Project Starshot

by | Dec 26, 2007 | Story

Author : William Tracy

It was late after hours at SETI headquarters. Still, two men hunched over a computer, it’s light bathing them in a blue glow.

“I can’t believe it, Jim.”

“There’s no doubt. Arecibo is picking up an artificial signal from an intelligent source.” Jim straightened, raked his hair back with his fingers. “Play it.”

“What?”

“I’m just curious; the transmission looks like an AM radio broadcast.” He leaned forward. “Dave, can we play it?”

“Well, let’s see—” Dave punched buttons. “There we go!”

A voice speaking in English emanated from the computer’s speakers.

“It can’t be…”

Jim stared at the screen. “That star is forty light-years away,” he pronounced solemnly. “This message is forty years old.”

* * *

The general faced the SETI researchers down across his polished wood desk. Medals swarmed down his uniform.

“Gentlemen, you wish to speak to me about Project Starshot.”

The researchers answered that they did.

The general placed his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned forward, brow furrowed. “Project Starshot is a classified government project—its very name is secret. I do not know how you found out about it, but whatever happened, a serious security breach has occurred, and national security is jeopardized.” He leaned back, crossed his arms. “Start talking.”

Jim turned to Dave. “Play the tape for him.”

First there was static, then a words. “… Officer Franks, of Project Starshot. I have completed the first manned test of the device. Our coordinates must have been wrong, because the wormhole seems to have delivered me to an alien world. The wormhole we created only works in one direction, and I have no means of returning. I am broadcasting this message in hopes that … ” the message dissolved into noise.

As the tape played, the general’s eyes widened. Then he placed his elbows on the desk, laced his fingers together, and propped his nose on his knuckles. He paused, listening. Then the general moved his head down, and leaned his hands against his forehead.

When the tape stopped, there was a long, awkward pause before the general looked up at his guests, eyes tired.

“We canceled Project Starshot in 1967. We thought they all died.”

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Spider

by | Dec 25, 2007 | Story

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Susan crept downstairs slowly, curious about the noises she was hearing from the kitchen. The lights weren’t on. It was Christmas morning so it was still dark out at five in the morning. Her parents slept far away from the kitchen all the way upstairs on the second floor plus they had been celebrating last night so they were in a deep sleep. Susan, of course, had barely been sleeping at all. Her eyes had flown open at every little creak of the house settling. She kept a sensitive child’s ear out for the sound of sleigh bells or hoofbeats.

Neither of those sounds was coming from the kitchen. It almost sounded like burglars. The lights were off and all she could hear was the slight tinkling of what sounded like cutlery. Every now and then, it sounded like the fridge was gently being pushed forward a few inches.

As she got closer to the kitchen, there was the sound of sparks. The half inch of darkness underneath the closed door lit up bright blue like night-time television and then went black again. The clinking and the gentle scraping continued.

Susan was not a fearful child but she was getting nervous. She chewed on her lower lip with wide-eyed indecision. The contest in her between wanting to see Santa and wanting to alert her parents to possible intruders was violent but brief. She opted for the Santa glimpse.

Very, very quietly she opened the kitchen door a crack, pushed her arm through, and felt for the light switch on the wall. She found it. Light flooded the kitchen.

The sounds continued.

Susan opened her eyes.

It wasn’t Santa.

There was a giant long-legged metal spider on the kitchen table eating the toaster. It was like a black skinless patio umbrella with a streamlined teardrop-shaped blob of metal at the center of it the size of a microwave oven. Its mouth parts were gingerly tearing away the chrome skin of the toaster. It hissed a little and the blue sparks came again from its mouth as a perfect square of the toaster’s hide came away and disappeared into the maw.

Susan stood frozen to the spot. The spider didn’t know she was there.

Wrapping paper still clung to the spider’s legs. There was a colourful bow still smoking on the kitchen floor.

It didn’t have its light sensitivity sensors or earmikes installed yet so it had no idea that Susan was there or that the light was on.

Susan whooped with delight. Obviously her parents had set the time zone wrong and it had woken up early. She stroked the back of her hand to fire up her implant and snapped her fingers twice to set it to pet control.

The spider spasmed and fell on the floor with a crash. Susan could hear her parents waking up.

“Bad spider!” she said with a smile on her face. This was the best Christmas ever. Her friends were going to be so jealous.

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The Upgrade

by | Dec 24, 2007 | Story

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Deep in the bowels of the Top Secret Experimental Vehicle Development Center, sat the most technically advanced aircraft ever developed by General Motors. As the ship rested solidly on its landing skids, I meticulously guided the ion-vapor polisher a few thousands of an inch above painted graphite composite skin. My fellow detailer, Clement, was polishing the chrome and mahogany trim inside the cockpit. “I don’t know why I bother,” he complained to no one in particular. “You know the military is gonna gut the entire ship once they get their hands on it.”

“What makes you think the customer is the military,” I asked?

“Com’on, who else can afford to spend 130 billion dollars for a one passenger ship? Hell, a thousand man deep-space battlecruiser doesn’t cost that much.”

“Well, I was kinda hopin’ this ship was for some trillionaire playboy,” I replied as I admired the 40 foot long aerodynamic beauty. “A primo ship like this should be used for recreation, not war.”

Clement stepped out of the cockpit and studied the sales sticker glued to the windshield. “Look at the options,” he remarked. “This ship has a tracking system with 5040 cascading global positioning locators, each with its own quantum homing sensor. The propulsion system is a 3.2 terawatt warp engine with microburst capability. There’s an inertial braking system that can stop the aircraft in less than a nanosecond. The cockpit canopy has a heads-up night vision photonic display. It even has a multiphase cloaking device. Think about it. Why would a civilian need an instrumentation package this advanced? There’s no doubt in my mind. This ship is definitely a prototype for a military fighter. I’ll bet they plan to use it to take back Mars. President Moore was an idiot for letting those ungrateful bastards secede without a fight.”

“You’re nuts, Clement,” I countered. “For God’s sake, this ship is a convertible. It can’t even leave Earth’s atmosphere. How’s it gonna reach Mars? Have you even noticed that it’s painted red? Who paints a fighter red?”

Undaunted, he continued arguing his point. “Mars is red too you know. You’d never see this baby while it was parked on the ground.” He motioned me to the rear of the aircraft and opened the cargo hatch. “Have you seen the hold? It has a station-to-station subspace tunnel array. It would be perfect for remotely loading munitions during an extended sortie. After the pilot fires all his antimatter torpedoes, he can re-supply the ship in-flight using the tunnel.”

“That tunnel only has a range of 15,000 miles,” I pointed out in vein. “That alone shoots down your Mars theory?”

“Just the opposite, Einstein,” he replied sarcastically. “Space Force has a supply station on Phobos. Fifteen thousand miles can cover every square mile of Mars. I’ll bet you a case of beer the customer is Special Forces.”

“I’ll take that bet,” I said enthusiastically. “Look, they’re supposed to be here in thirty minutes to inspect the ship. We’ll find out then. In the meantime, we need to finish up.” Clement and I quickly completed detailing the aircraft, then ducked behind some shipping crates and watched the hanger door.

A few minutes later, the door whisked open, and a plump elderly man with a broad face and a full white beard stepped into the hangar. When he saw his new “sleigh” his droll little mouth drew up like a bow. His eyes…how they twinkled! And, I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.

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Rumors

by | Dec 23, 2007 | Story

Author : Matthew Green

There were rumors of course, most were squashed, but on a ship full of soldiers with nothing to do but watch the stars go by, rumors happened. It was like getting cleaning detail, no use trying to prevent it, just grab a space suit and scrub.

The most prevalent was that the war was over a year ago and the ship was just squashing various rebellious factions that hadn’t got the news. Higher-ups didn’t let the lower-downs know this because that would result in a drop in efficiency. All very scientifically tested and all that. People spreading these rumors brought forth facts such as how little equipped the pockets of rebels were and how each trip between hold outs took longer to get to. Most were wiped out and the rest were getting harder to find. That explained the lack of any form of action for several months now.

Another, more frightening rumor was that they had miscalculated when the ship had sling-shot around that black hole. Somehow we were slung into the far reaches of… somewhere and didn’t know where home was. That one scared me the most. As a maintenance tech, I was privy to the storage holds of the ship, and I knew we only had enough food in stock to last six months at most. The commander told us that mail transmissions had been turned off so the enemy couldn’t triangulate our position. That was four months ago and by now everybody knew the truth; burst transmissions couldn’t be tracked that way. The rumor mill liked to churn that one out during the late shift. I used to like working at ship’s night. Some people complained about having to step outside and brush off the antenna arrays and scrub out the various vents and sensor assemblies, but I enjoyed it. It got me out and moving, and I liked the view. Well, I used to like the view, now I just wanted to live under a sky again.

I heard another voice that I recognized. “Hello Roy,” he greeted.

I was on cleaning detail, again, and turned toward the suit that was approaching. He waved one gloved hand at me as I stared into his gold visor. Suits didn’t display the occupant’s rank like normal uniforms did.

“Dave?”

“That’s me, me matey.” He said in his pirate voice.

“Damn man, they said you were dead.”

“That was the rumor.”

I turned back; the brush I had been using had drifted to the end of its tether. I retrieved it with a practiced move and resumed brushing dust off the antennas. They coated easily out here in the nothing.

“Don’t bother, at our speed it’ll be years before we’re close enough to use that.”

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Last Letter

by | Dec 22, 2007 | Story

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

Dear John,

How are you? Such a stupid way to start a letter like this. You’ll probably never get it anyway, and even if you do I’ll never know your answer. But I hope you’re well. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. You were right. But I don’t think I would have made any other decision.

I know when you first met me, sitting at the space port, staring up at the sculptures of shinning metal and watching the scurrying of their army of workers as the next flight was prepared, that you thought it was a kind of fascination on my part, a poor planet bound creature held enraptured by the shining towers. You thought that if you offered me some small part of the stars, a part of you, strange and exotic and alien with the memory of a thousand stars seen from the bridge of your ship, that I could be happy, and you could keep me with you.

And for a while I was content, truly I was. We would lie in the rose-gold dusk of day-start, as Filha’s pale light faded and Mãe began to rise. I would lie with my head on your chest, listening to the beat of your heart, and the echoing chamber of your chest, and hear words as you would have spoken them on your own world, before they reached your lips to become words for my ears.

But for every story you spoke, for every star in my sky that you pointed too, and told me of the peoples who lived there, the ships that passed by, I wanted, I needed to see them for myself. I listened to your cautions of time warps and life spans; how my race wasn’t equipped for the rigours of travel. But you could never understand what it was like for me, what it was truly like to be condemned to a planet bound existence and watch the lines the great silver ships traced across the sky. You offered me visions and remembrances of visited worlds; but the ships offered me the stars themselves.

So I’m writing this letter to say, you were right. The stasis is harder on my body than any other member of the crew, and when I was woken for this phase, I didn’t recognise the person looking back at me. My once flame coloured hair has turned grey, my face is lined. I still pass as fit for the helm but I know now I won’t make it to step out onto the next port.

But on my phase, when I’m alone on deck, I’d adjust the filters and watch as pinpoints of light streaked past. I capture images of distant nebulae and far reaching galaxies to gaze over when I’m in my cabin. I won’t reach them, but I’ve gotten to see them all. And it was so worth it.

Love, Calice

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