“Apparently, not fast enough,” Urania wryly remarked. “No, the brain scan isn’t bad at all. As for the full body scan, you are completely healthy. Very healthy in fact. On a somewhat related topic, I’ve gone over your tweaks to Geena’s meds and explained it to her the day you fought the Helgans. She’s appreciative and plans to switch to taking the altered version today. Its just been too hectic since then. I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to Ron about it yet, but we should have all of you on the same version. Try to avoid switching pills with Ron, the contraceptives are radically different. Won’t hurt you, but won’t prevent pregnancy either. Geena’s version is the same as yours. But you know all of that. It’ll be months before her internal damage is repaired. Still, she should improve with time. A mineral supplement will help with that. I’m really am sorry that it never occurred to me to alert her to the problem.”
She sighed. Urania had quickly become adept at making those non-verbal noises humans were prone to make. “I should have told her. I’ve also analyzed the box that the Rose is kept in. The lining has some interesting properties that we should go over at some point. I would even go so far as to suggest it’s over-engineered for shielding the Rose. Based on the analysis I’ve been able to do, I see no reason why the Rose even needs to be in a shielded container.”
“Interesting,” Lexi agreed. “I definitely want to go over that. Now, though, I’m thinking we’re going to arrive at Cardin in, what, three weeks? Since you’ve restricted my rubric usage, what can you tell me about the Accord?”
Chapter 26
Worlds of the Accord
“Technically,” Urania began, “’The Accord’ is the term for a contract ratified by eleven space-threading cultures between six and eight thousand years ago. Only one additional world, Ostrieachia, has developed space-threading tech and joined the Accord since then. That was around a thousand years ago. The name has come into more general usage to describe both the region of space these worlds occupy as well as the political entity itself, such as it is.”
She paused. “We don’t have a rubric covering this. You know Ron pretty much grew up on this ship, right? I have lots of educational material for teaching purposes. A lot of it overlaps the rubrics, but not all. He was a bright boy and an excellent student. You should spend time going through the material too. For instance, we have lessons covering the culture and people on each of the Accord worlds. You’ll find that useful.”
“Good idea. That should be a good use of my time until I can start hitting the educator again. Just tell me about it for now, please.”
“The contract itself is very non-restrictive on member worlds as long as they keep their hands and noses out of each other’s business. There are certain restrictions on the size fleet a world can maintain, but frankly, dear, star fleets are expensive and no one wants to spend that kind of money on hardware that will never be used. Of all of the Accord worlds, Vankovia boasts the largest and strongest fleet and even they aren’t near the limits imposed by the contract.”
Lexi looked thoughtful, following every word. “Would you project a holographic star chart for me with each world’s position highlighted as you mention it. I’m curious as to what this all looks like.”
Urania said, “Sure. Keep in mind we tend to think in terms of hyperspace travel times rather than actual physical locations. They’re not the same. The volume of space considered the ‘Accord’ is huge.” As a large star chart appeared in the space surrounding Lexi, Urania said, “Earth is the dot blinking green. Ackalon is over there blinking pink,” she chuckled. “I used the same color as the Rose of Light. Cardin’s Paradise, Ron’s and Geena’s home world and our current destination, is the pulsing yellow dot off to your left. No particular reason for using yellow, by the way. That’s Vankovia lit up purple in the upper left quadrant. That’s where I’m from, of course.”
They were still at it an hour later went Ron came out to make coffee. Noting the three dimensional display taking up most of the control room, he asked, “What are you kids up to? You can’t use that to navigate through hyper, you know?”
“Yes, we know. Bring the lady her coffee and take a seat, Ron,” Urania said. She assumed that at some point the novelty of telling her crew what to do would wear off, but she also figured she may as well enjoy it while it lasted.
Taking a mug of coffee from Ron, Lexi said, “Thanks, honey.” Then to Urania, she asked, “So these are all the worlds with intelligent life in Accord space?” Thirteen bright dots, each representing a world, were now lit up across the cramped expanse of the control cabin.
“Not at all, Lexi,” Urania replied. “These are just the twelve member worlds of the Accord plus your own Earth. There are several Level-Three non-Accord worlds. The Level-Three designation means they have space-threading technology. The non-member worlds have decided not to sign on as part of the Accord. Earth is a Level-Two, defined as possessing a high enough level of technology to be dangerous, but short of the ability to thread space. Level-One worlds are primitive with at best rudimentary machine tech. An example would be a tech-base like your world’s Roman Empire. There are actually many Ones and a few more Twos in the area.”
Lexi scanned through the display. “Add in the Level-Threes down to the Ones, would you please. Tell me what you know about each as you go.” While Lexi’s astro-political education was progressing, Geena joined them on the bridge. Ron got up to refill coffee cups, ducking under, rather than walking through, a holographic Level-Two world that sprang up in his path.
Seeing what was going on, Geena remarked, “Back to your earlier question about common DNA, the populations of many of these worlds are human. The Vankovians and Borgolians are both exceptions, being totally alien. The Helgans may or may not be. The Wraix would be another, except they seem to have disappeared off the charts entirely. No one has seen any of the Wraix in centuries. As far as I know, the Accord never even knew where their home planet was.”
Sitting again, Ron said, “You’re forgetting Ostrieachia, Mom. Those people clearly aren’t human either. Level-One and Two worlds are supposed to be off-limits, Lexi, but there are abuses. Technically, Geena and I shouldn't have been on Earth, but as long as we caused no trouble and remained unnoticed, no one in the Accord cared.” He shrugged. “If we had to ground there and call for refueling, it would have been awkward.”
Lexi sat quietly for a few moments, sipping her coffee, with her eyes closed. “Urania, set only the Accord worlds highlighted for me.” Lexi looked at the display with interest. “Now add in the Level-Two and Three worlds, but use a different color.” She again examined the display. “Blink Vankovia for a minute, will you.” After a moment, she added, “Now Earth.”
"What are you doing, Lexi?” Geena asked.
“You're missing some worlds. The Vankovians are exploring in the wrong direction.” She stood and walked into the display. Pointing her finger at a spot on the chart, she asked, “What's here?”
Urania replied, “It's just a water world. Uninhabited, of course. Odd you should ask about that one first. It was discovered only eighty years ago by Ron's grandfather. He named it Grammin. Lexi, despite the relatively small number of Accord member-worlds, the Accord covers a huge expanse. There are still hundreds of unknown worlds in this volume of space. What do you mean we're missing some worlds?”
“This arrangement isn’t random. There's a pattern buried in the distribution of human life. But there are gaps in the pattern. I need more data points. Move the display back a hundred-thousand years, please. Show me what it looked like then.” After studying the rearranged star map for a moment, she said, “Can you animate it? Bring it up to the present over the next four minutes.” After the display was back to the current time she said, “OK, that didn’t tell me anything. Now, take it forward in time. Let’s say a hundred-thousand years at the same rate.”
She walked through the display, looking at it from different angles while she sipped her coffee. Finally, she said, “Int
eresting. Bring it back to the present and rearrange them in terms of hyper-travel times.” After studying the new arrangement, she said, “I think it’s an n-space pattern. Oddly, it only makes sense mathematically when looked at now, give or take a couple of decades. Would you bring back the original view and gray out any non-human worlds. Wait, put that one back. You called that one Borgol? They’re not human?”
Urania replied, “They're a humanoid, largely silicate-based lifeform, but not human. Their name for their species is Grake.”
Lexi smiled. “Want to bet? Has anyone ever compared their DNA? You can take away Helga. They don’t fit the pattern. I don’t think they’re human. I’ll test the blood on the sword before I clean them this afternoon. One last thing, show me known near-terrestrial worlds with no sentient life.”
After no more than a quick glance at the display, Lexi remarked, “There are a quite a few of them, aren't there? Your Forerunners didn't seed worlds at random.”
“If that is the case,” Geena said, speaking slowly, “if you really see a pattern in all of that, then what was the point? What were they trying to accomplish?”
“I have no idea,” Lexi admitted.
Ron was staring at her, his eyes wide. “Like Mom sort of said, if you see a pattern Lexi, you’re the only one who ever has. What if the freakin’ Forerunners left a message for the future, kiddo. You said it only makes sense now. If that’s what your pattern is about, I tend to think that they might have left it for you.”
Lexi frowned. “That’s disturbing.”
Chapter 27
Dirty Helium
Urania wasn’t quite shouting, but her voice was louder than normal. “Everybody wake up. Now. We’ve got another problem.”
As Lexi rushed into the control bay, she already noted that the constant shaking of hyperspace travel was missing. Seventeen days en route to Cardin’s Paradise meant Lexi was probably the farthest away from Earth anyone born there had ever been. Unless Geena’s inconclusive researches into ancient mythology missed earlier visitations and somewhere out here were Roman legionnaires.
Seventeen days meant they were still six days away from Cardin’s Paradise. Urania’s forward screen was blank. The lighting was dim. It felt a few degrees colder than the ship was kept at. Lexi guessed they must be on battery power again. She didn’t take the time after hopping out of bed to dress. She might need to find her sweats again. She was strapped into her chair in seconds, with Geena and Ron right beside her.
Urania didn’t wait for anyone to ask. “Emergency protocols kicked in and shut the reactor down. We’re currently running on battery power only. As you can probably tell, we’re back in n-space. I haven’t tried to determine where.”
“Any idea what happened, Urania?” Geena asked.
“No, sorry.”
Ron said, “OK, the reactor shut itself down. There are only a few situations where the automatics would kick in and do that. If the reactor was overheating, Urania would know about it. That’s supposed to be one of those things that can’t happen anyway. If something broke and it was leaking, again we have sensors back there. Urania would know what happened. We’d all probably be speaking in high squeaky voices if it was venting helium helium anyway. So we’d all know it. We can’t be out of fuel again, we topped off the tanks.”
“We have to figure it out before the batteries die,” Lexi remarked. “I’m going to start with the reactor logs.”
“Good,” Ron said. “I’ll make us coffee then go check the machinery.”
“I’ll grab us some breakfast bars, then head to the rear with Ron.”
“I’m just going to sit right here,” Urania remarked wryly. “I’ll see if I can help with the logs. I’m also running diagnostics on practically everything other than the coffee maker.”
It wasn’t long before Lexi sat back and took another sip of her coffee. One advantage of the travel mugs they used in zero-gee was that they were insulated. Her coffee was still pleasantly hot. Ron and Geena were in the back of the ship, disassembling some of the hardware. Urania picked up Lexi’s voice and sent it over the speakers through the ship. “We ran out of fuel.”
“Lexi,” Ron said, “everything down here says the tank is full. And you and I already replaced the sensors that Urania relies on. She’s showing a full tank, too. Right, Urania?”
“Yes, Ron. However, I do see what Lexi’s looking at. The reactor thinks we’re dry.”
“Thanks. Got it. Gives us something a little more specific to look at. Mom, can you open up that other panel by the wall. I’ll keep working on this one.”
Just over two hours later, Lexi announced, “I’ve got something.”
Over the cabin speakers, Ron said, “I hope it isn’t transmitted by body fluids.”
Before Lexi could say anything, she heard Geena say, “That doesn’t even approach being funny, Ron. What did you find, Lexi?”
“The reactor thinks we ran out of fuel. We know we didn’t. I converted the digital logs of the helium three flow to analog. The graph makes what happened pretty clear. I should be seeing a smooth, almost straight line. Fourteen days ago, we have our first ripple. It’s minor, but it’s there. The ripple indicates the reactor wasn’t getting the full amount of fuel it was trying to draw. It pulled harder and the line looks fine for the next eleven days, then it starts rippling again. The magnitude of the ripples dropped off a bit after an hour but never quite smoothed out again. It was good enough until early this morning, when it abruptly spiked. Apparently, we don’t have software to look for something like this.”
“So the spike corresponds to when the reactor shut down?” Geena asked. “Why are we getting the ripples?”
“It could be a bad part, Mom,” Ron said. “I think we’re going to have pull every component between the tank and the reactor and replace it with a spare. Fortunately, we have spares for all of them. If I start doing that, can you put the panels back together?”
“Of course.”
“Ron,” Lexi said, “you may as well do that. When we have time I want to check for any unusual deposits or corrosion on any of them. However, I think the timing of the failure is too coincidental to be a random component failure. I think we have bad fuel. Something dirty got through the refinement process.”
“Just so everybody knows,” Urania said, “we’re in the middle of nowhere. The fuel in that tank is all we have until we get back to Cardin’s Paradise. Makes me wish we hadn’t topped off the standby tank too. What was left in it would have at least given us a couple of additional days of power, but if the main tank is contaminated it’s likely the standby is contaminated too.”
“True,” Ron said, “but it’s foolish to have a standby tank that’s half empty. It’s there for emergencies. Refilling it was the right thing to do. At least we fully recharged the batteries. Let Mom and me get to work. Lexi, you and Urania figure out how we’re going to reprocess our fuel if this turns out to be other than just a bad part. We’ll knock off for lunch in a couple of hours and see where we’re at.”
They ate dinner bars and drank plain water for lunch. No one wanted to waste the little bit of power opening the refrigerator would cost them or for that matter using the coffee maker again. The situation this time was far more precarious than when they were still in the solar system and could have returned to Earth. While they ate, Geena said, “I want you to know, Lexi, that this is the first time we’ve had issues like this since Crane and I bought the ship thirty years ago. We keep up with the maintenance.”
Lexi smiled. “I know. I actually checked the maintenance logs looking for clues. We had the initial failure with the sensor not reporting the tank was practically empty. OK, even on a tight maintenance schedule that can happen. You guys were hot on the trail of the Rose of Light and let it get too low, but with the sensor giving inaccurate readings you had no way of knowing. It’s not like you can unscrew the cap and stick in a dipstick. At any rate, that problem would have been picked up and the sensor replace
d, or at least recalibrated, when we got to a maintenance bay on Cardin.”
She paused. “I find it hard to believe that in eight thousand years of star flight, none of you people have ever refueled from a planetary atmosphere, but I suppose it’s possible. Neither Urania or I could pull up any documentation on doing it. I got something wrong in the process. I still don’t know exactly what.”
“No recriminations. It got us this far, darling. Neither Ron nor I would have even thought of trying it. The question now is can we fix it?” Geena asked. “We kind of have to. Otherwise we die out here. I’d hate for those new medications you made for me to go to waste.”
Lexi laughed. “Well, yes. We have to, don’t we? The problem is the amount of time we have left to fix it in. Urania?”
“At current power consumption levels, we lose power in thirty-eight hours. I’m sorry, but there is nothing left to shut down to conserve power.”
“Does anyone have any ideas of how to deal with this,” Lexi asked.
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