The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  Professor Dandelo noted in his mind which apprentice had made the breech of etiquette. Emotional outbursts, even during glorious successes like this event, were never acceptable. Professor Dandelo would make sure that apprentice had extra duties to ensure no future unscientific occurrences like this would happen again.

  Taking a glance back outside, through the window, Professor Dandelo blinked several times. He was elated that his science plan was taking place. He moved his hands smoothly and spoke. “Proceeding to stage three. Sound off on your individual tasks. Are we ready to proceed?”

  Again, the apprentices all called off “Ready,” as they checked their terminals.

  “Begin stage three,” Professor Dandelo ordered.

  The next set of lights turned on. Each computer terminal was working flawlessly. The apprentices entered the next sequence just as he or she had been taught.

  The millions of tiny energy orbs surged even brighter. Then they flattened, spread out, and linked together to form a single energy coating which was all-encompassing of every aspect of the hull of Habitat Epsilon.

  “Stage three accomplished as planned. No abnormal readings,” Professor Francois stated. “Energy wrap completed.”

  “Of course there are no abnormal readings,” Professor Dandelo stated smoothly and in time to the music. “This is science!”

  Professor Dandelo smiled and swayed in time to the beautiful music. “This is our last stage. Soon we shall find ourselves four hundred kilometers above the surface of this wretched planet. Sound off on your individual tasks.”

  Eager, happy, and glowing faces looked at their computer terminals. The twenty-four apprentices each adored the work. They were part of an immense moment.

  “Ready.”

  “Ready.”

  “Ready.”

  “Ready.”

  And on the verbal checkoffs went. The thoughts in the minds of the apprentices ranged from telling their grandchildren of the part they played, to wonder at how aptly Professors Dandelo and Francois could lead them, to joy at being able to escape from the planet that they had thought had a death grip on them all, and everything in between. None even considered the possibility of failure. Professor Dandelo had never let them down before. He was their idol, their role model, their leader, their hero, and in some minds, he was their god.

  Even the black wrapped Science Consistory members beamed in the immanent success they were about to achieve.

  As Professor Dandelo raised his arms to issue the last command, a crackling and static-filled noise arose from both lecterns. Sandie’s voice came forth from speaker which had never been designed to be used for long-range communications.

  “Professor Dandelo! Do not attempt teleportation! There is no receiving pad!” Sandie’s artificial and mechanical voice punctured through and into Epsilon. “The method you are using cannot accommodate the mass and size you are attempting! Brink could never get remote teleportation to work on areas greater than one-half meter in diameter. This will not work!” Sandie implored.

  “What in the world?” Professor Dandelo spit the words out in shock. “Professor Dandelo! Do not attempt telepo …” Sandie’s voice cut out as Dandelo severed the connection.

  “Dandelo? Is that some machine? Arguing with you?” The most senior member of the Science Consistory stood up and questioned. Her voice creaked with age, but held a deeply concerned edge to it. “Is there an entanglement issue here?” Winifred was a wizened, elderly woman with hair pulled into a tight bun. She was ninety-seven years old and had the look of the ancient elderly. With arthritically twisted fingers she pointed at Professor Dandelo. “I personally saw us make planet-fall. We were trapped here due to insurrection caused by entanglements between artificial intelligences, synthetic brains, and scientists. Are you entangled, Dandelo?”

  “No, Professor Emeritus Winifred, I am not. That was some recorded message, a warped prank, or sick joke. My work on teleportation is sound.” His face was cold and emotionless, as he hid the truth. Professor Dandelo had never told any of the Science Consistory where his breakthrough in teleportation technology had originated. He had claimed it as his own innovative work, saying it was the result of years of hard toil. When the trial run, done with a miniature system, had been a complete success, everyone had been so ecstatic that none had asked more. He turned to his lectern and shut down several more connections to further block the outside link where Sandie had entered. Professor Francois’ face was glaring up at him from the screen, but she did not comment.

  “I see,” Professor Emeritus Winifred said and sat back down. “Lack of discipline will be our undoing one day. You will find this prankster and severe discipline will result.”

  “Yes, Professor Emeritus Winifred, I will personally see to it,” Professor Dandelo responded. He then blew out the breath he had been holding. Leaning forward, eying the apprentices, as if he was truly searching for some culprit, he saw them all shrink back from his intensity. They uniformly rejected that ghostly, mechanical, and heretical voice which had doubted him. Then with both hands upraised he yelled out, “Proceed with stage four! We shall ascend from this mire now! Commence dematerialization.”

  The apprentices, their countenances restored by the progression, and again basking in Professor Dandelo’s presence, proceeded to key in all the commands. Twenty-four people deftly fingered their keyboards, and all the separate computers did their tasks. Stage four began.

  From the needle ship, Sandie again hammered a message to Epsilon. This one, like many of the others, failed to penetrate and find a speaker system. She hoped the few seconds of message which had pierced through Zalia’s atmosphere, then through the muck of mushy ground surrounding the Epsilon habitat, then through the barrier field, and the permalloy, and which had found a command and control set-up lectern, then hijacked some speakers, had been heeded. Sandie doubted Professor Dandelo would listen. The quarkite elements, while being spread to cover the hull, had allowed a very brief window of modulation. Sandie had sent the extremely compressed and recorded message through, conjecturing a marginal chance for someone to hear it. Sandie conjectured an even smaller chance for the warning to be heeded.

  Switching to other scanning instruments, Sandie detected movement in the rolling areas of taupe and blotchy brown which covered over the region where Epsilon had sunk so long ago. Ripples suddenly appeared, outlining a huge cylindrical shape. The ripples made slow and flattish waves, which radiation outward from the cylinder’s framework.

  Sandie made a connection to Captain Eris, and placed it in a two-way, three-dimensional arrangement.

  “What news do you have Sandie?” Eris responded.

  “Captain, I have detected surface activity which is probably connected to Epsilon. The surface over that habitat is showing large-scale longitudinal waves, transverse waves, and Rayleigh surface waves. They are difficult to precisely measure from orbit, but the movement is in elliptical and retrograde paths, with the major axis of the ellipse perpendicular to the outlines of a solid submerged object. That object is consistent with Epsilon’s rough dimensions. The amplitude, magnitude, and conjectured energy needs suggest they are indeed attempting to teleport the entire habitat from that location.”

  “Can they do that?” Eris asked.

  “Using the best of Brink’s computations and estimations, no. It is possible they have some advanced technological knowledge which surpasses that of Dome 17, but I am doubtful.”

  “Give me a full display from all sensors, filter out whatever is not needed,” Eris commanded.

  “Here it is, minus the atmospheric conditions,” Sandie stated.

  From where Eris sat she could now see a display which gave her the perspective of looking straight down at the rolling field of semi-liquid ground. The rippling taupes and browns were strange looking, but the silhouette of the habitat was clearly outline deep beneath.

  “Could they just be running some tests?” Eris asked. She was praying that that was all they were
doing. “Science involves proper experimentation, testing, and evaluation, right?”

  “I hope that is all they are doing, but I am suspicious it is far more,” Sandie answered.

  As Sandie spoke to Captain Eris, there was a change on the surface. The ripples altered dramatically. The sludge-like surface quickly sank, nearly fell, into a void where the habitat had been. The gooey ground sloshed down to fill that empty area. The sides of the huge depression sucked down the surface all around as the semifluid ground of Zalia sought equilibrium and balance.

  “Epsilon is gone,” Sandie stated. “The heavy gravity of Zalia is working to produce the anisotropic behavior of the ground.”

  “But where did it go?” Eris asked. “Would it just diffuse into nothingness? Like a disintegration?”

  “A disintegration-like outcome is a distinct possibility. I am scanning for any signs of Epsilon using all available equipment. The FTL scout ship’s detection equipment is looking right now,” Sandie answered. “In the scenario tests that Brink ran, the outcome of objects which were remotely teleported, without a receiving pad to directly synchronize the re-materialization, had no consistent pattern for their failures. The failure rate was one hundred percent. All tests were performed with a single element ingot. Tests were done on silver, aluminum, gold, copper, lead and zinc. These metals were purified as accurately as possible prior to the tests. Some did virtually disintegrate as their atomic particles lacked cohesion, yet the mass of the object was perceivable, just spread over the intended target. Others had a wide variety of variations and levels of failure in the reconstituted state. None arrived in the same shape as prior to dematerialization. The most often occurrence, in twenty-nine present of cases, was that the object’s fate was undeterminable. Brink theorized that the molecules may have become free and lost during teleportation, and thereby spread over too wide an area to detect.”

  “So we might never know?” Eris asked.

  “That is a distinct… I have detected an object which is now in orbit. I am sending telescopic images to you. It was Epsilon,” Sandie stated, with grave sorrow in her voice, emphasizing the word ‘was’.

  Eris looked at the images which were now coming in. Something was floating there in space, but it was not an intact habitat. It was roughly cylindrical shaped, but with a massive kink, or bend at one end. The bend was also a twist which gave the object a sort-of hooked appearance. Its color was not the bluish-gray of permalloy, but instead was a speckled mess of various colors. Some kinds of gas were jetting from numerous small places, putting the object into a slow and foundering tumble in the absence of much gravity.

  “Magnify,” Eris commanded. “I want to see it up close.”

  “Captain, are you certain? I can tell you that nothing has survived in Epsilon,” Sandie relayed. “I have thoroughly examined the object, and I suggest you not look too closely.”

  “Please magnify. Perhaps…” Eris halted. She was thinking of when she awoke from suspended animation, and all the death that had surrounded her then. She knew the truth of the old axiom, ‘You cannot un-see something.’ She swallowed and said, “I need to see it. I am the captain.”

  “Are you certain? The dimensions show that it has undergone severe compression. Its total length should have been approximately right under eighty-one kilometers, with a diameter of approximately seventeen kilometers. That object’s length, when factoring in the curvature is not greater than fifty-one kilometers. Its diameter is inconsistent, with its widest place being slightly over nine kilometers, and its narrowest diameter at three and one-half kilometers. It is comprised of a composite of organic and inorganic molecules in a haphazard pattern. I detect no untarnished elements anywhere on its outer surface. I also detect no open areas within that object. Its density is varied, but the object has no hollowness at all.”

  “Understood. Yes, magnify, but thank you for your concern for me,” Eris replied.

  “Magnification controls have been channeled to your location. It is now on voice command. Again, I advise you not look too closely.”

  “Understood. Display, magnify that object so that I can clearly see surface details,” Eris ordered.

  Eris looked closely, and the composite nature of the thing in space at first made no sense to her. Nothing looked like anything familiar. But then some patterns did emerge in the chaos of the object. Three wheels of an automacube, no longer black colored, but now speckled red and green stuck up from one section. The rest of the automacube was missing. There was some kind of swirled mass from which the wheels projected. Following with her eyes the swirls, she caught sight of a part of a door, then a section that might have been a smashed animal. The animal was a shiny, silvery-black color. More and more objects took form in Eris’ mind, but all were mutilated and mutated and mangled to such an extent that only parts of the objects were identifiable. A few places looked like human body parts, but Eris was not sure about that. Her stomach gave a great heave, and she spoke out. “Shut down image.” She tasted bile in her mouth as she fought to avoid vomiting. She wished she had never looked.

  “Sandie, can the process be revered? Run the teleporter the opposite way and put Epsilon back where it was, it its prior condition?”

  “No. We are not even sure of the exact process Professor Dandelo and the Science Consistory used in their hapless attempt. Brink isolated every recovered object he ever used in his attempts. They were locked in sealed compartments and ejected from Dome 17.”

  Eris swallowed hard and tried to catch her breath as another wave of nausea threatened to cause her to vomit. After a moment she was composed enough to say, “They did not even get a chance to call out for help! Did they suffer much?”

  “That is unknown. I detected no outgoing signals prior to Epsilon’s dematerialization, so no one cried for help,” Sandie replied. “After dematerialization it is unlikely they experienced any conscious awareness of anything.”

  Eris grabbed both her knees and shook her head. “Beta is gone. Gamma is gone. Delta never survived making planet-fall, and now Epsilon is fused into a solid horrific mess. I certainly hope Jerome and Cammarry have better luck in Zeta.” She straightened up. “What will become of that… thing out there?”

  Sandie the AI answered with a gentleness in her voice. “It is not locked into an orbit and will be pulled toward the sun of this solar system. It will take some time, I did not yet calculate how long, before it reaches that sun. It will be burned up when it does that.”

  “Well, that means no one else has to ever see that unholy mess,” Eris stated. “Sandie please seal the records on this. I am sure Jerome, Cammarry, Monika, and others will want to know what happened. They do need to know it failed, but can we please not allow anyone to see that abomination again? I should have listened to you. I wish I had not seen it up close. Just tell anyone who asks that Epsilon attempted teleportation, against our instructions, and they failed during re-materialization. No one ever needs to see that again.”

  “I agree and understand. I am collating the data to try to figure out what methods Epsilon used, but the data is limited,” Sandie replied. There was an undertone of sorrow in Sandie’s voice, and the AI knew it was a genuine feeling.

  8 wages of war

  The shuttle, NS-99, also known as Faithful Lightning, flew through the Zalian atmosphere easily. Its modifications made it simple for Sandie to track and monitor, although Cammarry or Jerome did the piloting.

  Jerome watched the cockpit display which showed the planet’s topography as it passed beneath them. He desperately wanted to contact Monika and find out how his sons were doing, but he was worried about Cammarry’s reaction. He had never missed anyone so much as he missed the twin boys.

  “Beautiful woman?” Alizon asked from the passenger seat which was behind the two pilot seats. “Is there a place here to relieve bodily needs?”

  “Yes, there is a small toilet in that compartment with the yellow marking on the door. I should have told you about it before,
sorry.” Cammarry gestured over at Jerome. “I thought he would have been in there already, babbling to some roustabout about his liter of children.”

  Jerome glanced back at her, a bit of anger rising. Then the anger fell, and he just felt sorrow at how their relationship had deteriorated to such a point. Pity, mourning, and sadness were the predominate feelings he had as he looked at Cammarry.

  “Will I need instructions on how to use it?” Alizon asked. “This machinery is very specialized, and I do not want to mess something up.”

  “Take over Jerome,” Cammarry said. “And just go ahead and talk to her to find out about the children. I know that is what you are thinking about anyway. I will instruct Alizon on using the in-flight toilet.” Cammarry unstrapped her restraints and stepped easily back to where Alizon sat. In a totally different tone of voice she addressed him. “I will show you how it works. How could you know? I understand how different all this must be for you.”

  Alizon unbuckled his seatbelt and stood shakily to his feet. “I appreciate your kindness. It is all quite remarkable.”

  Together they stepped to the small door which opened to the toilet. Cammarry pointed out where he should sit. “After I close the door, you can use that toilet. It is designed for use even in zero gravity, although often people in these shuttles would be wearing spacesuits, and those have built-in sanitation equipment to handle bodily wastes. For us in this flight, it will not be as tricky since we still have gravity manipulation in the shuttle which feels like earth-normal. The waste is pulled away by air pressure which may tickle you, but it will not bite. The air directs the waste, solid and liquid, to storage compartments. The liquid is recycled into usable water, while the solids are stored for use in other places. These levers control the air pressure. Simple on and off. Any questions?”