• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'Enhance that,' said Dogface.

Credit Card thought about it and the silver line of the Stunne' thickened suddenly. Acturus Station was pushed out of the tank by the change of scale. Closer in the Stunnel looked like tube made of open-weave carpet, silver threads weaving in and out representing the shifting multifrequencies of the carrier wave.

'Jesus,' said Lambada softly.

There was a distinct bulge in the silver tube. When Credit Card rewound the reconstruction the bulge shot backwards towards Acturus.

Credit Card froze the image and scaled up, showing the silver weave in finer detail. He stopped when the bulge filled most of the tank.

'It's like something inside is pushing out the walls,' said Blondie.

Ming looked at Dogface who shrugged back. 'Do a cutaway,' she said.

A geometric section of the bulge vanished leaving a neat cross-section. The core was a black sphere under the silver threads.

'Something inside, pushing out the walls,' said Dogface looking at Blondie.

'What is it?' asked Blondie.

'Black signifies no available data,' said Credit Card.

'This is just a representation,' said Ming. 'You can't have a real object distorting a carrier wave like that.'

'You can't get a real object through a carrier wave at all,' said Lambada.

'It's not a real object,' said Credit Card. 'It's got to be some kind of harmonics effect within the pattern of the carrier wave itself.'

'Something came out of the Stunnel gateway,' said Blondie.

'Doesn't mean it was real,' said Credit Card. 'Not really real anyway.'

'Tell that to the President,' said Dogface.

'I've never seen this kind of effect on a carrier wave before,' said Lambada.

'No one ever initiated a tunnel over interstellar distances before,' said Credit Card. 'Who knows what kind of effect you're going to get over forty light years?'

'Distance isn't relevant,' said Lambada, 'the tunnels are trans-bloody-dimensional. All that matters is harmonizing the gravitic geometry at either end.'

'What if the physical distance created a distortion in the carrier wave and you got a gravitic anomaly?' said Credit Card.

'There's a standard function curve for calculating that,' said Lambada. 'I was with Verhoevan when he did the fine tuning, we took account of that.'

'Verhoevan is now a sticky patch of disassociated chemicals along with half the establishment,' said Dogface. 'Let's run the simulation at one-tenth speed and see what happens.'

'You want to stay with the anomaly?' asked Credit Card.

'What do you think?' said Dogface.

The simulation ran forward, the woven strands of the Stunnel carrier wave rippled over the curve of the bulge. It looked to Blondie like a bowling ball falling down a stocking leg.

'Gravitic anomaly my arse,' muttered Lambada.

'It's accelerating,' said Credit Card.

'Getting up a good head of steam,' said Dogface.

'Acturus Station coming up,' said Credit Card.

'Slow it down,' said Ming.

In slow motion the bulge hit the bell end of the Stunnel gateway. The carrier wave seemed to push the bulge out into the station but whatever caused it wasn't showing up in the real world.

'That's when the telemetry and video links went down,' said Ming. 'If you look at the way the carrier wave snaps back into place, notice the power surges running up the main cables.'

'Causing a shut-down in the subsidiary circuits,' said Credit Card. 'Whatever caused the anomaly must dissipate directly into the station.'

'No one's planning to reinitiate the Stunnel in the near future, are they?' asked Lambada.

'Not that I know of,' said Ming.

'That's a relief.'

'What's wrong with you?' Dogface asked Blondie.

'Didn't you see it?' said Blondie. 'It went out the other side of the station.' The others looked at him. They hadn't got it yet. 'It's got into the system.'

The Stop

Benny sat upright in the kitchen bed and turned the book over in her hands. Her skin felt raw against the rough linen of the nightdress. 'You've got good skin,' said the skinny girl with outsized