To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  Again Amelia nodded.

  “I know you're very proud of the family and what we do, but you have to remember some of it is secret. Okay, sweety?” her father asked. She nodded a third time. “Good. Then get,” he said, squeezing her, then letting go. Go work on your homework and chores,” he ordered.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Amelia scampered off.

  “Think she'll behave?”

  “At least while she's sure she's still in hot water. I'm not sure how long the probationary period is going to last, but I'm going to enjoy it while I can,” Opal said grinning mischievously to her husband.

  “Heh,” he said, then slowly grinned back.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Hannah had an opportunity to explore nanotechnology and its medical applications when her class was given a virtual tour of a nano research lab. Her counselor Miss Coldwell sent her links about the career paths available. She was excited at first, thinking it could be an interesting alternative career goal. But as she explored the field she found it strictly limited on the ground. Most of the careers were in either research or teaching.

  Sure they used gobbler nanites in recycling and mining but only in extremely controlled conditions. Medical nanites were banned on the ground, which lead to her realization that it was another dead end. In order to do any actual work, to actually help people with the technology, she'd have to be in space anyway. She shook her head and let the idea die a natural death as she refocused her efforts on her original goal.

  Chapter 8

  Jamey had been involved in the current generation of starship drive design for the past ten years. He had been brought on as a young lad fresh from MIT who had focused his titanic mind on hyperdrives and force emitters to the exclusion of most other technology.

  Back in the 1990s, Professor Alcubierre and a series of scientists came up with ideas on how a ship could theoretically fold space around itself in order to move faster than light. The concept was far from perfect, but when they combined the theory with the theories of dimensional shift and created the first hyperspace isomorpher for a hyperdrive, the two concepts had come together like peanut butter and jelly.

  Force emitters folded space around the craft. When the computer within the hyperdrive sensed the folding of space, it bombarded Planck exotic matter with negative matter, forcing the micro wormholes to align, combine, and engulf the ship in a series of wormhole hops. Essentially the isomorpher punched a hole into another dimension the scientists called hyperspace. The ship's force bubble protected it as it moved through hyper. The shields protected the ship from the collapse of the ends of the wormhole while forcing the wormhole to remain open.

  In theory they would eventually be able to refine control of the isomorpher to hit various bands within hyper allowing a ship to speed up or slow down. There was a hypothesis floating about that they could build a functional external Stargate sometime, but it would require vast amounts of energy to send a ship.

  The current generation of force emitters looked like an evolution of superconducting magsails used in some of the ships still flying between planets within the solar system. But each of the rings in the force emitters formed a bubble of force around the craft, and they were very energy intensive.

  The first hyperdrive automated probes had looked like a series of three rings, each set perpendicular to one another to form a crude ball. Fuel, computers, thrusters, and gear were on the inside; nothing could be outside those rings. Anything that poked out too close to them was sheared off or interfered with the fields. An attempt to make the rings flush to the hull failed; clearance was necessary for the electronics and crew inside the hull to function.

  The two rings on the X and Y axis had powerful fields that could barely be steered or controlled, which was a problem. It turned out you couldn't just point the ship in the direction you wanted to go, hit the gas pedal and expect it to go, you had to maintain that course as well as maneuver.

  Jamey's contribution to interstellar propulsion had come about when he and Alec Niederman had hit upon using a series of smaller dense emitters each about twenty cm wide, which equated to near dinner plate in size. Alec had wanted to do the project because he wanted internal gravity. Jamey, however, had stayed focused on the drive.

  The conventional wisdom at the time was to make bigger emitters for more power … and because the manufacturing processes when the emitters first came about meant the emitters were inefficient and macro in size. New generations were being miniaturized and the individual shadow mass projectors were being packed into smaller and smaller frames. By working out the interactions of the plates and finding ways to overlap the fields and combine them, Jamey managed to make a more efficient drive that could be shaped and directed as needed.

  The smaller emitters meant they could be mass produced … they were easier to calibrate, and if one went down, it didn't catastrophically effect the field. All pluses for the program. It also meant they could scale the force emitters to use internally; something that had been considered an impossibility when the first emitters had been produced.

  By creating overlapping field emitters, they could do away with the need of a centrifuge gravitational system in the ship's engineering, which greatly simplified the deck layout. Alec had been right about that, Jamey mused. There were still some issues to work out, but the new emitters had already been put into limited use on the latest inner system liner, the Constellation. The fields only allowed a one-quarter gravitational field, and they still had a bit of a lag with the inertial sump to overcome, but they were very promising, it meant a whole new generation of ship designs were going to finally come about in the near future.

  The microemitters had been mounted on yokes and tested in a variety of applications. They had slippage issues to deal with but seemed promising. In fixed positions such as in the latest generation of fusion reactors, they promised to double the energy efficiency of the system. They had also managed to create ignition temperatures with just force emitters pressing the fuel together. It was tricky, but Coleen and Sydney Irons' latest reports were an eye opening experience. The new reactor most likely wouldn't make it into the first generation of starships, too expensive and finicky, but in time … he smiled thoughtfully. In time they'd get to the higher bands of hyperspace. He was sure of it now.

  There was speculation that the force emitters could be used for other things, such as tractors, repulsors, and even a second generation reactionless drive for a ship. Unfortunately, those applications seemed far off in the distant future. Force emitters were energy hogs when they weren't being used to shield the craft or in hyper. They also didn't have the range to reach other masses. There was no way the current generation of fusion reactors or power storage systems could handle the continuous load of moving a ship in sublight space for years at a time. To move the ship, they would need to reach out and grab another mass and then pull or push the ship along a course.

  But such headaches were for the future Jamey mused. The new refined design meant they could extend the length of the hull design along the Z axis with a series of rings along the body of the craft. An oval shaped ring had been considered around the circumference, but Jamey had hit upon the idea of using smaller rings mounted in nacelles. The rings did a neat job of folding space around the ship, punching a hole for it to pass into hyperspace. To some they looked like the near room temperature superconductive coils that encircled sublight ships. They had been around since the third mars mission; there were now magsail ships that plied the space lanes. The coils acted as primitive particle shields in just about every craft even if they didn't use the magsail to decelerate.

  His second major contribution to hyperspace travel was the sensor ring in the bow of the craft. The ring was a series of sensors, including mass spectrometers and gravitational anomaly detectors. Conventional sensors were useless in hyper, but by manipulating force emitters to form windows and lenses, Jamey extended the range of the other sensors. Jamey's Cyclops 2 probe had been the first to get
useful data back from within hyperspace.

  His contribution was still sending earthquakes through the hyperdrive community, as well as the scientists and theorists involved. He'd proven that mass in subspace did interact with hyperspace, forming mass shadows and interactions within hyper. An exam of the probe's log and comparison to the real time map of the sol system had given them a lot to consider … and proved that the safest launch point for a hyperdrive ship was outside the solar system. His theory of shadow masses in hyper effecting a ship explained what had happened to the initial three probe launches to Alpha Centauri. To jump to and from a system, they'd have to carefully map jump points, areas that were clear of obstructions. He made a note about that idea.

  Jamey frowned at the latest missive one of the junior engineers assigned to the force emitters had put together. It was a hopeful thing, apparently Alec wanted to toss the current plan to go with the latest generation of emitters. That would allow them to have even more powerful shields, allowing the ship to hit better octaves in hyper … but Jamey didn't buy it. The problem was twofold; there would always be a newer seemingly better version of equipment in the pipeline. They couldn't hold it back all the time or they'd never build anything!

  The second problem was the sensors. It was nice to go fast, tempting, but no. You could only go as fast as you could see after all. Alec and the original project engineers had forgotten that in their heady excitement of having a functional drive. No, they needed better sensors before he signed off on that, and he didn't see anything in his crystal ball. Until he actually got into hyper and saw it for himself … he shook his head wryly. Okay, so maybe he was being stubborn and impatient because he wanted to go. So be it, it was his neck after all.

  Now they were doing it. Not just building a probe this time, but the Daedalus. He turned his head as he adjusted his collar. In a couple hours, he'd have to be in the main observation bay with a bunch of stuffed shirts and dozens of media flacks. The Lagroose family was going to be on hand. Mister Lagroose himself was supposed to lay the first keel pieces and tack weld them together during the ceremony.

  Jamey just wished they'd get it over with and get to work. Sure they needed some sort of ceremony, but he was anxious to see if it worked. He shook his head. Since he was dressed and on time, he pulled up the latest missives some of his physics counterparts were working on.

  There were two competing theories for faster than light communications. One used tachyons, the other split muons. A third he discounted; it referred back to quantum teleportation, something he'd had trouble believing in when he'd first read the papers as a kid.

  The split muons was hard to believe too. They required a healthy trust in quantum entanglement, something he wasn't so sure about. Scientists had been playing with quantum this or that for some time, and not entirely successfully. Take the first attempts at building a quantum computer for instance. Splitting a muon, separating the components and then being able to observe and manipulate them seemed farfetched.

  Tachyons seemed more … plausible. They had been experimenting with them for decades, and part of the hyperdrive relied on tachyons. Steering a tachyon beam was still an issue, but he was pretty sure they'd get it licked eventually. The problem was encoding the data on the stream and keeping the stream focused. Based on his own experiences, he was fairly certain they'd have to hit some sort of Morse code method to transmit data, and they'd be limited to a couple light hours. Anything beyond that and the tachyon stream would be lost in the background noise of a solar system or would go off on its own … or both.

  He shook his head. Not really his problem, but if they got the drive issue licked it would be nice to able to tell someone about it in near real time.

  “All set?” Levare asked, leaning into his doorway.

  “Just patiently waiting for the call up,” Jamey said.

  Levare snorted. With all the bigwigs involved, security was tight. They were doing another sweep of the bay and surrounding area. He was fairly certain just about everyone was going to be scanned down to the molecular level. He couldn't blame them for being so paranoid; he'd read some of the nut job's crap that had gotten through his spam filters. He shivered. If any one of them got a bomb into that room …

  “Chill, Levare, security's tight,” Jamey said, not looking up.

  “Am I that obvious?” The engineer asked, coming into the room. He pulled out a seat and then snorted. Typical Jamey, he had it covered with magazines and plastic models. He picked the mess up and set it down on the floor near a similar mess.

  “And don't …” Jamey looked up and sighed as the mess slid on the floor. “ …never mind,” he muttered.

  “You really need to clean more often kid. Maybe hang some of the models up.”

  “No, a couple of them are out of date. I should recycle them,” Jamey muttered.

  “Then why don't you?” Levare asked, raising an eyebrow as he flashed white even teeth.

  Jamey snorted. “Same reason you probably haven't cleaned your office in ages. I'm not interested in it,” he said.

  “Well, if you are seriously considering going on this ship, you'd better rethink it. You don't need all this. Hell, some of it probably belongs in a museum,” Levare said, looking around. There was a model of a second generation force emitter on a stand on the edge of the desk. He reached out and flicked it with a finger. The plate moved, pivoting on the axis and then spinning as the yoke moved. “I still think we should refine the drive a bit more. Or go with the latest gen of force emitters,” he muttered.

  Jamey sighed and set the tablet on the bloater in front of him. He stretched, then laced his fingers together in his lap. “You and I both know there will always be something new in the pipeline. But what we're seeing now is incremental changes, nothing earth shattering in regards to efficiency or new features.”

  “True. But still, every generation we're refining our understanding of the math. And manufacturing is getting better at making them. Maybe …”

  “Maybe. But remember, we froze the design. If we wait, we'd have to do a bit of tear out sure, but we'd also have to wait for the latest gen to be tested, retested, then put into production …and so on and so forth. By the time that happened, another gen would be off the drawing board and in the prototyping phase and we'd want that version. Sometimes the shiniest bit isn't the best, Levare,” he said patiently.

  “Say's the new kid on the block. That's a pretty mature view,” the engineer said, looking at the younger man with interest.

  Jamey snorted. “It comes from my dad. He runs a communication's shack in Canada. I remember,” he looked up thoughtfully and tapped his chin for a moment. “Oh, when I was three?” He shook his head. He had an edict memory but tried to hide it from some people. They tended to look at him with wide eyes when they knew how young he was. The memory thing creeped a few people out. “Three and a half. He got delivery of a new upgrade. Someone in accounting sent him an upgrade instead of the parts he needed to repair a computer. They thought they'd get a bit ahead of the curve for when the station was scheduled to receive a full upgrade. But the gear they sent wasn't compatible with the software the older hardware was running, and it wasn't plug and play compatible with some of the legacy hardware. It was also supposed to use hardware that hadn't been put into production yet,” he said shaking his head. “They put in a software patch to supposedly make it compatible with the old stuff until it was.”

  Levare snorted.

  “There was some impedance issues with the cables too, some cross talk I think he said.” He frowned as the memory sharpened. The perspective was odd; he was looking up to his dad as Bret raged over the phone with someone on the other end. “He tried to eliminate the problems one by one, but each time he thought he'd run down one issue it'd cause another.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. And while he was having problems the station was down, which meant corporate wasn't happy. Eventually dad took some of the old hardware, broke it down on a breadbo
ard, and then cobbled together an interface. He got with a coder buddy to create an emulator, and the output was dumped into the new hardware. But the new hardware had just gotten an online patch that invalidated everything. It took them weeks to sort it out,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah. I bet heads rolled over that.”

  “You'd be surprised. The accountant tried to point fingers at dad, but dad wasn't having it. He'd kept a log of their conversations and of course the e-mails were in the servers. When the investigation was kicked off, the accountant tried to delete his e-mails, but dad had his copies and that alone pissed some higher-ups off. One big no no of the company is a cover-up.”

  “Yeah,” Levare nodded. Lagroose was a good company. They didn't hammer someone for an honest mistake if they owned up to it. But if they tried to cover it up, it was a death sentence to their career. He checked his tablet for the time. “Come on kid,” he said, rising to his feet. “We've got to get through security. Then stand around with rubber smiles and shake hands until they are numb.”

  “Gee lucky us,” Jamey grumbled, getting to his feet. He came around the desk just in time for Levare to slap him on the shoulder. “I think I'll hide behind you or something,” the younger man joked.

  “Not happening wunderkind. Everyone knows you are the man of the hour. Suck it up.”

  “Great,” Jamey sighed.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Jamey's changes to the force emitter ring placement as well as the design and construction of hypersensors in the bow of the ship completed three of the five major hurdles they had left before they could lay down the hull. Kathy Abram's work with the dolphins seemed to have resolved the helm and navigational issue, though only a real world test would know for certain. Finally, Amber Night the team's resident astronomer, astrophysicist and director of sensors came up with a solution to the sensor range and resolution issue. She had initially resented Jamey's intrusion into her department's domain, but she'd later grudgingly admitted his breakthrough had gone a long way to resolve a lot of the headaches they'd had.