The Pathfinder Project (37 page)

He nodded in acknowledgment. “I
appreciate the up-front warning, Doctor.”

“I also want to explore on a
personal basis just how far this ‘programmed’ part of you goes. The type of
preconditioning that you have talked about suggest that there could be time
delayed commands within you that can ‘snap you back’ – as you put it – without
your foreknowledge. So that will be the topic of our next conversation. Are
programmed responses now permanently a part of your thought process?” She
leaned forward with a very sincere expression of concern on her face and turned
off
the tape recorder. “Okay,” she said. “That’s what we will discuss
next time. Right now I want to hear some more about the dreams that you’re
still having, Patrick…”

Dr. Simmons was still working
later that day when the Captain stopped by. She pushed aside the microscope she
had been using along with its sample of the bacterial infection that was still
causing occasional hallucinations among the crew. Kaufield looked tired but in
control, and she was glad that he had accepted her offer to stop by for a few
minutes to visit. She handed him the cassette tape of her latest interview with
Patrick Warren and he tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“Have you apologized to Noriana
yet?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It took me a
week but I finally admitted that I
don’t
think the kid she’s carrying is
more important to the survival of our people than she is.” He sat down in one
of the empty chairs. “It was a good apology too. She even hugged me.”

“Pregnant women are more likely
to hug irritable Captains who say stupid things then… say… someone like me
would be,” Karen suggested. “It’s the extra hormones and such…”

“Hey, we agreed that she was no
longer commanding the fighter squadron until
well after
her kid is
born,” said Dennis, looking at the Doctor with a little apprehension in his
voice. “It’s too easy for a fighter to get picked off in battle – we would have
lost
two
people.”

“She’s the toughest pilot on
board and she wanted to assist in the effort to defend her ship,” Dr. Simmons
said. “
Both
of you are right… that’s the way it is in life sometimes.”

“Can I go now?” he asked. “Or
have you got an entire speech prepared?”

“Depends…” replied the Doctor.
“You can tell me what’s really been bothering you or you can tell Dr. Hagen. I
can schedule an appointment for you if you want.”

“What do you mean by that?” he
asked. “What else would be bothering me?”

“He has two openings tomorrow
morning and one in the afternoon.”

“The battle we fought last
week, what else would it be?” Kaufield finally admitted. “It’s been eight days
already and I still wake up at night after a good solid nightmare, sweating and
shivering. Considering all that we’ve been through I expected
that
to be
the very last of all the decisions I’ve made that would stick with me.”

“Do you have any ideas as to
why
that particular incident bothers you?”

“Because that battle included
the first moral decision I made that I really feel deep down was an incorrect
one.” He looked at her and smiled. “We received a lot of telemetry on that
enemy mother ship right up until that final instant our Canary Probe rammed
into it and we transited to a new location. All the numbers were right there on
my Delta console. Speed, distance, time to impact… all of it. They weren’t
going to collide with us before we could transit. I knew that but I ordered the
collision anyway… because I was at that instant
very angry
and wanted to
see those bastards who tried to take our ship suffer for their murderous
behavior.” She noted the mixed emotions in the expression on his face with a
bit of concern. “Technically we
were
trespassing in their territory,” he
commented. “Although even if you don’t speak someone’s language there’s always
the common sense option of firing a few warning shots. They
wanted
to capture
the
Pathfinder
.”

“It would have been an
irreversible disaster if this ship had been boarded,” Karen said softly. “A lot
of people would have died and it’s very probable – according to a lot of the
officers and not just you – that we would have lost the ship. Those alien
people did everything they could to catch us by surprise and overwhelm us
before we had time to react, so there are bound to be some strong emotions
generated when the enemy shows that kind of contempt for other life. They were
deliberately intimidating and you reacted to their posture instinctively.”

“Those people have been
fighting each other like that for over
forty-five thousand years
,”
Dennis pointed out. “They probably don’t even remember a time when they got
along with their enemies. When you combine that kind of revelation with the
surprise nuclear holocaust the Brotherhood unleashed on Earth, something inside
of me finally snapped. I wanted to lash out and make a point to somebody –
anybody
– that we’re not just going to sit back and take beating after beating without
fighting back.”

“But…”

“But we
had
lashed back
and them. The maneuverability of our fighters and the rail guns on those
shuttles totally caught them by surprise. We whacked them a good one,” he
said.  “And then I murdered dozens, maybe hundreds more of those alien people,
because I was sitting up there in the Command Dome
really
pissed off. I
admit it, I judged them right there on the spot and appointed myself their
executioner. Shouldn’t a starship Captain be above that?”

“You rely on your instincts
during combat, just like any other officer,” Karen pointed out. “Did you read
the intelligence report on the Canary Probe’s telemetry?”

“Of course I did. The power
source in the mother ship was undoubtedly from one of those weapons they’ve
been using against the stars in that wasteland of theirs. Destroying the ship
probably saved an entire star system… at least until a replacement arrives to
take its place.”

“Thanks for confiding in me,”
she said. “As long as you’re talking these things over with someone and not
keeping it all packed tightly away inside of you then there’s no need for me to
recommend an appointment with Dr. Hagen.
Everyone
on this ship follows
the same rules, remember? That’s what
you
told the Council.”

“I’m the Captain and I did say
that,” he said. “During a time of such extreme challenges, anyone who trusts
and relies solely on his own judgment will not last long in a leadership
position. This is my ship, I’m proud of it and her crew and I plan to stick
around.”

“Yes, and you’re also a flawed,
emotional human being just like the rest of us. So go
be
one and don’t
worry so much that your performance during this
one
crisis wasn’t
perfect. That would be a bad example to set for Joseph. Forgive yourself and
move on.” She paused, watching him stand up.

“I tell ya… it’s been one of
those days already, Doc,” he said.

“For what it’s worth, Captain,
I heard about the CAS Drive problems during the battle. Thomas said he pulled
every trick he knew and then some to get it working again. That was a
completely unexpected and unknown situation that he managed to resolve
successfully during a time of crisis. But
we
have the benefit of
hindsight. Even with all preliminary data indicating that our systems were back
on-line and functional, I doubt that I would have risked the ship by
assuming
that we could transit away in time to avoid a collision. I would have rammed
the Canary Probe into them too and
I’m
a Doctor, dedicated to
saving
and healing
life
. Sometimes there are simply tough choices that must be
made in a command position such as yours. We support you Captain, because you
are a good man and have worked so very hard to keep us all safe.”

“Thanks for telling me that,”
he replied, pausing in the doorway. A look of curiosity flashed across his
features and he pointed at the microscope. “Haven’t you found a permanent cure
for that hallucinatory bacterial thing yet?”

“Nope,” said Dr. Simmons.
“Haven’t
you
found a way to go back and reconquer Earth and get us our
home back?”

“Touche,” he said, touching his
forehead in a quick salute before vanishing out the door.

*    
* * *     *

From:
   Thomas Roh

To:
         Captain Kaufield, Council
Members, & Supporting Staff.

Subject:
  Dark
Matter and the problem it poses to the
Pathfinder
’s CAS Drive.

This E-Note memo has been
written specifically to provide useful background information to the average
crew member who is not familiar with the ins and outs of basic quantum
mechanics and astrophysics. During our recent journey through the star-damaged
wasteland, the
Pathfinder
’s CAS Drive was temporarily unable to function
as it has so well for us the rest of the time during the two months we’ve been
away from our home. This malfunction was due to the unexpected – and thus far
unexplained – presence of higher than normal levels of “dark matter” in the
vicinity of that particular Galaxy’s fourth spiral arm.

Dark matter is, by simplest
definition, non-luminous (or invisible) material that is not normally
detectable by conventional means such as the measurement of electromagnetic
radiation
.

Its presence is, however, a
reality that we have confirmed by using non-conventional observational methods
and through calculation parameters used to keep the artificial singularity
powering our CAS Drive working in unison with our PTP transit system. Dark matter
is normally completely undetectable to the casual observer – of which I am one.
I have spent the past week working with both our Lab and Observatory staff in
order to more accurately detect and catalogue this most fascinating material
that comprises the largest part of all mass within our universe.

Our home galaxy rotates
faster than it normally would based upon measurable gravity generated by stars,
gaseous nebulae, and the other visible objects that comprise it. Using that as
a basis for exploration our ancestors back on Earth were able to theorize and
prove the existence of a super-massive black hole – or gravity whirlpool – at
the center of the Milky Way around which the spiral arms rotate. Matter (like
our home solar system) spinning fast enough to avoid being pulled in by the
gravitational turbulence at its center maintains a stable orbit around the
outer event horizon and comprises the stars in the spiral arms just as we have
observed them over the past two months. The remaining matter and light energy,
the stuff that’s not so lucky, is relentlessly pulled in and devoured by the black
hole.

In recent years our
Observatory specialists have confirmed that virtually every galaxy in the universe
has one of these super-massive black holes at its center. The size of each
varies in direct proportion to the size and amount of stars contained within
its star cluster. It was initially very difficult to confirm the presence of
black holes in our universe since
everything
(including visible and
non-visible light energy) is sucked into its correspondingly huge gravity well.
Black holes solve one piece of the dark matter puzzle – with their existence
verified we have found the source of at least some of the extra gravity causing
the galaxy clusters to spin faster than they normally would were they composed
of visible, detectable matter alone. Many astronomers now believe that over 90
percent of the matter in a typical galaxy is completely
invisible
using
conventional observatory and detection equipment. Obviously, that which we
cannot see using normal methods is one of the primary difficulties we face when
trying to correctly calibrate the CAS system and keep its reactions to
unpredictable gravity fluctuations under control.

Recently the
Pathfinder
visited the Centaurus super-cluster. There are many of these “super-clusters”
scattered throughout our universe, each of which contains hundreds (and
sometimes thousands) of smaller galaxies. This was another key issue that
bothered many of our early astronomy ancestors. They were repeatedly forced to
address the question of why these gigantic clusters had not broken up into smaller
galaxies – like so many others had – during the 14 billion year projected
lifespan of our universe after the initial theorized Big-Bang.

The most reasonable
conclusion that early scientists reached was that these “super-clusters” were
held together by common gravity, just like the rest of our universe. Since they
formed billions of years ago then it follows that more than 90 percent of the
matter in a given “super-cluster” must be composed of dark matter. Otherwise,
the gravity generated by the detectable objects in the clusters would not have
been sufficient to hold them together for this length of time and they would
surely have separated by now.

The most controversial of
theories regarding “dark matter” is based on the inflationary Big-Bang model –
the hypothesis that our universe is basically an expanding, spherical explosion
that was initiated long ago. It is a commonly accepted explanation as to why
galaxies fly apart as the matter contained within them cools unless they are
close enough for their gravity to influence each other. This model asserts that
the universe went through a period of rapid expansion while it was still very
young, bringing the “cosmological constant” for this expansion close to one.

I won’t bore you with
additional details that make no sense to people who do not study these theories
as part of their career. But I will say that in order for the aforementioned
constant to be near one, the total mass of the universe would have to be more
than 100 times the amount of visible mass that appears to be present when using
our telescopes and measuring equipment. All in all, I would go so far as to
theorize that as much as 99 percent or more of the mass of our universe could
arise from the presence of “dark matter”. Keep in mind that this is only one
theory out of dozens that we’ve used to try and more closely identify and
measure these invisible galactic objects.