by Randal Sloan
Still, Julie hadn’t forgotten her resolve to go after the pirates. As far as she was concerned, they were on borrowed time. So earlier this morning, Julie, Zeke, Joe, Caitlyn, and a considerable number of technicians had headed out to R4. The two couples were each flying one of the corvettes and the techs were aboard a shuttle escorted by several anti-pirate ships.
When they arrived at R4, the two couples split up. Julie and Caitlyn stayed on the research ship where Julie was working to install the modifications to add the new drives to the ship, a task she dared not delay even with the need to move quickly against the pirates. It had to be ready in time to go get her father.
That had left the majority of the work to deal with the pirates in Zeke and Joe’s hands, with the work on the shield systems their top priority. Upon arrival, the two quickly caught a local shuttle out to the weapons testing center, which was located on a nearby asteroid for safety reasons.
Which brought Julie to where she was now. She had put all the events of the last few days to the back of her mind for a little while so she could dedicate herself to her project. She had just finished the first phase in the process, a task that, other than working her brain, really wasn’t that difficult. Once she added the circuitry to handle the feedback loop, the remaining modifications that she had made to the drive system from the original were actually fairly simple in principle, although not so easy in implementation.
What her drive modification did was to bring the ship just to the point it would move into the psuedo-universe as she called it, that point where the drive effects caused normal Newtonian physics to begin to come apart. To accomplish this, her field generators had to wrap around the entire ship, requiring Julie to calculate the field strength based on the shape of the ship.
Because the corvettes were considerably smaller, tweaking the fields to produce this effect was fairly easy for her. The math was complex but not difficult. However, for the much, much larger research ship the calculations were many times more complex, made even more so by the shape of the ship, which was in no way streamlined. The corvettes had smooth, elegant lines to start with since they had to be able to travel through an atmosphere.
However, the research ship had not been made that way, since it had never been designed for movement in anything but the vacuum of space. Julie had gone back to streamlined designs for future ships, but the only currently available ship big enough to handle the number of people on her father’s ship was this one. She had made good progress on the field generators around the ship, the only task remaining was the process of fine-tuning everything.
Julie’s thoughts were interrupted when she got an excited VR message from Zeke. “You’ve got to see this,” he told her. “Not only did the test shield hold, but we think it damaged the system that launched the micro-nuke blast!”
“Don’t be tearing up valuable Space Tech equipment,” Julie replied fiercely, albeit with a smile. “I leave you boys alone for just a few hours and you start breaking things.”
Zeke wasn’t fazed. He went on excitedly, “Yes, but we believe we can build a weapon using this principle. A plasma gun, if you will, something like we discussed before. By directing a micro fusion charge against a properly shaped field, the result would be a plasma burst sent in the direction designated by the field. We want you to come look at it to see if you think we’re right.”
Julie just stared at him. She had envisioned a plasma gun when she first designed her ship, even though at that time she had no idea how to build one. Zeke knew that too. Sighing, she told him, this time with an even bigger smile, “Alright, you’ve got me. Apparently you’ve gone right past the point of breaking things to making things that go boom. I’d better get there ASAP, or who knows what you’ll do next.”
Julie had to catch the shuttle over to the weapons lab where they were, so it took her a few minutes to get there. While she was on her way over, she wondered at the ramifications of Zeke’s discovery. It seemed to match so closely to what she had foreseen that she couldn’t help wondering about it. When she arrived, Joe was standing there looking smug and Zeke was pacing about.
“So what exactly have you done?” she asked Zeke.
“Ok, so the first shield worked pretty well, but we could tell it wasn’t absolutely 100%. So we started tweaking the field shape to try to find a better result. That’s when we hit on this one.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Joe interrupted. “Zeke here saw it in his head and made me adjust it until it matched what he saw in his head.”
Zeke shrugged his shoulders. “Ok, I saw it as a 3D shape. Ever since you showed us the 3D pictures of your Dad’s flight path, I’ve been able to see the fields as the same type of 3D image. I had been seeing something with the drive fields all along, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. But my brain suddenly figured out how to show it to me. I can tell you, for instance, that Joe’s corvette’s drive is about one-tenth a percent off from the optimal.”
Julie stared at him. “That’s absolutely amazing! I had to spend a couple of hours on the math to tweak the corvette drives. And I’ve spent all day working on the big drives, and I finally have them down to something like ten percent remaining. But let’s look at what you have here first. Tomorrow you can make it up by helping me with my work. Show me the VR of your test.”
Joe punched an icon on the console. She watched as the test device positioned itself in front of the test shield and fired a concentrated micro-blast at it. The VR was set for slow motion, so Julie could easily follow the results. The shield not only absorbed the blast but it concentrated it into a bullet-shaped plasma pulse that it sent back at the test device. The resulting explosion cracked the emitter on the test unit, so that it was completely unusable. But that wasn’t what was important.
Julie excitedly scrolled through the data from the test, quickly coming to the same conclusion. “You’re right. I could do the detailed calculations to verify it, but there’s no need. Just a cursory review tells me it will work. All you really need is a delivery method to push the plasma blast into the field and a way to direct the blast. The first you can probably do by firing frozen deuterium pellets into a laser chamber, and the second you should be able to do in software to control the fields. Oh, and cooling! This baby will get extremely hot in a hurry when you start firing plasma bursts. In fact, that will probably be the limiting factor in how fast you can fire it. All of it is basically off the shelf parts at Space Tech.”
Julie sent a mental message to Zeke. “That’s the weapon I saw on my corvette back when I had no idea how we could build it.”
Zeke gave her a mental nod. “That came to me the instant I saw the results.”
Joe had been looking back and forth between Julie and his friend. “Wow, Zeke! You two really are geniuses. Zeke’s been telling me that for years, but I never believed him before now.”
Zeke laughed at his friend. “No, I’m still mostly the same me. Most of this up here is like auto-pilot. Julie here really is a genius; you’ve seen what she can do with math and her astrophysics. And put her in her ship?”
“Yes, but the flying that I do that you guys only wish you could do? It’s the same way, Zeke. The instinct has to be there and our brains just build on it. What you do by visualizing the fields is just as remarkable.”
“Tell you what, guys. I’ll order the parts for the delivery mechanism and the cooling system. I need to borrow Zeke in the morning and then while I’m out testing the drive, you two can work on the software.”
“Oh, and Zeke — As soon as they finish the installation of the shield units in the corvettes, tweak the fields to give you the max shields possible. And for goodness sakes, tweak Joe’s drive fields to give him that one-tenth percent. When I outfly him, I don’t want him to blame it on the drives.”
They all laughed and then decided to quit for the day. They returned to the research ship, which they had made their base. Caitlyn was waiting for them, so they all spent time in the ship’s ga
llery laughing, and having a good time for the next hour or so before stopping for the evening. Having Caitlyn there helped too. She and Joe were quite an item now.
Zeke had gotten a mental message from Julie telling him she wanted some alone time with him, so they wandered hand in hand down to a little observation chamber even smaller than the one on Space Tech Station and scrunched in there together. After giving him a deep kiss, Julie looked Zeke in the eyes. “Do you see it now? We each bring our own strengths into this union. And that’s why I can’t wait to see our daughter. She’s going to hopefully get the best of both of us and if she does, she will be absolutely amazing.”
Zeke looked back straight into her eyes. “I know most people say you should wait to have a family. As soon as we’re married, I think we should start our family.”
Julie nodded. “I feel exactly the same way. I already feel a connection with our daughter, and I can’t wait until I can see her and hold her in my arms.”
“Soon my love, soon.”
They stayed there quite awhile, cocooned together, dreaming of the near future.
#
The next morning, Julie and Zeke started back on her work on the big ship’s drives. When they reached the first location, Julie used her math to calculate the initial settings, entering the parameters into the drive unit.
As soon as she had that in place, Zeke gave her a big smile. “I assume you want it to work just like the corvettes? Wrap the field tight against the hull of the ship?”
At Julie’s nod, he took over. “Just a little tweak, here and here. You had it pretty close — luckily, I don’t have to understand any of that crazy math of yours. Take a look now.”
Julie queried the AI. “Perfect. It shows an almost complete alignment to the ship.”
“I can probably get it a little closer when we actually get this monster moving, but that can wait till later.”
Julie laughed. “You’ve already got it better than I could get it by a magnitude of ten. But for now, we’ve got a dozen more of these field units. This crazy ship’s got dips and protrusions all over the place.”
“Guess we’d better get to it then,” Zeke said with a smile. This was fun so far.
With Zeke’s help, the work went ten times faster. By late morning they were finished with all the adjustments. Julie turned to Zeke with false indignation, “And to think I would have spent the whole day working on this, and would still have had to tweak them some when we started testing them in use. You just waltz in here and do it all in a couple of hours. I think you let me do all the work before this the hard way, just so you could make me appreciate you more.”
“Well, did it work?” Zeke asked her.
“Oh, it worked alright. Enough that I would take you to the gym and kick your tail, but I can’t even do that any more.”
“No, but you could have a lot of fun trying. When we get back to Space Tech station and your little private gym there, you’re on.”
“It’s a date,” Julie laughed. “I guess it’s time we split up and tackle our separate tasks.”
“Spoil sport! I was just beginning to have fun.”
“Well, love, I’m only a thought away.”
#
While Julie took the ship out for testing, Zeke quickly finished all the tweaks of the fields to generate the new shield on first Julie’s and then Joe’s corvettes. He also tweaked Joe’s drive field to get it to full efficiency. He even tweaked Julie’s drive just a tiny little bit, wondering if she would notice. Then he laughed to himself. Of course she’ll notice. The second she moves in it!
Zeke and Joe had completed almost all the programming for the plasma gun when Julie brought the ship back into R4. She VR’d the two of them. “This thing handles like a tank, but when you get it to move, it moves. Thanks to Zeke here, I’m completely finished with the testing until we take this baby out for the real test. But Zeke, I need you to meet me here in the lab. I’ve got an idea that I want to talk to you about. It came to me while I was floating around with no gravity while we were testing.”
“Of course— A gravity plate! Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll meet you in the lab. All you need is a floor plate and the smallest field generator you’ve got.”
Joe stared at the two of them in awe. “You two are absolutely amazing. It’s like the two of you are connected.” Then it suddenly hit him. “You are! Your nanites are somehow connecting you.”
When Joe saw the shocked look on their faces, he went on. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever tell anyone. Go on, go build your gravity plate. I can’t wait till you have them everywhere. I’ve never been really comfortable with spin-based artificial gravity. My feet tell me that down is that direction, but my head tells me it really isn’t.”
“Me too,” Julie told him and Zeke nodded. “It’s the pilot in you. Your head by instinct responds to motion when you’re flying. With the artificial gravity, it’s telling you that what you feel as gravity is really spin. But sorry about the look we gave you. No one knows but Emily, not even my uncle— especially not my uncle.”
“Well, it goes nowhere. You know how I feel about Zeke as my friend, and by extension to you.”
“Thank you. It is really important to us. Zeke, hurry up. Get that floor plate and get over here. I’ll get the field generator. I know exactly where I can get my hands on one.”
“On my way, love.”
#
By the end of the evening, they had the gravity plate implementation completed. They sent out a ship-wide alert and shut the spin down. Excitedly the two positioned themselves on the plate, maybe just a little closer than required. Julie used a side handhold to keep them in place; she didn’t want to come crashing down if it worked.
“Ready?” Julie asked Zeke with a big smile.
“Ready,” Zeke told her. “Let’s make history!”
With just a little nervous anticipation, Julie tapped her VR “On” icon. When it came on, they were pulled down onto the plate. To their bodies, it felt just like gravity.
The two danced together excitedly on the plate, and why not? This would revolutionize living and traveling in space. Julie suspected for those that suffered space sickness, that would be a thing of the past. Instead of rotating on and off the space station, Space Tech employees would be able to live up on the station if they wanted to.
Julie had a sudden realization. That meant they were going to need changes on the station soon. Immediately, they would need to expand the common area and the food court. Later would come much bigger changes, stuff like schools and labs and recreational areas. Emily and Caitlyn and their plans would get her started, but it wouldn’t be long before she would need an entire design team dedicated to the task.
Unaware of Julie’s thoughts, Zeke murmured, “Not quite one gravity, just a little more I think.” He tweaked the field just a tiny, tiny bit. “That’s it,” he said.
Physically, Julie couldn’t tell the difference but somehow she knew he was right. She could only laugh. But suddenly she stared at him. “One more question, love. Think you can build one to cancel out gravity? As in anti-gravity plates for cars and planes and low gravity beds for sleeping.”
“Oh my God! You just reverse the field— And poof, no gravity.”
“And if you build it using the new materials, it will be even easier to work with. Bet you can make the bed light and thin enough to roll up like a sleeping bag. You would need a more miniaturized field unit for that model but nothing to it.”
Julie had another thought. “I especially want them on my corvette. Just think what you could do on takeoff and landing. I could even fly to the monk island and land on it in my corvette. That would save all kinds of time when I have to go there in a few days.”
Zeke liked that idea too. He’d been worried about her having to fly to the island in a helicopter. “You’ve got it, love. It’ll just take a couple of hours to get them installed and the AI modified to handle them.”
Laughing he looked at Ju
lie. “We’ve got to go on these field trips more often.”
#
The next day they split up into three groups as they headed back to Space Tech Station. Julie asked Joe to fly the big ship so he could get a feel for it. When she started out in her ship, she sent Zeke an excited mental message, “You tweaked my drive!” she told him. And then she laughed out loud and sent, “Whoops! That sounded bad. But it’s awesome!”
Julie keyed her mike and sent a VR to both ships. “See you there, boys!” She kicked her little corvette into high speed and took off, leaving the two of them there.
“So much for taking it slow,” Zeke VR’d Joe. “I better stay with her or she will be flying rings around the space station by the time we get there. Safe flight!” Then he took off too.
Joe turned to Caitlyn. “Is it something I said or did I forget to put on deodorant?” He sent their ship moving too, albeit at a slightly more moderate pace.
“Whatever will we do with the time?” Caitlyn asked him, taking his hand in hers and sitting down beside him.
“Guess we’ll think of something,” Joe told her and gave her a big smile. Then he gave her a very serious look and said, “Actually, there is something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”
Somehow the three ships all made it back to Space Tech Station in one piece. But to Julie’s complete surprise, Zeke caught up to her and flew beside her. She knew he could have passed her if he’d wanted to do it. She sent him a mental message, “That is so not fair. You tweaked the drive again.”
Suddenly Julie had a vision of their daughter from some years in the future. Her name was Juliette and she looked a lot like her mother. Julie knew without a shadow of a doubt it was her daughter and that it was real. In her vision, the girl was in a ship somewhat smaller than the corvette. She had designed the ship herself and she was flying in some kind of space race. She had added something to her ship that Julie couldn’t quite figure out, but it was giving her a big advantage in the race. She was intent on winning it and she was blowing the competition away. She appeared to be a masterful pilot.