2024-2120

by Russell Fine

  After Debbie was permanently assigned to the project, four additional people were selected for engineering positions. Their job was to maintain all of the equipment onboard and be able to rebuild anything from spare parts. After the selection of the engineers, Jeffery, Debbie, and the engineers were scheduled to go through an eighteen-month program to learn everything about the ship’s systems.

  During that time Jeffery and Debbie were also responsible for managing the construction of the Star Rover. It made for some very long days, but they loved every minute of it. By the time their training class was completed, the ship was half finished. The hull was done and the work on the inside of the ship was started. The first step was to pressurize the inside of the ship and heat it so the construction crew could work without space suits. Once that was accomplished, the pace for the construction increased quickly. In fact, it appeared that the ship would be ready three months ahead of schedule.

  Jeffery and Debbie spent a lot of time selecting their crew members. The most difficult position to fill was the ship’s doctor. It wasn’t a problem for the first mission, but they had to interview fourteen doctors until they found one who met the qualifications and didn’t object to being gone for two years. In fact, the doctor they chose, Dr. Frank Weber, was very excited about the idea of possibly having an opportunity to study alien organisms. Dr. Weber knew a nurse who would be interested as well, so the medical positions were filled. There were literally hundreds of people who were interested in the biologist, zoologist, and geologist positions, and even more were interested in the videographer position. It took some time, but both Jeffery and Debbie were very happy with their choices.

  NASA found people for the chefs’ jobs, the linguist, the hydroponic gardener, and the security positions. As a result, the entire crew had been selected by November 2118. They were scheduled to start their ten-month training program in February. The idea was that every crew member would be able to do almost any job required.

  The Star Rover was completed and ready for testing on October 1, 2119. All of the onboard systems were tested extensively over the next three months. However, they had not tested the propulsion systems. The first propulsion system test was scheduled for January 12, 2120. For that test, only Jeffery and Debbie were onboard. The test was for the sub-light engine and was the same test that had been performed before. Jeffery put the ship in a fifty- thousand-mile orbit and accelerated at 1.25 g’s to fifteen hundred miles per second. Other than a few minor problems with the steering control system detected during acceleration, everything was perfect. They spent two days in orbit before slowing down to twenty-five hundred miles per hour and they returned to the space station.

  It took a day to repair the steering control. The test of the wormhole system was scheduled for January 25, 2120. This was going to be a one-week test and the entire crew was going to be onboard. Enough supplies were brought onboard to last three months, so if there was an engine failure they would be able to get back to Earth by using the sub-light engine without running out of anything critical.

  The plan was for the Star Rover to use the wormhole system to travel out past the orbit of Pluto. They would spend six days cruising using the sub-light engine and testing the onboard systems. Then they would use the wormhole system to return to the space station.

  The crew was brought onboard the day before they were scheduled to begin the test. It was the first time most of them had actually been on the ship. Everything was functional, except the hydroponic garden, but the woman who was responsible for it was onboard.

  The crew had two hours to unpack and explore the ship. Jeffery called a meeting in the dining room. When the crew was assembled Jeffery addressed them. “I’d like to welcome all of you aboard the Star Rover. I hope you found your rooms comfortable. This brief trip is to test as many of the onboard systems as we can. So, play with everything, and if you detect even the slightest problem report it immediately. On the table to your left as you walked into the dining room are small communicators that have your name on them. Please make sure you pick yours up. The system has been designed to use either the communicator number, which is a two-digit number on the back of each device or simply by speaking either the person’s last name or position. For example, if you wanted to speak to the doctor you could say ‘Doctor,’ or ‘Weber.’ By the way, I hope you all like steak and lobster, because that’s what the chefs are preparing for dinner. However, don’t expect we’ll be having that kind of food every night.

  “We’ll be starting our voyage early tomorrow morning, so be at your assigned post by 7:30. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask Debbie or me. Also, since there are only twenty crew members, we’re not going to be concerned about rank. It’s not necessary to address me as Captain or sir. Jeffery is fine. My executive officer is Debbie, not Lieutenant Commander Murphy. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening.”

  By 7:00, the following morning every member of the crew was already at their assigned positions. There was a security office and three of the security officers were there. The fourth security officer was assigned to be on the bridge, potentially manning the weapons stations. The bridge was manned twenty-four hours a day. There were always at least two people on the bridge; a security officer and the person in command of the ship. The command position changed every eight hours, it was either Jeffery, Debbie, or the ship’s navigator, Lieutenant Mike Parker.

  For the initial launch, the bridge was fully manned. Jeffery was at the command console. Sean Richards, the chief security officer, was seated at the weapons control console. Mike was at the navigation console, and Debbie positioned herself by the long-range scanners. At exactly 7:30 Jeffery told Mike to power up the engine and move the ship out of orbit and away from the space station. As the ship started to move, a message was received from Max: “Good luck and Godspeed.”

  When the ship was two thousand miles from Earth, it was pointed at Polaris and the wormhole system was energized. Jeffery announced that in ten seconds the ship would enter the wormhole and would exit fourteen seconds later. Once again, as the ship entered the wormhole all of the external monitors displayed a solid light gray screen. When the ship exited the wormhole, the display was completely different. Jeffery announced that the Star Rover was now more than three billion miles from Earth.

  The sub-light engine was engaged with an acceleration of .75 g’s. The low gravity would make everybody onboard more comfortable. The next six days would be spent testing the ship’s systems. So far, the only failure was one of the ovens in the kitchen, and one of the maintenance people took care of that very quickly.

  During their first full day on the ship, there were a few plumbing problems with the showers and toilets, but they were soon sorted out.

  On day two the weapons systems were supposed to be tested. They used the shuttle to place several eight-foot diameter targets five miles from the ship. After the shuttle was back onboard the weapons were powered up. The security officer with the most experience using the system was Lieutenant Bruce Phillips. Bruce was waiting at the weapons console for permission to fire the particle beam weapon. Jeffery told him to proceed, so Bruce took careful aim and fired the weapon. It missed the target by several feet. Bruce adjusted the aiming software and fired again. This time he missed, but by only two feet. He made another adjustment, fired again, and the target was demolished. He aimed at the second target and missed by a foot. He adjusted the aim again and fired. The target disappeared. He fired at the third and fourth targets. Both targets were hit with the first shot. Everybody on the bridge was pleased with the results, but several people expressed their hope to never have a reason to use the powerful weapon.

  Things were going very smoothly until late in the afternoon. There was a sudden power fluctuation and an external radiation sensor sounded an alarm. Jeffery was in his cabin but was immediately called to the bridge. “What happened?” he asked Debbie as soon as he arrived.

  “I’m not sure; we went through som
e kind of intense radiation field. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. This ship is shielded extremely well and nothing should’ve been able to penetrate it. Or at least nothing we’ve ever experienced,” Debbie answered.

  Jeffery opened his communicator and said, “Chief Engineer.” He waited a few seconds for Ron Rice to answer and then asked, “Did the radiation field cause any damage to the ship?”

  “There was no detectable damage, at least not so far. One of our sensors indicated the radiation was similar to a very powerful x-ray.”

  Jeffery looked at Debbie and asked, “Could we have been scanned?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Debbie, use our long-range scanners and see if there’s anything out here that might have generated that pulse.”

  Debbie went to the scanner console, entered a few commands into the computer that controlled the system, and said, “We’re scanning now for any object larger than a few feet, but the scanner’s range is limited to three thousand miles. A few minutes later the scanner announced, “Unknown object detected.” Debbie looked at the image on the monitor and could not believe what she saw. Her mind was trying to absorb it. She yelled, “You’d better look at this!”

  Jeffery moved quickly over to the monitor and looked at what Debbie was pointing at. There was no doubt about what he saw. It was another ship! Jeffery asked excitedly, “We are recording this, aren’t we?”

  Debbie answered, “Yes, everything we scan is recorded.”

  As everybody on the bridge watched the monitor, the ship suddenly disappeared.

  Jeffery said, “Debbie, send that recording to Earth. I know they won’t get it for a while, but if something happens to us they’ll know what happened.”

  He walked over to the command console and sent the following message to Earth: “At 4:43 this afternoon our ship was scanned by another ship. There’s no apparent damage. Long range scanners detected an alien ship. While we were watching the alien ship, it disappeared. We sent the video to you.”

  Jeffery then ordered his crew, “I want the long-range scanners set to scan at maximum range constantly. If anything is detected call me immediately.”

  “Yes sir, my staff and I will man the scanner non-stop,” Lieutenant Sean Richards, the chief of security replied.

  Jeffery announced to the rest of the crew what had happened and he told Debbie, “Get Mike and come to my cabin immediately.”

  “Okay,” Debbie replied and left the bridge. Jeffery was in the process of leaving the bridge, but stopped and said to Sean, “Get another one of your people up here to help you. The ship is yours.” He left without waiting for a response.

  A few minutes later Jeffery went into his cabin at sat down at a small table. A minute later there was a knock at the door. Debbie and Mike came in and sat down at the table.

  Jeffrey said, “The three of us have more experience in space than all the rest of the crew combined. We have to decide what to do about this situation. Debbie, how far was that ship from us?”

  “It was twenty-seven hundred miles away, almost at the limit of our sensors.”

  “The limit of our weapons is five hundred miles, so they were way out of range. But I really don’t think they meant to harm us. I think they just wanted to know more about us and our ship,” Mike said.

  “I agree. Do either of you think we should—” Jeffery stopped speaking because his communicator rang. When he picked it up he could see it was Ron Rice, his chief engineer. He opened his communicator and said, “Yes Chief Rice, what . . . ” but before he could continue Ron said, “I have to see you right now, it’s urgent.”

  “I’m in my cabin with Debbie and Mike.”

  “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “I think we should delay any decisions until Ron tells us what’s so important,” Jeffery suggested to the others, who had heard what Ron said.

  He opened the door to his cabin and then went back to the table.

  A few moments later Ron came in and said, “I was running some ship diagnostics. One of those is a check of the ship’s chronometer. It compares our time with the time on Earth by picking up a time signal. The diagnostic takes our distance from Earth into its calculations and then compares the two. Normally any discrepancy is very small, less than a millisecond.

  However, when the test was run today it was off by three hours. I ran the diagnostic a second time and the results are the same. Time stopped on the ship for three hours.”

  Nobody said anything for a few seconds and then Jeffery said, “I won’t ask if you’re sure this information is correct because you wouldn’t be here if there was any doubt. Is there any way to find out what happened during that time?”

  “I don’t see any way to do that. It appears every system and person on the ship was frozen in time for three hours. In fact, I can’t even tell when the event started,” Ron replied.

  Jeffery, clearly concerned for the safety of the crew said, “So, the ship could have been boarded and inspected and we would never know! Obviously, we are dealing with technology far more advanced than our own, but I think they had no intention of harming us. They certainly could’ve done that and we would’ve been completely helpless. I want the ship thoroughly searched and let me know if anything, no matter how trivial it may appear, is out of place. Ron, your people know more about this ship than anybody else so you’re in charge of this task. I want a report in two hours.”

  “Yes sir,” Ron replied and he left.

  Jeffery, Debbie, and Mike went back to the bridge and Jeffery made an announcement. “As you all know by now, it appears our ship was scanned by the alien ship that was detected by our sensors. What you don’t know is that the encounter with the ship didn’t last just a few minutes. It actually lasted three hours, but for some unexplained reason, none of us were aware of it. I’ve instructed the ships maintenance staff to search the entire ship for any evidence we might have been boarded during that time. If any of you see anything that looks suspicious, please let me know immediately.”

  Jeffery sent a message to Earth informing them of the missing three hours. Then he looked at the rest of the people on the bridge and asked “Should we continue the mission, or should we go back to Earth? I don’t believe meeting with an alien ship was simply a chance encounter. I believe they knew we were here and I suspect these are the same beings that took the Ganymede probe.”

  Debbie said, “I agree meeting the alien ship wasn’t a coincidence. They want to know more about us, but I don’t think we’re in any danger. I don’t see any reason why we should cut the mission short.”

  “I agree, but I don’t want to provoke them. I don’t think we should do any more weapons testing,” Mike said.

  “All right, unless there’s another incident we’ll continue the mission as planned.”

  An hour later Jeffery’s com unit rang. It was Ron. “Hi Ron, do you have anything to report?”

  “Yes, I found something missing. We had five spare power modules; now there are only four. I know there were five because I took a major spare parts inventory before the ship launched. Additionally, when Toby went to get some parts to repair the oven two days ago he remembered seeing all five power modules.”

  “That’s interesting. There was a power module in the Ganymede probe too. I wonder if that’s what they want. Please continue your search.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jeffery sent a message to Earth: “I don’t believe we’re in any danger. However, it’s now apparent during the missing three hours the aliens were aboard the Star Rover. One of our spare power modules was taken. We’ll continue the mission as planned unless another incident occurs or you ask us to return immediately.”

  Since it would take over five hours for a message to reach Earth, they still had not received his first message, so Jeffery was not expecting a response anytime soon. He was hoping they wouldn’t order him to return immediately.

  Another hour went by before Ron reported that nothing else appeared to be missing.


  Eleven hours after the first message was sent, Jeffery received a message from Earth:

  “We received your message and video. Please continue the mission and keep us informed.”

  A few hours later another message was received. “We don’t understand how you could have lost three hours. Are you sure it wasn’t an error with the diagnostics?”

  Then Jeffery received a response to his last message. “We confirm you had five spare power modules when the Star Rover was launched, so if one is missing we agree with your conclusion the aliens took it. No one at NASA has any idea how to stop time, but several have expressed a desire to find out how it was done. Keep us informed of any new developments and check all onboard cameras to see if the caught anything digitally.”

  For the remainder of the mission there were no more incidents, so they headed back to Earth on schedule. While they were waiting for a shuttle to bring them to the station, Jeffery told the crew not to discuss the encounter with the alien ship with anybody, not even with each other. He also told them failure to follow his order would result in dismissal from the ship’s crew.

  When Jeffery stepped onboard the station he was not surprised to see Max waiting for him. Max didn’t say anything but motioned to both Jeffery and Debbie to come with him.

  They followed him to a small conference room. Max closed and locked the door so they would not be disturbed.

  “Okay, tell me what happened,” Max said.

  Jeffery responded, “To begin with, all we noticed was a brief power fluctuation and an external radiation sensor sounded an alarm. It was determined the radiation was very powerful and like an x-ray. I didn’t think any radiation could penetrate the ship’s shielding, but apparently, I was wrong. Since high power x-rays are not a natural occurrence, I asked Debbie to use our long-range scanner to look for anything that might have generated a radiation burst. The system found the alien ship and we sent you the video. Sometime later, Lieutenant Rice reported that the chronometer diagnostic indicated the ship’s time was off by three hours. He ran the diagnostic a second time with the same results. We decided it was possible the ship was boarded during the missing time. I asked Lieutenant Rice and his people to search the entire ship for anything that indicated the ship had been boarded. They found one of the power modules was missing. There were no additional incidents and the alien ship was never detected again. It is my opinion that these are the same beings who took the Ganymede probe and they took it to learn more about how the power module functions.”