Enigma Ship by J. York (small books to read .TXT) 📕

that thought into the form of an order. There was a slight, springy, resistance, like punching through a thin sheet of rubber. He only stopped when he was up to the shoulder in Enigma. He wiggled his fingers experimentally. “Still attached,” he announced.

“Guys,” Stevens’s voice cut into the circuit, “Corsi is turning all red. For your own safety, I recommend not returning to the ship right away.”

“We will,” Corsi’s voice was slow and controlled, “have a talk about this later.”

“Gomez.” It was Captain Gold’s voice this time. “What do you see?”

“It looks like some kind of mechanical space, Captain. Possibly a power generator or an engine room, though the technology is unlike anything I’ve seen before. No sign of crew. Everything appears automated.”

“Captain,” said Duffy, “we have to go inside. We can’t tell much about Enigma from out here. It’s also possible that once inside, we might be able to get a message to the Lincoln, either with our combadges or through an internal communications system we can tap into.”

“Captain,” Corsi’s voice rose in warning.

“Stand by, away team.”

The bridge circuit was muted. Duffy exchanged glances with Gomez. He wondered what the proverbial fly on the wall would be hearing right now.

“Commander.” It was Corsi. “I’ll be monitoring the situation from here. I have a team suited and ready for immediate beam-out in case there’s trouble.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Duffy. “There’s a duplicate magnetic probe on one of Soloman’s manipulator arms. The module has enough power to hold the breach open indefinitely, which our portable model can’t do. Soloman can monitor us from outside and provide a communications relay.”

“Very well,” said Gold, “permission to enter the Enigma ship is granted.”

They withdrew the portable probe, and replaced it with the one on Soloman’s pod. With the increased power available from the pod’s mini-fusion reactor, Duffy felt comfortable upping the gain to give them a two-meter opening. Gomez insisted on going first, but there was no shortage of volunteers. They were all eager to examine Enigma’s mysterious workings.

There was an operational gravity field inside Enigma, roughly half a standard gravity, and it was oriented so that the opening dropped them onto an angled wall. A towline from the module was fed through the opening first, to allow them to climb down to a level deck about eight meters below. Duffy watched, feeling a slight bit of disorientation, as Gomez lowered herself down.

She waved. “Comm check. Do you read me out there?”

“Signal gain is down seventy percent,” reported Soloman, “but I still read you fine, and I’m relaying a clear signal back to the ship.”

P8 Blue was next in. She bypassed the line, her eight legs allowing her to scurry directly down the wall in the reduced gravity.

“Wish me luck,” said Duffy, as he waved at Soloman in his cupola and climbed through the opening.

“Despite considerable effort on my part, I still do not understand the indeterminate nature of luck. I wish you success, not failure.”

Duffy chuckled. “Close enough.” He felt the gravity field grab him as he passed through the force fields, and climbed hand over hand down the line. He dropped lightly to the deck—it was a little like his first walk on Mars—and joined the others in looking around.

The space was dimly lit, and their hand-lights helped them pierce the shadows. A large cylinder, covered with glowing blue panels along its length, stretched from one end of the space to the other, a distance of perhaps fifty meters. Duffy was drawn to this device, while P8 scrambled inside a large copper-colored piece of machinery at one end of the room. Gomez focused on some illuminated wall panels that might be controls or readouts. With the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere confirmed, both Duffy and Gomez took off their helmets to conserve their suits’ respective air supplies.

Duffy walked along the length of the device, feeling the pulse of power from inside as his glove slid along its mechanical supports. He knew instinctively it had to be some kind of engine. He stopped occasionally to take a tricorder reading, then moved along. He’d traveled the full length of the device before coming to a conclusion. “I think this is a space drive, a caterpillar.”

Pattie’s head popped out of an opening in the top of the device she was examining. “Excuse me? That last part can’t possibly have translated properly.”

Duffy laughed. “I wasn’t talking about one of your family members, Pattie. It’s a kind of theoretical reactionless drive. Inside this cylinder, a bit of space is being pinched, kinked. The drive then uses that kink to pull itself forward. Once the kink has been pulled through the length of the engine, it’s released, a new one forms at the other end, and the process repeats itself.

“It’s like an inchworm crawling along—again, no offense—or one of us climbing that line hand-over-hand. It’s a perfect stealth drive, no exhaust products, no radiation, no thermal emissions, just a few stray gravity waves that these people apparently have the technology to mask. Thing is, this kind of drive should require a lot of power.”

“Two things,” Pattie said. “One, you really don’t need to apologize every time you make a metaphor to an Earth-based insectoid or vermicular life-form.”

“Sorry.” Duffy grinned.

“Secondly, I believe that this device I am studying is the source of that power. I believe it may be a zero-point energy collector.”

Duffy whistled softly. “Literally energy from nothing. The Federation’s never been able to make that one work, though we’ve had the theory for centuries. Couple this drive to that collector, and you’ve got about as close to a perpetual motion machine as you’ll ever see.”

“I’m not having much luck making sense of these panels,” said Gomez. “For all I know, I’m trying to decipher a decorative wall hanging. But there’s definitely control activity behind it. If I can find a way to tie in a hard connection for Soloman, maybe he can access their control circuits from outside.” A puzzled look crossed her face as she studied her tricorder. “Is