The Orthogonal Galaxy (59 page)

“
Paol, d’ya see it
too?!”

“
Red… everything… is
red.”

“
Yeah, I know, but why?”
Blade blinked rapidly. Red still. He squinted. Red. He rubbed his
eyes briskly with the palms of his hands. Red. Everything was still
visible, but it was all cast in a deep red. The video displays, the
cockpit lights, his pilot. Everything was red.

Finally, a bright red
flash took both astronauts by surprised, forcing their eyes shut.
Both men held their hands tightly over their eyes. Blade laid his
head back against his seat, while Paol had leaned forward with his
elbows on his knees and hands still covering his eyes.

They remained in this
position, not daring to peek, not daring to move. The violent
heaving of the Star Transport and the bright red glare left them
helpless. They were now at the mercy of the debris that was
propelling them forward. For a couple of minutes, both astronauts
had resigned themselves to certain calamity, when suddenly, the
violent shaking ceased, and a quiet calm overcame the
cockpit.

Paol was the first to move
a muscle. Lifting his head slowly, he removed his right hand from
his face and opened his eyelid to just a thin slit. He saw no red
and risked opening his eye all the way. Everything looked normal.
He opened both eyes and looked all around him. He saw Blade with
his head back and his eyes covered.

“
Uh, Blade… I think it’s
safe to open your eyes again.”

Blade slowly pulled his
hands away from his eyes but left them against his temple to form a
small tunnel through which he could look while keeping his eyes
shielded.

“
Well that was strange,”
he admitted while folding his hands in his lap. His head still lay
back against the seat, as he dared not move, fearing that it would
disrupt the delicate equilibrium between normality and redness.
While sitting in this repose for quite some time, he heard a gasp
from Paol.

“
I don’t believe it!” Paol
exclaimed.

“
What is it, Cap’n,” Blade
looked over.

“
If the data is to be
believed, we are being impacted by particles traveling twelve
hundred times the speed of light. And Star Transport herself is now
traveling at zero point nine seven warp.”

“
Look here, Paol. Take a
look at this chart. It shows our velocity relative to our time.
Right here—about one minute ago, ya’ see our acceleration had been
pretty linear, but then ya’ see this sharp turn, and our speed
increased severely in just a few seconds. I’m guessin’ this was
around the time everythin’ went red. After the sharp rise, there’s
another significant bend in the curve right here, where the
acceleration settled back down. It looks like the ship wanted to be
launched into superluminal velocity, but hit the ceilin’ just below
the speed of light.”

“
Can you overlay that with
the particle impact speed?”

Both astronauts gasped
when they recognized the correlation. The moment where the
acceleration curve turned sharply upward was the precise moment the
impact sensors measured their first 1.0 warp particle
impact.

“
Whatcha make of it,
Paol?” Blade inquired.

“
I don’t know, but it
looks like even the tiniest of warp-speed particles packs a real
big punch, don’t you think? For us to be vaulted from just over
zero point five warp to zero point nine seven warp in a heartbeat
indicates that the power of the warp speed particles is something
far greater than we can imagine.”

“
If that’s so,” thought
Blade, “then why’d the propulsion seem to end at zero point nine
seven.”

Paol’s voice grew more
excited as he brainstormed through ideas about what they were
experiencing. “It actually looks like it stopped around zero point
nine six. We’re still accelerating, just more slowly. I’m thinking
that we’ve hit some physical barrier that is making it difficult on
the particles to push us past the speed of light, even with all of
their might.”

Blade’s hands typed
quickly on a pair of touch screen panels. Another graph emerged.
“And how d’ya account fo’ this?”

Paol frowned and wrinkled
up his forehead. “This graph is curious. If I’m reading this
correctly, then right up to the point where we had our first
warp-speed impact, we were slowly going deeper into the tail of the
comet. As we did so, the particle speed increased pretty linearly.
But right when we reach the warp speed boundary, the particle
impact speed quickly jumped from one point zero zero to 1203 warp
almost instantaneously. Where are all of the particles in
between?”

“
Could there be some dead
zone where particles can’t travel? Perhaps once ya’ hit the speed
of light, there’s a quantum step up to twelve hundred?”

“
I don’t know, Blade. I
just don’t know.”

“
Well, this superluminal
physics is all new science, Paol. The next generation of scientists
are gonna eat up this data. Shall we head back and give it to them?
What are yer orders, Cap’n?” Blade stared eagerly into Paol’s
face.

Paol’s fear was replaced
with renewed enthusiasm at these fascinating discoveries. “What are
you talking about, Slater! Go back? Now? And miss out on all of the
scientific discoveries we’re about to become famous for? Besides,
can’t you feel our ride? It’s never been smoother. I don’t have a
clue as to why we aren’t being ripped apart by the violence of the
particles, but I’m not one to be ungrateful for not being
pulverized. Hold the course steady, Navigator. This mission is just
getting started.”

Blade’s heart leapt and a
broad smile grew on his face, as he leaned back and watched the
Star Transport on its path towards Earth2.

…

“
Zero point nine nine,
Cap’n,” was the report from the navigator.

“
It looks like we’re going
to get there after all, Blade. I just zoomed in on the vehicle
velocity chart, and it’s definitely not asymptotic to warp speed.
The projections indicate that we’ll reach the speed of light in
about two minutes.”

“
Paol?”

“
Yes, Blade.”

“
D’ya think we’ll be
makin’ that leap from 1.00 warp to twelve hundred warp?”

“
I don’t know… it’s as
possible as anything, I suppose.”

“
D’ya think the Star
Transport will be able to handle that sort of velocity
transfo’mation? I mean a particle of dust is already… well… a
particle of dust. What if warp speed only pertains to the realm of
atomics? Couldn’t we also be transfo’med into independent dust
molecules when we make the leap?”

“
Maybe so, but if I know
you, you won’t be content not knowing, right?” Paol had a twinkle
in his eye as he smiled at Blade.

“
Oh, the lost sleep!”
Blade blurted playfully. “I thinks we’ve just gotta forge ahead,
come what may, or I’ll never rest again wonderin’ what could’a
happened.”

“
That’s what I thought,”
Paol nodded. “Zero point nine nine five. We’re only traveling about
one thousand miles per second, or about three and a half million
miles per hour less than the speed of light now.”

“
When ya’ say it that way,
it doesn’t exactly seem imminent, does it?” Blade shook his
head.

“
And yet the computer
calculates that we’re less than a minute away now.”

Both astronauts held their
breath, as hearts pounded relentlessly, knees bounced nervously,
and remaining bits of finger nail chattered noisily through teeth.
Their eyes barely blinked as they focused on the display: 0.995…
0.996… 0.997. Mercilessly, it seemed that the anxiety would never
end, as the display hung onto 0.999, until long after the
anticipated event should’ve happened.

“
Ya’ thinkin’ what I’m
thinkin’, Partna’?” Blade spoke softly.

“
Now, let’s be patient,
Blade. I know we had expected to be at one point zero zero warp by
now, but maybe it’ll just take a little longer.”

“
I don’t think there’s
gonna be a one point zero zero, Paol. I thinks we’ve reached our
physical maximum.”

Paol slammed his right
fist into his left palm. “No! I don’t accept it. Just a little
longer, Blade. It would be too anti-climactic to not hit warp
speed. Besides, if the comet tail particles can do it, then there’s
no reason why Star Transport can’t.”

“
I don’t know, Paol… maybe
it’s entirely different material all together. Anti-matter? Dark
energy? Who knows? Maybe the subatomic makeup of that stuff out
there’s ever so different than the raw material found on Earth,
from which you and I and this ship’s made up of.”

Paol’s fist pounded on the
display in fury. “No, No, NO!”

Zero point nine nine
eight.

“
Blade, steer us farther
into the beam, will you? We need to get to the deepest part, where
the fastest material will certainly push us over the threshold.
We’re only getting pushed at 10K warp. We know that the fastest
stuff will be going nearly 30K, so I think we just need to push
deeper in.”

Blade feverishly worked
the navigational controls for a couple of minutes, and eventually
confessed. “Can’t do it, Cap’n.”

“
What?! Why
not?”

“
All nav systems are on
automatic control, and I can’t get it into manual?”

“
Why not? Is the manual
control system damaged?”

“
Dontcha remember, Paol?
Once we start comin’ outta the beam, the computer takes over. It’s
a failsafe mechanism that NASA employed, in case the effects of
superluminal travel incapacitated us to the degree of not bein’
able to fly the ship properly.”

“
Ugh! Stupid engineers!
Did they not think that perhaps we would be lucid enough to need to
fly the blasted ship on our own? What idiots! We’ve got to override
the system somehow, Blade. When we come out of the beam, we’re
going to be nowhere near Earth2 for the computer to recognize the
celestial signature. What will the computer do to try to get us to
Earth2?”

“
I think the abort
sequence’ll kick in. The computer will not recognize the star
signature fer Earth2, so it will look fo’ the signature fer Earth1,
at which point it will calculate our trajectory back
home.”

Paol’s face grew red with
anger. “We were this close, Blade!”

“
Yes, but there’s no shame
in goin’ home now, Paol. The ship aborted the sequence, not us. And
we will have lots of data to provide. I’m guessin’ if it’s at all
possible, another mission will launch durin’ the next pass of the
comet.”

“
Geez… that’s another six
years to wait, Blade.”

“
A small moment in time,
compared to the history of man.”

After a brief pause, Blade
saw Paol’s face grow even more red.

“
Blade! Close your
eyes.”

Instantly, Blade realized
that everything was growing red as before. Both astronauts tightly
closed their eyes and covered their hands over them to avoid
another red flash.

“
Paol… d’ya think we’re
makin’ the leap to warp after all?”

“
Alas, no… I think we’re
coming back out of the quiet zone of the comet tail. As soon as we
feel the choppiness return, I think it will be safe to open our
eyes, at which point we’ll see the current impact speed will be
something less than one point zero warp.”

Shortly, both astronauts
felt a sharp jolt and a return to the violent shaking of the
vehicle that had been a concern before. Slowly, they both opened
their eyes, and saw the current average impact speed at 0.99 warp.
As expected, they were leaving the path of the beam, and would
shortly be on their way back to Earth1.

“
Well, buddy, looks like a
fairly anti-climactic mission, huh?” Paol reached over and placed
his right hand on Blade’s left arm.

“
Yeah. There goes any hope
of this story bein’ written down fo’ the ages.”

“
I don’t know,” Paol said
wryly. “Authors can find ways to write about anything. I suppose
there’ll be somebody out there desperate enough for a gig to write
our tale.”

Blade chuckled. “I feel
fo’ the poor sap who gives up his day job to write ‘bout
us.”

The pair laughed nervously
about their situation, but deep down, the disappointment could not
be assuaged.

…

Paol and Blade sat sullen
and reflective. Since Star Transport’s computerized navigation
system had full control of the vehicle, there wasn’t much else
either could do, except wait out the ride. Their thoughts went a
million miles a minute, as they reflected back on the many
experiences they shared together: the prison cell, the astronaut
training, the sublime views of Earth and Jupiter along with their
moons as well as the stars and asteroids.

Neither could help feeling
the depressive anti-climax of the situation, but they also felt the
privilege of the opportunity, and yet both felt guilt and shame for
secretly contemplating their future. How would they be integrated
back into Earth life, and what directions would their lives lead
there? Wouldn’t this provide them the easiest way out of the
difficult situation? Of course, Blade’s prison sentence had long
since past, but would Paol still be pardoned, or would he return to
penitentiary? Would they be anticipated with the same heroic
fanfare with which they left Earth just a few weeks earlier, or
would they be ostracized and seen as the symbols of failure for a
mission that cost too much and never should have been attempted?
Would they continue to pursue their new careers as astronauts, and
perhaps even attempt another ST mission to explore and map the
solar system, or perhaps to even make another go at Earth2 six
years from now?