“Yeah, but we have accelerometers in those instrument packages in the wing tips, and we know the thrust and off-center distance of the maneuvering thrusters. We spin it on the thrusters, we get the moment of inertia. Then we run it into hyperspace and run the screw drive.”
“Got it. Well, we’re almost there. A few touch-ups here and there and we’ll be ready to go.”
“You’re tracking on plan?” Huenemann asked.
“Yes, sir. We’re actually a bit ahead.”
“Excellent.”
There were also things that had to be tested that the prior hyperspace probe didn’t have. The hyperspace ship was based on the large space-capable cargo shuttle, and would be capable of taking off from and landing on the planet. The flight characteristics in getting to and from space therefore had to be tested as well.
To that end, Karl Huenemann interviewed the shuttle pilots who had been working for the project taking the hyperspace probe to space and back, Justin Moore and Gavin MacKay.
They were standing looking out over the assembly area of the building, where the two hyperspace ships were being assembled. The closer of the two looked like it was complete.
“It’s based on the shuttle you’ve been flying,” Huenemann said.
“I can see that,” Moore said. “A few differences I can see. Small ones. What are the big differences you mentioned?”
“It’s quite a bit heavier. Like flying with half a load of containers. That’s because of all the extra stuff. Rocket fuel and oxygen. Hyperspace generator. Nuclear powerplant.”
“There’s a nuclear powerplant in that thing?”
“Yeah. A little one. We had the plans from Earth, but we never actually built one before the hyperspace probes. You had one in the probe you took up and down before, though.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, but that was in the cargo, not in the shuttle,” MacKay said.
“True enough,” Huenemann said. “Crash it, though, and it won’t be much difference from before.”
Moore nodded.
“OK. Fair enough. So when do we get started?” he asked.
“Next week,” Huenemann said. “Flight tests first. Just drive it around in the atmosphere.”
“Then what?” Moore asked.
“Then we do a bunch of animal testing to make sure people can survive going into hyperspace. Then you can fly it to Beacon and back.”
“Oh, hot damn,” Moore said.
Huenemann chuckled.
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” he said. “Be a coupla months in between there, though. We want to make sure the radiation won’t fry you or something stupid like that.”
Moore nodded.
“Sounds good,” he said. “And then?”
“We’re gonna have it deliver a couple satellites. Under computer control. To look for the first two colonies. We think we know roughly where they are.”
“And then?”
“Then you guys can fly over there and say Hi, I guess,” Huenemann said.
“Land on the planet and say, ‘Take me to your leader’?” MacKay asked.
Huenemann laughed.
“Yeah, something like that,” he said. “It’s six weeks each way, though. In zero-g.”
Moore and MacKay looked at each other. MacKay shrugged.
“We can probably handle that,” Moore said.
“Shuttle Hyper-1 to Arcadia Control. We are all systems Go and awaiting clearance.”
“Arcadia Control to Shuttle Hyper-1. Other traffic is being held. You have clearance for takeoff and bearing zero-niner to space.”
“Shuttle Hyper-1 to Arcadia Control. Roger clearance for takeoff and bearing zero-niner to space.”
“We ready?” Justin Moore asked his co-pilot.
“Yeah. We’re good as it gets,” Gavin MacKay said.
Moore nodded to MacKay, and the co-pilot began spooling up the massive engines. When they neared their operational revolutions, Moore focused the thrust and the heavy craft lifted off the pad.
As they rose, Moore rotated the engine nacelles to angle the thrust aft, and the shuttle picked up horizontal velocity to the east, out over the ocean, using the planet’s rotational velocity to decrease the speed to orbit.
The sky grew darker and darker blue as they continued to rise. At thirty thousand feet, MacKay began feeding oxygen to the engines as well as fuel, maintaining the thrust they needed to attain low Arcadia orbit. Once around the planet and down was the mission this trip.
It was only a ninety-minute orbit, so it wasn’t long before they had the engines aimed forward and down, to brake their velocity and slow their descent. They were on the re-entry path back to the shuttleport.
“Shuttle Hyper-1 to Arcadia Control. We are inbound on re-entry trajectory.”
“Arcadia Control to Shuttle Hyper-1. We have you on radar, Hyper-1. Other traffic is being held. You are cleared to land on shuttlepad two-seven.”
“Shuttle Hyper-1 to Arcadia Control. Roger clearance for landing on shuttlepad two-seven.”
The big shuttle was holding back against the pull of gravity with a combination of lift and thrust from the engines. Even so, it was only minutes from the Arcadia City Shuttleport.
“Place engines under computer control,” Justin Moore said.
Gavin MacKay threw the switch on his panel and verified the change in his heads-up display.
“Confirm engines under computer control.”
The computer would now adjust the mixture and thrust to meet the pilot’s needs for the standard flight operation of landing the shuttle.
The large shuttle settled down toward the shuttleport. It lined up for shuttlepad two-seven, and its engines spooled up as it braked its descent. It settled down on the pad, and Gavin MacKay shut down the engines.
“I love flying, but it’s always nice to have a nice, quiet landing,” Justin Moore said.
“Third time up now with this bird. Seems pretty solid.”
“Yeah, but each time we do just a bit more. Go a bit further.”
“Next time is high orbit,” McKay said.
“Like I said. Just a bit more.”
“What’s your status now, Karl?” ChaoLi asked in the weekly status meeting.
“We’ve performed a number of test flights and had the first hyperspace ship up to high Arcadia orbit. Those have all been manned flights. We’re now ready to start testing hyperspace hops. Small ones first, then the run to Beacon.”
“And those will all be computer-run, like the first probe?”
“Yes,” Huenemann said. “We need to test the hyperspace capability before we do animal testing, and we need to do animal testing before we transit with humans aboard.”
“Do you trust the computer to take off and land from the Arcadia City Shuttleport?”
“Yes. The last two runs, the pilots sat back and let the computer run the ship. They had the ability to take control if the computer flubbed the takeoff or landing, but they didn’t have to. We seem to have a good handle on that now.
“Also, our flight paths both to and from space are clear of disaster potential. The metafactories, the nuclear power plant, the residential areas are all well clear of the flight paths. If the computer make a mess of it and the probe crashes, it won’t be pretty, but it won’t be a disaster.”
ChaoLi nodded. That had been one of the reasons for picking that particular property for the hyperspace facility in the first place.
“Very well,” she said. “You may begin hyperspace testing operations. And the RDF satellites? Are they ready to go?”
“Just about. One of our tests is to drop one near Beacon and see if it can find Arcadia. After that test, I think we can consider them ready.”
ChaoLi turned to JieMin.
“You think the RDF search algorithms are ready, JieMin?”
“Yes. They’re pretty easy, after all. At very low frequencies – in the sub-one-hundred-hertz range – Arcadia is ten thousand times brighter than
our sun. That’s due to all the radiated power from the power grid. Every high-tension line is a radio transmitter. We think they’ll be pretty easy to find, assuming we’re within a hundred light-years or so.”
“And we’re using three satellites per colony?”
“Yes,” Huenemann said. “We’ll get three vectors on each colony, and that should allow us to pinpoint which star they’re around from star maps.”
“What do we do with the satellites then?”
JieMin stirred and ChaoLi turned to him.
“There is an idea we’re working on,” he said. “If we know that colonies are three thousand light-years or more apart, we may be able to predict the most likely places for them. We pop each of the six satellites we have out to the likeliest spots, and see if they see anything. If one does, we pop a couple more nearby and let them get a couple more vectors on it. If we then shift to radio frequencies, with a very directional antenna we should be able to hear transmissions that tell us who they are.”
“I like that idea,” ChaoLi said. “And if we get one much later in the sequence, maybe they saved their passenger container viewscreen recordings as well.”
JieMin nodded.
“And parallax analysis of the recording would allow us to locate a bunch more of them. Exactly,” he said.
“What about Earth?” Huenemann asked.
“Well, we don’t need to go looking for Earth,” ChaoLi said. “We already know where it is. The question then is, How do we approach another planet, not knowing what the situation is there?”
“Situation?”
“The political situation. What if we go to Amber or Earthsea or Earth, and it’s a tyranny? They could take our people captive, seize the hyperspace ship. Perhaps reverse engineer it and send a space navy our way.”
“How do we proceed, then?” Huenemann asked.
“With care. We need to reconnoiter any planet we plan on approaching. Find out what their status is before we get too close or reveal our presence. We’re still working on that.
“For right now, the job remains to find them.”
The hyperspace testing of the ship started in small hops, reproducing their efforts with the original-design hyperspace probe. These flights were all done under computer control, as the original hyperspace probe testing had been. With the ship able to take off and land by itself, it wasn’t long before Huenemann’s team dispatched it to make the transit to Beacon and back.
The hyperspace technical team used the empty cabin of the new hyperspace ship to load the ship up with instrumentation. Radiation detectors, electric and magnetic field detectors, video cameras, and recorders, all of them made the trip to Beacon and back.
The animal testing started with guinea pigs. They and rabbits had been included in the original colony ecosystem for a number of reasons. One was to fill a niche in the food chain. Another was that guinea pigs and rabbits turned vegetable refuse into protein, real handy animals to have around in an early colony environment where food supply could become a problem. While rabbit and guinea pig were an acquired taste, people still raised them on Arcadia as an inexpensive protein source.
The guinea pigs were put in special cages that were not tall enough to present a problem in zero-gravity – even if the guinea pig was up against the ceiling of the cage, it could still reach the wires of the floor. The cages were also in a plexiglas box with a filtered air circulator, so that debris and waste from the guinea pigs floating around in zero gravity would not contaminate the instrumentation and other electronics in the shuttle cabin.
Finally, they sent dogs. They put the dogs on a time-release tranquilizer to keep them from going crazy in the zero gravity, and used the same filter setup as with the guinea pigs. They sent dogs that had been trained to obey certain commands and perform certain tasks, so they could do cognition testing on the dogs when they came back.
All the animals made the trip to Beacon and back unharmed, and the dogs’ abilities to perform the tasks in which they had been trained was unaffected.
They were ready for human passengers. The question at this point was who.
Manned Interstellar
“Your animal testing has concluded successfully, Karl?” ChaoLi asked at the weekly status meeting.
“Yes, ChaoLi. The animals all returned healthy. And the dogs were able to perform the same tasks they had been trained on. Once they had calmed down and the tranquilizer was out of their systems, anyway.”
“Excellent. Then we are ready to begin manned flights?”
“Yes. The question is, Whom do we send? One obvious choice would be our pilots. They have completed the initial testing on the second hyperspace ship now, and we’re moving to computerized testing on that ship. I’ve talked to them about it, and they want to go.
“The counterargument is that if something goes wrong, we lose the only people we have at this point who are checked out to fly the darned things. The other counterargument is that we really want the computer to execute the flight profile, so if they are incapacitated, the probe comes back and we can see what happened to them.
“The people sent on this flight don’t have to do anything at all, so it could be anybody. If we send the pilots, though, will they keep their hands off the controls?”
“I see,” ChaoLi said, and thought about it a moment before continuing. “I think we should send the pilots. They want to go, and they’ve earned some say-so there, working up the ships as test pilots. How about we promise them they can do some manual flight around the planet, Beacon-1, on the next mission, as long as they keep their hands off the controls for the first mission? Assuming the computer doesn’t fail and they have to take a hand, that is.”
Huenemann nodded.
“That’ll probably work. They’re good pilots. Professional.”
“What’s the status on the second ship, then?” ChaoLi asked.
“Ready for hyperspace testing. Once we’ve worked up to the Beacon run with that one, we’re going to do the screw drive testing. Get some torque numbers. With the first ship we were pushing to get to manned flight.”
“Those torque numbers will inform the design of a larger ship for long human missions,” JieMin said.
ChaoLi nodded.
“The first manned interstellar flight triggers another increase in our government funding, so that was the correct path, as we’ve discussed before.”
ChaoLi considered her notes.
“And the RDF satellites?” she asked.
“We’ll start placing those with the second ship once we get torque numbers,” Huenemann said. “The first one will be taken to Beacon for testing – see if it can find Arcadia – with the second manned mission. Once it passes, the second ship will place them, three near each of the likely locations for Amber and Earthsea.”
“Excellent. As you know, there is a huge increase in government funding once we pinpoint the locations of those colonies. They are going to want us working up bigger ships once we know where we’re going. Ships big enough to have rotational gravity, carrying passengers and cargo.”
“And the vetting of those colonies for actual contact?” Huenemann asked.
“That’s my assignment, and we’re working on it.”
Huenemann met with the pilots at the hyperspace facility adjacent to Arcadia City Shuttleport. They were in a conference room in the headquarters building.
“You guys are sure you want to do the interstellar thing with the hyperspace ship?” Huenemann asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Gavin McKay answered.
“Yeah, we’re good,” Justin Moore said.
“All right. That’s what you said before. I’m just checking. ‘Cause I asked the program manager about it, and she’s good with it, provided you guys keep your hands off the controls. This first one, anyway. You just sit back and let the computer do its thing, and you go along for the ride. No ad-libbing.”
“But we do get to fly it sooner or later, right?” Moore asked.
“Ye
ah. If you don’t screw up this time, next trip we’ll have you go to Beacon-1 and fly around a bit or something. Mean another day in zero-g in each direction, though.”
Moore shrugged.
“To fly on another planet, though? That’d be special.”
Huenemann nodded.
“Not this time, though. There and back, you just sit there. Now if the computer breaks down and you get warning lights and all that, you’ll have to find your way back as best you can. We have some training for that. But I don’t expect anything. The computers have made this run a bunch of times already.”
Moore looked at McKay, who nodded, then back to Huenemann.
“We understand. We’re good.”
When the big day came, Moore and McKay got one last lecture from Huenemann.
“Remember. No messing with anything. You’re just along for the ride this trip.”
“We understand, Mr. Huenemann,” Moore said. “We’ll be good.”
Huenemann looked to McKay, who nodded, then back to Moore.
“All right. Good luck. We’ll see you in a couple of days.”
Moore and McKay sat strapped into the pilot’s and co-pilot’s chairs as the computer ran through the pre-flight. It was giving both sides of the conversation they normally had with each other.
“Fuel.”
“Fuel shows ninety-nine percent.”
“Oxygen.”
“Oxygen shows ninety-eight percent.”
“Pressure.”
“Pressure check shows cabin is sealed.”
“Well, this is weird,” Moore said. “It’s like watching ourselves from the back seats.”
“Yeah,” McKay said. “I keep wanting to answer.”
“Oh, well. Nothing to do but sit back and watch. Gonna be a boring day out and a boring day back.”
“Yeah, but I downloaded some books to the shuttle’s memory.”
“Whatcha readin’?” Moore asked.
McKay pushed him his current book in the shuttle’s comm system. Moore looked at it in his heads-up display and laughed.
GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3) Page 8