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Sphere of Worlds: Holding Your Breath 
Sphere of Worlds: Holding Your Breath
Book 1- Part 1 - Chapter 1
- Good morning!
My mother's cheerful voice dispelled the flickering remnants of sleep, and I remembered arriving from the academy to my home station yesterday morning. The meeting, the interview with employers, the evening bachelor party drained me of all my strength and I wanted to lie in idleness for a couple of days more.
Increasing the light, my mother went closer to the bed and turned on the vibromassage mode. She grinned and tickled her leg sticking out from under the covers.
- Well, I'm up, I'm up..." I muttered, opening my right eye, twitching my arm to turn off the massage mode, curling up and covering my head with the pillow, trying to resist the nausea coming from the vibration.
- Already a tick out of the shadows. Don't forget you have important tests in the lab today. Professor Sun-Chi reminded me of that half a year ago. Oh... Well get up sleepy-sleepy... the star is shining, the station is spinning, and you're going to sleep through it all!
With a sniffle, I scratched the tip of my nose and sat down, looking longingly at my pillow. It seemed so appealing, but my mother's insistent stare and the word "must!" chased the remnants of sleep out of me. Sighing, I pulled the thermal blanket away from me. My mother looked at me with mischievous eyes and smiled affably. I frowned slightly and opened my left eye and pursed my parched lips.
- Do you think Daddy will appreciate my decision?
- He loves you, once they start the main terraforming stage of the planet and he returns from the surface to the station and then you'll know what he thinks about your internship and coming to our station. But I saw how much he missed you.
The ventilation air from the regeneration park refreshed the room, a pleasant faint scent of fresh greenery wafted in. I closed my eyes and stretched.
- Yes, I understand... It's just, this is my first job, the last time I saw it was four years ago when I entered the academy. And then I specifically asked to come to this station to be near you.
I covered my eyes, pulling the moment away. Feeling a light kiss on my forehead, I smiled.
- It won't be long now, six months at most, and we'll move to the planet. Orion, get up, you're not a child anymore. And let me know when you get back.
- And hurry up... I've got to go, I've got to go.
The hatch closed with a bang and the room was left with only me and the slight rustle of the ventilation unit. Yep, here are the cons, the deployment stations, all like in the early days of space weak gravity, food from tubes, budget air regeneration ... yes all budget just to allow to live a few months of the expedition before the descent to the planet. Although people try to modernize something on their own, but there's no way.
I have decided that sleep and the feeling of comfort cannot be returned, I opened my eyes and with a sharp jerk jumped up on my legs, slightly flew up to the ceiling, jerked the panel on my bunk, and with a rustling sound it slowly crawled into the wall.
Okay, let's make a brief plan for the day, first an ablutions, a snack and we need to fly to the lab. The screen on the wall panel shows that it's only a tick away, so we mustn't be late on our first day at work.
I jumped halfway across the room and opened the compartment's sanitary compartment, covered by the tape, and opened all the shower jets.
Gravity on the rotating station reaches 0.3G, under these conditions the water is more like gel - barely flowing, trying to stick and smear on the surface of the body. In general it's hard to wash in the full sense of the word, so you mostly have to make ablutions or do with an ion shower if you have one.
But it doesn't matter, now I have a little snack to eat and I'm on my way to the lab.
Jumping out of the room into the general compartment of the station, I touched the control panel with my hand, freeing the living compartment - the door beeped and switched its color from red to green. I don't think I'll be coming back here anymore, the science station had promised housing.
With a slight push I jumped up to the relocation ring - in the center of the corridor there were two cables with rings that moved at a constant rate in opposite directions through the entire station along the common corridor. Hooking onto the ring allowed one to reach or carry a small load to the main rooms or interchanges.
The mess hall was still crowded, but many people had clearly finished and were about to disperse. About a dozen people were breaking up their breakfast at the tables, and only two were picking out the available snacks at the serving window.
- Hello, astro-babes!
After giving me a light slap on the wrist and giggling merrily, my trainee partner whizzed past me into the dining room. With a chuckle, I watched her graceful flight to the serving window.
- Grab me a coffee and some sandwiches, "partner.
When I got her nod of agreement, I shifted to a vacant table, looked around, and began to look at her trim figure as I contemplated the day ahead. Although we were all issued universal monochrome gray jumpsuits to fit any size, the girls even at the academy managed to decorate theirs and accentuate their figure advantageously. On them, after a couple of days, he already looked perfect. And now I caught myself looking at the wrong places for my partner to look at. She was a brunette, now her short multicolored haircut, which looked like a carriage, hid her ears and highlighted the cute nose, and dark gray wide-open eyes as if surprised by the world around her. Outwardly frail, just over 170 centimeters tall, she was hardy and more than once on jogging moved along with me to the very end, although physical training in our direction and not particularly fond of, but the standard physical training astronaut we both passed with flying colors.
She flew up to our table loaded with briquettes, bottles, and tubes.
- Sorry, but there were no briquettes. Suck a tube of cereal," Lana giggled.
- I hate tubes. They look like some kind of worms in a package.
- Ewww... You can say that again. I wonder what we're supposed to do in the lab on our first day. - Lana asked, clutching her white teeth into a rye muffin.
- The job was listed as "Astronaut Laboratory Technicians. And who cares - like you're going to refuse...whatever it is we're assigned.
- Well, at least you'd like to know roughly how and what.
- Professor Sun-Chi yesterday in the interview kind of mentioned that they kind of study the local pulsar and will need some spatial sensors on clearly defined coordinates first and set up, oh, we'll have a lot of trouble. On reflection, she corrected her strand and continued: "One hundred percent we'll have to calibrate, too."
- He was more silent with me, leafing through the questionnaire and humming.
- Well you'll know a lot soon you'll be old - we'll live and see. Lana raked the food containers into one pile.
- I could see that she, like me, was just as excited about her first day of work as I was. With a disgruntled snort, Lana stood up, patted her stomach, and shoved the rest of her bun behind her cheek, glancing at the communicator screen:
- Yeah, time flies, 15 minutes to flight. We're going to be late at this rate. Let's speed up.
We exchanged insignificant phrases and got up from the table while chewing.
As we left the dining room I caught hold of the displacement ring and put my arm around her waist, pulling her closer.
- Oh, Orion, when are you going to find a girlfriend, and all your grabbing hands to me - smiling pressed against me and whispered in my ear Lana.
- Well... ahem... I've got more important work to do right now, and you're... you're always around. - I retorted and frowned remembering the number of the hangar with our "Behemoth".
The bad name Lana had coined on the first inspection was immediately attached to our ship because of the bizarre shape of the cabin and the hull. A former in-system truck, with a modified laboratory enhanced protection of the hull from various radiations to work in extreme conditions near the pulsar. That would be OK, but the name "Behemoth" was justified not by the increased power of the protective shields, but by the extremely low speed and increased dimensions.
- Aha, here comes Deck 9, the first to go! - Unclasping my hand and pushing my passenger in the right direction, I followed her into the transition hatch of the deck. So far from the center of the station gravity was no longer felt at all. And we pushed ourselves against the walls, giving ourselves the necessary vector and speed
- Two-Three! - Lana began.
- Stone - we said in chorus and laughed at the same choice. The hatch on the deck led to a narrow passage to the deck airlock- the slightly corrugated walls bent inward in places.
- All right," I said with a gasp of laughter, "my turn. Two-three.
- Scissors! - Paper!
- Okay, but the first flight out of the lab will be mine! - she touched a panel at the airlock. "Access granted," the panel replied.
The airlock, with a low rustle, opened access to the hangar.
- Well, we'll see about that," I authorized myself as well, poking the panel.
The hangar greeted us with coolness and dim light. Ah, Behemoth blinking with the occasional indication of on-board lights and an open hatch invited us inside.
With two strong thrusts we flew up to the level of the ship's hatch and slid into the airlock. The hatch slammed shut and the machinery rumbled, the ship was coming back to life from its sleep.
While Lana was at the airlock console pumping air out of the hangar and the station airlock, I flew through the cabin and sat down in the pilot's seat, strapped on my helmet and pulled up the steering wheel. I sighed, tuned myself for the future flight, clicked the slightly worn buttons, entered the coordinates of the laboratory from memory and turned on the prelaunch preparation, inspecting and checking the parameters of the systems. It was my first free flight since graduating from the academy. And it was my first ship, well... if you don't count the training ships. I heard a noise from behind me - Lana flew into her chair, quickly buckled up and fiddled with the straps, getting comfortable in the navigator's chair.
- B-r-r, it's so cold, Orion, I'm running a prelaunch diagnostic and course calculation...
- I stopped Lana last night and I've already calculated and entered it.
- Are you sure? We could miss - Lana's voice sounded perplexed and disapproving of the violation of the flight manual.
- It's unlikely, and in any case we're running out of time.
- Let me double-check, and do you think they'll give us the flight task right away, or they'll torture us with tests all day?
- "Deck 9, USSUT-29 to Control. Request permission to undock and corridor for departure."
- ... Oh, Orion! Don't you trust automation anymore? - Oleg's voice, familiar from yesterday, called me from the control room.
- Well, how can I say, I got used to duplicate the manual - I answered
- By the way, why are you still at the station, I thought you had already ticked off, you have shifted the start of work there because of the experiment, have you not checked the communicator? Yesterday there was a dispatch to all who work for scientists. - There sounded puzzled notes in Oleg's voice.
Cursing, I checked my mail, but there were no letters from my employer. I had to turn around and wave to my partner to attract her attention.
Lana dropped her course calculations and looked at me questioningly.
- Lan look in your room, Oleg said there was a message that the working day is a tick earlier because of the experiment. Do you have something?
- Empty, still checked this morning, maybe we did not have time to add, we just yesterday enrolled in the staff.
- Oleg, if this is some kind of prank for the newcomers, it's not funny. - I added discontent to my voice.
- What prank?! All of you who live at the station, a tick ago already pulled to work.
Lana and I looked at each other, yes on the first day of work and be an hour late.
"USSUT-29 - Disconnect cleared, access to departure sector corridor 4B cleared. Have a safe flight," Oleg's mocking voice brought our thoughts back to the present and I turned to the control panel.
I grabbed the helm and pulled it slightly, unhooking the spacecraft and moving it away from the station.
We reached the acceleration point of the sector we had been assigned to, so we began a short circle around the edge of the station ring.
- Let's go! - After confirming the choice of the entered coordinates, I initiated the activation of the engine.
I felt a slight vibration and increasing pressure pressed me into my seat, and behind me I heard the growing hum of the hyperdrive, gradually turning into a barely audible squeak. The statuses of the jump systems glowed with the colors of readiness. Within a couple of seconds, everything went silent, the sound just disappeared, and then MIGGLED.
...
My heart froze for a second and then started up again, and all my muscles, which had been turned into mousse for a second, gave rise to a wave of pain, and I coughed out a cramped, labored exhalation. After the jump I was able to regain my sense of well-being, the first painful sensation came, it hurt all at once, but it passed very quickly. It was a belated realization that despite all the painful sensations, the sound and light of the hyperjump exit was never deafening. Blinking my eyes quickly, I felt their complaints, too-an unbearable feeling of dryness, I suppressed the itching urge to scratch them. I swallowed my saliva a couple of times and tried to relax as the surrounding sounds, smells, and other sensations smoothly returned to normal. There was a quiet rustling and a convulsive cough behind me. In a hushed voice I strained to say:
- Lana, are you okay?
I looked around, the screens were winking red and yellow indicators of the ship's diagnostic systems, catching my attention. The back of my chair prevented me from looking at my partner, but I could hear from the side of my ear that she, too, was having a hard time with the jump.
- Okay, next time, be more accurate before you jump, or let the automatics adjust your speed. I'm going to unbuckle, bye.
There was a rustle of retracting seat belts that drowned out the hoarse notes of her voice.
- And by the way, judging by the revived radar we missed, the lab is a light second away. - Lana muttered, tapping the side of her fingernail on the radar display.
- Yeah... my bad luck, I forgot to add the y factor to the station's orbital drift. Forgot it wasn't stationary. I'll listen to you from now on.
- It's about time... loser, too bad there's nothing we can do, we still have a few minutes before the engine is fully resuscitated. I'm going to try to get in contact with the ship and check the trajectory and approach corridor.
But the connection came sooner than expected - I jabbed the sharply blinking request light on the panel and the voice of an irritated dispatcher echoed in the cockpit.
- "LB Prometheus calling USSUT-17."
- "Yeah, I hear you Prometheus, we're already correcting course we'll be there soon."
- "What the fuck are you rookies doing out there? Get out of there now, you're in the pulsar reaction zone. I repeat, this area is dangerous! Get the hell out of there!
- Acknowledged, start the engine and fly away!
- You'll never make it! There's a jet stream coming your way from the pulsar. You've got to jump from there to an arbitrary point! Hurry the fuck up and jump! Immediately... - The transmission was interrupted by interference.
And the ship began to shake slightly, as if small meteorites were hitting the shields.
- The ship was not yet alive and ready to jump, and it looked like we needed to jump right away- Lana's eyes and hands moved to the panel and flitted over the screens in an attempt to speed up the launch.
- This old thing can't recover that fast and jump again!!! - Panic already echoed in her voice.
The tapping of her fingers on the panel fractionally echoed my touches.
Several attempts to initiate a jump were unsuccessful. The energy, despite its overabundance, went from the generators and storage unit to the engine, and it absorbed it like a black hole, but would not start. The alarm buzzer sounded loudly and nastily, then all the status indicators of the engine system blinked red and "went out" the system stopped responding to our attempts to resuscitate it. The lights blinked a couple of times and all the screens and panels glowed white, but after a couple of seconds everyone was completely out, and the cabin was flooded with silence and darkness.
I stared perplexedly at the extinguished screens for a few seconds before I put my hands down and looked around myself. The duplicating circuits would not start without power.
Flashes and flashes danced in the outside view porthole. The inertia of motion was felt, and the bow of the ship was slowly scrambling upward, exposing the belly of the ship to the main flow of energy. The ship began to shake, and you could hear the faint crunching and creaking of the hull and plating.
- Orioshka, what do we do? We're going to die, aren't we?! - Lana's voice was soft and faint, and towards the end it broke into a sob.
I turned to her. She pulled away from the panel and clutched the armrests and looked at me sadly through her tears.
- Don't worry, we just wait it out-we were given a protected ship, it has excellent protection against all known radiation and powerful shields.
- The energies are gone! It's just like everything else, it's gone.
- All right, don't be hysterical, calm down, we were spotted by the lab and we only have to wait a little longer.
The increased vibration shook the ship more and more, it began to wobble and gently rotate around its longitudinal axis. It was impossible to calm down, much less lean back to look at Lana in such a jolt, and I was forced to return to my chair. The rustle that quickly emerged and grew into a low, growing rumble that drowned out all other sounds.
My ears perked up, and then, after a sharp and unpleasant click in them, I stopped hearing anything at all. Something warm touched and flowed from them down the back of my neck, and judging by the salty taste on my tongue, my nose bled as well.
The lights that had been turned off flared up and began to gain intensity in the background. The light that had first appeared in the portholes spread throughout the cabin and began to blind my eyes, it became more and more intense, it seemed to emanate from everything around me. Even the panel and my hands were glowing with smooth shimmering lights, when it began to press and burn my skin, I could not stand it and closed my eyes. The sharp sandpaper of the heat first scorched only my hands and face, and then my whole body began to burn. To somehow ease the painful sensations of light and fire, I pressed my head to my shoulders, grasped the grips of the chair with my immovable hands, and clutched them until it hurt, concentrated on the sensations of my fingertips, but as if the light and vibration had waited for this moment, merged into one and the world faded away again.
...
The darkness began to brighten and turn red, revealing dark pulsating veins and a blurred light halo. The tension increased, it was hard, painful, and unaccustomedly too bright. Feelings, thoughts, sensations were manifesting inside me. Too much of everything, too fast-it was unbearable. A halo of light began to take on color. The pain intensified. No, it wasn't just contrasting colors and blurred hues... the luminous tones were gaining in intensity. I saw, remembered, recognized, and was aware of images in spots of color.
Book 1- Part 1 - Chapter 1
- Good morning!
My mother's cheerful voice dispelled the flickering remnants of sleep, and I remembered arriving from the academy to my home station yesterday morning. The meeting, the interview with employers, the evening bachelor party drained me of all my strength and I wanted to lie in idleness for a couple of days more.
Increasing the light, my mother went closer to the bed and turned on the vibromassage mode. She grinned and tickled her leg sticking out from under the covers.
- Well, I'm up, I'm up..." I muttered, opening my right eye, twitching my arm to turn off the massage mode, curling up and covering my head with the pillow, trying to resist the nausea coming from the vibration.
- Already a tick out of the shadows. Don't forget you have important tests in the lab today. Professor Sun-Chi reminded me of that half a year ago. Oh... Well get up sleepy-sleepy... the star is shining, the station is spinning, and you're going to sleep through it all!
With a sniffle, I scratched the tip of my nose and sat down, looking longingly at my pillow. It seemed so appealing, but my mother's insistent stare and the word "must!" chased the remnants of sleep out of me. Sighing, I pulled the thermal blanket away from me. My mother looked at me with mischievous eyes and smiled affably. I frowned slightly and opened my left eye and pursed my parched lips.
- Do you think Daddy will appreciate my decision?
- He loves you, once they start the main terraforming stage of the planet and he returns from the surface to the station and then you'll know what he thinks about your internship and coming to our station. But I saw how much he missed you.
The ventilation air from the regeneration park refreshed the room, a pleasant faint scent of fresh greenery wafted in. I closed my eyes and stretched.
- Yes, I understand... It's just, this is my first job, the last time I saw it was four years ago when I entered the academy. And then I specifically asked to come to this station to be near you.
I covered my eyes, pulling the moment away. Feeling a light kiss on my forehead, I smiled.
- It won't be long now, six months at most, and we'll move to the planet. Orion, get up, you're not a child anymore. And let me know when you get back.
- And hurry up... I've got to go, I've got to go.
The hatch closed with a bang and the room was left with only me and the slight rustle of the ventilation unit. Yep, here are the cons, the deployment stations, all like in the early days of space weak gravity, food from tubes, budget air regeneration ... yes all budget just to allow to live a few months of the expedition before the descent to the planet. Although people try to modernize something on their own, but there's no way.
I have decided that sleep and the feeling of comfort cannot be returned, I opened my eyes and with a sharp jerk jumped up on my legs, slightly flew up to the ceiling, jerked the panel on my bunk, and with a rustling sound it slowly crawled into the wall.
Okay, let's make a brief plan for the day, first an ablutions, a snack and we need to fly to the lab. The screen on the wall panel shows that it's only a tick away, so we mustn't be late on our first day at work.
I jumped halfway across the room and opened the compartment's sanitary compartment, covered by the tape, and opened all the shower jets.
Gravity on the rotating station reaches 0.3G, under these conditions the water is more like gel - barely flowing, trying to stick and smear on the surface of the body. In general it's hard to wash in the full sense of the word, so you mostly have to make ablutions or do with an ion shower if you have one.
But it doesn't matter, now I have a little snack to eat and I'm on my way to the lab.
Jumping out of the room into the general compartment of the station, I touched the control panel with my hand, freeing the living compartment - the door beeped and switched its color from red to green. I don't think I'll be coming back here anymore, the science station had promised housing.
With a slight push I jumped up to the relocation ring - in the center of the corridor there were two cables with rings that moved at a constant rate in opposite directions through the entire station along the common corridor. Hooking onto the ring allowed one to reach or carry a small load to the main rooms or interchanges.
The mess hall was still crowded, but many people had clearly finished and were about to disperse. About a dozen people were breaking up their breakfast at the tables, and only two were picking out the available snacks at the serving window.
- Hello, astro-babes!
After giving me a light slap on the wrist and giggling merrily, my trainee partner whizzed past me into the dining room. With a chuckle, I watched her graceful flight to the serving window.
- Grab me a coffee and some sandwiches, "partner.
When I got her nod of agreement, I shifted to a vacant table, looked around, and began to look at her trim figure as I contemplated the day ahead. Although we were all issued universal monochrome gray jumpsuits to fit any size, the girls even at the academy managed to decorate theirs and accentuate their figure advantageously. On them, after a couple of days, he already looked perfect. And now I caught myself looking at the wrong places for my partner to look at. She was a brunette, now her short multicolored haircut, which looked like a carriage, hid her ears and highlighted the cute nose, and dark gray wide-open eyes as if surprised by the world around her. Outwardly frail, just over 170 centimeters tall, she was hardy and more than once on jogging moved along with me to the very end, although physical training in our direction and not particularly fond of, but the standard physical training astronaut we both passed with flying colors.
She flew up to our table loaded with briquettes, bottles, and tubes.
- Sorry, but there were no briquettes. Suck a tube of cereal," Lana giggled.
- I hate tubes. They look like some kind of worms in a package.
- Ewww... You can say that again. I wonder what we're supposed to do in the lab on our first day. - Lana asked, clutching her white teeth into a rye muffin.
- The job was listed as "Astronaut Laboratory Technicians. And who cares - like you're going to refuse...whatever it is we're assigned.
- Well, at least you'd like to know roughly how and what.
- Professor Sun-Chi yesterday in the interview kind of mentioned that they kind of study the local pulsar and will need some spatial sensors on clearly defined coordinates first and set up, oh, we'll have a lot of trouble. On reflection, she corrected her strand and continued: "One hundred percent we'll have to calibrate, too."
- He was more silent with me, leafing through the questionnaire and humming.
- Well you'll know a lot soon you'll be old - we'll live and see. Lana raked the food containers into one pile.
- I could see that she, like me, was just as excited about her first day of work as I was. With a disgruntled snort, Lana stood up, patted her stomach, and shoved the rest of her bun behind her cheek, glancing at the communicator screen:
- Yeah, time flies, 15 minutes to flight. We're going to be late at this rate. Let's speed up.
We exchanged insignificant phrases and got up from the table while chewing.
As we left the dining room I caught hold of the displacement ring and put my arm around her waist, pulling her closer.
- Oh, Orion, when are you going to find a girlfriend, and all your grabbing hands to me - smiling pressed against me and whispered in my ear Lana.
- Well... ahem... I've got more important work to do right now, and you're... you're always around. - I retorted and frowned remembering the number of the hangar with our "Behemoth".
The bad name Lana had coined on the first inspection was immediately attached to our ship because of the bizarre shape of the cabin and the hull. A former in-system truck, with a modified laboratory enhanced protection of the hull from various radiations to work in extreme conditions near the pulsar. That would be OK, but the name "Behemoth" was justified not by the increased power of the protective shields, but by the extremely low speed and increased dimensions.
- Aha, here comes Deck 9, the first to go! - Unclasping my hand and pushing my passenger in the right direction, I followed her into the transition hatch of the deck. So far from the center of the station gravity was no longer felt at all. And we pushed ourselves against the walls, giving ourselves the necessary vector and speed
- Two-Three! - Lana began.
- Stone - we said in chorus and laughed at the same choice. The hatch on the deck led to a narrow passage to the deck airlock- the slightly corrugated walls bent inward in places.
- All right," I said with a gasp of laughter, "my turn. Two-three.
- Scissors! - Paper!
- Okay, but the first flight out of the lab will be mine! - she touched a panel at the airlock. "Access granted," the panel replied.
The airlock, with a low rustle, opened access to the hangar.
- Well, we'll see about that," I authorized myself as well, poking the panel.
The hangar greeted us with coolness and dim light. Ah, Behemoth blinking with the occasional indication of on-board lights and an open hatch invited us inside.
With two strong thrusts we flew up to the level of the ship's hatch and slid into the airlock. The hatch slammed shut and the machinery rumbled, the ship was coming back to life from its sleep.
While Lana was at the airlock console pumping air out of the hangar and the station airlock, I flew through the cabin and sat down in the pilot's seat, strapped on my helmet and pulled up the steering wheel. I sighed, tuned myself for the future flight, clicked the slightly worn buttons, entered the coordinates of the laboratory from memory and turned on the prelaunch preparation, inspecting and checking the parameters of the systems. It was my first free flight since graduating from the academy. And it was my first ship, well... if you don't count the training ships. I heard a noise from behind me - Lana flew into her chair, quickly buckled up and fiddled with the straps, getting comfortable in the navigator's chair.
- B-r-r, it's so cold, Orion, I'm running a prelaunch diagnostic and course calculation...
- I stopped Lana last night and I've already calculated and entered it.
- Are you sure? We could miss - Lana's voice sounded perplexed and disapproving of the violation of the flight manual.
- It's unlikely, and in any case we're running out of time.
- Let me double-check, and do you think they'll give us the flight task right away, or they'll torture us with tests all day?
- "Deck 9, USSUT-29 to Control. Request permission to undock and corridor for departure."
- ... Oh, Orion! Don't you trust automation anymore? - Oleg's voice, familiar from yesterday, called me from the control room.
- Well, how can I say, I got used to duplicate the manual - I answered
- By the way, why are you still at the station, I thought you had already ticked off, you have shifted the start of work there because of the experiment, have you not checked the communicator? Yesterday there was a dispatch to all who work for scientists. - There sounded puzzled notes in Oleg's voice.
Cursing, I checked my mail, but there were no letters from my employer. I had to turn around and wave to my partner to attract her attention.
Lana dropped her course calculations and looked at me questioningly.
- Lan look in your room, Oleg said there was a message that the working day is a tick earlier because of the experiment. Do you have something?
- Empty, still checked this morning, maybe we did not have time to add, we just yesterday enrolled in the staff.
- Oleg, if this is some kind of prank for the newcomers, it's not funny. - I added discontent to my voice.
- What prank?! All of you who live at the station, a tick ago already pulled to work.
Lana and I looked at each other, yes on the first day of work and be an hour late.
"USSUT-29 - Disconnect cleared, access to departure sector corridor 4B cleared. Have a safe flight," Oleg's mocking voice brought our thoughts back to the present and I turned to the control panel.
I grabbed the helm and pulled it slightly, unhooking the spacecraft and moving it away from the station.
We reached the acceleration point of the sector we had been assigned to, so we began a short circle around the edge of the station ring.
- Let's go! - After confirming the choice of the entered coordinates, I initiated the activation of the engine.
I felt a slight vibration and increasing pressure pressed me into my seat, and behind me I heard the growing hum of the hyperdrive, gradually turning into a barely audible squeak. The statuses of the jump systems glowed with the colors of readiness. Within a couple of seconds, everything went silent, the sound just disappeared, and then MIGGLED.
...
My heart froze for a second and then started up again, and all my muscles, which had been turned into mousse for a second, gave rise to a wave of pain, and I coughed out a cramped, labored exhalation. After the jump I was able to regain my sense of well-being, the first painful sensation came, it hurt all at once, but it passed very quickly. It was a belated realization that despite all the painful sensations, the sound and light of the hyperjump exit was never deafening. Blinking my eyes quickly, I felt their complaints, too-an unbearable feeling of dryness, I suppressed the itching urge to scratch them. I swallowed my saliva a couple of times and tried to relax as the surrounding sounds, smells, and other sensations smoothly returned to normal. There was a quiet rustling and a convulsive cough behind me. In a hushed voice I strained to say:
- Lana, are you okay?
I looked around, the screens were winking red and yellow indicators of the ship's diagnostic systems, catching my attention. The back of my chair prevented me from looking at my partner, but I could hear from the side of my ear that she, too, was having a hard time with the jump.
- Okay, next time, be more accurate before you jump, or let the automatics adjust your speed. I'm going to unbuckle, bye.
There was a rustle of retracting seat belts that drowned out the hoarse notes of her voice.
- And by the way, judging by the revived radar we missed, the lab is a light second away. - Lana muttered, tapping the side of her fingernail on the radar display.
- Yeah... my bad luck, I forgot to add the y factor to the station's orbital drift. Forgot it wasn't stationary. I'll listen to you from now on.
- It's about time... loser, too bad there's nothing we can do, we still have a few minutes before the engine is fully resuscitated. I'm going to try to get in contact with the ship and check the trajectory and approach corridor.
But the connection came sooner than expected - I jabbed the sharply blinking request light on the panel and the voice of an irritated dispatcher echoed in the cockpit.
- "LB Prometheus calling USSUT-17."
- "Yeah, I hear you Prometheus, we're already correcting course we'll be there soon."
- "What the fuck are you rookies doing out there? Get out of there now, you're in the pulsar reaction zone. I repeat, this area is dangerous! Get the hell out of there!
- Acknowledged, start the engine and fly away!
- You'll never make it! There's a jet stream coming your way from the pulsar. You've got to jump from there to an arbitrary point! Hurry the fuck up and jump! Immediately... - The transmission was interrupted by interference.
And the ship began to shake slightly, as if small meteorites were hitting the shields.
- The ship was not yet alive and ready to jump, and it looked like we needed to jump right away- Lana's eyes and hands moved to the panel and flitted over the screens in an attempt to speed up the launch.
- This old thing can't recover that fast and jump again!!! - Panic already echoed in her voice.
The tapping of her fingers on the panel fractionally echoed my touches.
Several attempts to initiate a jump were unsuccessful. The energy, despite its overabundance, went from the generators and storage unit to the engine, and it absorbed it like a black hole, but would not start. The alarm buzzer sounded loudly and nastily, then all the status indicators of the engine system blinked red and "went out" the system stopped responding to our attempts to resuscitate it. The lights blinked a couple of times and all the screens and panels glowed white, but after a couple of seconds everyone was completely out, and the cabin was flooded with silence and darkness.
I stared perplexedly at the extinguished screens for a few seconds before I put my hands down and looked around myself. The duplicating circuits would not start without power.
Flashes and flashes danced in the outside view porthole. The inertia of motion was felt, and the bow of the ship was slowly scrambling upward, exposing the belly of the ship to the main flow of energy. The ship began to shake, and you could hear the faint crunching and creaking of the hull and plating.
- Orioshka, what do we do? We're going to die, aren't we?! - Lana's voice was soft and faint, and towards the end it broke into a sob.
I turned to her. She pulled away from the panel and clutched the armrests and looked at me sadly through her tears.
- Don't worry, we just wait it out-we were given a protected ship, it has excellent protection against all known radiation and powerful shields.
- The energies are gone! It's just like everything else, it's gone.
- All right, don't be hysterical, calm down, we were spotted by the lab and we only have to wait a little longer.
The increased vibration shook the ship more and more, it began to wobble and gently rotate around its longitudinal axis. It was impossible to calm down, much less lean back to look at Lana in such a jolt, and I was forced to return to my chair. The rustle that quickly emerged and grew into a low, growing rumble that drowned out all other sounds.
My ears perked up, and then, after a sharp and unpleasant click in them, I stopped hearing anything at all. Something warm touched and flowed from them down the back of my neck, and judging by the salty taste on my tongue, my nose bled as well.
The lights that had been turned off flared up and began to gain intensity in the background. The light that had first appeared in the portholes spread throughout the cabin and began to blind my eyes, it became more and more intense, it seemed to emanate from everything around me. Even the panel and my hands were glowing with smooth shimmering lights, when it began to press and burn my skin, I could not stand it and closed my eyes. The sharp sandpaper of the heat first scorched only my hands and face, and then my whole body began to burn. To somehow ease the painful sensations of light and fire, I pressed my head to my shoulders, grasped the grips of the chair with my immovable hands, and clutched them until it hurt, concentrated on the sensations of my fingertips, but as if the light and vibration had waited for this moment, merged into one and the world faded away again.
...
The darkness began to brighten and turn red, revealing dark pulsating veins and a blurred light halo. The tension increased, it was hard, painful, and unaccustomedly too bright. Feelings, thoughts, sensations were manifesting inside me. Too much of everything, too fast-it was unbearable. A halo of light began to take on color. The pain intensified. No, it wasn't just contrasting colors and blurred hues... the luminous tones were gaining in intensity. I saw, remembered, recognized, and was aware of images in spots of color.
symbol followed by an explanation. Here is the result: