Free Tachyon Web by Christopher Pike Page B

headed for Excalibur ’s air lock. Eric very much enjoyed the girls’ good-bye kisses, especially Jeanie’s tearful ‘Come back soon.’ He was beginning to feel scared, but it was the kind of scared that made him feel extraordinarily alive. They slipped their inflatable containers through the collars of the opant coats and donned their helmets. Sammy took their gloved hands.
    “Be careful,” he said.
    Of course, it was too late for advice like that.
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    The first thing Eric did when he stepped outside was turn on his helmet lamp. The light came out green on a green metallic ground. With the contacts he was going to miss out on whatever colors the Kaulikan universe had to offer.
    He moved straight out of the air lock toward the nearest wall and looked ‘up’ toward the end of the gray central shaft and black domes that encircled the shimmering ionic trail. What the alien technology lacked in sophistication, it made up for in magnitude. He stood, unable to stop staring, until he started to feel dizzy and had to put a hand out to steady himself. The rotation of the wheel was disorientating.
    “Are you okay?” Strem asked, putting his hand on his shoulder, shinning his helmet lamp directly in his eyes.
    “Yes.” Eric straightened. Excalibur blocked one side of the dark tunnel formed by the rim of the spinning wheel, a silent black cylinder whose outline could be seen only as a silhouette against the star field. But the other direction curved upwards without obstruction toward an inverted horizon that would bring them back to where they had started if they followed it long enough. Eric pointed to the Kaulikans’ glowing purple tail, which seemed to disappear into infinity. “Quite a view, huh?” he said.
    “I’ve got to admit, it is,” Strem said. “I just can’t understand how they could work so long building these ships and not invent the graviton or hyper drives. They mustn’t be as intelligent as we are.”
    “If I remember correctly, Dr. Pernel discovered the principles of the graviton flux entirely by accident, which led to the discovery of hyper relays. We were lucky; they weren’t.”
    “Ah, maybe.”
    They started away from Excalibur , plodding under the weight of the pressure suits, which had been designed for free fall. Eric estimated their gravity at eighty percent Earth’s. The side force or acceleration generated by the Kaulikan drive was barely noticeable. Then again, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that their drive had been on continuously for the last five years.
    The first part of their slow walk was uneventful. The hull floor was flat, devoid of equipment. Eric repeatedly found his eyes drawn to the central shaft, soundlessly spinning its massive plates on what must have been the largest ball bearings in this quadrant of the galaxy. He suspected that was where engineering would be located, which was where they’d probably find their forty gallons of ethylene glycol.
    Two hundred yards from Excalibur they came to a circular hatch on the ground with a light in the center and a handle at either end. There were no buttons to push, no knobs to spin. They stared at it for a while before Sammy came over the line.
    (“Pull on it. Turn it. Play with it. Open it.”)
    They tried to turn it clockwise and counterclockwise, but it didn’t budge. Yanking on the handles didn’t help matters. Eric thought it would be fitting to travel hundred of light years, survive a nova and a mad deceleration, and then not be able to get past the door. Finally, frustrated, Strem kicked the light, and lo and behold, that worked. The hatch eased up a couple of inches and they were able to turn it a half revolution clockwise until it stopped and swung open. They peered inside. It was awfully dark.
    “Who wants to go first?” Strem said.
    “Who was the first man to step on the moon?” Eric asked.
    “Armstrong.”
    “You see, you remember, I’m going first.” Eric knelt by