Quest for the Conestoga (Colony Ship Conestoga Book 1)

by John Thornton

  Suddenly, one of the small animals raced toward the bloated one, and stuck its head down underneath the animal’s belly. The small one put its front legs straight out, dipped its back and jabbed its head into a part of the other animal. The big one stood still as the smaller one nuzzled underneath.

  “Babies feeding,” Cammarry said.

  “Indeed, that is correct,” Sandie stated. “These are animals are no threat. They are of a type called capra aegagrus hircus, commonly called the goat. At one time on Earth there were an estimated one-billion of these goat animals in a myriad of subspecies, varieties, and types. According to the records we have, goats are one of the oldest domesticated animals. They were used for their milk, meat, hair, skins, as a work animal, and as a companion animal. These specific ones appear to be smaller than the average size in the records, perhaps they are of a dwarf variety.”

  “Three billy goats? There may be a troll lurking about somewhere, according to the old folklore,” Jerome said with a grin. “Although what would constitute a bridge to trip-trap across is unclear.” He smiled as he watched the one goat nurse while the other young one continued to bop about leaping in silly ways.

  “Billy goat refers to the male, nanny goat refers to the female, and the young ones are called kids,” Sandie said. “At least according to the common parlance of that era. As to the troll, there are a variety of possibilities. Trolls were common in folklore, and may represent degenerate humans, people or ill repute, criminals, or a common fear of the unknown. A troll might be a substitute figure for a monster that has no specific physical description. Trolls in the historical records varied drastically from culture to culture and even within the same community. Often the troll was simply a non-specific embodiment of the unknown or of primitive mind’s anxiety of terror.”

  “So no real trolls?” Jerome chuckled.

  The first young animal stopped nursing and began hopping about again. They kept moving closer and closer in their meandering manner. Then suddenly all the goats stood still, turned, and looked directly at where Jerome and Cammarry were squatting. With a group mentality, the goats seemed to all become aware of the people at the same moment. They intensely stared at the adventurers.

  “Maaaaa!” The goats all cried in unison.

  “They have seen us,” Cammarry said. “They do not seem overly worried or concerned. We still need to build the receiving pad, and these animals just confirm there is adequate resources here. They are able to survive, we have seen water running in these rooms, and there is plant life. Some kind of ecosystem is functioning, and apparently has been for years.”

  “I will get that door and begin making the grid,” Jerome said and as he stood up, the goats bolted away in the blink of an eye.

  “I guess I scared them. They are certainly skittish.” Jerome saw something else move in a far corner of the room. Something was behind one of the bush-sized plants. “Well one goat stayed, I think, way over there. Unless it was the proverbial troll from the rhyme?”

  Cammarry turned up the brightness of the fusion pack light and went back to setting out the components for the teleportation system.

  Jerome left and returned carrying the door into the room. He then cut a small section and made a flat tool of it. Using that he scraped the growth medium off the floor and cleaned the needed area. The space was more than adequate. He continued cutting the remains of the permalloy door and slicing it into thin sections and placed them in the correct pattern on the floor.

  “Sandie, I have everything ready. As soon as we get the grid pattern laid down, we can begin calibrations and final assembly.” Cammarry stood and walked over to another door and using a molecular saw, cut that door off and began stripping it down to add to the grid.

  “I am still working on some additional issues as well,” the AI replied. “I hope to be ready when you are.”

  Working together, Jerome and Cammarry soon had the basic framework for the teleportation receiving pad completed. The goats were heard again at one point, but it was a distant echo, and they did not approach. The two people kept comparing their endeavors against the plans that Sandie displayed through their com-links.

  “Sandie, double check our construction quality,” Jerome commanded. “We do not want any problems with this system.” He stood still and waited for the AI’s reply.

  “Excellent work!” Sandie chortled. “The grid pattern is nearly perfect, and it is well within established tolerances and design clearances.”

  “So now we hook up all the pieces and connect in the component parts,” Cammarry stated.

  She assembled the control and utilization console, as well as the proximity array and compiler. Jerome made the connections for the fusion pack. All the pieces fit together well and the mechanism was completed.

  “Sandie, I am ready to activate. Are you ready to oversee our transmissions?” Cammarry asked.

  “I am ready.”

  Jerome switched on the fusion pack. He nodded to Cammarry who began tuning the controls for the teleportation pad. The grid on the floor made a slight humming noise. There was a dim glow from the grid as energy slid into it. The area was wafted by a slight smell of ozone and something burnt.

  “Step one operational,” Cammarry stated as she adjusted the controls. “Now I need to fine tune it over the FTL pseudomagnetronics to be able to establish a direct connection. I am running the initiation tests on the FTA transceiver. Everything here looks good. It is functioning at acceptable levels. I can soon scan for the Dome’s signals. When I lock in on Dome 17, we should have nearly instantaneous communication. When I have the signal situated, all we will need to do is to connect in and synchronize the final field generator oscillations. That step might take a short while to establish the final calibrations.”

  “All indicators are optimal,” Jerome said as he looked at the console. Toggling a switch, he said, “Sending FTL carrier wave back to Dome 17.”

  “Looking good. System is ready to receive.” Cammarry smiled.

  “Negative response to carrier wave,” Jerome reported. “I am adjusting to larger scope and increasing quark synergistic amplitude and ultrasymmetric trios,” he adjusted several dials and checked some gauges on the console.

  “Sandie, I am not registering the Dome 17 signal,” Cammarry said. “Where is the malfunction? All my indicators say it is go for connection.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “I agree, everything here looks good,” Jerome stated. “The connection back to the dome should be easy. The receiving pad is open to receive.”

  “Unless someone else already locked in,” Cammarry said with a tremble in her voice. “Could that be?”

  “Brink would not prohibit us from locking in on the signal, even if another team had succeeded. The way I understand it, the signal and a teleporter lock are separate things. We might not be able to establish a lock and open an orifice, but the signal would still be there. The sending pad cannot connect to two separate receivers, but that is different from the signal. Those are two separate parts of the system. I could understand a failure to lock in and make the orifice, but we should still get the signal anyway, right”

  “Sandie? Sandie? Answer us! What is the status of this teleporter?” Cammarry yelled. Her voice echoed around the large room, much like the goats bleating had done. “Answer me!”

  “Sandie, what is the issue?” Jerome added. “I am sending out the FTL carrier wave at maximum intensity, but I cannot even find the signal, let alone lock in.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Sandie the artificial intelligence system finally answered. “Ever since we had the incident, I have been attempting to locate our astronomical position. I have only found two confirmed reference points in space, Westerhuis 1066, and Westerhuis 200Q.”

  “What does that mean?” Jerome asked.

  “Those are the only two objects I can positively identify from our present location. They are some of the most remote, from Earth’s position, of all the c
elestial objects identified and labeled by Astronomer Westerhuis. I do have a third celestial object, a pulsar, which I conjecture to possibly be one in the database, but it only roughly approximates the readings from Earth,” Sandie said tentatively.

  “What does that mean?” Jerome asked.

  “It means we are way far away from Earth,” Cammarry said in a low tone. “Dome 17 is far, far, away.”

  “That is why we need the teleportation receiving pad, of course we are light years away from Earth. The Conestoga was on a hundred-year journey so it traveled a long way,” Jerome replied. A growing unease was in his voice.

  “Neither Westerhuis 1066 nor Westerhuis 200Q were target systems for the colony ship program, were they? Sandie? Where are we?” Cammarry murmured. Then she spoke up. “Just say it! Where are we?”

  “I cannot locate the Earth solar system. I conjecture that we are between 1,722 and 1,789 light years from Earth, but that is only a rough conjecture with only a moderate level of confidence for accuracy. If the pulsar is not the one in the database, and that is a distinct possibility, then I cannot even give a rough approximation of distance from Earth,” Sandie replied.

  “We are way too far away to find the signal from Dome 17,” Cammarry said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “That is correct. I am truly sorry,” Sandie said. “I have attempted every conceivable way to assess our location, and let me repeat, I conjecture that we are between 1,722 and 1,789 light years from Earth. I can see no way to overcome the great distance, even with faster-than-light technology.”

  “We are over 1,700 light years further away from Earth than any of the colony ships’ target worlds?” Jerome asked. “How?”

  “That incident,” Cammarry said. “That Cosmic Crinkle thing. It threw us way out somewhere.” She slammed her fist into the floor. “No! It cannot be.”

  “Cammarry’s conclusion fits the facts, and she is likely correct, although I cannot explain it myself,” Sandie said. “The Cosmic Crinkle apparently, to use her term, threw the Conestoga out here as well as throwing the robotic probe and our FTL scout ship. I have no basis for understanding how that happened, but the facts point to that conclusion.”

  “So what we saw at the start of that incident, that first Conestoga, it was a mirage?” Jerome said. “Some kind of afterimage or stain in space? Like I said, a ghost?”

  “I have no better word to use than mirage,” Sandie stated. “We are here now, and I can conjecture no way of making a teleportation connection back to Dome 17. I am truly sorry.”

  Cammarry shut down the teleportation receiving pad. The hum was gone, the smells were gone, and the glow dissipated. “We have failed.”

  Jerome was pensive. He stepped over and held onto Cammarry. He then stated, “We are alive. We are here. We can survive here. That is not a failure. The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: we live in the possible, and that is being successful. We must not dwell in the past, nor dream of the future, we concentrate our minds on this present moment.”

  Cammarry hugged him back. “But the people in Dome 17, what will happen to them?”

  “There are six other missions, one of them must succeed,” Jerome said and together they wept bitterly.

  10 descendants

  As time passed, Cammarry and Jerome discovered that the dim lighting of the rooms they had explored did not charge over time. Sandie reminded them some hours later, as they sat around the teleportation receiving pad, "You may wish to attempt sleep."

  “How long has it been,” Jerome asked. He stood and did some stretching exercises.

  “It has been thirty-six hours since we had the Cosmic Crinkle incident. You may wish to begin establishing a day-night cycle. The lighting on the Conestoga seems to be consistently at the same level.” Sandie reported.

  “We can try to connect in again,” Cammarry said.

  “We have tried seven times, all without success.” Sandie’s voice was still infused with a subtle optimism which grated on Cammarry’s nerves. “I will keep monitoring for the Dome 17 signal. Should I discover it, I will awaken you immediately.”

  Jerome and Cammarry retreated back to the scout ship and strapped themselves into the acceleration seats and tried to sleep. Sandie was able to darken the cockpit, but it was very difficult to relax.

  “Jerome? The teleporter failed,” Cammarry cried softly.

  “Yes, I know,” he replied as he held onto her.

  “We will never see any of them again. We will not even know what happened to them, or where they will have gone,” she sobbed.

  Jerome cried as well. “It has been an exhausting journey. We still have the majority of the Conestoga to investigate. Who knows what we will find.”

  “I am with you in this,” she answered him.

  Eventually they did drift off into a fitful sleep.

  Sandie awoke them after some length of time. “I am establishing this as morning. Please wake up. There is food to consume and things to do.”

  “Morning? Or mourning?” Cammarry asked. “I guess I did rest some.”

  “Another day, another challenge. Sandie? Any luck finding the Dome 17 signal?” Jerome asked as he wiggled his way out of the scout ship and through the umbilicus. He grabbed a food ration ate it and sucked down some water.

  “No. I will let you know the moment that changes,” Sandie replied.

  Neither Cammarry nor Jerome spoke much for a while. They did move out from the floating in the scout to the gravity of the Conestoga. The airlock room was still a mess, with the remains of the rat mound, and the other debris.

  “We can at least make a clean place for ourselves that is not so cramped,” Jerome suggested.

  And so they cleared out the airlock and threw the remains of the rat mound into the room where the teleportation equipment was still located. They also scrubbed down the room with the chair, and the storage room with the body in the ruined spacesuit. All the debris they piled up in a corner of the large room. The teleporter was on one side of the center hedge of vegetation, and they threw the remains and junk from the other rooms on the far side of the hedge. Looking at the teleportation receiving pad was hard as it reminded them of their failure. So they called the great room the goat room.

  The far side of the goat room, had two doors which were stuck open about half way. Beyond the doors was a hallway which was also lit by the typical dim overhead illumination. There were a couple other doors off the goat room, but they were closed.

  “I will remove the seats from the scout, we can use them as beds in the storage room. That seems the most secure location as it has only the one door. We can shut that door as we need to,” Jerome said.

  “I will keep working on welding over as many of the rat holes as I can find, so the airlock room will be more secure as well,” Cammarry replied. “Those animals have not come back. I sort of wonder where they went.”

  “The Conestoga is big,” Jerome replied. “Especially to a small animal.”

  “Or to people so far from home.”

  Neither worked with much eagerness or passion, but they did explore the nearby rooms. If the door off the goat room opened easily they explored what was beyond. Neither felt like forcing anything open.

  One room was overgrown with tall and reedy plants, but it led nowhere else. Another room had stacks of cargo crates, covered by mold and small plants. The final door they opened led to a small room with shower stalls, toilets, and sinks. It took several hours of work to repair the pipes which came into that room, but Cammarry and Jerome established a working sink, and toilet. The air vents in the toileting area had jammed shut, and there was no evidence that growth medium had ever been present in that room. It was the first place they had encountered a room without what they called the fungus growth.

  “That secures a water source for us,” Jerome said as they finished. “And a waste disposal place.”

  “It is far better than what we were using in the corner of the goat room, wher
e the water made those small channels across the growth medium and empties out through the vents in the floor. That was smelly and nasty. This is much more sanitary, and I think that will be important in the future,” Cammarry replied.

  Each morning, Cammarry and Jerome turned on the teleportation system and manually scanned for the signal from Dome 17, but it was never located.

  “Sandie, any more information about where we are or how to contact Dome 17?” Cammarry asked yet again.

  “I am afraid not. The situation remains the same. I can conjecture no method of contacting Dome 17,” the AI replied. “I am still taking readings on this solar system and its planetary bodies. There are a high number of asteroids and comets, more than I expected. The oort cloud for this solar system is especially dense. I am tracking and cataloging them.”