by Dietmar Wehr
All but nine blue dots disappeared. The jump path along those nine formed a shallow zigzag line. The distance to the nearest super-giant was roughly the same as the length of their last jump.
“Let’s skip the next one and jump straight to the one after that, and let’s boost velocity from 20% to 30% of light speed,” he said.
“Those parameters are not advisable,” said the AI. “The shipboard duration of the missed jump to Alpha9 shows that extremely long jumps can affect shipboard time with possible negative impact on the performance parameters of the maneuvering systems. Recommend jumping to the closer super-giant at 25% of light speed.”
“No dice. I want to find out how good the new systems are and what their limits are. We skip the next super-giant and boost to 30%.”
“Your orders are acknowledged. Excalibur is maneuvering to line up for the next jump. ETA at the destination system is 89.5 hours.”
It was nearly 55 hours later when Koenig woke up to the sound of the emergency alarm. “Bridge! What’s happening?” When his voice activated the two-way intercom channel to the Bridge, he could hear the voice of one of the AIs in the background.
“—time dilation has increased effective velocity. Destination star’s effective gravity well is now too close to adjust trajectory for a hit. Excalibur will miss destination gravity well.”
Koenig heard what had to be Soriya’s anguished cry of shock. “I’m on my way!” said Koenig. He didn’t bother putting on any clothing. He was wearing his pajama pants, but if he hadn’t been wearing anything, he still would have run to the Bridge. As he entered the Bridge, he could hear Soriya sobbing, and when he got up beside the open Command Pod, he could see a number of red lights on the systems display. That was scary.
“I have the con, Astro. I don’t understand why we’re going to miss the super-giant. Explain it to me.”
“We have encountered the same phenomenon as during the jump to Alpha9. The passage of time on the ship has slowed. When our sensors track the universe around us, it appears as if we were moving much faster. By the time it became apparent that the ship’s trajectory needed to be adjusted, the ship was already so close to the destination system that the AI systems on board Excalibur were not able to react quickly enough to compensate. In addition, the time dilation affects the entire ship, including the maneuvering systems. Their effectiveness in modifying our trajectory also has be diluted. In the simplest terms, our efforts to adjust our trajectory were too little, too late.”
Koenig felt a shiver go up his spine. “I should have taken your recommendation. How did you know this would happen?”
“The recommendation was based on a risk assessment that was less than 100% certain. There wasn’t enough data to be sure of when the time dilation effects would make themselves felt. The key seems to be distance jumped. It’s unclear whether there is any additional cumulative impact from the higher velocity.”
Koenig noticed that Soriya was still sobbing and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. She didn’t look up at him, but she did put her hand over his.
“Is there no chance of hitting this gravity well?” he asked.
“Not if the sensor data is accurate, Commander. The ship will pass close by the gravity well, but whatever gravitational waves the ship hits will not be strong enough to drop the ship back into normal space. There may be some marginal effects, but we have insufficient data to calculate what those effects might be at this time.”
“How soon until we pass the gravity well?”
“Less than thirteen minutes now, Commander.”
“Can we shift our trajectory to hit another gravity well after we pass this one?”
“That is possible, but the probability of success depends on the size of the gravity well and the magnitude of the course change needed. The next super-giant would have the highest chances of a hit.”
“In that case, let’s aim the ship for the next super-giant as soon as we’ve confirmed a miss for this one.” He turned his attention to the XO. “We’ll be okay, Eriko. If we miss this one, we’ll try for the next and if necessary the next one after that. Sooner or later we’ll hit one. We’ve got plenty of food this time too.”
She nodded and seemed to become more composed. “I…I couldn’t help feeling that it was my fault since I was the BDO.”
“I officially absolve you of any responsibility for this situation,” he said in an exaggerated ‘command’ tone. She laughed and nodded.
The two of them waited in silence for the remainder of the 13 minutes to see if the ship really would miss the critical threshold of the gravity well that would stop the jump. Koenig was sure it would. The astro AI was quite competent and would not have sounded the emergency alarm if there had been a chance to hitting the threshold.
When it became obvious that they had missed, Koenig became aware that he was shivering and chalked it up to his lack of attire. “I’m going back to my quarters to get showered and dressed. I’ll relieve you as BDO when I get back, okay?”
“Okay.”
“The XO has the con,” he said as he headed for the exit.
When he returned, the astro AI had some good news.
“The ship missed the drop threshold by less than a million kilometers. The gravity waves there were strong enough to slow our hyperspace velocity by approximately 38.2%. This means that our reaction time and ability to maneuver in hyperspace has improved. AstroComp has now upgraded the probability, of hitting the jump threshold of the next super-giant to 97.7%.”
Koenig closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Gods of Space. He also made a mental note not to ignore the recommendations of the astro AI again. Soriya had gotten up from the pod by this time. The two of them hugged and held on to each other for what seemed like a long time.
When they let go, she said, “Are you sure you want to take the con this early? You still have a couple of hours for more sleep.”
Koenig smiled and shook his head. “There’s no way I’ll be able to go back to sleep now. But I haven’t had breakfast yet, so if you don’t mind getting me something from the galley, then I’ll take over early.”
“Okay. I’ll be back shortly.” She gave him a quick smile and walked away. When she got back, she found Koenig asleep in the Command Pod. She left the food and coffee where he would see it when he woke up and left the Bridge.
Chapter Four:
Excalibur did drop out of hyperspace in the super-giant star system that the astro AI had designated as SG3. Koenig was a bit surprised by the AI’s recommendation to jump to the next super-giant, SG4, at 30% of light speed. When he mentioned it to Eriko, she wondered aloud if their close call might have made him just a little bit gun shy. He admitted that it might have. The AI reassured both of them that there was no evidence that velocity would trigger the time dilation. While high velocities and not distance in normal space did have a time dilation effect, the opposite seemed to be true for hyperspace—which made sense to Koenig in a weird kind of way.
The jump to SG4 almost seemed routine. The resulting deviation from the star’s center was less than that of a lot of other jumps done without the maneuvering equipment. When Koenig arrived on the Bridge after the ship dropped back into normal space, Soriya noticed a different, almost mischievous expression on his face. He looked at her and winked before turning his attention back to the main display, which was showing the tactical representation of the SG4 star system.
“A thought occurred to me in a dream, and I remembered it when I woke up. Let’s see if there’s something to it. Astro, describe what happens when the maneuvering devices are activated.”
“The devices generate a field composed of longitudinal waves that interact with the fabric of space. The interaction generates a counter-force that pushes back on the field. This effect acts on the ship the same way that a parachute does on a human experiencing free fall. Because the field strength is not uniform around the ship, the bow will swing in the direction of where the field stre
ngth is greatest.”
“That’s what I thought. Now, what would happen if all the maneuvering devices were activated in such a way as to generate the same field strength around the ship?”
“The ship’s hyperspace velocity would decrease, while its trajectory would remain unchanged.”
Koenig began to smile. “And if the hyperspace velocity dropped below the velocity that corresponds to minimum jump speed, what would happen to the ship then?”
“Unknown. If the two velocities are perfectly correlated, then that would suggest that the ship would drop out of hyperspace, but that is only a hypothetical conclusion.”
“Then we’re going to test that hypothesis. Our next jump will be to the nearest star system that will get us closer to the target star. The ship will boost to the minimum velocity needed to jump. One second after we enter hyperspace, I want all maneuvering systems to generate a uniform field around the ship. If, as I suspect, the ship drops back into normal space without having hit a gravity well, then we’ll have proven a new capability that just might come in very handy at some point. If the ship continues in hyperspace, then we’ll still drop back when we hit the gravity well.”
Koenig was trying hard not to show how nervous he was as the ship approached minimum jump velocity. His hunch was just that—a hunch—and he tried not to think of possible negative outcomes.
“Jump velocity in…three…two…one…now. The ship has jumped…and has dropped back into normal space,” said the astro AI.
“Let me see the visual ahead,” said Koenig. The display switched from tactical to an optical image from the ship’s bow. They were back in normal space all right. “Switch to the view from astern.” The image changed, and the blue SG4 sun now looked a lot smaller.
“How far did we get in that short a time?” he asked.
“Approximately 77.4 light minutes.”
Koenig turned to Soriya. “This proves my hunch, Eriko. It means Excalibur can literally jump to any star, regardless of the distance, and drop back into normal space at any point, gravity well or no gravity well.”
She was smiling, but her expression told him she was puzzled. “But what about the time dilation effect of long jumps?”
Koenig nodded. “I think the AIs can handle that. Am I right, Astro?”
“You are correct in theory, Commander. Further testing is needed to confirm how quickly the ship can decelerate in hyperspace. When that data has been acquired, AstroComp should be able to calculate the correct point in time to begin deceleration, even with the time dilation effect. And if the calculations are incorrect and the ship misses the gravity well, it will simply continue decelerating until it drops out of hyperspace. At that point, it can then turn around and jump back to the destination star system.”
“Exactly. What kind of further testing do you recommend?” he asked.
“A series of very short jumps utilizing gradually increasing pre-jump velocities.”
“Very good. You may proceed.”
The tests took less than three hours to complete. The final test was with a pre-jump velocity of 30% of light speed. It took almost an hour to decelerate the ship enough that it was able to drop back into normal space.
Soriya having left the Bridge to head to her quarters, Koenig fell asleep during the pre-jump acceleration and woke up to find the test complete.
“This last test jump confirms that even at high hyperspace velocities, the Vergon maneuvering equipment can decelerate the ship at a consistent rate,” said the astro AI.
“Does that mean we can attempt to jump directly to SG7?” asked Koenig.
“Affirmative. Recommend using a pre-jump velocity of not more than 30% light speed for this jump.”
Koenig almost rejected that recommendation, then remembered his note to self not to override his AIs’ advice. “Fine. Thirty percent max. You can get the ship lined up and accelerate. As soon as we’re lined up and at speed, the ship can jump. I want to be advised when we’re ten minutes from the point where we begin hyperspace deceleration. What’s our eta at SG7?”
“Eighty-eight point six hours, Commander.”
“Hm. Plenty of time to play a game of chess.”
The approach to SG7 went smoothly. Excalibur decelerated from 30% to just over 5% of light speed while still far enough away from SG7’s gravity well to adjust its trajectory for a hit on the gravity threshold, which was not very far off from dead center. Koenig was extremely pleased with the result. During the 89 hours, he had conferred with the astro AI on how they could carefully test higher velocities and even longer jumps. For now, though, further expanding the envelope of jump performance would have to wait.
SG7 was not their final destination. The target system that now had the designation of V1 lay almost 21 light years away. It had a yellow sun typical of many star systems containing intelligent life. Before jumping again, the ship listened carefully to the surrounding ether for any EM transmissions and found multiple signal sources from the surrounding stars. The Vergon had not provided any translation data, so there was no way to translate those signals, but at least it gave the astro AI enough data to estimate the size of the volume of space that the local race had expanded into. V1 was one of the sources of transmissions. With that knowledge in mind, Koenig gave the order to jump to V1 and once again at 30% of light speed. This time the jump took less than 21 hours. Koenig and Soriya were on the Bridge when the ship dropped back into normal space. There was tension in the air that had not been there after the last few jumps. Soriya was in the Command Pod as the BDO. Koenig stood beside her. They waited quietly while the com and tactical AIs conducted their routine searches for both natural and artificial objects. V1 was in the center of the cluster of systems that had generated signals. The com AI should have picked up multiple sources within this system immediately, but it had not. The entire system was EM dark. The hair on the back of Koenig’s neck stood up.
“Do we know where the relay buoy is?” asked Koenig quietly.
“Affirmative. The Vergon have provided the original deployment location. The tactical display is now showing that data,” said the astro AI.
Excalibur’s green triangle icon was at the five o’clock position at the edge of the gravity threshold and a flashing yellow dot was at the two o’clock position, relative to the sun but much farther out. A planet in the sun’s liquid water zone was almost certainly the home world of the Sengals. It was now at the 9 o’clock position.
“What’s our status, Tactical?” asked Koenig.
“The ship is on full stealth mode, no running lights, full ECM engaged, Commander.” Before Koenig could respond, the AI continued. “Picking up intermittent reflections from metallic objects. Bearing changes indicate objects are moving.”
The display now showed so many faint bearing lines emanating from Excalibur that Koenig didn’t even try to count them. The fact that there were metallic objects moving in space did not surprise him. They were probably ships belonging to the locals, which were moving within the star system to outposts, mines, etc. and he would have been very surprised if they hadn’t been there.
“Can we determine if any of them are relatively close?”
“Negative,” answered the tactical AI.
“Okay. Astro, let’s get to the relay buoy for a zero-velocity rendezvous.”
That took less than an hour, and during that time, the entire star system remained unnervingly quiet. Koenig and Soriya had exchanged places after her duty shift ended. She had left the Bridge briefly to get something to eat. When she came back, she offered Koenig a sandwich and a coffee, which he gratefully accepted.
“Still no signs of life,” he said after taking a sip of coffee.
“What could possibly have made the entire system, including all the ship traffic, go completely silent like this?” she asked.
“I wonder…”
“Wonder what?” she asked.
“Well…I wonder if a super-wave might be responsible. If it was powerful
enough, it could have shorted out all their com equipment, possibly their power distribution networks and perhaps even crippled their ships. Physicists have been saying since the late 20th century that the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy sends out an expanding wave of cosmic rays every ten thousand years or so, and we’re due for another one any time now. If it damaged the relay buoy, that would also explain the buoy going silent, but the Vergon said there was a plea for help concerning massive DNA mutations. If the super-wave caused those, you’d think the damage to equipment like the relay buoy would have happened before any biological effects showed up, not the other way around. And if the cosmic rays were that powerful, living beings would be dying from radiation damage, not mutating. But if it’s not a super-wave, then I don’t know what it could be.”
