Montahue Scott and the Mobius Belt
Version 3.90
Resting comfortably in your loft in Less Angels, California, is a good way to spend a weekend. Being shuttled off to the depths of space is not as nice. That's just how you spent yours, though, as the Earth representative of the Universal Parliament gave you a call on Friday.
"Mr. Scott, the Universal Parliament is up in arms. A group of highly trained specialists have been sent to investigate an astonishing new structure at co-ordinates Vensqui sector 5, quadrant 3 degrees 64 and 54."
"And that is bad how? Because it's progress?"
"No. They've disappeared."
"The Parliament?"
"The professionals. They got into the structure--"
You cut in. "What's this thing called?"
"Oh," he says, "it's called the Mobius Belt. Anyway, we need--"
"What's a... an M-thingie?" you inquire.
A sigh comes over the phone line. "A mobius strip has only one side, Mr. Scott. Anyway, we--"
"One side!" you exclaim. "Wow! That's really--"
"ANYWAY," cuts-in the delegate (how rude!), "this is plan B, as the initial exploration failed. We need you to go to the Mobius Belt and figure out what's happened to them. If you could bring them back too, that would be just peachy-keen. A shuttle will be by momentarily to pick you up."
The delegate disconnects, and you follow suit. Tossing on your hat, you prepare for the inevitable.
Wham!
Yep. The shuttle has hit the landing pad on top of the building and come down through your ceiling. You sigh and embark the ship to be sent off the the Mobius Belt. You lie back on the sleeping couch and tip your hat down over your eyes, preparing to take a weekend-long nap. Before you enter Dreamland, a thought hits you:
Why am I plan B?
When you come to, the shuttle has unceremoniously dumped you into the structure of the Mobius Belt and left you stranded in deep space. Lovely.
You are at the singular twisted area of the Mobius Belt, a great mid-space alien construction. The main part of the Belt, the floor, is about two feet thick and suspended in the center of a great tube of some sort of glass. It twists itself at one point--here--and then continues onward, to the north and the south. What is amazing is that this twist in the Belt gives it only one side. To prove this, there is a strip of paint down the middle of the floor that had been run over the entire strip, both "sides", without the brush having been lifted from the ground once. The air is chemically treated and scrubbed to suit every known species in the civilized cosmos. However, being that the Belt is relatively stationary, there is no gravity. Through the glass, you can see stars in all directions, and a particularly bright light that you believe to be the agricultural planet of Serendipitous 6.