Chapter No.4 Understanding.

The next morning, I found Janet at the command station busy with inquiries, her fingers skimming over the virtual keyboard that projected as a holograph.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"I found something I don't quite understand." She turned to look at me. "When they came up with fusion powered plasma engine science, the physicists seemed to be concerned about what they called a quantum domino effect."

"That sounds ominous."

"They use antimatter to create the high temperatures and pressures needed to initiate fusion. If you recall, the main method of creating a fusion reaction was by using powerful lasers, but that wasn't practical for a propulsion engine. Antimatter is extremely dangerous and has to be kept from contacting normal matter. In order to accomplish that, they devised strong natural magnetic bottles to keep it under control."

"So, you think that the antimatter caused our situation?"

"No. It's the method that they use to create antimatter that could have caused it, but that's not the concern they had."

"Really?"

"Yeah, what they were afraid that it could propel us to many times light speed."

"No way!"

"Yes, way! That's why we can't see anything outside the ship. We're traveling so fast we're in an alternate reality that they refer to as hyperspace."

"Hyperspace?"

"Yeah, it's a sub-space reality that ignores Einstein's laws."

"I think I remember that as being a science fiction concept."

"It was, but evidently it's real."

I slouched back in my chair. "Well, that means if we exit hyperspace, we could be in intergalactic space or somewhere even more remote."

She gave me a subtle grin. "I don't think there is anywhere more remote than between galaxies."

I smiled. "Yes, you're right about that."

Janet sighed. "My only hope is if we could reenter this subspace and determine how to travel where we want to go."

"I doubt there's anything in the ship's manuals that would help us with that."

Sharon walked up. "What's happening?"

I gestured to Janet. "She's come up with a possibility that we're traveling above the speed of light."

Her eyebrows shot up momentarily. "Really?"

"We could be in a subspace or hyperspace, which doesn't obey Einstein's laws."

"That's crazy!"

"That's putting it mildly," I said.

"Can we drop out of it?" she asked.

"I would think so, judging by what happened to the probe we launched. All we have to do is turn the ship around and fire the engines. The trouble is, we might not be able to determine our location in the universe."

"Wow!" Sharon exclaimed. "You mean we could be completely out of our galaxy?"

"And then some," I added.

She gave me a rebuking smirk.

"Why did they send us on a wild goose chase?" Sharon asked. "If they knew about this, why didn't they inform us?"

"Evidently, they didn't expect it to happen," Janet said. "They had no idea what was going to happen."

"So," Sharon said. "We could potentially go back to Earth?"

"Yes," I said. "Assuming that we can come up with a course to return there. That might be a problem if we're in a location we aren't familiar with, like some distant galaxy."

"It also would depend on whether we can understand how to operate the engines to do it," Janet said.

"If we've been in hyperspace for twenty years, it might take us that long to get back to Earth," I said.

"Earth would be totally different if we did get back," Janet added. "They would consider us invaders."

"No use speculating," I said. "We have to determine how to drop out of hyperspace safely."

Janet turned to the virtual keyboard. "I'll see if there's anything else that's weird about the way they designed the fusion engine, which as you might have guessed is like exploding hydrogen bombs."

"How is that possible?" Sharon asked. "Wouldn't that destroy the ship?"

"Not if it's done by expelling hot plasma from a controlled fusion reaction. The engines use the most efficient version of fusion, which is combining deuterium and tritium at high pressure and temperature and then taking advantage of the neutrons that result by allowing them to react with lithium to produce more deuterium."

"Sounds like that could result in a cascading reaction," I said.

"Supposedly, the computer adjusts the reaction conditions to avoid anything like that."

"I still don't understand how that puts us in this . . . what do you call it, hyperspace." Sharon said.

"That's what I'm trying to determine," Janet replied without looking back at her.

"I think I'll go to the agricultural deck and see if there's any more robots out of commission."

Sharon turned to me. "I'd like to see that deck."

"Sure. We have to be in zero gravity for a short time."

She shrugged. "Okay with me."

We walked to the embedded ladder and I activated it. "Follow me."

She climbed up behind me and when I got to the top and opened the cover over the axel tube, I looked back at her. "You have to climb into this hole headfirst and then use your hands on the walls to propel yourself down the tube. I'll have the entrance to the deck opened. Climb out feet first by tucking in and turning around."

She nodded her approval.

After we climbed down the ladder to the floor of the agricultural deck, I pointed to the repair location. "That's where the robots go to charge. If they're broken, they have to wait until someone repairs them."

"What did they do when we were in hibernation?"

"I believe that the more advanced robots on the engineering deck came up to repair them."

She didn't react to that. We walked to the shed, which was open on all four sides. Only one robot was disabled. I squatted down to open its back cover, but a quick visual check didn't reveal the problem. I had to use a circuit tester to determine if there was a fried component. A few probe contacts with the test points revealed that a resistor had decided to give up the ghost. I replaced it and the robot bleeped its approval and hobbled off.

"I think that these little guys are failing because of old age," I said.

"Do these robots do all the farming?" Sharon asked.

"Yes. It makes sense to use robots for this type of work. They don't need breaks and they don't demand pay raises."

She chuckled.

She looked around. "This deck is much larger than ours."

"I think it's six times a large, but it needs that much space to grow crops."

"When are we going to drop out of this . . . hyperspace?"

"I think we need more information before we try that. The last thing we want is to end up in the middle of a galaxy's supermassive black hole."

"From the looks of it, we might be in a black hole," she said.

"I hope not. No one knows what's inside a black hole, but I'm sure it's not where we want to be."

We returned to the crew deck and went to the command station to see if Janet had found anything. What she told us was both disturbing and exciting.