Chapter No.6. Discovery

The next day, I found both Janet and Sharon at the command station.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"So far, it appears that there are four rocky planets and two gas giants orbiting a G5 V class main sequence star with a temperature around 6600 K," Sharon said. "Two of the rocky planets are within the habitable zone of the star, but we're too far away to determine their atmosphere compositions or whether they have liquid surface water."

"We're approximately a month out at our present velocity," Janet said. "We also need a slight course correction to arrive at the planet's predicted position. I can adjust the course correction to whatever velocity you need to get us there sooner."

"Good. Let's begin the correction now. It'll take about twenty minutes of engine operation to speed us up." I went over to the button to activate the G-seats.

We got into the girdles and then stepped up into our seats and strapped in.

"This is going to be rougher than the last engine maneuver," I said.

They didn't like that, but they were prepared for it.

"COMA, make the course correction and take us up to seventy five percent the speed of light."

"Engine propulsion will begin in T-minus ten minutes."

We remained silent and resolute the entire time. The engines came to life and slammed us into our seats. I wasn't sure how being at near 6 G's for any extended time would affect us. I remember my Air force career where I sustained much more than that in tight turns in a Raptor 5X fighter, but it was for much shorter times.

Ten minutes of torment ended the burn. I could tell that it had affected the two women, who were not really used to G-forces.

I looked over at the main command station screen and saw something that scared me.

"We're back in hyperspace!" I yelled. "COMA, turn the ship around and initiate a burn to bring us back out to normal space."

"How the hell did we get back in hyperspace?" Janet asked. "I thought we had to be up to ninety eight percent of light for that."

"I don't know. Evidently, we were wrong about that. The bad news is that if we don't get out of hyperspace, we could end up passing the star system completely."

It only took five-minutes to turn the ship because the wheels were still locked. The engine-burn only lasted two-minutes. When it was complete, Coma turned the ship back around, unlocked the wheels and started them rotating.

"After unfastening and climbing out of my chair, I went over to the command station. "We're at eighty percent of light," I announced.

"Thank goodness it's over!" Sharon exclaimed. "I thought my eyeballs were going to explode."

Janet wasn't happy at all. "This is ridiculous!" she blurted.

I smiled. "We'll have to go through deceleration when we get there."

"Shit!" Sharon spurted.

"Thanks for reminding us," Janet said with a frown.

I laughed.

Janet and Sharon sat down at the command station and activated the astronomy scan equipment. While they were trying to determine where we were headed, I examined the ship operations list.

"The ship is still in good shape despite all the stress we put it through," I said. "I'm not sure why we went back into hyperspace."

"Luckily we're still on course for the planet," Janet said. "Except we're now less than two weeks away at our current speed."

"I should be able to get much better readings on this system's planets now," Sharon said. "I suppose the computer will have to work its ass off to make all of the velocity correction calculations."

I stood up. "I think I'll go to my bunk. According to my clock, it's time to catch some shut eye."

"Yeah, we'll be doing the same," Janet said.

I walked back to the crew living section, stripped to my skivvies and climbed into my bunk, plugged pods into my ears and chose some soft music to sooth my abused body.

I fell asleep but the noise of voices brought me out of slumber. My bunk was right next to the shower unit, which meant that if the two women were going to take showers, they would pass my bunk, which meant that I would see plenty of skin. I guess they didn't care, so I decided not to say anything. Besides, I didn't assign the bunks.

I waited to early morning to take my shower after a run around the wheel deck, after which I grabbed a jelly doughnut and coffee before joining them at the command station.

"We're on course to the system, but we'll have to slow down about twenty-four hours out from the planet," Janet said.

"Oh, we've already decided on the planet?"

"Yes, the fourth rocky planet is at the outer edge of the habitable zone, but it has enough carbon dioxide and methane in its atmosphere to keep the planet warm," Sharon said.

"What else do we know about it?"

"Not too much yet. It has oxygen in its atmosphere and there are some land masses, but it's mostly an ocean world. We're still too far away to see much of what's on the surface."

"The star appears to be stable," Janet said. "Based its spectral readings, I would estimate this system to be about five billion years old, which is more than enough time to evolve life. The star shows lots of the expected metallic lines in its spectrum, a sign that's it was capable of forming habitable planets."

I leaned back in my chair. "the question is; is anyone home?"

"We're not detecting any radio transmissions," Sharon said. "When we get closer, I'll be able to determine if there's light sources on the dark side of the planet."

"Yeah," I said with a smile. "That's a good indicator of intelligent life."

"I would not be surprised if we find intelligent life on this planet," Janet said. "Especially since it just happens to be the planet we were headed to."

I sighed. "Yes, that's a good point, but I can't imagine how they would have known that it was the home of intelligent life." I paused. "I think we should try to determine where we are in relation to Earth."

"That's not going to be easy," Janet said. "But I might be able to calculate a possible line from our supposed original course by extrapolating backwards."

"That's assuming this ship didn't make any course corrections before it went into hyperspace and assuming that a course through hyperspace is straight and not curved."

"We'll just have to assume that it didn't change course and hyperspace is flat," she said.

"In the meantime, I'll see if I can determine why this big slug is so easy to get into hyperspace," I said.

To do that I headed to the engineering wheel deck where I could examine the engine operations without asking COMA.

I looked over the original engineering diagrams for the antimatter production unit and the fusion power modules that provided propulsion power. What I found was confusing. It appeared that several modifications had been made to the antimatter production unit. Obviously, the engineers were experimenting with various configurations.

Basically, antimatter is created by accelerating electron beams around a doughnut shaped torus containing protons that were positioned around a gamma ray emitter, which was powered by a nuclear reactor. That method produces antimatter in very small quantities, but it can be accumulated by trapping it in a magnetic bottle. Antimatter, in the form of antiprotons, are reacted with matter, in the form of protons, to create the heat necessary to cause fusion.

However, the engineers were aware that the antimatter production method was capable of causing a quantum flip, an event that could cause space-time to invert to a dimensional shift that didn't obey Einstein's relativity laws.

What I couldn't understand is why this would happen at less than light speed. The only conclusion I could come up with is that it was a quantum effect, which is the same as saying I didn't understand it.

Maybe Janet and Sharon had better news.