Claimed: Unchartered Territory Read Free

in his voice registered through the headsets and mirrored her own feelings.
    “Prepping probe one for launch.”
    Juno XI was equipped with three interstellar probes each with its own scanners and sensors to take readings around the singularity and eventually into the void. Dallas set the trajectory for the path the first probe was to follow near the rim.
    “Probe one is locked and loaded,” she confirmed.
    “You have permission to launch at your ready.”
    “Initiating countdown sequence.”
    Five... four...
    Dallas silently followed along with the digital count.
    One , she mouthed and jettisoned the probe. She saw it as it sped from her ship and towards the anomaly.
    “Dallas, we have a visual on the probe from your vessel.”
    “Good, I’m engaging the probe’s scanners now.” Working as she spoke Dallas initiated a monitor that would allow her and mission control to see all the images picked up by the probe.
    “The probes transmission are intact, are you getting this Bobby?”
    “Looking good on this end. Let’s see if you can get it to navigate away from the singularity for some measurements.”
    “Roger that.”
    The probe responded without a hitch to her commands swinging away from the distortion.
    “Amazing,” Dallas couldn’t help but utter as the probe projected back a live feed of the objects size measuring it far larger than they originally estimated. If her calculations were correct, six maybe more of her ships could fit within the opening. She looked to her primary monitor as the probe began transmitting the anomaly’s properties.
    “Dallas was a sensor check performed prior to launch?” Bobby asked.
    “I performed a manual one last night and a diagnostic before I let her loose,” she confirmed but understood why the question was asked. According to the data being received the anomaly didn’t seem to be emitting any levels of radiation, which should have been impossible. With it being so close to Jupiter’s orbit there should have been a significant presence. Even with her ship’s shielding there were trace levels present in her cabin.
    “Are you seeing the same levels of radiation we are here?”
    “If you’re seeing zero than so am I, but I’m also picking up a strong electromagnetic field.”
    “We’re getting those readings now. This is incredible!”
    Dallas shared the same sentiment. She’d never seen anything like it. “I-I think we might very well be staring into the eye of a wormhole,” she uttered more to herself than the mission control team.
    “Is the second probe ready for deployment?”
    “It can be, but is there authorization to go ahead of schedule?”
    “I’m staring at it on my screen you’re all green,” he replied.
    “That’s enough for me. Probe two is ready to launch.”
    “On your mark Dallas,” Bobby confirmed.
    She launched the second probe into the mouth of the abyss. Minutes ticked by with the only transmission being dead air, or at least that’s the way it appeared on her screen from the information being transmitted back to her. Dallas worried the scanner had been damaged by the electromagnetic field and was in the process of typing in recall instructions when her screen suddenly lit up with a constellation formation unlike anything she’d ever seen.
    “Mission Control we have a visual,” she said unable to control the smile in her voice.
    “Roger that Dallas, we are seeing it clearly on this end too.”
    “Reducing probe’s speed to perform a three-sixty scan,” she advised even as she entered the new instructions.
    The probe’s shielding obviously held up through the abyss because it transmitted back devastatingly clear images. Dallas was right. It wasn’t any constellation she recognized.
    It was true.
    The obsidian mass in front of her was not a black hole but an actual wormhole.
    One.
    No.
    Two moons were visible and orbited a distant sun. And just as the probe was nearing the completion of its rotation she caught her first