Chapter 6

"Charlie, one second before second stage burnout, we will go to warp drive. I have rigged the second stage to blow at burnout. It would be safer to test the ship, before we engage warp drive, but when Mark quit the mission, our discovery became inevitable. Even if Mark does not talk, the Jimworl may decide to destroy Mars1. We will do our shake down procedures in another star system," said Worel.

Charlie wrung his hands and asked, "Have you had time to program the computers? This has to be perfect, or we will be part of the fireball."

"There are some ship capabilities that you don't know about. Mars1 will generate a force field that can deflect the explosion," replied Worel.

Mars1 sat atop the Falcon Heavy and the Falcon Heavy lighted up. The Mars1 computer began increasing the thorium reactor output. Four hundred seconds after liftoff, the thorium reactor was producing 39 megawatts of power, 21 megawatts was waste heat and 18 megawatts was electrical power. Five hundred seconds after launch, Mars1 diverted 14 megawatts to its warp drive and 3 megawatts to its force field.

The ship shook as the second stage exploded, and the ship was knocked around. The Mars1 computer enabled warp drive and the ship headed away from the sun at warp 50.

Mary, Melissa, and Jennifer were ex military. All crewmates were pilots except Charlie. Mary had flown the F15, Melissa had flown refueling tankers and Jennifer had flown both the F16 and helicopters. But Charlie had never flown anything other than commercial flights and he suffered immediate motion sickness. He was incapacitated and feared that he would die. The girls enjoyed their first taste of space travel. Worel noticed Charlie's predicament and spoke to the computer, "three quarters gravity". The computer introduced gravity and the four humans looked at Worel. Worel laughed, "Isn't gravity nice? We will be comfortable and healthy. Maybe I can surprise you with some more ship's goodies."

Worel sat at the main controls and for an hour made adjustments to ship systems. The crew gathered around and learned.

"This is amazing; we are flying in space and have normal gravity. I see only blurs looking toward Earth's last position. My displays are giving detail about ship's systems I know nothing about. Weapons system 1-fore, Weapons system 1-aft, Weapons system 2-fore, I never imagined a Mars bound ship would need weapons. What are these weapons?" asked Jennifer.

Worel turned facing Jennifer and explained, "The two weapons systems on your display are operational. We will build a third system. We have a xenon plasma weapons system, and an ion beam weapons system. The ion beam system ionizes hydrogen and shoots a beam of protons 50 microns wide. This system is problematic in a strong magnetic field. If there is no magnetic field, this weapon will cut through any hull with which I am familiar. Some force fields will stop it. In that instance we use weapons system two concurrently with one.

The xenon plasma system shoots a lot of mass and pounds a target until it breaks up into many pieces. Weapons system-1 slices a target into many pieces and weapons system-2 pounds a target until it breaks down."

Mary asked, "There are gas planets where we can get hydrogen, but where can we get xenon?"

"We have a force field that protects our ship from high velocity collisions with space dust. But we have a second force field. We have shaped this field like a cone and set it to collect gas as we travel. The xenon sensors activate this force field and capture xenon whenever it is detected. As you surmised, we collect hydrogen in large quantities by flying through gas planets," Worel said and he was enjoying his role as ship engineer. "We will find many planets with co2 in their atmosphere. We have plenty of electrical power to convert co2 to carbon and oxygen."

Worel paused, checked some computer readings and continued, "Each of us will become familiar with all systems so that everyone can do any job. This ship has capabilities that are beyond your imagination. But you will learn to control the ship completely. And I have to finish building some systems. So I cannot be at the controls at all times.

We are generating about 36 megawatts, and going 50c. Under these operating conditions, the Jimworl can detect us from a distance of ten million kilometers. They are watching for our heat signature, and we are watching for their heat signature. If something lights up and follows us, it may be them. It is unlikely that they will catch us while we are in warp drive; but if they can compute our direction, they can get ahead of us and wait. We are changing directions now, to confuse anyone following us." Worel entered more code into the computer.

Worel brought Mars1 out of warp drive, 5 days later. During the 5 day cruise, Mary, Jennifer and Charlie assisted Worel as he built their phasor weapon. No human military had any weapon similar to this phasor system. Carbon nano tube fabric was the key to this weapon. Four capacitors supplied 2 megawatt to each weapon sequentially. Each weapon can initially fire four times. Recharge time is 3 minutes. Each capacitor is made of nano tube fabric. Nano tube fabric is used as both insulator and conductor, and wound in alternate layers. The result was the highest capacity capacitor per unit volume ever made. Worel constructed 4 phasors systems, 2 fore, and 2 aft.