by S F Chapman
Jana suppressed the tightening sense of dread that threatened to overwhelm her. “What do you want us to do, Mr. Gristle?” she asked cheerily.
“Our employer would like you fabricate some devices using those matter/antimatter pairings that we brought along from the Moon lab.”
“OH,” she nodded, “I’m sure we could do that for you guys.”
Jana’s heart was racing; the pirates would almost certainly want her to produce some sort of small and very destructive weapons with the dangerous and finicky materials. If she could win their confidence to the point that they became lax about overseeing her, she might be able to thwart their efforts.
Far down the passageway, Jana could hear Boz jostling about with one of the bulkhead doors.
• • •
Bosco shoved the two young deckhands out of the way as he blustered into the large compartment, “I told you morons to stay away from this friggin’ thing!” He studied the robust basketball-sized sphere clamped into the launching fixture of the deployment bay.
“It’s worth more than both of you lowlifes put together.”
His hands slid over the warm smooth surface of the object, it had an odd magnetic-like quality that clamped his palms firmly to it. Boz couldn’t fathom why the contents of the orb behaved in this way, but he savored the strange sensation nevertheless.
The deckhands watched with some amusement as the burly second in command struggled to jerk his hands away from the device.
Boz floated to the storage rack and studied the profusion of messenger tugs that were kept there. An unforeseen benefit of hijacking a ship that was outfitted as a delivery vessel was the large supply of the tiny expendable vehicles onboard that were used to nudge packages from the passing ship to customers waiting below on the surface of a planet or moon.
He selected the smallest long-distance/dense atmosphere tug on the rack. Boz pried open the hatch of the grapefruit-sized robot and entered the destination coordinates. He sealed the device and pressed it against the larger object sitting in the launch fixture. The two machines clung together.
Bosco smiled briefly at the interlocked spheres before gesturing towards the door.
The crewman followed him obediently out of the deployment bay.
• • •
Jana pressed the ‘send’ button in panic.
She stared at the open hatchway as Olin Gristle propelled himself back into the control room. He had been gone for perhaps a minute, but she had managed to squirm awkwardly around and hastily tap out a message on the communication console. Hopefully it was on its way to the intended recipient right now.
Jana smiled innocently to the Captain as he returned, but fortunately he was preoccupied with the handheld display that he carried.
After several seconds of holding her breath in fear, she finally relaxed; apparently she’d gotten away with the little misdeed.
A worn-out old crewman peered into the control room.
“Excuse me, Sir,” the scarred and grizzled pirate beckoned, “we have the men prisoners.”
Captain Gristle waved them into the cramped room.
The elderly crewman led the downcast chain gang consisting of four of her colleagues from the Lab into the pilothouse. The first was an unlucky janitor who happened to be in the Containment Facility when the kidnappers had forced their entry.
Jana studied the others with dismay.
Her gifted assistant Erik seemed to have suffered some sort of breakdown; his terror-stricken eyes leapt around with swirling incomprehension. A chubby teenage intern stared pleadingly at her; the poor fellow had arrived at the Lab about a week before the catastrophe. The last of the miserable lot was Ramesh, a haphazardly grad student who had helped out with her research. He grinned briefly in recognition as he was pulled roughly past her.
The old pirate prodded the shackled newcomers into a tight group around Jana.
Boz appeared at the hatchway and nodded to Gristle, “It’s ready.”
The Captain rubbed his chin hesitantly before operating several switches on the control panel. An alarm sounded for several seconds before a faint whirring pervaded the Butin Belle.
When a green indicator flashed, Captain Gristle looked up at the hapless hostages, “With that task complete, we can get on with other misdoings.” He surveyed the tattered group. “I hope that the cruise has been a pleasant one.”
“Well....” Ramesh started.
Jana shook her head in alarm and he stifled any further comment.
Gristle glared at the man before continuing, “You are now slaves and you will be treated as such. Misbehavior on your part will result in torture or death.” He balled his fist and struck Ramesh hard in the stomach.
The young man doubled over in agony.
The others watched in horrified silence.
“Shortly,” Gristle continued, “you will be transferred onto the Xenon Lightning where you will beginning producing several items required by our employer.”
Bosco chuckled cynically at the hatchway.
The Captain stared ominously at Jana, “I expect nothing less than your full cooperation.”
17. News Item: New speed standard announced
Dateline: 6th of July, 2445; Free City, Earth
With spacecraft speeds climbing ever higher and a confusing hodgepodge of systems to measure that velocity still persisting from the early days of space travel, The Free City Standards Committee has announced a new and definitive benchmark for indicating spacecraft speeds.
Upon the hoped for universal adoption of the standard, gone forever will be such arcane and archaic nomenclature such as kilometers per second, knots, parsecs per year or even the ancient miles per hour still used in the backwaters of the Outer Reaches.
After years of exhaustive study and no small amount of machinations, the Committee announced that the standard of spacecraft speed measurement will be Astronomical Units per year or more simply AU/yr.
Some variation of Astronomical Units have been used by Astronomers since the time of the ancient Greeks. Nearly all young students of the sciences in Free City know that an Astronomical Unit is the approximate mean distance from the Sun to the Earth, or a little less than 150 million kilometers.
The new system easily accommodates the leisurely lunar escape velocity of 0.8 AU/yr, the customary traveling speed of most space freighters at about 16 AU/yr and the blistering velocities of the newest fast interceptors of over 45 AU/yr.
If approved by the Warlord Syndicate and the Free City Spacecraft Authority, the new standard will take full effect by the 9th of April 2450.
18. The ripple “There’s one,” Dr. Carla Stuhr pointed to the dappled and brightly colored image on the monitor.
Lev nodded, “OK, I see it.”
In the dimly lit basement workroom, both Ryo and Keira strained to detect the indistinguishable irregularity.
Finally the old Investigator shrugged, “You got me, what are we looking for here?”
“Now I lost it,” Carla admitted sheepishly. The fledgling Gravitational Astronomer adjusted the sensitivity and the image exploded into a chaotic mosaic of vivid specks. She gently manipulated the controls until the countless colored dots merged into larger irregular splotches.
“There, that’s better.” The tall brown haired scientist turned to the visitors in triumph, “I bumped into Lev several days ago and he mentioned that he was helping out with your investigation of the Lab disaster.”
“I told Dr. Stuhr that we weren’t having much luck tracking down the pirates who were apparently at the Lab just before the explosion,” Lev interjected.
Carla laughed girlishly, “It seems so strange when you call me Dr. Stuhr, sweetie.”
Lev blushed.
“How is it that you two know each other?” Ryo asked.
Keira rubbed her forehead in distaste at the nauseatingly flirtatious pair.
Carla grinned, “We dated for awhile, then I moved in with him for about six months. It wasn�
�t particularly serious.”
“Why am I not surprised,” Keira muttered to herself.
Lev kissed Carla’s cheek; “She finally traded me in for someone else.”
Ryo spent several seconds studying each of the three young people in room, “Alright then; back to the matter at hand. Please explain the significance of the abstract art on the screen, Dr. Stuhr.”
“What we’re looking at is an enhanced false color image of gravitational waves propagating through the Solar System.”
Keira grimaced, “Gravitational waves?”
“The physics involved is really complicated,” Lev admitted. “Mmm, you need to know something about Space-Time for this to make any sense.”
“That’s true,” Carla nodded, “I’d forgotten that most people have never heard of it.”
Ryo and Keira shared the same befuddled look.
Lev smiled, “It’s not that bad, Albert Einstein was remarkably good at using simple analogies to explain parts of the theories of relativity. So imagine a bed sheet pulled tightly over a frame.”
Ryo tipped his head slightly and Keira frowned.
“This could be an overly simplified two-dimensional version of four-dimensional Space-Time. If we place an object like a bowling ball on the fabric, the mass of the object bends the sheet just as a star or a planet ‘bends’ Space-Time.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” the old Investigator stroked his chin.
“A small object like a asteroid barely bends the fabric,” Lev continued, “a really massive star creates a significant distortion that extends far beyond. Gravity is the bending or warping of Space-Time.”
“What does this have to do with gravitational waves?” Keira scowled.
“So far, in the sheet analogy,” Carla chuckled, “our bowling ball is at rest. Out there in the Universe, everything is moving.”
“This is my favorite part,” Lev grinned. “If I nudge the bowling ball and it rolls around on our tightly stretched sheet, it bends the fabric around it as it moves causing distinctive waves or ripples that effect anything that is nearby. If it passes near a smaller ball, the little guy will fall into orbit around the bigger one. The same thing happens in space with stars, planets and moons; even galaxies. Moving objects with mass cause ripples in Space-Time that we can detect as gravitational waves.”
Ryo slowly smiled, “OK, I see how that works.”
“For centuries,” Carla tapped idly at colorful image on the display screen, “we knew that gravitational waves existed, but they are so faint that we couldn’t detect them.”
“Just in the last thirty years,” Lev interjected, “the University finally developed a really good Gravitational Observatory satellite which peers down from way above the center of the Solar System. The equipment in the Astronomy Lab filters out the nearly overpowering gravitational waves from the sun, the planets and all of the larger moons, leaving just the small and really strange stuff that zips about through space.”
Carla smiled in triumph, “That’s what I work with as the junior researcher for the Solar System Gravitational Anomalies Project.”
Ryo shook his head in confusion, “I still have no idea of how this connects to our investigation.”
“I’m sorry,” Carla apologized, “Lev has a way of knocking me off track. As we just talked about with the sheet analogy, when mass moves through Space-Time it causes a distortion or bending that we see here as a ripple; the higher the mass and speed, the bigger the ripple or wave. Currently our research group is looking at the high speed and high mass exosolar particles that constantly stream through the Solar System.”
Lev interrupted the Astronomer, “Tiny fast moving bits of really heavy junk that get spit out of big stars when they explode.”
Keira squinted at the brightly colored screen, “Is there much of that stuff whizzing around?”
“There are always some massive particles. If a star supernovas in our section of the galaxy, the constant trickle turns into a torrent for a few weeks.” Carla’s fingers glided over the speckled screen, “We can’t detect high speed electrons or muons, mainly because their mass is so low, but we can spot nearly anything else, especially if it is moving at more than a couple of kilometers per second.
Ryo scrutinized the image, “What’s that little trail?”
Dr. Stuhr glanced at the monitor, “Judging by the color and the slight curve of the tracing, I’d guess it’s most likely a few alpha particles that are zipping along at about a third of the speed of light. We can request a detailed velocity and mass analysis if you want to know for sure.”
“I think we’re OK,” Ryo smiled at the scientist. “What is it that you found for us, Ms Stuhr?”
“Ah, I recorded a peculiar observation about a month ago,” Carla summoned a new image to the screen, “I was right in the middle of a transitional metal ion study at the time, so I saved it for future scrutiny.”
A fuzzy and slowly moving group of a few sparkling yellow and orange specks produced a noticeable wrinkling of the surrounding gray and brown mottled background on the display.
“This is not normal,” she assured them. “None of the other researchers has ever seen anything like it. The tight grouping of the dots and the relatively slow speed suggests that this is a spacecraft carrying a small quantity of unusually dense material.”
“Maybe it’s a bulk freighter loaded with Uranium?” Keira wondered.
“It seems to be a much smaller ship with just a tiny amount of stuff onboard that’s really heavy.”
Lev tapped at the brightly shimmering cloud on the screen, “What’s the density of these little guys, Carla?”
She toggled the controls to freeze the image and several numbers appeared next to the splotches. “This one has a density of about 32,000 grams per cubic centimeter and is moving along at 120 kilometers per second.”
“Wow!” Lev exclaimed. “I recall that Uranium is only about 19 grams per cubic centimeter.”
“What is this then?” Ryo pondered.
“Could it be a cluster of mini black holes?” Lev guessed.
“No, that would be so rare as to be unheard of,” Carla concluded, “even the smallest black hole would warp Space-Time much more than these things. The gravitational effects upon everything in the Solar System would also be quite noticeable. This is something else.”
“Neutron-degenerate matter maybe,” Lev asked hopefully.
“Neutron what?” Keira asked.
“The super compact material that makes up Neutron stars, and no it’s considerably less condensed than that.” Carla made several calculations and frowned, “The density of this particular speck here works out to be roughly equivalent a grain of sand with a mass of a bowling ball.”
“So it’s probably some really weird super heavy ordinary matter,” Lev nodded.
Ryo squinted at the fuzzy image, “I believe that’s what they were cooking up at the Ultra Energy Lab.”
“Exactly,” Carla smiled, “that’s why I thought you’d be interested in this information.”
“Where was this load of strange and possibly stolen cargo headed?” the old Investigator asked.
“Unfortunately we only captured a few hours of observations weeks ago and we haven’t seen anything since, perhaps because they’ve stopped moving; I’d guess the Asteroid Belt in the vicinity of Lutetia.” She tapped her fingertip against her forehead, “But they could be as far away as Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids at this point.”
“Thanks, it’s not much to go on,” Ryo sighed.
The warble of a communication device interrupted the group discussion. Lev stared at his display in disbelief.
“What is it?” Keira asked in concern.
“It must be a joke,” Lev frowned, “although I’m not sure who would be this cruel.”
Ryo gently twisted the taciturn man’s hand around and slowly read the short message aloud, “LEV...I...ON...BU...BEL, MA.”
Lev squinted his now misty eyes. “It’s
my mom,” he stared at the tiny screen with growing resolve, “she’s still alive!”
Ryo pried the device from the man and methodically checked the particulars of the cryptic dispatch, “It was sent about twenty-five minutes ago from an unidentified source somewhere near the boundary of the Outer Reaches.”
“Ryo,” Keira stared at the old Investigator, “Could ‘BU BEL’ be the Butin Belle?”
He hoisted the communication device up in front of the frozen image of the unusual ripple in Space-Time that they had been studying in earnest. “Yes, I suspect that we’ve just stumbled upon two clues here.”
During the next twenty minutes, Keira uploaded Carla’s information to the Inquisitor's Office and Ryo contacted Helga to share the startling new evidence.
Lev stood stiffly considering the ramifications of the revelations amidst the burst of activity.
When she had finished her work, Keira pulled gently at Lev’s sleeve and he hesitantly followed her to the door.
“Dr. Stuhr,” Ryo turned towards the helpful young Astronomer as the group of investigators shuffled out of the workroom, “please let me know right away if you spot anything like this again.”
19. Hot on the trail Ryo regarded the sparkling trove of billions of stars with interest through the generous front windows of the new craft. He had rarely been in space and with each visit its cold stark beauty had amazed him.
This trip was no exception.
Weeks had dashed by since Dr. Stuhr had alerted them to the peculiar gravitational readings in an obscure section of the Asteroid Belt and Lev had received the unusual message from his mother.
Helga had insisted that Ryo and his team of lucky young cohorts should track down the Butin Belle which now seemed likely to contain Jana Fesai, the fugitive pirates and apparently a cache of stolen materials from the Lunar Lab.
To his left, pressed into the Second Mate’s seat by the brisk acceleration of the ship, Lev gazed out at the celestial vista. Ryo had noticed that the young man had been clumsily striving to avoid watching Keira as she busied herself at the controls of the impressive and speedy new law enforcement interceptor called the Seiran.
