StS6 Deep Space - Hidden Terror
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Deep Space - Hidden Terror
The Stasis Stories
#6
Laurence E Dahners
Copyright 2021
Laurence E Dahners
Kindle Edition
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
Author’s Note
This is the sixth book of the Stasis Stories.
Though this book can “stand alone” it’ll be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including:
A Pause in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #1)
The Thunder of Engines (The Stasis Stories #2)
Radiation Hazard (The Stasis Stories #3)
Halting the Reaper (The Stasis Stories #4) and
A Tower in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #5)
I’ve minimized the repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those who are reading the series.
Other Books and Series
by Laurence E Dahners
Series
The Ell Donsaii series
The Vaz series
The Bonesetter series
The Blindspot series
The Proton Field series
The Hyllis family series
Single books (not in series)
The Transmuter’s Daughter
Six Bits
Shy Kids Can Make Friends Too
For the most up to date information go to:
Laurence E Dahners website
Or the Amazon Author page
Table of Contents
Other Books and Series
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Two
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Author’s Afterword
Acknowledgments
Other Books and Series
Prologue
AP Charlottesville, Virginia—Staze Inc. to be autonomous again!
Senator Blythe’s bill rescinding the nationalization of Staze Inc. has passed through Congress. Since President Willis was a strong advocate of the bill, there is little doubt that he will sign it into law.
After the government nationalized Staze, most of the leadership of the company resigned in protest. It soon became evident that the new government-installed leadership couldn’t continue to produce the stazer devices the company depended on—and the public so desperately desired. Though space launch, one of the company’s best-known endeavors, continued unabated, the production of stazers, and most importantly medical stazers, ceased immediately after the government takeover.
Though the reason for this is not completely clear, it seems that the people who knew how to build stazers had resigned during the leadership exodus. Rather than patenting the device, they have relied completely on secrecy regarding the workings of the stazing systems and have managed that confidentiality despite reverse engineering attempts. This left the governmentally-run version of the company without the knowledge required to continue building the stazers. At first, they assumed they could hire such expertise, or that the knowledge could be acquired from reverse-engineering the existing stazers owned by the company but, for reasons that are unclear, this strategy proved ineffective.
Even more controversial was the fact that many of those who had called for the takeover of the company based their demands on America’s need to protect Staze’s intellectual property from acquisition by our country’s adversaries. However, a few months after the nationalization, the erstwhile leadership of the company turned up in Italy and began building stazers there, thus it appeared that the U.S. not only lost the knowledge of stazing but, by doing so, forced the migration of that knowledge to another country.
In its new incarnation, Staze considers itself an international company, based in Virginia and Italy with plans to extend its reach elsewhere. It states that one of its goals is to improve transit around the world. As such, one of its first undertakings will be a demonstration project in which they will build a two-mile (3.2 km) Stade bridge across the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the toe of Italy’s boot. Such a bridge has been proposed, designed, and initiated in the past, but never completed due to the multibillion-dollar cost. Astonishingly, Staze says they will build it upon the footings constructed during one of the previous attempts—abandoned due to budget constraints—for less than a hundred million dollars. This price will not include the construction of roads leading up to the bridge, nor the paving of the bridge’s surfaces but will comprise all of the structural components of a bridge with six traffic lanes, two emergency lanes, two railroad tracks, and a wide pedestrian walkway. It will arch to a height of 300 feet over the middle of the straight to allow sea traffic beneath it and, astonishingly, because of Stade’s incredible strength, it will not have any suspension cables or support columns.
Desiree Lanis, Staze’s engineer for the project, says that building the structure of the bridge out of Stade will only take a few months, though the more ordinary parts, such as the paving of the roadway, placement of rails for the trains, and landscaping of the pedestrian walkway (all under contract to other firms) may take several additional years.
Having arrived back in Charlottesville the evening before—after a long flight from Italy—Kaem already felt tired when he and Arya walked to work in the morning.
When Kaem and Arya first stepped back into the building he was surprised when the first person to see them enter immediately stood. That sudden motion attracted the eyes of others who also began rising.
A moment later, to his astonishment, everyone in the building was on their feet. Spontaneous applause broke out, quickly reaching a crescendo. Embarrassed about the fuss, he ducked his head and tried to make his way to the table where he’d always worked, but people crowded around, still clapping. Norm stepped in front of him. Not sure of Norm’s intentions, Kaem extended his hand to shake but Norm took another step and threw his arms around Kaem.
When Norm pushed back there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you!” he exclaimed, eyes darting back and forth between Kaem and Arya. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Norm turned and spoke loudly enough to be heard fairly well over the tumult, “Thank you to Kaem and Arya for making sure we got paid whether the government took care of us or not. For refusing to kowtow to the government’s demands. For keeping us out of the military-industrial complex. For saving this company we’ve come to love. For expanding us internationally. For doing all that you do!”
A great cheer rose in the room.
Mobbed for a couple of hours, Kaem hugged or shook hands with everyone in the room. From the glimpses he got, it seemed Arya was doing the same.
Despite this, Arya managed to call a caterer that brought lunch in for everyone.
Though he felt like he wasn’t getting any work done, at the end of the day he realized their employees had been eagerly updating him on what they’d been doing during his absence and what they hoped to achieve in their new future. As he had in the past, he managed to make suggestions guiding them around current or impending problems.
Though he’d thought he wasn’t getting much done, the day turned out to have been surprisingly productive.
As they walked home that evening, Arya slipped her arm around his waist, “You wanna come home and meet my parents this weekend?
Kaem turned to stare at her, “I’ve already met you
r parents!”
“Yeah, but back then you weren’t my intended. In fact, you were my definitely-not-intended at the time. And you and I weren’t getting along the last time they saw you. I want them to see why I finally gave in and agreed to marry you.”
“‘Gave in and agreed?!’”
“Uh-huh,” she said, giving him an impish grin. “And then you could introduce them to that American custom where the groom asks the girl’s father for permission to marry her.”
“You want me to ask your father? Doesn’t that smack of… I don’t know, whatever kind of sexism it is where women are treated as if they’re property?!”
“Uh-huh, but it’d make him happy, and I like making my father happy.”
Kaem rolled his eyes. “I like you and I’ll do it, but I want you to know I’m offended on your behalf.”
“Thanks for that.”
“What do I do if he says no?”
“Tell him we’re running off to Las Vegas where we’ll get married in a sleazy chapel.”
“Really?!”
Arya snickered, “No, if he says no, I should be the one who drops the hammer. But he won’t say it. He and my mother have been trying to get me in your camp since they first met you at Bistro Valentin.”
Kaem snorted. “What if he wants to know how I’m going to support you?”
She waved flippantly, “They already know you own one percent of Staze. The way Staze’s been in the news, they probably think you’ve got more money than you’d need to do that.” She wrinkled her nose, “Despite my expensive taste in shoes and clothes.”
***
Gentle reader:
To ease understanding, as the language of the aliens in this story is translated to English, so are the names they use for stars being translated to the same names we use, and their units of measurement translated into human units. Epsilon Eridani is Epsilon Eridani, Sol is Sol, a light-year is a light year, a month is a month, a kilometer is a kilometer… and, by any other name, a rose, is a rose, is a rose.
***
On the third planet of the Epsilon Eridani system, Diddiq rubbed at his eyes and blinked muzzily. An old haliq female was peering down at him. Slowly, her image came into focus. With relief, he decided she didn’t look worried.
Her antennae twitched and she said, “Don’t worry. You’re okay.”
He almost asked, “I survived hibernation?” but realized at the last moment the answer to that was obvious. He was alive after all. Besides, he didn’t think he had the juice to say it.
The female’s heavy clothing and the 10 ℃ temperature displayed on the wall explained why Diddiq felt so cloudy. He began to wonder how many others had survived. His people hadn’t needed to hibernate for several thousand years now. Not since they’d arrived in the Epsilon Eridani stellar system and no longer needed to migrate because they weren’t overcrowded. But now that their population had expanded enough to test the system’s limits, they needed to send some of their excess citizenry onward—thus the need to evaluate their ability to hibernate again.
Without any need to hibernate, their ability to do it successfully had withered in their genomes. Even though they could “jump” from one star system to another without crossing the intervening space, they must first reach the very low gravitation regions at the periphery of a system. There, space was “flat” enough that a ship’s jump system could induce an interstellar leap. Because of the tyranny of the rocket equation and its demand for reaction mass, even nuclear-powered rockets couldn’t reach the periphery of a system quickly. They could shorten the trip to the periphery by making some in-system jumps—necessarily short because of the warping of space by the sun and planets, and, lacking unlimited power, they couldn’t jump very far at those higher levels of gravity. Traveling at the low speeds they could achieve; they couldn’t carry enough haliq to crew the ship if those haliq were awake and eating supplies.
So, they must hibernate; both during the trip to the gravitationally flat edge of the EE system, and then while they traveled from the edge of the next system to the inner planets in its livable zone. All this assumed there was an oxygen world in that zone where they could live—even if it required some genetic modifications.
Despite the recent gene tuning he and his cohort had undergone, survival through an extended hibernation was far from assured. Finally feeling strong enough to speak, he asked, “Did everyone survive?”
Her antennae dipped, signaling a negative. “We lost about sixty percent of your cohort.” Her antennae shrugged, “That’s not bad, considering.”
Diddiq hoped his friends had also survived but wasn’t distraught. Life was cheap amongst halaniq. And, the loss of the others meant he had a better chance of crewing one of the first ships.
The ships that would determine whether the stellar system the haliq leaders had chosen had an oxygen/DNA world they could convert to their needs. If so, a scoutship would jump home with the news while the larger ships would begin building a jump station deeper in the next system. Most of the ships’ crews would be assigned to build the massive power plants required by a jump station. With enormous power, and paired jump systems, one in the home system and one in the new system, they would be able to port through big ships carrying the huge numbers of haliq it would take to adequately decompress the home system. They would still have to move those haliq some distance out toward the periphery of the home system, but with huge amounts of power and paired systems, they would be able to jump stellar distances despite a gravitational curvature that would be unacceptable for a single ship. This would allow even haliq who could only hibernate briefly to travel as well.
And Diddiq had an excellent chance of going because they’d told him that, in addition to being gene-modified for leadership, he’d hit the genetic lottery to be one in a million for innovation and broad thinking.
I might even become the overall expedition leader, he thought smugly to himself.
Part One
Chapter One
When Gunnar Schmidt arrived at Staze’s regular meeting, he was surprised to see a man-sized Stade cylinder standing at the end of the table. Make that a cylinder with a dome-shaped top and two arms. Gunnar stepped around to look up and down the entire length of the cylinder and saw it was sitting on a rubberized ring at the bottom. Otherwise, it was relatively featureless except for some small openings here and there and a row of cameras mounted on the dome at the top.
You might think it was a spacesuit, he thought, except, no legs. And an astronaut in it couldn’t see out. He stopped and studied the cameras, Maybe the astronaut could see out using the cameras?
More of the group were arriving, Kaem among them. He asked, “Norm? Are you in the suit?”
“Yep,” came a reply, obviously through a speaker. One hand reached up and slid the front half of the silvery Stade dome up and back. This exposed a clear glass dome beneath it—inside which Gunnar could see Norm’s grinning face.
“What the hell’s this thing supposed to be?” Gunnar asked, having decided that, whatever it was, it was ridiculous.
“A space suit,” Norm said, looking quite proud of himself.
“You planning to install the legs on version two?” Gunnar asked crossly.
“Yeah, for versions that operate in gravity.” Norm answered. “But you don’t need legs if you’re only going to be working in weightless conditions. Instead, my feet are resting on rocker pedals that let me control these jets.” Sudden squirts of gas began jetting out of the little openings in the cylinder Gunnar had noticed earlier. “Out in space, the jets will be able to move me around in all three dimensions. They’ll be a lot more useful out there than legs would be.”
“And,” Norm continued, “I’m not completely immobile in gravity. Check this out.” A more powerful hiss emanated from the bottom.
Gunnar’s eyes traveled down in time to see the rubber ring at the bottom inflate. A hover skirt! Gunnar realized. The column started to slide to the right, but a pulse of t
he jets on its left side moved it back where it’d been. Then the jets quieted and the column settled back down to the floor.
Norm said, “Don’t want to do too much traveling by hover though. Uses too much oxygen.”
Alarmed, Gunnar said, “You have to use your breathing oxygen to move around?!”
Norm nodded, “Yeah, but it won’t take much to move around in weightless conditions, whereas hovering takes a lot. Besides, with one big O2 tank I can stay out longer if I don’t have to use the jets much. If they were separate tankages, getting low on either one could shorten the time I could stay in a vacuum.”
Suspiciously, Gunnar said, “You’ve been up in space in that thing?”
“Not yet,” Norm said. “I’m using calculations to say it won’t take much gas to move around up there. If it’ll ease your mind, I’m scheduled to go up on a GLI mission and try it out next week.”
Kaem asked, “How’re the new seals working?”
“Great,” Norm replied. “With the improved tolerances on the Stade components, the joints hardly leak even without the seals. But with the seals, the suit’s tight enough you’d have to count molecules to measure the seepage.”
Kaem snorted, “I’m not gonna believe they’re that good.”
Norm grinned, “Yeah, not really. But they’re a lot better than we’d hoped they’d be.”
Gunnar said, “What happens if you blow a seal while you’re up there next week? Not that I’d miss you much, but are they gonna have systems in place to rescue your lame ass?”
Norm snorted, “Because I’d miss you terribly, no matter what you do to sabotage my seals, I’ve made sure I’ll be able to make it back and plague you some more. The suit’s set up with an interior self-stazing system. Anything goes wrong and boom, I’m stazed. I’ll be ready to pester you again as soon as you bring me back down to Earth and destaze me.”