The wormhole drive consisted of three great rings of material grafted on to the outer hull of the spinning crew wheel. The drive used the Mach effect to concentrate a huge amount of mass-energy in a very small spot in space. Not only was the mass-energy huge it was also negative or exotic. The result was a repulsive gravitational force concentrated at a point in space.
At the quantum level of spacetime, there was always a churning, frothing mix of all kinds of topological objects. Among these were tiny wormhole mouths created and destroyed according to the energy uncertainty relations. If the concentration of negative gravity were focused on one of these mouths the repulsive force could expand it to the macro level. The number of wormhole mouths blinking in and out of existence in the quantum foam was so great that the drive almost always found a candidate to expand on the first try.
Sheila was watching the wallscreen which showed the space in front of the ship. There she saw a bright point of light form. The point grew in size under magnification to about the size of a basketball. It then seemed to shimmer and crystallize into a sphere, clear but milky. Sheila cast the far wormhole mouth toward Centauri and sent the message before she noticed the increasing vibrations.
“Olson is that the wheel again?”
Olson had moved to the wheel control console when he felt the vibrations start.
“I don't think so. It seems to be a power surge.”
They were both so focused on the source of the vibration that they hadn't noticed the wallscreen. There the mouth had become opaque and was growing and coming closer and closer to the ship.
By the time Sheila noticed, it was too late, the globe that was the wormhole's mouth filled the screen and soon consumed the fusion ship and crew wheel. The effect was as if the artificial gravity had been neutralized. The exotic mass-energy that framed and supported the wormhole was affecting the crew wheel's gravity.
Sheila found herself weightless and beginning to drift as the small velocity difference between head and feet caused a rotation of her body. Luckily she was just beside the drive console's chair. She was scooped up by the chair, which being bolted to the deck, was traveling as fast as the spinning crew wheel, a tangential velocity of almost fifty miles per hour.
Olson was not as fortunate. He had spun almost horizontally before he could grab the corner of a console and work himself into its chair.
“Olson can you spin it down?”
“I think so.”
He used his Emmie to spin down the wheel.
As it came to a stop Sheila spoke up.
“We're in the wormhole mouth and there doesn't seem to be any place to go. The far mouth must have collapsed.”
“Did the message get out? What do we do?” said Olson. “Are we in any danger?”
“I don't know, no one has ever been in a mouth for very long. The physics of the wormhole dimension are still being figured out.”
“Well let's not add to that quest. Let's get out of here.”
“Okay. I'll have to start the fusion engines and nudge the ship forward a bit. We should then emerge from the mouth.”
“Wouldn't it be easier to just turn off the drive and let the mouth collapse?”
“I don't know. But I remember that the physicist Emmy Gibbs used the wormhole mouth to compress matter in her experiments. So I'm not sure whether it would just dissipate or collapse to a singularity that would crush us in its infinite density.”
Olson looked stunned.
“You mean we could be crushed to a point just because this wormhole mouth decided to increase in size and engulf the ship? That hardly seems fair.”
“We're not dealing with a reasonable entity Olson. We're dealing with physics.”
He wasn't mollified but said, “Okay, you just do what you think is best, you're the expert.”
“Okay I'm going to try to start the fusion engines.”
Olson wondered.
Why does she say try?
Sheila knew why she said try. Because no one had tried to run a fusion engine in a wormhole mouth before. Ships approaching a mouth always cut engines before entering the wormhole. No one knew what would happen to an operating fusion engine in the wormhole dimension.
Sheila floated to the fusion drive console and brought it online. She entered the startup sequence into the drive's Emmie. She touched the screen to run the sequence.
Immediately the ship's frame groaned and popped as if under stress. Olson felt his insides ripple as if he were sick. His guts cramped. He yelled above all the noise.
“What's happening?”
“I don't know,” said Sheila not loud enough for him to hear. She was feeling the same effects as Olson.
She reached to cancel the startup. Immediately the pain and nausea and noise stopped.
“What is it?” gasped Olson.
“I think we're stuck,” said Sheila almost collapsing.
5
They had made their way with some difficulty from the control room to the coffee shop. Olson had trouble making something to drink in the zero gravity. Luckily he remembered that there were some squirt packs just for such a situation.
“I'm glad whoever provisioned this ship had more foresight than me,” he said. “I would never have thought to put aboard some rations for zero-g operations.”
“Things haven't gone well have they?” said Sheila.
Olson looked at her with concern. Maybe she was reaching the end of her rope.
“Oh I don't know,” he said. “We're alive, we've got food and drink and power. Hey, why do we have power if we can't run the fusion engines?”
Sheila had her head in her hands but the question made her think instead of bemoaning the situation.
“That's a good question,” she said looking up at him.
“Right now with the engines down all our power is coming from the isotopics. That power though is quite a bit less than the power of the fusion engines. I suspect that the exotic energy holding the mouth open would also be sufficient for our current power needs if we need to recharge.”
“I see. And what caused our sickness?”
“The massive flux of power when the fusion engine starts destabilized the balance between normal mass-energy and exotic mass-energy and I think it must have generated intense but small ripples of spacetime as the mouth adjusted. The ripples passing through our bodies caused us to feel sick.”
“So we can't use the fusion engines?”
“It looks that way.”
“Great, this just keeps getting better and better. How are we going to get out of here then?”
They had returned to the control room and were going over the consoles for anything they might have missed.
Just then the wallscreen burst into light. The shaking and noise started again and Olson and Sheila felt sick.
“What is it?” cried Olson.
“I think the mouth just swallowed something.”
“What?”
“I don't know. Probably a stray space rock.”
The shaking started to diminish, they both began to feel better.
Olson wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Are we going to have to go through that every time it swallows something.”
“No, that was probably a very small mass. Anything larger and the effects will be much worse.”
“Well I say we just turn off the wormhole drive and take our chances. It has to be better than our present situation.”
“Well if the mouth does collapse instead of dissipate it will be a much faster death. We won't really know it as it will collapse at the speed of light.”
“Good. Got my vote.”
“Okay, here goes.”
Sheila started to enter the shutdown sequence but then looked up rather sheepishly at Olson.
“What is it?” he said.
“The drive is already shut down. It shut down automatically when we stopped the spin of the crew wheel. I should have realized it but at the time I wasn't thinking strai
ght.”
“If the drive is offline and has been for some time then what is keeping the wormhole mouth open?”
“My guess is that since the far mouth collapsed prematurely the exotic energy that would normally have been dissipated out the exit mouth is trapped in this mouth and is more than enough to keep it open. That is probably why it expanded and engulfed the ship.”
“So now that we know what happened what do we do next?”
“The energy will eventually leak away due to quantum effects, just as a black hole evaporates due to Hawking radiation. Then the mouth should grow smaller and dissipate naturally and slowly. Leaving us in empty space.”
“How long will that take?”
“Off the top of my head without doing the calculations I would say that it will take months for the wormhole to dissipate completely. But once it becomes small enough for the ship to start to emerge we should be able to use the fusion engines. That would cut the time by a month or more.”
“Months? We can't wait here months. What happens to the rest of the crew while we vacation out here?”
“I don't know,” Sheila said somewhat insulted. “I didn't say it was my preferred course of action. I was only answering your question.”
“I know. I'm sorry if I seemed overly critical. But I'm tired of all these catch-22s. You know, we can't do this because of that, kind of thing.”
“I understand. Why don't we take a break and rest? Maybe then I can think more clearly.”
They agreed they had done enough for the day and would meet again the following day in the coffee shop.
Back in her quarters, Sheila had to first rearrange her bed for sleep in zero-gravity. She removed a rolled-up sleeping bag from storage unrolled it and began to anchor it to the corners of her bed. The bed and sleeping bag had been specially made for such an arrangement.
Once finished she went to the bathroom and reconfigured everything for zero-gravity before she could finish her preparations for sleep. Climbing into the sleeping bag she noticed for the first time the strange sensation of zero-gravity. Although she had trained in it this was the first time she would have to sleep in it. It turned out to be difficult for her which was somewhat surprising as many others had sworn it was the best sleep they had ever had.
Sheila decided it was just the novelty of the situation and there wasn't anything physically wrong. She would just have to wait until her mind settled down and accepted the situation.
But that was the problem. She didn't accept the situation consciously or sub-consciously. She was a problem solver and she had a problem to solve. So she lay there with the dim light of the room becoming brighter and brighter as her eyes adjusted.
There must be some way out of this mess. I should have paid more attention, we wouldn't be here in the first place if I had. I could have moved the ship easily before the mouth engulfed us. It wouldn't even have taken the fusion engines just a little attitude control . . .
She stopped and tried to sit up before she realized she had zipped herself pretty tightly into the bag. She unzipped the sleeping bag to her waist and then sat up.
The attitude rockets, I can use the attitude rockets to give us a small velocity without upsetting the energy equilibrium of the mouth unduly.
Sheila lay back but had a hard time going to sleep as her mind calculated the proper firing sequence and duration to accomplish her goal.
6
The next morning Sheila was thirty minutes late in meeting Olson at the coffee shop.
“There you are,” he said.
Sheila floated through the door and using the handholds in the wall pulled and pushed her way to the table where Olson was seated.
“You look tired. Didn't you sleep well?”
“I did after I fell asleep but it took some time to accomplish that.”
“Couldn't get used to the zero-g?”
“No, I was thinking. I think I've come up with a way to get us out of here.”
“Really?”
“Yeah we have other propulsion systems aboard this ship besides the fusion engines.”
“Other propulsion?”
“Yeah, you know. The attitude rockets.”
“Of course, why didn't I think of that.”
“Because we both have been somewhat overwhelmed by the situation I expect. I know I have and it's affected my reasoning.”
“Yeah me too. Although even if I had thought about it I would have expected the same reaction to using them as the fusion engines.”
“Oh there will be a reaction from the mouth but at the small velocity we need to break out I don't think it will be nearly as dramatic as starting the fusion engines. The time rate of change of energy is magnitudes less with the attitude rockets and therefore the reaction of the mouth should be magnitudes less.”
“Great. I really didn't want to go through that sick feeling again.”
Sheila shook her head in agreement.
After breakfast, they went to the control room. Sheila moved to the attitude rocket's console. She tried to use her Emmie to sign in but failed.
“What's wrong?” asked Olson.
“The sensor pad is not taking this handprint.”
“You sure you are using the right one?”
“I'm using the one you marked as attitude rockets console.”
“Oh.”
“I wonder if you used the wrong hand?”
“I don't know. How was I supposed to know which hand he used to sign in?”
“Okay. Do you remember who was at this station?”
“I haven't a clue. I did so many handprints that they all run together.”
“Okay I'll just run through all the ones we've recorded.”
None of the prints worked.
“Okay, his identity will be in the crew records. All we have to do is search them.”
But a query of the crew records returned a worrying result.
“Are you sure?” said Olson.
“Yes. The Emmie says those records do not exist. It's the same as our memories and our personal Emmies. They've been erased.”
“What do we do now?”
“I don't know Olson, I don't know.”
All Sheila knew was that she had to get away from Olson to think clearly.
“I'm going back to my room for a rest. I will see you at dinner.”
Sheila turned before he could respond and was out the door. Back in her room, she climbed into her sleeping bag. She began to tear up but stopped. She had to think and crying, however much it might soothe her fears, wasn't going to help her think.
If only Olson hadn't messed up.
She stopped herself. Blaming Olson wasn't going to solve the problem. The problem was they needed to get those rockets operating and eject a little reaction mass to move the ship.
A little reaction mass. I wonder.
Sheila awoke in the dark. The only light she had was her Emmie's screen. Using it she was able to make her way to the door but there she was stopped. Neither voice commands nor the sensor to open the door would respond.
Sheila panicked for a moment but then remembered that part of her training for the mission instructed her how to manually open a ship's door from within a room. Using the Emmie's light she opened the access panel in the wall next to the door and began hand cranking the door open.
Once in the hall, she hurried to meet Olson at the coffee shop. He was there standing outside.
“The door won't budge,” he said. “And I can't get my coffee.”
“I hope that's the worst of our problems,” said Sheila. “I don't know how you planned to make coffee anyway, without power.”
“Yeah I see what you mean. How are we going to get the power back on?”
“Well first I'm going to open this door and have a snack, a pastry that doesn't need heating. And then I'm going to isotopics to see if there is anything that can be done to get some power back online.”
Sheila removed the access hatch and proceeded to open t
he door. Unlike crew's quarters, public rooms had emergency access on both sides of the door.
After eating they went to isotopics where everything looked okay but the reservoir was badly drained.
“What now?” said Olson. “Nothing we do seems to work.”
Sheila could sense that Olson was becoming unhinged by the situation. She had to keep her wits and not panic. No telling what he would do if she showed the anxiety she felt.
“Well I've got an idea. It came to me last night. I think I can get us enough velocity to get out of this wormhole mouth.”
“Really?” said Olson his voice becoming calmer.
“Yeah. It has to do with the shuttles.”
“But they're as dead as the isotopics. Aren't they? And neither one of us could pilot one of them. I doubt we could even board one of them.”
“Well we don't have to board them or pilot them. We stay on the ship but use them to give us the momentum we need to escape the mouth.”
“How?” said Olson, looking at Sheila as if she had gone crazy.
“I don't know if you remember, but in training we learned how to launch the shuttles even from a disabled ship.”
“Yeah you're right, I remember. But how does that help our situation?”
“The launch mechanism is mechanically loaded so that a shuttle can be launched without power. And when the force of the launch reacts against the ship it should give us just enough momentum to slip through the wormhole mouth's boundary.”
“Action, reaction. I get it now. What are we waiting for? Let's do it.”
7
The shuttle release mechanism was halfway down the central girder of the ship where the shuttles were attached. Unlike older fusion ships the central spine was enclosed but not pressurized. It would still require a spacewalk to get to the release point.
Olson had experience with spacewalks having taken several on previous flights. Though Sheila had trained in the spacesuit and was confident she could do the job, she was nervous.
“Don't worry this is a piece of cake,” he said to Sheila. “We don't even have to worry about losing our grip and drifting off into space. We'll be back before you know it.”
To the Stars V-1 Page 10