The Resolute

by G. Weldon Tucker

  The problem had always been that the Cyborgs controlled the flow of information in digital packets, a complex process of compressing text or voice to a mere tiny strip of a signal, shot out across Earth point to point and decoded at the receiving end. But humans dare not use that, simply because the power of the Cyborgs computers was phenomenal, and little would remain a secret.

  Hence, most human communication in this era was in shortwave, using the old, antiquated digital converters, which the Cyborgs did not understand. The biggest problem of that was though no one could track the sender or the receiver, the range was short, as expected.

  But Jake was a very smart young man. On his shore leave from UE Resolute, he avoided the party crowds, and would hunker down in his tiny lab, a corner square only seven by seven feet in his family’s twenty five by twenty five feet of living space. His family, after the greetings and the few minutes to welcome him home, knew to leave him alone. He was inventing… experimenting, and someday, he might save their lives as they explored the universe out there.

  On the moon, Jake had a good view out of a skylight. It was the side of the Resolute, mostly finished. In his hand, he carried a miniature parabolic dish with a tiny chip at the focal point.

  He set it on a table facing toward the Resolute, sighted it carefully, then attached a single wire to a box no bigger than a small pocketbook. He waited, studying his watch. At the precise time agreed with another man far across the habitats, Jake tapped the button on top of the book. He had put the message together on his computer.

  Using a memory chip to transfer the message kept the Cyborgs out of his systems. A sixteen digit number went into the parabolic dish, scrambled, or, encrypted and off through space. But what Jake had developed was a directional packet system, different than the Cyborgs. For one thing, it was not a strip. It was a mere dot, impossible to intercept unless the Cyborgs set up a dish right on the path.

  With no Cyborgs up here to block it, it went to the fat stanchion on the near side to him, but the far end of Resolute, nearly twelve miles out, that held the huge main engines. It bounced, as he predicted, and shot home into a similar dish almost a dozen miles back. The distance was not the issue. It was the precision of the bounce.

  Seconds later, Jake got his confirmation. In code, which the computer broke down, it said, only, “GOOD DAMN JOB!”

  Then came the happy dance, a few fist pumps, but he suddenly realized he was not alone. Huh. All in all, it’s been a damned good day, Jake thought, grinning, embarrassed, as his family eyed him, looking pleased.

  CHAPTER 2

  Christine knew they were all busy people. There was little downtime on a space station, even if it had nineteen huge buildings, almost all of them four stories high. There were many talents, much responsibility, and family time was precious, but limited.

  Alice and Don had just left, her to report in for her shift at the hospital, and Don to get back to his practice. People need to see well. They would need it even more when they got out there in the middle of nowhere. And all four arks had no destinations… merely a vector to follow in hope of finding a home.

  “Merry Christmas, Mother,” sounded as she sat there, still drying tears. She looked up to see Lena with young Bryce in tow.

  The boy was almost twenty, and coming out of the Officer’s Academy this next month. He, too, would be on one of the ships. But, he had not yet gotten his assignment. Six grandkids, all in the academy, all near the top of their class. Again, she was so proud of all of them.

  She stood up, not as shaky as even the day before and swept the still lovely Lena into an embrace. Lena was a mere sixty nine and holding up very well.

  “You look stronger, Mother. Has the depression eased?” Always right to the point. She had not changed her personality at all over forty years.

  “Yes. I seem to have a new hobby, a new focus,” Christine agreed, then stepped away to hug her grandson, who looked so much like her son they could well have been like peas in a pod, one simply younger.

  Like her son, he was only tolerant of her embrace, and she stepped back, quickly. She knew where that came from, too. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

  Lena had retired in Captaincy, early, in order to raise her children. She was an artist, and surprisingly for her logical attitudes, a good one. And something the habitats had needed, desperately. Hundreds of her paintings, big and small, simple to ornate, were hanging on public and private steel walls, brightening the rooms.

  Yes, she understood the human emotions, and love. Hard to come by with her family traits. It had been a major milestone to even allow Hank to hold her. And sex? My goodness, she had been frightened half to death. But only until she caught on. They were lucky they did not have twelve kids.

  Young Bryce, stiff in the presence of a retired Admiral, was pink cheeked when she let him free. Tentatively, he held out a fairly good sized package, wrapped in recycled brown paper and bright red string. “Merry Christmas, Admiral.”

  “You did not grow up calling me Admiral! I am your Gramma. That is an order.”

  He grinned, embarrassed and rephrased it, “Okay. Merry Christmas, Gramma. This is for you!”

  Again, she sat down on the nearby chair, then untied the string. When she opened it, there was the continued theme. “How on earth did you find a star map? And in color?”

  It was a paperback, the pages stiff, as the manufacturing process had not yet matured on the moon, twelve by eight, with myriad colored maps printed page by page, all of the various points of interest labeled… and then, she realized it. Labeled by hand…

  The binding was the coiled spring she recognized from many uses around the habitats. “You… made this, Bryce?”

  “Well, I had help. The rest of the family is on duty on the ships, but we pooled the computer printouts and labeled the stuff we had to learn. This is the result of our final papers. About one sixth of the book is mine. The rest from the others. We knew, somehow, this is what you would need. I hope you like it, Gramma.”

  Christine bounced up, feeling fifty instead of seventy-three, and embraced them both fiercely. This time, her grandson accepted the hug and to her heart’s joy, he hugged her back.

  The tears flowed all over again, even from Lena. Hell, even the nearly minted Lieutenant misted up.

  When she watched them go, not long thereafter, she could not help but think of how things had changed. The kids were Lieutenants at nineteen and twenty. Grown up so much faster… And so fast… time had flown…

  Well, now she had a real hobby. She stood up, comparing the beautifully made star map to the stars overhead. After all, on the moon, it was most often a dark sky, all because of no filtering atmosphere, with the stars in the billions. Smiling, she adjusted her ‘scope and began hunting…

  CHAPTER 3

  Finally, each ark, a ship, was nearly completed. Off from one edge of Christine’s room, she could see the Resolute at berth. That, of course, was a misnomer. There was no water, there was no sailing the waves. It was dead still, no atmosphere or wind to create movement. And it was unbelievably huge!

  She could not see much beyond the quarter mile of the front, but the rounded, blunt nose was two miles high and three wide. She could almost envision how majestic it would be when launched. But, in fact, no one would be able to see enough of it to make sense until it was almost ten miles away!

  Only in space could man build such a behemoth. And on her proud watch, they had built four of them.

  UE Resolute, UE Explorer, UE Seeker and UE Hope. All very Navy oriented, thought out names.

  Recharged, for the moment, she dug out her plans for the Resolute. It was a book of five hundred pages, fastened with long screws at the left edge, and the pages were well thumbed.

  Of course, this had been Michael’s baby for nearly thirty-five of the past forty years, but he had passed the book on to her. She was, then, the Admiral. Someday, she would give it back to him. It was already obsolete, but ninety percent of the d
esign was spelled out, followed to the letter.

  She gently paged through, lovingly, remembering the angst of manipulating tons of material into position, stacking thousands of condos one upon another, side by side, and bolting it all together. Hell they even had to learn how to make the bolts!

  She traced the red design lines for electricity, the yellow for waste, the green for air handling, and the blue for water, knowing that as she saw them here, so they laid on the ships. And now with sixty thousand people in place, onboard each ship, everything had already been tested and retested a thousand times. Air? Check. Water? Check. Electrical? Check.

  Systems control? Checked, but beyond her knowledge.

  That was the last item to be installed, after the huge outside engines were mounted on their stanchions. Those were hydrogen based. Scoops and all. The design was to gather hydrogen at nearly the light speed the ships would move, and surprisingly, there were tons and tons of hydrogen available in this manner. The molecules might be far apart, but at better than six hundred million miles an hour, they could as well have been jam-packed.

  This provided an automatic fuel load, always topped and ready. If and when Resolute went into battle, or perhaps had to dodge asteroids, whatever, it was the big thrusters all along the outer shell, along with these four massive side mounted engines that could make the huge thing turn and duck as needed, within reason. Ponderously slow, but a hundred times faster than the best twenty first century battleship on the oceans. It was still several hundred million tons of mass.

  Not quite the fighter style, she was a battlewagon, more responsive to controls in space, however, as mass takes muscle, and though sharp turns were out of the makeup, even a quick one makes stresses.

  But, it was planned, with all the weaponry she carried, and her ability to lay it out, only a fool would take her on. But aliens probably do not recognize the term. If they exist. If they did, they would learn.

  The inner, back end engines were nuclear, designed to push and push and push until the craft reached the highest speed it was ever going to reach.

  With all calculations, that would be near the speed of light. No one had ever dreamed of exceeding the speed of light… except Michael. But he was still a dreamer, and it showed in the ships.

  -----

  It was odd to see so much blank titanium steel without a single window. Everything was cameras and displays for the illusion of windows. The discussion of the plans had centered around nearly half a foot thick polycarbonate so space would not intrude, nor atmosphere escape. But then, each of those windows, anywhere on the ship represented a structural weakness in a such a behemoth.

  The ship was built to move, and even to turn, but mass is mass. Any stress at all might simply pop the window right out. It did not matter. To her, it was still beautiful. Besides, all of that was outside her responsibility, before, and out of reach, now.

  People were living there, now, for several years. Children who knew nothing else. Kids would grow up wearing magnetic shoes with Velcro pads at all times, otherwise they would float off, out of control. Never barefoot. Parents who would be homesick for a planet, too. But that was why they put them in early. If someone was going to snap, it best be while they were in port.

  So far, in all four ships, there had been none.

  Smiling, again, she dragged out the ‘scope and tried to see far down the length of the ship. It was breathtaking, a long, flat cigar shape, but all she saw was a wall of steel and far away stabilizers… Then, suddenly breaking into sobs, she threw herself on her bed.

  I sooo so wanted to be on that ship!

  CHAPTER 4

  The launch party began. No one would listen to Christine’s complaint about clothing, or appearance or whatever.

  Don told her, “You are the hero of this program. Without your daring, and Uncle Michael’s too, this would never have worked. You have to be there!”

  Now, Lena and Alice helped prepare her. Both noted the firm stride, the determined look on her face, and they were glad. She had recovered from the depression. She had a life. And a hobby. She talked incessantly about watching the ships sail into space. Her dream, but not her right. Still, it was a miracle she had stepped back up.

  Of course, elegant clothing was not readily available, but with the right accessories, a long, black, shimmery gown of plastic and odd waste products restored the pink spots in older cheeks and made her heart beat a little faster. The first party was held in the habitats, all people her age or close. And it was not that exciting, even as they cheered her and Michael. Frankly, though she had met so many, she remembered so few. Family was enough. That logical thing, again.

  The second party was to be on the ship of her choice. Now that the assignments were made, and big portions of families put mostly together on a single ship or two, her choice was between two ships, Hope and Resolute. The two were carrying the DNA seed of her strong stock into space, evenly split. So were the other two, but to a much lesser, farther removed degree.

  UE Resolute! The pride of the fleet. Not because it was any different than the other three, but because this was the ship she and Michael had named with the first keel laid. Not to mention that it would be the only one she could watch- for years!

  It had been ten years since Christine had walked the bridge of the behemoth. Then, the controls were few, the realism slim, and nothing like what they showed her in the tour before the last party. This was a space ship, a modern, hard charging, make it happen ark!

  Faces glowing with pride, she and Michael, trailed by the family, surveyed their designs come to life. Behind the bridge nearly sixty thousand people lived their busy lives, as if they had never known anything else. The space was prepared for up to five hundred thousand, but at the rate people seem to replicate themselves, that might happen sooner than later.

  Already there had been discussions on limits and chemical birth control. To allow unchecked population expansion was to cause the program to fail as everyone died from lack of resources.

  They discussed every facet, maybe to remind those in attendance, or to reward those who put it together.

  A PR Lieutenant had the most to say. “We launch at fourteen hundred tomorrow. We have strived for the most important launch time, when the Solar System, which oscillates slightly above and below the Milky Way disk over several thousand years, is ‘above’ it by nearly a light year. The highest point. That is our launch target.

  “As most of you know, all four ships are being sent off in different directions across the galaxy, like spokes in a wheel, though focused where there is unknown galaxy to see and study. Hopefully, not over or near a black hole.”

  There were polite chuckles, but in actuality, that was a very sensitive topic.

  The Lieutenant lit up a vidscreen, and used a pointer. It had taken time to trust a vid, and in fact, had taken even more to redevelop them. He pointed a laser dot on a pie chart.

  “Basically, on a pie, with Earth sitting just inside one edge, the launches will cover a shape about one hundred and twenty degrees. You can imagine why we might not want to go off into deep, deep space, perpendicular to the galaxy! We would likely be forever lost!”

  More laughter rippled through the twenty thousand filling the auditorium. A big crowd, a full house. Seating limited.

  “True, we cannot cut directly across the galaxy, either. We know of the black hole, but we do not know how strong it is. No point in testing the limits! The ships that launch tomorrow are holding some of the remaining humans with a chance. A slim chance, but one they are willing to take. And we applaud them!” and the crowd did so, with him, the roar filling the auditorium.

  “We bless them, ask for whatever help the Universe can give them, and pray they will be successful. Someday, out there, another Earth!”

  Cheers and applause slammed through the auditorium. It was a good speech, Christine thought, but she was exhausted. Her brother was looking tired, too. Enough.

  Don and his wife, seeing this
, excused themselves from the festivities and ushered mother and Uncle Michael home in a shuttle. Their part was finished. It was up to those hardy explorers, now. Riding their babies. Carrying their babies, too, but it was in someone else’s hands…

  Christine could not help it. A bittersweet victory. She cried all night long…

  CHAPTER 5

  Two o’clock in the afternoon for those civilians lucky enough to still carry a watch. Fourteen hundred hours, military time. Christine, Michael, and several others of high rank stood by the cables that secured the mighty ships. And of course, hers and Michael’s was the Resolute.

  Entire crews and their passengers were on board each of the massive vessels. As soon as they were released, it was too late to get on… or off.

  Eleven and a half miles long, a flattened, but fattened cigar, Resolute carried four quarter mile long thrusters on half mile long stanchions, placed well back on the body to avoid destroying the critical hull. That hull kept space out and kept the heat from the ship.

  Space keeps a very cold temperature, barely four degrees above absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. Still, despite the length of the stanchions, when they were on full bore in the testing phase, the outside rooms’ interior walls in the aft cabins got pretty warm. But, put those same engines to the max in travel, and the walls would never notice.

  However, from where Christine stood, lever in hand at the very bottom of the tower for Resolute, she could see none of that. The plan upon release was for each vessel to lift off the several frames that braced it, then push back away from the huge derricks, lift a couple of miles and then turn to the vector appointed. Resolute would have to do an about face. A regal queen, as beautiful as any ship ever streaming from its launch on the ocean. Even if it looked like a very long, flattened cigar…

  They would see the hydrogen run thrusters, for the burning created an odd color, easy visible against the black, starry sky. Then, for two days, the full power of the mighty side engines would throw a trail back for almost twenty miles.