exactly to the middle of the station.
“We have to crawl through there,” she ordered.
“No way!”
“Let me rephrase that: Patcher and I will crawl through there. You can stay here, if you want. Alone. Without Patcher’s fusion lamp.”
“Alright, alright.”
They entered the tunnel. While Dwakk was small enough to crawl through rather comfortably and Patcher had the advantage that most maintenance tunnels were normed to its dimensions, Katara became stuck several times. Nevertheless they managed to continue, until they reached a hatch.
“Oh no,” Katara cried. “Not again. We can’t go through there. We have to find another way. Turn around, everyone.”
Dwakk reversed in one swift motion, while Patcher remained completely motionless.
“Turn around, Patcher. We can’t get around you,” Katara repeated her command.
Patcher did not comply. Suddenly it switched off its lamp. It was now completely dark. Neither Dwakk nor Katara could see anything. But they could hear Patcher’s voice. It sounded sad and full of guilt.
“I am sorry. It was not my decision. I was forced to do this. This is the end.”
“What are you talking about, Patcher?” Katara asked.
“The end of my damage assessment. I am terribly sorry. My programming forces me to make a complete damage report on entering a new station. I am sorry it took so long. But this station needs a lot of work. I apologize, if I was unresponsive during the calculations, but compiling the damage report required all my attention. Here is the complete list: 427 damaged terminals, 1 broken containment cell, 248 damaged light modules-”
“Abort!” Katara ordered. “I am not interested in the damage on this station right now.”
“I am sorry. As I mentioned already, I am programmed that way.”
“No need to apologize. You just had us worried for a moment. Are you alright now?”
“I am more than alright! Where should I start? Should I fix the terminals? Or the lights?”
“No, we are not going to repair the whole station. Just scan around and find a way to deactivate this scrambling field.”
“Scans revealed that the scrambling is not intentional. It is a byproduct of the experiment conducted here. A strong magnetic field is located in the middle of the station. I would advise against going any closer.”
“But we need to find out what happened here. Or we will never find our way back,” Katara explained.
“I can link up with a terminal to extract all the log entries. Are you sure I shouldn’t fix all the lights first? It would only take a few weeks.”
“Of course I am sure. Let’s go back to one of the terminals.”
They crawled out of the maintenance tunnel and headed for the next frozen terminal, where Patcher hat to use a cable to connect because of the strong magnetic interference. The process took a few minutes, but after that the robot had access to all the log entries.
“What did they do here?” Katara asked.
“They built a weapon, right? Or a monster even?” Dwakk guessed.
“It may be considered a monster and surely has military uses, but the research done here was purely academic, without any useful application in mind,” Patcher explained. “The task of this station was to create a magnetic monopole. And apparently they succeeded. They did, however, not consider all the side effects of such an object. Apart from the interference with their machines. Above all, they never considered that magnetic monopoles can also occur naturally, only not in our manifold.”
“Of course!” Katara shouted. “That explains what happened here. Where we are.”
“Does it?” Dwakk asked. “What is so special about a magnetic field?”
“It is not any magnetic field. It is a monopole field. A magnetic monopole field. Do you understand?”
Dwakk slowly shook his head.
“It is easy, really,” Katara began to explain. “Normally all magnets come with a positive pole and a negative pole. Once you are far enough away those two cancel out. But here it’s something entirely different. Here we just have one pole, and no matter how far away you go, it will always keep some strength. Naturally, such a pole is attracted to another pole of opposite charge. No matter how far away it is. Even if it is not within our three dimensional space.”
“I don’t really understand. So you say this monopole was lonely and pulled the whole station into another dimension?”
“Well, more or less. Lonely may be the wrong term, and it is not really another dimension. We just move in a spacial direction perpendicular to the x-, the y- and the z-axis.”
Dwakk tried to imagine such a direction but gave up soon. “I think… I think I get it. The lonely magnet pulls us away in a magical direction.”
Katara smiled. “Yes, more or less. That also explains why there are so many Transcannon capsules here. The strong magnetic field must pull them towards this station, when they coincidentally come close to it. Maybe Hexaglass has other magnetic properties, which make this process more likely.”
“So there is no way back? As far as I know we can only move in three different directions, and none of them lead back home. What should we do now?”
“We should start by putting together all the things we found out. Hexaglass seems to be attracted to magnetic monopoles, once it is fired from a Transcannon. There is a magnetic monopole in the middle of the station. To go home we have to move in the… let’s call it negative w-direction. And there should be another magnetic monopole in the positive w-direction, the one the station is attracted to. Any ideas?”
“We need to build a Transcannon. We have to shoot ourselves back into Hilbert Space. Just aim somewhere and hope for the best,” Dwakk proposed.
“I think chances that we hit the right direction by accident are minimal. I am sorry to say that, but this is a stupid idea,” Katara replied.
“No, Dwakk is right,” Patcher said. “The chances that we hit the optimal direction are minimal. But as long as we acquire any velocity in the negative w-direction it is only a matter of time until we arrive back home.”
“I am right?” Dwakk asked, surprised.
“I think you are,” Katara admitted. “All we have to do is reverse the polarity of the Hexaglass, so that we are pushed away from the poles. Away from the poles means back home.”
“But how do we stop? Wouldn’t we continue to fly in that direction forever?”
“Good point. But I think there might be a solution to this. The waste you transported in the capsules, it is explosive, right?”
“I guess.”
“Good. In that case I have a plan. But I need all your help.”
“What should I do?” Dwakk asked enthusiastically.
Katara thought about it for a moment. “Well, to be honest, I just need Patcher’s help.”
“You really did it!” Dwakk said, surprised. “You built a working Transcannon. Within a few hours.”
“Well, Patcher helped a lot. And there was a lot of good material on the station. However, this cannon will only last for one shot, so no test runs.”
“Test runs are for cowards anyways,” Dwakk said with a smile on his face. “Is the shuttle ready?”
“Nearly. Patcher currently glues the last waste capsules to the hull. Reversing the polarity wasn’t even that difficult. Boarding will begin shortly.”
Dwakk took a close look at the new shuttle. It was now stripped of all Hexaglass reinforcements but had lots and lots of Hexaglass capsules mounted on it. Somehow it looked like a shuttle infected with a terrible disease, but Dwakk was ready to board anything that promised to bring him home.
“Preflight check will be quick, we only have two buttons on this thing,” Katara noted. “And neither of them can be tested in any way.”
“Perfect, that means we can go home even quicker. I’m ready,” Dwakk said.
“Good, everyone is on board. Sorry for the lack of seatbelts. Or seats for that matter. Everyone, keep looki
ng outside. As soon as there is any sign of a star we have to initiate the deceleration maneuver. Ready?”
Patcher hesitated. “I think we should do more tests. Should I check the door opening mechanism one more time? Maybe a couple of times even?”
“Go!” Dwakk shouted and hit the start button.
The shuttle accelerated through the barrel of the Transcannon and soon the station vanished.
“That must mean we are moving in the right direction,” Dwakk said, relieved.
“Well, it just means we move in the w-direction. We can only be sure once we see stars.”
Outside, everything was black. No stars, no station, no capsules, nothing.
“Did we miss it?” Dwakk asked.
“I have no idea,” Katara confessed. “There is no way to determine our velocity without a point of reference. Just keep your eyes open.”
Suddenly a bright light flooded the shuttle.
“Is this a star? Are we back in Hilbert Space?” Dwakk asked.
“I don’t know what it is. But it’s better than complete emptiness. I’m going to break now. Grab onto something.”
“There is nothing to grab onto!” Dwakk screamed, but Katara had already activated the break. The, in the widest sense of the word, ‘controlled’ explosion of the waste capsules propelled them and all the Hexaglass components away from the shuttle and Dwakk face first towards the windscreen. Soon after, the Hexaglass merrily moved further into the w-direction, seemingly vanishing.
“That’s a star! We did it! We are home!” Dwakk shouted happily.
Patcher scanned the area and came to the conclusion that they were far away from home, but at least in the