their racial psyche. Both also soon found the years’ long cycle of conversation via radio telescope infinitely unsatisfying. A human scholar asking a question of his counterpart among The People had to wait years for the reply and vice versa. Within the scientific communities of both worlds the quest for an improved form of communication became a fixation that bordered on a mania.
Each culture had possessed its own Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Each had an approximately equal understanding of the structure of the universe and each focused its search in the same rarified area of theoretical physics, seeking for a mathematically irrational chimera called a wormhole.
A decade was spent proving that, yes, such things did in fact exist, but as an ephemeral transitory at the outermost edge of quantum reality. Dimensional “holes” did indeed open intermittently between far distant points in space, but so submicroscopically small and for such a brief period that even a single photon of light could not hope to transit through one.
A second decade was spent proving that such a wormhole could be “caught” and “held open” via a negative energy field. With the proper application of power, vast oceans of power, it could be “stretched “ to a “size” that would permit the passage of physical matter. However, a living being could not survive the transit. Systems created within the three-dimensional universe, be they mechanical, electronic, or biological, could not function within the dimensionless realm that existed within the wormhole, but ideas and goods could theoretically be passed across from one world to the other.
A third decade went into the construction of the hardware to make it happen.
“River–’Tween-Worlds, this is Worm Gate. We are coming up on shift initiation. We show good systems and we are ready to set transfer sequencing.”
Marta gave her command headset a final settling tug, her eyes flicking to the multiple countdown display bars glowing across the bottom of the imaging tank.
“Understood, Worm Gate. We also prepared.” Over the translator link Tarrischall’s voice held none of its usual humorous shading. Her Furry compatriot was the consummate professional when it came to Operations. “We have good systems. We stand by sequencing.”
“Very well, River–’Tween-Worlds. Coming up on sequencing initiator. Mark zero three… two… one… Set.”
The twin timing bar displays crawled across the main screen. T minus ten minutes to power up. T minus twenty-five to barge entry. Instantly the bars began their slow shrink back down toward the zero point.
The clocks had started.
One could not dally around with a barge shift. Not while one was expending enough electricity to power an entire continent. The gate crews at both ends of the hole lived by the fact they could build up enough juice in their accumulator arrays to execute a single two-way barge transfer every twenty-four hours plus a small emergency reserve.
“We have systems verification from ’Tween-Worlds,” the Grid Systems Manager called up from his station. “Auto sequencing set and verified.”
“Very good, grid. River–’Tween-Worlds, we show auto sequencing set and counting. Do you concur?”
“We concur sequencing, Worm Gate. We are go for transfer.”
Lane abstractly noted that the archaic space age technoslang sounded odd coming from one of the People. Tarrischall had become immensely proud of his linguistic expertise in the area, however.
“Acknowledged, River-’Tween-Worlds. Transfer is go. Securing communications and data links and withdrawing lasercom platform at this time. Talk with you afterward.”
“A-Okay, Worm Gate. Later. Want to hear more about this Jumping Jive. River-’Tween-Worlds, over and out.”
“Jumping Jive?” Rocardo queried off circuit.
“Um-hum, Marta replied absently. “It’s a long story. Let’s just say I’m running a personal cultural exchange program with our Furry friends.”
Her mouth tugged down momentarily as the command link indicator with River-’Tween-Worlds control blinked off her communications display. When they dilated the gate to move a cargo barge through to the Wolf system, they temporarily lost their ability to push a modulated data stream through the wormhole to the opposite gate. Thus, each transfer had to be accomplished as a pretimed sequence of events.
That loss had always made Marta Lane just a little bit uncomfortable.
“Raft positioning?” Tarrischall tossed the question over his shoulder, not shifting his keen jet-eyed gaze from the distant-vision displays.
“Raft anchored at channel approach,” Marrun-of-Gray-Lake growled back from the Voice-of-Raft-Guidance position. “Drift canceled on all vectors and holding stable.”
On the overhead displays the panning vision of the seer units verified the burly Gray-Laker’s words. The cargo raft, a huge round-ended cylinder with its sides marked with the odd angular writing and insignia of the Uprights, hovered beyond the gaping mouth of the perimeter grid, poised for the opening of the channel. Remotely guided Pusher units clung to its flanks like leech shrimp, their propulsor vents flaring intermittently.
“Raft Functions?”
“Internal functions verified to the sixteenth level,” Varess-of-Storms-Bay replied crisply.
The slight, golden-furred Voice-of-Raft-Guidance was the newest member of the watch and still somewhat self-conscious among Tarrischall’s veteran crew. “Ready to assume entry guidance.”
“Very good. We will be ready for you in a moment.” Tarrischall’s eyes flicked to the disappearing time dots on the sequencing display. “Voice-of-Physics, channel status.”
“Plus on all channel systems,” Narisara replied crisply. “Nominal to the sixteenth level.
Primary and crisis reservoirs at fifteen point six. Prepared for route sequencing on posted marks. Prepared for last phase safety block clearance.”
“You have it, O elegant black-furred one. Let’s crack her open.” Once more Tarrischall grinned at Narisara’s fastidious snort.
“All voices prepare for channel opening.” she called. “Safety blocks are clear. Flow increase on my notice. Portion one… portion two… portion three…
“Four… three… two… one…,” The Gate Systems Manager droned from his workstation, calling off the last disappearing millimeters of the bar display. No matter how many times she sat through it, Marta still felt her throat tighten as the countdown reached its conclusion.
“Zero… we have power up.”
There was no overt physical change within or without the control center beyond a shifting of light patterns on the control displays. But within the gate accumulator arrays huge supercooled fluid state switches closed, bringing the largest single power system the human race had ever created online. Focused negative energy fields of mind- boggling intensity converged and intermeshing within the worm cage. For a brief moment mankind warred with the very physical structure of the Universe… and won.
A blackness came to be in the heart of the perimeter grid.
A blackness deeper than that of the surrounding space itself. A slowly growing sphere of absolute nothing, a nothing with a density, a dimension, a nothing that the stars couldn’t be seen through, a nothing that twisted the stomach when looked at. A midnight void darker than the human comprehension of dark.
As he always did at the opening of the gate, Rocardo murmured, “One of these days I’m not going to want to look at that damn thing anymore.”
Marta nodded in understanding. She was in love with the possibilities of the wormhole and of interstellar communications, but there was always a discomfort in looking at something human eyes had never been designed to see.
As it was, they were only seeing the wormhole’s event horizon, that portion of its structure that extruded into the human-experienced three dimensions. There was much, much more to it than what was visible and likely just as well.
Bad as it was looking at the hole through a live video pickup, it was worse via a viewport or a space suit faceplate. Lane found it rather like standing on the edge of a high cliff or atop a tall building. A … pulling.
Others felt it as well. There had been a number of suicide attempts over the years involving the wormhole. One or two had even made it in. Marta had often mused that it probably was a rather interesting way to go.
The sphere of ultimate emptiness expanded until it just filled the center of the girderwork cylinder.
