A blue light flowed from the breach, accompanied by a brief, low sizzling sound. A spread of lights on Holly’s control panel lit up, and she leaned forward and accessed a program on her laptop. A few keystrokes and the viewing screen to her left flickered into life. It was a focused view of the breach, fed from a camera set up inside the containment field, and she swept it slowly from left to right until she found what she was looking for.
Melinda was already standing and looked at Holly expectantly.
‘Small winged insect,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll file it as sample two-four-seven – you should be able to access it now.’
Melinda nodded and, without saying anything, turned to her own laptop, propped on a chair beside where she’d been sitting. Can’t we bring something through alive? she’d been asking Jonah ever since the stability of the breach had been established. But his response had always been the same. Until they’d run a full cycle of remote tests on the atmosphere beyond the breach, the eradicator would remain switched on.
Holly zoomed in on the dead insect and scanned for any signs of damage. There were none. It gave her a deep sense of satisfaction that her contribution to the experiment was working so well, though she could sense Melinda’s coolness growing day by day. For three years it had been Holly’s task to create a safety barrier that would prevent the ingress of anything living from another world into their own, whatever its size, phylum, composition, or chemical make-up. Her previous work in force-field engineering had seemed like child’s play compared with the task facing her, but she had relished the challenge. Upon detecting something penetrating the field, the programs she had devised took three millionths of a second to establish the nature of the incursion and deliver a delicately measured electromagnetic shock to halt its life. The device would kill anything from a microbe to an elephant, and way beyond, with minimal or no damage to the bodily tissues.
Within the breach, several robotic sample pods took turns collecting these samples, isolating them, then retreating to the extremes of the containment field. They were rapidly filling up.
‘Zapped another alien?’ Vic Pearson asked. He’d crept up on her again, as was his wont. Ninja Vic, she’d once called him, when she’d only become aware of his presence when his hands had reached around to cup her breasts. But that had been years ago.
‘Small fly of some kind,’ she said, pointing at the screen. ‘Four wings. See the colouring? It’s gorgeous.’
‘It’s a fly.’
‘From an alternate universe.’
‘Whoopie-fuckin’-do.’ He sat heavily in the chair beside her and sighed.
‘You been drinking?’ she asked. She kept her voice down; with some staff sleeping, Control was a quiet place, and without Satpal’s soft music the silence might have been unbearable. Even the air conditioning was all but silent.
‘Jonah asked me to his room,’ he said. ‘Raised a toast to old Bill Coldbrook.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk, staring at the breach. ‘Night over there, too.’ His voice had dropped.
‘Jonah got you drunk?’
‘I’m not drunk!’ he protested too loudly. ‘And no, he didn’t. We chatted, I left.’ He waved a hand. ‘Had a few on my own in the canteen.’
‘You didn’t argue with him?’
‘No, no. We didn’t argue. Not this time. But he’s completely . . .’ he smiled, grasping for the word ‘. . . unaware, you know?’
‘As you keep saying. I think you’re unfair on him.’
Vic snorted, and Holly knew what was coming next. She didn’t like it when he drank and she never had. Alcohol didn’t suit him.
‘You say that, and you still balance your religion with what we’ve done here.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But my beliefs aren’t tested at all by this. If anything—’
‘Maybe,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Maybe.’ And that was what she hated most about Drunk Vic. With alcohol in him, he’d only listen to himself. He stood and skirted her station, descending two wide steps and standing halfway between her and Melinda. And he just stared at the breach for a while.
One day soon, someone would have to go through.
‘You know,’ he said, returning to lean on her desk and look her in the eye, ‘if your God’s on the other side as well—’