Warp Drive, Patent Pending, page 8
The Friday morning meeting was a chance for Glass to get caught up on the progress of some of the projects underway at the complex. Glass was there with his ever-present security man. At this meeting, the Warp and the Battery Teams were making updates. The Battery Team consisted of three people. Drath recognized Bob Simmons from his visit into Birdsville. He had wondered what Bob was involved in but knew that he couldn’t ask.
At the meeting, Bob explained that the power system in Mother was still mostly a mystery. It would be impossible to open the sealed power unit without damaging it. That was something they didn’t want to do. They X-rayed it, CAT scanned it and even did ultrasound imaging on it to look inside the unit without breaking the seal. It was heavy, it was dense, and it was nearly impenetrable to X-ray. But the ultrasound gave them some structural detail of the inside. It did resemble a battery in many ways. It had alternating plates circuited together in a liquid of some type. From the external terminals, they discovered a unique alloy, but all attempts to recreate the metallurgy fell a bit short. They had no real idea what the plates inside the battery were made of or what the acid was that charged them. They tried several prototypes, guessing on the materials and alloys, using the hints they got from the outside terminals. Although the batteries they created were quite powerful, they did not match the power in the Mothership. They suspected that perhaps the acid in Mother’s battery was just as alien as the metals. On the upside, the battery they did develop was marketable. It was quite a bit better than the technology on the market and would be a great advancement for electric cars. Bob recommended creating a plant to start production for commercial use.
Glass was pleased with that news and urged them to continue trying to copy the power source from the Mothership. Without a way to power the new ships they were building, the whole project would be lost.
“What is the value of only one ship?” Glass asked.
The room fell silent for a moment, “Promotion?” George suggested. “Use it to show off the research and development complex.”
“The ship is a secret. It needs to remain that,” Glass countered.
“A carrot,” Bob answered. “Use it as motivation to reach further.”
“We are doing that now,” Glass answered. His voice was getting a bit frustrated. “We have gotten a lot out of it, but there is more value there.”
“Exploration,” George answered. “Use it to explore beyond our normal limits. Find new technologies, and new recourses.”
“Have you figured out how to fly it yet? Can you go someplace and get back?” Glass asked.
George fell silent, and the whole Warp Team knew they were without an answer.
“Do we even know where the probes went? They went someplace,” Glass’s voice again was raised, but he was not exactly angry.
“There is no value in building more ships if we can’t create a power supply for them. And if we had the power, we need to know how to control them. You guys are letting me down. Drath,” Glass said pointing at him, “you were supposed to light a fire under your team. I need to see some results soon.”
Everyone in the room was silent for a few seconds. After the pause, Glass continued much more calmly and composed. “Bob, start the business plan for the battery production facility, get with Mary White in accounting and give her the material costs of the prototype. Outline any special production needs. You and she need to see if the product has a viable profit margin. If it looks like a go, then I’ll send you over to work with Maggie Barnwell for a while in Sydney. She’ll take a project and get a marketing plan laid out.”
Then he looked to the Warp Team, who was nervously waiting for instructions. “Figure out how the warp system works. We need to know how to navigate and fly it.” The team nodded. “Impress me with your superior brains, and earn what I’m paying you.” The tone of Glass’s voice was slowly relaxing. “I don’t mean to be too critical, but we’ve come so far and gained so much. We need to get this last problem solved.” Glass had stood as he was finishing his demands. “I’ll see you all next week,” he said and left the room.
Although George and Helen probably felt just as bad, Drath felt like Glass had pointed him out as not doing enough to help. He had really just gotten to the complex, he reminded himself. The others had been there for a while and were not getting anywhere on the problem either. He stayed in his room that night and missed the regular Friday night Gin game. George usually joined them on Fridays. Instead, he went to his apartment and mulled over what he was going to do. He was not the type to sulk. He considered all the possible options. He really didn’t like a failure.
After an evening of self-criticisms and review, he concluded that the team was concentrating too much on the tunnel that they had built in the hanger. Yes, it did bend space, but Drath thought the answers were not all in that project. He was sure the answers were in Mother. Whoever flew in the craft originally knew the routines and systems in Mother well enough to navigate. Just as in fighter jets or passenger planes, there are routine procedures that need to be followed. Airships are designed to be flown as easily as possible. They can’t be over complicated, and procedures can’t be time-consuming. It’s all a matter of learning the software. He repeated that breakthrough. It’s all a matter of learning the software.
Saturday was not an official work day in the complex, but many people worked through the weekend. Some seemed to never tire of the projects that were involved. Drath had tried to give himself a couple days off each week, but he needed to keep his head in the problem after the recent rant by Glass. When he walked into the office, he wasn’t surprised to see George and Helen already there.
“G’mornin George, Helen,” he said and walked to his usual desk. “Any plans for the day?”
“I’ve already checked the radio telescope report, and we still haven’t received any beacon transmissions,” George said flatly.
“I was going to power up the tunnel and jump in,” Helen announced.
Drath looked up. “It’s not all that bad. Don’t jump just yet,” he said. “Let’s step back and take another look at the problem.”
They both looked up interested in what he was thinking.
“We know we have a tunnel that bends space, and that it can be used for travel,” Drath began, “Right?”
They both nodded.
“How do we know it can be used for Travel?” Drath asked.
Helen raised her hand, and Drath nodded to her. “We took the technology from a spacecraft.”
“Correct,” Drath agreed. He let the fact settle in the air. “I propose we take a little time and see how Mother uses the technology. We have the Hardware, let’s look at the software.”
“If you go pushing buttons in Mother before you know what you’re doing you don’t know what will happen,” George cautioned.
“We’ll be careful,” Drath quipped.
“Our knowledge of the control language is limited,” Helen added. “The cryptologists have only just started to make headway on the text and glyphs.”
Drath had only been in Mother once or twice and remembered the alien texts and graphics that were on the viewers and monitors. “That would be a challenge,” he agreed, “but math is the same for all languages. We can analyze any computational elements and look for what could be procedures and checklists.”
“We could uncouple the power fibers to the field generator plates, that way we’d be safe from accidentally making a jump through a wormhole,” Helen commented.
“That’s thinking!” Drath agreed.
“That's the only way I'd play around with warp in her,” George confessed. He pulled his tablet computer from his desk. I have some reports on the language and a few screen shots of the primary screens of Mother’s controls. They do have what looks like a checklist.
They all studied the image on the screen. It was from a report put out by the Crypto Team. The report suggested that the bulleted lines of text on the screen started with a number. The symbols representing numbers changed with each bullet and a second symbol was added at the tenth bullet. The Crypto Team concluded that the numerical system used on the craft was base ten, and contained a zero symbol. Drath was pleased with that bit of knowledge. Now they were speaking his language.
The new direction the team was headed gave Drath a chance to explore Mother with a little more detail. The team hoped that understanding the software on Mother would give them insight on how to navigate the ship. If they could figure out what happened on that ship, they could apply it to the tunnel and on the other ships that Glass had made.
Getting To Know Mother
Stepping into the craft excited all of them. George and Helen had been in Mother many more times than Drath, but they too felt the excitement of being on a ship created by aliens from a distant planet someplace beyond the solar system. The craft wobbled a bit when the team boarded, but it stabilized after only a second. Magically, without instruction the hatched slide out of a pocket and close silently. Helen and Drath took the pilots seats that faced the front of the craft. The dashboard before them held three flat screen monitors separated by about a foot of empty dashboard. Two of the monitors were alive, displaying lines of mysterious text. As the Helen and Drath put their attention on the screens, they leaned up to examine or attempt to read the alien text. The seats responded by realigning themselves to correctly support the working posture of the occupants.
George went to the rear of the craft, opened a panel that was barely noticeable and was able to disconnect the power supply for the field generators so the team wouldn't accidentally open a wormhole. With that safeguard, they believed they could explore the warp drive control systems and press buttons without the fear of taking an unexpected journey to the edge of the universe or someplace even farther from home.
Drath had spent a fair portion of his career trying to prove and explain how faster than light travel could happen. He theorized with sound mathematical reason it was possible. He had published papers on it, showing formulas that allowed it to be possible. He had practically written the book on the possible future of space travel. Up until a few months ago, he believed faster than light travel was possible. Glass even led him to believe he would be working on that problem. Now he saw a different reality.
Helen explained to him that the gravity shield was really the craft's main propulsion system. But, it really wasn’t propulsion. The craft would gain altitude while within a planet’s atmosphere and use that planet's gravity to move the ship. By contorting the shields on the bottom of the craft, the flight could be controlled. Reducing the field’s strength at the front of the ship would tip it earthward and allow for a decent. The field could be strengthened again to gain altitude or reduced to dive to the planet surface. Turning left or right was just a matter of banking the strength of the gravity shield.
“Let me take you for a ride,” George suggested.
“Yes, do that,” Helen agreed, getting out of the ship and letting George take the cockpit. “I’ll be here when you get back.” As she neared the Hatch, it slid open. After exiting, she waved her hand near the side of the ship and closed the hatch.
George flopped into his seat and tapped the screen in front of him. The third monitor on the dash came to life. “She’s only driven the gravity drive once. I do it whenever I can.”
He scrolled through an image or two until he brought up the control screen. “This is the free fall system the craft uses to travel within the atmosphere. Its basic control is the gravity shield manager.” He motioned to the dashboard monitor. Drath noticed several icons of the alien glyph language and George tapped on a top corner of an odd symbol. His navigation through the screens in front of him was fast and confident. It was apparent he had done this before. Drath was glad about that because so much of the ship was still a mystery to him.
The huge monitor on the front of the ship came to life. It acted as the windshield. Drath hadn’t noticed any cameras on the exterior of the ship, but the angle of the view was from the front, in the direction that the seats were facing. The view was of the warehouse. The huge dark space was displayed with even more clarity and brightness than it actually was on the outside. Drath could see the girders of the distant wall which were lost in darkness as observed with the unaided eye.
George tapped a few more times, and Drath saw the point of view change. The ship was rising.
“I’m increasing the shield, and we are going up. The hanger is thirty feet tall, we’ll go up about 22 feet, there are collision sensors built in. They thought of everything,” he said. “The sensor is basic laser technology. Glass has the patent on the same collision sensor for cars now.”
George was having the time of his life. There was a wide smile on his face.
When the lifting stopped, he continued the explanation. “Now, by reducing the shield in the front area of the ship, we will dip and accelerate into a dive.” He pressed his finger on the monitor where there was a top view silhouette image of the almond shaped craft. When he slid his finger on the control, the point of view of the windshield monitor changed, and the ship moved forward.
“I don’t feel like I’m tipping and I don’t feel any movement,” Drath said in a concerned voice as the ship’s speed increased. The distant wall was getting closer.
“The craft dampens that, pretty cool huh.” The lack of movement inside the craft made the monitor look like a big video game. As the wall got closer, George pressed his finger and slid it on the screen. The screen showed the craft was banking to the left and rounding that end of the warehouse. Drath leaned in his seat even though the ship felt as though it wasn’t moving. The sensations of seeing the flight but not feeling it was odd. He believed George and believed they were moving, but at the same time, he was confused by what he should have been feeling. His brain had trouble accepting they were moving, not sensing movement.
As they approached the far wall again, George fingered the screen and maneuvered a smooth turn around the warehouse. By this time the craft was almost on the floor again. “It’s simple to steer, it almost corrects any bad driving. We need to get cars to drive this easily,” he said.
With another flip of the finger, the control monitor cleared and the large view screen reverted to the tan color. “You want to try?” George asked.
“No,no.no, I’m good,” Drath answered quickly. “Have you ever gone outside?”
“Only once, Glass is worried there may be corporate spies watching the complex.”
The door of the ship opened, and Drath noted that they had indeed moved. He was happy to be on solid ground. Even though he didn’t feel the flight, the contradiction of seeing the ship move left him feeling uneasy. That kind of thing would take some getting used to.
Helen saw the odd expression on his face. “It kind of gives me an upset stomach too,” she confessed.
Drath nodded in understanding, “I know what you mean.”
They could hear George laughing as he joined them, “Ya’ll are a couple of softies! There’s nothing to it.”
His teammates explained that the gravity shield was only half the story. Besides shielding gravity, the technology could also amplify it. A series of special plates circled the craft on all sides that could pinpoint on a nearby star, planet or any object of mass. It could use that objects natural gravitational properties to create momentum by focusing on it, then amplify its gravity. They believed that by using the distant gravity amplified tens of thousands of times the ship created momentum in space.
Even this magical technology wouldn’t create flight speeds close to the speed of light. Against all of Drath's deepest wishes to prove and discover faster than light travel, he realized it was not what they were looking at. The whole team understood that the speed of the craft was limited to the same laws of physics that Einstein had proposed. Nothing could travel the speed of light except light. The craft would travel galactic distances in a short time by creating a wormhole tunnel and just idling through it at sub-light speeds.
Understanding the actual physics on how the hardware bent space was the mystery. Every answer brought up new questions. And the challenge that they were faced with still was how could they predict or control the wormhole’s end point. How could they control the destination? That was what they were searching for as they scrolled through the files and control screens on Mother. They were looking for star charts, 3D star maps, or graphic images of any type. But, they only came upon page after page of textual files. Many of them apparently contained numbers glyphs, but the graphic images they needed were not there. How could you go anywhere without maps, they wondered.
George had not requested a translator from the Crypto Team because the last report said that no true translation progress was being made. The numbers, however, were another matter. They had found the zero key and could translate alien pages that included numbers. George and Drath then had devised a program that could translate the alien numbers of the screen into Arabic numerals that they could deal with. What they found as they read the pages displayed on Mother’s screens were what looked like lists. There was some unintelligible alien text followed by a twelve digit number.
“It looks like some sort of list,” Drath commented.
“There are hundreds of pages of them,” Helen said.
