Jason went below to ready the gravitonic radar set up in one of the workshops. How useful it was to have a shipmate! And, he really trusted Dalton, too. He got the radar working, interfaced its controls to the ship's computer, then went back up to the pilot room.
Looking over Dalton's shoulder at the computer display he found that they had more than covered half the distance to the spouting southerly current. It was getting late, however both of them were too anxious to postpone their operation until morning.
Jason told the computer to send for two cups of coffee.
Soon, there suddenly came a knock at the hatch in the floor of the pilot room. Jason looked down in surprise. Dalton started snickering. Jason told the computer to open the hatch, and when it slid open, there was one of the little robots sitting on the elevator with two steaming cups of coffee resting on top of it.
Jason picked them up carefully, and asked suspiciously, "Did you program it to knock?"
Dalton answered proudly, "Yes. But, only for certain tasks that aren't time-critical. Hey, there's no cream in mine!"
"We ran out."
"Hmm. We have powdered milk left, don't we?", asked Dalton.
"Yeah. Tell it to bring you some."
"Oh, I don't care... Hey, this doesn't taste so bad!"
"Ah, you're acquiring a taste for good coffee, the mark of a seasoned Adventurer. Our galley is currently featuring coffee beans from South America on Earth."
"From Earth? The home planet?"
"Yeah, it's a hell of place. You can get anything there."
"I stopped there once, back when I was a kid."
"With your dad?"
"Yeah," Dalton did not mind mentioning his father. He remembered only the good times with him, and no longer thought about his tragic ending. Space was a dangerous place, and people got killed. "We did some trading at the Riyad space port."
"That's their biggest one. I believe it's now the biggest in the Galaxy."
"I was just studying about it a few days ago. It IS the biggest in the Galaxy. I saw a map of that part of the world.
It's on a gigantic peninsula, in the middle of a huge, flat desert, just perfect for a space port. It's been there forever!"
"Yeah, since the time of the Original Builders."
"The ones that built Infinity City?"
"Yep. I think they even launched from Riyad. It's hard to remember. It was a long time ago when I had to read the legends back in school."
"What legends?"
"That's what they call the diaries and written accounts left behind by the Original Builders. But, the actual physical originals are all gone, and we only have copies of the text stored in the Infinity City Library. Some people don't think they are authentic at all. There's no way to tell. That's why we call 'em the LEGENDS. They teach them in the schools, though.
Seemed pretty believable to me."
"What are some of the legends?"
"Oh, Dalton, I can't remember. Ask the computer. They're all there. But, not right now. You're busy flying the ship, remember."
At the reminder, Dalton grinned over at him glowing with pride and excitement.
Jason switched the radar control system into a nearby viewscreen. It was all warmed up and ready to go.
Taking advantage of side winds from the approaching southerly gravitonic current, Dalton increased the speed of the sailship, and soon they closed on the southerly current. "My turn," announced Jason, and Dalton reluctantly traded positions with him. It could be tricky plunging into this strange, new kind of current. But, the gravitonic radar only worked on the inside of a gravitonic current. And Jason was a very experience pilot. He ordered the computer to make sure all objects within the ship were secure, and he told it to cover the pilot room dome. After a few minutes, after the three little utility robots had picked up, the computer reported "All secure." It was time to enter the rapid southerly current.
Jason flipped out the manual controls from within the arms of the pilot chair. Dalton leaned forward from his own seat eagerly watching every move. Jason swung the ship over to a course parallel to the southerly current spouting out and away from the whirlpool. Jason was secretly relieved to be moving away from the looming donut-shaped monstrous thing. As he slowly moved closer to the current, the side "winds" picked up, moving the ship along faster and faster. Small eddy currents between the side winds and the main current began jostling and rocking the ship. The spout from the whirlpool was as strong as the currents rocketing out from the poles of a star!
When they finally entered the main current, the ship surged this way and that in unpredictable directions. This current was rapid, and almost unstable! He did not want to remain in it for very long. "Computer, tell the gravitonic radar to begin scanning the current."
"Acknowledged."
They shot down the gravitonic current rapidly. The radar antenna swung slowly back and forth, up and down, sending waves down the entire cross-section of the current. Minutes passed.
They watched the radar screen expectantly. No echoes.
After 15 slow minutes, there was activity on the radar screen! Dalton left the secondary pilot seat to stare over Jason's should at the radar screen. Some kind of pattern! But, it was weak, and distorted, and changing constantly. The radar computer flashed an analysis at the bottom of the screen: "ECHO
FROM END OF CURRENT."
Dalton looked at Jason quizzically, "No ship?"
"No ship," Jason said with disappointment. "That's the echo from the radar. The waves have gone all the way to the end of the current, and some have bounced all the way back. Computer, how long is the current?"
"Unknown."
"Computer, how much time passed between the start of the radar signal and the return of the echo?"
"15.3 minutes."
"Computer, determine the length of the current from that data."
"580 light-years."
"My God!", cried Jason. "That's the longest current I've ever heard of! We'll have to report this to the Guard. Hey, Dalton, we'll get written up in the INFINITY CITY JOURNAL OF
RECENT DISCOVERIES for this!"
"Wow, that's great! I'll bet the northern current is just as long."
"Yeah, maybe the colony ship is in that one. Computer, terminate the radar. Man, I'm getting sleepy. Let's get out into dead space, and 'drop anchor' for the night."
"Can I pilot the ship?", Dalton asked expectantly.
"After I get us out of this wild current..." Jason brought the ship over, and slid quickly out of the gravitonic current.
They switched places, and Dalton carefully piloted them away from the current, following a perpendicular course.
Once they were far enough away, barely drifting, Jason ordered the computer to take in all sail, and retract the struts.
As a further thought, he ordered the little robots to crawl around the strut housings, and sail storage cans, checking for any damage from the long voyage. Normally, the computer could deduce damage from any change in a sail's behavior. But visual inspection was required periodically.
They dragged themselves tiredly down to the living quarter.
Jason swung the bed down from the ceiling for himself, and collapsed onto it. Dalton opened up the cabinet, he had originally stowed away in. Here, he had made a cozy nest of blankets and pillows for himself. It was a strange place to sleep, but it had one major advantage: The cabinet door could be closed when Jason's snoring was at its loudest!
The next morning, Jason rolled out of bed early, showered and dried in the little hygiene cubicle. He then pulled on a fresh one-piece coverall, and went over and tapped the door to Dalton's sleeping cabinet. The door remained closed, there was no sound. Jason opened the door and looked in. There were rumpled blankets and pillows but no Dalton. Hmm. "Where's Dalton?", he asked the computer. "Pilot room," it replied.
Jason proceeded up to the pilot room where he found Dalton at the controls, tacking the ship back and forth through the side winds just outside t
he southerly current. He was heading back toward the whirlpool so they could investigate the northerly current. "Being careful?", Jason murmured.
"Of course," responded Dalton, confidently. Jason approved, and thought to himself: I LOVE THIS KID!
"Computer," Jason inquired, "how close is the whirlpool?"
"Thirteen minutes at present rate of progress."
"That's close enough! Set a course tangent to the whirlpool, Dalton, and go around it."
"Aye, aye, skipper!", he cried gleefully, and followed with a series of commands to the computer to help him astronavigate around the menacing whirlpool.
WHERE'D HE LEARN THAT? Jason wondered. PROBABLY ONE OF
THOSE VIRTUAL-REALITY SHOWS...
There were many gravitonic gusts up from the whirlpool, but due to their instability, progress was much slower than it had been through the stronger side-winds. It took over two hours to skirt the whirlpool. Halfway along, when they were adjacent to the plane of the whirlwind's spin, they sped up slightly due to the incoming gravitons coalescing to form the whirlpool.
Once on the other side, they slowly maneuvered up to the northerly spout, with Jason once again at the controls. Once inside the northerly spout, surging this way and that due to its mild instability, equal to the southern current, Jason activated the radar again. This time, after only two minutes, they heard a sharp ping from the view-screen showing the radar status!
There on the screen an image was taking shape. As the radar continued to sweep ahead, the computer analyzed the echoes to build a picture of an object farther down the gravitonic current.
Even though the gravitonic current was rapid and strong, it seemed free from significant external noise. The returning echo was very sharp. The image on the screen grew clearer.
Jason and Dalton peered breathlessly at what the computer was drawing. They looked at each other amazed! Jason said,
"Guess what we just found, Dalton, old buddy!"
There on the screen, in sharp contrast to the black of surrounding space, a gray object was displayed. It was shaped like a tapering cigar, with landing fins on the sides at one end.
Dalton looked back at the image, "Looks just like the pictures in the news report!" He whirled around, and grabbed Jason's arms. "We found it, Jason! The missing colony ship! We FOUND it! We'll get written up in the INFINITY CITY JOURNAL OF
RECENT ADVENTURE, right?!"
"That's right, kid. You're an official Adventurer now!"
Dalton whooped with excitement and leaped around the pilot room. Jason chuckled, and reminded him to be careful around the controls.
Dalton ran up to the radar screen, looked again, then looked up at Jason, his eyes bright with excitement. "Let's go get 'em!
Let's go rescue them!"
"Take it easy," Jason replied calmly. "You forgot something. Computer, calculate the distance of the ship on the radar screen using the time it takes the radar echo to go out and come back?"
The computer reported, "88.7 light-years."
Dalton groaned, "Oh, no! That'll take weeks!"
"Yeah, I know. They've been sliding down this current for a long time. Hey wait a minute!" Jason looked up at the ceiling frowning in thought. "If that ship was reported missing about 87
years ago, and it's 88.7 light-years away from this whirlpool, then they're almost going the speed of light! Dalton, they must be living at a SNAILS PACE!"
"Wow! Because they're so close to the speed of light?"
"Yes! We're going to meet the original crew and colonists that lifted off 97 years ago! It's only been a short time for them. Just a few years..." He asked the computer to make some calculations based on how long it would have taken the colony ship to travel from its home world to the whirlpool. "It's only been about seven years for them!" He shook his head, "They're watching the stars go zipping by a dozen times faster than they should. They must be terrified! Dalton, let's go help 'em out!"
"All right!"
The computer was instructed to proceed down the current.
But due to its mild instability, Jason and Dalton spent as much of their time as they could in the pilot room, in case anything unexpected happened. Jason kept the radar scanning continuously.
It would warn them if anything ELSE, that might have been sucked down this spout by the whirlpool, was in their way.
Day by day, they drew closer to the colony ship. Day by day, their excitement rose.
8. RESCUE FROM THE CURRENT
It would soon be time to begin slowing down to match the velocity of the colony ship. This required such accuracy that only the computer could accomplish it. The unusually long gravitonic current rapidly moved at over 1,000 times the speed of light. The colony ship however, without any faster-than-light mechanism for gravitonic interaction, was being dragged along at only little more than nine tenths the speed of light.
Jason set up a program in the computer to smoothly reduce their speed slowly down, achieving the speed of the colony ship at a point just in front of it. Then, they would carefully maneuver closer.
Jason initiated the process though the colony ship still a few days ahead. He wanted room for error.
They slowed down easily. The first day passed. Then the second. Then the third. But as they grew closer to the speed of the colony ship, a frustrating development occurred.
The gravitonic current was extremely fast, and also slightly unstable. This instability resulted in mild surging movements of the sailship in random directions. No problem at very high speeds. But as the sailship had slowed way down, the surgings had a stronger effect, as if the gravitonic current was being pumped along by a gigantic Galactic heart. They would not be able to rendezvous with the colony ship with this unstable current surging the gravitonic sails this way and that, distances 100 times the very length of the colony ship. There was no way to board the colony ship while it was inside this gravitonic current. Was it possible to move it out?
While they considered this problem, yet another developed.
At their present speed, one thousand times less than the speed of the gravitonic current, the surgings had become very powerful, and warning devices reported undue strain on the ship's gravitonic sails.
This was easy to solve. They simply tacked slowly over, and popped out the side of the gravitonic current into the gentler side winds, where they discovered it was easy to maintain the slower velocity. So easy in fact that they brought the sailship through the side winds up parallel with the colony ship's position in the gravitonic current. But now they were at an impasse.
They sat around the pilot room discussing the problem for hours. With the aid of the computer's sophisticated data query capability, they poured through its atomic memory files looking for any similar problem ever recorded in the annals of Infinity City Adventuring. There was nothing. They had the computer search all volumes of the JOURNAL OF RECENT ADVENTURING. Still nothing. Just that single article by the Adventurer who had first discovered this whirlpool. And when Dalton noted the name of that Adventurer, he gasped out loud, his eyes growing wide.
He looked at Jason. "That's the Adventurer I grew up with! This story is about when WE got stuck in a whirlpool. Jason, it's the same whirlpool!"
Jason was amazed, and then something dark stirred in him.
"You mean this guy here is the one that dumped you in Infinity City?"
Dalton looked down at the floor, remembering that awful time. "Yes."
Only a summary of the article's highlights had been displayed. Jason now requested the entire article. There was a picture of the Adventurer! He was fat, with small black eyes that were cockeyed. And he was also BALD!
The PILL OF LIFE could not control balding. This was a genetic defect causing a mild destructive incompatibility between certain male hormones, aggravated by prolonged physiological stress. This trait was rare in Infinity City, where genetic defects could be cured by a treatment causing a molecular chain-reaction within all the cells of the body resulting in the r
epair of a given defect for every single DNA molecule. ( Note: The cause of aging, like all bodily functions, was rooted in the DNA molecules. Unfortunately, it involved a complex interaction between so many different genes that no one had yet invented a chain-reaction repair. Fortunately, this complex interaction, discovered long ago, was easily inhibited with the PILL. ) This particular Adventurer obviously had an off-world parent with questionable genetic structures.
Dalton groaned looking at the picture. "That's him!" His voice began to shake. "He... He killed..."
Jason interrupted, "That's all right. Don't think about it right now. We'll catch up with him someday." Jason memorized the face. This guy deserved payback for what he had done to Dalton. Then, he saw that the article reported the man, a certain Bartholomew Katz, had retired on a world around Rigel after phenomenal gains by his investments during the ninety three years he had been away. NINETY THREE!?
Jason whirled around to face Dalton, who was sadly looking off into space. "Dalton!", he shouted. Dalton snapped his head around to look at Jason in surprise. "According to this article, you were stuck close to the speed of light for 93 years!
You're... How the hell old are you anyway?"
"I just turned 16 on my birthday, remember?"
"Oh, yeah. But you're really over 100 years old, Infinity City time."
"What?", Dalton said slowly.
"The article says this Katz creep returned to Infinity City 93 years after he had last been there. Do you remember ever being in Infinity City before? Maybe that's where your mother is!"
"No, we never stopped there. Captain Katz hated the place..."
Jason interrupted irritably, "Don't call him CAPTAIN! He's a..." Jason checked himself, not wishing to call him a killer reminding poor Dalton about his father. "He's just a criminal!"
"Yeah, okay. He sure is." And now something happened inside Dalton, and all the pain from all the bad memories caused by the Adventurer Katz, changed from sorrow into anger. A hot, burning desire for revenge! "Yeah, I'm gonna get him, someday!"
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