“That’s helping,” Miriam said, blinking her eyes in surprise. “Thank you, Tuffy.”
“Sure you don’t want something to drink?” Mimi asked.
“I will when the gravity comes back on,” Miriam said, closing her eyes. “Right now I’m just going to let Tuffy give me a neck rub…”
“Dr. Becker?” Beach asked.
“Yes, Dr. Beach?” Becker said.
“Well?”
“Simply put, I don’t believe the readings,” Becker said. “I would suggest we go back to the boat. I would like to ask if we could move somewhat farther away, then come back and get a reading. We needn’t recover the gravitometer. In fact, I’d like to leave it here if we could find it again.”
“We can do that,” Beach said. “Blade, EVA,” he said, changing channels.
“Go EVA.”
“Returning to the boat. Please inform the captain, with his permission, that we’d like to move the boat somewhat away and then come back to get more readings.”
“Will do, EVA.”
10
“Well, that is interesting,” Weaver said, looking at the readings.
“Amazing,” Becker replied. “It explains so much and yet…”
“And yet,” Weaver said. “If we could publish this it would have half the astrophysics community screaming in horror. I’m trying to figure out how many theories you just turned into confetti, Dr. Becker.”
“Could someone explain in words of no more than one syllable?” the captain said. “And possibly tell me how it affects our mission?”
“Well, getting in and out of star systems is going to be hard,” Bill said. “That wasn’t just an effect we’re going to find near the bow shock. The up side is that now that we have these readings, I think I can figure out how to pilot through…”
“Mass,” Dr. Becker said. “I can see where you’re going with that, but the mass of planets is going to affect the turbulence zone.”
“Surfing,” Bill said.
“Tough,” Becker replied.
“Would someone please…” the captain said.
“It was assumed that space was flat,” Dr. Beach said, holding up a hand placatingly. “These readings indicate that beyond the gravitational effect of a star, more or less around the heliopause although that will be different for different suns, space bends sharply upwards. Oh, not compared to a planet’s well, but quite noticeably. Gravity and momentum take on completely different forms. At the juncture of those two zones there is a disturbance zone. We already experienced the effects.”
“And that’s around all suns?” the XO said, horrified. “All the way around?”
“Uh, huh,” Bill replied, forgetting for a second that he was an officer in the military and enjoying the intellectual puzzle. “A sphere around them. Around some of them it’s going to be spectacular. The really massive ones are going to have one hell of a transition zone. It’s almost like a big defense barrier around planets. I think we’re going to lose the Voyagers in about twenty more years. But I have to respectfully disagree with Dr. Becker. The main mass we have to think about is the star of each system. If we know the star’s mass, we can compute the gravity effect. Do we have any records from the transition zone around the sun?”
“Lots,” Becker said, nodding. “I’ll do a comparison and see if you are on target, Doctor.”
“These waves are broad,” Bill continued. “On the order of a half light-year for the really strong ones. If we can determine the period, well… Then it’s just a matter of surfing.”
“Catch the wave?” the captain asked.
“Probably approach the zone and drop to normal space,” Bill said, nodding. “Right when we hit the first wave. Then time the period and hit the warp. Depending on the star, we set the warp to match the periods. We’ll be skipping through a series of waves, then hitting the next one in period. The waves are probably going to give us a smidgeon of extra speed. I’ll have to compute that. But if it works it will only be about ten minutes that we’re in most transition zones. It may be rough, but not as rough as the last trip.”
“If it works,” the XO said. “And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we drop to normal space and limp home,” Bill said. “Warp to Sol’s transition zone and drive through slow.”
“How many hours?” the CO asked.
“Take us about a month to make it through,” Bill said. “How we fixed for food?”
“Permission to…” Mimi said, then paused, looking in the hatch to the conn.
“Enter the conn,” the CO said, looking over his shoulder. “Is this a social call, miss?”
“I… You’re going to try to enter the Eridani transition zone, sir,” Mimi said shyly. “I was wondering if I could… sit in. Sir.”
The captain regarded her calmly for a moment, then nodded.
“Take my seat,” the captain said, gesturing with his head. “I’ll just hold on.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mimi said, walking over and sitting in the chair.
“Where’s Tuffy?” Bill asked, not looking up from his screens.
“With Miriam,” Mimi said.
“So he’s not giving any hints about this?” Bill said. “Damn.”
“No, it’s just me, Dr. Weaver.” Mimi grinned. “Does that bother you?”
“A lot,” Bill admitted. “I would love for Tuffy to tell me I know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Can I look?” Mimi asked.
“Go ahead,” Bill said.
Mimi walked over and looked at the equations on the screen.
“The problem as I see it is that the boundary of the warped spacetime around the boat is a smooth transition while the spacetime in the disturbed region is sharply fluctuating. Is it a continuous function?”
“As far as our instruments can tell, the fluctuations are continuous but with random functionality. Perhaps it’s a period three superposition on a Henon map.” Weaver scratched his head.
“You mean it is chaotic?” Mimi raised her left eyebrow slightly.
“I think so. The gravity waves are a superposition of waves that might be described as an infinite Fourier series. But we have no clue where to start with the series.”
“You don’t have to!” Mimi was excited. She had thought of the answer and Tuffy was nowhere to be seen. “If it is period three then you only need to mimic a portion of it and then you can superimpose that on the upper right-hand corner of the Henon map to give you a description of the function.”
“Wow!” the CO said, his eyes wide at the sudden onslaught of technobabble. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I was thinking the same thing, sir,” Bill said, missing the sarcasm. “But then we’d need to take that function and tie it between the boundaries of inner part of the solar system to the outer part of the gravity fluctuations.”
“I think that is right. And the partial functions should be discernable with our instrumentation, right?”
“That should actually work. We can curvefit the data and then superimpose the Henon map; I like it,” Bill said, looking over his shoulder. “And that wasn’t Tuffy?”
“No,” Mimi said. “But he’s been working hard over the years teaching me. I think that will work.”
“You sure?” the CO asked. “Because, and don’t get me wrong here, it sounds like you’re just making this stuff up to confuse me.”