Connection (2 page)

Robert held up his hands – “How did you remember all those names? Thank you,” Robert said laughing – truly touched.

“Oh…and Death Wish…double caffeine,” Thorton said.

“Thank you Tom,” Robert said using Thorton’s first name.

“Will you have room?” Tom asked.

“Oh we’ll make room if I have to leave Skip behind,” Robert chuckled. Cool. He loved the gift. “Thanks Tom. We’re going to do a final test today that will document the combination drive.”

“Didn’t know that Robert. Why wasn’t it publicized? You’d think that you’d want everyone on the planet to know what you were going to do.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence Tom. I really didn’t want everyone to know what we were doing. We’re doing a trial run before we bring out the cameras to document our success – or our failure.”

“You’ll send me the video?” Tom asked.

“Of course. Wish us luck,” Robert said.

“You two be careful.”

Robert and Skip shook hands Tom and the ground crew and boarded their craft. They carefully secured their cargo and flight suits and started going through their pre-flight. This was going to be the real thing.

The Cassandra received clearance after an initial delay when Skip connected with the ground station in Texas as well as short delays along the route. The Cassandra’s thrust squeezed them back into their seats as the scramjet reached optimal power. The craft rapidly climbed through the atmosphere and was rapidly rising into the darkness of space and the scramjet was set to transition to the Hall Drive.

“Hall Drive ready to commence…scramjet shutdown on my mark…mark. Commence Hall Drive in three, two, one – mark,” Robert said and felt the gently increasing shove as the Hall Drive kicked in and headed the ship away from Earth.

Skip started a running commentary. “Radiation shielding at one hundred percent – Van Allen passage radiation was nominal… actually a lot better than we hoped. Computers are learning and no anomalies showing – looks like muons aren’t the problem with these processors that kept tripping up other systems. Five KPS – seven point-five – ten KPS and climbing…twenty…(longer pause)… leveling out at twenty-five KPS this setting…everything in the green. Ten percent better than simulation – we’ll have to tweak that. ‘Bout a month to Mars at this velocity – this is going to make you rich.”

“Already rich Skip. Wanta’ try the bias drive?”

“God boss – you have brass cajones. Hell – why not? We’ll have to test it sometime…oh f*#! Me…are you trying to break this thing? We could run the Hall Drive at a higher level if we had to find our way back if it actually worked,” Skip said actually sounding a little shaky.

Robert said, “Transition to bias drive on my mark …three …two …one ….mark.” He grinned thinking Skip was nervous – then realized Skip was just pumped – excited.

The viewscreens went dark but there was no change in the feel of steady acceleration they had felt on the Hall Drive. Everything felt the same yet the viewscreens were dark.

“Confirm that the Hall Drive is shut down.” Skip paused and scrutinized the board carefully. “Boss. The bias drive is showing a small buildup of contamination. Not sure if the bias drive is even doing anything. Hall Drive confirmed shut down.”

“Get me my viewscreens,” Robert said.

Skip tried but communications and viewscreens were just non-functional. Controls seemed locked and they didn’t want to manually cut power when they were, at least, one hundred thousand kilometers from Earth and accelerating at an apparent, steady one-gravity of acceleration. They couldn’t figure how the Hall Drive could show it was shut down yet still produce a steady acceleration. Also troubling was the fact that the bias drive had done nothing except knock out communications and viewscreens. Robert sat back thinking…maybe it wasn’t malfunctioning. Maybe everything was working just like it was supposed to work.

“Computer. Can your sensors downsample the radiation and show representations of this spectrum in the visible light spectrum at say…120 hertz?” Robert asked the computer.

“Do you want a continuous feed from the downsamples?” asked the computer.

“Yes,” Robert said and the viewscreens suddenly lit up. “Oh f*c#!” Robert said as the viewscreens showed stars…slowly moving stars. It meant they were traveling at superluminal velocity and had been for the past hour. “Computer …immediately shut down bias drive… also switch to this visible mode, similar to this method, whenever switching to the bias drive. Confirm.”

“Affirmative,” said the computer and they immediately felt weightless.

“Computer. Where are we? Can you pinpoint our location?” Skip said.

“The closet ship location to a solar system is 50 light hours from Beta Hydri – the coordinates would not be meaningful. Do you want more information?” asked the computer.

“F*c#!” said Robert. “Who programmed this thing? The bias drive is certainly performing differently from what we – I – thought is would. I think our little human definitions of space and time are skewed. Our theories must be out of whack with reality. There are either folds in space or our time sense was thrown off. How could we sense a steady acceleration? It doesn’t make sense…unless it…no…that’s crazy.”

“What? Should we turn around? Should we head back to Earth? Whatever you think? Wait – wait?” Skip looked really flummoxed. “Computer. What is our current velocity?”

“The ship is traveling at approximately thirty kilometers per second.”

Robert said. “Give us any additional information – basic information about the Beta Hydri.”

“Beta Hydri is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G2 IV. It is 24.4 light years from Earth and has 1.1 times Sol's mass, 1.46 times its diameter, and about 3.53 times its luminosity. It has approximately 90% metallicity of Sol and the star has a lithium/calcium ratio that is 10 times Sol's. Do you wish more information on the star or on the planets?”

“It has planets? Yes – yes – tell me anything about any planets that have been discovered.”

“The Terrestrial Planet finder survey last year confirmed three large gas giants, like Jupiter and three other planets…” the computer stated.

Robert cut it off. “Are any planets in the liquid water zone?”

“Yes. One planet is approximately 1.8 AU from the sub-giant Beta Hydri in the middle of the habitable zone but I have additional information,” the computer said.

“Proceed,” Robert was feeling very tired of this exchange. He hated miscommunication that slowed down exchanges of information.

“I am receiving coherent radio signals from the system,” the computer stated.

“Directed at us?” Robert asked wondering if they could have been detected. He decided to let the computer explain – seemed to be doing a decent job. “Tell us about the signals.”

“The signals are at the threshold of detectability through the radiation shield and I cannot give you more definition unless I drop the radiation shield. Your permission is required.”

“In the future – You may drop the shield whenever you determine the risk is minimal – plus,” Robert added. “…You may reestablish a shield whenever you detect any appreciable risk to the ship or our persons.”

“The shield is down. I am receiving a large number of low power signals on a multitude of spectrums…I will give you a summary in a few minutes.”

Robert turned to Skip. “Does the computer seem to be developing as we talk?”

“What do you expect? The Dex you wear will answer most of your questions and the ship’s computer is a heck of a lot more powerful than that thing. I’m surprised you…” Skip said and was cut off by the computer.

“The majority of signals are coming from three sources: from and around the planet in the habitable zone, a moon around the inner gas giant, and several point sources fixed and moving between those other two sources…virtually nothing anywhere else…nothing above 5 GHz…all below that range – a lot. X-band is clear on our normal deep space frequencies.”

Robert turned to Skip. “I was going to insist to turn around and head back to Earth but I’m not sure I could precisely turn us around accurately enough to do that without a lot more experimentation. We have, maybe, a weeks worth of air and can recycle or produce water indefinitely with the reactor. We’d develop oxytosis from the pure oxygen after that.”

“Hall Drive?” Skip asked.

“We’d be past Neptune in our system, so I think short jinks with the bias drive and microbursts of power to take us close enough to use the Hall Drive.” Robert said expecting Skip to give his opinion.

Skip sat there a few minutes running through it all – it was the longest period he had ever considered a decision. “’K boss. Have you thought about contacting another species? I just don’t particularly want to be someone’s stew.”

“They are intelligent. They have spaceflight. Oh.” Robert chuckled. “Did I mention we only have three days worth of food on this ship? We weren’t really planning any deep space runs yet – just a quick zip away and return.”

“Guess that settles it then. We eat a meal and then we take this puppy to land. Hero’s welcome? Gods? Rock stars? Celebrities? Scary beasts?” Skip asked breaking out the meal packets and setting them to heat.

Robert decided to use the supplied packets of food and coffee to enjoy a decent meal. He asked the computer to constantly monitor communications and develop a plan to use microbursts to get them closer to the hopefully habitable. He carefully savored the chicken teriyaki, vegetables in a butter sauce and carrot cake. Even the coffee was delicious. He also asked it to determine atmosphere before they tried to land. He didn’t want to land just to be asphyxiated or crushed by gravity that was too strong. He asked the computer to work on a plan to get them home – might as well ask. “Please try to sort through the signals, make sense out of them, and make it so we can talk with these people when you can.” He finished his meal – sipped the last of the coffee and turned to the console. “Thank you Cassandra.”

The computer responded. “Are you talking to me? Is this how you wish to address me in the future?”

“Yes, Cassandra. That is the name of this ship. This ship is your lovely body and you are its brains. Thank you Cassandra. No matter what happens – we know you did your best.”

The computer was silent as Robert and Skip replaced their helmets. They strapped in and talked through how they might accomplish this flight – they didn’t want to hit the planet directly with the bias drive nor zoom past it. They’d have to use microjumps.  “Initialize the bias drive for – Cassandra? What is the shortest interval we can control the bias drive? Can you determine our location precisely?”

“Yes Robert…the bias drive is calibrated down to one millisecond. Do you wish to pulse the drive at one millisecond?”

“Yes…one millisecond pulse on my mark. Mark.” Robert said.

“No change in location,” the computer said. Shall I try ten milliseconds?”

“Yes…on my mark. Mark,” he said.

“No change,” the computer said.

There wasn’t a change, even when they had used the bias field drive for a full minute.

“What’s different?” he asked the computer and Skip.

“We do not have the radiation shield enveloping the ship now and we did before,” said the computer.

“Turn on the radiation shield Cassandra and then let’s try the one millisecond pulse again. I’m not sure how it affects anything but…on my mark – for one millisecond bias drive…mark,” he said and the viewscreens blinked.

“Lord – Robert. We’re a lot closer to that system,” Skip said. “How far did we travel?”

“We moved 19 light hours from our previous position.”

“Cassandra. Can you recommend the usage time of the drive to get us between the gas-giant and the planet? I’d like to get close enough to use the Hall drive,” Robert asked.

“I think so?” the computer said.

“You ‘think so’ Cassandra?” Robert said incredulous that the computer would use this phraseology.

“I cannot be certain with the limited data but the short end of the use scale may be nearly linear. There are obviously exponential results from any prolonged use,” Cassandra replied.

“Okay. Whatever settings you deem necessary to reach the point I indicated between the two planets then,” he said and the viewscreens blinked. The viewscreens returned to full resolution and showed little around them. “We are one half AU from a terrestrial planet…it appears to be mainly an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere with a lot and water and plant life.”

                                                                                    ****

Proffer LeMit shouted uncharacteristically. “Assessor. Just had a ship appear on my screen…” LeMit was rarely surprised. “…headed in our general direction.”

“Contact them and tell them to ‘heave to’ directly in front of us and don’t try anything tricky,” said Assessor GeLett.

“Yes Assessor,” LeMit said as he sent a clear message.