Chapter 1 - An Asteroid Field with an Atmosphere

James and Rachael fall through a wormhole and become stranded in space.

Verginius Star System 

Annaserria Asteroid Belt

Oxygenated Region

When James opened his eyes, he found himself in an asteroid field, in outer space. He gasped, expecting the air to rush from his lungs… but then he found himself breathing normally. Sure, it was a little dusty, and more humid than was comfortable, but it was breathable.

The world was dark, lit only by an ambient glow. Before him, the soccer ball James had been trying to fetch, floated past. He’d kicked it into the stagnant creek catchment, which ran along beside the school oval, but by the time he’d waded in after it, the ball had vanished. James had vanished too, when he’d slid after it, below the surface of the water and into outer space. 

James reached out for the ball, but it had already floated out of reach. He watched it for a moment, before realising himself and turning back to where he came. Behind him shimmered a beautiful blue splinter, a split in space that pulsed and flickered like a living stained-glass window. As he watched it, the splinter pulsed faster, and faster, and then bulged to expel a body, which tumbled into him, knocking James over. It was a girl, dressed in the feminine version of the same school uniform he wore. She was slender, with long brown hair. Her long grey skirt, disliked by all who wore it, was torn down the seam. She had ripped it herself, a half hour ago. It had been quite the first impression. 

She gathered herself, as he had, and glanced to him.

“What happened?” she asked “Where are we?”

“Uh, I dunno. Where, uh, do you think we are?”

She gave him an incredulous look, before turning back to the splinter behind them. It was longer than either of them were tall, and contained entirely in a pool of water, floating in space. The girl reached out toward it, and the pool of water dissipated. 

The splinter vanished. 

The girl let her hand drop. 

“Good job. James said. 

She shot him an indignant look. 

“So what do we do now?” he asked. “Should we, like, wait here…?”

His voice drifted off, as he became aware that staying put would have been impossible. The ground they stood upon, which James had thought to be solid ground, was nothing more than a piece, adrift in a sea of rock, dust, water and ice, swirling before a violet backdrop. It seemed to stretch forever in every direction. 

Their piece of land was moving; as it bumped and grounded against other asteroids, their inertia would pull at them, gently, trying to pick them up but failing to escape the asteroid’s gravity. Deflecting off an asteroid twice the size of their own, they started to spin, and James clutched at the ground to keep himself from falling away. The girl took a different tactic, and leapt free of the gravity. Not wanting to be separated, James followed her lead, moving to a crouch and then jumping as high as he could. It was awkward, and James worried for a moment that he hadn’t jumped far enough to escape the gravity. But when he reached the height of his jump and began to fall, it was in the wrong direction, upward and toward the girl, not back down. 

It was a slow fall, which was good as James didn’t know how to right himself in flight. He hit the ground face first, grabbing hold of it before he drift off again. 

“Are you alright?” she asked, bending to help him up. 

“Yeah, fine.” He said, dismissing his stinging cheek with a wave of his hand. “Um, I’m James, by the way.”

“Rachael.” She told him, “Rachael Tyler-Evans. Do you see that over there?”

James looked to where she was pointing, but couldn’t make out anything noteworthy. 

“What am I looking at?”

“There’s a pipeline over there. Like a big storm drain. Its dark, so you can’t see it very well, but it heads off in that direction. I say we follow it. It might lead somewhere, and if worst comes to worst, we can always follow it back here.”

James nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Lead the way.”

Rachael raised an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want to go first? Don’t guys usually like showing off?”

“I need to see how you do it, so I can copy you.” James told her. “Otherwise I’d probably just f**k it up.”

Rachael smiled, gently, and leapt. 

The pipeline was large, over a metre in diameter, and made of metal. It had been assembled from countless short segments, bolted together, and as such there was plenty of spots to hold on to whenever a large asteroid drifted past and threatened to snatch them away, or when the dust clouds began to bellow. Dirt periodically flowed through the asteroids as if borne on a wind, penetrating their school uniforms, along with their closed mouths and eyes. The pair quickly became filthy, and though James wanted to rub the sand from his eyes, he knew that he’d just make it worse. Visibility was practically zero, and no matter how deeply he breathed in, James felt as though he was becoming starved of oxygen. As though she knew, James felt Rachael take his hand, and lead him with purpose away from the pipe. They clambered upward, scrambling along the side of a rocky cliff and toward the asteroid field’s edge. 

The pair emerged from the cloud of rock, into the gap between it and the violet sky. Like cloud layers in the atmosphere, the field sat several meters below the domed sky. So did the dust, and it allowed them some reprieve. From close up, it was clear that the sky was not static but flowed like a river, spreading out from a single location, somewhere to their right. The same direction that the pipeline headed. Beyond the translucent, violet sky, was a dark void, empty aside from the glow of six lonely stars.

“So… we in space?” James asked. 

“I’ve no idea.” 

Rachael picked a lump of rock, about the size of a basketball, and threw it toward the sky. It shifted slightly in the air, pulled by the surrounding asteroids, but stayed on course. Then, with a soft clunk, it hit the sky and bounced off. 

“So, a force field’s holding the air in?” James asked, “That’s awesome.”

“We’re in space, James.” She reminded him. “How the hell did we… how are we going to get back?”

“The portal thing? Maybe it works both ways. They normally do, in movies and stuff.”

“It disappeared.” 

“We’ll find it again.” He said, grinning. Pulling up his shirt, James used the corner of it to wipe dirt from his eyes. The fabric had torn, probably in one of his many crash landings. For a moment he wondered if his mother would be able to mend it, before remembering where he was. 

“We should go back.” Rachael said, “The portal’s probably reappeared by now. We need to get back, before we get lost here.”

“Can we just keep going for a bit further?” James asked, “We’re almost at the source of the force field! Don’t you want to see that? Besides, as long as we follow that pipeline, we’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, but what if the portal doesn’t stay at the end of the pipe like we thought it would?”

James hadn’t thought of that. 

“Then we’re already fucked.”

Rachael sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “We might as well keep going, seeing as we’ve come this far. But it’s your turn to lead the way.”

“Definitely.” James nodded. 

James didn’t have a watch, but it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Rachael overtook him. 

It was a long trip to the source of the force field. The lack of any consistent gravity meant they could by floating most of the time, which didn’t exert much energy. Still, it began to grate on James after a while. Rachael didn’t want to stop for another break again so soon, and charged on ahead, leaving James to catch up whenever he stumbled. The rocks would constantly break and scrape against one another, and more than once a gap would close after Rachael passed through it, forcing James to jump aside or risk being crushed. 

“More pipes.” Rachael panted, pausing to tie her long hair into a makeshift knot, while James caught up to her. James was so damn tired by this point, so battered and thirsty, that he hadn’t even noticed them. Now he had, he hardly cared. These new pipelines resembled the one they had been following, although most were different sizes, and all pointed off in different directions. They had been bent and broken from constant asteroid collisions, and their contents, water and gas and other strange substances, burst from a million punctures along their lengths. 

The source of the force field, and of the pipes, sat atop the largest asteroid the pair had seen thus far. Shaped like a half-cylinder with a radius of several kilometres, the top of the rock had been flattened and layered with asphalt. Upon it was a large, flat-topped building shaped like a rectangle, and fifty or so plinths, evenly spaced around it. The violet force field which surrounded them flowed from a spinning emitter on the roof, and James was sure that the pipes fed through the rock and into the base of the building. A second force field was being projected from the plinths, sheltering the complex from the rain of dust and rock which fell upon it from the field above. The shield flowed like water across glass, and domed between each plinth similar to how a magnetic field domes between prongs of a magnet. The place was cold and heartless, favouring efficiency over aesthetics to an almost comical degree. It didn’t feel threatening… just empty. It looked as though the entire place had never known visitors, and had sat alone since its construction. But then again, someone must have come here before them. At the edge of the tarmac, just before the first plinths, there was a puddle of yellow paint on the ground, long since dried. It looked as though someone had been carrying a bucket, and splodged some of it, much to their annoyance. They’d hastily tried to work it into some sort of messy arrow, pointing toward the main building. The pair followed it, James curious as to whether there would be anyone waiting for them. Perhaps the building acted as some sort of space-lodge? He was, in truth, disappointed when they reached the only door into the building, upon which was a message in that same yellow paint. 

Hi. If you want help, head inside. I’ve left you some stuff.

***

Below the first message was two more, in languages James couldn’t recognise.

Rachael pushed at the door. It opened, but not easily, for it was big and heavy. There were a set of bulky magnetic locks, but they’d been smashed. The door opened onto a hallway, running along the building’s circumference in both directions. The inner walls were bare, and there didn’t appear to be any doors leading deeper into the building. There were windows, but they were high up on the walls, and James had to give Rachael a boost for her to reach. James, feeling too sheepish to ask for a lift in turn, instead made do with jumping and clambering up to the sill. The inner room was large, encompassing the entire building aside from this narrow hall. It was a dense factory, a perfect mess of automated machinery intertwined with such sophisticated complexity that it was impossible to describe it in any detail. This was apparently what it took to project such a large force field. As Rachael pointed out, it probably controlled the concentration of gasses and other properties within the field as well, via the pipe network they had seen. Splitting up, the pair headed down the hall in opposite directions, heading around the rectangular perimeter until they met again on the far side of the building. There, opposite to the door which they entered by, there was another door heading deeper into the building. It was thinner than the first, and though its magnetic locks still worked, there was a crank on the wall which deactivated them. As Rachael pushed the door open, James thought he could see her disappointment, clear as day. 

Inside was not the factory, but a small kitchenette with no way through to the larger room beyond. Whoever had built the factory clearly hadn’t wanted anyone tampering with it, for there didn’t appear to be anyway to access it at all. 

The kitchenette was a small room, maybe two square metres. A collapsible table leant against the wall, beside which was a set of stools. Shelves covered the walls, on which sat a few pieces of crockery and cutlery, and a mountain of sardine cans. There was a sink, and a circular chute jutting out from the wall, above which someone had written disintegrator in that same yellow paint. There was also a strange appliance, about the size of a large blender. It had a slot shaped to accept the cans, which fed into a piston chamber and then onto a slightly dusty plate beneath it. Curious, James took one of the cans from the shelf and slid it into the slot. 

“What are you doing?” Rachael asked. She’d found a cheap-looking tablet computer, the kind which just acted as a digital notepad.

James shrugged. “What’re you doing?”

Rachael flashed him the tablet, which was covered with scrawled handwriting. 

“’If you want help, head inside’,” she quoted, “This is the ‘further instructions’ he was talking about.”

James switched on the appliance. It hummed to life and swallowed the can. “He?”

“It says his name is Arty. As in Arthur.”

James nodded. Inside a transparent chamber, the can’s lid was pierced with a spike, it’s pressurised contents spraying into the piston chamber. The plate, held by a clamp, began to spin. The piston moved up and down in its chamber, mixing the cans contents with a few gasses and powders, before squirting the mixture onto the plate. Another hiss, and a spray of aerosol covered the maroon mixture, solidifying it, and suddenly James knew what he was looking at. 

“Hey, Rach, I think this thing is 3D printing a steak!”

“That’s nice, James.” Rachael said, “Okay, so long story short, he wants us to wait here for him to come pick us up.”

“Is that all it says?” James asked, grabbing a stool and sitting down with his finished steak. It was tender and completely free of sinew or bone, and let loose a plume of steam and rush of red juice when cut. Sure, it had sharp corners and a spiral pattern, but aside from that it both looked and tasted pretty darn good. 

“There’s a lot of fluff about how we shouldn’t worry, we’ll be okay, blah blah.” Rachael told him, sitting down beside him and holding the tablet so he could read.

“’I’ll be there as soon as I can’,” James quoted, “How soon is soon, d’ya reckon?”

Rachael shrugged. “Hopefully not long. How long has it even been? Since we got here, I mean.”

James pulled his phone from his pocket to check. 

“I dunno. Like, eight hours? What time’d we get here?”

Rachael just stared at him. 

“You brought your phone?” she asked, snatching it off him, “Why didn’t you mention it before now? Why didn’t you call for help?”

“Uh, it had no reception.” James said, hoping to god that it was true. It was a small, black flip phone. James had owned it for years, and was so accustomed to it being in his pocket that it had completely slipped his notice. 

“It has no reception.” Rachael muttered, ignoring him completely. She closed the phone for a second, thinking, before flipping it open again and starting to dial. 

“Uh, Rach, there isn’t any reception.” he pointed out. 

“I’m calling triple zero.”

James nodded. “Excellent. Though you do understand there’s no reception?”

“Triple zero gets through on any network.” She explained, “Not just the one your tied to. So if there’s any network out there…”

She waited a few seconds before flipping the phone shut again.

“So… no reception?”

Rachael glared at him, and stood up. 

“The building could be blocking the signal.”

Rachael led the way out, back through the corridor and onto the asphalt. 

“It says there’s only thirty-three percent left.” She said. 

“Wow. That’s pretty good, considering.” 

“Considering?” 

“Well, it has been all day.”

“Once this dies we’ll have no way to contact anyone. We wont even know how long we’ve been out here.”

“Yeah, but still, it’s lasted a while.”

There was still no signal, though Rachael tried calling anyway. Unsuccessful, she walked to the edge of the tarmac, to the point where the rock fell away and the pipes lead out to the open field. 

“You reckon maybe the signal can’t make it through the portal at all?” James asked. 

“I think it can. At least it’s worth a shot. If matter can get through, microwaves may well be able to.”

“Light couldn’t get through. When we looked at the portal, it just looked blue. You couldn’t see through it.”

“Light and microwaves aren’t the same thing, James.”

Rachael thought for a moment longer, then leapt into the open field. She came down on a jagged piece the size of a bus, landing like a runner after a hurdle. Using her momentum, she ran to the end of the asteroid and jumped to the next one. And on she went, leaving James far behind. 

“Wait, Rach!” He shouted after her. He had a horrible vision in his mind of the two of them becoming separated and lost. Though as long as they could see the force field they could always follow it back. 

He started after her, running awkwardly. Unlike Rachael, he’d left his shoes and socks behind at the school. This was a fairly common practise, even if bindi weeds did often grow on the oval. It was just too hard to play in formal shoes, although now he wished he’d given it more of a shot. Hobbling to the edge of the tarmac, James jumped into the void. He drifted over, slower than Rachael and feeling incredibly foolish. He had to close his eyes as he drifted through a cloud of dust, and so stacked the landing. At least the low gravity meant it wasn’t a hard fall. Righting himself, James realised that the last button had been ripped off his shirt. His conservative school shirt was now an open vest, much to his horror. Holding it together as best he could, he ran after Rachael.

Thanks in part to her yells, James caught up to her as she clung to one side of a sheer cliff. It was spinning like a top, fast enough to throw you off. Rachael had one hand buried in one of the many fissures which decorated the cliff face; in the other she held the phone against her ear. 

“I have a signal.” She explained, “But the call isn’t going through.”

“Don’t they track your phone?” James asked. “Maybe this was enough, and they know where we are now.”

“What’s wrong?” She asked, clearly irritated, “Do you want to give up already? We’ve been out here ten minutes, your phone is about to die, this could be our only chance to-”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said, quickly. “I just… Rach, look out!” 

Another asteroid, larger than the one they clung to, had been drifting closer, attracted by mutual gravity. So camouflaged had it been against the sea of identical pieces, they hadn’t even noticed it striking the cliff above them. Now it was rolling toward them, skidding across the cliff face. James scrambled away on hands and knees. Rachael just jumped, lazily, allowing the boulder to slide past before floating back down.

“You right?” She asked. 

“Uh, yeah,” James said, “Your bleeding though.” 

Rachael glanced at her arm. The wound was large but shallow, with specks of blood appearing from her elbow down to her hand.

“So are you.” She said, dismissing her own injury with a wave of her hand. “Let’s keep going. There’s only one bar of reception, and it’s still a bit spotty. It’s all this rock, it’s in the way. If we get closer, we’ll get better reception. It’ll lead us back.”

“Alright.” James said. “Though, we should like, tie ourselves together or something. So we don’t lose each other.”

The force field, which James had been relying upon to guide them home, had long since been obscured as they’d worked their way deeper into the asteroids. 

“Using what, James?” She asked. “Just keep up.” And with that she was gone again. 

The pair continued through the field for what seemed like hours. James was not having fun. The field was so dense, it was impossible to stay still for long, lest a rock graze against you. Even if it didn’t rip clothes or break skin, it was dry and horrible to touch, and they had so much inertia that they were a pain to shift, should your path become blocked. Then there was the dust clouds, streams of sand and muddy water that blew through the field. In order to follow Rachael, James often had to barrel through the centre of these clouds, shielding his eyes and mouth as best he could. But he was sweaty, and soon was brown with dirt he’d picked up. He couldn’t wipe the sweat from his face, his hands were so dirty, so instead he would use the damp inner side of his shirt. But it took time, and with Rachael barrelling ahead he didn’t have any to waste. Instead he shook his head violently, shaking off the sweat which had pooled at the tip of his nose. It was a massive pain. 

When he finally did catch up to Rachael, he didn’t care anymore. He lay down upon the grubby rock beside her, and moaned. 

“D’you get hit?” she asked, dialling. 

“No. I decided I had too many layers of skin on my hands, and that I should take off a few. Only I took off too many. Or something. I dunno, f*****g hell I’m tired.”

Rachael smiled, gently. “You need to work out more.”

“Gyms are a scam. Anything they do is just temporary.”

“Okay… you could at least take up running, though.”

James waved the notion away. “Did you get reception?”

She nodded. “It’s ringing.”

Rachael switched the phone to speaker mode, and held it out for them to listen together. 

Brrrrrrp… Brrrrrrp…

They were long, low tones, most unlike the usual crisp rings which indicated the receiving phone was ringing. Then there was silence, and it lasted so long that James suggested they give up. After more than a minute, the phone beeped again. 

Brrrrrrp… Brrrrrrp…

This repeated several times, long enough that Rachael sat down beside James, worn out despite of herself. Finally there was a click: their phone had connected. 

“Hello?” Rachael asked. 

There was silence from the other end of the line.

They waited a bit, for the operator to begin speaking. Rachael tried waiting, periodically saying something like ‘Hello, is anyone there?’. Eventually she gave up the hope that someone would answer, and simply began to speak into the silent phone, trying to explain their situation as best she could. They were lost. They’d fallen into a creek and now they were in some weird asteroid field. They needed help, but they were safe. They had food and shelter. They couldn’t find their way home. There was two of them. There names were Rachael Tyler-Evans and James…

“Cook.” He supplied. “James Cook.”

Rachael left the line open for a while longer, then hung up.

“We’re almost out of power.” She explained. “But the portal’s close by. Maybe we can use the phone reception to find it.”

“How much percent has it got left?” 

“Eight.” She said, flipping the phone closed and readying herself to leap away. James stopped her. 

“Rach, wait. If we only have eight percent, maybe let’s not waste that running around.”

“What do you propose instead?”

“Why don’t we call our folks? Let them know we’re okay?”

“We don’t need to call them. Either emergency will tell them, or we’ll find our way back and tell them in person.”

“It’s got eight percent, Rach,” James said, “Do you even know which direction to go?”

She glanced around. This far deep into the shifting field, the shield holding them in was completely obscured. James had no idea which direction they had even come from, let alone which way to go. It wasn’t as though network signal strength was concise, and that was when they weren’t sitting inside what amounted to a Faraday cage. 

Rachael knew he was right, though she didn’t like to admit it. She dialled first. Her home phone rung slow and deep, like the emergency line, but when it was done a voice did answer. 

“Hi. You’ve reached the house of Jim Tyler and family. Beep!”

“I guys, it’s me. Rachael. I’m just calling to say… I’m okay. I’m with a friend. Don’t worry, we’re not doing anything. We got lost. It’s hard to explain. But I called triple zero, so hopefully they can find us. I don’t know how long it’ll be though.”

She paused.

“The battery on this phone is dying. But if we can charge it, I’ll call again, okay? Or else I’ll see you soon. I… I’ll see you soon.”

Rachael flipped the phone closed and handed it to James. Now only three percent of the battery remained. James dialled his mother’s mobile. It didn’t ring. 

“The person you have dialled is unavailable. Please call back, or leave a message.”

She probably had the phone switched off, James thought, or else she was in a call with someone else. 

“Hey, mum.” He told the phone. “Uh, you might have heard by now, I wagged the rest of school, or something. Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m in this… place. With a-”

He glanced at Rachael. 

“With a friend. We fell through a wormhole or something, in the creek, and now we’re in this asteroid field, or something. It’s f*****g cool. You’d love it.” 

There was a beep. James quickly checked the phone. It was at one percent. 

“Listen, mum, I love you, okay? Thanks so much for putting up with my s**t all the time. I mean, I’m gonna try to come home, I promise, but… but this place is crazy. So just in case-”

The phone died. 

James flipped it shut and slid it back into his pocket. 

“You alright?” Rachael asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Sorry I used up all of our battery.” 

“I used most of it.” She whispered, pulling him into a hug. “You wanna go back? I’m going to stay her a little longer.”

“I’ll stay with you.” James told her, “Better we get lost together.”