by John Ringo
“Okay,” Spectre said. “She’s all yours. But tell her only twelve-hour shifts, like everybody else in the boat.”
“I’ll try, sir. I’ll try.”
“…the set of group elements must have smooth structure and topology and therefore the group operations are smooth functions of the elements. The vector fields in the adjoint representation of the color gauge group describes the distribution of the flavor neutral…” the voice whispered at Miriam.
She had been ignoring it for days by keeping her mind on her work. Had the COB fellow not brought her down to the engine room to help out and had Machinist’s Mate Gants not had things for her to do she might have been going mad by now.
Miriam carefully placed the blade of the paint stripper tool under the heavy coat of heat resistant paint. The flecks of gray paint fell to the floor in chunks the size of corn flakes. The chipper didn’t drown out the voice.
“…the first excited state of the flavor neutral must have the required rest mass of three zero nine six point nine million electron volts in oscillating flux density but the half life of the up-type pair must be longer, frame relative, than the rest frame seven point two times ten to the minus twenty-one seconds. The modulation and control of the flux density and pair half life can increase or decrease the flat space metric within the motivation metric to accommodate potential well suitability…” the whisper continued.
“Maybe the sander will work better,” Miriam thought, not sure if she meant for removing the chipping and peeling gray paint on the pipe or to drown out the whispering voice in her head.
“Miss Moon?” Weaver asked as he turned the corner of the passageway.
The linguist was up on a ladder, laboriously sanding off the paint on a pipe.
“Hi, Bill,” Miriam replied, still sanding. “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Bill replied. “What are you doing?”
“The primary heat transfer pipes were supposed to be repainted and stenciled during the break,” Miriam said. “They never got to it so I’m doing it. There’s only four hundred and twenty three of them. Robby, you know the engineer guy? He wanted to pull me off to work on the recyclers but I told him I’d do it when I finished this. I figure I’ll be done by the end of the week.”
“Oh,” Bill replied. “Uhm, isn’t that a little… boring?”
“I like it,” Miriam said. “Besides, it keeps me, uh, occupied.”
“Oh. Well, have fun.”
“I will. You do the same!”
“T’at the las’ one,” Portana said with a sigh.
“Thank God!” Berg added. “Yo, Fill-Up. You’re done.”
“Thank God, man,” Lance Corporal Fuller said, cracking his suit open. “That didn’t take long.”
“Portly is a genius,” Berg replied. “Take off.”
“Hey, Portana,” he said as the armorer was racking his tools. “Mind doing me a little favor?”
“You help me ou’ alo’,” Portana said. “Sure. Wha’ you go’?”
“Let’s suit up,” Berg said. “Chill’s a coming. I want to take a little stroll to the dark side.”
“Conn, EVA One,” Berg said over the suit radio.
“EVA, Conn.”
“Request exit on Airlock One.”
“Airlock unlatched,” the Conn replied. “Go EVA.”
“Roger,” Berg replied, then switched frequencies. “Come on, Portana.”
“Where we going?” Portana asked nervously as he entered the lock. They were only wearing pressure suits and Berg hadn’t explained what mission required them going out on the hull.
“For a walk,” Berg replied. “I promise you’ll come back with me.”
“Okay,” the Filipino replied.
Berg cycled the airlock, hooked off a safety-line, then stepped out onto the hull, his grav boots holding him down.
“Follow me,” he said.
Airlock One was just abaft the conning tower. He moved from safety point to safety point, resetting his lines each time until the two of them were on the underside of the hull.
There, holding between two of the landing jacks, he gestured outwards.
“What do you see, Sergeant Portana?”
“Pocking stars,” the armorer replied. “Why?”
There was nothing but “pocking stars.” A massive sky full of them stretching in every direction. None of them were close enough to count as “suns.” They were just a welter of points of light, light so dim that it was as if the two of them were in a star-filled cave.
“That’s just it, Port,” Berg said. “Nothing but pocking stars. You feel that hull under your feet?”
“Yeah,” Portana said.
“There’s a hundred and fifty or so sailors, forty-one Marines, a couple of SF guys, a bizarre doctor and a very weird linguist in there,” Berg said. “Out here there’s not a damned thing but killer vacuum and worlds that are usually more dangerous. The sailors keep the vacuum under check and get us to and from those worlds. Then us Marines get to go find out what’s going to kill us. If the slightest thing goes wrong it’s figure it out or we all die. And nobody will mark our remains. We’ll be lost for pretty much all of time. That’s if we’re not a smear of plasma across the sky that eventually settles into a nebula and gets reborn in a billion years as a new planet. Your sister will never know where you fell. Nor will my parents nor any of the people who care about the people in this steel tube. There’s nobody and nothing out here to save our asses. It’s just us.”
“And… ?” Portana said.
“That’s it,” Berg replied. “Let’s go get some chow.”
Berg waited as the armorer chewed his chicken thoughtfully.
“So wha’ you’re saying is I nee’ to learn how to ge’ along,” Portana said, taking a sip of Coke.
“Nope,” Berg said, shaking his head. “What I’m saying is what I said. It’s just us. What you do with that is up to you.”
The armorer was silent for the rest of the meal and Berg just let him chew.
10
“Officer of the Watch,” the pilot said, looking over his shoulder. “Approaching Mu Ori multiple binary system. There’s a chill and astrophysics survey on the schedule for that system.”
The TACO, currently officer of the watch, looked over at the astrogator’s position where a newbie ensign was parked as the “secondary astrogator.” He grimaced at the thought of doing a system entry of a multiple star star system while Commander Weaver was asleep. Actually, he knew it shouldn’t be done, and probably couldn’t be done without the lieutenant commander. Not to mention that the CO was going to want to be present.
“Oh, grapp. An astrophysics survey? Astro?”
“We are now approximately one hundred and forty-three light-years from Sol closing in on Mu Ori, sir,” Ensign Waterhouse replied, seriously. Ensign Waterhouse had matriculated with a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from Colorado State University. He had joined the Navy on a Nuke track and been rather surprised when an entirely new branch was presented to him. But here he was in space about to do a close-up survey of the Mu Ori system. What could be cooler? Except checking out a nebula or a Mira variable or… gosh, there were so many choices! “We should be at the system entry distance in about an hour.”
» » »
In the TACO’s opinion, astrogator in training was actually a misnomer for what Waterhouse was doing. Manning a post, putting a butt in a seat, that was more like it. Commander Weaver was really the only one on-board who actually knew how to navigate with the ship’s computer system. If anybody started grapping around with the controls it would likely cause… problems. That’s why both the commander and the captain had ordered that on Weaver’s off shifts the manning of the navigation post meant “nobody touch a grapping thing or the maulk will hit the fan!”
“Shiny. Quartermaster of the Watch?”
“Sir?”
“Wake up Commander Weaver and the captain.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Miriam had never really had a problem with sleep. Close her eyes, she slept. Sometimes she woke up in the morning covered in sweat and with memories of some really odd and disturbing dreams. But she didn’t have a lot of problem with sleep per se. But the manual labor she had been putting in on the Blade since the ship went under weigh from Earth was beginning to take a toll on her physically. Oh, she absolutely loved what she was doing, otherwise she just wouldn’t do it. But, most things on the ship were put together with heavy mechanisms and required big, very big, tools. In fact, Machinist’s Mate Gants had referred to one of the pipe wrenches as a BGW. It didn’t take Miriam long to figure out what that meant.
Either she had picked up various big grapping wrenches too many times over the last few days or she really needed to sleep. She squirmed in her bunk hoping to find a comfortable position that would allow her to drift off.
“…a better construct…” whispered faintly through her mind.
“What?” Miriam hugged herself closer and tried to ignore the voice. It was relentless and would come and go at random, but once it got started it would go on for hours. And, she really needed some rest.
“…adjustment of the permeability factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density is necessary before realigning the frame dragging coefficients for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation…” the whisper continued.
“I don’t understand that… wait, say that again.” Miriam hugged herself even tighter just wishing she could sleep, but that damned voice had been whispering in her mind for more than two weeks. At least for the last week it was finally in English. The first few days it was pure gibberish and then it was a mix of all the languages she understood, which made it gibberish, and then it finally settled on English. Thank God.
“…adjustment of the permeability factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density is necessary before realigning the frame dragging coefficients for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation…” the whisper repeated.
“Hey! You’re listening to me.” Miriam opened her eyes and blinked them hard a few times at the darkness of her small bunk. She could see cracks of light that were seeping through the seam at her door and cast shadows of her on the bunk bulkhead. “Responding, anyway. Repeat that again.”
“…adjustment of the permeability factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density is necessary before realigning the frame dragging coefficients for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation…” the whisper repeated.
“I don’t get the first part but, oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density I understand and entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat spatial metric motivation I get.”
“…the background emissions due to the…”
“Shhh! Quiet.” Miriam said. The whisper stopped. It. Stopped. “Now why the maulk didn’t I think of that before.” Miriam rolled herself out of her fetal position and then like a slender cat quietly fell to the floor. She slipped on some jeans and a T-shirt and then her steel-toed spike heel boots.
“Commander Weaver?” she said, activating her implant.
“Miriam?” Weaver answered through a yawn. “It’s late; shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Long story…”
“Another time. What’d you need?”
“Are we about to do a system entry?”
“Uh, I uh, dunno. Hang on a sec, there’s someone at my door.” Weaver stretched and scratched and blinked his eyes hard trying to wake up. “Enter.”
“Sir,” the quartermaster of the watch stuck his head through his cabin door. “System entry into the Mu Ori system in about forty-five minutes, sir.”
“Roger that. You woke up the captain yet?” Weaver stood and rolled his head left and right, stretching his neck.
“No sir. He’s next on my list.”
“Right. Carry on.”
“Aye.”
“Bill? You still there?” Miriam said into his ear.
“Uh, how the heck…”
“Sir, we’re about to do a multiple system entry for chill and astrophysics survey,” the quartermaster of the watch said.
“Got it,” the CO said, sitting up. “Tell them I’m up there in… Wait, did you say astronomical survey, astronautical survey or astrophysics survey?” During chill times they’d done both of the former, respectively studying stars at long range but getting their “true” distance from Earth by triangulation and mapping for smaller but dangerous gravitational anomalies, potential black holes or neutron stars and the other “rocks and shoals” of deep space.
An astrophysics survey, though…
“Errr…” the PO said, looking at the written note on his pad. “Astrophysics, sir.”
“How in the hell did I forget there was an astrophysics survey?” the CO asked, standing up and hitting his head on a beam. “Mothergrapper!”
“ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, SET CONDITION TWO THROUGHOUT THE SHIP! PREPARE FOR SYSTEM ENTRY AND CHILL. ASTROPHYSICS SURVEY TEAMS READY YOUR POSTS.”
“What in the grapp is… oh grappin’ maulk, not this again. Goddamned astrophysics survey?” The COB looked down at the ceiling of the toilet stall and with lightning fast reflexes grabbed his coffee mug from the toilet paper holder, covering it with his other hand, just before he fell on his head. But, he didn’t spill his coffee until the contents of the toilet fell on him.
“Maulk!”
“Oh maulk!” Berg grabbed a stanchion as the ship suddenly lurched, and swallowed hard against a wave of nausea. He fell to his knees heaving as his inner ear raced to find an up or a down or a left or a right. Maulk, any direction would have suited his balance system, but Berg’s head spun and he heaved again.
“Grapping astrophysics survey! I don’t remember an astrophysics survey on the schedule!”
“ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, SET CONDITION ONE! SEVERE SPATIAL FRAME DRAGGING ANOMALY! ON-BOARD GRAVITATIONAL FLUCTUATIONS.”
“Astro? What the hell?” Spectre held onto the command chair restraints and choked down his stomach. The spin in his head was about like a flat spin at four g. He’d felt that once before in an F/A-18 Hornet, years ago, and he didn’t like it then.
“I dunn—” the lieutenant commander said, then vomited onto his control panel. Fortunately, it was the middle of the night and he had skipped supper. What came up was mostly fluids.
“Commander Weaver!”
“Working on it, sir,” Bill said, swallowing his gorge.
“Commander Weaver?” Spectre shook his head and the spinning subsided for a second. Just a second.
“I don’t get it, sir,” Bill snapped, looking at the readings. “There is not much worse gravity here than at YZ Ceti and we’re farther out. But there is some serious frame drag—” Weaver heaved but managed to use a bag this time.
“Eng reports Ball is nominal,” the XO said, then grabbed a sickness bag.
“I’m, uh, trying to figure it out sir.”
“Weaver?”
“Tchar?” Bill asked, looking at a small video screen. The Adar rarely got involved directly in the running of the ship.
“The ball particle counters are showing a largish background radiation across the spectrum of particles. We could be getting anomalous particle stream or even a-null impacting.”
“I’m getting that… data now Tchar,” Bill said, then grabbed another sickness bag and used same. The nausea from this transition was worse than anything he’d ever experienced in his life, and he’d spent a fair amount of time in both zero-g and fighters. “Thanks.”
“Commander Weaver, how is it coming over there?” Spectre was beginning to lose patience. He had reluctantly agreed to the astrophysics survey in the flight plan, but he had been assured that the distance would be safe and that they had to chill anyway. Fool me once, shame on you…
&
nbsp; “The algorithms from previous anomalies are not helping, sir. It must have to do with the serious gravitational frame dragging due to there being an A class star with four F class stars in extremely close orbit around it.” Bill gulped again and looked down at the port side bulkhead just as down became the starboard bulkhead.
“CO?”
“Go XO.”
“We really need to chill sir. Thermal readings exceeding eighty-seven percent of max.”
“Not till we get this anomaly under control,” Spectre ordered. “Commander Weaver, can we just back out of here?”
“That has never really worked for us in the past sir,” Bill replied.
“Right. Work faster.”
“Commander Weaver?”
“I’m running a sim now sir. I… think it’s…” He paused and grabbed another sickness bag. The conn was rapidly running out. “I think it’s going to tell me what is happening at least.” Some… detritus had gotten on his screen and he surreptitiously wiped at it with his sleeve.
He was the first to see Miriam enter the conn. The linguist was normally the first to go down from motion sickness but something had changed that. As the relative “up” shifted to port the linguist easily handled the shift, even seeming to anticipate it, and walked up to his station along the top of the ballast controls.
“Is there unusual frame dragging in this region?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Data reduction and simulation is… coming in now,” Weaver said, looking at her oddly. “Why are you asking?”
“I was just thinking about what might happen in a frame dragging scenario,” Miriam said, grabbing a stanchion just before another gravity change and bracing sideways. “What do you think about, oh, adjusting the permeabilty factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density? I mean, if you have to realign the frame dragging coefficient for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat plane metric motivation?”