by Thadd Evans
Tia, Yar, Bemme, and Pohum gripped their chairs more tightly. Behind Yar, Paley blinked nervously.
Palk howled in pain, "Ui!"
Outside my window, the ship flew past us.
Elto, Rax!
"Where is the TLS Two?" "Ten seconds."
"Understood. Can you switch on the holographic decoys?"
"I'll do that in two minutes."
"Has the Spectrometer provided better ultraviolet maps of D Twenty-Four?" Using the entire light spectrum, Spectrometers analyzed gases around planets, moons and stars. If the analysis was incorrect, we could land on a planet with a sulphuric atmosphere, and ST7 would disintegrate.
Greg remained quiet, focusing.
Along the edge of a screen, four spheroid ships were flying toward us.
I dragged my fingers across computer syntax loops---our spacecraft veered starboard---entered a cloud.
If their radio interferometric telescopes, devices that used the electromagnetic spectrum, detected ST7, their ships might follow us. In many cases, those waves were distorted by electromagnetic interference, rapidly changing electrical currents. Sometimes, clouds produced the currents. On other occasions, solar winds created them.
A robotic voice shouted through our earplugs.
PL Seven SP Fourteen, identify yourselves!
Greg sighed. "TLS Two can only translate part of what they're saying."
"Okay." I sweat dripped off my face.
We shot out of the top of the cloud.
A twenty foot diameter holographic star map, a three dimensional galactic chart that was almost as large as the bridge, appeared. Because we were inside the map, creating more accurate flight paths would be easier. All around Greg and I, on the inside of the map, S14, Yot, Minq, three stars, and six moons, Nasm, Caz, Onme, Ryet, Meis and Norom, brightened. In front of us, D24 enlarged.
"Greg?"
Near the top of the screen, just under ten miles behind us, a missile veered starboard, advancing toward ST7's tail.
"That's an IPG," he muttered, referring to an Intensely Programmed Guided Missile.
"What Series is it?"
"I don't know. It's time for a database search."
"Okay." The Eleven Series were programmed to seek out radio transmitters. Once that Series detected specific object programming loops, including pi and prime numbers, the missile exploded.
Greg wiped sweat off his neck. "There are seven thousand, three types in the Series. I'll keep checking."
"Anything else?"
"It's an IPG4." He scowled.
"Understood." My stomach muscles tensed up, a nervous reaction. An IPG4, a sixteen foot long missile, a well-designed aircraft with three software applications, SE, CH and INV, would search for our ship and the decoy's heat trail. ST7's stealth field had lowered our heat trail to one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. But if this missile detected the heat trail, we were in trouble.
Using visible light, INV scanned a starship, comparing it with a database that included four hundred hull shapes. If the starship resembled one of them, the missile would explode.
ST7 was two feet shorter than Etite, Ulthe, Glemal and Aito space vessels. The missile might not detect us because our ship didn't match INV'S database. But if INV spotted us, CH would switch on, and began searching for a heat trail. Fortunately, INV and CH never worked independently. If INV couldn't identify our hull shape, CH didn't turn on.
In the corner of the screen, the IPG4 veered port, and moved closer to our tail. If I increased our rate of acceleration, we might pass out.
"Where are the ST7O decoys?" I paused.
"Horizontally aligned decoys will be available in a few seconds, two port side, two starboard."
On a monitor, just beyond the wing tips, the decoys appeared.
Vera spoke. Our interferometric radio telescopes are transmitting continuous wave forms into the missile's warheads. But they haven't deactivated the warheads.
So far, the telescopes hadn't raised the missile's signal to noise ratio enough to shut off the warhead because the warhead had detected the waveforms and compensated.
Much to my surprise, the missile's nose flew inside the closest port decoy's tail.
"Greg, please use the radio interferometric telescope to send conflicting instructions into the warhead." I wanted the IPG4 to be overwhelmed by more signals. That way, it wouldn't find our servers.
On screen, text, IMPACT IMMINENT, wasn't blinking. If it did, the IPG4 had located its target. After the missile found it, the IPG4 would follow the decoy for several seconds before the missile exploded. It was time to create more computer syntax, multiple loops, and send the missiles away. Unfortunately, I hadn't created these kinds of loops before.
Greg exhaled, releasing tension. "In four seconds, I'll activate the radio telescopes."
Then the missile slowed down and went behind us.
Greg blurted, "It's going away!"
As sweat poured down my forehead, the missile accelerated, and went inside the starboard decoy, the one closest to our ship.
Greg hollered, "Damn it!" He paused.
"I just finished sending more random wave forms into its warhead."
Close to the edge of the screen, the missile decelerated until it was several hundred yards from our tail. Now it was a tiny silhouette, barely visible in a sea of stars. It exploded, Blam!
Greg exhaled, relieved. "Luckily, the blast is far enough away. The debris won't hit us."
I nodded.
At the top of a monitor, an analysis of helium and carbon dioxide gases surrounding an unknown sienna and gray planet, Vid, the first one we would pass on our way to D24, began scrolling. If there were any problems with our hull, we might have to land on Vid. In a few minutes, the analysis would tell me if the unknown planet was safe.
Greg announced, "Two missiles, six hundred yards behind us."
I bit my lip, upset.
On screen, the IPG's, both the same diameter, got bigger.
I blinked, "Their warheads are far more sophisticated than the one that just blew up. We'll have to decipher the triggering device with our quantum computer."
"I hate that thing! It collapses into one state too fast."
Classical computers used electrons to process information. Their processors were either on or off, they only created two states. Quantum computers could use 1 or 0 or 1 and 0 and everything in between. But if you observed their atoms, or heat interfered with them, they stopped because they had collapsed into one state, and most of the information was lost. One way of saving the information was by entanglement. If you applied outside force to two atoms, they became entangled. That is, even if the atoms were miles or a few feet apart, both particles shared information. In our case, a separate compartment, one that was inside this quantum computer retrieved entangled particles.
Quantum computers could break through a firewall's huge database in a few minutes because they sent particles through all the gates simultaneously. If we used a classical CPU, it would take hundreds of years to break through because that model's particles had to travel down one circuit, then move through another one.
We had used this quantum computer thirty times. It had only created one high-resolution star map. The rest of the time, it analyzed Brynin's atmospheric turbulence and collapsed into one state.
I said, "QC," and billions of floating point numbers, quantum computer syntax, appeared and began scrolling.
Greg, an irritated expression on his face, muttered, "Good luck."
"Are these IPG4 or IPG5?" "I'll archive."
"And?" "IPG5."
Near the bottom of the screen, one missile flew inside the most distant port decoy. Then the other weapon entered the closest starboard decoy.
Inside each warhead, I noticed 420,000,000,000,000,000 computer syntax loops.
Each loop, object program language that used Pi, kept creating random floating-point numbers.
Quantum computer syntax turned red. First measurement h
as occurred, warhead's trigger has not been deactivated.
We had failed. Damn!
I stuck my hand over other syntax---text popped up. Two firewalls have just been penetrated. Only three are left.
Although Pi never created any patterns, no one had ever analyzed 420,000,000,000,000,000 loops. It was assumed that there weren't any 1, 2, 4, 8 sequences or anything similar.
Quantum computer syntax enlarged. Analyzing loops will take three days.
Greg rubbed his face. "We're in trouble! One of those missiles will explode in a few minutes."
I shoved my hand over floating three dimensional object methods. Dis.troj.corr. Doing this placed a pi based Trojan horse virus, one that was similar to white noise, inside a radio signal, and sent the signal into both warheads. Hypothetically, the warhead's firewall wouldn't block the virus because it was random, unrecognizable. The firewall hadn't been programmed to notice it. Once the virus was inside the warhead, the virus would expand exponentially, 1, 2, 4, 16, 256.
Within moments, the closest missile moved toward our port side. The Trojan horse hadn't worked.
I blurted, "H.H.three. Fourteen." This new virus was sent into both warheads. It might attract more virtual particles from a parallel universe. If they became actual particles, all of them would shut off the warhead's trigger temporarily because the trigger hadn't been programmed to detect that quantum state.
Both missiles began dropping behind the decoys. When they were just under a mile from us, they exploded, Blam!
I glanced at Greg while wiping sweat off my forehead, relieved.
"We did it!"
I nodded and looked down at my dimly lit robotic left wrist. The polymer epidermis had peeled off, revealing silver conduits. Years ago, a new arm had been attached because the first one had been torn off in an accident.
"You looked irritated. What's the matter?"
Greg, a curious expression on his face, raised one eyebrow."
"The paint is peeling off my wrist again." "That's happened before."
"I don't like it."
He shrugged.
This was one more problem. I would put on more polymer skin and repaint my wrist later.
Maintaining the ship came first.
Close to the center of the star map, Aris enlarged.
I rested against the headrest, trying to relax. "Have you noticed any black holes, or asteroid belts in our immediate flight path?"
"Not yet."
If there were any, we would have to change course, and burn up more tritium.
Beneath Aris, a dark-chrome triangular Embas space vessel was about to cross our path. Along its starboard side, there were silver panels, no gun turrets. On the top and bottom, I noticed straight grooves, indentations that started at the nose and went all the way to the back, stabilizing the vessel whenever it entered a planet's atmosphere.
It moved away from us. The space ship didn't send any messages. Five miles beyond it, five spheroid interstellar craft veered port, moving toward the dark-chrome vessel.
Without warning, one of them exploded!
Greg blurted, "Why the hell did that happen?"
"Good question." I couldn't tell if the Embas ship fired it. Someone else, a cloaked spacecraft, might have destroyed the spheroid ship. If a battle was about to start, we had to leave. I shared my thoughts with Greg.
He remained quiet, his eyes moving back and forth. "Let's get out of here. We're no match for any war ships."
I nodded, waved my hand through floating coordinates. ST7 veered starboard, moving toward D24.
"Are all the COV Ten's ready?" I asked, referring to Connected Vectors.
"No, only eleven are. Which sequence for EFS?" Electromagnetic Fields Software, an application that created a protective gravitational field around every seat, had to be updated. Otherwise, the field couldn't adapt quickly enough, and we would be torn out of our seats as the ship changed directions.
"Sequence forty-four."
"Sequence forty-one, assisted by COV Ten is better."
"Understood." COV10 software helped debug EFS. Without it, EFS eventually crashed.
There was another problem. Years ago, after we started orbiting Moon 21, the solar winds changed, and our radio interferometric telescope scans began interfering with COV10's vectors. As a result, reaching Moon 21 was much more dangerous because our flight path was distorted.
Years ago, just before we reached Indigo 3, Aito starships sent us radio messages, saying that the only runway that was available was next to Sme Mountain, an active volcano. Because Greg knew so much about object programming concatenation, he created new vectors in two minutes, and we landed without any problems.
The limits of our 52,212,543,112,433,232-byte star maps ran through my mind. As on board servers processed information, electrons lost connectivity. As a result, maps of Red Ten's southern hemisphere, including four mountain ranges had been lost. Someday, I would have to purchase better computers.
Right now, it was time to use our client's disk to find out more about D24. Wanting to inspect the customer's package, I removed a tiny disk, and opened it.
Near the top of a monitor, text scrolled, indicating that the disk's transmitter was sending information to our wireless network. Server has begun importing data.
Gh.rr... gh.rr2... One of our main computers was creating a map. However, crunching the numbers was taking longer than usual. If this disk worked properly, high-resolution maps, clear ones, would appear, and we could use them to reach our destination sooner.
At the bottom of the monitor, syntax appeared.
Parsing...
At the same time, my stomach muscles tightened, something was wrong. The server should have created a map of D24 by now. But it didn't. "Trouble."
"Shit. That disk might be useless."
I remembered that Greg wanted to see his mother and brother. But he was afraid to see the hurt look on their faces because they had to live in a cramped high-rise, a structure that was occupied by over nine thousand people.
In my mind's eye, many years ago, while I was on Ea7, several of my co-workers began frowning because they were concerned about expressing their opinions. If they complained about OTA, corporate guards would probably imprison them for speaking out.
"Have you received any more messages from your mother?"
"Yes. I received one over one hundred and ninety days ago. Mom said that no matter where she goes, she has to wait in a long line all day long.
"She promised me another message. Unfortunately, it's overdue. I'm afraid to guess why." Greg lapsed into silence, a worried expression on his face.
"Will you ever return to Ea7?"
"My mother is seventy-one years old. I want to see her before she dies.
"But if I go there, it might be impossible to leave. OTA would probably put me in prison because I criticized them."
"Sorry to hear it."
He nodded. Not wanting me to see the pained expression on his countenance, Greg peered into another direction.
In the middle of the star map, an out of focus D24 appeared, and became opaque. In the northern and southern hemispheres, clouds began swirling. Soon, the entire planet was completely covered by them. Beneath it, inside a text box enlarged. Barom... There weren't any names of cities, humanoids, oceans or mountain ranges available.
For no apparent reason, D24 became more transparent, harder to see.
"Could you check the client's disk?" I paused, wondering why it wasn't functioning properly.
"Maybe in twenty minutes. Let me finish upgrading these parsing sequences first."
I said, "Functionfive, move," and the barely visible planet floated toward him.
About the Author
B.A. Liberal Studies and Art, Sonoma State University. M.A. Art, San Francisco State University, graphic design, City College of San Francisco. Javascript, U.C. Berkeley extension, Fremont
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