We had proven that there was no life around Alpha Centauri. The next step was to look at Barnard's Star, which is only slightly further out. Barnard's Star is about six light years from Earth and is a faint red giant or M class star on the Hertzsprung--Russel diagram.
Using the solar focus telescope system, Jim brought the star system into view at low magnification and stopped out the bright spot caused by Sol, and by Barnard's Star. An array of planets came into view. Two were fairly large gas giants, one of which was twice the size of Jupiter, and three were planets in the realm of Earth-like in size. The spectrometer computer dinged at us and said that oxygen and chlorophyll had been detected. The light from Barnard's Star had illuminated the planet's atmosphere and the wavelength bands that get absorbed by oxygen and chlorophyll had been absorbed and not reflected off one of the planets—the spectrometer instrument enabled us to measure which bands of light were received by the telescope and which ones weren't. But which planet?
We zoomed in on the inner three planets one at a time. The first planet was a barren rock much like Mercury. The second planet closest to Banard's Star was blue and green and looked like a Mars-sized Earth. We spent hours zooming in on the planet. There were oceans, mountains, trees, and even grass. We saw no artificial structures of any sort. There was life there, but most likely not intelligent life.
The third planet was mostly like Venus.
We bounced back to Moon Base 1 and began discussing who was going to visit Barnard's Star. We decided that we were all going. We were too valuable to America to risk getting lost in space, but we didn't care. Was that selfish? We knew we could get back.
We had one problem. At fifty times the speed of light, the trip would take at least fifty days there and fifty days back. That's a little more than three months. Tabitha and 'Becca were pushing two months pregnant. The Einstein was very comfortable for few hours, just like a minivan is comfortable for a ten-hour drive to the beach. But you can't live in a minivan for three months. We had to build a real starship. We would just have to be patient.
The crew split up into three groups. Tabitha and Sara and I made up one group, Annie, Al, and Margie made up the second, and Jim and 'Becca made the third group. We took turns. One week you got to bounce out to the solar focus and continue planet hunting. One week you got to work the starship construction project. The third week you watched over the military research and development aspects of our Moon Base 1 operations. Each team alternated through the three jobs. There were over a hundred and fifty personnel on the Moon Base now but we were the original brain trust. We felt an obligation to making sure it functioned and continued all of its missions, not just the really fun ones.
Tabitha, Sara, and I took the first watch designing the starship. We took blueprints from the International Space Station habitat modules and began redesigning them. Our idea was to build three habitat size modules, just a little larger, and connect them side by side, then lay two on top of those three, and then one on top of the two. So we would have a pyramid of six cylinder-shaped modules. We would then attach the U.S.S. Einstein to the middle cylinder module in the bottom line of three. Remember that the Einstein doesn't have rocket engines in the back of it where the Shuttle does. In fact, this is where the loading ramp is located. We could retrofit Einstein fairly easily to the new configuration. There were two side doors also so loading and unloading wouldn't be a problem.
Tabitha and Sara went about setting up the contracts Earthside to get construction of the modules under way. It would take about a year to complete the modules. We contracted the same aerospace firm that built Einstein. We decided to have them go ahead and build the retrofit faring that would connect the little warpship to the habitat cylinders.
A few days later, Annie had the idea to put a retrofit faring on both ends of the cylinders so that we could dock one of the other warpships to the other side. This way, we could land and then split up into two teams to cover more ground more quickly. She had the contracts modified to allow the new designs.
Occasionally, Jim and I would compare notes on the warp field and energy anomalies. We still hadn't quite put our finger on a solution to the nonlinear energy requirements for fast warp speeds. But we were new to warp theory. We had only been doing it for a year or so. We also compared notes on pregnancy. Tabitha hadn't had a lot of trouble with morning sickness. 'Becca on the other hand was miserable. I told Jim that Tabitha had been an astronaut for so long that probably nothing made her sick anymore.
A couple of months later we compared notes on the so-called "honeymoon trimester." We both decided that it would be a lot more fun without having to deal with a three to six month pregnant woman. Both of them exercised every day but their mobility was beginning to suffer. So, Jim and I had a clever idea. We redesigned the curvature in the flat space portion of the protective warp bubble of the habitat dome. The area around our respective bedrooms we designed a curvature that would be modifiable to zero gee and would be centered about the bedroom. The low gravity field would slowly taper back to one gee at the edge of the room. We each rigged us a transmitter to trigger the new software via the push of a button. We could also modify the amount of gravity in our bedrooms from zero to one gee. That gave me another idea about a high gee training facility, but that is another story. In fact, I remember seeing that idea on a cartoon I used to watch years ago.
I told Tabitha that I had a surprise for her. "I have remodeled the bedroom," I told her.
"What did you do?" she said nervously.
I led her into the room and said, "Tada!"
"I don't see any difference," she remarked.
"Look here." I pointed to the slidebar switch by the headboard of the bed. The switch had a zero at the bottom and a one at the top. "Stand here by the bed and lower the switch slowly," I said.
She reached up and slid the bar downward about halfway. My stomach lurched and tickled. I'm sure hers did. The baby kicked also. "Whoa!" she grabbed the headboard and steadied herself.
I leaned over and picked up the bed with one hand. "See, I rigged it so we could modify the gravity in here. You can probably get more comfortable to sleep at lower gee."
Tabitha slid the panel to zero and did a slow spin backwards above the bed.
"You don't think this will hurt the baby do you? The baby is suspended in water anyway. If anything, it might get motion sick with no gravity, right? Perhaps we shouldn't go all the way down to zero?" I asked.
"Oh, phooey. We and the Russians did long-term studies on pregnant mammals in both ISS and on Mir. We tested pregnant rats, rabbits, and a few others and never observed any differences between the spaceborn animals and Earthborn ones." She balanced herself and slid the bar upward to about one tenth gee. "We will have to be careful at this gravity not to get up too fast or you will get a bump on the head from the ceiling or the doorframe or whatever." She did another back flip.
"Yeah, okay, just be careful. Also, the gravity is only modified in this room and the bathroom—there's another slidebar in there. I thought the low gee bathroom might make it easier on you for getting up and down. Although, I'd leave some gravity on when I used the toilet or took a shower." I smiled at her.