PARALLAX NOW. THEN. THERE. Chapter 1
The alarms woke Rex before the lights did.
A sharp tone cut through the darkness of the technicians' deck.
Rex opened one eye.
The alarm sounded again.
He rolled over, pulled the blanket over his head, and waited for it to stop.
It didn't.
"Come on..."
A third alarm sounded.
Rex sat up.
The bunk room was still dark, except for the thin red emergency lighting along the floor.
Then the ship spoke.
"ATTENTION. ANOMALOUS COSMIC ACTIVITY DETECTED."
Rex stared at the ceiling.
"That's never good."
The alarm continued.
He swung his legs out of the bunk and reached for his boots.
"How bad?"
The ship answered without hesitation.
"UNKNOWN."
Rex stopped.
"That's worse."
He pulled on his work jacket and stepped into the corridor.
Technicians were already emerging from their bunks. Some were still half asleep. Others were checking their wrist displays as they moved toward the nearest terminals.
Rex looked up at the status panel above the corridor.
A storm warning was flashing across it.
Not a normal storm.
The radar had detected a large field of cosmic energy ahead of them.
And it was directly along their current route.
Rex hurried toward the technician's terminal.
"How long?"
The navigation officer's voice came through the corridor speaker.
"Twelve hours."
Rex frowned.
"Twelve hours until what?"
"Until we reach the outer edge."
That got everyone's attention.
Rex looked toward the ceiling speaker.
"And the route?"
A pause.
"Already locked."
Rex stared at the terminal.
"Can't we go around it?"
Another pause.
"Not without a major course correction."
"How major?"
"We'd have to turn now."
Rex waited.
Nobody said anything.
Then the navigation officer finished.
"And we're already too late."
Rex looked at the storm data.
The field was enormous.
It wasn't sitting in one place like a normal weather system.
It stretched across their route like something had drawn a wall through space.
The Parallax was going to pass through it.
There was no avoiding it now.
Rex rubbed his face.
"So what happens when we hit it?"
The navigation officer answered quietly.
"We don't know."
That was not the answer Rex wanted.
The ship's alarms finally stopped.
The red lights remained.
Rex looked around the technicians' deck.
Everyone had gone quiet.
The Parallax continued forward.
Twelve hours.
That was all they had.
Twelve hours before the ship entered something none of them understood.
Rex looked back at the radar.
For a moment, the storm seemed to flicker.
The display showed the field ahead of them.
Then, for less than a second, it showed the field behind them.
Rex blinked.
The display returned to normal.
He stared at it.
"Did anyone else see that?"
Nobody answered.
Rex looked at the radar again.
The storm was still twelve hours away.
He made a mental note to check the system.
Then he went to work.
He had twelve hours to figure out what was wrong with the radar.
He just didn't know yet that the radar wasn't the thing that was wrong.
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