Chapter No.16. Concern.

Bridget and I were walking on an alien beach while the shuttle was taking on fresh water. I saw something that didn't seem to be right. I walked over to it and picked a black object up. After brushing the sand off of it, I turned it in my hand to see if I could understand what it was.

It definitely wasn't something natural. It was a black box-looking object about ten centimeters long, six centimeters wide and two centimeters thick. I wanted to scratch my head if I could, but then I spotted what looked like numbers. That's when I realized what it was.

"Oh my God!" I exclaimed.

"What's wrong?" Bridget asked, her eyes large as saucers.

"This is a laser pistol battery," I said.

"How'd that get here?"

"Good question. It means that humans were here before us."

"How's that possible?"

"Did your ship come here before it exploded?"

"I don't know. I wasn't revived from hibernation until just before it did."

"Yes, I forgot. We'll have to check your ship's operations list." I put the battery into my belt pouch.

We completed the water collection operation on time and ascended back to the ship. After gently maneuvering the shuttle into the hanger, I had COMA pressurize the hanger so that we could exit the shuttle and connect the water tanks to a feed pipe that went down through the axel tube to the engineering wheel deck.

We returned through the axel tube to the crew wheel deck.

Janet, Sharon and Natale were at the food station.

"How'd it go?" Janet asked.

"We got the water we needed." I held up the battery. "I found this on the beach of the island we landed on.

"What is that?" Janet asked.

"A laser pistol battery," I said.

"What the hell was it doing on this planet?"

"Good question. I'll go through the other crew's operations list to see if they were there."

"I don't get it," Sharon said. "What were they doing on that planet?"

I held my hand up, palm out. "We don't know if they were there. All we do know is that humans were there."

"Do we have any more info on why the species became extinct?" Sharon asked.

"I think we should go through all of the photos we made of their art. Maybe there's a clue in them."

"What's next?" Natale asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose we should search for another habitable planet."

They weren't impressed with my ability to make decisions.

Later that evening, I was at the command station trying to find out if the other ship visited the planet we were orbiting when Janet sat down next to me.

"Burning the midnight oil?" she said adding a smirk.

"Yeah, I'm trying to determine if that other crew visited this planet. It looks as if they didn't."

She frowned. "I don't get it. We were supposed to be the first ship to explore a habitable new Earth, and it appears that everyone and their brothers beat us to it."

"I think it has something to do with traveling through hyperspace. Apparently, it's not just space that we're circumventing, it's also changing time."

She stared at me for a moment before replying. "You're talking about a quantum effect that we're not familiar with."

"That's a good possibility. We could be going forward in time and don't realize it when we travel through hyperspace. If that's the case, we could be years, maybe centuries in the future."

"How could we do that without aging?"

"I don't know, but we might not age when we're in hyperspace. Hibernation is supposed to reduce bodily metabolism to ten percent of normal. We were in hibernation for twenty years relative to the ship, but my beard was only an inch long. Ten percent of twenty is two. Hair growth is around a half inch per month. My beard growth would suggest that I had only aged two months, not the years I supposedly did."

"Yes, I had a similar feeling that I hadn't aged that much either based on my hair growth. I just assumed that the chemicals they pumped in us was responsible for that."

"The chemicals are supposed to lower our metabolism, but it's only to ten percent of normal."

I still had a laser pistol with me to compare its battery with the one I found. I looked at a number under the design designation. "According to the date on the battery pack that I found on the planet, it's ten years in the future."

She frowned. "What?"

"I agree. There are several things wrong with that. For one, why would a battery pack like the one I use be produced that far into the future? The other problem is that it means that humans are out here, which I find hard to believe considering the situation on Earth when we left."

"Maybe they got desperate to find a habitable new Earth."

"That's a possibility, but what disturbs me is the fact that we're slipping into the future because of hyperspace travel."

"Is there some way we could verify that?"

I symbolically scratched my head. "I'm not sure. Any clock system we could use would be subject to the same time dilation we experience."

The next day, I joined the women at the command station. "I think we should search for a new habitable system."

"I haven't been able to locate any good candidates in this galaxy," Janet said.

"What about a nearby galaxy?"

"The nearest spiral galaxy is nearly a hundred million light years distant from our current location."

I thought about it for a moment. "I might be able to coax some more acceleration from the engines before we enter hyperspace. With a bit of luck, we might make it there in say a month."

"I'll see if I can locate a possible system there, but it'll only be an educated guess. It's too far away to get a reliable fix on any star system."

"That's okay. We can locate a habitable system once we get there."

I got up and headed to engineering to determine how much I could push the engines without destroying them. After I had spent an hour of checking engine specifications and stress test results, Bridget interrupted me, sitting down next to me and smiling.

"I might have a way to calculate the quantum time dilation effect," she said.

My right eyebrow shot up momentarily. "Really?"

"I liked to toy with quantum math when I was in the academy, and the hyperspace theory was the big deal back then, at least for a while."

She was the last person I would imagine saying that, but I was willing to hear anything that could help us. "So, what could you determine about our situation?"

"I've looked at this vessel's log and have calculated that you're about twenty years in the past relative to someone on Earth. Natale and I are almost the same."

"So, what you're saying is that we slip into the past when we go into hyperspace."

"Yes. It's because time slows appreciably or even stops in hyperspace relative to someone not in hyperspace, but it's dependent on how much you accelerate before entering it."

"I had a hunch that was happening, but I was just going by what I could see, such as hair growth."

She smiled. "With us gals, it's how long we go without menstruating."

I suppressed a smile. I just nodded. "That would definitely mess up trying to time the safe period."

She giggled. "Yep."

"What you're saying is that our time varies, depending how long we're in hyperspace, putting us at a completely different date compared to anyone else in the universe."

"That's right. At the rate we're hopping back to Earth, we'll arrive way in the future."

"It's too late to do anything about it now."

"I agree, but there's something else you should know about hyperspace."

I stared at her with concern in my eyes. What she revealed was mind blowing.