“Just going over all the data again and again. Jerry’s an engineer and the closest to a physicist we have on the crew, but engineers don’t see things the way scientists do. I’m more a scientific mind, but my background’s not in the physical sciences. Still, a different point of view, a different emphasis, and just as he might see something I’d miss completely in the same data, I might see something he wouldn’t. Still, what bothers me most is that time and again I see an intelligence that we know nothing about behind this Three Kings stuff. It’s kept very hidden, except maybe for that gemstone gimmick—unless that’s just an interactive property that triggers paranoia within our own minds. I mostly believe it’s the latter, since we get such personalized visions until the perceived That Behind All That shows up.”
“I still kind of wish he’d let us bring it along,” An Li said. “If that last sense is real it might be a way to pinpoint where they’re hiding. That’s what I like least— they get to hide and maybe play games with us, while we’ve got to go in blind.”
“It’s always that way, or so it seems. Still, I’m glad old status symbol Sanders wouldn’t let us have it. If there is some kind of communication within it, then the last thing I want is two Eyegors wandering around the ship, one Normie’s and one God Knows What. Still, I think we have to separate the suggestion of an intelligent behavior pattern from things like the Magi’s Stones. As a social scientist, I can sense the logic pattern at least enough to form theories about it, but until I have proof that the stones aren’t just giving off some perfectly explainable phenomena, such as radiating something that interacts with the electrochemical patterns in the brain, I can’t accept the things as spies of the mind. Still, I’m going to keep an open mind. If we find them scattered in some geologically similar areas, they’re natural. If we find them in little sacks or stacked up like coins, maybe not. Either way, I’m wondering what the effect would be of a large number of them aboard ship. Drive us all psychotic, maybe.”
“That’s a cheery thought. How would we tell?”
There was a sudden sounding of a klaxon-like horn and then the captain’s voice came on all speakers.
“Attention. We are now powering up to leave orbit. Time to first genhole two hours twenty-one minutes.”
“Never mind the first one,” Lucky Cross called into thin air. “How long until we get to the wild one?”
“I have not been able to access that information. I must relinquish navigational functions to the subroutine and thus cannot access anything not on my standard charts. I will certainly let you know when we arrive and before we enter. At that point I will have complete control restored, as only I can take us through.”
“Normie the Weasel strikes again,” An Li grumped. “Like we can broadcast this information?”
Lucky Cross came into the ward room and settled down in a large padded chair. “But we could,” she said simply.
“Huh?”
“If the cap had full access to that data, we could sell it, trade it, do whatever we wanted with it. And pirates, military, you name it, could pry it out of us. As it stands, what we don’t know we can’t divulge, voluntarily or not. No, I think you underestimate the little bastard just because he’s a little bastard.”
Randi Queson still felt uneasy about it. “So what happens if we get there and there’s no ‘there’ there? I mean, what if the thing’s screwed up?”
“There’s either a wild hole exactly where it says or there ain’t,” Cross pointed out. “If there ain’t, then we turn around and go find Normie.” She sighed. “I’d almost like that better than there bein’ one there.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Look, the only way we get from Point A to Point B is through wormholes. They was all wild holes of one sort or another once upon a time, but we tamed ’em, shaped ’em, made ’em bigger or smaller to suit us, and made sure they opened at the same place and went to the predictable place on the chart. That’s the genhole—generated hole. A tunnel through space-time. You get where you need to go faster than light ’cause you don’t pass through no space in between. What you do pass through, nobody’s still sure. Like a lot of things. You listen to all the so-called brains give a zillion different explanations, you say ‘So what?,’ then you use it—not ’cause they can explain it, but because it works. It works the same way every time. But a wild one, now, that’s a different story. No genhole generators, no shaping, no stability, no nothin’. Hell, there ain’t even supposed to be any wild holes, at least not that you can use. Wormholes wink in and out all the time, but they last from a few millionths of a second to a few seconds, period, then they wink out and wink in someplace a thousand light-years away.”
“But not this one,” An Li noted.
“Nope. Oh, there are fields where wild holes wink in and out all the time. Somethin’ causes ’em, some kind of forces of nature, who knows? But they still wink in, wink out, wink in, wink out, and who knows where the hell they go to? This one, and this one alone, supposedly always goes the same place, and it’s been doin’ it for at least the couple of centuries or so since it was found, maybe a lot longer. It’s a natural hole that’s also consistent and predictable. And that ain’t possible. Even I know that much physics. Like some kind of predictable lightning bolt. Nope, this sucker may look natural and feel natural, but if you can go there and it shows up, it ain’t natural. And that to me spells ‘trap.’ ”
Queson shook her head slowly from side to side, almost in disbelief. “Everybody’s suddenly so gloomy about this, even me. Is it the new paneling or something in the coffee? I mean, didn’t we all just volunteer for this? And didn’t we all know we were probably going into some kind of trap? I mean, why else all the weapons and sensor equipment? We’re about as well-armed with weaponry and probes as a naval destroyer! If everybody thinks this is a one-way trip into an alien dissection lab, why did we all volunteer?”
Cross looked at An Li, who stared back at Cross. Finally, they both shrugged, and it was An Li who answered, “Maybe because we had nothing better to do?”
It took eleven days to reach the entry region. From the command center aboard the Stanley, they could see that this was in fact one of the places you’d expect to find the entry point, but picking the right wild hole was something else entirely.
It was one of hundreds of such places in the galaxy which, for unknown reasons, had from dozens to hundreds or even thousands of natural holes winking in and out. It was not a region that ships stayed in for long, but almost all trips had to go through such a region, since the genholes themselves tended to anchor at these spots.
Normally, a ship would emerge from a genhole and then immediately head into another in a preprogrammed sequence; in this case, they emerged into a kind of space that looked as ordinary and as empty as the rest but which set off every sort of alarm a ship might have—and caused even one the size of the Stanley to shudder, shake, and apply some real power just to stay in one spot for long. Things were happening out there, things well outside the visible spectrum.
There were no windows in the Stanley, nor any space-based visible cameras. They weren’t needed and wouldn’t show much in any event. The master board, though, in the C&C could show things the way the captain, with all sorts of sensors, could see things. The main difference was that they could see each method of viewing serially, while the captain saw them all at once.