Space Trippers Book 1: Trippin'

by A. Lightbourne

  Captain Fairbanks pursed her lips in annoyance as she eyed the two awe struck men disapprovingly.

  Valesque saw she had gotten the Military woman’s attention and so went on.

  “These panels over here…” she began as she indicated a large console located closest to the empty span of deck floor before the ball, “are where you monitor the Light Core’s operation. This panel indicates the capacity and the condition of all of the power storage containers above us.” she said indicating a large panel that was lit with progressive bar graphs and thousands of small indicator lights half of which appeared fully green, some others half green and the rest completely red.

  “As you can see the power we have available is at this mark.” the Engineer went on as she ran her still-clawed finger over one of the bar graphs that appeared halfway up the chart. “And these smaller icons show each of the containers and how much energy is available in each one.” she continued, running her hand over the small green and red circles on the panel below the bar graphs.

  The Engineer stepped in front of the next console to her right. “Over here we have the indication of how much of the gas suspension is present in the chamber and how much is left on hand.” she indicated a row of glowing and pulsing bars with climbing and descending numbers next to them.

  “What happens when we run out of our supply?” Sanic who had been silent until now queried in his Operations Overseer’s concern.

  “We just collect more. The elements we need are freely available throughout space.” Valesque returned happily.

  “As you can see...” she said, directing her speech mostly to the Captain, “the Light Core is very economical to run. If any parts are needed they are all pretty universally carried, you can pick up mirrors, solar panels and laser beam projectors just about anywhere. And it is a safe system too, in that if it does become unstable or gets damaged it will not cause a fall out or meltdown.” she finished smugly with a secret condescending side glance at the Military Captain.

  “But it takes a month to charge up and you can not view its operation externally.” the Captain rebutted, again smoothing back her tightly bound red hair.

  The Virrilian’s happy glow turned dark.

  “The operational condition of the chamber can be viewed at this console over here.” she retorted.

  Showing the way to the opposite side of the aisle were a large number of read outs and one small screen showing a live camera feed were housed.

  “As you can see we have a special, tiny, camera set up to view the interior operation of the Light Core. Here we can see the web of laser light beams and check for any abnormalities. As you can see from the screen, the interior of the ball is completely empty; there are no walkways or ladders, which would interfere with the bounce of the light beams and the absorption of the solar panels.”

  “How can the core be maintained if there is no way to get around inside it?” Sanic asked again in his Operations Control mode.

  “Bots.” she answered. “Cleaning Bots. Once a month or so the Core can be shut down for the Bots to go in, polish the panels, and remove any mineral buildup.

  They are anti-gravity bots so they do not need to touch any of the surfaces, which could damage the sensitive panels and misalign the mirrors.

  Which is another reason why regular personnel can’t enter the core, besides the fact that while it is running, like now, it is impossible for any humanoid life form to with…..stand……the…..intensity….” the Engineer’s voice trailed off uncertainly as she finished her statement and glanced at the live video feed from inside the Core, for she thought, she was almost sure, for a split second she saw a luminous figure move about inside the light field.

  Valesque shook her head at the idea but stranger things had been happening lately, the nightmare just keeps getting worse.

  She tried to obstruct the view of the screen by turning towards the others as she positioned herself in front of the console, hoping nobody else had caught the glimpse of movement she had detected.

  “Uhhhh….. well, that is about it for the Light Core.” she announced trying to sound unconcerned and move the tour away from the screen.

  The Captain looked perturbed. She stood before the Engineer with her arms crossed thoughtfully and one hand resting on her chin as she stared at the Engineer suspiciously. Valesque began to worry that she had seen something in the screen as well, until she finally spoke.

  “So, if it is not the power source that is causing our slow down. Then, what is it?” she finally asked in an almost accusing tone.

  “Well, it can’t be the power source.” the Engineer replied, grinning nervously. “Since there is absolutely, utterly and unequivocally nothing wrong with it.” she added as she made sure she was still covering the view of the screen.

  “It might possibly have something to do with the engines themselves.” she suggested quickly.

  “That would be over there, on the other side of the Light Core.” she continued as she gestured across the deck with no sign of intent to move from her spot.

  “The engine, weapons and scanner controls are all over there.” she added enticingly, trying to lure them away from the area so she could move.

  The Captain gave her a strange look as if to say she thought the Engineer was quite unstable and started across the open area of deck and around the huge sphere to the other half of Solar Deck 1. The other two slowly followed their leader in a slightly confused state.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Valesque quickly turned around to examine the screen behind her. She stared at it intently examining every nuance of the image, but no matter how hard she looked, there was nothing abnormal in the Light Core.

  I must have just imagined it, she thought, with everything else going wrong I am probably just over stressed and am seeing things. Or one of the mirrors could be slightly off alignment, I will have to look into that later, she mused, much later. Right now, she needed to concentrate on the main problem, the Space Tripper.

  Valesque scanned the area for anything that might be of use in disassembling the device in question.

  The crew they had to run these controls might not have any idea what they are doing, but they sure seemed to have cleaned things up very well.

  There was not a piece of wire, a clamp, or anything else useful in the whole area.

  With a resigned sigh, she pushed herself up off the stool before the Light Core monitoring panel and headed across the open area of deck to the side the others had gone to earlier.

  They were probably wondering where she was and who knows what surprises they might find next, the Engineer thought with one last suspicious glance at the giant metallic ball as she passed.

  This day just was not getting any better.

  She caught sight of her tour group as she reached the second control section of the deck. They were all huddled together around one of the engine monitoring consoles, with two new additions.

  Two thin, pink aliens with matching light red body suits stood nervously within the group around the controls. They seemed to be the ones in charge of the area as the Captain was trying to get answers out of them on the ship’s present lack of speed, but the two pink beings seemed to talk more to each other than to answer any questions the increasingly irritated Captain asked of them.

  “Well, I see you finally decided to join us after all.” the Captain began tersely as she noticed the Virrilian approaching.

  Her Second in Command, Fazar, winced a bit at her conversation starter with the headstrong Virrilian. At this rate they would never get on her good side.

  Captain Fairbanks let out a long groaning sigh, revealing the level of her frustration as she began again, “These two seem to be the ones assigned to monitor the ship’s functions down here.” she explained quickly, trying to calm her nerves. “And, of course, they don’t seem to have any idea what is going on. Like 90 percent of the rest of the crew.” she muttered.

  “They say this is the main engine console but
they don’t know how to read it.” she concluded, looking to the newly arrived Engineer for any insights.

  She hated to admit it but she was almost relieved to see the Engineer arrive, she may be obstinate, quick-tempered, stubborn and antagonistic, but at least she seemed to know what she was doing.

  Valesque was a bit worried by the slight look of relief the Captain had at seeing her. She tried to shake off the uneasy feeling of being wanted by the Military Officer by looking down at the panels in question.

  “You can monitor the engine’s functions from here.” she agreed to the others' assumption, keeping her distance from the almost welcoming Captain.

  Valesque glanced over to the two red clad figures.

  She had never seen them before, which meant they had not been a part of her building staff and therefore were not in any technical occupation.

  She could only guess where they had rounded the poor souls up from; they probably had been running a little juice bar somewhere, or considering how they had apparently cleaned up the entire deck of any building materials, they could have been janitors on Saturna 3.

  The pair seemed overjoyed at seeing her, as soon as they heard her say she knew what the panels were for their big black eyes got round with excitement and relief.

  Finally, someone who knew what was going on; perhaps she also knew what they were doing here!

  “Did you hear that, Brother?” one said eagerly to the other as they turned to each other and clasped hands excitedly.

  “Oh, yes, Brother!” the other replied just as eagerly, “She knows what the panels say, doesn’t she, Brother?”

  “Yes, Brother.” the first one replied, “She does seem to know what the panels say. Perhaps she knows the answer to that other thing we wanted to know as well.”

  “What thing was that, Brother?” the second returned, seemingly confused.

  The Captain put one hand up to her head and smoothed back her tightly bound hair once again. “Before we start that all over again.” she interrupted the apparently repeating conversation, feeling she would go mad if she had to endure the endless banter again. “Miss Valesque, would you please, be so kind as to tell us what these panels say about the engines?” she requested, looking as if she was trying to restrain herself from gagging the annoying twins.

  The Virrilian Engineer shrugged. “Well, these horizontal bars over on the left side are power availability indicators.” she began, deciding to start with the simplest component.

  “As you can see,” she continued, running a clawed finger along the length of the bars of light, “the lights are in the green, which means there is ample power to run the engines. If it was in the reds it would mean you had to use low-powered thrusters, no lights at all would mean no engine power was available.”

  The Captain made a mental note of that, there was enough power to run the engines, so that still did not explain the problem.

  Sanic also made a note of how the indicator functioned. No doubt, there was a similar power bar on his main operations command console on the Control Deck.

  Valesque ran her hand down the lighted panels to another indicator. “This is a diagram of the engines; any parts in red would indicate a fault. As you can see engine function is all green. There is no functional problem with the engines at this time.”

  Again that did not explain the problem.

  “Over on the right we have the engine output controls. You can adjust the pulse intensity to determine your speed. A subtle pulse would move us slower and a stronger pulse would push us faster.” she explained carefully for the slow ones in her audience. “This bar graph indicator shows us to be set for a high strength pulse….. and over here ..is the output chart……that's strange.” she mumbled to herself as she pointed out the graphs to the others. Valesque quickly slid in front of the panel and started running both hands expertly across the controls, trying to figure out the problem she was seeing.

  “What is it?” the Captain immediately asked, hoping for an explanation to her engine problems at last.

  “Uhmm, I'm not sure yet.” the Engineer replied quickly as her hands flew swiftly over the board, her serious eyes darting quickly from one indicator to another. She had detected a problem with the output of the engines but she did not want to admit any difficulties to the Captain. Not that she was afraid or too proud to admit her engines were somehow at fault, she quickly reasoned to herself as she rechecked the controls.

  Valesque hit a series of commands and suddenly a screen full of scrolling data sprang up before her. She scanned the information, looking for something in particular, as a series of diagrams flashed by indicating power flow, circuitry loops and energy levels.

  The Virrilian Engineer just kept them scrolling by at an amazingly rapid rate, until finally seeming to find what she had been looking for.

  Valesque groaned inwardly, just what she needed was another delay. She really had more pressing things to do, but if she wanted to get the Captain off her back so she could get on with her work she had better find a way to fix this as quickly as possible.

  “So have you found the problem?” the eager Captain asked again as soon as the Engineer seemed to find what she had been searching for and began to move away from the control panels.

  If she could get this engine problem fixed she might still have enough time to get to the Corseccan Galaxy and help her husband before it was too late.

  “Uh, maybe.” was all the Virrilian replied, very noncommittally as she moved quickly from the area towards a section of bulkhead wall across the room behind them.

  ‘Maybe’ was better than ‘no’ the Captain thought as she contemplated the need to follow the Engineer across the room, but decided instead to just sit on one of the control section stools and wait for a progress report as she monitored the situation.

  Sanic took Valesque’s place at the engine control panel to see if he could detect what had troubled her. He glanced over the controls she had mentioned last, looking for any discrepancies.

  He saw that the engine control was set for a strong pulse thrust, but the output chart showed a much weaker pulse actually being emitted. The control specialist then glanced to where the scrolling information had been stopped.

  There was nothing in the information on the screen that seemed to pertain to the problem at hand, Sanic reached out to scroll the data back a few more pages looking for what had finally caught the Engineer’s attention.

  All he could see was a circuitry chart, but being unfamiliar with the intimate design of the ship, he could not see what that portion would have to do with the low engine output.

  Valesque meanwhile had already removed the access panel to the circuitry she had found questionable in the diagrams.

  She looked through the web of cables until she found the dark blue cabling the chart had indicated.

  Scanning its length, she found herself staring up at a foreign piece of metal and an apparent addition of looped cables connecting here and there in the circuitry.

  Valesque caught a glimpse of some deliberate scratches on the face of the metallic box. She stood on tiptoe to get a better look at the silvery piece in the middle of the cabling. ‘DRW’ it said.

  Valesque lowered herself back on her heels. “DRW?” she pondered, what could that mean?

  Suddenly her eyes opened wide as she came to an unhappy realization. “Dr. Warner!” she said aloud in alarm, and then quickly turned to look behind her to see if anyone had heard her.

  The Captain was sitting quietly, smoothing back her hair as she watched Sanic explaining control functions to the babbling pink twins, while Fazar wandered about mindlessly examining the room and control components as if they were wondrous works of art.

  Valesque sighed in relief as she turned back to examine the foreign couplings more carefully.

  First, there was the Space Tripper in the Med-room with a tone set for just her Virrilian hearing to detect.

  Then, there was the possibility he was one of the ones who
had stunned her to make sure she was on the ship when it left, plus the possibility of some flux in the Light Core she had detected and now there was a feed back loop in the circuitry complete with an etching of his initials.

  If Dr. Warner had done this, he apparently wanted to be sure she knew it was him. But why would he want to make sure she was on board?

  How would he have gotten a hold of the Space Tripper, or know how to set it up?

  And why did he mess with the engines and wiring?

  Valesque contemplated the silver box and cables once more.

  The engine controls showed the setting to be at a strong pulse, which would mean they should be going over ten times the speed they were now.