CHAPTER 33

It took a little getting used too but, then again, Dee supposed the one thing she had was time to do that. Like all other humans, growing up on Earth, Dee developed a sense of what was up and down. She thought in terms of squares, boxes, and straight lines. There was always a floor beneath your feet and a roof over your head.

In the near zero gravity of the drive train module this was not the case. You couldn’t think in terms of floors or roofs because there were none. The rounded walls were packed with electronics, tools, and the occasional hand hold or Velcro padded footrest. In the time that Dee had spent installing everything in this module, she had learned how to only use the supports sparingly. After a while she realized they were actually a hindrance to her working except when she needed to move from one spot to another.

Even if Dee was becoming proficient at working in such environmental conditions it did not mean she was used to it. Her mind was too well trained to think in more conventional terms. When she was talking to Billy Sams, more than once she found herself using terms like up and down which, were almost meaningless here. Since there were no windows or real reference points she could not even be sure of more conventional ship like terms such as aft and forward, or starboard and port.

A system of sorts was developing. They started talking to each other using the various equipment as reference points. Then the ship started moving! At first Dee had not even noticed. She knew that the chemical thrusters had been fired but, that was only because there was an execution log on one of her monitor screens. The little arrow blinking by the schedule of events told her what was happening. Dee had not considered the effects until she slowly started to notice them.

The biggest problem here was figuring out what was moving and what was not. At first it was hard to tell if anything was moving at all but, then Dee started noticing that the equipment panels right in front of her face were suddenly no longer there. They had somehow rotated away. She simply assumed she had drifted and then changed her position to compensate. After it kept happening she slapped her forehead and said, “well duh. We’re spinning.”

That would have been easy enough to deal with but then came the next little quirk. Soon she found that both she and her tools were drifting horizontally away from her various work stations. This had always happened to some degree but now it was getting more noticeable. Dee growled at that but not really because it was not that big of a problem. Her frustration was more grounded in the fact that she had failed to think about it before it happened. She knew better!

There were lots of advantages though. With no gravity there was no weight and working on heavy machinery was simple. The drive train had been designed so that a single person could tear it down if need be. That required thinking in bulk and spatial dimensions as opposed to weight. It was different and, again, required Dee some time to get used too. How many times had she asked for help to pull something that, on Earth, even two people couldn’t lift? Billy kept laughing at her when he had to remind her that she could do it alone.

Despite the little adjustments that Dee was having to make in her thinking, she had to admit, she was having fun! This was the realization of everything she had ever dreamed of. This propulsion unit was working! Soon they would fire it up for real! They had already done so in several tests and all looked well. Dee had wanted to take it out for a short spin, a shake down cruise, but time constraints had limited that to some orbital test of the critical systems.

This time the cause wasn’t even the Japanese but rather, the position of Earth in relation to their destination. Traveling in space was not as simple as pointing your vehicle in the direction you want to go and stepping on the gas. The reason for this was the same one that caused Dee’s drifting around the compartment. Everything in the universe was always moving and had it’s own velocity and direction of travel. How important that was depended on what you were trying to do.

Flying from one planet to another, in the same solar system, was much like trying to jump off a speeding bullet and land on another one. Flying to another planet that was in another solar system was even more complicated. It was like trying to jump off a speeding bullet, fired from a gun on a moving train and then, land on yet another bullet fired from another moving train. Then again, as Dee considered, the example was probably easier than what the Hermes was trying to do.

At least bullets travel in straight lines, more or less, for the duration of their flight. Planets don’t do this and you have to account for where it is in the circle it is making around it’s sun. Your momentum will never take you in just one single direction because as you leave the orbit of a planet you are actually being pushed in several directions at once.

A comparison would be in throwing a baseball. The velocity and path of the ball is greatly dependent on when the thrower releases the ball from his arm. If he releases it too soon the ball will arc high and miss the strike zone. If he releases too late then his ball might have more velocity from the added few seconds of transferred energy from his arm but, it will be wasted when the energy transfers once again, a moment later, into the ground. The ball will fly to low.

Once again, the comparison was easier than reality because velocity and direction of travel were not the only factors in play. The last big factor was the very thing that Dee was having a problem compensating for as she worked. It was easy to know how things were supposed to be but you could only truly understand it once you had worked in those conditions. Even that was a misconception. There was always gravity. It was really a matter of how much gravity and that was dependent on a great many things.

Distance was a factor there. The further away you got from Earth the less influence it had on you. That was not because it was no longer pulling on you but more like the influence of other bodies overwhelmed the effects of a little spec like Earth. At the moment, in orbit, the Earth was still the single biggest factor in terms of gravity. It was trying to pull Dee, and the entire ship, down. What kept that from happening was the second factor.

The ship was traveling at a speed that kept the gravity in check. If you went too fast you’d pull away. If you were going too slow then you’d burn up in the atmosphere on your way down. A stable orbit was really just a matter of getting up enough speed to establish an equilibrium between gravity and velocity. Of course, in this case, breaking the orbit of Earth was only one consideration. They were trying to fly to another star and that required breaking the pull of the sun. It was a lot, lot, bigger than Earth with far more gravity to worry about.

The only good news was that the same rules applied for Alpha Centauri. There would come a point when the Hermes would use the gravity of that star to help carry them forward and draw them right to their destination. At that point the drive train and chemical thrusters would only be needed for course corrections. Till that time however, the drive train was going to have to work at building enough momentum to reach that point. The chemical thrusters were going to be required to correct the direction of travel. It should have been simple enough since calculating such things as velocity and direction are exact sciences. The problem is that you never know all of the variables involved until they actually happen.

All of this combined to mean that favorable launch conditions, towards the nearest neighbor to Sol, was one that only came every so often. The window of opportunity was narrow and had to be very exact in order to be even reasonably close to the needed parameters. In four more orbits of Earth, taking about twenty minutes a their present velocity, they would hit one.

Dee watched her mission clock ticking down. Whatever she had left to do in here would have to wait. In a few more minutes she would be metaphorically flipping the switch. The particle accelerator tracks were always running but now at full power. The multitude of tanks that were filled with gasses needed to contain the tachyons to restricted space were ready and waiting. The air pumps that would blast those gasses out, behind the ship, were all set to go. The charging rods that would ignite the gas were powering up. The dish that would collect the released energy from the quick cycles of small explosions was ready.

In reality, Dee would simply type a password in the computer and then her finger would tap the enter key. The manual settings, brass keys, and other safeguards had already been set. The computer could then take over as soon as the command was given and the authorization recognized. Dee had the password and login typed in already. Her finger was just hovering and waiting. She kind of giggled thinking, “one small tap for a woman, one giant leap….”

Then she saw him floating at the other end of the module. Dee’s smile vanished along with any joyous feelings she had. She commented to Billy Sams, “I think they said something about coffee.”

Sams had also seen him come in but paid him little mind. Now he could see the looks passing between them and decided that maybe coffee was a good idea. Billy flew off and once gone Dee snorted out, “well I knew I wasn’t going to be able to avoid you forever.”

Gary Barringer acted quite easy in the face of her hostility. Dee was all too aware of how good he was at that. He never let anyone rattle him, Dee most of all. He was also very good at picking his times and places and it could be no coincidence that he showed up at this moment, right before they powered up.

“It’s probably what Isaac had in mind,” Gary replied. Then he surprisingly switched subjects on Dee. “That’s not why I’m here.”

Dee thought about that before replying, “you mean on this mission or pestering me right now?”

In his charming way he replied, “both actually. Isaac told me to ask you once we were underway.”

There was only one thing he could be talking about, “you signed a civil non disclosure Gary.”

Suddenly Gary dropped charming and became very firm, “so sue me. Does Jack even know?”

Dee looked back to her computer screen and didn’t answer. The lack of a response was all Gary needed to figure it out. His reaction was a bit of a surprise too. Dee could never remember seeing Gary act angry.

He was not exactly red faced and huffy but there was a certain resolution in his tone that she had never experienced before, “you’re playing with all of our lives here Dee. I think that once we get out there, coming clean might be a good idea.”

Well she had known he had a flare for the dramatic, “oh please! Gary would you leave. You know my Uncle. You know he can get… well… hair brained about certain things. It’s nothing.”

At least he was doing as requested. Still, he was Gary, and he could not resist a parting shot at her, “he wasn’t the only one Dee. I for one seem to think they’re right.”

“And you’re all hair brained!” She wanted to say, “and you most of all,” but Dee could not quite force that out.

Fortunately when he left the call from the command module came in just at that moment. Dee had important things to worry about now. Gary could wait and why not? Hadn’t that always been the case?