Chapter 54

"Captain Gort, get underway to Cosmic space, please."

"Aye, aye, Commodore.

Coms, to all ships, conform to my movements.

Officer of the watch, when coms report all acknowledged, move to the hyper at the northwest at one hundred gravs."

"Aye aye, Ma'am. Quartermaster make ready; Engines prepare to answer bells."

"Quartermaster, aye."

"Engine room answers ready, sir."

There was the quiet buzz of conversation emanating from the com positions and then,

"All acknowledged, Ma'am."

The OW received a nod from his Captain,

"Quartermaster, ring one hundred gravs at standard acceleration, come to two nine five, zero seven five."

"One hundred gravs, two ninah five, zero seven five, Sir."

"Vector" began her journey to the hyper limit trailed by the rest of the task group with the VWs and the MCs each in a flat box formation.

"Fly ops, deploy "Shriek" to reccy the hyper" ordered Slow into her boom mic.

There was no perceptible response but some five minutes later the forward screens showed "Shriek" accelerating for the hyper limit. She was a mere speck when there was a flare indicating turnover preparatory to the low velocity translation into hyper. Some minutes later, the report came back,

""Vector" "Shriek". Hyper clear at the lower levels to the range of Period. Over"

""Shriek, remain in place to observe. "Vector" clear" Slow ordered and she remarked to McCock, "having those Satcoms makes it easier for all concerned; she doesn't have to bounce about like a yo-yo as we did in the past."

McCock nodded agreement.

The task group translated without incident through to hyper rising up the levels with all movement ceasing just beneath the layer. The order was passed to prepare ships for hard space and when all confirmed ready, McCock passed the order for individual movement and for each vessel when through to bring up shields to protect against cosmic rays and to move to an RV point one kay klick toward U93. McCock was being careful as the layer did throw vessels about during passage as a function of passage velocity and formation passage was untried. It required over an hour for the task group to pass through the layer. However there was an incident — R1, the second last vessel through, was thrown some hundred klicks up. Investigation into the incident did not find that R1 had acted differently and R2 using identical parameters passing after R1 had experienced no problems. Sir Henry suggested transient localised turbulence and set about examining the records of the layer as obtained by every vessel that had transitioned since first passage; this kept him entertained during those boring time frames when nothing was happening on the overwatch.

The group formed up on "Vector" and moved in close formation toward U93 monitoring the beams fromU92 and U96. McCock ordered a screen of UVAs (U40s) toward the southwest to locate U99, as the 'fly-by' was now designated, which was tagging the Chencon fleet. The U40 leading the Chencon covering screen was detected and the group turned west of south to intercept. McCock ordered the group to cross ahead of the Chencon's direction of travel, which was still direct track Sol-Mountserrat, and then to turn to locate the Chencon armada from overhead forming up with U99 in the centre of the group. The expanded UVA screen was distributed hemispherically about the group allowing Sir Henry to research cosmic space a further ten kay klicks out from the layer. Presently, the group was spread parallel to the layer some fifty klicks off.

Denny and Polack assisted by Peregrin and William began calibrating instrumentation for use in hard space using the Chencon rate of advance of one eighty gravs as the gold standard. Use of the third 'puter allowed the quartet to more accurately calculate distances against signal returns. U93, U96 and as the distance decreased, U92, signal strengths and signal returns from "Vector's" Period began to harden up the results to the point where the quartet was confident of velocities and distances using ship's instruments in hard space. Sir Henry was detached from his studies of the layer to double check the results. When Rosemary finally got his attention and emphasised McCock's assertion of the importance of the data, the knight had stared blankly at her for some moments, said "Oh" and turned his full attention to the matter. After half a day of deep concentration, Sir Henry expressed his satisfaction with the results but did point out that using Einsteinian maths would have given a slightly more accurate result than the Newtonian maths which were used. Denny accused Sir Henry of being a "bloody egghead" and pointed out

"Einstein maths would have improved the accuracy by about one tenth of a percent and would have taken us another five weeks to achieve the results."

"True" Sir Henry acknowledged "and when we get some time we can run the figures through and get the better results."

(Sir Henry did calculate the Einsteinian results eventually; spacers were satisfied with Newton while puttering about the galaxy but in universal terms an inaccuracy of one light year each thousand light years could put the spacer in the middle of nowhere without a road sign to be seen.)