Twin Earth
Chapter Twenty

As we grew closer to the supposed position of the anomaly, the vibrations continued to get stronger and the signals got louder, until eventually it became too painful to continue. Our seats and the screens around us were rattling so much I was concerned they would come off their grounding and smash us all to pieces. Even the pen was now flying around the craft, frantically hitting me in the face, so I yanked it off its thread and stuffed it into a drawer under the screen.

“We can’t continue like this,” Rachel screamed over the noise. “The structural integrity of this thing will fall apart! How are we supposed to study anything under these conditions?”

“But what can we do? Turn around and go home?” I shouted back in despair.

“Turn that noise off for a start,” Rachel replied, waving her hand towards the signal graph whilst holding her other hand over her ear. Nodding in agreement I switched off the signal monitor and we both sighed in relief as the haunting melody finally fell silent.

“That thing was creeping me out anyway,” Rachel added.

“I’m going to send out some micro-probes to see what they pick up,” I stated, rubbing my elbow for the hundredth time from continuously banging it on my seat. “There, I’ve sent out five of the ten probes. Let’s see what they pick up.”

“Can you see anything outside yet? I can’t see very much at all from this side,” Rachel asked, leaning over.

“I can see some debris floating around, but... oh my god.”

“What? What is it?”

“Some... anomaly... it just appeared over there, like the ripple we saw on the photos. I can see loads of stars magnified. That’s incredible! It’s so clear, but... what the hell? Now it’s gone again.”

Rachel strained to see, “I can’t see anything.”

“There! Look, it’s opened up again, but over there this time,” I replied.

“Oh my god I can see it! It looks so bright and... woah,” Rachel paused, ducking subconsciously from a huge piece of debris that suddenly flew over our heads. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“There’s more coming. I’m moving us out the way,” I shouted.

I flung the ion drive back into action and quickly swerved us out of harm’s way as hundreds of smaller pieces, of what I presumed to be asteroid debris, flew past us towards the ripple. They then proceeded to dance around it, just like the sand had done back on Earth, but then they stopped as the ripple once again disappeared, causing the debris to silently drift back off into space.

“Now it’s over here,” Rachel exclaimed, yanking my shoulder so I would look out her side of the craft. “And the debris is now flying towards it.”

“This is incredible. What’s causing this to happen?”

“I don’t know. Have the probes sent any data back yet?”

Remembering our task, I quickly scanned the computer for any new data, but I was disappointed to see that all five of the probes had been destroyed as soon as they had reached the anomaly.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Rachel mumbled in disappointment. “If the anomaly was powerful enough to slice an iron asteroid apart then I doubt Magnus’ tiny probes were going to fare any better.”

“Not even with his fancy technology by the looks of it, which doesn’t bode well for us either.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Wait, there’s something here,” I muttered, scanning through the probe data. “Just before probe two died, it managed to report back the mass spectrum, whilst the ripple was open and after it closed, taking the probe along with it sadly. It’s incredible.”

“Am I reading that correctly? It went from a mass of what... 100 million times that of our sun to barely a pile of rubble in seconds? How is that even possible? That debris isn’t anywhere near enough to match that! It must be an error in the data, surely?” Rachel remarked.

“Run the gamma ray light detector at the ripple that’s open now, quickly,” I replied.

I waited as Rachel quickly brought up her screen and punched in some demands to her computer.

“No, there are virtually zero gamma-rays. I guess that can only mean one of two things. Firstly, we’ve finally proved dark matter doesn’t emit gamma-rays or, there is no dark matter in the anomaly.”

“I find the latter hard to believe, don’t you?” I replied confused.

“Did the germanium crystal detector pick up anything?” Rachel asked quickly.

“I think so, there was a rise in temperature just as the ripple opened.”

“Then it has to be dark matter.”

“But if it is, it’s like it’s constantly being produced and destroyed? How is that possible?” I exclaimed.

“Anti-matter annihilation?” Rachel suggested, but I wasn’t convinced.

“But that still doesn’t explain what is causing it to appear in the first place.”

“I know, it doesn’t add up. Look, there’s another ripple opening over there,” Rachel replied. “Shall we try and send out a probe again?”

“It will probably be destroyed, but I have an idea. Previously the probes were destroyed as the anomaly opened so let’s send some out after it’s appeared. Maybe we’ll have better luck?”

“Try it. It’s worth a shot.”

Nodding, I deployed another two probes and prayed they wouldn’t be destroyed as quickly.as the first few, and then we waited.

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