~
Month twenty-four plus nine days. Ground stations have requested that we cut our transmission speed to 90%, because our high speed data is being received faster than they can process.
Month twenty-five. Strange things are happening to all our communications. Even the normal UHF TV signals from Earth are having to be reduced in speed as well as frequency shifted back up to VHF TV tuner frequencies. The automatic fine tuning circuits in the TV's can't handle the frequency drift.
Month twenty-five plus thirteen days. The Captain finally relented and sent one of the scout ships out to do a 360 around the main ship. When they returned their clocks had gained 2.3 seconds over the shipboard clock. They were out for 3 1/2 hours. The digital recording show the aura extending 3 ship lengths out from the ship in all directions. Also now it shows streaks of red and amber. One crew-member commented that it looked like the northern lights when he was a kid in northern Alaska. All data recorded and transmitted to Earth by all communications systems aboard.
End of month twenty-six. Earth reports that they are transmitting all signals to us at normal speed and requested that transmit at 50% speed. Amity Ho, our computer repair wizard, has had to rebuild half the computers directly connected to outside sensors. For some reason the main processors are loosing their timing signal capabilities. She built me a computer using all cannibalized parts from several and it works perfectly. She can't explain the malfunction, nor can the experts back on Earth.
End of month thirty-one. Transmission speed was reduced to 10% normal yesterday. It takes forever to get anything through now. Earth control has requested that we build small guided missiles and launch all data recorded in one month batches when normal communications fail.
Month thirty-two and six days. Several of the reporters reported that they received the exact same dispatches word for word that they received yesterday. For six hours last night all communications failed.
Month thirty-two and eighteen days. Naomi, the crew communications specialist along with Albert our theoretical astronomer reported at a crew meeting that we are experiencing an unusual phenomena. All signals received by the ship communications array are reversed, and the same we received from now back toward launch date. By analyzing the transmissions received they claim that we are traveling in reverse time. The computers corrected the signals for first to last data received for awhile, but now they are failing to decipher signals received. After the meeting the Captain ordered us to do a complete data download for a messenger missile that will be launched in ten hours. He informed us that the messenger missile will take nine shipboard years to reach Earth, but Albert computes that Earth time will only be four years after our departure. He ordered me to prepare a wraparound solar power unit that will function to power a transmitter until it is turned off. When I asked him how long, all he did was cover his face with his left hand and mumble fifty years.
As much as I don't like letting anyone read my journal, I'm including it as two files, one normal and reverse in ASCII and another in UTF-8, along with a printout of all my file names and data summaries.
End of month thirty-two. At several meetings where we pondered the situation we were in, the reporters were elected to be our historians. Each is tasked to make an independent history of our trip starting with the meeting where our situation was described to the ship crew. I'm thinking about restarting my journal.
Month thirty-three plus one week. The Captain announced that he will chair weekly meeting of the crew by shifts. Our starting topics will to be to figure out how to survive in the Saturn system, figure out what date in Earth time we are, how we can return to Earth after we left so as not create problems, and last but not least important how to handle our supplies.
Month thirty three plus eight days. Last night I attended my scheduled meeting on shift two and listened in on the third shift meeting. Pandemonium in both. The Captain took several of the ideas and ordered committees formed to refine them and submit solutions to him.
Month thirty-three plus fifteen days. Naomi, third shift pilot and navigator, cornered me after their meeting. She and Alice had talked and determined that I probably knew more about what was going on than Albert because all he did was spout theoretical data. They even offered to help me with my duties on the solar panels and power converters.
End of month thirty-three. It's hectic, the latest navigation data indicates that we are only a month away from the Saturn system. We haven't lost enough delta-V to enter the system and go into orbit. The Captain doesn't want to use the chemical rockets to decelerate because there is no way to replace the fuel. Naomi and I have been tasked to compute a deceleration orbit using gravitational breaking.
Month thirty-four and four days. Calculations complete. However we'll have to make five orbits of Saturn to slow us enough. It will be like balancing a brick on a pin, because our velocity is high enough that if our attitude off by 2 degrees the ion drive will simply accelerate us into an impossible trajectory, not decelerate us. The Captain isn't happy with the trajectories because the first and fourth passes are inside the orbit of Mimas and through the rings. After informing him, I computed re-positioning the solar panels for minimum impact damage, I informed him that I would need help for a week to re-position them. The ion drive would help burn a path for us, but he needed to get engineering to build a shield across the rear of the ship in case we actually hit a large chunk of ice in the rings.
Month thirty-four and twenty-eight days. It took us 4/100th of a second to transit the rings. One compartment in the rear of the ship was holed. Power drops from fifty-seven panels indicate damage. We've got six weeks to repair all damage and prepare for the next close pass. I decided to recompute my dating system, starting with our first transit of Saturn as day 1.
~ ~ ~