Today, as we consider pouring more of the planet’s limited wealth into this financial black hole, maybe we should pause to ask what we hope to gain from this vast investment. Knowledge? Scientists say there are no privileged places in the universe. If that is so, we are now in position to calculate, as the fanatics like to say, what’s out there.
What’s out there is primarily hydrogen. Lots of nitrogen. Rocks. A few spear-carrying cultures. And empty space.
It’s time to call a halt. Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won’t need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet.
— Gregory MacAllister, interview on the Black Cat Network, Tuesday, February 17
It’s a long way to Betelgeuse. One hundred ninety light-years, give or take. Almost three weeks in jump status. Plus a day or so at the far end to make an approach.
Abdul al Mardoum, captain of the Patrick Heffernan, usually had no objection to long flights. He read history and poetry and played chess with Bill, the AI, or with his passengers, if they were so disposed. And he put time aside for contemplation. The great void through which the Academy’s superluminals traveled tended to overwhelm a lot of people, even some of the pilots. It was big and empty and pitiless, so they tried not to think about it but instead filled their days with talk of whatever projects lay ahead and diverted their evenings with VR. Anything to get away from the reality of what lay on the other side of the hull. But Abdul was an exception to the general rule. He loved to contemplate the cosmic vastness.
They were, at the moment, in transdimensional space, which was another matter. The void was gone, replaced by eerie banks of mist and an absolute darkness illuminated only by whatever light the ship might cast. All ships necessarily moved through the cloudscape at a leisurely pace. It was a physical law that Abdul didn’t quite understand. The Heffernan might have been a sailboat adrift on the Persian Gulf. To Abdul, it was daunting, yet he accepted it as more evidence of the subtlety and providence of the Creator, of His care to leave pathways through a universe so vast that without their existence the human race would have been confined to its home sun.
It was the second week of the mission. Their destination was Betelgeuse IV, one of the oldest known living worlds. Intelligence had never developed there, at least not the sort of intelligence that uses tools and devises political arrangements. Because the biosystem was so ancient, it was of intense interest to researchers, who had established an orbiting station and were forever scrabbling about on the surface of the world, collecting samples to be taken to the orbiter and examined with relentless enthusiasm. The local life-forms did not use DNA, a fact of great interest to the biologists, though Abdul never understood that, either.
This flight, he realized, was going to be long. Usually he enjoyed these missions, took a kind of perverse pleasure in the solitude, looked forward to the conversations that the environment invariably stimulated. But this would be different.
The Heffernan was carrying four passengers, all specialists in varying biological fields. The senior man was James Randall Carroll, Professor Carroll, no casual intimacy, thank you very much. He was tall and a trifle bent. He was forever brushing his thin white hair out of his eyes. He smiled a lot, but you never got the sense he meant it. Despite his inclination toward formality, he wanted very much to impress his colleagues and Abdul. He did that by going on endlessly about the differences between terrestrial reptiles and their closest cousins on Betelgeuse IV.
There were, he would point out as though it really mattered, fascinating similarities in eye development, despite the differences in the local spectrum. Here, let me show you. And twenty minutes later they were into the feeding habits of warm-water reptiles. Or mating procedures. Or the curious and as-yet-unexplained diversity of propulsion methods by certain inhabitants of one of the southern swamp areas. Particularly annoying was his habit of periodically asking Abdul whether he understood, whether he grasped what the change in refraction really implied. The professor even followed him onto the bridge when he tried to retreat. (He’d made the mistake of inviting the four passengers to come forward anytime they liked, to see how the ship operated. It was a tradition, an offer he’d been making for years. But no more.)
Betelgeuse was approaching supernova stage. It would happen sometime during the next hundred thousand years or so, and Abdul found himself wishing it would happen while Carroll was in the vicinity. He’d like to see his reaction if the world, the swamps, and all its lizards, were blown to hell.
Abdul had been piloting Academy ships most of his career. He loved the job, loved carrying researchers to faraway places, loved watching their reactions when they saw the pale shrunken suns, or the supergiants, or the ring systems. He had no family, could not have had one and kept his career. It was the sacrifice he’d made. But it was well worth it. He treasured every mission. But Carroll was going to take this one from him.
“Abdul.” It was Bill, the AI. “We’re getting fluctuations from the 25s.”
The 25s were the jump engines. They controlled action across the interface, in and out, and provided initial momentum after insertion. But once the Heffernan was under way through the clouds, they went into maintenance mode. There should not have been any fluctuations. “Can you see a problem, Bill?”
He blinked on. In his gray eminence persona. That meant he was trying to reassure Abdul everything was under control. Which scared the devil out of him. “Don’t know. I’m getting contradictory signals. Mixer’s not running properly, but it appears the entire system is misfiring. Power levels are dropping.”
Abdul opened a channel to Union, the space station. “Ops immediate,” he said. “This is the Heffernan. We are having engine problems. May have to abort flight.” He closed the channel while he thought what else he wanted to say. “I’ve been with this outfit my entire life,” he told the AI. “It’s always been smooth riding. I’d like not to blow an engine now.”
“Maybe you’re due.”
“Maybe.” He opened the channel again but was startled to see the Academy logo blink on. And then an ops officer.
Odd coincidence. From out here, at a range of almost ninety light-years, a transmission should take about eighteen minutes to reach Earth. So they couldn’t have a reply already.
“Acknowledge your last,” the ops officer said. Abdul stared, unbelieving, at his image. “Leave the channel open. We’ll stand by to assist.” The screen blanked. The lights on the hyperlink flashed and went off. “The system’s down,” said Bill. “Power surge.”
“Can you restore it?”
“Negative.”
“How’s the radio?”
“Radio’s okay.” Not that that would help if they were stranded out here. “We are getting a prejump warning, Abdul. Four minutes.”
How did the reply come back so quickly? What was going on?
The jump engines were designed, in the event of a major problem, to terminate operations and return the ship to normal space. That was what the warning was about. Jump in four minutes. Nobody wanted to break down in hyperspace. If you did, no help could reach you. If the engines blew, you couldn’t get out. Ever. He didn’t know whether it had actually happened to anyone. Two ships had vanished during the seventy years or so that the superluminals had been in operation.
“Bill,” said Abdul, hesitantly, “are we capable of making the jump safely?”
“I am optimistic.”