Uplift (18 page)

Corvette. They know that these are recordings somehow, and not just brain stimulation like we told everyone at first. The training lessons are not as clear since they don’t have duplicates of you, and
Corey. 

Richard’s teams have had some ideas different from you, and Corey just because some of the training is unclear.
Tell them we’ll all meet in the morning after they’ve had a chance to sleep on the ideas. See what they come up with.

“Have your guys all do them today, and sleep on them. We’ll get together tomorrow in Hanger three’s conference room, and bounce ideas back, and forth. No alcohol tonight. Stress that,” Carole ordered.

Hershel nodded, and rushed off to see what this crazy new boss had proposed…no telling.

****

Hershel Graham had heard rumors about Patterson, but had never heard anything about Koth. He had run the training module through once as soon as he got home. Even though his boss had said no alcohol, he went to his private bar, and poured himself some gin, and tonic. Good god, he thought. Ideas were swimming through his head, and he knew all eleven others on the team were going to react just like he did. They had duplicate copies of the training.

Classic training says you couldn’t physically block gravity, but gravity wasn’t what Hershel thought it was before today. The ideas he just had introduced were astounding. You might be able to twist a section of space around a shell so it wasn’t even in this dimension. Gravity was just an effect of backscatter standing electromagnetic waves about 29 times the Planck limit if this theory was correct. Gravity would be extremely short wavelength electromagnetic standing wave radiation. That would mean that dark matter was simply a radiation attenuation effect on large, or dense masses, and didn’t exist per se. He took another slug of his now warm gin, and tonic, and realized that his team might be able to cobble together a way to project a field. God. This is next to sex – wow. He sat down for a second run through.

****

The morning started out with Corvette having coffee, and cornucopia of fruits, pastries, nuts, and breakfast foods were laid out.

Most members of the team were there except Hoskins, who said he had been throwing up since he ran the first module. Watanabe said he had overslept, and was on his way in. He said he had run the module three times, couldn’t sleep until very early this morning, and slept through his alarm. Most the team was a bit bleary eyed from lack of sleep, but they dived into the food, and espressos.

Carole started by asking them to pull chairs around so they’d face each other. “Okay folks. Stomped on a lot of old theories yesterday, I’m sure. Ideas? Hershel. You start off, and anybody jump in when he takes a breath,” she said, and the group chuckled as they glommed down the food. She handed Hershel a tablet to draw on to display on the large whiteboard beside them.

Hershel took the tablet. “I think we can design a field that will allow us to shield a ship from gravity. Means no inertia I think. Look at this equation,” and he drew it out on the tablet. “This isn’t a new idea. Some guys who had no credibility as physicists came up with them back in 2007. We can, I think, increase the radiation pressure of the field at different points allowing us to move really fast in air, or in space.”

“How can we do this in atmosphere? Air would heat us up when we push through it at any speed faster than sound wouldn’t it?” asked Jeanine Nakamura.

“Don’t think so Jeanine. Guess it’s equivalent to the Antheon supercavitation torpedoes the Navy uses. Whoever thought that using hydrogen peroxide to project bubbles, causing supercavitation in front of a torpedo, would allow a torpedo to travel at faster than the speed of sound through water? The torpedo is pushing through the bubbles, and not the water itself. Of course it uses a rocket for thrust, but nearly a thousand kilometers an hour through water – that was impossible until they did it thirty years ago,” Hershel said. “We didn’t have a powerful enough power source until last year to try these tests, but now we have the zero point modules.”

Susan Siriluk spoke up. “How about we try graphene for the shell again? I’ve had some ideas.”

“I agree. Tell me what you think we need, and we’ll order it – boss willing?” he said, and looked at Carole who nodded, and gave a ‘thumbs up’.

That little thumbs up crystalized their enthusiasm, and they quit holding back – occasionally stopping for rest room breaks, water, and coffee.

****

Two months had brought them to this test today. They had built a small utility vehicle that seated six with a small cargo bay. They generated a standard field around it. The test model had worked after several failed tries. Hershel, and Carole were in a protective bunker a lon-g-g-g way away. They were going to turn on the field first – the standard protective field, but they had added shielding, possibly, for three other dimensions according to their math. They were going to try them – one dimension at a time for different durations.

Conner Johansen was the test pilot today. He checked in, “Dimension Delta for fifteen seconds. Three…two…one…” he said, and then the area around the craft went totally dark. Exactly fifteen seconds later it reappeared. “Damn,” Johansen said. “I thought I had seen dark before, but that was creepy. No radiation on any frequency was transmitted in, or out through the field. Might be a good way to hide, and as a defense, but we couldn’t do anything through it for offense. Dimension Echo for fifteen seconds – measuring any radiation from either direction. Three…two…one…nothing happened,” Johansen said. “I didn’t notice any change in the radiation in, or out. Any change noticed from out there when I switched it on.”

“Nothing here. You counted down, and then immediately started talking again,” said Hershel Graham in the control bunker.

“You mean fifteen seconds after the countdown,” corrected Johansen.

“No…no,” said Hershel. “You counted down, and immediately started talking.”

“No Doctor Graham. I waited fifteen seconds…then I spoke again.”

“Okay. Try that again, but try leaving it on for one minute this time. Synchronize our clocks, and try it again,” Hershel ordered.

Again Johansen counted down, “Three…two…one… (pause) off,” he said. “Read me off your clock.”

Hershel did, and then Johansen responded. “Looks like I spent thirty seconds for every second of your time. If we want to age rapidly – looks like we can do that.”

Carole, butted in. “You mean – we could make a large field, and get thirty days of work for every day that normally passes. That would speed up the projects, but we’d have to cut it off, and on regularly to get items in, and out. Food, air, heat, waste – all that… Let’s try strengthening the fields at the lower side of the keel for just a one-tenth of a second pulse when you turn it on.”

“Acknowledged… Dimension Echo with stronger radiation on the bottom of the keel…in three…two…one…” and there was a thunder clap, and the craft disappeared. Simultaneously, the building blew up.

“What happened? The craft blew up,” Carole said.

“My god. No…look at this high-speed playback. I had it going at one thousand frames per second, and one second it is there, and the next it is gone – not even on the frame,” Hershel said.

It blew up, Carole thought.

No. Listen to Hershel. I think he sees it,
Corvette thought
.

Hershel stopped the video, and pointed. “See everything flying inward, and the fairly neat hole in the top of the hanger. It went straight up – faster than I can calculate.”

What do you think Corvette?

You have progressed further than my own people Carole. We have nothing like your Delta field. Your Echo field is different too. My race can travel at superluminal velocities one hundred times faster than light. Time slows down when we travel interstellar distances. I do not know how fast, or far your employee just went, but I am not sure he can control the craft fine enough to land back on Earth. We may have made a major mistake.

How so? Carole thought.

If Johansen uses the field outside geosynchronous Earth orbit – the craft’s field will be detectible by the Horde. More fields, and the Horde respond faster with more ships.

Carole turned to her colleagues. “Hershel. I suspect that Johansen traveled at superluminal velocity – maybe 100 times light speed”

“Wouldn’t he be crushed?” someone asked.

Hershel tilted his head, “I…don’t think so. He may have experienced no inertial effects.”

“Then how was the ship able to crash through the roof. Shouldn’t it have just stopped if he didn’t have momentum? Wouldn’t it have only been the thrust,” someone else commented.

Hershel…again…sat thinking…tilted his head…”Umm.

It may be that Johansen had the original field on at the same time. The implosion effect was probably the air rushing in to fill the volume the ship had vacated. We need to monitor any frequencies he could possibly transmit on.”

Hope began to fade after 24 hours with no contact, and Carole didn’t know how she should handle his ‘disappearance.’ No one was calling it his ‘death’ yet, but Conner Johansen was married with a two-year old girl at home. Carole ‘talked’ with Richard through her Corvette/Corey link. She sent him all their data.

Corey confirmed the threat of early detection. Richard was concerned, but was ecstatic about the Echo field because his group had had nothing, but failures trying to punch holes in the original fields. Richard thought that their Delta field might be used if they could figure out a way to make it project out like a sword. Richard told Carole to report an explosion killing Johansen to authorities, and his family if they found no trace of him after a second 24 hours. Two days would be suspicious enough, but you might give them part of the video.

****

Carole was sitting in an adjacent hangar’s conference room when in rushed a security agent who whispered in Hershel’s ear. Carole’s new auditory abilities allowed her to hear what the agent was saying, but she gripped the arms of her chair to keep from showing she had heard.

Hershel jumped up, and shouted, “Conner is at the front gate. They’re driving him over here! He’s okay! …Banged up, but okay.”

“Stay calm folks,” Carole said even though she too was excited.

Two security people ushered the limping Johansen into the room, and there was an upwelling of hugs, and slaps on the back. It was like the prodigal son coming home.

Hershel finally got some order by doing the loudest whistle Carole had ever heard. Hershel went up another notch in Carole’s estimation. He was obviously brilliant, and a capable leader.

“Conner. Tell us what happened. How did you get back? Everyone. Let him tell us instead of doing the twenty questions routine,” Hershel said.

I am interested in this too Carole… Your people are very resourceful
, Corvette thought.

Conner Johansen hobbled over to a chair, and sat down heavily. He was pretty disheveled, and massaged his left knee.

Carole remembered that her people at this facility had not had the nanite augmentation that the security, and military personnel had enjoyed. She noted to Corvette to schedule that as soon as possible.

Conner let out a big sigh, looked around the room, and smiled. “I thought I’d never see y’all again,” he said, and we knew he was tired to let his southern drawl show, but he straightened up, and continued. “One second I was in the hangar, and the next I was in deep space. If I hadn’t been an amateur astronomer – I would have been a goner. By the way – we have to make more outside views for any craft we fly and add computer-aided navigation. First thing I noticed that there had been no inertial effects.”

Everyone around the room looked at Hershel who had guessed that, and they all nodded.

Johansen continued. “The ship didn’t have much in the way of communication gear – we had figured we didn’t need it yet. Anyway. I cobbled together a timing circuit to get faster cutoff control.”

“Why’d you need a faster control circuit?” Jeanine Nakamura asked.

Half the team rolled their eyes, but Johansen just smiled, and continued. “I was almost to Mars about twenty light minutes away from Earth. I was lucky to be close enough to recognize it, or I would have been toast. I realized that I had gone straight up from Earth. I realized that as soon as the field had ceased, the Earth would move thirty kilometers per hour in a nearly circular orbit, and the Earth would rotate at about 1,600 kilometers per hour, so I would have to travel in multiple directions to get back. It took me about twenty hours to build the timing control circuit, and then a few hours to move the radiation equipment each time I wanted to change direction. I finally landed…”

Jeanine Nakamura piped up again. “Where did you land?”

Hershel coughed, and shook his head to let her know to quit interrupting.

Johansen just smiled, and continued. “I landed in the Monongahela National Forest near Circleville, West Virginia. That’s why I’m limping. Took me a while to get out of the forest, and get to a road. Hitched rides, and finally got back here. Twisted my damn knee climbing down a little incline right near the first road I saw. A car was coming down the road, and I was rushing to get to the road, and stepped wrong.”