Solar Express (49 page)

Nothing actionable! How like Prexy Yates, as if action has ever been a part of her persona. Thought, yes, but not action, unlike a few former chief executives who acted without thought. We won't name names.

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The sudden death of Noram DOEA Secretary Luvalle might not have been a heart attack. Heart failure, yes … nanobuilt blood clots all through his system. That's the word on the undernet … and in a few other places—like Beijing. Very interesting timing. And you don't hear any heartfelt sympathies from Sinese Head of State Jiang Qining. Can't imagine why. Remember, you heard it here first!

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Sacramento, California, is under water! Again. As a result of a late-season tropical storm, the former state capitol is truly submerged with more than fifteen feet of water in places. The old state capitol building has collapsed into a pile of rubble, and the rain is still falling … The last of the Sonoma and Napa Valley vineyards were washed out in mudslides from hillsides destroyed in last summer's wildfires or rotted out in pervasive standing water …

 

E
SCAPE
V
ELOCITY

 

68

R
ECON
T
HREE

27 N
OVEMBER
2114

Tavoian remained before the controls, almost shaking as he realized that if it hadn't been for Alayna's earlier warnings, he would have been in a far worse position than the merely difficult situation that he was currently facing.

“Present course options. Begin with shortest trip duration.”

DIRECT ACCELERATION COURSE WITH STANDARD ACCELERATION PATTERN WILL NOT ACHIEVE STATED OBJECTIVES. NOT ENOUGH HEL3 AVAILABLE.

“Not available?” Tavoian understood even as he voiced the question. His mouth was dry as he studied the figures the AI displayed. Merely reversing course and accelerating Recon three to kill his inbound velocity wouldn't work because the first two hours—all that the drive would take for continuous use, with a slight margin for error—would leave him still moving toward the sun if at perhaps five kays per second, while the drive recovered. Another two-hour burst of acceleration would break him free of the sun's gravitation, but leave him with a lower outward velocity. Two more two-hour bursts, with two hours in between each, would have him traveling at a speed that would take him not quite eight days, with less than ninety percent of the Hel3 he needed to decelerate, even taking Earth's orbital speed into account. Less acceleration leaving the artifact and the sun would stretch the return time to more than ten days, and give him a slight margin in terms of fuel.

All that was a gross oversimplification, but the bottom line wasn't. He didn't have enough fuel for either course. One wouldn't work at all, and the other might well leave him short of fuel for the necessary deceleration. If he dropped another hour from the acceleration phase, that would leave him enough Hel3, but take almost two weeks. And the way the CO2 level was rising, at the present rate of increase, if it didn't stabilize somewhere …

“Calculate the CO2 level in ten days at the rate of increase over the past two days.”

THE LEVEL WILL REACH FIVE PERCENT ON NOVEMBER THIRTIETH. THE CALCULATED LEVEL ON DECEMBER SIXTH WOULD BE NINE POINT TWO PERCENT AT THE CURRENT RATE OF INCREASE.

Almost ten percent, and above that if you take the slow way.
At over seven percent, there were definite effects, especially on judgment, and breathing, and at eight percent any lengthy exposure would result in unconsciousness, which if it continued would lead to death.

“Plot a course based on present acceleration and a constantly vectored turn.” That wasn't likely the most elegant way of phrasing it, but what Tavoian wanted was to know if he had enough fuel to accelerate along a course swinging away from the sun, in essence trying to swing into what amounted to an elliptical orbital path that would take him toward Earth using the base velocity Recon three already had and vectoring his way onto a return course. He was still too far from the sun to swing around it in a way that would prove helpful, especially given both the time it would add and the fact that Recon three didn't have adequate insulation for a close encounter with Sol.

He thought about trying to collect some of the cubesats, then decided against that, but he did initiate retracting the solar panels, and having the AI lock the two ISVs into the exterior docking stations. As he waited, he had to wonder about the Sinese ships. He hadn't seen any change in their operations. Then again, the converted longliner, as a noncrewed probe, was likely viewed as expendable, and it could be that the larger vessel wasn't so much a converted warship—the ones that the Sinese weren't supposed to have—but a ship heavily shielded in order to allow the Sinese to remain with the artifact longer.

He shook his head, not envying the Sinese team.

After several moments, a very long time for the ship's AI, a course plot appeared, along with figures below it.

THE PLOTTED COURSE WILL TAKE EIGHT DAYS, BUT WILL REQUIRE FOUR IMMEDIATE TWO-HOUR PERIODS OF ACCELERATION, AND AN ADDITIONAL FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, BUT ONLY THREE HOURS OF DECELERATION.

Almost fifteen hours of accel and rest, the same as it took to get to the artifact, to be traveling at roughly half the speed for half the distance.
Except, Tavoian realized, it was far more than half the distance given that he'd be traveling farther to avoid initially losing speed in order to use that speed to escape the sun's greater gravitational attraction near the orbit of Mercury. On the outbound trip, he'd also had a boost from the Earth's orbital velocity, while on the return, since he'd be matching speeds effectively with Earth's orbital velocity, he'd only need to decelerate to that, and not to zero. He did feel better about having a margin for error with the fuel, although he worried about the extra time, especially with the rising CO2 levels.

“Plan to begin acceleration in thirty minutes.” Tavoian needed to stow more than a few items that he'd left loosely secured in the passenger and cargo areas.

STANDING BY FOR DEPARTURE AND ACCELERATION.

Tavoian had only been working about fifteen minutes, hurriedly strapping down equipment or placing it in storage lockers in the cargo area, and realizing that he still had a number of cubesats that had never been used, when the AI announced,
THE CO2 LEVEL IS NOW UP TO TWO POINT SEVEN PERCENT.

“Are the environmental systems functioning?”

SYSTEMS ARE FUNCTIONING WITHIN OPERATIONAL PARAMETERS.

While he knew that he was moving quickly and working to put things away, and that increased his respiration and CO2 output, the fact that as little as fifteen minutes of light exercise had raised the CO2 level worried Tavoian … more than a little. But there was little else he could do except finish up buttoning up the ship and get ready to depart.

Ten minutes later he had the spaces secured. He headed back to the control area, where he strapped himself in.

“Beginning checklist,” he announced, looking at the screen and checking off the items, until he came to the last one. “Thruster test.”

THRUSTERS TESTED AND WORKING.

Tavoian continued with the checklist. When he finished, he ordered, “Begin orientation.”

BEGINNING ORIENTATION.

Tavoian had to wait several minutes before the AI reported,
ORIENTATION COMPLETE.

For a moment, Tavoian almost requested permission to begin drive ignition, so automatic were the procedures, but he wasn't reporting to an operations controller. Instead, he said, “Commence ignition.”

DRIVE IGNITED.

“Activate drive.”

DRIVE ACTIVATED.

The gentle pressure began to build, pushing Tavoian down into his couch. He could only hope that the higher-speed course option would work as he had planned. But then, no one had planned for the increase in the speed of the alien artifact, definitely a Solar Express in more ways than one.

He continued to watch the monitors and screens as Recon three accelerated away from the alien artifact—and the two remaining Sinese ships, knowing that, initially, his course line would diverge only slightly from that of the artifact, but that the initial speed would be counterbalanced by the greater distance covered, but not completely. Enough, if all went as plotted, and that the fuel measurements, speeds, and vectors worked as planned, then he might get back to Donovan Base before the ship's atmosphere became too toxic.

Once Recon three was firmly established on course, then, and only then, would he message the colonel, with an explanation about both the artifact's greater speed and the ship's environmental difficulties.

Abruptly, he frowned as he noticed that the separation from the artifact was not as great as projected by the AI. “Are we having acceleration difficulties? Shouldn't we be farther from the artifact?”

ACCELERATION IS AS PLANNED. DRIVE IS FUNCTIONING OPTIMALLY. ARTIFACT HAS INCREASED ITS INBOUND SPEED BY FOUR KAYS PER SECOND WITH A POSSIBLE ERROR FACTOR OF FIFTEEN PERCENT.

That shouldn't be possible.
Tavoian didn't doubt that it was happening, though. He also wondered if Alayna had any explanations.

He smiled, faintly. She had enough problems in dealing with her multi-fractal mini-granulations.

 

69

D
AEDALUS
B
ASE

28 N
OVEMBER
2114

On Wednesday, Alayna was up early, knowing that she had a half hour in which she could train the main optical array on the alien artifact, the Solar Express, something she hadn't been able to do on Tuesday because of the time commitments already established, some of them years before. When the image came into focus, relayed to the COFAR screens before her, she could only make out three objects.

Has Chris departed? Has something happened to his ship?

“Marcel, what is the position of the artifact with regard to the sun … and its current speed?”

“2114 FQ5 is now fifty-two point one million kilometers from the sun. We do not have a position baseline since 1610 on 26 November. At that time, 2114 FQ5 was approximately sixty-three million kilometers from the sun. The artifact's average speed over the past thirty-seven hours has been approximately eighty-four kilometers per second.”

“It's speeded up even more. Estimate perihelion.”

“If acceleration increases strictly in relation to solar gravitation, perihelion will occur at 1214 UTC on 3 December.”

“It's more likely to occur sooner. I can't believe it won't continue to accelerate. The main array will be free again at 1930. Make another observation then.”

With the reduction of number of ships around the artifact, Alayna was even more worried about Chris. She hadn't received a message since the night of the twenty-sixth, which wouldn't have bothered her if she hadn't known where he was and the risks involved.
And you don't even know all of them.
She worried about whether her last message had gotten to him.

You've done all you can.

That thought didn't help much, but she forced herself back to her own problems, and the question of why the sun was behaving as it was, becoming hotter abruptly, showing more convective activity, and the lowest number of sunspots in more than a century, if not in historic times.

Are you the only one seeing this?

With that thought in mind, she dashed off a quick message to Emma, just noting her observations on the recent changes in the sun, and asking for a confirmation. While she believed COFAR's observations were accurate, and certainly there was no doubt about the decrease in sunspots, there might well be questions about solar radiation intensity.
Besides, it's a way to bring it to her attention.

She went back to considering her problem. What was different? The most obvious reason was that the alien artifact was somehow involved, but that was totally absurd. There was no way in the universe that an inactive remnant of an alien spacecraft that measured something like two kilometers by four hundred meters could have any effect on a sun with a diameter of a million four hundred thousand kilometers.

As her day progressed and the solar images she was able to view from the time leased by various Earth-based observatories, one thing became clear. Even at solar latitudes higher than those where she was studying, there were significantly more multi-fractal mini-granulations, and she was even able to identify two absolutely regular mini-granulations, something she'd never captured before.

She still kept thinking about the artifact. What could power something as massive as the Solar Express? Especially with no detectable electromagnetic radiation and no detectable heat? Neutrinos weren't easily detectable, and effectively they had no mass, which disqualified them from any propulsion systems she could envision.

The bottom line was basic—an artifact that was either propelling itself faster than gravitation attraction with no detectable means of propulsion or was acting as if it had a mass in a solar range. Neither was possible according to existing theory and years of observation—or even present observations. Chris and his ship would have been crushed into the artifact if it had that mass … and there was no way the artifact could have been carrying, say, a tiny fragment of a neutron star.

Which is least impossible and why?

Another thought crossed her mind, and she didn't know why or from where it came. How about something not quite in the universe … or not fully in the universe? What if gravity was merely a small part of something far larger, but less obvious?

Thoughts swirled through her mind. The question raised by the artifact wasn't as Dyson had asked more than a century earlier, whether a graviton could be quantized, but whether it could be used in some fashion … A classical gravitation wave could be considered to be a coherent superposition of a large number of gravitons … the entire output of thermal gravitons over the entire lifespan of the sun would be four.