David felt the delayed adrenaline rush accelerate his heartbeat to a driving thump. The only light was the fading afterglow of the computer monitor screen. The dominant sound was the descending whine of the turbopump spinning down. They were still in the lab, and the power was off! Those new settings must have overloaded the circuits, blown a breaker, and shut down the vacuum system. But this was the middle of the morning, so why was there no light coming through the windows? The twist! They'd been inside the twistor field when the transition hit. They were on the other side of the twistor transition! The CCD camera had shown only darkness and distant stars on the other side of a transition. They should be breathing vacuum, suffocating in the blackness of empty space. How could they still be alive? Where were they! His mind raced, cycling on emptiness and paradox without a reference point. David drew three deep breaths, shook himself, and studied what his senses were telling him. He was still crouched near the control desk with his arms around Melissa and Jeffrey, who squirmed closer to him.
