“All the same, he bugs me. He shouldn’t even be involved in the launch. I could have hired my own range safety observers. I didn’t need Sykes assigning a naval escort. The government insists on keeping me at arm’s length like some shamed mistress, and then they pull this!”
Nathan smiled. “You should look at this as a gift. Now you don’t have to pay for it, you’re assured of having a professional job, and no one keeps a secret worse than a sailor. Instead of having only a few tracking stations aware of this, now you’ll have 200 blue-shirts bragging about it in the next port they hit.” He motioned a rocket blasting off with his hands. “‘There I wuz, watchin dis rocket shoot up inta space. Lemme tell youse all abouts it!’”
Gordon grinned. “The ranks of my faithful grow: first it was just a few UFO freaks, and conspiracy bloggers, but now I have the junior enlisted of the USS McInnerney. I have truly arrived.”
Nathan walked over to the flatscreen with the radar of the encroaching storm. “This probe is supposed to travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Are we really worried about a little wind and rain?”
“Space is an empty vacuum, while the atmosphere is decidedly not, but it’s not those that bother me.” Gordon walked over to the flatscreen with the video of the probe and sea-launch platform itself. He jabbed a finger at the dark shape of the probe. “This carries an experimental nuclear reactor and the most powerful motor ever designed. Do you really want to see what happens when it’s struck by lightning?”
Nathan opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by Kristene sweeping into the room. “That would be a ‘No’, boys. Not after seeing what was not left of the test pad after our first full-scale drive went out of control. I think we might get in trouble if we nuked a hole in the ocean.” She smiled at them and then rushed over to the VTC screen, reaching out to touch one of the pictures. “Dr. Hastings, how are we doing?”
Hastings, a bald man with a weathered, pockmarked face, looked up from whatever he had been doing and into the camera. An identifier below his image listed him as being aboard the Launch Direction Ship, a recently acquired container vessel by the name of Morningstar, which operated in company with the McInnerney, a mere fifty nautical miles from the probe’s launch platform. “Hi, Kristene. We’re a bit frantic over here, but we’re coping. As far as the probe is concerned, it could launch now or when it was supposed to, five hours from now. I’ve updated the timeline and initial launch vector on the computer and it’s conducting the pre-flight. No problems thus far.”
Kris smiled. “Computer” was such an understatement that the word almost no longer applied. Situated somewhere in the technological stratosphere between the fuzzy logic expert systems that managed the nation’s air and ground traffic and the dream of true artificial intelligence, the system aboard their probe was the current pinnacle of computing capability. Comprised of eight different massively paralleled processors, each of which utilized both linear digital and nonlinear quantum elements, as well as 100 terabytes of flash memory with optical storage backup, the system was expected to accomplish the nigh impossible task of operating and piloting the probe across light-years of space, locating and rendezvousing with an alien vessel for first contact, and then reporting back to Earth.
“Computer” was practically an insult.
“Sounds good, Doc,” Kris said. “Go ahead and begin the power ramp once the pre-flight finishes running. We’ll launch from here when you give us the go-ahead.”
“All right, we’ll contact you then. Morningstar, over and out!” Hastings grinned with a mischievous gleam in his eye.
Nathan winced. Hastings knew that sloppy comms procedures were his pet peeve. Anyone with any time among radio circuits knew it was either “over” or “out”, but never both together. Kris looked back at him and grinned. They all loved tweaking his somewhat rigid professional sensibilities.
Out in the vast Pacific, practically lost among the rising waves surrounding it, the launch platform was a lonely island of stability amid the chaos of the seas. Nestled at the bottom of a gantry rising a hundred feet from the surface of the ocean, the probe squatted with burgeoning power. It had a purposeful, enigmatic appearance, singular in design, unlike any other rocket ever launched.
The top of the probe was covered with a white aeroshell covering the instrumentation and antennae underneath, which would be jettisoned immediately after leaving the atmosphere. It was also the sole linking factor to any previous design. After that, the probe’s shape was designed solely around the needs of its mission.
Beneath the aeroshell, the probe was a slender, flat black spire, the top half bristling with sensors, cameras, and dishes. The middle length of the elongated body was given over to reactor cooling, a nest of radiator fins sticking out perpendicular to the fuselage like the petals of some midnight black bloom. The bottom half was a tapering, stepped pyramid shape, the inverse of the usual flared venturi common to all previous rockets. It was different but reminiscent of Kristene’s disastrous first design of the photon drive, improved by a greater understanding of the force she had unwittingly unleashed.
Hidden at the center of the probe, surrounded by the radiator fins, the pebble bed reactor came to life. Neutron baffles withdrew, allowing thousands of tennis-ball sized “pebbles” to mix for the first time. The spherical pebbles were each tiny fission reactors in their own right. Tens of thousands of encapsulated pellets of enriched uranium were sandwiched within a silicon carbide matrix and then wrapped up in a thick graphite shell. The shell moderated the fast neutrons from spontaneous fissions and allowed them to drift back among the pellets, increasing the probability of absorption in the uranium and the chance of an induced fission reaction. Group enough of the pebbles together, and the whole assembly became supercritical, raising the rate of fission and the reactor temperature until the graphite expanded and the process became self-limiting. It had a high operating temperature and efficiency, but a meltdown was virtually impossible, making the pebble bed perfect for their use: safe, simple, and powerful enough to reach the stars.
High pressure helium was forced into the reactor, flowing between the channels naturally formed by the bed of spherical pebbles. The helium carried away the heat of fission to the thermogenerators surrounding the core. Electricity began to flow and the radiator fins grew white hot.
Hastings spoke from the VTC screen. “Control, this is Morningstar. The probe is on internal power with pre-flight complete and satisfactory, no discrepancies. Ummm. That’s it, I guess. We’re ready to launch. Who’s pushing the button?”
Kris turned to look at Nathan, and then she and he both turned to stare with intent at Lee. Gordon looked from one to the other and back until he shrugged. “Okay, if you insist. I’ll push it.”
Nathan grunted. “Right, as if one of us trying to push it wouldn’t be the quickest way to the unemployment line.”
Gordon grinned and approached the completely unnecessary Big Red Button he had installed just for this moment. He lifted the button’s cover and cleared his throat. “This is our greatest moment. With this simple act, we answer the promise of generations that have come before us, and we make a promise to the generations that follow. Mankind has always reached for the outermost fringes, the distant horizon, and the furthest frontiers. With the launch of this probe, we expand the sphere of our influence upon the universe and reach out to neighbors unknown. We hereby swear an oath to the future that we shall continue our intrepid journey, no matter the obstacles we face, and we shall reach out to embrace whatever fate holds with courage, honor, and ever increasing wonder.”