by Dane Bagley
***
“Where is Captain Jenners?” injected James into the peaceful silence that Bob had been enjoying for the past several hours. James seemed excited, almost panting as he walked in and began looking around like he had misplaced something.
“I don’t know, James, what’s up?” he asked smiling.
“Where are we?”
“On the deck,” Bob said sarcastically.
“Where is this ship? I mean right now, where exactly is this ship?” James continued looking around frantically, practically vibrating with excitement.
“Uh…”
“Where is Captain Jenners? How long ago did he leave the deck?”
“I haven’t seen him since the start of the shift,” Bob said as casually as he could. He felt a little bit of pride swell within him as he said it. He hadn’t really caught on to the level of James’ concern. Bob knew that James would know it was his first time flying. He hoped the conversation would turn to this subject and lighten up significantly.
“What, you’ve been flying it these past several hours?”
“Yep.” He could feel the pride swelling. Here comes the ‘congratulations’, and ‘how was it?’
“Then where are we? Where is this ship right now?” James almost shouted. Bob didn’t even get an, “Um,” out. “Where is Captain Jenners? He needs to be on deck right now! Call him!”
Bob felt deflated, irritated, and disrespected. He was the third in command. But he picked up the intercom and called, “Captain Jenners, you are wanted on the flight deck,” in a calm and annoyed tone.
James was frustrated in the lack of urgency with which the call went out. He almost went to the intercom to redo the call, with the appropriate level of urgency and franticness, but thought better of it. Instead he went to the instruments, and began reading and typing. Mike walked in. “Hey guys, what’s going on?”
Bob opened his mouth, hoping to find someone more interested in his accomplishment. Before the words could come out, James interjected, “Merick’s been flying these past few hours, and I don’t know where the Captain is.” James was obviously distracted, and did not turn around to look at Mike. Mike lifted his eyebrows and turned to look at Bob. He, too, was ready to say something to Bob, when James started up again. “Somethin’s wrong. I don’t know where we are. We are not on course. I saw somethin’. I heard somethin.” Footsteps could be heard approaching. “Is that Captain Jenners?”
“No, it’s me,” Kenny said as he entered the deck.
“We are not on course. We need to figure out where we are.” Both Mike and Kenny looked concerned and headed over to James. Bob was turning red. Whether it was from embarrassment or anger even he couldn’t tell. Ironically, the navigator, who had been flying the ship, was not being consulted as to where they were, or how they had gotten there. “I saw somethin’ and it just isn’t right. We passed by a star and a planet—way too close; we weren’t supposed to go that near to anythin’. I put my readings on the planet, and I saw somethin’.”
Everyone’s ears perked up. Even Bob began to understand. Just then Steve entered the deck. He walked in quietly, while everyone’s attention was diverted.
“What’s all the fuss up here?”
Everyone turned towards their Captain. Steve had a look of annoyance on his face that was unknown to any of the crew. Mike, who knew him the longest, had never seen that look on Steve’s face. He was unkempt, like he had just gotten up from a nap.
“Captain Jenners, we are off-course,” James began.
“Merick, what’s going on?” Steve said more sternly than was his way. Bob did not want the discussion going his way just yet. He didn’t answer immediately, hoping that James would keep going on with the message that he was relaying before the Captain came in.
But all eyes were now on Bob. “Captain, James says we are off course, but as far as I know, I have flown just right.” The Captains and the crew’s eyes turned towards James.
“Captain, we just passed by—I mean close by—a star and a planet.”
“We are not charted to go close by anything!” Steve exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, that is what I’m sayin’. But we did; so, I knew we were off course,” James explained
“Kenny, we’ve got to get on course. Figure out what is going on. Who knows what we could be heading towards? Mike, you take over navigation, and make sure that nothing is in our way, imminently.” Kenny and Mike began directly. Steve turned towards Bob, but was interrupted by James.
“Captain, there’s more.” He waited a moment for Steve’s attention to turn towards him. “I got some readin’s of the planet. It was lucky, and I didn’t have much time. But I saw somethin’. It’s goin’ to sound crazy, but it was there.“ Steve continued his eye contact but did not say anything or show any expression.
“Captain, that planet had AC.”
“You can get readings on air conditioning,” Bob spoke up.
“Alternating current, sir; that planet had alternating current. I know it sounds crazy. I wouldn’t make it up.”
“How long ago was this James?” It was clear that Captain Jenners’ wheels were turning. His demeanor was noticeably different. It’s one thing to be the Captain; it’s another thing to be in ‘uncharted waters’ and facing unaccountable circumstances.
“Maybe ten or fifteen minutes, sir. As soon as I was out of range, I came running up here looking for you. I didn’t know why we were off-course, and I knew we could be in danger. But I also knew that I had found what we were looking for.”
“Are we off-course, Kenny?” asked Steve.
“Yes, I believe so. Yes, we are off-course, but I’m not sure how long or how far we have gotten, yet. I’ll give you an update ASAP.”
“Are we in any imminent danger, Mike?”
“At our speed, I have a window of about five minutes for large objects—maybe sixty seconds for smaller objects. We will have to watch closely until we are back on our charted course.”
“Sir, are we heading back on-course, or back to that planet?” James asked with a degree of desperation.
Steve did not answer. Kenny looked around as if to say, “Where am I charting towards?”
“Do you know what is going on now, Kenny?” asked Steve.
“No, still working on it,” he replied as he turned back to his work.
“Let’s go back to the planet,” exclaimed Bob. “We can check it out, and then get back on track. Rev up the speed a bit, and we’ll be right back to where we need to be.”
“We went off about four hours ago,”stated Kenny. “We’re lucky to be alive. It looks like we headed into as open of a region as we could have. How close to that planet did we come, James?”
“Real close, Kenny—real, real close—nearly orbit range. We could have easily been goners.”
“What happened, Kenny?” asked Steve.
“Merick punched in a 9 instead of a 6,” explained Kenny.
“Let me see that,” Bob said as he headed towards Kenny. He looked at the readout and uttered, “oops.”
“What’s the reverse course time frame?” asked Steve.
“I’m working on that now.” Kenny was the best pilot in the fleet, and he was showing his worth right now. “It’s not looking good, though.”
“Fourth dimensional travel doesn’t work like 3D travel,” Mike started in. “It might take half an hour to go one way, but to stop, turn around and head back, it could take weeks. Plus our destination is not exact. We only know generally when James got the readings.”
“We are in very open space, sir. We should be able to set a re-course back towards that planet. If James’ readings are correct, we may have found exactly what we are looking for,” Kenny explained.
“Captain, Kenny’s right. Even if the planet turns out to be nothing, at least we will have a safe orbit to re-chart our course and get back to where we are supposed to be. If the
re is something there, then we won’t have so much explaining to do when it gets out that we were this far out of our way,” said Mike. Mike had Steve’s ear more than anyone else. James did not have any reason to argue with any of the logic, so he looked eagerly at the Captain. Bob was careful not to bring any more attention to himself, so he just sat there and looked on.
“Re-chart our course back to that planet, Kenny.”
“Yes, sir. There is only one likely star, and I’ve already got a re-course charted. We can adjust for planetary orbit as we get closer.”
“How long?”
“Less than a day, sir.”
Chapter 15