“How long were we out of contact?” Masako asked. “From how cold it got, I’d guess at least a few hours.”
“More like nine,” Jack answered.
“Damn!” Palmer said loudly. “All I remember is some sort of flash of light, then everything went black. What the hell happened?”
“We’re not sure yet, but once the Doc here is done checking you out, I’ll bring you guys up to speed on what we do know.”
Jack stood back patiently while Helena finished her cursory examination of Palmer and moved on to Masako. She methodically checked her temperature, blood pressure, and tended to a few scrapes on her forehead.
“So how are the patients?” Jack finally asked.
“Overall, they’re in good shape. They’re cold, but have no signs of hypothermia. Had they been out there for another few hours, though, we would’ve had some problems. Aside from that and Masako’s scrapes, they’re in good health.”
“Good, then we’re done here,” he declared. “Kurt, go over the shuttle with a fine-toothed comb; especially the outer hull since you have easy access to it in here. See if you can piece together what might have happened to it.”
“I’ll start right away.”
“Palmer, Masako, come with me.”
The two followed Jack into the hall, where Jack quickly stopped and tapped his comm. unit. “Don, respond please.”
“Here Jack.”
“Have you made any progress?”
“Still none. How’re Palmer and Masako?”
“They’re right here beside me; both are fine. I’m going to send Masako straight up to work with you. Bring her up to speed.”
“Good. I can use the help.”
Jack led the way down the narrow main passage until he reached the conference room near the bridge. “Palmer, we can go over everything in here. Masako, let Don know where he can reach me. Also, tell Devon to hold this position until we get some sort of reliable navigation data.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry. Devon’ll know what I’m talking about. They’ll fill you in on everything up there.”
As Masako headed away Jack turned to see Palmer’s confused expression. He reached around his first officer to turn on the room’s lights and said, “Sit down and I’ll tell you what little we know. Who knows, when I’m done, you may wish you were still in that pitch black shuttle.”
“That doesn’t sound too promising.”
Palmer sat motionless for the next hour as Jack explained their situation, describing everything in detail, from the dome on Epsilon Eri-D to the point at which they brought the shuttle into the bay. Palmer probed him politely about the bodies found in the dome, but otherwise didn’t interrupt his briefing. His first officer’s face said he was taking it all in, but gave no clue as to how he felt. Jack took a breath and was considering whether to ask Palmer directly for his opinion when the computer interrupted.
“Captain?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“We have some very disturbing news. At Don’s request, I’ve asked Kate, Maurice and Masako to join you in the conference room.”
“Explain.”
“It’s based on the data that Maurice and I reviewed with Devon. At my suggestion, Maurice asked Kate to check a problem we encountered. She used an innovative approach that uncovered an unexpected answer. Don and Masako were already coming to the same conclusion when I consulted with...”
“Can please just summarize what you found for me?” Jack pressed.
“Don will be with you in a minute. He asked that he explain it to you. I concur that it would be more appropriate. Also, I think that Kurt and Nadya should join you.”
“Fine. Let them know.”
When he was sure that the computer was done, Palmer said, “Time for another of Don’s presentations.”
Jack smiled. It was a rare moment indeed when Palmer made a comment that was even close to humorous. “It would’ve been nice if he allowed the computer to give us at least a hint of what was coming.”
The others filed into the room in silence and filled the remaining seats around the table. Once Don was sure everyone was there, he said, “We’re not in the Epsilon Eri system anymore.”
As was his custom with important statements, Don paused for dramatic effect. Jack held back his urge to comment on the impossibility of the statement, and Don continued, “I’ll start with the most convincing data which comes from the computer’s analysis.” Don stared off into space for a split second before saying, “Oh and from Maurice too, sorry. They’ve been working on correlating our stellar observations with data from the astronomical database as opposed to the navigational files. The problem as we all know is that the observed stars didn’t match the navigational charts. However, after they converted the astronomical data into nav-format, they didn’t match the observations either. That pretty much ruled out file corruption. The computer suggested expanding the comparisons beyond just visual data. That was when Kate was brought in and made a hell of a leap. She suggested looking purely at the radio-spectrum and looking only at pulsars.”
Seeing a perplexed look on Kurt’s face, Don took a moment to explain. “Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars: the burnt out cores of massive, ancient stars that went super nova eons ago. What remains are ultra-dense, stellar remnants with extremely powerful magnetic fields. As a result, they emit powerful beams of radio waves. When rotating, these beams sweep through space like the light from a lighthouse, we then see them as pulsed radio wave sources.
“What’s useful is that the rotational rate for each pulsar is unique. Thus by measuring the amount of time between pulses, we know exactly which one we’re looking at. So, Kate’s idea was to reconfigure the communications antenna array to look at the thirty strongest ones that we know of. She was still betting on the fact that somehow the visual data in both the astronomical and navigational databases was bad, and that the radio data, being stored in an off-line library would have been unaffected. Though her assumption proved wrong, this method gave us the answer.”
Don paused again, prompting Jack to say, “Just tell us what you found!”
Don took a breath and said, “The computer was able to identify all of the targeted pulsars, however, they were in the wrong locations. A few quick simulations showed that you would see these pulsars in their observed locations if we were about three-hundred thirty light years away from Epsilon Eri, in the direction of the galactic core.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jack shouted.
“This is total nonsense,” Palmer added.
Don ignored them and typed a few commands into one of the table’s embedded terminals. The room went dark, and the holographic display came on line. Evenly spread throughout the room were thirty bright red dots. Don continued, “Since the pulsars are visible primarily in the radio region, I have highlighted them here in red.” He entered a few more keys and thirty open green circles appeared. Each circle was near a corresponding pulsar, but ranged from a couple of centimeters to nearly half a meter away. “The green circles represent the expected positions of the pulsars if we were still in the Epsilon Eri system. Now watch.”
The room felt as if it was slowly moving as each pulsar moved toward its respective circle. The holographic animation stopped when each was in or nearly in one of the circles; the furthest being only a couple centimeters away. “This is our best match. At a little over three-hundred-thirty light years from our original location, the calculated positions match up pretty nicely with what’s observed. We’re not quite sure why we don’t have a one-hundred percent match, but I’m hopeful that we’ll have an answer soon.”
Palmer jumped in with the first question, “Why couldn’t we determine this from looking at the regular stars?”
“For obvious reasons the nav-system uses the brightest visible stars for its comparisons. The distances of these reference stars should range from tens to hundreds of light-years away from our position –
whether that be back home or at Epsilon Eri. So, one might surmise that if we move ten light-years one way or ten the other, some will get somewhat dimmer as we move away from them, while others may grow a bit brighter. We can easily compensate for changing magnitudes as long as you stay within a couple dozen light-years of your original charts. However, a jump of over three-hundred light-years would make most of our main guide stars appear significantly dimmer and thus unrecognizable by the matching routines. That’s what kept the navigation system from properly initializing.
“The pulsars on the other hand, are very bright radio sources, and are between five-hundred and two-thousand light-years away. As a result, traveling three-hundred light-years wouldn’t cause as dramatic a shift in their observed position or brightness. Plus, since we were using their timing to identify each one individually, the shifts that did occur in their brightness didn’t cause any confusion. That’s why it worked.”
Palmer continued his challenge, “How can you be so sure of this explanation? Seriously, it flies in the face of reason. Have you checked this against the expected positions of regular visible stars? I mean since you supposedly know where we are now.”
Don shot back defensively, “No. That’ll take at least a few days to do. First, identifying main-sequence stars will have to be done by matching their spectra against known references. That’s not nearly as easy as timing pulsar flashes. Then we’ll need to take parallax measurements, which will involve moving the IPV to a few locations in this star system. On top of that ...”
“That’s enough for now,” Jack said, trying to end the argument before it escalated any further. He allowed them a few seconds before continuing, “Don, you said Kate’s data was the most convincing. What else do you have?”
In a more measured tone, Don answered, “Earlier you asked me to find our location by looking for Epsilon Eri-D. This, of course, led us to that unknown planet. However, after unsuccessfully scanning the region further for Eri-D, I began to doubt my original assumptions. Basically, I thought that maybe somehow, we were thrown some great distance within the Epsilon Eri system, and began looking for the asteroid belts and the other inner planets. We couldn’t find them either. At that point we took things a step further and pointed our instruments at the star itself. It was more for calibration purposes than anything else. However, it was immediately clear that the star isn’t the same color as Epsilon Eri. I mean, Epsilon Eri is a K2 star, which is somewhat cooler and oranger than our sun. This star looks like our sun! I took several spectra and have identified it as a G3 star which is just about the same color as the Sun and only a slight bit warmer. Based on that, I knew for a fact that we weren’t in the Epsilon Eri system. My method, however, doesn’t tell us where we are, whereas Kate’s does.”
The room stayed silent after Don finished. There wasn’t anything to say. Jack looked to Kurt, who was staring at the table and running his hand through his hair. His engineer finally looked up and said, “You’ll have to bear with me on this. I’m just an engineer. I know antimatter drives, life support systems, avionics and the sort, but I’m no astrophysicist. So if I understand you right, you’ve looked at a couple dozen of these pulsars ...”
Don interrupted, “Thirty.”
“OK, thirty. And then based on where you see them in the sky, you figured out where we are.”
“That’s correct.”
“No it’s not! What you’ve said is insane. How the hell can we have traveled three-hundred-thirty light-years in a couple of hours, when it took us over a decade ship-time to go the 10.8 light-years to Epsilon Eri?”
“I didn’t say it took a couple of hours.”
“So, what’s that supposed to mean? Our clocks say only eight or nine hours passed since we flew by those damned rings.”
“It’s supposed to mean that we experienced only a few hours. Think about it. When we were on the Magellan, due to time dilation, we experienced only ten years pass. Back on Earth, however, over fifteen years passed. I’m just saying that it’s not inconceivable that if you could accelerate to hyper-relativistic speeds, you could do such a trip in a few hours of ship-time. Back on Earth, though,” Don took a breath and then continued in a much more subdued tone, “three hundred-thirty years would still have passed.”
Nadya jumped in saying, “The acceleration necessary to do that would be unimaginable. Saying that it would’ve ripped the ship apart would be a gross understatement.”
“Yet we find ourselves looking down on an alien world with a globe-encompassing city,” Don replied.
Kurt slapped the table and pushed himself deep into his seat.
“What about a wormhole?”
Jack turned quickly to his left to see that Masako had posed the question. Before Don could answer, Jack intervened. “Let’s hold off on any wild guesses for now. Don, you said it would take a few days to confirm our position using normal main-sequence stars.”
“Actually, more like two or three days.”
“Let’s skip doing a full navigational analysis, and assume that the pulsar data is correct. What if we just want to confirm our distance, not validate our complete position and orientation?”
Don stared off into space as he thought it over. Nadya then interjected, “Couldn’t we do it basically by just looking for our sun and simply measuring how bright we see it?”
As all eyes in the room shifted to her, she continued, “If we do assume the pulsar data is correct, then we know roughly where we are, and our orientation. That means we would know where to look with the ship’s telescopes to see our sun. All we’d need to do then is take its spectra to confirm that whatever we’re looking at is the sun, and measure its magnitude. You know, the further you are away from a bright object, the dimmer it appears.”
“That would give us independent confirmation,” Kurt added.
Don sat silently, staring at his terminal, prompting Jack to ask, “Don, how long would it take to do this?”
“I don’t know – maybe a day.”
“Good, use whoever you need and get this done asap.”
As they started to get up, Palmer called out, “Captain.”
Turning to the somber-faced man, Jack replied, “Yes?”
“We do have one fundamental and critical issue to deal with.”
Jack nodded his head for him to continue as he sat back down.
“If we’re truly three-hundred-thirty light-years from Epsilon Eri-D and the Magellan, then we’ve got a critical supply problem.”
Jack’s stomach dropped as the room fell deathly quiet. Palmer continued, “We only have seven days’ worth of rations left on board. The expectation was that we’d routinely restock our supplies from the Magellan until we were self-sufficient on the planet. We need to immediately implement survival protocols. At one-half rations we should be able to stay healthy and extend our supplies to fourteen days.”
“Two weeks? What the hell are we supposed to do?” Don shouted.
Palmer stared grimly at Jack. As the cross-conversations in the room grew louder, Jack said, “Quiet down, everyone.” Turning back to Palmer, he continued, “What else?”
“We should start trying to put together a plan hopefully either to make contact with someone on this planet, or at very least go down and scavenge supplies of some sort.”
“We’ll do both immediately,” Jack replied. “Have Kate broadcast messages in all frequencies explaining our situation. If someone’s down there, I want them to know we’re here and need help. In the meantime, I want a complete inventory of everything on this ship – water, food, fuel, spare parts – everything. Send me the results asap.”
“Understood,” Palmer replied.
Chapter 17 – July 19, 2124
Kurt allowed himself to relax as he floated by the window in the IPV’s observatory. The small room was dark; the only light came from the cloud-enshrouded planet looming outside. Nadya and Claire had just left to prepare their data for the meeting and he welcomed the chance for a bit of
solitude. He drifted closer to the floor-to-ceiling window until his face was barely a few centimeters from the glass, making it easy to forget the IPV’s cramped quarters. With only the planet and open space in front of him, he felt a sense of freedom that he missed dearly. “Computer,” he said softly.
“Yes Lieutenant Commander.”
“Can you pipe some music in here?”
“What would you like?”
“Mozart ... something not too loud.”
The opening strains of a violin concerto drifted through the air, tempting Kurt to close his eyes. Exhaustion weighed him down. He couldn’t remember when he last slept; not counting the time they were unconscious, it had to be at least two days. The image outside though forced his eyes to remain open. They had entered orbit uneventfully earlier in the day, and the mysterious planet now filled his entire field of view. Its alternating bands of muted red, grey and brown clouds formed a hypnotic pattern. Scattered along each band’s edges were large cyclones that seemed to be gently blending the bands into a bland, neutral gray mass. He imagined that over time, the entire atmosphere would be converted into that same, drab hue.
Their orbit carried them over one of the few breaks in the cloud-cover. The dark, metal surface made it look as if he were gazing down upon some intricate piece of machinery. In the fading light of sunset, Kurt strained hard to take in all of the details of the enigmatic city. He imagined the parallel lines to be roadways or transport tracks. They were bordered by countless rectangular and oval structures; each with progressively more complex patterns engraved within them. The structures must surely have soared above the planet’s surface, but from his orbital vantage point, he was unable to venture even a guess as to their true dimensions.
The music reached a crescendo, driving his imagination to explore what the planet must have been like before it succumbed to whatever forces ravaged it. He could see a world populated by tens of billions, and assumed it to be a utopia. Any civilization that reached this pinnacle of development must have solved the more mundane woes of social inequities and basic survival. It would be a race who’s only remaining mission was to explore the sciences and arts, expanding their own minds and understanding without even a hint of violence. It was something he would never have dreamt of without having seen it. But it was this same sight of an abandoned, ruined world that spoke against this. All of the IPV’s observations and their failed attempts at communications confirmed that it was indeed a dead planet. Something did this, and it wasn’t a natural event.
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