by Doug Farren
To prevent the loss of bone mass and strength which would normally occur in space, the living quarters were built inside a large circular wheel which could be rotated to provide a simulated gravity of just over 0.8 G’s. A complicated counter-rotating balance wheel with computer controlled movable counter-weights prevented the gyroscopic effect from making the entire ship spin.
Jay floated down a corridor, paying particular attention to the location of the emergency stations. During his familiarization tour he met many of the crew who were apparently doing the same thing. Although they greeted him with respect he had the feeling they saw him as only a passenger. Jay found his way to the drive chamber and spent a few minutes inspecting the stardrive. He reluctantly turned around and made his way to the bridge where he hoped to find the captain.
One wrong turn and ten minutes of floating through passageways brought him to the ship's control bridge. Kauffman floated into the cramped compartment and stopped himself just inside the armored hatch. The captain was floating over a console watching an officer who was manipulating several controls and talking in a low voice. Jay could not make out what he was saying.
“Captain?” Jay announced his presence in a low tone, not wanting to interrupt any important work.
Captain Shoemaker held up his hand to acknowledge Jay’s presence but did not take his eyes off the panel. After about two minutes he said, “Very good Chris. I think I’m familiar enough with this console. Thanks.” He then expertly spun himself around with a light push of his foot until he faced Jay and said, “Mr. Kauffman. How can I help you?”
“Well Sir, I know you are very busy, but I would like to have a word with you when you have a few minutes. I can come back later if this is a bad time.”
“Oh no, I was just familiarizing myself with the communications panel. It’s a bit different than any I’ve used in the past. What can I do for you?”
“I want to be assigned a job. I know I can’t take the place of Kyle as your chief engineer but I’m sure I can be of some usefulness. I learn quickly. I’m getting the feeling that some of the crew might think of me as just a passenger and I don’t want any resentment to set in for my being here instead of Mr. Norland.”
“I understand your concern Mr. Kauffman. I’m sure the crew regards you with the utmost respect. After all, you are the inventor of the stardrive. But they are also seasoned astronauts and are keenly aware of the fact that you have never been on an extended flight before. They might harbor a little bit of resentment concerning Kyle, but you can be assured that it’s not directed at you. They are all professionals.”
“I don’t want to just sit in my room this entire trip,” Kauffman replied. “Isn’t there something I can do?”
“Well, how about if I assign you to engineering. You can work with Mr. Simatowski. He said you did very well in your training sessions.”
“That sounds fine with me. When do I start?”
“I would like to give you a couple days to get familiar with the ship. How about reporting to Mr. Simatowski the day after tomorrow—his shift starts at 0800.”
“Fantastic! Thank you Captain.”
“Glad to have you aboard Mr. Kauffman.”
The next two days passed quickly. By the end of the first day, Jay’s body had become accustomed to the zero-G environment. Jay spent hours wandering around the massive ship until he was certain he knew its every compartment and passageway. On his second day he asked John to blindfold him and take him anywhere in the ship he wanted. His goal was to be able to find his way back to his quarters within fifteen minutes and without making any wrong turns.
John took him to a small machinery room located in the far aft section of the ship. At first, Jay did not know where he had been left but after looking at the compartment number stenciled on the bulkhead near the hatch he had a good idea as to where he was. He exited the room and using his knowledge of the ship’s compartment and frame numbering system he was soon back on familiar ground. He made it back to his room with plenty of time to spare.
John turned out to be a good instructor and Jay was a quick learner. It wasn’t long before he was familiar with most of the major components under the engineer’s care. The first emergency drill was initiated while Jay and John were discussing some of the routine maintenance required by the ship’s main oxygen regenerator.
“This is a drill!” the ship-wide address system blared. “Hull breach between frames thirty-two and forty, deck four, port side. All hands to stations!” A moment later the ship’s general alarm sounded.
Following his training, Jay quickly made his way to the nearest emergency suit locker and donned a suit. Since he was not in one of the affected compartments he was not required to seal his suit but he did perform a seal check per procedure just in case the suit was needed.
John checked over Jay’s suit. “Very good!” Jay felt proud of this accomplishment until John asked, “Without lowering your visor what’s the pressure of your oxygen tank?”
The suit’s built in monitor had displayed a green status on all subsystems when he had run it through the final checks which had meant that there was oxygen available. John's stipulation not to lower his visor meant that Jay could not consult the suit's internal monitoring system which was displayed on the visor as a heads up display. He had neglected to look at the tank status in his haste to complete the procedure. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The suit’s internal diagnostics showed green.”
“This isn’t something they will teach you in the simulator. Diagnostics can fail. You would be wise to do a manual check on your tank pressure before selecting your suit. It takes an extra second to look at it but that extra second could save your life. Unless there is a catastrophic hull breach you will have enough time to do that check.”
A moment later, the captain announced that the drill was over. Jay carefully stowed the suit back into its place in the locker making sure that it had been properly connected to the locker’s internal systems so it would be recharged and resupplied with oxygen.
Several more drills were run during the day. Jay managed to respond to all of them without any errors. The scariest was the fire drill which simulated a fire in engineering. Because a fire aboard a spacecraft is one of the most life threatening events possible the crew had to react quickly and accurately. Jay was running the stardrive through a series of internal diagnostics from the maintenance panel when the captain entered the engineering space and, using a bullhorn, said, “This is a drill! Fire in the main fusion reactor output breaker!”
Kauffman reacted instantly. The nearest emergency suit locker was located one deck down and fifteen meters away. He spun around and launched himself in the direction of the locker. His aim was off by only a small amount and his feet landed on a maintenance cabinet quite hard putting a dent into the door. Jay pulled himself over to the locker and very quickly put the suit on. As soon as he was sealed in he contacted the bridge and reported his status.
Jay heard Simatowski a few seconds later and then his suit started to expand. For a brief moment Jay felt a bit of panic as he wondered if the suit would hold against the building vacuum. This drill, as with all fire drills, involved sealing off the affected compartment and sucking all the air out of the room. The ship was built so that it could be compartmentalized and each compartment quickly pumped down to a vacuum. This would remove the source of oxygen from the fire quickly putting it out. It also preserved the ship’s limited supply of oxygen from being consumed by a fire.
Jay’s suit felt stiff but he was able to move. After a few minutes the bridge announced that it was terminating the drill and after a few more minutes the suit began to collapse as the compartment was re-pressurized. The bridge then announced that the compartment was once again habitable and Jay removed the emergency suit. As he was closing the locker’s door John appeared and patted him on the back. “Very well done Jay!” He then noticed the dent in the tool cabinet.
Jay felt a pit forming in his stomach
as John traced the dent with the flat of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “My aim was off and I hit it pretty hard. I’ll…”
John turned toward Jay and laughed out loud. “Do you think you’re the first person to ever dent or even damage anything during a drill? You are supposed to react as if it were a real emergency. Five years ago my skipper pulled a fire drill on us while I was guiding a motor into position. You don’t need chainfalls in zero-G so the motor was floating free. It was in a perfect position to give me a good kick-off toward the emergency locker and when I did it went crashing into a waste pipe. We passed the drill but it took us a week to get the stench out of engineering. The bottom line Jay is to get yourself to an emergency locker as quickly as you can. This dent is nothing.”
After the first day of announced drills the captain began running unannounced exercises. Jay participated in fire, depressurization, loss of power, loss of radiation shield, and many other drills. As the crew watched his performance in these drills they began to accept Kauffman as a crew member rather than as an outsider.
On October fourteenth the crew prepared to spin up the living quarters. Jay had become used to living in zero-G but was looking forward to being able to feel his own weight again. The spin-up was a routine procedure but safety protocol meant that the living section had to be evacuated in case of problems. The captain ordered the ship’s internal air-tight doors closed and the spin-up was started. Jay was in the engineering module during the evolution.
“Commencing spin-up,” the captain announced over the ship's address system. A moment later Jay felt a shudder run through the ship. Several minutes and several vibrations later he thought he could hear a deep hum reverberating through the ship's hull. The entire procedure took fifteen minutes after which the captain announced, “Spin-up is complete. We have two-thirds G. All hands please check your compartments.”
The crew quarters section of the ship was a complex engineering marvel. A single rotating section would have created crew compartments with different levels of centrifugally generated gravity. A crewman assigned to one of the outer compartments would have experienced an artificial gravity more than that of a crewman assigned to a compartment closer to the axis of rotation. To prevent this, the living section was broken up into four separate rings each of which spun at a different rate. Because of this odd design a method of gaining access to the spinning rings was needed.
The solution was to build a separate ring on which several elevators ran. This ring was stationary and contained a set of guide rails running radially and circumferentially around the ring upon which magnetically driven elevators ran. One elevator at a time would appear at the hub allowing one to three individuals to enter. The elevator would then move radially along the ring until it was at the level of the desired destination ring. It would then engage a set of circumferential rails on both the destination ring and the elevator ring and then accelerate until its velocity matched that of the destination ring.
The mechanism which spun the four rings also provided the emergency escape route. A one meter diameter tube extended from each compartment out to the spin spindle. This not only provided the mechanical connection from each of the rings down to one of the four spin hubs but also provided a tube through which people could exit. A person would climb ‘up’ the tube but the further ‘up’ one went the less centripetal force was felt.
Jay waited in line with several other crewmen at the elevator hub until it was their turn to board an elevator. The elevator itself was mounted on a swivel assembly which automatically adjusted the occupant's position within the elevator as it came up to speed with the destination ring. For the first time in days Jay felt his own weight returning. It was an odd sensation. Less than a minute later, the elevator had synchronized its speed with his ring and the door slid open. A moment later, Jay was inspecting his living quarters to make sure that everything was OK.
In order to reduce the complexity of the spinning living quarters there were no physical connections between the spinning rings and the rest of the ship. This meant that electrical power was supplied through slip rings and no water or bathroom facilities existed. This design was an inconvenience to the crew but this inconvenience outweighed the health benefits achieved through providing the crew with an environment which simulated a gravity field. Bone loss and other biological changes caused by extended exposure to zero-G was still a major problem on long voyages.
Two days before departure, Jay was called to the captain’s cabin. He knocked on the door and heard “Enter!”. Jay slid the door aside and the captain rose from his tiny desk to greet his visitor. He was surprised to see that the captain’s cabin was not much larger than his own.
“Have a seat Mr. Kauffman. I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you for some time now but with all the launch preparations I’ve not been able to make the time.”
Kauffman took a seat in the only other remaining chair. “Thanks captain. How can I help you?”
“Mr. Simatowski has told me that your performance in the ship’s drills has been exemplary. He also has said that you would make a great engineer if you ever decide to join the AST space force.”
“Thank you sir. I’ll keep that in mind in case I ever need a new job.”
“What I have really been wanting to talk to you about is this stardrive we are about to test. I’ve read the explanation that has been given to everyone but as the ship’s captain I feel I need to know more. I’m not even sure what questions to ask. My greatest concern at this point is with my crew. Do you have any ideas about what it will feel like when we use the drive to travel at faster than light speeds? What are the dangers and is there anything that we can do to reduce these dangers?”
Jay had spent many hours deep in thought over these same questions. He had very few answers. “The technology behind the stardrive is something entirely new. It manipulates certain features of space and time with which we've had no experience. Personally, I don’t think there is any danger to the crew mostly because we will be inside an artificially generated space-time field. But I can’t be one hundred percent certain of this. That is why this crew has been told there is a chance of not coming back. There are risks.
“What will it feel like? Again, I cannot answer this question because I simply don’t know. As far as the risk; the most important thing I can think of is to ensure that the drive system field generator is as precisely aligned as possible. I wish I could give you better answers than that but we are dealing with things beyond our current knowledge on this adventure.”
The captain digested this for a moment then replied, “Well, I guess we will just have to trust your instincts on this one. Once we are on station and testing begins you will be in total control. Don’t let anyone try to rush you.”
“Don’t worry about that captain. I intend to see my drive take us to the stars. If it takes us a month to align, then we will spend a month doing it.”
The captain stood up, signifying an end to the meeting. “Thank you for being honest Mr. Kauffman.”
“My pleasure captain. If you have any other concerns please feel free to look me up.”
“That won’t be a problem Jay—this is not a very large ship.”
Two days before the scheduled departure day Kauffman was relaxing in his quarters when he heard a knock on his door. Getting up from the computer terminal where he had been reading a technical manual he slid the door open and found himself face-to-face with Anita. “Surprised?” she said in greetings.
“Very much so! What brings you up here?”
“I thought I would give the ship a final look before sending her off into space,” Anita replied as she made herself comfortable on Jay’s bunk. “I also wanted to give each member of the crew a personal send off. What we are doing here is history in the making.”
Jay took a seat next to Anita. “This is a dream come true for me. You know—I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for giving me the opportunity to work on my drive equations.
Without your support I don’t think any of this would have ever happened. I will be forever in your debt.”
“If the Kauffman stardrive works even half as good as you expect it to, all of humanity will be in your debt. My roll in this was to simply give you the resources to make it happen.”
“I’m still not comfortable with you calling the stardrive by that name,” Jay replied. “Although, come to think of it, it does sort of have a nice ring to it.”
“Well,” Anita stood up and smiled. “I have the whole rest of the crew to talk to before I can head back to the surface.” For a second she hesitated and then she reached out and took hold of Jay’s hands. Anita’s voice softened and a distant worried look appeared on her face. “You are a very good friend Jay. I really shouldn’t say this because I’m your boss but I do care for you and I will worry about you. Make sure you make it back.”
Jay gave Anita’s hands a reassuring squeeze and replied, “You are more than just my boss Anita. You are the closest friend I’ve got. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Anita returned Jay’s squeeze, took a deep breath then turned and walked toward the door. As she slid it open she said, “Take care of yourself out there.”
Jay stood staring at the closed door for many long minutes after Anita had left trying to sort through all the emotions that were running amok inside him. Why not? He thought. Anita was intelligent, beautiful, and single. But it would never work out. She was his boss! She was the CEO of one of the largest corporations on Earth. He was a simple engineer. Why would she be interested in someone who could lose himself in his work so deeply as to forget that other people even existed? No, these feelings could not be allowed to continue. Anita had only been expressing her concern for a good friend and nothing more. Logically, he had convinced himself that what he was feeling was all in his head. His heart, however, refused to listen to logic.