"I still don't like that idea. I think I should go first this way if it fails then I'll be the only one to lose my life."

"I understand but the Arwen has a better chance of returning than your shuttle. I'll see you on the other side."

While the crew around her prepared Marjorie closed her eyes to think. This could be the end of everything for her and the Arwen. There was no promise the ship, even with its shields, will survive the plunge to the bottom of this ocean. She'd been close to death's door many times. In the Gyssyc war she had accepted her death but, thanks to a fluke of timing, she survived her suicidal attack. That was different, her death would have meant something. If she were to die here no one would know what happened, the Arwen would just become another ship that had been lost to the hostility of space.

"Captain," Commander Pippleton said, "everything is in order, we're ready to go."

"Thank you, Commander. Communications, give me the ship, I'd like to talk to them."

"You have them." The Communication officer said.

"Attention Arwen crew. We're about ready to make our dive. Those who can strap yourselves in, those that can't hold on tight. If all goes according to plan we'll be in normal gravity soon. Captain Cook, out." She motioned for the communications office to turn the feed off. "Helm, take us down."

The Arwen tilted downward and the engines ignited. Captain Cook felt herself being pushed into the back of her chair which groaned from the added pressure. From somewhere close she heard several loud popping noises that she recognized as the seams which held the bulkheads together ripping away.

The ship started to shake as they moved further toward that core. Underwater ocean currents which had been calm in the upper layers were now trying to sweep the Arwen away. They were reaching the barrier, the place where the pressure compressed the water into a solid. They were moving toward it fast, passing through several layers of ever increasing force, trying to slice through it. The water was getting more viscose slowing the Arwen down. Captain Cook worried they were be trapped like a fly in amber but she realized if they stopped the water would simply crush them.

"We're about three kilometers from the core, shield holding strong." The Commander said. "We'll reach the barrier in three minutes."

The murky view from outside slowly dimmed. The alien life-form, as sturdy as it was, couldn't survive at these depths. Soon, there was total darkness, not even the ambient light from above made it down this far. She tried to switch views, tried to see what was in front of her from different wavelengths, but she saw nothing.

"Barrier boundary is one minute." Commander Pippleton said. "Shield holding strong. Professor Ricter's shuttle is doing fine."

Marjorie looked at her shield configuration. It was shaped like a spear, a long point in the front that wrapped around the Arwen. She hoped to pierce the barrier and drive her ship through.

The Professor, as they planned, broke off and let the Arwen pass. Then, the Arwen hit the barrier. Everything shifted forward and she felt her safety belt straining to keep her in place. It was as if someone slammed on the breaks of a car while it was traveling at a high rate of speed. The bridge crew grunted in unison as their bodies pressed against the restraints.

"We're making it through," The Commander said, his voice didn't sound stressed, could the Ulliam body be that powerful that these extremes didn't bother it at all? "Shield is holding at 20 percent, engines at full power. We're slowing down but still moving. The Professor is following in our wake."

The Arwen pushed through. She saw nothing but black on her monitor, nothing in front of her and nothing behind her. The dark seemed to absorb all light, the lights from the engines, the lights from her ship, the glow from the strange ribbon aliens.

Then, she saw something. A dim glow. This was how the Professor described it, if they could keep moving they would be okay.

The Arwen sliced its way through the barrier and into a wide-open expanse of crystal-clear water. Right away she felt gravity, the gravity she and her crew have been fighting for the past day, disappear. A few drops of sweat from her forehead floated in a tiny sphere in front of her eyes; she was weightless, and it was the best feeling of her entire life.

She relaxed her arms and just let them float next to her. Any loose hair her tight bun didn't catch drifted above her head. If she were in a more playful mood, she would have undone her hair and let it all float around. Commander Pippleton said, "Water pressure is at zero. We're not detecting any of the ribbon life form."

"We'll do a full sweep later. Turn the gravity plates on and get a crew together to assess the damage."

"The gravity plates are on."

"Are they damaged?"

"I'll have the Chief McFerren look into it."

She looked at her monitor and saw something to make her cheer; the Professor's shuttle had followed and was now maneuvering toward the Arwen.

"Captain," her communication officer said, "The Professor would like to talk to you."

"Of course." She replied cheerfully.

His face appeared on the screen and he said, with a big smile, "Told you this was the right way to go."

"I never had a doubt, Professor. Now, let's see if we can't get your shuttle over here so we can talk in person."

"Captain," Commander Pippleton said, "Chief McFerren said the gravity plates are working fine."

"Why don't we have gravity?"

Professor Ricter said. "I don't have gravity either. It's possible were in some sort of gravity-free zone."

"How is that possible?"

"I have no idea," he replied. "Will I have time to study it while I'm on the ship?"

"Well, we need to repair some systems and sure up the hull then we need to figure out how to get out of here, and I'm going to need your help with that. You might have some time, but not much."

"In other words, not amply time. I guess just knowing this is possible will have to be satisfactorily for now. I'm programming my shuttle to land. I hope to see you in a few minutes."

"Captain," Another bridge officer said. It was the communication officer. "I'm picking up something odd. It sounds like a beacon of some sort."

"A distress call?" She asked.

"None I've never heard before."

"Okay, let me hear it."

The sound from the speakers was a series of short clicks followed by a long, two second crackle. It cycled over again, repeating the same series of clicks and chirps. "Could it be interference from the string creatures?"

"I found it after I filtered any interference from them out."

"Where is it coming from?"

"Down, toward the core."

The core, everything seems to come from the core. "Navigation, how far down is it to the core?"

"A few kilometers."

"Okay, once the Professor is on set course for the core. I want to check it out."

Chapter eleven.

The core was an enormous mass of silver that flowed with eddies and currents of lighter silver moving across its surface. It looked like a giant ball of mercury floating in a sea of gelatinous fluid. The Arwen, its own surface polished to a mirrored perfection, reflected its image off the core's surface creating a refracting infinity loop of images.

Captain Cook, Professor Ricter, Doctor Fran Lipton and Commander Pippleton sat in the main conference room amazed at the images the props were showing them. "The core is about as large as the Earth," Professor Ricter said. "In fact, it's slightly larger and is generating enough gravity to hold all the water above us in place."

"If it's generating gravity why are we all still weightless?" Captain Cook asked.

"Somehow the core is also keeping this region no gravity zone. Gravity can't exist here; it's almost like we're in a place where the laws of the universe don't apply." His voice sounded flat, distracted.

"Professor, are you okay?"

"No, Captain, I'm not. This place should not exist. The fact it does goes against everything I've learned. I'm going to study and try to understand it, but it'll be tough since I'm having a hard time even accepting this isn't some sort of trick."

"Do you think it's a trick?"

"No," he replied seriously. "It's real. I just don't know why or how."

Marjorie took a deep breath to still her own worried heart. She had never seen him so rattled before and it worried her. "Okay, do we have any ideas how to get out of here?"

Commander Pippleton raised his hand. "We could use the magnet from the Particle Accelerator to create a magnetic field which might be strong enough to keep the ribbon forms off us. However, we're not sure if we would have adequate power to get us out of the planet's gravity field."

"Okay, we'll keep that one as plan C, what else?"

"We could check out what's inside the sphere." Doctor Lipton said. "It's look's liquid so I'm sure a probe could easily get inside."

"The probe I saw from the alien ship crashed on the surface."

"How long ago was the probe launched?"

"About 2,000 years ago."

"We should still send a probe inside the core to see what will happen." Doctor Lipton said.

"Professor, do you see any reason not to try this?"

He pursed his lips, thinking hard. Then, with a wave of his hand said, "Captain, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to head to my room now to think."

"Go ahead, Professor."

He pushed himself off his chair and floated to the ceiling. With very little grace, he pushed himself down again. His face was stoic, solid in defiance of the weightlessness. He nodded to the others then pushed off the floor toward the open door and into the hallway.

"You talk about this and give me a solution. I need to talk to the Professor."

They all nodded in agreement and Marjorie, the veteran of many weightless moments both in training and in combat, gracefully floated after the Professor. When she found him, his legs were drifting over his head and he was hanging onto the wall for dear life.

She skillfully grabbed his legs and pulled them down. "The trick is to not to let one part of your body get ahead of another," she said trying to use a voice which wasn't condescending. She didn't want to upset or embarrass him any more than he was.

"I'll have to remember that. Is the meeting over all ready?"

"Well, without you we can't go on," she said with a smile.

"Ah, trying to help my ego with compliments. You know me so well. Did you come here to rescue me or talk to me?"

"Talk to you. You seemed odd in there."

"Yes, I need to deal with this."

"I find it hard to believe there is something out here that surprises you. All we've seen, all we've learned from the Gyssyc-"

"This isn't like that," he said stopping her mid-sentence. "The Gyssyc technology was more advanced than ours, but we would have eventually figured it out. I estimate they were only about 50 years ahead of us. But this? This is beyond anything we can even imagine."

"You sound more scared than awed."

"I don't get awed," he replied coldly. "I don't want to meet the race that created this. This planet, this zone, everything we've seen is not just a few hundred years ahead of us, it's a few thousand years ahead of anything we can even theorize about."

"From what we've seen there is no advanced life here so-"

"So what?" He interrupted again. Marjorie had seen this side of him before, he was rude, obnoxious and not a very good friend. However, she had accepted who he was and would let it slide, pointing out his fault was just another way to shut his thought process down, and she needed his full attention on the matter at hand. "The life here can't do this, that's true, but what if this was just a test planet, a proof of concept some advanced alien abandoned. What if it's a scout planet, something placed here to entice other races to discover it so they can see who's next on the list of races to invade or displace? No, I don't trust this place and the sooner we get out of here the better I'll feel. If we can do it stealthily even better. I don't want an alien race this advance looking at the Earth, at least not until we're able to compete."

"Aren't you being a bit paranoid?"

"I think paranoia is the best choice of action here. History has shown when an advanced race meets an inferior race the advanced race always oppresses the inferior one."

"I know my history."

"Captain, there is something else, and it's a selfish reason that only you may know."

"I'll take it to my grave."

The Professor looked around the hallway to be sure no one was coming. "I've spent almost every waking moment since the minute I could read learning how things work, learning how the universe operated, thinking I knew everything but knowing I still had more to learn. Being here, seeing what another race has accomplished made me realize no matter how long I live I will never be capable to duplicate this. I might not even be able to completely understand it, and that makes me wonder why I've dedicated all my time to learning when, in the end, it won't mean anything."

"Professor-"

"No, Marjorie, I know you're going to try to say something that will make me feel better."

"No, I wasn't." Captain Cook said sternly. "I was going to tell you to get over it. I'm going to need you to be level headed. I'm going to need you to be the confident Professor Theo Ricter I've become friends with. One of the things I admire about you is your conviction in your ideas. More often than not, you've been right. This place is fascinating, but we can't worry about how or why it's here. We need to concentrate on how to get out and I'm going to need your leadership to make that happen. I'll be your psychologist when we're in Wormhole space heading back to Earth, but until then I need your head right here."

"Hmm," he said, the corner of his lips curling up in a reluctant smile. "Is that the tough love I've heard that Captain's use to encourage their crews?"

"No, it's a Captain talking to her top science officer."

"I see," he replied then nodded. "I think I can put aside my paranoia for now, but it's something we're going to have to talk about later."

"Fine. On our way back to Earth we'll both come up with a package to present to the President. However, first, we need to get back. Now, float to your office and come up with something. I want to go home, and I want you to lead the way."

He smiled again then slowly, awkwardly, moved down the hallway.

When he disappeared, Marjorie took her hand out of her pocket. It was trembling now more than ever before. She made a fist and tried to stop it, but it continued to disobey her commands.