by Bob Mauldin
Kitty looked in the direction the ensign pointed and her mouth dropped open. Her head swiveled classically between the two, coming to rest, finally, on the one she had been speaking to. “You mean to tell me that I have a pair of redheaded identical twins on my ship? On a ship named after Robert Heinlein? This is just too hilarious.”
The ensign stuttered, “Y-yes, Ma’am. Is that a problem?”
Kitty immediately tried to assuage the panic she heard in the woman’s voice. “No, it’s not a problem. As long as I’m aware of the situation,” she hedged. “I think I just found the ships’ good luck charms. Totally identical, are you?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Except that I wear my hair different since we can’t wear different outfits.”
“And what are your names?” Kitty asked.
“Ma’am, I’m Diana Lynne and my sister is Demeter, and before you say anything, Ma’am, our father was a professor of Greek history. With a sense of humor, I might add.”
Kitty laughed out loud. “I know what you mean about a sense of humor. My last name wasn’t always Hawke. My father’s name was Brian Cattin. Try growing up being called Kitty Cattin.” The laughter, though muted, was genuine, and Kitty could tell that there was no malice in it. Which is a good thing, she thought. I should get back with the same number of crew that I started with, shouldn’t I?
Kitty finished her meal, made her goodbyes, and went to the bridge. She found John Marshall, her Weapons/Tactics Officer, sitting as shift commander as third shift neared its end. Standing beside the chair, she asked, “Status, Commander?” and he began to detail the status of the ship. Everything from the monopoles, containment fields, power conduits, field generators, to the warp engines themselves had all been triple checked. Simulations showed that she would be able to leave ships like Galileo behind in the blink of an eye. If all went well. And, of course, there was the innovation that that technician in the engine room had come up with: cross-connecting the three power cores so that additional power could be routed to any one of the three main systems. She was anxious to see how it would affect the engine trials after how well it had worked on the lasers.
John slid out of the seat and she slid in. She had actually taken over the shift about ten minutes ahead of time as was her usual habit. And one of the rules she had instituted was that shift change should occur one station at a time unless there was an emergency. Normally, full shift change with each station reporting status to new operators could take as much as ten minutes. Today wasn’t normal and the change was effected in less than five, which still gave Kitty time to talk to the engineers and techs in the engine room and scattered throughout the ship.
As the last status light on her board turned green, Kitty ordered Helm to move out at normal speed. This would be the first time humans traveled in excess of the speed of light. All the data said that, in an emergency, the warp engines could be run up from a stop, but the figures also showed that they worked best if the ship was approaching light speed. So, they would use their in-space drive to cruise up to the lower warp limit, and then boost past it.
As these were speed trials, the instructions were different than anything she had issued up to this point. Those instructions were to channel as much power to the in-space drives as possible without redlining the drive and see how fast they could attain their maximum velocity. Engineers, techs, and scientists began to monitor their instruments. Kitty cut the intercom into the circuit so all could hear what was going on.
She gave the order to boost and in less time than anyone thought possible, the ringed wonder of Sol system was a slowly receding dot in the rear scanners. Long before the orbit of Uranus was reached, Heinlein was at the warp threshold, cruising just under the speed of light. This was the point where people could get two ages if they stayed at speed too long. Time passed normally for them, but their friends outside the ship would seem to age much faster. The curious thing was that once they went into warp drive, that law of nature no longer seemed to hold, according to the figures they had. Einstein would need several lifetimes to re-figure his equations.
Kitty ordered the massive engines cut into the system at their lowest warp settings. She had once asked one of the engine room technicians why there weren’t two separate engines for normal space and for warp space, and she had been told that the whole thing was a matter of the energies produced by the power core. Once the monopoles are placed in conjunction with each other, they find a happy medium where they emit a tiny amount of energy. An amount that would operate all the third tier systems without problems for dozens of years. But to move a vessel the size of Galileo, for example, in normal space, more energy was required, so the containment field was constricted a bit, forcing the monopoles closer together, producing enough energy, once routed to the engines, to move the enormous ship around the solar system. To move at warp speeds, it was necessary to try to separate the two poles. This, for some reason, produced energy quantum levels higher than pressing them together. That energy, when channeled into those same engines would move the ship up to and through the warp barrier. Slowly they would be raised up to their max. Over the next twelve hours, they dropped in and out of warp half a dozen times, bringing the ship to a virtual standstill and running her back up to warp speeds, looking for their fastest time.
This last test was to see how the warp engines would hold up under a sustained near-maximum boost. Kitty had long ago surrendered her chair to the second shift. Marsha Kane had control when the time for the last test came, but Kitty would be on the bridge for the beginning of it. Marsha looked her way and asked, “Course, Ma’am?”
Kitty smiled and said, “Set course for Alpha Centauri.”
Marsha’s eyebrow went up just slightly. She turned to the Nav Officer and ordered, “Navigator, set course for Alpha Centauri.”
When the navigator called out, “Ma’am, course laid in, sent to Helm, and locked,” Marsha got a last nod from Kitty. After checking engine status one more time, she announced the impending test to all hands. Turning back to her crew, she ordered, “Helm, move us out. Normal speed, increasing to maximum in-space. Report when maximum speed is achieved.” Shortly she called the engine room. “Prepare for warp.” And as the ship approached its maximum in-space speed, a new panel lit up on Helm’s console who reported, “Ma’am, ship ready for warp.”
Commander Kane ordered, “Very well, Helm. Bring us to low warp,” and the now-familiar twisting sensation, that some said they didn’t feel, ran through her body as the ship passed through the invisible barrier. The ship passed that barrier as effortlessly as it had during the short trials and Marsha said, “Very well. Run us up slowly to maximum warp. Report when we’ve reached that point.”
Kitty could feel the vibration slowly building as Marsha and the rest of the crew pushed Heinlein to her limit. Once they reached high warp, Kitty spoke to Marsha. “Very good, Commander. We are now to run at this speed for twelve hours. Since no one can keep up the kind of concentration we need for that long, shifts will change every two hours for the duration of this test. Especially the shift commander. I don’t want anyone zoned out. I will be on-call at all times. Just whistle, Marsha. I’m going to my cabin for now.”
The engine tests were largely anti-climactic. A huge success of course, but overshadowed by the weapons tests with all their pretty explosions. The physics of this type of space flight said that when you came out of warp, you retained the velocity you had upon entering, so great care had to be taken in plotting courses. Kitty was on the bridge when Heinlein emerged from warp and she immediately ordered full deceleration and full scan, leaving the area directly astern for last. A chill ran up her spine as a thought crossed her mind, and she muttered, “More of that life-defining crap. Could I be an adrenaline junkie?”
Finding what they expected to find, nothing, they turned their sensors in the direction of the solar system, and were surprised, but not unduly, in retrospect, to find that they were receiving a message that they had
already received and responded to days before. Kitty, feeling unusually good about how the tests had gone, decided it was time to be a little bit playful. “Gayle, send this reply to the message we just received: Captain Hawke, just how many times do you think it is necessary to tell me to be careful? Sign that Captain Hawke, Heinlein, date it and send it. Rob, can you tell me exactly where we are?”
Robert Greene looked up from his console. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but all I can tell you right now is that we are part way between our starting point and our destination.” Before Kitty could explode, he continued, “All kidding aside, Ma’am, I cannot tell exactly where we are, but I can tell you that if we continued at our highest acceleration, we would reach Alpha Centauri in about two weeks, which makes our maximum speed somewhere in the vicinity of double that of a ship the size and configuration of Galileo.”
“That’s good enough for me.” She keyed the intercom to address the crew. “This is the Captain. It is my pleasure to report that we have just completed the last phase of testing. And, I might add, we have aced it. Now we can go home. I want to express my appreciation to everybody for a job well done. The time for the return to Orion will not be as long as we have had to go through up to this point since all we need to do is head straight in. So, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get to it. Thank you.”
An outside observer would have seen Heinlein slowly accelerate to her maximum in-space speed. As she reached her limit, that observer would have seen her apparently blink out of existence, while the occupants of the ship went about their duties blissfully unaware of the impact they were making on human history.
Kitty had finished her report and one of the recommendations she had made was to keep the computers well-acquainted with the various pieces of space debris in whatever area they chose to come out of warp, if possible. She could already see the dangers inherent in traveling to new places and wondered out loud how many ships and people would be lost in exploring their newly expanded neighborhood.
“There is something about two objects not being able to occupy the same space. What happens if we come out of warp inside a moon or something else we can’t possibly know about beforehand?” she asked Daniel.
He looked at her and tried to allay her fears. “The people we have rooting around in the remains of the database have been tasked to look for that particular problem. Believe it or not, some of us have already thought about it. So far, what has turned up is a lot of nothing. Since we managed to save some of the data, we have records of many drop-outs, without their stellar locations, of course, and never has anything shown up to cause the engineers or astronomers to worry. That isn’t to say that it can’t happen or won’t, just that it seems highly unlikely. Some of the theoreticians think that physics won’t let a vessel come out of warp inside another object. That remains to be proven, of course. And how we prove it, I surely don’t know. I’m just a lowly engineer, myself.”
Kitty leaned back in her chair and an introspective mood seemed to come over her. “Okay, what’s on your mind, Kitty?” Daniel asked. “I’ve come to know that look.”
“I seem to have become more philosophical lately, Dan. What I want to know is what are we going to do with all the ships we’re building? I mean, I know we’re defending our right to keep the technology now that we have it, and, quite likely, defending our planet, as well, but we don’t really see an enemy. All we have concrete evidence of is three other ships: one destroyed, and the two survivors high-tailing it out of the county, so to speak. I have to wonder if we are really going in the right direction, sometimes. It seems to me that we’re building stuff we don’t really have a lot of use for.”
Daniel gave her a penetrating look. “I agree, in a way. But, when you think about those ships, you have to ask yourself whose policies they were following. If it was one individual that’s one thing. But if they were operating under the orders of a government that’s a horse of another color entirely. The question I need to put to you is: do we dare take any chances? I’d much rather err on the side of caution. And personally, I want to get my hands on whoever is in command, hang him by whatever passes for thumbs, and then spend all day carving him into little pieces. Bloodthirsty? Well, I’m not going to defend my position by saying that the human race has been bloodthirsty since it began, but I still want to see the son of a bitch suffer.”
Changing the subject, Kitty began to describe her ideas for a large, permanent base to Daniel. As an engineer, the prospect should distract him from the emotions she could see just beneath the surface. “The asteroid Vesta,” she said. “I’ve been through the database and think I’ve found a way to turn it into something we can use. It won’t be long before we have several thousand people out here and some of them will become permanent residents while others will need a place to vacation from the ships and bases. It’ll take a few years to get it ready for occupation, but here’s what I have in mind.”
Itemizing the equipment she had found in the computer, she began. “First, we’ll need a power generator and broadcaster. A simple program will coordinate several dozen specialized machines to hollow out the asteroid and some of the material can be used to seal the interior against air loss. Smoothing off the surface will let us lay out artificial gravity grids like the ones built into the deck plates of the ships. Or lay the cables on the inside surface before the sealer goes on. Then the inside of Vesta will have gravity. The material culled from the surface and excavated from the interior will follow the asteroid until Galileo arrives to scoop it up and use it to build structures for the interior. Everything except Galileo’s part can be done without supervision from humans if we build a computer and program it to do the job for us. Once the entrance is sealed, we can introduce air, heat, light and plants to begin oxygen production. I can do an initial survey on the way to Gamma since we’ll pass Vesta on the way.”
Daniel stared at Kitty with his mouth dropping farther open with each sentence. “What?” Kitty demanded. “I’ve looked into this. It’ll work, dammit.”
“I’m not doubting you, Kitty. I just think that we should have thought of this already. When you meet Galileo at Point Gamma, you should be able to skim some of her time and get your machines without causing too much of a slowdown in construction. From what I see here,” Daniel said as he called up specs on his own screens, “the factories you’ll need aren’t the same ones used in dock construction, for the most part. If Simon gives you any trouble on this, have him get in touch with me. This needs to be done and I’ll back it, if he doesn’t himself.”
Thanking Daniel for his time and support, Kitty left. She desperately wanted to talk to Simon, but he had taken Galileo back to Earth to pick up more volunteers for the next ship. His instructions to her had been to take Heinlein out to Point Gamma where the next dock, Libra, was to be built. Of course, this would be after she had spent some time here getting her crew sorted out and doing some patrolling to train the recruits.
Included in these instructions was a suggestion that she slowly begin scanning the asteroid belt on the way in hopes of finding any unwanted visitors like the ones who had attacked Orion. Many people believed that there was too high a possibility that spies had been left behind, and after a careful analysis of the records, she had come to believe that the theory was plausible. Still, she wished that Simon had waited a little longer before getting Lucy’s ship crewed. She agreed that time was not to be wasted, but ...
Kitty made her way down to Orion’s docking bay where her gig and pilot waited. This is such a waste, she thought. I can fly myself around as well as anyone else can. Why does Simon put so much stock in appearances? And why do these people follow so readily? Resigning herself to the inevitable, she boarded the trim little vessel and waited while the pilot went through her checklist and was pushed out of the bay by the presser beams.
Her gig was nothing more than an over-sized Mamba without weapons, capable of carrying a pilot and four passengers. Not warp-capable, it was used to ferry
personnel from space to ground or ship to ship. Early on, Kitty had seen the necessity for having two standard shuttles, so a little judicious re-engineering had dropped the Mamba complement from twelve to ten so they could tuck the shuttles into the recesses of Heinlein’s docking bay.
Two days went by while the tech crew left the ship and the regular crew boarded. Finding room assignments, workstations, and common areas had been a small problem at the beginning of the first voyage, so Kitty had maps made and distributed to the new arrivals. Finally, the Heinlein powered up and began to make her way through the maze that had grown around the station. Knowing Simon wouldn’t rendezvous with her for almost a month, Kitty took her time cruising along just above the asteroid belt with her sensors on full, searching for whatever she might find. Knowing she had a one in four chance of finding anything, if it was there at all, as she was only passing one fourth of the belt on her way to Gamma, she felt it would be good practice for the crew. And that percentage held only if an intruder chose to use the asteroid belt for a hiding place. She would, herself, she mused, but maybe that didn’t figure in the ideas of someone who came from a totally alien culture that had been in space for hundreds of years.
Along with the drills, the regular flights by the Mambas tended to keep most people occupied. Daily reports from Galileo and Orion didn’t take up much of her time, nor did her responses, as she was still pretty upset with Simon, so she had plenty of free time on her hands. Running performance drills kept all hands occupied, if a little bit irritated, until she started plugging herself into various personnel slots and taking part herself. It was such a success with the crew that she mandated the procedure for all the command staff.