Jaunt by Erik Kreffel

mechanisms, but failed to reach it before the Casimir’s quaking reached a dangerous level.
    Snow was the only image on the monitor now while the group fought to contain the animated machine. They wrestled delicately with the expensive device, hoping to salvage its cargo without having to take a sledgehammer to it.
    With the hands of de Lis, Valagua, Gilmour and Mason on the casing of the machine, Waters devised a newer strategy. “The dropchute! Open it!”
    The four wrestled the unwieldy device onto its side long enough for Waters to land her left hand onto the dropchute. She retrieved a wrench from the top of the table, and using the leverage of her left arm to steady herself, placed the tool’s twin teeth over the clear housing of the dropchute. The rigged airlock hissed as she pulled it open, admitting the atmosphere to invade the pristine vacuum chamber below.
    Despite this, the Casimir continued to quake. Whining horribly, the machine’s casing fractured, launching the dropchute into the lab’s ceiling. Gilmour and Mason pried de Lis and Valagua away from the mechanical volcano just before it cracked in two. The remains of the plates and gear mechanisms spilled out as the shell halves were blown past the exam table and onto the floor.
    But that incredible explosion paled compared to the sight now before their eyes. Hovering in the remains of the Casimir—for a mere second—was a bizarre optical hole, an electromagnetic siphon curving light waves around its tight, spherical core. The jewel itself orbited the core, swiftly spiraling into the heart of the phenomenon before the assembled group could reach for their instruments to study it. The team gasped as the siphon instantly collapsed upon itself with a dreadful sucking echo, ending the anomaly and the mystery of the jewel all too soon.
    “Jesus,” Valagua muttered.
    “Break camp! We’re going back now!” de Lis shouted in the jumpjet.
    Without hesitation, Gilmour and Mason, followed by Waters and Valagua, ran to the camp, hastily gathering and evacuating their gear from the temporary domiciles while de Lis secured the mobile lab for flight lockdown status.
    Liftoff had been scheduled for 2047 hours, local time, under the descending layer of night, but the incident in the mobile lab virtually guaranteed their return to Ottawa should be as swift as possible. If the Confederation had indeed been aware of their presence here, there wasn’t much this tiny group could do to evade the Russians’ satellite platforms. The best they could hope for was to effect a quick exit, arousing as little notice as possible.
    De Lis took a few minutes to devise a satisfactory explanation for their abrupt departure, mentioning nothing of the jewel, to Secretary Buhranda; the jumpjet’s pilots, meanwhile readied the jumpjet for emergency takeoff, fueling the craft with just enough hydrogen pellets to get back to USNA airspace, but no farther. It was truly a last-minute operation.
    After performing final inventory checks of their equipment, Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Valagua boarded the jumpjet, leaving Nepal and the mysterious crater behind them. De Lis stepped aboard a few moments later via the starboard hatch, then signaled the pilots to depart. Wiping his jaw, de Lis took a seat and a deep breath. Deep down, he knew the easy part was done; the hard part was just beginning.
    USNA airspace once again greeted them, lending a palpable ease to the craft. From what they could tell, the Confederation had not detected the team’s access to the Central Asian Conglomerates, a small comfort with the potentially hazardous cargo the team had retrieved from the earth.
    The jumpjet made a smooth descent back at Hangar Building B, gliding under the opened doors which led to a cavernous subterranean chamber. Once the craft had set down, a grounds crew, loaded down with equipment cases, poured out an adjacent compartment. They hurried over to the jumpjet and flooded its interior, scanning