Dark Drive

The void.

Dark. Cold. Desolate.

Alone.

Jerrold's eyes were open but it didn't do any good. He couldn't see anything. He closed them and could see all the vivid nightmares of his percolating imagination.

He preferred the darkness.

So he left his eyes open. And his mind stayed shut down.

If he were to allow himself thought, he would remember the events that led up to now. Up to the point before he entered the sparse region of space. Up to hell and damnation.

The star cruiser Haldeman wink from one space reality to the next; hopping through miniature tears in space created by the Bova drive. Her crew was oblivious to the forces at work outside their fine craft. It was supposed to be that way. The hyper''reality engineers that designed and built the Bova drive units felt that any lay person who tried to figure out how the thing operated would go mad from the sheer impossibility of it. So they didn't tell anyone. The academies gave a standardized test to see if there were any students who could master the art of the spatial drive technology. When they found them, they were routed to special courses and basically commanded into the services of the Science Sector, an elite corp of technicians and researchers that ran most things in this, the Golden Age of Human Exploration.

The crew of the Haldeman were no exception. They were merely mechanics and service personnel, with a smattering of minor sciences such as geology and astrology.

Jerrold was one such minor specialist. He knew the rudiments of planetary geology. Enough to have him assigned to the Haldeman as a Fourth Class Cargo Item. He really didn't have anything to do on board during his awake periods, besides go over manifests for when they eventually made planetfall. So he wandered. And he pondered. And generally made a nuisance of himself. He asked questions of every station aboard the Halderman.

"What does this do?" He would ask.

"Don't touch that," they responded.

"Why does this hum like this?"

"Don't turn that!"

Day after day, awake period after awake period, Jerrold's wanderings became a point of annoyance with the rest of the crew and manifest Items.

One day, a Second Class Drive Mechanic decided he'd had enough of Jerrold. Decided to scare him a bit, get him to stop asking questions.

"How do you think the drive works," he asked Jerrold. Jerrold pondered and said he didn't know. "If you go into the Housing Room, you'll see and maybe you can figure it out."

Jerrold hesitated, but upon seeing the mirth in the Drive Mechanic's eyes, bustled right into the space where the drive was housed.

"No, don't, you'll. . . " The Mechanic's words were swallowed by Jerrold's exclamation of amazement.

"Its so simple," he whispered in awe. "And if you twist this. . ."

The universe tipped on end by about eight degrees six minutes. The forward portion of the Haldeman simply vanished, while the middle third became embedded in the upper crust of a densely populated, pre''technology society planet some eighteen hundred light years away.

The last section of the cruiser, minus the drive room, ripped into seventeen thousand, nine hundred forty five pieces. And each went in its own direction at its own speed.

Jerrold and the drive merged in a symbiotic unison. And ceased to exist in this universe.

A pocket, outside of space and time opened up and swallowed the man/machine.

Alone.

Desolate. Cold. Dark.

Jerrold/Bova drive wandered the void. Seeing nothing. And preferring it that way.