TWO YEARS LATER

CHAPTER 01

Given the breakdown of the crew, time saw to the natural unofficial division of collective efforts. With a total of forty-eight people, thirty-two of whom were civilians, the military was just slightly out numbered. This of course mattered little in the overall scheme of the entire crew trying to entertain itself. The American Military was used to fighting battles out gunned and numbered but their training was a little inadequate on some of these particular battlefields. Thursday night talent shows were not normally their strong suit.

This contest, held in the gym every Saturday afternoon, was more to the military’s liking and style. It suited Pete, personally, as well. He routinely did more than just coach the different sporting events that got organized. Basketball was the favorite here but, that had even gotten old over the last two years. Relay races with strange twists were even running out of steam. That was mainly due to everybody running out of ideas about what the runner had to do in order to be allowed to pass the baton. Some of the stranger ideas in the galley suggestion box were banned by Jack very quickly. This turn of events led to the latest rage on Hermes, Boxing.

"Slug his brains out Pete!" screamed Julia.

Pam reached over and slapped the botanist on the arm, "Hey, whose side are you on?"

"Well I don't want him coming home tonight with two black eyes," responded Julia.

"Come on Gary! Give 'em your right!" Pam settled back down and poked Julia in the arm, "You know Barringer has got some of the cutest biceps. I'm glad I put him on the weight-training program. Course Mike won't let me give him exams anymore."

Two rows up from the girls, Vitosk raised his eyebrows and stared down at them. He looked up from the chessboard that he and Jerry had been locked over for the last few days. They simply kept moving the entire thing from location to location. The different scenery somehow kept their repeated battles from growing too old, too quickly.

Looking down at the ladies, "Am I to take it that you ladies actually enjoy the sight of two sweaty men with their shirts off. Hammering away at each other, no less?"

Pam looked over her shoulder, "Damn right!"

"Hear that Reverend," nodded Vitosk to his chess mate, "what we have here is a double standard. They are all for this barbarism yet when someone suggested a Friday night wet T Shirt contest they went ballistic."

Julia turned around on the bench, "that was you that put that in the box wasn't it? I knew it all along you old pervert."

Picking up a pawn, Vitosk moved it forward and looked at the accusing faces of the ladies bellow. "Don't look at me my dear Julia. I told you before that we don't have such things in Russia. Someone had to even tell me what it was. I deduce that if fingers needed pointing… Well let's just say I would not look too far from home on that one."

Jerry was busy studying the board. Vitosk tried to break his concentration, "What would God have to say about Wet T shirts Reverend? I suppose that your book covers it in some form or another."

Looking up at Vitosk, "Well since you two are so much alike Yurgani, why don't you tell me?"

"Quite right Reverend," Vitosk looked down at the women, "I think he would rather like the embellishment of his creations."

Both Pam and Julia turned there backs on him, "asshole."

Vitosk only smiled and looked to his chess companion, "my point exactly."

Dee looked up when she heard the thud. She watched Pete take a step back and winced, "Damn that must have hurt."

Thinking about it no further, Dee went back to her notepad that she had been furiously scribbling away at. She did not sit in the bleachers, but rather, down on the opposite corner of gym. She planted herself right on the floor. Dee liked her solitude but after a very short period of time her own cabin walls got old. Now she would tolerate a group of people but, only at the outer edge. Most of the crew thought of her as stuck up. Dee didn't want them to know she was just bad with people. She preferred the simplicity of math. There she never failed.

Sitting down on the floor next to her, Jack groaned. He had just finished his watch which was a bit longer than anyone else's. That was by his own choosing of course. "What's up kiddo?"

Looking up from her pad, Dee made eye contact for just a second, and then went right back to scribbling, "you know that knee is going to keep on hurting you old man. That is if you don't cut back your time down in the command module anyway."

It was most likely true even if Jack did not want to admit it. Doctor Mike had warned him about his prolonged periods, in zero gee sections of the ship, without enough exercise to compensate for it. They were all on Mike’s personal fitness program aimed at keeping them healthy in this environment. Mike was in a lot of ways just like Dee. She was constantly experimenting with her drive and Mike was experimenting with the crew. The data that they both brought back from this trip would be just as important as the survey material gathered at Curly, Larry, and Moe.

"I know, I know woman. Stop reminding me would you."

"Well you wouldn't let anybody else get away with it," said Dee speaking from experience. She would spend twenty four and seven down in the Drive Monitoring Module if she could. Jack had made her stick right with Mike's health program which, of course, separated her from her loved one. That left a certain edge in her voice when speaking of the matter.

Jack shrugged it off. He had put up with the bitching for two and a half years now. One more complaint from her was no more going to phase him now than it did when she first started. "You know if you don't stop all this work crap you're going to go crazy eventually."

That was far from the truth. For Dee, the work was all that kept her sanity intact. Everyone had their own way of doing it. For the most part the ship ran itself. The computer automation was that good. What the crew did was make sure the computer kept doing its job properly. The down side to that was it left a little more spare time than it should have. After the first year when most of the ships SNAFU's had been tweaked out, the work schedule had slacked up dramatically. The fact was that they had turned this hastily built starship prototype into one very efficient machine. Seldom did things go wrong, now, that were not seen coming for a long time in advance.

"What?" Dee motioned to her short hair. Most of the women had cut their hair that way. It made working in the Zee Gee sections easier. "Let my hair down you mean?"

"Why not?" replied Jack. "You know I thought you looked pretty with your long hair. You know, the way you had it before we left?"

"Oh," her eyes rolled, "that's certainly original Jack. I wish I had a nickel for every time one of you guys on this tin can told me that."

"I'm serious Dee. It would be a change of pace anyway. You could keep it pinned up like Julia does when she's on her watch."

Dee took the pen out from behind her ear and began scribbling again, "Yeah, well she had a reason to keep hers that way. Besides, if I had that long dark hair I don't think I would have cut mine either."

She was normally sore about this particular topic. It was not what Jack came down here for anyway. "Did you see the daily reports yet?”

The computer generated reports on the ship systems, position, and other such dreary data normally did not change that much on a day-to-day basis. Dee had long since stopped being in a rush to read them. "Not yet, maybe I'll get around to them when I've cleared the three weeks back log off my desk."

Jack stood and his attention had shifted to the match, "Pete! You call yourself a Marine!"

Gary pushed forward as his opponent stumbled back. Red, who was acting as coach, stood in Gary's corner cheering him on. "Way to go kid! Beat him now and you get to take on the Sergeant Major next week."

That broke Barringer’s concentration. His eyes popped out and he looked back at his coach, "What!"

Pete saw the opening and put his last strength into a right cross. Gary realized where he was just soon enough to look back and catch the full force of the punch. Considering who his opponent would be next week he thought the wisest course of action was to stay down once he was there.

Jack propped up against the wall and then slid back down next to Dee, "Well anyway, I think you better look at them. If I'm right, we got just one last bug to work out in Saiid's software."

____________________________

In the command module, "It's an option, not a bug," protested the computer engineer with the fake pointed ears. "Jesus Dee, you were the one who put the parameters in there. I warned you when you did it, remember?"

Dee was still amazed by the figures she kept getting from the computer. "This can't be right Jack. This is impossible."

Vitosk pulled himself down into the core of the command module. "Of course it is not. If people like you had managed to completely dominate science over the years, we'd still be waiting for lighting strikes to obtain fire. My theory states that such a thing is possible, and I believe that you have just proved it for me Doctor Brewer."

Jack strapped himself into his chair. It was a rather odd looking contraption next to the viewing screens. The chair looked normal enough but, it was situated in a cage like frame. "I take it you read the daily's Yurgani?"

"Most certainly, unlike some I read them as soon as they are printed out. I would say, Doctor Brewer, that in your search to do this very thing you have over looked the fact that you already had."

He knew! Probably for days even! Dee winced, "If this is true, Jack, we need to start breaking right now. Even so we might still miss the target."

Saiid was looking at the faces of those in the command module. He was lost, "I don't get it. What happened?"

Jack rubbed his chin, "Well Mister Spock, I think it is what you would call Warp Speed."

Unlike his hero, Saiid was grinning ear to ear, "Fascinating! Way to go Scotty!"

Already agitated, Dee stomped her foot on the bulkhead, "Who the hell is this Scotty person?"

After two years she still didn't know. Jack still laughed. Nobody would tell her. Whenever she asked, everybody usually busted a gut. It was one of the longest running jokes aboard and probably the only secret.

Jack commanded, "Sergeant Major, call a department head meeting in the galley. ASAP."

Pete wiped his forehead with a towel. The meeting had come up so fast that Pete had no time for a shower or change of clothes. This was something big. Nothing ever happened on Hermes, anymore, that did not come with an overextended warning. He came in and pulled up a chair at the end of a galley table. The bench seats were already all taken.

Jack took note of his fellow colonel, "Pete you're sweating all over my good furniture." There was no response, so Jack got on with it, "Guys, I'll just go ahead and tell you this. Hell, I don't know any other way to put it. According to what we were just looking at it would appear that this ship has some how managed to break light speed."

There was a slight rumble in the room. Anyone with a background in science was definitely stirred by this revelation. Harry Wu was actually up on his bench doing an absurd little dance. Saiid, who had a background that was mostly in science fiction, was even more excited but, not as impressed. Only the less technically inclined seemed to think about the more practical consequences. Red Darby scribbled some notes since he normally kept the minutes for each of their staff meetings. He was about to say it but, then figured it was not his place.

Pete saw that and voiced what he knew was on Red’s mind, "We're almost there aren't we?"

The room went silent when they all suddenly realized this. Jack nodded to Pete, "We'll be in the outer reaches of the Alpha Centauri system within the week. So it looks anyway. Saiid is going to double check everything but I really don‘t expect any of this to be wrong."

"It's correct," added Vitosk.

The prospects thrilled Pete, "Jesus, we got a lot to do here."

Red made double sure he jotted all of this down in his journal too. Then another, a frightening, thought hit him, "How in the hell did we miss something this big?"

"Looking at the damn computer too much," replied Jack.

Dee added, "The ETA date on the monitors didn't jive with the astronomy data we were getting. Once the ship reached it's top speed according to the computer it didn‘t change anymore. The date was really changing all of the time but for speeds faster than we thought we could push. So the program just left the date the same since we had already told the computer that it was wrong."

Red had presented a very good question and pointed out a mistake that worried Jack. It was his fault in the end. This was not just the usual responsibility that commanders take for all sorts of things by default. He had played it conservative with the drive for starters. Being something new, it was doing things they had not counted on. He had allowed his chief drive engineer to get behind in her work. It was not just Dee of course; all of the departments had gotten slack on checking their data. No one compared notes like they had in the beginning. Jack had figured they needed a break and so he let them drift. That time was over now. The serious work of was about to start.

Pete tossed his towel into his closet. He fell on the bed while still covered with sweat. Julia sat down next to him and shook him in an excited fashion, "Is it true Pete?"

The moans were mixed with sort of a yes. The exact words were, "I hurt."

Julia might as well not even have been listening to him, "Oh there'll be plenty of time for that later. I can't believe it! We'll be there so soon. It might mean that we can get back to Earth in time so Joey can have a normal graduation from a normal high school. You know my own prom was so messed up. I wanted him to have one that was normal. All that might be possible now!"

There was another moan from Pete's head which was now buried in a pillow. Julia leaned over and hugged his sweaty back. "Oh don't fret, he was just a psychologist."

"He hits any harder than any PHD I ever run up on."

Julia did not seem to take notice. A meek sounding call came from her, "Pete?"

"What babe?"

She hesitated for a second, "When we get home. Things between us.... well you know. I mean.... "

Pete knew exactly what she meant. He really couldn't blame her for being concerned either. They had moved in together over a year ago. Even now Pete was still procrastinating about doing what he had planned on since the beginning. Pete was not even sure why he was waiting. He thought it might be fear. The scuttlebutt running around the ship agreed. On deeper reflection, he knew that was not the reason. Pete had searched his soul. He found that he did love her. He wanted to marry the girl. It was just that every time he tried to get the words out they hung in his throat like a piece of food that came out of the galley.

"Julia," moaned Pete.

She was stroking the short hairs on the back of his head. Her eyes were drifting lazily across the room as her head rested between his shoulder blades, "Yes Pete."

"Want to get hitched?"

The jumping up and down on his back was painful. She then rolled him over and tossed a leg across his waist. Julia reached down and pulled his head up. She kissed him as Pete tried to suppress the pain. Julia was grinning from ear to ear, "Yes! Yes!"

Shuttle Pilot, Air Force Captain Bill Morton, was leaving his cabin for the shuttle air locks to begin the long process of getting them prepped for a landing. He stopped outside the Marine Colonel's room as he heard the commotion. "Don't those two ever stop?”

There were mounds of the stuff. Jack didn't bother with printing them all out either. He did finally print out the high orbital shots from the OK probe. The computer had joined them all to form a very good map of the surface of Alpha Centauri II, or more commonly known as the planet Moe. It was the primary destination of this mission. Alpha Centauri III, the planet Larry, was on the other side of the star right now. Curly was orbiting around Proxima, another star all together, and unless they found something real interesting there, it was just going to get a fly by.

Moe was a good place to start. It was smaller than Earth with only .87 the Earth's gravity. That made getting to the surface and back up to orbit a bit easier. The planet had no satellites to speak of and it only boasted one continent that was only slightly larger than Africa. The atmospheric reports were sketchy but the climate seemed to be rather gentle.

As Jack studied the map, tacked up behind his desk, he realized that he only had a few serious candidates for landing fields. He had two basic considerations about the spot he picked. The first was an abundance of drinking water. If the OK probe was to be believed then even the oceans of Moe contained fresh water. That was the secondary consideration however. The knock on the door made Jack think of the first.

Larry Barlow came wandering in. He somehow could manage to get grease on his clothing in the most sterile of environments and Hermes was just that. They had all went through a massive decontamination effort before final boarding. Even mites, who were on everyone from the day they were born till death, were not on board the ship. It was a place that some one with allergies would consider absolute heaven.

Jack shoved a picture across his desk. Larry picked it up and looked before asking, "how much more data do we have on this spot?"

"Not much," said Jack with a pitiful shake of his head. "I've been pouring over every bit of data in the OK file and that's the best I've found so far."

It was an overhead-magnified shot of a desert. One area was circled with a red marker. It very much resembled the Southern California desert near Vandenberg. "Looks a lot like a seasonal lake bed to me. It might work and it’s sure as hell long enough."

The orbiters used them as emergency landing strips back home. While nobody had ever actually taken off from those areas in California, the specs of the shuttle itself indicated clearly that they could. The surface was long and hard which was essential. More important, and to the point, was that a dry desert lake bed was relatively smooth. "So Larry, you know more about those birds than even I do. How much work would you have to do on the under carriages to push our chances of a good take off up to around 99 percent."

Larry did not want to answer that question. There were too many unknowns to even put a percentage on it. Larry had also been delaying the undercarriage work for other reasons. They were of the more personal kind and for that reason alone he would not bring it up.

The modifications that he proposed before they even left Earth were decided, by people higher than him, to be not that important. It was felt that in order to push up the launch date the work could be done in route. Larry had been mad about it for more than just being put off. Those idiots did not understand that a good test was in order after making those kinds of changes to a complex machine. The other reason, the main one for Larry, was that he was terrified of having to leave the ship to do it.

"Uh, you know I'll have to EVA to finish all of that don't ya? Best wait till we get in orbit and you get a chance to send those probes down."

"Do it now Larry," said Jack as he spun his chair around to face his computer screen.

Larry began thinking of reasons to wait, "What about that thing Dee was talking about, the deceleration problem and all. You know if you actually leave the ship?"

"Vitosk said it was all right," remarked Jack as he began going through multiple batch files looking for every single probe photograph. Jack keyed his intercom, "Dee, pick up."

To get privacy on the intercom you had to use the hard-wired phone system. The intercom was a sort of radio relay that anyone could listen to. Jack’s phone began to beep and he picked up. Larry took his cue and got up to leave. His head hung low all the way to the door. Jack was too busy to notice, "Get up here I got to ask you a question about something."

"I'm busy Jack," replied Dee. She was in the lab on the other spin module. The morning’s revelations had her hot to find out exactly how this happened. "Can't it wait?"

Jack scrolled down the screen on his computer and then back up again. He guessed it was not that important. "Uh, you’re busy I guess. Look, there are one or two number sequences missing in the probe photos."

There was a moment of unexpected silence that took Jack by surprise. Finally Dee answered in a cocky voice, "So?"

"So," replied Jack, "Where the hell are they?"

"We had some bad ones Jack. They were just discarded. That was all," the phone went dead.

What had gotten into her? Jack looked on his calendar that was hanging by the door. He had the days marked off that he stayed away from the women on board, "not even close. Wonder what's up with her?"

"What's wrong with you?" asked Vitosk from across the lab.

Dee did not even manage a short answer for the Russian. She simply got back to work. Vitosk could not help notice how jumpy she had become. He finally ignored it and got back to his community service as he saw it. "Now Joey, the principle of entropy as outlined by some moron two centuries ago."

The boy had no problem remembering. He was proving to be a very bright young lad. Vitosk enjoyed his time with him and thought that the boy would one day turn out to be a fine communist, such as himself. "That all matter seeks the lowest possible potential energy."

"This principle was changed when?"

"Twelve years ago."

"By whom?"

The twelve year old pointed and smiled, "You did."

"What is the principle now Joey?"

"That all physical matter seeks lowest potential energy which is why it exists in the first place."

Dee had only been half listening but stopped when she heard that, "Ha!"

Vitosk raised an eyebrow, "You disagree Doctor Brewer."

She bit on the end of her pen, "Did you tell him that there are still parts of your paper that not everybody accepts. That's the biggest one."

Vitosk simply nodded, "Well someone forgot to tell your engine out there Doctor. It certainly isn't acting like any standard six cylinder with twin cam and over head injectors. At least not one that I have ever heard of."

"My drive is not violating that principle. The Tachyions are slowing down, not speeding up."

Vitosk nodded in agreement, "Yes, they are only violating Einstein’s laws of relativity."

"Einstein’s work was incomplete."

Vitosk sat back in his chair, still certain, "so is our understanding of the universe. It is true that physical matter is ‘lazy’ but then it is also breaking down."

"Yes Vitosk, but it's reforming into new physical matter," she was almost pleading with him on this point.

He countered as if this was a fencing match and he had just easily deflected a thrust, "not all of it."

Dee rolled her eyes and slid off her stool, "that amount is so minute it doesn't even effect equations."

"Yes Doctor Brewer, while that is true as well, the fact remains it is going somewhere. Now you are sounding more like a politician. The simple truth is you can compromise with nature all you like and it is still going to keep on doing what it does. Take Jerry for example. His religion is really a belief in a science that is two thousand years out of date. You on the other hand are hanging onto a religion that is two hundred years out of date. Religion and science are really one and the same here. Once we learn them as children we don't want that perception tarnished in the least. Hence we would have to admit that we have lived our life to that point by a falsehood. Those who are more wrapped up in the falsehood are those who fight the hardest to save it."

"You said it, not me," Dee replied. This conversation was old now. They still fought it on a daily basis though. "You are implying Doctor?"

Harry was almost sorry he walked in. He knew the point they were now at. He tossed his books on the table and then thought, "Oh let's see if I can guess. Yurgani, I think this is the part where she says, 'your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not yet helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes.' That about it?"

It was a reference that only Harry Wu and Joey got. They both laughed which left the Nobel Prize physicist and engineer a bit puzzled. Harry shrugged it off, "You know? Star Wars? The movie that Saiid plays every other week?"

Dee paid little attention to those things. Vitosk had been so bored that he actually watched it one time, "I do believe that movie was ludicrous in the extreme."

Harry pulled a stool up to the table, "Yeah particularly that part about flying to other planets. Total science fiction. Joey you ready for US History?"

Vitosk stood up and collected his glasses and books, "American History, talk about fiction. I think it's time for me to go."

There was no better place for the shuttle crews to meet than in the orbiters. They all huddled around in the flight cabin as Pete looked over his to do list. All during the briefing he could not help but notice Larry, "did somebody just shoot your dog?"

Bill Morton laughed, "Jack is sending him out for a walk."

"Oh," replied Pete, "You going to be all right with that Larry?"

"Sure Pete, just fine." His tone betrayed his words here.

That was something of no small importance. Pete would go slowly with Larry and his fear. There was no one else who could do this work properly. "All right guys, I finally came up with an A and B crew list."

"Uh hum!" Red cleared his throat. The crew was exchanging glances and looking toward Pete with cutting eyes. Red rubbed at his mustache and played with the pen in his pocket, "aren't you forgetting to tell us about something first?"

That blabbering woman! How many others knew? The way this crew was, it was likely that the entire ship knew by now! "All right guys, who told you about the most intimate details of my personal life?"

Red laughed, "personal life? Hell Pete! Where do you think you are? I heard it from Gina up in the galley this morning. I think she said Cindy and Carlos told her. I guess they got it from Pam."

Pam! That girl couldn't keep her mouth shut if somebody was trying to take a piss in it! That made sense though. Who would Julia naturally tell first? Telling her to keep it quiet was naturally an exercise in futility.

Bill added, "What we want to know is, when’s the bachelor party going to be?"

"Oh no," replied Pete, "You guys don't need me as an excuse to get drunk. I'm not going to be your next victim."

Last year at the, New Years Eve party, Jerry had gotten drunk and passed out in the galley. Most people thought it was a novelty to see a preacher drunk so he naturally drew a crowd. A small commando team was formed and led by Sergeant Major McCandles, with Red Darby as acting exec, who then proceeded to roll poor Jerry in toilet paper and tie him to the galley bench no less. Jerry took it as any person with a hangover would. He didn't even notice when he tore through the toilet paper and stumbled into the latrine to puke.

Pete was going to kill her for spilling the beans! Right now, though, he had to get his crew under control, "All right! On a business note here. Did everybody note, on their print out, who I put on the B crew as the co pilot."

They all had obviously not bothered reading it. Every head went down. When they finished, no one commented so Pete continued, "Then we need to start bringing Joey in on these meetings I guess. Everybody's all right with this now?"

Red shrugged his shoulders, "Why not? He's better in the simulators than anybody else."

"That's bumping you to crew chief Red. Most people would get a little upset at getting upstaged by a twelve year old."

"No problem here Pete," and there was really no problem. Red was too old for all the ego crap and besides he was the journalist here. While he had forgotten that often since they left he had not forgotten what he wanted out of this mission. This trip meant a bestseller that would translate into a retirement pension that he was so far lacking.

"This trip here is for the young anyhow," Red also added.

"Well said," replied Pete. He got on with the briefing.