Far Side Two
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 8
I
Walter Hermann and Oskar Friedrich were full commanders in the Deutsche Marine and were aware that Commodore Fisher was sitting off to one side. They commanded sister boats in the submarine service, and for the last few days, the wildest rumors had been running through the DM, and in the submarine service, it was a thousand times worse. Now they were expecting an operational briefing, and with all the rumors, they had no idea what was to come.
What came was a young blonde woman in her late twenties. She carried herself like any officer of the line wished he could.
“Gentleman, I am Linda Walsh, deputy director of the Arvala Expedition. Arvala was discovered by Andie Schultz and Kris Boyle, a planet so far away that careful study of the Arvalan night sky has revealed nothing visible from Earth. The planet is estimated to have a 42,200-mile circumference; it appears to have a higher percentage of water cover than Earth, but the fact is, we have no idea. It was reached by a Far Side door.
“The planet is inhabited by a species of genus Homo. They aren’t interfertile with Homo sapiens, but there are no visual cues as to the difference. There are a number of nations there, five we know of. Compared to Earth, very simple ... but it happens that four of the five nations have been at war for more than 1500 years, which makes the Hundred Years War between England and France seem like a minor tiff. The fifth nation was founded by those who fled the destruction of their civilization fifteen hundred years ago. The winners enslaved all those who couldn’t flee.
“The survivors arrived on a continent more than 9000 miles away. They called their nation ‘Arvala,’ named after their first large city. They faced a very hostile environment. We’re using that name to mean the entire planet. Arvala didn’t have a well-timed asteroid impact to wipe out their dinosaurs, so they faced slightly smaller versions of the T. Rex; raptors still exist, and there are pterodactyl-like predators as well.
“To make matters worse, the two species of pterodactyls appear to be intelligent. The smaller version appears to be as intelligent as a human six-year-old, the other race appears to be as intelligent as we are. Both of these species are carnivorous flying reptiles. They think humans are rather tasty.
“Germany has agreed to lease your two boats to the expedition for an indefinite period. We also have leased two coastal patrol boats from the US Coast Guard, and they are already on station.
“Commodore Fisher assures me that you will volunteer for this deployment. Only volunteers will be accepted. The commodore assures me that if he asks for volunteers, he will get enough. And be sure of this: while your mission is charting coastlines and the sea bottom, some of these will be hostile shores. You will be alone; yes, every time you submerge, you are alone, but here there is lots of support available at need. Not so on Arvala. The coastal patrol boats have a nine-hundred-mile range, yours is ten times that.
“The oceans on Arvala are much larger than Earth’s. The ocean east of Arvala is estimated at nine thousand miles across, and that distance is a minimum to a nation of people who keep slaves. We know of few islands, but their size and location are mostly uncertain.”
Walter spoke up. “I have a cousin who tried to build a Far Side door. He said the size was a meter by two meters. And his machine failed.”
“It is complicated. Andie Schultz is the director of the expedition, and she also has been appointed the Czar of Far Side doors by the American president. She prevents any Far Side door from forming on Earth, either outgoing or incoming. Don’t confuse fictional Stargates with reality. We can open Far Side doors for as long as we want, wherever we want. Whenever we want. And they are two-way. As a result, we will generate a door in the exit of Kiel harbor. We have fine-tuned the design so it will be thirty-two feet wide and sixty-four high. You may have to take down some of your antennas.”
“You will appear at the Arvalan town of Siran-Ista in deep water. Know that the oceans on Arvala are saltier than Earth’s, by about four percent.”
Walter spoke up again. “Our boats are roughly 23 feet in beam. What happens if we contact the side of the Far Side door?”
“Nothing. The ‘edges’ of a Far Side door are impenetrable. We will make a chute that will guide your boat through. Get it wrong and you will ‘collide’ with the door. Obviously, you will be going dead slow. Both patrol boats got through on the first try. While their beam is only nineteen feet, the Far Side door was twenty-five feet by fifty.”
“And the enemy? How are they armed?” Commander Friedrich asked.
“Their technology is roughly late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Their largest warships mount broadsides of fifty 36-some odd pound balls. Unlike on Earth during that period, they have primitive radios -- spark gap transmitters and galena crystal receivers. They have primitive communication protocols as well; their codes are simple. They simply cannot hear our radios, see our radar, and they have no sonar.
“If you were on the receiving end of a fifty-gun broadside, you will have more risk from an engineering casualty than the broadside. Still, sailing ships are stealthy; you’ll have to be careful.
“Going back to transit, if you hit the forward edge of the door, you stop. You can back and try again. If you hit the interior edge, it bounces you off. If you are going slow, it’s not important. One of the patrol boats was hit by a wave halfway through. It was a large wave, and the crew was sitting down and strapped in. No injuries were reported.”
“Brown drawers,” Oskar said.
Linda looked the man in the eye. “No injuries were reported.”
Walter laughed. “Would you think that was a reportable injury?”
She ignored the comment. “Commodore Fisher says that you will be monitored by his staff for the first thirty days, evaluated, and another boat will come through if things are satisfactory. You will not be given offensive tasking by the expedition. Andie Schultz will pay thirty-five pounds of gold to any crewmember who comes for a year’s deployment. In addition, she offers thirty-five pounds to anyone injured and another 35 pounds to the families of anyone killed. This is in addition to any payments from Germany. Her payments are about a half million dollars, US, at the current rate of exchange for each award.”
Walter spent a few seconds thinking, then asked, “Okay, the bad guys probably can’t hurt us, even if they could find us. This seems like rather elaborate planning for an accident or a possible engineering casualty.”
Linda nodded. “Andie has lost a dozen people to aerial predators, the Israelis one, and one of our allies lost about two hundred in one attack. The Arvalans themselves have lost thousands to these predators over the last fifteen hundred years. These are the intelligent predators I mentioned earlier.
“No one has timed the speed of a dralka diving; they seem to have very acute vision and they are cautious now, so they attack when your head is turned. A dralka is a flying reptile, like a pterodactyl...” Linda went into the familiar warning they always gave these days.
“And if dralka are bad, there are the dralha ... they are larger and meaner predators. A few weeks ago, two of our people were attacked from behind by a dralha. We lost a weapon ... the bugger grabbed one of the two, costing a good man his left arm. Your people will have to be armed whenever they are outside; if I get a report of someone not carrying a weapon outdoors, that person will be back on Earth as fast as we can make the transfer. I get copied on all reports like that, but almost never get involved with a person’s relief. That’s Kurt Sandusky, a former armor major during the first Gulf War. He’s lost men to those damn birds, and is out to reduce the number of such casualties to zero.”
Linda stopped and waited for a question, and when one was not immediately forthcoming, she gave a low laugh. “You didn’t ask about the bad news. The bad news is the dralka; the smaller ones are as smart as human six-year-olds. The really, really bad news is that the dralha’s intelligence is similar to our own. The only reason why we think we have a chance against them is that they don’t have hands and thus aren’t tool users. The absolutely worst news is that they have enthralled human slaves that do have hands.”
Linda stood there and answered a few questions, but the two commanders seemed to be processing the data, while the commodore had heard it all before and was quietly watching his two officers.
“One last topic. I need your promise not to mention the secret to anyone, not anyone at all, not for any reason. I referred earlier to Kurt Sandusky. He has told me that if he finds out that one of you has talked, he’ll kill the three of you. You would simply vanish. You should understand the draconian penalty when you hear me. This is the last chance for you to opt out.”
“I take exception to this,” Commodore Fisher said.
“And as I’ve said, you will recognize the necessity once I explain. Talk would endanger Arvala and the Earth, to a slavery more savage than you can imagine.”
Reluctantly, they agreed.
“The dralha are telepathic. Further, they have a method they call ‘enthralling’ where they take over a mind. Completely, entirely, utterly. Utterly. The person affected is helpless, like a puppet on strings. No volition or sense of self. Only about a percent of Earth humans are susceptible. They plan to kill anyone who can’t be enthralled. I imagine 7 and a half billion humans might be a mouthful to swallow, but looking at someone ‘enthralled,’ the servitude isn’t apparent.
“Again, we have developed a method of dealing with the two Americans so affected. The jury is still out on whether or not they will ever rejoin society as productive members.”
“Doesn’t the connection vanish through a Far Side door?” asked the commodore.
“Einstein said of quantum phenomena that it was ‘spooky action at a distance.’ He appears not to have exaggerated,” Linda said dryly.
“Please,” Linda went on, “I have more that is not as adversarial -- of course, your most dangerous opponent is Arvala, the planet, and that’s a major adversary. Navigation and tides are my next subject. You have been advised to bring along several spare sextants for each boat. There is no GPS, no LORAN, and no navigational aids at all. No lighthouses. Not only that, the poles are reversed -- the north magnetic pole is in the bottom hemisphere, unlike Earth. On Earth, the sun appears to rotate east to west, but the Earth is actually rotating counterclockwise. We have decided the simplest thing is to declare that the cardinal directions are the same as Earth. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”
“Speaking of the cardinal directions leads to latitude, which leads to tides. You gentlemen haven’t seen the Big Moon yet. Submariners probably won’t be affected by the Big Moon like some have. The Big Moon is in a close orbit around Arvala. It appears to rise in the west and set in the east. When it is just partially occulting the visible sky, it’s not too bad. At one point in the biweekly cycle, it stands in the sky overhead in a singular fashion. It covers about 80 percent of the sky. I’ve heard people describe it as ‘a hammer hanging over their heads.’ I’m a physicist; I just look at it as a chunk of dark sky. Lamentably, the Big Moon in its full glory has driven one man bat-guano crazy, and several others have had to be sedated and returned to Earth.
“On Earth, a day is 1440 minutes long. On Arvala, a day is 1175 minutes. That number of minutes is nearly evenly divisible by 24, thus an ‘hour’ on Arvala is nearly 49 minutes long; there are still 24 hours in a day. We will provide watches for all crew members. It will be tough adjusting; but so far, everyone has done so. The biggest problem is adjusting to hours a sixth shorter. Ship’s officers will have watches that track Earth time as well. The Earth time watches have a background of a global map on officers’ watches and a red background for Arvalan time.
“And now more information about Arvala’s rotation. Earth’s axis is tilted as it goes around the Sun ... this is responsible for the four seasons. Because the Big Moon is in the sky, at least the theory goes, Arvala has no axial tilt. None, zero, zip, nada. There are no seasons. As a result, the Arvalan temperate zone is just that, temperate the year around, and they routinely gather four crops a year on the agricultural land. Earth, during the period equivalent to the Arvalan culture, needed four people of five working the land to feed everyone, and there were frequent famines.
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