Into the Unknowable Ch. 11

"I have absolute faith in the wisdom of Captain Kerensky, Dr. Chang and Professor Penrose," said Beatrice. "I'm sure it will be fine."

The actual passage into the Anomaly was indeed very uneventful. From Paul's perspective in the bedroom of his villa surrounded by holographic screens and accompanied by Beatrice there was absolutely nothing to mark the fact that the Intrepid was no longer outside the Anomaly but was instead speeding into it at a velocity of several millions of kilometres per hour. There was a margin of perceived error as to the exact location of the Anomaly's boundary, but at the speed at which the Intrepid was travelling it would have taken a barely measurable period of time to pass through it. There was no jolt, shudder or perturbation of any kind. There were no discernable differences between the outer space they had left behind and the space inside the Anomaly. It was composed of precisely the same amount of cosmic microwave background radiation.

The biggest difference was what could be seen through the holographic screens surrounding Paul's bed. They showed a view ahead where there was absolute nothingness and a view behind where there was a long rip through empty space on the other side of which were stars and galaxies. Disturbingly the nothingness around the Anomaly was total and absolute, while the long stellar rip which was measurable in thousands of kilometres was getting steadily smaller. Ahead there were no stars, no planets, no dark matter, no intergalactic gas clouds and no obvious destination.

"What happens now?" asked Paul after a few minutes.

"I don't know," said Beatrice with a momentary flash across her face that resembled an expression of triumph. "I suppose we just sit and wait."

"Sit and wait?" said Paul. "What sort of plan is that?"

"I imagine there will have already been countless great discoveries made by the scientists on the ship," said Beatrice. "Perhaps they've found something about what the Anomaly might be. Isn't that exciting?"

"Not very exciting at all if we can never get back home to Mission Control," said Paul as he stared at the absolute nothingness ahead. "Shouldn't we just turn round and head back the way we've come?"

"What! And finish the mission before we've consolidated our results. Shall we see what other people have to say?"

Beatrice commanded the holographic displays to show what the scientists and senior officers were saying publicly. It was still disconcertingly upbeat. Was there no one who shared Paul's anxiety about being lost in total nothingness with no apparent escape route and continuing to head at great velocity in precisely the wrong direction?

Captain Kerensky was full of unadulterated praise and adulation for the crew for navigating into the Anomaly. "From the point of view of possible peril, I'm sure you'll agree that it was nothing more than an anticlimax," she said.

Chief Science Officer Dr. Chang was equally enthusiastic. She eagerly looked forward to the exciting results of all the research now taking place in the wonderful new laboratory they were now within. "There's a lot to do," she said. "We all better get stuck into it right away!"

Professor Penrose was also enthusiastic. The very fact that there was no measurable difference between the behaviour of quanta within the Anomaly to that outside had him burbling with delight. "The very lack of something different is really something very special indeed," he enthused.

Although not many scientists were quite as unabashedly animated as the man who until recently had been the most sceptical in their company, they all concurred with the professor's findings. There really was no real measurable difference between what could be observed inside the Anomaly to what could be observed on the outside. What was not mentioned but must have been obvious to everyone was that along with this absolute lack of new information was the new fact that the Intrepid was deep inside the Anomaly where there was literally nothing at all and no apparent prospect of returning back to Mission Control to report their findings.

"So here we are in nowhere having found nothing new and with nobody to report this to," said Paul. "Nowhere. Nothing. Nobody. It doesn't look good."

"Don't worry, dearest," said Beatrice as unconcerned as ever. "I'm sure it will all work out for the best in the end."