Project Sail

by Anthony DeCosmo

  Yesterday, after the lecture detailing his new ship and another lecture by Captain Charles, Hawthorne was assigned quarters with Bill Stein, 185’s pilot.

  On the Virgil, he spent most of his time in Kelly Thomas’ quarters watching videos and sharing stories. No sex.

  For the longest time, Hawthorne had sought to sleep with a woman half his age, his version of climbing Mt. Everest or running the Pittsburgh Marathon.

  When he met the eager Lieutenant Thomas, his wish fulfillment appeared imminent. Then he discovered that Thomas was just a little girl playing a role assigned to her by the men on Titan, and their relationship changed into a kind he had never before experienced.

  She brought him dinner from the canteen and would hug him goodnight. He read her passages from his favorite book, The Forever War, and they watched Three Stooges for hours while eating something resembling popcorn.

  Kelly was not stupid, merely inexperienced. She only sought acceptance, and on Titan they had twisted that and turned her into a plaything.

  He wondered why she had decided on a military career. Her skills and personality matched more with a robotics technician than a soldier, yet whenever he asked she said that joining the armed forces had been her childhood dream.

  Whatever the case, Jonathan no longer wanted to have sex with Kelly Thomas; he just hoped that someday he might again have sex with a woman.

  His new roommate—Bill Stein—was fourteen years younger but had spent most of his life working in space. A faint drawl suggested southern heritage.

  Stein always had a story to tell, usually about his days piloting a mining skimmer on Callisto. He had faced treacherous conditions and Chinese subterfuge on that Jovian moon, but survived to share a good yarn or two.

  While he did not ask, Hawthorne wondered what story might explain the growths and scars on Stein’s arms and neck. However, that was a question for another day.

  As he waited with the rest of SE 185’s crew to board their new ship, Hawthorne saw Reagan Fisk bound into the lobby.

  He knew Fisk would soon return to Earth to reunite with his fiancée. His future held a wedding and probably a promotion.

  Hawthorne found Fisk’s enthusiasm for the wonders of space naïve but it was hard to hate the guy; he had a positive attitude and that separated him from most of humanity.

  Fisk approached the ship’s Corporate Liaison, a stout man named Martin Chambers who would represent UVI’s interests during the mission. Chambers wore a black turtleneck under his coveralls, his face seemed sculpted from rock, and his hair was golden blond.

  Hawthorne watched as a smiling Reagan Fisk tried to strike up a conversation. Chambers, however, responded by grumbling, “go away,” and Fisk retreated like a bullied kid.

  So much for one big happy corporate family.

  The airlock opened with a hiss and the line shuffled aboard SE 185.

  ---

  Ellen Kost stepped to the side of the corridor and let those bound for the bridge pass. She, Wren, and Carlson remained behind with their tour guide, Professor Coffman.

  She liked Coffman. He had a soft voice and a gentle smile that punctuated the end of every sentence.

  Conversely, SE 185 unnerved her. While not as claustrophobic as the Virgil, she disliked the ship’s architecture: Trapezoidal corridors, floors of metal grating, and light from thin glowing strips set in rust-colored ceilings and walls.

  Of course, she would not say anything about how she felt because the others might think there was something wrong with her.

  “Four project rooms,” Coffman referenced the doors to either side of the hall just outside the bridge. “From here you will manage your research.”

  He opened one and the lights inside flickered on, brightening a square chamber. A countertop with seating for two faced a bank of control panels, cabinets and drawers lined either side of the room.

  Wren said, “This is one fucking dreary ship.”

  In the fifteen minutes since their tour began, Coffman had shown an ability to block out Wren’s foul language. Kost thought that a valuable talent she wished she could learn.

  “I admit it is not what I would expect from a research vessel. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Five years ago, I was on a mission to map the Kuiper belt and stuck for months in a converted tanker. Quite a disagreeable smell, I recall.”

  Coffman glanced about as if comparing 185 with that old tanker.

  Kost asked, “So where are you from, Professor?”

  “What’s that? Oh, yes, well I am from Saskatchewan originally but we moved to Massachusetts when I was young. My father joined the new faculty when MIT reopened.”

  “Any children?”

  “Me? No, I have spent far too much time in space.”

  “That would drive me fucking nuts,” Wren said. “I hate it out here.”

  Coffman replied, “Well, the more I see of the universe, the more fantastic I find it.”

  Carlson said, “So these project rooms are for us?”

  “From these rooms, you will oversee your research with links to drones and satellites as well as the ship’s sensors.”

  Wren walked up to their host and asked, “Tell me, Frederick, where exactly are we going?”

  Coffman answered in a tone that sounded like a father telling a child he could not open any presents until Christmas morning.

  “Unfortunately, that information must wait until the next briefing.”

  Kost asked, “Professor, do you work in any of these rooms?”

  “Yes, but I will split my attention between research and engineering; I supervise operation of the A-H drive.”

  “Funny, you don’t look like an engineer,” Wren said. “Far too clean.”

  “Well, yes, given the nature of our engines, my job is more mathematics than elbow grease. Any problems will appear in columns of numbers as opposed to, say, an oil leak.”

  Kost said lightheartedly, “If we get a flat tire, at least we have a lot of smart people onboard who can change it.”

  Coffman answered, “Dr. Kost, if we suffer a, well, flat tire during A-H operation, our atoms will scatter across several light-years before we even know there is a problem.”

  ---

  After the Virgil’s sorry excuse for a sick bay, the one aboard SE 185 felt like a godsend to Dr. Ira King. Four beds, two isolation chambers, a multi-purpose body scanner, a prosthesis fabricator, and even a bio-growth tank.

  Better still, she had an assistant named Rafael Soto, a man in his late twenties and of Mexican descent. Soto had been onboard for several weeks and was familiar with the layout.

  After providing a tour of sick bay, he told her, “Everything is designed for dual purpose on this ship, even the crew. For instance, sick bay doubles as the biology lab.”

  Soto spoke in a monotone voice showing no emotion and with stiff body language.

  She tried to warm the atmosphere.

  “Tell me about yourself, Rafael.”

  “Ma’am?”

  She leaned against a counter.

  “Where are you from?”

  “I am originally from Chilpancingo but I lived in Torreón for a while after I got out of school.”

  “What are your medical qualifications?”

  “I have trained as a Physician’s Assistant and am qualified to help with surgery. I served as medical officer on UVI transports for the Mars to Moon run for a couple of years. Before accepting this assignment, I was at Europa as part of a corporate exchange program between UVI and Golden Prominence studying anaerobic organisms found under the ice.”

  “Amazing the Chinese let you in.”

  Soto said, “I had more issues with American intelligence when I came back. I’m just glad I got out before the Niobe was destroyed. I hear things are tense around Jupiter now.”

  Still, his tone did not soften. Such a young man should not be so serious.

  “Well, Rafael, I think this will be an interesting journey.”

  --
-

  To Hawthorne, SE 185’s bridge felt exposed.

  True, he served for years aboard the Princess where the bridge sat atop a conning tower, but the Princess was a cruise ship that only went as far as Mars. SE 185 aimed for a more ambitious journey and they were already beyond the safety of the asteroid belt. If a Chinese warship visited, a well-aimed cutting laser could easily decapitate the ship’s command.

  This bridge also suffered from disorder: panels, control boxes, and gauges bulged from the walls and hung from the ceiling, like high-tech stalactites. A gray and red color scheme contributed to a cave analogy.

  Hawthorne sat at a semi-circle station to the rear, starboard side of the bridge with interactive panels, buttons, and screens spread in front of him.

  Across from his station was the flight operations officer, or Air Boss. Further forward in the middle of the room was Captain Charles’ chair with a wide console at his fingertips and an array of screens above.

  Ahead of the Captain’s chair, the ceiling sloped down, making it impossible for helmsman Bill Stein to reach his seat without stooping. At least he had a good view; in front of the pilot’s chair was a rectangular window, although it served no practical purpose.

  The navigator—to Stein’s right—could not share the view. The designers had cut off the sloping ceiling and dropped a flat screen straight down. This was in addition to screens along the starboard wall, boxing the poor man into a corner.

  Many of the monitors and control panels seemed last-minute add-ons. SE 185’s original design focused on finding exploitable resources. Re-tasking 185 for general exploration required modifications, leaving the bridge chaotic and cluttered.

  Hawthorne’s job included communications, damage control, and general operations. It had been a long while since he dealt with the details of spaceship flight. As the Princess’ Captain, he had issued orders and entertained guests, leaving the fundamentals to his crew.

  Because he did not have an implant, he first switched his console to a touch interface. He noticed Bill Stein tapped his fingers on his panels too, suggesting he did not possess a thinker chip, either. The rest of the bridge crew needed to only point, their implants translating thought and finger motions into commands.

  As he scrolled through the screens, Hawthorne found a schematic tracking everything from hull integrity to oxygen mix for each compartment. Another screen provided a diagram of power flow and yet another listed a menu of checklists dealing with situations ranging from thruster failure to gravity screen calibration.

  Captain Charles said, “Navigator, pull up training flight program ‘endeavour.’ Helmsman, prepare to disengage from station.”

  Thirteen years had passed since Hawthorn played the role of first officer. Before inheriting command of the John Riley at Jupiter, he had acted as his captain’s right hand man, turning general commands into specific action. He assumed that was expected of him now.

  He looked across the bridge at the middle-aged brunette sitting at the flight operations station. She had two distinguishing features. First, icy blue eyes, perhaps artificially colored. Second, she wore a prosthetic left arm that looked natural from a distance. Up close, however, the skin lacked the freckles and blemishes of a flesh-and-blood version.

  It crossed his mind that she might be a bunk buddy for whatever deep space mission loomed. However, Charles decreed there would be no sexual relations during Project Sail, probably because he assumed his first officer was sleeping with Lieutenant Thomas.

  The man really does have it out for me.

  Whatever the case, Hawthorne said to her, “Leanne, please verify docking clamp release and check your boards: we should be buttoned up from stem to stern.”

  Hawthorne’s screens flickered and went black.

  Captain Charles turned and said, “Commander, sit tight and spectate until you are up to speed.”

  The two men locked eyes for a moment, and then Hawthorne leaned back and put his hands behind his head in an exaggerated gesture of relaxation.

  “Warner,” Charles told her, “confirm docking clamp release and secure ship for flight. Helm, when your boards are green fire maneuvering thrusters at ten percent and get us clear of the station.”

  Outside, a cluster of umbilical cords detached, the docking ramp withdrew, and thrusters fired to roll the ship away from the station. Inside, a heavy panel slid over the window in front of the pilot’s chair.

  “Tommy, is that course ready?”

  “Aye, sir, plotted and ready.”

  “Then put it on the board.”

  Screens across the bridge displayed the course in a series of numbers as well as lines through a cube that represented local space. From what Hawthorne could decipher, SE 185 planned a jaunt beyond Neptune’s orbit, one that would take a week if traveling by diametric drive.

  Charles said, “I want to go further today,” and went to work adjusting the course from his chair.

  While he waited, Hawthorne’s eyes drifted to the navigator, Tommy Starr. Something about him seemed odd, although it was hard to tell since he was wedged between screens and controls. Still, Hawthorne thought the man’s face seemed unnaturally thin and stretched; his arms a little too long.

  When Charles finished changing the course, he called Starr by a nickname that put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “Okay Marvin, try this.”

  Marvin?

  “He’s a Martian,” Hawthorne said aloud and everyone on the bridge glared in his direction.

  “Yes, Commander,” Tommy said. “Is that a problem?”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  Starr coughed into his hand and Hawthorne remembered he had heard him cough while waiting to board, too.

  Given how often he visited the red planet, he should have realized it earlier but native-born Martians were a rarity away from Mars because they were so young. The first civilian colonies went online in 2088 with no births allowed for another two years.

  “Sorry,” Hawthorne said, his face as red as Tommy’s home planet.

  Eyes returned to control panels and touch screens.

  Starr’s oddities resulted from combining the lower natural gravity on the Martian surface and the artificial tug of manmade gravity inside the domes. The mix played havoc on human skeletal development.

  From what Hawthorne understood, Martian kids often developed chronic respiratory issues such as asthma and bronchiectasis, likely from never having breathed fresh air.

  The joys of living in space.

  Captain Charles’s revision popped up around the bridge and Hawthorne thought it must be an error. The new course covered a distance longer than the entire solar system by several magnitudes.

  Once again, Hawthorne could not contain his inner voice.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Charles said, “That’s nothing, Commander; an hour of the A-H in operation. Just a quick test run.”

  The longer he stared at the plotted course, the harder his heart pounded. It was one thing to talk about moving—for lack of a better word—faster than light could follow, another to see a course plotted out into interstellar space.

  He felt a bout of anxiety crawl out from his belly and send a nervous shake through every limb. What they were about to attempt—what Charles and the crew had done multiple times while waiting for the Virgil’s passengers—evaded his capacity to comprehend.

  Jonathan Hawthorne had spent most of his life in space. He knew how to measure Sol’s children in astronomical units because dealing in miles or kilometers involved far too many zeroes. He knew that Uranus orbited twenty AUs from the sun. Now SE 185 intended to travel into deep space hundreds of times farther than Uranus was from the sun.

  And that was just a quick test run.

  Warner, the Air Boss, told him, “Relax, and don’t let it rattle around up there,” and she tapped her temple with an artificial finger.

  He realized his mouth hung open and his complexion morphed from the red flush of e
mbarrassment to a pale shade of shocked. Jonathan Hawthorne, the hero of Ganymede, speechless.

  Perhaps Captain Charles’ decision for him to spectate was for his own good.

  “Mr. Stein, take us out to safe distance.”

  SE 185’s diametric drive came online, projecting negative mass and sending the ship forward at nearly five million miles per hour. Until today, Hawthorne thought that fast.

  Charles turned and spoke to his new first officer.

  “We have made runs longer and shorter just about every day for the last week and the crew did nearly a dozen trial runs while I was busy recruiting you. Point is you have a lot of catching up to do.”

  Hawthorne swallowed but found no saliva in his mouth.

  He asked, “This ship was built before the Niobe?”

  “The A-H drive went through its proving trials on test ships, then a probe, and then SE 185, but for obvious reasons the Niobe was scheduled to lead the mission.”

  “And then the Chinese changed the plan.”

  Stein said from the pilot’s chair, “Captain, reaching safe distance.”

  Charles faced forward.

  “Okay, turn off the main drive when we are in position,” he then flicked his finger in the air, interacting with an overhead screen. Graphs and charts detailing the performance of various systems shrunk to the corner, making room for a video link with the engineering section. Hawthorne could make out the typical RDM cisterns but also a big sphere he could not identify.

  Professor Coffman approached until his face filled the display.

  “Ah, Captain, are we at the safe zone?”

  “Arriving now, Professor, and the course is on the board. Take a look and let me know how long we have to wait.”

  “Give me a minute, Captain,” and the video window closed, allowing the charts and graphs to fill the space again.

  Charles spoke to Hawthorne without turning around: “You heard the briefing yesterday. The diametric drive system primes the RFPG, which needs to build up energy. That power has to be measured precisely to reach our destination. Remember, we are not really moving, the drive makes space do the moving for us and once it starts we do not have much control.”