The air that hit them from inside the ship was cool and made the five people shiver. If it was way too hot outside in the summer sun at noon, it was still very cold inside. It was as if they were stepping through a hidden gate into a completely different environment.
Of course that was absurd. But this coolness added to the cruiser's eerie aura.
Her steps clattered through the empty corridors. Deep darkness seemed to extend endlessly into nothingness and was only insufficiently pierced by the beams of light from the flashlights. Beyond this light, this darkness seemed to intensify.
“We'll check the accommodations and the mess first.” Like an invisible ghost, Gibbs voice hung in the silence and was hollowly thrown back from the metal walls. He had lowered his voice the way some people reverently lower their voices in a church. "Then we go on to the bridge.Finally, we'll take care of the engine room and loading decks. "
The others nodded in silence, then followed him deeper into the ship's belly. With an almost dreamlike certainty, Gibbs led the small group through the bowels of the SeaCrawler, through the vast labyrinth of corridors, stairs and decks.
The cruiser presented itself like a ghost ship. Leaving. Without a single hint of life. And everywhere they saw the same picture as outside: the metal walls were covered with a green patina or already pitted with rust. In places even fringed holes yawned, revealing the cavities and wiring behind them. The metal grids over which they went also creaked alarmingly and dust trickled softly down from them. As for the narrow stairs, Gibbs insisted that they only go to the next deck one at a time, being the first to climb or descend the stairs carefully each time.They reached the first accommodations after a not too long search. Large accommodations with beds for six men, showers, toilets and lounges. Apparently they had been in use at the time of the disappearance, because innumerable personal belongings of the crew members were found both in the sheep rooms and in the common rooms. Mugs, books, magazines, photos, games, clothes. The beds were made and rumpled by their users.
Tony picked up one of the glossy magazines, pulled it towards him and opened it with a smug grin. "Yes, such a long stay at sea, with no prospect of going ashore soon, would be real torture if it weren't for those nice little magazines. The editors should be given an award for keeping our boys happy during such inhospitable missions hold."
He blinked, blinded, as Kate photographed him with the magazine and the harsh flash completely drove away the deep darkness for a few tenths of a second.So he couldn't see her evil smile either, with which she gave him over the camera and which turned into a happy giggle as the pages of paper disintegrated under his fingers with a slight rustle. "As you can see once more, a pleasure without duration."
He stared perplexedly at the crumbs on his fingers and the now frayed edges. "That was the May issue !! Not even half a year ago. Boss ..."
"Yes Tony, I know." He picked up one of the open books and turned it with the open sides toward the floor. After a moment's hesitation, the sheets peeled off the spine of the book and sailed silently to the ground. Again, the flash from Kate's camera tore through the darkness.
Mulder was pacing from one table to the next, running his finger over their surfaces or touching chairs and shelves. “There is no dust anywhere, not the smallest grain.” He stopped at a few loosely lying photos and illuminated them with his flashlight."Agent Todd?"
Kate came over to him and took a picture of the whole picture. Then she watched curiously as the FBI agent carefully placed one of the photos on the palm of his hand and looked at it. "Look. It's brittle, just like the magazines and books here. But it's still full of color and intensity, as if it had just been developed. It's neither faded nor yellowed the way it should be Photo so old it turns to dust in your fingers. "
Amazed, Kate looked up for a moment and looked into Mulder's glittering eyes. Then she turned to the other photos and examined them. He was right. And the newspapers looked hot off the press, too. "But how can that be? I mean ..." She fell silent when she realized that not even the entire cruiser was so old that it was allowed to have these extreme signs of age. And finally, they had no explanation for that either."How is that possible?"
Mulder slipped the photo back onto the table, where it suddenly fell apart into a thousand small snippets. Then he followed Gibbs further into the shower rooms, which were covered with white lime and black-greenish mold. "A leap in time. Or more precisely a time warp in which the ship got caught and only came out again by accident. As a result, it lost a lot more time than we do in our time calculation. It probably spent decades trying to find a way home. "
Scully watched with discomfort as Gibbs straightened up stiffly and only slightly turned his head in the direction of her partner. But he didn't say anything. Fortunately, his face was in the dark, but she could swear she could still see the angry twinkle in his eyes.
"Such a phenomenon is extremely rare and is therefore more likely to be misunderstood as a haunted story. But there are places where such wrinkles appear very frequently over time.Places like the so-called Bermuda Triangle. The United States even experimented with this phenomenon at one point. You are sure to be familiar with the Philadelphia Experiment. "
Now Gibbs turned completely to Mulder. "Stop fooling us, Agent Mulder! Or do you believe those fairy tales you're telling, don't you?"
“Such time wrinkles have not really been proven, Agent Gibbs.” Scully cleared her throat and then met the NCIS agent with a slight smile. She herself had once cast that look at Mulder, so full of bewilderment and disbelief. She didn't even think she was the one to scientifically back up the adventurous stories of her partner in order to reinforce the image of a completely insane FBI team. "From a scientific point of view, however, such occurrences are quite possible. Even Einstein already had this knowledge and has come to the public with it.Of course, nobody believed him back then.
Time wrinkles are still more common than time loops. A time warp would explain how the SeaCrawler got here. It crossed such a rift in time on its way to the Middle East, was torn out of our era and at the same time skipped several decades. Space and time are closely related and can never be separated from each other. However, if this happens anyway, it can happen that the object affected by it comes back into our era in a completely different place. Here, chance decides at which place on this planet the object reappears.
We were lucky that in this case it was actually on United States soil. "
Tony pulled his head between the shoulders of the red-haired agent behind the back and gave Kate a completely horrified look from wide-open eyes, which she answered with open mouth.Then both turned to their boss, but the expected disaster miraculously failed to materialize.
"Really?" Gibbs crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Scully in amusement. "You are a scientist, aren't you?"
Scully sighed uncomfortably. "I'm a doctor. But my years of work at Agent Mulder's side automatically lead to a basic scientific knowledge. My job has always been to prove or disprove the credibility of his theories."
"So is it really his idea?"
"Agent Mulder just doesn't rule out possible causes in advance just because they are too adventurous to hold their own in front of the general public. It has been shown, however, that he has the right instinct for such things astonishingly often."
Mulder turned his head to her in amazement and couldn't suppress a crooked grin. But Scully didn't even think about looking at her partner, let alone noticing the gesture.Why the hell has she been trying to save his bum from too much trouble lately?
Gibbs was silent for a while, as if considering what had been said. Then he shrugged and left the room. "You should talk to our scientist about it sometime. I am sure she will be very happy with it.
Kate, take a few photos of the condition of the wet rooms, we're going on to the bridge. "

They went the rest of the way in deep silence. The atmosphere in these gloomy, cold corridors of the Navy cruiser was too oppressive. Also, each of them had their own thoughts, trying to figure out what they were seeing and what they had heard so far.
Even if there was even a trace of truth in this ludicrous idea, it didn't explain what had happened to all the crew members. They would have met a group of retirees, but they definitely should have met someone at all.There were enough traces that indicated human life. But not a single indication of what caused it. That made the five of them even more uncomfortable.
They used the path that led them across the open deck to the bridge and took their time to examine the weapons devices installed there. None of them moved back below deck in too short a time.
The picture remained the same, however. Rust and verdigris. Grenade launchers that could no longer be aligned with a finger's breadth, rusted screws and levers that would break off once or twice if they were subjected to too much stress.
Their next target was the control tower in the middle of the ship. The inconspicuous front door ducked into the deep shadows of a turret and stuck persistently. Only when Gibbs threw himself against it with all his body weight did she give in with a pitiful shriek and give way to the access shaft. One after the other, they scurried up the narrow steps and finally entered the bridge at the end of the stairs.Sunlight flowed through the large armored glass windows and flooded the technology-overloaded room. Behind it stretched a pristine blue sky and the once proud prow of