“I managed to pick up a few trace elements before the sensors simply cut out on me entirely,” said Xy. “Based on it, I certainly wouldn’t recommend an EVA. I’m reading cardiotoxins, neurotoxins, dermatoneurotoxins, myotoxins, nephrotoxins…”
“The repeated use of the word ‘toxins’ would seem to be the tip-off, wouldn’t it,” said Calhoun grimly.
“Yes, sir, it would. I don’t even want to think what it would do to an EVA suit.”
“But what’s it doing to our hull? Morgan, can you…” He paused. “I don’t quite know how to say this. Can you feel anything? On the outside of the ship, I mean. I know you’re in the central computer, but—”
“I can’t feel anything out there in the tactile sense, Captain,” Morgan said slowly, as if trying to figure out the best way to explain the inexplicable. “But I can send electrical impulses through parts of the ship’s hull in a manner not entirely dissimilar from a nervous system. It gives me sensations of pressure, basic environmental data and such. I’m doing it right now, since I thought it a safe assumption that—if you asked—you’d want it done.”
“All right then,” said Calhoun. “How long will it take you to—”
“It’s instantaneous,” she said. Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully and she brushed a lock of her hair from her face. Calhoun thought both of those gestures to be a bit amusing. After all, she was a computer entity and didn’t really need to “think” at all. Her thought processes were indeed, as she said, instantaneous. Nor did she need to make any sort of physical gesture to adjust her appearance. She simply needed to think and the change would happen immediately. But she retained enough of her humanity that she still felt compelled to at least look like she was giving something some thought and display those little human gestures such as primping.
“It’s definitely not the fluidic space that the U.S.S. Voyager encountered. I just compared the readings from their own science surveys,” she reported. “Its mass is much thicker than that. It’s…well, it’s gelatinous.”
“Gelatinous? Okay…look, I know you don’t have much to work with. But can we at least get a feel for what’s out there? I mean, isn’t it possible that we haven’t gone anywhere at all? That we’re actually inside some sort of…I don’t know. Enclosure? Some sort of force bubble created by whatever the hell that was?”
“An enclosure within our own galaxy? It’s possible, yes,” admitted Xy. “Then again, it is possible, as I suggested earlier, that we’re in another universe entirely. Or perhaps some sort of pocket universe, an anomaly situated between different planes of existence. But as long as our sensors aren’t functioning, I can’t determine precisely. Still…perhaps I can get us a rough idea of the size of what we’re dealing with.”
“How?”
“I can use the sonar array dish to generate small-amplitude adiabatic oscillations. If they encounter boundaries, obstructions and such, they will rebound from whatever they strike and be detectable to us if we listen for their reflection. If they don’t return, we know that we’ve got some serious distance around us. Perhaps enough to indicate that we truly are in another galaxy or even universe of some sort. If they do return, we can determine the distance they traveled by measuring the time of the emission of the pulse to our reception of it. We might even be able to construct wave images of whatever it was they ran into. Naturally if we were dealing with deep space, such an alternative to sensors would be fruitless, because there’s no air for sound waves to travel upon. But in this gelatinous mess, it should be feasible.”
“That’s very ingenious,” said Calhoun. “Do you really think it will work?”
“It worked several hundred years ago,” Morgan pointed out, “back when they called it ‘sound navigation and ranging’…or, for short—”
“Sonar. Oh. Right.” Xy looked slightly crestfallen. “That would be sonar, wouldn’t it.”
“Don’t feel bad, Xy,” Burgoyne said consolingly. “Nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel every now and then.”
“Very well, then. Do it,” Calhoun ordered.
“Kebron,” said Xy, moving toward the Brikar, “I’ll need to do this through tactical…”
“Got it.” Kebron didn’t nod, since he effectively had no neck. He stepped back and allowed Xy to step in and start programming the sensor dish for its newly created purpose.
“Morgan,” said Calhoun, as Xy continued his preparations, “do you think you can handle both ops and conn until Tania’s back at her post?”
“Of course, Captain.” Morgan was speaking matter-of-factly, without any trace of boasting. “In point of fact, since I’m effectively the computer system, I could run this entire vessel all by myself.”
“That’s a great idea, Morgan, because having a single computer mind running an entire space vessel…nothing bad has ever happened as a result of that situation.”
She frowned. “That was sarcasm, wasn’t it.”
“Just a touch.”
“Oscillation activated, Captain,” said Xy. “Generating full-radius scan.”
“Excellent. Engine status?”
“We have both warp drive and ion drive available, Captain,” said Morgan.
“Can we move through this…whatever it is?” asked Calhoun.
“We can, yes,” said Burgoyne. “But we shouldn’t move at anything more than sublight speed.”
“Why not?”
“It would be inadvisable.”
“I’m not following, Burgy,” said Calhoun.
“Captain…light speed functions because we essentially slip into warp space while simultaneously bending a bubble of subspace around us. That’s why we don’t become bogged down in Einsteinian paradox. It’s also why warp speed has been having environmental consequences: because it causes wear and tear on the very fabric of space and time itself.”
“So?”
“Oh dear,” Morgan spoke up, and now Xy was nodding as well. “I see the problem.”
“Yes, so do I,” said Xy.
“Excellent, then,” Calhoun said, slapping his palms on the armrests of his chair as if the matter was settled. “As long as everyone else understands, I don’t see why it’s remotely necessary that the captain be right there along with everyone else…”
“The problem, Captain, is that we don’t know where we are,” said Burgoyne. “Subspace, warp space, or any damned space in between. Plus Xy has given us reason to believe that some aspects of the laws of physics might not function in the way that we’re accustomed. If that’s the case and we activate the warp engines…”
“We’re taking the chance that we could shred everything around us,” said Morgan. “Not only could we destroy our surroundings, but we could theoretically initiate a chain reaction that would work its way through every plane of existence and destroy time and space—the very universe—itself.”
Calhoun took this tidbit in. “Okay, yes,” he admitted, “I would tend to classify that as ‘inadvisable.’ Good judgment call. So we proceed on impulse, if we’re to proceed at all, is that it? Going to take us a long time to get anywhere. Then again, since we haven’t the faintest idea where we’re going, I suppose we’re not in all that much of a rush. I mean, Kalinda is still a prisoner on Priatia, and the incendiary political situation in the New Thallonian Protectorate threatens to plunge the entire territory into civil war. But what’s a massive body count between friends?”
There was silence from the rest of the bridge.
“People,” he continued, “I have no desire to bring the entirety of the multiverse crashing down upon our heads. But neither do I want to pretend that we don’t have some serious time pressure at work. We need to figure out what happened, and how to reverse it, and we need to do it soon…before there’s no longer a Thallonian space of any sort to get back to.”