Twin Earth
Chapter Eighteen

I was crushed into my seat as the pod thrusted upwards, out through the tunnel ahead and towards the sky above, but strangely there was not a single sound from underneath us except for the intense rattling of our seats.

Slowly moving my head against the pressure of the g-force, I peered sideways out of the window and watched as the rain lashed down, immediately being blown away from the force of the wind outside. The jungle and the facility below were quickly disappearing from view as we entered the tumultuous cloud cover of the remnants of the hurricane, but then everything stalled just as we reached the clear blue skies above the storm.

“What’s happening?” Rachel asked with a hint of terror in her voice.

“Prepare for entering plasma sequence two, over,” the same crackly voice from before announced over the communication system.

“Can you confirm what the hell that is, over?” I replied, looking back at Rachel with probably just as much terror.

“Just sit tight, over,” the voice replied.

“What are we doing?” Rachel mouthed to me nervously.

Just as we were about to lose momentum and fall back down to Earth with a crash, the craft thrusted upwards once again, this time with more force than before and an ear-piercing scream emanated from the slipstream outside. I closed my eyes and wished I could close my ears too as I struggled to remain composed. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as the pressure on my body increased. Then the pod stalled once again, causing me to wheeze out loud as we lurched forward in our seats.

“This is fucking horrible,” I moaned, wiping at the window, which had begun to frost up on the outside in some vain hope of clearing it from the inside. I couldn’t see anything other than what looked like the sun setting on the horizon in the distance.

“Prepare for final plasma sequence in three, two, one...” the voice continued, but I missed his final words because the pod was once again thrusted upwards, this time with even more force. I could barely breathe under the pressure and squeezing my eyes shut I held on to my seat belt, waiting for it to be over.

Then everything stopped. The cabin was no longer vibrating uncontrollably and opening my eyes I stared out at the darkness beyond. I released my hands from their tight grip and tried to re-focus my eyes to the lack of light. There was nothing but black and a billion stars, and the arc of the milky-way sat proudly in the middle in all its glory.

“Wow,” I whispered softly.

Then I realised we were weightless. It was a strange sensation and not one I had felt for a long time, not since the plane we had used to prepare for it in, but somehow it seemed more intense this time. A pen tied to the side of the screen in front of us was now drifting in front of my eyes and even my tongue seemed to float inside my mouth, so much so that for a while I struggled to speak.

“Escape sequence complete. You are now clear for mission dark matter, congratulations! Over,” a familiar voice cheered over the comms.

“James? Is that you? Over,” I asked, clearing my throat.

“Sure is. Everything okay? Over,”

“We’re alive. I guess that’s a start, over” I mumbled.

“Well done guys. The ionohex has successfully launched, over,” Trevor announced.

Regaining my senses, I clicked a few necessary buttons and checked our navigational systems to make sure we were on course to the moon.

“You okay?” I asked, turning to look at Rachel.

“My head hurts.”

“It’ll settle down.”

“I think I passed out.”

“Yeah, that launch was pretty rough considering the size of this thing, but damn, it was quick.”

“I just feel sick.”

“Take a second. We’re not going to be doing much for the next few hours so relax,” I replied, but I could see Rachel had already closed her eyes.

I felt sick too, but I wasn’t sure if that was from the launch or from my nerves. Either way, I double checked our trajectory and mentality rehearsed everything I had to do, but not knowing the craft made me feel inescapably vulnerable.

“You can deploy the sails now Tom, over,” Trevor stated.

Scanning the screen in front of me I frantically looked for the correct procedure of buttons to press but was relieved to see a clearly marked orange switch that had nanophotonic sail in small letters underneath. Clicking it upwards, a gentle whirring sound filled the pod for a few seconds and then there was silence. I turned to look out the window and noticed a huge sail had opened, spanning for a least seven metres outwards around us. According to the data on the screen, we were still moving upwards, or forwards depending on how you viewed things, but I was surprised to see our speed had increase by about twenty percent.

“How long until we get to the moon?” Rachel asked, turning to look at me.

“You feeling any better?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“I was expecting it to take a couple of days, but from this initial data it’s estimating to be about four hours?” I replied.

“Four hours? That’s incredible.”

“I think I can even bring that down, hang on.”

I clicked a few more switches on the quantum laser panel to my right and was amazed to see the destination time decrease by yet another couple of hours.

“How is that possible?” Rachel asked. “I hardly feel anything.”

“I guess you wouldn’t,” I mumbled in confusion. “There’s no air around us to give us an indication of speed.”

“Of course,” Rachel whispered sitting up, her scientific enthusiasm clearly taking over.

“Look, it’s even speeding up when I adjust the speed of the ion beam thruster.”

“How fast are we travelling?” Rachel exclaimed.

Frowning, I looked back outside, but it was too hard to tell. You could almost detect our closest stars drifting ever so slightly past us, but I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination. If it wasn’t for our panel readout and the slight acceleration, you wouldn’t have a clue.

“About twenty-two thousand metres per second,” I retorted.

“How fast does this thing go?” Rachel asked in amazement.

“I don’t think I want to replace out,” I replied, taking my helmet off and rubbing my hair, which refused to sit flat now.

“Is it safe to do that?” Rachel asked watching me.

“The cabin pressure is fine. If Magnus’ pod has got us this far then I’m sure it will hold out against any space debris hitting us and blowing us apart.”

Nodding, Rachel also lifted off her helmet and placed it back into its compartment. “Oh my god that feels so much better. So, what do we do now?”

“I guess we wait,” I replied sitting back. “There’s not a lot else we can do.”

“What do we do when we get to the anomaly? What kit does this thing have?”

“I’m not too sure to be honest. There are some micro-probes here by the looks that we can deploy. I presume they have been programmed to help us somehow, and there’s some basic measurement panels we can use to detect matter.”

“But this is dark matter?” Rachel replied. “How are we supposed to detect that?”

“I guess we will wait and see. Hopefully this kit will pick up the fluctuations we detected back on earth.”

“What about the signal? Can we pick that up here?”

“Oh yes, hang on, let me try something.”

I pulled out a smaller panel to my side and using the touch screen I entered some code. A graph flicked up on the screen matching the one we had seen back in the lab.

“That’s it,” Rachel replied excitedly. “We should keep that on. See if it changes as we get closer.”

“The signal seems more consistent this time,” I remarked, looking closely at the data that updated every few seconds.

I continued to check the data that was now being fed in to our systems and the more I played around with the pod’s computer, the more confident I became in Magnus’ technology. I was slowly beginning to respect his technical abilities. It looked like he had programmed multiple scanners and probes to be used on the craft, and after an hour or so I had brought up as much data as I could replace on the anomaly so far.

“Anything new?” Rachel asked, putting down her own panel and leaning over to mine.

“Not really other than the signal. It doesn’t seem to be cutting out anymore.”

“Maybe there is less interference up here.”

“Maybe. You replace anything?”

“Not really. The moon is pretty close now though. It looks huge outside to my left. Can you see it from where you are?”

Leaning over I peered out of Rachel’s side of the window and was surprised to see the moon so close.

“Wow,” I muttered. “You can see so much detail. Look at that!”

“It’s cool isn’t it? It looks like you could just put your hand out and touch it.”

“Shame we can’t make a pit-stop,” I laughed, pushing myself back into my chair.

“To be honest, I just want to get to this anomaly, do what we have to do and get home as soon as possible. It’s already beginning to freak me out to think about how far away we are from Earth already.”

“Speaking of which, we’re about two hundred thousand miles away by now.”

I laughed as Rachel wheezed at my comment.

“Only another one hundred thousand miles to go.”