by Rick Cook
Just out of curiosity he had asked Dr. Takiuji—or was it Dr. Sukihara?—that question once. The Japanese physicist merely smiled and answered, “Perhaps some things.” The way he had said it did nothing for Ludenemeyer’s confidence.
“Heading on,” Iron Alice DeRosa reported. Jenkins looked down at his screens. The captain’s console showed him the same information the computers were giving the pilot. DeRosa’s announcement was perhaps unnecessary, but it was both correct procedure and comforting.
“All sections report ready,” the deck officer called out. Again Jenkins looked at his board to confirm.
“Stand by for drive,” Jenkins said. On his touch panel a palm-sized square glowed red, deeper and brighter than the red bridge lights, like a hot coal on the instrument panel.
Jenkins took a deep breath and placed his fingers over the glow, as if to block it out. A timer sprang into existence on his screen, its numbers unreeling frantically as it counted off the hundredths of a second.
Clancy got the signal and increased the speed of the turbo-pumps. The torch was hot and ready, waiting only the fuel.
Once more the signal sounded. Sharon sighed, climbed into her combined bunk and acceleration couch and tightened the safety straps over her shoulders and midriff.
When the clock reached zero, the drive kicked in automatically. There was no lurch, no inside-out feeling, no distortion of the star field in the view ports. One instant they were looking at one set of stars and the next instant the stars had changed as if someone had changed channels. The only sensation was a not-quite feeling of incompleteness, as if they had missed something or blinked at a critical moment.
Instantly, Iron Alice DeRosa was very busy.
The most difficult time in using the KOH drive was not travelling between the stars, it was right after you arrived.
A KOH drive provides instantaneous transport, but it does not repeal the laws of physics. You break out with at least the total kinetic energy you went in with, including the energy inherent in your path about a star, and your rotation about the center of the galaxy. It also includes the energy inherent in the galaxy’s motion through space, but that can be neglected as long as you stay within the galaxy.
This is both exacerbated and mitigated by two other things. The mitigating factor is that the drive tends to automatically seek points where the ship’s energy is most nearly in balance with its surroundings. A KOH starship tends to travel between isogravs.
The exacerbating factor is that there are quantumlike effects at work which add a measure of uncertainty to the ship’s position and velocity. A component of the difference in total energy between where you started and where you finish shows up as velocity in a random direction.
You cannot in principle know which way you will be heading when you break out, nor can you predict your exact velocity and position. It is entirely possible to break out with more total energy than you went in with and for various complex and subtle reasons this does not represent a violation of the law of conservation of energy.
Not all this uncertainty shows up in velocity. Some of it is released as heat. A KOH ship that comes out on a really bad vector will cook its crew like microwaving ants in a vacuum bottle.
With careful navigation the mismatch will never get that bad. But preventing a serious mismatch requires detailed knowledge of the target area, especially the gravitational fields. That kind of knowledge is easier to get about the edge of a star system, away from the competing gravitational effects of the planets, so jumps tend to be made to and from the edge of star systems and the ship proceeds in or out on a conventional drive. There is also the fact that coming out of drive in a volume of space containing an appreciable amount of matter will rather nicely reproduce the condition of the universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang on a much smaller scale.
As a practical matter, what happens is that a ship breaking out of drive finds itself in a strange solar system heading in a random direction with an uncertain amount of velocity. The first order of business is to get the velocity under control and that takes very sharp piloting.
The sensors on the ship’s hull took a quick and dirty reading on the apparent movement of the star field, the ship’s computers translated that into a rough guess as to the ship’s direction and velocity, and Iron Alice DeRosa reacted.
Thrusters swung the ship around so the stern was pointed in the direction of travel. Then the pilot hit the main engines.
Far back at the rear of the elongated teardrop that was the Maxwell, Clancy’s turbopumps poured a river of hydrogen slush enriched with deuterium and tritium into the fusion torch. An appreciable fraction fused to helium, and lambent flame too bright to have a color lanced from the rear of the ship.
Clancy kept his eyes on his displays and his hands on the fusion control panel. In theory there was no need for the torch watch. The computers were capable of overseeing the enormous forces unleashed and channeled by the torch. In practice there wasn’t a torch captain alive who trusted the pile that far and the engineers trusted it less than that. Next to the pilot’s chair, the torch watch was the most important job on a fusion ship.
Slowly the Maxwell’s mad dash through space slowed as the great reaction engines bled off the excess velocity.
“Sir, we have achieved orbit,” DeRosa reported formally.
Jenkins nodded. Then the gray-haired woman smiled wryly.
“The sixteenth human expedition outside our own solar system. Gets to you, doesn’t it?”
The captain knew precisely what she meant. The first interstellar expeditions had belonged to world powers in the southern hemisphere and the vital young states of the Pacific Rim. The old worn-out nations like the United States, Japan and the fragments of Europe had no role. This was a sop, an unimportant voyage meted out as a reward for political favors. But it’s still an interstellar expedition, dammit!
Jenkins smiled back at his second-in-command. “Don’t let it get to you too much, Al. Just get me the station reports.”
And far, far away, millions of miles and hours of light travel, the Maxwell announced herself to other ears with a burst of radio noise. The others were as quick in reaction as they were tireless in scanning the heavens. Other instruments swiveled onto the radio source. Optical detectors found the brilliant flame of the Maxwell’s fusion drive. Infrared arrays followed it too and as the flame died they picked up the Maxwell’s heat against the background of space.
From one end of the system to the other the word went out by ways both secret and open. “Others have arrived. Make ready.”
Again the gongs boomed and echoed through the ship. “Secure from acceleration stations.”
Back in the passenger section, Sharon Dolan breathed a sigh and loosened her harness.
The romance of space travel, phooey! she thought, massaging her shoulders. I bet I’ll have black and blue marks for days. She wondered how long it would take to spin backup and restore gravity. Normally it took at least twenty-four hours. It was a fairly complex process and had to be done carefully.
Then maybe I can stop playing passenger and get down to work.
The Maxwell’s job was astronomy, part pure science, part practical. The ship had gone deeper into space than any human vessel and the astronomers and astrophysicists who made up the majority of the scientific contingent were hoping to literally see the universe from a new angle.
Sharon was along almost as an afterthought. The main interest was stellar astronomy, not planetology. The system they had entered probably had planets—most single stars do—but there were no plans to come in beyond the fringes of the system.
Like the theoretical part of the mission, the practical part was much more concerned with other stars than this one. Their destination was simply a convenient place to stand while they did their observations.
With the KOH star drive, the limiting factor on how far you could travel was not range, it was location and gravitational energy. Like the Portuguese explore
rs working their way down the coast of Africa nearly seven hundred years before, the starships needed “landmarks” to work from and information on which harbors might be safe.
The essence of the landmarks were long-baseline observations. That meant an elaborate series of observations taken light-years apart and closely tied to an object whose position relative to Earth was well known. A star, in other words.
From this point new observations could be made to precisely locate other stars, and information on the gravitational lay of the land could be inferred from those observations. With that information stars further out could be plotted precisely enough for other expeditions, and crude gravitational maps constructed to help later explorers.
Maxwell’s interest was less in this star system per se than in what could be seen from the system. The distance and motion of the star was known and the information gathered here could be tied into observations taken in other star systems to extend the baseline. In turn that longer baseline could be used to send starships even further out to extend the baseline even more.
On the bridge Jenkins scanned the spangled black sky laid out ahead of them.
DeRosa looked over her shoulder. “Try about two o’clock and maybe one thirty down,” she told him.
The captain shifted his gaze and picked out “their” star.
Far away the ruddy sun glowed in the depths of space. At this distance it was merely the brightest star in the sky. They were far out from it and suns of its type do not shine brightly in any event.
The star was a perfectly ordinary M2 red dwarf, so ordinary it had no name. Although it lay only seventy light-years from Earth it was invisible to the naked eye and hard to see from an Earth-based telescope.
It had a number, of course. It was AC + 37° 30242. There were other designations in other catalogs, but never a name. It was too small and too plain to have ever gotten a name.
It looks so, well, ordinary, Jenkins thought. Intellectually, he had known what it would look like, but he still had a feeling that somehow it ought to be special.
Jenkins’ contemplation was broken by a chiming on his screen.
“Dr. Aubrey on line two,” the synthetic voice reported.
Jenkins touched his panel and Andrew Aubrey’s face sprang to life on his screen.
“Captain, do you have any idea how soon we will be able to spin up?”
“Not yet, Dr. Aubrey. We are still checking.”
Aubrey nodded. “I’d appreciate if you could let me know as soon as possible. It will make the discomfort easier to bear if people know how long it will last.” Aubrey looked none too good himself. He was pale and his easy air seemed just a trifle forced.
“Of course, Dr. Aubrey,” Jenkins said soothingly. “I will let you know as soon as I have the information.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Aubrey said and cut off.
The cafeteria wasn’t crowded, even though it was the only one on the ship fitted out for zero-gravity and the only one on the ship serving tonight. Much of the crew was at their maneuvering stations and zero-gravity upset too many stomachs.
Still, some stomachs are stronger than others and even the weakest stomach has to be fed. There was a slow but steady flow of people through the line and on to the tables beyond.
They wore a variety of costumes. The crew generally wore jumpsuits in the colors that denoted their sections. The civilians dressed in everything from street clothing to jumpsuits of their own.
In all the group, Dr. Sukihara Takiuji stood out. Suki was dressed in his normal mode. Which is to say in a manner a preMeji Japanese would have regarded as normal and that nearly any twentieth-century Japanese would have considered eccentric for everyday wear.
His hakima, a long divided skirt, floated around his legs. His tabi, divided socks, were white. His kimono, tucked into the hakima, was brown patterned with white. Suki was completely at ease and after months in space, no one else paid any attention.
In modern Japan, Dr. Takiuji’s clothing marked him as an adherent of one of the traditionalist parties, trying to revive a country damaged for the second time in as many centuries by atomic fire with the virtues of the past. Sharon knew that the details of his clothing proclaimed more precisely where his loyalties lay to anyone who could read the signs. Possibly his practice of iaido, the art of drawing the samurai sword, and his obsession with the ancient game of go indicated his political beliefs as well.
Sharon noticed that the soles of his tabi had very untraditional dark patches of Grip Sole sewn neatly to them.
Like the decks and bulkheads in the passenger spaces and the corridors everywhere, the cafeteria was carpeted in a short-pile fabric. To the hand it felt slightly stiff. The loops in the pile caught at the special material on the soles of the slippers everyone wore. The result was a slight “tack” that held you to the floor—if you didn’t push too hard or try to walk too fast. To Sharon it was like walking on the sticky floor in a busy movie theater, but it was better than floating off the floor every time you took a step.
Tonight the cafeteria’s food tended to be sparse and bland. Sharon was thankful there was nothing spicy or pungent or worse yet, greasy, filling the air with an odor that would challenge her stomach. She selected an insulated bulb of tea from the rack and took two slices of toast, neatly wrapped in plastic.
Ahead of her, one of the crewmen in the tan coveralls of engineering was heaping his tray with wrapped sandwiches. Sharon shuddered.
The watchers did not know yet what to make of their visitors. Typically, they did not announce themselves directly. Perhaps the newcomers were ignorant of their presence or perhaps they believed that the watchers were ignorant of theirs. In either event, best to keep silence and watch.
Suki stopped at the steam table holding sticky oriental rice and a few other equally bland dishes for those who wanted hot food. He heaped rice into a covered bowl as nonchalantly as if they had not come nearly a hundred light-years between breakfast and dinner. His appetite was still good, although, Sharon noticed with a slight smile, he eschewed the pungent pickled vegetables that normally accompanied his meals.
The cafeteria was a big room. On special occasions it might feed five or six hundred people. Although there were empty tables everywhere, the diners tended to cluster at the round four- and six-person tables near the serving line. There was something about being sealed in an enormous steel bottle a hundred light-years from home that encouraged sociability.
Another mark of how far we’ve come, Sharon thought, like the murals of Earth scenes on the walls.
The long back wall of the cafeteria was a forest glade. The water in the brook meandering through it and the leaves on the trees moved as if the wall was a picture window. Another wall showed the red rock desert of North America, the fantastically carved spires of pink and buff sandstone soaring out of the reddish soil. An occasional eddy of dust or quiver of the scraggly greasewood bushes in the foreground gave the illusion of wind.
There were no cities on the walls. That might have been too painful.
The catering crew understood the psychology perfectly and had not bothered to activate most of the farther tables. The vacuum intakes in the middle of each functioning table made a slight hissing noise as they sucked crumbs, spills and debris into the cleaning system.
Sharon eased her way in to a vacant seat at the table with the Japanese physicist and several other people. She watched, fascinated, as Dr. Takiuji produced a pair of chopsticks and began to eat from the bowl, holding it close to his mouth. A single grain of rice floated free and the Japanese deftly plucked it out of the air with his chopsticks.
“You know that’s probably more efficient than a fork in space,” she said.
Suki looked up at her and grinned. “Better control,” he said in his accentless English.
She sucked tea from a bulb and watched again. “I wish I had a better understanding of the principles behind something that’s taken us a hundred light-years from home,” Sharon sai
d.
Dr. Takiuji smiled at her. “So do I.”
“But you helped develop the drive,” one of the engineering crew put in.
“That does not mean I understand it, I am afraid,” Suki said. “It is very difficult.”
“What is the maximum speed with the drive anyway?” a stocky man in a vacuum jack’s coverall asked.
Suki smiled slightly. “No speed.”
“Come again?”
The Japanese physicist gestured. “First we are here. Then we are there. Instantaneous. No speed.”
“That’s how we avoid the Einsteinian effects,” Sharon said.
“How does it work?”
Again the slight smile. “Very complicated. It is not easy to describe without mathematics.” He turned back to eating.
“But you worked with Kerensky and Omo on the drive?” someone else asked.
Dr. Takiuji picked the last grains of rice out of his bowl. “I worked on it, yes.”
“What did you do?”
Suki rested his chopsticks on the edge of his now-empty bowl and thought for a moment. “Without mathematics, the best I can think to say is that I helped define the difference between ‘nothing’ and ‘almost nothing’.”
Sharon continued to watch out of the corner of her eye as she sucked on her bulb of tea.
And you, Dr. Takiuji, Sharon thought as she watched him. What did you do to earn exile?
She knew in a general way. There had been some kind of struggle within the traditionalist parties in Japan and it had been considered politic for Suki to absent himself for a while. In another time he might have shaved his head and become a monk. Now he went out among the stars he had helped open for Man.
But there were no details. Like so much in Japanese society it was closed and opaque, hidden behind a curtain of natural reticence and cloaked in inflections, sub-texts, and things half-said.