Free IGMS Issue 11 by IGMS Page B

incredibly fast, yet they didn't feel as if they were moving in any particular direction. It was as if they were falling in place.
    It lasted only an instant. Trevor unbuckled his straps, checked a pressure gauge on the wall, took off his helmet and fought his way to Gretchen through a field of floating clutter. When he reached her, he pulled off her helmet and pulled back the neoprene hood, revealing a sweaty mess of brunette hair. Her expression was one of utter shock and he bent over her, planting a single, solid kiss on her alabaster cheeks. The light seemed to come back to her eyes and she embraced him.
    "I think it missed us," said Trevor, unsure of whether to be happy or disappointed. "Nikolai, I think you added wrong. I don't think we're moving, we must've been too far out."
    The Russian removed his helmet and gloves and pushed them aside. He lifted his finger and pointed to the window. Trevor and Gretchen looked at it and they once again felt as if they were falling. Stars streaked past the window.
    "We're, we're just spinning . . ." stammered Trevor.
    "No," said Gretchen, "I don't think we are." She unbuckled herself and moved to the telemetry readouts. The trajectory information was completely nonsensical but she could see that most of the station had been torn away. She figured the rest of the space station had been flung into its own journey, or possibly even been sucked into the black hole. All that remained of their section was the control module, the small windowed cupola connected to it on one side, and the wreckage of half the Destiny laboratory on the other. A gauge next to the door showed her that the cupola was still pressurized so she opened the hatch and went in. Trevor and Nikolai pulled themselves in after her. Constellations of burning stars whipped past the windows like meteorites.
    Soon, all three of them had their faces pressed to the glass like little kids looking out the window of a train. What they saw was a galaxy that was not merely black and white, but radiantly colorful. Gas clouds like giant blue pillars, nebulas that were reddish and purple -- shimmering with stars in frozen explosions that looked like burning magnesium. They passed through a field of sparsely scattered comets, many light years across, and watched in amazement as the tail of one of the smaller comets slipped past silently above them.
    Twenty minutes went by as they tried their utmost to absorb what they were seeing. In the back of their minds, they may have been aware that their lives could be snuffed out at any second, but for three people who'd dreamt of exploring the galaxy for their entire lives, the concern seemed remote in the face of their silent rapture.
    "I don't understand," Trevor said without removing his face from the glass. "How can we be moving so fast? Those black holes were traveling near light speed and they took hours to get across the solar system. We must be moving a thousand times faster than light right now."
    "No," said Nikolai. "We're not moving faster than light, it just seems like it because time for us is flowing very slowly."
    Trevor pulled his head from the window and looked at his hands, as if expecting them to move about in slow motion. Gretchen smiled and said: "Speak slowly, he's a pilot."
    "Trevor," said Nikolai, "if you could somehow follow our progress from Earth . . ." Here, Nikolai stopped for a moment, then abruptly continued, "you would see us slowly inching our way across the galaxy. However, when things travel close to the speed of light, the flow of time slows down for them."
    "Special relativity."
    "Exactly. Since less time is elapsing for us, our velocity seems to be much higher than it would seem to a 'stationary' observer."
    Trevor's interest in physics quickly waned, and he contented himself with looking out the window. That none of them were overly-upset about the destruction of their home planet was solely due to their assumption that they would soon be following