Chapter Eight
Pressurized
I felt the sweat that was beaded up on my forehead gather into a drop and slip down into my eye. It burned and I had to blink my way past it, as my hands were locked in readiness to do something.
I don’t know what as it wasn’t time for me to do anything yet.
If I was sweating, then Torren beside of me was likely to be as well. I tore my eyes off the screens in front of us and the treacherous ocean depths that they portrayed all around us.
Glancing at Torren I could see he was worse off than even I was. He was constantly blinking, with sweat flicking off of his eyelashes.
I reached for a cloth and leaning over I wiped at the sweat on his forehead without blocking his view.
“Thanks!” He gritted out tersely his focus on the screen and the controls in his hands.
My eyes were drawn back to the enthralling, but deadly view of what was taking place around the vessel. An hour earlier Torren had submerged the vessel in the underground chamber and moved it out through a narrow underwater cavern that first led downward and then upward.
It had been totally dark within the cavern except for the light cast off by the lights on the exterior of the vessel, which had done a good job at illuminating the way before us. Now we were out of the cavern and into the small boulder strewn bay.
Following the course charted for him Torren navigated the vessel in and around the sharp rocks that projected up from the sea floor everywhere. On the screen in front of Torren there was a view of our way forward with and indicator line that showed the vessels suggested navigation course through the maze of rocks.
Auto pilot couldn’t be used because of the unpredictableness of underwater currents and changes to the topography. Much could change in seven hundred years, but surprisingly little seemed to have.
Torren was doing an excellent job of keeping the little flashing indicator light that represented us on or near the plotted line charted out by the vessel’s navigation control.
As long as the plotted line that snaked in and around obstructions was green and the vertical indicator line was blue we were fine. A couple of times one or both of the lines had flashed yellow in warning and Torren had to adjust our position either up or down or side to side more heavily.
Suddenly the whole vessel abruptly jolted sideways and indicator alarms sounded loudly throughout the ship. Torren’s screen showed red lines and he valiantly tried to bring the vessel back on course, but something was causing resistance to his efforts!
He jammed his foot down on a lever on the floor and the whole vessel lurched forward violently towards a wall of solid rock ahead of us. He seemed to regain some steering control and with a shudder that rocked the vessel, we pulled free of the strong underwater current that we had been caught up in, but we were now plunging ahead toward the rock wall.
Torren let off on the power and steered madly away from the looming wall of rock. The rocks grew closer and closer until they filled the screen, but Torren managed to turn the vessel and then giving it more power he pulled away from the rocks and back onto our charted course.
As the red line turned back to green and the alarms stopped ringing I managed to force myself to breathe again.
Larc had been standing behind Torren the whole time and now he patted him encouragingly on the shoulder. Within a couple more minutes we were out of the rocks and headed out into the ocean that opened up deeper before us.
The auto pilot function clicked on and the vessel picked up speed, as it headed out toward the beacon array further out in a deeper spot in the ocean. Soon it would be my turn.
Torren leaned back in his seat and pried his fingers off of the oddly shaped wheel in his hands.
The cool modulated voice of some woman from the distant past came out over the vessel’s sound system, “Approaching transferral zone. All crew members and passengers must return to their seats and fasten safety harnesses. Secure loose items aboard ship. Transferral zone in two minutes.”
I started fastening my harness on. My fingers were shaking so badly it was hard to get the clips pushed into their slots. Orhanin who sat on my other side reached across and helped me without saying a word.
I nodded my thanks embarrassed by my jitteriness.
Larc spoke out in a commanding tone, “Talaric, put on your harness.”
“I’ll ride it out. I don’t like being restrained.”
No kidding I thought to myself. That pretty much described his philosophical approach to life in general.
Larc looked sternly at him for a moment, but then gave up.
The two minutes passed by fast. Ahead of us the beacon array was the only thing that could be clearly seen on the ocean floor, as it was brightly lit up in the darkness all around us.
The modulated voice piped up again, “We have reached the transferral zone. Initializing transferral procedure.”
The nose of the vessel started pointing upward to face at the sky somewhere far above us. Abby had not mentioned anything about this vertical aspect of my job!
I breathed out, “Oh God!” even as I heard Talaric scrambling to get into his harness.
Within a minute the vessel was pointing straight up at the ocean’s surface and moving sideways to position directly over the beacon array. When the vessel was over the array it spun slightly around and seemed to click into place.
We were locked into place on the beacon array so as to keep us from being sucked up the electro stream to soon.
“Vessel ready for transferral. Please select desired coordinates and initiate electro stream transferral.”
I swallowed hard and reached my hand out and up towards the screen in front of me. I started dragging my finger on the surface of the screen, as I leafed down through menus of options, just as I had practiced in my simulations with Abby.
Now for the big test to see whether or not attempting the mission was even possible.
I accessed the appropriate file and scrolled down the list of coordinates to various other worlds in the registry, until I found the one I wanted at the bottom of the list. Most of the coordinates I had scrolled down through had red flashing icons beside them, which indicated one or more of three possible things.
The beacon array on that world was damaged or missing, there wasn’t enough water to complete transferral safely, or the world was not safe to visit either environmentally or because of enemy influence.
The icon for Earth was green. The mission was a go, which I informed Larc of.
We hadn’t known until this moment whether or not Earth was still reachable, as Abby could not validate any information from the beacon array from the underground chamber.
Selecting Earth as our destination brought up another screen that asked for the initialization of the voyage. I had to go down a series of checks that verified that the ship was fit for electro stream travel. All the checks came back positive.
The green button that initialized the charged energy beam lit up before me. I pushed it down. The moment after I pushed it the beaming array folded out from around the vessel to form the framework of a circle that encompassed the vessel at its widest point.
The button began to flash with green light. I hesitated in pushing it again one more time.
“Go ahead Zevin. Push it and may God help us!” Larc intoned deeply.
I pushed it down.
A whirling noise began to sound out louder as the outboard structure that had folded out from the vessel began to spin faster and faster around the outside hull, until the whole vessel pulsated with the vibration of its turbulence. All the vessels exterior lights, as well as those in the vessel went off, except for the lights cast off from our screen displays.
Very frightening to say the least.
Abby needed to write a better training manual for the next bunch of suckers lined up to commit suicide.
Suddenly a bright golden color intermixed with green streaked upwards through the water to the heavens above. The water around us became turbulent, as it was sucked up into the vacuum being caused by the energy particle beam’s path into space.
On the display in front of me there was a long bar with a slow moving green line on it. It was the indicator for showing how much seawater was still needed for the voyage.
Abby had said to give a good five count even after the bar reached full capacity. It was a good thing to have a little extra water, but not too much.
I could see that the ocean around us had turned into a swirling whirlpool of turbulence, as water was sucked into the vortex faster than the ocean could immediately refill.
The bar was full and I counted to five. At the count of five I hit the green button once more.
The vessel unlocked from the beacon array and shot upwards with greater velocity than I had ever experienced before in my life. It felt as if the skin of my face was being blown inward and I practically couldn’t breathe.
We were pressed deeply back into our seats, as we surged upward through the column of sparking color.
Dimly I thought I saw a bluish color beyond the walls of energy surrounding us and then it briefly turned red and then black. It stayed black and the feeling of being glued to our seats dissipated rapidly and the vessel leveled out and I could have sworn we weren’t moving at all, but the indicators for travel said otherwise.
The cool voice intoned once more, “Transferral successfully initialized. Expected arrival at destination, Earth in three days, four hours, fifty seven minutes, and sixteen seconds. It is now safe to remove safety harnesses.”
The lights came back on as she finished talking. Everything was on automatic control now in terms of the vessel’s operation. I could relax now or at least try to.
Something was being handed to me; it was Torren holding the same cloth I had used on him.
“Thanks!” I said mopping away at my face.
“Don’t mention it.”
We both sat back in our seats entirely exhausted from the experience we had just gone through.
Roric unknown to the men on the vessel had watched the entire training process take place with Krista by his side on a special display that Abby had set up for them.
When the vessel had left the underground chamber he and Krista had come back up to their room on the cliff top and watched from their balcony out toward the distant ocean and waited.
The transferral beam was clearly visible even at such a distance with several low mountains in their way of viewing the ocean.
The beam of golden green light had seemed to reach forever up into the sky. When it began disappearing from the ground up they both knew that the ship was on its way into space and God willing, Earth.
Krista watched as she stood within the shelter of her husband’s arms. Big tears fell down her cheeks; as she witnessed the column of light disappear from view upwards into the heavens.
She’d just perhaps seen her two sons for the last time. When the light was gone she turned and sobbed against Roric’s chest, as his tears wetted her hair.
Roric continued staring up into the sky hoping against hope for the safe return of his sons and the mission to be a success, but he couldn’t shake the despair he felt of that never happening.
I came to the conclusion by about the second day of our voyage that life on a vessel traveling through space could be unbelievably boring. I was even starting to look forward to landing, because it meant that we would get off this miserable ship, with all its brightly lit technology that I had come to loath.
I was walking back towards the main control room in search of somebody to talk to about something, anything in order to kill the time, when alarm bells went off all over the place, as the hallway filled with red flashing lights.
I ran the rest of the way to the control room.
What was going on?
Several of the others were already in the control room.
Ileyano turned away from a screen to yell to the rest of us, “It says we have a coolant leak and that we need to redirect down another pathway! The redirect valves are under the floor over there!” He said pointing, as he began to run towards the spot.
There was a sound of an explosion followed by the hissing of steam, as a pipe running overhead burst and fell crashing down onto Ileyano’s head. He crumbled to the floor as steam vented into the room.
Talaric and Larc pulled the unconscious Ileyano out of the worst of the steam pouring into the room, even as I ran for the floor panel that Ileyano had indicated.
Thanic, who was Ileyanos understudy beat me to it. Throwing the cover back we starred blank faced into the space that was revealed.
There were four pipes with four differently colored shut off valve handles. Blue, green, yellow, and red.
“Which one is it Thanic?”
“I don’t know! Abby never showed me!”
I grabbed the green handle and started to pull it, but Thanic stopped me.
“I think its two levers at once! Turn the red one as I turn the blue one!”
I released the green handle and did as Thanic said. We turned the valves in unison and the steam stopped pouring into the room. Moments later the sirens went off followed by the warning lights. Then the annoying monotone voice of the vessel broke into the stillness of the room that was punctuated by our heavy breathing.
“Coolant successfully rerouted. Coolant levels back to normal.”
I looked across at Thanic and he back at me.
“How did you know it was two valves?” I asked.
A slight grin popped out on his face, “Steams gotta go somewhere and if reds usually hot then blue is usually cold. A fair exchange right?”
I dropped my head down laughing hysterically.
I hoped space travel never got this exiting again! I would take the boringness of space travel over this kind of experience any day.
The rest of the journey went by without any further incident. Ileyano had not woken up yet and we were monitoring him closely, but there was little we could do for him. He was already secured to the bed in his quarters, as we began preparation for landing.
What awaited us no one knew, but it probably wasn’t going to be good. My thoughts were interrupted by the ship’s voice letting us know that arrival was imminent and that we should fasten our safety harnesses.
Already ahead of you lady.
The only part of landing I was responsible for was to deactivate the charged energy beam moments before we entered the water. If I waited too long the ship would crash into the ocean floor and the beacon array.
The vessel had been slowing down in speed for the last several hours so it shouldn’t be too difficult should it?
I was quaking inside at the prospect, as my hand hovered near the button that would shut the beam off. I glanced over at Torren and it made me feel better. He looked as uptight as I felt as he sat there gripping the wheel. And then things got worse.
We had taken off vertically and apparently that was how we landed too, only now we faced down and hung against our safety harnesses. With the nose of the vessel straight down and the conscious speed of the vessel increasing I glanced over again at Torren and he at me, as we gave each other a look of shared misery.
I looked back at my screen and the rapidly decreasing increments of time and got ready to hit the button. I couldn’t do it too soon or the vessel would smack into the hard surface of the water and shatter.
I had no way of knowing when we were in the water other than relying on the instruments in front of me. The clock struck zero and I hit the button.
I had probably broken it, because I had hit it so hard.
The charged beam ahead of us started to break up and I could tell that we were in the water, as it started to pour in and around us shaking the vessel. The beam generators that had encircled the ship folded back inside the vessel, as the water became rough.
Torren engaged the biplanes. As the two side fins pulled out from the sides of the vessel they gave more resistance to the downward momentum of the vessel headed for the seafloor.
Our speed decreased rapidly, but it was a rough time, as the vessel shook violently. Torren was able to pull us up out of our decline onto an even plain.
We had landed and looking around the control room I saw no water venting into the vessel so we were good.
Larc got out of his restraints and came up behind Torren and I, “Great job you two! Alright Corrigan what do you have for me?”
Corrigan turned from the display in front of him, “The scans are complete Sir. The ship’s analysis shows only minor changes from the last file reading of the ancestor’s departure from Earth. The condition of the landmasses appear to be remarkably similar with the earlier record. We are roughly two hundred miles offshore of the continent near the beacon array location.”
“Okay then, Torren put us on a course for that land mass. We’ll get in and then get out fast and be home before any of us know it.” Larc said confidently.