir," said Jai. That was right before all the lights went out and the power went out, everything but the strobe alerts now flashing red and the speakers which kept screeching as loudly as before. And then the ship began to move, slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed, heading straight for the rapidly spinning planet.

"At this rate of acceleration," Jai observed, "we'll be sucked into the planet's orbitational pull in approximately one minute."

"Where's that beam coming from?" Geronimo shouted.

"From the clam shell thing," Pisco yelled back through the radio. "Straight from right there."

"I'll blow it out of the sky," Pagan said. "Let me loose on it, sir." If wishes were horses, she might well have added, because she literally had nothing to work with.

"Lieutenant Rodgers," Geronimo barked, "open a communications channel, see if you can find out what the thing wants from us."

"Yes, sir," September said, and a million thoughts crowded into her head as the pushed at buttons and clicked on representative icons. A lot of those thoughts were redundant, slight variations on a handful of themes. How do we know it's a thing? How do we know it can communicate and with us? Why do we think that it wants anything? What is pushing these buttons really accomplishing, especially since it seems all the power's gone out? Nevertheless she persisted.

A roar and some kind of clicking began to come through her headpiece, and she announced that she'd made contact and was transferring the connection to the main speakers.

"Computer," Geronimo said, "universal translator on!"

Once again, the computer did not reply. Could it? Where was the override? Was Roddy down there fixing things? September told herself to focus, to do her job, to be what she was supposed to be, the communications specialist. Geronimo was turning towards her now. She could feel it. This was her moment, her time to shine.

"Fifteen seconds," Jai flatly declared, and the ship was really moving now, hurtling towards its doom.

"Roddy, report!" Geronimo said,

"Hull breaches reported on decks five and twelve," Roddy said, "We're utterly defenseless. I'll have the screen back up in a jiffy though. Now!"

All eyes turned towards the screen which was now centered on the bright lime green spinning mass of the sphere. That whirling jello world was going to be the last thing that any of them ever saw.

"I've got nothing!" September was about to say, but she held her tongue. It was true. The screeching and the clicks did not add up. She heard no patterns. She discerned no undertones. It was mechanical, random and raw, unscripted, unrehearsed. She was convinced there was nothing to it, nothing at all, as if it were all merely one big mistake.

And then it stopped, as suddenly as it had begun. The vise that was holding the ship in its grip was gone. The ship was moving along its previous path, steady and serene. The planet on screen was slowly turning in its normal, twenty seven hour rotation, no longer spinning at that millisecond pace. The clam shell was gone. There was nothing at all in its former place.

"Cancel the alert," Geronimo said, gathering himself and sitting up straight in his command chair. The lights were back on, the engines humming smoothly.

"Roddy?" Geronimo said.

"Yes, Captain," came the engineer's voice from below.

"Anything to report?"

"No, sir," Roddy said. "Why?"

"Why?" Geronimo was too surprised to respond to that. Instead he redirected his attention.

"Computer, status."

"All systems reporting green," the computer voice said.

"Steady as she goes," it added.

"And what was all that about?" Geronimo said to no one in particular. He turned to look at his crew members one by one.

"Well?" he asked. September glanced at Pagan to get her cue, and Pagan looked to Pisco.

"I didn't see anything, sir," Pisco said.

"Nothing from here," Jai agreed. September and Pagan added their own affirmations.

"All's well that ends well, am I right?" the captain said to nods all around.

"Lieutenant Pisco," he continued, "please set a course to anywhere but here."