Free Dark Beneath the Moon by Sherry D. Ramsey Page B

proximity to a star. We know there’s no weird interstellar dust cloud carrying particles that our arrival will suddenly ignite or start some other reaction, annihilating us so fast you wouldn’t even be able to wonder what happened.”
    I paused for breath, and Baden fixed me with a quizzical stare. “So, I take it you’ve had the experience of spelunking new wormholes, Captain?”
    “No, but Hirin and I debated the possibility for a while when we were younger—much younger. Yes, before you were born, Maja,” I said, seeing the question begin to form on my daughter’s lips. “We considered it too risky, and having seriously considered those scenarios, I can tell you this is nothing like how it would feel to actually face them.”
    “I read that PrimeCorp is still the largest private funder of independent wormhole explorers,” said Hirin. “They’ve got their fingers in more pies than they even have fingers.”
    “They won’t miss any possible opportunity to make a dollar,” I said. “If they’re funding the exploration, they’re entitled to a cut of any resulting discovery royalties.”
    “I’ll take your word for it about the wormhole exploring anxiety,” Baden said. “But you have to grant that this is exciting.”
    I grinned at him. “I’ll give you that. I’ve never had the pleasure of travelling to a newly-discovered secret system before. Now, we’re supposed to send a message through the wormhole before we head in, and wait for confirmation, so let’s do that. To Admiralo Woodroct, on the O. Domtaw , according to Lanar’s brief. Tell him we’re here, waiting to come through on his word.”
    “Sending it now, Captain.”
    “Yuskeya, keep an eye out for our unwanted visitor, would you? I don’t think they’ll catch up with us, but they’ve surprised us before.”
    We waited in silence, but no reply came from the Domtaw . I drummed my fingers on the arm of my chair. “Baden, resend that message, would you? Add that we may have an unknown ship following us, and we’d like to get through the wormhole before they catch up to us.”
    Baden’s nimble fingers stuttered across the screen, and a moment later he said, “Message away.”
    Another few minutes ticked by in agonizing slowness. “What’s the delay over there?” I said, irritated. “I thought the priority was for us to get in there without being seen. Now they’re making us wait on the doorstep?”
    “They could be busy, I guess,” Hirin offered. “Although you’re right, I expected them to be watching for us.”
    I tapped a fingernail against my front teeth. “Yuskeya, any indication there’s someone coming through the wormhole from the other side?”
    After a brief pause, she reported, “Tracer scan seemed to take a little longer than usual, but it reports all clean, Captain.”
    “Well, I think we’ve waited long enough out here. Viss, let’s have the skip drive. Rei, whenever you’re ready, take us in.”
    “Aye, Captain,” she said, as the skip drive thrummed to life. Normal drives aren’t enough to traverse the inside of a wormhole—they wouldn’t even take you past the edge, or terminal point. The skip drive generates a thin layer of what the physicists call “Krasnikov matter,” enough to keep the wormhole from destabilizing while a ship is inside it, and a strong enough field to launch the ship into the wormhole at one terminal point. The field also holds the ship intact by countering the immense forces at work inside the wormhole, and protects it from the high-frequency radiation, which would prove disastrous for ship and crew. Finally, it repels the ship from the inside surface of the wormhole, propelling it through in a series of skips, like a rock skipping across calm water. Unlike a rock skipping across water, however, the skips don’t run in a straight line. As the skip field repels from one side of the hole, the ship slides around to bounce the next time off the opposite side, to create a