Orma went to her laboratory to develop a plan while Emily approached Gertie. She found Gertie in her laboratory and leaned backward against a table next to her.
“I’d like to take our test ship out of commission for a few months,” she announced.
Gertie stared at her, then stepped over to her desk and sat down. When she looked up at Emily, she asked, “Are you ready to tell me what you’re working on?”
“No.”
“We’re scheduled to begin installation of the new sensors for my project in two weeks. The project is important to Douglas, particularly if we succeed in increasing the distance we currently see. Is your project more important than that? And does it need to remain a secret?”
“It’s meaningful, and no, it does not need to be a secret, but it’s my project. I’d like to finish the work by myself.”
Gertie sat back in contemplation. “What you’re describing,” she eventually said, “is common among scientists. It boils down to you, and only you, wanting the credit. It’s an ego thing, Em. I want you to consider your project in the bigger picture of what we’ve been tasked to accomplish out here. Does civilization have to pay the price for your pride, for your ego?”
Emily was shocked at this interpretation of her work, and Gertie’s words hurt her deeply, but the more she thought about it, the more she understood that Gertie was right. She had promised to do whatever was in the best interests of the Alliance. At the start of her project, she had been doing exactly that, but now? Now she had results that mattered, but she wanted to deliver a completed project all on her own. She wanted to make a name for herself, she wanted to do something that was pure her, something that would prove her worth in the eyes of Arlynn and Greg and the Alliance. She had crossed a boundary somewhere along the way, and she hadn’t even known it.
She lifted her chin to Gertie. “Thank you,” she said in a whisper. “I apologize to you and to the Alliance. I’m ready to explain my project.”
“I won’t demand an explanation,” Gertie said. “If you want to continue your project, and if in your estimation it has more value than my own, I will give you the ship.”
Emily walked around the table to Gertie and put her arms around her. “I love you, Gertie. May I call you grandmother?”
Tears came to Gertie’s eyes. “Young lady, you have the most convoluted family I have ever heard of, and yes, you may call me grandmother. But you may not call Geoffrey grandfather, not as long as he’s your commander.”
Emily tightened her hug, then released Gertie. “Will you look at the data, or would you like a demonstration first?”
“I want a demonstration, then I want the background data.”
She got her demonstration. Without bothering with the data, she approved Emily’s request and called Douglas and Lester. They received a demonstration as well. Both were speechless with Emily’s results.
Douglas turned around in the pilot seat to face her. “Do you know what this could mean, Emily?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“I’m not certain I do. If this simulation can be translated into something that works, at the very least we’ll be able to visit more planets in a shorter time period. That equates to a quicker likelihood of finding the Oort. And . . .” He looked away, his eyes shifting from side-to-side as he considered ramifications. “In the big picture,” he eventually said, “this could change space travel throughout the galaxy. I can’t even begin to imagine the repercussions of shortening four-month transits to just a few weeks. What do you need from me to complete your work?”
Emily was ready. “I need recordings from hyperspace of planets. I need to know their pulling forces. I haven’t been able to find any in our files that work. And I need a test program based in reality, not on the computer models I’ve been working with so far. The results you’ve seen here might not translate into the real world.”
Douglas turned to Gertie with his eyebrows raised. “They’ll work, Geoff,” she said. “They’ll need refining, but they’ll work. The basic data is good.”
He turned back to Emily. “I appreciate the work you’ve done, but I can’t let an ensign manage the program.” She looked crestfallen. “Gertie is in charge, Emily. I’m sure you’ll do the work, but she’ll be looking over your shoulder and coordinating the efforts of the various departments.”
“Yes, sir. In that case, I have only one request. Someone has to test the results in a real ship. I’d like to be the pilot.”
“Your dads would skin me alive if I let you do that.”
“No, they won’t, not unless I kill myself, and I won’t. There’s no other pilot in your fleet who knows more about this than I do. Between the earlier program and this one, I’ve literally made thousands of jumps to compile data, and I have an excellent feel for the capabilities of the ship. In all fairness,” she added, “I’m a fleet line officer, not the child of important parents.”
Douglas winced. She had turned his own words back on him. There was no way out of this.
Danny Lester came to his rescue. “I could detail a pilot from the bridge crew or from one of the scouts to be in command.”
Emily shot him a withering glance, but Douglas jumped on the idea. “Done,” he said.
So, Emily got her improved timer. Douglas dispatched five scouts to different star systems to conduct flybys close enough to gather recordings of planets, comets, asteroid belts, and anything else they found floating around in the systems. They then made careful observations of those same objects while in real space.
Emily and Gertie worked on the results, attempting to quantify values associated with each object. In addition, they were able to quantify values for entire systems, values that would be helpful as the ship approached the system from afar.
When they put it all together in the simulator, her concept looked hopeful, and the engineers began preparing the ship for flight. That in itself took a lot of work. The engineers had to install a second StarDrive console, transfer the simulator program to the scout’s main computers, then run extensive tests to make sure everything worked properly. While that was going on, Gertie had another crew run a complete test of all ship’s systems, including full inspections of the hardware. Any small glitch could become life-threatening with the precision the tests would require.
Lieutenant Cass Ayker joined Emily as the ship neared readiness. He had come from one of the An’Atee colonies and was eight years senior to Emily. They spent long hours with the scientists developing a test program that would let them work their way closer and closer to a target system without undue risk. They would build incrementally, step by step.
When everything was ready, a full crew of six entered the ship. They did not expect to encounter the Oort on this mission, but they would be prepared if they did. Cass motioned Emily to the StarDrive seat, and she did not hesitate. He launched them from the baseship and moved off a safe distance while Emily programmed the first jump, then the scout disappeared into hyperspace.
They made a few passes near their target system, partially to calm everyone’s nerves, but also to verify the accuracy of the course line. Cass and Emily each programmed each run, verified their computations, then they jumped. Cass had no problem dealing with the fact that Emily’s results always showed up first. He even cautioned her to stay sharp and not to worry about showing him up. They were after results, not competition between the two of them.
A full week went by before they were confident enough to attempt getting really close. Emily and Cass stood down to get a good night’s sleep, then they returned to the bridge to make the first set of calculations. Emily offered him the primary console, but he declined. “It’s your show, lady. Go for it.”
The ‘show’ required a series of jumps. Beginning far from the star, Emily brought them fairly close, then she brought the new timer into the picture. She made three tiny jumps to reach the orbit of the outermost planet. Another jump brought them further into the system. Her predicted red course line
was only a little off the expected position. This worried Cass—he was not accustomed to finding any discrepancies at all aboard An’Atee ships—but Emily assured him the error was within reasonable bounds. They could tighten up the program when they returned to the baseship, but the jump had essentially been on target. They set up another jump, executed the jump, and found their position again slightly off but reasonable. Two days later, they had jumped as far as Emily and the engineers felt was safe. They were over two-thirds of the way into the system and had reached the orbit of the fifth planet. Had this been Ariall, they would have been less than a week out from the planet.
Stress showed on everyone’s faces, though in theory they had accomplished the hardest part of the mission. Now they just had to escape the system without hitting anything on the way out. Emily was tempted to do it in one jump, but she knew that doing so would mean her removal from the program. As specified in the test program, she made the series of jumps required until they were well outside the system.
“Okay, Cass, it’s your turn,” she announced.
“We’ve completed the program,” he said uncomfortably.
“I know, but it’s the right thing to do, don’t you think?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. We need to have a regular pilot try this, but we’re not going to sacrifice our careers to do it. We’re headed home. It works, Emily. We’ll work out the bugs, and we’ll get better at it, but first we need to get these results back to the ship.”
Emily smiled her agreement. “I knew you’d say that, and you’re right. Want to fly for a bit?”
He did. He took the ship into hyper and completed the journey with one jump, steering the ship manually toward the destination showing on the end of the red line.
“Do I get to try that next time?” she asked. It was a pretty remarkable display of ability even to her. She had not yet attempted to hit a target in one jump.
“Only if I get to fly the next approach into the system.”
“Deal,” she announced.
Douglas was in awe of the results. He immediately authorized more tests and refinements to the system, and he set the engineers to work building systems for the rest of the ships. Emily and Cass made numerous additional runs on the first system, gaining confidence and skill as they fine-tuned jump results until they were able to complete all the jumps in a single day.
Since most voyages between stars entered systems from above or below the plane of the ecliptic, she and Cass tried those as well. After a number of cautious test runs, she and Cass were able to complete those jumps in half the time, and they were able to move the final jump point considerably closer to the star since they were not headed right toward it.
While scientists refined the tiny errors in the red course line, and engineers stayed busy constructing systems for the fleet, Emily and Cass ran tests at three different star systems. Again, some small inconsistencies showed, but the test parameters for the planets as seen through hyperspace on approach and calculated by the computers proved accurate enough for operational use.
Engineers built considerable safety margins into the fleet’s systems to provide for aberrations that might not have come to light. Over time, refinements would continue being made to the system, but for the present, Emily’s gift to the Alliance was awesome. Douglas had the means to explore individual systems, and Emily had found a friend in Cass.
She and Cass became instructor pilots. Actually, they became instructors of instructors. With some 150 qualified pilots in the fleet, rather than training every pilot themselves, they trained a cadre of instructor pilots who then expanded the training to the rest of the pilots. The two of them spent very long days and nights between classrooms and testing ships as the ships received the modified systems. Douglas stood the fleet down for two months during the process. When their work was done, Emily and Cass took several days of downtime to recuperate.
Then Emily took on the Harbok. Douglas gave serious consideration to withholding the information from them since giving a gift of such magnitude was really Greg’s purview. The day would come when the glue that held the Alliance together became commerce rather than war, and the Alliance would likely hold some things in reserve. In the end, he decided that he would have to remove the Harbok from the bridges on his ships if he hoped to keep the system a secret. That was contrary to the intent of Greg’s instructions to him.
They got the full program. Emily spoke the language quite well, but these senior military people were not like Ollie who was jovial and accepting of a wide range of beliefs. They were focused on the kill and whatever it took to make that kill. The officers had taken the teaching machine course on the An’Atee language, but it was still slow going. Unfortunately, Emily’s system was so far limited to An’Atee ships. To make matters worse, they had to fight inner battles with themselves in order to accept training from a woman. There were no women pilots among the Harbok. They made the grade. It just took them longer.
Douglas was not idle during this time. He and his staff changed the search plan radically. The scouts became true scouts, heading out singly to study various star systems. The plan risked their discovery by the Oort, but there was just no way to get around it. Scouts initially jumped only into the outer system of their target star since, so far, all intelligent races occupied only the inner planets. The scouts were clearly visible to anyone looking in their direction for the few moments it took to cloak after dropping out of hyper. In nearly all cases, it did not matter because there were no intelligent beings within the system.
Oort computers could likely tell a lot in those few moments. At a minimum, the drive signature would identify the origin of the ship. The Oort might not know Ariall’s location, but they had certainly encountered An’Atee drives during battles.
As soon as the cloak went up, the scout would change its position at the highest speed possible. Nothing else mattered to them until they accomplished that. Crews were reminded that if they felt any discomfort, they could leave immediately. The system could always be studied later in force. If the system was benign, a stay of a week or two was acceptable. Close inspection of planets might reveal any number of things ranging from small settlements or even previous significant habitation.
Everyone feared the potential risks of investigating a race of beings known to be aggressive and suspected of being telepathic. Was it possible for this telepathic ability to extend beyond their own species? Was it possible for an Oort to take over the minds of crews aboard the scout? The risk to the crew aside, the risk of the Oort capturing an An’Atee vessel with all its refinements was frightening. Something had to be done to prevent the Oort from capturing a ship.
The solution was simple, though terrible. Once the door of the ship closed behind the last crewmember, the ship could not be opened without a code issued by its prime ship or the baseship. This was a very dangerous undertaking for the crews aboard the scouts. Their ability to eject was taken from them, and if for some reason the capital ships of the fleet were destroyed during their time away, there would be no way for these crews to ever leave their ships.
The positions of Ariall and the An’Atee colonies were erased from the fighters’ computers. It was not a foolproof solution since the crewmembers knew where they were from, but it was the best they could do. Grayson gave serious consideration to a self-destruct plan if a fighter failed to return within a three-month window, but he vetoed it. He would rather fight the Oort than force his crews to feel trapped inside a time bomb.
Still, most crews, for the first time ever, experienced a feeling of claustrophobia when the door closed and locked behind them. Not only were these crews test pilots, they were explorers. In true An’Atee form, they rose to the occasion. Scouts left singly, as soon as crews were trained and the ships outfitted with the new systems. The crews received strict instructions to not test the limits of the new system. They only needed to get close. Everything they did would be recorded, particularly the views of the many planets they w
ould discover while in hyperspace and the resultant jump performance. Scientists would review the recordings when the ships returned and use the results to fine-tune future navigation computers.
When she finished training the Harbok, Emily was assigned to what she called ‘drudge work.’ Someone had to study the recordings brought back by the scouts, and she was part of the team chosen for the work. They made refinements to the navigation computers, and Emily and Cass tested them by returning to those systems that were deemed safe, meaning there had been absolutely no indication of intelligent life.
Gertie, meanwhile, was hard at work on her own project. The second test ship, another fighter, had been modified with sensors that would penetrate farther into or through the shield in an attempt to improve the perception of fields around stars and planets during hyperspace jumps. The ship made multiple flights, all of them automated and without crew, to test how far the probes could extend without interfering with the field. Test results were encouraging—some improvement was noted as the probes extended—but the results were not phenomenal.
Gertie kept pushing the probes farther and farther, but the field did not seem to care. It did not make sense to her, but she understood from Smythe’s early tests that the dimension these probes entered made changes to the sensors themselves as they entered that dimension. She got the probes out to hundreds of feet without encountering any difficulties. Partly out of frustration, and partly out of curiosity, she took a bold step. She had the engineers design a probe that stuck out a full mile behind the ship. When the ship returned from its tests, the probe was intact, and the StarDrive field had sensed no problems.
Genesis Page 34
