IronStar (78 page)

Numerals

Dok - one

Dat - two

Fira - three

Data - four

Dak - five

Fika - six

Nash - seven

Doi - eight

Faz - nine

Dakka - ten

Bell Codes
(Two or three
chimes: low and high tones rung by watchtowers or ships)

low low
 
- all's well

low low high - enemy in sight

high high low - enemy approaching

high low high - under attack

low high low - call for cavalry
(call for assistance if ship)

high low low - party of interest
approaching

low high high - all clear

I offer these few thoughts, excuses
and rationalizations for the Civilium’s FTL (faster-than-light) technology,
which is based on manipulation of the (plausible but not-yet-discovered) Higgs
particle. I find FTL indispensable in the plot of a space opera, but in
accordance with the goal of minimal assumptions, I have attempted to avoid
doing further violence to the physics of The World As We Know it. Thus the
Civilium does not have FTL communications or sensors. I assure you this is as
great an inconvenience for the author as for the various navies which must
somehow contend with the fact that their targets can run faster than they can
be seen, and that while running, they themselves cannot see. I have attempted
to deal with the tactical and strategic consequences of
run-or-see
in a
logical, and hopefully satisfactory manner.

When Higgs particles were
discovered (in Kirrah’s universe), they turned out to come in two versions,
later dubbed
yin
and
yang
. These are virtual particles having the
same properties except for opposite spin gravitational moments, somewhat
analogous to electrons and positrons. They are in fact commonly and continually
produced in the so-called ‘quantum foam’, but always in equal and opposite
numbers, and always too fleeting to detect.

Early attempts to produce Higgs
particles artificially, appeared to be unsuccessful because they are (almost)
always produced in
yin
/
yang
pairs, absorbing no energy and with
no other discernable consequences. It was only by accident (but that’s another
story) that the means was found to produce just one type of Higgs. The result
was the production of pseudo-mass, or as a General Relativity physicist would
say, the artificial curvature of spacetime.

The useful thing about artificial or
pseudo-mass, is that it doesn’t have any inertia. Thus a vessel which generates
such a phenomenon can in effect hold the pseudo-mass in front of itself rather
like a carrot on a stick, and fall, forever faster, towards the ‘mass’. This of
course requires energy, but the energy is not required from the Higgs
generators. Quite a lot of energy
is
required to run them, but that’s
true whether they’re accelerating or idling, and not a problem for a
civilization with compact fusion generators.

Instead, the kinetic energy comes,
in effect, from the vacuum itself. The pseudomass is maintained by an excess of
yin
or
yang
Higgs particles, which annihilate their opposites in
the quantum foam, and it is in fact the resulting imbalance in the foam, which
powers the process. Unfortunately for those who would like to follow the
‘trail’, any imbalance due to the passage of such a vessel is promptly erased
by the effects of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

The
dangerous
thing about
pseudo-mass, is that there’s no reasonable limit to how much can be created in
a small volume around a vessel. Since pseudo-mass produces gravity
indistinguishable from that produced by real matter, early experiments tended
to tear the (unmanned) vessel apart with tidal forces. This was resolved partly
by more precise control of the Higgs generator, and hence of the precise shape
of the pseudo-mass and the resulting spacetime curvature.

It was also alleviated by the
production of a
pair
of curved fields, one nested within the other. The
resulting field diagrams look like a double-walled tube, if you stand back and
squint just right, hence the name Tubedrive was coined. The combined effect was
to give a reasonably flat, stable gravity inside the Tube, while allowing quite
monstrous field gradients outside. The practical limits on a vessel’s speed
became the engineering limits on keeping the inside space free of destructive
gravity gradients, which becomes more difficult as vessels grow larger, and to
a lesser extent, heavier.

Another inconvenient consequence of
creating pseudo-mass at sufficient density to drive a vessel, is that any
material substance nearby would be drawn into the Tube as though into a black
hole, with all the resulting tidal heating, radiation, accretion disc and other
untidiness which would quickly vaporize anything material in the vicinity,
including the imprudent vessel. Thus no atmosphere landings by Tubedrive.

Once Higgs generation was possible,
it took theoretical physics some time to catch up with advances in drive engineering.
One breakthrough came with the realization that the drive did not, in fact,
violate conservation of momentum laws, but simply exchanged momentum with a
volume of space that theory claimed was rather larger than the observable
universe. The fact that such an explanation was proposed, then accepted by
mainstream physics, gives some insight into the desperate state of theoretical
physics at the time. The circumstance under which it was later experimentally
demonstrated, is one of the ingredients to another story ("Upfall").

The net effect of all this is that
a Regnum Tubeship could initiate its ring of Higgs generators, build its own
custom black hole, and fall below the event horizon. While inside it could
continue to accelerate, turn or stop, dragging the massless black hole along
with it like a fly in a bubble. The only energy required to perform this feat
was the few megawatts to maintain the Higgs field, and to dump surplus heat
into radiators.

Technology

In writing this story, I have
followed several strategic goals. One is that I would ask my reader to believe
as little new technology as possible, consistent with the needs of the
storyline, and two, that the technology would be integrated in a plausible and
thoroughly consistent way with the laws of physics as best we know them today.
Thus we have FTL travel but not FTL communications, and laser-guided particle
beam weapons but with strict limits on their firing, imposed by energy storage
capacity. The c-fractional bombardment scenario is as real as careful
application of the equations of Special Relativity can make it, and here and
elsewhere, I have done my best to make sure the math works and the physics is
realistic. If you’ve ever winced to see a space ‘fighter’ bank and zoom in a
vacuum like a WW2 fighter plane in atmosphere, you will understand why I feel
strongly about this. Science Fiction should not contribute to the popular
dumbing-down of science.

The “universal translator” is
another area where I have attempted a higher standard of realism. Kirrah’s
computer, and Civilium computers in general, are not mind-readers and require
some minimum amount of data to assist with translation. In other words, she has
to learn the old fashioned way. Her computer is quite clever, and capable of
correlating sounds with images of lips, body language and context to present
her with its best guess of meaning. And of course, many of the idiomatic and
cultural contexts can only come with experience. But it still takes
work
.

A word about Runes:

In the course of recording this
story, the author made use of the Millennium Runes™, a 53-symbol set following
the principles of the ancient
Futhark
(Norse) runes, but re-imaged for
life at the beginning of the 3
^rd
millennium.

I gave these runes to the Talamae
culture, but unlike most Terrans, they don’t use runes as a way of
fortune-telling or demanding psychic answers to difficult questions. It was
understood that the tablets and symbols function to jog the mind free of its old
habits, to open new ways of looking at issues, and thus to release the wisdom
already present in the supplicant. In other words, the runes functioned to draw
forth the wisdom of the person using them, rather than the other way around. In
fact the Talamae word for rune-drawing,
ito’lae’mara,
literally means
‘wisdom drawn forth’, that is, drawn forth from the user.

If you asked a Talamae whether the
runes themselves were sacred or wise, they would have looked at you in
astonishment and said, ‘Of course not, they’re just pieces of stone or wood
with markings on them.’ Then they would go right on using them in ways that
might seem most remarkable, to Terran-trained minds.

When rune-drawings are mentioned in
this story, the runes recorded herein were the runes actually drawn by the
author for that place in the story, using the first symbols drawn. No attempt
was made to ‘adjust’ the symbols or fit them better into the story. They are
recorded exactly as drawn, blind, the first time in each instance.

If you are interested in learning
more about the Millennium Runes™, contact the author. They became available on
Terra in the first few hours of the 3
^rd
millennium A.D. The fact
that the number of chapters in the story is equal to the number of runes in the
set, was noted only at the end of the story and is, as far as the author knows,
another complete ‘coincidence’.

Regarding
ath’lae’mara
:

The Talamae priests in this story
practice a healing technique called
ath’lae’mara
, or
‘light-drawn-forth’. Like the runes, this element of the story is real. Each
instance of
ath’lae’mara
in this story is based on events witnessed by
the author, either in his own practice of one of the so-called ‘energy-based’
healing techniques in use today, or while observing another practitioner at
work. On Western-culture Terra in the early 21
^st
century, this
technique goes by several names, including Therapeutic Touch, Healing Touch,
Attunement, and Pranic Healing. One presumes a culture in which this was
studied and used for millennia, would have skills beyond our own.

Huntsville, Ontario

October 2013