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  “How big?”

  “The planet is half the size of Ambigon and three-quarters its density. No atmosphere. It makes one rotational spin for every 47.8 daily rotations of Ambigon.”

  “So, where on the planet is the rift and how big is it?

  “Our best guess is a few meters under the surface near one of the poles. Its volume is a sphere about 1.372 cubic meters.”

  “What do you mean your best guess?”

  “The ships in the area are attempting to block any scans. We can't get a more accurate reading unless we move in closer

  Huh. I had expected the rift to be something much larger.

  Sort of like, a huge, mean evil glowing maw. A planet eating monster. I asked Ranger to give me a rundown on those ship scans.

  Mica had come to the bridge and took in the situation. “Do you want me to man the weapons station?”

  “No, they can’t detect us. We’re going to jump in a bit closer to get an idea of their capabilities. If we could, I’d like to just scare them off, not blast them into atoms. There’s always a better way.”

  The ships were spherical with a diameter slightly larger than the length of a typical frigate. I'd never heard of any ships of that design, but hey, it's a big galaxy. The thing that concerned me most was that they were effectively blocking peaceful access to the rift. I asked for more details about their weapon and defensive shields.

  Ranger couldn't provide those details from this far out without an active scan. He recommended we not actively scan those ships yet. They were an unknown quantity and, as such, could possibly detect, not only our scans but also our location.

  We jumped in closer for better passive scan data. At 800K klicks, our passives didn't get much more information. “Ranger, do a three second active focused scan of the closest ship.” It was like lighting a very short fuse.

  All four ships immediately powered up defensive shields. That action coincided with strong active scans from them. One of the ships disappeared, and then reappeared a short 20K klicks off our port bow. Ranger jumped us out immediately.

  We emerged in nowhere. That is, we were well outside our galaxy. Off the map. In the void between the galaxies of our local cluster. We had jumped over one-hundred times the diameter of our galaxy.

  I sat back. “Ranger, what was that all about?”

  “Sir, I know who they are.”

  “Oh, friends of yours?”

  “Semi-acquaintances. It seems they were expecting us.”

  Did we have a Zee leak on the other side?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Over the past several billion years, the Zees had communicated with many thousands of species throughout the universe and had remained in contact with many of them.

  After the demise of the Surrons, they had looked for other partners. One of those who looked promising was a highly advanced race of bipedal organics they called the Eschlian.

  At the time, those folks were on a track of intentionally transitioning from a fully organic race to a semi-organic one. Ranger gave me a broad-brush explanation of them having developed a hyper-Q fluid crystal technology similar to but much more advanced than nanotech.

  Over many thousands of years, they had raised it to an art form. In what started as an experiment, they started manufacturing non-organic life. They had accelerated those life forms' evolutionary rate just to see what came out the other side. Eventually, this spawned a new race that the Eschlians had nurtured. This new sentient race quickly built on the foundations the Eschlians had laid.

  They thrived, and the Eschlians faded away. The Zees found that this relatively new race, the Eshalax, were not yet culturally mature enough to be acceptable as partners. Apparently, they were bullies.

  It was this off-shoot race, the Eshalax, who had parked their ships on our prime real estate. They had come from another galaxy. They wanted something. Two things actually.

  They wanted to thin the rift to close it. But that process would also instantly dissolve much of our local galactic cluster as the rift dissipated. The other thing they wanted was Ranger. They had waited, knowing that he, or some Zee like him, would eventually show up. They needed him and his knowledge of instant cross-universe jumps to get away before the dissolution began, otherwise they would be caught in the great fizzle.

  As a race, they were not averse to using their four ships as a suicide squad, but they also wanted Rangers knowledge-base back in their home worlds.

  It had been a very long trip for them. They're jump-drives were better than what humanity had achieved, it had taken millions and millions of years to complete their voyage. They didn't have the S-jump we had. The interlopers knew the threatening rift was in our galaxy because the Zees had shared that location information with numerous intergalactic races, including the Eschlians.

  They were a patient bunch of inorganic beings, having waited here for over a million years. I later learned that the Zees back home considered the Eshalax mission a back-up plan if a more passive rift closure could not be achieved. Ranger and Traveler had not been told everything by the Zee mucky-mucks on the other side of the dimensional division.

  The Zees were not as all-knowing and all-powerful as I'd imagined. When I asked him why the Zees had not just conducted a transfer of Surron technology and science to the next suitable partner, he said that they had gone through a considerably lengthy internal debate about that.

  In the wrong hands, Surron technology, with some advancements, could be used for universal dominance over all other species. They would also be able to tinker with the Zee's dimensional home. I'm sure that last bit was a more persuasive argument from the Zees point of view.

  The debate had gone on for eons. They decided to join themselves together, become one individual, to find a solution. That transformation had unintentionally resulted in a tremendous and cascading loss of contiguous data, much of it covering Surron technology. That’s why our discovery of the ancient Surron ship was the keystone to a workable solution.

  The laws of entropy hold true in their dimensions as well. The Zees are masters of their domain and excellent at gathering and analyzing information, but not masters of the universe when it came to dipping into our levels.

  Ranger compared their abilities in our realm, to a human, stuck inside his house, being able to see and hear what was happening outdoors only by sticking a camera outside and listening to the local Q-radio station.

  I gathered the crew around the ship's conference table. According to Ranger's short scan, the Eshalax ships were no match for us in weapons, defense, or local-space speed. We held the high ground advantages with our S-jump drive, weapons and far superior AI cores inhabited by the Zees. We had three options. Either draw them off, give them a reason to leave, or seek a cooperative alliance with them. I had discarded the option of blowing them out of the area.

  After looking at the information Ranger had collected from their AI archives, it was apparent they had a low regard for intelligent organic life forms. Coupled with the fact that they wanted to capture Ranger the Zee, and the ship, we voted to follow Ranger's plan for a road trip. We needed a bigger lever, one that was over two billion years old.

  At the end of the meeting, Mica brightened up, “Hey, maybe we'll meet the Princess of Mars or her body double.”

  “More likely we'll meet Zargon, the Destroyer of Worlds,” Sandy countered.

  Sandy, always the optimist, I thought.

  12 Jack be Nimble

  It felt … strange … a non-quantifiable strange … a whispered strange. We had arrived at our destination in time and space.

  The possibility of backwards time travel had been researched for thousands of years. For a long time, humans had seen theoretical evidence of very peculiar energy-particle-waves that appeared to flow counter to what we perceived as the flow of time.

  These packet-waves were very interesting from a theoretical standpoint. But no practical experimental application or process had ever been proposed or successfully li
nked to anything that flowed in the normal direction of time. Just a theoretical and mathematical toy physicist played with from time to time. We had just gone from time to time. And had been the very first ones to do it.

  Ranger could meld our ship and everything it contained, within a discreet dimensional subset. The process required assistance from the Zee’s dimensions coupled with specific technology that now existed on our side, in our ship.

  The Surrons had the technology potential but had not recognize it as such. And the Zees never had any intention of lending them a hand in developing time transit. Potentially severe paradox scrambles were too likely. Like taking a crap on someone’s lawn, time travel paradoxes just were not done by civilized peoples.

  The collective body of Zees had decided rather quickly, as opposed to their normal glacial speed of consensus making, that since time-window was relatively short, and all other options led to potential mission failure, they would support this effort. A one-time shot backwards with several restrictions and conditions meant to avoid problematic changes to the future from that point forward.

  First, we could not interact with anyone or even be detected back here. Second, we would be returning to the exact time and place we left. We didn't want to bump into ourselves. That would be awkward. Third, we would not leave behind any trace of our time-traverse. And fourth, we couldn't stay long.

  Apparently, mother nature applied something Ranger described as quantum smoothing for anything going back in time. Mother’s big eraser. We had five days before we would be smudged out of existence. We were to be thieves in the night. Literally. We were going to steal a fully functional, advanced Surron ship and bring it back with us, forward in time.

  We went back over two billion years. The place was a galaxy far across the universe from ours. We were looking for a very specific ship, which had existed at a very specific time, in a very specific place, just before a very specific event. We were going to hijack a ship of the dead before it was eaten.

  The ship had been, or now was, on a scientific research mission. The Surrons were attempting to catalog everything in the universe. A very long but noble project.

  Surron records of the time showed that the crew of the ship we were looking for had been wiped out after a sample of particularly vicious Nano-material, they had found on a planet, had gotten past their ship's isolation lab barriers. In less than a day the entire crew had died.

  They had been able to get off a partial message about the cause of their demise. When an investigation ship had arrived, days later, all they found was a large swarm of Nano-particles floating in space around the planet.

  Having knowledge of the hazard from the ship's message, the investigating Surrons had stayed well away from the vicinity of the ship and the planet. After gathering what little information there was to be had, they vaporized not only the Nano-swarm, but also the entire solar system, by putting the local star on a very short fuse to supernova. The Surrons weren’t taking any chances.

  Since all evidence and records pointed to the complete digestion of the star ship, nobody in this time frame would miss it if we could capture and cleanse it, snatching it away before it was destroyed. Timing was going to be a bit tricky.

  We couldn't swoop in until after the crew was dead. Their sensors would detect us and our presence might be revealed in their last messages. We had to take possession well before the ship had been used up as nano-food to the point of uselessness, and before a rescue team arrived.

  Did I say that we had popped out in space? Well that wasn't exactly true. We had popped inside a large, hollowed out asteroid at the system's fringe. This concealment, plus running Q-darkened ship, would effectively hide us from the Surrons.

  In our asteroid hideout, we wouldn't be an active part in taking over the ship. Ranger's plan was for Traveler to invade and take control of the Surron ship's non-sentient AI.

  This invasion would take place over several hours. It would give her time to silently navigate the AI structure, slowly and passively, so as not to alert either the Surron crew or the ship's AI.

  She would then lay in wait until the crew had died. At that point, Traveler, together with Ranger, would release high-powered scans of the ship that would deactivate the voracious, replicating Nano-infestation. To work, the scans had to originate from both inside and outside in a coordinated manner.

  Before the scans, Traveler, would eject a package of Nanos, along with a few tons of material for them to feed on. The Surron investigation had to find that debris cloud when they arrived. Even a slight change to history would cause ripples that could later become tsunamis. I hoped that Ranger and Traveler knew exactly what they were doing. The countdown began.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Traveler had started her process by probing access points into the Surron ship's non-sentient AI. She kept us posted on her progress. I could tell that Sandy and Mica were getting a bit of cabin fever inside the ship, inside the asteroid. I was getting a bit twitchy myself, waiting for our part to begin.

  We all voiced a bit of sadness that the Surrons, who we thought of as fellow spacers, would be sacrificed to the Nanos. Our mission to save the universe prevented us from giving them advance warning to abandon ship. In that regard, history would have to remain unchanged.

  Difficult AI barriers were causing time-eating delays in our plan. There was only one day left before the Nanos escaped. Traveler was tenacious and was finally and fully inside and ready.

  As the remaining Surron crew members breathed their last, Traveler worked the plan with lightning speed. She made the Nano and material dump and then jumped the ship to our rendezvous point between galaxies. We jumped out of the asteroid to join Traveler and started our part of the Nano extermination scans. We had beaten the Surron rescue team by less than a day.

  Several hours later, the all clear was given. Our plan was to bring Ranger inside the large Surron vessel after some preparations were made by Traveler.

  She used the ship's bots to respectfully gather the Surron's crew’s remains. Encasing them in a ceramic shell. We would later release that into a star’s corona. A spacer’s funeral.

  The Surron ship, which we rechristened Traveler, began a thorough house cleaning and sanitizing sweep with her bots. Traveler's environmental and recycling systems also had to be adjusted to suit us before we could come aboard. I told Traveler to lock down all the labs and research areas so that none of us would accidentally stumble into things we had no business fiddling with.

  The ship looked enormous, especially when parked just five klicks away from us. After several hours, Ranger nosed into one of Traveler's hangers and we were docked and locked.

  Before we had even left Ranger's bridge, Traveler and the Zees had time-jumped us, lock, stock and barrel back to our starting point in space and time.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We stepped out of Ranger into a large bay, docked on the port side. Along the starboard side was a row of five of what looked to be escort fighters. Sleek and mean little buggers. The Surrons must visit tough neighborhoods.

  Traveler used floor lights to guide us to the bridge area. We all wanted to see how the mucky-mucks had lived. We were a bit disappointed. While the Surrons were a bit shorter and wider than us, we didn't feel like we were in an alien vessel. I guess in any vessel, regardless of the race, a corridor is a corridor and a hatch is a hatch. I was glad the Surrons were not a race of serpents. I didn't see myself being comfortable using circular tubes to get around the ship.

  The bridge was a bit of a letdown. It was about twice as large as Ranger’s. Lots of clear open space. While it was well laid out and the normal functional areas were readily apparent, it didn't have either a draconian or opulent appearance you see in the space adventure vids. No golden throne. It had a very functional, utilitarian feel.

  Traveler said she was adjusting the bridge screens to emit light frequencies suited to our visual perception. Our vision worked in a wider spectrum, but the Surron's visual re
ception leaned toward the violet side of ours, into frequencies we could not detect with the unaided eye.

  I noticed what looked like an inordinate amount of small bot activity on the bridge. Traveler told us she was having the bots change the engraved labels on the bridge equipment to our language. She had already converted the language used on the touch screen. She was also working on getting the ship to accept my Q-Com signals as being from the captain of the vessel.

  Mica’s only comment was, “So, where are the crappers?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Traveler continued to use her ship's bots to do the remaining minor chores, manufacturing, and other changes she thought would be needed. One of those was to create an on-demand 'you-are-here' map of the ship in our heads-up displays.

  We took a one-day tour through the ship. Other than crew spaces, it was mostly manufacturing, lab, and research areas, cargo holds, and hangar bays, along with the expected power, environmental, and propulsion spaces. Sandy peeled off from the tour to nose around the engineering.

  The starboard hangar bay had another five fighters and two decent-sized transports, which were twice as large as Ranger. The Surron’s had liked open spaces. The ship was over two kilometers long and three quarters of a klick in diameter. Twice as much mass as a battle cruiser and longer than the largest human freighters.

  Mica and I hopped inside a fighter for a look around. At the pilot’s station, Mica began running his hands along the backrests of the seats. “Sizing up the upholstery?” I asked.

  “Nope, just making sure I wouldn't get head-jacked if I sat down to fly one of these things.” In casual conversations, to Mica, most everything were things.

  About twelve hundred years ago, there had been a very serious attempt to hard-connect pilot’s brains to a fighter's rudimentary AI via a cable head-jack. They never did solve the infection site problem satisfactorily or the other, very minor problem of having half your gray matter yanked out if someone gave the connecting cable a hard jerk. Made the back of my head itch every time I thought about it. Sandy said the only problem was that pilots didn’t have brains to connect to.