“How much food stock do we have on board?” Peter asked.
“Clarification of specifications needed: In normal space, or K-T-space?” Perry asked.
“Real.”
“Assuming there is no manufacture of non-essential items, and approximately 6,000 calories per day for the male adolescents and 4,000 for Henrietta, there are sufficient materials for the manufacture of 22.5 days’ worth of food. If emergency rationing begins now, we may double that estimate without a significant effect to your growth rates.”
“But those figures are for active kids,” Ali observed.
“True, but without an adequate exercise routine, muscle atrophy will manifest itself and bone mass loss will become a chronic problem.”
“One and a half months, then, with moderate rationing,” Peter concluded.
“That is approximately correct,” Perry replied.
“So, we need to find food,” Henrietta said.
“I have often heard Henrietta use this term,” Perry suggested, “and I believe it is appropriate for this situation. I believe my reply should be ‘duh.’ ”
* * *
Son, I love you ….
The dream returned again in the middle of the night, causing Peter to wake up in a cold sweat. Everything was dark and disorienting. It was the tone of the voice that disturbed him. It sounded like pure resignation, like his dad knew it would be his farewell speech to the universe.
Those words came back to haunt Peter. Was his dad still alive? He couldn’t be. But the woman talking to him seemed so calm.
“Missile impact in one minute, Captain …. Point defenses will not stop them all.”
How many missiles struck the Sirius? Ten …? Fifteen …? One was enough to destroy my dad’s small frigate. Was the end quick? Peter dearly hoped so.
Peter would not let his father’s death amount to nothing. He would survive somehow and bring this ship back to humanity to make his sacrifice worthwhile. For that, he would need to take charge; unify the crew, and bring them back home.
So, how do we get home, Peter? You think you are so smart; tell me how?
First, they would need to find out where they were. If they could make that connection, they could make plans to travel back. First things first, Peter realized.
It was still dark in the stateroom, but Peter did not bother with the lights. “Perry, are you there?”
“I am always here, Peter.”
He stared up at the dark ceiling. “After you regained consciousness, we were drifting in a straight line, correct?”
“It was more like an arc due to the attraction of the mass of the star, but otherwise, that is a correct approximation.”
“And you’ve kept track of all the course corrections you’ve made since then?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good. So can you extrapolate the direction we came from?”
“The curvature of our original course was increasing exponentially, so it would stand to reason the initial entry point was close to a straight line. Assuming you could tell me how long I was non-functional, I could extrapolate the entry point into this system, and it’s exact location.”
“How accurate would that be?”
“Trajectory extrapolation alone would approach eighty–six percent, Peter. In addition, the nebular gas we have traveled through has been distorted by our passage, and can be used as a supplemental data point to confirm our assumptions.”
“You can do that?”
“Oh, yes. The B companion star here has hollowed out an ionized region within the gas cloud along its orbit. Our passage through the cloud is producing a similar effect, albeit at a much smaller scale.”
“Okay, fine. Make those calculations and store it in your memory.”
Perry purred for less than a minute. “Done,” he said with satisfaction.
“Already?”
“It was a simple calculation, Peter. Solution accuracy is 98.65 percent.”
Wow, that was simple. He was impressed. “Alter course, and bring us back to that exact spot and the heading we came from.”
That should at least put them back in the proper direction, assuming they bore through K-T-space in a straight line. If the line through K-T-space was tortuous, then all bets were off; but Peter did not think so.
“Very well,” Perry responded. “At optimal speeds and trajectories, we can arrive at that location in seven days.”
“That would leave us with around six weeks of food.”
“In normal space, yes. Accounting for hyperspace travel will alter that parameter, adding more days to your effective travel range.”
Peter wondered just how far they could go with that amount of food onboard. Without at least one jump, they would not get far. “We normally use a half-day of food per light-year in a jump?”
“That is correct.”
“And you can cut us to half-rations in jump too?”
“That is possible, but that would result in a noticeable effect on human development. It is one thing to cut rations in normal space, but time is magnified considerably within a jump. Developmental deficiencies would accumulate quickly.”
“We’ll have to live with that chance,” Peter said mostly to himself. He was sure it was the only way. “Perry, lights please—full power.”
The room lit up. Peter looked at his watch. They had no idea what time it really was—nor the day or the year, for that matter—but they established an arbitrary time of day once they came out of jump, as well as declaring it as Day 1 of Year 1. The time was now 0312 in the morning of Day 9.
“Well, no use trying to get back to sleep,” Peter said.
“I could sing to you,” Perry suggested. “I am led to believe that melodic repetitions calm children at bedtime.”
“No, that won’t help. Thanks anyway.”
“You are welcome, Peter.”
Peter reached down to the deck and retrieved his Personal Assistant, rubbing his nose as he turned it on. “Show me everything you have about this system. Create a file on my PAD.”
Within seconds, Peter’s Assistant chimed. *INCOMING FILE RECEIVED,* the PAD’s artificial voice stated.
Peter sat up in bed and folded out the display between his legs. He began scrolling through the data. There had to be something here he could relate to. Something seemed odd, but what was it?
* * *
Peter stayed in his room working on his problem through most of breakfast. Finally satisfied, he gathered up his PAD, threw on a clean CT-suit, and rushed into the galley as the others were finishing their meager morning meal.
“Morning, early bird,” Stiles huffed. “Nice of you to worry about our predicament. Feel free to sleep in longer tomorrow.”
Peter ignored Stiles and sat down. Henrietta asked him if he wanted anything to eat, but he just shook his head. Thinking twice, he got up for a bulb of juice. He came back to the table and unfolded his PAD.
“What you got there?” Ali asked.
“Perry, transfer the model of this system from my PAD to the galley monitor. Project what it would look like from the direction we came from.”
“Done ….”
“Ooh, that’s beautiful,” Henrietta remarked.
A rich star field appeared on the monitor. Thousands of stars filled the background so dense they looked like a fine, uniform covering of sand grains on a black table. Whisks of dark nebular lanes concealed the background stars at several locations. Superimposed on the field were fifteen intensely bright stars, several shining brightly within delicate nebulae of blue, red, and yellow. It showed the clouds they were in, but from the outside looking in.
“That looks familiar, other than all that gassy stuff,” Jimmy observed.
“It should. I think it’s the constellation Scorpio. Look at the tail at the bottom and the head at the top.”
“Yeah, I see it,” Henrietta replied. “It could be.”
“Random star patterns,” Stiles replied. “It’s like seeing cas
tles in a cloud.” He purposely looked at Henrietta. “You can see whatever you want if your mind’s feeble enough.”
“Why are you always so negative?” Henrietta asked.
“I’m not negative; I’m realistic.”
“Huh,” she replied. “Keep your realism. I think Peter’s on to something.”
“Because a few stars line up?” Stiles asked.
“No, there’s more,” Peter answered. “My dad told me about this sector. Look at the brightest star, there in the middle.” He moved the virtual pointer next to the big star.
“The reddish one,” Henrietta observed. “It looks like Mars viewed from Earth.”
“Yeah. That’s what they say in the books. You know what ‘Antares’ means?”
“No,” Henrietta remarked.
“Ant Ares means ‘rival of Mars,’ ” Jimmy said. “Although many people mistakenly say it means ‘like Mars’ possibly because they equate that to ‘Mars-like.’ I, for one, do not know why they would make such a mistake, because obviously ‘anti’ is a derivative of ‘ant’—”
“Boring …,” Stiles sang. “How come every time you open your mouth, I fall asleep?”
“Maybe because you have the attention span of a pea,” Henrietta suggested.
“Gee,” Stiles shot back, “witty and pretty—not!”
Henrietta preened for Stiles.
“Anyway,” Jimmy continued, as if he had not been interrupted, “they named it Antares because of its visual similarity to Mars.”
“Yep,” Peter continued. “It’s the Heart of the Scorpion.”
“Is that the star we were stuck at?” Jimmy asked.
“Well, Antares is a red supergiant. But is it our supergiant? I wasn’t sure at first, but look at the evidence.”
“There’s evidence?” Stiles asked.
“Well, circumstantial anyway. Plus, I only recall a little about what my dad said. I really wasn’t that interested at the time. Thing is: those gas clouds are the real clue.”
Ali stared at the screen, trying to take it all in. “How’s that?” he asked.
“I think that blue area near the top is the Rho Ophiuchi Complex. It’s a triple star system full of blue-reflection nebula and dark nebular lanes.”
“Just like what’s showing there,” Jimmy said in wonder.
“Just like what’s showing there,” Stiles repeated. “Kissing butt again, Null-Grav?”
“But here’s the thing,” Peter continued, ignoring Stiles, “all that yellow stuff surrounding what might be Antares is very rare yellow-reflection nebula. You don’t see that very often. It’s extremely rare.”
“And we got all kinds of yellow clouds surrounding us,” Henrietta pieced together.
“Exactly. And if I remember right, there was some red emission nebula below the yellow clouds. I can’t remember what star that is, though. But it matches this model. Least what I remember.”
“That still doesn’t—” Stiles began.
“One more thing,” Peter continued. “I remembered a globular cluster somewhere near Scorpio’s line of sight, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where. See that blob, to the right of Antares?”
The kids strained to see where Peter was pointing.
“See, right here,” he pointed. “Perry, what is that?”
“It is a globular cluster,” Perry replied. “I do not know what the name of it is, but I estimate it is approximately 7,000 light-years away from our current location.”
“So, could we be at Antares, Perry?” Henrietta asked hopefully.
“I really cannot tell, Henrietta. My database, unfortunately, does not include any references to this area of space. In addition, the gas clouds we are surrounded in obscure much of the outside universe. Observations beyond several million miles from here are very difficult to make. Plus, I do not have the advantages of Peter’s memory.”
The kids stared in wonder at the static astronomical model Peter had on-screen. He connected the dots of the fifteen stars with his stylus to show the outline of the Scorpio constellation. It was a view, presumably from Old Earth, to where they exited right after the jump from Vega, enhanced by what Peter could piece together from his earlier studies of this area of space. Peter passed his hand over the screen and the model began to morph. It was an accelerated computer representation of the flight path they took as they drifted toward the star, and then as they completed the slingshot orbital maneuver. The simulation stopped at the location they were currently at. Peter swiped the screen again and the computer model was replaced with the actual scene outside. They looked identical.
“Well, that’s as good a guess as any, Peter,” Ali stated. “Let’s go with it. So how do we get home?”
“That’s kind of a problem.”
“How’s that?” Jimmy asked.
Peter was reluctant to continue. If he was right, it was not good news for him and his friends. “If this is Antares, we’re pretty far away from home.”
“How far?” Henrietta asked.
Sheepishly Peter replied, “I can’t remember exactly, but around six hundred light-years.”
“What?” Stiles shouted. “You’re nuts! That’s farther than any human has ever gone before.”
“By a factor of over ten,” Ali added.
“This is all virgin territory,” Henrietta said. Stiles started to say something, but Henrietta stopped him with a look.
“Whoa,” Ali cried, “wait a minute. Six hundred, you said?” Peter nodded. Ali ran to the engineering console off to the rear of the bridge. “Perry, call up your K-T Gen4 Curve.”
Perry accessed his FTL engine statistics, showing the efficiency of his engines as it passed through K-T-space, and presented them to Ali at his station. Ali ran the numbers toward the upper end of Perry’s operating range. In stunned silence, he passed his hand over the screen to turn it off. It looked as though Ali saw a ghost.
“What’s wrong?” Jimmy asked.
“If we really travelled six hundred uncontrolled light-years, we came pretty close to the jump envelope.” No one understood what Ali was talking about so he continued explaining.
“This is something that Krenholdtz and Turner didn’t even understand initially. When you bunch up a series of folds in space, they’re not all the same size. During the first half of the trip, each fold gets a little larger than the one before; on the second half of the trip, they decrease in size. So, if you stack the folds together, in cross section, the stacked folds themselves take the shape of a sine wave. The result is that the starship ramps up to a maximum apparent velocity somewhere in the middle of the journey, and then ramps down until the engine is pre-instructed to break free of K-T-space. Understand?”
“No,” Stiles replied, “but neither do the experts, so go on.”
“Throughout the journey, the K-T engine needs to anticipate what it needs to do next. It constantly integrates as it goes. If, at any step along the way, it does not have sufficient strange energy to accomplish the next step, it … ‘stalls’ … is the best word to use, I guess.”
“Why not just stop?” Henrietta asked.
“Again, we can’t simply explain what happens in K-T-space. Nothing in the visual world adequately describes it. Think in terms of a bullet passing through multiple layers of a strong material. It will eventually lose so much energy that it gets caught. The K-T engine must plan ahead and stop folding space before it runs out of energy. It moves by throwing out tame superbradyons as it goes, but it must plan for the move far enough back along the curve to be able to function as designed; it balances throwing out superbradyons with decreasing speed. The end point must match exactly.”
Peter nodded, encouraging Ali to continue.
“Our generation of FTL engine can only do so much, and there’s a cap on our maximum apparent velocity. We top out at a maximum jump of 750 lights.”
Again, no one seemed to care what Ali was talking about. “So what happens then?” Henrietta asked.
?
??That’s where our apparent velocity while in jump degrades to exactly match c. The Gen4 is maximized for jumps up to fifty lights, which works just fine within the Colonies. Once you start passing through more and more folds in space, you start to degrade. Seven–hundred–fifty folds are quite a few to bust through, and the Gen4 is just not powerful enough to do that. Without a trigger to fall out of K-T-space at that point, the theoretical physicists are still debating what would happen.”
“Go on ….” Henrietta prodded.
“Again; can’t explain …. Think in terms of old-fashioned prop airplanes. If they climbed vertically, they’d eventually stall out and fall back to Earth. Not until the twenty–first century did we have planes that could reach escape velocity. In K-T-space, when you ‘stall’ there is no place to fall back to. Instead, you hit a space fold and deflect along the length of it, never being able to penetrate back into normal space. You can’t maintain superluminal speeds; you can’t become subluminal, so you are condemned into having all your kinetic energy converted into luminal particles.”
“And …?” Henrietta asked impatiently.
“It would either result in an explosive overload of the FTL drive unit or we’d become lost in hyper space forever.”
“That would suck,” Stiles added.
“Yes, it would,” Ali replied. “If we’d gone only twenty percent further, we wouldn’t be here.” Ali looked around at the faces in the room. Several started to show a flicker of understanding. “Peter, are you sure of this location?”
“This has to be Antares,” Peter stated.
“Are you sure?” Jimmy asked. “Really sure?”
“Well, no … but what else can it be?”
“Wait,” Stiles said. “Forget all that theoretical crap. Let’s get back to the real world. It will take six adjusted months per hundred light-years to get back to the Colonies.” He thought for a moment, “That’s three years of ship-accumulated time!”
“And that’s the problem,” Peter replied. “Food; we’d need 150 days’ worth for the hyperspace segment alone.”
“And we only have a third of that,” Henrietta said.
“We’ll die a third of the way home,” Jimmy lamented.
“Well, if only one of us jumps, he might have a chance,” Stiles suggested.
“Or she,” Henrietta added. “You volunteerin’ t’ stay behind?”
“No.”
The kids remained silent for several minutes.