From Friends to Lovers Ch. 28

"So, Doctor Oakes, we understand you and your fiancée will be getting married later this year."

The reporter who spoke was from one of the tabloids, and I remembered Marie's advice: Keep them on your side - they won't pay much attention to the science, but if you give them what their readers want, they'll at least be positive.

"That's right," I nodded, throwing Beth a soft smile. "You'll be very welcome to join us - you can get the details from the faculty office."

I made a mental note to tell Philippa at the office - I could see myself owing her a lot of favours, very soon.

"Henderson, from the Times," another voice spoke up. "What's your next step?"

Marie glanced at me to let me know she'd field the question. "A lot - and I mean a lot - more tests. What's on the other side, if anything? is it safe? if something goes through, can we get it back? Don't expect anything to change dramatically any time soon."

He nodded. "Very well."

"We'll be having press briefings weekly," Marie confirmed, "so if there are any developments we'll announce them."

Beth looked at me, getting a reassuring nod, and stepped to the microphone, her expression a mixture of trepidation and obvious sadness. "One more thing. I'm very sad to announce the death of my grandfather, Jake Hayward. I know he'd have found all this fascinating, and we'll be hoping - perhaps through the IAU - to commemorate him in some way within the project as it develops."

Jake had slipped away peacefully in his sleep sometime on New Year's Eve, and Beth had helped to arrange a quiet family funeral, all of us travelling up to stand at the graveside.

She stepped back, and Marie took her place. "We'll close this session now - thank you for coming, and we'll see you next week."

Understandably even the most experienced of the journalists were subdued as they left, and Marie and I both hugged Beth. "Well done."

"I wanted to say something in public," Beth nodded. "We owe him so much."

We made our way out of the lab, and I glanced at a digger cutting a trench across the far end of the car park. "What's that?"

"New high-voltage lines," explained Marie. "No more calls to the substation."

When we got back to the house, Sarah had a meal ready for us. "Lots of post again - some children have even crayoned pictures of little green men."

As we ate, I could see that Beth had something she wanted to say. Finally she put down her fork. "Marie?"

"Hmm?"

"Well, you and Tim are both going to be working flat out, and it's a fair drive between your rooms at college, the lab and here - we want to see you as often as we can."

Beth paused. "Why don't you just move in here? We can give you a room -" she glanced at Sarah, grinning - "though how much you use it is up to you."

Sarah looked puzzled. "But isn't that your study?"

Beth shrugged. "Plenty of room in the attic. We could knock out some of those partitions, make a big space for all of us to work."

Marie was obviously moved. "Thanks, Beth as long as you're sure."

"We are," I nodded. "Now, who wants ice cream?"

***

Over the next few weeks we implemented the program we'd described, slowly gathering information about what lay on the other side of the shimmering barrier. Samples revealed an atmosphere, slightly higher in oxygen than our own, more humid. "Maybe the other end is just in the Amazon rainforest somewhere, and we'll see a very startled jaguar next," quipped Beth.

Oddly enough, cameras pushed through sent back nothing at all, and Marie grumbled frustratedly. "There must be something about the physics."

"What about an old-fashioned film camera?" Sarah suggested.

"Brilliant," grinned Beth. But when we tried it, the film was fogged. "Maybe the field produces incidental x-rays."

Some tests took longer - the bacteriological assay came back inconclusive, with only Earth organisms which could easily have been contamination. "At least it doesn't look like there are any superbugs," Beth mused.

The next step - involving a lot of debate, and culminating in a stormy meeting of the University ethics committee - was to assess the effect on living organisms of passage through the field and back. Bacteria, amoebae, tardigrades, seemed unchanged, and insects carried on about their usual business unaffected by their journey into whatever lay on the other side. Finally Marie sighed. "There's nothing else for it - it has to be the gerbils."

Sarah hid her face in Beth's shoulder as Marie fixed the cage to the extending arm we'd been using to push our experimental items through the field and retrieve them. I held my breath as the arm extended, the cage vanishing through the barrier. Marie counted under her breath, setting the arm to retract, and there was a collective sigh of relief as we saw whiskered noses still twitching curiously, the scamper of tiny feet.

"We're not out of the woods yet," Marie reminded us. "They'll stay in quarantine for a few days, we'll run every test we can think of on them - bacterial, radiation, MRI scans, the lot."

She stretched, her face betraying weariness. "We should take a break, come at this fresh when we have all the results."

We spent the next few days relaxing, in the hot tub, of course in bed, in the book room by the fire. "What about your students, Marie?" queried Sarah one afternoon. "If you're spending all your time on the project, I mean."

Marie nodded. "Someone else in the faculty will have to pick up all the undergraduate teaching."

She grinned at me. "But Tim and I will definitely be running some seminars on what's happening, and the physics once we find out what we've actually done. We already have invites to Harvard, MIT, ..."

Beth threw a wink at Sarah. "New York again."

I groaned. "I can't imagine the devastation you two will create in the shops on Fifth Avenue..."

We spent a couple of days actually in clothes while the work was done on the attic, and when the last lick of paint was on, we climbed the stairs, Beth spreading her arms out and turning slowly at the centre of the space. "Wow - they've made an amazing job of the roof windows, so much light in here."

"Now we can sort your room, Marie," grinned Sarah.

Finally the last of the test results was in, and Marie and I pored over figures, graphs, diagrams. She pushed back her chair, looking thoughtful. "I talked to the people at NASA, ESA. Frankly they don't have any better idea than we do - to send volunteer human subjects. They suggested military personnel, but the University shot that one down straight away. This is a civilian science project and it's going to stay that way."

The look on her face required no explanation. "I also talked to the Vice-Chancellor. Of course he couldn't ask us point blank to go, but we understood one another."

"We'd better have a talk with the girls," I nodded.

Beth's first thought was for Sarah. "What about the baby?"

"There's no evidence of any biological effects whatsoever," Marie reassured her.

"Then I want to come," Sarah was determined. "If something does go wrong -" Beth squeezed her fingers - "then I'd rather have been with you, than be the one left behind."

We decided on midday the next day - "Might as well be rested when we start," grinned Beth - and Marie double-checked that the new power lines were ready. "The most likely problem is that the portal collapses - we've not actually proved that we're back in the same place when we re-establish the effect."

I glanced at her. "So portal's the word we're using?"

"Sure."

We'd left the press out of our plans - if something terrible happened, or more likely nothing at all, a carefully-worded statement would be released - so the only other people in the lab just before midday were the two technicians tasked with watching the equipment, and the Vice-Chancellor himself. "Good luck," he offered as we made the final checks.

The portal formed exactly as expected, and I grinned at Marie. "This project was yours from the beginning - you can have your name in the history books."

She took a deep breath, stepping onto the platform, Sarah and Beth behind her, me bringing up the rear. We'd debated long and hard what equipment we could take, finally deciding on a mixture of scientific instruments and survival gear, enough that each of us could comfortably carry in a backpack.

"Ready?" Marie turned to ask, getting nods from each of us. She walked forward, and I had the utterly new experience of watching her push through the barrier, the shimmering effect outlining her face, her body, then only her backpack, and she was gone.

Beth and Sarah were next, and I had a sudden qualm. What if everything dear to me, those I loved the most, had just vanished irretrievably? I took my own step forward, my vision blurring, a feeling of utter disorientation overcoming me. Then my feet crunched on some surface definitely not part of the lab, and I stumbled, feeling a hand on my arm to steady me. "You OK?" I heard Marie's voice.

I blinked, looking around. Behind me a mirror image of the portal shimmered, the outline of the circle just visible. But my attention was captured by the sky above, a brilliant band of stars crossing above us as though diamonds had been tipped carelessly onto velvet. I heard Beth's low whistle, and she couldn't help a mischievous grin. "OK, I'll be the first one to say it. We are definitely not, no way, not in a million years, in Kansas anymore..."

But it fell to Sarah to make the most significant discovery, the one that would turn human history on its head. "Hey, look at this."