by Bob Blanton
“At least I hit you,” Catie said from where she usually ended up, on her butt on the mat. She’d been training with Liz for almost two and a half years, but she still didn’t stand a chance. She’d hoped that when Kal started training her as well, she would get faster and finally be able to beat Liz, but Liz worked out with Kal too, and she just got faster.
“Come on,” Liz said as she offered Catie a hand to help her get up. “You’re getting faster. That actually hurt.” Liz rubbed her ribs where Catie had hit her.
“Good,” Catie said as she rubbed her butt. “At least I’m not the only one who’s sore.”
“You might have cracked one; I think I need to have a doctor look at them,” Liz said as she rubbed her ribs.
“I have an appointment to talk with Dr. Metra today; you want to come?” Catie asked.
“I don’t want to horn in on your appointment,” Liz said, “but I can be your bodyguard for the trip and have someone else look at me while you’re with Dr. Metra.”
“It’s not an appointment, or at least not a doctor’s appointment. She just wants to tell me something,” Catie said. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about a disguise; you suggested Dr. Metra might be able to help.”
“Oh, you still can’t go anywhere without attracting a crowd?”
“Yes! I’m so tired of it. And I have a paper, my last high school assignment, and I need to be undercover to do it.”
“What, like a journalist?”
“Yeah, it’s for sociology, but it’s kind of like a report,” Catie said.
“Sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, sure.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Hello, Dr. Metra,” Catie said as she and Liz entered Dr. Metra’s office.
“Hello, Catie, hello, Liz,” Dr. Metra said.
“Hi, I can wait outside if you like. I need to see someone about my ribs,” Liz said. “Catie kicked me pretty hard this morning.”
“I can look at your ribs while we talk. The Captain has just asked me to, how do you say it, come clean with Catie.”
“About what?” Catie asked.
“Those nanites you’ve been giving me printer time for,” Dr. Metra said.
“Oh, the birth control ones?” Catie asked.
“Why yes, how did you know?”
“I reviewed the designs you submitted for printing,” Catie said. “Did Daddy figure out you were distributing them?”
“Yes, he did; apparently, I’ve been so successful that there was a news report about the drop in the birth rate.”
“Cool. Was he mad?”
“No, he offered support and gave me a budget and said he’d tell you the printer time was on the up-and-up now.”
“Your slang is really improving,” Catie said. “What are you watching?”
“Oh, I’ve been reading mystery novels,” Dr. Metra said. “I’m reading the ABC Mysteries now.”
“Good for you.”
“How are you distributing the nanites?” Liz asked.
“I’m putting them on small bandages. One of the women who came here from the refugee camps is part of a network of women who have been distributing birth control to women in male-dominated environments. When she told me, I offered to help. A one-time bandage is much easier to distribute than boxes of pills.”
“That’s amazing. Let me know if you need any help,” Liz said.
“I will, but with the Captain’s support, we should be able to increase distribution and help even more women. Now, let me see those ribs,” Dr. Metra said as she picked up a scanner and walked over to Liz. After running the scanner over the affected area, she spent a moment reviewing the scan in her HUD. “No breaks or cracks, you’ll be sore for a bit. I can give you a shot to speed up the healing if you’d like.”
“Sure,” Liz said. “I have a training flight tomorrow, and bruised ribs don’t go well with high-G turns.”
Dr. Metra entered some data in the nanite printer she had in her office; it was used for simple treatments like this, but the birth control nanites had to be printed in space.
“Dr. Metra,” Catie interjected, “I wonder if you could help me with something?”
“If I can.”
“I need to disguise myself so that I can get around the city without people recognizing me.”
“Oh, you’re still getting mobbed?”
“Yes, and I need to be able to do some things without people recognizing me,” Catie said. “I’ve got to do an undercover report for school.”
“Interesting, what would you like to change?”
“What can you change?”
“Oh, lots of things,” Dr. Metra said. “We can change your hair color, skin color, and eye color. Those take a while to take effect, also to reverse. We can also change your weight a little. Then if you need more, we could do some cosmetic surgery.”
“Wow,” Liz said. “That’s way more than I expected. How do you change skin color?”
“I have to program some nanites; then they’ll reset the melanocyte cells in your skin to produce a different level of melanin. It takes about one week for the color change to complete if we’re making it darker. But it takes three weeks to lighten it back up, though we can speed that up with skin peels.”
“What about eye color?”
“The same thing; we have the pigments carried to the eye by nanites. It only takes a few hours.”
“And hair color?”
“That only takes a few hours as well, but then you have to wait for it to grow out,” Dr. Metra said. “But hair dye can take care of that.”
“Then why bother?” Catie asked.
“Roots,” Liz said. “You don’t want to have to dye your hair every few days to avoid having your roots show.”
“Oh, so what should I change?”
“Who do you want to pass for?” Liz asked.
“I want to work in one of the manufacturing plants as an assembler or something like that.”
“So, maybe you’d like to be a Latina or a Syrian refugee,” Dr. Metra suggested.
“No, that won’t work,” Liz said. “Too easy to get tripped up with language or cultural things.”
“A girl from Boston or San Diego isn’t going to be a good undercover identity,” Catie said.
“Could you change her voice?” Liz asked.
“We can change the tone,” Dr. Metra said. “But accents are caused by mispronunciation, usually the vowels.”
“What about a Polynesian girl from Hawaii,” Liz suggested. “That would allow us to make you look really different without going too far outside your cultural norm. You’ve been to Hawaii, and there’s nothing too unique about the culture that you couldn’t fake it.”
“Then why am I here?” Catie asked.
“Your parents are construction workers,” Liz said. “That covers a lot of area. You can say they went home, but you decided to stay. I think you can pass for seventeen now. You said you could change her weight; how does that work?”
“I can make some nanites which will make her hold water; that will add five or six pounds, and give her a softer look,” Dr. Metra said.
“That would be perfect,” Liz said. “That and a darker skin color with brown eyes and hair, and she’ll be totally unrecognizable.”
“What about my voice?” Catie asked.
“I think if the doctor can lower it half an octave, it’ll be good.”
“When do you want to do this?” Dr. Metra asked.
“As soon as you can,” Catie said. “I’m getting cabin fever.”
“Oh, another good idiom,” Dr. Metra said. “Anyway, I can have everything ready in two days.”
“Okay, I’ll be back. Hey, is my mother working today?”
“Yes, she is. Why do you ask?”
“Just want to drop in and say hi,” Catie said.
“That’s nice,” Dr. Metra said. “She has surgery in an hour, so she should be in her office.”
“Thanks, bye. See you in two days.”
Chapter 9
Testing Testing
“Hi, Nikola,” Catie said as she met Dr. Nikola at her office. “Are you ready to sit in on the experiments?”
“Certainly, I’m interested in meeting this guy of yours.”
“He’s not my guy!”
Nikola laughed. “Dear, if people keep getting that kind of reaction from you, they’re going to keep calling him that. You have to ignore it; eventually, they’ll get tired of teasing you.”
“I’m not so sure it will work. Uncle Blake doesn’t give up very easily.”
“Come on, he’s a man, they all get bored easily.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, we’re set up for the test over in his office. It’s just four floors down.”
“You couldn’t get him a nice office on the top floor?”
“He didn’t want one up here, said it was too crowded. The floor he’s on has some big labs and storage, so not many people are down there.”
“So, he likes his privacy?”
“He’s not much of a people person,” Catie said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Hello, Dr. McDowell, this is Dr. Nikola Zelbar, I told you about her,” Catie said.
“Yes, yes, she wants to watch, just sit there,” Dr. McDowell said, pointing to the chair to the side of the big display he was using.
“He doesn’t like to use specs,” Catie whispered to Nikola.
“They give me a headache,” Dr. McDowell said, “but my hearing is just fine.”
“Sorry,” Catie said. “ADI should have the probes powered up and ready for our test.”
“They are ready,” ADI said. “This is exciting, interstellar travel in minutes instead of decades.”
“We’ll have to see about that,” Dr. McDowell said. “I’ve selected these two stars.” He pointed them out on the display.
“Why those two?” Catie asked.
“They’re far away from our solar system, they’re next to each other, and they’re both so young they’ve just finished forming their solar systems.”
“How far away are they?”
“Two hundred twenty light-years to the first star, the second is just 2.5 light-years from the first.”
“There is one star that’s in the path between the two,” Catie said.
“Yes, but it’s not directly in line,” Dr. McDowell said. “Based on my calculations, we should be able to make twenty-five light-year jumps with the engines we have in the probes.”
“I’ve got everything recording; which probe are you going to use first?” Catie asked.
“We’ll start with the alpha probe.”
“Okay, I’m ready when you are.”
“On three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage,” Dr. McDowell counted down and pressed the button.
“It’s gone,” Catie said. “I’m reading the data from it now. We didn’t make it. It looks like we’re over three light-years short of the star and quite a bit off line. I make it fourteen degrees off.”
“Something must be off,” Dr. McDowell said. “Let me set up the next jump.”
Dr. McDowell spent several minutes calculating the necessary variables and entering them. “Okay, let’s see if we can get this right, on three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage.”
“We only jumped point-zero-zero-one-two light-years,” Catie said.
“I know I had the power setting right. Okay, I’ll dial it up this time . . . engage.”
“You jumped point-zero-zero-three light-years that time,” Catie said.
“Okay, max power next time.” . . . “engage.”
“You jumped point-zero-zero-five light-years.”
“I don’t understand,” Dr. McDowell said.
“Maybe I can help,” Nikola said. “I’ve been studying the data from your earlier experiments. I noticed that you sent the first probe toward Epsilon Eridani. In fact, the data shows you were about sixty AUs from the star.”
“That close; I didn’t notice,” Dr. McDowell said.
“And, when you sent the probe back, even though you didn’t get it where you wanted to, it was within sixty-five AUs of Sol. So, I would hypothesize that you need to be within the gravity well of a star where the gravity measures the same as the gravity of our solar system at sixty-five AUs. The numbers seem to corollate since Epsilon Eridani is point-eight-seven times the mass of Sol.”
“That makes sense, but why did we miss this time?” Catie asked.
“Again, a hypothesis, but that star you pointed out might have deflected the wormhole or whatever it is that the probe moves through,” Nikola said.
“Okay, but it’s going to take over two days to get Alpha to the star we’re targeting,” Dr. McDowell said. “What a waste of time.”
“Dr. McDowell,” ADI interrupted. “I suggest you let me get the Alpha probe into position, and you can concentrate on doing experiments with the Beta probe.”
“Oh, you can do that?”
“Of course, just switch your control board over to the Beta probe, and I’ll take care of the other one,” ADI said.
“Um, thanks,” Dr. McDowell said.
“I’m happy to help,” ADI replied.
“Okay, so to help validate Dr. Nikola’s hypothesis, I’ll send the Beta probe to the first star and then on to the target star,” Dr. McDowell said.
“You need to hit the edge of its solar system, so you don’t have to pass through it to get to the next star,” Catie said.
“Of course,” Dr. McDowell said with just a bit of irritation at having the obvious pointed out to him. “I’ll adjust my numbers to target a distance that will produce the same gravimetric density as sixty-five AUs from Sol.”
After a few minutes, he had the necessary variable set. “On three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage.”
“We’re there,” Catie said. “I have us at seventy-eight AUs from the first star; that was a perfect jump.”
“Thank you,” Dr. McDowell said. “Now I’ve got it set up for the next jump. On three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage.”
“Another perfect jump,” Catie said. “Now, we’re ready to run the experiments we were planning to run.”
“We already have data that shows we need to be inside the gravity well,” Dr. McDowell said. “So, let’s see how far inside we can be. I have two experiments in mind. The first is to push the probe into the star’s gravity well with its drive and then see if we can jump out. It takes an hour for each test. The second is to jump it to the other star and try to see how far into the gravity well I can jump. Those take the least amount of time, but also have the most unknowns. Anyone have a suggestion?”
“Well, being one who hates to wait,” Catie said, “I vote for the second method. It’ll give you both how far in you can jump and how far in you can be and still jump without having to wait.”
Nikola just shrugged her shoulders. “Worst case, you have to wait two days for the second probe to get into position.”
“Okay, we’ll go with method two,” Dr. McDowell said. “I’ve programmed it to jump just to the edge right now. We’ll use a couple of jumps to calibrate the power; then, we’ll start modifying the jump distance.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Okay, we’re calibrated, I’ve targeted a jump that reaches one hundred AUs from the star; that would be the same as sixty AUs from Sol,” Dr. McDowell said. “On three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage.”
“Right on target,” Catie said after she finished taking all the readings.
“Good, so going back, we’ll target the same as fifty-five. . . . On three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage.”
“Off target,” Catie announced. “The probe is at one-hundred-eight AUs and five degrees off line of the target.”
“It looks like the end of the jump has the same behavior as we saw when the jump vector was too close to the other star,” Nikola said. “The gravity well pushes it around.”
“Yes, I think we might need to consi
der that the wormhole behaves like the end is in each of the locations along its path. And that end is pushed around by gravity.”
“But there is gravity everywhere,” Catie said.
“Yes, but it becomes very small when you’re outside of a solar system,” Dr. McDowell said. “It is nice to know you won’t jump into the middle of a star by accident.”
“But you could screw up and brush a star and wind up in the middle of nowhere, weeks or months of microjumps from a gravity well; like when we brought the first probe back,” Catie said.
“That is a possibility,” Dr. McDowell said. “I want to move the probe inside the gravity well. I think we should start with ninety-five AU; that will take twelve hours. Can your ADI handle navigating it for us?”
“I would be happy to,” ADI said.
“We’ll meet at ten a.m. tomorrow,” Dr. McDowell said.
“We’ll be here,” Catie and Nikola replied.
◆ ◆ ◆
“We’re ready for the test,” Dr. McDowell said the next morning. “On three, one . . . two . . . three . . . engage.”
“Nothing happened,” Catie announced. “The probe didn’t even move.”
“Curious,” Dr. McDowell said. He made some adjustments on the control panel and watched the display. “The drives are working; it moves just as one would expect. But if we set up the harmonics, it just sits there.”
“What do the harmonics do?” Nikola asked.
“I set the drives to oppose each other, then I create a harmonic between them,” Dr. McDowell explained. “I was using the harmonic to characterize the drive performance when we had the first jump.”
“So, based on that, you wouldn’t have expected the probe to move,” Nikola said.
“That’s right, and it didn’t with all the other tests we did.”
“So, when it’s inside the gravity well, it behaves as anyone would expect it to; but when it’s outside the gravity well and where, in general, one would expect it not to perform very well, the harmonics then cause it to jump,” Nikola said.
“That’s correct,” Dr. McDowell said. “So now we have to wait another twelve hours before we can do the next experiment.”
“What are you testing next?”
“We want to see if one probe can carry the other along with it when it jumps,” Catie said.