“I can’t believe it. It’s what was described in Henson’s book. The Pickering ship, the first one, the one that went to the quantum gate.”
“I see. I really should have read that book,” Joseph admitted.
“That sector, the quadrant that is missing. It contained the seats for the passengers or crew, for launch and for landing. In front of that is the main section for piloting, instrumentation, research. It has the bubble. The one Henson entered, from where he saw the quantum….”
“Gate, you say. I don’t know what that is. How did this go to, observe or whatever, what you call a quantum gate, which ought to be subatomic.”
Yeardsley ignored these comments. “There’s the engine at the other end. It should be fusion-plasma. Enormously advanced for its time.”
“And still leaking all over us. It’s a darn good thing we have all this extra shielding. Thank you, Win. We’d be dead otherwise.”
“We’ve got to get inside.”
“Didn’t you hear? We can’t go outside this lorry. Look at these readings. We wouldn’t last long, even in full moonsuits.”
“Wait! In front there. Isn’t that a docking port?”
Sure enough. The nose fairing of this craft, evidently the final stage of a huge rocket, had been opened or ejected to reveal what appeared to be a docking port attached to a sizable airlock. Before Margaret could speak, Joseph’s wheels were spinning.
“Can’t we dock someway. So we don’t have to be outside?”
“Yes, I think maybe we can. We’ll take my PSV. It’s maneuverable, and it has a flexible, universal docking attachment. It’s able to adapt to anything. It’s lightly shielded, but we won’t be in it for long. Once attached we’ll robotically open the airlock door and get ourselves inside.”
“We’re both going to have to ride in that PSV after all? I suppose I get the back seat.”
“No seat, but you’ll be in the carry-on, unless you want to be pilot.”
“I’ll squeeze. You fly. But be quick about it. I get claustrophobia.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Birth
Margaret squeezed ever so carefully into the glove box as she was now calling it. Joseph was on hand to lend a tuck or push and to make certain that nothing was amiss in the process. They didn’t need any kind of insult to the integrity of her moonsuit. In space, the slightest compromise could turn a challenge into tragedy.
He had parked the lorry inside the crater as far from the alleged Pickering ship as possible. If there was a problem with the PSV, he wanted them to be able to make a run for the lorry, but he was afraid that parking closer might endanger the lorry’s systems.
He remembered how Gunning had given him a brief run-down on why the fusion-plasma engine was still dangerous after all this time.
“You can’t turn the damn things off,” Gunning had said. “Once you create a plasma, and the plasma starts fusioning, it digests its fuel while it has it, and then it starts on everything around it. It’s like a hungry beast. It slows, but it never goes away. And so, it keeps on spitting out particles and anti-particles for eons. That’s a lot of energy, whether it’s used quickly to propel the rocket to enormous velocities, or whether it slowly oozes out, transforming everything around it, including you if you’re not careful.”
“Can it ever be fired up again? To propel the ship, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t want to try,” Gunning said. “Pickering’s first ship, the first we actually know about, was one-use only. It took that guy, Henson, past Jupiter and almost killed him in the process. Yeah, he came back talking about angels all right. He almost was one.”
So the ship that lay before them, with its crew and passenger sector missing, like a big slice out of a long, or tall, pie, presumably antedated the ship that Gunning described. That could make it even more dangerous, by how much he did not know.
∆∆∆
“Tell me again how I’m supposed to get into an air lock from here. I can’t move at all.” Margaret was very uncomfortable already. She wished she was on a dig in the open air instead of in this cramped space, barely able to move. She thought of the ruins of some North American city with the remnants of a great forest growing up and around the rubble.
“Once we connect, I’ll move my seat forward and then tilt it forward. The opening to the PSV’s airlock will be under my seat. You will have to go in first, head down, face down. You will find rungs to cling to and to propel yourself through the tube. Once you’re fully in, I will move my seat back into the luggage area, which you previously occupied. I’ll enter the tube and close it by remote control. Then a robot at the far end of the tube will start opening the hatch into the spaceship’s airlock.
“And if something goes wrong, we back out the same way we went in. I just need for you to keep calm. It will all work. You’ll see.”
∆∆∆
Joseph remotely opened the back hatch of the lorry and carefully piloted his AG!Super out toward the great cylinder’s nose. It took less than a minute, but he was sure that that was more than a desired amount of exposure. The PSV docking tube snaked forward. Once he had assured himself it would not kink, he latched it onto the spaceship’s docking port and moved his seat to its full-forward and tilted-forward position.
Margaret had a little more room with Joseph and his seat out of the way. The air lock was open, and it took only a few convolutions to send herself head-and-face-first into the equivalent of a birth canal.
Her helmet lights were the only illumination. She imagined herself in a narrow passage in a cave. She wanted to tug on a rope to reassure herself of a means of return. Instead, she had only the shallow handholds to create her own peristalsis. Her helmet bumped into something. The end? Joseph was talking to her. Something bumped the bottom of her boots. That had to be Joseph. But then the tube…rattled? What was that?
“Do you copy? Answer now!” Joseph was calling repeatedly.
“I tried to answer. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been talking to you, but you didn’t answer. I’m right behind you.”
“What was vibrating?”
“I don’t know.” Joseph was perplexed. All seemed to be routine, as expected, as planned. He had reached Margaret and remotely shut the hatch behind him. But something was shaking, after the hatch was shut. OK, he thought, that must be the robot opening the other end.
It’s taking its own sweet time about it. Why isn’t that hatch open?
“It’s opening now. I’m getting an indication.” Do not jam. Do not jam. Will I have to abort this procedure? I have no backup plan.
Whoosh! Margaret and Joseph were in the ship’s much larger airlock.
“What? What?”
“Wow. Okay, I planned that. Well, actually I didn’t bleed down the pressure as much as I should have. But I wanted the pressure differential to give us a boost.”
“Okay, okay! I can move again at least. Have we been born now? I think we just became twins!”
In the dim light, Joseph smiled.
CHAPTER NINE
The Pickering Ship
The airlock of what was believed, by Dr. Yeardsley and more and more by Joseph himself, to be the original Pickering ship was spacious. It was also dark, and Joseph was looking for some controls.
A few guesses later, there was light and…sounds. He could hear sounds even through his helmet. That meant the chamber was pressurizing, although the breathability of its air remained highly questionable. If this ship had been half-buried here since its first flight…. Joseph was surprised that it had any power left at all.
“How could this be working after all this time?”
“Joseph, didn’t you expect it to be working with all we went through just getting here?”
“Well, you wanted to get inside. Look! The inner hatch is opening!”
Joseph and Margaret, the twins, together took their first look inside.
“Wow! Everything is so…twenty-first century.” Joseph was almost disappointed.
“Indeed it is. We’re looking into a time capsule. It appears to be unchanged since it was first located here, a very long time ago.”
“Who brought it here? And why? This thing did not crash.”
“And there is no indication that it was piloted here to lie down gently on its side in the dust. But the crew capsule, if that’s what the missing sector…. The book said that Henson splashed down. He must have been in the sector that’s missing.”
Joseph crawled through the hatch, then stood. “All this equipment. And some of it is still running.”
“Well, Gunning told us that you can’t shut off the engine. I guess it’s been powering this ship ever since.”
“And sending anti-protons everywhere. It’s a good thing they put this in such an out of the way place. Did they intend to disguise it?”
“I think that may have been very intentional.” Yeardsley was by now standing in what appeared to be a main control section. She wanted to push some buttons, but she knew how foolish that could become.
“There’s the hatch to the observation bubble.” It cranked open easily by hand.
Margaret rushed over and peered outside. She could feel energy, or perhaps that was just her emotions. This was history, human history, virtually unchanged by the passing of time.
“I’m trying to get some readings on the atmosphere in here. Amazing. The ratio of gases is remarkably…just right. And the temperature is 20 degrees Celsius. That’s perfect.” Joseph very cautiously released his visor and took several shallow breaths before lifting it completely.
“We can breathe in here.”
Margaret quickly opened her visor and took several deep breaths. The air was not even stale. No mold, no deterioration, detected visually or otherwise, she noted.
“What do we do now? You’ve made your discovery.” Joseph had always been impatient, and he saw no reason to quit now.
On the other hand, Dr. Yeardsley was entering professional mode. “I’ve got to start documenting, and photographing, everything here. Please resist the impulse to touch or move anything more than we have already. You can help by making a video. Describe what you are seeing. From a pilot’s point of view.”
“This pilot doesn’t know where to begin with this old stuff. It might as well be a twentieth century submarine to me.” One screen intrigued him though. It read “Extraneous Plasma Conversion”. The reading was high, almost at the top of the scale.
“Hey, where’s this extraneous plasma coming from? And what is it being converted from, or to?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Margaret continued to narrate her video and also still, full-data, images.
“Do you know what happened to the second Pickering ship, if this is the first?”
“They sent it into the sun. Something about the…well, the engine. I know it couldn’t return to earth.”
“Yeah, because they couldn’t shut the thing off. Just like this one. I’d wager that was the reason. Listen, this plasma conversion indicator…okay, I know I wasn’t supposed to touch anything, but this is important…it has a graphic display of activity over time and this is increasing at an exponential rate. It’s been slow for many years, but the activity is getting faster now. A lot faster.”
“What does that mean?”
“Okay, I need to talk to an engineer. It may mean that the density of materials here has been so pock-marked by anti-protons that we’re not being safely sheltered in here at all.” He thought of what his own PSV-generated particles had done to the control tower that he had buzzed what seemed like eons ago. “This is so much worse than what I did. I’ll explain later. But I think we need to get out of here now.”
Dr. Yeardsley was working methodically. She hadn’t answered, and Joseph wasn’t sure if she had heard him at all.
“Margaret, we need to go.” Just then there was another rattle and a slight but very rapid vibration, as if to accent his concern.
“You go on if you’re worried. I really need to document….”
“I can’t leave you here!”
“Yes, you can. I’m doing fine, and I don’t want to ride in that cargo hold again. Go get another vessel that can properly dock with this site. And some personnel who can shut down the engine. They must be able to do that by now.”
“Okay, I’m going to take the PSV high enough to reach a communication satellite without this interference. But be careful. Keep your visor closed and use your suit air till I get back.”
“If those are the terms, then okay. Suit air flow on. Visor closed and locked.”
Joseph didn’t know if that would make any difference or not. But he shut himself up in his suit, closed and partially depressurized the ship air lock and then sucked himself back into the PSV docking tube. In a few moments he was kilometers above the hidden crater and calling for help.
∆∆∆
“You left her down there!” Gunning was almost explosive.
“She wouldn’t leave. I told her I’d be right back, but I needed to be able to reach someone.” Joseph’s PSV was locked in a stable fixed position high above the site of the Pickering ship.
“Well, you’ve reached me, and what you’re describing sounds like an old plasma-fusion engine about to go critical. Don’t you know they had to send those things into the sun? The first ones were way too dangerous. And now you’ve left our special guest marooned in one.”
“Okay, I’m headed back down now.”
“I’ve got to see the base commander. We’ve got to convince the powers-that-be that you’ve discovered a true hazard, for everybody. We’ll be sending another ship right away. But I want you to get Yeardsley and yourself back into the lorry and away from that site.”
“Okay…got to pilot now. Almost back.”
∆∆∆
In a very short time Joseph was back in the PSV’s docking tube. He kept trying to call out to Margaret, but there was no reply. The interference must be too strong, even at this distance.
Whoosh! The pressure from the tube ejected him forcefully. I didn’t finish bleeding this tube.
But where was he? He was not in a larger airlock this time. In fact, he wasn’t anywhere at all but on the lunar surface, next to his PSV. He was in total disbelief. This cannot be happening. This is impossible.
There was no Pickering ship. There was only a mostly flat lunar surface. The only shadow was cast by his PSV behind him. There were no steep crater walls. In the distance was the lorry, parked by itself in the open. There is no Pickering ship, he repeated to himself. Where is Margaret? Where…?
Gunning’s voice rang loud and clear in his headset. “Joseph, come in. Joseph. This is Win. Are you out of there yet? Come in?”
“I’m here.”
“Thank God you’re outta that crater.”
“There is no…crater. And no ship. Am I lost? But there’s the lorry. It’s here.” Joseph’s voice was cracking. It was somewhere between a sob and a scream.
∆∆∆
“Okay, deep breath. Stay put. I mean get back into the lorry. Don’t touch the PSV. You are ordered not to touch the PSV. Close yourself into that lorry and remain there until we arrive.”
“But what about Margaret?”
“Do you see Margaret? You don’t see anything familiar. You are not in a position to be able to evaluate any of this. We’re leaving right away. We’ll be there in…maybe an hour or so.”
“I can’t be lost. The lorry is here. But there’s no ship…no crater.”
“None that you can see anyway. You don’t know what’s going on. Try to stop thinking. We’ll be there soon. Stay in touch.”
“Mr. Jayden, this is Dr. Miron. I’m a neuropsych practitioner located at Moon Base Alpha. The base commander has asked me to accompany Mr. Gunning and Capt. Ross to your location. I’ll be talking with you while we travel. We understand that you may feel very troubled right now.”
“Troubled? Troubled isn’t the word for it. I’ll talk to you once you’re here
. I’ve got nothing else to say. This isn’t for real. This isn’t real.”
Joseph switched off communications and bounced himself from the lunar surface and on toward the lorry.
CHAPTER TEN
Joseph's Dreams
“So now you want to talk to me.” Dr. Miron picked up her pen. An accompanying notepad lay on the tabletop. “You certainly have resisted that for a while.”
“I don’t know what else to do. I’m marooned here. Imprisoned really. My PSV is impounded. People keep interrogating me every day. And nobody can find Margaret, Dr. Yeardsley. She’s presumed dead, and they think I’m responsible.” Joseph was desperate, and forlorn.
“That’s a pretty heavy burden. A very heavy burden.”
“And they don’t believe me. The crater disappeared. So did the Pickering ship, right in front of my nose almost. No more radiation or subatomic interference. There’s no evidence, so they think I made all of this up. Or that I’m psychotic.”
“We need to start at the beginning. That would be, ah yes, the anomaly that you described when you first arrived from earth.”
“I’ve gone over this a million times. I can’t help it if the PSV has no good record of what was happening. The anomaly probably prevented that too, except that now…. It’s just too much.”
“I’m sure it is.” Dr. Arisu Miron could see that Joseph was perspiring despite the coolness of the room. He was agitated, unfocused, and jittery. He looked like someone on drugs, but that was impossible for him in this location. She knew that all he received was a mild anxiolytic and some melatonin.
“And then…there are the dreams.”
“You haven’t mentioned dreams before, although recordings would indicate some pretty active REM sleep.”
“You’re spying on me while I sleep even. That doesn’t help me feel any better. But, yeah, the dreams are vivid, and strange. I don’t usually remember dreams, until now.”
“All right. Tell me about your dreams.”
“They are about a bunch of people around a big fire. They are all chanting something, something about the word ‘meaning’. And then a big…eye shows up. A big vertical cat’s eye kind of thing, all lights and flashes and colors. The eye is talking to the people. It’s telling them what to do. And it tells them about the Pickering ship and where it’s located and how we need to go find it before it’s too late.”
Personal Space- Return to the Garden Page 3