The Deep Dark Well Read Online Free PDF

hallway.  She
could hear him hyperventilating on the com link, laughing hysterically and
cursing under his breath.  She could reach him on the com link, but she could
no longer reach into the man, a panicked animal with no thought but to put as
much distance between himself and this cursed place as possible.  It would not
be distance enough.
    She looked back at the
wormhole, the source of the paradox energy that threatened her existence.  Any
second now it would again spread out through this space, and this time nothing
would survive.  Not her, not the ship, not even the wormhole.  But she didn't
see any problem with her traveling into the future, through the wormhole.  It
was her only chance, the unknown.  How do I know it's a Wormhole? she
asked herself.  How do I know it's a gateway to the future?
    Only one-way to find
out ,
she thought, slowly jetting herself into a position to make a run through the
center of the hole.  No fucking with negative matter for this southern girl ,
she thought, her hands grasping tightly on the attitude control joysticks. 
Before she could move the sticks forward for a powered straight flight, space
began to expand and contract behind her.  Pain invaded her every cell, wearing
spiked jack boots.  Her vision began to blur, and she knew, with her last
coherent thought, that time was running out.  Hands pushed forward and the
thrusters in her backpack pushed her forward at full power, 1.2 meters per
second per second, right to the middle of the hole in space-time.  The suit
quickly picked up speed, flying straight and true.  Pandi felt consciousness
leave her with a last thought, will I ever wake up, and if so, where?  
Then the suit was through the entrance of the wormhole, down the long tunnel
with a flash of light.
    Compression waves grew
swiftly in strength, the diamond hard hull of the ship rippling with the waves,
crumbling into dust like dry plaster in a strong man's hands.  Chavis was
gripped by the waves, trying to find his way to any kind of safety, ripped to
pieces as if by a giant clawed hand.  Fusion took place between the atoms
pulled apart and pushed back together with terrible force, melding light atoms
into heavier atoms, releasing torrents of energy like the heart of a star. A
star that flared for long minutes as matter went beyond fusion, converting to
total energy as particles picked up velocity and sped off in random
directions.  In a little over four and a half hours, the first photons of the
great explosion would reach Harrison Base.  Many hours later the outposts of
the inner system would note the great flare of light as a new star was born in
the heavens, only to die moments later.  Other photons, in a steady stream over
two billion kilometers long, carrying the information transmitted from the Niven to Harrison Base, changed from participants in a coherent beam of light,
becoming a muddle of incoherent quantum particles that told nothing of what had
happened.  The Universe had righted the wrong, preserved causality, and
maintained the flow of history as it was meant to be.
    Chapter 2
     
     
    I was willing to give
anything to face the unknown.
    Anything, but the lives
of my crew.   Pandora Latham.
     
     
    I made it , was Pandi's first
thought on exiting the mouth of the Wormhole.  What's coming after me? was her second thought, as the blast of superheated air threw her across the
wide room and to the floor.  She raised herself on an elbow as she checked to
see if her body still worked after all the punishment.  Her head swiveled in
time to see the still open mouth of the wormhole, a sight out of the ancient
visions of hell.  Fire raged in the still intact ship, hot enough to burn the
very hull, which was glowing white and gushing great gouts of black, oily smoke
into the vacuum.  The waves of imminent disaster still radiated on some
unconscious level, and Pandi was on her feet in a second, looking for the
quickest way to put something more