Chapter 4: The First Trip

With all his stores laid in, his air tanks filled, and batteries charged he was ready to attempt his first exploratory trip. To begin with Jason decided to simply repeat the same translation he had used for his exploratory probe. If he happened to notice anything interesting or unusual during the translation he would cut power to the translation engine and make a more detailed observation.

To start his exploration Jason used his truck to haul the pod to an isolated area of forest which was little visited and had plenty of tress and brush in which to hide the truck while he was gone. He unloaded the pod into a small clearing at the off to the side of a little used dirt road and hid the truck in the underbrush to one side of the clearing. Then he climbed into the transfer pod, dogged down the hatch, and sat down at the control panel.

For his first trip Jason decided to repeat the initial 5 minute translation he had started with the unmanned probe unit. Since the circuits he had installed in his pod were different from the ones he used in the small test units Jason had built before he wasn't sure exactly how it would perform and what the speed of transition between nodes would be. He had some calculations extrapolating from what he had measured in the small units and modifying them for the new circuit he was using for the pod. While this gave him an idea of what to expect there was still a considerable uncertainty about what would actually happen.

Jason spent a couple minutes checking to ensure everything was ready. The video monitor in front of him was on, displaying the video from his forward camera. Finding nothing left to be done he flipped the switch that activated the drive circuit. Immediately Jason noticed a flicker in the picture being displayed on the screen. At the same time the meter displaying the current being drawn by the drive circuit flicked upward momentarily before dropping back to the previous value displayed before. Several seconds passed and then the screen flickered and current surge repeated. This process continued until the 5 minute timer Jason had programmed expired and the drive shut down.

Looking at the screen displaying the view from the forward camera Jason could see nothing in the view which was different from that which had been displayed when he started. The same trees and shrubs which had been in view still seemed to be the same as when he had started. Jason switched the view to each of the other cameras in turn; still nothing seemed to be different about the view outside. He checked the exterior pressure gauge which indicated normal air pressure outside. A couple more tests gave him confidence it was safe to leave the pod and explore outside. Jason crawled through his tiny airlock and stood up outside.

Jason's first impression was nothing had changed and had had not gone anywhere at all. However, when he went to where he had parted the truck a few feet away he made a significant discovery. The truck was gone! Even more significantly, there were no tracks to indicate his truck had ever been there. This provided Jason with the first conclusive evidence that he had indeed gone somewhere but now the question became, where was he now? From the looks of the surroundings it was obvious that Jason had not gone anywhere in terms of geographic location but the missing truck indicated he had still gone somewhere.

It seemed to Jason there were two possible explanations for where he was now. The first possibility was that he had traveled somehow into the past or future, or alternately, he had passed into an alternate universe. It seemed that it wasn't possible to determine which explanation was correct without more analysis of the data his instruments collected as well as exploration.

Jason took a few minutes to carefully examine the outside of the pod, taking special care to look over the wiring and coils for the drive. He wanted to make sure the drive had not somehow become damaged during the translation to this node. Jason wanted to make sure that nothing was somehow damaged during the translation to this node and if anything needed repair he could fix it before doing his next translation.

It seemed prudent now to determine if he could return to when or where he had started from so he reentered the pod and sealed the door. He returned to his seat in front of the control panel and ran a quick check to make sure everything was working correctly. Satisfied with the results of his check he activated his pre-programmed return sequence. Again he waited through 5 minutes until finally the computer automatically shut down the drive. He quickly shut down the system, squeezed out through the airlock, and rushed over to where he had left the truck. A wave of relief flowed through him when he discovered the truck was now exactly as he had left it parked.