Until the Dawn, page 32
"But we're not quite done here yet," he said. "One of these two men gets a second award." Both Greg and Trey looked at each other curiously as Colonel Murray, Corporal Keenan and his daughter Lucy walked up onto the stage. The little girl held a wrapped package and giggled gleefully as she handed it to Trey.
Deciding to work the crowd a bit Trey tucked the package underneath one arm as if to save it for later. Immediately people began hollering and cheering and he finally gave in and opened the gift. He held up a beautifully framed child's picture that showed a donkey in the Garden wing eating apples off of one of the trees. There was a rainbow smeared in the background and green grass scribbled in at the donkey's feet.
"Did you make this for me?" Trey asked Lucy curiously. She looked up at him with brilliant, excited dark eyes and nodded with a smile, carefully hugging her father's leg. Her dark hair was bound up in a ponytail and she had on a bright blue dress.
"It's so that you know which end to think with next time," she said innocently. "You think with the side that eats apples!"
The crowd erupted in laughter and it took a few minutes for the commotion to die down. Trey stood there with a confused look on his face as Colonel Emerson stepped up to the microphone. "I know you're confused, Trey, so I will explain. Corporal Keenan told me the tale of your mighty trek across deck four during the wasteland crisis," Murray announced, quieting the crowd with the strength of his voice. "But if you find yourself in a similar situation again, we in the military would suggest that the next time you run across deck three all the way to the lifts at the rear of the Waywardsman. As you know, they take you directly to the Lab wing, and it's much safer than flashing your badge and forcing our marines to escort you down to deck four so you can sprint across a potential battle zone." Once again, Trey felt his face flushing with embarrassment. He glanced out into the crowd and found Nell, who was standing at the rear of the group laughing and applauding with everyone else.
"What can I say?" Trey decided, stepping up to the podium and speaking into the microphone. "I didn't know your troops had the entire area cordoned off. Tactical strategy is your department, Colonel – not mine!" He triumphantly held Lucy's picture in the air and Norris thumped him firmly on his back.
"Spoken like a true civilian," William shouted into the microphone, clapping his hands. He turned and pointed to both Greg and Trey who stood side by side with their new medals dangling. "Congratulations, gentlemen!"
"Congratulations!" the entire crowd repeated, right before the noise became too loud for anyone to hear anything except for the clapping, hoots and hollers.
"Congratulations indeed," Trey repeated to himself, thinking back to just how far he had come in just a few short months. With the experience he had gained working on the Waywardsman Project, he was now accomplishing more by working a lighter schedule each day than he ever had while putting in the longer hours. He had become a teacher, and – although he wouldn't recognize it for a few more years – a true leader as well. He lifted Lucy up into his arms and gently hugged her before kissing her firmly on one cheek. Next he carefully handed her back to Corporal Keenan to the delight of the cheering crowd surrounding them.
* * *
The next morning found Norris sitting calmly in the Command Dome, listening to the activity around him. Melissa was busy scanning the immediate area with motion sensors, quickly locating the latest Canary Probe to return from yet another of Dr. Marcus's test sites. She turned and nodded at the Captain, acknowledging the probe's successful journey. Across from her, Aaron sat at his station carefully monitoring the Waywardsman's current course alongside the outer edge of Poseidon's gravity river.
"All preliminary data from the Canary probe indicates a successful transit," Greg's voice said cheerfully from the open Comm-link at the Captain's side. As usual he was down in the Lab wing making sure the CAS team kept everything running perfectly.
"Continue the countdown to our transit," Norris ordered.
"The ship is secure and ready for PTP," Aaron responded. "May I ask where we're going this time? Do additional lengthy, boring gravitational studies lie ahead in our future, perhaps?"
"Good guess," said Melissa, laughing happily. "Dr. Marcus is very enthused about these 'boring' studies as you call them. She's worked her whole life to find out more about the universe and I would imagine could care less if the rest of us are interested or not."
"Well I like a little more excitement in my life," Aaron responded. "That's probably why I hooked up with a fighter chick." He heard Norris laughing in the background and smiled.
"The Canary Probe has docked with the Waywardsman," Melissa reported. "We're all set for a transit to the new test site."
"Coordinates are set and verified, Captain," said Greg from the Lab wing. "One minute, ten seconds remain until CAS Drive activation."
"So how does Greg like his medal?" Norris asked Melissa, chuckling a little at the memory of the prior day's events. "Is he letting all of the attention go to his head?"
"No," Melissa replied, smirking slightly. "He's got a really quiet, humble personality. Like Trey, he was very overwhelmed by the surprise and all of the attention. They both feel everyone who worked with them day after day deserve the award as much as they do. That's why they hung their medals on one of the walls in the Lab wing – so everyone can share them."
"Having a hero or two around for our people to look up to never hurts," Norris decided. "We don't know how long we're going to be out and about traveling the universe, so it's also important to keep morale up."
"Twenty-two seconds to transit," Greg's voice sounded out confidently. "All CAS systems read green."
"Trey has really turned his life around," Aaron said. "The kid was absolutely destroyed emotionally by the attack on Earth and having to cope with the after effects. I'm very proud of him and I made sure to tell him that yesterday evening."
"He still feels he isn't always contributing enough these days," Melissa said softly. "But when he looks back on the demand he was placing on himself to perform he can at least admit now that a lot of it was unrealistic. He was simply expecting too much of himself."
"Ten seconds," commented Greg.
"A lot of people never recover emotionally from what he went through," Norris said. "Whether he and Greg can admit it, they are heroes."
"I can hear everything you guys are saying up there, by the way," Greg laughed heartily. "The Waywardsman is ready for transit in five, four, three…".
They had grown accustomed to the routine, instantaneous CAS leaps across vast distances over the months that had passed since the attack on Earth. There was the usual quick PTP flash and then it was over – destination achieved. The CAS procedure used was exactly the same as standard PTP, the only differences being distance and the amount of power they could apply to the engine using the singularity's electricity instead of the alternative power generated from burning liquid fuel. Short range trips had become as commonplace as the longer ones, which was why they were all astonished…
* * *
…when this time the ship bucked wildly from side to side and several consoles in the command ring in front of Melissa and Aaron suddenly sparked and began smoking. Norris leaped to his feet and caught Ensign Long, who had lost his balance and was about to fall. He steadied the young man and then frowned in frustration as the lights in the room went dark. Aside from a few consoles whose screens still glowed with power they were unexpectedly shrouded in darkness. William immediately smelled the acrid odor of burnt electrical insulation, and he could see a small fire burning inside one of the valuable laptops.
"What in blazes was that?" he asked, confused by the sudden silence in the Command Dome. Almost all of the computer systems that provided the normal background noise had stopped functioning.
"I have no idea," he heard Aaron comment from across the room.
"The damage control computer is still working, sir," Ensign Long reported. Norris could see the eerie outline of the man's face as he reviewed the computer's data. "Aside from the electrical failure we have minor structural damage to the Garden and Livestock wings… but the computer reports they are still intact and pressurized."
"Thank God for that," Melissa concluded softly.
Abruptly the power and lights snapped back on and everyone quickly busied themselves at their stations. William watched and waited helplessly as they worked, fighting back a burst of anger and intense frustration at the unexpected situation.
"The Waywardsman is on backup systems," Melissa reported. "Battery power only… the CAS singularity is not… I repeat… not active." Swiftly, she put up an image of the wand on one of the monitors to verify. "It's gone dark."
William quickly activated the closest Comm-link. "Greg," he said firmly, "This is the Command Dome. What's going on down there…? Was there some sort of a problem with the transit?"
"I'm not… sure yet," came the hesitant reply. "Please stand by."
"There's nothing out of the ordinary on motion sensors," Melissa reported. "But I do think you should look at this," she commented, putting up an image on one of the overhead screens.
Burning in the center of the screen was a distant star. In the foreground was a huge scattering of thousands of small comets, their bright tails all pointing away from the star's solar radiation. Several extremely thin nebulae, composed of angry red-colored dust stretched and twisted their way through the cloud of comets and deeper into the image as far as they could see. The normal blackness of empty space was completely gone – instead they were staring at a screen filled with a soft golden mist. From an astronomer's perspective it was a spectacular sight and everyone paused for a moment to simply admire the scene.
"That's a really remarkable view," Norris commented, "But it's most definitely not where we're supposed to be right now. We were programmed to emerge from the transit trip next to a trinary star system." He met Aaron's gaze with a look of puzzlement. "So that begs the question, where the hell are we?"
"Captain, this is Greg," said Fredericks, his voice momentarily distorted by a burst of static on the still-open Comm-Link. "Someone changed our destination coordinates right before we activated the CAS Drive. We landed in the exact center of the Poseidon gravity river."
"Confirm that, please!" Norris ordered.
"I have… three times already," Greg insisted. "Instead of our next planned transit alongside the edge of the river we instead traveled over 73 million light years directly into it. If you had asked me to put us into its exact center these are the coordinates I would have suggested. I'm not kidding you… the Waywardsman is currently sitting no more than 5 light minutes from the center of the river's width at this point along its length."
"What's the status of our CAS Drive?"
"It's down until further notice, Captain. We suffered severe damage to our electrical equipment down here. As expected, the PTP window did not interact very well with Poseidon's gravitational force. Our carefully controlled singularity model collapsed from the disruption as soon as we emerged from transit."
"Aaron, bring the liquid fuel engines back to full power and place our maneuvering thrusters at station-keeping. Melissa, please let me know if anything dangerous floats our way."
"May I make a suggestion, Captain?" Aaron asked. William nodded and walked over to stand next to him as both men studied the readouts on Aaron's helm console. "I think that we should leave the maneuvering thrusters off at this point – to conserve fuel. There's way too much gravity here and everything is drifting toward Poseidon, so I think we should let the ship float with it and that will minimize our risk of colliding with anything." He shrugged, pointing at their fuel indicators. "That is, unless you want us to expend valuable fuel trying to swim upstream like a school of salmon."
"Point taken. We may need that fuel if we can't get the CAS Drive working again," Norris said grimly. "If we are unable to restore it to full operation, we're going to have to try using smaller, standard PTP transits at a 90 degree angle in order to move back out into normal space."
"We'll have to begin burning some of the liquid fuel anyway, Captain. We can't stay on battery power for any reasonable length of time."
"Agreed. Thanks primarily to the 'Atomic Nightmare', we're almost fully loaded with fuel," Norris said, taking a deep breath as he activated the Comm-link next to Aaron. "Greg, who changed the PTP destination coordinates?"
"Pardon me?"
"As I understand it, the CAS systems will only accept commands from dedicated work stations in the Lab wing or from my Delta console. Each work station logs a specific security code for all commands as they are received and processed by our network. So look at the log and please tell me which work station changed the destination coordinates on us."
"Stand by Captain," Greg said quickly.
"This is not good," Aaron noted, clearly frustrated. "If we can't restore the CAS systems to full operation we're a long way from anyplace safe right now…"
"Don't begin worrying prematurely," replied William firmly. "The ship is intact and simply drifting calmly in a gravity river at this point… that's all. The only problem that we need to address is how to get safely out again. We have food, water, and a lot of resources out there – drifting right along with us. If we require additional fuel then at least we have plenty of material nearby to search through using shuttles."
"Do you know how long it will take, using only standard PTP, to return to normal space?" queried Aaron. "We're not talking a short-term crisis here. Our maximum range for transit just decreased to a fraction of our previous capability. Standard Point-to-Point is usually meant for travel within our solar system."
"I'm sending a copy of today's activity log to Aaron's screen," Greg's voice crackled through the Comm-link speaker. "All commands are prefixed by a location code: 'COM' for Command Dome or 'LAB' for the Lab wing. This location is followed by a work station number, command sequence ID, and a date/time stamp. Together these items comprise a unique key that is assigned to each computer instruction processed by our systems."
"The command that changed the transit coordinates will be near the end of the list," William commented, pointing at the information appearing on Aaron's screen. "It will be the instruction received just prior to CAS PTP activation."
"There," Aaron said, pointing at the screen. "What the devil…?"
They stared in awe at the command log list. Each instruction began with the proper security code prefixed by 'COM' or 'LAB' except for the one they were looking for. The command that issued the change in coordinates was there, but listed with a security code beginning with the word…
"Trust," Norris said, dumbfounded. "No work station ID, no sequence number, no date or time received. Just the one word: 'Trust'."
"Who could do that?" Melissa asked. "Not even our top-level command staff can bypass the dedicated systems and plant a command like that. It would take…"
"...Much more technical knowledge than anyone on this ship has," the Captain decided. "It must be our unknown friends again – the ones who sent us the 'universe diagram'. Whatever their ultimate agenda for us is, we've just moved another step closer to it."
"They forced the Waywardsman to come here and crashed our CAS systems in the process," Aaron growled. "And now they're asking – at least I think they're asking – for our unconditional trust? That would be a hell of a lot easier if we had been allowed a choice in the matter."
"Melissa, please keep our motion sensors active and scanning," Norris decided. "I'm going to go and have a chat with Dr. Marcus in the Observatory. It looks as though we're going to have the chance to spend some time directly exploring the Poseidon gravity river from within its boundaries after all."
Discovery
UNTIL THE DAWN
Chapter XVIII: Discovery
* * *
On the 142nd day since the Waywardsman first dared to venture out of the Milky Way, Trey Rem spent the entire day – and a good part of his evening – down in the Lab wing working side by side with his good friend Greg Fredericks. Their goal was still a simple one: restore the CAS Drive systems to full operation so that the ship could exit from the gravity river surrounding them. He had lost count of the number of weeks that they had been drifting, but was certain that someone somewhere was keeping track. The young scientist had simply made it a priority not to worry about the things he was temporarily unable to change.
Dr. Marcus was quite pleased with their predicament – she continued to reassure him that she and her staff were learning a great deal by having the opportunity to directly view objects captured by the immense gravity field. There was only so much they could learn, she pointed out, during the time that the Waywardsman had been stationed many light years distant. Still, it bothered Trey – a lot – that the CAS systems were off-line… the idea of being trapped in the gravity river for any length of time was an extremely unappealing one both to him and to the rest of the crew as well. The feeling of helplessness weighed on everyone psychologically, even if no immediate danger presented itself.
