USS Kepler Dawn

by Gerald Lane Summers

  The crowd went wild, screaming and shouting, “foul, foul” and booed loudly. One nut job threw a folded over cup of soda into the ring, missing us all but making the canvas floor sticky.

  Buryl came up off of the floor and piled on me with his knees straddling my waist. He then started pummeling me with both fists. I blocked most of the punches by holding my arms straight up, and did not forget to consider my final blow and how I might end the fight.

  I rolled half left, just as Lieutenant Lee was about to grab Buryl and stop his attack. He was too late. My right hand shot straight up, hitting Buryl flush under the nose with the flat of my gloved palm. Even through the glove and his headgear, I knew it had accomplished its purpose. Had we been standing when I’d done that, or without the glove, it might have killed him by driving his ethmoid bone and nasal septum deep into his forehead. He rolled over backward, eyes blank, his legs trapped under the weight of his body.

  Lieutenant Lee caught him before his head crashed onto the canvas and declared the fight over by waving his arms. He then tried to help Buryl back up without success. Buryl resisted as if the battle was still on. I managed to get up, grabbed and smothered his wildly swinging arms and helped Lee get him to his feet by pulling on his left arm. Dirk Mahoney took his other arm and wrapped it around his own shoulder. The crowd cheered as we did this while Buryl was somewhere else. His eyes were jerking around and he could not stand straight. I escorted him to his corner, sat him on his stool and suggested Lieutenant Lee call in a medic. Within seconds, a white coated medic was shining a light into Buryl’s eyes, checking for concussion or brain damage.

  I found out a day later he’d been released from the medical department with a warning that he could not box again for at least a year. Concussion protocol had been imposed.

  Chapter 9

  Iwas admitted early to the space academy and commissioned as an ensign the week following the fight. Buryl was not. He was denied admission for the upcoming year and was to be on probation for the next. His behavior in the fight had been reprehensible, though not enough in itself to result in his being disqualified forever. Before being admitted, he was told he would have to complete a special course on military behavior, etiquette and discipline.

  As a result of my early promotion, I would be ahead of him in rank for all time and was pretty sure he would not accept it. His only other choice would be to join with the colonists. Hopefully, I’d be wrong, he would get over it and we’d settle our differences. I certainly did not intend to cause him any more grief.

  At the ship’s space academy, the rank of midshipman had been abolished. After high school, students destined for the officer’s military service were admitted to the academy as ensigns. Upon graduation they would achieve the rank of lieutenant junior grade. The change was made to eliminate the teasing traditionally heaped on newbies at the original naval academy. At times the hazing had resulted in serious injury and that was to be no more. An ensign was considered a full-fledged officer, not just a student or applicant and under the rules in force, they must be treated as such. No one hazed an officer.

  The rank was important to me for more than one reason. In order for me to work in the astronavigation compartment, as the captain had ordered, I had to be an officer. Neither cadets nor colonists were allowed in there.

  Once that rank, a single gold bar, had been pinned on the epaulets of my new white uniform by my father, I went directly to the head of the ship where the navigation systems were located. My father did not know of my orders from the captain. I had told no one.

  I felt uncomfortable in the new uniform although glad it did not include the stretch material worn by high school cadets. For the most part, it was exactly like the dress white uniform of a naval ensign that had been in use for centuries. The shirt remained long sleeved with epaulets. During the period designated as summer on the ship, short sleeved shirts were appropriate. Additional gold rank stripes were at the wrist of the dark dress blue jacket, not the whites. In my case they consisted of a single gold stripe with a small star above it. The navy blue uniform would be worn during what passed for winter.

  These changes may seem silly to some, but they are not. Humans are biological creatures who function within cycles known as circadian or bio-rhythms. Without day and night, we get really screwed up. The uniform changes help us stick to those rhythms. The ship’s lighting also helps as it is dimmed noticeably at night and brought back up in up in the morning.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  I knew a little of the astronavigation compartment, sometimes called “the bridge,” from various models of the ship I had seen as well as the actual plans of the ship’s construction. Nothing had prepared me for its gigantic size. When I first stepped into the compartment, I felt as if I had been swallowed by a massive black hole. What looked like a huge window thirty feet tall extended from my entry point in both directions as far as I could see. People were huddled over instruments at various stations all along the front of the room. I did not recognize many of them.

  It was disconcerting to note that the floor was as black as space itself and stepping into the room required a bit of trust that it was in fact solid. With the lights all turned down to assist in telescopic observation, I had the queasy feeling that I was hanging out over the end of the ship and likely to fall off into eternity if not careful.

  The room was located at the very bow of the ship, more toward the top than the middle and spanned its entire two mile breadth. It also extended partially around the sides. The window itself was another massive telescreen projected in three dimensions by trillions of tiny digital atomic sized pixels. To people like me who had been confined to the interior complex, this was an astounding place to be.

  After being admitted to the compartment by a lieutenant I’d never met, I was told to double time to the far starboard signals station and report to Lieutenant Commander Herman. Ms. Herman? Nah, I thought. It couldn’t be.

  As I approached the station, a bit out of breath for the jog, I realized it was Ms. Herman and she was wearing a lieutenant commander’s uniform. She had her head bent over a focusing scanner and was twiddling several knobs, obviously trying to localize and focus in on a signal of some kind. I hesitated to interrupt her. A few seconds later, she sensed my presence and looked up. I immediately stiffened to a brace position.

  “Well,” she said. “What are you doing here … Stick?”

  I could feel my face turning warm. “Captain’s orders,” I replied. “I’m to assist in the analysis of some anomalous signals apparently emanating from Kepler 186f. I had no idea you were here.”

  “Okay,” she said as she stood. “You’re still wearing your cap, so why don’t you salute so I can return it and we can get down to business?”

  My God, I’d forgotten to salute. Wearing a cap on the bridge or while traveling the corridors was appropriate, as they were considered to be ‘outside,’ as opposed to in the various compartments. Once inside at your work station, it was appropriate to remove it.

  I snapped a perfect salute to her and she returned it just as perfectly. Hmm. That was interesting. Most officers were not so precise.

  “Okay, Stick. That’s the last time I want to see a salute from you on this bridge. Also, you should use the speed rail along the wall for rapid transit when you come in at the center. It’s not obvious, so you probably did not notice it. It’s much faster than running the entire mile or two if you are fully at the end. I generally come in from either the right side corridor or the left, depending of where I want to be. That eliminates the need for using the speed rail. It’s a pain in the patoot.”

  I looked to my right and saw the thing, a thin rail flush with the floor at the bottom of the bulkhead about the width of two shoes with a bar to hold on to. The bar also had a rotating control not unlike that found on an old style motorcycle, which started the thing moving and stopped it when necessary.

  I found myself shaking my head and felt a smile growing on my face. The unkno
wn lieutenant had snookered me. He must have known I had not been in the astronavigation compartment before, and purposefully did not tell me about the transport system. No matter where people are, they will pull a stunt on you if you are not alert. It would not happen to me again.

  Herman turned around, a slight smile on her face as well. Her hair was now pulled back, apparently to keep it from falling forward and obscuring her view of the various scanners. She sat at her work station chair while continuing to talk and look at me.

  “We call this place the ‘bridge,’ because that is what it is. Some wonk decided to call it ‘astronavigation’ years ago because we also do a great deal of science here as well as monitor our forward progress. Treating it as a real ship’s bridge is not particularly helpful, although there is a captain’s chair in the center for approach management. We can see the forward bubble at work, but most of the control systems are more efficiently operated from the anti-gravity engine compartment. We primarily monitor the ship’s sensors in here and when we are in close orbit to a planetary body, nothing beats this view.

  Look out and down at the center point of the ship. You will be able to see the anti-gravity generator probe pointing forward. It runs from the rear of the ship and is supplemented forward by additional anti-gravity generators. If you put on a pair of special signal lenses, you would be able to see the bubble itself.

  We generally work casually and respect the views of the other officers. Watch out for the occasional trickster. If someone pulls a stunt on you, just take it and laugh.

  Right now, we are, at least at my station, trying to figure out the signals coming from 186f. They are of a very primitive and weak character, possibly natural. It is just as possible they are being generated by an intelligent species. Oddly, they appear random rather than coordinated as a language might be. We will be trying to decipher them as best we can from this distance.

  So far, we haven’t gotten very far. We know only they are not on a band capable of carrying a visual signal. It is an AM band, or amplitude modulated radio signal, which is not uncommon in the natural world. There are minor suggestions of an embedded audio signal beyond the natural range.

  Your job will be to use your best thoughts to review what we have found so far and do your best to correlate it. The captain believes you are extraordinarily intuitive and make connections that others do not. I have yet to see evidence of that. He thinks he has, but before you let the superhero in you run amok, note that there are several others on board with similar attributes. Captain Hollenbeck spends much of his time looking for them.

  So, take a look at our observation summaries over the past two months and see what pops into your mind. I have discovered that meditative relaxation techniques help when doing this sort of work. It’s like allowing your peripheral vision find what you are looking for. When you are ready, start your own observations. I won’t be looking over your shoulder.”

  I was paying close attention to her presentation, thanked her when she was finished and started off toward my own station.

  She hesitated and then called me back. Her hair was blowing slightly from the breeze of the air conditioning systems and I was reminded that she was definitely not unpleasant to look upon. I was surprised by what she said next.

  “I’d like to apologize for the way I treated you on the last day of school. I had reservations about reporting your historical critique. Unfortunately, everything of importance in any classroom on this ship must be reported. If I had not done so, the captain would have reprimanded me. He is always on the lookout for outstanding students and you were at the top of his watch list. How you handled that situation was important to him and believe it or not, that history is now going to be changed. The pledge and history will no longer be applicable to high school students, so you can rest easy on that account.

  And, if anyone is to be thanking anyone, it should be me thanking you. I know you told the captain I should have a more important job and for that I am grateful. I’d been stuck in classrooms longer than I should have been and with one word, you managed to get me promoted to lieutenant commander, out of the classroom and into a job I have been wanting for some time. Is it not strange how things work out?”

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  My specific station was several meters down from Commander Herman. It contained ten different scanning machines and telescopes, including one designed to scan a wide field ahead of the ship that could be focused down to include the entire Kepler 186 planetary system. After going over the various reports, I decided to try it first, to see if I could attribute the signals to some other body besides 186f.

  No one had mentioned that possibility in the reports, but for some reason it seemed appropriate to me. Perhaps that was what the captain had seen. Anyway, following my gut instincts came natural and I’d always wondered if it was a wise thing to do. So far, so good.

  Commander Herman worked with a scanner that focused more closely on 186f, trying to isolate individual continents and land forms that might be there.

  Later that day I discovered the other thirty personnel working on the “bridge” were searching for other possibly habitable planets. It made sense only if we were not certain Kepler 186f was habitable. I thought that had already been established. Apparently there was more to it than met the eye. We might arrive to find it looking good but full of poisonous plants and alkaline water or some other factor that prohibited human life. We already knew it was possible that 186f was tidally locked with its red dwarf star and that the star could be generating deadly radiation. Without rotation, the planet could have no magnetic field and without an axial tilt, there would be no seasons. All of this would cause problems for the colonists.

  Nothing was to be left to chance, because the plan was for the ship to continue on after the colony had been established and running smoothly. There could be no Roanoke,* on this mission. We would continue until a good home was found.

  After several days of eye-bugging drudgery, I came to realize the signals of concern were varying with a specific orbital distance and speed from the planet. We had not considered the possibility that Kepler 186f might have a habitable satellite, now my observations suggested the subject needed to be explored.

  As we edged closer, if traveling at more than four and a half times the speed of light could be called edging, I raised the focal length of the scanner and it became more apparent. There was a large satellite, about twice the size of Earth’s moon Luna, circling Kepler 186f at a distance of approximately nine hundred thousand miles. At that distance, it was small enough to have been mistaken for a star, and when it passed behind Kepler 186 it took quite some time to re-appear. 186f itself was ten percent larger than Earth and this newly discovered satellite was roughly a third the size of the planet. All this put together explained why it had not been observed before. It was just far enough away from the planet to be seen as an independent object rather than a satellite.

  Lieutenant commander Herman started focusing on it and soon confirmed it was likely the source of the signals we were picking up. As the satellite passed behind the planet its signals were interrupted, and that was the cause of the variation. Of considerable note, long range scans demonstrated that both objects had Oxygen/Nitrogen atmospheres. This suggested that our two concerns about rotation and tilt would be of little import, because an atmosphere would not likely have remained if the planet had been tidally locked.

  A few days later, we realized we had made another very significant discovery. The satellite had an ocean. We could not see it except through spectroscopic analysis. We had several different tools at our disposal with different names, all of which measured radiation intensity as a function of wavelength and were very valuable in scanning interstellar objects for gases, planetary make up and analysis.

  To say Captain Hollenbeck was pleased when he came up to confirm our findings would be a great understatement. He proclaimed it to be one of the ship’s greatest discoveries to date and directed a doubling of ef
forts to extract every detail possible from the data.

  I figured the next few weeks would be very interesting and I was in the right place at the right time. Commander Herman suggested I take up gambling, because I had the luck for it. My view was that luck was made, not the result of random chance.

  The science staff was suddenly energized and coming up with all kinds of experiments they might conduct. The ship was buzzing and the truth could no longer be kept secret. The new guy had made an important discovery.

  Chapter 10

  During first semester at the academy, Miki and I were required to take traditional courses that any former military service member would have recognized. It included the history of the naval academy, its heroes and victories, spectacular failures as well as its goals and current directives. They were all drilled into our dinky little brains by training officers who knew how to make us feel small. Mostly though, it was about discipline, its importance and purpose. By the time we completed it all, we could snap to with the best of them.

  I should probably note that harsh discipline, meaning physical punishment, yelling and insulting the ensigns was no longer the rule at the academy. Long study had determined that it tended to disrupt rational thought and force premature judgment. People needed to make rapid decisions through experience, not fear of failure. Yelling at them did nothing but interfere with sound analysis.

  My first real assignment was to the anti-gravity engine room as Captain Hollenbeck had promised. I was so excited I had to contain my enthusiasm lest I look like some overly-excited child. Without AG engines, Kepler Dawn would never have been built and certainly would not now be within ten years of another star system.