It is not enough to know where you are going, or where you are coming from, but both of them together which make the difference.
"Ok, we're reaching 0.9 c", the junior technician said, "get ready for impact!"
Phil glanced at the instruments. Everything was goiing fine, as usual. Trust the juniors to still get exited, he thought. Having seen a few dozen runs, Phil was no longer that impressed by the acceleration of a single positron. He was more interested in the people himself, standing in front of their screens, their readouts, their controls. Everyone was in a kind of rapture, eagerly awaiting the results as if looking forward to a new toy. There was the timeless trance while you were waiting for the end, and an wxiting helplessnes as you watched the figures dance across the screen, unable (and unwilling) to interfere. Particle Psychology for beginners.
The impact itself, though, was still worth watching. About fifteen seconds, and with any luck, new knowlesge would be gleamed about the inner workings of the gluon, or even (which everyone was secretly hoping for) about something noone even knew existed. Hey, it had happened before.
"Keep an eye on the readout", Phil said, "I've got the feeling this could..."
He got no further, though, because suddenly all hell broke loose. Sirens went off, red lights started to flash, and complete confusion roared through the room, erasing any hope of communication.
"Whoa! Calm down! What happened? Where's the impact data?"
People were frantically searching their screens for clues, which was good, and shouting their findings at random, which was rather less helpful.
"We've lost it, totally! The pressure is off the scale!"
"Tracking is lost. Particle has deviated, or evaporated, or..."
"Target has dissappeared, magnetic bottle has folded. Sensors are..."
"We've got atmosphere!"
"What?", Phil asked, "What was that?"
"Atmosphere! Sensors report 80 percent nitrogen, 15 percent oxygen, at, um, 980 millibar and rising. Carbon dioxide..."
"Wall breach?" Phil's partner Thomas asked. "Unlikely, but could happen."
"What's the outer hull like?", Phil asked the structural supervisor.
"Still empty", she replied. "We've got almost total vacuum all around the ring."
Thomas and Phil stared at each other in disbelief. If the air wasn't coming from the outside, then where in the name of...
The question suddenly became unimportant, as the junior technician, who had been staring at the microsensor output, shouted:
"Lifeform in the tube!"
Kessa lay on the floor in the darkness, dazed. The glow from the Gate had faded, making it impossible to see anything. The floor, she felt, was some kind of metal, and rounded like the side of a barrel. She tried getting up, but she was aching all over, and quickly lay down again. It was probably better this way. She wouldn't be able to see where she was, anyway.
Everything was quiet, so she was probably safe. That didn't mean she could fall asleep, even though she wanted to. She was exhausted, and would probably be out within seconds, but she was still in an unknown place, and might need her wits about her.
What happened just now?, she thought, I had opened the Gate just in time, and then... an explosion? A suction?
That was it. She had been literally sucked through the Gate in a rush of wind, hurtling her several spans along the floor. The impact had broken her concentration, and the Gate had folded. Good thing it did, too, she thought. I probably couldn't have closed it fast enough on my own. But closed it was, and it would take quite some time and skill to track her.
On the other hand, she might be in worse trouble than she thought. If the air from her world had been sucked in with her, then there must not be any here. She had been aiming for a world with no magic, but to find one with no air...
She reached out for Source, and found nothing. Bullseye, she thought uneasily. There was indeed no magic here, or very little. But she had hoped she would be able to survive here. Panic filled her at the thought that she had placed herself in a position where the one thing that would have been able to help her was denied, unavailable, out of reach. It didn't help one bit that it was getting harder to breathe...
Phil stood in front of the inner access hatch in his ennnvironment suit. They had duplicated the atmosphere inside the tube in the outer ring layer surrounding it, and were preparing to open the connection between the two of them. It had taken a while to convince everyone to take these extreme quarantine measures, but they had finally agreed that they just didn't know enough about whatever was inside the tube. The macrosensors had indicated a humanoid lifeform, and the atmosphere was similar, but still...
Anyway, the access hatch was now opening. The lights had come on inside, and they entered the inner tube. They had worked as fast as they could to prepare everything, but the oxygen levels inside the tube had still definetely dropped since the readings had started. He called back through his comlink to raise the oxygen levels a bit.
The access hatch opened to the fork in the tube, the junction where the accellerated particle was no longer dragged around in a circle, but flung towards its (ultimately fatal) destination. After a few minutes' walking, almost to the taeget field area, they came upon a tattered figure in long, blue robes, lying almost lifelessly in the floor.
"Drink this", the little box on the band around Phil's neck said. "It should is good."
"Thanks, Kessa said, taking the cup full of hot liquid. She noticed dome lights blinking on the box whenever she said something. At least it seemed to be speaking better than before.
Phil's box reminded her of the tiara they had placed on her crown again, and she reached for it.
"No", Phil's box said, and he started to rise from his chair, one hand streched towards her. "Okay. Please."
She lowered her hand again. It didn't seem to be doing much, but it was still unnerving. Oh well, if it made them happy...
"Talk with we, please. It is good if we talk much."
She took a sip from the cup. It was hot and sweet, though with an underlying bitterness. It seemed to be okay, so she took some more.
She looked arouond again. There were four of them, in white clothing, sitting or standing across from her. She herself was now dressed in a white nightshirt, and seated on a rather comfortable chair made from a strange material. This was a lot better than the bed from before.
When she had regained conciousness she had found herself tied down on a high bed whith a smooth, soft material. The bed had been made from metal, had been rather thin and about waist high. There had been several tubes running to needles stuck into her arms, and several people in green robes wearing masks had been bustling around her. She had felt a bit drugged, and had been unnaturally calm.
This had allowed Phil to introduce himself, though he had not been able to speak any word in her language at first. He had convinced her, through gestures mostly, to accept the tiara on her forehead, which he had indicated had something to so with the box on his throat. He had coaxed her to speak, and the box had gradually started answering in her own language.
At the moment though, not much was being said, despite Phil's urging. They were not being impatient, luckily, since she didn't think she would have been able to handle that at the moment. But now what? Well, since I did make this journey to ask for help, she thought, I might as well get started.
"My name is Kessa ka Rerre. I am a sorceress from the planet Earth, and have come to ask for your help."
This was met with uncomprehending smiles. One of them glanced at the little black box on the table before her. There was a little red light blinking on it, but other than that, it wasn't doing anything. If they were expecting any help from it, it clearly wasn't coming. She decided to ignore it and go ahead with her tale.
"I am a representative of the Council of the Three Stars, a group of teachers and guardians of magic knowledge."
Blank stares again.
"Oh right, you don't have magic here. How to explain... You know, teleenergetics? Autokinesis? Scrying, elemental field structure working..."
Still nothing.
"Never mind. The point is, we need your help. I'm not sure if this was the right place to come to, but here I am. In fact, you might be able to help us more than others, come to think of it."
"Wait", Phil's box said, "you comed here how?"
"How I came here? By a Gate. I, the Council, and some assistants, opened one. We were actually trying to search the worlds for one most likely to help us. Coming here was just an accident."
"Ok, it's probably better to start from the beginning. Our entire world is being overrun, or rather gradually overtaken, by some kind of force or organisation. We don't know for sure who or what they are, but they are very skilled in magical warfare. They use some kind of magic disruption field, too, so we are hardly able to fight back. Most people, those not in the government or the Council that is, seem to think it's nothing more than an invading army, and not a bad one at that. But we fear it may be something worse."
Phil interrupted her. "You are being lost a warefare? So you came here?"
"Oh no," Kessa said, "that's not it! If we were just losing a war, and are allies couldn't help us, we'd just surrender. It happens all the time. I wouldn't have come to a strange world just for that! Anyway, the Council, like other scholars, doesn't get too involved in politics. But now we're being hunted down, it seems!"
"You see, thoroughout the land, and in other countries too, from what I've heard, professional magic users are being attacked, seemingly at random and without purpose. But since noone else seems to be targeted like this, we had to conclude there was something coordinating all this, and for some reason."
"But since time was running out, I put the suggestion before the Council to send an envoy to another world, to have a chance to unravel the mystery before it's too late. They didnt't like it, though. You see, contact with another world just might hahave put us in deeper trouble than we were now. I had to volunteer to lead the party myself before they finally agreed."
"Oh, right", said Kessa, "if you don't have magic then you don't have Gates, either. You see, our world - and yours - are just one amid an endless number of dimensions. Gates allow you to travel between them, if you can find a beacon. But you need... wait, you have beacons, don't you? I just followed one here! How can you have beacons if you don't..."
They were just staring blankly at her, though a bit startled by her outburst.
"Never mind. Anyway, I was to take two mages and seek out a world that, well, looked promising. One that had a high standard of magic, that just might know what it was we were facing. So they all gathered around, the Council that is, and linked up with me. That means I could use their strength. A Gate is difficult to open. We were all there in the Western Auditorium. I started to scan for beacons. For two reasons actually: you need one to open a Gate, in most cases, and worlds with beacons would also be sufficiently advanced, we presumed."
"But most worlds were too hostile, we couldn't have survived there, or magic was hardly being used, which would have done us no good. But then we stumbled upon your beacon. It was very strange, since your world appeared to have no magic at all, but the beacon was very strong and very stable. Also, your world seemed to have almost ideal survival conditions. So we decided to send a small probe through a miniature Gate, just to check things out."
"Then, however, we were attacked." Kessa's face turned grim at the memory. "They had sent some kind of animals, it appears. I just heard the screams outside the doors, and felt magic flashing. But those things must have overwhelmed our guards just like that, and started to tear down the doors. Some Council members tried to attack them, but they just shrugged off the attacks and the stasis fields. When they were through the doors, they started running towards me. I did the only thing I could think of at that moment: I opened the Gate as wide as I could. That's when I was sucked in. I guess that the shock made me lose my concentration, because I just lost hold of the Gate, and it folded. I think that was what stunned me, the backlash from the Gate folding. Or maybe there was no backlash, and I just hit my head. Anyway, here I am. And I need your help."
They stared at her for a while. Then Phil took the little black box from the table, did something that turned off the little light, and said through the box on his neck: "Well, Kessa ka Rerre, I think we should run a few more tests on you, and then I'll take you to see the Senate. Then we'll decide what to do about this whole situation."