Read Online Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra by Stephen Lawhead - Free Book Online

Hewlett StarNav equipment. That bugger is nearly a hundred times faster and smarter than anything commercially available. It's made solely for Lein's peacekeeping forces.” He smiled broadly. “But we got a special deal.”
    “Why such a powerful computer,” asked Treet idly, “if ground control can handle everything?”
    “Just plain good backup,” shrugged Crocker, his sunburned face creasing in a conspiratorial wink. Then he leaned forward and said, “Thing is, nobody really knows what happens when you get that close to the event horizon. And once inside the wormhole, we're on our own.”
    Treet blinked back at him. Had he heard right? “Wormhole, did you say?” He exchanged a bewildered look with Pizzle.
    “Uh-oh.” Crocker nodded slowly, took the cigar out of his mouth, and tapped the ash off into an empty mug. “Ol' Horatio has stepped in it again. I thought you fellas knew.”
    “Are you saying we're reaching Empyrion via wormhole?” asked Pizzle, visibly awed at the prospect.
    “Well, let's just say we don't have provisions for a fifty-year trip, so we're taking a shortcut.”
    “Fan-super-tastic!” Pizzle rocked back in his chair, beaming. Crocker smiled broadly.
    “I'm glad you're both so delighted,” said Treet sourly. “Just what in blue-eyed blazes is a wormhole exactly?”
    “Well, it's—nobody knows what it is
exactly,
but—” began Crocker.
    “Let me tell him,” offered Pizzle cutting in. “It's like a tunnel in space, only elastic, sort of…” His voice trailed off when he saw that Treet was frowning. “A hole in the space-time fabric, you know?”
    “Something like a black hole, you mean?” Treet felt that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach again. What had he gotten himself into? “Are we talking about a black hole?”
    “Yes, sort of,” said Pizzle. “Um … but not exactly. They're distant cousins, maybe.”
    “What kind of answer is that?” Treet kept his temper down, barely.
    “It's a phenomenon on the level of a black hole,” said Crocker. “Very difficult to describe.”
    “Apparently,” puffed Treet indignantly. “Am I supposed to believe that we're going to fly through some
phenomenon
to get to the colony? Like diving through a hole in a wedge of Swiss cheese?”
    “That's it!” Pizzle nodded vigorously. “But more like pinching Jello. Say you had a block of Jello—that's space, see?” His hands described a large cube. “You pinch it in the middle and push the two opposite sides together—collapse the center, see?” He brought his index fingers together through the imaginary Jello. “Well, the distance you have to travel decreases the more you pinch, see?”
    “And since in space,” added Crocker, “distance and time are one and the same thing …
Voila!
Decrease distance and you decrease time, see?”
    Treet was silent for some moments, looking from one to the other of them and back again, a dark frown lowering his brow and pulling his mouth down. “I see,” he said finally, “but I don't like it.”
    “Take it easy,” Crocker soothed. “It's perfectly safe.”
    “How do you know? You just said nobody knows what happens inside a wormhole.”
    “Our best guess is that you just pop on through—like riding a trolley through a tunnel. Only you've carved about forty or fifty years off your travel time.”
    “I don't believe this,” said Treet softly. “Both of you are crazy. You can let me off right here. I'll walk back.”
    “Look,” said Pizzle, “it'll be all right. There's a book I can call up for you that'll tell you all about wormholes—what there is to tell, that is.”
    A chime sounded over the speaker system. “Back to the bridge,” said Crocker, jumping up, obviously glad for an excuse to leave. “You read that book, Treet, and we'll talk again later.”
    Treet watched the pilot pull himself hand-over-hand up the wall toward the cockpit. Even at one-quarter gravity, Treet doubted he could have managed the feat.