Elias had cooked dinner and everyone was helping themselves and then gathering in the small common area of the apartment.
“Elias I just want you and Burgess and Dag to know you can stay here as long as you want.”
“Thanks Arn but Burgess and I have already discussed it. We think it will be better if Burgess went back to our place to wait until we can clear our names of these ridiculous charges. And Dag maybe you could accompany Burgess and watch out for her?”
“Of course sir.”
“No Elias. I want Dag to stay with you. He can be a very real help with what you have to do. I'll be fine back in the habitat with my friends and family and yours as support.”
Elias was about to object but looking at Burgess he realized she had already reached her compromise position.
“Okay honey. It's okay with me if it's okay with Dag. We talk about him sometimes as if he were a servant or something.”
“I don't mind sir. You and Burgess have always been very helpful and kind to me and I must say you certainly have given me an adventurous life so far.”
Elias and Burgess laughed.
“Too adventurous sometimes Dag,” said Elias.
“Elias,” said Arn, “we need to get you set up so you can do whatever experiments you need to resolve this problem with the wormhole. If we could routinely make jumps as the Starway 1 did without the horrendous loss of human life it would once again change the future. At least it would give those of us who believe in freedom the tools we need to stay one step ahead of this creeping totalitarianism.”
“I understand Arn. Dag, if you are staying here maybe you can assist me in my research?”
“Of course sir.”
“What we need to understand is how the human body is affected by what I believe is a temporary spatial phase change in the wormhole. I could work on the physics if you would review the medical records of those that were unaffected versus those that were affected.”
“I can do that Elias.”
“There you go Arn. Our research goals in outline.”
“Excellent Elias. Just let me know what you two will need. Now, why don't we eat this delicious meal you've cooked for us before it gets cold. I also want to discuss with Burgess how to stay in contact while we are absent.”
Burgess and Elias turned in early. It was around four in the morning when Dag knocked on their door. Elias rose and unsteadily made his way to the door. Opening the door he saw Dag standing there. Elias slipped through the door and closed it behind him.
“Dag, what's wrong?”
“Sir my communications monitoring program has picked up a transmission from the Centauri System concerning you and Dr. Strombecker.”
“Yes?”
“It seems that both of you have been charged and convicted of treason against the state. You are to be arrested immediately and brought to Centauri for implementing the verdict.”
“The verdict? What is the verdict?”
Dag hesitated, “You and Dr. Strombecker have been sentenced to death.”
Elias sent Dag to wake up Dr. Strombecker. He went back into the bedroom to wake up Burgess.
“Burgess honey wake up.”
Burgess stirred and turned over to face Elias.
“What is it?”
“Change of plans honey, I'm going to have to leave immediately.”
With that Burgess sat up in bed.
“What do you mean Elias?”
“Dag brought us some bad news. It turns out that Dr. Strombecker and I have been convicted of treason against the state. I expect we will be arrested anytime.”
“I don't understand Elias, don't we have proof that StarPath Corporation willfully caused the spacetime disruption that caused all the damage to the habitats?”
“Yes honey we do have proof. But things are moving too fast to take a chance. They may implement the punishment for treason before they reopen the case.”
“The punishment?”
“Death honey, Arn and I are under a death sentence.”
“Elias no!”
Burgess jumped from bed to hold her husband. After a minute Elias continued.
“Honey I'm going to give you all the evidence I have about the cause of the disruption. I want Dag to go with you and when you two get back home have our attorney file to reopen the case with the new evidence. Arn and I will stay in touch. When the death sentence is dropped I will be back. It's for the best Burgess.”
Burgess had almost stopped crying, she held her head back and looked into Elias' face.
“Okay honey. We'll get this ridiculous ruling overturned and then we'll be together.”
They continued to hold each other for some time.
They all met in the common room. Arn had already sent messages to the crew of the Starway 1 asking for volunteers to take the ship out again.
“I'm ready,” said Elias.
“Okay,” said Arn. “I've got calls out to all the crew. Let's start for the docks and see who joins us.”
Elias turned to Burgess and Dag.
“Dag, change of plans, I want you to go with Burgess and when you get back home try to find some way to get a wormhole link that you can trust. Arn and I will signal you by sending messages either directly or through this station, we think the crew here will stay loyal to Arn even under pressure from the Centauri governments. They will relay it to Centauri with an encryption key if need be. When you receive the key use it to signal back and we will know we can communicate.”
“Okay Elias, but one thing,” said Burgess.
“Yes.”
“I've discussed this with Dag and we feel it would be better for him to go with you.”
“But honey you need someone to take care of you.”
“Elias I'm going home where I will have family to help, you're not. Who is going to need help more than you?”
Elias was about to argue but then said, “You're always right dear. Now kiss me goodbye.”
Elias with Dag and Arn made their way as quickly and inconspicuously as possible to the docking area. Boarding the Starway 1 they found only five crew members. Al, Roy, Buck, Steve and the doctor A.C. Kepler were aboard, the others obviously would not commit to such an open-ended mission.
Arn was somewhat disappointed but said, “Okay then if this is all we have we're off. We'll just be dependent on the Emmies a little more than usual.”
The great fusion ship had been refueled and provisioned and was soon alive and ready to undock.
“Let's go Al,” said Arn Strombecker.
With that, the ship began moving away from the docking port in a slow-motion ballet which would aim it in the direction they planned to go. Soon they would be accelerating at four-tenths Earth gravity before making the wormhole jump.
Burgess was watching it on the wallscreen in her room. A tear in the corner of her eye. Where they were going she did not know, Elias had thought it best that no one outside the ship should know. When the ship was out of sight Burgess turned off the wallscreen and laid down on the bed where she and Elias had laid only a few hours before, the new reality sinking in.
Burgess was awakened by the door alarm. She turned to her Emmie and found she had only been asleep a couple of hours. The alarm sounded again. Rubbing her eyes she looked at her Emmie to see who was at the door. Her heart rate rose as she saw what looked like station personnel and some Terran Federation officers.
Dressed in their best I see. Well I might as well get this over with, it won't do to keep these seekers of justice waiting.
Chapter 14
Wormhole Physics 101, 5th Edition by Dr. Elias Mach
Copyright 2393 C.E.- Appendix 2, Page 590
Building a Calibrated Entanglement Detector
To pass anything other than qubits through a wormhole the object must be entangled with the nearside wormhole mouth. In turn, this will entangle it with the wormhole mouth on the far side. Each atom of the object must undergo this entanglement and each atom uses a qubit to
do so.
If the passage of the object through a wormhole is modeled more as a teleportation rather than a transport then it is easy to see that a vast amount of entangled qubits are being used to teleport that object.
The entanglement detector is a Casimir effect based device. According to quantum field theory, even a vacuum is filled with electromagnetic waves at many different wavelengths. The Casimir effect measures the existence of these waves between two extremely close parallel plates. As the plates in the device get closer together some electromagnetic waves are excluded from between them because the wavelengths of those waves no longer “fit.” To fit the wavelength must be equal to or a multiple of the distance between the plates.
Outside the device the electromagnetic waves are still the same at all wavelengths and these external waves will have a greater energy than the waves between the plates. The net result is a measurable force between the plates dependent on the distance between them.
What the entanglement device shows is that when an object is transported or teleported through the wormhole the net effect is a weakening of the Casimir force. It is as if the electromagnetic waves external to the plates have been diminished. This effect is a direct consequence of the “atomizing” of spacetime. In effect, spacetime is breaking down as a result of the loss of entanglement in the area of the wormhole mouth and can no longer support a surfeit of EM waves.
We can calculate the energy needed to break an entanglement as follows . . .
Burgess was tired. They had kept her up for six hours asking questions and wasting her time. She had finally been escorted back to her quarters under guard and was preparing to sleep when the door alarmed.
She looked at her Emmie, it was her guard.
“Yes,” she said.
“Someone here to see you ma'am.”
“Who?”
“A robot.”
Could it be?
She rushed to open the door and it was. Dag.
“Dag!” she said. “I thought you had left?”
“May I come in Miss?”
“Of course.”
Dag entered the apartment and sat on the chair at the table in the small kitchenette.
“Well?” asked Burgess.
“I tried to see you sooner but the Federation officers wouldn't allow it.”
“I mean why are you here and not with Elias?”
“Elias felt that you would need someone to help. He was sure the Federation would make some move against you.”
“He was right Dag and I was wrong. I probably need you more than Elias. Just having a friend here relieves my anxiety.”
“I hope you don't mind Miss, but I have inquired of a lawyer back in the Centauri habitat where the Federation plans to take you and place you under house arrest for aiding and abetting a known fugitive.”
“Not at all Dag. It looks like that's the kind of help I'm going to need.”
When the Starway 1 left the spaceport they were simply heading as quickly as possible to a spot some ten AU away from the system so as to make a safe jump. There had been no time to decide as to where to jump. Elias and Arn discussed it on the way.
“Well Elias what do you think? Where are we going.”
“I've been thinking about that for a couple of days Arn and I think we should head back to Epsilon Eridani.”
“Why's that Elias?”
“Because I would like to make a more thorough inspection of that fusion ship wreckage we found. We didn't have the time to even find out what ship it was. We were too busy trying to stay alive.”
“What could it tell us Elias?”
“Well, we know of only four ships that went missing when making a wormhole jump. I figure this wreckage is one of those. And depending on which one it could lead to our acquittal or new wormhole physics. Either way, I think it's worth our time.”
“Okay, luckily the ship was restocked and with as few crew members as we have aboard we should have plenty of time and resources to explore. Should we jump straight there?”
“Even though I think that all those aboard are somehow immune to the effects of such a long jump I would still recommend against that until I can come up with the reason for the deaths we've experienced.”
“Very well Elias, but it will take weeks to get there.”
Elias nodded.
Burgess had been brought back to the Centauri Two habitat and was confined to her home. Though she couldn't go anywhere most people that wanted to see her, such as Elias' dad, got in. Burgess asked about Elias' mother.
“She's fine Burgess. Being a mom she is just worried about you and of course her son.”
“I'm glad she's well. Tell me what is going on in the habitat. It's so different from the place that Elias and I left just a few months ago.”
“It has changed Burgess. People seem to have lost their will, or their minds, I don't know which. They've allowed this man Mason to take over. Even the government won't make a move without consulting him. It's part fear and part Svengali.”
“Svengali? What in the world is that.”
“Oh, its a reference to an old story. The fictional character Svengali is adept at seducing, dominating and exploiting other characters. And that is just what this Mason person has accomplished with the people, the governments, almost the whole of the Centauri population.”
“Remarkable.”
“Yes, for the promise of safety they have given up freedom and they don't care who this Mason destroys, such as Elias. His Committee on Public Safety is just a front for a power grab.”
“What can we do?”
“Those of us who don't want to give up our freedom are outnumbered. I guess the ultimate answer is to move on. I'm too old, but you and Elias should consider it.”
“I wish we had,” said Burgess shaking her head. “I wish we had gone to the stars.”
After weeks of wormhole jumps and recharge orbits and fusion rocket propulsion, the Starway 1 was closing in on Epsilon Eridani. Even though the Eridani system was thought to be lifeless the ship still honored the ten AU safe zone.
Arn, Elias and the others were in the command center of the ship.
“When we get there Arn there will be an extremely weak radio signal either from the fusion ship or the shuttle we left behind. That's the area we want to shuttle down to.”
“Understood Elias. Al is already monitoring for that signal on the usual channels.”
As the Starway 1 came into the Eridani system under full braking the navigational Emmie also adjusted the course for the large Jupiter like planet. Closing in they picked up the moon Elias had been stranded on and with a few correctional burns, the ship was in orbit. The crew wheel, which was powered down during maneuvers involving accelerations so as not to cause motion sickness from Coriolis forces, was powered back up and started to provide some artificial gravity.
Al found the signal and Elias and Roy and Steve prepared the shuttle for landing. They put down near the other shuttle. Quickly readying themselves for an EVA they started for the fusion wreckage within an hour of landing.
Elias led them to the shipwreck.
Elias looking up at the looming crew wheel said, “I think the first thing we need to do is find out the name or designation of this ship.”
“We'll have to climb the crew wheel until we find the command center,” said Steve.
“That may be a hard climb,” said Roy.
“Well let's try it,” said Elias as he pointed. “We can enter the wheel through that crushed bulkhead.
Once inside the three found themselves in a crewman's quarters which appeared to have been unused. They had entered through the breached floor. A few feet away was the door to the common access hall.
“I would say from the configuration that they were in spin-up when the wreck occurred,” said Elias.
Steve and Roy agreed.
The wheel was buried in the carbon dioxide slush of the moon at about a seventy-degree angle to the surface. Because it had b
een spinning the “floor” was pointed away from the center of rotation. They were standing on one of the walls. On the adjacent wall about at the height of their head was the door to the hall. Once in the hall, they could stand on the bent metal that rested on the surface of the moon and look above them as the hall, like an elevator shaft, started upwards at a seventy-degree angle eventually curving until their view was blocked.
Elias was looking up that hall.
“Anybody got any idea where we are in relation to the command center?”
“Well,” said Roy. “According to the room number on that door and the one up there, we are about as far away from the common areas and the command center as possible. We are going to have to go up the hall until this wall,” he patted one of the walls, “becomes our floor.”
“Like mountain climbing,” said Steve.
“Right,” said Elias. “Well we brought everything we need for such an eventuality so let's get going.”
Each of them unpacked the climbing bots. The bots could go anywhere, even straight up walls. By manipulating the Van der Waals' force through large surface area pads of carbon nanotubes as well as an assist from a magnetic attractive force when the substance they were climbing was metal, the bots could lift several times their own weight. More than enough to lift the men up the wall in the lower gravity of the moon.
Elias and the other two attached themselves to the three bots with carbon fiber rope and soon were being lifted up what was the outer wall, not the floor, of the crew wheel.
The bots weren't fast but were steady. They continued to pass crew apartments until they finally started seeing common areas as indicated by the sign on the wall next to the doorway.
The bots now transitioned to what had been the ceiling as it was leveling off with the crest of the wheel. The men found that they could walk only using the bots for safety in case of a fall. The rooms were larger in this area, restaurants, auditoriums and others. Finally, after almost a half-hour, they saw the door marked Command Center. However, the door and the room beyond were upside down.
Once inside the room, they had the bots scale the wall to the “floor” and secure themselves. The ropes hanging down were available for Elias and the others to climb up to the consoles and workstations.
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