by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.
Every muscle in Captain Carroway’s body clenched as she watched the white dwarf on the viewscreen — the vacuum bomb was still careening toward it, and if she hoped fervently enough, she could imagine the white dwarf was already shrinking. They were already flying away from it. They were going to escape. Maybe, just maybe, they were going to escape.
“Captain?” Ensign Lee woofed tentatively.
Captain Carroway tore her eyes away from the view of the shrinking white dwarf star to look at her ensign. His butterfly ears were standing tall again, but there was concern in his eyes and a shakiness in his stature. Carroway meowed impatiently, “Yes? What is it?”
“The Anti-Ra ship, The Last Chance, is on a collision course to intercept our… uh… scientific probe,” Ensign Lee barked with a quaver in his voice.
“Will that work?” Captain Carroway snapped at her Morphican first officer.
“No,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie stated plainly. “Even this close to the star, there’s enough space dust per cubic kilometer for the explosion to spread from the Anti-Ra vessel to the star.”
There was something so deeply tragic about the Anti-Ra crew sacrificing themselves on a gambit that wouldn’t even work. And yet, was it truly more tragic than simply dying because they were caught in a rapidly growing black hole? Either way they would die. Though, Captain Carroway supposed this way was more noble. And that made it more tragic. She’d only spoken with that squirrel captain — Captain Chestnut, it was worth remembering his name, he deserved that — briefly, but the Norwegian Forest cat felt a profound respect for him.
“They’re brave souls,” Captain Carroway meowed.
“Are we about to die?” Ensign Lee woofed. There were more than enough puzzle pieces available for him to have put the whole picture together by now.
“Not if I have anything to do about it,” Mr. Melbourne meowed through gritted teeth.
“There is a small chance,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie observed, “that the Anti-Ra vessel intercepting our vacuum bomb will give us the extra time we need to escape unscathed. The black hole will grow much more slowly at first, beginning with the Anti-Ra vessel as its seed.”
“Those are people,” Ensign Lee woofed, staring at the Anti-Ra vessel growing ever closer to the arc of the vacuum bomb on their viewscreen. His statement was less a rebuke of Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s matter-of-fact tone and more just a statement of horrified wonder at the train wreck he was watching.
None of them had been prepared for this, even the two of them who’d known the truth about this mission.
On the viewscreen, the small Anti-Ra vessel collided with the streak of light that was the vacuum bomb, and for a moment, everything flashed white. Bright and piercing. When Captain Carroway’s eyes cleared from the flash of light, she saw the Anti-Ra vessel burning, smoldering; then it impossibly shrank in on itself like a trick was being played on her eyes.
Captain Carroway blinked, and next she saw, the Anti-Ra ship was gone. White light from the dwarf star began snaking across the empty space toward where the ship had been. Then the star itself began elongating, stretching from a shining sphere to a glowing oval. Then one end of the oval — the end closer to where The Last Chance had disappeared — snaked out, twirling across invisible gravity lines, circling the minuscule but rapidly growing black hole that the Anti-Ra ship had become.
“Will we make it?” Captain Carroway breathed, barely voicing the words at all.
“It’s hard to say,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie answered.
“Those people…” Ensign Lee woofed, overcome by grief. “We were just talking to them…”
“At least, they didn’t have time to suffer.” Commander Carroway tried to say the words softly; she was trying to be comforting, but all she could think was: they didn’t have to wait and wonder whether they’d survive, like I’m having to do right now. It was wrong to envy people who were already dead, but in a way, Carroway did.
As a kitten, one of Captain Carroway’s littermate’s had tried to interest her in watching sports games together, but she’d never understood the appeal. If you waited until a game was over — doing something else while it was happening — you could just look up the score and skip past all that unnecessary drama. It saved so much time.
Captain Carroway wanted to look up the score after this was over, but the only way out was through…
The white dwarf star’s light continued to stretch out and swirl around the dark patch where the black hole must be. It was eerie and beautiful, and it didn’t feel like it was getting any smaller on the viewscreen. Of course, it was growing… so maybe that was an optical illusion? But Captain Carroway didn’t think The Wanderlust was pulling away from the black hole.
“We are stuck in the black hole’s gravity well,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie announced. His long ears had both drooped forward hopelessly. He’d never looked more defeated. “We cannot escape by flying forward.”
“Could we…” Captain Carroway felt like an idiot saying it, but this wasn’t a time to let dignity get in the way of brainstorming. “…I don’t know, turn around and fly through it?”
“It’s a black hole,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said bleakly. “It’s not a worm hole. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Are you sure?” Captain Carroway hissed.
“One hundred percent,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie replied primly. Even this close to death, he could still find room for annoyance.
“Not a thousand percent?” Mr. Melbourne quipped. The white tom cat’s narrow tail was lashing frantically behind him. “I dunno. Only one hundred percent seems low to me right now for basing decisions on.”
“No, Mr. Melbourne, that would be hyperbole,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said, tall ears perking back up a bit now that he had a chance to defend clear communication and the pursuit of reason. “Neither hyperbole nor flights of fancy will help us here.”
“I’d take a flight of fancy over nothing right now,” Ensign Lee woofed.
Captain Carroway looked at the young, pretty dog. He was staring at the viewscreen like it would swallow him up, and he wasn’t wrong. Ensign Lee might have spoken out of despair, but he had a valid point. Whether a plan would work right now might be less relevant than whether it would give The Wanderlust’s crew something to do with their final minutes…
There wasn’t time to do anything meaningful like share a last meal that had more substance than protein bars and coffee or record final messages to send to the loved ones they would be leaving behind — something that Captain Carroway should have thought to do the night before. But her brain had been in a fog, ever since Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had said the word “suicide” to her. And at this point, nothing The Wanderlust sent would escape the growing black hole’s rapidly expanding gravity well anyway. They were lost. They might as well embrace it.
“To hell with probabilities,” Captain Carroway announced with as much bravado as she could muster. “Turn this ship around and take us straight into the black hole.”
“To hell with logic, science, and reason too, then, I suppose,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie muttered, but he didn’t argue more than that. He understood what his captain was doing. He didn’t have to like it or agree with it, but he did understand. And even though his body was perfectly regulated to keep himself from panicking at the imminent prospect of his death, the rabbit-like alien understood that the other three crew members of The Wanderlust didn’t have that advantage. Terror would be coursing through their veins in the form of all kinds of stress hormones. They couldn’t help letting fear of mortality unbalance them.
“Aye, Captain!” Mr. Melbourne meowed in delight. If he was going to die, at least, he was going to die doing what he loved, what he was best at, and doing it in the most extreme way possible.
What other cat could say they’d flown a top-of-the-line starship straight into a rapidly expanding baby black hole? None that he knew of! Of course, he might not get much of a chance to brag about it after the fact either, but that was a problem for later. Right now, his paws were doing the driving, and it was time to let them dance over The Wanderlust’s controls.
Toward the back of the bridge at his station, Ensign Lee was facing his own mortality for the first time in his young life. He was a young enough dog who’d lived a blessed, privileged enough life that — while he’d faced his father’s death as a young puppy — he’d never really considered the idea that he would someday die. Not really. He knew it academically, of course, in a sort of abstract way, but it had never been a real, serious concern, staring him right in the face, unblinking, unflinching, coming for him.
Ensign Lee found himself wondering about what he might have missed out on by spending his whole life so dedicated to the pursuit of his Tri-Galactic Union career. And yet, even with the seconds ticking down, he couldn’t think of anything wild or reckless he’d ever done, and he couldn’t think of anything glorious but foolish he wished he could do, if only there were time left. He couldn’t think of anything at all. Fear had frozen him. He’d never been brave and bold like the tomcat steering their vessel with dancing white paws.
Ensign Lee watched Mr. Melbourne, and maybe it was just the crazy, heady mix of hormones flooding his body, but he felt a little bit in love with that cat. Only half an hour ago, he’d wished Mr. Melbourne would shut his muzzle and stop telling silly stories about his exploits among the prisoners on the penal asteroid for the last three years, and yet, suddenly, those stories felt so vibrant, so full of life. Even life on a penal asteroid sounded wonderful and delightful when described by that charming tomcat.
If Mr. Melbourne could pull The Wanderlust out of this black hole, Ensign Lee swore to himself, he would try to become more like that tomcat. He would try to live life such that Mr. Melbourne could tell stories about him to pass the time. Nothing Ensign Lee had done in the last few months — or years, even — would make a good story. All he’d done was work, focus, study, and follow the rules. If he got a chance, Ensign Lee wanted to be more than just a Good Dog. He wanted to be a vibrant one.
On the viewscreen, the white dwarf’s stretched out strings of light blurred and blended together. The air aboard The Wanderlust’s bridge grew thick and heavy, like the officers on her bridge were breathing — or rather, choking on — molasses. Then the ceiling contorted, metal screaming as it bent inward, and the viewscreen cracked right down the middle. Liquid crystal fluid leaked down the cobweb cracks on the display like blood.
Flame licked its way onto the bridge from The Wanderlust’s central corridor, followed by billowing bursts of thick gray smoke, dotted with glowing red sparks that filled the air. All of the officers on the bridge began to cough and gag. Thick air was hard to breathe, but ember-filled smoke actually burned.
Captain Carroway tried to cry out — she wasn’t sure if the cry was the start of an order to Mr. Melbourne to turn the ship back around or simply a primal war cry meant instinctively, irrationally to scare the big, looming black hole away — but the roar returned to her throat before it could escape from between her fangs.
The smoke cleared, flowing backward to the corridor where it had come from.
The viewscreen repaired itself, cracks smoothing back together and liquid crystal fluid flowing back into place behind the smooth screen.
The ceiling screamed its way back to its original convexity, and the air began to thin, becoming easier to breathe again.
Everything was undoing itself.
Except the view on the viewscreen?
Blank darkness. An endless void. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Is the viewscreen broken?” Captain Carroway choked out from her lacerated throat, still burning from the smoke she’d breathed in.
Mr. Melbourne, with his fur fluffed out like an asterisk, turned back to look at his captain; the expression on his ghost-white face showed that he thought she was crazy. Clearly, the viewscreen had repaired itself. The cracks that had been there only moments before were entirely gone.
“Yes,” Captain Carroway snapped impatiently, her voice still rough and rumbly, “I know it’s not still broken… but… is it working? Where’s the star? Are we… inside a black hole?”
The Norwegian Forest cat captain looked over her shoulder at Ensign Lee, but the Papillon was staring at the controls on his console, paws hovering uselessly above it like he’d been about to do something but then forgotten what it was. He was far too absorbed and bewildered by whatever readings his console were showing him to notice anything as inconsequential as a question from his captain. The young dog was clearly stunned.
The white tomcat, on the other paw, looked like he’d been startled into action, ready to fight anything and everything that came his way. “What the hell was that?!?” he caterwauled.
“I believe,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said, voice shaking and ears flopped completely downward, “that we just experienced a blip in time.”
The rabbit-like alien’s brow was bleeding, fur matted and red above his left eye. His computer implant was gone. At least, with horror, that’s what Captain Carroway thought at first. Then she saw the implant had been yanked out somehow and was lying on the console beside her stunned first officer, still plugged in by way of a mycelial cord to the ship’s computer system, but no longer serving any purpose now that it’s connection to Vossie’s brain had been severed.
“Oh, Vossie!” Captain Carroway yowled. How would her friend get by without his implant? She needed to get him to a doctor immediately so the implant could be reinstalled in his brow and the connections restored to his brain.
“Actually…” Ensign Lee’s voice was halting and hesitative. He was still staring at his paws, hovering just above his console. “We’ve moved in space as well… A long way in space…”
“Well, where are we?” Captain Carroway asked distractedly. She had gotten up and was trying to help Vossie, but there wasn’t much she knew how to do for him. She was afraid to touch the displaced implant. She didn’t know how delicate it was or if she might break it further by trying to unplug it from The Wanderlust’s computers. So, she let the implant be and settled for checking Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s brow directly. The wound was mostly shallow, but like head wounds do, it was bleeding profusely.
“I believe, based on these readings, that we’re in the empty expanse between galaxies.” The Papillon’s butterfly ears had splayed and were hanging low. His bright eyes had a frantic shine to them. “Unless I’m mistaken, we’re on the far outer reaches of the fringe of… the Tetra Galaxy.”
Captain Carroway whirled around, exclaiming, “The Tetra Galaxy!” Mr. Melbourne reacted much the same way, and the two cats’ exclamations coincided.
“A blip in space-time…” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie muttered. “Intriguing.” They were the words he would normally say, but his voice was weak and his whole body shook like his heart was racing with fear and probably a plethora of other emotions that his implant would usually be keeping in check.
“Mr. Melbourne, could you see if you can scare up a med kit, please?” Captain Carroway meowed, trying to gather her wits together. Then she added, “And Ensign Lee, could you please calculate the quickest route home?”
The Tri-Galactic Union was centered in three galaxies — The Milky Way, Twilight Spiral, and Ursa Dentatus. Those galaxies were thoroughly explored and interconnected by various hyperspace jump points that made it possible to navigate through them and between them fairly quickly.
The Tetra Galaxy, however, was much farther away. And while a nexus did exist that bridged between the far outer reaches of Ursa Dentatus — the galaxy where the bear-like Ursine aliens had come from — and the Tetra Galaxy, the Tetra Galaxy itself was still almost entirely unexplored. There were no maps of hyperspace jump points that would make it quick or safe to navigate. And at a rough estimate, a direct course from the outer edge of the Tetra Galaxy back home to the Milky Way, without any hyperspace jump points, would take many months at top speed. At best. At worst? It could be years.
Four Tri-Galactic Union officers, all alone, trying to crew a ship of this size for months on end without any help or support would be untenable. Even if it were a crew who had been carefully picked to get along with each other. That wasn’t the case here. Sure, Captain Carroway and Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had been best friends for years, and Mr. Melbourne might prefer a long voyage to his incarceration… but Ensign Lee had been betrayed by the Tri-Galactic Union he believed in when he was sent on this mission. The bright, young Papillon had every right to be angry.
None of them were prepared for what they might be facing.
“Uh… Captain…” Ensign Lee was now looking at his computer console like it had turned into a snake and might bite him. “We’re being hailed?”
“Out here?” Captain Carroway meowed in bewilderment. “In the middle of nowhere?” The Norwegian Forest cat sighed and shrugged. Maybe this mission would involve scientific discovery and diplomatic first contact after all. “Put whoever it is on the viewscreen, I guess.”
Mr. Melbourne returned with a med kit and began cleaning up Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s head wound. Meanwhile, Captain Carroway returned to her captain’s seat and composed herself for whatever might appear on the viewscreen, whatever strange, new, alien race might live out here in the dark between galaxies.
Continue on to Chapter 8…