Free Epic of Aravinda 1: The Truth Beyond the Sky by Andrew M. Crusoe Page B

them?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, we’re still in my home star system, so it’s possible it needs to know that one of us is from Avani. Why not try broadcasting my DNA to the gate itself? Maybe that’s why the last gate worked. I cut my finger!”
    “Broadcast your genetic code to the gate? Intriguing idea. Navika, can you translate genetic material into a signal that this gate is likely to understand?”
    “Unknown, Oonak. But I can certainly reduce the genetic signal into a string of numbers and broadcast that to the gate. However, even if I broadcast it at extreme speed, an entire genome could take a while to transmit.”
    “Then do not send the entire genome. Start at the beginning, and if it responds, stop transmitting.” Oonak turned to Zahn. “Do you have a sample we can use?”
    “Here. This should work,” Zahn said and gave Oonak a single blonde hair from the top of his head.
    Oonak placed the single hair onto a panel that popped out of the armrest of his chair. Zahn watched as the panel flashed brightly for a second, and then the single hair was gone.
    “Decoding…”
    Zahn was about to ask how the hair had disappeared so quickly when Navika spoke again.
    “Transmitting.”
    After a few seconds, a bright light grew within the ring.
    “Excellent work, Zahn! Navika, position us one klick away from the center of the ring. I would rather not get taken in unexpectedly like last time.”
    In a few seconds time, they had gained some distance from the growing point of light at the center of the gate. As before, the space in the middle of the ring spiraled in on itself, except that this time thousands of stars were behind the vortex, creating the illusion that they were circling a massive drain. This gate was also much bigger than the first, and when Zahn studied it closely he noticed that the surface of the ring itself had lit up in perfect geometric patterns, just as the previous gate had.
    “Oonak, I am receiving a repeating signal. It appears to be repeating the signal of the address we just entered. I would surmise that this is an indication we can now proceed through the gate.”
    Indeed, the bright point at the center of the gate stopped growing, and the space around it continued to swirl in a strange way as if starlight itself weren’t sure what to make of it. Zahn looked over to his right and gazed at Kuvela-Dipa once more. He wondered if it might be the last time he would ever see it.
    “Proceed,” Oonak said, and Navika moved closer and closer to the bright center of the vortex. Soon, it completely filled their view, and in an instant, they were gone.
     

CHAPTER12
     
    WELCOME TO NOWHERE
     
     
    Once again, Navika and everyone within hurtled through a corridor of pure light. Zahn tried to make out more details of the thread-like strands of light in the distance. Yet time itself seemed to flow differently in the corridor, and they were back in the darkness of space before he could even begin to count them.
    At first, they only saw darkness. After a few seconds, their eyes adjusted, and the darkness gradually revealed itself to be a field of stars around them once again.
    Zahn looked around. The constellations around him were breathtaking, but they were also completely foreign to him.
    “According to my star maps, we are now over 2,000 light-years from Avani,” Navika said.
    “Are there any planets nearby?”
    “None detected, and all of the nearest stars are well over ten light-years distant.”
    “Indeed, we are deep within the Ocean of Space now, Zahn,” Oonak said. “It appears we are in an area between star clusters.”
    Zahn looked above him and noticed that they were drifting from the center of a ring-shaped gate just as they had with the first gate, now over 2,000 light-years away. Had they really travelled that far? Zahn tried to digest this fact, but had trouble wrapping his mind around it, even though he had experienced it for himself.
    “Oon, how is it possible we’ve gone so