Ad Astra

by Jack Campbell

  "That's correct. However, sufficient time has elapsed so that we should have been able to observe such events from the tests by now."

  "I see." Horton licked his lips, closed his eyes, then nodded. "Well, I guess we've got to keep trying." Then his eyes shot open and he looked around the table again. "Wait a minute. You said you wanted me to pilot the probe. But I'm a Systems Officer, not a pilot."

  "Yes, Commander. We know that. That's why we're asking you to, uh, occupy the probe for this test."

  #

  Earth's sunlit arc, splashed blue/white/brown, hung within Josh Horton's line of sight. Next to the small viewport stood Dr. Orasa, waiting patiently for Horton's attention to return to her. "Sorry, Doc," Josh apologized. "I've never been up here on the station before. The views are pretty impressive."

  "That they are," Dr. Orasa agreed. "Seeing the Earth from here always reminds me of that scene in the movie where the waltz is playing as the space station rotates majestically. Of course, our station doesn't rotate. Do you remember that scene?"

  "Oh, sure. Everybody involved the space program knows that one. But that's not the movie I was thinking of just now."

  "Really? Some other space epic?"

  "Uh uh." Josh smiled in half-embarrassment. "I was thinking about the old musicals. You know, with the spectacular dance routines."

  "Yes…" Dr. Orasa replied with a mix of puzzlement and patience.

  "I always loved those routines. Watching Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Ann Miller dance like you figured angels would if angels ever acted in films with silly plots. So, I was looking out and thinking what kind of dance routines those people could have done up here in zero gravity. Imagine it!"

  Dr. Orasa smiled in reaction to Horton's enthusiasm. "I suppose I can. Be that as it may, Commander Horton, I'm sorry my information won't be as dazzling. In truth, there's very little I can tell you."

  "I thought you were a hot-shot quantum physicist, Doc."

  "I am," she replied with another slight smile. "The problem is that just about everything we know about conditions on the other side of the light-speed barrier is theory. All I can do is summarize that theory for you."

  Horton nodded somberly. "Because nobody who's actually been there has made it back."

  Anguish shadowed her face. "I'm afraid that's correct. We don't know how moving faster than the speed of light will affect many things. Our nervous systems, for example. Or your perceptions of everything around you. Do you understand the concept of a frame of reference?"

  "Yeah." Josh nodded again. "The Three Stooges did a routine about that once."

  "The Three Stooges?" Dr. Osara blinked in evident confusion. "They did a routine about alternate frames of reference?"

  "Yeah," Josh repeated. "In the skit they were carpenters, I think, and Moe and Larry got into an argument over which way was Right and which was Left. So Moe calls over Curly and tells him and Larry to stand facing each other, then tells them both to point to their Right. Well, naturally Curly points one way and Larry points the exact opposite way, and Moe gets mad, calls them knuckleheads and slams their heads together. But they were both pointing the right way, based on their own frames of reference. Right?"

  Dr. Osara blinked again. "Uh, yes. That's…roughly the concept involved. You'll be perceiving the Universe in a manner different from any of us who aren't traveling at your velocity."

  "But you don't know just what that'll mean."

  "No." She managed another smile. "I hope you won't consider me a knucklehead because of that."

  Josh smiled back, trying to ignore the tight knot which persisted in forming in his guts. "Nah. You don't know what you don't know, do you?"

  "Uh…no. Good luck, Commander Horton."

  "Thanks. One more question, though. Do you know why I specifically was picked for this mission?"

  Dr. Orasa shook her head, frowning slightly. "No. I can't imagine it was because of your fondness for Ann Miller and the Three Stooges, but I don't know what criteria were used for your selection."

  Half an hour and fifty meters later, Josh stood staring at the object which held his fate. Prometheus Seven, resembling nothing so much as an outsized round trash can with a slightly convex nose, sat locked within its cradle inside the space station's service hanger. Slight bulges around the probe's surface marked coverings for instruments and communication systems. Josh Horton ran one gloved hand along the titanium alloy skin of the probe, as if he could somehow feel the metal through the layers of his spacesuit, then levered himself into the cockpit where ranks of gauges and displays grown familiar in brief but intensive training now stared back at him. "Nobody ever told me why this thing is streamlined," he complained.

  Colonel Linda Gutierrez smiled briefly. "No one knows what kind of resistance exists in the FTL environment. It's purely a safety precaution, just in case turbulence associated with the FTL transition, or resistance on the other side, might be able to harm anything sticking out."

  "Like my neck, you mean?" Josh muttered. "Is that also why there isn't any porthole?"

  "That's right. That, and, um…"

  "And?" Josh asked sharply.

  Colonel Gutierrez grimaced but nodded in acquiescence. "Since you've met with Dr. Orasa you know we have no concept of how things will look in an FTL environment. The outside view may be profoundly disturbing. By using viewscreens you'll be able to shut off that view if you need to."

  "If the viewscreens work. I mean, the lenses are electro-optics, and Dr. Orasa pointed out I'll be moving faster than their signals. Heaven only knows what I'll see. Or what I'll think of it." Josh rubbed the back of his neck, frowning in thought. "Now what does that remind me of? Seeing and moving fast and thinking. Oh, yeah. A long time ago I saw some show on the way humans see things. You ever hear about that?"

  Gutierrez shrugged. "Maybe. There's a lot of interesting things about the way human systems work."

  "You said it. Well, this one talked about how when you're spinning you see things rushing past in a blur. Only it turns out you don't."

  "You don't?"

  "No. They found out the optic system can't process something it sees that's going by that fast, so what your brain really sees when you sweep your eyes past something is a blank spot. But the brain can't handle blank spots, so it generates a picture of what it thinks should be seen, only the picture's blurry because the brain can't remember all the details. Cool, huh?"

  "Unusual," Colonel Gutierrez agreed. "But, regardless, on this flight you shouldn't need to see where you're going, Commander Horton. After the FTL drive kicks in you do a straight run for ten minutes, then a timer drops you back into normal state. If calculations are accurate, that should place you about twenty light minutes downrange when you depart the FTL state."

  Horton's mouth worked as if he were tasting something unpleasant. "And if somewhere along that way there's some real big rock in my way? What do I do if I can't see it coming?"

  Gutierrez shook her head, face solemn. "Commander, at the velocity you'll be traveling you wouldn't have the chance of a snowball in hell of turning quickly enough to avoid an obstacle."

  "Great," Josh grumbled. "This is like putting on a blindfold and diving into a pool without knowing if there's any water below. I guess if I do hit something you'll see the fireworks."

  "We haven't seen any fireworks in the prior tests," Gutierrez advised, then quickly added to her statement. "You shouldn't be able to run into anything. In theory, while in the FTL state you should not interact with mass traveling at non-FTL velocities."

  "I don't know about you, Colonel, but I'd sure hate to be the one who found out that theory was wrong."

  Gutierrez smiled. "Sorry, Commander. If it's any consolation, you seem capable of handling anything you run into. As long as it's not a real big rock."

  "Thanks," Josh snorted, then glared directly at Colonel Gutierrez. "Look, Colonel, I'm about to risk my life, and despite everybody telling me about how capable I am
I've yet to get a straight answer on why I was picked for this job."

  "You're a very level-headed, very capable individual," she recited, avoiding his gaze.

  "Thanks, again. I must be the most capable guy on Earth. But that's not the reason. Why, Colonel? Why me instead of somebody like you? You're a pilot, with the training and reflexes to handle something moving fast. Me, I'm a ship-driver by training. I got picked for NASA because they needed people who could keep space station systems running, and ship-board training seemed to be a useful equivalent. So, why me?"

  Colonel Gutierrez didn't answer for a moment, staring into the emptiness outside the hanger. "Because of what you said, Commander. You're not a pilot. Listen. The first six probes never came back. They've spent years analyzing the theory, the mechanical systems, the technology, the training. Nothing seems wrong. Nothing explains the failures. But we assume that on the other side of FTL things are going to be strange. We've just talked about that. So the human factor will be critical. After analyzing every aspect of the first six missions, we could find only one major factor the first six pilots had in common."

  Horton took a deep breath. "And that was?"

  "They were all pilots." Gutierrez shook her head angrily. "Maybe that's it. Maybe something in our training is leading us astray. Maybe. It's our best guess, our only guess, right now."

  "Great." Josh stared at the bright displays on the probe's control panel, reaching out to slowly tap one of the two mechanical clocks ticking silently away, then glanced at the triple-redundant mechanical watch attached to his wrist. "Our best guess. Okay. At least that tells me something. They've built in mechanical back-ups to every electrical component they could, just in case FTL messes it all up. But humans only come in one standard configuration, don't they?"

  "They come in many configurations, Commander. As many configurations as there are ways of seeing things. Pilots are one configuration. You may be a different enough configuration to make a difference."

  "Colonel, I sure as hell hope you're right about that."

  #

  The shuttle, which Josh couldn't keep from thinking of as a tug, released the clamps holding the Prometheus probe in place. Pushed well away from the space station, facing into eternal emptiness, the probe ran its final automated checks before initiating the test flight.

  Josh Horton watched lights flick on and off and digits cycle rapidly as the onboard computers checked and rechecked every component. He tried not to think about the flight, running through scenes from his favorites movies as the countdown dragged, but found his gaze repeatedly wandering back to the displays and to the mechanical linkage to the FTL drive which should drop the probe into normal state if the electrical timer failed to send the signal. Finally, every marker glowed green, every read-out matched required parameters. Horton cleared his throat, acutely aware that his next words might be the last anyone else would ever hear from him. "This is Prometheus Seven. All checks complete. Preparing to initiate test flight."

  "Roger, Prometheus Seven. You are cleared for test flight initiation. Begin count-down on my mark." Horton raised one hand over the mechanical back-up timer, ready to mash it down at the same moment the electronic timer began counting down. "Mark." Horton's hand fell, and both mechanical timer and its electrical counterpart began scrolling off what could be the last ten seconds of his life.

  Zero. Prometheus Seven flexed as if the entire probe were ballooning, its structure booming like a deep-throated bell. A moment later a secondary but still powerful crash marked the probe's guts collapsing back into place. Josh Horton felt his own body flex strangely in time to the probe's agony, jarring his senses unlike anything he'd every experienced. Some kind of shock wave when this thing transitioned to FTL, even though it's probably not a wave. Got to check the equipment. That had to mess up something.

  Everything he tried to look at was oddly hazed, almost wavering in blurry imprecision. Josh shook his head violently, blinking in rapid succession, but the instrument panel before him remained blurred. Did that shock mess up my sight or is this how things look when you're moving faster than light? How am I going to tell if that shock knocked anything off-line? It must have messed up the backup mechanical linkages. He squinted, trying to focus. The read-outs remained fuzzy, but several resolved themselves into the same digits they'd held when he started. A close examination of the mechanical linkage showed it blurred in places but also apparently in the same configuration. The viewscreens showed as black blurs sprinkled with dancing spots of light.

  Josh raised his arm to look at the watch on his wrist, staring in shock as the limb seemed to move in slow stop-motion jerks. A sudden sense of pressure on his wrist was followed by the realization that his watch was now pressed up against his helmet's face shield. Faster-than-light speed. That must be it. My nervous system commands and feedback are moving slower than my environment. Just got to do things in stages. Allow time for feedback.

  Wrist and watch were still blurred, but by concentrating Josh made out the hour and minute hands on the watch face even though the second hand remained too vague to see. As best he could tell, no time had elapsed. Okay. That makes sense. It's surely been less than a minute since I punched into FTL. He fought back a sudden wave of nausea, closing his eyes against the churning in his gut and a growing headache. Dizzy. I'm dizzy. Must be because of the incredible speed I'm traveling. Or maybe that shock messed up my brain, like getting kicked in the head. That'd explain the way everything I see is blurred.

  He focused back on the watch, which still displayed no apparent change. It has to have been a minute by now. It has to. The image remained stubbornly unchanged, the minute hand wavering in his sight like everything else, but apparently unmoved. How much has this disorientation messed up my sense of elapsed time? Maybe I can count down in my head - Another surge of nausea hit, stronger, the world seeming to spin in time to the thunder of his pulse in his head. Got to beat this. Whether it's FTL effect or not, I can't function when I'm this dizzy. Okay. Got to spot something. He knew that, knew from watching Miller and Kelly spin around dozen of times without falling, that dancers in movies had kept their balance through those spins by focusing on a single point as long as possible, then whipping their heads around to focus back on the same point. A fixed visual reference. Like looking at the horizon to fight sea-sickness.

  Josh locked his eyes on one segment of the instrument panel, a blurry section where four displays met in what should have been a point. But the point remained too vague to make out, and the nausea kept growing. Flashes of false light flickered inside Horton's eyes as the dizziness gnawed at his consciousness. Can't keep this up. The displays all showed the same data, his wrist watch the same time. Hasn't it been a minute yet? It has to have been! The image of the watch seemed to fuzz a little more, but remained stubbornly unchanged. He concentrated on the instrument read-outs again, seeing vague numbers which all seemed to add up to normal states.

  The instruments say everything's fine. Everything's not fine. Why am I so dizzy? Just seeing things blurry shouldn't make me dizzy. I know people who need glasses who don't get disoriented just because they're not wearing them. Sure I'm moving incredibly fast, but how can my brain know that when it doesn't have anything to look at that says I'm moving fast? Wait a minute. Josh fought down another wave of disorientation, trying to dredge up the memory which had teased him. That story I told the Colonel about. The brain doesn't like what it sees. Makes up a picture. Blurry? Could this be a case of that happening? But I'm seeing the instruments. They say everything's fine…there was something else. Something really important.

  His heart pounding in time to his head, Josh barely kept from throwing up as he fought to recover the memory he sought. I gotta remember. Something that might be the key to this…keys. That was…yeah. The brain makes up a picture when it can't handle what the optic system sends it. But that picture only shows what the brain expects to see. You don't see your car keys on the desk you whip your eyes across because
the brain doesn't know the keys are there and so doesn't put them in the picture it makes up. But what would that -. Oh, my God.

  Horton blinked again, vainly trying to focus on his blurred instruments. Am I really seeing these? I'm moving faster than light. My eyes and brain evolved to work with light-speed messages. My eyes are seeing something now, but what? Is it images my visual system can't handle, like that blank spot? If it is, then my brain's just making all this up. It's showing me what it expects to see, because it can't accept what it does see. It's showing me instruments which say everything is fine because that's what it remembers. It's showing me an intact mechanical linkage because that's what it remembers.

  He moved his arm again, sweating from fear and discomfort, trying to maintain concentration while his brain spun wildly. Stop-motion jerks brought his hand to the FTL control, then he slammed it down even as his consciousness ebbed.

  Josh gradually became aware of his breathing, shuddering, eyes tightly closed as the world still spun inside. He forced his eyes open, blurred metal above them, causing his heart to pound again, but this time the metal resolved into firm detail when he concentrated. Lowering his gaze, he stared at the instrument panel. One screen displayed the outside, endless stars marching away. In a corner, the navigational system was running an analysis, trying to match the stars it could see with the picture expected an appreciable fraction of a light year from home.

  His wristwatch showed almost ten minutes gone by. According to the electronic readouts, slightly less than four minutes had elapsed. So, best guess, I was in FTL state for six minutes. And the electronic timers didn't work in that state. Ugly. What about the mechanical back-up? Horton bent to view the linkage, shuddering as he spotted a component drifting loose. Broke off during that transition shock, I'd guess. The mechanism didn't have enough flexibility at that point. The navigation system chirped happily, displaying the probe's estimated position. Horton stared, dread fighting with elation as he saw the system read-out declaring him to be approximately twenty-four light minutes from his start-point. Wow. This baby's even hotter than they thought. I must have been going six times the speed of light. In terms of distance from home I just beat Magellan and Columbus all to hell. Now, how do I get back home?