THE CAMBRIDGE ANNEX: THE TRILOGY

by Peter Damon

  Michael was beginning to wonder if the man was going to be of any use to them as he led him forward and up, and into the laboratory the twins had made their own, his attempts at conversation getting a grunt, if that, in response.

  The room was empty, but the dialogue the twins had had with Professor Brewer had already yielded some equations, and these were presented on the walls, each of them using a different colour as alternative thoughts and ideas were portrayed in mathematical notations.

  “Ah!” Professor Chaichenko murmured, and he walked slowly around the room, his eyes following each notation, often nodding, sometimes shaking his head.

  “We reserved the green pen for you, Professor,” the twins said, coming into the room.

  “We have a monitor on anyone entering the laboratory,” one of them murmured to Michael in explanation for their timely arrival.

  “You are wrong, here, and here,” he said, and found the green pen to begin scribbling his own annotations.

  Professor Brewer appeared, a mug of coffee in his hand, and sat down to watch the Russian. “Not sure I’d agree, but it’s an interesting argument,” he offered.

  “How else do you explain this” Chaichenko asked, walking back to tap his pen against an earlier equation.

  “Einstein,” Professor Brewer began, but the Russian was already shaking his head.

  “No,” he said. “The loss of propulsion is too great. The energy is being expended in another fashion. We must learn what it is, and then we may proceed,” he told them.

  “We think we know what it is,” the twins spoke.

  “Dark energy,” they needlessly clarified.

  Michael silently left them to their discussions and went to find Heather, unaware of the profound silence he had left behind him as Professor Chaichenko, perhaps the most prominent particle physicist outside of CERN was forced to re-evaluate his position.

  August 4th.

  It was 10 o’clock on board the ARC. For half of the crew it was 10 in the morning and they had settled into their work routine. For the other half of the crew, it was 10 in the evening and many had retired, or were in the process of retiring for their night. Most of them had been on board for eight weeks, ever since the launch, and the period had brought a familiarity to their surroundings and a pattern to their lives. Things were starting to settle down and make sense.

  Oliver Cole, well used to sleeping in different beds in different circumstances, yawned as he finished making himself the last cup of tea of the day. He was about to sit down when heard his monitor bleep at him and waved the control unit towards it to have it wake up and show him the new news item that had caused it to make a sound.

  It was an article in the Moscow Times, the only English language newspaper in Russia that was still widely circulated.

  Oliver sat up as he read details about moon dust having been collected by ARC personnel, and then offered through eBay to the highest bidder.

  He tagged the story for Michael and opened his profiles on the social networks to begin fighting fires, well aware that within the hour the story would be picked up by the European press and, thereafter, the world.

  Within half an hour, Oliver began to see editorials on the web sites of various newspapers voicing their disgust, and urging their nation to support the Russian stance on the changes to the United Nations Outer-Space Treaty.

  He was about to raise the alarm with Michael, when a slight smell, only vaguely noticed to begin with , began to interfere with his concentration. It was something vaguely metallic, with an indefinably unpleasant undertone, and it refused to let him work.

  From a vague and indescribable scent, the smell quickly blossomed into a foul stench, a smell that forced Oliver to rush out of his suite, only to see others, up and down the passage, also rushing from their quarters many, like him, dry-retching and coughing.

  Some had remembered to grab their spacesuits on the way out, and those that hadn’t recognised the seriousness of their situation well enough to return to get theirs, once more coughing and retching at the smell that now filled the suites.

  With evacuation rehearsals fresh in their memories, the coughing and gagging crew climbed into their suits, all thoughts of modesty discarded against the greater risk, and made their way rapidly up to their evacuation station on the first floor.

  Leanne, caught up in the exodus, keyed her communications open to warn those in the control-room of what was happening.

  There was a moment of silence as they trained their screens to the mid-ship systems. “No fires,” a voice told her, she thought it was Gary’s. The control-room would have been alerted to a fire by the detectors. Similarly, any increase in toxic gasses would also have raised alarms, well before anyone breathing the tainted air would have noticed a problem, let alone a wayward smell.

  “It’s got to be a fault in the air systems, and something we’re not testing for,” she told him, picturing the systems in her mind. The suites might look like hotel rooms, but the air system that supported them was far more complicated than the air-conditioning normally found in a hotel room.

  “David and Thomas agree,” Gary told her.

  “I’ll meet them in the Plant Room,” she told him. “Meanwhile, you best have someone meet this lot. They’re not going to be happy if we find it’s just a fault in our air purifying systems,” she warned, and turned her steps to go downward instead of up.

  +++++++++++

  Michael was already dressed in his spacesuit when he entered the control-room to obtain an update from Gary, the Duty Officer.

  He immediately saw a distinction in the fault and opened a channel to the twins. “Thomas, David. You appreciate the problem has only occurred in the mid-ship quarters?” he asked.

  There was a moment’s silence in which he could visualise the twins looking towards each other with dawning realisation.

  “Thank you Michael. We’re on it,” they told him, their voices sounding a little more positive.

  He nodded and hurried up to the first floor to meet the fifty odd people who had been forced from their rooms, together with approximately twenty to thirty others who had been caught up in the exodus.

  By the time he got there, panic was already setting in. Women were crying, with many more clinging to their partners, some of whom were arguing as to whether they should stay there, or move towards the docking bay.

  “Alright!” Michael called over the voices of others. “We’re in an evacuation situation. We have plenty of time though. There is enough air to last us all at least four hours, so please make your way slowly, carefully, down the stairs to the sixth floor, and long the main passage to the dock area where we have three coaches ready to depart.”

  “You got that?” Michael asked Gary.

  “Frankie’s preparing them as we speak,” Gary confirmed.

  Michael sighed and began moving to the stairs with his charges, his mind fighting thoughts of fires in cars and the charred remains of loved ones. Like those he led towards the docking bay, he had no idea what had gone wrong, and could only pray the team working on it would find and solve it, before it became life threatening.

  “Michael!” Oliver called from not far away, and jostled the moving crowd in an effort to reach him. “We have another problem!” he called, frustration etched into his face.

  +++++++++++

  Leanne’s RFID allowed her to open the door to the Plant Room, immediately below the control-room with access from the sixth floor. The twins turned the corner and hurried over to join her as she entered.

  “Did you hear Michael’s point?” they asked her.

  She had, and the three went to the detailed diagram on the wall. Here, a large display showed every piece of piping that took or brought air to or from the various controlling systems.

  “A sub-artery that deals only with mid-ships,” she thought aloud, her finger following the route out of the oxygen generation system, the last in the process, and forward, towards the suites.

 
The twins had already moved off to prepare themselves to physically find the pipe she identified.

  “Alpha, Tango, Zero, Four,” she called.

  “Got it,” one of the twins called. The other two followed the voice and found Thomas already on his knees opening the access panel.

  “Oh shit. Hold your breaths!” he called, reaching down with a grimace to remove the small fuming package that had been put inside.

  “Who the hell would do that?” Leanne gasped.

  +++++++++++

  “Everyone. Please, everyone, your attention,” Michael called, going to stand in front of the three coaches sitting on the floor of the docking bay.

  “This was a test,” he told everyone, and nodded as there were cries of astonishment and anger.

  “Yes, yes, I know. Heartless, sadistic, cruel. And I’m sorry we had to do this, but it’s pointed out how unprepared we are for a true emergency,” he told them, and let that sink in for a moment.

  “Our pre-planned rehearsals finish inside of ten minutes. This test finished in twenty-five. Need I say more?” he asked.

  He didn’t. He could see it in their expressions and the looks they gave one another. “Good night everyone. You can return to what you were doing.”

  +++++++++++

  Don Graves, senior professor of mathematics allowed the young woman from the airport authority to lead him from one corridor to another, her bright smile and easy conversation helping to put him at ease. Frankly, he was glad she was there otherwise he would have been totally lost.

  He was sixty. Some would say too old to be going off on jaunts, especially when they involved going to a completely new college, part of the growing Cambridge University.

  That wasn’t to say he’d not travelled. In his younger days he’d travelled to Europe quite often, had even held a Fellowship at Oxford. But not recently. He’d become too absorbed in his studies to waste time in aircraft travel. Indeed, any time away from his offices seemed like an obstacle to his continuing research.

  Those that knew him well worried about him. They knew that the genius mathematician, who could so eloquently portray gravity with words and numbers, struggled to understand which way a door opened.

  “Do you know how long the trip will take?” he asked of the woman as he wheeled his baggage cart in front of him, holdall on the bottom, his laptop case on the top, his brolly on top of that because he knew it rained quite often in Cambridge, England. He recalled that from his days at Oxford.

  “I don’t, I’m afraid,” she admitted, and smiled pleasantly back at him as she led him to the required gate.

  It looked deserted and the professor looked about him, uncertain if this was the right place or not.

  A woman stood from one of the seats, a short woman with a short bob of blond hair curving under her round face. “Professor Graves?” she asked in a rich English accent.

  “I am,” he agreed. “Are you from the Rolle College?” he asked, checking the name on the printed email he had kept with him for reference.

  “My name’s Cheryl Hall,” she told him, and shook his large hand, dwarfing her own.

  “Is the plane here yet?” he asked, glancing out of the window and seeing the end of the boarding gantry staring into nothing.

  “We’re going by car,” she told him, taking his bag from the trolley to begin leading the way to a side door.

  “A car?” he queried, nonetheless following her. She seemed to know what she was doing, as did all the young people who had helped him on that day, from picking him up at his lodgings, bringing him to the airport and seeing that he found his way to the right area of the large complex. He had to admit, he was lost when he was taken from his laboratory and tutorial rooms.

  Down a flight of stairs and through another set of doors to a narrow service road and a black and upright vehicle with large windows and even larger wheels.

  “Thank you dear. You’ve been very kind,” he told the other woman as she helped him into the front passenger seat and helped him with his seatbelt before closing the door and waving goodbye. The young English woman was already in the driver’s seat and talking to the airport control tower on a car phone, obtaining approval to move out towards the small and southern-most runway; the one designated for light aircraft.

  “So, do you work for the college, or the airline?” he asked Cheryl as she drove sedately out from under the building to the large aircraft parking-space beside Harbour Side Drive.

  “For the college,” she said, casting him a smile as she allowed the car to slow to a halt.

  “Is something wrong, dear?” he asked as she bent forward to tug a level over, then pressed a button to patiently wait for something to happen.

  “No, no, everything’s is fine,” she told him, pressing a second button before picking up the car phone once again, to talk hurriedly into it once more.

  “Logan Airport Control, this is ARC001 standing on 14/32. Ready to depart,” she spoke.

  “Hello ARC001, this is Logan Control, you are clear to take-off.” They confirmed.

  Don looked about him, wondering where the aircraft was, when all of a sudden, he noticed they were rising into the air.

  “My word!” he said. He looked about him, all appearances of confusion gone from him as he keenly analysed what the vehicle was doing.

  Alright?” Cheryl asked. People normally reacted quite differently when being raised towards space in a road-going vehicle.

  “Oh, I’ll say! How very interesting,” Don grinned. This was what he’d been wanting all his life. “Would you happen to know if the earth’s magnetic field is distorted by this activity?” he asked, reaching into his jacket to retrieve his note-book while another dozen questions demanded answers in his mind.

  August 5th.

  Leanne and Allan sat close together in the control-room, seated in front of the new desk on which a large interactive table would allow quick and easy control and monitoring of their soon to become fleet of satellites.

  Out in the rear docking bay, three shipping containers hovered a metre off the deck, scaffolding bars welded to their sides to support the dishes and solar panels that had yet to unfurl and provide power to the batteries.

  “Prepare to launch,” Leanne told the dock hands over the docking bay tannoy.

  The massive rear doors were opened, and at a signal from one, the men pushed the three containers outwards, so that they floated serenely from the ARC to hang in space behind it, awaiting their orders.

  Leanne used the interactive table to select the special satellite of the three, the one with additional equipment in it for just their use, and tapping the screen, invoked the app that would send it rushing to the south and into a geosynchronous orbit above the Antarctic. Both Allan and she watched it from their screen, verifying its course and speed before moving to their next task.

  “Ok, ARC-A1,” Leanne murmured, using the first commercial satellite’s new Unique Satellite Identifier to select the second and common communications satellite. She used the interactive table to take a set of instructions from the ARC and ‘deliver’ them to the satellite, then invoked the instructions.

  Solar panels unfurled and swivelled, and then the satellite moved off to take up its station above the Australian continent, transmitting a welcoming signal while it waited for the correct response from its new masters to bring it to fully functioning.

  Leanne moved the other final satellite to a position below the ARC, out of harm’s way, and it waited there expectantly for further instructions.

  +++++++++++++++

  Another meeting of the management committee, and Michael inwardly groaned. Space was beginning to be uniquely tedious and exciting in turn, sometimes both in the space of just an hour.

  He chatted with some of the team, caught up with news and events and made notes of the things they asked of him, all minor but important. The twins were the last to arrive, a first for them, and they looked flustered as they took their places. No doubt the arrival of
their team of professors was bringing new research to the table.

  “OK, first and foremost, let me apologise for that evacuation rehearsal yesterday. Was it only yesterday? But I think I’ve got my point across; we’re far too complacent about our environment. Perhaps we’ve done too good a job of making the living area comfortable,” he suggested.

  “Anyway, perhaps we can start with Doctor Gail Barber and ask her how she finds us, to begin with,” Michael suggested.

  Gail blushed and looked towards everyone seated around the table. “Well, as you know,” she began, her Australian accent giving a twang to her voice. “I was brought here to see what we could do to improve your diet and fitness levels. There are 110 of us on board the ARC at the moment, and of those only 40 are using the gym in anything like a regular basis, and those that do, aren’t following the correct regime for their bodies, or in fact exercising at the right times given their metabolism.

  “The food being served here is predominately vegetable and carbohydrates, though individual diets range from heavily protein based, to vegetarian. In all cases, sugars and fats are too high and will need reducing.

  “I’ve been working with Paul, Allan, Su and Martha, and we believe we can use your data chips and the intelligence in the gym equipment to much better effect.

  “To begin with, the gym machines will be told by me what exercise you need to perform, and length of time. Be warned everyone; I will know if you have not done your allotted time! Everyone will receive your individual exercise programs shortly via the monitors in your individual suites, and I expect you to follow them, or face the consequence!

  “In the kitchens; the practice of making those they know their favourite meals will stop. The kitchen staff will have a set menu to work from each day, with options for most people’s tastes or inclinations. However, there will be specific foods for specific individuals. Allan is setting up a facility in both kitchens so that, as soon as one of these individuals enters the restaurant, the kitchen staff will know of it, and will know what food to prepare.”