Very few Olyix quints ventured into the hangar. Some had appeared in the first days, performing inspections on the transports that showed the worst damage. Other than that, there had been very little activity. Things like giant slugs slid slowly across the gently curving floor and up the black bark of the pipes in a routine that seemed completely unaffected by the arrival of the transport ships. Smaller spidery organisms skipped about on five legs, tending to specialist cell patches. It was one of those that Jessika constructed in the Avenging Heretic’s biologic initiator, like the creeperdrones black-ops teams used to use to spy on their targets. They had detailed files on all the creature types humans had encountered during their visits to the arkship before the invasion – size, weight, colouring, speed and manoeuvrability, even a guess at the autonomous intelligence level.
The fake spider creature had been released into the hangar three days ago. Jessika had directed it, slowly taking it around the base of the walls, avoiding the genuine Olyix service creatures. As it went, it spooled out a single long-molecule fibre that conducted data. She stopped the creature every few hundred metres and emplaced a sensor clump the size of a pinhead, opening up their view of the hangar.
Kandara approved of that. Nothing could sneak up on them now. Not that there was ever going to be much they could do if the Olyix did spot them.
Now the remote had reached the big entrance to the hangar. An invisible force membrane covered it, holding the air in – similar to Earth’s shields, although this one had permitted the transport ships to pass through. Jessika walked the creeperdrone fake forwards. The force opposing the remote was similar to walking directly into a hurricane. It edged forwards, exerting itself at the top end of its power. When it broke through, it was in vacuum. The downward curving passage beyond was devoid of the pipe trunks that covered the hangar; naked rock walls continued all the way to the hole that broached the arkship’s surface. The creeperdrone stood on the edge and looked out.
‘Has it glitched?’ Alik asked.
They were back in their tanks, which put them back on the simulation bridge. It had changed since their initial flights back in the Delta Pavonis system. Now there were split levels and curving rails. Walls had unoccupied crew stations, with chairs; consoles had rows of switches and keyboards between small screens filled with slim, colourful graphics. Instead of the original display that had hung between their consoles, they now had a panoramic wall screen ahead of them. Kandara suspected either Yuri or Callum was oozing memories of old sci-fi shows into the simulation template. But she did have to admit, the bridge felt a lot more like a real spaceship now.
Everyone stared at the main screen. It showed nothing. When she reviewed the direct feed from the remote to confirm its location, the lip of rock slipped into her vision. It was in the right place. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘Why can’t we see the wormhole?’
‘Technically, you can,’ Callum said. ‘It’s the part of the image that doesn’t exist. At a guess, I’d say the interior of the wormhole is a continuum that doesn’t permit photon propagation.’
Kandara had forgotten Callum had a physics degree. Sure, it was a century out of date, but still, it was the only one on board. ‘You mean it’s dark?’
‘No. There is no visuality. It’s a structure composed entirely of exotic matter, so it probably doesn’t even qualify as an open space. It’s not surprising the creeperdrone’s sensors see nothing. I’m guessing our poor old animal brains interpret that as black.’
‘What about Cherenkov radiation?’
‘Not in here. Though now you bring it up, there should be somewhere the arkship’s physical structure intersects the exotic matter. Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘So what you’re saying is we’re not going to see the end of the tunnel approaching?’ Yuri said.
‘That’s about it.’
‘The Salvation of Life will certainly be aware of it,’ Jessika said. ‘From what I can make out, there’s only a couple of days’ travel remaining until we’re at the sensor base.’
‘We need to finalize our actions,’ Yuri said. ‘Do we try and release a Signal transmitter there?’
‘It’s not the enclave,’ Alik said quickly.
‘Yeah, but we both know now the enclave is a lot further away than anyone was thinking. The pulse those Signal transmitters are going to put out have a limited range.’
‘I thought detection was limited by the size of the radio telescope humans use to find it.’
‘You’re right,’ Callum said. ‘But the further away we are, the longer the Signal will take to reach this part of the galaxy. If the exodus habitats haven’t picked it up after a couple of thousand years, then they’ll probably assume we didn’t make it. Nobody will look for it. And if they do, catching the pulses becomes progressively more difficult over distance.’
‘The Olyix aren’t going to abandon this sensor station we’re heading for just because we broadcast its location,’ Kandara said. ‘They have to use it to send their next wave of ships to Sol and the settled worlds. That’s going to take them a century or more, depending on how far away we are. If anything, they’ll reinforce it with ships from the enclave star system, wherever that is.’
‘It might not take a century,’ Jessika said. ‘I’ve been examining what I can in the Salvation of Life’s onemind. The Olyix were surprised when they arrived at Earth; they didn’t expect humans to have accomplished interstellar travel so quickly. We know they were trying to establish their own portals between Sol and the
