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    © 2004 Andrew Dormeier
A green light on Falinor's console lit up. He caught it out of the corner of his eye and turned around to survey the panel.
"What is it?" Artemus asked. Without looking up, Falinor replied, "I left the sensors on to take more readings of the ends of the tunnel, to see how far it reached. The readings I am getting show the ends to be much closer than they should be, much closer." "So this cylinder just stops?" "No, the emission lines I am getting show a higher concentration of hydrogen than normal." "The tunnel wall?" "It would appear so. Another observation: the distance to the wall increases the further I scan starboard." "So the wall turns or is curved." "Yes, it is curved in a broad arc." "Well this shoots our theory to the ground. No ship traveling fast enough to create this shockwave would be able to turn that quickly." "No. One other peculiarity I discovered is a higher level of radiation from the tunnel wall on our starboard side." "What does that mean?" "Look," Falinor said as he brought up a display on the main viewscreen. The tunnel wall lay before them. Near the center of the screen a small area was brighter than the rest. It glowed a soft, light orange. "It's a protostar forming in this arm of the nebula. Amazing," Sol declared as he peered through millions of miles of gas. "Which means that the curvature in the tunnel walls could be formed by an object in orbit around this unborn star. The arc angle that we have seen so far fits a number of possible orbits, most of them noticeable ellipses. The object would have to be large, the size of a planet." "A planet then. How would a planet form before its parent star, and leave such a distinct trail as this?" "Unknown." "We should investigate further: this is becoming an interesting little mystery indeed. Adjust for the curvature of the passageway, fire up the ghost drive and take us up to 0.05 lightspeed. Let's find what's out there." |
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