Chapter 15: Intrepid - 3756 C.E.

It was now over a month since the Intrepid plunged into the Anomaly and Paul was no more relaxed about it than he was before despite Beatrice's constant reassurances. What troubled him most wasn't just what was going to happen to him now that he was inside the Anomaly but whether he'd ever return to the universe he came from.

"I look at the bulletin boards every day and read each and every the scientific report," Paul told Beatrice who was sitting beside him, "and I've still seen nothing to persuade me that it was ever such a good idea to have entered the Anomaly."

"I can't believe that," his wife said. "Look at all the enthusiasm and excitement! It's like a new dawn in scientific knowledge. We're learning so many new things about the universe, aren't we?"

"Are we?" said Paul, who now also wondered whether what he perceived as a lack of interesting new science mightn't just be his misunderstanding of the evidence. The tone of the bulletins and daily reports certainly gave the clear impression that every day was marked by the discovery of a new theory as important as that of General Relativity. On the other hand, Paul came from a culture where individual, even idiosyncratic, opinion was valued over conformity to a widely held view. He wasn't equipped to respond in kind to bubbly upbeat enthusiasm. The more the bulletins sustained a fever pitch of excitement despite the lack of any apparent material value the more Paul distrusted them. Just what it was that Captain Kerensky, Chief Science Officer Chang and Professor Penrose thought was worth enthusing about Paul wasn't sure but he was increasingly troubled by the very real likelihood that he would never again return to Godwin.

It wasn't that Paul had missed his home in the Kuiper Belt very much before. So many things had happened over the last few years, not the least of which being his marriage to the delectable and loving Beatrice, that Paul hardly ever thought about his home colony at all. But somewhere at the back of his mind he'd always assumed that he would one day return home; only this time accompanied by his delightful wife. She would surely be the envy of every man on Godwin. It might be several years until that day, but eventually Paul would return to a life of happy obscurity in a sane and rational society that placed no undue value on fame, fortune or reputation. This unspoken expectation now seemed nothing more than an unattainable dream.

But at least he still had Beatrice to keep him company.

Paul wasn't sufficiently enthused by the apparent fervour of his scientific peers to wander away from his home and investigate the Intrepid's other levels. There had seemed little reason to do so before the Intrepid crossed the Anomaly's threshold and there didn't appear to be any compelling reason now. Paul had long ago completed his sightseeing tour of the Intrepid and everything he ever needed was always close at hand. Paul never understood why his presence had ever been needed on the Intrepid in the first place and now that the space ship's mission had reached its climax his utter redundancy seemed even more starkly apparent.

Moreover, Paul didn't need to venture far at all if he wanted to see the weird Apparitions that were appearing all over the place inside and outside the Intrepid. The time and location of these manifestations were completely random so one place was no better than any other. Paul didn't know what to make of them. They were weirdly entertaining as well as being rather frightening and somewhat perplexing. They reminded him of the avatars he'd encountered in virtual reality and many of them, such as the dragons and semi-clad swordswomen, could easily have sprung from such a universe.

One critical difference was that these Apparitions were never persistent. They usually stayed in sight for less than a minute. And then they abruptly vanished.

"Where do they go?" Paul asked Beatrice.

"Back to where they came from," his wife suggested.

"And where's that?"

"Isn't that exactly what all the scientific research is explaining?"

Paul furrowed his brow. "Er ... no, it isn't," he said. "We always thought these weird Apparitions came from inside the Anomaly and now we're here they seem to come from somewhere else again. Is there another Anomaly inside this one?"

"An interesting theory," said Beatrice with a light laugh.

Making love with Beatrice was the most reliable way for Paul to forget his anxieties. This was something so regular and agreeable that Paul could no longer imagine what life before marriage was like. She was so responsive, so passionate and so dependable. Beatrice never had headaches or days when she didn't feel like making love, unlike all Paul's previous girlfriends, (or at least the physically corporeal ones). She was there for him whenever he wanted her. She was there even when his mind was elsewhere and it took her little effort to persuade Paul that what he really wanted was to nestle his head on her shoulders, to thrust his erect penis into her willing orifices and for their bodies to pump together in total harmony. The power of love was not at all diminished on this side of the Anomaly's aperture.

Paul was slumped naked on the bed. His penis flopped to one side as he lay in a patch of their shared perspiration and his own semen. He could see the world beyond the villa through the open doors where other passengers might occasionally walk by on the way to and from their homes. A deer was grazing less than fifty metres from the door. In most ways, it was no different inside the Anomaly to what it was on the outside. The Intrepid's systems were the same as ever.

"Paul!" shouted Beatrice. "Paul! Come here!"

"What is it?" asked Paul who jumped off the bed and dashed over to Beatrice who was standing naked and in the hallway.

"What's this?" she asked.

She was pointing at a door in the hallway of a peculiarly rustic design with wooden panels and a brass door handle.

"It's a door," said Paul, stating the obvious. He speculated whether Beatrice was referring to some stain on the panel.

"I don't remember seeing this door here before."

Paul scratched his chin. "Well, it must have been," he said. There was so much he normally never noticed that it was quite natural for him to discover things that had always been there that he didn't remember ever seeing before.

"Seriously," said Beatrice. "I'm sure that it wasn't here before."

"It's probably some kind of service room," said Paul. "Perhaps this is where the household robots stay."

"There's another room for them," said Beatrice.

"Is there?" said Paul who'd never noticed that before.

"It's in the kitchen."

"Really?"

"Shall we open the door and see what's inside?"

"It's probably just a load of household equipment," said Paul whose enthusiasm was more for returning to bed.

"Let's see..." said Beatrice who pulled the door open to reveal a well-lit corridor on the other side. "This doesn't look like a service room."

Paul was more than a little startled. "This is another of the Anomaly's weird phenomena," he said. "If you look at the length and extent of this corridor it should be projecting right out of the villa into the lawn. In fact on the other side of the wall is one of the living rooms and there's no corridor going through that!"

"Are you sure?" asked Beatrice.

Paul walked round the corner to the other side of the wall.

"Absolutely," he said. "That corridor shouldn't be there. Let's close the door and forget about it."

"I don't think so," said Beatrice firmly. "I think we should go through the door and along the corridor and find out what's going on."

Paul couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Are you insane?" he said. "It's as mad as the Intrepid having entered the Anomaly in the first place. There could be anything down there."

"We owe it to the mission to find out what there is," said Beatrice. "Everyone else is making discoveries. We should do our bit to help."

"Someone else can do that," said Paul. "Perhaps we should just inform the Science Officers. I'm sure the Chief Science Officer what's her name ... Petal Chang ... would be interested."

Beatrice ignored Paul's advice. "I'm going in," she said resolutely. "You don't have to join me if you don't want to."

More than the fear of the unknown was Paul's fear of losing Beatrice forever.

"OK," he said. "If we have to ... But first let's get some clothes on."

"Of course, darling," said Beatrice with a slightly simpering smile.

In Paul's imaginings and even more so in his exploration of virtual reality, when the heroic duo of a man and a woman entered the unknown on a hazardous mission they generally dressed in flattering tight-fitting outfits. Invariably they also carried powerful hand weapons that could vanquish any monster that might appear. They wouldn't normally venture into the unknown as Paul did in a colourful tee-shirt, baggy shorts and a pair of canvas shoes. Nor did they dress as Beatrice did in skimpy tight briefs, flat sandals and a gossamer top that revealed almost all her bosom and midriff. But then the Paul's wardrobe of readily available clothes was never designed for adventures into the unknown.

Nevertheless, when Beatrice went through the mysterious hallway door and Paul reluctantly followed, the pair did so very much as adventurers. Paul left the door to the villa open behind them but its reassuring light didn't illuminate much of the corridor. The couple relied on the corridor's discreet and omnipresent internal lighting system of the type in common use throughout the Solar System for countless centuries. Paul wondered whether the Intrepid had somehow opened a doorway into the crew quarters near the bridge, although it was even more austere than Paul remembered. There were doors at regular intervals but, instead of holographic screens that displayed a view of the empty space outside the Intrepid, between each door was an imposing holographic image of an authoritative figure whose eyes appeared to follow Paul and Beatrice as they wandered along.

"Who is this man?" wondered Paul. "I've never seen him before. Is he one of the Intrepid's officers?"

"I don't think we're on the Intrepid anymore," said Beatrice with an excited gleam in her eyes. "I think we've somehow entered a totally different space ship altogether."

"How is that possible?" said Paul. "You can't just walk into another space ship as easily as that. Is this another weird thing to do with the Anomaly?"

"It must be."

"So is this character the space ship's captain?" wondered Paul. "I don't like the look of him at all. He doesn't look very friendly."

The image in the ubiquitous repeated holographic screen showed a man with cropped blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin. He wore a tight-fitting silver uniform and an ornate helmeted cap balanced rather peculiarly over his blond hair. He further distinguished himself by sporting a trim blond moustache. His stern expression seemed rather creepy to Paul.

"Perhaps we should ask this fellow," suggested Beatrice cheerfully as another tall blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned man approached them along the corridor. He also wore a silver uniform, but there was no hat and no moustache. He was carrying a small device in his hand that was probably a gun of some kind and he seemed to be very anxious.

He stopped in front of Paul and Beatrice and warily examined them.

"Hello," said Beatrice.

The man replied but it wasn't in a language that Paul understood. As always, however, Beatrice displayed another skill that she'd kept hidden from Paul until this moment and that was an astonishing fluency in the language the man spoke.

"Where did you learn to speak like that?" he asked Beatrice after she'd spoken.

"Hush," said Beatrice, indicating the blond man in front of them. He'd ignored Beatrice and addressed Paul with what was to him nothing more than a series of generally incomprehensible guttural sounds.

Paul shook his head good-naturedly. "I can't help you, I'm afraid," he said cheerfully. "I can't understand a word you're saying..."

"It's German," said Beatrice. "It's a very formal German as well. There are a lot of peculiar structural idiosyncrasies."

German was one of the less widely spoken languages in the Solar System. Paul was sure that it might still be spoken in the Asteroid Belt and possibly around Neptune.

The man spoke again. This time he listened when Beatrice replied. He addressed her more directly and then marched off down the corridor towards the only holographic screen that didn't display a picture of the moustachioed man with an odd hat. He stood in front of it while he spoke into a mouthpiece.

"What just happened?" asked Paul.

Beatrice smiled. "There seems to be a misunderstanding," she said. "Apparently he thought you were a Senior Scientific Officer from this ship. He's puzzled because although you look precisely like this Officer Mauritz you're dressing in a very peculiar way and you've changed your hair colour and eye pigment."

"That would be very odd," admitted Paul. "Why didn't he speak to you first of all? Surely he could see that I can't speak German."

"He doesn't see that at all, I'm afraid, I don't think he anticipated that there might be anyone on this space ship who'd speak any other language. The reason he didn't want to speak to me is because I'm a woman and from the way I dress he assumed that I was a prostitute. I don't think he likes to talk to women and most of all he doesn't want to speak to prostitutes..."