by Patricia Stewart | Apr 11, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The mammoth multi-functional spaceship, the HMS Drebbel, descended slowly through the skies of Beta Bevatt and settled gracefully onto the undulating surface of the planet-wide ocean. For the next two hours the giant ship filled its ballast tanks and gradually submerged beneath the waves. Now a submarine, the vessel powered its way toward Meta DeStad, The City of the Fish.
Six months earlier, the first mission to Beta Bevatt detected the underwater city, built and populated, by fish. Of course, “fish” describe the Earth-base analog. Xenobiologist had a more accurate technical description of the streamline aquatic life on Beta Bevatt, but to the layman, they looked like fish, and swam like fish, so they called them fish. But that is where the similarity ended. These fish were sentient. They had a language, cared for their young, cultivated seaweed gardens, and even raised shrimp-like food in a pen built entirely from a reed that they meticulously weaved into a large sphere using finger-like appendages on the ends of their pectoral fins. The Fish were friendly and hospitable, not unlike the primitive American Indians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And the humans wanted to cultivate that relationship, so they kept the mothership hidden, and only interacted with the Fish using their quiet hydro-magnetically powered fish-like submersibles. Apparently, the ruse worked, because the Fish accepted the humans as distant, if not peculiar, cousins.
However, several months into the current mission, the Fish came to the humans requesting help. It seemed that the Fish had a great enemy. A pod of predators that swam in from the north and attacked their city around the same time every year, and that day was approaching. The prior year, the predators had killed 20 percent of the inhabitants of Meta DeStad. They were hoping that the human-fish could join them in battle.
***
“Captain,” pleaded the Science Officer, “we have to help. We’ve befriended these creatures. We can’t abandon them in their hour of need. Sir, we have over fifty manned submersibles, and they are all faster than anything in the sea, we can defend the Fish.”
“Tom, I understand your feelings, and I want to help too, but we can’t interfere in the natural selection process of Beta Bevatt. If the Fish were meant to survive, they’ll have to do it on their own. My hands are tied.”
“Please, sir, can we at least arm our submersibles? That way, if you change your mind, we’ll be ready to help.”
The captain studied his bridge officers. There was mutiny in their eyes. In his mind, he knew they would obey his orders, but in his heart, he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he should buy some time. Maybe, the predators wouldn’t come this year. “Okay, Tom. But mark my words; no submersible may leave the ship without my direct order. Is that understood? Good. Now, go ahead and begin making the modifications.”
Two weeks later, the predators arrived. “Captain,” announced the sonar operator, “they’re coming. But sir, I’m picking up the sounds of screws churning in the water, and transmissions. Sir, I recognize the language. They’re Centari. It’s a hunting expedition. They’re hunting the Fish for sport.”
“What! Those bastards,” exclaimed the captain. “The Centari Treaty forbids them from entering this Sector. Okay, it’s no longer a natural selection dilemma. Launch all of the submersibles. Wait, belay that order. Launch all but one. Commander Eckland, you have the Conn. I’m joining to lead this fight.”
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 25, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The ship shook violently as it unexpectedly dropped out or warp. The captain was thrown to the deck where he could feel the tell-tale vibrations of explosions occurring somewhere on the ship. He climbed to his feet and activated the communications console. “Bridge to Engineering. What’s going on Chief?”
“Unsure, Captain. We’re fighting several fires right now. I need some time to sort things out.”
“Make it quick, Chief. I want you to brief the senior staff in my ready room in one hour.”
*****
An hour later, Chief Cernan walked into the Captain’s Ready Room into the middle of a heated argument. “I demand a thorough investigation, Captain. I want to know who is responsible for this debacle.”
“You are an uninvited guest on my ship, Mr. Harris. You are in no position to make demands,” rebutted the captain. “Civilians don’t belong on experimental missions.”
“I’m not a ‘civilian’. I am the personal representative of Senator Schmitt, and if you think…”
“I’ll deal with you later,” interrupted the captain without apology. “Chief, what’s our condition?”
“Precarious, Captain. The Alcubierre drive is undamaged, but the subspace heat exchanger is completely destroyed. Since the efficiency of the anti-matter reaction is so low, we’ll vaporize the ship if we can’t bleed-off the excess energy into subspace.”
“So, you’re telling me that we have warp drive, we just can’t use it”
“Not exactly, sir,” replied Cernan. “We can run the wrap drive, but only until it overheats. Then we have to shut it down until the engines radiate the excess heat into normal space. I estimate that we can run the engines for two seconds, with a cool off cycle of 24 hours. At that rate, it will take us about five years to get home.”
“Five years,” screamed Harris. “That’s unacceptable! You can’t expect me to sit around hear while you incompetent fools…”
The captain slammed is fist onto the top of the conference table and yelled, “That’s enough out of you, Mr. Harris. You say one more word and I’ll throw you into an escape pod and we’ll tow you back to Earth.”
The chief suddenly smiled. “Hey, captain, that a great idea.”
“The hell it is,” exclaimed Harris!
The chief waved a dismissive hand at Harris. “I’m not talking about you. I mean we can deploy the sixteen escape pods into two large octagons and fill in the space between them with sheets of polyaluminum. I’ll fabricate superconductive tethers and tie them into the nacelles. That should radiate the excess heat a hundred times faster. We can probably make it home in about three weeks.”
“Still unacceptable,” bellowed Harris. “I have important meetings to atten…”
There was a flash of light and Harris collapsed to the floor. The captain looked at the settings on his phaser and muttered, “Damn, it was set on ‘stun’. Too bad.” The captain looked up and smiled at the shocked expressions on the faces of his senior staff. “Relax, gentlemen. It’s one of the privileges of being so close to retirement. Besides I’ve wanted to do that since that blowhard forced me to take him aboard. He also needs to learn that there are consequences to ignoring the commands of the ship’s captain. Lieutenant Irwin, when Chief Cernan deploys the escape pods, make sure Mr. Harris is in one of them with enough food and water for a month. And please, disable the intercom. I’ve listened to his babbling long enough. Dismissed.”
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 15, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Lieutenant Robinson studied the sensor readings. The Captain stood behind him, patiently waiting for his science officer’s technical assessment. “It’s clearly artificial, sir,” Robinson finally said. “Although its surface composition is consistent with an S-type asteroid, its structure is completely different from the other asteroids in this field. For example, gravimetric data indicates that its density is 70% lower than it should be, and an asteroid with a mass under a trillion kilograms should be potato-shaped. It should not be perfectly spherical.”
“Your recommendation, Lieutenant?” prompted the Captain.
“We need to know what the inside looks like. I recommend we deploy seismic probes with ground penetrating imaging systems.”
Two hours later, they were looking at an intricate 3-D holographic image of the subsurface structure of the anomaly. There were 720 geometrically identically subsurface chambers that were uniformly distributed just below the exterior of the asteroid. Each chamber contained an irregularly shaped object of silicaceous material with a mass of approximately three metric tons each. Beneath the 720 outer chambers, there were additional, larger subchambers, but there was insufficient resolution in the data to determine the contents, or nature, of those chambers.
“Captain,” said the ensign manning the science station, “I’m detecting an increase in seismic activity within the asteroid. There are hundreds of low magnitude earthquakes, I mean asteroidquakes. It appears that the surface of the asteroid is crumbling.”
“Put it on the main viewer, magnification fifty,” ordered the captain. As he studied the viewscreen, the surface of the asteroid blasted away and a coma of dust expanded outward in slow motion. Then hundreds of shuttlecraft-sized rocks flew from the asteroid in random, erratic, corkscrewing trajectories. Eventually, they all settled down, and began traveling in straight lines. A few seconds later, they increased speed, and flew off into the asteroid field with apparent purpose. A dozen of the flying “rocks,” which happened to be heading in the general direction of the ship, paused at a distance of approximately one hundred meters. They hovered like bees for a few minutes and then one by one, they detoured around the ship and headed off toward remote regions of the asteroid field.
by Patricia Stewart | Feb 16, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Tell me again, Welin, why you have to lie to the Captain?” asked the temporal assistant. “It doesn’t seem right,” she added with disgust.
“You’re not seeing the big picture, Molly. It’s not about a single ship; it’s about what happens afterwards. Malum’s great, great grandfather was working in the engine room of that ship. By killing Alexander Pravus five years before he fathered Malum’s great grandmother, we’ll ultimately prevent Malum’s birth, and save the lives of millions of innocent people that have been butchered since he’s seized control of the planet. I would prefer to have killed Malum as a child, but his scientists have set up temporal blockades that go back more than a century.”
“What if Pravus survives the sinking,” countered his assistant. “Have you thought of that? There is no guarantee everyone will die.”
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take. Please, Molly, it’s now or never. His henchmen could discover our laboratory at any time.”
With tears beginning to form in her eyes, she acquiesced. “I hate you for making me do this,” she cried. “Do you even know what you’re going to tell him?”
“Yes, Molly. I have it all worked out. Now please, time is running out.”
“Okay, damn you. Clip on your wings before I change my mind.”
Minutes later, a ghostly image appeared over the Captain’s bunk. “Captain Smith, wake up” it sang softly.
The groggy captain rubbed his eyes as he struggled to comprehend what he heard. “Who is it?”
The semitransparent apparition floated in mid-air, its wings beating rhythmically in slow motion. “Why have you shut down the engines?”
Suddenly terrified as he realized it wasn’t a dream, Smith’s trembling fingers clutched the covers to his chest. “It…it..it’s too dangerous,” he answered.
“No, Edward, it’s not. Would God ask me to come to you if it were dangerous? You must believe me. It’s your destiny to complete this voyage as quickly as possible. Now, go to the bridge, and resume your original heading and speed.”
“But, Gabriel, please. It isn’t safe,” Smith pleaded.
Welin raised his voice and pointed an accusatory finger at the frightened captain. “Do not question the Holy Father. Do as he commands, or suffer his wrath. Now, GO, or spend eternity in damnation.”
Reluctantly, but obediently, Captain Smith scurried form the bed, put on a robe, and headed toward the bridge.
At 11:40 PM, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg. From that instant forward, no one remembered the original voyage, where the Titanic had steamed into New York harbor 18 hours behind schedule. Instead, the new reality was that the Titanic took 1,517 souls to the bottom of the Atlantic, including Alexander Pravus.
Although Dmitry “The Slaughter” Malum was never born, there were unforeseen consequences in the new timeline. Adolph Hitler wasn’t killed in WWI and subsequently rose to power, America reached the moon before the Soviet Union, the European Union collapsed, and then, in a desperate maneuver to lash out at the entire world, North Korea unleashed The Doomsday Plague. By 2048, there were no humans alive to invent time travel to rewrite history a second time.
by Patricia Stewart | Feb 11, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Horatio Kiddleson stared open-mouthed at the turbulent accretion disk as it swirled into the ergosphere that surrounded the bottomless gravity well. “Dammit Schwarz, you didn’t tell me our destination was a black hole.”
“Quite right, young man. And believe me; it was not easy finding a licensed pilot that didn’t know V404 Cygni was a black hole. I wasted a year searching for someone as unenlightened as yourself.”
“I may not know every celestial object in the quadrant,” Kiddleson rebutted, “but I know how to jettison your sorry ass out the airlock. I’m getting us outa here. They don’t call them things ‘widow makers’ for nothin.”
“Hold on, son, that’s all about to change. I’ve invented a Quantum Gravity Shield, which will make this ship impervious to the effects of gravity and hard radiation. But you don’t need to take my word for it. How about a simple demonstration? I’ll activate the shield and you can take us in for a closer look. Just drop down to one AU. This old plasma burpper will still have plenty of power to escape if it doesn’t work. I’ll even sweeten the pot. I’ll double your payment if I’m wrong.”
“Double you say? Hmmmm. We can do one AU on half impulse. Okay, Schwarz, it’s a deal. But I’m pullin’ out at the first sign of trouble.”
Schwarz activated the Quantum Gravity Shield, and the ship descended to 93 million miles in a matter of minutes. “Wow,” said Kiddleson, “we don’t even need a radial velocity to maintain this distance. I think that thing may actually work.”
“There was never a doubt,” replied Schwarz with an arrogant smile. “How about dropping us down another 60 million?”
“Sure, why not. This excursion will make me famous, not to mention rich.”
Again, the ship plummeted like a geosynchronous space elevator on steroids. But at 40 million miles, something started to go wrong. “Hey, Professor, I don’t feel so good. I’m getting light headed.”
“It looks like the graviton compensator is out of alignment. You better take us out so I can fine tune it.”
“No can do, Professor. Whatever’s happening, it’s preventing me from activating the ion drive. If you can’t fix it on the fly, we’re crashing into the event horizon.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Kiddleson. The event horizon isn’t a material surface. You can’t crash into it. It’s just a dimension where light can no longer escape the gravity well of the singularity. We can pass right through it. Of course, if the generator’s imbalance gets any worse, we may get Spaghettified first.”
A few minutes later, the ship passed through the event horizon without incident. In preparation for escape, Kiddleson rotated the ship outward, into the overpowering brilliance of the incoming photons. He frantically began manipulating the controls. “How much longer?”
“Got it,” Schwarz replied. But Kiddleson didn’t need to be told, he knew it the instant his body wasn’t being pulled like taffy. He rammed the throttle to full, and initiated the warp drive a few seconds later.
Safely back in space, Schwarz looked up from the shield generator toward the cockpit. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “Where are the stars? Crap, it must be time dilation. While we were within the black hole, time stopped for us, but the rest of the universe aged a trillion years. All the stars have burnt out. The universe is dead!”
Kiddleson began laughing. “Now, who’s the idiot? I shut the iris when light started pourin in. Stop worrying.” Kiddleson opened the iris and stared open-mouthed out the viewport. “On Shit,” he said, “no stars.”
