"Where and back again?" by Matthew R. Walker

Geraldo McStyn, 'Mack', made one last inspection of his ship's engines before departing on the test run. Privately he thought the engineers had slightly overestimated this engine's speed.

"Come on Mack! Lets get this show on the road!" the shout came from the forward command compartment. The voice belonged to his copilot, Tommy Green, who had flown over one thousand test flights with him. They trusted each other implicitly, and had often saved each other's lives.

Mack left the engine compartment, closing the door behind him. "On my way! Start the checklist rundown! Lets see what this lean machine can do!", he shouted back. As he entered the command compartment, he noticed that Tommy had already finished the checklist. Strapping himself in, he looked over, "You ready?"

"Green and go! Let's move this hunk of metal out of space dock."

The two men were considered one of the best test-pilot teams in the known galaxy, and were often flying high priority missions for the military. They had their share of bad times, and were looking forward to retiring soon. They did not quite fit the classic model of test pilots. The most obvious manifestation of this was the fact that neither of them would drink anything stronger than tea.

As they maneuvered out of space dock, Mack was on the radio, requesting clearance for acceleration to S-light. When he received it, he gave the thumbs up to Tommy, and closed the channel. Tommy reached up to flip the switch on the new S-light drive they were testing, called the S-light Hex. It was supposed to be six times faster than the last model. Neither pilot quite believed this, as the current speed was in excess of 20S-light.

As Tommy flipped the switch, they each felt a slight surge forward, the result of acceleration not quite damped by the ships inertial damping fields. Glancing down at the instruments, Mack could see something was wrong right away. The ship was going much faster than it should. According to the instruments, about 46,665 times faster than the current model. Mack tried to flip the switch, but it was stuck! He looked over at Tommy, fear in his eyes. Tommy had not yet noticed the velocity reading. Mack pointed desperately at it, and suddenly Tommy noticed it.

"Holy Challenger!" he cursed, using an old spaceman's epitaph. He too tried to turn off the switch, but it refused too move.

They looked into each others eyes, by now so used to each other that they could almost read the other's thoughts. They both spoke at the same time.

"I'll get the tool kit," said Tommy.

"I'll start opening the panel," said Mack.

By the time Tommy was back with the tool kit, Mack had the panel open, and was inspecting the back of the switch. It appeared to be a standard transmitter control device, totally sealed at the time of manufacture, not to be altered by any but an authorized repairman. It didn't take more than a microsecond for them to decide and take it out and inspect it.

"This thing couldn't be jammed! It's sealed!" muttered Tommy.

"Let me see it, there's no way it could be jammed." Said Mack.

They looked at it, arguing about whether it could be jammed. All the while, you could hear the faint hum of the S-light Hex motor still running.

"All right, let's open it up, but I still can't see how it could be jammed." Mack finally said.

Mack reached into the tool box and pulled out the smallest cutting tool, a Micro-Flash. He turned it on and put it against one side of the control box. It made a faint whining, but no mark on the surface of the container materiel. He stared at it dumfounded. "What in the universe? This is supposed to be able to cut through triple hardened Poly-Molybdinum Alloy hull materiel!" He tried it again, with the same result. He sat there stunned, and Tommy took them and also tried. When he too failed, Mack cursed under his breath, and pulled out the next larger cutting torch in the box.

This torch was supposed to be able to cut through super hard Hafnium-Titanium alloy, the hardest substance used in ship construction. It would of done it too, if the batteries had been replaced after the last time it had been used, three years before. When it also failed to even mark the control box, Mack stood up.

"You keep working here, I'm going back to see if there's a cutoff on that thrice-blasted engine." He stocked out of the room, muttering very elaborate curses under his breath. Now they had been in the S-light drive for twenty eight minutes.

When he entered the engine compartment, all that was audible was a quiet hum from near the back of the engine. Mack searched the whole room, but found no cutoff, even the receiver end of the control was inaccessible. Fuming, he returned to the front compartment. The inspection took 13 minutes.

While Mack was inspecting the engine, Tommy had tried all the obvious tools in the box, but none of them had any affect on the materiel at all. He was just giving up when Mack came into the room, roaring mad.

Mack reached into the toolbox, and pulled out the largest hammer they had, a ten pound sledge that had never been used, but that Mack carried, 'Just in case.' When Tommy saw this, he opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it after looking at Mack's face.

Mack put the switch on the floor, raised the sledge, and brought it down as hard as he could on the switch. When he lifted it up, the switch box had split neatly in two, and they could see an object blocking the switch. They looked at each other and laughed, then Mack reached down, and taking out the thing that had been blocking it, flipped the switch. At once the ship came to a halt.

Mack and Tommy both sat down. Mack suddenly broke into a laugh, and held up the object he had taken out of the switch. In his hand was a small piece of rock, just the right size to stop the switch from moving.

Mack glanced out the view port, and blinked. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. "Tommy, do you see what I see?" He inquired dumbfounded.

Tommy turned and looked out the view port also. For the first time in their career, he was speechless. "Bu.. But, that can't be right." He managed to stammer out after a moment. The view port was pure black, not one star spot anywhere in sight. They both turned to the navigational display, and Tommy punched in the command to do a subspace scan of the surrounding area.

As they waited for the scan to complete, they both sat and stared out the window at the impenetrable darkness. Suddenly the Nav Computer beeped, startling them both. They laughed nervously at each other, and turned to look at the map the scan had generated.

They looked at each other, looked back at the map, then looked at each other again. The map showed a huge blank space, curving away on the sides, and a little back. Mack sighed, "There must be something wrong with the Nav Computer, lets open it up."

Tommy handed Mack the Descrambler, a device they had found useful on previous missions for getting into areas they weren't supposed to. Mack put it up against the locking device on the access panel for the back of Nav screen one. It took a few seconds for the code computer in the Descrambler to find the correct code. When the panel was open, they both looked inside.

"The display looks like maybe we have a blown image manipulator fuse." Tommy said.

"Maybe, but I think what we probably have is just a loose wire," Mack replied.

Mack reached in and wiggled a few wires, watching the screen to see the effect. Suddenly the whole screen went dark, and there was a dull pop as one of the fuses blew. Mack cursed, and pulled out the blown fuse. After he replace it, the screen came back on, but there were still only stars behind them. None of the other fuses were blown, and none of the wires were loose. Mack sighed, and closed the panel.

"Nothing, it must be the scanners themselves. Let's turn the ship around and see if that helps..."

When they got the ship turned around, they could see stars in the view port, and on the Nav display. But now behind them was blank on the Nav display, and the stars were in no known pattern. Mack scanned all the other astronomical measurements, but could spot nothing obvious. There was something that bothered him about the Three-Degree Radiation measurement, but he couldn't place it.

"All right, let's head back to base. But this time, program the Nav computer to turn the drive off. I don't want to get stuck in S-light again." Mack said.

Tommy nodded and entered the program into the Nav computer. His eyebrows shot up when he saw their current coordinates, but he supposed he shouldn't be suprised, they had been in S-light for a long time, and at very high velocities. When the program was in, he checked over it once more, and then looked at Mack. "Ready?" he asked.

"Yep. Let's get back to familiar stars!" Mack almost sobbed. This experience had been a little much for him.

Tommy hit the enter key on the board, and the ship surged back towards the center of the universe. Just before they entered S-light, there was an odd bump, almost as if something had hit them from behind, but they didn't have time to stop and check to see what it was.

As they headed rapidly toward their destination, Mack was scanning over the astronomical readings again. Something was still bothering him. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Tommy, come look at this!" he shouted. He was looking at the Three-Degree Radiation measurement. "Look, see how this spreads out in a sphere away from our location? The only way it could do that, is if we were outside the expansion edge of the universe! Tommy, we were at the edge of the Universe! Do you know what that means?"

Tommy nodded, looking stunned, suddenly he laughed, "No one is going to believe us. They'll think we altered our data."

Mack nodded, "Your probably right, but still... Hot Jets! We were at the edge of the universe!"