That familiar voice, with its perpetual tone of dry amusement, was one Mac found absurdly reassuring. In this awesomely bizarre situation it was a welcome touch of normality, the same voice that had led him out onto a dozen new worlds. Virtual fingers tilted the joystick forward, and the maneuvering pack nozzles snorted nitrogen, moving him out away from the shuttle. As far as he could see in the standard visual spectrum he was heading into total darkness; the barrier could be a couple of centimeters in front of him, or fifty light-years. His radar said ninety-three meters. He bumped the speed up to a couple of meters per second, then told his e-butler to switch on the craft’s spotlights. His space suit glowed a dusky pewter as the beams followed him. Up ahead he was sure he could see the triple circles where they were striking the barrier; they formed a royal-blue patch; the effect was almost as if someone was rendering a cartoon shimmer on the surface.
Mac activated the infrared function in his retinal inserts. Half of the universe turned a lambent carmine. Even though he could see the barrier, there was still no way to judge physical distance. The radar put him forty meters out. He began to reduce his closing speed, and the spotlights were showing up as circles with a slightly greenish tint. But he could finally see his own shadow projected onto the flat wall ahead.
He came to a halt a meter away, and just floated there for a moment. The biomonitor showed him his racing heartbeat, and he could hear the adrenaline buzz in his ears. He started to raise his arm, fingers extending to touch the enigmatic surface, then paused. He hadn’t received permission, but if he checked before doing anything the EVA would take all day. The reason he’d been chosen was because of his contact experience. Not in this situation, he told himself evilly, and managed a small grin. His heart rate had slowed a little now, so he completed the motion. His fingers touched the surface.
For one twisted-up moment he imagined the barrier vanishing like a soap bubble, punctured by his ignorant touch. But it didn’t, and he chuckled slightly at the notion. By now he was drifting away, propelled by the slight contact; so he moved the joystick forward, and put his hand out again. This time the maneuvering pack held him in place.
“Okay, I’m touching it. No apparent reaction. Seems like ordinary solid matter, there’s none of that slight surface instability you get on our force fields.”
“Understood, Mac,” Oscar said. “We were all waiting for some demonic claw to come through and drag you in.”
“Hey, thanks for that.”
“My pleasure. You feel like applying some sensors for us?”
“Will do.” He reached down to the equipment clipped on his belt. One by one, he stuck sensor pads against the barrier, taking measurements. He had to hold each one in place. The high-temperature epoxy was no use at all. When he squeezed it out of the tube, it simply rebounded off the barrier like water splashing off Teflon. “We didn’t think that would work,” Oscar said. “There aren’t any atoms there for it to adhere to. Worth a try, though.”
“Sure, but I’m using up gas at quite a rate keeping these sensors applied.”
“Copy that. Please apply the meson rate detector.”
“Okay.” He settled the fat little cylinder against the surface. Once again that notion of there being something on the other side was strong in his mind. He was scratching away on the barrier like some mouse behind the baseboard, and the house cat was listening intently, unseen, just the thickness of an electron away. Irrational, he kept telling himself. But surely something knows we’re here? He twisted his head to one side until he could see the starfield. For a moment he was upright, pressed against a wall, with the night sky behind him, the ground lost beneath his feet. The vertical horizon between red and black was perfectly straight and clear. When he looked down, that same horizon was below his boots. A human mind simply couldn’t grasp the size of the thing. Whoever established this incredible artifact must have had a phenomenally compelling reason.
Defense? Confinement? The sweepstake on board was running eighty/twenty. Both implied aggression somewhere; again on a scale beyond human comprehension.
“You all right there, Mac?” Oscar asked.
He realized his heart was thudding again, and took a couple of deep breaths. “Sure, no problem. What’s next?”
“Exotic waveform detector. Tunde wants to know exactly where the infrared emission originates. That should help define the barrier interface with spacetime. “
“Sure.”
After forty minutes he placed the last sensor back on his belt, and jetted back to the shuttle. The physicists were pleased with the results; they had moved another step toward understanding the nature of the barrier. But as to how it was generated, and the why of it, they hadn’t got a clue.
