Chapter 15

"When you set out on a journey,... make sure that you always carefully plan for every eventuality." -- The Teachings of Gran Ch .32 Lines 1, 3.

Dahra walked into the large room that contained the Starjump, with Fig trotting behind her. She closed and sealed the door behind her. No more air could get in or out of the room.

She portaled to a lower room of the ship. A room she could not reach, without injuring herself, in Docre's gravity. It had a large window in what was now the floor, that gave a magnificent view of the chamber's blank floor.

As she entered the room, she anchored to the ceiling, using her Velcro suit and two anchoring straps. It was an odd feeling to be stuck to a ceiling.

Fig fidgeted at the velcro paw booties as it walked on the ceiling. Dahra had them fashioned for him. It made it difficult to move across the ceiling. He had initially tried to bite them off, but a couple of swats by Dahra had taught him that he had to put up with the discomfort.

The launch would probably be the most difficult part for Dahra. After the ship reached space, the ship's computer, combined with an amplifier would help her with portaling. But the first one was all up to her.

The launch involved opening a portal twenty-five miles above Docre. Not something, she had ever done, but a task that should be relatively easy.

The hard part was opening a twenty yard wide portal for the ship to pass through, to do so in two seconds. That would not be so easy. The widest portal she had ever made was five yards across. She had never before needed to make such a large portal.

For the past two days, Dahra had been practicing opening large portals. She stood near the edge of the library's flat roof, and made large portals off the side of the building. She found it a unique experience. It felt like she was stretching something inside her brain. She had no trouble opening a portal up to ten meters across. When she made portals larger than ten meters, she felt an strange tingle spread throughout her body. The wider the portal, the stronger the tingle. It actually felt pretty good, in a mildly painful way.

She knew that the area of the brain that gave her her portaling ability was located next to the limbic, or pleasure, centers of the brain. Was it possible that stretching portals like this, actually stimulates the limbic centers? She had never heard of such a thing. But, how many portalers had ever tried to create such large portals?

After two days of practice, she felt that she could now open a large enough portal in just a few seconds. She laid flat on her back, looking toward the floor, feeling the restraining pull of the Velcro holding her in place.

Dahra took a deep breath, released it, then portaled.

Before her opened a black sky, dusted with stars. Not the few faint twinkling stars she could normally see in the docren night sky, but thousands of them. More than she dreamed existed. The sight took her breath away. She heard the sound of the air in the room whistling by the ship, as it fell through the floor into the vacuum of space. She felt the ship jolt as the platform fell into space. The weight of gravity left her body as they fell through the portal. Fig panicked at the sensation, and was now tumbling end over end in the middle of the room.

Suddenly, just as the front end of the ship had gone through the portal, the ship stopped with a jerk. What had happened? thought Dahra, then she knew. The useless power cable that fed power to the ship was still connected. The ship was tethered to the building by this thick cable. It wouldn't last though. The force of gravity, would cause the cable to either disconnect or break, she wasn't sure which.

While waiting the few seconds for the cable to come loose, Dahra checked the computer's readout screen on the far wall. The portal wasn't quite big enough for the ship to go through. Passage would cause the several sensor arrays to break off, and might even cause a hull breach, that would kill her in seconds. The portal needed to be at least three yards wider.

Dahra tried to open the portal wider, but found a mental barrier that she could not pass. The barrier had an elastic feel to it. She could open the portal a few inches, but the moment she wavered from pushing against it, the portal would snap back to its original size.

Every time Dahra mentally pushed against the barrier, the tingling in her body became stronger, almost to the point of pain. She realized she had to make one concerted effort to pierce this barrier. If she didn't then she would probably be dead. She relaxed her pushing, concentrated, then pushed with all will.

The barrier broke. Dahra doubled over on the ceiling, gasping. A feeling of pleasure and pain flooded her nervous system with a feeling unlike anything she had ever felt at a pleasure house.

The portal opened another ten yards, just as the cable snapped, sending the Starjump tumbling through the portal. The maneuvering jets of compressed air kicked in automatically, stabilizing the ship.

Dahra laid on the floor gasping for breath. It seemed that in the thirty seconds it took to pierce the mental barrier, she had expended more energy than she usually did in a day.

After a few minutes, Dahra carefully got to her feet. It was an odd feeling to be without gravity. If it wasn't for the Velcro soles on her shoes, she would fly across the room, like Fig was. Dahra reached up and managed to grab one of Fig's feet, and pull him back to the floor. Fig carefully lifted one foot off the floor, and started walking much more carefully, keeping at least three paws on the floor at all times

Dahra went over to the computer monitor and punched the status button. A pleasant female voice said, "twenty miles above planet. Next portal in three minutes. Portal room one."

"Three minutes!" shrieked Dahra. "I can't portal in three minutes! I'm still a wreck from the first one!" She unanchored herself and pushed her way down the circular hole in what was once the ceiling. In zero gravity, it was just another wall. She used all sides of the tunnel in her panic to get to the main portaling room.

The tunnel, fortunately, ran into the main large tunnel that bisected the ship. At one end of the tunnel was a hatch marked with a "One", and at the other end a hatch marked with a "Two". Dahra scampered down the main tunnel to the hatch marked "One", pushed open the hatch and climbed through. She hit the terminal's status button, as she entered the room.

"Eight miles from planet. Portal in ninety seconds." Less than a minute!

Dahra looked at the domed ceiling and saw a breathtaking view of Docre, her home planet. It was curved mosaic of blues, with a few splotches of green. Decorating it were pure white bands of clouds. This stunning view was rapidly changing, since the planet moved beneath them, and getting larger by the second.

"Fifty seconds to portal."

Dahra crawled over to the amplifier helmet that was velcroed to the floor in the center of the floor, put it on, and laid down on the floor, looking up at the dome. The portaling amplifier looked a lot like the mover amplifier that Lissa had used to discover the find, those many months ago: a helmet that covered the whole head, with a visor over the eyes, and a cable that ran out of the top of the helmet, into the floor.

The computer's voice piped into her helmet. "Ability: sixty-seven percent. Within acceptable parameters."

Sixty-seven? thought Dahra. I thought I was sixty-two.

Looking through the visor, she saw a red "X" near the top of the dome. That was the point where she would open the portal. She looked around for the green "X", signifying the exit point, and found it near the left horizon of the dome. She needn't worry about the exit point; the computer would take care of that. All she had to worry about was opening a portal at the red "X".

"Ten seconds to portal. Five seconds. Three, two, one. Portal."

Dahra was so tired that she didn't think that she would be able to open even a regular sized portal, but the instant she started portaling, the computer took over. Dahra felt like something had reached in and taken control of part of her mind. And it had.

This portaling had a feeling of detachment that Dahra had never felt before. She felt like she was just a spectator. The computer was the real portaler.

But there was also a feeling of violation. The feel of the amplifier taking control of part of her mind was a cold and brutal act. The seizure had none of the gentleness or humanity to it that her mental contacts with minders and emoters had had.

When the ship had safely passed through the portal, the amplifier let loose of Dahra mind. The full strain of two difficult portals within ten minutes hit her. She lost consciousness.

The portal opened about fifteen thousand miles from Docre, and sent the ship flying off toward Chin, Docre's tiny moon. Chin was an airless rock, about one-tenth the diameter of Docre. It orbited Docre every one hundred and sixty days. It was so small that it could not be seen from inside Docre's atmosphere without a telescope.

Dahra slowly regained consciousness. Never had she felt so mentally fatigued. She would never have pushed her own mind to that extreme. But the computer had.

She felt wetness on her face. Evidently, Fig had tried to wake her, to no avail. She slowly opened her eyes, and almost had a heart attack. The peak of a jagged mountain whizzed by overhead, seemingly, just a few meters from hitting the dome. More peaks flew by in just a few seconds; some even closer to the dome.

Dahra took off the amplifier, crawled over to the terminal and pushed the "Status" button.

"Passing Chin. Distance from surface: three miles.

"Next portal optional."

Dahra entered the command for more information.

"Lat fly-by in fourteen days, without portaling. Lat fly-by in ten hours, with portaling."

Dahra didn't want to sit in this ship doing nothing for fourteen days, waiting to get pulled in by Lat's gravity well. But she didn't feel up to portaling right now, either, although with the computer's help she was sure she could. She decided that she would go get some rest in her bunk before portaling to Lat.

She spent the next few minutes watching the rugged terrain of Chin go by. Gradually the Starjump pulled away from the moon, and left it behind.

After the show was over, Dahra prepared to leave for her bunk, She looked for Fig, and saw him curled up, asleep. He was floating a meter off the floor, on the far side of the room, as peaceful as could be. She decided not to disturb him, and exited, leaving the hatch open, so he could reach food and water from the dispenser.

The fly-by of Lat, the next day, was spectacular. The portaling was done in portal room number two. In all ways identical to room one, except that it faced the opposite direction.

The computer-assisted portal was just as unpleasant, but didn't seem quite as draining as before.

As the ship approached Lat, the domes darkened, so no other star was visible. But even then, it was nearly blinding.

The Starjump flew across the surface of the star, just outside of the corona. It was pure luck that it didn't get destroyed by any prominences. Dahra watched in awe as they flew by sunspots that were ten times bigger than Docre.

The crossing took three hours. By the time it left, the Starjump was the fastest moving object in the solar system. It flew back across Docre's orbit in only one day.

The computer's program was to use one of the outer gas giants to further slingshot it into even higher velocity and to aim it toward the first star. But Dahra disagreed. Higher velocities made it hard to slow down later, and one portal would reorient the ship to the right star.

The ship had been programmed for a ten star tour of some of Lat's stellar neighbors that were spectrally similar to itself. All of them were smaller than Lat. The trip was a loop that would return back to Docre after the tenth star. Dahra might have to change the programming of the ship to visit other stars, if no life was evident on these ten.

The first star on the tour was a little over a docren light year away, a third Lat's brightness, and half its size. It was a prominent star in the Docre's northern skies, spectrally similar to Lat, and a strong prospect for finding life.

After a good night's rest, Dahra was ready for her first true long distance jump; one that would be impossible without the amplifier. She laid on the Velcro "floor", aimed at the red "X", and portaled. Again she felt the computer take control, and then felt nothing. The portal was all but invisible, a black portal against a black sky. Only the sudden appearance of a bright star marked the portal's appearance. It was hard to tell when the ship had passed through. The computer let her know about the passing by letting go of her mind. The strain of the long distance portal hit her all at once. She felt liked she had sprained a muscle in her brain, if such a thing were possible. Her portaling ability had been stretched in a way it never had before, her mind felt sore.

Dahra stood up and walked over to the monitor. The computer said that she had portaled just under a light year in distance. The ship was now in interstellar space. She needed to portal again to reach the new star. She should have been able to make it in just one jump. The time it would take to reach the star, without portaling, was still measured in decades.

The computer analysis said that she was only portaling at forty percent of her potential. This worried Dahra. Coming up next was the big gap between the stars on her tour, over ten light years. If she did not make it in six jumps, two jumps a day for three days, the system would run out of stored energy, and she would die. Right now, it would take her twelve jumps.

Dahra went into the ship's library, and studied the possible reasons for this problem. The computer listed five rare diseases that would cause this problem, along with several mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, that would shut down portaling abilities completely. She didn't show symptoms of any of these conditions. The non-medical causes, though, hit Dahra to the bone. "Guilt (or other forms of preoccupation)" and "depression." That was it. She still hadn't dealt with her feelings of guilt. This problem was now a threat to her life. It had to be dealt with.

Her first priority, though, was to get the ship into orbit around the star. The second portal was much shorter than the first, but the two combined in one day wore her out. The ship was still approximately a day out from entering the stellar system of this star. During this time, the ship sensors would scan the system for planets, and have a report ready for Dahra by the time she woke.

Dahra woke the next morning, ship's time, ate a prepackaged breakfast, and exercised in the artificial gravity of the center tunnel. The tunnel could be spun, independent of the rest of the ship, up to full gravity by a special motor in the ship.

Fig seemed to enjoy the gravity as much as Dahra. While she was doing calisthenics, the ahd ran round and round inside the cylinder. After the exercise, Dahra went to the main computer room to read the scan of the system.

The computer created a three dimensional model of the system (more technology lifted from the find) showing seventy five percent of the system that was not blocked out by the star's radiation. The system had three large gas giants, one of which was ringed. The area that would contain Docre-like planets instead was populated by a series of asteroid belts. Any planet that might have existed with life had long since been destroyed.

Dahra went down to portal room two and portaled to alter the course of the ship, so it would come into a stable orbit around the nearest gas giant. In order to get into an orbit, the ship had to be slowed down. The braking of the ship involved skimming across the upper atmosphere of the gas giant.

The passage through the atmosphere was a horrific experience. The whole ship shook. The items that had been floating the past couple of days flew onto the wall, from the rapid deceleration. The interior temperature rose, as the radiating system over-heated. But when it was over, the ship was in a stabile orbit.

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