The Flight of the Trace
Stephen B5 Jones
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Copyright 2013 Stephen Jones
The cover is the work of Sabine Sauermaul and can be found at PublicDomainPictures.net
The Flight of the Trace
"What are you building?" Escapade asked.
Bond Curtiz had been working in their bay for more than a week. They lived in one of the "neighborhood" space stations orbiting Venus, along with thirty other families. They had three bedrooms, a kitchen/living room area, and Bond had a workshop. He was always working on some project or putting something together.
"It's my version of the P-14, Covdell Tracion engine," He said, proudly showing the disassembled boat in front of them. It was the frame of an old orbiter which had obviously seen better days. It didn't look like it could survive a single orbit.
"I remember hearing about those," Escapade said, shaking her head. "They didn't work, right?"
"That's not entirely true. Covdell sent three robot craft to Proxima Centauri, programmed to take some readings, turn around and return," Bond said. "But they never came back."
He had been reading and studying about this for three years, not including the time he spend reading articles about the test runs.
"The very definition of 'didn't work'," She said.
"But it did work," Bond said. "We have the first few microseconds of telemetry. The concept is really simple; the fusion generator feeds the matrix assimilatory, which, once it reaches the functional level, activates the engine, propelling the craft at relativistic speeds for a fraction of a second. How long that fraction is determines how far away the craft goes. The matrix assimilatory on this boat is much smaller than the one Covdell used, and, according to all performance estimates, should allow me to jump about 3 AUs at a time. I can get from one part of the solar system to another in a few seconds... You stopped listening."
"Right after you said 'really simple'," Escapade admitted. "I was distracted when I realized you're planning to fly this thing."
"Not right away," He said.
"Um ... 'Never came back.'?"
"I'll do a lot of tests," Bond said. "Don't worry."
Escapade nodded and climbed the steps back into their living area.
"Just as soon as I get back," Bond said to himself. Escapade liked everything to be planned and well-ordered, but not Bond. Bond enjoyed the chaos. It occasionally produced friction between them.
Bond worked on his boat for the better part of the evening, barely acquiescing the time to eat dinner with Escapade. She was one of the designers in charge of the terraforming of Venus, and very smart.
It was fairly late when he finished putting the last of the reinforced hull panels on the boat. As an afterthought, he took time to stencil the name "Trace" onto the side of the boat, just under the side window. He had always wanted to a ship named "the Trace."
Bond looked around, knowing Escapade had gone to sleep, and climbed into the control seat of the Trace. He knew he should let it sit overnight; he could retest everything in the morning. The theory had been proven many times, despite the problems with the actual trials. Building the engine on a smaller scale made perfect sense. If it worked on the small scale then the engine could be made larger.
In the end he decided to take it out for a spin. He would be back within the hour.
"This is my first flight with the modified P-14 engine," Bond said to the recorder. He had learned early to always have a recorder with him when he flew, especially something he was testing. "I am going to take a quick hop to Jupiter, Gorges is a friend of mine, a researcher on Europa station. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I show him this."
He consulted the Eurika 2 navigation net, a configuration of small satellites which currently were on their way out through the asteroid belt. His computer triangulated his position according to the satellites, and then gave him the heading for the neighborhood of Jupiter. He turned the boat to match the heading, and waited, savoring the moment.
"The assimilatory is ready and standing by," Bond said. "According to the tests, I should feel nothing, and see a bit of a bright afterimage in my eyes. Then I will be in the neighborhood of Jupiter. Here I go."
Bond pushed down the lever to activate the engine, there was a moment where he felt disoriented, and was seeing a strange, bright afterimage in his eyes. He looked back over his shoulder, Mars was gone. He looked ahead and started his braking thrusters. His boat should be drifting at a pretty impressive speed, even if he couldn't feel it, and Jupiter should be filling the sky ahead in mere moments.
Only, it didn't.
The thrusters slowly pulled his speed back to normal levels, and there was still nothing ahead of him.
"I'm not seeing Jupiter at all," Bond said. "I'll get the computer to download a location from the Eurika 2 network, and read my distance from Sol."
There was no information from the Eurika 2 network, which puzzled Bond until the distance number came back, 1403 AUs. Bond gasped. He was well beyond the outer system. Then he turned the boat around to look at the fairly bright star which the computer had checked and confirmed was Sol.
The signals from the Eurika 2 network would not have traveled this far yet, nothing had.
"It works better than I thought," Bond muttered to the recorder.
The system had already started rebuilding energy in the matrix assimilatory. He would be able to jump again in just a few minutes.
"I'm going to turn around and get back into the solar system," Bond said. "I have about five minutes before I'm charged up again. No one has been out as far as this before. Call whoever keeps the record books."
Bond waited, turning the Trace's nose to the exact opposite of the direction he'd been traveling; it looked like he would just graze past the edge of Sol. He should return not too far from where he had started. From wherever he landed, he would fly back to his neighborhood station, then perhaps a little snack, and to bed. Tomorrow he was going to be famous.
"Okay," he said to the recorder. "I'm all charged up and ready to go."
He pushed the lever again.
Bond didn't take time to consider the effects of the second jump. The moment he knew he'd moved he was having the computer check the Eurika 2s and the distance to Sol. He shouldn't be too far from home.
He looked around. There was one prominent star in the sky. He knew it was Sol, and that he was closer than he had been before, but even before the computer told him the numbers he knew he wasn't close enough.
"I'm not home," He finally said out loud. "I missed. I should have known. You can't fly by line of sight out here. The universe is curved, more curved than we have been taught. I can figure up the exact numbers later."
He almost said, "If I can get home." But he didn't want to say that out loud, not yet.
Bond had a moment to think, and he knew he had to, there was no way he could haphazardly stumble his way back home. If he jumped again, he would jump 1403 AUs. He had no way to adjust the matrix assimilatory. He hadn't brought a space suit. What he needed was reliable navigational information, and he needed it at 1403 AUs out.
He checked his computer. There was no signal from the Eurika 2 network. On a whim he tried to Eurika 1s. They had been launched first, and had been abandoned when they moved too far away from the inner planets to be useful.
The first signal came in, then another, finally a third. Bond let out a breath as the computer projected a picture of the current solar system and then zoomed in on his location, well outside Neptune's orbit.
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"It'll take me about twenty years to get home from here with my regular thrusters," Bond said to the recorder, then input the direction he'd been going, from Mars to Jupiter, and had the computer project the line, 1402 AUs long, well into the outer reaches. He had been off by a few degrees on his return trip, it had been enough to set him very far away from home.
Then he noticed a small blip, not too far from where he had just been, relatively speaking.
On his monitor he zoomed in on the blip. It was one of the Voyagers. They had been sent out at the end of the last century. His computer had exact information on its location, a holdover from the early versions of the solar system mapping programs.
"If I know where Voyager is," Bond said, using the computer information to point his boat directly at the place where Voyager was supposed to be. "And the direction it's headed, and the angle of my trajectory, I should be able to know where Sol is and compensate for the curve of the universe."
Bond pushed the lever, hoping, praying.
Voyager was still transmitting, faintly. It took the computer about an hour to secure the old ship's location. It was too far away to actually visit, but it was tempting. That little old probe might just save his life.
Bond allowed the computer to set the course again. It looked like he was aiming too far away from Sol.
"All the information I have tells me this jump will get me home," Bond said. "But I guess there really is only one way to find out. If this doesn't work I'll have lots of time to tell you my last will and testament."
"There's a message," Jihm said, and showed the Saturn station commander where he had imported the message to his computer. "From a boat called the Trace."
"This has to be a joke," Gregorie said after he glanced over it.
"I'll get the telemetry back in a few minutes," Jihm said. "But he sounds legit."
"How could someone get a boat that size this far out," Gregorie said. "There haven't been any ships..."
"He said he built a modified Covdell Tracion engine," Jihm said. "If he did, it would explain how he got here. He also downloaded a message for his wife. Should I send it?"
"Not until we're sure," Gregorie said. "What does it say?"
Jihm handed over the reader; it contained a woman's name, an address on one of the Venus satellites, and the message: "I was stupid again. I should have listened to you. I'm sorry."
"Just in case," Gregorie said, setting the reader down. "Send an alert to the research ship. They may be needed for a rescue operation."
"Okay," Jhim said, touching the speaker in his ear. "I have to go back to the communication room. The telemetry is coming in now."
The research ship met Bond in just under a week. He was cold and hungry, and very happy to see them.
It took three months to get home. By then he was the most famous person in the solar system. Several major companies were engaged in a bidding war over him and his design. Bond would be forever known as the man who opened the stars to the human race.
But most important, his wife forgave him.
... Again.
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An earlier version of this story won second place in a sffworld.com writing contest and was published in Speculation, a webzine which was a one-time publication; it was a school project. (I hope he got a good grade.)
Stephen B5 Jones has written various stories and tales including "Fairies Don't Flirt" and the novel Escapade and Goodbye.