The Starry Rift

by Jonathan Strahan

  Burleigh asked, “Why?”

  “Because there always is.” Especially, Tielman thought, if Jordan Stolz was involved.

  Burleigh asked Stolz, “How does it work?”

  “It’s quite ingenious,” said Stolz. “But simple in principle. As you know, every object in the universe extends in four dimensions.

  There are the three spatial directions—up-down, front-back, left-right—and also the temporal direction—future-past.”

  Tielman said, “So an object exists in space and in time. So what?”

  “So the repair kit has the ability to reach back along an object’s temporal extension—to reach into its past—and to snip out a spatial cross-section, and bring it forward to the present.” Burleigh looked as baffled as Tielman felt. Stolz said, “Look—you put a damaged object into the kit. The kit reaches into the past and brings forward an earlier, undamaged copy of the object in place of the present, damaged version. Actually, the repair kit doesn’t really repair things. It replaces a damaged object with an undamaged copy of itself from the past.”

  Burleigh still looked confused. “But what happens to the original damaged copy?”

  Stolz smiled. “It’s put into the past, in the place of its earlier undamaged self. Conservation of mass and energy, you see. The present and past copies are neatly swapped.”

  “Hang on, there’s something wrong with that.” Burleigh looked dizzy. “Do you mean to say that somewhere in the past I was carrying about a damaged copy of that stylus?”

  Stolz’s smile broadened. “It is confusing, isn’t it? You see, you’re thinking in terms of nai’ve, old-fashioned causality, which doesn’t really apply. For a short time the stylus in your pocket became broken—as the copy from the present appeared—and then, as the limit of the excised cross-section was reached, it became whole once more. Well, obviously it couldn’t stay broken, since it was perfect before I snapped it in two, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. It’s impossible!” cried Burleigh, outraged.

  “Impossible or not, it happened,” replied Stolz, just as heatedly.

  “Look,” interposed Tielman, exasperated, “I don’t particularly care how the thing works—as long as it does work. Stolz, can you guarantee me that that device will not fail?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Stolz with confidence. “I’ve made a thorough study of its workings. Those Sirian ancients were excellent engineers, even if their descendants do have personal hygiene problems. You see, you can forget the missing spare fuse. With the repair kit, we can fly without it. We can fix anything!”

  Burleigh said, “Well, what do you think, Captain? Does the Pig fly?”

  Tielman pressed his lips together. It was wholly against his nature to entrust himself to any machine whose workings he could not analyze and understand—which was why Stolz was Tielman’s last resort, rather than his chief engineer. “We wait the full forty-eight hours the chief executive gave us. Then I’ll make my decision.”

  As Tielman and Burleigh took their leave, the unkempt head of the sole member of the Flying Pig’s Department of Last Resort bent once more over his latest project, oblivious to the world.

  The hours trickled away, and the hope that the vital cauchium might arrive in time to make up the spare quantum fuse dwindled. The pressure built up on the captain, a pressure made worse by knowing that Stolz had offered him an option. Tielman kept a place for Stolz onboard the Pig, and had relied on his gadgets in the past, but only as last-resort options when the Pig had got itself into trouble in deep space. He had never left Earth already reliant on Stolz’s unreliable contraptions. And he had certainly never taken a ship into space without being sure he could bring it home.

  But at last the deadline arrived, and Tielman realized he had no choice: if he didn’t take the ship out, the chief executive would replace him with somebody who would, and he couldn’t put his crew through that. So, with a heavy heart, he ordered the crew to their launch stations.

  The Flying Pig eased her way out of the shipyard, and the Prandtl Drive powered her into space.

  Tielman took his seat on the bridge of the Pig. The bridge was a large dome-shaped chamber centered on the main display tank, now glowing a uniform, comforting green. A dozen crewmen with control consoles clambered around the tank, endlessly checking on every aspect of the ship’s performance.

  “Well, no problems so far.” Burleigh grinned up at his captain.

  Tielman said nothing.

  A display at his elbow warned him to prepare for the hop through no-space, for the speed of the Pig had risen to just below the velocity of light. You could travel slower or faster than light, but of course nothing could travel at lightspeed itself—so the Pig cheated. In a maneuver similar to electron tunneling, the ship stepped sideways through the other-universe of “no-space,” and so avoided the light-speed barrier and surged on into greater “tachy-speeds,” the realm of the tachyons, particles that traveled forever faster than light.

  With a brief, disconcerting jolt, no-space was crossed, and the Pig’s speed rose instantaneously to just above lightspeed. Tielman watched the velocity indicator resume its steady upward motion. “Any problems over the hop?”

  “None, sir.” Burleigh consulted a readout. “Breen in Engineering reports the Prandtl Drive behaved better than the standard drive generally does. Uh—we’ve got another memo from Last Resort.”

  Tielman raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “Tell that bus driver Tielman that he can kindly schedule his next hop so as not to coincide with my coffee break. I’ve spilled boiling liquid all over my—I think I’ll skip the next part.”

  The other bridge crew chuckled. Tielman just brooded over the display tank, waiting for problems to arise, as they always did.

  Burleigh said, “Oh, no—space it, Captain, I just can’t understand you. What is there to worry about?”

  “Something will go wrong. It always does. The only question is how much damage it will do.”

  “You aren’t a barrel of laughs, sir.”

  “I’m not paid to be,” Tielman said bleakly.

  The ship surged on, far outrunning the light of Earth’s sun.

  It was a simple mission, designed to give the Prandtl Drive a thorough workout. The Flying Pig’s course was a straight line in toward the heart of the galaxy—though the plan was to turn back long before the Core would be reached.

  The Pig would accelerate up to a predetermined maximum speed—a speed at which she would be the fastest-ever human ship, a speed at which it would take little more than four weeks to cross the galaxy from side to side—and then the Prandtl Drive would be shut down. As the ship coasted, the drive would be switched to deceleration mode and restarted, and the Pig’s speed would be whittled down to nothing. On the return journey the maneuverability and control of the drive would be tested.

  Simple.

  The first part of the voyage passed without any major problems. When the Pig crashed through the previous human speed record, Tielman allowed his crewmen to hold a small celebration, though he insisted that a full watch be maintained at all times. The maximum speed was reached without a hitch. The drive was shut down and checked over as the ship coasted before deceleration.

  Then came the moment for the drive to be restarted.

  Tielman resumed his seat on the bridge. The main display tank glowed a steady green. Crewmen busied themselves confidently over last-moment checks. “Any problems, Burleigh?”

  “None, sir. All departments have checked in.”

  A soft bell chimed. A crewman called out, “Ten seconds to restart. . . . Eight.”

  Tielman sat and brooded.

  “Six. Four. All lights green. Two. One. Restart . . .”

  The ship convulsed like a wounded animal. The green glow of the main tank flickered and was drowned by virulent red.

  I knew it, Tielman thought. His fist crashed onto a large scarlet button set into the arm of his chair, and a siren wailed throughout th
e ship. “Damage report!”

  The bridge crew reacted to the situation as they had been trained. Each officer checked out the systems under his or her responsibility. A neutral white began to seep into the deep red areas in the display tank as the root of the damage was isolated, until eventually all that remained of the original mass of red was a small, stubborn crimson sphere.

  Less than a minute after the beginning of the trouble, Burleigh was able to turn to his captain. “Sir, the trouble’s with the drive. The quantum fuse blew. There’s little damage, but the drive’s dead.”

  Tielman pressed his lips together. So his ship was hurtling through the galaxy, faster than any ship had traveled before—and he had no way to slow it down, still less turn it around. “Terrific. Burleigh, come with me.” He left the bridge.

  In the drive control room, Breen and his assistants were running methodically through an elaborate checkout procedure. When Tielman and Burleigh entered the room, Breen rose, his face twisted. “Captain, what can I say, I—”

  Tielman asked brusquely, “What happened?”

  Running a hand through graying hair, Breen said, “The fault wasn’t with the drive itself. It didn’t overload! It’s hard to believe, but the defective component was actually that quantum fuse—the one that—”

  “I know which quantum fuse,” Tielman said quietly.

  “Why the thing didn’t blow when we left the yard is a mystery to me. When I sent through the juice to restart the drive, a fault in the fuse’s cauchium lining started a feedback loop. The drive began to spike, and the fuse itself blew out. But the fault was with the fuse itself. See?” Breen presented the culprit: the fuse, a metal-gray cylinder whose blankness was now marred by a black band around its center. “Well and truly blown.”

  “Then we can’t restart the drive,” Tielman said.

  “No, sir.”

  Burleigh laughed. “And it’s all because of the failure of the one component on the ship for which we don’t have a backup. What are the odds?” But he shut up when Tielman glared at him.

  Breen said, “Look, Captain, I’m sorry—”

  “Save it. What options do we have? Is there any way to bypass that fuse?”

  Breen looked doubtful. “We’ll check, of course. But the quantum fuse is a pretty integral fail-safe. The drive isn’t designed to run without it.”

  Burleigh, who had kept contact with the bridge, touched Tiel-man’s arm. “Excuse me, Captain. Astrogation are asking to see you—urgent.”

  “What now?” Tielman turned to Breen. “Do what you can. Come on, Burleigh.”

  Burleigh hurried at Tielman’s side as he strode toward Astrogation. “Captain, I don’t see what the panic’s about. All right, we’re out of motive power, but we’ve plenty of supplies on board. All we have to do is wait, and—”

  “‘Wait’? Burleigh, at this moment the Pig is moving faster than any ship before her. How long do you think it would take to outfit another ship with a second Prandtl prototype? Six months? A year? Until then there is no ship in the galaxy that can catch the Pig. And meanwhile, in eight days we’re going to be hurtling into the Galaxy Core.” They turned into Astrogation. “Within a month—assuming we survive the Core—we’ll be outside the galaxy altogether. Another month after that and our supplies will be running out. And so you see—”

  A soft voice interposed: it was Gregg, the bald, plump, mustachioed head of Astrogation. “Actually I think you’ll find we’ve less time than that, Captain, once I’ve made my own little contribution to the general hilarity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gregg led them over to the centerpiece of the Astrogation Department. It was a chest-high cube containing a beautifully detailed three-dimensional image of the galaxy. “One of those things, I’m afraid,” said Gregg. “Here’s our course up to now—” A straight green thread appeared amid the disc of stars. “And here’s an extrapolation of that course, now that we’re plummeting along it helplessly.” The thread lengthened toward the Core—then came to an abrupt end, well before it had reached the galactic center.

  Tielman asked, “Why the termination?”

  Gregg magnified the image of the end of the green thread. Stars exploded out of the image, and Tielman endured a brief, unforgettable sensation of enormous speed.

  The thread ended in a red point.

  Gregg said simply, “That’s a red giant star. Somewhat bigger than Betelgeuse. If you want, I’ll give you its catalog number.”

  Tielman knew where this was leading. “And it’s in our way, isn’t it?”

  “In approximately two and one quarter days from now, we will hit the giant at a point about thirty degrees north of its equator.” Gregg sighed. “The stars do get crowded as you approach the Core. Still, it’s a big place, and you might expect to get through without running into anything.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t expect that at all,” Tielman said.

  “It’s not our lucky day, is it?” Gregg said sadly.

  Burleigh said, “I can guess what you’re thinking, Captain. ‘I told you so’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, does it?”

  “For the first time since we left Earth you’re absolutely right, Mr. Burleigh.”

  Half a fruitless, frustrating day passed. Then Tielman called a council of war in his cabin with Horne, head of Astrophysics, Gregg of Astrogation, Breen of Engineering, and Burleigh.

  Horne of Astrophysics was a burly, blunt man. “But didn’t anybody notice that our course was going to run through a star?”

  “Of course we did, but it shouldn’t have mattered,” Gregg said bitterly. “We were supposed to turn back long before we reached the neighborhood of the giant.”

  Burleigh said, “I’m wondering what will happen when—if— we hit the star. It won’t be a simple collision, will it?”

  Horne replied, “No. You have to remember that the Pig’s moving at translight speeds. That means that when we go through the giant, the star’s normal tardy-matter can’t affect us, since it’s impossible for any kind of energy to be transmitted faster than light from a tardy-object. So by the time, for instance, a quantum of heat has reached our position, we’ll have left, if you see what I mean. Therefore we won’t be crushed or burned by the star.”

  “Oh, goody,” Tielman said menacingly.

  Horne went on uncertainly, “But there’s bound to be a high concentration of tachy-matter spread through the inner layers of the star—and that will hurt us. It will be as if, for instance, we were to run into the atmosphere of Jupiter at a quarter the speed of light.”

  Gregg of Astrogation said, “What’s worrying me is what happens when we run into the deformed space around the star, which we’ll hit long before the star itself.”

  Breen of Engineering said animatedly, “Yes, that’s a point. At tachy-speeds our hull will be put under such stress that—”

  Tielman held up his hands. “Gentlemen, this is all academic. Our intention is not to hit the star at all. What happens in detail if we fail isn’t of much interest. Breen, have you made any progress with the drive?”

  Breen shook his head. “There’s no way I can repair the fuse, and we can’t run the drive safely without it.”

  Gregg said, “Surely it’s not so great a risk as a hundred percent certainty of smashing into a red giant.”

  Breen smiled. “Tell that to the Prandtl Drive computer.”

  Burleigh asked, “Is there no manual override?”

  “Yes, but it’s purely an emergency device designed to kill the drive, not to start it up.”

  “A dead man’s switch,” Tielman said. “How appropriate.”

  Breen said, “Look, Captain, we’re working on it. I have a couple of men looking at ways to bypass the computer altogether, and fly manually. But even if we find a way, the chances are we’ll wreck the drive altogether. It just isn’t designed to be operated this way.”

  Tielman glanced at a wall chronometer. A little over one and a half days to impact. He looked aroun
d. “Anything else?”

  Breen said nothing more. Horne folded his hands in silence. Gregg looked embarrassed.

  Tielman stood. “All right. Keep working. We’ll meet again in six hours, or earlier, if anything turns up.”

  They rose to leave—all save Burleigh, who quizzically caught his captain’s eye. An unspoken conversation passed between them.

  Last resort time, Captain?

  Last resort time, Mr. Burleigh.

  “Tell Jordan Stolz to report to the drive control room. Now— don’t take any excuses. And tell him to bring that widget of his.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The head and sole operative of the Pig’s Department of Last Resort arrived at the drive control center fully twenty minutes after his captain, Burleigh, and Breen. He brought with him a certain metal-gray, half-meter cube.

  Breen grimaced. “And what is that unlovely contraption?”

  “It’s no-spaced heavy, that’s what it is,” cursed the red-faced and panting Jordan Stolz. He pushed back his unruly mass of gray-blond hair.

  Burleigh hastily interposed, “This is Dr. Stolz’s Sirian All-Purpose Repair Kit, which may be the answer to all our problems.”

  Breen looked dubious.

  Tielman said, “Please bring us the faulty quantum fuse, Breen.”

  Breen, with a carefully neutral expression, crossed to a corner of the room, where four crewmen were quietly working. He returned with the fuse. “Now, if you will please explain what—”

  “Later, later,” said Stolz impatiently. “Hand over the fuse and let’s get on with it.”

  Breen held on to the fuse and looked to Tielman for guidance.

  “Just give him the fuse. He can’t do it any more harm, can he? Explanations later.”

  Stolz bridled at Tielman’s tone, but he wordlessly accepted the cylinder and rolled it into the intake of the repair kit. He pressed the buttons along the edge in careful order, then stepped back and waited.

  The four men held their breath as the kit flickered and whined. The crewmen on the other side of the room glanced across curiously. The kit took longer over the fuse than it had over Burleigh’s stylus. Stolz brusquely explained that this was due to the fuse’s greater mass and complexity.