Only a large craft could support a crew for the indefinite length of time envisioned. Indeed, the Outward Voyager would never return to ObLa. It would traverse the galaxy for however many millennia it could survive.
The ObLaDas did not possess the capacity to construct the Voyager. Interstellar space travel was a hard game to play and ObLa found that it even lacked the capacity required to invent and develop all of the specialized technologies, machines, and engines that would be required. In the end, the Outward Voyager was successfully completed only because their planetary partners contributed greatly to the program. The Primaforms did more than anyone. They designed and built four hydrogen fusion propulsion systems and the robotic crafts that delivered these units to the vicinity of ObLa. That alone was a three hundred year operation.
Technical challenges were one thing; raw expense was another. No matter how much help it would receive, one planet must bear the majority of the cost of fabricating components, lifting them into orbit, and assembling the craft in space. That planet must possess a tremendous supply of surplus energy, material resources, and wealth. Only the richest planet could attempt such a feat. ObLa possessed these resources only because its vast mineral capacity had never tapped by its frugal population. Even so, the proposed project would consume the entire economic productivity of the planet for an equivalent of fifty years. A terrific cost! Should they do it? (The simple task of lifting the Outward Voyager components and assembly facilities into orbit would cost as much as 1,000 trillion dollars if they matched the Earth’s current best estimated cost of $9,000/kg.)
It is not a quest that would appeal to the people of Earth, but then we do not view aliens as members of our extended family, or even as our friends. The ObLaDas were very different. Their biologically driven emotions sustained a desire to make some connection with those beings that they believed must exist. To date, ObLa remains the only planet in our galaxy that is known to have successfully conducted a ‘manned’ interstellar space flight.
And so was born the Outward Voyager. It was a gangly, unattractive collection of ill-matched components, vast, empty connecting spaces, and fragile critical structures, all held together by a maze of cables and struts. No interstellar vessel could be stocked with all the food, air, water, and supplies that its crew would ever need. Too heavy, too costly, manifestly impractical. When launched, the Outward was an almost empty shell, albeit a very large one. The ship must be equipped with the capacity to collect space-borne matter during flight and to convert those basic elements into all the food, fuel, and material that its crew would need to survive. The collected material must be sufficient for the construction of new facilities, and to meet the needs of any alien beings that might be brought on board.
Space is not empty. Whole stars are blown to gas and dust. This refuse is scattered in thin clouds across our galaxy and often collected into bands surrounding solar systems or wandering streams between the stars. The space through which the Outward Voyager would travel contains an immense quantity of widely disbursed matter. The vessel would sustain itself by continuously sweeping these diffuse clouds using its wide collecting grids and deceleration fields to slowly accumulate the water, hydrogen and less abundant heavy elements that it would require.
The Outward Voyager’s memory files held few images of the entire ship. It may be that the original crew never got more than a glimpse at some small part of the spindly ten-kilometer long craft. The Outward was a mostly empty, stripped down husk. The resting mass was carefully controlled in order to reduce the immense amount of energy required to accelerate such a tremendous structure to fractional light speed.
The crew had lived on the Outward Voyager for months. All through their preparations for launch they had been weightless, but now they were well into the ordeal of acceleration. The small crew occupied the outer two levels of the boxy, fifteen-deck habitat module. This structure and the counter-balancing anti-module with its laboratories, warehouses and construction facilities, were located on opposite ends of a long tubular connecting arm. The near duplicate arm and pair of modules on the opposite side of the hull were largely empty at launch, but would be fitted out and furnished in flight as the need developed. A bridge that passed through the central hull of the ship connected these dumbbell-shaped arms to form an H-shaped unit. The bridge served as an axle that would enable the habitat and working modules to rotate and provide a simulated gravity after the Outward reached cruising speed and its engines shut down.
Now, during the long period of acceleration, the small crew was divided between a portion of what they called the Filim Side module and temporary quarters within the propulsion unit as they struggled to manage the ship as it continued to gain speed. After full their full velocity was attained and the arms rotated to create a simulated gravity, they would bring the anti-modules into operation, begin fitting out proper living quarters, and complete the control deck from which the ship and its robotic modules could be managed. The thirteen empty levels of the habitat module would, in future, if all went well, be filled with captive aliens. Duplicate living quarters and control facilities would ultimately be built in the Farside module in case of an emergency. All this would take time, but that was a commodity that they would have plenty of.
The Outward Voyager had a long hollow central hull. It was a large, long, almost empty tube. The interior of the hull contained little atmosphere and that was as cold as the vacuum of space. It was an alien environment where most of the work was conducted by robots. A cluster of deuterium fusion engines and the massive electrical generators needed to power the ship, and even larger units to maintain the fusion process force fields, were isolated in the rear of the hull, far from the living quarters. The wide material collection array and chemical processing equipment were spread across the leading edge of the ship. Stubby tethering flanges protruded a short way from the hull to lock and support the module arms during the long acceleration phase and course changes when the force of the engines provided the gravity equivalent and would have collapse the anti-modules under its own weight if they were not supported.
LonRi JonDar and the other crewmembers had maneuvered weightless within their sparsely equipped quarters for eighty days preparing the ship for launch, testing control systems, and initiating a long list of automated procedures. The rotatable arms were aligned along the hull with the habitat modules to the rear. The deuterium fusion engines had been ignited, but it would take many days before the rate of acceleration of the massive ship increased to where they would feel some semblance of gravity. The arms would remain in that locked configuration for over a year that the ship required to reach its permanent cruising speed, nearly sixty-five thousand km/sec, about twenty percent of light speed, if the calculations were correct.
With all engines operational, the Outward Voyager could have accelerated at a much faster rate, but its leisurely pace reflected the maximum force that could be tolerated by the ObLaDas and their land-oriented circulatory systems. The poor things had some serious problems surviving prolonged periods of high gravity. The otherwise sturdy beings inevitably developed painful clots and cramps primarily in their limbs, if continued for some time, the tissues in their extremities would undergo partial necrosis with amputation needed for survival.
The ship and its constraints, so different from ObLa, would exert a profound influence the crew’s lives. From the beginning, the ObLaDas were stressed physically and emotionally by the unexpected demands of their living conditions. ObLa society held conservative, restricted mores. By their very nature, the ObLaDas wanted to do their best by the community. The hormonal control of their emotions made this commitment physical as well as intellectual. ObLaDas literally felt bad if they did bad. On ObLa, this translated into a family and community focus that valued stable relationships and mutual assistance. A child was raised by the neighborhood as much as the family. The thought of dabbling with your neighbor's handsome husband's affections was enough to make you sick.
T
hese societal values would be maintained during the Outward mission, or so they thought. What had changed was the society. No one, least of all the inhabitants of the Outward Voyager, was aware of how his or her biology would react to the novel circumstances under which they now lived. The Outward ObLaDas were of a community, but now the community was an unattached, predominantly female society whose members were not expected to reproduce in the normal way. Here, all procreation would be controlled to maintain a healthy genetic mixture that would not otherwise be possible within such a very small population. So, what exactly was preferred community behavior in this new way of living? How would this be subsumed into the Outward mission? The ObLaDas intrusive biology would tell. It was the beginning of a social and operational instability that would plague the Outward Voyager for centuries.
It began to tell, appropriately enough, on the ships two biologists. LonRi was one of the quieter, more intense of the crew. Although all ObLaDas looked very much alike, she was a bit smaller and thinner than most, with a tendency to wear her emotions on her flexible surface. She took refuge in her work and was very much aware that the ship was most vulnerable during launch. With only eight ObLaDas on board, five of them living in the hull tending the engines, they could hardly afford losses. Dead or injured crew could be replaced over time and, even without accidents, the size of the crew would need to be increased, but that would happen only after she had her cloning laboratory operational. LonRi felt some considerable anxiety about the coming days, as might be expected, and it would be months before she could even get to her laboratory in the Filim Anti-mod
TekLet LonAtt was in charge of the major manufacturing processes, most of which were performed by her microbes. The workshop would be active through the coming years fabricating wall panels, floor modules and most of the large furnishings for the ObLa habitats, but like LonRi’s cloning facility, it sat inoperable during the acceleration phase, upside down as it were, in the distant Anti-module. New construction would not be needed for some time, not until the ship’s crew was expanded and habitats were built to accommodate LonRi’s new clones or even some unspecified alien inhabitants. TekLet had little to do and her guilt when around the harried crewmates had brought her low. The stresses of the voyage would build over the generations and lead the ObLaDa crew to some unfortunate decisions and tragic behavior.
Chapter 7 Cathia
Intense light and vivid colors coated the rolling hills of the Cathian high plains. Yellow, gold, and silver blades and tall windblown stalks were blown in waves during the double sunlit days and throughout the long cloudless summers. Broad bands of large orange plants added their vibrant hues to the valleys that spread across the landscape of this extraordinary land. Water flowed over numerous steppes as it came down from the hills and small dams broadened the meandering waters of the plains before the streams emptied into the sands where the last of the their moisture sank into the barren ground. Narrow paths cut through tall plants to connect the villages and farms that were home to the tough, stocky Cathians. This rugged species lived along the foothills and broad plateaus that lay between the endless dessert and the pestilential ocean shores of the planet Cathia.
Much and little had happened during the twenty-five centuries that had elapsed since the start of the Outward Voyager’s mission. They had closely surveyed 173 solar systems and discovered 62 life-harboring planets, of which 42 had been sampled. Only 16 had what might be called intelligent beings, some of which were too large or fragile to capture. They had, however, collected ten of these species, seven of which still survived. Even so, the ObLaDas were disappointed. The idealistic crew that had launched the Outward Voyager, each one intent on discovery and filled with wonder, had been succeeded over the generations by a specialized compassionless company of tradition-bound operatives. The current list of ObLaDas had become preoccupied with their single-minded goal of discovering populated planets and conducting experiments on the life forms that they had captured. They had no regard for the beings that they kept.
So far, none of their aliens had made any progress in the sciences. They displayed only a minimal ability to grasp mathematics beyond simple arithmetic and were logical only to the point of being annoying. Training, attempts to further education, and purposeful breeding were all being pursued, so far without success. Through all of this, the ObLaDas had become steadfast, intolerant, and uncaring stewards. They ignored their captives’ wellbeing to the point that their callous behavior distorted and suppressed the very attributes they were so eager to find.
This was all a prelude to the next unfortunate decision. The ObLaDas were intent on traveling along a promising stream of mainline stars that were of the optimal age to contain life and were relatively close together. Unfortunately, the trajectory needed to reach the next star in this series was at a low angle from the entry path to the planet Cathia. The ObLaDas launched their planetary probe, restarted the Outward Voyager propulsion system, and initiated the star rounding along the outer edge of the solar system. All went according to plan, but by traveling at undiminished speed and orbiting at maximum centripetal force, as much as the ObLaDas could withstand, they would approach the preferred departure angle to the next star in only seventy-eight days. A complete rounding of the solar system would consume another eleven months. The ObLaDa leaders did not want to waste that much time.
The planetary probe quickly located an organized and reasonably sized species; one that would be of value to collect and study, or so the controllers decided. The very limited time allotted to the mission would not allow the probe to adequately define the aliens’ living habits, preferred foods, or sustaining social interactions, all of which would be needed to adequately maintain this species on board the Outward Voyager. Nevertheless, and with little concern about the wellbeing of the Cathians, the probe was instructed to capture as many of the beings as it could hold, collect whatever food was readily available, then return within an unprecedented twenty days upon the planet’s surface.
That bright, nearly white sky, the twin suns, and long pleasant seasons had become bitter memories for the captives that had been brought within the Outward Voyager. Dim corridors, narrow hallways, and small plain rooms were a harsh contrast to the expansive homeland of the twenty-four aliens. For them, life became a struggle for survival at a basic level. The Cathians had maintained a vibrant, clever, industrious society, but in the Outward that had already degraded badly.
The Cathians had an unusual single gender society that was both compartmentalized and hierarchical. Everyone had her place and wanted to stay in it. This thoroughly organized social structure might have given an advantage to the captives. Firm authority and organized interactions could help manage the challenges in this wholly new world, but all of their highly placed people had fled soon after the Outward’s landing craft arrived. As a result the captives were all lower cast individuals who were now, for the first time in their lives, leaderless and without direction.
The Cathians had been on the Outward for some two hundred and twenty days. They wandered through their plain, boxy, featureless enclosure without purpose. They were fed a bland gray mush that was barely edible to the refined Cathians who required a rich and varied diet to maintain their wellbeing. The survivors had all lost weight, strength, and will.
Without thinking, or perhaps caring, the ObLaDas used a twelve-hour light/dark cycle and dim lighting within the Cathian habitat. It was the same as the ObLaDas known on their home planet, but in the habitable regions of Cathia the day had thirty-two hours of intense light and four hours of partially lit night. The darkest dark of a Cathian night was brighter than the meager lighting within their habitat. They could not adjust.
Note: Units of Time
The ObLaDa day was divided into twelve hours of light and twelve hours of dark. This record will use the same ObLaDa ’hour’ (~75 minutes Earth time) and ‘day’ (~30 hours) that were used on the Outward Voyager. For convenience, we will refer to a twenty-four day period a
s a ‘month’ (~30 Earth days) and a 288 day unit as a ‘year’ (~ 360 Earth days). These are close enough to familiar durations to be useful without being overly complicated. Relativistic factors would make gibberish of any attempt at exact comparisons to Earth time.
- MDK
The Cathian language relied heavily on gestures, body language, and facial expressions, which provided the context and subjective weight to the few simple words that they expressed vocally. Unfortunately, the Cathians small protuberant eyes could not adjust to the low light levels, dark corners, and long nights of the habitat in which they were made to live and their ability to communicate was severely limited. This added to the generally depressed state of the captives and contributed to their poor performance in the intelligence tests that the ObLaDas employed. In the beginning, the ObLaDas doubted that the new aliens had any useful language at all. Their disordered behavior and acquiescent demeanor conspired to diminish the few favorable impressions that the ObLaDas had formed. Ironically, the Cathians were the most intelligent society that had yet been discovered, but the ObLaDas were convinced that they were baseline dullards and resented the cost, time, and effort that they had expended on bringing them aboard.
Outward Borne Page 5