Transport 3_The Zone by Phillip P. Peterson

Author:Phillip P. Peterson [Peterson, Phillip P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-12-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

“Ten days!” Dr. Hope said.

“Are you sure?” Russell asked.

“Yes. In ten days the death zone will reach New California. At around half past four local time.”

Russell looked down at the floor. He felt dizzy. Ten more days, and the same thing would happen to his home as he had just seen happen to Target A and Target B. And Ellen, Jim, Grace, and Greg would die like his friend Ernie Lawrence. Russell looked up and stared at the black sphere standing passively in front of him in the cave. Since the deadly missions twenty years ago, he had always had a vague feeling of uneasiness around the alien transporter. This thing had caused the death of too many people. Several times it had almost got him as well. But now Russell saw it with new eyes. The danger was almost tangible. The artificial intelligence had told him and shown him images of the destruction of its original creators. But now that Russell had seen with his own eyes the destruction of a whole planet within a few minutes, it dawned on him how real this danger was.

Beside him, Russell heard a quiet sobbing and he laid a hand on Chris Holbrook’s shoulder. “There was nothing you could do. If you’d stayed any longer, you would be dead now, too.”

Chris shook his head. “If only I had taken along some tools. There would have been a way of freeing him. If we’d just had a rope with us, we could have easily lowered ourselves down the cliff face.” His eyes were red.

It was the second time Russell had seen his friend cry. The first had been three weeks ago, when the astronaut had buried his own son following the fight against the monsters on New California. Patrick would have celebrated his eighteenth birthday this week. And if they didn’t find a solution, his daughter would also die in ten days’

time——together with everyone else on New California.

Dr. Hope and John Mitchell had joined Russel, Chris, Marlene, Albert, Travis, and General Morrow a few minutes ago, right after analyzing the recordings from the sensor packages.

“And you couldn’t find out anything?” Marlene asked.

Dr. Hope shook his head. “Nothing that could help us in any way.”

“What actually happened?” Travis asked. He was pale. He, too, had family on New California.

Russell knew the answer already. He had known since watching the images on the screen. The same thing that had happened to the creators’ planet millions of years ago.

“The transporter must have turned into a black hole,” the scientist explained in a husky voice.

“But how?” Marlene asked.

“It’s pure speculation, but I assume that a horizon formed in a wormhole used by the transporter.”

“What does that mean?”

The physicist raised his arms. He was obviously searching for the right words to explain his theory in layman’s terms. “The transporter uses a network of sub-microscopically small wormholes that connect it to the neighboring transporters. For the transport itself, one of these wormholes is enlarged, so that people and materials fit through.

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