Portia left the room quickly, but calmly. Down the hallway less than fifty meters would be the mechanical access to the rip-jump engine. Though smaller than our regular thrusters it had remarkable power that was more fear inducing than ever before. If this malfunction would have happened while docked at a station, our ship could have torn off a big chunk and killed thousands by letting them get sucked into an extremely cold death in space.
"Can we confirm that we are not moving along the two-dimensional fabric of jump space?" I asked Lin.
"Normally, we can follow our path on the screen. But my monitor is not currently working."
"Mine either," Nancy replied.
Then the room went dark. Only the eerie orange-red glow of emergency lighting remained. Nausea set in quickly once again as my ass floated slowly out of my chair. The artificial gravity had disengaged. Was this due to our ship’s malfunction or did Portia have to shut things down to make the repair? She certainly should have warned us if that was the case.
"What the fuck is that?" Nancy asked in alarm.
I swiftly turned to see a dark form enter the room through the side wall. It had a fluctuating pitch-black shape like a mystical assassin. I imagined a face at the top, but there was only a tapering to a rounded point where a head would have been on a human. Lacking solid form, its gaseous body shifted but never strayed.
Then it reached out and touched me.
A frosty chill ran through my body. Not just from the frightful scene either. I could feel ice forming in my blood. My breathing ceased abruptly. I assumed that my heart stopped beating as well. Is this what it was like to die in space? Had the ship ruptured and allowed all the life-supporting air to be sucked out? Was this smoky creature a representation of my mental synapses firing randomly just before death? Then why did Nancy see it too?
Then it withdrew as silently as it had arrived.
I let out a deep breath and felt the warmth return to my body slowly. Gasping from the recent feel of suffocation I looked around the room. The lights came back on as gravity jerked my butt back down onto the seat. Puke lurched into my mouth and I instinctively swallowed it in a massive gulp before it could block my airway. Looking around I saw the same effects on my crew.
"The repair is complete, captain," Portia informed me through the speaker system. A few seconds later she returned to the control room to speak directly. "The Terran Capsule is exactly where it was before the breach. Zero time has passed since our departure. It is quite possible that the Andromedas station does not know of our unique situation."
No one said a word. We were absorbing the information but still traumatized from the strange entity that had just stopped my heart. I knew that my two wives had seen it, too. It was a relief to know that we survived the encounter, that we never left the Andromedas system entirely. It just took a moment to process what had just happened.
"You need medical attention, captain," Portia said. It was not a question. "As do your officers. Shall I take control of the Terran Capsule?"
"No!" I shouted. "I'm fine. We are all fine. We are just a little confused by what just happened."
Portia studied her computer display for a moment as the rest of us returned our attention to ours. Power was back on. We all had full access to the systems again. It was just like coming out of jump. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
Then Portia asked, "Are you referring to the space breach or the intrusion of the alien life form?"
Chapter Two
I scurried to Portia's station and looked over her petite shoulder at the data screen. Unfortunately, it was so fine print that I couldn't read any of it. Only an artificial brain with eyes to match could decipher the tiny symbols and images scrolling at an accelerated speed. They programmed these things to read our monitors instead of jacking in to make them appear more human. That only worked if you didn’t notice the screen.
The android was seated so I placed my hands on her shoulders as I leaned in for a better look. Standing she was almost as tall as me, but half the girth. Titanium bones covered in humanoid shaped layers of plastic kept her at a reasonable weight, though definitely not lighter than Nancy or Lin. There was no reaction to my touch, nor even the give that would be expected of human tissue.
Bright orange hair cut to an anime bob that pointed to her narrow chin. Large yellow eyes with silver specks reflected in the slight glare from her screen, as did her tiny flat nose and incredibly small mouth. Her lips barely moved when she spoke.
"The internal sensors detected an unknown life form aboard the ship periodically over the last few minutes," she told me with no display of alarm.
"What is it?" I asked, completely giving up on reading her screen.
"Unknown means that the computer was unable to classify the entity," Portia explained without the smirk that should have come along with the statement. "Considering the extensive database..."
"Is it still here?"
"Sensors have not recorded the presence since our return to real space, captain," the android said. "There are no documented cases of alien life forms in the flat void of jump space."
"Just like there were no cases reported of anyone sitting still over there," Nancy added.
"That is correct. Despite the lack of data, I would suggest that the presence exists only in the other realm," Portia told us. It seemed an unusual thing for a robot to say. "We should report it to
