SHEDDING LIGHT

by Michael Edelson

  “Okay, so I’ve told you how centrons have probable states, and those states can turn them into anything, right? Light, people…”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, so think about motion. Motion is a state. If you accelerate a particle to a certain velocity and then take away the acceleration force, that particle will remain in motion forever unless it is slowed by an external force or crashes into something. That particle requires no energy to maintain that velocity. The velocity is a part of that particle’s state.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Still with you.”

  “Good. So there are two ways to induce motion. The first is something like a rocket or a baseball. You use thrust to accelerate a rocket, and your arms to accelerate a baseball. The second is something like light. It is created with motion as a characteristic, and a very high probability characteristic. Nothing accelerates light. It is born, so to speak, moving at light speed.”

  “So a baseball needs an external force to move it, but light is just made moving fast?”

  “Right. That’s what the centron accelerator does. It takes the ship and everything in it and figures out how to change its state, adding velocity.”

  “So it’s like an engine or a nuclear reactor of some sort?”

  “No, the centron accelerator is a logic processor. What they used to call a quantum computer, using the thirty two predictable states of a negative polarity energy centron. It figures out the stimuli needed to coerce the centrons of the ship and its crew into a high enough probability of motion. The centron state inducer is what makes the actual change to the ship and crew through the mass interface, and everything is powered by the reactor. The coupling is what connects all the components. Without it, nothing works.” And no doubt that was why the saboteur had tried to break it.

  “I see,” she said, though he doubted she got it all. She seemed bright enough, but he knew it was a little too much for anyone to take in all at once. “Did you say the crew? It accelerates us?”

  “Yes, it induces a state of motion in us as well.”

  “So why do we need the acceleration capsules?”

  “Well,” he hesitated, not wanting to frighten her. “The whole process works very well, but it is very complicated, and sometimes there are minor glitches. That’s why we have to be in the capsules when the ship changes velocity. If we moved around the ship, and there was a fluctuation in the probability field…well, it would be bad.”

  “I see,” she said. “Is that what happened to my makeup kit? It made a huge mess in my room on our last run.”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “I assume so. Though I see you must have a spare.”

  “Always,” she said, smiling back. “A girl has to maintain appearances. So anyhow, what about the gravity?” she asked. “Why does that go out when the coupling fails?”

  “The centron accelerator also does the gravity, using similar principles. It’s not real gravity, but it simulates gravity by constantly moving us towards what we define as the bottom of the ship.”

  “So how does our reactor work? Where do we get our energy?”

  “I thought you only wanted to know about the FLT drive,” he protested. His mouth was dry and the water on the ship tasted terrible.

  “Did you not just tell me that the reactor is part of the FTL drive?” she demanded, jabbing at him with her pencil. “Do you now recant your words?”

  “Fine, fine. You did help me with the camera.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “It’s the same principle as the probability drive. We convert matter into energy directly by changing the states of the centrons. We can use anything as fuel, but the denser it is, the more efficiently we can store it. All of our waste products are converted to energy. When you go to the bathroom…”

  “Uh, thanks,” she interrupted. “That’s more than I need to know.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Okay, one last thing. What about the theory of relativity? And what about the little particles in space that could collide with us? How do we get around that?”

  He let out a long breath. He had a lot of work to do setting up the remaining cameras, and this wasn’t helping him get it done any faster. Carl was originally supposed to do it, but the captain had him sweeping the rest of ship looking for bombs.

  “Relativity only applies to conventional acceleration. We do not accelerate or decelerate. We merely change stationary particles into moving ones and bingo, we move. No time dilation, no speed limit. You called the capsules acceleration capsules, but they’re really hop capsules, because that’s what we do. We hop from one speed to the other. As for particles hitting the hull, the ship is surrounded by a pattern disrupting field, also a function of the probability drive, and it uses the same principles. Anything that collides with us is reduced to individual centrons, which are not a threat. We’re bombarded by light-speed centrons every time we turn on a light bulb.”

  “So we can go as fast as we want to? A billion times the speed of light?”

  “No. Our speed is limited by our pattern disruptor field, it can only protect us from a certain density of particulate matter. It’s also limited by the structural integrity of this ship, how much probability fluctuation it can withstand, and by our reactor’s ability to contain the power it creates. Listen, I really don’t have time to get into it any further, Miss, um, Debbie…”

  “That’s fine. I have enough for now. I’ll come find you when I don’t.”

  She turned to go, and before he could stop himself he blurted out “Hey, I don’t suppose you can help me set up the rest of the cameras?”

  She stopped, turning slowly to face him. “Okay,” she said, looking at him strangely. “I guess I can do that.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “HERE YOU GO, PROFESSOR.” Jack handed Merrick a data pad with the calculations that had kept him up half of his sleep cycle.

  “What are these?” Merrick took the pad, squinting at the small screen. Jack wanted to kill him. Five hours of work and he couldn’t even remember what he’d asked for.

  “The observation window data?” Jack reminded him, suppressing his irritation.

  “Oh yes!” Merrick said. “Terribly sorry, I forgot all about it. Yes, of course, the data. I’ll need to enter these into the computer. I’ve decided not to stop and look after all, but to record on the fly. A snapshot every few months or so. Light months, not our months.”

  “But why?” Jack asked, puzzled. “We can only maintain like a half AU field while in motion. You won’t be able to see nearly as much—”

  Merrick coughed, interrupting him. “Can I trust you, Commander? To keep something from the others?”

  The question made Jack very nervous.

  “Um, that all depends…”

  “No, no. It’s just about my work.”

  “Oh,” Jack said, relieved. For a second there he’d been afraid the professor was about to confess. “Sure.”

  “Good.” Merrick nodded, apparently deep in thought. “I’ve decided to pursue a slightly different slant, and with the saboteur on board, I don’t want it to get around. I’ve spoken to Jonathan, of course, but I need you in on it so that no one asks too many questions about the changes in our flight plan.”

  “I guess I can keep it to myself, whatever it is. As long as it’s not something that the captain would need to know.”

  The professor smiled and nodded. “Excellent. You see, I’ve decided no more fooling around. I’m going for the big fish.”

  “Big fish? What could be bigger than what we’re doing?”

  “I want to discredit the bible.” He paused, staring at Jack intently.

  Jack hesitated. “Isn’t that what we’re doing here already?” he asked, feeling a bit irritated. He never had much use for God or religion, so the concept didn’t bothered him, but he didn’t think it was a good idea for Merrick to be so happy about it. Some of the others might not be so understanding.

  “No,” Merrick said with a shake of his head. “Not direc
tly, not until now. You see it’s hard for us to see anything useful, since we don’t know exactly where to look. We can’t hear anything, and can only see a few hours a day for a few months out of the year. We can’t see who shot Kennedy unless the assassination happened during a viable observation window, and only if that window covered that part of the world. Even then, the sky would have to be clear, the light patterns well preserved. That scene with the workers was one in a thousand. Most of what we see is too garbled to zoom in that close.

  “We came here to see if we could see anything at all, and we can. But before going home, I want to bring something back, something big. I want to bring proof that the bible is poppycock. If, in fact, it is.”

  “But how will you do that?” Jack asked. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because we won’t see any miracles, doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. Sure, it would be nice to see the Israelites crossing the Red Sea on rafts, but what are the odds we could pinpoint the crossing at all?”

  “Interesting you should mention Exodus.” Merrick smiled, narrowing his eyes. “That is one of two areas I plan to focus on. If we can take just one major event out of the bible and discredit it with evidence of a contrary reality, that would show that the bible is at least partly blatantly false. It’s one thing to say that the plagues Moses brought to Egypt can be explained by natural phenomenon, but what if we prove there were no plagues, that there was no Moses? Such absolute falsities would undermine the credibility of the entire book.”

  “That makes sense,” Jack agreed. “But I still don’t understand how it’s possible. As you said, the limitations on what we can see…”

  “Well,” Merrick said, playing with Jack’s data pad as he talked. “I have a viable theory from the last set of interval shots we took, but I need more data before I can formalize it. I don’t want to share this till I’m certain.”

  “What’s the other thing? You mentioned two?”

  “Right,” Merrick said. “For that I’ll need your help. Is there a limit to how far we can go? How fast?”

  “Sure there is. We can only—”

  “I don’t need to know the details,” Merrick interrupted. “Just tell me how far out we can get in a few days, pushing the ship to the max, so to speak. I need to come to a complete stop, as far away as you can get us.”

  Jack thought about it. “The last bearing I sighted down had a clear shot for quite a while, so if we max out our speed we can probably get about four hundred thousand light years from Earth after the next hop without another sighting. There’s just one little problem with that.”

  “What is it?”

  “That will take us well outside the Milky Way.”

  Merrick blinked. “Leave the galaxy? We can do that?”

  Jack shrugged. “There’s no reason why we can’t. In fact it’s much easier to navigate out there, provided we don’t go too far out and get lost.” He almost shook his head as he said it. For almost a hundred years since Yuri Gagarin broke free of the atmosphere, mankind was stuck in Earth Orbit, then the solar system. The Venture was the first manned spacecraft to leave those confines for anything other than a test run and the distance it could travel was mind blowing. The universe had opened up practically overnight. If he managed to get the ship back in one piece, he could be a part of the greatest era of exploration in the history of mankind.

  “Will the captain approve that?” Merrick asked, looking uncertain.

  “I don’t know,” Jack admitted. “We had days and days of mission briefings, but nobody mentioned leaving the damned galaxy. I mean there’s absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t, except the obvious.”

  “Obvious?”

  “The further we get, the more difficult it will be to find our way back. I can handle it with a single hop, but after we get there I’ll want to get us right back where we belong as soon as I can.”

  “Will fuel be a problem?”

  Jack shook his head. “Not even an issue. Even if we run out we can feed chairs and other crap into the converter. The amount of energy in even a single gram—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” Merrick said impatiently. “One more thing, commander. For the short hop, can you keep everyone in the capsules while we coast? I don’t want to give the saboteur a chance to strike until I get my data.”

  “I guess,” Jack said, cringing at the thought of so much time in induced sleep. “I’ll have to ask the captain, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have a problem with it.”

  “Good. If the captain approves, please plot the course, after we complete the data gathering for the course you just gave me.”

  “I still don’t understand why,” Jack said. “Most people don’t interpret the bible literally. Disproving something that’s supposed to be a morality tale isn’t going to change anything.”

  “I agree completely,” Merrick said, his eyes burning with intensity. “First, Exodus is not the only fish I plan to fry, but more on that later, once I’m sure. Second, I have nothing against religion, when it’s approached rationally. Some of my closest friends and most respected colleagues believe that God created the world, but they believe he did so through science, evolution, geology. It’s not their faith I’m going after.”

  “Who then, the fundamentalists?”

  “Yes. Those who believe in Adam and Eve, that God literally created the world in six days and that Satan buried dinosaur bones to tempt people to disbelieve. Not to get them to change their minds, because they won’t, but to expose them before the world as the frauds and imbeciles that they are.” Merrick’s lip curled into a snarl. “And if those bastards are going to try to stop us from learning the truth, I’ll do everything in my power to shove it down their throats.”

  Jack nodded. In this, he and the professor were in full agreement.

  * * * * *

  THE OBSERVATION LOUNGE WAS a luxury only a ship like the Venture could afford. Designed around the size of the probability field, the ship had a lot more space than was absolutely necessary for bare survival. The Venture had ample storage, individual crew quarters, and, of course, the lounge with its fancy ThruVue panel.

  Jack poured himself a cup of tea and sat on the vinyl-covered settee. He leaned back, relaxing, taking in the view. Nearly every surface on the ship was metallic, multiple alloys of stainless steel, titanium and aluminum. Initially the smooth matte surfaces impressed him with an austere and sterile calm, but the cold metal sheen inevitably replaced those feelings with an oppressive monotony. The stark blackness of space with the vivid glimmer of distant stars was a welcome and invigorating change of scenery.

  “You again,” Debbie’s voice cut through the calm. “Don’t you get tired of following me around?” Strolling over to the drink dispensers, she poured herself a cup of dark black coffee and sat down on the other side of the settee, as far from him as possible.

  “Don’t you get tired of being so snooty?” he asked. Not for the first time, he’d wished her personality was as attractive as the rest of her.

  She frowned. “How am I snooty?”

  “Well,” he began, taking a sip of his tea. “Every time I try to have a normal conversation with you, all I get are snide remarks. Unless of course you want something from me.”

  “You’ve been trying to have a normal conversation with me?” She flashed him a coy grin. “I hadn’t noticed. Maybe you’re just a clumsy conversationalist.”

  “That’s what I mean. Why can’t you say anything without an insult in it?”

  “Alright. Let’s talk. Is it true we’re actually leaving the galaxy?”

  He frowned. He had spoken to the captain only a few minutes before. How the hell had she found out so fast?

  “Yeah,” he said. “The captain just approved it.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “No, not unless I really screw up and get us lost. It’s really no different from being in the galaxy, except there are less things to crash into.”

  “You’re n
ot gonna screw up, are you?”

  “I’ll try not to,” he said. “See, it’s not so bad to have a normal conversation.”

  “This is not really a conversation,” she said. “I’m asking questions about the expedition. If you actually want to talk, you’ll have to ask me something personal.”

  “Okay,” he said, deciding to give it a shot. “Are you scared? I mean with the bomb and all? You’re the only one that seems unaffected.”

  “There’s really no point in being scared. The situation is out of my hands.”

  “Come on,” he protested. “You can do better than that.”

  “Fine,” she said, blowing air from between her lips. “A little bit, when I’m around some of the others. Not the professor though, or you.”

  “Why not me? I could be the saboteur. I’m the only one here not chosen for the mission.”

  “Call it woman’s intuition,” she said, smiling. “Besides, the fact that you’re here almost accidentally makes you the least likely party.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It makes it less likely that someone planned to have you aboard. You weren’t even on the auxiliary roster.”

  “Gee thanks,” he replied gloomily. “I feel better now.” Salt in the wound.

  “Cheer up,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s what counts.”

  “Yeah,” he said, unconvinced. “I’ll go down in history as the only man on the first interstellar voyage who didn’t belong there.”

  “Is this your idea of conversation? Feeling sorry for yourself?” Before he could reply, she said, “How did you get to be here, anyway?”

  He exhaled slowly, leaning further back in his seat.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well in that case,” she said. “I have to run. I have an appointment with my hairdresser. You’re the one that wanted to talk, remember?”

  “Fine, I guess we have nothing better to do.” He did feel like talking about it, getting it off his chest, but he felt as though he was just giving her more fuel to taunt him. Still, for some reason, he wanted her to know.