They crossed into the night-side, and Kurt lost his view of the city to darkness. On Earth, any metropolis seen just after sunset would have been ablaze with lights. He remembered looking down on the east coast of the United States, and marveling at how the lights of that urban expanse clearly outlined every intricate detail of the Atlantic coast. The receding city below, was pitch black.
They traveled deeper into the night and all that remained of his view was a ghostly, jet black disk that blotted out the surrounding stars. The darkness was interrupted only by the sporadic flashes of lightening deep within the clouds below. The fleeting blue-white bolts gave off barely enough light to make their presence known, and provided only the briefest of glimpses of the surrounding clouds.
His attention drifted away from the darkened globe as his mind focused on the stars. At three-hundred-thirty light-years distant, the Sun was far too dim to make out. That thought alone made their isolation disturbingly apparent and shook him free from his trance. He was aware again of the music and listened as a violin sang its melody against the chorus of a subdued orchestra. The piece was already in its final movement: nearly half an hour had passed.
“Computer,” he called out quickly, “time please?”
“Ten-forty-two.”
“Damn it, the meeting! End music please.” He opened the door and pushed his way into the corridor. His mind raced ahead as he tried to collect his thoughts and focus on the status reports he needed to present. But he couldn’t. He knew something big was going to happen. Nadya had hinted that she’d found something but wasn’t letting him in on it. All he knew was that she was pissed as hell when Don assigned the most mundane tasks he could find, to her and Claire: they had to double-check the unexplained errors in the pulsar data and see if there was any correlation between them. As far as she saw it, it was just grunt work. Kurt wasn’t sure if it was payback for something or a typical Don-oversight. The man was a bit egotistical, but he was also more oblivious to conflicts than vengeful. By morning, however, Nadya’s anger was gone and all she and Claire would say was, “Wait and you’ll see at the meeting.” He had even tried pressing Nadya into giving up her secret, but she ended the conversation quickly by giving him a disarming kiss and telling him with a mischievous smile, “You’ll have to wait like everyone else.”
Kurt turned the final corner and entered the crowded room; it seemed that most of the crew was already there. The eight seats around the table were long since taken, so he made his way over to an empty corner near the back. He looked to Nadya, but she and Claire were completely engrossed in their work at a terminal and didn’t notice him.
At exactly ten-forty-five Jack rose from his seat and said, “OK everyone, let’s quiet down and get started.” The conversations quickly ceased, and Jack continued, “Don, do you want to start?”
Kurt watched Don nod in acknowledgement and begin, “We completed a map of the immediate vicinity, and confirmed what Devon’s nav-data first suggested. There are two gravitational anomalies in relatively close proximity to this planet. Telescopic views show each to be composed of a group of three rings, identical in size and mass to the objects we encountered back around Epsilon Eri-D.” He quickly tapped a button on his console, and a small, gray-banded, softball-sized globe appeared above the table. Two tiny, bright red circles hovered at opposite ends of the table, equidistant from the globe. “As you can see, the objects are located roughly a million kilometers from the planet, in opposing, balancing positions. We still don’t know what these things are, but it’s not a big leap to assume that they’re associated with how we got here.”
The room grew loud with discussions before Kurt called out loudly, “You say that like you’ve confirmed where we are?”
The conversations quieted down as Don turned thoughtfully toward him and answered, “Yes, maybe I should’ve started with that info. Anyway as we discussed yesterday, we needed independent verification of our distance from Earth. We located the sun, verified it with its recorded spectrum in our database, and then calculated our distance based on its brightness. We are currently about three-hundred and thirty-five light-years from Earth.”
Don paused a moment, but this time no one questioned him. He entered another command at his console; the holographic map disappeared and the three large monitors around the room displayed a set of numbers. “The sun is located at these coordinates. We then took the following spectra and compared it against the reference data.” The monitors obediently showed two side-by-side graphs of jagged, peaked lines. As expected, they were identical. “They are from the same star – our sun. I would put the chance of error in our conclusion at less than one in a hundred-thousand.”
“Three-hundred and thirty-five light-years,” Jack repeated. “And we still have no idea how we got here.”
“No. Just that we encountered these ... these objects around both Epsilon Eri-D and here. There’s no evidence, no scientific basis to believe that they’re connected with this, but I just think that they are; it’s too coincidental. We need to put some real effort into studying them.”
Jack continued, “We’ll get to that. Now, what about the errors with the pulsar data?”
“We haven’t made any headway on that front.”
Nadya quickly cut in, “Actually, we have.”
Jack and Don turned to face her. Kurt wasn’t sure who moved more quickly.
“What do you mean, we have?” Don asked with an edge.
“Early this morning Claire and I made a breakthrough with the data.”
“I haven’t seen this...”
Jack cut him off, saying, “Let’s hear what you’ve found,”
“But I haven’t reviewed it yet,” Don protested.
“I want to see it now. We can review it here together.”
With Jack’s nod to her, Nadya stood up with a slight smile on her face. “First, let me be clear, we’ve reviewed and re-run these results a half-dozen times already, so I’m quite sure we’ve ruled out any obvious errors with what we’re about to see. But, I think that everyone has to scrutinize this further because we’re still having trouble accepting it ourselves. We’ll start by displaying a holographic animation that shows how we arrived at our initial results with the pulsar data. The second part will illustrate our new interpretation.”
The room went dark. Scattered around them were the red points they had used before to identify the pulsars’ positions, as well as the green rings representing their predicted positions. Nadya began, “As you can see, this is the same data Don showed last time. The pulsars are pretty close to their predicted positions, but it’s obviously not an exact match. We then thought a bit about Don’s suggestion of hyper-relativistic travel; travel so close to the speed of light that our internal clocks would be nearly stopped. As we all know, however, the stars outside would still have continued moving and interacting according to time in their own reference frame. Basically, three-hundred thirty-five years would pass out there. If this was the case, then over the course of those centuries, the stars themselves will have moved with respect to each other.”
“Of course,” Don said loudly, “I should’ve seen that.”
“Don’t worry Don,” Nadya answered in a conciliatory tone, “we were sure that that was the case too, but it turned out not to be the exact answer. Let me show you.” She pressed a key on her console, and the stars around them began to drift. “Right now we are looking at how the pulsars would have moved if we progressed from the year 2100 to 2400.” It quickly became apparent that they were going the wrong way. Without exception, every red pulsar moved away from its corresponding green ring. As the animation finished, Nadya continued, “To say the least, this was disappointing. We were positive that we were on the right track, so we worked through the night refining and re-running the simulation until there were no more adjustments that could be done.
“Then, as we stared at it, we noticed an odd coincidence: When we ran the simulation, every pulsar exactly doubled its di
stance from its predicted position. I don’t believe in coincidences. So we ran the simulation in reverse.”
The stars began to drift again. This time, however, each moved towards its respective green ring. The displays lining the walls around the room showed the years marching backwards: 2050, 2000, 1950, 1900...until they finally stopped at 1790. Every pulsar was perfectly centered in its corresponding ring. The room dissolved into pandemonium as nearly every voice shouted for Nadya’s attention. The voices ebbed slightly so that Kurt could just make out her shouts over the din.
“Quiet! Please quiet down! I think we can answer some of your questions if you let us outline some of the details for you.”
The noise began to subside, but not enough to satisfy her. “Come on! Give me a few minutes here. We’ll get to your questions one at a time.” When the voices calmed to a hushed murmur, she continued, “First, let me assure you that the results in this simulation are real. The speed that each of the pulsars is moving through the interstellar medium is well documented. We simply pulled that information from the ship’s library files and calculated their locations backwards from there. And yes, we triple-checked for the obvious possibility of a sign error – there is no chance that we got our equations backwards.”
Nadya continued with her technical review of their findings, but Kurt’s mind drifted. He knew the whole thing was impossible, but deep down inside, part of him couldn’t help but dwell on the possibility that this was for real: they had actually traveled back some three-plus centuries in time. He couldn’t resist the temptation to go a step further and dream about what it meant. The American Revolution would have ended just a few years ago, and the French Revolution would be just getting underway. At this very moment Louis XVI could be marching to the guillotine. What he wouldn’t give to actually see these events himself – could he? Reason tried to creep back into his mind as he thought, “Can this be for real?” He ignored that small voice, and thought about the violin concerto he’d just heard: had it even been written yet? A moment’s calculation in his head told him it had, though it would only be about twenty years old. Just the possibility of listening to something that hadn’t yet been written shattered his day dream. The paradox unnerved him at a most basic level. Morbid curiosity though drove his subconscious further: People who had been dead for centuries were now alive. Others who had dramatically affected his own history hadn’t even been born yet. It was insane!
Kurt tried to rescue himself from this vicious circle of speculation by focusing on the meeting. Don was questioning Nadya on possible errors. The conversation was too dry though, considering the meaning of it all and he gave up on it. A quick look around the room showed that most of the crew appeared as distracted and oblivious to the continuing dialogue as he. The urge to continue speculating about the possibilities of time travel returned, but he resisted. In the end there would have to be some reasonable explanation for all of this. Instead he glanced at a clock on the wall: Nearly twenty minutes had passed. To his relief Jack stood up and brought the discussion to an end. “OK, let’s take a break from this right here,” Jack said calmly. “Nadya, I trust your work, but I honestly don’t know what to make of it right now. To say the least, we have a lot to do to understand your results. But despite the temptation – and believe me, I’m tempted – we will save any further detailed review and analysis for later on. The only thing I can say for sure is that it doesn’t change our current situation with regard to our survival. Since that is paramount, we’re going to continue at this point with reports on our current status. Once this is done, we’ll look at assigning tasks related to our survival. After that, and only after that, will we be able to take the time to try and understand where we are and what’s happened. Is that understood?”
The hushed murmur of cross-conversations ceased completely as Jack waited for his statement to sink in. The ensuing silence was the response he wanted. “Good. Palmer, please proceed.”
“Thank you sir,” the first officer said, his voice showing no emotion. “The doctor and I completed a complete review of our current food reserves and our nutritional needs. As of this point we will be reducing daily rations to thirty-five percent.” The noise of hushed conversations picked up again, but Palmer continued loudly over it, “We will be preparing a nutritional supplement to accompany this. It will be in pill form, but it should make up the difference in terms of necessary vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. I expect that all of us will feel some discomfort from this during the first few days until our bodies adjust. Keep in mind that we have very few options and this is necessary. Also, we will be suspending the standard exercise regimen. That means that I don’t want people wasting energy on unnecessary physical activity. Following these protocols should extend our supplies to about twenty days. We will review this again in a week.
“Next is fuel. Nadya, you told me earlier that fuel reserves for the ion engines are at seventy-five percent, right?”
“Yes. Pierre checked the Xenon propellant levels and they’re at seventy-five percent of capacity. The reactor, of course, is not an issue. We’ll have enough power for all ship-board systems and engines for the next several months.”
“What does this mean in terms of the distances we can travel?” Palmer asked.
“We can make a couple of trips between the inner planets of the star-system before we run out.”
“So you’re saying, we’re stuck unless we can use whatever sent us here to send us back,” Don declared.
“You know that’d be the case even if our propellant was at a full hundred percent,” Nadya shot back. “The ion engines simply aren’t capable of getting us to the speeds we need for interstellar travel. The IPV’s top speed is only one percent of the speed of light – that means it’d take us better than thirty thousand years to get back. What I’m saying is that to conserve what propellant we have, we should pick our trips within the star system carefully. It’d be real easy to run out within a week or two’s time.”
Palmer nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned to stare straight at Kurt. “Hoffman, what’s the status of our other expendables?”
Though caught off guard by the question, Kurt recovered quickly. “Normally I’d be concerned about the chemicals we use for carbon dioxide scrubbing, and water and biomass recycling. However, our stores of all of these will easily outlast our twenty-day food supply. So, in short, we’ve got adequate stocks of these.”
“Good,” Palmer replied tersely.
Kurt watched as Palmer leaned over to Jack to say something. Jack then stood up and said, “OK, since there’re no surprises with our supply situation, then I’m going to lay out how we’re going to proceed from here. As I mentioned, right now I want all efforts focused on our survival. To this end, I’m going to divide you up into three groups. You will receive your assignments from your group leader. I expect them to be carried out with the greatest possible expediency.
“The first group will focus on analyzing the damage we sustained. In short, we’re going to go under the assumption that the rings are what sent us here. As a result, we will need to develop a way to better protect ourselves should we have to go through one of those again. Kurt, you’ll head up that group.”
Kurt did his best to hide his surprise at the sudden assignment as he said, “I’ll do my best.”
Jack shot him a quick smile that said he saw through his guise of preparedness, before continuing, “The second group will be focusing on reconnaissance and possible salvage missions. After a day and a half of scans and unanswered attempts at communications, we will proceed under the assumption that there is no one alive down there. So to be clear, we will be looking at possible salvage sites. Unlike Epsilon Eri-D, though, my guess is that this place was inhabited until recently, so I am holding out hope that we will be able to find something. I will be leading this group. I know many of you will, by nature, be interested in doing a lot more than just scavenging for supplies. But, let me be clear, anything we learn will b
e useless if we die out here. So, this is first and fore-most a salvage mission.
“The third group will study the devices themselves. As Don stated, initial observations show them to be identical in size, shape and mass to the one observed around E Eri-D. We’re going to need to find out very quickly how these things work. Our only hope at this point is that they are linked with how we got here, and that somehow we can use one to get back to E Eri-D. Commander Palmer will be leading this group.
“You will all be getting your group assignments within the next couple of hours. In the meantime, I want you to wrap up whatever projects you’re currently working on. Obviously, what I’ve just outlined will supersede all other duty assignments.”
Before anyone had time to react, Jack continued, “One last thing: I want you all to know that I have complete confidence that we will get through this. You know me well, so you know that I wouldn’t say this unless I believed it. Let’s stay focused.”
Kurt surveyed the faces in the room as Jack paused to scan the room himself. All eyes were focused on the captain; all but Don who was fidgeting with a hand-held computer. Jack’s voiced carried over the growing murmur as he said, “OK everyone, let’s get to work.”
The room slowly emptied in a stunned, almost orderly manner. Kurt stayed back, looked for Nadya, and spotted her just as she caught sight of him. He glided over to her and asked sarcastically, “So that was your little surprise?”
She only smiled in response.
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