by Randal Sloan
He had come to watch their latest test of a new propulsion system. Some strange behaviors had been seen in testing different containment configurations for a new design of their fusion plant. Although they had not provided any actual benefit as a modification to the containment units, an unforeseen possibility had been presented. They believed that the effects from the fields could be used as a method of propulsion, in which a distortion of space generated by the field would allow the ship to move by compressing space in front of it and decompressing the space behind it. To the ship it would appear to be moving toward a gravity source, but that source would always seem to be just in front of the ship.
The closest to the proposed propulsion system was the theoretical drive system known as the Alcubierre drive, and until now that was entirely theory. The possibility that they might have the technology to do something similar now was astounding, if it actually worked. All their early tests had been promising. Such a drive could potentially achieve significant speeds, and theoretically achieve faster than light travel.
They had temporarily mounted field projectors for the test propulsion system in the bow and stern of the ship, which had involved running heavy duty power cables most of the length of the ship to the newest version of the Space Tech fusion plant. They had already completed a number of tests of the drive and so far it looked good. This time they were going to do a live test. Hopefully, they would be able to use the new propulsion system to move the ship instead of using the rocket motors.
As Sam moved to his station in the main control room, a warning tone went out through the ship and the ship's spin was stopped for the test. Everyone donned spacesuits and strapped in to their stations. When the lead tech, John Jenkins, looked toward him, he nodded his agreement, and the drive was brought online. Everything came up green, so it was time to fish or cut bait as his grandfather used to say.
They had decided on the plan to engage it at one percent power, check their results and then try two percent if it looked good. Finally, if it again passed muster, they would go all the way to ten percent. John was essentially the pilot, and he had a large button on his console to hit if they needed to abort. They also set a course up from the solar plane to make sure no one would be in their way.
"One percent is a go," John said. Sam nodded his approval and John pressed the start on the console, ready to hit the abort if necessary.
It was working! The ship started to move on the set course and the acceleration matched the expected profile within an acceptable range. In fact, their acceleration was actually a little better than expected. They remained at that level for a couple of minutes until the doctor said, "Ok, this is really looking good. Take us to two percent."
John pressed the preset two percent choice. The ship immediately increased its acceleration. Once again everything looked good, although again it performed better than the expected specs. Someone would need to study their detail readings after the fact to determine why that was occurring. After a few minutes John looked to the doctor, who simply nodded. The final test for the day was a go.
John once more hit the engage button, again they felt a surge in acceleration, and again the ship started to move noticeably faster. Momentarily the new readings passed within the expected range, but strangely, the acceleration continued to increase. At first, John thought, it was because the system was again performing better than expected, but the acceleration increase continued unabated. Realizing that something was wrong, John tried to abort the test, but just as he was reaching to hit the cancel button, the acceleration began increasing by a huge amount. He was unable to reach the console to hit the button, because he was pinned down due to the g force from the acceleration. The situation was dire and the acceleration would have probably become fatal for the passengers, but luckily for them, all power to the ship was lost as the power levels exceeded that which many of the systems could handle, causing them to trip out.
#
Doctor Randolph gradually became aware again of his surroundings. He had briefly passed out when he suspected the acceleration had exceeded ten g. Everyone was wearing a spacesuit with the faceplate raised. He could tell the power was out because it was very dark. He began to see the lights on the various spacesuits coming on and he turned his on also. "What happened?" he croaked.
John replied, his voice rather stressed, "I don't know..." He was looking for his own answers, too.
He finally managed to get control of himself. "Somehow the acceleration curve was higher than we expected." That was just stating the obvious. He struggled to explain what he did know.
"I think maybe it should've been a logarithmic scale, which would've been bad enough. But I also think that at the last it was more than that. We seemed to be experiencing some kind of feedback loop that dramatically increased the power level. If everything had not tripped out when it did, I think we would all be dead now."
John was still rather shaken up about it. He looked at Doctor Randolph. "I'm sorry, sir. It happened so fast, I couldn't react fast enough and then the g force was so bad, I couldn't reach the console to hit the abort."
Sam shook his head. "It's not your fault. No one could have reacted quickly enough."
John nodded. He still felt bad about it, even though he knew that was true. He went on, needing to get it all out, "In hindsight, we were way too optimistic, and we should have increased one percent at a time. That way we would have detected the issues in time to abort the test."
Sam nodded. "That's my fault -- I pushed too hard -- too aggressively." He sighed. He knew he was obsessed with getting his revenge. They should have taken it slower. But it was too late to go back. "So what do we do now? How long until we can get the power restored? And how soon can we contact Space Tech Station to get assistance?"
John replied, "Let me check with Engineering."
John switched on his suit radio. "Control to Engineering. Please respond. I need an immediate status update." His eyes glazed over for a moment as he listened to their reply. "Control acknowledges," he finally said.
"Sorry, sir. As per protocol, I was able to communicate with Engineering by means of my suit radio. They are telling me we should have emergency power in a few minutes, but at least an hour until they have partial power from the main reactor, which they believe is undamaged.
"Regarding your second question, we're moving too fast for anyone to reach us anyway," John told him, glancing at the few displays he had active, none of which displayed their current speed. "At least for a long time, and they will have to decide if it is feasible to attempt a rescue."
At least the communication system still seemed active, but it was giving an error which John immediately knew what it meant. That was bad! "That doesn't appear to be the worst problem. Right now, I don't even know if we'll be able to communicate with Space Tech. We carried spare parts for our propulsion systems, and even our communications equipment. However, I'm pretty sure our outside antenna was stripped away during the acceleration. We will have to fabricate something, and do an EVA to make the repair. We can transmit, but not at the long range we would need to reach anyone."
At that moment, the emergency power came on. John switched his console to use the emergency power. "Oh no--" he said. If anything, he was even more shaken up now than before. Every time he looked at something, the news grew worse. He struggled to get his composure.
"I am now able to read the information on my console, including our projected speed. If this is correct, our current speed is much greater than we thought. Not good at all..." He stared at his console in almost disbelief, but every time he looked, it still came up the same.
"We will have to figure out exactly what happened later. I can guess that somehow in the last few moments, we were outside of the Newtonian universe briefly. I will try to calculate our exact position and speed to verify this, but I can tell you that it's bad. We may be beyond rescue, if we can't get the drive to work again. I'm not sure that Space Tech can build a fast enough rocke
t to reach us, unless we figure this new drive out with their help. Maybe they could at least get us more supplies."
"How long will our supplies last? Especially the essentials such as food, water, and oxygen?"
"Enough food probably to last at least a year. We initially planned to have that long of a contingency if for any reason we could not be resupplied. We may be able to stretch that time period a little bit if we began rationing immediately. Theoretically, our water and oxygen supply should last us indefinitely, but I'm sure we have some leaks in the system. We may be able to mitigate that to some extent by shutting off areas of the ship."
"That gives us that long to figure this out. Hopefully either Space Tech will be able to mount a rescue or together we can figure out how we can return. If we can even figure out how to contact them."
One of the other techs exclaimed. "I think we have another problem." He had turned rather pale.
Seeing their questioning looks, he managed to get control. "Even though we can't transmit, we can receive signals. Take a look at the time stamp on the message I just picked up between Space Tech Station and one of our mining ships."
Sam stared at it in obvious confusion. "It looks like it's something like a few months ago. How is that possible?"
"Look at the year, sir." The man nervously pointed at the year of the timestamp. His obvious distress was getting worse.
"Oh..." Sam could only stare at it for a moment. The only answer seemed incredible. He looked around the room. "I don't know how, but it appears that we have somehow lost several months..."
Sam was having his own problems maintaining control. Finally, he went on, voicing what they all knew was the only answer. "We knew something strange happened at the last, with perhaps Newtonian physics breaking down. The only possible explanation is that we have traveled forward in time." Everyone in the control room just stared at him, all in various levels of shock and disbelief.
Sam was more than a little shook up too, but he tried to maintain appearances for his team. However, he couldn't help but comment, "So everyone at home probably thinks we are lost forever. Which we may be anyway..."
#
In the executive offices of Space Tech, Ted Randolph called an emergency meeting. They now knew that Doctor Sam Randolph was missing and his lab assistant was also suspiciously missing. To make things worse, The Annette was late reporting in after their communication blackout during a special propulsion test they were conducting. The combination of the two events had many convinced that the Organization had kidnapped the doctor, using the resulting chaos to somehow take control of the ship. The situation looked grave, and Space Tech had no choice but to go into emergency operations mode.
After ending the meeting, the PR team was called in and they went over their strategy in detail. They would not communicate anything directly, but rumors would be "allowed" to get out that the doctor was sick, or that he was taking a break due to the pressures of the job. This was only a temporary strategy since he would have to be there for the stockholders meeting in a couple of months.
Having dismissed everyone, Ted sat by himself in his office. He alone knew the details of the test the Space Tech research vessel was conducting, and he feared that they had more than likely suffered a major catastrophe that had nothing to do with the Organization. He wasn't sure about his brother and if it was a coincidence or not. He knew he had planned to be involved with the testing, but he had not told him he was going there.
So far they hadn't been able to discover anything regarding his whereabouts. If the Organization had kidnapped him, why couldn't they find any evidence at all? Plus he and his brother both had a special tracking device implanted that only a very select few knew about, and the first thing he had done when he realized his brother was missing was to try to find him using their array of satellites. Nothing! He could hold things together by himself for a little while but within a few weeks he would have to make some tough decisions. The most important of those decisions would be who would be the next CEO. He knew who that would have to be, he just didn't want to go there if he had a choice.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rumors
Space Tech has announced that one of their research vessels is missing. According to their statement, they were testing a new propulsion system and the ship has disappeared. A number of search ships have been sent to the area, but they have so far not found any evidence of the research vessel. They haven't found any debris, so they are holding out hope that the ship will be found.
#
Mid-term break over, everyone headed back to school. Miranda was suddenly getting a lot more attention than she wanted, and she kept seeing students talking and pointing toward her. Someone had VR'd her pool game and the video had gone ultra-viral. Emily of course was excited about it, but Miranda just wished she had kept her cool. Caitlyn and her friends were even worse than ever, now going out of their way to cause her trouble.
Back at the military training area, they shifted to teaching the students basic hand-to-hand fighting skills. To Miranda the training seemed really easy, but she tried to hold back on her moves to match the level of the other students. When the Master Sergeant showed them how they could practice the hand-to-hand moves in the VR simulator, he couldn't resist giving Miranda a glance. She gave him a big smile, because she immediately realized what that meant.
It wasn't long before Miranda was taking advantage of the opportunity to practice after class alone. By carefully pacing herself, she was able to avoid the headaches. Soon she had pushed her skills to an advanced level as she practiced by herself with a simulated dojo as her instructor. Not the same as practicing with an actual person, but she had every move down to perfection. She learned to respond by instinct with moves that were best for defense when faced with an attack and the moves to attack if necessary. Of course, she told no one, just as she had told no one but the Sarge about her skill level with shooting, even though she longed to try them out for real.
The following evening Miranda's astronomy class was conducted for the first time at the big telescope. The construction work had finally been completed, sped along by the scrutiny the incident with the lasers had brought about. It had been built for the astronomy class. The telescope worked by shooting a laser off a Space Tech satellite, using the return signal to tell an AI how to modify the view to compensate for the effects of the atmosphere. That was why the lasers had been there to start with, although it was only supposed to have been only one set of primary and secondary lasers.
Miranda was glad to be no longer studying theory or viewing space-based telescope footage, but looking out through the telescope with her own eyes. She was thrilled that she now had an opportunity to point it to her own specified location. She had been looking at some of the furtherest galaxies visible with the Space Tech telescope, looking for clues for her theory regarding the subspace fabric. So Miranda stayed later than the other students.
With the telescope at the top of a big hill at the far end of campus, Miranda found herself walking back alone in the semi-darkness. Suddenly she was surrounded by Caitlyn and her friends. One of them said, "It's time to teach the girl a lesson, and there's nobody here to watch or to help." A number of them moved in toward Miranda, obviously intending to attack her.
Without thinking about it, Miranda slipped into her defensive position that she had learned in the hand-to-hand classes, and seconds later all of the other girls were lying on the ground. Realizing that she had done it again, Miranda helped them back to their feet. Two were holding their arms in obvious pain and Caitlyn was limping again. The others weren't much better. They all looked at her with a mixture of fear and respect and quickly hurried away. Sorry that she had obviously injured some of them slightly, Miranda was nevertheless angry at them for attacking her.
The next day even more rumors followed Miranda. She finally was unable to take all the pressure, sneaking off to the flight simulator to hide inside of it. Although the students had been given ac
cess, no one was currently training in the simulators. Miranda had previously used the basic simulations they had been assigned in class. However, she needed a distraction, so she pulled up the more advanced simulations. She was soon flying many advanced VR missions in the simulator and was so engrossed in the activity she didn't see the "Facility is closing" VR icon until it was blinking red. She realized that she only had five minutes to leave. She struggled with that because she was on the verge of another major headache, but she managed it by thinking about Julie's music as she moved. When she got back to the dorm and Emily asked where she had been, she shrugged and said nothing.
#
Zeke had been talking with some of the guys about the pool game with Miranda. He knew she was somewhat embarrassed by it, but they were all amazed. One of his geek buddies had slowed the video down, and they all watched as each ball had precisely been hit into the center of the pocket, even on the banked shots. He had also measured the speed of the spin on the cue ball on that last shot and it was off the charts. To even attempt that shot was unreal. Everyone had always known that the only way to put the eight ball in the side pocket without scratching was with a soft touch, yet Miranda had hit it as hard as anyone had ever seen, but had put so much back spin on the cue ball that it had moved in the opposite direction than it should have.
When they heard about her "incident" with the soccer team, they all kidded him that he better watch out. He laughed at that, but admitted that he too thought that "Better not make the girl mad!" was a pretty good policy. However, he told them, "She's a very sweet girl, you know," at which they all said, "Wooooo!" and one of them said as he was leaving, "Man, you've got it bad!" Zeke smiled at that and wisely kept his mouth shut.