SHEDDING LIGHT

by Michael Edelson

  “Aperture?” The dimples came back.

  “The part that catches the light and condenses it to a small point you can see,” he said. “Some telescopes use curved mirrors to take a huge amount of light and focus it into a small place. The bigger the mirror, the more light it captures, and the more distant and dark objects it can see.”

  “Okay,” she said hesitantly. “I guess that sort of makes sense.”

  “Good. Remember the first space telescope, the Hubble? Its aperture was eight feet. It could capture enough light to look at distant nebula and galaxies, but it couldn’t make out planets; too much light from the stars and not enough of an aperture. That’s where the Van Tessel field comes in. Our telescope uses an energy field to catch photons instead of a lens or mirror. Its aperture just now was two astronomical units in diameter, that’s almost two hundred million miles. Sometimes we can even get it bigger than that. Imagine how much detail it can see with that big of an aperture.”

  “Yes, but,” she said, not sounding convinced. “Doesn’t the light from the sun overpower the light from the earth? Drown it out?”

  “Yes and no. Yes, if you gather light from one perspective, it doesn’t matter how much you get, you can’t see something that isn’t there. However, with an aperture that’s hundreds of millions of miles across, we can gather light from many perspectives. When light bounces off an object, it goes in multiple directions. You can see that object if you stand directly in front of it, but you can also see it from a few steps to the side. We gather all of the different perspectives our field covers and make a composite image. The detail, as you saw, is incredible, though the further we get from Earth the less perspectives we can merge. We can see the Egyptians quite easily, but we’d have a harder time looking at dinosaurs. Not that we couldn’t do it, we just wouldn’t get as much detail.”

  “I suppose I can stomach that, though it doesn’t quite work for me yet,” she said, putting her pad away. “Now about relativity…”

  “Captain Perpignan and Commander Roberts,” Carl’s voice crackled over the ship’s intercom. “We need you in engineering right away.”

  “Sorry, Miss Watanabe, have to go,” he said, failing to suppress a sigh of relief. Being cooped up in a tiny ship with her was proving difficult in a way he had not anticipated.

  “I’ll find you later,” she called after him as he ran down the corridor.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” he said, and meant it. Sort of.

  CHAPTER 4

  “WHAT THE HELL IS this?” Jack stared at the device and couldn’t quite accept what his eyes were telling him.

  “Well,” Captain Perpignan said. “At least this may help explain all the strange problems we’ve been having. We now know for certain that we have a saboteur on board.” He handed the device back to Carl. “What do you make of it?”

  “Clever thing,” he said, turning it over and over. “Only God knows exactly what’s in it, but it smells a bit like Clorox.”

  “A god-damned bomb,” Jack said, shaking his head.

  “Well we might have a clue as to whose,” the captain said, indicating the timing device. It was a navy-issue chronograph, sans bracelet. Each of them had been given one before launch. “Whoever is missing his watch is in big trouble.”

  Jack absentmindedly fingered his own, still safely on his wrist. Both the captain and Carl wore theirs.

  “But why target the field generator?” Carl asked. “It’s not a critical component. Unless this is extremely potent, it doesn’t look like there’s enough explosive here to do more than break it.” Indeed, the watch case was only a little smaller than the blob of explosive putty to which it was attached, which couldn’t be very efficient, considering the limited availability of chemicals on the ship. A tiny battery was wired in to provide the ignition spark.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s not a critical system,” Jack said. “Without it, we couldn’t go forward without fear of hitting a gravity well or a dense particle cloud, and to go back home I would have to retrace our course exactly, having to account for disparate drift. It would be a big pain in the ass.” He had purposely understated things so as not to alarm anyone. Space appeared empty, and for a slow moving vessel it practically was. At thousands of times the speed of light, however, it thickened up pretty quickly. VTF failure would be catastrophic, and if he made even the smallest mistake plotting the course home they would all die. Of all the other crew members, only Yelena truly understood the difficulties in plotting a faster than light course, though she was only able to attempt it with the VTF scope.

  “Then that must have been the intent,” the captain suggested. “To halt the mission and make us run home.”

  “Why would someone want to sabotage the mission?” Carl asked. “It’s not like we’re out here spying on people’s military secrets…we’d be a little out of date.”

  “Whether it makes sense or not,” Captain Perpignan said. “It’s still a fact. That bomb did not make itself.”

  “Couldn’t it have been on board before we left orbit? Maybe a maintenance technician?” Jack suggested.

  “No,” Carl said, shaking his head. “I would have seen it when I checked the generator, which I do every day. This was put here sometime after zero eight hundred today. When I found it, it had about fourteen minutes left before blowing.”

  “Are we going to announce this?” Jack asked, rubbing his chin. “Tip whoever it is off that we know?”

  “No point in hiding it,” the captain said. “When this thing doesn’t go off, he’ll know someone found it.”

  “Or she,” Jack suggested. “But not necessarily. They may think they did something wrong, and try to retrieve the bomb before it’s found. We may have a chance to catch whoever it is when they come back for it.”

  “Excellent.” Captain Perpignan smiled. “That’s what we’ll do. Carl, set up a security camera. We’ll give it three hours. If no one comes, we’ll call a meeting.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  They waited, but no one came for the bomb.

  * * * * *

  “A SABOTEUR? ON THIS SHIP? Preposterous!” Professor Merrick objected. “Everyone here was hand picked and rigorously screened!”

  “Not everyone,” Jack said, barely hiding his bitterness. They were gathered on the bridge in a hasty meeting announced on the intercom only moments before. Jonathan Goldstein and Yelena both looked as though they had been sleeping, eyes puffy and jumpsuits hastily donned.

  The Professor scoffed. “I hardly think it was you, Commander Roberts. Besides, why in hell would someone want to sabotage my mission? It’s just a high-tech archaeological dig!”

  “Nevertheless,” Captain Perpignan said. “There is a saboteur on board. We found this in the Van Tessel field generator.” He held up the disarmed bomb for everyone to see.

  There were gasps and sharp intakes of breath. Then silence.

  “I’m going to have to ask everyone to show me their wrists,” the captain said, his voice cold and steely.

  “What for?” Jonathan asked, then shook his head. “Oh, the watches. Here is mine.”

  The others hesitated, then extended their wrists. Everyone had their watch, except Merrick.

  “I don’t wear watches,” the Professor said. “I didn’t take it when they offered. So you think I want to blow up my own telescope?”

  “Seven watches were issued,” Perpignan said in a measured tone. “I signed the requisition forms.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Jonathan said while Merrick rolled his eyes. “I was there when they came around with them.”

  “You don’t need to defend me,” Merrick said, exasperated. “If I wanted to sabotage my work all I would have to do is stop doing it.”

  “Maybe you wanted it to look like it wasn’t your fault,” Debbie suggested, eliciting a cold stare from Merrick. “Sorry, I’m just thinking out loud. It’s ridiculous to think the professor would want to sabotage his own project. He has no motiv
e.”

  “Very well,” Perpignan said. “The fact remains, however, that seven watches were issued. The seventh is right here. The question is, who was it issued to?”

  “They made us sign for them,” Jack said. “It would be recorded somewhere at home. We’ll know as soon as we get back.” He looked at all the gathered faces, trying to see if someone looked nervous. Everyone did, or no one. It was too hard to tell.

  “That doesn’t do us any good now,” the captain said. “The only way to send a message back to Earth that wouldn’t take thousands of years to get there would be to build another FTL ship and point it home.”

  “What about the other problems?” Yelena asked, nervously rubbing her own watch. “Can we learn anything from them?”

  “Chief?” the captain motioned for Carl to speak.

  “Well,” he said. “Let me think.... the first glitch was a processing error in the centron accelerator. That could have been entered in the user interface terminal. I can see if they left some kind of trace, but I doubt it. Also, it could have been a genuine glitch.”

  “Alright,” Perpignan said. “What about the other two.”

  “The melted fibre optics were definitely sabotage, now that I think about it,” Jack said. “It doesn’t make sense any other way. However, I doubt there would be much evidence. We don’t lock up our tools.”

  “I agree,” Carl said. “But the second glitch, the hop capsule one, is like the first, it could have been genuine. No way to tell. It was an overload in the interface. That’s a high current connection and it’s feasible that it could blow.”

  “You never shared the details of that. Was it any particular capsule?” Debbie asked, holding her glowing palm at waist height, almost trying to hide it.

  “Yes,” Carl said, smiling. “Mine. But it wasn’t life threatening because the safety system wouldn’t move the ship unless every capsule was working within parameters. There’s no way to bypass it. At least not that I know of.”

  “We still don’t know why anyone would want to sabotage the mission,” Yelena said.

  “Of course we do,” Jack said, thinking out loud. His words were like a power switch, instantly shutting off all sound in the room as all eyes were locked on him.

  “I mean…” He hesitated, suddenly nervous under such scrutiny. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s a religious thing. It has to be. We were sent here to see if it was feasible to see human history, to answer questions about our origins. We’re questioning the bible, questioning God. To a religious person, that would be like blasphemy, wouldn’t it? You know how many religious groups back home wanted to kill the project. And all those protestors…”

  “This is all speculation,” Merrick protested, visibly disturbed.

  “This isn’t.” Captain Perpignan held up the bomb. “This is fact.”

  “What are we going to do about it?” Jonathan asked. His face was pale and a sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. Jack couldn’t blame him for being afraid, but was he afraid of returning in failure, or of being discovered?

  “I want everyone to stay here,” the captain said. “Commander Roberts and I will search everyone’s quarters. I don’t know what we are looking for, but we have no other leads to follow.”

  “You are not going to ruffle through my personal things!” Merrick cried, outraged. “I won’t stand for it!”

  “Professor, that was not a request. If you protest further, I will only assume you are trying to sabotage the mission by forcing me to lock you in your capsule.”

  Merrick opened his mouth, then closed it. He glanced at the others as though looking for support, but only downcast glances met his eyes.

  “Very well,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal. “If you break anything the navy will have to pay for it.”

  “Commander,” the captain said. “Let’s go.”

  They searched for several hours, but found nothing.

  CHAPTER 5

  “JACK?” DEBBIE’S VOICE SOUNDED from outside the engineering bay. “Commander Roberts? Are you in there?” Her head peaked around a corner. He was busy installing a security camera, and the cursed thing wasn’t getting any video.

  “Not now, Miss…”

  “Just call me Debbie, will you?” Her hair was tied back in a bun, assorted curls dangling around her face. She was the only one aboard that bothered to style her hair. Jack didn’t know whether he should find it annoying or appealing. Perhaps it was both.

  “Fine, Debbie. Not now. I need to install this damned camera and it’s not working.” The captain had ordered cameras installed throughout the ship, or at least as much of it as they could cover.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Before he could stop her, she snatched the camera out of his hands and slid her finger along its surface. A holographic interface appeared just above the device’s slick black shell.

  “I can’t get any video,” he sighed, exasperated. He stood atop a plastic storage box he had enlisted as a makeshift ladder.

  “Duh,” she said with an infuriating tone. “That’s because you haven’t paired it with the controller.” She did something with the interface menus, and the camera rebooted.

  “Try it now,” she said smugly, handing it to him. He turned it on, and it worked. He sighed, closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. The more things changed…

  “How did you know to do that?”

  “I’m a journalist, remember? We work with cameras? Anyhow, now that I saved you about five hours of banging your head against a wall, maybe you and I can have our little chat.”

  “Now? With a damned saboteur on board?” He couldn’t believe the woman, she was relentless.

  “No more excuses, please. The show must go on, as they say, and I still have a feature to write, saboteur or no.”

  “Fine,” he said, giving in. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be around her. “What would you like to know?”

  She took a few steps toward him and his nostrils filled with the gentle scent of her perfume. Part of him couldn’t believe she actually brought perfume on board a space ship, but the rest of him was too busy enjoying it.

  “I want to know how the probability drive works. How can it beat relativity?”

  “All that stuff is on the net already,” he said. “Can’t you just look it up when we get home?” He wished he could get her to stop asking him about the damned probability drive. He hardly understood it himself.

  “Don’t be difficult. I want to hear it from you. I don’t need useless techno-babble; if I did I would have asked Carl, who knows a lot more about this than you do.”

  “I suppose I’ll take that as a compliment.” Again with the put downs. Why did he put up with it?

  “You should. That’s how I meant it.”

  He blinked. “Oh. Fine then. Do you know what a centron is? I guess we should start there.”

  “Is that like an atom?” She took out her notepad. She was always writing something in that damned thing. He wondered if there was anything there about him.

  “You failed physics in college, didn’t you?”

  She frowned, and he smiled. Revenge!

  “Stop me if you know any part of this,” he continued before she had a chance to riposte. “Everything in the universe is made of a single particles called centrons, which exist in various states. Their states are induced by interaction with other centrons. These interactions result in formations, patterns. An atom is a pattern of centrons in various states.”

  “What do you mean by states?”

  “A centron has a near infinite amount of states, or characteristics, all of which are entirely dependent on interaction with other centrons. Consider light, whose color is determined by individual photons inducing state changes in each other based on their interactions with particles in solid matter patterns. And the photon itself is a centron whose state has been altered by other interactions.” He shook his head. “I’m not explaining this well.”

  “That’s okay.” She scribbled so
me notes. “What does this have to do with the probability drive?”

  “Probability is how they describe centron interaction. Certain interactions create a high probability that a centron will behave in a particular way, or have a particular state. Nothing is absolute, but some probabilities are so high as to be almost certain. Centrons interact with each other to form patterns of probability that react predictably. Everything that we think is solid is actually a pattern of centrons with a high probability of stability. Nothing solid lasts forever, as the pattern is never absolute and eventually breaks apart. They used to call this stuff quantum mechanics back when they were just stumbling about and making wild guesses about multiple universes and other nonsense.”

  “I’m not sure I follow…” Her eyes were intent, she was really trying to understand. Jack nodded, appreciating her interest for the first time. There was something about the way she looked at him that made it seem as though she was asking these questions out of a personal interest, not just to dress up her story.

  “Okay…imagine two solitary centrons. Alone, they have no state, they don’t really exist. Scientists call them potential centrons; they are more like the faint possibility of a particle. If a few of these potential particles meet each other, they form a pattern, and that pattern gives them characteristics, or states. But the pattern is not absolute, because if it was, it would never change. Instead, it is merely highly probable that the pattern exists in its current state. That instability is what allows matter to be affected by other matter or energy, all of which is of course nothing more than centrons behaving in certain ways. Now let’s say this pattern that forms from a few potential centrons encounters other patterns and reacts to them, forming more complex patterns. Eventually it could wind up a lump of rock, or crystal, or even a person. Life is nothing more than a very complex pattern of centron interactions. When you move your hand, centrons in energy states interact with those in matter states to create motion. Get it?”

  “No, but I can spend more time with it later,” she said, patting her palm computer. “Now tell me how the drive works.” She was scribbling furiously. He tried to see what she was writing, but she pulled it away.