The Pathfinder Trilogy

by Todd Stockert

  “What in blazes was that?” he asked, confused by the sudden silence in the Command Dome. Almost all of the computer systems that provided the normal background noise had stopped functioning.

  “I have no idea,” he heard Adam comment from across the room.

  “The damage control computer is still working, sir,” Ensign Long reported. Kaufield could see the eerie outline of the man’s face as he reviewed the computer’s data. “Aside from the electrical failure we have minor structural damage to the Garden and Livestock wings… but the computer reports they are still intact and pressurized.”

  “Thank God for that,” Mary concluded softly.

  Abruptly the power and lights snapped back on and everyone quickly busied themselves at their stations. Dennis watched and waited helplessly as they worked, fighting back a burst of anger and intense frustration at the unexpected situation.

  “The Pathfinder is on backup systems,” Mary reported. “Battery power only… the CAS singularity is not… I repeat… not active.” Swiftly, she put up an image of the wand on one of the monitors to verify. “It’s gone dark.”

  Dennis quickly activated the closest Comm-link. “Glen,” he said firmly, “This is the Command Dome. What’s going on down there…? Was there some sort of a problem with the transit?”

  “I’m not… sure yet,” came the hesitant reply. “Please stand by.”

  “There’s nothing out of the ordinary on motion sensors,” Mary reported. “But I do think you should look at this,” she commented, putting up an image on one of the overhead screens.

  Burning in the center of the screen was a distant star. In the foreground was a huge scattering of thousands of small comets, their bright tails all pointing away from the star’s solar radiation. Several extremely thin nebulae, composed of angry red-colored dust stretched and twisted their way through the cloud of comets and deeper into the image as far as they could see. The normal blackness of empty space was completely gone – instead they were staring at a screen filled with a soft golden mist. From an astronomer’s perspective it was a spectacular sight and everyone paused for a moment to simply admire the scene.

  “That’s a really remarkable view,” Kaufield commented, “But it’s most definitely not where we’re supposed to be right now. We were programmed to emerge from the transit trip next to a trinary star system.” He met Adam’s gaze with a look of puzzlement. “So that begs the question, where the hell are we?”

  “Captain, this is Glen,” said Fredericks, his voice momentarily distorted by a burst of static on the still-open Comm-Link. “Someone changed our destination coordinates right before we activated the CAS Drive. We landed in the exact center of the Poseidon gravity river.”

  “Confirm that, please!” Kaufield ordered.

  “I have… three times already,” Glen insisted. “Instead of our next planned transit alongside the edge of the river we instead traveled over 73 million light years directly into it. If you had asked me to put us into its exact center these are the coordinates I would have suggested. I’m not kidding you… the Pathfinder is currently sitting no more than 5 light minutes from the center of the river’s width at this point along its length.”

  “What’s the status of our CAS Drive?”

  “It’s down until further notice, Captain. We suffered severe damage to our electrical equipment down here. As expected, the PTP window did not interact very well with Poseidon’s gravitational force. Our carefully controlled singularity model collapsed from the disruption as soon as we emerged from transit.”

  “Adam, bring the liquid fuel engines back to full power and place our maneuvering thrusters at station-keeping. Mary, please let me know if anything dangerous floats our way.”

  “May I make a suggestion, Captain?” Adam asked. Dennis nodded and walked over to stand next to him as both men studied the readouts on Adam’s helm console. “I think that we should leave the maneuvering thrusters off at this point – to conserve fuel. There’s way too much gravity here and everything is drifting toward Poseidon, so I think we should let the ship float with it and that will minimize our risk of colliding with anything.” He shrugged, pointing at their fuel indicators. “That is, unless you want us to expend valuable fuel trying to swim upstream like a school of salmon.”

  “Point taken. We may need that fuel if we can’t get the CAS Drive working again,” Kaufield said grimly. “If we are unable to restore it to full operation, we’re going to have to try using smaller, standard PTP transits at a 90 degree angle in order to move back out into normal space.”

  “We’ll have to begin burning some of the liquid fuel anyway, Captain. We can’t stay on battery power for any reasonable length of time.”

  “Agreed. Thanks primarily to the ‘Atomic Nightmare’, we’re almost fully loaded with fuel,” Kaufield said, taking a deep breath as he activated the Comm-link next to Adam. “Glen, who changed the PTP destination coordinates?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “As I understand it, the CAS systems will only accept commands from dedicated work stations in the Lab wing or from my Delta console. Each work station logs a specific security code for all commands as they are received and processed by our network. So look at the log and please tell me which work station changed the destination coordinates on us.”

  “Stand by Captain,” Glen said quickly.

  “This is not good,” Adam noted, clearly frustrated. “If we can’t restore the CAS systems to full operation we’re a long way from anyplace safe right now…”

  “Don’t begin worrying prematurely,” replied Dennis firmly. “The ship is intact and simply drifting calmly in a gravity river at this point… that’s all. The only problem that we need to address is how to get safely out again. We have food, water, and a lot of resources out there – drifting right along with us. If we require additional fuel then at least we have plenty of material nearby to search through using shuttles.”

  “Do you know how long it will take, using only standard PTP, to return to normal space?” queried Adam. “We’re not talking a short-term crisis here. Our maximum range for transit just decreased to a fraction of our previous capability. Standard Point-to-Point is usually meant for travel within our solar system.”

  “I’m sending a copy of today’s activity log to Adam’s screen,” Glen’s voice crackled through the Comm-link speaker. “All commands are prefixed by a location code: ‘COM’ for Command Dome or ‘LAB’ for the Lab wing. This location is followed by a work station number, command sequence ID, and a date/time stamp. Together these items comprise a unique key that is assigned to each computer instruction processed by our systems.”

  “The command that changed the transit coordinates will be near the end of the list,” Dennis commented, pointing at the information appearing on Adam’s screen. “It will be the instruction received just prior to CAS PTP activation.”

  “There,” Adam said, pointing at the screen. “What the devil…?”

  They stared in awe at the command log list. Each instruction began with the proper security code prefixed by ‘COM’ or ‘LAB’ except for the one they were looking for. The command that issued the change in coordinates was there, but listed with a security code beginning with the word…

  “Trust,” Kaufield said, dumbfounded. “No work station ID, no sequence number, no date or time received. Just the one word: ‘Trust’.”

  “Who could do that?” Mary asked. “Not even our top-level command staff can bypass the dedicated systems and plant a command like that. It would take…”

  “...Much more technical knowledge than anyone on this ship has,” the Captain decided. “It must be our unknown friends again – the ones who sent us the ‘universe diagram’. Whatever their ultimate agenda for us is, we’ve just moved another step closer to it.”

  “They forced the Pathfinder to come here and crashed our CAS systems in the process,” Adam growled. “And now they’re asking – at least I think they’re asking – for our uncondit
ional trust? That would be a hell of a lot easier if we had been allowed a choice in the matter.”

  “Mary, please keep our motion sensors active and scanning,” Kaufield decided. “I’m going to go and have a chat with Dr. Markham in the Observatory. It looks as though we’re going to have the chance to spend some time directly exploring the Poseidon gravity river from within its boundaries after all.”

  THE PATHFINDER PROJECT

  Chapter XVIII: Discovery

  On the 142nd day since the Pathfinder first dared to venture out of the Milky Way, Thomas Roh spent the entire day – and a good part of his evening – down in the Lab wing working side by side with his good friend Glen Fredericks. Their goal was still a simple one: restore the CAS Drive systems to full operation so that the ship could exit from the gravity river surrounding them. He had lost count of the number of weeks that they had been drifting, but was certain that someone somewhere was keeping track. The young scientist had simply made it a priority not to worry about the things he was temporarily unable to change.

  Dr. Markham was quite pleased with their predicament – she continued to reassure him that she and her staff were learning a great deal by having the opportunity to directly view objects captured by the immense gravity field. There was only so much they could learn, she pointed out, during the time that the Pathfinder had been stationed many light years distant. Still, it bothered Thomas – a lot – that the CAS systems were off-line… the idea of being trapped in the gravity river for any length of time was an extremely unappealing one both to him and to the rest of the crew as well. The feeling of helplessness weighed on everyone psychologically, even if no immediate danger presented itself.

  It was well past dinner time when he and Glen mutually agreed to suspend operations for yet another day. They were still busy with the huge task of identifying and replacing burnt out circuit boards and other computer components, but fortunately for them the electronics division of their Lab wing had kicked its hardware production into overdrive. Normally this was Adam’s department, but Kaufield had decided to keep him busy steering the ship in the Command Dome. They no longer needed his innovative hardware design skills since the original schematics for the CAS systems were stored in their central mainframe. The electronics production this time around was geared toward replacement – specifically the equipment that had been damaged or destroyed during their unplanned transit into the gravity river.

  Thomas entered his quarters tired, hungry and slightly dejected. They had gotten so used to having the CAS singularity available for the Pathfinder’s power needs that the comment he had recently made to Julie about her being spoiled by its capabilities now seemed like a nasty omen. He was reaching for the light switch when he suddenly heard snoring. Grinning to himself he decided to leave the lights off and not disturb Kari. Dressed in cut-off jeans shorts and a T-shirt, his girlfriend from the Observatory was sacked out comfortably on his couch, sound asleep. He noticed that George was curled up and tucked comfortably between her ankles, purring as he enjoyed the warmth from her legs on both sides of his fur-lined body.

  “Lucky you,” he whispered to the cat and moved to the kitchen area. He opened his refrigerator and began looking for something to make a sandwich with. Since he still lived by himself – except when Kari was around – there weren’t a lot of choices available. He was still rummaging through his meager choices when he heard her soft voice from behind him.

  “Late night, huh?” she asked, sitting up carefully. George also got up as she moved her legs and hopped down to the carpet. The cat yawned slowly and then stretched out his front paws, doing his best to wake up. Kari reached a hand down and stroked his fluffy fur as he walked by, causing George to roll onto his back and playfully paw at her fingers.

  “I guess so… it’s not too often that I knock off for the day later than you do,” Thomas commented. “There’s nothing in my fridge. Madame, would you please do me the honor of accompanying me to one of the restaurants for a late supper?”

  “Maybe,” she said, reaching down with both hands to rub George’s tummy. The cat decided to escalate the encounter, wrapping all four paws around her hands and starting to gnaw on her knuckles. She continued to tickle him and George suddenly decided enough was enough and leaped to his feet. The black and white furred cat scrambled quickly all the way into the kitchen before pausing alertly by Thomas’ feet, his tail curled high into the air.

  “Maybe?” Thomas asked curiously. “Woman, I’m hungry enough to eat one of those cows up in the Livestock wing all by myself. After looking at computer components all day, I was seriously thinking about using up one of my steak rations.”

  “Sit down on the couch,” she said coyly, motioning to the opposite side of the sofa.

  “Well… maybe I want to sit next to you,” grinned Thomas, winking at her.

  “Nope, you’ve been working really hard so I’m going to teach you a new stress relief game, but it requires you to sit across from me,” Kari decided. She continued to sit against one side of the sofa with her legs stretched attractively along its length. Realizing he wanted to eat dinner within the next millennium, Thomas decided to humor her and sat down where she indicated. He swung his legs up onto the couch and she carefully curled at the knees so that he had room to place the bottom of his feet against hers. The material in his socks was all that separated their feet – he noticed she had left both her shoes and stockings sitting next to the doorway. Things were getting interesting, he mused silently.

  “A new stress relief game, huh?” Thomas asked suspiciously, raising an eyebrow at her.

  “It’s a piece of cake and really easy to learn,” she countered, smirking at him. “I ask you questions and you answer them. If I like your answers you get a positive response.”

  “That sounds a lot like you have most of the power and control over this game,” he noted with amusement.

  “Exactly,” Kari said, rubbing one of her feet along the inside of his shin. She ignored the puzzled look he gave her, noting that he didn’t exactly yank his leg away from her probing foot. “How long have we been going together, Thomas?”

  “95 days,” he replied. “That one is easy, because our first date was back on the Fourth of July. We went to the party in the Garden wing together and you captured my heart that night.”

  “Ooh, good answer,” Kari smiled, moving her foot up to the inside of his thigh. She slowly rubbed her toes back and forth across his leg and watched the young scientist begin to grow steadily uncomfortable. In her off duty hours she spent a lot of time walking with Mary, Julie, and Nori in the Garden wing. The lovely tan on her legs that this exposure gave her was not lost on Thomas as he struggled to maintain his composure.

  “Do you want to work toward a positive, long-term relationship with me and me only?” She blinked her eyelids at him and blew him a kiss.

  “Absolutely,” Thomas said, continuing to grow more and more uncomfortable as her foot continued to wind its way around the inside of his legs. He had to carefully sit up and shift position slightly as her foot worked its way under his shirt and onto his bare stomach beneath. “I’m a scientist. Do you realize how heavily the odds are against another female of any sort ever being attracted to me?”

  “Do you want to have children with me?” she asked. He noticed her tone of voice had a distinctly serious flavor to it.

  “As long as they don’t turn out like Adam,” he chuckled, laughing gleefully at his own joke. Kari’s foot suddenly withdrew quickly from beneath his shirt and kicked him smartly on the shin. “Ouch!” he growled and then grew serious as he saw the expression on her face.

  “Do you want to have children with me?” she repeated. “Do you want to start a family regardless of where we end up on this trek through the universe of ours?”

  “As long as it’s with you, Kari Hansen,” Thomas said sincerely. “After what happened to me emotionally as a result of the attack on Earth, I never expected a girl to ever look at me seriously a
gain, much less a beautiful person like you.” Both of her bare feet slipped under his shirt and he struggled mightily to maintain his dignified posture. He mentally forced himself to take large, deep breaths and cautioned himself to ignore the sight of her lovely bare legs. He was successful with the deep breaths, but found that he inexplicably couldn’t remember what the second part of his plan had been.

  “Do you like me?” she asked, fluttering her eyelids at him again. “Do you really like me, Thomas Roh?” He looked into her dark brown eyes and smiled.

  “I love you, Kari, and I’m not afraid to say it. I don’t care where we end up or what obstacles we have to overcome, as long as I spend the time with you…” He watched her face begin to glow with embarrassment and was pleased to discover that she could grow somewhat uncomfortable as well. “If it’s a commitment you’re looking for, you’ve got it. Don’t worry about silly little things like that.”

  “Are you proposing to me?” she wondered out loud.

  “Hell no. You’ll know when I’m proposing to you because it’ll be a complete surprise and I’ll do the deed properly.” He was a bit puzzled and risked a quick look toward the kitchen where George sat carefully washing his face with one paw. “I thought you said this was a stress relief game. So far it’s been more of a heart to heart…”

  Her T-Shirt hit him squarely in the face, leaving him temporarily unable to see and beginning to realize that everything his friends had told him about women over the years was pretty much true. “What do you think happens next?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Thomas decided, tossing the shirt aside. “I may not be the toughest, most physical guy on the ship but I am a guy.” He got up off of the couch and watched her playfully stand up on it, her feet sinking deep into its cushions. He walked over and stood next to her with his mouth inches from her bare stomach. She was a knockout anyway you looked at her… so having her stand there in short shorts with only a bra on was just about more than Thomas could take. “Okay, now I get it,” he grinned, “You’re in control of the questions, and it’s my job to take care of the stress relief part.” He kissed her bare stomach several times, focusing particularly on her navel area. He finally couldn’t resist and grabbed her firmly around the waist with both hands and lifted her gently to the carpeted floor.