Chapter 61: Chapter 61: Unsteady Navigation
Duncan led Alice back to the upper deck of the Homeloss—the cold Creation of the World still suspended high in the night sky.
Duncan thought he had been exploring inside the ship for a very long time, even suspecting that an entire night had passed, but now, looking at the deep night sky, he seemed to have only spent a few hours below.
Yet, it was during these mere hours that he witnessed such bizarre and extraordinary circumstances that left a lasting impression on him.
He still remembered the cabin with the inverted lights and shadows, and especially that door at the bottom of the hull…What exactly was behind that door?
Duncan’s lantern had gone out, and together with the doll he slowly made his way to the captain’s cabin, neither of them speaking much—the doll seemed to be rehearsing cooking in its head, while Duncan’s attention was fixated on the deck structures around them.
He compared what he saw with his memory, confirming that the dim and dilapidated cabin opposite the door was indeed a part of Homeloss, whose style matched perfectly and whose structure had a vague continuity.
Moreover, now that he recalled, it seemed that there was something more in the depths of that decrepit cabin, hidden in the darkness.
That was Homeloss’s unknown “hidden area”—an area that not even Duncan, the captain himself, could sense or detect.
Did the goat head know about that door? Did it know what lay behind it?
Should he ask it?
They reached the captain’s cabin. Though Duncan’s mind was still tumultuous, he entered the door with Alice and saw that the goat head was still quietly positioned on the navigation table, its hollow black eyes turning toward the sound of the door.
As Duncan turned to hang the lantern, he heard Alice already greeting the goat head with a hint of excitement, “Mr. Goat Head! I went down to the lower decks with the captain! The very bottom of this ship is incredible! The lowest cabin is all split apart—and there’s also a very strange door!”
Duncan suddenly felt no longer torn about how to start a conversation with the goat head—he almost forgot that he had an inquisitive and unknowing doll with him, and Alice’s chatter had opened up the scene.
He struggled to keep from laughing out loud and pretended to tidy up quietly while listening intently to the conversation between the two “crew members”. He heard the goat head’s voice, with an unsurprised tone, “I knew you’d be astonished! Miss Alice, now you realize how great Homeloss is, don’t you? It’s a ship that can sail safely across different dimensions at the same time!”
Listening to this, Duncan felt a stir in his heart.
The situation was indeed as he had guessed; the bizarre scenery outside the cracks in the bottom of the ship… was certainly because it no longer belonged to the space-time of the Endless Sea!
At the same time, he was quickly calculating in his mind: Alice’s curiosity about the strange sights beneath Homeloss was overwhelming, she seemed reluctant to ask too many questions of him, the “captain,” preferring instead to inquire with the chatty goat head. But if he continued to stand there eavesdropping, it would seem odd and suspicious, and it might even cause the goat head to steer the topic toward him—if it threw a “You should ask the captain” at Alice, he wouldn’t know how to respond…
With this thought, he immediately made a plan. After composing his expression to its usual seriousness, he said nonchalantly, “You two chat here, I’ll take a walk outside—Goat Head, Alice is now part of the crew. You can tell her anything about the ship that isn’t too secretive.”
Upon hearing this, Alice’s face immediately lit up with a joyful smile, and the goat head readily agreed, “Of course, Captain, your loyal subordinates always warmly welcome new members…”
Duncan left the captain’s cabin, pushing the door behind him.
But the moment he left the captain’s cabin, he refocused his mind, leveraging the close connection between himself and Homeloss, and carefully paid attention to the movements inside the captain’s cabin.
As he concentrated, his vague perceptions became clear, real-time monitoring, a vivid reflection of everything in the captain’s cabin playing out in Duncan’s mind. He “saw” Alice promptly take a stool and sit opposite the goat head, excitedly recounting her exploration of the lower decks of Homeloss, describing the bizarre scenes at the bottom of the hull.
She seemed to have completely forgotten the matter of making a late-night snack for the captain—but Duncan didn’t mind at all.
He appreciated the puppet’s divine assist at the critical moment.
Under the night sky, Ai Yi suddenly flapped his wings and fluttered onto a nearby mast as if standing guard, while Duncan walked slowly forward just like he was normally patrolling the deck. In his mind, however, the conversation within the captain’s quarters came through clearly.
Alice had brought up that bizarre door with Goathead, her tone tinged with tension, “…That door looks a bit scary, the captain won’t even let me get close to it…”
“Of course, you can’t get close, not just you, even I can’t touch it—don’t give me that look. I know I have no hands or feet, but the ‘touch’ I’m talking about is another kind of… contact, control, understanding, spying, you get it? That door is untouchable in this sense… If you touch it, you’re done, got it?”
Alice seemed to have been startled by Goathead’s unusually stern tone and hesitated for a second or two before speaking, “Then… what exactly is that door?”
As Duncan walked on the deck, he focused his attention but then heard Goathead fall silent suddenly; after a long time, he spoke in a deep voice without directly answering any questions, “You surely haven’t touched that door, right?”
“I haven’t touched it!” Alice replied in a hurry but then she hesitated before adding with less certainty, “Although… although the captain leaned in to peek, he looked through the crack of the door and poked at something on the other side with his sword…”
After Alice’s words fell, Duncan suddenly felt the entire ship shake, followed immediately by all the main sails and side sails making a low moaning sound in the wind and all the masts and ropes creaking in succession—and all these things were currently being controlled by Goathead!
He looked up in surprise at the swinging masts and ropes as if he could sense the momentary panic of the controller behind them. In his mind, an exclamation came from the captain’s quarters, it was Goathead’s voice, “What did you say?! A crack in the door? The door cracked open?”
“Yes… yes…” Alice sounded as if she had been frightened, “The door was ajar, with a crack, about… about as wide as a finger…”
“The captain took a peek through the crack on the other side? And then? He poked with his sword… Did he change at all then? When he took you away, did he seem hesitant or dazed?”
“No,” Alice replied immediately, “The captain’s expression was very serious, and he quickly took me back. He seemed to be thinking about something on the way but wasn’t dazed at all—ah, he also discussed cooking with me, I need to go to the kitchen later…”
“Forget the kitchen for now! Do you know what’s behind that door?”
“Ah… what’s behind that door?” Alice’s voice carried a mixture of confusion and fear. She had never seen Goathead so seriously urgent before—it was as if the ship was about to sink.
Goathead’s tone suddenly became very low as he slowly said, “Behind that door is Subspace.”
Duncan stopped in his tracks on the deck.
Behind the door, Subspace?
He was completely astonished, the huge waves stirring in his heart almost interfered with his monitoring of the captain’s quarters, but then he thought of another thing—
The shattered bottom of the ship, the dim, chaotic light and shadow flux outside the crack—it appeared that Homeloss was sailing in different dimensions, and its bottom was obviously in a different space-time from the real world. And there was a door at the bottom, and Subspace lay on the other side of it…
Could it be that the lower half of Homeloss was actually navigating in Subspace?!
And if Goathead’s words were to be believed, this state of navigation seemed unstable? Not only did the bottom require the captain’s constant pacification, but that door theoretically should have been closed tightly, yet now it had cracked open… What did this mean? Could it mean there was a problem with the “seal” of the bottom? Or was something from Subspace trying to enter Homeloss?
He recalled his own attempt to close that door before leaving the bottom of the ship, yet no matter how hard he tried, the door remained firmly open just a crack—as if fused with space itself.
At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, but looking back now, a bizarre idea involuntarily surfaced in his mind.
Perhaps… when he tried to close that door, something on the other side was resisting him, preventing him from shutting that passage…