What is death but a dream within a dream.
—James Clavell
Is the existence of life a divine miracle or merely a pathetic mistake?
—John Quinn
The absolute, or Kelvin, temperature scale has as its lowest limit a point called absolute zero, which is a temperature of minus 273.15 degrees centigrade; using the English system of measurement, which was gradually phased out during the twenty-first century, this is equal to minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit. On Earth, temperatures as low as minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit have been recorded in Siberia, a region of the former Chinese Empire, and in the Republic of Antarctica. In the laboratory much lower temperatures have been artificially induced, but each incremental decrease in heat “content” becomes increasingly more difficult: It is harder to go from minus 300 degrees to minus 301 degrees than it is to go from minus 299 to minus 300 degrees. This may be compared to squeezing the water out of a sponge; most of the water is easy to remove, but the remaining moisture requires greater and greater effort, in the form of compression, to remove smaller and smaller additional amounts of liquid. Eventually, a point is reached whereby the sponge remains damp regardless of how much wringing is done.
This lower extreme, minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, can be approached quite closely; in fact, the gulf between this ultimate coldness and how near we can get to it is the smallest fraction of a degree, a temperature so cold that gaseous helium atoms are reluctantly made to coalesce, tenuously joined together by weak inter-atomic attractive forces and condensing into a frigid liquid. But the remaining gulf might as well be measured in parsecs, because exact zero is unobtainable; it is an energy level as impossible to reach as the center of a black hole or the farthest reaches of the universe or the innermost workings of the atom, since the elimination of all vestiges of warmth from a system would require there to be no movement within it and no contact between the system and any other portion of the universe from which to garner the faintest trace of heat—nor can there be any disorder, for absolute zero must be devoid of any life or chaos whatsoever, matter essentially reduced to a state of absolute death.
There is no apparent limit at the other end of the temperature scale; temperatures of tens of millions of degrees have been created, measured, recorded. Yet, perhaps, here also there is some limit beyond which human understanding and capabilities will never sojourn, a boundary of such tremendous heat that the concept of heat has no meaning, for it will be unable to explain or account for the phenomena observed. There could be such a place where all the components of matter are themselves consumed to become energy and the energy thus created is devoured becoming something transcendent of this universe, the one we humans feebly consider with our inadequate science and our uncomprehending minds.
The average temperature of a healthy man is 37 degrees centigrade (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit); considering the total range of any scale quantifying temperature, mankind is located far, far down in the realm of the infinitely cold; and should we decide to graph such things, plotting the upper limits of recorded temperatures relative to absolute zero, only the largest of scales would show the temperature of humans as distinct from absolute zero. In fact, with most temperature scales our existence isn’t even beyond the margin of error for the measuring techniques used!
When it is studied in this way, our individual lives represent so little heat; we are inconsequential specks of energy. In the larger scheme of the cosmos we are so very close to absolute death.
No engine noises intruded inside Captain John Quinn’s cabin on board the E.I.S. Milton; the engines did their engine duty far away at the other end of the vessel, but they would sound no louder than a faint hum even if his room were located next door to them. Actually, one could sleep quite easily inside the vessel’s engine compartment, the noise (if noise is even the right word) was more soothing lullaby than anything else; occasionally among the fleet’s ships, crewmen were indeed found asleep on duty near the engines, resulting in a severe dressing down from their irate commander. Sleeping on duty during wartime is a capital offense; fortunately, there were no wars at present and the sleeping men would not have to die; thus, did the captains explain the seriousness of the transgression and the luck of its timing.
The engine room on Quinn’s ship housed the most advanced propulsion device ever built by man. The hypertronic light drive engine or HLD—or as the men invariably called it: Hildy. Inside these machines, tons of brooding alloys fashioned to exquisite exactitude, the ship fed upon the power of hypertronic flux with a tranquility inviolate except during transitions; for only then was there real noise to disturb the quiet metallic places inside the ship.
Neither was there a sound of rushing wind against the hull because wind requires particles of air to give it palpable life, and there was nothing outside the ship except the near perfect vacuum of space, perfection marred here and there by the infinitely few errant stray particles of matter: atoms and molecules, and subatomic fragments sadly searching for long lost mates. These elementary particles became increasingly less common as the ship pushed onward; in fact, it was the relative density of matter which was one of the most important navigational tools for this particular mission; the ship’s course adjusted itself automatically to drive them deeper and deeper into regions containing less and less matter.
Quinn’s cabin was the largest on the vessel, though the other crew quarters were comfortable and spacious. Compared to the cramped quarters of mariners of days past, those sailors of liquid seas, Quinn’s crew, these navigators of galactic oceans, were berthed in quarters that were luxurious, almost profligate in roominess. Each room contained a separate bath with toilet, sink, and shower, and ample amounts of hot and cold water were available; once used the water was collected and recycled through the ships waste repurification system (or as the men would naturally call it: the re-pee system). The ready-to-reuse water pumped to the cold taps was chilled to a perfect 15.6 degrees centigrade and that for the hot water faucets was warmed to a precise 43.3 degrees centigrade.
Quinn did not share with anyone his recent anxiety over the practice of repurification. It disgusted him to think that the warm water cascading over his soaped body in the shower was recently someone else’s—or his own—cleansed urine, or worse, that it contained the moisture extracted from the crew’s fecal material. Some things can never be made wholly pure again despite the most rigorous attempts—innocence and sewage are two such examples. Certainly, the analyses of the waste turned into drinking water showed it to be chemically indistinct from pure water, but nothing—no treatment, no filter, no amount of heat, no chemical—can change where that water has been or what it once was a part of. As a wag on Triton II had once opined: “A chaste former prostitute is forever chained to an odometer that gives one pause.”
Had anyone bothered to review the computer records of the crew’s water usage habits, they would have noticed the Captain, of late, took the most frequent number of showers of any crewmen; but these increasingly averaged briefer amounts of time, as if he began his absolutions—and gave up too easy, only to try again.
Perhaps Quinn would’ve been surprised to learn, if such records were kept—unlike water usage this data wasn’t collected as per regulations—that he was spending an increasing amount of time in the ship’s chapel, a dedicated compartment on the vessel, which was a holdover from centuries ago and often referred to by the crew as the “reflection room.” Yet, admittedly, he felt less and less redemption. It was as if there was no way to get oneself clean.
A large desk occupied one corner of Quinn’s cabin. The desk crafted of real wood harvested from the great cedar forests on Algernon 5, which grew rapidly under the eternal vermilion daylight of its two warm suns and carbon rich atmosphere; timberland lovingly tended from tiny seeds transported at great effort and cost across several terasecs, planted in the rich soil, grown to delicate saplings, and finally the adult trees were harvested on the gentle misty slopes of alien mountains. After almost three years in space the wood still gave off a pleasing cedar smell, noticeable upon first entering the cabin. Fresh and clean. Particularly redolent when a rarely used drawer was opened. The other furnishings included two chairs upholstered in purple hygar hides, both richly comfortable; an entertainment center with holographic viewer, stereo, and gaming devices; a dresser containing both official uniforms and his casual clothes; several large decorative plants; a metal table; wall hangings, including his diploma from the National Space Academy; his full-size bed; and a solitary photograph—a picture of a beautiful young woman. She was alone, sitting on a boulder, legs drawn up under her chin, somewhere in a terrestrial park with verdant landscaping visible behind her.
The bed rested against the wall opposite the door, underneath a large window made of clear megalex, almost as strong as the ship’s hull and as equally impervious against cosmic radiation; its flawless optical quality afforded crystal-clear viewing of the heavens. Since they were traveling at hyperlight speed, there was nothing visible through the window. Even so it was Quinn’s habit to keep the transition shutters open, allowing the blackness to shine inward. When the ship was actively braking or accelerating through the light-barrier, the automatic override closed all the shutters throughout the ship. The window was almost as strong as the hull.
Quinn rested on the bed, ten fingers interlaced behind his head, his face slightly tilted towards the door. Thinking at the moment about absolute zero.
The faint hum of the ventilation system seemed almost as soothing as the engines. Cool, slightly oily air (or so he believed though he knew it was impossible—their air filters were perfect) gently wafted out of the air duct into the room, the air movement barely perceptible as a gentle touch on his face and bare feet. Quinn’s pale green eyes were open but appeared glazed over, as if they saw nothing. He wore a jumpsuit, blue synthetic material with gold fabric bars sewn on each shoulder and the word, QUINN, affixed to the left breast pocket. His thick hair was a dark chestnut brown and close-cropped. He was of average height, thin, yet wiry.
Inside the intergalactic ships there were no suns to scorch the skin, weathering it to creased and seamed, fine brown leather—like sailors of old. The ship’s construction prevented any harmful radiation, ultraviolet or other, from reaching its occupants; but Quinn’s face, though pale, showed deep lines; wrinkles radiated outward from each eye, furrows crossed his shiny forehead, and cuts, caused equally by laughter and frowning, lay along each side of his mouth. The laughter so long ago. The frowning more recent.
Perhaps it was not the sun but the pressures of command which weatherbeat the faces of countless captains who sailed upon the seven homeworld seas. Faces burdened under the crushing weight of venturing forth upon unknown oceans, relying on and responsible for crew and ship, at the mercy of, yet expected to survive, weather, reef, rock, and currents, dependent on luck and, most importantly, on themselves; the captain alone responsible for the lives of so many, alone responsible for the pairs of eyes silently imploring him—rather than their gods—to provide salvation during raging storms, the captain alone, separated from the rest by the need for command presence, solitary with silent thoughts; all this etching itself into a commander’s wrinkled countenance.
Quinn found himself spending more and more time in his cabin, knowing it caused whispering among the men. He afforded himself this luxury, the crew’s concerns notwithstanding. His second-in-command, Lieutenant Benjamin Cook, was a very capable officer, who, though graduating in the middle of his class at the academy, was recognized as having the requisites of command: intelligence, unflappability under pressure, quick thinking, the respect of both his subordinates and superiors. All these traits Quinn also had—still had, he reminded himself—if only these other thoughts would stop coming to him, thoughts that increasingly dominated his mind…
Everything in the cosmos is relative. There is even an old theory called Relativity, which is typically a lecture in a History of Science class. The basis of human science is the observation, measurement, and recordation of events and things around us. The data is then taken and theories are developed to explain what we have observed. If the theory is accurate and viable, it can even be used to predict other things or make additional discoveries. Mass is a tangible characteristic, a property dependent on the amount of a substance. Other such properties are heat content and volume. Mass can be easily determined with a variety of measuring devices, but even so, it too is relative because it is based on reference to some other known mass, which itself is related to some previously known mass, and so on back to some point at which the reference point was by necessity arbitrarily designated. Something somewhere had to be designated as weighing exactly one kilogram. The amount of material in one pan of a simple balance is determined by placing a known amount of weight in the opposite pan until the pans are equally balanced. The amount of known weight serves as the reference point to assign the mass of the material for which the weight was previously unknown.
Other qualities can be quantified: temperature, chemical composition, energy, speed. Consider speed. Some things are apparently at rest in the universe relative to other things. Others are moving; some slowly, some at the speed of light; others, like a spaceship, actually exceed the speed of light many times over. What if the entire universe suddenly disappeared except for two objects for which the distance between them is increasing (without acceleration): one apparently at rest and one moving. Alone in the ebon blackness of nothingness, with no other reference points except each other, it would be impossible to discern which one was moving and which one was at rest; for while the distance between them would be increasing, it could be the result of a moving object distancing itself from a stationary object, or that both are moving away from each other, or it is just as probable that a slower object is trailing a faster object which is gradually pulling away from its slower pursuer.
More terrifying: What if the universe contained a single object. How could it know if it was at rest—or traveling a billion light years per second?
If one can only tell by using reference points the various states of things and these reference points are ultimately arbitrary, then what do we really know about anything?
The intercom buzzed. Quinn rolled onto his side. His eyes suddenly became more alert, a slightly brighter emerald color. He pushed a button near the head of the bed.
“Yes?” The voice, though tired, possessed a commanding tone.
It was Cook.
“Sorry to bother you, Captain, but we just received a message from Command. They said since we’re nearing Centerpoint they want us to slow down earlier than planned and take more detailed observations. We’ll need to go to hypolight speed to take the readings.”
Fully awake now and propping himself up on an elbow, Quinn thought for a moment. “Okay, I’ll be right up.” The pause was too long, he thought. Cook will think I’m not focusing. Without realizing it, Quinn kept his finger on the intercom button, but didn’t talk.
“Captain?”
Quinn blinked; the lieutenant’s voice had startled him. “Yes, Cook?”
“Just checking to see if you were still there, sir.”
“I’m on my way. Just let me wash up first.”
“Aye, aye, sir; there’s no hurry. We don’t have to disengage Hildy for an hour. If you like, there should be plenty of time for chow.”
“Thank you, Cook.” Quinn sat up, sluggishly, wishing like hell he’d several more hours to rest. His legs dangled over the edge of the bed.
More and more, Cook was becoming like a mother to him, reminding him to eat, sleep, exercise. The lieutenant couldn’t be as direct as Quinn’s own mother—after all, he was a subordinate—so he had to be much more subtle and tactful with his superior officer. Sato’s playing handball later, sir; maybe you’d like to join him…Dr. Simms gave me an extra vitamin, sir; would you like it? Sometimes he resented Cook for this, other times he was grateful. He’d been having difficulty remembering when he’d last eaten or slept, and had recently caught himself not even knowing what day it was. He suspected Cook knew these things, but, thankfully, the lieutenant said nothing. Cook was a discreet S.O.B.; he gave him credit for that.
“When was the last time I was on the bridge?” Quinn whispered to himself. He cocked his head in a pondering pose to think this question over, but the answer was not apparent; instead, there was a misty fog, a gray shape off in the distance of his mind, vague shadowy outlines he thought he could see, but the details could not come into focus. He stood, stepping back and forth a few times from one foot to the other in response to the chill of the metallic deck, the cold pushed his wakefulness to the next higher level. He took a few steps towards the bathroom, stopped, and lithely dropped his body prone to the floor and started doing push-ups, immediately settling into a steady, powerful rhythm.
One…two…three…ten…twenty…fifty. The sweat drops on his exposed skin became noticeable around the sixtieth. Seventy…eighty…eighty-five. At ninety the lactic acid in his arms and chest became thick, filling his muscles with a million jabbing needles. One hundred…one hundred ten. Droplets of warm salty perspiration dripped onto the dull gray deck, the veins on each bicep protruded, turgid with the blood trying to return to the heart and then to the lungs for infusion with oxygen. One hundred twenty…one hundred thirty. A goal became manifest: Reach one hundred fifty regardless of the pain. One hundred forty. The rhythm slowed, he struggled to keep his back straight, and pelvis off the floor. Concentrate. Abs tight. Tighter. Burning now. No thoughts except the pain, and even that was now like something far away…one hundred forty-five…one hundred forty-six. Four more. That was all. One hundred forty-seven. Each additional push-up required all his concentration. Focus. Back straight. Body parallel to the floor. Breathe downward. Exhale upward. Chest down. Brush the floor. One hundred forty-eight. The urge to settle onto the floor and not push back up was overwhelming. The muscles screamed—the engines and ventilation systems made no sound. One hundred forty-nine. What was that noise? It was someone screaming. One hundred fifty. Quinn collapsed onto a coolness that felt like an ice floe, his lungs gulping for air. He rolled over onto his back, feeling the blood surging throughout his body, especially into the arms, fresh blood forced deeply into the muscles washing away the acid, replacing it with fresh invigorated blood.
He stared at the dull iridescent light affixed to the ceiling directly above him. How it reminded him of a sun…close…providing life…he caught himself in time and sprung to his feet.
Rather than just wash his face, he decided to take a shower. For one of the few times in recent weeks it was a long one and he didn’t think about the repurification system once.
Quinn dried off and zippered himself into a fresh uniform retrieved from the dresser, stuffing the sweat-drenched one inside the laundry bag behind the door. Feeling refreshed for the first time in days, he left his room and walked down the corridor towards the elevator. The hall was painted a pale blue, its smooth walls bowing outward as a semicircle joining the deck with the ceiling. The captain’s cabin was on the deck right below the bridge, so he would be nearby in the event of an emergency. But rarely did Quinn take the nearest elevator or stairs, usually walking to the farthest one on this level, enjoying the extra distance. There was no one else about, but this was not unusual. The time was 5:00 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time. Most of the off-duty crew would be at the mess hall or in one of the recreation rooms. He could hear the squeak of his rubber-soled shoes on the clean, flawless floor. The noise seemed loud, though this too was relative, since there were no other sounds except for his breathing to compete with the squeaking.
Entering the elevator he pressed the button for Level 4 and the lift moved. The pit of his stomach momentarily lagged behind the rest of his body, but quickly equilibrated itself. Seconds later the doors opened to another hall, this one a pale green color, a large black number four greeted him opposite the elevator doors. The passageway led a short distance to the galley.
The men in the mess hall saluted him as they became aware of his presence. “Carry on,” he ordered, somewhat embarrassed by the attention. He chose a seat at a table with the only other officer present, a propulsion engineer named Wallace.
Quinn ordered food from the mess steward. Wallace was pleased to see the Captain in a friendly mood. He hadn’t seen Quinn for a week and had caught snippets of gossip about how the Captain appeared increasingly withdrawn and odd. Wallace welcomed the opportunity to speak with someone. In the latest hypermail from Earth, he’d gotten the communication most dreaded by a crewman on a lengthy voyage—a Dear John letter.
Of course, there was nothing he could do in response to it. She was there and he here. The letter was emphatically final. Her mind was made up. There was no way for him to change it from across the emptiness of space any more than the earthbound man could have altered things from across the smallest of towns. Such things have always been final. He began to unburden himself to Quinn, pleasantly surprised by the attentiveness and sympathy.
The Captain listened to Wallace describe something painfully familiar—his Dear John letter was literally a Dear John letter. What was she doing now? A week before the ship left, he received a letter he was sure was like the one coldly sent to Wallace. Hers told Quinn the engagement was off, the six-year wait would be too long for her to endure, she was sorry she didn’t have the courage to tell him directly but felt it was better this way. He shouldn’t try to contact her; it was better if they both got on with their lives. Got on with their lives? She would have a six-year headstart on getting on with “their” lives. Hers could begin tomorrow; a new life, new hopes, fresh dreams—new loves. He, by contrast, was trapped, captive for six years with nothing but the thought of her—his new life not able to begin for so damn long.
But no—it was not fair to expect anything else. Six years is too much of a loved one’s life, waiting for a ship’s captain to return from the black void. Six years is too large a fraction of a life to spend in an emotional suspended animation waiting for him to come back, thinking things could be as they were at the last parting.
Enough time passes and nothing is ever the same again.
Wallace checked his watch and rose to return to his duty station. He was glad the Captain seemed normal today, a fact he would soon communicate to the other men in the engine room. Like all ships, be they of wood, steel, or amalgams of hi-tech alloys, this would shortly be made known to all the crew. As Wallace excused himself, the mess sergeant brought a plate of grilled steak with onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and corn. Quinn was disappointed that Wallace left him to eat alone. Thanking the mess sergeant and acknowledging the engineer’s departure, he suddenly realized how hungry he was and the food was quickly consumed. When the main meal was finished, he still had some appetite left. Hot blackberry cobbler and coffee were brought. The mess sergeant was pleased, even proud, at the Captain’s obvious enjoyment of the meal. The meal over, Quinn didn’t linger and proceeded to the bridge.
“Sir, this is the order we got from ECC,” said Cook, handing him the message from the Earth Communication Center.
Quinn rapidly scanned the message board and took the command chair still warm from Cook having occupied it in his absence. The order reminded him just how close they were.
Had it really been three years since their ship left Earth? The engines reduced the relative insignificance of the vastness of space to…to what? Still six years, there and back. Engines capable of speeds well in excess of light speed, and still six years. The tremendous velocity necessary because the journey would cover a great distance in search of the Centerpoint.
Hundreds of years ago a great scientist pondered two immense questions. First, what is so special about the speed of light that dictates humans can never approach, let alone, exceed it? He refused to accept there was something magical about one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. They called him a fool for believing light’s speed could just as well have been a constant one hundred thousand miles per second or one million miles per second or ten miles per hour. Not accepting the barrier as inviolate, he unlocked the secret of intergalactic space travel. His discoveries enabled humans for the first time to construct ships capable of fantastic journeys. This they did, and planets like Algernon 5 became realities, one of hundreds of colonies scattering among the stars the seed of trees as well as the seed of man.
Even so, there were limits to the speed at which ships could travel. Velocities many times light speed were possible, but it was not possible to merely wish oneself to a place in the blink of an instant like John Carter of Mars or Dorothy of Kansas. Quinn’s streaking ship still required almost three years to journey from Earth to its destination.
The second question involved the Big Bang Theory. This theory had been developed during the twentieth century and supported by all the data accumulated over the subsequent centuries: The universe arose from a single point in space of infinite density. At the moment of creation this singularity vomited forth all of existence: matter, energy, and the laws of nature, and the universe has been forming, reforming, and expanding from this point ever since, radiating out in all directions into the infinite reaches of nothingness. From this point arose the atoms and stars, heat and light, the solar systems, galaxies, and, ultimately, living things.
The universe’s expansion was typically described as the surface of a balloon blown up larger and larger. There was technically no “center” of the balloon’s interior. Or so they thought.
The same scientist who gave them intergalactic space travel also believed that, with sufficient information, one could calculate the place in space from which the Big Bang originated—he proved one could travel to the middle of the balloon. All that was needed was merely the exact locations, speeds, masses, and headings of all matter in the universe at any specific point in time. With this information all you had to do was plot the paths back to what should be a common origin.
Two hundred years passed before a computer could be built with such a capability. The Centerpoint then calculated and plotted. Quinn’s mission was to go there.
An obvious follow-up question naturally arose: If we can determine where the singularity was, and if we go there—what will we find? Great minds debated this. Numerous theories were developed, some with more adherents than others. But all the postulations would remain speculation until a ship was sent to claim The Centerpoint, as it became known.
“Final preparations to disengage Hildy,” Quinn instructed the crew. The men moved with well-drilled motion, in preparation for switching off the main engines and dropping ship’s speed below light speed. Each of the men found his station—and slipped into “bump” harnesses.
Travel at faster-than-light velocities had been successfully done for centuries—but there was an effect, of as yet unknown origin, that occurred when one crossed the threshold of 186,000 miles per second, either accelerating or decelerating past this transition. This effect was called the Kajorsen Permutation. The crews called it—The Bump.
A transition—coming or going—resulted in violent shudders and vibrations to a ship, disconcerting to even the most seasoned space voyager. If done improperly, a crudely initiated transition could tear apart the stoutest of vessels, reducing it and its occupants to oblivion. Such a catastrophic occurrence was rare—not because the risk was remote—but because great effort and caution were invested in preventing it. As the ship’s builders claimed: This ship can take much more abuse than can its human crew.
One possibility is an equipment failure at the moment of engaging or disengaging the Hildy. Should such an event occur, the results could be as destructive as one precipitated by an incompetent or poorly led crew. This was all conjecture, though, because if any ship had sustained a serious mechanical problem or human error during a transition, no evidence remained to prove it—or anyone left alive to tell the tale.
The E.I.S. Milton was the most advanced of the Earth Intergalactic Ships. One thousand feet long, with an average beam of one hundred feet, it carried a crew of 200 officers and enlisted men along with all the accoutrements necessary for a prolonged scientific space voyage: food, water, clothing, entertainment, scientific equipment, weapons, medical services.
Quinn thanked good fortune that he had a ship crewed with the finest men the Space Service could muster. Every piece of the vessel was lovingly and meticulously maintained. The operational level of the ship was beyond reproach, exceeding all standards. Unfortunately, every component of every machine that man has ever built has associated with it some inescapable risk of failure, no matter how remote that chance, no matter how much effort has been invested to prevent it from occurring, no matter how much it is wished otherwise. The Milton was no exception to this rule, though the probability of such an event had been reduced to absurdly low odds.
The most important part of Hildy was the magnetic flux regulator, designed to contain and modulate the tremendous forces inside the engines. Constructed of the strongest alloys, the MFR (you can imagine what the crew called it) is how the awesome power is harnessed and converted into the controllable forces generating both operational power for the ship and a means of traveling beyond the speed of light. During the building of their ship, every single component was inspected and retested an exhausting number of times. The MFR was no exception; in fact, due to its importance it was tested most often and most rigorously. After each trial, all parts of the vessel, including the MFR were rechecked. After the final trial this was done one last time before the ship was declared spaceworthy and commissioned into service
But despite the best efforts there was a flaw. A very small flaw. A tiny defect in a portion of the housing, much smaller than the head of a pin, which had somehow during the casting been made with the alloy constituents not in their proper ratios. This portion of the housing was still strong—it had, after all, survived many runs at full power with no ill effects, but it was a defect, nonetheless, and ultimately unable to withstand repeated extreme conditions. Only after the final test run had the alloy’s chemical composition changed enough to be faintly visible on the inspection scans, indistinct but possibly detectable by an extraordinarily skilled and alert inspector.
Technology advanced forward as it always does, but machines were not capable of providing as consistently discerning an inspection as men for every aspect of a ship’s construction, including the alloy housing. Therefore, it was still necessary to have humans review the scans taken of the alloy housing and check for flaws.
As fate would have it, the person responsible for reviewing the scanning data was blessed with abundant talent; but as fate would also have it, he was preoccupied with other concerns on a particularly important day for the Milton’s future crew. On the day the pre-commissioning scans were given to him for review, he’d had a major altercation with his promotional board after being denied advancement he insisted was “guaranteed him.” The details of this denial do not concern us; suffice to say it’s probably not a good idea to let members of the promotional board overhear oneself bad-mouthing them in a bar the night before said-self is scheduled to appear before said board.
Notwithstanding this unfortunate event, this inspector applied his usual thoroughness to the scan sheets taken earlier that morning. Each one appeared flawless, but was still carefully rechecked. Finally, the last several sheets were scrutinized, but momentary thoughts of the injustice he suffered flashed across his mind and intruded on his concentration at the same instant he was handling plate number 345-GH-34. Keep in mind it would have taken the best inspector to have noticed the minute shadow on the plate. Had he noticed it, his first thought might have been that it was possibly an imperfection on the picture itself rather than a problem with the ship, but nonetheless it would have been further investigated. Hell, he probably might’ve studied it for a long time before suggesting a closer examination of that portion of the MFR.
As it was, there never was the opportunity to take another look, because he passed it along with the others. And, thus, horseshoe nails are to ships sailing intergalactic seas as they are to steeds of flesh and blood on ancient earthly battlefields.
Even so things might have gone alright had not the bump been especially violent this transition.
Quinn casually watched the men as they went about their duties, every one of them calm and professional. His eyes moved with a rapid sharpness and imperceptible pauses: the glow of a dial or screen, a crewmember’s alertness and alacrity, a few sweat beads on a forehead. Inwardly, he was pleased. It was a good crew and he took pride in having honed them to an even finer edge during the last several years of their cruise. Both he and Cook were arguably the best officers in the fleet, a fact duly considered by those who planned this most ambitious of missions. They were chosen for this reason, their talents complimenting each other, Cook fully capable of assuming command in event of an emergency. Others capable of replacing Cook if he were somehow unable to perform his duties.
“Lieutenant Cook, what’s the final status for all stations?” Quinn said, his voice slightly raised above a normal conversational level.
“All stations checked in as ready, sir.”
“How about engineering?” Quinn asked, knowing the answer. The engineering section was the most critical for the transition, and he always double-checked one last time. Cook knew this also. They had been through many transitions together and he did not resent the Captain’s additional caution. Rather he welcomed it and its implication that Quinn appeared to be his old self.
“Engineering confirmed they are ready to disengage Hildy at your command, sir.”
“Braking shutters?”
“Closed and confirmed.”
“Visually?” Quinn did not allow his men to foolishly rely entirely on gauges and readouts.
“Affirmative. Each deck warden has checked in.”
“Navplot targeted and locked?”
“Affirmative. We drop out 2.5 qsecs from Centerpoint.”
“Navigation, what is our ETA to disengagement?”
Ensign Bennett, the navigation officer studied his control panel. “Arrival in one minute, thirty seconds, sir. Automatic switch-off has been calibrated with engineering and confirmed with the computer. All figures are exactly within normal.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bennett,” said Quinn. The concept of exactness disturbed him, and he knew now was not the time for such ponderings. He settled back into the commander’s chair, adjusting the seatbelt and shoulder harness. His eyes refocused on the engineering console. It contained lights, yellow, red, green, white; dials, some he could even read from his chair; switches; monitoring screens; a keyboard which clacked and clicked to the rhythm of the crewman’s fingers…
We define it as such but it is not. There is nothing in the universe that has been shown conclusively to be exact—even mathematics is riddled with approximations, which for all practical purposes seem to be precise, but nevertheless have their inescapable inherent inaccuracies. Geometry is a branch of mathematics based on a fundamental inexactness—pi, the most perfect of lies. The area of a circle is defined as being equal to pi multiplied by the radius of said circle squared. The use of the equal sign is misleading because there is no equality here, merely an estimate, albeit a very close one. The reason for this is two-fold: First the radius of any circle can never be measured to an exact number. The most precise measuring device has an innate limit beyond which the value of its reading becomes unreliable. The last decimal place in any observation is uncertain; this is the basis for the statistical error reported in scientific missives. And secondly, pi is an irrational number, one which has no exact value, though calculated to trillions of numbers to the right of the decimal point, numbers disappearing off into the distance leaving a wake of nonrepetitive sequences. Since pi is not exact, it is impossible to determine with certainty the area of a simple circle…
“…sixty seconds to disengagement. Captain?”
Bennett’s voice caught Quinn’s attention. He hoped Cook didn’t notice his head jerk upward as if surprised. “Very good, Mr. Bennett. Commence countdown. Hildy will disengage at zero seconds.” It was all so simple thought Quinn. Sit here in this chair and watch others do all the work; they didn’t really need him at all. If this chair were empty, it would change nothing. All the functions would be carried out just the same. He watched the bridge chronometer tick off the seconds. Fifty. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. Five. One.
“Hildy disengaged,” Bennett said.
“Commence braking,” Quinn ordered.
“Breaking commenced,” Bennett confirmed.
“All stations report,” Cook said. He relayed the information that each station was reporting normal conditions. It was going to be a routine transition.
Bennett looked up from his station’s monitors. “Nearing light speed.” At that moment a perceptible shudder began throughout the ship. Starting as a barely noticeable jiggling that steadily increased in force and tempo; a few seconds later it became a vigorous vibration accompanied by the ship jostling from side to side.
Quinn thought it was slightly stronger than routine for this stage of a transition. “Ensign Bennett, stabilize quadrant-alpha trim,” Quinn ordered, hoping this would reduce their horizontal slippage.
Bennett tried to reduce the side-to-side movement of the vessel, but the transition became more violent. “She’s fighting us, sir. Bump strength increasing.”
A rough jolt shook the ship, sending everyone straining against his restraints. Suddenly, the ship began to rock up and down, each oscillation increasing a few inches. Quinn winced as another jolt made the shoulder harness painfully dig into his arms. “Time to sublight?” he asked.
“Twenty seconds,” Bennett replied.
Another jolt shook the vessel, more like a large rubber mallet wielded by an angry god had been pounded once against the hull. The shaking continued, much more violent than Quinn had ever experienced. Somewhere behind him he heard an object, maybe a writing implement or loose personal item, clatter onto the floor and begin to rattle around. Damnit! The crew was drilled to secure ALL items before transition. The smallest unsecured item could become a dangerous missile if allowed to move freely during rough sailing.
Quinn pushed an intercom button on the console in front of him. “Engine room.” His voice itself jiggled—
Six hundred feet away and several decks lower than the bridge was the largest compartment on the ship—the engine room. A shrine to the ultimate in human technology—the goddess that was the Hildy. All powerful, beautiful, giver of life, dangerous if not lovingly appeased with the utmost care and homage. Like attendant priests the engineers worshiped the engine with love and sublime reverence. For them, Hildy represented God, both benign and—under the wrong circumstances—wrathful and unforgiving. The key was offering whatever sacrifices were necessary to prevent those wrong circumstances from happening.
The noise level in the engine room increased from tomb-like quiet to that resembling a stadium rock concert; the normal sounds associated with a transition were dominated by that emanating from the MFR, which labored to slow the Milton. The MFR reigned in the flux it had previously allowed to run at full gallop. The magnetic field created by the unit safely contained the energy powering the ship. Should the field be sufficiently weakened this power would escape and quickly reduce all matter on the ship, living and inanimate, to pure energy. The increasing vibration and shaking were putting strain on the unit, but it had been specifically built to handle absurd amounts of abuse.
The stress gauges showed one thousand Kajorsens and rising.
Wallace’s station was near the MFR. He was primarily responsible for monitoring the Kajorsen level. Noticing the communication light go on, he pushed a button. “Wallace here.” He had to shout to be heard above the roar. Like Quinn, his voice sounded as if he was speaking from a seat in an old pickup truck racing down a rutted corduroy road.
“Wallace, this is the Captain. How’s the MFR holding up?”
“At 1053 KJ’s. Everything appears to be—”
The ship reeled violently to the right, cutting the voice off. Everyone on the ship gripped their seats tighter. The shaking increased to a bone-rattling level. In the alloy housing of the MFR, the minute defective speck at last had had enough. The repeated pressures of light speed and braking, first through the trials, followed by years of space travel, and finally the roughness of this particular transition made tenuous its previously strong grip with the rest of the housing alloy. The speck, much smaller than the head of a pin, heated to several thousand degrees, no longer had the strength to bind to its brother materials and it became free; thrown at great speed from the housing, followed by a thin beam of magnetic flux no longer constrained by housing material.
In the bridge Quinn still had his finger on the intercom. “Wallace…Wallace…are you there?” He heard the briefest of screams. “Wallace! Wallace! Are you there?”
“Captain!” Cook shouted, “there’s a breech in the regulator housing. We have uncontained flux in the engine room!”
“1500 KJ’s!” someone yelled.
“Christ,” Quinn said, surprisingly in a perfectly normal tone of voice; “get engineering and make sure they plug the breech.” He knew if the breech became large enough—and enough wasn’t very large at all—it could release sufficient magnetic flux to pull apart the regulator—the ship would be unable to escape the transition, and would be destroyed either by flux vaporization or by shaking itself to death.
Bennett interjected: “Captain we are unable to complete transition. There’s insufficient flux control to allow for braking.”
“1710 KJ’s!”
Quinn knew as well as any member of the crew that the MFR units were rated at 2000 KJ’s, well above any stress that the calculations had shown could be anticipated. Through all the chaos erupting around him, Quinn remembered something a wizened petty officer had told them at the academy in his intangibles class: “Calculations don’t mean shit!”
Cook was barking orders now. “Maintain course and keep this ship as steady as possible. The men in the engine room are going to need her steady to patch!”
The engine room crew desperately tried to repair the damage. Immediately upon hearing the breech alarm, three men who’d been suited up into protective gear prior to the transition, as was routine, quickly moved to reach the small hole allowing deadly flux into the compartment. The now untethered men crawled on hands and knees, grabbed at any handhold, pulled themselves forward foot by agonizing foot. They were thrown back and forth as they worked their way towards the hole, dragging behind them the heavy emergency patch kits. These clunky kits banged loudly against the engine room equipment.
Slumped over his console was Wallace, unconscious, head bleeding, his body limply thrashing wildly in concert with the rhythm of the flailing vessel. A pea-sized piece of containment plate was missing over the breech.
The three men in the depths of the ship worked furiously. A beam of flux stabbed outward from the side of the MFR housing superheating the surrounding air; an eerie flickering rainbow of lights emanated from the beam, the colors dancing around the room, a madhouse discothèque.
The assistant engineering officer on duty, Commander Prichot, was directing the operations of his men, the coruscating light sparkling off his helmet.
“Come on, come on! Wilson, Kopek. You two get the patch and bracing by the breech.
The men ignored the nearby Wallace, as they’d been trained to do.
And so they struggled. Prichot reached the MFR and secured himself to it first, and then Wilson and Kopek, using thin almost break-proof Meadanite lines. Even so, each savage movement of the ship caused the men to slip (Wallace’s blood made the footing even more precarious). A loose wrench rocketed past Kopek’s head and sailed into the ankle of an engineer at the lifesupport station. The three men ignored the scream of pain, audible even above the hurricane-like cacophony.
Prichot heard a voice yell, “Call Medical and get men down here!” He almost laughed. If they didn’t get the patch in place soon, the request for medical personnel would be irrelevant.
“Commander!” yelled one of the technicians strapped to his chair and monitoring the flux unit; “we’re at 1900 KJ’s. The hole is getting larger!” And indeed it was; the rim of the hole, no longer supported by the missing alloy, began to flake off small additional pieces which were shot away by the flux beam; this exposed new unsupported alloy to the flux; the hole’s condition further impaired, thus weakened it further disintegrated and so on.
Prichot knew there was no more time. They would not be able to set up the automatic patch securer, which would allow placement by remote control from a safe distance. “Wilson, strap me tighter to the housing, Kopek, hand me the patch.” This they did and Prichot was now inches from the hole, staring at the blinding light. The superheated air began overwhelming his suit’s ability to maintain a comfortable, let alone safe, temperature. As he lowered the patch over the hole, he interrupted the errant beam, and flux was diverted around the edges of the patch, and the glove and arm of his suit began to dissolve. He yelled with pain but did not relax his grip. At last, with a final push, he slammed the patch over the hole, the left arm of his suit a blackened tattered mess.
“Get the bracing on! It’ll only hold a few seconds!” he screamed.
Wilson and Kopek pushed past him and immediately affixed the braces in place over the repair. Once this was done, Prichot notified the bridge, then collapsed into unconsciousness.
Quinn ordered Bennett to recommence braking.
Seconds later, the ship finally slowed, dropping past the speed of light. Like a sailing ship spit out of the mouth of a storm into a calm, protected lagoon, suddenly the vibration and rolling stopped and the bridge was quiet except for the muted voices of the crew and their panting breaths quaffing air. Quinn shifted in his harness and noticed the back of his shirt and underarms were sweat-soaked. He was alert, alive, at the height of his abilities—he was a Captain having survived a terrible storm. “I want a damage and injury report from each section right away.”
Cook unlatched his harness, almost falling forward out of his chair. “Captain, that was the worst transition I’ve ever been in…or even heard about.”
Quinn nodded. “There aren’t any worse to have heard about. Any worse than this, nobody would live to tell. I want you to go down to Engineering and see what the hell happened down there.”
“Yes, sir,” Cook rose, his legs noticeably wobbly, and staggered off to the engine room.
Quinn remained on the bridge for several hours. He communicated with each section personally, offering encouragement and advice, asking questions, providing the command presence that a machine could never replace. His place no different here among the stars than that of the sea captains of long ago standing on wooden decks after a fierce storm or great battle, directing the repair efforts of their men, ordering the cutting down of torn sails and breaking out the extra spars from the hold, mourning for the dead claimed by the sea as her own, interred forever below the greenish-gray waves.
The final damage reports came in. There were scores of broken bones, concussions, and bruises. Luckily, only ten men were injured seriously, Wallace and Prichot the worse. Prichot looked like he would survive though he had lost his arm just below the elbow. Wallace’s head injury was bad. The chief surgeon didn’t expect him to survive. The engineer was connected to full life support. Brainwave monitors showed an extremely faint hold on life.
The only significant damage the ship itself suffered was to the MFR housing. The assistant chief engineer reported this could be repaired in a few days. Now that they were at sublight speed, the flux unit could be taken completely off line and fixed while the ship was powered by the less formidable auxiliary pulse engines.
“Going at minimal speed, what is our travel time to The Centerpoint?” asked Quinn.
“The braking delay brought us a lot closer than we were supposed to. Our calculations, based on reassessing our position, indicate we’ll be there in seventy hours, sir.”
“Good. Have the Science Unit commence their measurements and observations as instructed.”
“Yes, sir.”
It had been planned for the Milton to drop out of hyperlight farther out, and then fine-tune their course inward, toward the Centerpoint. Navigation did some rejiggering of the course calculations, and assured him the untoward event of the last few minutes had not unduly compromised the mission.
Quinn stood for the first time in hours and felt the soreness and tension. “I’m going to sickbay.” Grimacing, he moved to the elevator. The doors whisked shut and he pressed the button to Deck Three. A few seconds later he pushed the stop button. There was an automatic override which after five minutes would restart the elevator. Leaning back against a wall of the elevator, the cool metal was soothing against the back of his moist uniform. It took a genius to design the engines, but a man willing to risk his life to save us. Prichot…Wallace…poor bastards.
The difference between genius and institutionalization is merely a pinch of madness one way or the other. This is especially true regarding artistic genius: painters, writers, poets, sculptors. Who is madder? Albert Einstein or Hieronymus Bosch? Who is the greater genius? An argument could be made for Einstein’s brilliance based on the fact that most other geniuses have difficulty fully comprehending his Theory of Relativity. While many recognize him as a genius, only a select few truly understand why, for his is the genius transcending understanding by the many. A nonscientific example of such sagacity is James Joyce. He’s called a genius, but how many people really understand the significance of Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake, either novel arguably as esoteric as Relativity. Those supporting Bosch as the greater intellect have on their side a very powerful truth: An idea as profound as the Theory of Relativity would have eventually been discovered by someone else. It may have taken decades, perhaps centuries, but, nonetheless, it would have finally appeared among the body of human knowledge. Not so for the disturbing paintings of Bosch. Had he never lived, there would not have been a “Last Judgment” or “Garden of Earthly Delights” to torment observers to the end of their days. Similarly, only Van Gogh could have conceived of, and made tangible, paintings burning with flames fueled by his genius, but first kindled by his madness…
Chief Surgeon Simms looked up from a patient being tended for a separated shoulder.
“Hello, Captain.”
“Hello, Simms. How are the men?”
The doctor’s brow clouded. “Prichot is stable but depressed as hell about his arm.”
“Wallace?”
“He’s in the other room. He’s not going to make it.” Simms whispered this last part so the other patients couldn’t hear. “There is irreversible brain damage. Technically there is life—if you define life as including a straight brainwave line. But no, it’s a matter of time before he’s gone.”
All the advances and still men had to die, thought Quinn. He’d never had a man die during any of his commands. Space travel had been sanitized plenty, the risks lowered, it was the rare captain who wrote the letter home to a grieving wife or inconsolable parents. Your son, in the finest traditions of the Space Service…you can be proud of your husband…if there is anything I can do…sincerely yours…
Usually, when something did happen, there wasn’t a captain—or anyone else left—to write a letter.
Prichot had nodded off, the remains of his arm swathed in thick Specton bandages; the healing process promoted by nanomeds injected directly into his bloodstream. Quinn went to each injured man in turn. Carefully touching or patting each one, encouraging, but not patronizing, comforting them with his obvious concern.
Finally, he reached Wallace’s bed and numbly stared at the engineer. The lamps had been dimmed, but the monitors provided enough light to see clearly. Wallace’s head was wrapped in bandages. Tubes ran into each arm, and several came out from under the head coverings. A mechanical breathing pump rhythmically hissed in the soft darkness. There was nothing to say to comfort the man, since Quinn knew Wallace was beyond listening, but he touched him, nonetheless, placing a hand on Wallace’s arm, keeping it there a few pathetic moments. The Captain wondered what thoughts were. Maybe nothing but limpid profundities, glimpses at painful truths, intertwined with a descent into madness.
Quinn found himself back in his cabin and contacted Cook for a report.
“We are steadily approaching the Centerpoint. There’s no matter detected and our position is being coordinated, by extrapolating the previous data, so we will reach what appears to be the exact spot. The science officers are continuing their observations and measurements.”
“Thank you, Cook. Let me know if there are any messages or developments.”
“Yes, sir.”
A defect of man’s reliance on modern monitoring devices is that if nothing is detected, it is assumed that nothing exists. The more mankind advanced, the more his mind and senses are subordinated by this bondage to technology, which has replaced sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The Milton’s crew was no exception. Their detection devices told them they were nearing an area of complete emptiness. Because of this, no one thought to open the shutters and look outside.
Quinn sat in one of his chairs, his feet on the bed. Leaning over he pushed a switch. A minute later, he saw the faintest glimmer of pinpricks in the distance, the rest inkiness. The now feeble light had traveled in all directions away from near this very place for tens of billions of years. What now, he thought? We’ve come all this way to where everything supposedly began. The singularity is long gone, spread over the incalculable volume of the universe. Noticing a faint reflection in the glass, he turned off the light in his room. He saw the reflection was a picture on the opposite wall, of a forest scene back on earth. An old oak tree’s curved branch reaching downward at a quiescent dark pool underneath. The distorted image on the window was of a dark fuzzy curve. With the switch off, he returned to his seat and thought about the curve. It seemed like a graph from an algebra book, from high school, maybe college…
In all the universe there is a specific number of elementary particles, the components comprising all the matter in existence. This number is vast, most recent estimates place it on the order of ten to the one hundred twenty-third power. Yet, it could be written out in a few minutes. He’d heard of other numbers, so large that to write it out in an average person’s longhand would require a piece of paper incomprehensibly larger than the universe itself. Perhaps, this condition should in fact establish a limit to numbers themselves. There is no meaning to a number larger than the number of elementary particles. Ten to the one hundred twenty-third power plus one simply does not exist. And there’ll never be any more than this number.
One of the basic algebraic equations studied by all students is y = 1/x2. Plotted on a typical xy graph it appears as two symmetrical curves above the x-axis on either side of the y-axis, mirror images of each other. An interesting characteristic of the plot is its behavior as values of x approach zero. From the left side or the right side, as x nears zero the value of y rises precipitously at a dizzying rate of acceleration. There is no value for the equation at x = zero for as x approaches zero the value of y rises towards infinity. Why would a spacecraft be necessary when one merely needs to seat himself on such a line while having x go to zero? The equation will take him to infinity as surely as the swiftest of ships…
The cool air from the air conditioner caressed the sweat on Quinn’s face, and his eyes opened. He wasn’t sure if he’d been asleep. Leaning forward in the chair, he stared out the window. Though the stars were far away—maybe he imagined these pinpricks if light, since there was supposed to be no discernible light at Centerpoint—he noticed one slightly brighter than the rest. He studied this star, then realized it was closer than a few moments before. Shaking his head, he looked again. It was unmistakably nearer, lazily coming up from behind and just astern of the ship. Kneeling on his bed, he placed his face up against the window and stared with all his effort. Not a star. It was some kind of glowing—orb.
Slightly behind the orb there were others now just like it coming into view. He retrieved a towel from the bathroom and vigorously wiped the window. There were dozens of lights trailing off like glowing wake bubbles behind the ship. The nearest one was just outside his window, perhaps fifty feet away, seeming like a dull, saffron-colored oriental lantern. He estimated it to be about three feet in diameter. It gradually overtook the ship and disappeared from his view towards the bow; the other orbs hove to with the ship like the first one and he saw they were all identical. Quinn peered in the general direction toward which the first orb appeared to be heading, and thought he could see a faint glow creeping past the front of the ship.
“Cook!” The excitement in the Captain’s voice reverberated over the intercom and caused everyone on the bridge to stop what he was doing.
Cook pushed the communication button. “Yes, sir?”
“Are our sensors picking anything up?”
“Nothing unusual or unexpected, Captain. Matter and energy levels, as predicted, are extremely low here. Basically, just our ship’s.” Cook avoided glancing at the men. He knew they were all watching him. “Sir…sir…are you still there?”
“Just a second.” Quinn walked back to the window. There were several orbs visible, still heading in the same direction. He called the bridge again. “Check for energy readings in the immediate vicinity of the ship.”
“Sir?”
“Check for all frequencies of energy around the ship. Now!” The sharpness in Quinn’s voice unnerved the bridge watch.
“Aye aye, sir.” Cook ordered the checks. Nothing was detected. This was reported back to Quinn several minutes later. Quinn could still see one orb, but in a few seconds it moved out of view past the bow.
“I’m coming up right away—”
The line cut off before Cook could acknowledge. Sixty seconds later Quinn arrived on the bridge, wild-eyed and out of breath.
“What’s our course?” Quinn asked Bennett.
“Directly toward Centerpoint, sir.”
“Are you sure nothing unusual has been detected by the sensors—any of them?”
“No, sir,” Cook responded, for the first time realizing the Captain meant that they should be detecting something.
Quinn paused before posing his next question, finally noticing the queer looks he was getting from the men. At last, he asked, “Has anyone looked out the windows?”
Cook ignored the puzzled faces. But now that they thought about it, none of them could remember the last time he’d looked outside. The lieutenant reached over and pushed several buttons. He turned back to Quinn. “The only window which has been opened since our return to sublight speed is the one in your cabin, sir.”
Am I imagining this? Quinn thought. They must really think I’ve lost it now. Indeed, they were all staring at him furtively, with concern rather than amusement or disrespect.
“Open up the shutters on the bridge windows,” Quinn commanded. The request was odd and he knew it.
“Right away, sir,” said Cook. “Petty Officer Fugate, retract forward transition shutters.” Fugate input the request into his console. A crack appeared in the center of the bridge window and began to grow as the shutters steadily pulled away into recesses within the hull.
The ship and bridge faced directly toward Centerpoint.
Like a feeble dawn, a stab of pale light, resembling that filtered through opaque glass, probed through the crack and bathed the bridge in a yellowish glow. Everyone looked at it amazed, saying nothing, as more window became exposed.
Directly ahead of the ship shone the soft yellow glow of what seemed to be a huge fuzzy sun. Bright, yet not so blinding as to force them to look away from it. They could all see one of the orbs pulling ahead of the ship on course towards the light.
“What is it?” someone asked.
An unsure voice answered. “It looks like a star only much less intense, dimmer.”
“The color is different though,” Cook said to nobody in particular.
“Science section,” Quinn said, “conduct a full analysis of that star…or whatever it is right away. Get Pringle on this immediately.” Quinn then told Cook and the others what he’d seen from his room earlier.
All the tests and measurements directed at the light came back with disturbing results. Each showed—nothing. Nothing whatsoever. The lights registered as emptiness. No mass. No energy—most surprising—an absence of readings in the visible spectrum of radiation. How could this be, thought the men on the ship. We see it with our eyes. The machines can’t be telling us we aren’t seeing anything. No temperature. The objects were at absolute zero—equally impossible—the radiant heat from the ship itself should have caused slight thermal readings. They should be seeing nothing because all of their instruments were telling them there was nothing out there. Word traveled throughout the ship. Every window with a view of the light was crammed with curious crewmen transfixed by the quiet radiance ahead. The ship’s telescopes showed it not a single large source of light, but one comprised of hundreds of billions of individual orbs.
The ship maintained its course towards the light. Quinn wanted to maneuver closer; there was something important about the lights, but he was unable to find the eloquence to describe it, a shimmering cold fire, a place of answers, the key to the singularity. But he knew this wasn’t prudent; concern for the men compelled him to order a halt until they could learn more and plan their course of action.
They began to notice more orbs, all heading towards the light. Many were coming from the same direction paralleling the ship’s course, but the telescopes also showed them arriving in lesser numbers from other directions, each heading to the same place. Quinn ordered the ship to resume closing on the massed orbs, but in a slower, circuitous path, which would spiral inward.
Quinn scheduled a meeting to later discuss the situation and develop a course of action. He excused himself from the bridge and headed to his cabin, but thought better of it, instead deciding to go to the upper observation platform. He arrived there and found it crowded with many off-duty personnel. Not wanting to be with others, he found a lonely window on Deck 6 facing forward. He stood quietly. There was no menace to the glow, of that he was certain.
He wondered why the objects were spherical shaped, remembering from some mathematics class of long ago that a sphere was considered a perfect shape, though he couldn’t recall why this was supposed to be so…
The volume of a sphere is equal to 4/3 pi times the radius cubed. If a circle were to have a radius equal to 1 foot its volume would be equal to 4/3 pi. Since pi has no definite value, the volume of a sphere has no definite value. Perfection has no definite value…
They sat in comfortable chairs around a large table in the officer’s conference room next to the bridge. Quinn, Cook, Pringle, Lieutenant Conroy—Prichot’s second-in-command in engineering, and Ensign Whisteler. Pringle, clutching a coffee mug, was the first to speak. He gave an overview of the findings to date—essentially that nothing was detected even though everyone could see the orbs. All they knew was the small diaphanous orbs were arriving steadily from a variety of directions.
They debated the wisdom of proceeding. The orbs did not appear threatening, but the possibility of menace could not be discounted. Finally, Quinn decided they should at least sidle the ship up to the edge of the orbs. What should be done once they got there? Several of them were for sending men outside into the orb cloud for a closer look, but there was concern about the safety of this option.
Someone posited the theory that the orbs were some odd remnants of the Big Bang. Another said they must be some new lifeform. This latter theory was explored further by trying to communicate with them. But after several hours of beaming signals, no dialogue had yet been established.
And, so, the ship inched its way closer and closer toward the cloud of orbs—or herd as the men now called it. Finally, about two hundred meters from the edge of the herd, the ship stopped—or anchored.
The nearest of the softly glowing spheres quietly bobbed just ahead.
Pringle and another crewman left the forward hangar. They used the “puff packs” as the tetherless, self-contained, self-propulsion units were called. Pringle approached one of the closest lights. There were no distinguishing marks of any sort on the thing. Just the smooth, peaceful glow. The subdued light reminded him of that emitted by an overcast day or a streetlamp on a foggy evening. What produced or contained the light he could not discern. The orb appeared membrane-less. He reached out to touch the sphere, but it moved in sync with his hand staying just out of reach. He pulled his hand back and the orb moved back to its original location. He tried this again with the same result. Several times he tried a fast reach, but no matter how hard he tried the orb remained just beyond his fingertips.
Quinn watched all of this with rapt interest on the bridge’s main viewscreen. When the men returned to the ship, he decided to grab a short rest in his quarters.
According to the clocks it was night on the ship. So the men could have familiarity in their routines, the crew followed Greenwich Mean Time. At this time the lights took on a different hue, representing a special type of artificial night here in the eternal night of space. Quinn found he couldn’t sleep.
As per Quinn’s orders, Cook reoriented the ship, exposing a broadside toward the herd. Quinn stood before his cabin window peering out at the magnificent lights in front of him. How long he’d stood like this, hands clasped behind his back, he did not know. Out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement, and turned.
The orb’s movement was slow, dreamlike, and it slowly appeared out of the side of the ship; once completely free of the vessel, it seemed to pause, and though its surface was perfectly flawless and the distance was about seventy-five meters away, Quinn thought it appeared to rotate towards him, pause briefly, and then drift off to join the others waiting in the distance. He nodded softly, whispering something indecipherable.
How could he explain to Cook or the others? Pringle would argue the impossibility of it—he might say it violated the second law of thermodynamics (to increase the overall order of the universe) or some other scientific law…theirs was a scientific mission, after all. A ship’ chaplain came to mind, though the last of those were billeted on ships centuries ago. To have resurrected that job for this mission would’ve been so ludicrous as to have ended the career of anyone foolish enough to suggest it.
The intercom buzzed, startling Quinn not at all.
“Yes, doctor.”
“Captain, this is…yes, it’s Simms. I wanted to let you know that Wallace just died.
“Thank you. I know.” Quinn disengaged the intercom before Simms could say anything more.
And in the far, far off boundaries of the universe, if their ship were near enough, the men would have seen what would take tens of billions of years to reach back to the center of all things—the blue shift began. And from the inhabited places came a steady stream of lights, small rivulets some, others larger streams, one a mighty river.
All flowing to the quiescent eternal sea.
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