by T I WADE
VIN spent much of the time staring outside the cockpit. Jonesy could control the craft without his help and crept away from the ship. Mars was already another star in the sky, just a little larger than the other stars as it appeared outside VIN’s port side window.
The sun was a constant; always there. It took a long time for such a large body to grow small, and even at 51,000 miles an hour, they were creeping through space slower than a tortoise across a road. Earth was also just another small star and they were now in new territory, well over half a billion miles from Earth and getting farther away all the time.
Ryan left the last message for Earth before leaving. In the dust before Opportunity’s camera, it read “America One-heading for Jupiter-back in a few decades-see you around sometime.”
“Ready to start the alien shield defense system,” Jonesy communicated to the Bridge. Nobody had really put a name to the box or the magic it generated. Jonesy and VIN were going to allow the shield’s box, now strapped exactly halfway down the length of the shuttle, to power up for ten minutes. Their objective was to see how large the blue shield would grow, and if it stressed out the battery, the shuttle’s computer systems, or the thrusters while it was operating.
“You are now one mile off our starboard side. We are ready, Mr. Jones, when you are,” Ryan replied, watching the shuttle from the Bridge.
“We have video feed running and you can start her up. I suggest 30 percent and then hold it there for several minutes,” added Igor standing next to Ryan.
Fully suited up, the two astronauts prepared themselves for activating the shield. Everything in the cockpit was strapped down tight, all backup computers were live, and they themselves had videos running inside the cockpit, and outside to record what was about to happen.
At 30 percent, the same blue shield made its appearance from the box underneath them, and began to grow. The forward movement of the craft did not affect the blue wall. A beautiful round ball began to envelop the shuttle and, foot by foot, it crept along the shuttle’s fuselage in both forward and rear directions simultaneously.
“Increasing to 40 percent. How does it look from the Bridge?” Jonesy asked.
“Beautiful,” replied Ryan. “It is as far back as your tail section.”
“I see it still creeping along our cockpit windows, right by my helmet,” added VIN. “I don’t see any readout changes in the craft, or on my suit.”
“Okay, holding power at 40 percent. I have a question,” Jonesy interjected. “If it envelops our rear thrusters, what is going to happen? Are we going to explode?”
“How do you mean?” Ryan asked not getting what Jonesy was saying.
“We need continuous thruster movement, from side thrusters, and or rear thrusters, from time to time. What happens when I ignite the engines?” Jonesy asked.
“Well, that is what you are going to find out, Mr. Jones,” replied Ryan.
“I would bet that the manufacturers thought of that, whoever they were,” Igor commented. “I think thrust emissions could be classed as ‘soft emissions’ for the shield. Because the thrust out of the motors is not dense or solid matter, in an atmosphere like on Earth, it should not affect the shield. Those are my thoughts only, not fact.”
“Okay, increasing power to 50 percent,” continued Jonesy and VIN watched as the blue wall left the front of the ship and advanced out in front of them a foot at a time.
“The walls are not touching the craft, the shield has changed from a perfectly round ball to an oval circle. It seems that it keeps the same distance from the sides as it does from the ends of the ship,” stated Ryan. “It now looks like a peanut shell, or a cigar around your shuttle, Mr. Jones, Mr. Noble.”
“Well, it is about twenty feet in front of us and twenty feet above the roof of the shuttle,” added VIN.
“And only at 50 percent power,” added Jonesy, “and it is still growing, I think it’s time for my partner to head out and check what it’s like out there.”
Since VIN was suited up and ready for a spacewalk, he pushed the control lever to raise the docking port out of the roof.
“The cigar shape changed slightly to accommodate the expanded width caused by the rising docking port,” Ryan observed as VIN headed into the port.
VIN grabbed the cord and sealed the lower door to the port. He allowed the port to purge by sucking 97 percent of the air back into the tanks, to keep the valuable air within the shuttle; once he was down to a vacuum, he allowed the outer hatch to open. Gracefully VIN floated out.
The blue soap bubble picked up all the light there was out there. It looked much lighter inside the bubble than outside and slowly he let the cord out and floated away from the ship.
“I wonder if this bubble would expand all the way down to Earth, maybe even for a landing in our atmosphere,” Jonesy mused out loud.
“Yeah! And bounce all the way down the runway like a rubber ball. I don’t see it,” responded VIN, riling his partner from outer space.
“Well, we won’t try that for a while, Mr. Jones,” smiled Ryan.
“If you could, Jonesy, you could disappear inside your bubble, in your fancy Gulfstream, and head around planet Earth totally off the radar,” laughed Igor.
“Mr. Noble, we can see you. You look like a fetus in a cocoon through the binoculars,” added Ryan.
“I’m going to try and exit the shield using my jetpack,” VIN said.
It was very pretty in the blue bubble, but the color dimmed back to plain black when his head floated outside of it. His suit and his jetpack didn’t change anything. “I think Igor is right, my jetpack doesn’t change the bubble. I’m now three quarters out and can’t feel a thing. Let me hit the bubble as hard as I can.” Even with half his body still inside the shield, when he hit it with all the strength he could muster in space, his glove connected hard onto the bubble’s surface. He left his hand there, and once the initial impact was gone, he could immediately sink his hand into and out of the bubble, not feeling a thing. “I got it! How they designed this thing,” VIN laughed as he hit the bubble hard from inside, again hitting solid matter. “Ever smack your flat hand onto water? It’s like hitting a hard surface, but if you let your hand glide into the water, it just passes through.”
“Pretty close, VIN,” remarked Boris from inside the mother ship “but you don’t actually enter the water, a thin skin is always between you and the water, and I believe this is how this alien shield reacts. I believe that any laser beam fired at the shield will just add to its strength, from inside or out.”
Jonesy was ordered to increase the power another 10 percent and the shield increased, this time doubling in size. When Jonesy increased the power to 70 percent, the bubble extended about 100 feet from the shuttle, but it didn’t grow anymore, the shield just became brighter.
“It seems that it doesn’t extend out further than a certain distance, it just gets brighter and stronger,” VIN reported as he followed the bubble. To him it had certainly got brighter. Again inside the shield, he felt he was in the deep end of a large, bright blue, clear swimming pool.
Finally, when VIN was back inside, Jonesy ignited the rear thrusters; again, nothing happened. Somehow the shuttle’s speed increased and the bubble didn’t change. That blew Jonesy away.
Once the test was over, it was time to test it on America One herself. The box would be connected to the much larger, more powerful nuclear reactor underneath the mother ship. With 10 times the power, they would have to be really careful how much power they sent through the box. Too much and it could be destroyed.
An hour later, with the box closed down and the docking port back in its retracted position, Jonesy reconnected the shuttle to America One.
It had certainly been an interesting test. The next step was for spacewalking electricians to connect the box halfway down the underbelly of the mother ship, which put the alien box in the same location as the reactor.
With their workday over, the two astronauts entered the cubes,
took the elevator up to the Bridge, debriefed, and then headed up to the pool deck. It was time for a swim and a few space beers on the loungers. During their four-month stay on Mars, they had certainly missed the inner luxuries of America One, and the stockpiles aboard, which had increased.
“So, gentlemen, today our settings are much more powerful using our reactor, than the one Mr. Jones used on SB-III,” Ryan said to the group gathered on the Bridge the next day. The crew had placed the battery onto the underbelly of the mother ship, and during a three-hour spacewalk Igor and Boris secured the cables to outside connections on the reactor.
“I believe two percent power to start with would equal the 20 percent used yesterday,” Igor calculated from the notes he had worked on earlier. “Under no circumstances can we go over nine percent. The shield has never been subjected to our raw power, and we certainly don’t want to damage the reactor or the walls of the ship.”
“We will start at one percent and carefully go up to eight,” replied Ryan. “Eight percent power from our reactor won’t hurt usage aboard the ship, and it will give the shield far more concentrated juice than Mr. Jones used yesterday.”
Most of the astronauts, Captain Pete, Igor, Vitalily and Boris were on the Bridge, the best place aboard ship to view the shield. Jonesy and VIN were half a mile off the starboard side of the ship, and were to record events from outside.
“We have cameras running, and we are ready for you to start the test,” VIN reported. They were not wearing helmets so they could watch what was happening without any distortion that might occur from looking through Plexiglas.
Nothing happened for the first couple of minutes; Ryan was holding the power down to one percent. At two percent the two men in SB-III saw the blue ball begin to grow. As expected, it seemed to want to cover any parts of the ship protruding out of its wall. The ball flattened out and stopped growing quickly underneath the craft, concentrating its energy on covering the cylinder tubes sticking out in three directions.
“Increasing power to five percent,” stated Igor and, the ball grew quickly.
“The blue wall has just about reached the upper cylinders,” Jonesy briefed the crew on the mother ship. “Now it’s creeping up the cylinder walls.”
“Both ends of the ship are covered and now you guys on the Bridge are about to go for a swim in a blue pool,” VIN added.
He was right. The crew on the Bridge watched in fascination as a blue line worked its way along the outside of the large windows, passed the Bridge infrastructure, and continued growing. Ryan and the other observers watched it stop growing about twenty feet in front of the Bridge.
“Just about over the cylinder roof now,” VIN informed them. “There, it has completely covered the craft.”
“We can now pump it full of air and begin sunbathing on the outer decks,” Jonesy joked.
“I would suggest heaters first,” replied Maggie, his wife, from inside the Bridge.
“Well, tell the boss to fly closer to the sun, then we can haul out the pool, and get enough radiation for the rest of our lives,” Jonesy added, making everyone aboard smile.
“We need to increase the size of the bubble,” continued Ryan seriously. “Igor, increase power to six percent.” The bubble grew and the light became brighter inside the bubble, and also inside the Bridge.
“Does looking through the bubble seem okay?” asked Boris.
“I brought dark glasses just in case for me and Mars,” said Suzi, holding Mars Noble; the two were wearing the glasses she brought. “If I keep my Polaroid glasses on, I can see through the bubble much easier than if I take them off.”
“Interesting,” replied Ryan. “Mr. Saunders, could you please get my spacesuit helmet from the dressing room? Also, Mr. Noble, I want you to get your helmet on and go out to view the bubble externally. The binoculars I’m looking through distort the view; it’s like being underwater and we need to complete our tests within our three-hour test schedule.”
Just as Ryan’s helmet was placed over his head, he noticed that the deep blueness inside of the bubble decreased somewhat. VIN reported the same effect when Jonesy helped him on with his. Jonesy extracted the docking port and readied it for his partner.
“It seems the bubble has stopped growing,” Jonesy observed when he returned to his flight seat. “Like yesterday, the bubble boundary is about 100 feet from the external points of the ship. It looks identical underneath the ship, as it does over the upper level, and in front and in back.”
“Any feedback on power output?” Ryan asked Igor.
“Negative, the reactor, and the shield—which I cannot gauge—seem fine. I’m certain the box was designed for long-term use and I think it is not necessary to halt the power. The first test is to allow SB-III to enter the shield while it is under power. If that is positive, then we can do a short thruster test. I don’t really want to use a Pulse thrust test inside the bubble until and unless it is absolutely necessary. If anything can harm, or damage our outer walls, it is a hydrogen pulse bouncing around inside the bubble. Remember what the smaller shuttle pulsers did to our hangars down in Nevada?” Everybody nodded.
“If we can get SB-III through the bubble, Mr. Jones, connect the shuttle back up to America One inside the bubble, and complete maneuvers with hydrogen thrusters only. With the success of that test, we will have achieved a dream of every science fiction fan: to have a shield against the destructive aspects of space matter.”
“What would happen if something big, like an asteroid hit us while we are in the bubble?” Kathy, Ryan’s wife, asked Igor.
“That I don’t know, but I’m sure the bubble would take most of the impact and, hopefully, America One would not be damaged when it bounced around inside.” Igor thought for a few seconds. “Since all of our electronics are still 100 percent operational in here, I believe the best way to diffuse the impact is to divert it beforehand and not have any impact at all.”
“Well said!” Ryan commented.
VIN went out for a short space walk to photograph the mother ship inside the bubble. The bubble didn’t look as blue with his helmet on, the difference being the glass of SB-III was made of polarized armor glass compared to his helmet’s Plexiglas.
Twenty minutes later came the first big test. With VIN still outside the shuttle, Jonesy was to slowly inch the craft through the wall, the operative word “slowly” of utmost importance.
By now Jonesy could command his beloved SB-III to do somersaults if anybody wanted him to, and he carefully aimed the shuttle’s nose towards the blue barrier. The space closed and, as slowly as possible, he allowed the most forward part of his craft—the particle deflection shield two inches in front of the nose—to touch the wall; the shuttle’s nose passed through the shield and into the blueness inside.
VIN was pulled along and hit the wall hard as he came in contact with it, bounced off, and floated halfway down the fuselage. He relaxed his hand and it and the rest of him slipped through the wall with the shuttle below him.
“I’m still using the side thrusters, and they aren’t being detected or deflected by the wall,” Jonesy reported.
“Three quarters of the shuttle inside the shield,” VIN added. “There goes the tail; okay Jonesy, we are inside the wall.”
“Preparing SB-III for a connection to the docking port,” Jonesy stated, as he worked the craft in-between the cylinders. “Turning inverted for docking. It is really pretty in here, like being in Earth’s atmosphere. Everything is clear and nothing looks distorted to me. Two feet from the port… one foot… three inches… ready to connect to the docking port.”
“You are connected to your port, SB-III, outer hatches locked, retracting docking port now,” a crewmember inside the mother ship conveyed over the intercom.
“Great! The most important test is complete,” Ryan said. “Now at least we know that our smaller craft can come and go as they please, albeit very slowly. Now we need to test the side and rear thrusters of the mother ship.”
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br /> For the next hour, the ship’s thrusters went through tests. The shield around them didn’t deter any thrusts or movements and the Bridge decided to leave the shield up permanently. It still worked after being dormant 10,000 years, so another few decades wouldn’t matter.
An unexpected and especially pleasant aspect of the shield was that it produced a sense of light coming through the windows. Instead of blackness and stars, there was a little reminder of a sunny clear day on Earth. Ryan wondered if this was part of the actual design; to remind the aliens, or first voyagers what a day in atmosphere looked like. Insulated from the blackness of space, the crew grew accustomed to a new sense of comfort and protection within the cocoon of the blue shield.
Chapter 8
The little round blue planet, or is it an asteroid?
Gradually, Mars was left behind as they crept closer to the asteroid in front of them.
America One couldn’t see or find the minute planet on its radar. The only way Captain Pete could follow the direction of the rock, was to rely on the computers and follow the programed path they had created based on its previous direction and speed.
Since leaving Earth orbit, life aboard the mother ship had become routine. Daily meetings between certain sections occurred either in the cafeteria or on the Bridge. Daily meetings were also scheduled within the sections of the ship: biology, physics, chemistry, fuel manufacture, water purification, the build and repair crew, engine maintenance, health, diet, and numerous others. Quite a few of the crew belonged to several of the discussion groups and had to tier their meetings.
Security was the smallest group, consisting of VIN, Jonesy, Boris, Igor, Ryan and Vitalily. One of the doctors, or even the biologists, was asked to attend if there was a security problem in their areas.
VIN often attended the biology discussions with Suzi and eighteen-month old Mars Noble. He also attended health meetings and get-togethers to discuss disease, diet and general health aboard ship.
