Frontier: Book One - The Space Cadets (7 page)

She turned away, coolly. “I know
who you are,” he continued. “And I know how you survived the
wars.”

She stopped again in her tracks,
and turned back towards Aisha.

“
We
’
re
leaving,” she said. “Now.”

I remember the night I had my
epiphany. I was sitting in a trench, afraid to put my head up in
case it was shot off. It was like the previous century and a
quarter had never happened. Then, there was a blinding flash of
light, brighter than a thousand suns, and I knew civilization had
begun its grind to a slow and painful halt…

“
Interstellar
travel,
”
said the teacher, Miss Abby, who seemed
impossibly tall and blonde, “isn
’
t just
possible, but it
’
s in the here-and-now. We
have it!”

Her legs were so long that Aisha
wondered if she was born in microgravity. But then her words sunk
in.
Interstellar Travel.
No longer the realm of science
fiction. It was real.

“
However,” continued the teacher,
“to understand the nature of it, you
’
ll
understand why it is we can
’
t do it
easily. Not yet, anyway.”

She called up a graphic, showing
the solar system, with the sun at the center, and the planets
orbiting along the plane of the ecliptic.

“
Every solar system,” she said,
“has a sphere of icy debris surrounding it. It
’
s called the Oort Cloud. In our case, it
’
s about fifty thousand A-U
’
s
from the sun. That is, fifty thousand times’ the distance of the
Earth to the sun. It
’
s really far
away.”

“
But studying it gave us some
clues about the nature of gravity, and in particular the force
properties of gravity. It has a wave like nature, like any other
force. But what happens when waves interfere with each
other?”

A French boy, Jacques, answered.
“You can have constructive and destructive
interference.”

“
That
’
s
right,” continued Abby. She spread iron filings on a piece of card,
and turned on a speaker beneath the card. Classical music filled
the room. The deep bass caused Aisha
’
s
ears to throb. The fine filings vibrated from the sound, and
started to form patterns. She turned on another speaker, and the
filings began to form patterns for that too. In some places there
were no filings at all.

“
And just like with any other
destructive interference, there are null spots, like
these.”

“
Wait,” said Aisha. “So if there
are areas of null gravity, from destructive interference between
two stars, then--”

“
Then the space around that area
forms a kind of bubble. If you travel into it, headed in the
general direction of the other star, you are instantaneously
transported towards the Oort Cloud surrounding that
star.”

“
That
’
s how we get interstellar travel?
No warp drive or hyperspace?
”

“
Nope. But what
’
s the problem with this approach?”

Soo-Kyung spoke up. “There are
many,” she said. “Not least, how do we send a ship the fifty
thousand A-Us to the Oort Cloud in order to find one of these null
zones? And once we
’
re there,
it
’
s still a very long journey to any
potential, prospective planets.”

“
Correct,” said the teacher. “But
also, how do we get back once we
’
ve done
so?”

“
How do we even know the ship made
the journey successfully?”

“
Wait,” said Aisha, a thought
growing in her mind. “You
’
ve done it
already, haven
’
t you? The closest star is
just over four light years away, so you might have sent a ship four
or more years ago, and then detected their transmissions, which
would take four years, at the speed of light, to let us know that
they made it in one piece. Or at least their transmitter
did.”

“
So,” said Soo-Kyung. “Did
you?”

“
Yes,” said Miss Abby. “We did.
And just over a year ago, we got confirmation that the ship made it
all the way across the gulf between the stars.”

“
Amazing,” said Aisha. “Travel
between the stars. The galaxy is open to us.”

“
Not
quite
yet,” said Miss
Abby. “But maybe soon. A few problems to solve first.”

“
Wait,
”
said Soo-Kyung.
“
You got confirmation just over a
year ago?
”

“
Yes.”

“
And wasn
’
t it just over a year ago that the Academy opened
enrollment to anybody that could qualify?”

“
Why, yes it was. Your
point?”

“
Is there a
connection?”

“
There
’
s
always a connection, in everything. The question is, of course,
whether that connection actually
means
something or
not.”

“
Does it?”

“
Time will tell.”

“
Time will tell?”

All eyes were on the exchange
between the teacher and this brash young Korean student. And when
people saw the flag on her nameplate -- that of North Korea --
there were gasps.

“
Wait,” said Aisha.
“There
’
s something else, isn
’
t there?”

“
What could you mean?” There was
mischief in Abby
’
s voice. She was waiting
for someone to make the connection.

“
We discovered it very easily,”
said Aisha. “Surely, if there were other alien races, they would
discover it, too. And one of the reasons why we believe
we
’
ve never encountered aliens is that it
takes too long to travel between the stars. But this discovery
makes star travel quick and simple, relatively speaking,” said
Aisha. “So where are they? Surely we would have seen some evidence
of them by now.”

“
That
is
the question,”
said Abby finally. “And the one we
’
re
working on answering.”

“
By going out there. By looking
for ourselves,” said Aisha, nodding. “It makes sense.”

Soo-Kyung furrowed her eyebrows.
“Does it?”

The teacher looked to her again.
“What do you mean?”

“
If they do exist, and
they
’
ve not visited, there
’
s a good chance we want it that way, isn
’
t there? I mean, we
’
ve been
listening for radio signals for years and have heard nothing. Why
is that?”

“
There are many reasons that could
be so,” said Abby. “And the most likely explanation would be that
most civilizations are like ours, if they exist, and that they’ve
only used radio waves for communication for a very short space of
time. So, say a civilization has used them for a hundred years.
That means there
’
s only a one-hundred-year
window in which they would reach us. If a civilization is around
for, say, ten thousand years, that
’
s only
one percent of their civilization time that they use the
waves.”

She looked around the room. “It
gets more complex when you think of distance,” she added. “Say that
civilization is fifty light years away. If they reached the ability
to produce radio waves one hundred fifty-one or more years before
we started listening for them, then those waves would have passed
us right by, and we
’
d never know they
existed.”

Aisha shrugged “So listening for
radio waves is--”

“
Like hunting for a needle in a
haystack the size of the moon.”

***

There was a buzz around the
lunchroom as the new students walked in. Some looked on and
sneered, and Aisha more than once heard words like
“rabble.”

She took an empty table and was
joined by Soo-Kyung. Some of the other new students joined them,
while others looked around for a different table.

Oblivious, Soo-Kyung wolfed her
food. “Surprisingly not bad,” she said between
mouthfuls.

“
What happened last night?” Aisha
was surprised to hear her own voice as she blurted out the
question. Since the night before -- and Soo-Kyung
’
s response to Seamus -- it had been burning inside
her. She
’
d been afraid to ask. There was
something intimidating about the Korean girl.

Soo-Kyung looked up at her, and
Aisha could see a decision being made behind her eyes. Then,
something changed, and she went back to her lunch without saying
anything further.

***

For the rest of the day, they were
paraded from class to class. They saw more of the station, and
explored the various habitats. While they lived in the rims of the
wheels that made up the station because of gravity effects, there
was a lot more to the station. They accessed these areas by
climbing
‘
up
’
from the rims towards the central hub.

“
As we climb,” said Mister Porter,
their primary attendant, “the effect is unusual, because
you
’
ll feel yourself getting lighter. The
wheels that made up the station are made up of concentric circles,
with the outermost operating at one gee.”

Aisha nodded, remembering how
astronauts measured gravity. 1G, or one gee, was the equivalent of
the surface of the Earth. Gravity was measured relative to that, so
that with the moon having approximately one-sixth of the gravity of
the Earth, so they called it 1/6th G.

“
At the hub of the wheel,”
continued Porter, “there is no rotation, so you’re weightless, like
in outer space.”

“
What happens there?”

“
First-year cadets,” he continued,
“will fly training craft in that space. While some of you might be
familiar with flight on a planet
’
s
surface, doing it in space is very different. So, the safest way to
train is at the central hub of the station where we have a close
simulation.”

One student was incredulous, and
Aisha noticed the French flag on his breast. “We learn to
fly?”

“
Oh yes,” said Porter. “And a
whole lot more besides!”

For the whole trip Soo-Kyung
walked no more than an arm’s length from Aisha, but
didn
’
t say a word. She caught her
friend
’
s eye from time to time, but the
Korean girl just gave a downward look that almost appeared to be a
bow. Aisha didn
’
t push it.

***

Classes finished for the day, they
returned to their quarters, exhausted. Smith was waiting at the
door, with Seamus nowhere to be seen. There was a flicker across
Soo-Kyung
’
s face that almost looked like
disappointment.

Smith nodded to her, and she
returned the gesture. “Can we talk,” he said to Aisha,
“alone?”

For the first time that day, Aisha
saw a small smile on Soo-Kyung
’
s face. She
nodded, and entered the apartment, leaving Aisha with
Smith.

“
I’
m
sorry about last night,” he said. “I think we came across a bit
strong. I hope we didn
’
t scare
you.”

“
It
’
s
okay,” said Aisha, realizing that she meant it, but also curious
about what had spooked Soo-Kyung. “But don
’
t talk about Soo-Kyung, I want to talk with her
directly.”

“
Okay,” he said.
“Walk?”

“
I don
’
t
even know your name.”

He smiled. “You
’
re right. Patrice.”

“
Isn
’
t
that a girl
’
s name?”

He laughed. “Not in Canada,
apparently!”

She liked his natural laugh. There
was something so sincere and unguarded about it.

“
So what do you want to talk
about?”

“
I have been here for almost six
years,” he said. “Almost since the beginning. There were only two
wheels then.”

“
You must have been, what,
eleven?”

“
Ten,
”
he said.
“
But my parents thought it was best
for me to come here.
”

“
That
’
s
rough. You must miss them.”

“
I do, and I don
’
t,” he said. “I rarely saw them when I was
Earth-side, as I was always carted off to various boarding schools.
I think I miss my sister most of all.”

“
I’
m
sorry, that must be hard,” said Aisha, putting her hand on his arm
gently for a moment.