Now, just hours later, he struggled in mid-flight. His back ached, and his wing muscles were on fire. No longer parallel to the ground, his tired legs dragged through the air. Hungry and thirsty again, he was approaching the equator. A little further and he’d make it.
Calm’s Expedition
Calm surveyed the room in which he and the colonel sat with a critical eye. It felt less like a crude cavern than Cay’s infirmary room did, but only by a narrow margin. Calm sat across the table from the colonel in charge of the station. He was having limited success getting through to the man. “We can’t just stay here,” he asserted.
“Yes, we can.”
Calm palmed his forehead. “Look, you’re a military man. We need to know what’s out there. If we’re alone in this solar system, there aren’t enough of us on this station to repopulate the human race, nor do we have the necessary technical knowledge to sustain ourselves. Can we repair things once parts begin to break and the spares run out?” He paused for a moment, waiting for some indication of their level of manufacturing capability. None was forthcoming. “We need to find out what else is in this system.”
The colonel’s tone made it clear that he thought Calm was both stupid and reckless. “And if something in this system is hostile, it will kill us.”
“You’d rather live in fear than try to deal with our situation?”
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
Calm watched as a redness passed from the colonel’s neck up and over his face before reaching his hairline. It was much like watching a thermometer measuring a rising temperature. “I’m not taking a tone. I’m just saying that we need to learn more about our environment.”
“Do you realize just how risky that’s going to be?”
“Less risky than investigating an alien artifact that results in our entire station’s being teleported to a different star system?”
“That’s completely different,” sputtered the colonel.
“No, it’s not. We’re in a crisis situation, and sending an unmanned probe to the inner solar system that will take months to get there and back is a stupid idea. This is a situation that calls for human judgment, you need to send a manned ship.”
The colonel’s face was transitioning to an intense shade of crimson. “You can’t speak to me that way.”
Calm kept his fingers loosely interlocked, knowing that his lack of angry body language threw the colonel more than anything else. “Address the issue, not the conversation. We need to know more. I volunteer to go with whomever else is willing to go.”
“I cannot ask men to do what you’re suggesting.”
“I’m volunteering. I’m guessing others will volunteer because of the protection that I provide.”
“The protection that you provide? Without you, we would not be in this mess,” sneered the colonel.
“If you had an issue with my participation before this, I’m sure that you had every opportunity to lodge a protest with the appropriate authorities. All of this is beside the point. I am not in your chain of command, but I am respecting it. Announce an expedition to the inner solar system gracefully while I’m giving you the opportunity to do so.”
The process of getting a ship’s crew together was painless. Choosing whom to leave behind was more difficult. Miners on long-term contracts, who no longer knew whether there was a firm to which they were still attached, jumped at the opportunity to find out what was going on with their lives. Cosmological researchers were fascinated at the prospect of being the first humans to explore a potentially new solar system. People who were bored or curious wanted to go on the ship just for a change of scenery. Every member of the community had an interest in the expedition. Scant hours after it was announced they had a full complement of crew ready and eager to go.
Calm sat alone in his cabin aboard the ship. Being outside the chain of command, he had no duties to speak of. The luster of his celebrity had worn off for his fellow crewmates, who now treated him like a normal person, but he still liked his privacy. His thoughts were interrupted when a man walked through his door unannounced.
Calm didn’t know this man, who was shorter than Calm, had dark hair, and possessed a wiry runner’s build. Despite looking only about ten years older than Calm, the stranger’s eyes looked ancient.
“Hello, Calm.”
Calm found his voice rising despite his intentions to the contrary. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Cheshire.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Calm jumped to his feet and strode toward the man, invading his personal space and leaving less than thirty centimeters between their faces. He scrutinized the smallest minutiae of Cheshire’s face—the curve of his lips, the set of his jaw, the directness of his gaze. None of it revealed anything to him. “Why?”
“Back on Earth they’re calling the event that took place ‘The Sweep.’ It may well have been the singly most important event in our recorded history.”
“How did you get here?”
“You’re going to arrive safely in the inner solar system in a matter of days, and you will learn many things that surprise you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. This is a multi-month trip.”
“Remember, this is only the beginning, and the gates will change everything. They’ll even help to alleviate that boredom of yours.”
Calm narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean gates?”
Cheshire just smiled at Calm and vanished.
“All stations alert! All stations alert!” blared the voice of their expedition’s leader, Captain Smithston, over the com system.
Calm refused to believe that the two incidents were unrelated.
“Calm, report to the bridge.”
No, not a coincidence. Calm headed to the bridge, looking for Captain Smithston. Automatic doors opened and closed in his wake.
Entering the bridge, he found a scene of frantic energy. Smithston pointed at him as soon as he entered the room. “Calm!” he said. “We need you as close to the prow of the ship as we can get you. Walk with me. I’ll explain on the way. Andrews, come along. I want to make sure we put him in the right place.” The captain set out with Andrews following him. “We’re accelerating at an unprecedented rate of speed.”
“Why is that a problem?” asked Calm.
“The Doppler-Bubble Drive has inherent limitations. Somehow this ship is bypassing them, and we have no idea how.”
Calm felt a mild curiosity but no worry. “Bypassing them?”
Andrews spoke for the captain, his voice hinting at an academic background. “We’re going about thirty times faster than theory says we should be capable of. That isn’t a problem unless we hit something.”
“Oh,” said Calm, “so that’s why you want me in the front.”
“Right.”
He recalled Cheshire’s comment, “
You’re going to arrive safely in the inner solar system in a matter of days, and you will learn many things that surprise you
.
”
“Why not just slow down?”
“We can’t.” Only the tightness of his voice showed just how scared that made Andrews.
That reply brought Calm up short. “Why not?”
“We are using the slowest method of spatial distortion that the Doppler-Bubble Drive allows for,” explained Captain Smithston.
“He should stand here, sir.”
“Calm, please stand over there.”
Calm stood in the specified spot. “Okay, now back to this slowest method.”
“Yes?”
“I’m a certified pilot. Are you telling me that unless fully disengaged the Doppler-Bubble Drive on this ship is going dangerously fast?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it doing to the distortion bubble?”
Andrews looked impressed. “You came to that question faster than we did, sir. The distortion bubble seems to be unaffected.”
Of course Calm had thought of that faster. He spent a lot of time thinking about energy distortion. “How are you making sure that we don’t crash right now?” he asked.
Andrews answered in a lecturing tone reminiscent of the classroom. “Well, theoretically we can’t crash. The drive creates a localized distortion in space-time that the ship sits within, and we ride within the bow wake of the distortion. If we cross paths with something, it should be swept aside by the bow wake. In addition, the ship’s computer sees obstacles ahead of us in the far distance, and through minute course adjustments it’s set to avoid collisions. But it wasn’t designed for reactions at these speeds. We’re almost flying blind. The same theory that says we won’t hit anything also says that we can’t go as fast as we’re currently going.”
“We’re going to make it,” Calm replied, remembering Cheshire’s statement.
Andrews shook his head. “You don’t understand. At our current speed, if we’re hit by something as small as a grain of sand, the entire ship will be obliterated.”
“I’d like some meals and a mattress.”
Smithston looked confused by the segue.
“I have to stay here for several days, right?”
“Right.”
Calm ticked items off on his fingers. “Food, mattress, clothing, something that I can use to take care of my basic needs.” He considered asking for entertainment, but he had his Uplink. Besides, what else could they give him?
“Done.”
Odd Discovery
Jonny sat at his desk, still wincing from his last session with Derek. Aches and pains invaded his concentration. One spot on his lower left side was tender and made itself known whenever he bent, stretched, or inhaled. He rubbed his temples. There was a dull ache behind his eyes, not enough to stop him from working but just enough to make everything a little bit harder. Between his workload and those tests, a feeling of profound weariness had settled over him.
News reports of extraordinary Keystones served as a tempting distraction from his designated work. One kid had turned into a living bolt of lightning. Jonny was thankful that the kid lived on Terra Ring One. There also had been a slight increase in crime, but given the proliferation of cameras on artificial habitats, new criminals were expected to take a longer time to emerge as they learned how to game the system. Jonny’s rat video had gone viral, but reaction to it on the Rings had been less panicky than on Earth.
From time to time vermin made extensive nests on the Rings. The invaders’ origins were tricky to track down, but the most popular theory was that they were escaped pets. Whatever their source, a simple protocol had been developed to take care of them. Affected areas were hermetically sealed after all humans had been evacuated, then pumped full of carbon monoxide for an hour.
Neither Jonny’s exhaustion nor the distraction of local news prevented him from noticing something odd on his computer screens. Jonny had approached his task by casting his net more widely than usual, launching a Ring-wide search to assess how many gravity-capable ships were available in any capacity. The available quantity was negligible compared to what would be required. This discovery forced Jonny down a second avenue of approach, a complete analysis of the utilization of all infrastructure throughout the three Rings.
The Terra Rings were huge. Each was twenty kilometers wide with a circumference of approximately two hundred and sixty-five thousand kilometers, amounting to a combined surface area of sixteen million kilometers or about eleven percent of the dry land on Earth. Such large amounts of space meant that the usage of different areas was in constant flux and that records were not always up-to-date.
Jonny needed to determine which manufacturing facilities could be repurposed to construct gravity-capable spacecraft in a matter of hours or days. Most spacecraft were never intended to reach an atmosphere and, as such, were made with different design considerations. Aerodynamics were not important in space; therefore, most spaceships could not be modified for use in a planetary evacuation. Because the Doppler-Bubble Drive could be dangerous to use within an atmosphere, Jonny’s goal was to find, salvage, or construct hundreds of thousands of fusion drives and fuselages capable of landing and launching a ship.
Every ship in space had fusion drives for fine maneuvering, as did habitats, satellites, and the Terra Rings, in order to maintain stability in orbit. Even so, producing hundreds of thousands on command was a tall order.
Jonny called up a hologram on his display that showed Ring One in its entirety. Then he called up data on the different sections of the Ring and color-coded them according to their usage and function. One by one colors lit up on the display. Green indicated parkland spaces and residential areas, useless for his purposes. Black indicated industrial facilities that could not be converted speedily for his present needs, also useless. Blue indicated commercial zones, warehousing, recycling, scientific labs, corporate offices, entertainment, life support, law enforcement, emergency services, and transportation. He couldn’t make use of them either.
Next were two colors, yellow and grey, that signified areas of promise. Jonny highlighted the Ring with yellow where manufacturing facilities existed that could be used to produce viable spacecraft. It was a paltry amount, not nearly enough to fill the contracts that they wanted to accept, but Jonny handed the information off to his junior staffers for follow-up. The miniscule areas of Ring One that remained were highlighted in grey, denoting those that had poor documentation or left him unsure of what their present function was.
Analysis of Ring Two revealed an identical pattern, with a minimal number of suitable facilities.
With low expectations Jonny repeated this plotting for Ring Three. Colors splashed onto the hologram but in low quantities. There was roughly the same amount of residential space yet less blue and black. Jonny felt like a hound near the end of his hunt. He called up the yellow industrial zones on Ring Three and stared at it dumbfounded.
Almost nothing appeared on his screen. He had expected a massive swath of yellow to fill the gaps, but it wasn’t there. Ring Three had no zones that were suitable for his project. That couldn’t be correct.
Jonny then searched the grey areas. Over ten percent of Ring Three was given over to undocumented worksites. With that much space, anything could be built.