Chapter No.5. Contemplation.

Sharon and I had returned from the agricultural deck and were standing by Janet at the command station.

"Find anything?" I asked, not really expecting anything.

"We have a problem," she said, sounding apocalyptic. "This hyperspace isn't supposed to happen, at least not at the very start of the mission. Theoretically, it only happens when a vessel reaches eighty percent of the speed of light, and we weren't supposed to reach that velocity even after months of engine propulsion."

"I don't get it," I reacted. "If that's the case, why are we in it?"

"Something weird happened, a phase reversal of the antimatter production unit. The computer was supposed to prevent that from happening, but something went wrong. I think it's a programming error."

I sat down in chair next to hers. "That means that if we drop out of hyperspace, we need this programming mistake to put us back into it."

"Yes, but I'm not sure if it would happen again. I still have to locate the code to see if it would."

"Okay, keep searching. We're still safe as long as we're in hyperspace."

I stood up. "I think I'll do some running."

"I'll join you," Sharon said.

We started our run at a leisurely pace but decided to pick it up after a couple of circuits around the wheel. However, after a dozen circuits at the more rigorous pace, we stopped near the crew bunk stations.

"Whew!" she huffed. "That worked up a sweat."

"Yeah, you're right."

She smiled. "Time for a shower." She pulled her crop top off and deposited it in the clothes cleaner unit.

"Ah . . . I think I'll go help Janet find the mystery code."

She pulled her shorts off and deposited them in the unit, adding a grin, which I didn't return.

I headed back to the command station and sat down next to Janet.

"I haven't found it yet, but I'm in the right area."

"Maybe I could help."

She glanced at me and then turned back to her screen. "Yeah, try the code in the engine operations system processing."

After a half hour of reviewing the coding that was responsible for controlling the engines, I found something that didn't make sense, at least not to me." I turned to Janet. "This coding doesn't make sense. It appears to be a way to alter the antimatter production rate."

"Transfer it to my screen," she demanded.

I did that by using my hand to literally whisk the coding over to her screen. While she was intently studying the code, Sharon showed up and sat down at next to me.

"Have you found anything?" she asked.

"I think I see what might have happened," Janet said. "This coding was a method to speed up antimatter production. The production procedure they use is to blast fast moving electrons with gamma rays. Evidently, the code allowed for increasing the gamma ray bursts to step up the production of positrons. Bad news is that it also causes a quantum uncertainty that could create a phase reversal of space-time."

"Better known as hyperspace," I said.

"They don't refer to it as that, but it fits."

"Could we use it to reenter hyperspace?"

"I don't really know, but I would think we could."

"Okay, then the next step is to drop out of hyperspace and try to determine where we are," I said.

"Are you going to do that now?" Sharon asked after sitting down next to Janet.

"We have to activate the G-force seats before we do that."

Sharon squinted. "G-force seats?"

"Yeah," I said before standing up and walking to the opposite side of the wheel and pressing a button.

Wall sections parted and jet fighter pilot-like chairs slowly came out of the wall. They were reclined at an angle to the wall with straps to hold us in place and were oriented to point toward the ship's front. They also had inflatable girdles to keep us from passing out at high G-forces.

"We have to step into these and strap up before we fire the engines." I climbed up in one of the seats, pulled the girdle around my middle and latched it, and then used straps to secure my body in place. It was as if I were strapped to the wall.

Janet and Sharon replicated my actions.

"COMA, turn the ship around relative to our direction and power up the engines for a short burst, say about five minutes at fifty percent."

"Rotation has begun," she sang in her sultry voice.

"I hope we don't end up in something bad, like a star or a black hole," Sharon said, sounding concerned.

"If we do, it was nice knowing you two," I said with a smirk.

They weren't in an amusing mood. Janet just stared at me with concerned eyes. Sharon frowned.

The rotation procedure required ten minutes. We remained silent during that part of the move to drop out of hyperspace.

"Rotation is complete," COMA intoned. "Engine propulsion will commence in T-minus ten minutes."

During that ten minutes the wheels stopped turning and then locked in place to avoid damage to the rotation mechanism, which meant that we ended up being in zero gravity.

"This is scary," Sharon said.

"Going into space is scary, but we still do it."

"I think we're masochists," Janet said.

"No doubt," I replied.

At the end of the countdown, the engines fired, slamming us into our seats hard, a sign that we were under high G-force. The deceleration lasted for five grueling minutes before it ended.

"Engine propulsion has ceased," COMA redundantly informed us.

We had to wait until our wheel deck unlocked and began rotating again. When that process was completed, a whistle sound indicated it was safe to get out of our G-force seats.

I unfastened my safety straps, wiggled out of my girdle and stepped down out of my chair. Janet and Sharon did the same. I went to the wall control and activated the recession of the chairs into the wall.

Janet sat down on a chair at the command center and activated the forward camera. "We're in normal space, she announced in a relieved voice.

Sharon and I sat down near her.

"Nice to see star streaks again," I said.

"We're at sixty percent of the speed of light," I said after looking at the ship's status screen. I turned to Janet. "See anything familiar?"

"Not yet," she said. "I can say for certain that we're in a galaxy and headed toward a star system."

"How far away are we from the system?"

"I'll have to do some calculations after I do a spectral scan, but it's probably not more than a light year, maybe less."

I ran a hand through my hair. "How could we be this conveniently lucky!"

They acted as if good luck was expected.

We didn't feel any different being in normal space. After becoming bored, I decided to go to the food unit and order a soy burger and a coffee. There wasn't all that much to do on the crew deck wheel. COMA kept the ship's systems operating properly and the wheels kept turning to keep us in normal gravity. Small robotic devices kept everything clean. The boredom and simplicity of it was a reason to be concerned about mental health.

I finally decided to go back to the command station to see what Janet and Sharon had discovered.

"What do you know?" I asked sitting down next to them.

"To paraphrase you, I have good news and bad news," Janet said. "The bad news is that we can't determine our present location. We're definitely not in the Milky Way galaxy. For one thing, the center doesn't look at all like our galaxy's. It's way too bright and there's much more gas and dust. The galaxies we can see from our position don't look at all like any of the nearby galaxies that we would be able to see if we were in our own galaxy, and that's after I used the motion phase software to render the star streaks to a zero velocity rendition."

"What's the good news?"

"We're on course to a star system that has rocky planets," Sharon said. "I've only started trying to determine how many and what they're like."

"How long will it take to arrive there?"

"At our current velocity, it will require two months," Janet said. "But we could speed that up by using the engines."

I nodded. "Unfortunately, we'll have to go back into the G-force seats."

"I hate that!" Sharon blurted.

Janet frowned.

"Can't avoid it. We have to be oriented so that our backs are to the opposite of the acceleration direction." I smiled. "It shouldn't require that much time to speed us up a bit."

"Before we do anything like that, we need to find out if any of the planets orbiting that star are habitable," Sharon said.

I agreed with a nod, but what they should realize is that it doesn't make any difference. Even if we do find a habitable planet, it would take a long time in hibernation to get back to Earth, and there was no way to send the information of our discovery back there.