“What do you mean?”
Green pointed at a yellow line on the floor, then at a ladder, which appeared to be mounted horizontally along the wall. The engineer took a concentrate bar from his pocket and threw it into the room. As the bar flew over the yellow line it didn’t fall down, but accelerated upward towards the opposite wall, as if magnetically attracted by it.
“I see. Thanks,” Jeff said. Clearly the gravitational vector had changed yet again.
He crossed the threshold tentatively, then grabbed the nearest rung of the wall-mounted ladder with both hands. Then he took another step forward. His legs were suddenly flung upward. He was only able to hold onto the rung with great difficulty, and his feet slammed into the ladder.
His coordinate system had changed from one moment to the next. The floor had turned into the wall, and the opposite wall into the floor, at least fifty feet below him. If Green hadn’t warned him, he would have fallen to his death.
“Watch out! You have to be really careful here,” he warned the others.
A cylindrical-shaped corridor led out of the small room and was so narrow that Jeff had to crawl down it. As he squeezed his way along it, he was repeatedly pushed to the side. It took him a moment to realize the direction of gravity was changing again. After a few feet, he looked back and saw Shorty bringing up the rear, crawling along the ceiling of the corridor. He immediately felt dizzy, and focused on looking ahead before he was actually sick. The ceiling had now turned into the floor.
He forced himself to continue. Again and again, in his mind’s eye, he saw his father burning alive. And every second his mind wasn’t overwhelmed by this image, the same questions kept popping up: How had his father gotten here? Had it really been his father, or just a deceptively similar illusion created by this nightmarish ship?
He reached a closed hatch and waited a moment for the others to catch up before opening it. Like an iris diaphragm, the individual sections of the hatch disappeared radially into the wall. He blinked as he was dazzled by a bright blue light.
Shit! A light alien!
He rolled to the side and pulled his pistol from his holster.
But then he realized the light was simply emanating from the new room. He clambered out of the tunnel and stood up. Except for the cavitys, it was the first illuminated room since leaving their quarters; the first sign that here, in the center of the ship, something was different. The room was spacious, like a warehouse. But Jeff couldn’t see the source of the light, it seemed to be coming from every direction at once. The walls were white and smooth, with narrow, rectangular hatches embedded on the left- and right-hand sides.
He helped to pull the others out of the tunnel, and noticed that Joanne looked worse than ever. He wondered if they should set up a camp for the night here, but he wanted to find an entrance to the central part of the ship. Then they could have a rest before going any further.
“Joanne, how are you feeling?”
She coughed slightly, shaking her head as if it might dispel her drowsiness. “I feel dizzy. Like I drank a couple of glasses of champagne. But I’m OK.”
“Sure?”
Instead of answering, Joanne studied her handheld. “We can go through either of the hatches. They both lead directly to the center of the ship—which is only few feet away from here.”
Jeff nodded. “OK.” He chose the hatch on the right and headed straight for it. The others followed and took up position behind him.
He reached out a finger, but didn’t speak. Turning around, he studied the faces of his shipmates. Joanne looked dazed; Mac and Shorty were clearly exhausted; Green’s eyes were fixed on the ground; and Castle appeared tense. Somehow, he felt he ought to say something and took a deep breath.
“We’ve reached our destination. We’ve nearly made it to the center of the ship. I don’t know what’s behind this door, but I’m sure of one thing. If we’re going to find a way to get back home, the answers to our questions will be behind this door.” He hesitated. “In any case, I want to thank you for following me here.”
Joanne nodded tiredly. Mac looked him in the eyes, hesitated a moment, then nodded too. The others didn’t react, and just waited.
Jeff took another deep breath and pushed the button next to the hatch. He heard the inner hatch closing behind them.
Then a loud alarm tone sounded from the loudspeaker of his helmet. Several indicator lights on his neck console flipped to red and he heard a cracking sound in his ears.
“Shit!” Castle screamed.
The emergency release on Jeff’s helmet activated. The molded plastic cover shot out of his neck, wrapped itself around his head and locked with the ring round his neck.
Within seconds, the air had been sucked out of the room, creating a vacuum. The lights flickered briefly. If they hadn’t activated their suits in advance, they would have all been dead by now. In front of Jeff, the hatch went up, revealing a narrow staircase illuminated by strips on the walls that emitted a pale white light.
Jeff took a deep breath and looked around. His shipmates all had the plastic visors of their helmets pulled down in front of their faces.
“Lucky again,” Green said laconically.
“Let’s go,” Joanne said.
Jeff began to climb the stairs. They led up just a few feet. One step at a time, Jeff climbed the stairs until he was standing on a wide platform.
What a view!
“Oh my God!” Castle said.
The platform was curved and made of pale-gray metal. Jeff felt like he was inside a huge bowl or a giant balloon. The strangest thing, however, was the enormous dark-gray sphere hovering above them, which took up almost the entire sky. It was covered in a regular pattern of fine black lines. Here and there on its surface were faint dots of lights and black areas. Some of them looked like they might be doorways.
“What the hell…?” Mac whispered.
“What is that? I don’t get it! What are we looking at?” Shorty ogled the hovering orb.
“That,” Joanne began, “is the spherical center of the ship.”
“What?” Mac was confused. “Above us? But…” He trailed off.
Jeff understood, although it was completely unintuitive. “They work with artificial gravity. We’ve seen that already. There is no direct access to the central area. They’ve separated it from the surrounding central area of the ship with a vacuum.
“Let me get this straight,” Shorty said. “That huge sphere above us is the epicenter?”
“Yup.”
It really was breathtaking. The whole orb was bathed in a soft light. The horizon of the rising floor merged with the outer shell of the epicenter, which was perhaps twenty or thirty miles away.
“How can it just float there like that?” Mac pondered.
“It’s probably gravimetrically coupled,” Castle replied.
“What?” Jeff asked.
“Imagine a steel ball suspended from metal springs,” the weapons expert explained.
“And?” Mac asked impatiently.
“Replace the metal springs with gravitational fields.”
Jeff could picture it.
“How far away is it?” Shorty asked.
“Almost exactly six miles,” Green said.
“How do you know that?”
“You can calculate it from the angles,” he replied. “If you take the tangent from the big—”
“OK, OK,” Shorty gave a dismissive wave. “Forget it.”
“I’m wondering something completely different,” Castle said.
“Yup,” Jeff nodded. “How do we get across?”
“The gravity is too strong for the jets on our spacesuits,” Joanne said.
Jeff thought feverishly, but couldn’t come up with a solution. Was their long journey going to end here? Had it all been for nothing?