Chapter 17. Test Run

When Charles joined with Carl, Dave and Robert on the engineering deck, he was the object of kidding, and complaining.

"I heard that the big three came to your quarters last evening. Did they come in their underwear?" Carl asked him.

"Nope," he replied with a hint of a grin. "They were wearing robes."

"I think they're nuts," Dave said. "You would think we were back in our junior cadet days at Space Command."

"Yeah, they act like they're teenagers," Robert said.

"Let them have their fun," Charles said. "They had better have the math right about this faster than light travel or their hairbrained social project will come to a quick end."

"Why do we need math?" Robert asked. "Didn't the manual spell out how much power it'll take?"

"There was an element of probability in it. That's why I asked the women to sharpen up their calculations before we try a test run."

Carl gave him a confused expression. "When are we going to do a test run?"

"Tomorrow at 0700," he said, sounding as if it were a sentence.

Tomorrow came quicker than any of them really wanted it to. Charles, Carl, Dave and Robert joined in the command deck and began the process of engaging all the power sources and engine warmups needed to go out from the L2 location. Charles decided to plot the course so that there would be little chance of crashing into an object, at least anything known.

"How do these tachyon particles make this vessel go faster than the speed of light?" Dave asked.

"That's because if tachyon particles slow to zero, their energy would be infinite. In other words, they go much faster than light speed so that their energy stays down."

"How faster than light are we talking about?" Robert asked.

"Well, if we can't go hundreds of times faster than light, we may as well not bother. Most star systems we want to explore are hundreds, if not thousands of light years away."

"Hopefully, our brainy female scientists have worked out the math properly," Carl quipped.

"They scare me," Robert said. "They're geniuses, but they act like naughty teens."

"Unfortunately, we may have to put up with their antics forever," Carl said.

"Not to change the subject, but will the Graviton system handle the crazy speed this boat will go?" Dave asked.

"According to the brainy women's calculations, it will," Charles replied. "If not, we'll be like smears on the wall."

Where are we going?" Robert asked.

"p Eridani," Charles told him. "It's a binary star system a little less than 27 light years away." He activated the ship wide warning system, which began blaring a warning that the voyage was about to begin.

When he pressed the button to begin the process, there was a pause, a silent dead period that lasted several minutes before the ship began to move. At first, it didn't seem as if the acceleration was all that hard, but the screen that showed what was going on outside displayed what looked like a blast of white streaks originating from an imaginary spot directly ahead.

"Holy shit!" Carl exclaimed. "We're already at ten times light speed!"

"And it's still climbing," Charles told them. "I don't feel much of anything that would indicate we're accelerating that quickly."

Carl smiled. "I guess the brainy women got the math right."

"This proves that my original theory of why they included these women on our voyage to Proxima B. It was so that they could use their smarts to solve the faster than light problem."

Carl frowned, "That's ridiculous. If this concept was already known before our voyage, why didn't they wait and test it. It would have saved the lives of six people."

"That would have revealed it to our enemies," Charles retorted. "Space Command was competing with Russia and China for the ultimate conquest of space."

Carl sighed. "Now, we're the only humans who are aware of it, and I don't see how it will help us."

"We'll be able to explore space to find another intelligent species. That's what mankind has always wanted to do, but there was no way to accomplish it . . . until now."

"Except we're no longer a legitimate representation of mankind," Carl argued. "We've been converted to something that is completely un-human by a cosmic process that we don't understand,"

"He's right," Dave said. "We're sterile and unable to reestablish humanity. In essence, we're asexual."

"Even though the women think we're sexual," Carl added. "It's a dilemma that can't be resolved."

As if on a cue, Alice, Vicky and Hilary entered the command deck.

"Are we there yet?" Hilary asked while brushing an errant bunch of hair away from her eyes.

"It won't be long," Charles told them, suppressing a grin. "Hopefully, we can drop out of faster than light about a hundred thousand kilometers away from p Eridani."

Vicky looked at the main screen. "How do you know how close we are? It looks like we're traveling through an amusement ride."

"I got it on a timer based on our velocity compared to light speed and the known distance to there."

"What are we going to do when we get there?" Hilary asked.

He pointed at her. "You are going to determine if there's a habitable planet in the star system."

"That might be difficult. It's a binary system. Most binary systems are not very friendly to planets."

"Well, be that as it may, we need to determine that. If there is a habitable planet it could help us understand what happened to us."

His wish was about to be decided when their vessel dropped out of faster than light and approached the binary system. The women activated the telescopic system and began the search for planets.

After an hour of searching, Alice announced their finding. "We've located a planet around the larger star, which is a K2 class main sequence star. The planet is slightly larger than Earth, and it does have an atmosphere, but we're too far away to determine its composition."

"I'll change course to get us closer," Charles told her.

"So, what if we do find a habitable planet?" Carl asked. "Are we going to go down on it?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Vicky replied. "If life did evolve on the planet, we would risk getting infected with viruses that we would have no immunity to."

"In other words, we can only live on Earth, but it's been rendered essentially unhabitable."

"That's true, but this probably isn't the only possible habitable planet in our galaxy."

All eyes were on the main screen as their vessel approached the planet orbiting the larger star.

"This planet's atmosphere contains oxygen," Hilary announced. "The bolometric temperature is approximately twenty-six degrees C."

"Do you think it's safe to orbit the planet?" Carl asked.

"I'm not detecting any signs of objects in orbit," Hilary replied.

When the ship was safely in orbit, close observation commenced, and it didn't take long before there was a report that changed everything.

"Those look like cities," Carl excitedly exclaimed, pointing to the main screen that showed the surface. "This planet must have an intelligent species."

"It sure looks that way," Charles commented. He turned to Vicky. "Any radio signals?"

"Yes, but I'm having trouble deciphering them."

"We'll have to send stealth probes down there," Charles said. "We need to know if they're still alive."

After the probes were launched and had entered the planet's atmosphere, visual signals filled the main screen.

"They look like lizards!" Vicky exclaimed, her eyes wide with excitement. How could they be the intelligent species?"

"I like their outfits," Hilary said. "They must like stripes. They remind me of comic renditions of jailbirds."

"This is what would have happened on Earth if a big-ass asteroid hadn't caused the K-Pg extinction event," Judy said. "Dinosaurs would have become intelligent enough to be the prominent species."

"I don't believe that these creatures have space exploration capabilities," Janice said. "They're about where we were in the Middle Ages."

"Are we going to make contact with them?" Dave asked.

"No," Charles replied with a dissatisfied tone. "We didn't come here to make contact. However, this shows us that what happened to us was not something that affected the entire galaxy."

"Are you suggesting that it was an alien attack?" Alice asked.

"Not necessarily. It could be that it was just more aimed at our location. We'll need further evidence to pin it down."

"What about the change in the physics?' Carl asked. "It's difficult to imagine that it only changed physical laws in an isolated sense."

"I agree. Maybe it only changed them as it applies to us humans."

"It's hard to imagine that."

"We need more information to draw a conclusion." He turned to the women. "Get as much data as you can. We need to return to our solar system and take on more water."

"Couldn't we obtain more water from this planet?" Alice asked.

"I don't want to take a chance that they would see it. We would be responsible for causing a situation that could change their history."

"That sounds like Space Command's noninterference rule," Carl said.

"Yeah, but it makes sense even though we're no longer under their rules."

"Whose rules are we under?" Alice asked, her expression indicating a tease.

He smiled. "I think we should be under the rules of common sense."

She gave him a mock rebuke expression. "That's no fun."

They laughed.

Charles moved the ship out of orbit and began the process of returning to Earth.