A Larger Universe (25 page)

The same smaller lord brought him the transit destination on
a sheet of paper and waited on the top stair for him to acknowledge he was
ready to begin the calculations.  When Tommy had done so, the lord said
something to the lord seated at the console on the floor above, then ducked her
head down to talk to Tommy.  "You may begin," she said.

Tommy clicked the submit button and waited by the printer for
the response. 
That's got to be the slowest part of this until I can send
the information to wherever it goes
.  Tommy handed the page to the small
lord and followed her up the stairs.

Page in hand, Ull walked over to the navigation station and
stood watching its lights flicker in the near darkness.  Almost thirty minutes
later, its results appeared in a column of numbers down a vertical panel. 

"Your computer's results are different."  She
handed the paper to Tommy.  "See for yourself." She waited a moment
for him to make the comparison.  "This transit will last approximately
three weeks.  We will be at that destination for several weeks before
proceeding.  You have much time to find your error."  She turned to the
console operator.  "Initiate the transit."

The operator's words echoed softly from speakers at the edge
of the room.  "Transit in five seconds."

Tommy watched overhead as the countdown reached zero, and
the stars disappeared into total black. 
I guess I'll check my program for bugs. 
I missed something, somewhere.  Maybe it would be better if I knew what the
thing is supposed to be calculating rather than just trying to duplicate the
code in a different language.  That's a place to start.

A week later, he had gotten as far as understanding the
input parameters, or at least he thought he had.  They were the ship's current
and destination locations expressed in distance units from the galactic center,
distance above or below the galaxy's center plane in the same units, and, finally,
the angle subtending the galactic rim from some zero vector almost halfway
around the edge.  The destination parameters added a three-space vector for the
ship's velocity relative to the galaxy's rotation at the destination. 

He wasn't certain he was right because the zero-galactic-angle
vector location made no sense at all.  Ull said the transit would take
approximately three weeks.  That was a rough estimate, but, even roughly, if he
were right about the beginning and ending points, the transit "velocity"
was close to 180 times the speed of light.  A set of marker stars must define
the zero vector, but how could they be seen through the galaxy's core?  The
Nesu must be using a set of visible marker stars as a secondary vector and from
them extrapolating to the real zero vector.  Why would they use an invisible
reference vector that would take at least four hundred years to reach at 180c? 
With all the rounding in the calculations, even a short transit might leave
them several light minutes from their expected destination.  If he were right,
having to extrapolate the zero vector could double the expected rounding error.

The output signals generated by the lords' navigation
computer were an even bigger surprise.  After working with them for a while, he
could only make sense of the signal by assuming they represented a series of
ten-dimensional arrays containing base twelve numbers instead of the base
sixty-four numbers used in the computer.  He couldn't even begin to visualize
what the mathematics might mean.

He decided to try another approach.  What if his program
were right and, somehow, the lords' computer was wrong?  What if the program in
the computer was different from the one in the backup circuitry block?  Tommy
went through the calculations line by line, calculating intermediate results
and comparing them to what he believed they should be.  Halfway through, he
found a multiplication of two positive numbers in the calculation that, if
multiplied by minus one, resulted in the same final answer as given by the
lords computer.

I've got it!  The lords' computers use the same method
for representing a negative number in binary as Earth's computers:  the high
order binary digit was set to one for negative and zero for positive.  Some
malfunction in the circuitry had flipped the digit from zero to one during the
calculation.  My program's result is correct.

The ship would emerge in the wrong place.  But where?  He
didn't have access to the star charts necessary to find out.

Writing a program to work backward from the result wasn't as
difficult as the original had been.  The day before they were to end the
transit, he asked Lord Ull for a meeting.

Tommy found her swimming back and forth in her pond. 
Without waiting to be told, he walked to the rock shelf and sat down, this time
without dangling his feet in the water.

She finally stopped in front of him.  "You have
something to tell me?  Have you found the problem with your computer?"

"No, Lord Ull.  I have found the problem with your
computer."

Her undulating whistle had a different sound.  "I have
learned something new about you, feral.  You do not like being wrong.  The
problem is with your computer, not our computer."

"Your computers have failed before.  Many times."

"True, but always by dying, not by giving wrong
answers."

"That may have been true in the past, but not this
time."

"Wild human, I am enjoying the happiness flowing from
those we have helped.  My word has support in the council as never before.  You
are imagining a problem that does not exist, and I will not worry over
it."  She rolled over on her back.  "You should be enjoying the
moment, too."

Tommy stood.  "I am happy you are happy, Lord Ull, but
please look at this."  He placed the sheet of paper on the rock, away from
the water.  "These are the coordinates of where we will emerge.  If you
grant I might be correct, will the ship be in danger at that location?"

The next day, Tommy was in his cabin when a call came from
Lord Ull.  "You were at least partially correct.  We are not where we
expected to be.  Our exact location has yet to be established, but the nearest
star is over a light year away.

"Is your computer ready to be used for
navigation?"  Ull asked.

"I am working on the device that sends the signals to
the drive," Tommy replied. 
Wherever and whatever that is.

"That must be your highest concern until this is
resolved."

"Yes, Lord Ull."

Nore showed her frustration by agitating the water beneath
her.  Ull had come to the council pool with a piece of paper she said proved
the feral human had predicted their situation.  Nore wanted to accuse her of
getting the paper after their arrival, but dared not.  Ull had become too
popular.  For that matter, the feral may have damaged the navigation computer. 
He spent many hours in the same chamber and was completely unguarded.

"Ull, you place far too much reliance in the feral
human."

"I am only saying we should be cautious when making our
next transit."

"You admit the feral reports the computer made a single
error," Nore said.

"That is true," Ull replied.

"Has he given you reason to believe the computer will
continue to make errors?"

"No, he has not."

"What is the worst that could happen?" Neth said. 
"Would any of The People be placed in danger?"

"We are seven light years from our intended destination,"
Luns said.  "Space is large.  This ship is small.  We might be farther off
course, but little else is likely to happen."

"We cannot drift here, far from our trade worlds,"
Las said.  "We must move on."

"I agree," Nore said, "and I will be ship
commander for the week beginning tomorrow.  I recommend we continue."

"If you are sure we will not be in danger," Neth
said.

"By your silence, I find agreement," Nore said,
cutting off the discussion and forcing a response.

When she received none, she said.  "We will transit
tomorrow."

#   #   #

Nore took her place on the control podium at the appointed
time the next day.  This was one tradition she wished she could change.  Each
member of the council was ship commander for a week in rotation.  If any movement
of the ship was required during the week, the ship commander was responsible
and in command of the bridge.  Nore would have preferred to always be in
command.  She had watched the other council members and thought them
unenthusiastic and not in control.  They were only on the bridge when a
movement was required.  She stayed on the bridge as much as possible during her
rotation, even when in transit.  That nothing had ever happened didn't mean
nothing would.

A movement from the elevator caught her eye.  Who was late? 
She insisted everyone be on the bridge at least an hour before transit.  She
soon found replacements for those who broke her rules. The feral human came
into view.  She was about to have him escorted off her bridge, when she saw Ull
with him.  She watched as the feral lifted the trapdoor into the sub-deck, and
both climbed down the stairs, pulling the trapdoor closed behind them.  Good. 
She could do without his smell in her bridge.

The astronomy section had located the ship the evening before. 
The coordinates of their destination were the same as from the previous
transit.  The calculations had been made.  All that was left to do was enter
transit.  She turned to the navigator console operator.  "Initiate the
transit."

The operator's words echoed from speakers beneath the dome. 
"Transit in five seconds."

Overhead, the stars disappeared from view.

The week passed.  The transit would continue for all of this
week and most of the following.  As usual, she spent most of each day on the
command podium, watching the duty shift as they watched the control lights,
and, as usual when in transit, nothing happened.  She would not be ship
commander when they exited.  Each day the feral human and Ull arrived soon
after she did and disappeared into the sub-deck, closing the trapdoor behind
them.  She waited for the day that the human came without Ull so she could
order him off her bridge but that never happened.  Whatever they were doing
down there was Ull's problem not hers.

On the fifth day, a cry of alarm from the navigation
operator broke the routine.  "Director Nore!  The transit drive is
shutting down!"

As she stood and turned toward the navigation station, an
overwhelming blast of heat and light struck her through the overhead dome,
filling her lungs with fire. 
Ull's feral must have been right
, she
thought. 
The navigation computer was damaged after all.

For perhaps the hundredth time, Tommy wished Ull wouldn’t
loom over him.  She had ordered that he complete whatever remained to make the
new navigation computer functional, then insisted that she must escort him to
and from the bridge sub-deck.  The only explanation she gave was an abrupt
"Council politics."  He didn't mind the escort, but the trapdoor she
closed behind them held the heavy musky odor of her dry body in the stale air
of the sub-deck.

The closed trapdoor saved their lives. 

He had just completed what he hoped was a final test.  Ull
sat silent and motionless, watching him.  That was how they had spent the week,
with him working and her watching.  She seemed to be pondering something, but
he couldn't fathom what and his thoughts about her looming always ended with
him remembering that he was closed in with a carnivore. 

A massive jolt and a bright, almost unbearable light shining
around the trapdoor’s edge drove that image from his mind and knocked him out
of his chair.  Before he could cover his eyes, he heard screams from above,
quickly cut off, then a mechanical sound that made the floor under them
vibrate.  A shrill wailing keened.  The air from the ventilators became furnace
hot and smelled of burnt hair.  He heard a faint thud, and the intense glare
ended, leaving him with eyes too overexposed to see in the sub-deck's normal
light. 

"Wait," Ull said.  "We must wait.  Can you
see?"

"No."

"Nor can I.  We can do nothing until we can see."

Tommy rubbed his eyes.  He hoped he wasn't permanently
blinded.  That would be the end of trying to get home.  A washed-out ghost of
Ull slowly emerged, then solidified.  "I can see you now," he said.

Ull nodded and started up the stairs.  A new blast of hot
air washed over him as Ull cautiously opened the trapdoor.  The aroma of cooked
meat joined an even stronger smell of burnt hair. 

His computers could be overheating!  He hurried to the
keyboard to start the shutdown process.  When he looked up the stairs again,
Ull had disappeared.

The situation he found on the deck above was surreal. 
Visually, everything seemed the same, but the smells and heat made a lie of
that.  Lights glowed throughout the room at various consoles.  The dome
overhead was black, as it had been when he started work that morning.  Nesu
were in chairs in front of their consoles, though, when he looked closely, he
saw that all were slumped over as if asleep.  Beyond the navigation console, a
Nesu also seemed to be sleeping, except she had chosen the floor beside the
command podium.

"They are dead."  Ull's voice came from behind
him.  "I have circled the center column.  All are apparently dead from
intense heat, perhaps from breathing overheated air."

"I thought nothing could touch the ship when it is in
transit."

"We are no longer in transit, as you can see." 
She pointed at the navigation console, and then pointed up.  "The dome
shield closed automatically."