by Brian Smith
“Armstrong Station has some good restaurants. I was thinking a nice little dinner and some drinks, and we can finish getting caught up. I thought you might like to hear what Colin Harper is up to: he’s got a new gig heading up security for one of Kusaka’s new technology startups.”
“That sounds good—I’d love to hear what that one-eyed old bastard is up to. Any objections, hon?”
Ford shrugged, realizing, for the first time he could remember in a long while, he had no immediate responsibilities, problems, or worries. It felt good—liberating, even.
“I’m your man. Let’s go!”
Coda
Marsnet News Review
Select headlines from the final years of the twenty-first century:
March 2096
-Hyperwave communications—what’s the buzz about? Three letters, my friends: F.T.L. That’s right! For the first time in human history, a man-made radio-style signal was sent from the experimental transmitter on the Galileo Optical Imager to a receiving station on Luna. The signal-propagation speed was exactly as predicted by Tsong transform, covering the distance between the two stations at the speed of light squared. That’s c2, for those who didn’t hear it the first time. To put that in perspective, a signal that would normally have taken more than four hours to cross the 30.5 AU distance currently separating Terra and Neptune completed the trip in a little over eight-tenths of a second. That’s faster than a standard radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, can go between Terra and Luna. What does this mean for you? It means that in a few short years you’ll be able to converse with your aunt Lucy on Ganymede with no signal delay—at least not one you’ll notice. For those wondering how long it would take to send a message to your uncle Sal on Alpha Centauri, the answer is almost as good: less than two minutes of signal delay. Remember where you heard about it first: right here on the Marsnet, transmitted to you at good old-fashioned lightspeed!
June 2096
-Failure of third FTL probe! Kusaka Shiguro, CEO and founder of Federov-Kusaka Technologies, issued a statement today confirming that the company’s latest attempt to move physical mass “beyond the light barrier” was unsuccessful. Kusaka firmly stated that the theory is sound, however, and that physically accessing what physicists now refer to as the “‘third dimensional sheaf” is well within the realm of scientific possibility. Kusaka went on to state that the process is very energy intensive and that the first prototype model to succeed isn’t expected to yield real velocities of more than two to three times the speed of light. When asked what was next, Kusaka was very upbeat, stating, “We’ll stick with it—we definitely aren’t giving up. Every failure teaches us a little more and moves us another rung up the engineering ladder. It’s a long ladder to break the light barrier, but we’re getting there. The theory is solid: now it’s just an engineering problem.”
October 2096
-Dejah Thoris sighted? A crew of independent miners operating out of Ceres is the latest group claiming to have spotted the fabled Dejah Thoris, the modern-day Flying Dutchman that whisked several hundred AI synths off Mars in the waning days of the First Interplanetary War. Purported sightings of the Dejah Thoris continue to this day, despite assurances by the Chinese Federal Republic and the Trans-Oceanic Alliance that the vessel was last seen on a course taking it out of the solar system entirely. The imagery provided by the independent miners is of suspiciously low quality and considered suspect by the authorities. Coincidentally, this is the third straight year that a group has claimed to spot the mystery ship on or around Halloween. Trick or treat!
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November 2097
-Disaster on Lysithea! A formal statement issued today by Worthington Energy confirms that an experimental antimatter-production facility in the Jovian system was destroyed in some form of industrial accident. The tiny moon, known once as Demeter, was otherwise uninhabited. The explosion was bright enough to be seen from the surrounding moons, and it appears to have destroyed not just the industrial facility but the moon itself. WE is withholding the names of deceased facility personnel pending notification of their next of kin, but the company confirms that all souls were lost. Demonstrators gathered in several cities on Mars and Terra to protest the development of antimatter energy, restating concerns that it is far too volatile for safe power generation and that the potential for weaponization is too great to be ignored. Pundits on the other side of the issue have stated that antimatter energy production is coming—the theory is solid and the technology is being refined. Proponents further state that the reason these experimental facilities are located off-Terra, in the outer system, is to mitigate the risk of what happened to Lysithea. One advocate was quoted: “The loss of life is regrettable, but no worthy endeavor comes without risk. The pursuit of this technology is happening with proper safeguards for terrestrial populations, and in this case the system of safeguards worked as they were designed to: no unaffiliated citizens were injured or killed. This work will move forward at other, similar facilities in the outer system.”
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January 2098
-With the acceptance of a dozen more nations for membership, the Trans-Oceanic Alliance today announced that it is changing its name to the Trans-Terran Alliance. Existing members have endorsed, in addition to expanded membership, slight changes to the overall charter regarding federalized governance and the responsibilities of member nations. The first official act of the rebranded alliance was to announce that it would entertain petitions from former joint-TOA territories on Mars, to either formally join the new Terran Alliance or withdraw entirely, freeing them to form the foundation of a peaceful, independent Mars-based government. CFR and PEA authorities have yet to follow suit, although the PEA has formed an “exploratory council” to research further the changes embraced by the TTA and study their potential impact on Terran-based PEA member nations.
July 2099
-HUMANITY BREAKS THE LIGHT BARRIER! The Crandall Foundation, in cooperation with Federov-Kusaka Technologies and Hardesty and Hardesty Astronautics, has announced that test pilot Michael Ashburn, president of the Mars-based Crandall Academy, completed a transit between Mars and the asteroid 433 Eros in five minutes and twenty-seven seconds. At the time of the flight, the distance between the two celestial bodies was measured at 0.764 AU, or 6.5 light-minutes. The experimental lightship Hermes achieved a top velocity of approximately 1.2 c, slightly below the velocity achieved in unmanned tests, but a new human speed record for manned spaceflight. Asked what it felt like to be the fastest human alive, Ashburn displayed good humor. His response: “All I really want to do is go to Alpha Centauri. This just means I won’t be an old man before we can get there and back!”
In related news, Crandall Foundation chairman Carter Drayson has stated that the planned launch of the first interstellar mission will be delayed up to a year while the starship is retrofitted with a prototype FTL drive, already under development. The delay is expected to reduc
e the projected fifteen-year mission profile to eight years, cutting the transit times approximately in half. Drayson went on to state that, with hyperwave communication allowing near-real-time data transfer between the mission and the foundation, the first colonization effort could be mounted even before the initial mission returns to Terra, provided either planet in the Alpha Centauri habitable zones proves hospitable to human life.
March 2100
-Crew selection for Alpha Centauri finalized! The Crandall Foundation announced today that it has finalized its crew roster for the Melinda Crandall, mankind’s first interstellar lightship. Twenty-four men and women have been selected to make the crossing, which current estimates place at approximately two and a half to three years, one way. Once they arrive, the crew will make an exploration of two potentially habitable worlds in the binary star system, with up to a full year dedicated to surveying and exploring each planet. The lightship will then make the return journey, completing the round trip in an overall mission time of approximately eight to nine years. Thanks to suspension technology employed during the transits, crew members who aren’t essential to flight operations will experience the two-year mission duration only in the Alpha Centauri system itself, while those who are essential to the ship’s operation will rotate between periods of wakefulness and suspension, experiencing four years of total subjective time. Because of the nature of superluminal propulsion, which accesses what physicists refer to as “the third dimensional sheaf,” the ship and its crew will not experience any time-dilation effects, as they would during a transit utilizing fusion-torch propulsion, which the earliest plans for the mission called for.
The crew-selection process has been touted as “arduous,” perhaps the most difficult of the challenges involved in sending men and women to the stars. After a three-year selection-and-culling process, two test crews underwent final evaluation, with approximately two-thirds of the test-crew members participating in both. The final selection corresponds to the first test crew, whose members were deemed the optimum “professional and social fit.” Crandall Foundation chairman Carter Drayson stated that all parties are “pleased” with the final selection and that the mission is on track to launch on its revised schedule, in the first quarter of next year.
February 20, 2101
Starship Melinda Crandall (“the Mindy”)
In Lunar Orbit
“Well, tovarich, this is it. I’ll see you in roughly a decade, give or take,” said Captain Michael Ashburn, master of the Melinda Crandall, to Kusaka Shiguro. The two men were smiling broadly, their eyes shining with emotion and excitement at this temporary parting. “None of this would have been possible without you, my friend. Arigato gozaimashita,” Ashburn added from the depths of his soul.
Kusaka winked mischievously at him. “I might beat you there yet.”
“Don’t you dare!” Ashburn laughed, although there was slightest hint of seriousness in his tone.
“Hey— You’re already known as the first man to travel faster than light! Isn’t that fame enough?”
“Well, you’re the genius who invented the engine! Isn’t that fame enough?”
The two looked at each other for a long moment and then shared a belly laugh and a final embrace. “We’re going to keep working on the refinements, Mike-san,” Kusaka said seriously. “We may be able to send someone after you with an upgrade that speeds up the transit back—I promise I’ll time it so that nobody beats you there. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough,” Ashburn replied. “Give Miko-san my love. I want to see little Shiguros and Mikos running around when I get back!”
“I wish the same for you someday, brother,” Kusaka said sincerely.
The one thing that had always puzzled him about his friend was Ashburn’s apparent lack of desire to form lasting, intimate relationships. Part of it was the singular, laser-focused ambition Ashburn had always possessed which had gotten him to this moment in time. But there was something else, too—something a little more elusive. Kusaka had seen his friend briefly fall in and out of love a few times over the years, but in the end it always seemed like his friend was waiting for someone who hadn’t shown up yet. He hoped Ashburn hadn’t waited too long.
“This is enough for me,” Ashburn said quietly, as if reading his friend’s thoughts. “It’s what I’ve wanted my entire life. Anything good that happens after this is just icing on the cake.”
“Then, get going,” Kusaka said firmly.
The two men exchanged one last armclasp, and then the Crandall Foundation party gathered and moved through the airlock and back into their shuttle. Carter Drayson was among them, but he and Ashburn had already said their friendly goodbyes. Ashburn knew that optical imagers and telescopes all over the solar system were focused on this ship, but he didn’t care about that right now. He just wanted to get underway, before someone changed his or her mind about the whole thing.
When the official party was gone, Ashburn conducted a brief walking tour of the ship, just to reassure himself that everything was ready to go. It was not a frivolous gesture; they were leaving the solar system—the first human beings ever to do so. They were going to be a long way from home and dependent on only themselves if something went wrong. They would be beyond aid or rescue for several years. Any mission-critical systems failure in the interim meant they would all die. As captain, Ashburn felt the weight of history pressing on him like never before. This was what he had wanted, above all else—a chance for his name to be written in history alongside Magellan’s, Columbus’s, and Armstrong's. It would be attached to the success or failure of this endeavor for all time, and he intended to see the mission succeed.
Failure was not an option.
He paused in the suspension bay, taking some extra time to check the security and systems of the twenty crew members in suspended animation. Sixteen of them would remain in suspension for the entire crossing; four would relieve the current “active” crew in six months and would in this way alternate at six-month intervals for the entire transit. It had been hinted, given Ashburn’s top-tier contacts at the Crandall Foundation, that antigeria therapies were being developed which had the potential to greatly expand the human lifespan. They weren’t ready yet, and even their development would be mired in controversy once they became public knowledge. However, it tickled Ashburn to think that Alpha Centauri might not even be as far as he got to go. The one thing the past decade had taught him was that you could just never tell how things were going to turn out.
He made his way to the bridge, where Wei Shanzou, one of his deck officers, was manning the conn. Shanzou greeted the captain formally, but his face was split in a tremendous grin.
Ashburn felt his excitement growing as he settled into his captain’s chair and made a quick call down to the engine room. There, Chief Engineer Dhir Chandraskar was monitoring the energy output of their four main-line fusion reactors and drive systems. Every vital system aboard Melinda Crandall had been duplicated for safety: she was currently the only ship in existence that boasted a dual Federov drive; and while only one Kusaka Stardrive was installed, she had a complete set of components that could be used to assemble a second one if necessary.
“What do you say, Dhir? Are we ready to get this show on the road?” Ashburn asked.
“Yes, captain,” Chandraskar replied.
“Very well. Mr. Shanzou?”
“Keps are computed and laid in, captain.”
“You have the deck and the conn, Mr. Shanzou. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy the view. Transmit the departure signal and get underway.”
“Yes, sir,” Shanzou replied. A canned message went out to signal their departure, and Ashburn could only imagine that the eyes of most of humanity were riveted to images of this moment displayed in snoopers or oculars. In space, the Melinda Crandall pivoted easily in the general direction of the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross, and accelerated within a few minutes to 0.35 c, her top sublight speed. Several hours later, once they
were well below the ecliptic plane and past the equivalent distance of Neptune, they engaged the Kusaka Stardrive.
As with Ashburn’s first (and subsequent) experiences with superluminal travel, the starfield ahead of them seemed to blue-shift as the Mindy accelerated, and then to fade out as she broke the light barrier. Perceptually, the transition seemed to strand them in an inky, infinite blackness. The first time Ashburn experienced it, it had scared him so badly he’d almost wet himself—something he’d never told anyone.
Despite successful unmanned tests prior to his historic flight in Hermes, he’d spent the longest five and a half minutes of his life wondering whether he would “return to reality” at the end of the flight or be trapped in a black nothingness for all eternity. Kusaka had explained repeatedly that the traveler never physically entered the third dimensional sheaf. It wasn’t a form of hyperspace, a wormhole, or immersion in a higher dimension, but more as if the vessel were surfing a third-sheaf dimensional wave front. The cosmos was still out there; current technology just lacked the sensor capacity to see it. In the future, when FTL sensors were developed, those traveling at superluminal speeds would still be able to “see” the outside universe. Ashburn looked forward to that day, because he still found the impression of sensory deprivation deeply disturbing to his hindbrain. To battle that feeling, he and the other crew members liked to use a virtual overlay that displayed a mentally soothing, artificially generated visual of the external universe.
That was the view Michael “Dakota” Ashburn enjoyed now, along with a fresh cup of joe as hot and black as he could brew it. Dead ahead in the center of his screen, the warm yellow light of the Alpha Centauri binary beckoned him forward, into the future.
Appendix A
Dramatis Personae
Principal Characters