“Okay,” George was saying, “veer to the left, to the left…”
Menhaus jerked the wheel and they went too far, the needle of the compass swinging far to the right and almost stopping George’s heart with it. But without being told, he brought the boat back until the needle was pointing straight up, attracted by an unknown magnetic influence.
“Hold it there now,” George said. “We’re moving straight at whatever it is…”
Behind them, far, far behind them there was a rumbling sound like thunder. A deafening hollow boom. The fog behind them was lit with a flickering green light.
They knew what it was.
The anti-matter bomb. The collision of dimensions, the big bang.
Seconds now, mere seconds before that shockwave found them, atomized them into mist.
Oh, it was a breathless time. A frenzied time. An insane time. A time when all and everything were balanced on the head of some celestial pin and George could feel the world trembling, waiting to fall, readying itself for that great, godless fall to the pavement far below. He could almost feel that pavement rushing up at him, feel himself impacting with a splatter of blood and bones and memory.
The compass needle began to spin.
George’s heart leaped.
Menhaus muttered, “I think, I think…”
George held the teleporter in his hands. They were shaking badly and he almost dropped it. He held it steady, placed one hand on the scope and the boat began to vibrate, static electricity snapped and crackled all around him making his hair stand on end. The generator hummed, the scope shot out a blue pencil of light that was refracted, boosted, amplified, turned back upon itself and a stream of blue pulsing, ionzed particles shot out into the fog… made the fog glow and seem to momentarily freeze like frost on a window pane.
And then, then…
And then there it was, the fog within a fog, a breath of interdimensional lunacy surging out at them. A vortex, a hole, a tear
… and they were plowing right into it, Menhaus jerking the throttle down out of sheer exhileration. There was a blinding flash of light that knocked them right out of their seats and a sickening sense of falling, of drifting, of tumbling through white space and cosmic noise… and, yes, a sensation of speed and distance and time and particulated matter.
And then blackness.
It lasted for less than a minute, but when they opened their eyes and found their bodies, they were gasping for breath. Coughing, gagging, delirious and disoriented. George made it to his knees and crashed back down onto the deck of the cigarette boat.
Panic, just panic… that weird, inexplicable sense of pressure and lack of it, of fullness and emptiness and countless leagues of nothing. Then even that was gone and they were breathing air, good clean air that filled their lungs and revitalized them.
Panting, George sat up.
It was black, blacker than black.
The boat was rocking as small, choppy waves bumped it to and fro. And overhead, overhead George could see-
Stars.