Travel Plans

The dinner table was crowded. McFarren had a portable display and computer with him. Malcolm called the meeting not more than an hour after the strange passenger arrived. He knew all of the crew was curious about the man and the mission.

“I have called all of you here so’s that you can hear where we are goin’ and why,” Malcolm was serious again.

“Yeah, why the big mystery anyway,” Wash asked.

“We get paid to do a job,” Malcolm said firmly, “not to ask why. I’ll let Mr. McFarren explain to you what our mission is.”

McFarren tapped on his little computer and the 3-D holographic display showed a model of the Milky Way galaxy, “As I am sure you know, we are situated in the Orion arm of the Milky Way, here.”

With dizzying speed the model zoomed into a lighter area of one of the spiral arms. A blobby sphere was highlighted in light blue.

“The Alliance controls this space here highlighted in blue. The rim planets that we know are in red. As you can see we are here, now 42 light years above the plane of Alliance space. About eight months ago a deep space probe spotted gravimetric anomaly 137. It began as a gravitational oddity like many others we have encountered. At first, there were thoughts it may be a black hole or dark matter. As the probe got closer, we discovered its speed relative to the rotation of the galaxy was 1.4 meters per second along the plane of galactic rotation and zero with respect to the z-axis.”

“Wa,wa wait,” Wash was incredulous, “you sayin’ that this thing is holding position?”

“Scientists were not entirely sure at first,” McFarren explained, “and infrared views showed a very symmetrical shape. So they ordered the probe to alter course and investigate.”

The display changed views and showed a long, cylindrical darkness against the central bulge of the Milky Way. The darkness was slightly rounded on each end.

“It definitely doesn’t look like something,” Kaylee was wide-eyed, “umm natural I guess is the word.”

McFarren continued, “Exactly, and when the probe wa