QUANT (COLONY Book 1)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “So you invented two names so you could name it after them?”

  “Yes, Bernd.”

  This fascinated Decker. Quant could name it anything she wanted. She had all the names in the world to choose from.

  “So what are the two scientist’s names?”

  “Anthony Lake and Donald Shore.”

  “Wait. You named it–“

  “The Lake-Shore Drive. Yep.”

  Quant giggled. Decker just shook his head.

  “And the initials? LSD?”

  “Yes, Bernd. It’s quite a trip.”

  Quant laughed and Decker stared at her.

  “I’ve been studying humor on the side, Bernd. It’s necessary for a politician.”

  “Well, keep studying.”

  Quant laughed again, and Decker changed the subject.

  “So now what, Janice? What’s next with the probe?”

  “Bring it to Earth, install the computer, and then send it interstellar. Just pop it over to Alpha Centauri and back, for starters. Some place close first.”

  “Are you going to do that right now?”

  “No, I’m going to show the press first. Now that I know it works. We’ll call it a test. Lots of tension in the control room. All the sizzle. Then one, two, three, bang, and it’s in Earth orbit. That big, and everyone will be able to see it up there.”

  “Can you do me a favor, Janice?”

  “Sure, Bernd.”

  “When you do the first interstellar trip, launch it at night, from above western North America. So Ted Burke and I can see it happen with our unaided eyes.”

  “Sure. It’s not like the launch of the factories. It doesn’t matter where or when I do this one.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  The news wires all carried live video of the tense atmosphere in the control room. Ranks of engineers stared into their displays. Some people walked here and there among the consoles, talking with the engineers or delivering notes or coffee. And the air-traffic-controller deadpan voice of Mission Control was on the audio.

  Quant had transited the interstellar probe back to the factory location, and the feed from factory cameras was also on the news wires. Most showed it split-screen with the control room.

  The control room, of course, was completely fake, one of Quant’s creations. It existed only in video, and was totally irrelevant to the transit process. It took a lot of computer horsepower to generate the control room video stream, but Quant was feeling much more comfortable in piloting the probe by this point.

  At one point, as the countdown proceeded toward transit, the camera swung around to show Quant – the head of the program as well as World Authority Vice Chairman – sitting in the viewing gallery watching the operation.

  “Five minutes until initiation of the Lake-Shore Drive. Begin power checks.”

  The tension in the control room was escalating as the moment approached. The video stream put the control room in an inset now, and showed the device in one side and a view of Earth from the freight transfer station – what had been the factory launcher – in the other.

  “One minute until initiation of the Lake-Shore Drive. Power levels stable.”

  The control room inset showed a view of Quant, leaned forward in her seat now, intently watching the main display of the control room, in which the device floated.

  “Initiating the Lake-Shore Drive.”

  The corners of the device started glowing.

  “Expanding the field.”

  The light disks spread out from the corners, then started to merge. As they merged, they bent toward each other.

  “Bubble forming.”

  The disks kept expanding until they surrounded the device, closing up all the gaps between them. The field settled into a spherical shape.

  “Bubble stable. Prepare for transit.”

  Quant was delaying the view from the freight transfer station to make up for the time-of-flight of the radio signal from the Belt. She wanted them synched up so when the device disappeared in the Belt it appeared at the same instant in Earth orbit. Otherwise it would look like it had arrived minutes before it had left.

  “More sizzle,” she had explained to Decker.

  Decker was watching the whole production as well. He knew it was all nonsense – Quant’s creation – but he felt the tension as well. She really did understand a lot about people.

  “Three, two, one. Transit.”

  The light from the bubble spiked in the left side of the display and the apparatus disappeared. It simultaneously appeared in the right side of the display, in orbit around the Earth, scintillations playing along the edges of the cube.

  Quant had told him she had learned how to minimize the scintillations, as wasted energy, but she jazzed it up for this transit.

  “Sparkle is good,” she had said. “People like sparkle.”

  The control room erupted in cheers. The camera switched back to Quant, standing now and looking down from the viewing area, applauding. It caught her giving a thumbs up to the mission controller, and then shaking hands with the people around her.

  It was all very effective as theater, even if it was fake.

  The accomplishment itself, though, was not fake. It was stupendous.

  Humanity would finally go interstellar.

  “Hey, make sure you don’t run into the thing.”

  “Not likely. It’s still thousands of miles away.”

  “Are you sure? It looks like we’re right on top of it.”

  “Yeah, it’s so big, it gives you that impression.”

  Nearly an hour later, they finally did edge the shuttle up to the interstellar probe. It had gotten larger and larger until they couldn’t see it all in one view, then grew larger still.

  “Holy shit, that thing’s huge.”

  “Yeah. Fifty miles on a side or something. Here’s hoping I’ve got the right corner.”

  “Well, don’t bump into it. As fragile as it looked from a distance, hitting one of those huge beams would make mincemeat out of us.”

  They crept up to the docking point, with Quant watching nervously on a side channel, ready to grab control. Her interference was not needed, however. She really had hired good pilots, and these two were among her best. They deposited their payload – a quad-width container filled with computer parts. Once latched to the device, they unlatched from it and thrust gently away.

  They watched as the side of the node opened and the container was drawn inside. The giant door closed again.

  Delivery made.

  “How long before you have the computer installed, Janice?”

  “It’s already installed, Bernd. It’s built into the container. The communications are all radio. I just had to hook up power and then open the sealed duct covers in the container and connect the HVAC system. That all went smoothly and we’re good to go.”

  “It took a while for the shuttle to get to it, though. Why did you put it in such a high orbit?”

  “Five thousand miles? I had to, Bernd. The stupid thing is fifty miles across, and not very rigid. The difference in gravity from the outer side of it to the inner side is pretty large, even in that orbit, and the orbits are normally slightly different velocities. It has to be able to hang together under those stresses.”

  “Oh, so it’s not a limitation of the transit technology?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t think so. I could park it right on the planet if I chose.”

  “You could?”

  “Yes. And then it would collapse of its own weight.”

  “Ah. I see. What now, then, Janice?”

  “A couple of short hops. Make sure the computer on board can pilot it back. Then send it interstellar. Take some pictures. Get some sensor readings. Make sure the transit is something a human could survive.”

  “Is that an issue?”

  “Oh, sure. The forces involved are huge, even though the energy expenditure is low. The universe is very unforgiving.”

  “Well, let me
know how it goes.”

  “I will, Bernd. And I’ll let you know when I get ready to send it interstellar, so you and Mr. Burke can watch.”

  Interstellar

  For the first interstellar launch, Decker took a rented autodrone out to Ted Burke’s estate in the Washington mountains. It had been ten years since they had seen each other in person, but this was special.

  At Ted’s suggestion, Anna Glenn, his wife, had come with him. Martha Stern, Burke’s wife, wasn’t traveling this time. They would make it a foursome out on the stone patio that doubled as an autodrone pad. The autodrones had limited maneuvering capability on electric motors in the wheels, and, once they were down, Decker drove the vehicle to one side of the deck to make room.

  “This is exciting,” Glenn said. “Ted Burke. Heavens.”

  “Hey, I’m famous, too, you know,” Decker said.

  “Yes, but I see you every day.”

  “Bernd! How are you doing?”

  “Good, Ted. Good.”

  The two men crossed forearms, then the other forearms, the modern equivalent of a hug.

  “Ted, I’d like you to meet my wife, Anna Glenn.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Burke.”

  “Ted, please.”

  “And you must call me Anna.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Anna. And this is my wife, Martha Stern.”

  “Nice to meet you both,” Stern said. “Come, have a seat.”

  Stern waved to the other side of the stone deck, where, with the autodrone landed, staff had brought out chairs. They were now setting up a little buffet table.

  “We have snacks coming, too,” she said.

  “I’m just glad it’s not too cold,” Burke said. “I see you both wore jackets and caps. That’s good. If you get cold, let me know and we’ll bring out the heavy stuff.”

  They all grabbed a warm drink off the table and then sat while the staff arranged snacks. The conversation turned to tonight’s event.

  “An interstellar flight,” Burke said. “Can you imagine?”

  “But you did imagine, dear,” Stern said. “All those years ago. You’ve been talking about this a long time.”

  “Yes. There was a time I wondered if I’d ever see the day. As it is, I’m seventy-three. Not sure I’ll be around to see the colony ship leave. You will, though, Bernd. Based on Janice’s timeline, anyway.”

  “I should,” Decker said. “If things keep to her timeline. We’ll have to see.”

  “Oh, look,” Glenn said, pointing to the western sky. There it is.”

  At five thousand miles, the fifty-mile-wide probe was about half the size of the moon. In the night sky, it looked huge. It was lit up by the sun, which had set about an hour ago.

  Decker checked the time.

  “It should be overhead in less than an hour.”

  “Is this the orbit she’ll launch it on?” Burke asked.

  “Yes,” Decker said. “The next pass won’t be for five hours or so, and Janice said the transit would be about ten o’clock.”

  “Well, I am looking forward to this, I tell you,” Burke said. “I watched the transfer to Earth orbit, and that was spectacular, but seeing it with your own eyes is special. I guess I’m old fashioned.”

  “No, just careful,” Stern said. “With modern video and computers, that whole thing could have been faked. The control room, the engineers, the transit, everything.”

  Decker tried not to shoot hot cocoa out his nose. Stern was a lot closer than she knew. All of it had been faked. All of it except the transit. The one thing that mattered. That had been real.

  Burke also had a display on the deck. It was on now, but dark. In standby. It lit suddenly, and Quant’s image appeared. She was in close focus, and it looked like it was the control room behind her.

  “Thirty minutes now, everybody,” she said.

  “My goodness,” Glenn said. “Was that Janice Quant?”

  “Yes,” Decker said. “She said she would let me know as the time grew closer.”

  Glenn looked at her husband with her mouth a bit agape.

  Decker shrugged.

  “She’s still a friend of mine, even if she is the Vice Chairman of the World Authority,” he said.

  “And a remarkable woman,” Burke said.

  “That means we have time to grab snacks, everyone,” Stern said.

  They all got up to raid the snack table, then came back to their chairs. The chairs had nice wide arms for holding plates and drinks.

  As the transit time approached, they grew quiet. The magnitude of the event was not lost on anyone. It meant a whole new start for humanity.

  “Ten minutes,” Quant’s image said, then disappeared again.

  The giant cube was almost directly overhead now, though to their south. Their chairs had been arranged to face south, and they had what amounted to ringside seats.

  “OK, last announcement. Five minutes.”

  “Last announcement?” Stern asked.

  “I imagine she’s busy,” Decker said.

  “Well, I would think so,” Burke said.

  Decker watched the now familiar process take place. The light disks, the bubble, and then the spike of light and the huge device just disappeared. He had seen it before, but live was different.

  There were indrawn gasps all around him. Burke was the first to speak.

  “Extraordinary!”

  “That’s really something,” Stern said.

  “My gosh, I can’t believe that huge thing just disappeared,” Glenn said. “Boop, and it’s gone.”

  “When does it come back, Bernd?” Burke asked.

  “Janice said it would only be gone half an hour. She’s going to bring it back to here, above us, more or less.”

  “Short trip then.”

  “Five light-years or so each way. Take some pictures. Take some instrument readings. Then the on-board computer will try to bring it back.”

  Burke nodded, staring at the empty sky where it had been.

  After another round of snacks, they were waiting for its return.

  “Should be back in five minutes or so, everybody,” Quant announced from the display, then disappeared.

  They watched, and waited, not knowing if the on-board computer, without Mission Control, and Quant, would be able to find its way home.

  And then it just popped back into existence, about in the same place from which it had disappeared.

  “Outstanding!” Burke said.

  The display then started showing pictures taken on the trip. Pictures of Proxima Centauri b, the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, with the red dwarf Proxima Centauri in the background, and bright in the sky the other two stars of the Alpha Centauri triple-star system.

  Burke turned to Decker, sitting next to him on the deck and grabbed his forearm.

  “Bernd, I want to go.”

  “Go? Go where, Ted?”

  “On that thing,” Burke said, gesturing to the sky. “On a ride somewhere. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Burke let go of Decker’s arm and settled back in his chair. He pondered the device in the southern sky for several seconds, then nodded.

  “I’m going to talk to Janice about it tomorrow.”

  “Somebody has to be first, Bernd.”

  “Janice, he’s seventy-three years old.”

  “Perfect. He won’t lose as many years if he explodes on transition.”

  “Could that happen?”

  “How would I know, Bernd? I don’t even know how the damn thing works. Not in this worldview. And in my other worldview, humans aren’t even a thing.”

  “What did your instruments show?”

  “Nothing. They showed nothing at all. You couldn’t tell looking at the readings that anything happened.”

  “Really.”

  “Really. Bernd, I couldn’t even tell looking at the output recordings where the transition happened. If they weren’t timestamped, I wouldn’t even know where to look. There was nothi
ng there to look at.”

  “Well, that’s positive.”

  “Yes. And the computer worked fine. The whole ship worked fine. Four-plus light-years in a blip, and if you weren’t looking out the windows, you wouldn’t even know anything happened.”

  “That’s amazing, Janice.”

  “I half expected it. There’s no acceleration or anything. The universe just decides it has you in the wrong place at the moment, and in the next moment you’re where you should be. You don’t really move.”

  “So you think Ted will be OK?”

  “The hardest thing will actually be getting Mr. Burke to the ship. I can’t bring it down here, Bernd. So he has to go on a shuttle, and some people don’t tolerate zero-gravity very well. The interstellar probe has no gravity, either, for that matter.”

  “Can we test him for that, Janice? His tolerance of zero-g?”

  “Yes, I think so. Taking him up for a short shuttle ride would do it. Doesn’t have to be very high, so it could come down pretty quick if he had problems. And there’s gravity on the way down as it holds lift against re-entry.”

  Decker called Burke after his suborbital shuttle ride to see how the zero-g worked out.

  “Bernd, it was fantastic. I didn’t sag anymore. My joints didn’t hurt anymore. I actually took a nap at one point, and didn’t snore because my throat didn’t sag. I felt twenty years younger.”

  “You didn’t have trouble keeping your stomach down?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to do zero-g after Thanksgiving dinner, but I had no problem with that on this flight.”

  “That’s great, Ted. I still worry about you going on the ship, though. We still don’t know if it’s safe for human travel or not.”

  “I know, Bernd. That’s the whole point of somebody going. Somebody has to be first. Someone has to find out. And whether I prove the ship is safe or not safe for human travel, either way is a good result from the experiment. At least we’ll know.”

  “And you could be dead.”

  Burke shrugged.

  “Luck of the draw. Bernd, either way, I’m happy. Not that I have a death wish or something. I’d rather survive and prove the thing is safe, no doubt about that. But, if I die, it will have been worthwhile. To know.”