Chapter 63

"Sundowner" had retrieved and stowed the messenger ship, dropped down into n space and was spacing for Lorn with an ETA of second dog two days hence.

The Trainees came up the chutes from E into C aft, passing through Orville's repair facility (he referred to it as his workshop), under the elevated hydroponics unit on the starboard side and the clean room on the port (with its rumoured treasure of three tonne slabs of gold and platinum), through the airtight hatch in the starboard side after accommodation bulkhead (and as usual somebody stumbled over the coaming to Colin Bolem's disgust - Colin had left the hydroponics unit at the last moment to answer the all hands call) past the Old Gym (now with the Sick Bay and the Medical Quarters), past the 'way to the starboard Boat Bay and through the airtight door in the forward accommodation bulkhead into the cavern of the Club.

The Sundowners, except the watch, poled, or walked down the companion way from the mezzanine accommodation to the deck and then out into the Club via the port airtight door in the forward accommodation bulkhead.

The different routes determined that the two groups remained separate, divided by the central catwalk. When Clare stood on the athwartship catwalk mounted to the forward side of the accommodation bulkhead, this immediately drew her attention causing a mental note for later action.

"Some of you, particularly in the Air Wing, don't know the details of the ship we ... ahhh, found, I suppose you'd describe it. Mr Cahlewis?"

Cedric clambered up onto the platform and addressed the gathering. He threw a holo using his PDA of the reclaimed vessel into the expanse above them.

"It masses about three hundred tonnes and is powered by an ion transfer fusion bottle power plant. I didn't detect it until it came through that downthrust from the cosmic layer. It seemed out of control and caromed off the hyper cosmic layer at a shallow angle and headed for us just as we were at zero velocity preparing to drop down into n space — I've analysed the 'puter tapes and the ship itself would probably have just missed "Sundowner's" hull by about a ship length but the 'puters are programmed to work with the volumes associated with raised shields and sails. If both ships had had shields rigged then there would have been a collision. As it was, it struck our expanding defensive shield. I don't think it had any shield activated as it probably had been stripped off by transitting that downthrust. It struck our triple layer indenting it and pushing the outer layer out from between, thinning it down to the point that there was a handsbreadth area of contact with the anti-electronics layer which caused the shut down of all electronics on the ship, including the inertial compensator. The bounce imparted to it by our recovering and still expanding triple shield put it into the layer and that dissipated the momentum, stopping it just at the cosmic edge.

Our friendly repair bot, Art, hitched a ride on a Lone Ranger scout and went up through the tunnel and retrieved the ship.

The passengers, they were not crew, were in secured life support pods. Seems when the inertial compensator failed, they impacted on the inside wall of their pods. Dr Saint reports they were mush; he recovered tissue samples to deliver to someone when we find who to give them to.

Art has examined the hull and reports no damage.

Mr Jang and I have inspected the power plant; it's fully functional and we have powered it up. Messrs Hobson and Windsor rebooted the things' 'puter and it comes on line beautifully; the only problem is that the anti electronic contact wiped it clean as a whistle — all that's left is machine language. So no joy there. With help from Threep and Art, they reprogrammed the 'puter using the spare 'puter in the starboard Boat Bay and the 'puter now works like a bought one. While the rest of us have been getting our jollies exploring the layer, Chief and assorted Black Gang have been playing with their new toy and we now have a space capable runabout.

The only shielding is a modification of our triple shield and is virtually adherent to the hull making minimal cross section — according to the manuals of which surprisingly there is a full set of printed volumes. Perhaps the owners didn't want others looking into the 'puter. At present we don't know if the thing has radiation shielding with its shield — it should have had to survive but we haven't managed to detect anti-radiation shielding. Perhaps the adherent triple was also radiation proof — that is my current theory.

The volume of shields is exponentially larger than the ship rigging them and contributes similarly to the resistance of the ship's velocity. When we game it on the simulators the thing plays as a warp speed. That is being taken with a small modicum of salt. We will explore that very carefully, very carefully indeed.

The cosmic hyper interface layer. About fifty thousand kilometres full of turbulence and radiation. N space shields are effective; sails are not — too high a particulate density. It's still as sick making as translating in and out of hyper.

Outer space. Still need n space shields for protection. The only propulsion system that works is the thrusters. That's because of the virtually absent particulate density. And because of the near absence of resistance, a little bit of thrust goes a very long way — as Miss Stanton and the Hobsen brothers discovered.

The major problem in cosmic space, as I see it, is navigation. I cant see navaids being placed soon; mainly because we ain't yet got a need to use cosmic space. We've got long sleep and support pods and that sufficed in the early days of galactic exploration and colonisation but once out of the Milky Way it's a long time between drinks. Our present star maps will have to be totally reworked even to work in the near cosmos because of refraction problems through the layer limiting the field of view not to mention the fact that our starmaps haven't picked up the non galactial stars because of those same refractive problems. If we were out in cosmic space looking in to the Milky Way disc then there is a cone of view in which we would see galactial stars and we could probably get a fix ... But, and a very big but, that would limit exploration to running about the outer edges of the Milky Way. Having said that, I'd remind you that exploration of Old Earth started off in a similar manner, sailing not straying out of sight of land.

Unfortunately, we can't spare the time to play as we are contracted to harbour and approach mapping of the south galaxy to keep up with the changes within the galaxy.

Out of this we've got a new ship with a new-to-us drive we can play with and that will have to suffice to keep our interest.

Last thing, we have no idea of the origin of either the thing's port of departure or destination now where it was built other than to be able to say that the manufacturing processes are consistent with known methods.

Boss, anything else?

Suits, dismiss to quarters."

...

Orville and Morg were in the Mess and looked up as Clare walked to the urn to fill her mug and add the extras. She joined them and skewed her head to look at the scrawl of figures and numbers on the paper in front of them. (PDAs were good for individual use but for two, working things out or gaming problems, screens or holos worked but for seeing where you'd been, slate and chalk still had a lot going for it.)

"Wotcha, you two?" she enquired.

"Morg is helping me with a problem that has been nagging me for years" Orville started "You know Cedric says anti radiation screens are actually a constantly replenished ionic paste held in position by an energy field?"

"Yah; so... ?"

"That messenger is warp speed according to the big simulator and its backed up by the battle 'puter; but I've done some work on that power plant — the ion transfer fusion bottle is a fuel hog but it delivers big time — but the power / mass ratio doesn't match up with the standard velocity graphs which only go up to cee anyway. When I did trade school, the graphs were presented as the result of experiment because the theoretical calculations just didn't work. I've long held a theory that the theory didn't make enough allowance for the fact that space, of any sort, is not an absolute vacuum.

I asked Morg to run some figures..."

"Orville made a point" Morg began, "that mass in space is irrelevant except with reference to gravity but it did reflect the size of the ship. But when I looked at it more closely, I found the ratio should have been power / shield volume and when you look at that factor you wonder if particle / radiation resistance becomes a significant factor and my preliminary work (waves his hand over the scribble) says it does.

"Sundowner" has extremely powerful propulsion and we are faster than any contemporary warship but not as fast as the tables would have you believe. We carry two types, actually three, of shields. Impellor shields, tuned shields, that is Dune, and defensive shields. Impellor shields give some protection from detection as they tend to prevent emissions going through them and absorb probing radiation to a limited extent. Dune tunes us to the surrounding electromagnetic radiation and when it is activated "Sundowner" actually accelerates; not much, but it does. That globe of defensive triple shield is like throwing out an anchor, but ... again the ratios if shield volume is a factor don't work. Then when you consider the effect of the Warshawski sails in hyper...

It's held that cee is the velocity limit. But I'm now thinking that is more the result of the creation of electromagnetic radiation — it all arises from disintegration of a nucleus and the release of energy stored in the bindings..."

"Suits, where is all this leading?" Clare interrupted.

Morg and Orville exchanged glances and then looked again at Clare, Morg very quietly said,

"We think we can build a warp speed ship."

Clare's eyes widened and then she seemed to mentally pause before nodding.

Clare slowly put her mug back on the mess table and sat bolt upright regarding her subordinates,

"That will probably be expensive."

"What will be expensive?" TJ joined them. "A bit of interesting news bye the bye; McCock and his lot have given — well actually sold - 119 to the Queen and they will man it for her as part of her bodyguard. Suits; so what will be expensive as I doubt if we couldn't afford it?"

"These two think they can build a multi cee velocity ship" Clare informed him.

That statement gave TJ pause for a moment and then he waved his hand for more information. Morg told him the same information, perhaps a bit more expanded and a bit more technical. However, the scribbling was used in the discussion and so took longer.

When Morg finished, TJ was silent and his shipmates could almost see the neurones convulsing,

"We need Cedric."

"Not now; we've got to clear for dinner." Clare decided; "Morg get Cedric briefed. You lot can think about it overnight and we'll have officer call eight morning; we've got a full day's spacing before Lorn and this will occupy the time."

As the officers dispersed to their duties, Clare accompanied TJ to their cabin,

"What do you think's gonna happen about 119, TJ?"

"Only got WAGs, Clare; interesting times though."

...

Clare cast her gaze about the occupants of the two tables pulled together in the Club; she had acceded to Cedric's request to hold the conference in the cavern of the Club. He also needed Threep and Art present and that meant the Doctor had to be present.

Clare had slept in the "off duty cabin" the previous night and had not been aware of the disturbed night TJ had had,