McCarran airport at Las Vegas is the fourth busiest airport in the USA, mostly because of the steady influx of gamblers, but Marty and Angie were not in Sin City for fun and games. They were here to go to Area 51. Nobody drives to the top-secret base that the government does not even admit to. Day workers fly there from a private terminal, known as the Janet terminal, which no visitor ever sees.

Marty gave the official at the main desk a half smile. “Martin Sinclair and Angelina Sarasota reporting for duty, sir.”

“ID’s,” he said without a smile on his young but weathered face.

Marty and Angie handed their newly created passes to the man. He looked them over, glancing back up at them.

“Step over to the retinal scanner, please.”

They took their turns allowing the scanner to check their retinas. When the match was completed each placed his or her hand on a finger print scanner.

“No electronic devices are permitted, including laptops, cell phones, PDA’s, MP-3 players, cameras, recorders, etc.” He paused to crack a smile. “You also have to be searched.”

Angie flashed an ornery grin at Marty. He returned a frown.

Later, when Marty joined Angie in the terminal waiting room, he wasn’t his usual chipper self.

“Now you know what I went through at NASA headquarters,” she said with a grin.

“Man, I can’t believe that they’re that concerned about security.”

“Fun, isn’t it?”

“Not!”

He sat down and sighed. “I hope that this is the last of it.”

“I agree,” she said. “I’m not really surprised by all of this. This new ship is probably the most significant craft that they’ve ever tested at Area 51.”

“Hell, it’s the most advanced machine in human history.”

She smiled. “And we’re the first to fly it.”

“Hopefully, we won’t be the last.”

She frowned. “Surely you’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“Me? No way. This is why I was born. This is what I’ve dreamed of doing all of my life.”

She gave him a cocky grin. “What? To go where no man has gone before?”

He grinned back. “Or woman.”

She returned his grin, but soon settled into a slump. “I feel like I’m back in the Air Force being assigned to a new base. All I have is a duffle bag, and worse of all, my family doesn’t know where I am or where I’m going.”

He shook his head. “No one gives a damn where I am.” He looked at her. “I’ve seen you more than I ever saw my ex-wives or my children for that matter.”

"From this point on it won't make any difference. It'll be as if we vanished off the face of the Earth."

He offered her a soothing smile. "In a way, we will have."

She sighed. 

###

The trip to Groom Lake was swift, but neither Marty nor Angie could see anything. The plane's windows were shuttered. After the landing, they were greeted by a familiar face.

"General Wilson," Marty said, saluting.

"Welcome Martin," He turned to Angie. "Angelina."

She nodded.

"Come," Wilson said, gesturing to a Humvee. "I have something to show you."

Marty and Angie got in the second row. The General slid into the passenger seat and motioned to the driver to proceed.

"How was your trip?" he asked.

"Fine," Angie said. "We didn't get to see the desert."

"The less you know about this place the better off you are."

"Are we going to stay here?" Marty asked.

"Yes. You will be billeted with your crew. There's a commissary here if you need any personal items."

"How's the food?"

"It's standard issue."

Angie made a face at Marty.

The Humvee drove out into the desert and stopped at what looked like an old horse corral, but when they approached, the gate swung open to reveal a hidden entrance. The entire corral was a clever illusion.

The vehicle drove down a tunnel and stopped before a blast-hardened door. The passengers disembarked and entered the huge entrance into a humongous cavern.

Marty's eyes widened. "Wow! Now that's a space ship!"

The X-2001 sat on the cavern floor on twelve landing gear assemblies. Its massive wedge shape resembled an Imperial cruiser instead of a space plane. Marty and Angie had trouble taking the entire ship in. It was just too large.

“How does this thing get out of here?” Marty asked.

“There’s a door at that end,” Wilson said, pointing. “We’ve had it out for tests but only at night.”

They stopped at the elevator, which was much larger than that on the X-1001 and could easily accommodate three. Wilson stopped the elevator below the command center. The door swished open to the equipment deck.

Wilson pointed to a smaller craft the size of a small aircraft but with stubby wings. “This deck has your exploratory craft. The largest Landers are capable of transporting four or five members. There are many smaller surveillance craft, some the size of insects.”

“I take it that we won’t land this ship on any planet,” Angie said.

“Only if necessary,” Wilson said. “It’s just too large.”

“It certainly is,” Marty said. “I bet it was fun flying it here.”

“It was flown at night without running lights and in full stealth mode.”

They ascended to the command center, which was spacious by any standard. The deck was similar to that on the X-1001 except much larger and more ergonomically appointed.

"We could use this as a ballroom," Marty said.

"There's a great deal of equipment embedded in this deck," Wilson said. "Equipment that you will need to scan solar systems from some distance away."

Wilson gestured to the back of the center. "Your accommodations are back here."

They followed him through a door to a corridor with individual rooms. Wilson activated the door to one of the rooms.

"Reminds me of the exec quarters on the George Washington, but larger," Marty said.

Wilson laughed. "These quarters have heads."

Marty smirked. "Wow! A bunk, closet, desk, and bath: all the comforts of home."

"When are we doing a test flight?" Angie asked.

"Tomorrow night," Wilson said. "The engineers have cleared it."

Marty glanced at Angie with concerned eyes. "But, we don't know anything about this ship."

"You will be given a crash course. I understand that Woronowycz himself is going to brief you."

That revelation stunned both Marty and Angie. 

### 

Dr. Viktor Woronowycz was an impressive looking man despite his age, which Angie estimated to be in the high seventies. He had short-cropped gray hair, penetrating blue eyes and a square jaw. He looked more like a retired Ukrainian General than the remarkable scientist that he was. A lot of his contemporaries thought he was either a brilliant mathematician and physicist or a totally mad scientist.

He had a typical accent but his English was perfect. "Thank you for your patience. What you are about to do will determine the future of mankind."

Both Marty and Angie nodded. They were the only ones present in a small conference room.

"We have already tested the worm generation system with animals, including chimps, and there have been no discernable effects. I realize that human DNA is only a few percentage points different than that of chimps, but there is still a risk."

"Has the X-2001 been sent through a worm hole?" Angie asked.

"Yes, but it was unmanned. Your test flight will go out one parsec, but it will determine if humans can survive this."

"Will we be going faster than light?" Marty asked.

Woronowycz cracked a slight smile. "No, we haven't defeated Einstein yet. You will not be going faster than a tenth the speed of light. The wormhole drive is not really a precise title. What it does is distort space, making a distant location close, essentially by creating a stretched singularity. Actually, the term singularity is not accurate, but it gives us a simple way to refer to it. In any event, you simply have a much shorter distance to travel."

"Wouldn't that require enormous power?" Angie said.

"Yes, but this can be realized from anti-matter and matter interactions."

Angie and Marty exchanged concerned glances. They were going to ride on the most powerful bomb ever conceived by man.

Woronowycz offered a smile. “Your bravery will go down in history. I am convinced that you will be successful. Many good people have spent thousands of hours of difficult work to create this marvelous machine, and it is they who wish you good speed.”

Good speed, indeed, Marty thought. They had no idea what they were getting into, but there was no turning back now. 

### 

Marty glanced at Angie and smiled. “Well, this is it. We’re going to find out if humans can be squeezed through a singularity and live to tell about it.”

“We’re committed. We can’t quit now.”

“We should be committed. We’re totally out of our gourds for doing this.”

She didn’t answer. “Take us out of the hangar, Delphi.”

“Yes, Angie.”

As the huge ship began to roll toward the back of the underground cavern, a large door cracked open and slowly moved up to allow passage. Marty and Angie watched the main screen reveal the desert outside as the last gleam of dusk was fading.

“I’m surprised that they transferred Delphi’s programming to this ship,” Marty said.

“This is the much improved Delphi,” Angie said. “Without her, we couldn’t do this.”

The ship rolled a thousand feet out onto a salt flat and stopped.

“We have clearance for launch, Angie.”

“Execute, Delphi.” Angie said.

“Yes, Angie.”

The ship jumped off the ground and flew straight up with just a slight glow from its aft section.

"Where exactly are we going?" Marty asked.

Angie pointed at the screen showing a vast field of stars. "Out that way. I think it’s toward Polaris."

"Wow! We're already up to five hundred kilometers per second."

"We have to get up to twenty nine thousand before we jump," Angie said.

"Why so fast?"

"It has something to do with how long the singularity remains stable. We can only jump a few parsecs at a time."

"I can't even imagine doing that."

Angie smiled at him. "I don't either."

"Jump in ten minutes, Angie."

"Acknowledge, Delphi." Angie said.

"Man, this thing kicks some serious butt."

"I think they added two extra engines," Angie said. "And, they made several improvements in engine efficiency."

Marty looked around the command center. "I wonder how they built this so quickly. I figured it would be years away, not months."

"Apparently, they were doing it all along."

"That would imply that the technology was already available."

She nodded.

"Jump in one minute, Angie."

"We are ready, Delphi."

"Good luck, Angie and Martin."

"Thank you, Delphi."

"You are welcome, Angie."

Marty smiled at Angie and extended his left hand. She looked at it and then accepted his gesture of unity.

The stars on the main screen began to rotate, slowly at first and then so fast they blurred. The effect was like flushing a toilet but the hole that everything was going down was tiny, almost impossibly small. The command deck began to twist, making the floor the ceiling, the left wall into the right. Suddenly, the front of the room and the main screen shot forward and soon disappeared into a twisting parallax view. Marty raised his right arm but quickly lowered it when his arm appeared to be so infinitely long he couldn't see his hand. He turned to look back but the ship was just an infinitely long twirling cylinder. He felt tingling in his entire body, as if he was near static electricity. His eyes burned from the twisting brightly colored lines that made up his new alien universe.

Everything snapped back with a nerve-jangling crack.

"We have entered normal space, Angie."

"Bring us to a stop, Delphi."

"Yes, Angie."

Marty wiped his brow. "That wasn't so bad."

"I wouldn't get too smug just yet. We still have to stop this boat, turn it around and go back the same way we came."

He waved a dismissing hand at her. "Delphi can handle it."

"I'm sure she can."

When the ship came to a dead stop relative to the solar system, Delphi turned it 180 degrees.

"Give us a nice straight coarse back to as near Earth as possible minus stopping distance, Delphi"

"Yes, Angie."

The engines screamed to life, signaling that the jump was imminent.