“What about others?”
Dag hesitated.
“You're right I shouldn't be putting others in this kind of danger, not without their volunteering. I guess it's the same as when we found out we had lost all those years. I was fascinated by the confirmation of general relativity while everyone else was worried about their families.”
He paused and looked at her.
“I'm sorry I didn't take your safety into account Miss.”
Ally teared. “Dag you should know by now that I'll support you.”
“You're a good friend Miss.”
Dag reached for Ally. She took his hand. They hugged.
“Yes Captain I think you've taken your ship as close to the source of this anomaly as is possible. It would be best if I took an escape pod filled with my equipment from this point on.”
“But Dr. Mach and escape pod has very limited maneuverability and power. I'm not sure it will be any better.”
“It is smaller sir. It should therefore not be put under the stress the ship is enduring. And it is important that I get measurements from closer in. It might be important for the future of humanity.”
“If you go who will operate your drive?”
“Walker and Ally should be able to do it as well as I.”
“Okay Dr. Mach. You do as you feel you must. We will wait for you.”
“And sir.”
“Yes.”
“Don't tell Ally that I'm going she worries.”
“Of course.”
24
Jomo and his family had been back in the village for a month. But the village was more a collection of damaged and deteriorating buildings than a community now. While a few other families had stayed the majority was gone. No more than fifty people remained.
Jomo's great-grandmother had died in the three weeks after they arrived. He had wondered if it wasn't from a broken heart since she had been in good health before the death of his great-grandfather.
But the strain was great on everyone. The planet continued it's rolling and shaking as the disruptive stress of spacetime increased. It was like the failure of a frame of a building. With its fall the walls, the windows and floors could not hold for long.
Jomo and his father and Jomo's oldest son Wangari spent most of their days searching for food to supplement what was left in the shuttle. They were not in danger of running out yet but if they didn't find a way to bring in more food the situation could get serious.
The problem was that the changing planet was devastating the plants and animals also. Trees uprooted, streams disappearing into the gaping holes of a broken world and animals dying of thirst and hunger. And no longer did a day go by without some ground quake or aftershock or ground fault opening and swallowing the surface above.
The air was always filled with smoke or haze from fires burning or a distant eruption. Volcanoes that hadn't erupted on Adowa in centuries were active again. And at any time the surface might buckle and explode skyward as a new fault developed. It was almost luck that the village had not been the target of such destruction, yet.
This day Jomo and the others had gone deeper into the forests surrounding the village. Jomo had hoped they would find a new source of meat which was getting very depleted in the area around the village. Jomo was in the lead with his son in the middle and his father bringing up the rear.
Suddenly the ground shook, the three were knocked off their feet. Then the noise of the quake got louder. Jomo had never heard it so loud. A great sound like something tearing began building beneath them.
As Jomo looked back to see how the others were doing Wangari went down. As he scrambled to rise a fissure opened at his feet and spread. He couldn't rise to his feet and disappeared down the divide.
“Wangari!”
Jomo ran to his side of the fissure while his father did the same. Jomo looked down and there about fifty feet from the surface was his son lying on a ledge. He yelled down to him but got no response.
Jomo looked across the still growing break.
“Father, go to the shuttle and bring the hyper-cord.”
His father immediately started for the shuttle.
Jomo kept calling to his son but got no answer. The fissure had quit spreading but seemed to be continuing its destruction out of sight as Jomo could hear it. It wasn't until a half-hour later when his father got back that the trembling ground started to subside.
Jomo told his father to throw him the hyper-cord. Catching the spool Jomo started immediately feeding the cord down into the fissure. Once it had reached his son Jomo took out his Emmie and began manipulating the tech-enabled cord to wrap it around his son, under his arms. Like a snake, the cord, driven by micro-scale internal actuators, curled around Wangari. The power for its movement was contained in the spool's hub where an isotopic reservoir existed.
Once under Wangari's arms and shoulders Jomo braced himself and caused the hyper-cord to retract. It started looping as if a spring and then began to close the loops pulling Wangari toward the surface where his father was resisting Wangari's weight.
Once the hyper-cord was tightly coiled Wangari only needed to be pulled the last few feet up and onto safe ground. Jomo immediately caused the hyper-cord to release his son and retract onto its hub. Putting down his Emmie and the hub Jomo moved to his son and raised him.
“Wangari, Wangari! Can you hear me?”
Though unresponsive Jomo could tell his son was breathing easily. Checking for broken bones or signs of internal injuries Jomo found none. He felt it safe to move his son.
“Dad I will carry Wangari around this fissure. It must end within a few miles at most. You start back and prepare as best you can to treat Wangari when we get there.”
With that Jomo was gone. His father didn't even have time to acknowledge.
25
Dag had outfitted the escape pod with the equipment he would need, assisted by a couple of technicians. He had sworn those technicians to secrecy. But on a small ship in the middle of nowhere there are no secrets.
“Dag how can you risk your life like this?”
“Miss I have to. We must find out more about what is causing spacetime to disintegrate and I have to get closer to the source. The ship can't take me any further.”
“But an escape pod? Those have limited maneuverability and minimum power. Do you really think it can take you to the source and bring you back?”
“I think so Miss. I had some technicians and engineers modify it so that it is more robust.”
“Why didn't you ask me to help?”
“I was worried about worrying you.”
“So you were just going to disappear?”
“No, of course not. I was going to say goodbye.”
Goodbye? That stopped Ally. Dag noticed the look on her face. The same one she had when she found out they had been circling the wormhole for eighty years.
“Miss I'll make it back I promise.”
“You won't have to. I'm going with you.”
“Miss no.”
“Why not? I can operate the vehicle while you make measurements. You said you made it more robust. Well I'll look at the changes and improve them. We'll have a flight-worthy craft when I'm finished.”
Some of what she said made sense to Dag. Especially having a pilot while he focused on measurements. Still.
“Is it a good idea to split the helm functions from the scientific functions?” Ally asked.
“Well yes but . . .”
“Good, then I'm volunteering unless you think you can find someone better.”
Dag hesitated.
“There's no one better than you Miss.”
The escape pod rechristened Little JS1 or LJS was ready. The voyage had been planned and the course plotted and should take no more than a long day. There was no provision for the crew to sleep so that Dag and Ally would have to stay awake the whole time they were gone, for Dag it wasn't a problem. There was some provision made for problems that might arise in
that there was food and water for Ally for several days. But that was typical in an escape pod.
The pod was launched down the exit tube of the JS1 in the approximate direction of the anomaly. At first the flight was smoother than aboard the JS1 but as they closed on the anomaly the small craft began to be buffeted and the sound of a ping like a hammer on the hull began to be heard.
“What could that be?”
“I'm not sure yet Miss. But it seems to be related to the buffeting that we are experiencing. And that is related to the breakup of this spacetime.”
“But we're in space Dag. There is no sound in space.”
She stopped.
“Maybe we are imagining it?”
“No I don't think so Miss. Give me a little time.”
It was an hour later. The pinging sound had become steady and louder. Dag had reviewed his measurements and his physics.
“Miss I think I've come up with a hypothesis for the sound we are hearing. It is reminiscent of the phenomenon discovered in the twenty-sixth century when the wormhole transportation system was established. The sound occurred when at a wormhole wall the repulsive energy to keep the wormhole open and the gravitational attractive energy trying to close it balanced but not exactly and created oscillations in the wall. The energy was so great that it caused gravitational waves of high frequency to radiate away from the wormhole walls. When impinging on a ship's hull these waves set up sympathetic vibrations, some of which were in the audio range. Ships had to be redesigned to minimize this sound.”
“I see. So are we approaching a wormhole wall?”
“No Miss but something similar must be happening. I think we are approaching an area where repulsive energy, sometimes called dark energy, is pooling kind of like a fountain. A kind of oscillation between the repulsive dark energy and attractive gravitational energy is being created until it smooths out far away from the anomaly.”
“But where is this dark energy fountain coming from Dag?”
“I don't know yet Miss.”
Two more hours passed. Now the sound was much louder. Ally had put on noise cancellation earbuds. Dag had just turned down his audio gain. Not only was the sound louder but there were also flashes of light outside the pod. Also, Ally was having a harder time keeping the pod in trim. Sometimes it would lurch one way or the other.
“Dag I don't think we can put up with this much longer.”
“I think you're right Miss. I just need a few more measurements and we can get out of here.”
Ally looked at her Emmie which was showing an outside view. There she saw scarlet streaks like lightning that would explode and fork in many directions. The light was from all directions at once.
We must be at the source, she thought.
Then like a plow encountering a rock the pod lurched and decelerated at a tremendous rate. No sooner had it stopped than it began to accelerate in the direction they had come.
“Dag what's happening?”
Dag, who had not strapped in as he should, was busy trying to keep his head from being crushed against his test equipment.
Some seconds later the acceleration eased and Dag said, “I think we hit the source of dark energy head-on."
“Are you okay Dag?”
“Yes Miss I think what happened is that we encountered a large area of concentrated dark energy. It acted just like the negative energy bubble of the spin-two drive in that while it was attracted to the pod, the pod was repelled from it. The pool of dark energy was so large that its momentum changed very little while we experienced a violent change.”
“Any thoughts on why there is a fountain of dark energy in our universe?”
“Nothing concrete. But the gravitational interferometer did register a reading that, if correct, that is if it wasn't a malfunction, has all the signs of a region of space detached but close to ours.”
“You mean another universe, next door? A baby universe?”
“Whether it is a baby universe or not will be determined when I extract more data from the instruments. But it definitely looked like a detached region.
“The only difference being that I think it is the source of the dark energy fountain.”
Ally busied herself with making sure the pod was traveling in the direction she expected to find the JS1. Dag continued to review his measurements. The trip was now smoother, the pinging sounds had stopped.
Eventually, Ally spoke up.
“Dag I don't know if its the excitement or the duration but I'm feeling funny.”
“What do you mean Miss?”
“I feel calm but unengaged with what is happening.”
“Miss put the pod on auto. Let the Ems fly it from here. Just make sure we are headed in the right direction and turn on the emergency transponder.”
But Ally didn't move or couldn't move. Her eyes were closed. Dag moved to engage the Ems and the emergency transponder before he felt the effects that Ally had already succumbed to. He too felt “unengaged” and then he was offline.
26
Jomo didn't make it back to the village until after dark. The fissure was miles long. It was the worse he had ever encountered. Tired, he collapsed as he handed Wangari over to his father.
“Jomo you okay?” asked his wife.
“Yes, but it has been a long day. How is Wangari? He will be fine I'm sure. Your father says he just has bumps and bruises, nothing broken. But Jomo I have some bad news.”
“Yes?”
“Your grandfather has been killed. It was one of the buildings. He was searching for anything that might be useful. It collapsed and we had to dig him out of the rubble. But it was too late.”
Jomo had had enough.
“Why are we being tortured like this? What have we done? How can a benevolent creator gaze upon our wretchedness and do nothing?”
His wife was a bit shocked. Jomo had never seemed to doubt the creator. His loud voice had brought other children into the room but Wangari was still asleep. She stared at him, unsettled and a bit afraid.
“Jomo you'll scare the children,” said his grandmother. “We don't have the right to question our destiny, we have the duty to rise and meet it.”
Jomo looked at his grandmother who had so recently lost her life-long partner.
“Well,” he said in disgust. “Our destiny seems to be to die because this wretched creation can't hold together. So may we all rise for our execution.”
They were all shocked. Jomo didn't care.
“Sir I have an emergency beacon,” said the comm operator aboard the JS1.
“Where Defar?”
“I would put it at least one AU.”
“Moving?”
“No sir, I would say drifting.”
“Helm plot a course to intercept.”
The JS1 set off immediately to investigate the beacon which was no doubt from the escape pod. At top speed it would take the ship almost five days to reach the location.
It was the third day and the JS1 was still approaching the location of the beacon when without warning a large popping noise echoed through the crew wheel which had been powered back up after the ship reached top speed. The noise was deafening but seemed to have stopped with no damage detected.
The Captain was still questioning personnel when the popping was heard again, still at an ear-splitting volume. The Captain ordered everyone to put on protective earbuds.
The popping continued the next day and the following increasing in frequency until it was more than once per minute. The intensity had increased to the point where the noise-canceling earbuds were failing to mask the sound. Only with earphones were the crew members in control able to communicate and do their jobs. But there weren't enough to go around. Many of the crew were starting to show signs of trauma and stress.
They were closing in on the location of the beacon and had been decelerating when the engines failed.
“Helm what has happened?”
“Engine room informs me that fusion has been que
nched. They don't know why.”
The Captain called the engine room, the Chief Engineer answered.
“I don't know Captain. I'm running diagnostics. I'll let you know when I get some results.”
“Helm will we be able to finish deceleration to target with the reaction motors.”
“Yes sir.”
“Very well bring them online.”
The ship had decelerated. There was no sign of the pod on the wallscreen.
“Helm why am I not seeing the pod on the screen?”
“Captain we are still a ways from the beacon's location.”
“And why is that?”
“I don't know sir. The Ems programmed the burn. It appears that we have stopped too soon.”
“Okay helm just get us there.”
The ship began moving again toward the emergency beacon's location. After an hour the wallscreen pinpointed something.
“Is that it?” said the Captain.
“Yes sir,” answered helm and comm at the same time.
“Okay get up close and bring them aboard.”
The Captain called Walker.
“Walker once we have Dr. Mach and Dr. Mekur aboard I want you ready to get us out of here.”
“Yes Captain.”
Eventually the pod was brought aboard and the Captain wasted no time in giving Walker the go-ahead.
But nothing happened.
“Walker engage the drive.”
“I'm sorry Captain the drive's not working the space has changed too much.”
“What do you make of it Doc?” asked the Captain.
“From what I can tell it appears to be a form of hibernation.”
“Hibernation in a human? I've never heard of that.”
“Well that's the best I can come up with.”
“Is she going to come out of it?”
“I suspect she will. I've given her what she needs to keep her internal organs going.”
Cycle of Stars Page 14