Beyond the Event Horizon

  BEYOND THE EVENT HORIZON

  episode one

  by

  Albert Sartison

  Published by Albert Sartison at Smashwords

  Copyright 2015 Albert Sartison

  1.00

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  The events of this book continue the story begun in “THE CONTACT” and follow on immediately from the end of the previous book. “BEYOND THE EVENT HORIZON” can be read as a stand-alone story, although certain nuances of the plot will not be understood if you do not know the preceding events.

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  Albert Sartison (Goodreads)

  Nature creates ability; luck provides it with opportunity.

  François de La Rochefoucauld

  Prologue

  In 2177, close to the Solar System, scientists discover a source of disturbance to the space-time continuum: radiating gravity waves that did not appear to have the signature of those caused by natural processes.

  On the basis of the approximate distance to the source and the intensity of the waves generated, its mass ought to be compatible with the size of a binary star and exert a strong influence on the movement of the planets in the Solar System. However, such a system of heavenly bodies is not known to exist.

  Attempts to detect the mysterious object with the aid of Earth-based observatories and orbital telescopes are unsuccessful, but astronomers succeed in determining the location of the anomaly. Its distance from the Sun is estimated to be six light hours, which is within the range of high-speed spacecraft. A research expedition is being equipped to go to its location...

  1

  By the evening of the day of departure, the weather was already beginning to deteriorate. When Steve left the house and got into a taxi, the sky was shrouded in a light mist, changing its colour from dark blue to milky. When he reached the spaceport an hour later, bundled his things together and walked towards the terminal entrance, there were sparse rain clouds overhead.

  All those taking part in the expedition were sitting in their seats in a small private conference hall. As he entered, Steve saw dozens of faces turn towards the sound of the door opening. Since working on the ‘Dawn’ project, he had got more used to such situations and had become more relaxed about facing people he didn’t know. Dozens of pairs of unfamiliar eyes directed towards him no longer brought on wobbly knees and a dry mouth as they had done before.

  Also, he had now taken his finals. As soon as Shelby had finished checking and marking his work, Steve would no longer be a student, but a fully-fledged adult. An astrophysics specialist. Since the assessment was no more than a formality, it was time to conduct himself accordingly and not look up to his more senior colleagues from below, but consider them his equals.

  Steve nodded to them in greeting and looked round for an empty seat. He started by looking along the back rows, but after thinking about it for a second, looked further forward, closer to the podium. The closer to the speaker, the easier it was to take in what was said. Steve knew this from his experience of lectures at university.

  Under the gaze of those present, he stepped forward and sat in the front row. It was better that way. He looked to either side. On his right was a gloomy-looking elderly man working away on his tablet. When Steve had approached the seat next to him, he hadn’t even given him a glance, but just took his coat off the seat irritably. To his left, a little further away, was a group of people, clearly scientists, who obviously already knew each other. They were quietly discussing something. Clive was sitting a little further along the same row. They looked at each other, and Steve acknowledged him with a brief nod.

  A voice suddenly rang out from the stage. “Greetings, team!”

  Everyone stopped talking and turned their heads to the front. Once satisfied that he had the attention of his audience, the speaker continued.

  “Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Kimble, and I have the honour of being the captain of our expedition ship.”

  Compared to the others, Steve, as a former participant in the ‘Dawn’ project, knew more about the expedition, so he already knew the captain’s name. But this was the first time he had seen him in the flesh. The captain’s appearance radiated the confidence typical of all ships’ captains.

  “Our route takes us beyond the limits of assimilated space,” continued Kimble in a confident voice. “This makes our expedition the first of its kind, taking us far beyond the orbits of the planets.”

  The captain switched on the screen behind him to show images of the Solar System.

  “If you look from the Earth’s viewpoint, our target is roughly in the direction of Mars, but at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic. This will mean that after only a few days of travel, we shall be far away from our entire space transport infrastructure, and should unforeseen circumstances arise, we will have no-one to rely on but ourselves.

  “I am not saying this to arouse fear. But each member of the team must realise that the expedition has to be taken seriously; we can’t expect help from anyone. And now please proceed to the exit. We will be taking off immediately, and the shuttle is already waiting for us. I’ll tell you the rest of the details on board the ship.”

  Steve, who had just made himself comfortable in expectation of a long and detailed explanation, looked surprised as he had to stand up and make his way to the exit with the others. That was probably the shortest briefing he had ever attended. It was clear that the captain was no lover of long speeches.

  On his way out, Steve slowed down. When Clive caught up with him, he again nodded in greeting.

  “Well, how did you find the briefing?”

  Clive looked discontented.

  “I don’t understand why we had to assemble in the hall. We all know where we’re going anyway.”

  “Perhaps just so that everyone knows who their captain is.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” said Clive in a loud voice, not in the least concerned that the captain himself might hear him.

  Steve just smiled. Clive was being his usual self. Previously, Clive’s awkward socialising skills used to irritate him, but he found them rather amusing now. Perhaps Steve was beginning to grow up...

  Outside, the weather had finally broken. The spaceport field greeted them with pouring rain, lightning and deafening thunder. A strong wind blew cold spray into their faces, and although the bus was waiting for them under a small shelter, giving some protection to the face, it meant their feet got wet through almost instantly.

  The bus closed its doors with a hissing noise and set off immediately. The sound of its powerful electric motor was barely audible against the noise of the rain beating down on the roof. With every gust of wind, water lashed against the windows as if someone was amusing himself by spraying the bus with a hose, its valve fully open.

  It was clearly not flying weather, and Steve looked around him in alarm. The dense rain prevented him seeing very far, but as far as he could make out, there was no other movement in the spaceport. The bus, rocked by the strong wind, passed long rows of parked tankers, their lights off.

  Fifteen
or twenty minutes later, the bus left the field in front of the terminal and was now passing between launch pads. They were weakly illuminated, and it seemed that most flights had been cancelled. Those ships that had not managed to land before the onset of the bad weather were awaiting the end of the storm in orbit. Nor were any launches taking place.

  The wind was so strong that even the space elevator was not running. As they passed, its cables stretching up into the sky were barely visible in the glare of the floodlights. They were rocking considerably, despite being thick and under strong tension.

  Steve got up from his seat to talk to the captain. The bus was going at quite a speed, so it wasn’t easy to keep his balance. He staggered up to the front where Kimble was sitting, busy with his tablet.

  “Sir, why are we in such a hurry? I thought lift-off was scheduled for five in the morning,” said Steve, raising his voice to make himself heard over the sound of the wind and rain outside. Gusts of cold air were blowing into the bus through a slightly-open hatch in the ceiling. The larger drops were trapped by filters, but fine spray still found its way in. Jets of wet air were beating right into the captain’s face, but he seemed to be enjoying it.

  “The plans have changed. I’ll explain everything on board the ship,” he answered curtly, making it known by his manner that he had no desire to discuss the subject with every member of the team individually.

  Steve said nothing, but looked out through the windscreen. Nothing could be seen apart from the cat’s eyes in the asphalt.

  “But won’t it be difficult to take off in this weather?” he asked.

  “I’ve taken off in worse weather than this. It will rock a bit at first, but nothing to worry about,” said Kimble to allay his fears.

  “Taken off? I thought you were the captain of a large cargo ship,” said Steve, rather surprised.

  Large cargo ships, as a rule, transported ore from the asteroids and were so big that they never landed on the surface of a planet. They unloaded in orbit.

  “Even I was young once, Steve,” said the captain, smiling.

  “Forgive me, sir, but non-flying weather has always been non-flying weather.”

  “So it has, but no-one ever told us about it in the SSS,” replied Kimble as if to himself, looking at the screen of his tablet. Glancing back at Steve, he said, “Everything will be OK.”

  The trip had already lasted at least half an hour and they had still not reached their launch pad. Steve had not realised that the spaceport was so huge. The glare of powerful floodlights was soon visible in the distance. It seemed they had finally reached the shuttle that was to deliver the team to their ship awaiting them in low orbit.

  The bus slowed down gradually, and the light became brighter and brighter then suddenly disappeared, leaving a few floodlights illuminating a launch pad with a squat shuttle mounted on it.

  Steve discovered to his surprise that what awaited them was not a civil ship but a military one. Quite small, squat, streamlined, predator-like – it had already opened the entrance under its belly, from which a red light was emanating. The powerful engine nozzles suspended above it looked significantly larger than those of civilian ships of the same size.

  The bus drove as close to the shuttle as it could, then finally stopped. Steve was sitting next to the door, so was the first to leave the passenger cabin and come under direct bombardment from the cold rain. The water didn’t just fall from above, it beat into his face from all sides, even from below, bouncing up under his untucked shirt and running in a cold stream down his stomach.

  Steve ran for the shuttle as fast as he could. You might think that the faster you run, the less wet you get, but in such rain, it makes no difference. His clothes were soaked through the second he left the bus.

  The interior of the shuttle was quite spartan. Everything was functional, with no concern for either convenience or comfort. Steve hadn’t expected anything else. The wide entrance led into something like a cargo hold, which, unlike civilian shuttles, had two rows of seats for spaceborne troops, their backs to the walls. Further on there were illuminated racks for weapons, which now stood empty. Further on still, the compartment narrowed, ending in a door to the cockpit. Unlike the space for passengers, the cockpit had narrow windows, their lower edges roughly at shoulder level. All the lighting above was red, but looking down, there were a vast number of lights of every possible colour. The two pilots were already strapped into their seats, chatting to each other.

  One of them, hearing Steve’s footsteps, turned round and took a quick glance at him. Steve, who was looking round the interior of the cockpit with interest, met his eyes. He nodded in greeting, but the pilot simply turned back, ignoring the gesture. Oh well, armies have their own ways of doing things. Not so much formal courtesy, but, on the other hand, more respect when things got serious.

  After shaking the water off his clothes and wiping his face with his sleeve, Steve went further into the lounge and sat down on one of the seats. He found and fastened his seatbelt and lowered the stabilising bar, which clicked into place. Cushions immediately inflated themselves on either side of his back, fixing his body in place completely. Cool! There were no such devices on civilian ships.

  Steve took a quick look back at the entrance, where the others were still hurrying in. The water was not just trickling off the roof of the shuttle and the engine nozzles, but pouring down in streams. The bright glare from the floodlights lit up the rain, blinding Steve’s eyes as it dispersed. Because of this, it was impossible to see what was going on outside the ship from inside. Shadows periodically appeared as if from nowhere, breaking through the downpour and momentarily opening the curtain of water to the world outside.

  The torrential rain forced the team to get from the bus to the shuttle amazingly quickly. Some coped with their seats at once, while others fiddled about for a while trying to strap themselves in. Kimble walked along the rows of seats, strapping in those who couldn’t manage it themselves. Only then did he flop himself down onto a free seat and strap himself in with lightning speed, an action he had obviously done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

  Once firmly in place, the captain made some sort of gesture towards the ceiling. Steve followed the gesture with surprise, and only then noticed the dark eye of a small camera above them. It seemed that the pilots had been using it to observe them. There had been no need for them to look round from their seats.

  “Roger,” said a voice from one of the loudspeakers above Steve’s head. He was sitting quite close to the cockpit, and could hear the pilot’s voice even without the intercom.

  At that very second, a deafeningly loud hissing noise was heard from outside. The ship was blowing out its nozzles with compressed air to eject the water that had drained into them and any other detritus. The solid wall of water cutting the interior of the ship off from events on the launch pad disappeared immediately. The water gushing out of the nozzles could be seen for dozens of metres behind them as it swirled around and away into the night sky.

  From the direction of the entrance came the sound of hydraulic amplifiers, straining. The entrance door, which also served as the floor, thus making it easier to enter the shuttle, began to rise, sealing the entrance behind it. Once in place, it slammed sonorously, moving sideways slightly into slots that locked it in place. The deafening hiss from outside fell silent immediately.

  A small monitor came down to a position just in front of Steve’s face and relayed the image from the external cameras. He could see the water from the rocket engine nozzles still shooting off into the darkness.

  Suddenly, from somewhere behind them on the other side of the hull plating, sharp sounds like discharges of electricity were heard. At the same moment, the water from the nozzles stopped flowing in uniform streams, and diamond-patterned shock waves passed through it. The frequency of the waves kept increasing, and, with a bright flash of light, two plasma exhaust jets shot out of the ship’s tail. The shuttle was instantly filled with a
low roar, incomparably noisier than on civil ships.

  Steve took his eyes off the screen to look at Kimble. It was hard to make out in the semi-darkness of the shuttle, but he thought Kimble looked pleased. The lift-off in the military shuttle must have brought back some pleasant memories from his past.

  The violet plasma jets changed their focal length several times, then the engine nozzles were lowered. The ship shuddered noticeably and rose vertically into the air. It was shaken from side to side almost instantly, with gusts of wind trying to throw it on its side and back to the ground.

  After gaining only a few dozen metres of altitude, the nozzles changed direction again, and Steve felt the acceleration inclining him to the right. The side cushions were good shock absorbers, preventing his body from bumping painfully against the harder parts of the seat.

  The shuttle stopped being thrown from side to side, and, instead, started vibrating like mad. The noise of the turbines continued to increase, and Steve felt the ship accelerate even more. Yes, it seemed the pilots had never heard of passenger comfort.

  Steve looked at the image from the front camera, but his eyes could make out nothing but onrushing drops of water. Suddenly the drops were no more, and the amazing sight of the starry night sky and the bright moon shedding its soft light on a dense blanket of cloud opened up before him.

  The ship’s acceleration increased significantly. This is really too much, thought Steve. The excess G was beginning to make him feel uncomfortable, and the shuttle was now gaining altitude at an acute angle to the vertical. Under the pressure of such acceleration, the blood was beginning to leave his head and his vision was blurred and fading.

  After a few minutes, the ship suddenly changed position sharply, so that its ceiling was now the floor. The shaking had almost stopped, and the shuttle was moving along smoothly and steadily. Describing a huge arc, it left the atmosphere and went into orbit to meet the expedition ship.