by gerald hall
“It is amazing to think that we are going to be starting on a journey to another star in just a few months. After the successful test last year of the drone ship with the prototype Alcubierre warp drive, we were able to make the final refinements to the warp drive inside of Endeavor. Once the last additions to the power, life support and accommodations components were complete, we began to choose who was going with us.”
“The list of people who have asked to come with our polymaths and their families has been incredibly long. I think that practically everyone living at Hebes Chasma has put in a request.”
“I know. But a lot of people are going to be very disappointed, I’m afraid. Most people who came to Mars are still remarkably driven to pushing the edge of exploration and technology. They want to be part of the crew on the ship to the stars.”
Among those people was a certain Michael H. Curtis. When he learned about the big secret of the asteroid being turned into an interstellar ship, he immediately wanted to be a part of its crew. But he had a far different agenda than the polymaths. Michael believed that once there, he could somehow stop this ship from ever reaching its destination, even if it meant dying along with all of the polymaths. So, when he did not receive any notification to prepare to go board Endeavor, Michael immediately traveled to the colony headquarters complex to find out why.
“I’m afraid that you are not on the list to board the warp ship, Sir.” The young woman at the Colonial Personnel Transportation office calmly told Michael after he brashly stomped into the room and demanded to find out why he had not been contacted.
“What is your name, Miss?” Michael asked the clerk, trying his best to intimidate her into compliance.
“My name is Talia Rodriguez, Sir.” She said while smiling as though Michael’s attempts were having absolutely no effect on her. She was obviously too young to be one of the polymaths. Michael guessed that she was either one of the children of a non-polymath colonist or a fairly recent emigre from Earth.
“Why are you telling me that I am not going, Talia? I am one of the polymaths. Aren’t they all leaving onboard Endeavor?”
“Actually, Sir. You are not officially listed among the Ten Thousand or their dependents. We have only a limited number of slots for passengers other than the official list of polymaths and their dependents. Your name is not listed for any of those slots.”
“This is outrageous. I have every right to be on that ship with the rest of ‘my people’. Who do I need to talk to about this?”
“Deborah Marcum-Sorenson.” Talia calmly replied.
The infiltrator froze for a moment at the thought of actually facing Deborah. She was not only the leader of the polymaths, but also had quite the reputation of being able to infallibly ‘read’ people that was physically close to. Michael had worked very hard during his time living at Hebes Chasma to avoid any direct encounters with Deborah.
Michael had been particularly afraid of meeting Deborah after hearing a rumor that she was the one responsible for the miracle that saved the colony at Hebes Chasma from destruction by the CME. The idea of actually being discovered by the Dijinn that everyone from the Caliphate was so terrified of absolutely petrified Michael as well.
After a few minutes of introspection and sheer terror, Michael decided that staying on Mars was probably the best course of action. It would probably also be the safest one as well. He had been told by his handlers that eventually the Caliphate would come to deal with the infidels at Hebes Chasma. Michael wanted to be there to help in any way that he could. If he could not prevent the polymaths from escaping, at least he could pave the way for the Caliphate to make their way to Mars before the colony grew too large and too powerful for the Caliphate to eventually overcome.
Chapter Forty Seven:
Deborah Marcum-Sorenson’s Quarters
Hebes Chasma, Mars.
September 10, 2064
Deborah and her family stood together as they prepared to part ways. Deborah, her husband Peter and their son James were going to be travelling on humanity’s first interstellar spacecraft. But their daughter Mary had decided to stay behind on Hebes Chasma.
“Deborah, you know that you look exactly the same as you did when we first arrived here on Mars. It’s as though time has stood still for you.” Peter told his wife with a loving, if not envious, smile.
Indeed, if someone looked at Deborah and Mary together, they could have easily passed as sisters instead of mother and daughter. Deborah and Peter’s daughter stood slightly taller than her mother. But, Mary Sorenson was just as beautiful as her mother with her light brown hair, hazel eyes and athletic figure combined with just the right amount of feminine curves.
Mary’s twin brother James was a little taller, but looked much more like his father, including having his piercing blue eyes. But James had the same confident smile and demeanor as his sister. Deborah had spent many hours with both her children while they matured, both physically and emotionally. During those sessions, she shared her sense of morality and responsibility in the use of their gifts in a way that only Deborah could do.
“I’m going to miss you very much, Sweetheart.” Deborah told her daughter, tears beginning to flow from her eyes.
“I’m going to miss you too, Mom. But you know that I need to stay here, at least for a while. You know that another asteroid is already being prepared to become another warp ship by the colonists who are remaining here. I might end up traveling on it to help start up another colony in a decade or so.”
“But you are going to be all alone.” Deborah said.
“Don’t worry, Mom. Uncle Nathan and Aunt Nancy are doing to still be here to help keep me company. Remember also that I have one of Mutley’s granddaughters here to keep me company.” Mary warmly replied while petting the brown and white-haired dog sitting next to her.
Deborah’s Mutley was among the first dogs to be allowed to travel to Hebes Chasma. Now, there are more than a thousand dogs, cats and other domestic pets now living within the Mars Colony. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, the pets living at Hebes Chasma were completely free of the usual annoyances of fleas, ticks, mosquitos and other parasites that have plagued them for millennia. But Hebes Chasma’s canine and feline residents still provided loving companionship as they had in the past to the humans that had also traveled so far away from Earth.
Hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos for a wide variety of domestic animals also lay waiting in storage onboard Endeavor and at the Martian colony. They would be brought to term eventually when the right conditions for bringing them into their new worlds came into being.
Then Deborah reached out and embraced her daughter. While they embraced, both women felt an intense tingling running throughout their bodies as they shared their feelings in a way that no two human beings had ever done. When they released their embrace, there was nothing more that needed to be said. Mary would never be truly alone, her mother understood.
“Are you ready to leave now, Sweetheart?” Peter asked after also hugging his daughter and saying his own farewell to her before him, Deborah and Mary’s brother James left to watch to the shuttle launch area.
“I guess that it is a little late to be having second thoughts now. Besides, we already have several thousand refugees on the way here from the Moon who are planning to occupy our quarters at Hebes Chasma. I’d hate for them to think of us as going back on our word now.” Deborah said with a laugh.
“You still amaze me after all of these years together. I think that you haven’t aged a single day since we first met each other. You still look just as beautiful as ever, even though we now have two children that are basically all grown up.”
Deborah smiled at Peter’s complement. What she didn’t say was that he had aged some, there was even a hint of silver showing up at his temples. While as a whole, the polymaths on Mars were all healthier than most people their age and probably going to live longer than average, Deborah had no idea how long she would live.
/> Peter was not the only one to have noticed that Deborah’s biological clock had essentially stopped when she reached adulthood. She also certainly had more control over her biological functions than the average person. This was why Deborah and Peter did not have any more children after the twins. Deborah just worried about what the repercussions would be if more humans with her gift were to be brought into the world. So she essentially willed her body not to conceive any additional children in spite of the fact that Deborah was physically still quite capable of having another baby. Fortunately, Peter understood the reason behind Deborah’s decision. But he wasn’t completely happy about it.
He also wasn’t happy about leaving Mary behind either. But Deborah insisted that Mary had to be given the right to choose whether or not she wanted to stay with the rest of the colonists at Hebes Chasma. But now, the time had come to travel to the warp ship for the journey to the stars.
Deborah, Peter and James boarded Manassas, as Arthur’s gravity drive shuttle prepared to fly up from Hebes Chasma to the asteroid cum warp drive ship. They and the thirty other passengers aboard the shuttle strapped themselves into their acceleration couches for the liftoff. Manassas had originally been fitted with a nuclear-thermal drive for flight away from gravity wells. But after Arthur had moved to Mars, he had his personal gravity drive shuttle refitted with a fusion torch drive like the later shuttles featured. This greatly increased the vessel’s speed and endurance.
“Everyone hang on. We are to have a little fun here with a high performance takeoff.” Arthur told everyone.
A short countdown lead to a few seconds of mild acceleration as the Manassas left the takeoff pit. But once she cleared the surface, Arthur increased power to the gravity drive modules to maximum. The vessel leapt through the sky until it cleared the Martian atmosphere. She then flipped over and used her fusion drive to slow down for their approach to the orbiting warp ship. After that last period of deceleration was over, Arthur’s friends left their couches and made their way to the bridge to watch the warp ship on the bridge monitors as they neared the hollowed out asteroid.
On the surface, the vehicle that would take the polymaths beyond the stars looked little more than the ordinary asteroid that it has once been. It still had dozens of impact craters on its exterior. Arthur maneuvered towards one of the roughly potato-shaped asteroid’s poles. At that end, a large opening led deep into the interior of the asteroid ship. Manassas easily slipped inside the opening and slowly cruised towards the large docking chamber at its end.
“Look, they already have two of our large transport ships docked inside.” Peter commented as he looked at the data feed on a bridge monitor from Manassas’ external optical sensors.
“Yes, those are two of our most advanced ships. Glorious and Courageous have the newer M2P2 drives so they can literally sail between planets using a minimum of energy and reaction mass. They also have been retrofitted with fusion torch drives for higher acceleration when necessary. We will need them to move large numbers of personnel and our other materiel from this vessel into orbit around the planet that we choose to settle on.
We will also be taking all but one of our gravity drive shuttles with us. We will need to have these ships to establish our new home wherever we end up. It will take us some time to build a sufficient infrastructure to build additional vessels of this type. So we much have enough vessels to fulfill our long-term transportation needs at the very beginning. Hebes Chasma already has enough capability in place to begin building more shuttles of their own if they need more. They are also able to build conventional rockets if necessary. The large transports will enable the colonists remaining at Hebes Chasma to explore the rest of the solar system in due time if they wish.”
Manassas made contact with one of the nearby docking ports. Once a firm seal was established, Arthur and his passengers left his shuttle and went to the warp ship’s command center.”
“This is all so incredible.” Deborah said as she looked around all of the equipment in the command center. There were rows of video monitors connected to banks of powerful computers.
Some of the monitors displayed data on ship’s systems while others showed imagery from hundreds of different sensors scattered all over the surface of the asteroid and video monitors within the passages inside the vessel.
To the polymaths in the command center with Deborah, it was fascinating to see someone with so much power to still find wonder in the achievements of others. They all loved Deborah for what she had done and who she was. That was never going to change because the polymaths were completely confident that Deborah was never going to change from the intrinsically decent human being that she was.
After a few minutes, Melody Atherton walked up to Deborah and made a request.
“We would like very much for you to speak to everyone about our journey and what we want to achieve, Deborah. We would be very honored if you did this.”
Deborah stood there silently for a few moments with a blank expression on her face, initially not knowing how to respond. Eventually, with a deep sigh, she answered.
“I really don’t want to do it, Melody. I just want to quietly live my life along with my family. I’ve already played politician far longer than I care to. I’m sure that you can find someone else to do this instead.”
The room was silent after Deborah’s plea. No one knew quite how to respond to it. She had always been so selfless in her efforts to help the colony. Deborah’s response was unexpected to say the least.
“I’ll do it.” Sandy interjected. “Deborah is right. She deserves some peace in her life now. She’s already done so much for us. It would be unfair for us to ask for more from her.” The blonde polymath said while looking at Deborah and her family.
A relieved Deborah smiled with tears in her eyes.
“Thank you, Sandy. I’m sure that you would do a much better job than I would anyway. I’m heard you talk to groups before. You could charm even the most difficult critic or opponent into compliance in a heartbeat.”
Sandy just smiled.
“Well, we better go find our quarters, get settled in and rest. Tomorrow is going to be a very momentous day for all of us.” Arthur told everyone.
The next day was September the Eleventh back on Earth. The polymaths had picked the date years in advance to commemorate a tragic event that had happened within the old United States of America sixty three years earlier. But the date was also symbolic in other ways to Muslims as well. The polymaths meant now for this occasion to be a different kind of symbol also to the barbarians that had taken over mankind’s homeworld. The message was that the Islamists would NEVER succeed in their goal to rule supreme over all of humanity. There would always be free men and women somewhere within the universe.
Sandy stood behind a podium and looked towards a video camera. Several of the other polymaths stood nearby including Deborah and Arthur Wheeler. The team running the ship-wide broadcast gave a quiet countdown. At the end, the broadcast began. Sandy warmly smiled and began to speak to her fellow polymaths who were watching on video display monitors all throughout the warp ship.
“Good afternoon, everyone. Now that we are all gathered here for our greatest adventure, I wanted to speak to you together. This incredible ship is the culmination of over ten years of construction and over twenty years of research. She will take us where no human being has ever gone before. When we find a world that is suitable, we will conclude our travels and build a new peaceful, secure home for us and our descendants. The vast majority of us will sleep during this journey with a select few awake on a rotational basis at any given time to monitor systems and assist with any required maintenance. Otherwise, our Artificial Intelligence program will be watching over us during our journey.
We may reach our new home in just a few years or we may be sleeping for hundreds of years. We have the resources to sustain our systems for as long as we require. But we are going to build something truly remarkable when we arrive. That much,
I promise. The Lord has blessed us all in this endeavor. We thank Him for everything that we have and everything that we are. We hope that we will show Him that we are worthy of all of the gifts that He has granted us.” She concluded.
“You did a great job, Sandy. I knew that you were the right person for the job.” Deborah said while giving Sandy a warm hug.
“Thank you. I hope that everyone feels the same way.” Sandy replied.
“I’m sure that they do.” Arthur commented.
“It’s time now for our journey to the future.” Sandy told Arthur.
“Activate the thrusters to begin to leave Mars orbit.” Arthur ordered.
Reaction thrusters changed the orientation of the warp ship slightly. A few moments later, six powerful fusion torch drives thundered to life. The massive vessel slowly climbed away from Mars. After about thirty minutes, the ship escaped the last of Mars’ gravitational influence. This maneuver was carefully timed so that Mars was be between the warp ship and any observers from Earth.
“We should be far enough away from the Martian gravity well to activate the warp drive in about five hours.” Arthur noted.
“That will be just enough time for everyone to get a quick meal and then go to their therapeutic torpor chambers to get tucked in for the long sleep. We will only have about a score of people awake for the next year until time for the next rotation.”
The entire warp ship was a beehive of activity for the first couple of hours. After that, the activity quickly died down as more people were put into TT hibernation. By the time that five hours has passed, the interior of the warp ship was virtually silent with the exception of the noises of the machines that ran her.