Wormholes (28 page)

D
acey hauled herself up the ladder, feeling the alien planet’s winds gust through the hole, buffeting her suit despite its weight. The winds whipping around the helmet created a low roaring sound in her ears. Her head reached the razor-sharp boundary between one universe and the other, and she felt suddenly disoriented. Below the infinitely fine line, she saw the familiar gray steel vacuum chamber, now no longer holding a vacuum, but containing the swirling hot atmosphere of the planet. Above the line lay the planet, a sprawling, bright vista that made her gasp, uttering a wondering “Whoa!”

Stretching away as far as she could see lay a mass of verdant green — a sea of ground-hugging foliage that followed the low rolling landscape like a rich covering of the lushest carpeting. A luminous diffuse gray light bathed all. Patches of bare red rock showed through in places, but the green had covered all that it possibly could. Life was as tenacious here as it was on Earth. Above, she saw thick rolling clouds whipping across the sky in streaming clumps, now and then parting to reveal a pale blue sky, and blinding glimpses of a sun that seemed more brilliant than their own.

“You okay?” She heard in her helmet radio. Gerald’s voice carried the weight of an abiding anxiety for her. “You can back out if you’re not okay. We don’t have to do this.”

“We do. You know we do.” Dacey remembered their argument as she continued to scan the landscape. Three days ago, the optical telescope installed in the chamber had revealed the planet — a tantalizing blue and white ball hanging in space. The fourth planet from the alien star, large swaths covered in liquid water, could harbor life. Of course, logic suggested that they approach the planet cautiously and before venturing onto it, do months of observation, recording volumes of images and taking careful measurements to understand its exotic whims.

But Dacey had argued that it was simply not possible to wait. They had little idea how much time they would have until the hole closed. One glitch in the magnetic field could be the end.

“Exactly,” said Gerald. “The end. And if you’re on the other side? It’s suicidal.”

“This is too important,” she had said, gesturing at the video image of the gleaming planet, its skin of atmosphere swirling with clouds. “The data, the samples, standing on the surface of another planet that has life. I’m going! That’s it!”

Bolstering her argument was Lambert, who informed them via a phone call from somewhere over Kuwait that he’d negotiated worldwide television rights for five billion dollars. The money would pay for a massive increase in their research. Maybe it would even mean they could capture enough holes to understand them, to learn how to shut them down. Maybe they could learn enough to avoid the undefined catastrophe that Gerald’s well-educated theoretical gut feeling told him was coming.

Cameron had announced that “Suicidal” was his middle name and that he’d been damned patient while everybody else had fun. After all, Gerald and Gaston had made three more space walks to gather data. Three passages into another universe that had brought them back with awed tales of other star systems.

Now it was his turn, insisted Cameron. Besides, he’d argued to Gerald that, as a forensics expert he knew how to take valid biological samples, complementing Dacey’s skills as a geologist.

What’s more, he proclaimed, he’d be about the safest person to go with Dacey, since he’d make damned sure they both got their asses out fast if there was any sign of trouble. Left unsaid was that Brendan Cooper would have otherwise been the other astronaut. Cameron understood that this expedition would be a tribute to their fallen comrade.

So Cameron had won the spot, and after a stunningly fast trip to the planet, the hole’s laser beams clearing its path of space dust, the spherical orb had settled gently toward the planet’s surface.

Scanning the planet for a final moment before preparing to enter it, Dacey remembered how they had all watched, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as the hole skimmed over vistas of wind-blown deserts, violently rolling oceans, and most promising, sprawling regions of living green.

And now this incredible planet was hers! She pulled herself up the last few rungs and into the grip of the planet.

Gerald had warned her about the geometric anomaly of the hole. She had climbed
up
from Earth into the hole. Now, she climbed
sideways
out onto the other planet, feeling its gravity pull her down. The ladder sagged under her weight toward the hole’s edge. She felt a knot of fear rise in her stomach. She steadied her breathing, listening to its rhythm inside her helmet. She moved with utmost care, watching the ladder come within inches of the edge, but steadying.

“She’s out,” said Cameron’s voice in her helmet radio, reporting her progress. Then, to Dacey: “Okay, now you wanna move your ass, so I can get out too?”

“Jimmy!” she scolded.

“Oops, sorry.” He remembered that nearly the entire population of his home planet was listening to him. “I
meant
to say, please translate your current position into one that is more amenable to my egress.”

“Better,” she allowed, pulling herself over the end of the ladder. She reached down and unlatched a hinged extension to the ladder that was made just for such exigencies. It swung down, hanging vertically beyond the sphere of the hole. She swung her legs out and managed to roll herself over so she could put her feet on the ladder, letting herself down to the ground. Trickles of sweat rolled down her temples, despite the suit’s cooling system. The small refrigeration unit could barely keep up. The temperature measurements they made as they approached the planet read over a hundred and twenty degrees in the temperate zone, with a hundred percent humidity. Mullins warned that it would feel like taking a steam bath in a hurricane.

She made sure the fiber optic communication cable and tether leading back through the hole was unsnarled. The cable made her feel like little more than a walking space probe, feeding data to earth. She tried her footing in the knee-high tangle of plants with their leathery cylindrical leaves. She stumbled drunkenly before finding her balance. Hidden beneath the short, dense forest was a tangle of ankle-twisting roots that held tenaciously to the soil below. Despite the planet’s lower gravity, she had to brace herself against winds that battered her suit so viciously she could barely stand. She held a brief conversation with Gerald, as they went over the exit checklist.

And now, keeping her feet wide apart for balance, she turned away from the hole, once more to the planet’s vista. She tried to hold down her excitement, analyzing the landscape with her geologists’ eyes.

They had chosen their landing spot well. While large swaths of the planet were reddish desert, they had landed in one of the large regions of living green nestled between seashore and mountains. There, life had flourished, protected from the most violent of the planet’s constant winds, and watered by the evaporated moisture of the oceans captured as rain by the mountains. The sheltering mountains were not high, no doubt worn down by eons of wind erosion. But they offered shelter enough, and the thick green mass climbed partway up their gullied red slopes, as if entreating them to remain and give life.

“Whoa! Fantastic!” she heard Cameron exclaim. He’d come through the hole now. She looked up to see him reach the end of the ladder and drag the cylindrical case through behind him. He let himself down and pulled the case after. She helped him lower it to the ground. A howling gust of wind caught him and he staggered back, falling into the mass of vegetation. “Damn, these are vicious.”

“The planetologists were dead right,” said Dacey as she helped him up and they held on to one another while the gust died. “The planet had no moon to slow it down over its formation, so it kept spinning fast. That means these winds never let up.”

“Also means the days are short,” said Gerald’s worried voice in her headset. “You’ve only got about five hours of daylight. Remember, only eight hours in a day. And you’ve only got three hours of air left.”

Dacey smiled at Gerald’s mothering, checked Cameron’s cable and they both stepped away from the hovering, glimmering sphere, pulling cable out along with them. Cameron dragged along the black cylindrical case with their instruments and sampling equipment.

“What was that?” Cameron stopped, gripping her arm, steadying himself against the winds with the case.

“What?”

“Saw something out of the corner of my eye. Over there.” He pointed to a small plant-encrusted rise. “Stand real still.”

Abruptly, a leathery brown stalk popped up from the vegetation, then just as rapidly withdrew back into its depths.

“See it?”

“Yeah. Stay still.”

“What do you see?” It was Gerald’s voice.

“Something moving.”

“Then get out. Get out now!”

“No. We’re all right,” said Dacey.

Another leathery stalk popped up nearby, then withdrew. Dacey could see now that it was forked at the top, with each branch ending in a large sphere.

“Animals!” She shouted. “Damn! Animals!”

“Like snakes?” asked Cameron. “I hate snakes.”

The stalks
were
snakelike, but there was something about them that didn’t suggest snakes.

“It’s like they’re part of something else,” said Dacey. “Attached to something. Let’s go see. Move slow.”

By now the stalks were popping up all around them, dozens nearby and fewer farther out in the thick mass of green. Most withdrew, but a few remained extended, waving slightly in the blasts of wind. Dacey suddenly recognized the spherical appendages on the end.

“Jimmy, those are eyes on the end!
Whoops
!” She tripped and fell face forward. Cameron helped her up. Most of the nearby stalks had disappeared, accompanied by tumultuous rustling in the foliage as objects barreled away from them. Dacey found that she had tripped into a shallow trench of clear red dirt that cut through the foliage.

Cameron stepped down into the trench with her. “We got pathways here. These are pathways. Should we be in pathways?”

“Yeah, they’re trenches made by the animals coming through. They allow the animals to move around without going through the vegetation and stay out of the—”

A dark round shape appeared in the trench about thirty feet away scrambling toward them. It stopped suddenly, dead still, its leathery skin making it look like an old, scuffed medicine ball come to life. After a moment, a branched stalk about four feet long unfolded from its front. The stalk was muscular and prehensile, like an elephant’s trunk. On the end of each branch, large dark eyes blinked in tandem. And at the fork, two small, wrinkled holes opened wide, sniffing the air. Above each eye jutted a kind of large silvery structure that looked something like a bicycle reflector. No sound could be heard over the steady roar of the wind.

“It’s a proboscis,” said Dacey into her microphone. “It’s the animal’s nose and eyes.”

The creature tentatively shuffled closer, needing to come down the trail, but unsure of the tall creatures’ intentions. As it advanced, they could see long taloned claws reach out from its low humplike body to pull it forward. It opened a wide mouth, perhaps in threat, perhaps in fear, to show large teeth and a thick rough black tongue.

“It doesn’t look too damned friendly,” said Cameron.

“See the teeth? Flat. For chewing vegetation. It’s a browser. Not a predator. I think we’re okay.”

“Think? Think? Seriously? Not
know
?”

The animal folded back its proboscis into a protective slit along its back, leaving only the eyes peeking out. Its shyness winning over its need, it turned and bulled its way into the undergrowth, scrabbling with its large claws, and was gone. But then immediately, something else, something smaller and brown came scurrying along the trail. But before they could tell what it was, it turned and leaped into the thick bush itself.

“There’s a regular zoo here,” said Cameron.

“Yeah, well, I’d love to trap some of these things, but we should get about our business.” Keeping watch for other creatures, they opened the black case and took out plastic bags and bottles, and began to gather samples of the plants and soil.

Periodically, they stopped, trying to catch sight of the source of a rustling in the brush or the flash of an animal scampering along the trail. Most of the varied creatures were a dull brown, although they showed glimpses of white, gray and reddish. Once Dacey glimpsed what could have been a small monkeylike creature, with bright eyes, long limbs and grasping fingers, but it pulled itself into the thicket of plants before she got a clear look at it.

During the gathering, they kept up a steady exchange with Gerald and Mullins, who pointedly announced their remaining air. George also cut in to comment on their elevated heart rate. Periodically, they would glance back for reassurance at the hovering sphere with the ladder extending from it.

They worked their way along the trail, dragging the umbilical, discovering an amazing variety in the vegetation. Green stalks of plants thrust upward, intertwined with the curled tendrils of vines that sought a way to penetrate the tangle. Almost all the plants had characteristic vertical cylindrical leaves. Dacey remembered enough college botany to theorize that the leaves would allow the plant to get the most energy from the rapidly moving sun, as well as extend themselves up sturdily into the wind without being beaten to tatters.