Chapter 104

Dear Willow and Family,

I've been told I must keep this note short so I shall endeavor to do so. I would say that my job has given me a proctologist's view of the exercise of concubinage as practiced in the diaspora. I know that we, Marissa and I, have worked hard at becoming a family. I know that whenever a sponsor is willing to approach me on the issue of failed compatibility I always tell them that the concubine is their family member now, and that while the idea of marriage may have been degraded by the Confederacy I haven't noticed that people have stopped having families.

So I take it that everyone is wondering just how we ended up off track as we did. I honestly don't know. The AI insists that we encountered an uncharted space-time anomaly. But it won't tell us what type of anomaly, it only insists that we don't have the foundational knowledge to understand what has happened. GRR! I'm pursuing all the courses in physics that are available through the sleep-trainer. Then I'm looking into the ones on cosmology. One or the other ought to help me gain the 'foundational knowledge' the AI is certain that I lack!

We made enough survey drones to explore the area around us for about a light-year and that is what we have done, or rather we've sent the drones on their way and they should be reporting back soon. In the meantime we seem to have exited hyperspace (if that is where we were traveling) about half a light year outside a system containing a binary star. The main star is about the same spectrum as Sol, while the second is a massive super giant planet or possibly a brown dwarf orbiting about in the track and area where Uranus orbits Sol.

So we have been proceeding that directions for no other reason than that it is the nearest solar object to our exit point. We're moving on what Ensign O'Mally terms 'impulse power' though he says he isn't sure that it is analogous to what the creators of Star Trek imagined. Still the term is good enough to use in this case. That is we are accelerating and moving purposefully in a particular direction at speeds and powers less than necessary to make a hyperspace jump.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of planetary bodies in the system where we're headed, but we're too far away for conventional observation and we really need some more resources before we can build other sorts of observation devices.

It has taken quite a while to make our way close enough to see anything that might be orbiting either of the suns in the system we're heading toward but now we can see at least one swarm of asteroid type of objects in one of what the AI calls an L spot orbit. I thought that sort of orbit was only defined by the earth moon system. The AI said that any bodies with similar masses that orbit one another create the same sorts of effects. Then it projected the orbit of the two major objects in the system and showed how the larger of the two has a track that weaves in a sort of sine wave as it makes its way around the galactic core.

Still that is where we're headed in the hopes of finding an iron, carbon, nickle asteroid to snuggle up against so that we can use part of it to build more and better exploration drones. Then we'll see what we can see. The Aer Lingus is very urgent that we map the point we exited from whatever sort of wormhole or other anomaly. I would imagine so that it can plot a course back to diaspora space...

I hate to cut this short but I've been reminded again that it takes most of the power available to the Aer Lingus both in processing and physical power to make the 'call' so I shall sign off and put this in the queue to go with the other data that the ship will be sending to the coordinator of mapping for the diaspora.

Your brother, Will Murphy