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THE PORTAL
By
Kaitlyn O’Connor
© copyright September 2007 by Kaitlyn O’Connor
Cover Art by Eliza Black, Sept. 2007
ISBN 978-1-60394-077-1
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
The trip had been long and tedious, but it would’ve been a lot more boring, and, truth be told, probably impossible, if not for the frog DNA.
Dr. Alexis Conyers tried to push that stray thought to the back of her mind, as she had every time it had surfaced since she’d agreed to accept mutation for the sake of mankind, but it wormed its way to the forefront of her thoughts again as she struggled to focus on the activity around her.
Their mission might not be mankind’s last chance, but there was no denying it was their best hope. Sacrifices were necessary if they were to have any expectation of pulling it off. She’d accepted that.
They’d all accepted that.
And it still bothered her to think about the alien DNA strands that had been webbed to her own, making her less than human anymore.
She still felt human. She still looked human, but the bald truth was that she wasn’t entirely human anymore and she wasn’t as comfortable with that as she would’ve liked to be. It made her wonder if the desperation to save the human race hadn’t already gone beyond what it should’ve.
Harnessing the comet had seemed hair-brained and brilliant at the same time … and so simple it almost made everyone feel stupid they hadn’t thought about it before. Scientists had studied comets and meteors for decades. Other scientists had trained their gazes on the search for a truly habitable world, one that would support human life without requiring terraforming, or building biospheres, or lugging tons of life support equipment light-years just to provide the minimum to sustain life.
But, until fairly recently, no one had thought to put the two projects on the same page.
They’d colonized the Earth’s moon, Mars and its moons—moons belonging to half the planets in their solar system, but that was less than ideal. Not one ‘world’ they’d conquered could sustain life without a tremendous amount of work and the ever present danger that some vital piece of equipment would fail and wipe out the entire colony before help could arrive.
As bad as things had gotten on Earth—and it was pretty damned unstable—it was still better than anything they’d been able to come up with—although there was some comfort in not having all their ‘eggs’ in one basket, in knowing it was less likely, now, that a single cataclysm could wipe out the entire human race.
The probes they’d finally set down on comets to piggyback a ride through the universe had succeeded where all other efforts had failed, though. The comets had carried their ‘eyes’ further than they’d been able to reach before, faster, and given them a far better look at the universe.
With the comet borne, deep space probes, they’d found the perfect new home for humans--as close to perfect as they were likely to find in time to do them any good, at any rate. The problem was that the planet was so far away it made the ordinary methods of colonization impractical if not completely impossible.
That had resulted in ‘hair-brained/brilliant’ strategy number two—their mission. Instead of trying to build a fleet of deep space ships to carry colonists to the new world, they’d built the U.E. (United Earth) Plymouth, crammed it with everything needed to build the transport portal, a handful of scientists/engineers, barely enough supplies to sustain those scientists/engineers, and sent them forth in the fastest ship ever built by man.
It had still taken nearly ten years to reach the new world, and there wasn’t enough room on the ship for the supplies needed to sustain human life for that long. It would’ve taken a far bigger ship to do that, more time, and more money.
That was when the geneticists had stepped in with ‘hair-brained/brilliant’ plan number three—the introduction of foreign DNA into the scientists which would allow them to be frozen for most of the trip—literally frozen.
Alexis’ stomach churned and a shudder raked its way up her spine.
It wasn’t altogether a new idea. Geneticists had been working for years to help the human race evolve with the same speed as their world, adapt swiftly to the changes to keep them from going extinct.
The introduction of frog DNA was still radical, though.
Never before had anything other than the DNA of other mammals been utilized.
And she was still surprised she’d woken up after being deep frozen for so long.
They’d tested it as much as possible, of course, before they’d blasted off into the unknown, but there’d been no time to do the years of research that needed to be done, should have been done before it was pronounced ‘safe’. The compromise had been to deep freeze them for relatively short spans of time, awaken them to do routine checks of the ship and equipment and make certain everything was still working properly, perform or check minor course corrections as needed, and then deep freeze them again.
All in all, they’d been awake only a year, total, of their ten year trip, thawed for a matter of weeks and then back into the deep freeze, but even with the work they had to perform during those waking times the trip had seemed excruciatingly long and tedious.
Alexis dragged in a deep, cleansing breath, trying to make herself relax as the engineers finally took their places and began the process of ‘lighting’ up the portal to full power.
She sincerely hoped it was going to be full power this time. They’d already lost two probes. They were down to one. If the signal boost they’d jerry-rigged didn’t reach the counter portal on Earth this time, they were going to be down to drawing straws to see who would become the guinea pig. There wasn’t much else they could scavenge off the U.E. Plymouth without the risk that they’d be permanently stranded on New Earth, and no one wanted to even think about that.
It crept into her mind anyway and Alexis glanced around at her fellow travelers.
Dr. ‘Mel’ Melody Carson, the lanky, almost six foot blonde navigator, was the closest person of the group that came to being a ‘friend’, although the two of them were hardly bosom buddies. She was currently chewing her last fingernail off at the quick while she stared at the blank screen of her console as if she could will the thing to light up. Linda, who in Alexis’ opinion had far more boobs than brains, but who was supposed to be a crack mechanical engineer, was staring off into space, her lips moving as if she was either going back over her calculations … or singing to herself … or maybe praying?
That would be about as helpful as crossing her fingers, Alexis thought dryly, wondering if Linda had always been this ‘spacey’ and she just hadn’t noticed, or if the freeze/thaw process had left part of her brain frozen.
Richard ‘the dick’ Sloan, one of the two ‘grunts’ they’d brought along for protection and to help move heavy but delicate equipment, was scratching his balls as he, too, gazed off into space. His side-kick, Gary Pitts, a real whiz, was crouched on the ground nearby, chewing on the stalk of a plant that hadn’t even been analyzed yet for possible toxins.
Drs. Li Chung and Angus O’Neal had their heads together over the main control console and Dr. William ‘Bill’ Long was staring at the gauges of the power unit. The three men were brilliant and held so many degrees in so many fields it was almost sickening.
Alexis tried to block the nasty thought that they had no reason to focus on anything besides their studies since it wasn’t likely they’d had women to distract them, but she was only marginally successful. It wasn’t that any of the three were deformed or just plain ugly, but they were certainly no better than average in looks and, more importantly, to her way of thinking, anyway, their personalities left a lot to be desired when it came to companionableness, let alone charm. A block wall had more charisma than the three of them put together.
She was fairly certain she’d never heard anything come out of their mouths beyond scientific speculation. She’d yet to see even one of the three open their mouths to say anything remotely conversational. They might as well be eunuchs. She was pretty sure not one of the three had even looked at Linda and registered that she was a female … and recalled that they were male, which, as far as she was concerned, said it all.
Any male that could work around Linda and focus on their work instead of her wasn’t a red-blooded male.
She hadn’t considered when she had set out on the mission that she might be stuck with the crew of the U.E. Plymouth for the rest of her natural life—and no one else—She’d been honored to be chosen. She’d been focused on the mission.
One ‘waking’ year of travel and three months of roughing it on the new world later, she was finding it harder and harder to ignore the possibility that she might never see anyone but this group again.
And, with the exception of Mel, she didn’t even like them.
Not that she disliked them, but the degrees that separated ‘like’ from ‘dislike’, she’d come to realize, were like a vast ocean when one viewed it with the perspective that this group might be ‘it’, the only people she was going to be around for the rest of her life.
Not that there was a lot of reason to worry about it. After three months on New Earth, as careful as they’d been with their supplies, they were still running dangerously low on everything and they’d been too focused on completing their mission to spare the time to explore their new world and search for local resources to replenish their dwindling supplies.
If they didn’t get the portal open soon, they probably wouldn’t be around long enough to have to worry about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives.
It worried her that they hadn’t been able to hail Earth.
It worried everybody, although they had carefully avoided the subject.
Regardless of the distance they should have been able to reach someone, hear something from mission control in all this time. If nothing else, it seemed to her that one of the furthest colonies, closer to the edge of their solar system, should’ve picked up their attempts to communicate. Not that that made them close by any stretch of the imagination, but still ….
Dr. Long was speculating that there was something about the planet itself that was interfering with communications.
It was as good an explanation as any, and completely unsupported by research of any kind since they hadn’t brought along a lot of equipment for testing the environment. That wasn’t an area of their collective expertise. She had a degree in anthropology, but that wasn’t terribly useful in their current situation.
It couldn’t be avoided, though, or at least she hadn’t been able to avoid the knowledge that the crew of the U.E. Plymouth was pretty much useless for anything other than the focus of their mission. They had all the skills and knowledge they needed to build the portal and none of the skills or knowledge they would need to live on this new world if they found themselves completely alone.
The ‘grunts’ might make it. The rest of them were toast if they couldn’t accomplish their mission and bring through the people it was going to take to build a colony.
“Ready, Alex?”
Alexis jerked as O’Neal barked the question at her, surging to her feet from her perch on the supply box she’d been using as a bench. “I’ve checked the probe out thoroughly. It’s good to go.”
Almost before she got the words out, the whine of the power unit reached a near ear-splitting pitch. A gust of air rushed past her as if the portal was a living thing and had just sucked in a deep breath, and static electricity danced along her body, making the fine hairs prickle.
Alexis stared at the portal, feeling a surge of adrenaline rush through her. Her heart danced a little jig of awakening of hopefulness.
“Mel?”
Melody’s head jerked up when O’Neal barked at her, her eyes wide.
“Anything?”
Melody ducked her head, staring at her vid screen again. “Phantoms,” she said, referring to the streams of light visible beyond the portal, which created a tunnel-like effect through space. It was actually more along the lines of a cannon, designed to break down the cells of both living and inanimate objects and shoot them across time and space where it reassembled them—theoretically. The portals on the other colonies did, of course, but then they hadn’t needed the range this one did. Supposedly, the distance shouldn’t make one iota of difference, but then, what did they know when it had never been used over such a vast distance?
“Wait! It’s stabilizing!” she exclaimed excitedly.
Long, who’d been diverted by the conversation, returned his attention to the power unit. “Stable here, as well—minor fluctuations.”
Melody looked up. “I’ve got a fix on mission control.”
“You’re sure?” Chung asked sharply.
“Confirmed,” O’Neal said, a note of excitement in his voice, now, or as close to excitement as the man ever got.
“The portal on the other end isn’t responding,” Chung announced after a few moments.
“Knock, knock!” Richard said.
Gary snickered.
Alexis tamped her irritation. “Should I release the probe?”
“Hold,” O’Neal snapped. “Let’s make sure the power’s going to be sustained this time.”
“Why aren’t they opening the other portal?” Linda demanded of no one in particular.
“Maybe they’re out to lunch?”
Alexis sent Richard a narrow eyed glare that time. “I’m glad you find this so damned humorous, Dick.”
His beefy face reddened.
“Can we activate it from here?” Linda asked, an edge to her voice that Alexis recognized as fear and/or hysteria, mostly because she was struggling against both herself.
Chung and O’Neal exchanged a look. “Possibly,” Chung finally answered.
“Possibly? Or definitely?” Linda demanded, sounding more anxious than before.
“What would the point?” Richard ground out.
“The point,” Linda snapped, “is to get home!”
Richard gave her a disgusted look. “And what would be the point of that? We ain’t been able to contact anybody. Nobody’s answering the call to activate the gate. Don’t tell me it hasn’t occurred to any of you ‘brains’ that nobody’s fucking there or the damned portal would’ve been opened on the other end?”
* * * *
“How much time, by your calculations, has elapsed on Earth?”
The food Alexis had just popped into her mouth, space rations and nothing to get excited about to begin with, lost what little appeal it had had as she waited for Chung’s response to Long’s question.
Chung’s dark eyes leveled on Long speculatively. “The theory before we left was two hundred years—give or take fifty. I have no new data to add that suggested a need to recalculate.” He shrugged. “Or to factor in that might yield a different calculation.”
The Plymouth party had clustered around the portable plasti-table and bench units as they generally did for their evening meal and Alexis exchanged a look with Mel, who sat across from her.
“You think Richard’s right?” Mel asked. “Something’s happened?”
Long turned his head to stare at her. “Obviously something has. I wasn’t particularly alarmed when we failed to hail anyone. There was no absolute guarantee when we left that we’d be able to communicate across such a distance. Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been a problem, but we maintained the connection precisely thirty minutes without any response from the other side. The signal was good on our end. The only conclusion to be drawn from that is that mission control, for whatever reason, has been abandoned.”
Alexis felt her stomach clench around the food she’d been gamely trying to swallow. “Why would they just abandon it, though? Wouldn’t they relocate it to one of the other colonies if something cataclysmic happened on Earth?”
Long’s gaze was almost pitying. “One would think so.”
“Maybe they did? Maybe we should try the coordinates on the other colonies?”
O’Neal looked at Linda in surprise. “You know as well as we do that the portal is linked to the one on Earth. If they’d moved it, the portal itself would have adjusted. We wouldn’t have to key in the change. Besides, it connected. There was no response.”
Linda glared at him. “Maybe we could try recalibrating the portal to one of the portals on one of the colonies?”
“Dangerous,” Chung responded succinctly.
“And it isn’t dangerous staying here!” Linda snapped. “Look around you!”
The comment was rhetorical since they were inside habitat. There wouldn’t have been any point anyway. New Earth was primal, lush, and teaming with life—paradise, but a raw, untamed one, beautiful and without a doubt deadly due to the completely unknown plant and animal life. Alexis had imagined that it must be a great deal like Earth had been when it was young, despite the fact that it had four moons, instead of one, and rings very much like Saturn’s. Not surprisingly, although they’d taken great pains to avoid any contact, there was even evidence of emerging intelligent life.
She didn’t especially want to find out how intelligent, but they’d scanned the area thoroughly before they chose their base camp site and she had hope that it wouldn’t be an issue. Richard and Gary were the only two members of the group who’d even ventured beyond the perimeter they’d set up when they’d landed and established base camp. They didn’t know what was ‘out there’ and none of them were anxious to find out when they weren’t really equipped to deal with it.
Aside from that, the mission was top priority. They couldn’t take the chance of losing a single member even if they’d felt brave enough to face the challenge. Gary and Richard were the only members of the party that were armed and the only ones who knew how to use the weapons, or at least the only two who’d had any training in using them.
“If the other portals happened to be in use,” Chung said finally, “and we did manage to tie in, we’d risk dispersing their particles across the universe. You know that.”
“So we do nothing?” Linda demanded tautly.
‘Going home’ hadn’t been on the agenda, but, like Linda, Alexis hadn’t been able to think about doing much else since they’d landed on the primitive world. If civilization wasn’t coming their way, she was more than ready to pack it up and head back to it herself. They’d accomplished their mission. If ‘home’ wasn’t coming, it was time to go back. “I could re-program the probe to activate the portal on the other side,” Alexis suggested tentatively.
Everyone at the table turned to stare at her. It unnerved her for a moment, until she realized their intent focus and the fact that not one of them had immediately denounced the suggestion meant they were as anxious to go back as she was.
“You’re certain of that?” O’Neal demanded in the gruff voice typical of him.
“I am,” Alexis said staunchly, quelling her doubts.
Richard shoved to his feet and slammed his fist down on the edge of the table, making everyone jump. “What the fuck is the point? They’re gone! Don’t you get it? We’re all that’s left!”
“You don’t know that!” Linda virtually screamed at him, leaping up from her seat, as well.
“Right!” Richard snarled. “I’m just guessing that if there was anybody around, they might have turned the damned portal on! Obviously, they either completely forgot about us after they shot us into the ‘great beyond’, or everybody’s gone.”
Chung, Long, and O’Neal exchanged uncomfortable looks. “Hysteria isn’t going to solve anything,” O’Neal said finally.
For a moment, Alexis thought Richard was going to completely lose control of his temper. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest as his eyes narrowed on O’Neal, his fists clenching and unclenching, the threat of violence palpable.
Regardless of the fact that it had made him far stronger than a ‘normal’ man, which was supposed to be an asset, it occurred to Alexis that webbing ape DNA to his might not have been a wise decision. It seemed to her that the man was having a very hard time controlling a tendency toward violence.
“Easy for you to say,” he growled finally, relaxing his stance with obvious effort. “You wouldn’t know an honest emotion if it bit you in the ass. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you three were fucking droids!”
Chung studied him with a face devoid of expression. “We are as deeply concerned about this unexpected turn of events as you are, Sloan. But we realize we must analyze the situation carefully before a decision is made.”
“Analyze?” Gary snarled, joining Richard. “And while you’re sitting around with your thumb up your ass, analyzing, maybe you can tell us how the hell we’re going to survive if it turns out there ain’t anybody on the other side? We may not be engineers and scientists like the rest of you, but we can sure as hell count. We’ve got enough rations left for a few weeks at the most. The fucking habitat is already starting to fall apart because it was never intended to be anything but temporary shelter and we don’t know a hell of a lot more about what’s out there than we did when we landed—except that once the fucking power goes there’s plenty of things out there that aren’t going to be out there anymore. They’re going to be in here—with us—and I don’t think they’re too worried about whether or not we’re edible!”
“Exactly my point!” Linda snapped. “We’re completely unequipped to deal with this environment. We have to go back. Whatever happened, regardless of what state things are in, Earth is where we belong. We stand a much better chance of surviving there than we do here.”
Alexis studied Linda, tamping the urge to agree with her—at least openly.
She did agree with Linda’s assessment, but she wasn’t certain whether it was because there was any real logic to it or if it was just an instinctive urge to run ‘home’ because this place was so completely alien and the thought of getting up close and personal with raw nature terrified her. For all they knew Earth might be just as ‘alien’ to them now as this place was.
Almost as if he’d read her thoughts, Chung suggested the same thing. “If, as Sloan surmises, something has happened and no one is there, can we be any more certain that we could survive if we did go back to Earth? If our civilization has been destroyed, would we not do as well to remain here and try to survive?”
“On what?” Richard snapped. “With what?”
“And who gets the women?” Gary growled.
Alexis felt her jaw slide to half mast. When she glanced at Mel and Linda, she saw what she thought was probably identical expressions of revulsion and outrage on their faces. She didn’t know if she was more insulted and disgusted because it had been Gary who’d dropped that little nugget of dung in their midst or if it was on principle. She thought it was both.
“The most reasonable thing to do would be to share,” Long responded.
Long’s comment stunned Alexis almost as much as Gary’s had. Talk about an absolute breakdown in civilization! In the space of five seconds they’d gone from a group of respected scientists and equals to the completely archaic view of men vs. women? “Now, wait just a fucking minute!” she snapped, surging to her feet, as well. “I’m just as well aware of the role of sexual congress in the general health and mental well being as the rest of you and the government’s stance on that in this type of situation. I signed on just like everyone else and I don’t mind sharing myself if there’s a need, but we happen to be people! It isn’t up to any of you to decide what to ‘do with us’!”
Richard gave her a look she didn’t like. “Things have changed,” he said, his voice a low, threatening growl.
A shiver of uneasiness went through Alexis, but she stood her ground. “Meaning?”
“Meaning if its going to come down to survival of the fittest—and it sure as hell’s looking that way—you might want to consider who’s best qualified around here to help you survive.”
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