The Ship That Dove into The Sun
by Sean Brandywine
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Sean Brandywine
Published by Strict Publishing
International
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Chapter I
Cruising the Star Lanes
The starship New York was cruising at 56 C; that is, fifty-six times the speed of light. It would still take four weeks to reach its destination: Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth. Except that the New York was not going to complete that journey.
On the bridge, Captain James Huntley again scanned the instrument readings. He sat in the Captain’s chair, straight-backed, even though the uniform he wore was not military. Still, it was well pressed and very clean. His gray-at-the-temples hair was cut short. It was his habit to personally read the status of the ship’s systems about once an hour whenever he was on the bridge. And he insisted that his junior officers also kept a nearly constant eye on the status boards. Star flight had been first achieved forty-eight years before the launching of the New York. In that time, the technology had gone from crude experimental models to huge, space cruising passenger liners much like the old days on earth when mighty ships sailed the oceans carrying a thousand passengers or more in comfort. The New York was only one of three commercial liners on the Alpha Centauri run, as the ship’s owners and crew referred to the trip, but it was the newest, largest and fastest.
Of special concern to the Captain were the forward scanners. Since the New York was traveling through normal space not some hyperspace or alternative continuum, it had to be concerned with objects it might encounter. Hitting a grain of sand at fifty-six C would result in a release of energy equal to a nuclear explosion. The ship put out tremendously strong magnetic and electrical fields before it to divert matter. Even with that, it was also heavily shielded on the forward edge and that shielding had to be replaced with each trip.
It was not surprising then, that it was the Captain himself who first became aware that something was wrong. The LMD light flashed red and a chime sounded. Instantly, the Captain and everyone else of the bridge became highly alert. But the Large Mass Detector warning light dimmed and the chime ceased. In less than a second, what might have been a major disaster became nothing.
The Captain studied each instrument readout carefully. The LMD had detected something large near the New York. The Nav Computer was capable of making the decision to alter the ship’s vector if necessary to avoid objects ahead, but there was no indication that the ship had done that. There was just the warning, then nothing.
The Captain was uneasy about this. He ordered full diagnostics on all navigational systems - then watched carefully as each diagnostic completed and reported. Nothing was wrong with the systems.
* * * * *
“Yes, we are traveling quite fast,” said Dr. Olga Sinclair. She lifted the glass of white wine to her lips and sipped. Across the table from her, the famous writer, Brian Donovan, took a somewhat larger drink from his rum and coke. She was a distinguished looking woman, in her early sixties maybe, but with a full head of silver-white hair she refused to dye even though it might well make her look years younger.
“How fast?” he asked.
“On this trip, we are traveling at fifty-six times the speed of light,” she told him.
“Which is?”
“The speed of light,” she began a familiar lecture, “is 300,000 kilometers per second, or 186,000 miles per second. We are doing fifty-six times that, so we are currently covering 16,800,000 kilometers every second. That’s 10,416,000 miles per second, for you Americans.”
“My gawd! I can’t get my mind around that idea. We are moving at over ten million miles every second! Amazing!” Donovan was twenty years her junior and did dye his temples to keep the patches of gray from showing. He claimed it was because his image as a writer of popular adventure thrillers demanded he be a young, vigorous man.
“And it will still take us four weeks to reach Alpha Centuri,” she added. “That’s one of the reasons why we have explored only a few star systems - the closer ones. Well, that and the cost. Star ships are very expensive.”
“Tell me! This ticket cost me a pretty penny!” He took another drink and frowned. “But didn’t I read something in school about the speed of light being a maximum. That nothing can possibly travel faster than that?”
“That was what was believed and taught for a long time. Then some theoretical types postulated tachyons. Those are particles that travel faster than the speed of light. About forty years later they were actually proven to exist.”
“So, that’s how we can travel so fast? We turn into tacky-ons?”
“No, but the existence of tachyons proved that the speed of light was not really an absolute limit. Look, if you take a normal particle, say a rock or even a star ship, and accelerate it faster and faster, eventually you will begin to approach the speed of light. But strange things begin to happen then. The mass of your particle or ship begins to increase, to outside observers. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass you have to accelerate. And time begins to slow down. But forget that right now. You know that the larger a mass, the more energy it takes to make it move, right? So, as you approach the speed of light,” she continued without waiting for him to answer, “you have to put more energy into making the object increase its speed. Eventually, the mass will become so great, approaching infinity, that it would take an infinite amount of energy to increase the speed. That means you cannot go faster than that speed which is what we call the speed of light. It would take an impossible amount of energy.”
“Okay, so where does this energy come from? I think someone told me that this star ship has anti-matter energy?”
“True, it does, but even that is not enough. What you have to do is look at the other side, at tachyons. They travel faster than the speed of light. In fact, if you try to slow down a tachyon you have the same problem but in reverse. You have to add energy to a tachyon to slow it down. As a tachyon approaches the speed of light from the other side, it takes more and more energy to slow it down. And, as with normal matter, you cannot slow it down to equal the speed of light because the energy requirement would be infinite.”
“So…?”
“What the tachyons told us is that the speed of light is not an absolute ceiling but a barrier. If you can jump over the barrier, you can continue on the other side. That is what this ship does. It uses a large amount of power to remove itself from normal space, just for a nanosecond. When it returns, it is on the other side of the barrier. They call the device that does that a Twister. Then the problem becomes totally different.
“Could I get another wine?” she asked a passing waiter. “Lecturing is thirsty work. Ah, that’s better.
“Now, as I was saying, once you are on the other side of the C barrier, traveling faster is easy. Just lose some energy and you’ll go faster, just like a tachyon. In fact, this ship is putting out a goodly amount of energy just to keep our speed from getting too fast.”
Donovan was shaking his head. “This is all beyond me.”
“There are only a handful of people who can understand the equations. But the bottom line, as you Americans like to say, is that we jump the C barrier, travel as long and as fast as we like, then jump back.” She sipped wine again and corrected herself. “Well, that is not exactly true. We can, but we do not want to go too fast, because when we get to our destination we have to use energy to slow up down to around the speed of light so we can jump and barrier again and be sub C.”
“I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t actually doing it right now.” He was still shaking his head. “Over ten million miles every second!”
Just then, a younger woman came up to their table. She was late twenties, slender, with straight blonde hair and pouty lips that most people would consider sensual. Very sensual. “Hi, mind if I sit here? You’re Doctor Sinclair, aren’t you?”
Since she was well known in scientific circles, Olga was used to being recognized by strangers. “But call me Olga,” she told the young woman, who immediately turned to Donovan and added, “And you’re Brian Donovan, the author.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Guilty,” Brian said. “But who are you?” He waved a hand towards an empty chair.
“My name is Sindra McCoy.”
“Sindra, that’s an unusual name,” Olga said.
“It’s just a form of Cynthia. I didn’t want to be called Cindy, so I came up with Sindra, spelled with an ‘S’. Or my mother did.” She added, as she sat down, “I write for Los Angeles News Service.”
“Ah, yes, I do believe I have seen your byline on their website,” Olga told her.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Sindra said. “I would like to have a chance to interview both of you some time, at your convenience. You’re going to Alpha to do research,” she said, turning back to Dr. Sinclair. “And you, Mr. Donovan, why are you talking such a long - and expensive - trip?”
“Well, the stated purpose is to gather first hand information for future books. That’s what the publisher says, and what I tell the IRS when they question such a huge deduction as a business expense. But between you and me, it’s mostly because I simply want to see another star system. I understand that Alpha Centauri Four is quite unusual.”
“So, how soon can we expect another thrilling adventure novel set on that exotic planet?” asked Sindra.
“I’ll be there for six weeks, then another four weeks trip back. I guess I’ll begin writing on the return trip. There certainly isn’t much to see while traveling.”
“I was surprised about that too,” Sindra said. “I expected to see stars whizzing by. But they don’t even have portholes on this ship. And they tell me there is nothing to see even if you look out the window on the bridge. Why is that, Doctor?”
“It is because we are traveling faster than the speed of light, and I’m out of wine. Well, that’s enough for one evening. Look at it this way: we are moving faster than the light from the stars does. That means that light from stars behind us can’t catch up with us. And the light from stars in front of us is blue-shifted into frequencies we can’t see.”
“Blue-shifted?”
“It’s similar to the classic explanation of why the universe is expanding. The frequency of light from a moving object will be shifted from what it was when emitted by the source. In the case of stars and galaxies moving away from us, the light is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. That’s called the red-shift. If a star was moving towards us, its light would be shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum - blue-shift. Works the same way when you are the one moving instead of the star.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Do you?” asked Donovan. “Really?”
“Well, sort of. That’s why we have science advisors on the staff to make sure that we get these kind of things right.”
“So we can’t see the stars behind us, nor those in front. Makes for lousy scenery,” was Olga’s final word on the subject.
* * * * *
On the bridge, where there was nothing to see out the view port, Captain Huntley was still worried. The alarm had not repeated itself, but it was his nature to worry about occurrences he did not understand. The LMD had never done anything like that before.
There were five people on the bridge; three engineers, a computer expert and the Captain. There really was not a pilot because the star ship basically flew itself. The only time human guidance was needed was when approaching a satellite for docking. And even that could be handled by the computers. One of the engineers, Alexei Borodin by name, was hunched over his console, reading instruments and considering running further diagnostics when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something that was quite impossible. They could look forward through the port but that was a very limited view. For most purposes, a series of view screens presented them with a view of the area around the ship, relayed by camera. One of those view screens, with a small label “Aft” above it, should have been totally black. That was the screen showing directly behind the New York, and no light should be showing since none could catch the ship at that speed. But there was a small, round dot of light in the center of the screen.
“Captain!” called Alexei. “Look at this!”
The Captain tore his attention away from the panel before him and walked the couple steps over to Alexei. “What is it?”
Alexei simply pointed to the screen. For a long few seconds the Captain just stared at the screen, refusing to accept the impossible. Finally, he muttered, “Must be a bug in the system. No star ship travels as fast as we do. There can’t be anything in our wake. What the hell is going on with this ship?”
It would have eased the Captain’s mind if the diagnostic they ran had come up with a malfunction. But it did not. And, to make matters worse, Alexei, with a tremor in his voice, announced, “Captain, it is getting bigger.”
* * * * *
“And why are you going to Alpha, Doctor?” asked Sindra.
“It is not much of a secret, but we’re planning to launch a new type of star ship. This one should enable us to travel even faster than we do now. More like one hundred times C. A trip from Earth to Alpha would take half the time it does now.”
“Amazing,” both Donovan and Sindra said at the same time.
“We will be able to really begin exploring our section of the galaxy.”
“Do you expect that we will finally find other intelligent life?” asked Sindra.
That was a question being asked long before the first crude rocket ships left the surface of the earth, clawing to get into space. But man had reached four of the nearest stars and still not found even a trace of life. Make that intelligent life. Lower forms had been found on three planets, include Alpha Centauri Four, which in some ways resembled Earth a couple hundred million years ago. But nothing with more brainpower than a cockroach.
“Who knows?” Olga smiled. She was used to answering that question. “It will be nice if we do. And I’m sure that eventually we will. But within our lifetimes…? Probably not.”
* * * * *
My God!” uttered the Captain. “It’s a ship!”
That is what the dot had grown into: an obviously artificial construct. More than anything else, it resembled a soccer ball; perfectly round with a pattern of lines on its silver-blue hull. Unlike the New York, there was no massive shielding in front to absorb the impact of tiny particles that could not be deflected. Also, there were no visible windows or ports. Nothing broke the smooth surface but that pattern of lines that looked as if they were painted on.
The computer expert, Madori Masako, wondered aloud if this ship had anything to do with the false alarm of a few minutes before.
“If so,” the Captain answered, “then it was in front of us. Now it is behind us and catching up. Nothing we have could do that.”
They were all silent for a long time. This was it!? Contact with aliens at last? After centuries of wondering, was that old question about to be answered?
* * * * *
“Well, it’s getting late,” Olga said. “And I’m not as young as I used to be. I’m for bed.”
Donovan bid her a good night’s sleep and was happy to see her get up to leave. He had been wondering if there was any chance of his getting lucky with the rather good looking Sindra. What a name! He wondered if those pouty lips were as good for kissing as they looked.
Suddenly, there was an instantaneous distortion of reality. It lasted only for a few microseconds, but all on board the New York felt it. In that incredibly brief instant each person on the ship felt as if their very being was twisted inside out, a feeling that was more mental than physical yet very strong.
The three of them in the lounge looked at each other.
“That was a jump,” said Olga. “We’re back to sub-light speed.”
“But…” protested Donovan.
Olga sat back down, shaken by the incident. “We should not jump here. We’re only half way to Alpha. Something must have happened.”
* * * * *
The bridge crew looked to each other in startled amazement.
“We jumped back!” spoke the Captain, disbelief filling his voice.
Alexei leaned over one console. “Is correct,” he said. “We’re not only sub C, we’re nearly at a dead stop. According to these readings, we are not moving at all.”
“That’s impossible!” said the Captain. “You cannot go from 56 C to zero in an instant.”
“Sir…”
The Captain and Alexei both looked up to find Madori pointing to the viewing port. There, nearly filling the port, was that ship. It seemed massive as it hung there, a few stars surrounding its image. The stars demonstrated vividly that they were not moving; they were undistorted and of normal color. No relativistic effects at all.
“What the hell!” muttered the Captain. Max crossed himself. The others simply stared in disbelief. A long time passed before anyone could do more than stare at the object that had apparently pulled them to a complete stop. It was Madori who finally broke the stunned silence.
“That certainly was not made on Earth,” she said in awe.
“Got that right,” said the Captain with a shake of his head. “Max, get on the comm. Are they trying to contact us?”
Max DeFoe became busy at a console. His fingers danced over the keys, his eyes shut to better pay attention to the noises in the earphones. After long minutes Max did not move. When he finally opened his eyes and looked up to the Captain, he said, “I’m getting some kind of signal in the 144 MHz band. But I can’t tell how it’s modulated. Doesn’t seem to be FM or AM.”
“Anything else in other frequencies?” asked the Captain.
“Not on those we are set to monitor. We’re not a research ship; I can only monitor the communication bands we expected to use, not all possible frequencies. Now that signal is gone.” He fiddled with a dial. “It seems to have shifted to 175 MHz.” A minute later: “Now it’s gone again.”
“I guess they tried to contact us. We’re just not set up to receive. Damn!” The Captain felt helpless. Here was the most important event in human history and there was nothing he could do. “Try contacting them on our usual frequencies,” he told Max.
“Already trying. No response.”
“Damn!” the Captain repeated.
Chapter II
Visitor
Back in the dining room, half a dozen puzzled passengers were all standing around looking bewildered.
“I wish we could go up to the bridge to ask what happened,” Dr. Sinclair said. “But passengers are not allowed there.”
Just then, a crewman, one of the stewards, rushed by. “Hey!” called Donovan, “What happened?”
“Don’t know. Nothing has come down from the bridge.” He hurried on, as if he had someplace important to be.
“Best thing to do is to go to our cabins and await word from the Captain,” said Donovan. He was looking at Sindra as he said it, not really worried about the unexpected jump to sub C and still hoping to test those pouty lips.
“Perhaps you are right,” muttered Ogla. “But this is highly unusual. There is absolutely no reason why this ship should drop to sub C. And a great many reasons why it should not.”
“I’ll walk you back to your cabin,” offered Donovan as he took Sindra’s elbow in his hand.
Olga saw his not very subtle intention and frowned. But she was old enough to know that she no longer attracted men the way she once did. With a sigh, she turned to go, leaving the Donovan to make his move. A slight smile crossed her lips. Sindra was as worried as she was. That would either drive her into his arms or turn her cold as ice. Her guess was that he would not “get lucky” that night.
“That’s really not necessary,” Sindra was saying. “I can find my cabin on my own.”
Not one to be defeated so easily, Donovan ventured, “Would you like a nightcap? Would help to relax you.”
“Mr. Donovan,” she replied with a smile that looked very nice on those pouty lips, “you are being more than a little heavy-handed. Why don’t you just ask me if I would like to go to bed with you?”
Encouraged by the smile, he grinned and told her, “Would you?”
“No.”
“Oh…”
“But keep trying. Maybe sometime you’ll succeed.”
As she turned to walk away, Donovan was left standing there with his mouth hanging open and trying very hard to decide if he had been totally rebuked or encouraged. He tossed off the rest of his drink and uttered a heart-felt, “Damn!”
* * * * *
“Damn! What can we do? Why don’t they do something?”
The Captain of the New York was confused and frustrated. “They stopped us. Now they just sit there, doing nothing. Why?”
No one on the bridge answered his questions.
Eventually, Madori remembered what kind of ship they were and told the Captain, “Perhaps you should get on the horn and tell the passengers something. They will know that we’ve gone sub C.”
“Tell them what?” he snapped. “That an alien ship has stopped us in our tracks?”
“Tell them we had to drop to sub C for a mid-course correction,” suggested Alexei.
“Yeah, they won’t know what B.S. that is,” the Captain said as he reached for the mike.
“Attention. This is the Captain speaking. Some of you may have noticed the transition a few moments ago as we dropped to sub light speed. There is nothing to worry about. This is simply so we can take a navigational fix and make any mid-course correction needed. We will be resuming our journey soon. Thank you.”
He put down the mike and swore. “I suppose I lied to them. We won’t be going anywhere until that ship lets us. Alexei, do we have enough anti-matter to build back up to where we can jump over C?”
“Sure, Captain. We have enough reserves to make the trip back to Earth when we leave Alpha. But if we have to use them now to restart, we won’t have them for the return trip.”
“So, we’ll have to wait at Alpha until another ship can bring us more anti-matter pods?”
“Right.”
“The Company will be very upset about the extra cost and delay, but that can’t be helped. Maybe they’ll be so happy at the news that it was one of their ships that make the first contact with aliens, that they will forget about a little extra money.”
“Tell that to the bean-counters in Accounting,” muttered Madori.
“Meantime, what do we do about this?” the Captain said, waving his hand at the silver-blue sphere filling the port.
* * * * *
Marla Crofton knocked on the door to cabin 3B. “Enter,” came a voice from within. She opened the door and told the man standing inside, “Cleaning.” He waved her in and continued shaving at the tiny sink in the tiny bathroom. As the electric razor hummed away his stubble, Marla went about quickly and efficiently changing the bedding. She paused before leaving, however, when she saw the uniform hanging in the small closet.
Colonel Bruce “Brick” Bronston finished shaving and noticed her looking at his uniform. “That’s for when we get to Alpha,” he told her. “No use wearing it on the journey.”
“My father was in the Air Force,” she told him with a hint of respect in her voice.
“What unit?” the Colonel asked, mostly to be polite.
“Ninety-third Fighter Squadron,” she told him. “He was a mechanic. He was killed when the base was nuked during the Fourth Gulf War.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The Colonel was honest in his feeling. He had lost some good friends during the “limited conflict” that the press called the Fourth Gulf War. He still carried a few scars and a slight limp from when he had to eject at 120,000 feet and mach two. Still, he considered himself one of the lucky ones. Getting blown out of an aircraft doing twice the speed of sound by an explosive charge under his seat usually kills a man.
At that point, the transition to sub C occurred, leaving both of them staring at each other. “Was that…?” he started to ask.
“I think we just jumped,” she replied. “That is what it feels like when we stop at Alpha.”
Damned unusual, he thought. Being assigned to the staff of the World Space Control, he was very familiar with interstellar flight and knew full well that there was no reason to jump sub C only half way through the flight. But he said nothing and let Marla go about her business. Making sure he had his ID badge, he moved rapidly towards the bridge section.
* * * * *
“I’ve done everything but put a welcome sign in the port window. They are not responding to anything I send on any frequency.” Max was looking as frustrated as the Captain. “I thought I heard some more of that signal a couple times, but nothing that sounded like communication.”
“Maybe we should just try to start up again,” suggested Alexei. “They’ve had a good look at us now. Maybe they’ll let us go.”
“I have been thinking along those lines, but somehow I have the feeling they won’t. And any race that can stop a star ship in high C flight should be able to easily stop us if we start up.” The Captain felt like pounding his fist on the console. “Wish I had weapons on this ship.”
“We’re not Air Force Space Command,” commended Madori dryly. “We’re a peaceful passenger liner.”
“What the hell do they want, already?”
“My guess is that they are trying to communicate,” added Madori. “But their equipment and ours are different. Even if they used the same frequencies and modulation, would we understand their language? It is only in the video shows that all aliens speak English.”
“They why don’t they try something else? Flashing lights or something.” The Captain was on edge, and it was showing through his usual calm, professional exterior. “Or just get in a shuttle and come over.”
“Maybe they are waiting for us to make a move,” offered Alexei. “Something more than radio signals that they cannot understand any more than we seem to be able to understand theirs.”
“We have three shuttles in the hangar bay, right?” asked the Captain. His nervousness was showing in that he knew his ship very well and could probably recite the names, vehicle numbers and other data on each of those three shuttles. “Maybe if we break out one and just go to a point half way between the two of us. That should be considered an overture for contact, right?”
“Captain, we don’t know how alien these creatures are. Maybe they do not think like us at all,” Madori said. “A small craft heading towards them might be considered a weapon. Maybe by their standards they are making all reasonable efforts to contact us.”
“Why the hell didn’t they intercept one of our exploration ships? They had linguists and all kinds of experts just hoping for a chance to meet an alien culture. Why us?”
“Captain,” interrupted Alexei, “they may be making the first move now.” He was pointing to the viewport. A dark hole had opened in the side of the alien craft and a small craft was emerging.
“Well, finally,” breathed the Captain. “Make sure the hangar is air-tight then open our hangar access. Let’s invite them in.”
A few minutes later, the smaller alien craft was still slowly heading for the New York when Alexei reported, “Hangar door is open. Welcome aboard.”
“Exterior cameras six and seven,” ordered the Captain. “Let’s watch what they do it.”
Two monitors came to life, flickered, then cleared to show a starry black background. On one there was a curve across the bottom of the screen where the hull of the New York cut into the picture. On the second camera feed, a small arc of the large alien ship was visible at the top and the smaller craft centered on the screen. They watched anxiously as the small, silvery craft neared the camera. They could see that the shape was a flattened disk.
“A flying saucer!” exclaimed Max. “This is too much. Next they’ll be saying ‘Take us to your leader’.”
“That ship maybe a disk shape,” commented Alexei, “but there are too many protrusions on it. Not aerodynamic. Was never meant for atmospheric flying.”
They could see that he was right. There were a dozen antennas on the top and several unidentifiable protrusions on the bottom. As it grew in size, they began to wonder what was propelling it. There were no signs of exhaust from any kind of rocket motor or even steering reaction controls. It simply moved smoothly through the vacuum towards them.
“Reactionless propulsion. I’d sure like to know how they do that. Hey,” said Alexei, suddenly sitting up straighter, “he’s not going into the hangar!”
His comment was true. The small disk ship was moving out of camera range at the top of camera seven. In less than a minute it was out of sight.
“Activate the other cameras. Find where it’s going!” ordered the Captain. Under his breath, he muttered, “Damned bastard. Open the door for him and he tells us to go to hell.”
“It seems to be heading for the upper decking,” reported Alexei. “It’s outside section three of the passenger quarters. Looks like it’s hovering just over the hull. Shit! Now it’s dropped down where the camera can’t pick it up.”
“Alert security! Get Roberts down to that area!”
The security team onboard the New York consisted of one man: Nathan Roberts, former Marine sergeant. With only fifty-eight passengers and a crew of thirty, there was not much need for security. He was there mostly because some company officials said there had to security personnel on board. So he doubled as a cargo master, but was armed and could be called on if force were needed.
“I think it’s attached to the hull,” said Alexei. “Wish we had more cameras.”
“I wish we had some 50 caliber machine guns mounted outside the hull,” said Captain James Huntley, as you would expect from a former Space Command officer.
“I’m getting a slight pressure drop in section 3 D.” Alexei studied the readouts on the engineering panel. “Now it’s stabilized.”
“Were we breached?” asked the Captain immediately.
“Maybe. If so, it was closed up immediately. Any size hole would be setting off alarms all over the place.”
“There’s the disk again!” said Madori, pointing the silvery disk as it rose into camera view. It rotated casually then headed back towards the larger alien ship at a sedate pace.
“What the hell was that?” asked the Captain. “Tag, you’re it?”
They watched as the smaller craft entered the hole in the side of the larger ship, then the hold closed up.
The Captain leaned over one console and pushed a button. “Roberts! Report! Anything from section 3 D?”
A moment later there was a crackling sound followed by a sharp, military voice, “No sign of intruders, sir. Empty corridors. Wait! There’s a passenger here.”
Before the security officer could report more, the bridge crew could hear a hysterical female voice coming over the speaker. “It took her! It took her!”
“Calm down,” came Robert’s voice. “Tell me what happened.”
It took a full minute for him to calm the passenger enough to begin to get a coherent story from her.
“I was going to my cabin and there was a woman coming the other direction. It was that older woman, I don’t know her name. There was a bump and then a strange noise from the wall next to where she was standing. A circle of bright red light appeared and then that part of the wall fell down. Loud noise. That woman just stood there, looking at the hole in the wall. Then these arms came through and grabbed her!”
The passenger had to be calmed down again. The rest of the story was simple. The arms, apparently mechanical in nature, took the older woman and carried her through the hole. What happened after that, the passenger did not know because she fainted. When she came to, the hole was not there any longer.
“I can see where the wall was cut and then welded back,” reported Roberts. “Very smooth job.”
“Get that woman down to the dispensary,” the Captain ordered. “And keep her there. No contact with the other passengers - got that?” Then he released the button.
“So they grabbed a passenger,” he said, disbelievingly. “This sounds like something out of a bad tri-D space thriller.”
“The only older female passenger we have on board,” said Madori, “is Doctor Olga Sinclair. She’s headed for the science station on Alpha.”
The Captain just stood there, fists clenched and a dark scowl on his face. “What the hell do they want?” Then he turned to Alexei. “There are three layers of hull there, right? They had to cut through three thick metal hulls. Then they patched them up after they left?”
“Apparently,” agreed Alexei. “I’m getting no pressure drop now.”
The Captain finally did slam his fist down on the console. “What the hell can we do?!”
* * * * *
In an attempt to keep a normal sleep cycle for humans, the New York maintained a day/night schedule mimicking the day/night cycle of Earth. At the time the bridge crew was discovering that a passenger was missing, it was the middle of the “night” and most passengers should have been asleep in their cabins, dreaming about adventures on the strange world of Alpha. But the mental shock of transition to sub C awoke everyone onboard the ship. A few fell back to sleep but the rest gathered in the main lounge in an effort to find out what was happening. There was a sense of unease circulating among the forty or so people gathered together, a vague dissatisfaction fed by the Captain’s announcement that all was well. Most of these were not stupid people; they knew that all was not well.
Brian Donovan was happy to see pouty-lips, aka Sindra, returning to the lounge. The night was not over, and hope again flared inside that perhaps she would want a little tender consoling during these unnerving circumstances.
Col. “Brick” Bronston was telling Leonid Andreyev that even with his credentials as World Space Control staff, he had been denied access to the bridge and the Captain. Lenonid, who spoke English with a terrible accent, was a multi-millionaire in Russia, his fortune having been built on vodka sales both within and without Russia, was following what the gray-haired, distinguished looking officer was telling him, but his mind was on getting back to his cabin and the lush Svetlana, his mistress, who he had left in bed. Bronston was not used to being denied anything, but since this was a civilian ship there was little he could do. Of course, eventually he could make trouble for Star Lines Incorporated, but that would be in the future and right now was when he wanted to know what was happening.
Dovovan was homing in on Sindra like a heat-seeking missile when he was knocked off his feet by a sudden and violent movement of the New York. Most of the people in the lounge were on the floor and looking startled. Alarms began going off with loud, klaxon voices. The lights flickered.
“Oh, shit!” muttered Brick Bronston.
Chapter III
Star Ship in Trouble
Alexei was the only person on the bridge who had been watching the alien ship when it happened. That hole opened again, but this time it was a small, black object that dashed out and rapidly closed the distance to the New York. It happened so fast that he could not react with a word of warning. The object disappeared from the viewing port and an instant later the huge ship was rocked by an explosion that shook its entire structure. Alarms began going off, several different ones in rapid succession.
“What the…” began the Captain. His words froze in the air when he saw the readouts flashing red on several screens. “We’ve been holed!” he cried.
Alexei was already scanning the numerous readouts to get a coherent picture of what had happened. “A missile hit us in Section 9,” he called out. “Losing air there very fast. Must be a big hole!”
“Lock off that section,” called the Captain.
“Already tried. One or more of the airtight doors must not be functioning. We’re still losing air. I’m trying to close the next level up.”
There followed several very long seconds of no words, only the continued shrill blaring of alarms and the darting fingers of the Russian on the keyboard before him.
“No good,” he warned. “Still losing air.”
The Captain was turning pale as the death of his ship registered in his stunned mind.
They could feel the New York beginning to rotate as venting gases from several ruptures of the hull acted much like control thrusters. A screen switched to an external view. All those on the bridge stared in disbelief at the gash in the side of the New York with what looked like steam venting out. In reality, it was their air, released into the cold of space and condensing into a frozen mist before being dispersed by the vacuum.
“Oh, my God!” muttered the Captain. He repeated it several times.
It was Alexei who realized what had to be done before anyone else. “We have to abandon the ship,” he called out loudly. “Captain, order everyone to the rescue pods!”
Captain Huntley just stood there, frozen with shock.
“Captain! The automatic systems cannot handle a breach that large! And there is nothing we can do manually. We are going to lose all our air and we can’t stop it.”
Still the Captain did not move nor speak.
Alexei reached over and pushed the comm button. “Attention all passengers and crew! Proceed immediately to the nearest rescue pod. The New York has been hit by an object. Abandon ship! This is not a drill!” he added needlessly.
Alexei stood and grabbed the Captain by the shoulders. “Sir, we have to get to the pods.”
“The crew… The passengers…” was all Huntley could say.
“The crew knows about the pods. And the passengers were told during the preflight briefing,” he shouted in the Captain’s face. Then he added, under his breath, “I hope they remember.”
“Abandon ship…?” the Captain muttered disbelievingly.
Alexei glanced around and saw that the two others on the bridge were making for the hatch that led to the rescue pods. He pushed the Captain in that direction. “We have to go!” he shouted.
With the New York’s rotation speeding up, even though slowly, it was not easy to walk when the deck wanted to move sideways under your feet. Max had already gone through the hatch, and Madori’s rear was just disappearing when Alexei got the Captain turned around and heading in the right direction. But the man dug in his heels.
“I can’t leave. We have to do something!” he said as he began to recover his senses. “Can’t abandon the New York!”
“Captain, there is a huge rip in the lower half of the ship,” Alexei told him firmly. “Some of the doors are holding but systems are going down across the board. Sir, the New York is doomed!”
“NO!” yelled Huntley as he jerked out of Alexei’s arms. “NO! NO!”
“Duroc,” muttered Alexei in Russian. Fool, it meant, and it was a mild term for what he really thought. “Stay with the sinking ship,” he added, and then rushed to the hatch. Just before he dove through, he yelled back over his shoulder, “Radio for help!” Then he was diving through the short tube that connected to the rescue pod. He bumped into Madori as she was trying to get into one of the seats. He turned and closed the hatch of the pod behind him before taking a seat himself.
“What about the Captain?” asked Madori, looking back at the closed hatch.
“He wouldn’t come,” hissed Alexei. “Max, eject as quickly as you can.”
Max, who was in the seat with a few simple controls on a small panel before him, frowned, but his hand reached to the large red cover. He flipped it up and then thumbed the toggle switch under it. There was a one second warning buzzer followed by a jerk as the pod blew off the outer hatch and leapt away from the dying star ship. They were pushed back into the seats as the small solid-fuel rocket motor on the pod blasted them away from the ship. The burn lasted only five seconds, then there was silence and they became weightless.
For a long time the three of them simply stared at each other. It took a while before their minds could come to grips with the sudden chain of events.
There was only a small viewport in the rescue pod. Through it they could see a star field then the bluish-silver of the alien ship as the pod rotated. It crossed their view then was replaced by the image of the New York. Max touched a few buttons and the pod stabilized. At first there appeared to be nothing wrong with the New York, its gray hull unbroken. But its own rotation brought into view the deep scar that spelled doom for the once-proud star ship. The missile that hit it might have been small, but it did a lot of damage to the hull. A gaping hole at least a hundred feet across marked the surface, still venting small, rapidly disappearing clouds of frozen air.
“Oh, my gawd!” exclaimed Max as they watched debris being sucked out of their ship.
“They hit the drive compartment,” Alexei said. “The New York isn’t going to do any more flying.”
For a while they could only watch in stunned silence. It was Alexei who realized the danger they were in. “We have to get out of here,” he told them in a trembling voice.
“Why?” asked Max.
“The anti-matter pods,” he told them. “When the power fails, the containment system will shut down. When that happens, several pounds of anti-matter will come in contact with ordinary matter. The explosion will make a nuke look like a firecracker.”
“But how?” asked Madori. “This pod has only limited propulsion, right?”
She was correct. The rescue pods were meant for only one thing: to save people if the hull should be breached by collision or other damage while in orbit around a planet. They provided only small thrusters and very limited fuel. For that matter, their air supply was good for only a couple hours at best. The intent was simply to keep them alive until rescue could come and fetch them. It assumed that they were near a space station or another ship, not half way between Earth and Alpha.
“Might as well not even try,” said a dispirited Max. “There’s no way we can get far enough away if the anti-matter blows.”
Alexei did not contradict him. The facts were staring them in the face. They were going to die and had only postponed it by ejecting in the rescue pod. Either the air supply would run out or the anti-matter pods on the New York would explode - it was only a question of which would happen first.
“Look, there’s other rescue pods,” said Max, pointing to three small dots moving away from the New York. “At least some others made it out.” Then he added, glumly, “For all the good it will do them.”
Alexei settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. He had always known that spaceflight was dangerous, they all did. But with typical human arrogance, they figured the accidents would happen to others, not them. Not that being blasted by an enemy star ship should be considered an accident. The Russian born nationalized American citizen brushed back his black hair with a hand and sighed. That hair was worn at the limits of regulations for the company, but he refused to cut it military short as the Captain and most other officers did. Anyway, it matched his thick, bushy eyebrows.
“I wonder why they only hit her with one missile?” he eventually asked, mostly to himself.
“One was all it took,” said Max, frowning and seemingly unable to take his eyes off the dying ship. Unlike Alexei, Max always kept his hair in a crew cut. With his thin facial features and dark eyes, it gave him a slightly sinister look. Or maybe a little rat-like if you were inclined to animal analogies.
“Maybe they have accountants onboard and it was a cost-cutting decision,” added Madori. “Why use two expensive missiles when one will do?”
Alexei had to smile even in the dire situation. Madori had this thing against accountants and their kind. Even facing death, she could make sarcastic remarks about them. He looked over at her Asian features and her angry rather than fearful expression. That would be typical of the California born young woman; get mad first and worry later. He had always liked her, but his strict policy of never dating anyone working for the same company as he meant he had never had a chance to get to know her. She was very pretty, though, he had always thought. Not a bad figure, either, to judge by the way she filled out the company uniform.
“Hey,” said Max suddenly. “A hole!”
Alexei’s eyes snapped open.
The alien ship was partly in view and Max had spotted that the hatch or whatever had opened on the side of the alien ship. But nothing came out.
“Another missile to finish the job?” wondered Madori. But no missile emerged. For long minutes they stared at the alien ship, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.
“Max,” Alexei finally said, “let’s go exploring.”
“Huh?”
“Fly us over to that ship. Let’s see what’s in there.”
“That’s stupid!” exclaimed Max. “They tried to kill us! You want me to get closer to make it easier for them to finish the job?”
“I’m guessing that open hatch is an invitation,” said Alexei. “They want us to come in.”
“Maybe he’s right!” said Madori.
“In any event, it’s better than just sitting here and waiting for death.”
“Alexei, you’re crazy!” protested Max. “Once they get their hands on us, who knows what they’ll do? They kidnapped one of the passengers! Remember?”
“I’m not forgetting. But there is the possibility that they won’t harm us. They’re aliens; their thinking maybe different from ours. Maybe they’re sorry for what they did and want to save us now. Maybe we did something that made them think we were going to attack them, so they fired that missile.”
“And maybe they’re psychotic, sadistic monsters just anxious to get their hands, or tentacles, on some humans to dissect,” said Max.
“Where’s your sense of adventure,” said Alexei with a grin.
“Where’s your mind? You lost it someplace back a ways.”
“I think Alexei may be right,” interjected Madori. “I vote to take them up on the invitation.”
“That’s two to one. Democracy rules. We go.”
“You’re both crazy!”
But Max began coaxing the controls to maneuver the pod towards the alien ship. As they approached, nothing happened. The hatch, large enough to accommodate dozens of pods, remained open. As they came within two hundred yards, lights suddenly came on inside the alien ship. They illuminated what was obviously a hangar, a hundred yards wide and almost as tall. The area was apparently empty; they could see no aliens, no craft, nothing but empty deck and bare walls.
“Now that’s an invitation,” muttered Max, “they turned the lights on for us.” He maneuvered the pod slowly inside the hangar. Once they were about the center of the hangar, the pod dropped to the floor. Simultaneously they felt weight again.
“Artificial gravity,” commented Alexei.
“Now what?” asked Max.
Alexei leaned across the panel to peer to the side. “As I thought, the other pods are coming in too. We wait until they are all in and I’ll wager the hatch will close.”
“Maybe then we’ll meet our hosts?” pondered Madori.
“Undoubtedly,” agreed Alexei. “Hope they’re gracious hosts.”
Alexei was right. Two other rescue pods entered the hangar and dropped to the floor. After a few minutes and no additional pods, the metal doors closed over the opening, blocking out the sight of stars and the dying New York.
Chapter IV
Inside the Alien Ship
“I wonder if these aliens use anti-matter,” muttered Alexei after the closing of the hangar door.
“Why?” asked Madori.
“’Cause if they don’t, they might not be aware of what is going to happen to the New York when the anti-matter containment fields fail. If they were smart, they would be getting out of here as fast as possible.”
His announcement was met with silence.
“Would serve them right,” said Max after a while.
“Well, where are they?” asked Madori, looking around as much as the limited viewport allowed.
“Hey, there’s atmosphere out there,” said Max, pointing out the port. Following his finger, they saw two humans exiting from one of the other pods.
“I expected this,” said Alexei. “They’ve pressurized the hangar. And I’ll bet that it’s very breathable air.”
“That looks like Colonel Brontson,” said Madori. “I met him at the departure party.”
Alexei was already opening the rescue pod’s hatch. The air that came inside was definitely breathable, although it had a little tang, almost like ocean salt water - mixed with the usual, metallic smell of canned air. They climbed out and stood looking around. There were several areas of the wall that were probably doors. Those walls were a very pale yellow color, almost more of an off-white. There was no sign of aliens anywhere.