Ad Astra (12 page)

"Thanks, again. I must be the most capable guy on Earth. But that's not the reason. Why, Colonel? Why me instead of somebody like you? You're a pilot, with the training and reflexes to handle something moving fast. Me, I'm a ship-driver by training. I got picked for NASA because they needed people who could keep space station systems running, and ship-board training seemed to be a useful equivalent. So, why me?"

Colonel Gutierrez didn't answer for a moment, staring into the emptiness outside the hanger. "Because of what you said, Commander. You're not a pilot. Listen. The first six probes never came back. They've spent years analyzing the theory, the mechanical systems, the technology, the training. Nothing seems wrong. Nothing explains the failures. But we assume that on the other side of FTL things are going to be strange. We've just talked about that. So the human factor will be critical. After analyzing every aspect of the first six missions, we could find only one major factor the first six pilots had in common."

Horton took a deep breath. "And that was?"

"They were all pilots." Gutierrez shook her head angrily. "Maybe that's it. Maybe something in our training is leading us astray. Maybe. It's our best guess, our only guess, right now."

"Great." Josh stared at the bright displays on the probe's control panel, reaching out to slowly tap one of the two mechanical clocks ticking silently away, then glanced at the triple-redundant mechanical watch attached to his wrist. "Our best guess. Okay. At least that tells me something. They've built in mechanical back-ups to every electrical component they could, just in case FTL messes it all up. But humans only come in one standard configuration, don't they?"

"They come in many configurations, Commander. As many configurations as there are ways of seeing things. Pilots are one configuration. You may be a different enough configuration to make a difference."

"Colonel, I sure as hell hope you're right about that."

#

The shuttle, which Josh couldn't keep from thinking of as a tug, released the clamps holding the Prometheus probe in place. Pushed well away from the space station, facing into eternal emptiness, the probe ran its final automated checks before initiating the test flight.

Josh Horton watched lights flick on and off and digits cycle rapidly as the onboard computers checked and rechecked every component. He tried not to think about the flight, running through scenes from his favorites movies as the countdown dragged, but found his gaze repeatedly wandering back to the displays and to the mechanical linkage to the FTL drive which should drop the probe into normal state if the electrical timer failed to send the signal. Finally, every marker glowed green, every read-out matched required parameters. Horton cleared his throat, acutely aware that his next words might be the last anyone else would ever hear from him. "This is Prometheus Seven. All checks complete. Preparing to initiate test flight."

"Roger, Prometheus Seven. You are cleared for test flight initiation. Begin count-down on my mark." Horton raised one hand over the mechanical back-up timer, ready to mash it down at the same moment the electronic timer began counting down. "Mark." Horton's hand fell, and both mechanical timer and its electrical counterpart began scrolling off what could be the last ten seconds of his life.

Zero. Prometheus Seven flexed as if the entire probe were ballooning, its structure booming like a deep-throated bell. A moment later a secondary but still powerful crash marked the probe's guts collapsing back into place. Josh Horton felt his own body flex strangely in time to the probe's agony, jarring his senses unlike anything he'd every experienced.
Some kind of shock wave when this thing transitioned to FTL, even though it's probably not a wave. Got to check the equipment. That had to mess up something
.

Everything he tried to look at was oddly hazed, almost wavering in blurry imprecision. Josh shook his head violently, blinking in rapid succession, but the instrument panel before him remained blurred.
Did that shock mess up my sight or is this how things look when you're moving faster than light? How am I going to tell if that shock knocked anything off-line? It must have messed up the backup mechanical linkages
. He squinted, trying to focus. The read-outs remained fuzzy, but several resolved themselves into the same digits they'd held when he started. A close examination of the mechanical linkage showed it blurred in places but also apparently in the same configuration. The viewscreens showed as black blurs sprinkled with dancing spots of light.

Josh raised his arm to look at the watch on his wrist, staring in shock as the limb seemed to move in slow stop-motion jerks. A sudden sense of pressure on his wrist was followed by the realization that his watch was now pressed up against his helmet's face shield.
Faster-than-light speed. That must be it. My nervous system commands and feedback are moving slower than my environment. Just got to do things in stages. Allow time for feedback
.

Wrist and watch were still blurred, but by concentrating Josh made out the hour and minute hands on the watch face even though the second hand remained too vague to see. As best he could tell, no time had elapsed.
Okay. That makes sense. It's surely been less than a minute since I punched into FTL
. He fought back a sudden wave of nausea, closing his eyes against the churning in his gut and a growing headache.
Dizzy. I'm dizzy. Must be because of the incredible speed I'm traveling. Or maybe that shock messed up my brain, like getting kicked in the head. That'd explain the way everything I see is blurred
.

He focused back on the watch, which still displayed no apparent change.
It has to have been a minute by now. It has to
. The image remained stubbornly unchanged, the minute hand wavering in his sight like everything else, but apparently unmoved.
How much has this disorientation messed up my sense of elapsed time? Maybe I can count down in my head -
Another surge of nausea hit, stronger, the world seeming to spin in time to the thunder of his pulse in his head.
Got to beat this. Whether it's FTL effect or not, I can't function when I'm this dizzy. Okay. Got to spot something
. He knew that, knew from watching Miller and Kelly spin around dozen of times without falling, that dancers in movies had kept their balance through those spins by focusing on a single point as long as possible, then whipping their heads around to focus back on the same point. A fixed visual reference. Like looking at the horizon to fight sea-sickness.

Josh locked his eyes on one segment of the instrument panel, a blurry section where four displays met in what should have been a point. But the point remained too vague to make out, and the nausea kept growing. Flashes of false light flickered inside Horton's eyes as the dizziness gnawed at his consciousness.
Can't keep this up
. The displays all showed the same data, his wrist watch the same time.
Hasn't it been a minute yet? It has to have been
! The image of the watch seemed to fuzz a little more, but remained stubbornly unchanged. He concentrated on the instrument read-outs again, seeing vague numbers which all seemed to add up to normal states.

The instruments say everything's fine. Everything's not fine. Why am I so dizzy? Just seeing things blurry shouldn't make me dizzy. I know people who need glasses who don't get disoriented just because they're not wearing them. Sure I'm moving incredibly fast, but how can my brain know that when it doesn't have anything to look at that says I'm moving fast? Wait a minute
. Josh fought down another wave of disorientation, trying to dredge up the memory which had teased him.
That story I told the Colonel about. The brain doesn't like what it sees. Makes up a picture. Blurry? Could this be a case of that happening? But I'm seeing the instruments. They say everything's fine…there was something else. Something really important
.

His heart pounding in time to his head, Josh barely kept from throwing up as he fought to recover the memory he sought.
I gotta remember. Something that might be the key to this…keys. That was…yeah. The brain makes up a picture when it can't handle what the optic system sends it. But that picture only shows what the brain expects to see. You don't see your car keys on the desk you whip your eyes across because the brain doesn't know the keys are there and so doesn't put them in the picture it makes up. But what would that -. Oh, my God
.

Horton blinked again, vainly trying to focus on his blurred instruments.
Am I really seeing these? I'm moving faster than light. My eyes and brain evolved to work with light-speed messages. My eyes are seeing something now, but what? Is it images my visual system can't handle, like that blank spot? If it is, then my brain's just making all this up. It's showing me what it expects to see, because it can't accept what it does see. It's showing me instruments which say everything is fine because that's what it remembers. It's showing me an intact mechanical linkage because that's what it remembers
.

He moved his arm again, sweating from fear and discomfort, trying to maintain concentration while his brain spun wildly. Stop-motion jerks brought his hand to the FTL control, then he slammed it down even as his consciousness ebbed.

Josh gradually became aware of his breathing, shuddering, eyes tightly closed as the world still spun inside. He forced his eyes open, blurred metal above them, causing his heart to pound again, but this time the metal resolved into firm detail when he concentrated. Lowering his gaze, he stared at the instrument panel. One screen displayed the outside, endless stars marching away. In a corner, the navigational system was running an analysis, trying to match the stars it could see with the picture expected an appreciable fraction of a light year from home.

His wristwatch showed almost ten minutes gone by. According to the electronic readouts, slightly less than four minutes had elapsed.
So, best guess, I was in FTL state for six minutes. And the electronic timers didn't work in that state. Ugly. What about the mechanical back-up
? Horton bent to view the linkage, shuddering as he spotted a component drifting loose.
Broke off during that transition shock, I'd guess. The mechanism didn't have enough flexibility at that point
. The navigation system chirped happily, displaying the probe's estimated position. Horton stared, dread fighting with elation as he saw the system read-out declaring him to be approximately twenty-four light minutes from his start-point.
Wow. This baby's even hotter than they thought. I must have been going six times the speed of light. In terms of distance from home I just beat Magellan and Columbus all to hell. Now, how do I get
back
home
?

#

"You used chewing gum?" Colonel Gutierrez demanded, her voice over the communications circuit sounding disbelieving.

"I had some with me," Josh explained. The probe drifted, awaiting rendezvous with the shuttle sent to retrieve it. "My mouth gets dry sometimes when I'm tense, you know, so I usually carry gum. It worked to repair the broken link, and was flexible enough to handle the shock when I went back into FTL to get home."

"And that was why we lost the other six probes? Because of a single broken linkage?"

"No, Colonel." Josh tried to keep his voice unemotional, tried not to think of the six pilots before him who had ridden into oblivion. "We lost those probes because they were being controlled by pilots. Your guess was right."

"I don't understand," Colonel Gutierrez shot back in anger. "Why do you say that? What would pilots have done differently?"

"Colonel, they'd have done something fundamentally different. Because they were pilots. Because of their training," Horton explained carefully. "I'm not a pilot, but I know plenty of them. You're trained to trust your instruments, right?"

"Of course."

"Especially when you're disoriented, right? And lacking outside visual reference?"

"Naturally! It's when you're disoriented that you most need to refer to your instruments. You have to follow what they tell you or you'll crash. It's too easy to mistake what you think you see…" The Colonel's words trailed off. "I think I understand."

"Yeah. Pilots' training tells them that they must depend on what their instruments tell them when they get disoriented. It's drilled into them, isn't it? The better the pilot, the more experienced and the more highly trained, the more they know to depend on their instruments. Right?"

"Right." Colonel Gutierrez sounded as if she were in agony.

"But at FTL you're not seeing those instruments you're trying to depend on," Josh continued. "You're seeing an image generated by your brain. Blurred. Incomplete. And consisting only of whatever the brain remembers seeing from before or is otherwise convinced must be true. I thought I saw an intact linkage when there was actually a broken one there. I thought the instruments were saying everything was working fine. But you can't trust anything you see in FTL state. Or rather, anything you think you see."

"Like Alice," Colonel Gutierrez murmured. "Down the Rabbit Hole into a world where nothing is what it looks to be. Wait a moment. Didn't you report you saw your arm move, even though the vision came in jerks?"

"I thought I did. Most likely, what I really saw was my brain knowing I'd moved my arm, getting feedback from the muscles, and calculating where I ought to see it based on how much it had moved. That's what made the picture stop-motion. I guess our brain's image-manufacturing center can't handle streaming video very well."

"That makes sense. But why were you different, Commander? What made you act against what your instruments were telling you?"

Josh shrugged, unseen by his listener. "Me? I got my training on ships. I don't trust instruments any further than I have to trust them. I assume stuff isn't going to work right. That training saved my butt. But pilots have to train and act differently."