chapter ten
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Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio
non-congruent
The Kleio shook, and the bulkheads groaned.
“This is as close as I can get us!” Elzbietá shouted. “Phasing in!”
The shuddering subsided, and the view of their surroundings appeared above the command table.
“That’s . . . ” Raibert breathed.
“Is that . . . T3’s Earth?” Benjamin asked.
The remains of a shattered planet lay spread out before them, stretched, thinned, and ripped apart by tidal forces drawing it toward a massive spherical void, black both visually and chronometrically.
“I don’t know,” Raibert said. “But what else could it be? Philo?”
“It’s Earth.” Philo’s avatar appeared at Raibert’s side, his face grim. “There are enough recognizable landmasses left to confirm it. Look, you can see the boot of Italy right there. And that other piece has what’s left of New Zealand.”
“Then this is T3’s Earth.” Benjamin shook his head. “You’re right. It can’t be anything else.”
“What do you make of that black sphere?” Raibert asked.
“Not sure yet,” Philo said. “Whatever it is, though, that’s where all the chronotons are going. Other than that, our array is coming back blank.”
“Is it a black hole?” Benjamin asked.
“No. If it was, we’d see the gravitons coming off of it. Besides, black holes can’t suck one universe into another. This is something else entirely.”
Raibert brought up a detailed view from Kleio’s array. A raging torrent of chronotons poured into the sphere, but inside, their instruments detected nothing.
No space.
No time.
Just an inconceivable, all-consuming emptiness.
An eater of realities.
Synthoid or no, Raibert Kaminski swallowed.
Hard.
“Can we say anything about that sphere?” he asked.
“Well I can say it’s a good thing I stopped when I did,” Elzbietá replied. “If I’d kept going, we’d be inside that thing. The sphere’s transdimensional coordinates overlap part of T3’s outer wall. As far as what that means?” She shrugged.
“Hmm,” Philo murmured. “It aligns with the outer wall and chronotons are flowing toward it.”
“Thoughts on what that means?” Raibert asked.
“Maybe. Could be a breach in the outer wall, allowing chronotons to flow out of this universe.”
“Wait a second,” Benjamin said. “You mean to tell me that sphere is a hole in T3’s outer wall?”
“That’s one possibility.”
“But it’s a sphere. Spheres can’t be holes.”
“Think of it this way,” Philo offered. “Is the universe flat like a sheet of paper?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then a hole in it isn’t going to be flat, either.”
“I guess that makes some sense,” Benjamin said slowly, his brow creased as he stared at the virtual display.
“Any sign of the Aion?” Raibert asked.
“Not so far,” Elzbietá said quietly. “I’ll keep looking.”
Raibert looked at her for a moment, his expression bleak, then nodded.
“All right.” He let out a long, slow sigh. “Let’s recap what we do know. For one, this is no Gordian Knot.”
“Definitely not.” Philo shook his head. “Everything we see here is consistent with what we witnessed in T4. T3 is undergoing a chronometric implosion, and if I had to guess, that implosive force is what wreaked havoc in T4, too.”
“But how?” Raibert asked. “T4’s own outer wall should have protected it.”
“True. But if T4 was really a child universe of T3, then it’s conceivable their outer walls were still touching. That would make T4 very susceptible to anything happening in T3. Let’s assume for a moment the sphere is a breach in the outer wall. The chronotons leaking out will create what could be considered an extreme low-pressure zone in T3. And if the decompression is powerful enough, it’s going to suck in anything nearby.”
“Including T4,” Raibert said. “Hence, all the suckage we saw there.”
“Then there really is a second way to kill a universe.” Benjamin’s eyes were haunted.
“That seems to be the case, Doctor,” Philo said.
“Do we have any idea what causes it?”
Raibert glanced expectantly at Philo, but the AC merely shook his head, and Raibert slouched back in his chair.
“Well, shit,” he groaned.
“We need to let SysGov know about this,” Benjamin said.
“No kidding, Doc! What was your first—”
“Guys!” Elzbietá interrupted. “Hey, guys! I found the Aion!”
“Where?” Raibert asked sharply, eyes lighting with sudden hope as he jerked back upright in his chair.
“Right there!”
A beacon pulsed halfway down the tortured remains of Earth-T3.
“The chronoton flow creates a lot of interference, but I’m certain that’s an SOS from their telegraph.”
“Can you contact them?” Raibert asked tautly.
“I’ve been broadcasting a basic greeting ever since we got here. If they could hear us, they’d have responded by now.”
“It’s an SOS,” Philo said. “They may be unable to respond.”
“In that case, can we pull them out?” Raibert asked.
“That’s the tricky part.” Elzbietá rubbed her hands together. “It’s rough in there. A lot of debris phasing in and out, and they’re in deep.”
“Can you do it?” Raibert pressed.
Elzbietá expanded the section of the display which contained Aion’s beacon. Two continent-sized fragments grated against each other, and rubble spewed outward from the slow, terrible collision. Smaller boulders the size of mountains phased into being, smashed into each other, then disappeared.
“I can do it,” she declared.
“Are you sure?” He looked deep into her eyes. “Those are our friends over there. I want them back just as much as you do—probably more; I’ve known Fritz almost since grade school! But we’re not doing this unless you’re confident you can pull it off. And not just because I’m worried about our hides. Ben’s right—we’ve got to get home to tell SysPol about this.”
“I know.” Elzbietá looked down at her virtual displays for a long, still moment, then raised her head and looked straight into his eyes once more. “I can navigate that mess,” she said, and her voice had hardened into living steel. “I’ll get them out, Raibert.”
“That’s all I needed to hear.” Raibert strapped in. “Take us in whenever you’re ready.”
Elzbietá and Benjamin strapped in as well, and she glanced at the Viking avatar at her elbow.
“Philo, you have the secondary systems.” She brought up her virtual controls. “Here goes!”
Kleio surged forward.
“Reinforcing forward armor,” Philo said.
“Hang on!” Elzbietá warned. “Things are about to get bumpy.”
Tiny pebbles pattered against the hull as a mountain loomed ahead. Kleio dipped underneath, and the patter turned into a torrential rain. Rocks phased in and out ahead of them, and Elzbietá adjusted their own phase, finding gaps of safety in the ever-shifting environment.
A series of loud thunks echoed through the ship, and Raibert looked up at the overhead urgently.
“Hull holding,” Philo said. “Damage negligible.”
“We’ll get through!” Elzbietá promised through gritted teeth.
A viscous blob of magma came into view ahead, stretching and breaking apart. Kleio splashed through a thin section, globules splattering across the bow, and sped toward a city tumbling lazily end over end.
“The Aion should be just beyond that city fragment,” Philo said.
“Almost there!”
The city had been built around a lake, and the lakebed now formed a path through the rounded debris fragment’s center. Elzbietá took them straight through the eye, then slowed on the far side.
“Almost on top of the signal,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Found them,” Philo said. “It’s—”
He didn’t finish. Instead, he brought up a visual of the Aion.
Or, rather, what was left of it.
A broken section of gunmetal hull spun amidst a smear of twinkling particulate matter. The smashed and ruined piece of debris was just barely enough to house one of the chronoton telegraphs.
There was no sign of the rest of the ship.