by submission | Jul 2, 2011 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson
It started when I was just a preschooler. “Who wants to one day fly up into space?” asked the instructor.
They gauge the reactions of children who get enthusiastic when it comes to questions of science and space travel. By the time I was in my twelfth year I had been selected for the long-range program.
I have always been a loner, more comfortable to remain in my own thoughts than in the company of others. And my love for space and space exploration has pushed my ambitions easily in this direction. Now here I finally am, on the first leg of my solo journey to another star.
The solar sails, now open to their full two and a half kilometer extent, glisten less and less in the fading light of Sol. Soon their gossamer sheen will be nothing but an ink black shadow against the backdrop of cold space. I cross Neptune’s orbit without incident, and head for the ort cloud.
I report back to Earth Base regularly, but it’s all scientific data and business as I have no family with whom to share well wishes.
I sip my morning coffee, freeze dried grounds from the massive provisions hull, enough to last me seventy years. I stare out the forward bay window, gazing at the distant speck that is my eventual destination.
Wolf 359, less than eight light years distant will still take far longer than this many years to reach. Considering acceleration and deceleration I will be a much older man when I finally arrive at this system where once no satellite was thought to orbit, the young red dwarf harbors a small solid body, most likely too primitive to contain life, but nevertheless, an actual planet orbiting a star besides our own, my ultimate dream destination. And I am to be its first Earthly visitor.
I have understood from a young age that since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the technology has already existed to do away with actual human participation in extraplanetary exploration. Why risk lives when robots can get us everything we need? But can they really? All the rock samples and data in the world mean nothing compared with mankind experiencing new worlds through the eyes of one of their own. This is why I now sail into the void.
I am one of many who dream of traveling into space and visiting far away worlds, but one of few actually prepared to receive this blessed one way ticket into ultimate discovery and wonder.
I am thirty now. I will be more than twice this age when I drop into orbit around Wolf 359’s little satellite. That leaves me with up to a possible thirty years or so for telescope exploration and data collection. And if potential conditions prove risk-free enough I then have the resources for a total of three actual landings with three-day excursions attached to each. This will be a challenge to my physical toughness when I am in my seventies or greater. But I am more than up for it. Of this I have no doubt whatsoever.
And then if I manage to live to the ripe old age of one-hundred out there circling that tiny rock and my food and fuel finally runs out? Well providing I haven’t miraculously discovered something else to eat, then I have a pill that will work quickly in assisting me to avoid painful starvation. But this is neither here nor there, because I am on my way… and I am ready.
by Patricia Stewart | Jul 1, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The captain struggled to stand up. His dislocated left arm hung uselessly at his side. In the dim red light of emergency power, he could see his bridge crew climbing back to their assigned stations. “Does anybody know what the hell just happened?”
“We entered an uncharted wormhole,” answered the crewman monitoring the Opts Station. “Main power is off line. Possible hull breaches on decks 41 through 45. Emergency bulkhead doors have automatically deployed.”
“Any damage to the passengers sections?” asked the Captain, suddenly focused on his 6,214 passengers.
“The damage to primary structure appears to be limited to the crew sections. However, there must be injuries above deck 38. The ship experienced more than 20 gees when we returned to normal space.”
“Okay, Mister Hichens, you’re in charge of search and rescue. Take all non-essential crewmembers. Move the seriously injured to sickbay. For the rest, set up triages in cargo bays 1, 2, and 3. Mister Jessop, your top priority is life support. I want a briefing by all department heads in two hours. Now get going.”
* * *
“Hold still,” protested the nurse as she tried in vain to put the captain’s reset arm into a sling.
“Report,” barked the Captain to his department heads, as he pointed the nurse toward the exit.
“Limited power has been restored,” said the chief engineer. “We have enough power for two hyperspace jumps, maybe three. However, long range sensors and subspace communications cannot be repaired until we get to a space dock. In essence, we have some mobility, but we’re blind, deaf, and dumb. Until we get a fix on our position, a jump would be foolhardy.”
“Options?”
“I have the ships navigators in the passenger observatory,” replied Jessop. “They are trying to locate Cepheid Variables. If we can identify the spectrum and frequency of three of them, we can get our bearings. But to be honest, it’s a long shot, Captain. The equipment installed on cruise ships wasn’t designed for the kind of precision we need. Rescue isn’t likely either. Who knows where the wormhole dumped us.”
“Does anybody else have an idea?”
“Excuse me, Captain,” offered the timid Cruise Director, “but I think I may have something?”
“I’m listening, Mrs. Cartright.”
“I was reviewing the passenger manifest, sir, and I noticed that we have over 100 Extra-Terrestrials on board. One of them is an Eridani, sir. A Way Finder.”
“Whoa, a Way Finder,” replied the captain with a smile. “I’ve never met one of them before. Have him escorted to the bridge, immediately.”
* * *
The short Eridani stood in the center of the Bridge with his hands spread wide above his head. He chanted and mumbled for several minutes, as the ship’s translator and navigator worked furiously at a computer terminal. Then he lowered his arms, bowed toward the captain, and left the bridge.
“Give us a second, Captain. The Eridani use a log cylindrical coordinate system, and we use a spherical coordinate system. We’re doing the conversion now.” A few minutes later, he announced, “Got the direction, but does anyone know how far a ‘merdeft’ is?”
“A light-year or a parsec?” suggest the first officer.
“I think ‘defteros’ means ‘second’,” suggested the translator.
“I’ll look up Eridani’s AU, and do the parallax calculation,” said the navigator. Twenty minutes later he announced, “Ready, Captain.”
The captain mulled over the risks, but finally committed. “Let’s hope the Eridani are using standard galactic time. Make the jump, Mister Elliot.”
A few minutes later, the bridge crew cheered as the image of Saturn appeared on the main viewscreen.
by submission | Jun 30, 2011 | Story
Author : Pete Clark
In the vast, senseless void of space, a new star appeared.
Darin watched from the observatory with wide eyed wonder at the glowing orb, reflecting on the War, the unknown enemy. The unseen enemy. He trained his telescopes and tapped keys to optimise magnification. His hands shook, then steadied as he increased his adrenaline levels with a thought to a hormone implant at the base of his skull, inserted painlessly into his spinal cord. He maximised magnification and shut his nictitating eyelids, minimising glare.
It was innumerable miles away, this orb. Its light came in steady pulses, of every known wavelength and, Darin noted, searching the databases, some new. His excitement grew with each pulse, and as he watched, it moved subtly in his viewfinder. Impossible. He looked again, using a thought-controlled drone to connect more computer power. He gained another power of magnification and the orb filled the viewfinder, strange swirling clouds scudding across its surface. Instantly, Darin knew this was no star. He chilled.
He quickly patched into the communications network and tapped a message out on the keyboard that lit up on telescope’s base unit. Its soft glow illuminated his fingers, and turned the complex recognition circuitry embedded in their tips into a sparkle of fingerprint fireworks.
His message read, simply:
UNKNOWN STAR / CRAFT. CO-ORDINATES 1955:1565 b-SECTION. MOBILITY LOW ALTHOUGH MEASURABLE. SIZE INCALCULABLE. SUGGEST SENDING CRITICAL RESPONSE TEAMS 4 AND 6. WILL CONTINUE MONITORING AND REPORT AS NECESSARY.
He tapped the key that added his details. He paused before hitting send. He re-read his message and thought of the panic that might ensue. It was war time, sure enough, but to add to the confusion? He could be hailed for securing the nation and for doing so without causing panic or fear. He sent his message to one of the numerous storage files that he had secreted around the communications network, and gathered data.
The final pulse of energy that Darin registered was not light as known to him, but rather its inverse, invisible dark energy that reached Earth in a stream about as wide as a human hair. It punched through the focusing lens, taking microseconds to travel through the length of the telescope and out of the eye piece. Darin grunted in surprise as the energy pulse seared a path through his brain, cauterising a worming scar through his tissues. He fell from his chair, his final thought not of love or family, but only a nagging regret that he should have risked the panic of the nation and released his message from its secure folder after all.
Innumerable miles away, against the textured velvet backdrop of space, the orb winked out of existence, appearing seconds later, to those who cared to look, light years closer to Earth. Its surface boiled with energy, as if it was alive and the taste of death on its tongue had piqued its curiosity just enough for it to want to try again, perhaps on a larger scale.
by submission | Jun 29, 2011 | Story
Author : Samantha L. Barrett
Dan shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, trying to ward off the freezing mid-January air as he walked to his roommate’s bar. A middle-aged man stared at him unabashedly as he walked by. Dan almost stopped him—this had been the seventh person to look at him like that today (and the 39th all week, since he’d started keeping track), and since he didn’t think there was anything outlandish about his appearance, it was starting to get creepy.
He ducked into Bill’s and shut the door quickly. Bill saw him from behind the bar and began pouring him a beer as he hung his black down jacket up in Bill’s office. The bar reeked of cigarettes and fries, and the football game blared loudly on the flat screen. Dan scooted through the packed, dimly-lit room to the seat Bill had marked with his drink.
“Do I smell?” He asked Bill.
“Another one, huh?”
“Seven today. Do I have toilet paper hanging out my ass?” Dan leaned in and scowled, “Did you draw a penis on my face while I was sleeping again?”
“Unfortunately not. I don’t know, Dan; maybe you look like someone.” He glanced over his shoulder as someone hailed him. “Cover Jessie’s shift on Friday?”
“Sure.”
Bill sidled away to fill the guy’s pitcher. Dan took a sip of his beer and watched the Steelers’ touchdown attempt; Roethlisberger connected to Ward on the third down and he cheered with the rest of the bar.
“Too bad they’ll lose in the playoffs. They had a good team this year.”
Dan looked down; it was the girl sitting next to him. She watched the field goal attempt and half-heartedly slapped her hand on the bar when they made it.
“Excuse me?”
She turned. She was very pretty, with bright blue eyes, curly brown hair, and a long, straight nose.
“The Raiders’ll win this year. Sons of bitches.”
“The Raiders are doing terribly.”
“I know—makes for a nice underdog story.”
Dan stared at her. “Are you psychic or something?”
“No, Ioanna.”
“Sorry?”
“Ioanna. With an ‘I’. It’s a really popular name since the actress Ioanna Miller. My mom loves her.”
Dan had never heard of Ioanna Miller. “I’m Dan.”
Ioanna choked a little on her run and Coke. “You wouldn’t be Daniel Rodriguez, would you?”
“Have we met?”
“Just now.”
“No, I mean: before.”
“You know my roommate,” she said quickly.
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
Dan frowned. “Is there something going on? People have been acting weird all day. Was I on America’s Most Wanted or something?”
“No, um, sorry. I’ll stop bugging you.” She left a tip for Bill and fled to the restroom. Dan almost went after her, but he knew Bill wouldn’t be happy if he crashed the women’s room.
After the game, Bill switched on the news; the headlining story was about a Japanese physicist. Dan didn’t really pay attention until Bill poured him another drink and nodded toward the screen.
“Crazy shit, huh?”
Dan glanced over. The physicist was talking with the busty blond anchor, and the marquee on the bottom read: “TIME TRAVEL POSSIBLE.”
“Thirty years, he’s saying,” Bill continued. “Sack of shit. Be cool, though. Where would you go?”
Dan shrugged, “Don’t know. Something famous, I guess—the moon landing or Washington crossing the Delaware.”
“Imagine seeing Bob Dylan as a kid. Fucker wouldn’t know what you were staring at.” Bill smirked and shook his head as he filled another pitcher.
by submission | Jun 28, 2011 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
I say goodnight to the two suns once they’re down. There’s a chill without ’em. I go to throw something warmer on. I end up putting on one of her old nightgowns; just throw it over what I’ve got on. I freshen up my drink and check on the charging situation. We don’t have a full charge, but we’re on our way.
Back outside I say goodnight to my HUV, her HUV, the HUV port… the mazeracks start crawling out of the little sheds I built them on the side of the HUV port and I say goodnight to each one of them. It’s morning to them, time to hunt. They give me little looks, they don’t get it. Whatever, they’ll be fine.
I make my way over to the little cemetery and say goodnight to everyone. I say goodnight to her last and longest. I tell her I know she’d understand and I cry, cry like a small child, wheezing and everything. Pretty quick my drink is empty. My cup may be defective. I promised myself to say goodnight to the whole bottle before… before I stop saying goodnight.
I say goodnight to everything that I recognize as an individual thing on my way back to the house. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight…
I put more drink in my drink. The charge is at 97%. I give it a little more time. I put on my favorite song. It isn’t our song, which is better. I can’t listen to it anymore. Damn, I like this song. It’s over; I check the charge and we’re all full. I go back and play our song and say goodnight to all the furniture I bump into walking over to my fully charged blastick.
The damage we did in our day… I haven’t fired it in years, but I kept it. Never know when something is going to come in handy. Our song is really pretty. I start dancing with my blastick, respectfully. We’re dancing slowly and tears are running down my face. I’m pretty sure my blastick is sad too, sad as an object can be. It can’t believe I’m asking it to do what it’s going to do. The song’s winding down and I’m rubbing the stick under my chin looking for a comfortable spot.
Then all hell wrecks into my yard. I run out and recognize Rig’s HUV like half crashed in my yard. I sling the stick over my shoulder and go see if he needs help.
That old boy falls out of the HUV a bloody mess, too bloody for that wreck. He looks up at me and laughs. He compliments my “ensemble” and dies. That’s a very Rig way to die. I say goodnight to him. Then I see six of the most desperate eyed kids that ever had eyes in his HUV. We stare back and forth. I don’t say goodnight to them. The oldest is a dirty haired girl, holds her head like she thinks she’s tough. She says Rig said I’d keep them safe if they got to me.
Two years I was planning tonight and they want me to change my mind in two minutes. Two more minutes and I tell everyone to get out of Rig’s HUV and load into mine over there. We have to get going. Maybe all them goodnights were right. Maybe I don’t make it back here. Maybe I can’t see letting nobody hurt some kids, lost as me and Rig and she was once.
