* * * *
“Are you sure we're heading in the right direction?” Clay asked Alec for the tenth time as he stared out at the vastness.
“I’m positive. We just need to be patient.” Alec knew Clay was beginning to doubt Jessie’s directions but something inside told him to trust her… which is what he did. “They’ve got a day head start on us and we don’t know how fast they can travel.”
Clay checked the pilot’s console. “Should I give us more speed?”
"If we go any faster we might overshoot them without ever seeing them.” Alec warned. “But I was thinking, maybe we could accelerate in small jumps, maybe in distances equal to the range of our radar.”
“That might be an idea. But would it really save us time?” Clay wondered.
“Well, it’ll at least keep us busy.” Alec said settling down in the copilot’s chair. The cockpit was actually a full sized control cabin, complete with wall to wall monitors, navigations, weapons and communications stations. Clay sat at the command console.
“But still, if we’re just a half a degree off, we could miss them by thousands of miles.” Clay was being pessimistic and realistic at the same time… Alec didn't want to hear that.
“We’ve checked and double checked. You did the measurements at GraviTych.” Alec said referring to their small reconnaissance mission to their now abandoned GraviTych building. He was pleased to find the drawings still on display in the lobby. There could be no doubt about their measurements… only about Jessie’s instructions.
“It’s just that space is so big and we’re so small. Too bad we don’t have access to their portals.” Clay said it more to himself staring out at the Milky Way spread out in front of them.
“You know… maybe I could...” Alec's voice trailed off as he left the bridge for the cargo area. Clay checked the controls and followed him.
“You've got me thinking. If the portals are wormholes then there should be some sort of spacial anomaly, where space itself is broken or folded in on itself causing turbulence in the normal flow of space. Since our anti-gravity is based on redirecting and manipulating this flow, I was thinking that we should also be able to observe the flow, kind of like how lightning radar works. I can build a sub-space antenna to 'listen' for any static in the normal space flows... I'll need to connect it up to my laptop.” Alec pointed to the laptop that never left his side.
“Anything I can do to help?” Clay asked… knowing there wasn’t.
“Yes, pray.”
Clay nodded and went back to the bridge to keep looking for that needle in a haystack.
Clay woke with Alec fumbling with an odd looking shimmering silver dish antenna… obviously built with the anti-gravity material, trying to connect it to the navigation console.
“Need a hand?” Clay asked as he sat up.
“Hold this.” Alec handed him the dish. Clay grabbed it by its base while Alec drilled mounting holes in the console. “Rats, I don’t have any mounting screws. I'll be right back.” Alec said.
Clay waited patiently as Alec fumbled around in the back room. He came back a few minutes later empty handed. “My turn.” He handed the antenna back to Alec. Clay replaced the drill bit with a screwdriver bit and proceeded to remove screws from various consoles around the control cabin. “Is this enough?” he finally said holding out his handful of new screws.
“What are you waiting for?” Alec replied as Clay mumbled something incomprehensible and finished attaching the dish.
“I know it's a little late to be asking this, but shouldn't this be mounted outside?” Clay asked after tightening the last screw.
“No, we're detecting space anomalies. Matter, or mass have nothing to do with this.” Alec told him as he started wiring his dish to a small circuit board.
“I still don't understand it.” Clay said. “I’ve never really understood you’re anti-gravity stuff.”
“Well, according to our theory of space, you might say that matter is really emptiness while space is full.” Alec tried to explain. “The smallest unit of matter is an atom... not the smallest particle, but the smallest working unit. I came up with the idea that somewhere inside an atom there is a hole in the universe. It’s either the neutron or just the emptiness between the atom’s particles. The larger the atom is, the larger the hole… and the larger the hole, the more space that gets sucked into it.”
“How can we feel gravity if matter is nothing?” Clay asked.
“I think it's the electrons, I think they're the only part of an atom that can interact with space. So when they spin, they can actually redirect and manipulate the flow of space. According to my theory, that's what a magnetic field is... a line of spinning space caused by the space flowing through a magnet where all the electrons are in line and spinning together. That's what makes iron so unique… the alignment of its atoms create that rare 'spin tunnel' effect.” Alec said as he finished wiring the dish to the circuit board.
“What about other metals, like copper? Why is iron so special?” Clay wondered.
“Since the atoms in iron are naturally so perfectly lined up, all one needs to do is pass an electronic field through it. Once the electrons are spinning together the field becomes permanent… a perfect harmony between the spinning field of space and the electrons in the iron matrix.”
Clay was almost convinced Alec knew what he was talking about.
So then, how is this dish TV antenna of yours going to find anything?” Clay finally got to his point.
“It all comes down to our anti-gravity blanket material. You know that it's a collection of our original anti-gravity boxes, but miniaturized so there are thousands of these boxes per square foot. Up until now, we've been using these boxes to manipulate the flow of space by running an electric current through them. The connecting micro fibers of wires create a giant grid, sort of like the 2 dimensional memory chips in our computers.” Alec continued as he connected another cable between his laptop and a connector underneath the navigation console. “But now, instead of pushing current through it, I'm monitoring the micro currents coming out of each micro box… currents that are created by the natural flow of space.”
“That's not helping. Space is really big, so how can this little 3 foot dish detect anything?” Clay said spinning it around in its mounting.
“Have you ever wondered why you can see a star millions of light years away?” Alec was now typing into his laptop. “You can blink, move a little to the left, or to the right and the star is still there and at the same time millions of stars or beams of light and energy can be seen coming from all directions. Wouldn't you think that all these light and energy beams would be bumping into each other causing distortions or canceling each other out, like waves on water?”
“I know I'm repeating myself, but I still don't understand.” Clay shook his head.
“Well, my theory is that each 'piece' of space, whatever space is, contains a memory of all the energy passing through it in all directions. Also, each piece of space can transfer the energy going through it to neighboring pieces... in all directions at once.” Alec said as he typed into the keyboard of the navigation console. “So if each piece of space contains this memory of the energy passing through it, wouldn't it also have the same memory of its own flow, or potential energy? So I should be able to get samples from thousands of pieces of space… say one from each micro anti-gravity box of the anti-gravity blanket. Then triangulate the energy flows to determine all the sources along with their distances… there.” Alec said activating his new navigation program. The main view screen lit up showing a grid with thousands of different colored specs.
“What the heck?” Alec said looking it. “There shouldn't be that many distortions.” He studied his laptop looking for a programming bug.
Clay sat back and studied the monitor. “Alec, look at the pattern of those specs.” he said interrupting his debugging. “Those specs are the Kan-ji ships... look that cluster is from the Seeker
ship. And that's the line of ships between the Seeker ship and Earth. Those are the attacking Kan-ji ships.” Clay said pointing to the various patterns.
Alec slowly looked up from his laptop realizing Clay was right. “That means that each one of the Kan-ji ships has a portal to fuel their engines, just like we thought.”
Clay searched the view screen for their target. “There!” he finally said pointing to a small grouping of specs on the opposite side of the screen. “Now if you could calculate the distances and directions we'll be in great shape.”
Alec took the hint and bent over his laptop… going back to work.
Alec's Dream Page 66