“Are you there?” She waited, hearing a faint wash of static on the line before her mother’s voice emerged, a barely discernable whisper, as though from another world.
“I’m frightened, Maeve… I’m frightened.”
“Where are you, mother? Are you home? Are you in bed, dear?”
Something interposed itself between them, a shadow, thin and insubstantial, yet palpable in its effect. The overhead lights flickered for a moment and Maeve was distracted by the sound of Paul’s voice emanating from the intercom.
“We’re opening the outer lock, Kelly. You can ramp it up to full power and start the spin sequence.”
“Roger that,” Kelly’s was all business, his eyes focused on the main power flow panels, arms extended as he began toggling switches and twisting dials. Maeve listened at the receiver, but static masked the connection. She covered the mouthpiece briefly and whispered something at Kelly.
“Maeve says to check your pockets and all.” Kelly passed the message on through his console microphone.
“Tell her we’ll be very discreet campers.” Paul’s voice returned with a strange southern twang to it, and she knew that he was reaching out to Kelly in their secret language, a mythology of long steeped friendship that passed between them as a silly, effortless banter.
“Power at 100 percent,” Kelly informed. “Everything all right down there?”
“We’re all yours,” said Paul.
“Well, don’t cause any trouble in the park. Got that?” Kelly smiled as he spoke again: “Spin configuration looks wonderful, Paul. I’m infusing the chamber now… On my mark… And you are good to go!”
The static on the telephone increased, and Maeve tried to talk through it, urging her mother to wait a moment. Her eyes were glued to Kelly, watching his animated movements at the main console. He snapped his fingers, waving at Jen to take a seat next to him on the targeting vector readout.
“Watch that color bar,” he said quickly. “Let me know what it’s reading.” His eyes were scanning the bright phosphorous displays on the panels, the green numbers reflecting onto his face and forehead until it seemed that his brain was being flooded by an endless digital stream of ones and zeros.
“Looking good… looking good…” he intonated his inner assessment of the data stream, making minor adjustments to the spin stabilization unit. “What’s the bar showing?” A quick glance at Jen brought her to life and she focused on her read-out panels, a bit flustered but comforted as her training kicked in and she fetched a reflexive status call from memory.
“Three green,” she said, a little more confidence in her voice. Her momentary distraction over Maeve’s reaction to the telephone call dissipated, and she was focused on the task at hand.
“Sing out if anything changes.” Kelly seemed mesmerized by his screen. He twisted a dial, fine tuning some setting in the breach vectors. The sound of the generators came to them from deep beneath the earth. It was a swelling vibrato, with deep bass overtones and a definite rumble. Maeve felt a subtle vibration building as she pressed the phone to her ear again.
“Mother?” She queried, but there was no sound from the other end of the line. “Are you still there?” The static seemed impenetrable, but she hung on, painfully distracted, eyes riveted on Kelly where he worked the main console.
“Blue line on the bar,” said Jen, with just the hint of a warning in her voice. “Vector reads five-seven.” She looked at Kelly, who gave her a momentary glance, a knot of tension furrowing his brow as he made a further adjustment.
“Now?” he asked, eyes widening with anticipation.
“Shifting into violet,” said Jen.
Kelly looked at her full on, eyes darting back to his main read-out panel. He bit at his lower lip. “Toggle the number three switch on your array!” Kelly raised his voice, emphasizing some inner decision he had been struggling with.
The spatial locus readings were solid green, but the temporal vectors were starting to shift on him: green into blue into violet. He decided to suppress his shading algorithm, hoping he could nudge the waveform back in the right direction. “Come on now,” he breathed. “Come on…”
Jen watched her readings, frowning as the color shifted again. “The bar is yellow now,” she said quickly. “Nine by five.”
“Shit!” The single word carried a cascade of emotions. Kelly covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide, as though he were searching frantically in his mind for a solution. He must have entered a bad variable, but where? There would be no time for a diagnostic. Kelly was scanning his main readout, desperate for some clue. The spin-out looked good, and they had a stable Arch array. The power readings were fluctuating but still maintaining 97% of full capacity. The spatial locus was dead on. It had to be the temporal shade.
“Enable that switch again!” He shouted, pointing at Jen’s panel.
“What?”
“Toggle number three!”
Jen passed a moment of hesitation and returned the switch to its original position with a snap. Kelly slid over to her station, the wheels of his chair skidding on the polished tile floor. The bar was moving again, spiking up into the yellow and then falling off to the violet. Maeve was frozen, the telephone limp in her hands as she watched Kelly press the palm of his right hand to the side of his head.
“God…” he breathed, watching the dizzying array of numbers spin on a digital countdown readout. “Oh God…”
“Maeve???” The sound of her mother’s voice seemed to echo from the receiver, pinging with a trilling rhythm as if stuck in a reverberating loop. Maeve stared at the telephone, real fear in her eyes when she heard the strange sounds emanating into the room. “I’m frightened… frightened…” the echo seemed to resonate in her mind. No one else seemed to hear it.
“What’s wrong?” Maeve let the telephone slip from her grasp as if it had burned her hand.
Kelly had a desperate look on his face. “Phase inversion,” he said. “I wonder if they’ve crossed the line yet? Damn, we should have had cameras in the approach tunnel.”
“Phase inversion? Are you certain?” Maeve rushed over, leaving phone receiver dangling over the lip of the desk by its cord.
Kelly was staring at the main console, his mind racing the digital countdown indicator on the upper panel. It was speeding past 15 seconds, the millisecond displays spinning rapidly and giving the impression that time was moving much faster than it should. He had to do something, and quickly. A sudden thought occurred to him as he looked at the pattern buffer. The infusion! If they were moving as planned in the Arch corridor they would have already passed through the infusion. He should have a good signature for both of them in the pattern buffer now, an immense bank of hundreds of thousands of terabytes of computer memory, holding a virtual description, in mathematical terms, of their quantum matrix. He made a lightning fast mental calculation, looking at the reading on the temporal vector range and ciphering in his head. Then he moved, practically knocking Maeve over as he lunged for the vector gradient controls.
He thumbed a switch.
The digital clock passed through eight seconds.
His fingers moved in a blur on the keyboard, eyes glued to the screen. He gave the module the access code to the pattern buffer, and fed the data sample to the core vector guidance unit. Then he opened a protective cover on a side panel and he punched his index finger home, depressing an ominous red button.
“What are you doing?” Maeve blanched when she saw what Kelly had done. “That’s the vector loop!”