Chapter 4 – Manoeuvres

Elapsed time on board (ETOB): LD2. Elapsed time at origin (ETAO): LD2

"All right, I'll do it." Sam said with certainty, much to Daniel's surprise.

"Oh, thank you, Colonel Carter. Thank you!" breathed Emmett Bregman. "You won't regret this, I promise you. If you'll excuse me, I'll go tell the sponsor straight away. She'll be so pleased! And it could, if I may say so, lead to greater things..... Well, different things for you personally. You were so natural in the documentary we made here about the SGC. Folks will just love you as the project's special correspondent on TV." He shook hands briefly with her and left in a hurry.

"We'll see." murmured Sam at his departing figure.

Daniel stirred in his seat at the side of Sam's desk. "Er, Sam, I don't want intrude, but is this wise?" he asked.

"Probably not." She replied with a sigh. "But at least this way I can stay a lot closer to events than just by watching the newscasts. They'll lose interest in the next few days anyway."

"But what about the SGC?" Daniel continued. "They might say no and mean it."

"Then I'll resign and do it anyway." She stated in a calm voice, as though it were an everyday decision like taking tea or coffee.

"But you can't be planning to spend the next twenty years waiting for Jack, just talking and watching on a monitor, surely?" Daniel came back, waving his arms in exasperation.

"It won't take that long." she said with confidence. "Something will turn up, just you see."

"But how?" He was incredulous at her assumption.

"They're making this voyage in a series of jumps through hyperspace and in between each one, they're going to be spending weeks at a time just cruising in normal space, making the observations, right?"

"Yes, I know that."

"Well, each time they exit a wormhole into normal space, they'll be travelling at a higher fraction of the speed of light. That's the plan, right?" Daniel nodded again, and Sam continued. "But they won't be reaching near the speed of light until the last few jumps. The differential ageing effect won't be happening in a big way until they're doing more than ninety percent of c. Only then will they start to age significantly more slowly than us."

"Right." Daniel interjected. "Half as fast as us at ninety percent of c and one third as fast as us at ninety five percent. This is school kids' stuff, Sam. It's only the last jump at ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of c when they'll be ageing seventy times slower....... Ahh!"

Sam remained silent, just raising her eyebrow as she stared at him. He carried on voicing his deductions.

"Soooo, for the next few months until they make those final very fast runs, they'll only age a few days less than us, and if you can make contact with them during that time, you get a chance to make Jack to do what Jack has to do....." He laughed to himself. "You've sure got it bad for him, haven't you?"

Sam looked down and gave a quick, nervous smile. "Part of me died when they launched two days ago, Daniel. It doesn't get any worse than that."

"Hence," Daniel continued, "you've taken the job with Bregman Films and you'll be payrolled by Madonna Megaburgers to be the main Earthside contact with the Prometheus. But how are you going to work your way on board? The crew is hand-picked and signed up for the duration."

"I, er, thought of that." said Sam, an unmistakeably devious tone to her voice. "One of them is going to become the target of highly emotional pleas by her family members to get off the boat before the final runs take place and return home while she's still in the same time frame as the rest of us."

"And who is this lucky person?"

"Sonja Meyer."

"The astrophysicist? Now there's a surprise. Not! But how......?"

"She and I studied for our doctorates together. I know her family. Her mother isn't going to take much persuading to lay it on thick."

"And you know a well-qualified replacement who can step into the breach. All's fair in love and war, eh Sam?"

"Indeed." replied Carter, inclining her head slightly in imitation of their absent friend.

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Elapsed time on board (ETOB): LD Plus 4. Elapsed time at origin (ETAO): LD Plus 4

The huge Mylar pod to which the Prometheus had been mated, piggy-back style, in Earth orbit made the craft look like a next-generation version of the Space Shuttle when it had been attached to its larger fuel tank and booster rockets during the many take-offs of the last twenty years.

TV viewers watching via the long-focus cameras aboard the International Space Station observed the delicate ballet of the last few of the bright yellow robot drones and their attached, looping umbilicals moving spider- like around and away from the ship and its pod. The white mist of ice crystals that they had spent the last two days spraying over the noses of both the Prometheus and its Bio-pod had dissipated, leaving the extraordinary sight of two glittering cones that had transformed the lumbering, irregular shapes of both craft into sleek, streamlined, huge darts with silver-white tips and black bodies.

"Sam, for crying out loud!" came Emmett's voice in her earpiece as she sat behind the desk in the TV studio. She winced at the familiarity of that expression. "You're leaving too many gaps between voiceovers and you're not here to give an engineering and astronomy lecture! Just look at the spectacle in front of you! Is it not beautiful? Does it not stir your soul? Are they not boldly going where no man, yadda, yadda..... Feel it, Sam! By all means, keep explaining, but just tell us what it means to you!"

'If only they knew.' she thought briefly, but took a deep breath and carefully formed her thoughts and words.

"It's strange to think that they're going to need streamlining in the vacuum of space." she stated, little realising that even on her first day of broadcasting, much of her male audience around the world was already becoming intoxicated with just the sound of her lilting voice, and didn't really care what she was saying. "But later in the mission, they'll be travelling at such incredibly high speeds that even the ultra-dilute universal soup of a few gas molecules and micro-particles that stand in their flight path could slow them down. The streamlined shape will minimise that deceleration. More importantly though, the ice nose cones will protect them from particle impact much more effectively than a metal shield. At those speeds, it would be like a bullet passing through paper."

"Better. Keep going." came Bregman's voice inside her head again.

"Some of you may be wondering why they don't just rely on the force shield that has protected Prometheus since we built it." said Sam. "Well, that and the artificial gravity generators will be turned off during the observation runs through normal space. The instruments they carry are so incredibly sensitive that the background noise of onboard systems needs to be minimised at all times. And believe me, force and grav generators are incredibly powerful, electrically noisy items."

"Excellent, Sam. Keep reminding them that you helped to design and build this ship." came her tutor's voice again.

"The other advantage of ice is that it's a renewable resource." Sam stated, faltering a little as she rebelled at the idea of talking about her own involvement. "In an emergency, they can slow down and collect the nuclei of comets to replace lost material. There are billions of comets in the universe and most of them are nothing more than slushy ice." She paused a while and watched the last robot returning to the Space Station on the monitor. "Let's listen in for a while on the ship's intercom as they prepare for departure."

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Jack O'Neill sat at the rear of the Prometheus' control cabin chatting idly with Celia Chen, the Bio-pod and space telescope engineering specialist. They both had little to do until the voyage was under way, and knew that they would best serve the others by keeping a low profile but remaining ready to act if requested.

"Nervous?" asked Jack in a kindly voice.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't." she replied with a tentative smile. "It's all right for you – you've been on this ship dozens of times."

"Yeah, but the sinking feeling before launch doesn't go away." he replied. "It'll dissipate when we're under way and getting busy, just you see."

"I want to believe you!" she giggled.

"Believe it, nyen ching-duh." he smiled back, and she looked surprised.

"You speak Chinese?" she enquired.

"Just a little." he mused. "Learned it in Korea before you were born. Forgotten most." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glow of a red light on the comms console signalling that the TV link was active. "Lao- tyen boo, mei-mei. Smile at the camera."

Taking a quick coffee-break in the studio while the live on-board downlink was in progress, Sam reached for her cell phone only to find a text message arriving before she could send the one she was planning to write.

'believe it youngster, and oh lord, sister. tell the devious rat I'll get even with him. daniel'

'yeahsureyoubetcha' was her quick reply.

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