Chapter 5 – Talking

If the pilot Vittorio Avagnaro was satisfied that all pre-flight checks aboard Prometheus had been completed satisfactorily, then that was certainly good enough for Jocelyn Stevens so she gave the five-minute notice to fire the engines that would propel them out of Earth orbit to the first wormhole jump point.

"Just time for a few words from each of you for folks back home." Stevens said in clipped tones before opening the live TV link again. "Thirty seconds each. Oh, and there's a new downlink person. Actually someone who nearly made it on this mission but her employer wouldn't let her go."

Jack's ears pricked up at her statement but he dismissed the fleeting possibility almost immediately, only to be sent reeling moments later when Sam's smiling face appeared on the monitor. Beside him, the insightful Celia Chen observed the brief expression of shock on his face and knew instantly that they had 'history', and not the trivial kind. She smiled, understanding already that Jack O'Neill, father figure or not, was a very private person who would never openly confess to having feelings for someone. 'Well,' she thought, 'at least I can return the caring that he has for us. He'll never ask that from anyone. It's going to be difficult for him when she's on the other end of the sub-space communicator every time we make contact.' Her musings were broken by Jocelyn Stevens making the first contribution to the final pre-departure messages.

"I am so honoured to be commanding this ship on such a momentous voyage." said the commander. "We now have the means to look at evolution on a grand scale, as well as the opportunity to verify the most fundamental concept ever developed by man. I refer of course to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Our near-light-speed observation runs in normal space have never before been carried out by any of the sentient races we now know to exist throughout the universe. This is truly a first for humanity. Mohammad?"

The camera switched to the calm, dark face of the co-pilot, Mohammad Sesele. He smiled benignly at the camera and stated calmly, "Whatever name you give to your God, think of us from time to time on this voyage. Not as anyone important, just as emissaries of humankind seeking the truth about His creation."

"I'm so sorry to be leaving all my ex-wives and girlfriends. Ciao bambini!" laughed Vittorio. "Just think though, ladies, that when you see the brightest star in the sky, it's still me!" He blew a kiss to his somewhat under-whelmed coterie of ex's.

"Sonja?" said Stevens, indicating the astrophysicist seated off to the side as the small camera in the cabin roof panned round.

"Ya, thanks Jos." Meyer's strongly-accented English increased the attention of all German-speaking viewers around the world. "Like she says, it is a great honour to be permitted to advance science in this way. Mother, I will miss you, but you will always be in my thoughts. Ich liebe dich!" She waved at the camera before it moved on to Celia Chen.

"I too am so pleased to be on this journey." said Celia. "I dedicate the discoveries I hope to make to my friends in the orphanage and university. Juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan."

"O'Neill?" came Stevens' voice again.

The camera was squarely pointed at Jack and he knew he had no escape. Hesitating only momentarily, he uttered, "Er, like she said, this is a happy day." He paused before a slight frown creased his forehead as he looked up. "Carter, what are you doing there? Did I forget to turn out a light or something?"

In the studio, Sam's short-lived surprise at his question spurred her on to seize the opportunity, unlike so many she knew she had been wrong to pass up before. She gazed into the camera lens and said evenly "Just pursuing unfinished business..... Jack."

"Whoa!" came the delighted, amused, simultaneous cries of NBC and CBS broadcasters in other studios who were shadowing this transmission. "Is there an agenda here or is there an agenda here?!!" said one, while the other exclaimed "Jack, baby! What are you doing on board that ship?" And so, the Nine Days Wonder that followed in the less-than-serious sections of the press and media (i.e. everywhere except The Wall Street Journal) centred around speculation on ultra-long-distance relationships rather than the serious tones of galactic science. "Carrying the torch for him while he carries it for mankind" was voted the best headline – by the journalists themselves, of course, to whom the reading public are a sideshow anyway.

Emmett Bregman was in seventh heaven, even more so when he realised that keeping the paparazzi away from 'Colonel Sam' at times when she was not kept out of public view by the Air Force was best for her as well as himself. His film company was now powered by a combination of exclusive access rights to the Prometheus expedition and the air of mystique surrounding his new-found 'star'. He'd seen her obvious attraction to her former boss when shooting his original film at the SGC and it had not been by chance that he'd approached her to fill the role of TV anchor woman. Even the Pentagon was enjoying the publicity, having already decided to suppress any background details on why General O'Neill's career at the SGC had suddenly been terminated. Everybody loves a hero, especially an awkward one who would be out of their hair for twenty years.

Only the woman from CNN commented on the fact that Jocelyn Stevens had addressed Jack by his surname, in contrast to the rest of the crew. She foresaw signs of stress between the commander and the security officer in the on-board months to come, and in that she was remarkably perceptive.

Pete Shanahan's ex-wife found him by chance, drinking himself into oblivion in a downtown Denver bar. That same night he was back in her bed if not her life.

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Elapsed time on board (ETOB): LD Plus 6. Elapsed time at origin (ETAO): LD Plus 6 days 4 hours

"OK, we're finally ready to start the spin-up now." said Jocelyn Stevens into the sub-space communicator. "We are steady at forty percent of c and the cable between the Prometheus and the bio-pod is finally taut without oscillations at the full forty kilometre extension."

"Copy that, Jos." responded Sam in the comfort of the Earth-based studio. "Anybody still space-sick after two days of zero g?"

"Negative, Sam." came back Stevens' voice after a short delay. "Chen and Sesele seem to be over the worst of it. The others are OK."

"Sam, explain again to the viewers what's been going on, and keep it simple." said Bregman into her ear-piece.

Sam paused in the way that she was becoming used to and collected her thoughts. She continued in a calm, clear way.

"The Prometheus exited the first wormhole two days ago in the vicinity of the smaller Magellanic cloud, the satellite galaxy to The Milky Way. Using the quantum exchange techniques developed from the theories of Doctor Rodney McKay, they picked up energy from the wormhole itself to accelerate to a much higher exit speed. They're now coasting well away from densely- packed star regions at forty percent of c, as we refer to the speed of light. The plan called for the bio-pod to be detached from the mother ship as soon as they were back in normal space, and this passed off without event. It started to manoeuvre away from the mother ship, pulling after it the Fullerite tethering cable that keeps the two craft connected together. Now Fullerite is an immensely strong, lightweight form of pure carbon. At full stretch, the two craft will be forty kilometres – that's about twenty four miles – apart, and the thrusters will be fired so that they start to spin around each other, held together by the taut cable. The Prometheus is much heavier than the bio-pod, so the centre of rotation will be nearer to itself than the bio-pod. About ten kilometres along the cable towards the bio-pod, in fact, so that the pod will swing around in a circle some sixty kilometres in diameter while the Prometheus will swing in a circle twenty kilometres in diameter."

She paused while computer graphics demonstrated the procedure for the TV audience.

"They hit a snag soon after the bio-pod started to draw away from the mother ship." Sam continued. "The cable started snaking and snatching, and so the procedure was stopped until they could steady the oscillations. However, as soon as they started again, the same thing happened. They eventually worked out that the artificial gravity generator aboard Prometheus had to be switched off while the cable was being paid out. Human beings can live for short periods in zero g, but after a few days and weeks, the lack of gravity means that muscles start to decay and bone calcium starts to reduce. Also if you're not used to it, zero g can make you feel very nauseous. So these two days in free-fall may have been uncomfortable, but otherwise OK in the long term.

Anyway, the ships are now fully apart and the rotation manoeuvre they are starting will create the sensation of gravity on board each of them as a result of centripetal force – just like a fairground ride, for example. They'll spin just fast enough so that a force of one-sixth g, like astronauts experienced standing on the surface of the Moon nearly forty years ago, will be felt on board. Good enough to give the sensation of up and down, but not enough to stop you from hitting your head on the roof if you jump up too quickly."

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Celia Chen was exhausted after three hours of careful monitoring of the thruster firing program on board the bio-pod. She had been in constant communication with Vittorio on the Prometheus and between them, they had established a perfectly flat circular orbit around each other without breaking the cable or setting up difficult-to-control snaking movements along its length. She and Jack were the only crew in the pod, and he had spent the time talking her through some of the more awkward moments, using his pilot's experience to persuade her to have the confidence to override some of the computer's control movements whenever it appeared to be following its own whims and not those of the crew.

Gravity on the pod was now fully at one-sixth g, and it felt odd to be looking up at the 'ceiling', to see the cable disappearing straight up into blackness. The Prometheus at this distance was invisible to the naked eye, but Jack had aligned his telescope alongside a view port so that they could see it if the need were felt.

He broke out some MRE rations from the food locker and offered her a fruit- flavoured bar.

"Thanks, Jack." she said, taking it gratefully. "I don't suppose....."

"Coffee in five." he smiled back at her. "You need a break before we start to deploy the large telescope mirror, never mind how soon the boss wants it done."

"How's the greenery doing?" she asked, still munching.

"OK, I think." he replied. "Most of the liquid water that spread itself around the growing decks in zero g has returned to the floor and some of the tomato plants have already started growing at crazy angles, but the vegetables seem like normal. Oxygen and CO2 levels are what they should be."

"Jack, do you mind that Jocelyn has allocated so many jobs to you in the bio-pod?" asked Celia after a while. "The original roster wasn't set up quite like that."

"She's the captain, and what she says goes." replied Jack at length. "But she can't stop me carrying out my security duties on Prometheus at the programmed intervals, so I guess anything outside that is acceptable."

"But she almost acts as though she doesn't want you on board at all." Celia continued.

"I'm sure that's an exaggeration." he said, not wanting to foster an atmosphere of insubordination. "The captain's role isn't easy in any respect, and she's got to call 'em like she sees 'em. Now let's not have any more talk like that! Time to call up and let them know we're ready for the telescope mirror deployment. Mohammad's just itching to get out there in the mini-pod to place the focal point data collector ahead of us, and he can't do that until we've got the mirrors lined up now, can he?"

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In the studio, Sam had just finished explaining how the mirror segments on the Prometheus and the bio-pod would reflect light and other radiation back to the focus of this huge rotating telescope – two telescopes, in fact, one of twenty kilometres, and the other sixty kilometres in diameter. More graphics had demonstrated how computers would piece together all the information gathered as each mirror segment swung lazily around to complete each circle, acting as though they were one giant circular mirror, used one slice at a time before moving to the next position.

It had taken Mohammad Sesele in the mini-pod much longer than expected to ferry the small collector out to the focal point some sixteen kilometres ahead of the two craft, and set its gyroscopes correctly so that it stayed perfectly aligned. In fact, he'd become so absorbed in wanting to set it accurately that Jack had felt it necessary to cut in on Jocelyn Stevens' final radioed 'urgent advisory' to tell him in much stronger, highly colourful terms to get his ass back to Prometheus before he ran out of oxygen and fuel and endangered the whole mission. Both gauges were well into the red when he docked again, and he had the grace to admit that perhaps he had gone a little too far. None of which, however, made Jack any the more popular with the captain.

The clipped tones of Stevens' daily sub-space transmitted report spoke volumes to Sam, who recognised instantly that friction was building between the two. She knew on the one hand that Jack had been absolutely correct in his actions as safety officer, and on the other that he would never compromise the chain of command by openly speaking against the senior officer. However, she also knew from experience that he was capable of storing up resentment that would be expressed in a highly forceful and even vitriolic way in private, and realised that she should perhaps attempt to defuse some of his temperament during their daily personal message exchanges.

Each crew member was permitted to send and receive several minutes of recorded personal messages every day. These were made and viewed in private and usually were exchanged with friends and relatives on Earth, transmitted in highly-compressed format in seconds. The TV studio had been inundated with calls from around the world when news had leaked out that Jack O'Neill was alone in neither sending nor receiving daily personal messages. The flood of offers that poured in had ranged from simple correspondence to marriage or management of his financial estate for the next twenty years, or both. Recognising the opportunity for what it was, Sam sent him a note saying that she would fix him up with a gay professional wrestler if he didn't start communicating with her on a regular basis. His first reply arrived the same day.

She took home 'his' CD to watch and listen to in total privacy. Opening a bottle of Californian red wine and pouring herself a large glass in the kitchen, she then decided to bring the bottle with her anyway to the sofa, where the DVD player was loaded and ready for the start button on the remote. Eating was out of the question.

To her surprise, Jack appeared to be surrounded by foliage on the screen. His recorded voice was much more life-like than the distorted words of the sub-space transmitter, and it heightened her tension a little. What if this was a gamble gone wrong? What of he really did want to be out of her life?

"Well, Carter, this is a fine mess you've gotten me into." was his opening gambit, and she was still on tenterhooks. "Well, not really, I suppose. The old wrestling moves are a little rusty these days, so here I am."

He paused and looked away from the camera briefly. "Welcome to my world, Carter. As you can see, this is one of the growing floors in the bio-pod, somewhere I'm going to be getting to know pretty well over the next few months according to Stevens. And all those years as my 2IC haven't gone to waste, Carter. I know you'll be sending me a message saying not to get into the captain's bad books any more than I am now. Well, I know I won't stop you – I never did before, did I?

Stevens is a good sort, and tough enough to take hard decisions if she has to. Timing could be a little better, though. I'll try to get her to see that. The others are likeable too, even Avagnaro except when he's trying to persuade one of the girls to share his bunk. He knows I'll get nasty if he goes too far, though.

Kinda surprising, isn't it, that I'm out here with all these research doohickies and you're not. I'll admit I've thought about that a lot. Still, the pay's good if I bring them all home safe and sound. Keep your fingers crossed for me on that score, OK?

Well, that's all the news I can think of right now. I was sure surprised to find you on the other end. I hope it goes well for you, being famous and all.

Also I hope that you and Pete are doing OK. Good luck, now. Talk to you again when there's some news."

She watched his deadpan expression on the screen as he reached forward to switch off the recorder, and the screen went blank. She was disturbed to find that she had been crying without realising it.

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