Space Voyage #1

[ronthepon]

For two whole hours I sat with KAC, understanding the principles of the ship's mainframe. Without knowing it, he was teaching me to hack into the complex firewall of the ship. After all, he did owe me a favor for shutting up about the banana peel thrown at the spoilt chamber door.

 

I could now get into the ship's innermost virtual control rooms and leave without traces of my presence. It could prove to be useful later...

[TheBigDog]

GOODBYE

 

We had spent the last two days recovering all of our people and gear. That had been completed almost 36 hours earlier, and everyone had been busy with wrapping up the missions. I viewed the reports from the departments as they were coming in, and pressed people to hustle as I saw fit. Now I was satisfied that we had had enough time to evaluate everything. It was time to discuss moving on.

 

All the great minds were present. That is what I liked to call the command staff of the Prophesy, “The Great Minds.” We were gathered around the conference table on the third floor of the command module. This was our place to relax and candidly discuss the all of the topics of the universe.

 

Our purpose this day was evaluation of the Prophesy’s performance during her space trials. We needed to decide if the systems of the Prophesy were ready for our exit from the comfort of earth. There was a litany of facts and graphs spread out before me. Each member of the staff was taking their turn to go down their checklist. I was giving the appearance of paying attention, but I really was not. I would force my self to ask a question every now and again, just to keep me focused, but this presentation was more formality than necessary. If there were any problems significant enough to jeopardize the mission I would already be aware of them. That was the nature of this staff.

 

Part of this mission was always PR. And to that end we had included our friends making the documentary of our trip to observe our proceedings. They would be releasing a steady stream of specials about life on the Prophesy for consumption by the people of the world. The shows were being filmed and edited right here on the Prophesy before being streamed back to earth for presentation. The whole crew was aware of this aspect of the trip, and was cooperating with the filming. There were 3 people on the documentary crew. All three could be seen around the ship conducting interviews or just silently filming the goings on. They also did their own writing, producing and editing. They had been around us for so long during the construction process that it was second nature to have them around now. They were officially members of the crew, although they represented “external” news outlets to give the air of objectivity. The reality was that we would have final say in what was presented to the public. But it had to this point been unnecessary to edit any of their work. You might say they had been won over by the dream, and once on the side of the dream they were seeing it through rose colored glasses.

 

Despite all of that, they were only allowed in the command conference room on a couple of occasions. This was in fact the first time they had been allowed in here to film during a meeting. It could be said that this meeting was in fact being staged for the purposes of the documentary. Needless to say there would be no mention of Desire LaTouche or nano-viruses. There would be no mention of our ex-crew members Smith and Wesson. Today there would only be optimism and success. There was a level of deceit in this, but I was fine with that. Everyone had their secrets; the crew of the Prophesy was no exception. And besides, this was a science mission, not a soap opera. In time all of the stories would be told, but not until we had achieved the goals of this mission. We didn’t need silliness setting back the space program. This was a time for moving forward.

 

And speaking of moving forward, we were getting updated by Gahd on the results from the maintenance schedule on the main engine systems after our three initial burns. It is an extremely well prepared and choreographed presentation, but as always I am staring too closely at his face. Years prior he had spent some time as a professional fighter. I was always looking at his face trying to find all of the evidence of his juvenile pastime. I don’t know why. When you got a couple of drinks into him he would not only point out every mark on his body with a sense of pride, but tell you in rapt detail the exact circumstances of how he got it. His dozen men had their work cut out for them in keeping this ship and her many systems operational. He also had virtually the entire crew drafted into his preventive maintenance programs.

 

I was drifting again, thinking about the crew. We had been planning on taking 96 people on this trip. That number had been reduced by two with the exit of Smith and Wesson. But they had been replaced by two others who had been waiting in the “bull pen” of hopeful alternates on earth. The two new crew members were hardly new. They had been members of the earth side team planning team, and both had been to the Prophesy for a one month stint after her completion. They had joined us during the Prophesy’s temporary return to earth during the moon mission. There were every bit a capable as Smith and Wesson, but added a different quality to the crew that their predecessors didn’t have. They were both women. I had been doing the math on this. I am not sure why I was quite so obsessed with that. Call me crazy, but the notion of being in space for five or more years without women around was disturbing. I also had offered to the contest winner the option of joining the crew, which she had gleefully accepted. This had been a preplanned PR move. But we had managed to make it look like it was a last minute decision, staging some impromptu conversations in view of the documentary crew. It would make great television. We had also taken on an additional 3 people for the agricultural group. Again, all women. So we now had a crew of 100. And now we had 31 women and 69 men. Huh… sixty nine…

 

It was time to pay attention again. Gahd was wrapping up and passing the presentation on to Racoon. He was so excited about having more people on his staff. It would give him the proper bandwidth to do some more meaningful research now. The reality was that his research was some of the most important of all. If we were going to step past the solar system and into the truly great beyond, then we not only needed to deliver a self sufficient craft, but also enough variety to provide a quality of life onboard the ship. We had an enclosed environment. At the most basic level we had a limited supply of atoms on the ship. And those atoms had to provide the nutrition and tools and entertainment for the crew for very long periods of time. His research was not just how to sustain, but how to do it is a way that was… well, humane. Quality of life on the ship through replenishable dietary supplies was the ticket. And he was the man for the job.

 

I noticed I was doodling. I had my notepad open on my lap and was doodling with my stylus. There was virtually no paper on the ship. We had established paperless processes for virtually everything. The notepad was a clever device. When opened it is the size of two A4 sheets of paper. It is slightly flexible and infinitely useful. Each side is a high resolution screen with an element that works with the stylus to allow you to write on the screen. Your pages saved to local memory and can be uploaded to your personal folder on the mainframe. They are every book in the world. They are notepads. And every member of the crew has three of them. They have internal batteries that allow them to run for about an hour. They are powered and recharged by USB, and the ship has USB ports everywhere. Right now I was using mine to doodle while Racoon was talking. I was drawing a leaf, and smiling at myself. It must have been something I heard from Racoon. He was talking about his recent breakthrough in toilet paper. The answer? Hemp. We were growing a variety of hemp on the ship for the purpose of renewable resources like toilet paper. We would see how it turned out. There was a decent supply on board. I might never have to find out for myself how well his new creation really worked.

 

Racoon was soon done and handed the meeting over to Jay-Qu. He had one of the sexier jobs on board the ship. As our resident astrophysicist he was heading our MFDSAT project. MFDSAT stood for Multiple Frequency Deep Space Array Telescope. This was a project deeply in need of a better name. We really needed a name for this telescope. The parts of the telescope were filling most of one of our cargo bays. When completed it would be several kilometers across and have no less than 24 telescopes working is sync with each other, each equivalent in capability to the famous Hubble space telescope. The primary purpose of this telescope is to look at nearby solar systems, and to find likely planets for us to explore over the next century. It was very important work for the voyages that would follow our own. No less than half the crew was involved in the complex deployments that would take place to construct that telescope. It was one of the most important elements of our mission. The idea was to build it so that it would live forever in the shadow of Jupiter, or one of the other large planets. Janus was busy calculating the orbital requirements. We would scope out the territory when we arrived. This deployment was just months away. And when we are done with our exploration of Jupiter’s moons it will become our primary objective before moving on to our next destination.

 

That had me thinking. We had 30 of the telescopes on the ship. 6 were remaining as a permanent part of the ship’s toolset. 12 were currently deployed around our outer ring and were ready for use. As soon as we begin our drift phase of travel to Jupiter we will begin using the Prophesy as a larger telescope herself. We could use all 12 individually, each with the power of Hubble. Or they could be used as groups to take even more powerful images. There was an earth based user group just itching to begin taking snapshots. In a couple of days that part of the project would begin. I am not an astronomer, but Jay-Qu has promised a plan to wow everyone in the weeks between Earth and Jupiter. I know he will do it.

 

Next up is TheFaithfulStone. TFS is our gadget man. Robotics, automation, AI, artificial sensory systems, and the ever needed and priceless creative engineering. His “buggers” had proved to be priceless for inspecting the ship’s difficult to reach areas. Something we had never initially planned to do. There were arguably 17 separate issues identified by thee buggers that could have proven catastrophic to the mission. Not even a thought 2 years ago, they were indispensable to the ship and her crew now. Almost like pets, TFS had given many out to crew members for custom modifications to do all sorts of interesting things. I might even get one from him. I was actually toying with the idea of having sporting events with the crew’s custom buggers as the contestants. In addition to the buggers he had helped to develop bots to help with the agricultural chores that had proven to be superior in low gravity environments. When we began to send landers to moons, asteroids and comets his innovative concepts of locomotion would come in even handier. His workshop is like stepping into Dick Van Dyke’s in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It is a wonderland of chaos. I love it down there.

 

After TFS was the man I like too think of as the load master. Kayra spends more time in zeroG than anyone else on the crew. Everything coming and going on the ship is coordinated through his department of external operators. He is also the man who pays attention to the physics of the Prophesy herself. Keeping the ship balanced, the cargo spaces secured properly, tracking the Wrangler, MEL and MEUS operators. All of those details ran through his department. He was going over the stress readings from the gyro bearings. The main gyros are what rotated the ship to provide artificial gravity, and pointed the ship in drift to maintain precise orientation. These were some of the only systems where we had concerns about wear and tear. They were sufficiently over designed, but remained an area we needed to keep a close eye upon. Kayra was a very busy man on the Prophesy. He also seemed to have a nearly endless supply of really great coffee. I don’t know where he stores it. But I hope he brought enough for everyone. It is fantastic.

 

Last up was Pyrotex and Janus, reporting together on the major ship systems; the engines, navigation, fuel reserves, propellant reserves and computer systems. All were in order. With all of the presentations completed, it was my turn to stand up in front of our small group. The conference table is horseshoe shaped. The open part of the shoe faces a huge computer screen. I have been sitting all the way at the end with all of the others stretching around to my left around the table. The documentary crew is behind their cameras behind all of us. I only have a few words to say to end the meeting.

 

“Thanks everyone. As I was listening to all of these presentations there was something I was listening for that I never heard. Nobody said anything about delaying our mission. So lets make it official.” I worked my way around the room, asking each of the command staff if we were ready for our mission. And from each of them I didn’t just hear yes, I got from each a hearty “HELL YES!”

 

“Then the only thing left is to make it official. As of this moment we are concluding our space trials. InfiniteNow, are you prepared to make the announcement that we are go?”

 

“You bet your *** I am, BD” was his enthusiastic reply.

 

“Well then. Janus, have you completed the plans for our transition to Jupiter orbit?”

 

“Yes. It’s programmed in and the fuel is loaded into the main engine for the first burn.”

 

“When is our next window to leave lunar orbit and begin the burn?”

 

Janus didn’t even check his notepad, he simply spit out the answer. “Fifteen minutes to the next window to exit orbit BD. Then every two hours after that.”

 

I turned to Kayra and asked him with a purposeful tone, “Kayra, is the ship secure for engine burn?”

 

“We are secure and ready for burn, BD.”

 

“Pyro, how about main engines. Where are we on the checklist for burn?”

 

Pyro did look at his notepad. But this was because he wanted the most up to date data. “We began the checklist six hours ago. We are just about at temperature now.” He had a huge grin on his face. A familiar grin.

 

“Well then. No time like now, right?” I looked from face to face for some sign of concern. I saw only enthusiasm. “Good. Infinite, you better make you announcement quick. We light up in 14 minutes.” Pyro was exiting for command before the last word had left my mouth.

 

I was thinking that I had been very clever in making such a fast decision, but the reality was that they had all been thinking the very same thing. No time like now. That had been the motto during our design. During our construction. During our trials. It was not just a motto. It was a mindset. And it had driven men to do things that nobody had ever dreamed would be possible in a time that nobody believed even after seeing it happen. No time like now. And now we would be starting our mission.

 

I was left standing alone in the room. Everyone had left. All of the command staff was hustling to make sure that in a few short minutes everything could happen. The documentary crew had hustled out after them, not knowing which way to go, or who to follow. None of them had stayed with me, and that was fine as far as I was concerned. I walked to the back of the room toward the door, taking the time to straighten the chairs that I passed along the way. In the back of the room was a pool table. This was the same pool table that had been in our first office ten years ago. We had played many a game while hashing out the plans to the ship. It made perfect sense that it was till here. Still available when we needed to plan not the birth, but the life of the Prophesy. It was racked and ready for a game of nine ball. I stopped and considered it for a long moment. And I took a cue from the wall and chalked it. Below me were the most talented people in the world working to launch this great ship away from the Earth, bringing man to where he has never journeyed. The greatest minds in the world? They would soon no longer be “in the world”. What would we call them? Oh yes, just like I always had. They were simply the greatest minds.

 

I placed the queue ball on the table and slid the cue though my left hand a few times quickly to insure that there was no friction and the stroke was smooth. Then I bent over the table, quickly took aim, and crushed the cue ball. It shot across the table, crashing into the rack of nine, scattering them across the table. My eyes shot quickly form ball to ball, trying to follow them as they flew in every direction across the table, until I cam to the nine ball, slowly rolling toward the back corner, miraculously avoiding contact with the other balls flying around it, and dropping gently into the corner pocket. I dropped the stick onto the table and walked out the door. Some days you just couldn’t lose.

 

I took the long way to command, taking time to look out windows and enjoy the view. By the time I arrived it was just a minute to engine launch. I took my seat behind the rail. Pyro stood at the rail. The control panels that we normally used were computer touch screens. But on the rail was a small compartment that contained manual controls. Pyro had that compartment open. And his finger was tracing the edge of the red button in the middle of the controls. It was the manual engine launch button. Watching him from my seat I felt like a voyeur. The look on his face, his almost labored breathing, the sweat visible on his face and in his hair, the visible trembling of his finger tracing the edge of the button. It was strangely erotic as I watched, compelled to witness the moment in history that man committed himself to the expanse of space, space beyond the influence of earth.

 

Pyro’s eyes were on the screen. There was a countdown to our point of ignition. There was an image of the Prophesy in orbit of the moon, closing on a point in space along a green line. Closing… closeing… closeing… My eyes now darting back and fourth between the screen and the trembling, circling finger. So close until… the count was zero… the image was at the change of course… Pyro’s finger came down on the button. Then there was the familiar feeling of the ship accelerating. As our weight was shifted from straight down, to down plus sideways. Less than 150 meters away there began a series of nuclear explosions, battering massive energy into the push plate, deliver that energy into the shock absorbers, which after going their full travel slam back out to receive the next explosion. All of that transferring nearly smooth constant acceleration to the rest of the ship through the massive frame. We are almost instantly accelerating at 0.1g toward the earth.

 

On our previous trip from the moon to the earth just a few days earlier we had eased in. After a small burn we let the gravity of the earth draw us in, with a short burn to correct our speed to enter earth’s orbit at the correct speed.

 

This time was different. We were going to run the engine all the way to the earth, and use her gravity to slingshot us at even higher speed out away from earth and toward Jupiter. Where the last trip had taken almost two days, this trip would take just a few hours, and we would whip around the earth like a bat out of hell, traveling faster than any men have ever traveled before. And we would move away from earth with our engine firing for another full day reaching speeds greater than anything man had ever launched into space. Pressing that small button had been the final deliberate act that ignited the adventure. It was as significant as Neil Armstrong setting the first boot onto the surface of the moon. And if everything else were lost to computers and automation. Pyrotex had claimed for himself the honor of being the man controlling the machine and piloting this great ship at the moment of her birth into history. Our voyage had begun.

 

 

The next night on earth there was a bright star in the sky. Four brothers stood at the edge of Lake Erie looking at it. Looking at the bright star. The youngest of them, only 3, had been told what the ship meant. It was a space ship. On that ship was the young boy’s greatest hero. As the start twinkled bright, high in the night sky the young boy lifted and hand and waved. Waved to the star and broke the silence of the night.

 

“Goodbye Daddy! Goodbye!” he shouted in a voice swallowed by the silence of the great outdoors. Swallowed by the vastness of space between he and his father.

 

Thousands of kilometers away, a tear suddenly rolled down my face. I had been trying hard to bury the emotions. To deny the conflict I felt. But without warning it hit me in the gut. I never heard it, but the sound of my son’s goodbye broke me. And I sat in the command chair and cried. A picture of my family clutched in my hand. No great accomplishment comes without a price. And at that moment I felt the full price I was paying to participate in this dream. I could not bring myself to say it out loud. I could only whisper it in my mind. I looked though my tears at the faces in the picture, and I broke all over again as my mind whispered to my sons... “Goodbye”

 

The Voyage had begun...

 

Bill (T+18)

[IDMclean]

Patiently I lay there, on my odd little cat's bed, curved in a bowl like shape, match well with the ground, I had wanted to build such a thing forever and had only got on it with the acceptance of the Prophesy project offer.

 

In my head I ticked off the missing variables, god I hated programming sometimes, the idiosyncracies of working with things ment to work on systems decades old and dead. My program was a dud without some key concepts, I needed to work on my OpenGL Matrice Vertex transformations...

 

Turning over I watched the screens, It was giving live feed of the Prophesy from the International Space Station. In the corner of the Systems Monitor, it showed the count down, and for the Command computer was BD and Pyro, pyro with his apprehension, tension, as he carressed the console like somekind of lady. Made sense. I liked the view they had up on command, but it didn't have the perspective of my own, six different perspetives, most of them on Terra.

 

I reached over, grabbed some dramamine. I probably should have taken it a little bit earlier... luckily this bucket wouldn't be doing to much in the way of manuevering. Drinking down a bottle of water, I laid back. I went back to writting my email, it was to my mom. I wouldn't have much time to send it, communications were going to get slower and slower as we moved away from Terra.

 

Maybe I would just sleep through the acceleration phase, it would be more plesant I think than being awake for it. Email first then I'll get to that.

[Jay-qu]

MFDSAT stood for Multiple Frequency Deep Space Array Telescope. This was a project deeply in need of a better name. We really needed a name for this telescope.

 

Broad/Wide Spectrum Ultra Deep Space/Field Telescope Array - I dont know any other way to put it.. That comes up as BSUDSTA or WSUDSTA or BSUDFTA or WSUDFTA. Which are all pretty crap.

 

How bout we just nickname it TGE - Through Gods Eyes?

[Racoon]

Well guys... Looks like the Space Voyage is going great!

 

You haven't heard too much from me because I have been busy working on the pleasure droids, and making sure the wine doesn't go bad.

 

:love: :thumbs_up & :girl_hug: :kiss: + :friday: = :wink:

 

Everything seems to be in order;

Carry on.

 

Great view from my Mod too.

 

[TheBigDog]

"What the hell was that?"

 

I shouted it out loud even though I was alone. I had clearly heard... heard? I had heard of felt something! Like a jolt through the floor. A vibration through the ship that ended as suddenly as it had started.

 

I sat up in bed and dialed Command. Janus had the Con. We were nearing the end of our first burn. He answered on the first ring.

 

"What is it BD?"

 

"Janus, did you just feel something? Is there anything unusual on the board?"

 

He didn't answer right away. That was unlike him. Was I going nuts? Maybe I had dreamt it and was not thinking clearly. I waited for a few more moments.

 

"Janus?" No answer. I waited for a few long moments.

"Janus?" Again, no answer.

 

"Con?" Silence. The lights indicated a good connection. And I had just talked to him a minute ago!

 

"Con?" What the hell was going on here?

 

"CON!!!"

 

Bill (t+19)

[TheFaithfulStone]

I was awoken by a dozen screaming alarms. Even though I wasn't supposed to be sleeping, I had dozed off, and a quick glance at the status board showed every single bot was reporting some kind of malfunction.

 

But none of them were the same. One of the auto-plows was giving me an unbalance alert - the other was reporting it's CCD was dead. In their crates, one spare was reporting that none of it's limbs were functioning.

 

Impossible! They were all secured - nothing was going to hurt those bots without also destroying the containers. There had to be some kind of sensor malf. But on ALL the bots - all at once? Unlikely!

 

I killed the klaxon, and logged into the bugger monitoring program - two dozen screens of blackness - not a single little bugger was transmitting. An EMP? That nano-biont Pyro had mentioned - I was clear - I hadn't been with Ms. Latush - but I was paranoid about the clap - so I'd been checked out anyway - unless it was a variant of the cooling oil bacteria the bots shouldn't be affected. A mainframe malfunction? No - I was on my session right now - the computer was still up. Something had selectively targeted the autonomous systems. But how? A 802.11a interference signal? Smith & Wesson? More Maldive terrorists? I even believed BigDogs theory about media conspiracies for a half second.

 

I forced myself to slow down. Breath. Breath slowly. Recall your Herbert - I must not fear - fear is the mind killer...

 

That was better. Silence. No screaming metal - no rushing air. No physical damage (to this section anyway.) Just the dull, nearly infrasonic throb of the circulation fans.

 

Silence.

 

Breathe.

 

Something wasn't right. I couldn't place it. I didn't know the ship like I knew my little charges, but I knew that something wasn't right.

 

Silence.

 

The engines! :eek:

 

TFS

[Janus]

BEEP-BEEP... It was BD on the intercom. I picked up and asked what was up.

"Janus, did you just feel..."

 

I missed the rest because at that moment the board lit up with multiple alerts and warnings. I could heer BD yelling over the intercom but I was too busy to answer. My eyes scanned the alert board while I did a quick mental triage. What could be sorted out later, and what was critical?

 

As I was sorting it out, another alert flashed up. Damn!, I reached for the emergency engine shutdown.

[Pyrotex]

Ten seconds after the klaxon went off, I was sitting up in bed, waving my virtual display screen into existence. There in the dark, I drilled down through four levels of display until I got to engine diagnostics. Accelleration trace. Constant 0.1003 G until it spiked to .1844 G, dipped to .0605 G, then spiked again.

 

I drilled over to the shock absorbing system. Whoa!! It wasn't absorbing the shocks! Not with 100% effectiveness anyway. I was about to reach for the emergency stop when the engine shut down. Somebody else got to it first, maybe, or the autos cut in. Hydrolic oil temp at 400 C? Ouch! That ain't right. I call the bridge...

[ronthepon]

For the first time in my time aboard the ship, I was really badly hurt.

 

I had stuffed myself into the claustrophobic plumbing sections for making some basic sort of inspection, and had found the excellently preserved remains of an old and unused spraygun. The moment I bent to pick it up, the wierdest jerk made me fall, face first, on to the floor.

 

I lay motionless for thirty seconds. Hot, sticky blood poured from my nose onto the thin chamber's floor, making my head spin with the smell. The tiny lights had gone out, and there was the sound of the ship's alarm in the background.

 

I struggled to get to my knees, and banged my head on a sharp pipe corner in the process. To my surprise, my head began to spew more blood. I groped for my torch in my shirt pocket, and found that it had been knocked into a neat two halves by my fall.

 

I should have taken the hard ones when I had the choice!

 

The trapdoor was around the corner, and some light was beginning to be visible now that my eyes were beginning to get used to the dark. I carefully stood up, carefully avoiding all pipes and structures. I walked slowly towards the light, feeling blood slowly trickle from the now stinging wound in my head. My head was spinning now, and I was getting disoriented.

 

I turned around the corner, wondering what the hell had happened. A stroll to the medics was a must now, and I had to be ready for a great deal of new work. Hopefully it would not call for any type of contact between me and my other... employers. I hated to be the sick part-time spy they had made of me.

 

Without warning, the trapdoor under me gave away. In the few deciseconds for which I fell, I cursed my carelessness concerning the location of the trapdoor. I fell, and fell hard, instantly loosing consiousness.

[TheBigDog]

The transition from thrust to drift was subtle but unmistakable. The indicator light on my wall that a manual emergency shutdown had been initiated was not so subtle. Bright red and flashing, it carried an erie shade of distress into my bedroom. I pushed the pillows that had supported me against the constant thrust of the ship and slid out of bed. Still in my boxers I crossed through my quarters and out the door to the third floor hallway. The first tihng I notices is how bright the stars out the window looked. A moment later I realized it was because the lights in the hall were not on.

 

What the hell is that? I squinted through the thick window panel at the main chassis "above" me. There appeared to be a dark streak on the side. It almost looked like something had been leaking out! I instinctivly reached for my phone, but found it was not there. Then I reached for my passkey to my room, but it was not there. I tried poking the keypad, but it appeared to have no power.

 

Damnit! I was locked out of my room in my underwear with no communication, there appeard to be some sort of general power outage, and it looked like the ship might be leaking hydrolic fluid into space!

 

This isn't supposed to happen to spaceship captains!

 

Bill

[Pyrotex]

...I called up the highest level ASAP screen on my virtual display. There were 11 warnings and alerts. 12. 13. The big ones included power failure in ring 4, though backup local battery power could be relied upon to keep life support going, provide some illumination in hallways and key areas, and a few other crit functions. There was also a hydrolic leak, a malfunction in the slammer-injector, and at least one sensor reporting blast radiation damage near the rear of the ship. Lessee...minor alarms included several instances of vibration/shock causing things to fall over or be dislodged. The swimming hole in module "Tahiti" overflowed causing water damage on both decks. What a mess! All-in-all, I could not determine what was the root cause of all these problems. But it probably started somewhere in the engine section.

 

Now, as soon as everybody remembers the little "cell phone" permanently glued to the back of their left wrist, maybe we can get some answers! :)

 

I checked our delta-V. We already had enough to break free of Earth's gravity well. Of course, nowhere near enough to get us to Jupiter!

[TheBigDog]

I had to start thinking. Dammit! Stop and think BD! Since the... whatever it was... that woke me up I had been making one bad decision after another.

 

Think! Think! Think!

 

The crew had all been here, on the ship, longer than I had. In fact I had spent less time actually on the Prophesy than any other member of the crew! Including the show winner. I had to trust them to do their jobs in an emergency. And being the captain, I needed to give them eason to have confidence in my ability to lead and to make decisions. Getting locked out of my room in my underwear was not helping.

 

Think! Think! Think!

 

I took a deep breath and gathered myself. Janus had the Con, and he would surely be coordinating all of the emergency actions from there. Surely the leak, or whatever it was, coming out of the center body of the ship was indicated on sensors. It dawned on me then. What had I come running out of my room for to begin with? Was I goinng to charge in and save the day from a dead sleep? I needed to calm down and have better faith in our crew.

 

Then I realized I heard the beeping. My wrist comm! I had forgotten about that completely. It was a small backup communicator. I looked at the small LED readout. Pyro was calling. He was off duty to. I walked down the hall to his door and spoke into me wrist.

 

"Pyro, I am at your door. Can you let me in?" And I knocked for good measure. Just as I did the lights came back on in the hall. It was somehow comforting when they did.

 

I knocked again and waited outside Pyro's door.

 

Bill

[TheFaithfulStone]

I was staring at a blank screen. Ships systems were erratic, but appeared to be functioning. The lights in the shop were flickering on and off - it had a carnival effect, really.

 

For an instant the console flickered to life, cycling through a few dozen video feeds from the little buggers. The automated imaging diff wasn't showing anything. In the view was the Tahiti Ocean, sitting calmly in it's tubs. The lights were out above it - which had the quease-inducing effect of a giant wall of black water standing over you.

 

I glanced over at the readout - sensors reported the ocean had splashed over - radiation damage, a host of other issue. Something aft - near the engines. But there was the ocean, held against the wall by the spin of the ring, and lapping gently against the false shore.

 

I punched the channel for the bridge.

 

"Con this is Stone."

 

"What?" Janus sounded testy.

 

"I'm looking at Tahiti Ocean right now, but the sensor says it shouldn't be there."

 

"What are you talking about?" I heard the buzz of an insistent alarm going off in the background.

 

"Tahiti Ocean is still in place - check the freed for Crawler 18."

 

"Fine." There was a delay of a few seconds as Janus called up the video for the crawler. "What the..?"

 

"I'm calling BigDog. We're blind."

 

Just then, the image diff alarm did go off. I glanced up at the feed - Service Corridor 12 - Ring 4. There was a body lying in the floor, motionless.

 

"Who is..." I started - but the feed turned to static, the lights went off overhead, and I was plunged into darkness.

 

TFS

[IDMclean]

An insessent beeping woke me, sharp and unkind to non-sense ephemerals that swam in my head. A looked over, suddenly drawn awake. the monitors were off and the Uninterruptable power supply was screaming that it had no source. I was up quickly. The lights were out, that was not unussual in my room. The music I played to help me sleep was of, and we weren't in motion.

 

It took me a moment to realize this, my inner ear, so keenly sensitive to such things as motion, told me that though I was stuck to the floor, the tangental motion we had been experiencing had deminished.

 

I quickly hit the button on the face of the UPS, and watched the Main monitor flicker to life. I was displaying oddities all over the place. A panel blinked at me madly, angry that I had not been awake to pay attention to it. I opened it to find a system log, what it read was non-sense. There had been an adjustment in the trajectory of a fuel pellet. It didn't say who ordered the adjustment, but it had thrown the system out of alignment. The slam-plate hadn't been alerted, infact the log indicated a shutdown of certain safety protocols. Of what I read, I immediately drew upon the conclusion that there had been deliberate intent put behind this.

 

I checked over last minute sensor info before everything went haywire. Flipping open my comm. "Command, this is the clown. I got something funny for yah, if you didn't already know..."

[Pyrotex]

I threw on my semi-formal, early-evening silk robe with the embroidered red and taupe dragon (suitable for greeting other officers) and opened the door. TheBigDog was pissed. I ushered him in, and turned the overhead lights down a bit so I could see the display more clearly.

 

Look at this, I said. I showed him the total ship power map. Ring 4 with the bridge was totally on emergency power. My ring, #3, had perhaps 90%, as did #2. Ring #1, nearest the aft (and the engines) was not only out of power, but out of comm as well. As I watched, the last network connection to ring #1 went out. Now there was no way to remotely tell what the hell was going on in there.

 

TBD said, Engine? I waved my hand. There was a lot of red glowing in the air. Too much.

 

Gimme an external Infrared, he said. I waved. Blue to Green image from cam XIR 09, colors showing temperature. Yellow bars indicated overheat in the recoil/accellerator pistons. Red on the engine nozzle was normal, but at one edge the red blossomed into white. Damn! Assymetric overheat of one edge of the nozzle. TBD solemnly pointed at some green-yellow on the opposing edge of ring #1. It caught some nuclear blast radiation??

 

I said, oh ****.

 

He said, you're ****ing right.

[Jay-qu]

"you have got to be kidding.." AARRRGGHH!

 

Things could not have gone much more wrong! I have not slept since we left Earth orbit, one of the main reasons been I have been working endlessly on the telescope array, GE for short. I set it up, ran some calibrations, even gave it a quick test, but for its first major look into space I had been saving a special treat.

 

I have been working on a few of my own theories when it comes to extra-galactic mechanics. But because of the scales involved it is impossible to watch galaxies move and interact with eachother within my own lifetime, so those of us interested in this area (as goes for many areas in astronomy!) have to settle with multiple snapshots of the objects in question at different ages. My current idea is about the formation of galaxies, and this is where lights limited speed comes in handy. All the galaxies formed billions of years ago, but due to the vast distances involved and light travelling at a modest c, when we look into deep space we are peering back in time and can see these primordial processes occur. The problem with this is that it requires some very high powered equiptment to do so. Unfortunatly back on Earth the only thing that came close was the hubble, and hubble time was not easy to obtain.

 

This is what made our set up perfect for the job, since no one else new it was not yet fully operational I had it at my full disposal, so why not for its first task proove my theory and send back to Earth the first of many major discoveries the Prophesy will make. The experiment was only do-able with our setup because it was an array of broad spectrum scopes, I would need this to view the incredibly redshifted spectrums coming from such vast distances. It was a complex untanglement of the incoming data by my computer that would make this all possible, it took me weeks to write and test these intricate sub-routines that would analyse the incoming data.

 

Now it was all ready to go, all it would take was 24 hours of uninterupted veiwing of ultra-deep field objects, this exposure time was needed because of the tiny intensities involved with such distant objects. And I was not going to risk leaving my computer while this ran, anything else can wait.

 

It was well into the 20th hour when things went wrong. It all started with a bump. I had calculated in the slight variation in acceleration due to the way our engines opperated, but this bump was way to large to be compensated for. The array was only out of line by .01 arcseconds for under a half a second, but the damage was done. Because of the nature of the experiment the data had to be directly streamed and combined with all the data collected so far, sort of like photographic paper been overexposed, there may have been a picture there once, but there is little chance in salvaging it.

 

The engines had now completly shut off, I was so infuriated with the interuption of my important work that I hadnt stoped to think of why this had occured. We where supposed to have been still accelerating for hours to come, Pyro had assured me so. It dawned on me that this couldnt be good news, my ground breaking discovery would have to wait.

 

I threw down the rest of my high-caffeine soda, rubbed a hand through my hair and started off to find Pyro and BigDog, someone was going to take a fall for this!