Doomsday's Eve by Richard Tongue

Author:Richard Tongue [Tongue, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

“Two minutes to drive activation,” Curtis said.

“I just hope it’s a smoother ride this time,” said Dubois.

Corrigan smiled, floating free in the module, and replied, “Look at it this way. This might be the one.”

“A brown dwarf?” replied Antonov. “Unlikely. Interesting, of course, from a scientific standpoint, but if our goal is to find a new home for humanity, I find it hard to believe we will find what we are looking for there.” Turning to Curtis, he asked, “Can we not alter the flight plan?”

Shaking her head, Curtis said, “Not without weeks of work and access to a quantum computer. Everything was planned for a four-jump loop, starting and ending at Earth with a potential detour to Mars for the final step. Even that pushed the limits of our storage capacity to the limit.” She paused, then added, “I can get us back to Earth from Luhman, if necessary. We built that in as a fail-safe, when we hoped there would be opportunities for more trips.”

“Unless something dramatically changes,” Antonov replied, “I don’t think that will be necessary.” He shook his head, and said, “Hard to think that I’ll never see Earth again.”

“There’s always the chance David will take out Goliath,” countered Corrigan. “I’m not giving up hope yet.” He looked at the countdown clock, then said, “Fifteen seconds. Hang on, everyone, and try not to…”

Everything went black, his stomach wrenching once again, his senses outright failing this time to process what they were perceiving, instead casting him into an endless, eternal void, nothing as far as he could see, the only entity in the universe, the only object in all of creation.

He was alone, alone as he could never have imagined, never have conceived, locked in a barren, featureless, meaningless wasteland, even his own body, his own self, starting to dissolve into nothing, fading away as though it had never been, would never be, could never be again.

Corrigan serenaded his return to reality with a terrible, wailing scream.

“Jack?” Dubois asked. “Jack, are you…”

“I’m fine,” he said, taking deep breaths to calm himself. “I’m fine. That was worse than last time. What about the rest of you?”

“About the same as before,” said Curtis.

“You jumped the gun,” Dubois said, turning to the engineer.

She nodded, then said, “I thought it might not be so bad that way, if I took you all by surprise.”

“It didn’t work,” Antonov said, bluntly. He shook his head, then said, “I should start running a diagnostic check. Sooner or later violating everything universal law is probably going to have consequences.”

“I’m opening the Cupola,” Dubois added, tugging a switch. “Let’s take a look at where we are.” She drifted up through the hatch as the mechanism engaged, followed by Curtis and Corrigan, the protective shielding rolling back to allow the starlight to shine in.

Hermes One had settled into orbit around a cold, icy wilderness, a vast, desolate wasteland with the brown dwarf rising behind it, a dull, dim red that cast a strange, gloomy light on the world.

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