“I shall,” said Abaddon. “Let us begin the journey.”
T
HREE DAYS LATER, EVEN AS
dawn was breaking over Professor Faraday’s launch complex, a group of several dozen gathered to see Jerry off on his bold mission. Jerry had donned his flight suit and prepared to pilot Dagger 1 alone into the abyss. Upon the nose of the craft was its new name—
Hope
. Christopher had come up with it. It seemed appropriate enough.
Professor Faraday and his wife stood at Jerry’s side.
“I sure wish that you weren’t going alone,” lamented Faraday.
“This is a mission for one man,” said Jerry. “There’s no point in risking anyone else’s eternity.”
“I remember when you came here,” continued Faraday. “It’s been nearly four years now. You told me that you would become a pilot. You were so certain. Now you have become the finest. I cannot think of a better pilot for this mission.”
“Remember, don’t charge the capacitor beyond one hundred percent,” warned Christopher. “Don’t go into hyperdrive until you reach point ninety-eight of light speed. The faster you’re going when you engage it the better. You’ll be surprised how much fuel it will save you.”
“I will,” promised Jerry, climbing into the cockpit. He took his seat and buckled in. It was time to go. He paused. “I’ll see you this evening.”
Christopher nodded. “You bet.”
The group pulled back as the canopy closed and sealed. Jerry engaged power. He went over the checklist; everything was a go. A minute later the ship lifted off the pad in a cloud of dust, steadily gaining speed and altitude. At 90,000 feet, he switched from jet to electromagnetic propulsion. Less than six minutes found him in the blackness of space. He brought the capacitor to full charge. He resisted the temptation to take the capacitor to 102 percent. He would stick with the plan.
Jerry pushed the throttle of the electromagnetic drive forward. His status display hung like a phantom before him. He watched his speed build. Under normal conditions, he would not go to the trouble of achieving such incredible speeds before engaging the hyperdrive. Still, the science team was convinced that it would buy him valuable power. He would stick to the plan.
It took over half an hour of his time to achieve the required speed, which was closer to 45 minutes in ground time. Most of that time was used in getting from 90 to 98 percent of light speed. To get to 99 percent of light speed could easily require another hour. It was just the nature of relativistic travel. Again he checked his instruments; he was ready to engage the hyperdrive.
The jump to hyperdrive was accompanied with a dizzying sense of acceleration as the stars of normal space seemed to evaporate. They were replaced by clouds of colored vapor, high energy plasma really, rushing past him, contrasted against a velvet sky. They looked like the mare’s tail cirrus clouds one might see on a warm summer’s day—clouds touching the edge of the stratosphere.
This was nothing new to him. He’d made hyperdrive jumps dozens of times, yet never had he seen them sweep past him at such a speed as this. He plummeted ever deeper into the ether. The clouds around him faded in both brightness and color as he headed toward outer darkness. Within seconds the source of power that this vessel depended on would start to fade. At that point he would have to augment it with power from the capacitor. But as the seconds passed and his surroundings faded to black, it didn’t happen. His engines were still drawing power from somewhere—that much was clear.
Christopher had said something about such high speed creating a narrow tunnel of normal space in its wake. Through that tunnel the power of the Father’s Holy Spirit still flowed, feeding the engines. It was another minute before that power began to fade and the engines were compelled to draw on the power stored in the capacitor.
Jerry prepared for his entry into outer darkness. There was one critical maneuver still remaining: a four-second, full reverse power to the hyperdrive. Without it he would enter outer darkness at incredible speed, overshooting Planet Hell by 100 million miles—or worse, crashing into it at nearly the speed of light. So critical was this maneuver that it had been left to the onboard computer to initiate. All Jerry needed to do at this point was to sit back and enjoy the ride.
The maneuver was anything but a pleasant experience. Even with the inertial dampeners at full, it felt like he had just plowed into a wall. Bright amber light filled the cockpit, followed by a sudden jolt. Ahead, the nearly full disk of Planet Hell was hurtling toward him at breakneck speed. He applied full reverse thrust to the electromagnetic drive to reduce his forward velocity. It worked. A minute later, his speed had been reduced to 10,000 miles per hour, just as planned.
What Jerry beheld was a vast desert world that took up a fifth of the sky. It was painted in shades of brown, red, and black. Yellow storm clouds filled with bolts of powerful blue lightning hid portions of the planet’s surface from view. These were the firestorms. Below them a mixture of flaming sulfur and powerful sulfuric acid rained down upon this barren world and its hapless inhabitants.
In other places, volcanoes spewed out poisonous gases and red-hot lava. The sulfur within these eruptions was what provided the raw materials for the great firestorms. Even from here it was not a planet that would entice a passing space traveler, yet it was one of the most traveled-to destinations in the universe.
Before him was the daylight side of the planet where temperatures could soar past 300 degrees. Jerry turned to his navigation display. It was highlighting a region of the planet to the far left, not far from the place where eternal day met eternal night. Here, a vast tan-colored desert met a black, fiery sea. He was right on course.
A firestorm could be seen some distance to the south, but it would pose no obstacle to his approach or rescue. All was proceeding as planned. Jerry glanced at his power readings. He was amazed to discover that he still had nearly 71 percent power in the capacitor. He breathed a sigh of relief. Fuel for the trip home would be no problem. This mission was going very well so far.
Yet there was something here that he had not anticipated: a sense of isolation, of loneliness. He tried to shake it, but he couldn’t. It was the absence of the Spirit of God. The reality of God’s Spirit was something he had taken for granted for so very long—a comforting Presence that was conspicuously absent here. He had read about this effect, but he hadn’t expected it to make his heart feel this heavy. Jerry concentrated on the mission. He was 63 minutes from touchdown; he would have to focus.
The flight in continued uneventfully. As seen from the surface, he was coming in straight out of this world’s huge red sun. It would obscure his approach, at least in the beginning. Now at an altitude of 200 miles, he engaged the cloaking device. It was a power consumption hog, but a necessary evil. He applied reverse thrust to bleed off speed. His entry into the atmosphere would need to be relatively slow—Mach 3—and it would slow rapidly from there. This would generate relatively little heat and no sonic boom.
Only a few minutes passed before Jerry could hear the rushing of the highly rarified air across the dagger’s airfoil as he slipped through the ever-thickening atmosphere some 30 miles up. He got a much closer view of that sulfur firestorm to his south. Its billowing, yellow clouds towered over 12 miles above the surface, and the clouds were alive with powerful bolts of blue lightning. Below it, the sulfuric acid rain came down in gray sheets, mixed here and there with a rain of sulfur fire. It was an awesome yet ghastly spectacle.
Right now Jerry was crossing a range of barren mountains just to the east of the target zone. He switched from electromagnetic to jet propulsion. He would overshoot the zone and then swing around and approach it from the fiery sea. He glanced over at the mission clock; it was just over 12 minutes to touchdown.
“Hold on, Mom,” he said, “I’m almost there.”
Around him the sky was undergoing a transformation from the blackness of space to a sort of dark blue and now to a more tan color. Ten thousand feet altitude came and went as he passed over the landing zone. He was still too high up to see any detail. He only hoped that his mother’s sarcophagus had not fallen into that black sea.
Six thousand feet over the black, fiery sea Jerry began to experience rough air, and it only got rougher as he descended. The intense heat of the sea was causing powerful thermals that buffeted the dagger. This would make his approach all the more difficult. At 3,000 feet he made a hard bank to the left, reversing his course. He had dropped to a mere 1,500 feet when he rolled out of the turn. The sea was coming toward him awfully fast. He had dropped to less than 200 feet when he finally increased power and leveled off. He scanned his high frequency radar: no contacts other than the cliff two miles ahead. That, at least, was a break.
Two minutes later Jerry was in hover mode just beyond the cliff. Again he scanned his surroundings—nothing. He identified the landing site; everything was just as it appeared in the book. Before him he saw his mother’s sarcophagus, still undisturbed. He was in time. He extended the landing gear and made a soft touchdown on the rocky plains just 15 feet from the cliff’s edge. The engines shut down. Only the cloaking device and high frequency radar remained active.
Now time was of the essence. Every minute here on the ground increased the probability of detection. Jerry grabbed his rifle and the tool kit and popped the canopy. He climbed down the ladder. He felt as if ants were crawling all over his body as he stepped through the force field of the cloaking device. He turned to look back.
Sadly the ship was still almost invisible, a rippling outline against the background. Still, from a distance of 100 yards or so, it probably was invisible. He moved on, walking amid the shining, metal coffins.
This place was just as it appeared in his mother’s book. However, the heat and smell of crude oil and sulfur were far more noticeable. Occasionally he heard a muffled moan emanate from one of the coffins, but mostly he heard the relentless crashing of the waves upon the cliff below. It took less than a minute to get to his mother’s sarcophagus. He looked down to discover that the crack in the ground appeared no wider. That was a relief.
It was unusually quiet within the sarcophagus. Jerry didn’t know if that was good or bad. He sat his kit on the ground and opened it. He pulled from it a high energy plasma cutter and a remote scanner. He sat the scanner, which linked to the radar in the dagger, where he could monitor the screen as he worked. He engaged the plasma cutter, and it came to life with a low hum. He moved it toward the metal seam and began his work.
He was relieved to discover just how quickly the stream of high energy plasma sliced into the metal. Within just a few seconds he had cut several inches. Already the heat and stench emanating from within that awful tomb was almost overwhelming. He had cut nearly two feet when he heard a gasp from within the sarcophagus, followed by several rapid breaths.
“Ohhh!” came the cry from within. It seemed so full of agony. Then came the rapid breathing, one gasp after another. “Air,” muttered a woman’s voice from within, “air.”
“Please, be still,” said Jerry, in as calm a voice as he could. “I’m here to rescue you.”
For a moment there was no response, just more rapid breathing. “Rescue?” came the disoriented cry. “I’m really being rescued?”
“Yes,” confirmed Jerry, who continued to cut through the metal at approximately waist level.
“I feel air, there’s air,” groaned Leona. “I can breathe.”
“Yes,” confirmed Jerry, “and there’s going to be more. I’m cutting through the metal. I’ll have you out of there in just a few minutes.”
“You’re a hallucination, you’ve got to be,” moaned Leona. “I’m going out of my mind. I know it.” Leona began to cry between her gasps.
“No, you’re not going out of your mind,” said Jerry. “I’m not a hallucination. Please don’t cry. You’re going to be OK. Please trust me.”
She was talking to him, and she was making sense. It gave Jerry new hope as he carefully cut along the neck of the sarcophagus.
“Ohh!” cried Leona. “Oh, God, that burns.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jerry. “I’m cutting you out of there with a plasma beam. I’m trying not to hurt you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t stop, please don’t stop. Please, get me out of here. For the love of God, please,” urged Leona. Again she went silent. Her breaths seemed less labored now. “You’re not a hallucination; you’re real. I know it now. How did you get here? Who are you?”
That was the question that Jerry didn’t want to answer, not right now at least. He needed to have her calm. To tell her that he was her aborted son wouldn’t sit too well with her in her current state of mind.
“I’m a friend,” he said. “I’ve been planning this rescue for years. I’m sorry that it has taken so long.”
“I don’t have any friends…not anymore,” gasped Leona. “They told me that no one would remember me, that I’d suffer here for all eternity forgotten by everyone who ever loved me. The demons told me that.”
“You can’t believe demons,” said Jerry, who was now stretching to cut the shell open over her head. “I remembered you.”
“But who are you?” asked Leona.
There was a moment of hesitation. “My name is Jerry.”