Starship X-15

by Alan VanMeter

  “Wait, I have to use the restroom. Ohhh…yeahh…uhhh. There we go. That’s nice and wet and warm.” I chuckle. “So you were saying?”

  I hear him sigh heavily. “I was telling you that I just got promoted, that’s all.”

  “Wait… uhhh… a couple more little squirts, sorry. Now what were you… oh yeah. You just got promoted. Wow, you sure must know someone.” I laugh.

  “Oh god, my balls hurt.” He says with resignation.

  “Hey now! I wasn’t inviting or anything cowboy. You’re getting a little too personal there pardner.” I taunt him.

  “From you freaking busting them bitch!” he growls, as if in pain.

  I take a moment to let him cool down. “I’m just kidding Rick, I’m not trying to bust your balls dude. Just thought we could have our tense banter for fun. You know, because it is a long flight and everything.”

  “That’s what you call fun?” His voice is full of angst.

  “Sure. What do you call fun dude?”

  “Not that!”

  “Well, what then?” I persist.

  “Shit! You know… fun stuff. River rafting, skydiving, mountain climbing, the exciting fun stuff.”

  “Damn Rick. I didn’t know that you had it in you, son. That is some wild shit there. Hell I figured you for a pansy-ass. You know a lily-livered runt, as it were.” I mock the hell out of him, and I don’t really know why. “But that is actually real man type fun isn’t it? Did you ever do any of that stuff, really?” I sound doubtful, and challenging at the same time.

  “I’m not going to make it Devon. Tell my mother that I love her. This is Lieutenant Commander Rick Hobart signing off.”

  I see him touch a control with his strapped down wrist, and the intercom goes dead. I start yelling all kinds of obscenities at him, but he can’t hear me. I know a dead channel when I hear one.

  The intercom is still off, and it has been two hours plus since Rick cut me off. I guess I was a little hard on the tyke. I don’t know why he sets me off so. It is like I’m a tigress and he is some weak helpless prey for me to kill, and eat. Damn, I think I might just have some psych issues, maybe. It is so damned fun though! Or was rather.

  As I am stewing in my own juices, literally, or at least in the drops of pee the pump didn’t extract from my suit. Suddenly the ship is violently jolted, and it begins to spin, our weight being oddly thrown here and there as we spin. I see Rick unstrap his arms, and hurriedly tap some controls. The intercom is still dead, but I holler anyhow. I get lighter and it gets hotter. This continues as if we are making a dimensional penetration, but we are already in the fourth dimension, trans-dimensional. At least the exterior of the ship is.

  Rick is doing all kinds of manipulations of the craft’s controls, and then finally the intercom crackles to life.

  “This is a bit more than just some trans-dimensional turbulence here Devon. I am cutting the drive in five, four, three…”

  “What happens then?” I shout.

  “Two…one. Quantum drive is disengaging to shut down. Don’t worry, whatever it is won’t affect us in normal space.” He is near shouting.

  “Dropping temporal velocity now. Panel one opening in three, two, one… What the hell?”

  I do feel heavier for a moment, but that doesn’t seem right to me. Yeah… That’s backwards from normal.

  “We aren’t losing temporal velocity! Panel two should be opening now, but the first panel hasn’t popped yet. Something’s wrong!” Rick is very excited sounding, or panicked.

  We stop spinning as the drive shuts down, and the ship finally seem to orient to a direction.

  “Panel’s still aren’t popping open! That means we are still at trans-dimensional temporal velocity. I don’t know what is going on Devon!” Rick’s voice is definitely panicked.

  I too am a little freaked out. I start to feel lighter again, and the heat comes with it.

  “We are accelerating in temporal velocity, but the drive is shut down, right?”

  “Affirmative.” He says shakily.

  My mind races, what the hell could propel a ship at trans-dimensional temporal velocity, all by itself? God? Oh right, that doesn’t exist. Angels, or rather the Legacy? Sure they could, but why? No, it has to be a natural phenomenon, but what?

  “Rick, we are going for a ride it seems, by what I don’t know, but we don’t have any control over it, right?”

  “No we don’t it seems.” He agrees.

  “Maybe the panels will pop in a little bit then.” I offer.

  “Yeah… I hope so.”

  Two hours later the panels haven’t budged. This means that the gravitonic pressure on the exterior of the ship is still so very slight. Meaning we are still in trans-dimensional travel.

  “Rick, I think we might just be up the river without a paddle here.” I sigh.

  “I can engage the drive again and see what happens.”

  I think about that. “Hey… that’s worth a try. Why not?”

  When he does it just makes us way lighter, and way hotter too. Then everything gets real weird, and I can’t tell where I am. Things are like in each other, no…something else. I can’t tell if something is in front of, or behind something else. I’m way too hot, and my vision stretches as if smeared across my eyes. Rick backs the drive throttle down and disengages it.

  “That was way too freaking weird for me now. Don’t do that again.” I demand of him.

  “We can’t do that. It just seems to makes us go faster in time. You know the weight loss and heat feeling I’m sure.”

  “Shit! I hated that show from the sixties, they used to show re-runs of it all the time.” I growl.

  “What show?”

  “Lost in Space. Freaking Doctor Smith was a flaming pedophile… always taking poor Will by the hand, behind the rocks. The Robot tried to warn them you know.”

  “You are the very strangest person I have ever met.” He tells me straight up.

  “Looks like you may just be stuck with me Commander.”

  “Lieutenant Commander.” He corrects.

  “Whatever.”

  Eventually I fall asleep again, even in the sweltering heat. I know I might not wake up again, hell there’s a good chance I won’t. I don’t really care though. I am going out with all true glory. One of the first space explorers…Yeah!

  “Stanley! Stanley!” I am rousted from my slumber. “Devon! Wake up!”

  “Oh… it’s you Hobart. I thought I had died and gone to hell.”

  He sighs. “We have slowed our temporal velocity some…feel the cooler body?”

  I do notice that I am more comfortable, cooler wise. “Yeah.”

  “The panels still haven’t popped open, but at least this is easier to live with.” He chuckles half-heartedly.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “About six hours, inner hull time.”

  “I’m wiped out man. I have no energy.” I say with a thick tongue.

  “Me either. We have to do something Devon, but I don’t know what.”

  An idea just comes right into the very middle of my head. Fluid.

  “Wait! This is a movement of time-space fluid Rick. Maybe like a jet stream on earth.”

  “A galactic jet stream of time-space fluid?”

  “Yeah!”

  He ponders it. “Sure, why not?”

  “Right on!” I squeal.

  “Okay, so what do we do about it?”

  “Well, since we seem to be caught in a jet stream, maybe we can maneuver out of it?” I offer.

  “Yeah… that sound’s right. Only thing is… which way do we go? I can’t activate any external sensors in trans-dimensional flight, so we have to guess I suppose.”

  “Okay then. You choose, left, or right.” I agree.

  “Or up or down too, and any vector in between.” He reminds me.

  “Oh yeah. Well, pick one cowboy, and giddy up!”

  “We’ll go with hard right maneuvering thrusters from the bow, the
y are the only ones I can activate in hyper-time. Then I will engage the main drive.”

  “Right.” I nod with mock bravado. He only sees my helmet nodding though.

  “We are activating maneuvering drive in three, two, one… Full thrusters, hard starboard!” He yells in the intercom.

  I feel much more weight on my body, and at an angular direction. At the same time I finally cool off some. The hull shudders violently as if it is buffeting against unseen powerful forces. Oh god… this thing is going to come apart! It is vibrating and shuddering so violently.

  “Full main drive throttle now!” Rick yells over the shaking, straining noise of the hull.

  The ship sounds like it is tearing apart and then it quakes with a snapping clank, suddenly the only noise is a squealing subtle vibration.

  We both look at each other, but our faces are somewhat hidden in the helmets.

  “Powering down main drive.” He goes back to the controls. “We should know if that worked in a minute when the panels start to open… hopefully.”

  “We can’t be too far off course, right Rick?”

  “Actually we probably are. Remember that for every minute of interior time we experienced, the exterior travelled point three light years… if we were at normal trans-dimensional velocity that is, and I have a feeling…”

  He looks around at the myriad of displays. “The first panel should be opening any second now.”

  The ship suddenly buffets from an unseen force, and we feel much more weight on us, and cold.

  “That sure felt like an event horizon being breeched, but the panels aren’t opening!” He sounds real worried.

  “What happens if they don’t open at all Rick?”

  He looks at me. “They have to. Otherwise we can’t get out.”

  “Lost in space, and stuck in this ship? Nope, I’ll pry the bastards open if I have to.” I growl.

  A green light begins to blink on the control board.

  “Panel one opening in three, two, one!”

  The weight evaporates and the cold is instantly replaced with harsh tingling, then burning fire. The air hoses gush cold air.

  My groans drown Rick’s out in my ears.

  It takes a few long seconds before we adjust, and the pain goes away.

  “Good, we’re finally decelerating.” Rick sounds joyful even. I can’t say I would disagree with that feeling. Shortly the next panel opens, and we go through the process all over again. Finally all the panels are popped then Rick opens the view ports, and external cameras.

  “Alright, now that we’re back in normal space, just where the hell are we?” He gets busy with the star chart data base, and has the computer look for possible correlations, and identifiable stars.

  “Well I guess we are lucky in one respect Devon. It’s a good thing you are a Stellar Cartographer. Let me unstrap you, and then I’ll help you figure out our position.”

  I’m screwed. We’re screwed. I used to have a hard time finding the same grocery store that I always went to! Shit, I know I’ve studied this stuff. Now I had better remember it all.

  We take our helmets off to see better, and then we get to it.

  “All we need are two recognizable stars. We can triangulate from that.” I try to sound confident.

  “The computer is using the optical scopes to try to find possible matches right now. Let’s see what it comes up with, and go from there.” Rick smiles at me for the first time since the trip began.

  After an hour the computer still hasn’t found a single possible correlation to any known stars. It has checked only about a third of the eternal night around us though. I start thinking about the possibility that we will not be able to fix our location. What then? We die? No! Giving up is not in the plan at all, nope. We find somewhere we can live, that would be next, if we can’t find home.

  “Hey Rick, just how much fuel do we have anyway?”

  “Let’s see… our current fuel pellet is eighty percent consumed, and we have two more full pellets.”

  “Only two? Why so few?”

  “They are very expensive to make, and so Star Command rations them pretty carefully.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Right at this moment I am in complete agreement Devon.” He gives me a grin.

  Two hours later the computer has scanned the local heavens all around us, and has only come up with two possible matches to known stars. I check it out myself with the telescope camera. The possible matches may be Kaus Austrailis, and Kaus Borealis. I am looking at what the computer guesses might be Kaus Austrailis.

  “We have a blue spectrum all right, but… oh shit, the hydrogen lines are weak. It’s an O class, not a B. It’s not a match at all, and that means neither is the other.”

  Rick is silent, seemingly thinking. Then he pipes up. “Okay then, what’s the nearest star? Or the closest G or K class star. Best chance of finding a habitable planet.” He now looks determined. Now I know he’s not a quitter, or a panicky person. I nod and go to work.

  It only takes me twenty minutes before I have a good candidate chosen.

  “Check this one out Rick. G class with a high visual magnitude, and it has hardly any red-shift to it. My estimate is that it is two point three six light years distant. Oh, and see these tiny little stars near it. Those are planets Rick. One of them has oxygen spectral lines.” My excitement is hard to contain. This is our best bet.

  “I have the coordinates feeding into the navigation system now. Let’s get back into our helmets and strap in. The fuel pellet in the drive should be more than enough for that short of a flight.”

  We close up the equalization panels, and accelerate to quantum temporal velocity again, but this time the ride is smooth, though still very painful as always. The drive automatically shuts down after we transit approximately two point three light years distance. When we can open up the view port; the camera shows that we are in the unknown system, ten AU from the nearest planet. It is not the one with the oxygen in the spectral lines. That planet, the fourth from the star, is our target. However it is fort five AU distant. This means we have to close up some of the equalization panels again and take a sub-quantum leap. We are there with in several hours, and discover that the world has an Earth similar atmosphere, and water. We also see much green color, indicating life.

  “The atmosphere is breathable, gravity slightly less than Earth normal, and there is water.” I inform him. “Don’t know about biological compatibility, but this is a good bet here.”

  As we approach, Rick hits me with some bad news.

  “This ship wasn’t designed for planetary landings Devon. It has no landing gear at all.”

  “And we don’t have a shuttle, so how the hell do we get down there?” I see the issue right away.

  “I can take the ship into the atmosphere and maybe hover it low enough to the ground for us to jump.” He shrugs.

  “What happens to the ship then? How do we get back up into it?”

  “Well it will hover on auto pilot until the fuel pellet is consumed, or we trigger an auto shut down, and then it will crash.”

  “So we lose our ship?”

  “Maybe if we hover it low enough, it won’t be damaged from the fall, then we could dig under, and into it. Use it as our shelter.”

  “That actually sounds like a good idea. Okay, let’s do it.” I figure, what the hell.

  Before we descend, Rick cracks me up by sending a mayday call on the radio. He keeps at it, going through a wide range of frequencies. Then we wait for a bit, and there are absolutely no signals coming from the planet.

  “Just thought I should try.” He sighs.

  I laugh again.

  “I’m going to put orbital probes out, and we can use the link with them to help us maybe.” He nods and activates some controls.

  Down we go, nice and slowly, and smoothly. Since the view ports are facing straight down, it is easy to look for a fresh water lake, or river to land near, or crash near that is.
<
br />   “There, that big lake near those mountains. It has a river coming from it, that’s got to be fresh water. Plenty of greenery, or trees too.” I point.

  “Sounds good to me.” He agrees, and steers us down towards the lake.

  Something crosses my mind. “Hey Rick, If we closed one set of the aft panels, wouldn’t the ship be gravitationally buoyant? Then we could just let it float with no power.”

  “No good. The panels have to be open, or when we leave the ship we’d be burnt up.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  He finds a nice flat field of grass of some kind, and sets the ship to auto hover five feet off the ground.

  “Okay, toss down anything that’s not strapped down Devon.”

  “Where is the survival kit?”

  He shakes his head. “There isn’t one.”

  “Crap. Remind if we ever get back, to give a piece of my mind to the person setting the standard equipment on our ships. They really dropped the ball.”

  There really isn’t too much that we can find. A couple of extra pressure suits and helmets, a tool kit, a fair amount of food and water, also a couple of metallic looking pillows and some blankets.

  “I see a distinct lack of any kind of weaponry Rick.”

  “You noticed that did you? Well, you heard about the fellow who tried to paddle up Shit Creek without an oar?”

  I sigh in response.

  “He got soaked with shit.”

  “I get it, we are screwed.” I sigh again.

  We toss everything into the grass beneath us, including some utensils, and toiletries.

  “You first, lady.” He grins at me.

  I climb down into the open air lock, and dangle my feet through the hatch.

  “You’re not going to fly off on me now, are you?” I call back up to him.

  “I’m right behind you girl.”

  I jump down onto the grass, and move out of the way for him. He doesn’t come through.

  “Okay, bye, bye now Devon. Smell ya later.” He calls down.

  “Asshole! Get down here!” I yell.

  He is laughing as he jumps down. Right away we start hauling our gear from under the saucer.

  The ship is small, only eighty meters diameter, so it doesn’t take us long to get our gear free from under it.