Chariot 3: Conception
Chapter 22 – The point of no return

Chariot 3 kept descending vertically for a few more meters until her bow stopped and started to turn as her aft kept on moving a few feet more, until the disc was leveled back to its original horizontal position.

Flumen opened his eyes and, along with the others, dazzled the extensive variety of the fascinating sea life that surrounded them. For a brief moment, they felt as if the time stopped, watching some of the fish moving slowly under the water.

It was when the Captain broke that peaceful instant “Sissy, eject the essential tube immediately.”

“Ejecting essential tube.” Chariot 3 would never hesitate to follow an order, probably one of the very few things she was incapable of doing, even though she knew her survival would most likely depend on the content of the tube.

The nitrate they had obtained would never be enough to enable the ship to return home which Captain Shoffer knew very well, and agreed that it was probably the reason the Nibirian Space Agency had no records of their return to Nibiru.

Chariot 3 had been compromised. At that moment, while watching the tube descending the Inter Deck, the crew realized that they had reached the point of no return. They all knew that from that moment onwards, returning home was no longer a possibility.

“The antimatter…” Out of his seat and down on his knees with the palm of his hands touching the deck, Flumen watched the tube slide down the deck and reach the magnetic passage which opened just enough so the bottom of the tube could slide, and stop half way through it.

A drop of dense sweat slid down Shoffer`s forehead and grasped his black lenses. The captain did not blink or felt any discomfort other than his dry throat he was used to. Sad, all he did was to look down and watch it, and so did the others.

The magnetic pole then disconnected itself from the spaceship, the tube continued to slide down until its top passed through the magnetic passage which closed immediately thereafter, avoiding any decompression.

Without any graphic image projected by the ship, they all stared at the sad event, the ejection of Chariot 3`s main power supply. But what no one realized was the imperceptible, almost insignificant quantity of antimatter being encapsulated, and then sucked into the graphene duct that Chariot 3 had connected to the essential tube.

The metagraphene capsule containing just over a cubic centimeter of antimatter followed its course through the duct, carried within the flow of the graphene solution which led it to the lab, the one room that so far none of them had needed to enter, yet.