Veteran astrogator though he was, Mark Caldwell always dreaded the approach of minus point. You never could predict what effect the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction might produce just before the jump into hyperspace when the laws of the Einsteinian universe broke down. But only at minus point could warper coils take over from blast engines.
At minus point, which set in at 186,100 miles a second, time started to reverse itself and flow backwards. Bending of the space-time continuum distorted entropy, causing an indescribably extended vessel and occupants to actually grow younger. Because human minds were unable to function during this period of cellular regeneration, robot pilots took over immediately. Two hours past the barrier, the crew would awake—at least two hours younger than at the moment of plunge.
Relays shuffled and clutches locked, clamping the Star Rover's directional controls, while Mark Caldwell fed the ship's heading figures into the mercury vat memory of the pilot. Then, he prepared for the big sleep. When consciousness returned, his brain would no longer be fogged.
The astrogator's sensitive fingers closed the last switch. Around the plowing freighter, the void strained and twisted in the flux of new forces, squeezing the vessel out of the universe as a grape is squeezed from its skin.
It was at that moment of passing the barrier, that the skags—after a million years in the dream-barren sleep of suspended animation—awoke from their life in death. The time-reverting effect of minus point returned their bodies to that instant in the forgotten past when they had retreated into mass oblivion.
First to be jolted into life in the Star Rover's dim gray hold was the mind of K'Gol. Tentacles rustled in violent wriggling activity, then massive eyelids opened to reveal cold purple eyes. As inhuman strength massed in his limbs, K'Gol stood erect, found the release to his prison shell and pressed the button. The transparent envelope collapsed, leaving him free.
Thought vibrations brought perplexed messages from the two other skags.
K'Gol studied his surroundings and said: "We have failed. The gas nebula penetrated and we are in the realm of the dead."
"We are dead, yet we breathe."