THE FOREVER GENE (THE SCIONS OF EARTH Book 1) (39 page)

One of the veterans came over to David and extended his hand.  "Clyde Snick," he said.  "I'm the director of operations around here."

"David Herald," said David, taking the proffered hand.  There was no point in trying to hide who he was.  "I hope my name doesn't make me persona non grata around here."

"On the contrary," said Clyde.  "We are very interested to hear from someone who has dealt first hand with our friends the Faerie Folk.  Come inside and have some breakfast with us.  Then you can have a look at what we are planning to do."  He bent down and looked through the open window of the Aventador.  "And later on, you can take me for a spin in this baby."

David took the opportunity to clean up, before joining Edgar and Samantha for breakfast.

That afternoon, he sat in on a briefing given by Clyde Snick.  "As you are aware," said the director, "the final member of our 'Phone ET' team has arrived."  He nodded to Edgar who received a smattering of applause and a few mock whoops from his DOPE compatriots.  "The message he envisioned has been composed and is ready to go.  It has been reduced to binary code, so don't try to read it without a professor of mathematics present."  There were a few chuckles.

"Atmospheric conditions are perfect at the moment," he continued, "so tonight's the night."  There was more applause.  "Be at the shack at eleven hundred hours sharp.  We will conduct a few preliminaries and transmit the message at midnight.  That is all."

"The shack?" whispered David to Edgar as the briefing broke up.  "That doesn't sound too promising."

Edgar didn't have to grin; one had been permanently plastered across his face since he had been reunited with Samantha.  "Don't worry, it's not like any shack you've ever seen."

Edgar was certainly right about that.  When they walked into Hat Creek's state of the art transmission centre that evening, David had to grin wryly at the misnomer.

Watching the sound engineers go through their protocols, Edgar kept up a running commentary for David's benefit.  "The new diodes compress the bandwidth to a millionth of that of ordinary terrestrial frequencies, but the transmission can still go out multi-directionally," he concluded.

"Right," said David.  "What does that mean?"

Samantha leaned across her beau's lap from the other side.  "It means it's the loudest radio ever built," she said in a stage whisper.

Edgar looked heavenwards in mock exasperation.

When midnight arrived, the transmission began.  There was no symbolic throwing of a switch; the whole process was digitally programmed.  It wasn't possible to see the actual transmission and the assembled onlookers had to make do with watching a graphic representation on a giant wall-screen.

The message took about two minutes to send and David found the whole thing somewhat anticlimactic. Still, he joined in the applause when Clyde announced that the transmission had been successful and that humanity's plea for help was surging towards the stars.  Then he set it to loop continuously and bowed with a flourish.  The show was over.

Someone cracked open a few bottles of champagne and began handing out the liquid in a motley variety of glasses, cups and mugs.

David took one and turned to Edgar.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

Edgar shrugged his shoulders.  "We wait."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Katya scowled at the two astrophysicists.

"What do you mean it won't work?" she demanded.  "How hard can it be to reverse the vector which brought us here?"

Hans sighed.  "It isn't that simple, Katya.  You see, wormhole travel is not linear.  It is not just a matter of reversing the equations.  What you have to do is to calculate the reverse polarity of each and every singularity event within…"

Katya rolled her eyes and interrupted him.  "I don't follow that mathematical stuff, Hans.  You know that.  Tell me what the problem is in a language I can understand."

"The problem is that you don't understand the problem," said Hans heatedly.

"No, the problem is that you can't solve the problem," countered Katya.

Hans threw up his hands in frustration.

"I wish you two would just get a room," interjected Harry in exasperation.  His comment hit closer to the mark than he'd realised and he wasn't sure which of them reddened more, the astro-geek or the ice queen.

"The problem is not with the equations," he said to Katya in a more soothing tone.  "We have done the mathematics over and over again and we think that we have successfully calculated a return vector."

"You think?" she said.  "That isn't very reassuring."

"Well, we've never done this before so we cannot be one hundred percent sure.  But all of the simulations have been spot on, so we are reasonably certain that the vector is correct."

"So what is the problem then?"

"The problem is a spatial one.  In order for a wormhole to take us back to Earth, we have to open it in precisely the same place we arrived."

"Surely we can do that?  Can't we calculate our rate and direction of drift since we arrived and reverse it?"  Katya still couldn't see what was so difficult.

"It has to be exactly the same spot," said Hans, re-entering the fray more calmly.  "Even if we do our best to retrace our course, we cannot possibly account for subtle variations caused by things like stellar radiation and gravity.  If we are out by even one kilometre, we could end up thousands of light years away from our intended destination."

Katya stared at him thoughtfully.  "So, we can't use the star charts to plot a new wormhole because we know the Faerie Folk have not given us reliable information.  And if we simply reverse the wormhole vector that brought us here, we can't be sure we will end up in the right place."

Hans nodded.  "Now you're getting it," he said.

"What if we do our best to navigate back to the spot where we came in?  Would the return vector get us back to within a few thousand light years from Earth?"

Hans and Harry looked at each other.

"Yes," said Harry patiently.  "But we can't bridge such a massive distance with ordinary travel.  And we can't plot a wormhole from there because we can't trust the Faerie Folk's charts."

"Why can't we plot one using our own charts?"

Hans took over again.  "The information in our charts is millions of years old.  You see, our data consists of light emanating from and reflecting off celestial objects.  The further away something is, the older our picture of it is."

"Yes, I went to those lectures too, Hans.  I know the difference between our star charts and theirs.  I realise we can't rely on our charts to open a wormhole from where we are now because we are thirteen million light years away.  But the closer we get to Earth, the more up to date our own charts are.  If we use the return vector you and Harry have calculated to get us as close to Earth as possible, the information in our charts should be good enough to enable us to safely plot a shorter wormhole back to Earth."

Hans had assumed a faraway expression even before she had finished speaking.

"She might be onto something, Harry," he said after a moment.  "It's risky, but it could work.  I will have to do some calculations."  He turned back to his console, intending to get right to work.

"Hans," said Katya.  "You have been working non-stop for a week; it's time for a break.  By my 'link, it is dinner time.  Let's get something to eat and then some rest.  The universe isn't going anywhere."

Harry agreed with her wholeheartedly and together they cajoled Hans away from his console and out onto the bridge walkway.  They heard voices coming from one of the dining cabins and, when they walked in, saw that there were about three dozen people eating at tables in the spacious room.  Katya saw Carson and Vitaly sitting at one of the tables and gave them a brief nod, which they both acknowledged.

The buzz of conversation in the room died as she entered. The 'crew', as she had been calling the people who had been on the ship when it blasted off from the Moon, took her frosty reputation seriously.  She decided to take the opportunity to give them an update and strode to the centre of the room.  "At ease, everyone, I won't keep you from your dinner.  As you know, Dr Mattheus and Dr Hasper have been working on getting us back home all week.  I am happy to report that they have successfully calculated a return vector."

There was a smattering of applause and a few cheers.  Katya held up her hand.  "But, as with all things astronomical, there are a few complications.  I won't go into the details now; but it is going to take two or more wormhole jumps to get the ship back to Earth.  And with that will come a lot of time-consuming preparation."

There were a few groans.

"But the important thing is that we are going to make it back," she continued.  "It is just going to take a little longer than we thought.  Harry, what is your best guess?"

Harry considered for a moment.  "We need to manoeuvre the ship back to our entry point, run the wormhole simulations again, send a probe to make sure we aren't going to run into anything nasty on the other side, then figure out exactly where we are, plot a second wormhole, and follow the same procedure again. I would say four to six weeks."

There were a few more groans and Katya held up her hand again.  "It could be worse, people.  We might have damaged our star drive in the wormhole, or been swallowed by a black hole when we arrived, or we could all be sitting in a Chinese prison.  I don't think a six week pleasure cruise through galaxies no human has ever seen before is all that much of a hardship.  And we don't need to worry about running out of food; this ship is provisioned for sixteen thousand people and there are only one hundred and thirty-seven of us on board.  We are the first humans ever to travel intergalactically and every one of you is going to be a celebrity when we get home.  Make the most of it."

She joined Hans and Harry at the table they had commandeered and beckoned Carson and Vitaly over.

"Good speech, commander," said Vitaly approvingly as he sat down.

"I'm giving you two a task," she said.  "Most of the people on this ship didn't sign up for this trip and I don't want them becoming restive or rebellious.  I want you to assign research projects to everyone who is not directly assisting Hans and Harry.  Stress that the more data we collect the more valuable it will be when we get back."

The two men nodded their assent.

"And make sure that everyone keeps to a day-night schedule," she continued.  "I don't want people going stir crazy through a lack of sleep."  She glared at Hans and Harry.  "That includes you two.  I don't want you working for weeks without sleep and turning into blithering idiots.  You both do enough stupid things already."

She turned her full attention on Hans.  "Haven't you ordered me any food yet, Hans?  I'm starving."

The German flushed scarlet for the second time that day and hastily began flicking through the menu on the table top touchscreen.  The other three hid grins behind their hands.

Katya wasn't surprised when Harry's four to six week estimate turned out to be on the low side.  The check and re-check regime imposed by the two astrophysicists was frustrating and time-consuming.  It took them days just to collate the data needed to calculate the ship's rate and direction of drift since arriving at what they began calling Point X; their point of entry into Centaurus A.  Then followed a lengthy manoeuvring process; with Vitaly carrying out tiny course corrections as they got closer and closer to Hans and Harry's estimation of where Point X should be.

When the two astrophysicists were finally happy with the ship's position, they insisted on recalculating the return vector from scratch.  Just to make sure that the alteration in their course and position hadn't had some unknown effect on the equations.  As it turned out, it hadn't.

Eventually, they opened a wormhole and sent through an advance probe.  They insisted on collecting a week's worth of data from the probe before pronouncing the destination safe.  Then they conducted the practice run again, sending through a different probe to rule out any glitches in the probes themselves.  They compared the data from the first probe with the data from the second probe and confirmed that it was the same.

All in all, it was nearly five weeks before they announced that they were ready to go.

Katya ordered the crew to assemble in one of the passenger cabins, reassuring them that everything had been double-checked and explaining exactly how the life-support cocoons worked.  Although everyone knew what to expect, having already experienced wormhole travel, there had been no time for a proper briefing on the last occasion.  She made sure that it was understood that the initial jump would not take them all the way to Earth; she didn't want panic in the ranks when they got to the other end and found themselves in unfamiliar territory again.

She put Carson in charge of the people in the passenger cabin, and returned to the bridge.  She joined Hans, Harry, Vitaly and the six technicians who would make the jump on the bridge, one to each console.  She had assigned the central pilot's console to Vitaly, and strapped herself into one of the others.  She barked the order to go and then tried to relax.  She was not much more than a passenger on this trip; the astrophysicists would manage the process of acquiring the wormhole and Vitaly would do whatever flying was required.  Her task was to stay conscious so that, if anyone had a problem, she could step in.

She watched spellbound as the roiling mass of matter and energy formed by the star drive coalesced into an enormous vortex.  Vitaly set course directly for the imposing phenomenon and she had to fight off an attack of vertigo as she watched it sink inwards, centre first.  As the ship entered the funnel it had created, she caught a brief glimpse of an immense tail stretching away into the distance.  Then the ship entered the wormhole's gravitational field and was catapulted forward, careening through the hole in space for a long four minutes.

Katya gritted her teeth, determined to keep her stomach under control this time.  When Earthworm emerged into normal space again, she gave herself a moment to take a deep breath and then, as the external feeds came back on line, she concentrated on calculating their new position.

Hans beat her to it and gave a whoop of excitement.  "One thousand two hundred and seventy-two point seven four light years from Earth!  We are back in the Milky Way, guys.  We must have been no more than a kilometre and a half away from Point X."

Relief swept over Katya like a wave.  They weren't out of the galactic woods yet, but at least the first part of the plan had been successful.  And this close to Earth, their own star charts should be reliable enough to take them the rest of the way back.  Hans immediately began work on the next phase and this time the others were unable to tear him away from his console.  They left him to it and joined the rest of the crew who had started an impromptu party in the dining cabin.

Before calculating the next vector, Hans, Harry, and their assistants spent a week carrying out a verification process of the human star charts of this part of the galaxy.  They assimilated all of the observable changes and then began calculating the vector.  When it was complete, they sent through the first advance probe.  They received no feedback at all; the machine seemed to vanish completely.  They waited a few days, rechecking everything, and then sent through a second probe.  It also vanished instantly.

Katya, Hans, Harry and Vitaly held an emergency conference and decided that they would have to abandon the vector.  They had no idea what was at the other end of the wormhole and they couldn't risk running into something that would destroy or cripple the ship.  It was Katya who came up with the best alternative; divide the journey into two vectors.  The first would be calculated to take them to within a hundred light years of Earth.  Then they would be in a much better position to calculate the vector which would put them precisely in orbit around the planet.

A little dispirited, they began the whole process over again.  It had been three weeks since they had made their successful first jump and morale on the ship had begun to wane.  Katya made sure that Carson kept the crew busy with their research projects and her insistence on following a day-night schedule kept most people on an even keel.

Thankfully, the next jump was a success.  The probes that were sent through gave the all clear and the trip was mercifully short and uneventful.  It had taken another six weeks, but they were now less than a hundred light years from home.

After another celebration, they got to work on the final leg.  Hans and Harry were ultra-cautious, determined to get the final jump just right, and it was another four weeks before they decided that everything was completely correct.  By the time they acquired the third wormhole, excitement on board was at fever pitch.  The crew barely noticed the trip, it was a few seconds long and wormhole travel was old hat by then.