Moneypenny, this one's for you.
Chapter 9 – Critical Factors
Elapsed time on board (ETOB): LD Plus 22. Elapsed time at origin (ETAO): LD Plus 25 days 9 hours
The shattering news from Earth had almost eliminated the tension between Jocelyn Stevens and Jack O'Neill. Almost, but she still tensed whenever he spoke during their meetings, and consciously or unconsciously used mildly deprecating terms when summarising his suggestions.
His niggling retort to her repeated use of his surname sent the temperature up again, though.
"O'Neill, if you knew more about the functioning of....." she had started.
"I know damned well how the gizmo works, Josie!" he had replied, his patience thinning at her obstinacy, his glare matching hers. "And I do know how important it is to salvage whatever remaining science there is left in the time available. But I strongly suggest that securing the ship and crew for what could turn out to be the last time has got to take priority here. If, and I repeat 'if' we're all satisfied that everything possible in that direction has been done, then there'll be opportunities to save what we can of the experiments."
Once more the silence of the expectant crew was deafening, making Stevens uncomfortable and hesitant about voicing her next command. She recognised more openly now that Jack's role as Safety Officer had been of greater significance than she had wanted to believe before, and deep down she respected the dogged way he had made his points. But that was the limit of it: O'Neill would not openly challenge her authority: she knew that his military background would stop him from attempting to usurp her position as captain, and it had brought her a measure of confidence.
It had been a mistake to have a non-scientist on board, or even an amateur one, she thought. The importance of this mission was so great that risks were generally worth taking, and he had slowed their progress. All right, she admitted to herself, the shock news that the naquadria reactor would probably become increasingly unstable the nearer they approached the speed of light had put a new perspective on things, but quid pro quo the more important it had become to ensure that an experiment that would almost certainly never be repeated in their lifetimes was run to its limits in the time available. This wasn't about fame or her career: she loved science more than that. She was walking in the steps of giants, and the thrill was overwhelming. Even O'Neill had become absorbed in his work for amateur astronomers, she grudgingly recognised.
She had no idea of how long the crew had been waiting for her to speak: had it been a fraction of a second or a measurable part of a minute? She looked round at each face in turn, all (except him, of course, the damned poker- playing iceberg) waiting with obvious expectation.
"Very well." she said with as much firmness as she could muster. "Mohammad, you will run the experiments that Sonja and I were doing on the twenty-one centimetre background radiation map until a logical point of shutdown has been reached, or in twelve hours time, whichever is the sooner. Vittorio and I will run a full systems check on the reactor and ancillary power distribution units."
She felt more relaxed now, and the decision having been made, she also realised that the common dangers of the next few days would leave no place for personal grievances. "Sonja, Celia and Jack will return to the Bio- pod to shut down and retrieve the experiments being run there, including the biology data. We won't reel the Bio-pod back in to make the wormhole jump: it will be abandoned where it is once we've terminated the rotation. You will return here in the mini-pod. Likewise, there's no point in retrieving the focal point data collector ahead of us." She looked for, and received an almost imperceptible nod from Jack before continuing. "Safety first, people. We have an awesome responsibility to salvage what we can from the greatest astronomical and cosmological experiment since the roots of modern science became established three hundred years ago. But don't let yourselves take unacceptable risks. We'll be making the next wormhole entry in eighteen hours from now. Now go to it, folks."
Murmurs of assent from around the cabin reassured Jocelyn that this had been the right decision. As they left, she called "Jack! A moment, please."
Surprised at her words, he loped gracefully back over to her in the one- sixth gravity. This was a sensation that they would all miss.
"Jack," she continued, "look, I know you think I've been hard on them and you....."
"No, Jos, you haven't." he interrupted her. "Just a little focussed, maybe. We're all still here and in one piece. That's as big an accomplishment as all the data you've logged."
A thin smile crept across her face. "Thanks, Jack. Just help me make sure we stay that way, OK?"
"Yes, boss." he smiled back at her.
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'The flattest roller coaster ride in the Universe' Vittorio had called it. But it was nothing like a roller coaster in anything except the adrenalin rush. No apparent motion, except when leaving and approaching the two co- rotating ships connected by the impossibly thin thread of a carbon fibre cable. Not that the connecting trajectory to meet with the Bio-pod followed the cable, even if it were visible from more than a few metres away. No, the mini-pod with two space-suited figures held gently in its manipulator arms set off in a direction at right angles to the Prometheus and the line of the cable, its computers having predicted exactly where the Bio-pod would arrive in its orbit around the mother ship, aiming them straight for that still-empty point in space.
Celia Chen was by common assent the best pilot of the mini-pod, and so she sat in the relative comfort and security of the small cabin, designed to comfortably hold one person wearing a space suit. The pod was pressurised, so she could look out over the controls and instrument panel through the large forward view port without wearing her helmet. The multi-flex jointed arms of the pod's two 'claws' were spread wide so that she had a clear view ahead – essential for safe docking – but not so wide that she couldn't see the rear of Sonja's and Jack's space suits off to each side as they rode the 'coaster' out in the total vacuum. As soon as the pod's booster rocket had accelerated them to cruise velocity and cut out, she shut off the external spotlights so that all three could enjoy the panorama of stars, galaxies and nebulae splashed across the velvet, utter blackness.
The adrenalin rush was more heightened in the two crew members outside the pod. It wasn't just the feeling of utter isolation in deep space (provided they didn't turn round and look at Celia's face through the view port, of course): the sound of their own breathing in the suits – a constant, steady rasping – reminded them of the fine thread by which their existence hung. But the view was even more captivating than from inside the Prometheus or the Bio-pod. It was the drug that kept them all volunteering to ferry between the two craft. All except Vittorio, unfortunately. His first trip as 'external cargo' had had to be aborted when his heart rate had risen above 140 and his rapid breathing had fogged his suit visor. He was fine inside the mini-pod, but the rest of them knew never to pressure him into doing that again. And none held it against him, either. Only those who'd done something like it would know what it was really like.
All too soon the mini-pod had matched velocities with the Bio-pod, and the two space-suited figures detached the karabiners that tethered them to the metal fingers of the claws, and fired their micro-thrusters to propel themselves gently towards the airlock. Celia floated off again in the small craft to inspect the ice nose cone and the Mylar exterior skin of the combined observatory and greenhouse.
As soon as the pressures were equalised, the inner door opened and their helmets removed, the organic odours from the growing decks that Jack and Celia found so refreshing, Sonja tolerated and Mohammad hated, assaulted their senses. Sonja wrinkled her nose and sneezed a few times, but smiled at him as they started the process of helping each other out of their space suits. With few words they set about their respective tasks, hers at the control console for the telescope, his in the fruit and vegetable beds that he grudgingly admitted had come to be his pride and joy. Funny, he had never been much of a gardener, except when Sarah and young Charlie had been so much a part of his life. Perhaps those few happy memories had caused his interest to re-surface. One day.......
One day. That brought him back to reality. Present dangers aside, their now- aborted mission meant that they would no longer be running near to the speed of light in the later stages, and would not be ageing slowly compared to the sluggards back on Earth. So no twenty-year absence. Instead, the prospect – and he only dared to think of it as the prospect – of Carter in his life. Would she want a garden? He stopped himself thinking these absurd thoughts and tried to re-focus on the job in hand, and was aided in his return to reality by the sight of Celia outside in the mini-pod as its searchlights passed across the lower deck view port as she continued her close inspection.
He ran the data logger that recorded just about every aspect of life in the hydroponics beds and the heavier soil-filled 'plots', as he called the strange chambers where root vegetables were growing. Temperature, humidity, pH, biomass, KNP fertiliser ratios in the soil, atmosphere composition, especially the oxygen / carbon dioxide ratio. Every aspect except taste, he mused. Low-gravity tomatoes, strawberries and other red fruits were soft and squishy compared to the real thing back at home. Soya just tasted like soya, its texture never retained in cooking anyway. Still, complementing their rations with fresh produce was a huge improvement to morale, not to mention taste. Even Megaburger meals were made presentable. He wondered once again who had thought up the multi-functional role of the Bio-pod for this mission: food store, air-recycler thanks to the presence of green plants, telescope mirror and attached laboratory, spacious living and sleeping quarters, centrifugal gravity generator.
Presently he heard and felt the vibrations through the ship as the mini-pod docked and sealed itself onto the airlock, allowing Celia to complete her transfer. He glanced at the large metal cabinet in the stern of the Bio-pod containing the gyroscopes. It resonated as the vessel was nudged by the impact of the docking manoeuvre, the spinning metal masses rotating to compensate for the small movement.
After two and a half hours, Jack had done all that he could in the growing decks, and took his collection of the best strawberries back through the hatch for the three of them to enjoy with their scheduled meal break. He was surprised to see Celia by herself at the console, and she caught his quizzical look.
"Sonja's sleeping." she explained. "It's already past the end of her shift, whereas ours is not yet half way through.
"Ah, yes. I'd forgotten." he replied. He placed the strawberries in a container in the small galley area, and continued "These will keep for her breakfast, then."
On turning round, he was surprised once more to find that Celia had moved right behind him, and he noticed a strange expression on her face. Her eyes were wider than normal, and shining in the subdued lighting. Her one-piece flight suit was unzipped down to her navel, revealing glimpses of the graceful curves of her cream-coloured skin. No undershirt then, screamed Jack's subconscious and not-so-subconscious senses. She reached forward and took his hand, entwining her fingers through his. His own puzzled look was undiminished when she spoke.
"Jack, you know that there's a chance that we might not see home again." She paused until his eyes moved up from their joined hands and were staring straight back into her own. "And you know how much I like and respect you. We may never be able to do this again. I want to make love with you. Now, bao bei. We have time."
No data logger could possibly have recorded his change in temperature just then. "Hwoon dahn." he muttered in astonishment.
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Making the TV broadcasts and acting as link-person to the Prometheus had been fun. That element of the job was missing from her perspectives now, though, as Sam struggled through a press conference. The media wolves had appeared like lightning once the rumours of a serious mishap aboard the expedition ship had taken hold.
She was grateful for Emmett Bregman's presence on the podium, as he seemed adept at handling the baying hordes of his own kind in the 'pit' below.
"Now look, boys and girls!" he shouted in an attempt to calm the hubbub. "Listen, will ya? This is the heart of the problem that we're trying to explain, and we're ONLY GOING TO DO IT ONCE!" And like the proverbial sea parting before Moses, they sat and listened, microphones, pads and pencils poised. "Go, Sam."
She drew a deep breath and launched into her explanation, fully aware of Bregman's stinging words of warning – much more graphic than Jack's had ever been – about keeping it short, understandable to the lay public, and clear.
"We – and by that I mean all of us who've been involved in this project – had forgotten a basic consequence of the laws of relativity when we planned this mission. Now as you know, until we discovered the element naquadria on the planet Kelowna, we had no means of generating enough power with any of the elements found on Earth. The power that's needed to keep spaceships and their crews safe and intact when forming and jumping through wormholes is truly enormous by any standards. The naquadria generator is like a super- small, super-powerful nuclear fusion reactor, and it supplies all the energy that's needed for force shields, artificial gravity, propulsion into orbit and wormhole formation and passage."
She paused but no-one interrupted. "Since we discovered how to travel around the Universe in wormholes during the last few years, there has obviously no longer been any need to find ways of getting to speeds near to the speed of light any more for interstellar travel. Except for the purposes of this mission, where that was exactly what we wanted to achieve in order to better understand the formation and physics of our Universe."
Still no interruptions, so she ploughed on. "Naquadria generates so much power in normal space-time because it exists simultaneously as metal in normal space, and as radiation in sub-space." She could see the first frowns on heads around the audience, but was determined not to stop now.
"Prometheus is using the time it spends in wormholes to draw energy from sub-space, as Dr. Rodney McKay explained on this program the other day, to accelerate it when it returns to normal space. Twice now, they have exited wormholes into normal space, the first time at forty percent of the speed of light, as planned. The second jump was supposed to bring them out at sixty-five percent of c, but as you know it was nearer to seventy percent. It seems that we still don't know enough about methods of control and this is an area for development."
"So the naquadria is less stable because of this energy exchange in wormholes?" called out one journalist.
"Not directly, no." replied Sam. "It's more basic than that. I think you all here have heard of Einstein's famous equation, e equals m c squared. Now in normal space-time, the speed of light is a constant value that never varies. Experiment after experiment has found that to be true. What this means is that the mass of an object – you could think of it if you like as how much it would weigh here on Earth – and the energy it possesses are directly related. Relativity Theory predicts that objects travelling close to the speed of light are more massive than when they are moving slowly. Mass is energy divided by the speed of light squared."
She paused again and spoke a little more slowly in the hope that the message would register with at least a few of them. "You may know that fissionable elements like uranium have a property known as 'critical mass'. In other words, you can put more and more uranium together until it reaches its critical mass, when it spontaneously and explosively converts into other elements, radiation and a very great deal of heat. Your basic atomic bomb. Nuclear reactors, on the other hand, are controllable because the uranium in them is drilled full of holes into which damper rods made of materials that absorb the radiation can be lowered."
"So the naquadria in the Prometheus reactor is increasing in mass along with the rest of the ship and crew each time they exit a wormhole at higher speed, then?" asked the CNN science editor. "Are you saying, Dr. Carter, that it is in danger of exceeding its critical mass and exploding?"
"Not yet." replied Sam. "But it is substantially less stable than other nuclear elements like uranium and plutonium and thus its behaviour is more difficult to predict. The reactor has been running hotter than its design temperature, a sign that it is perhaps approaching its critical mass. There may still be a considerable safety margin but because we're not sure how big a margin, it has been decided to terminate the mission now. Otherwise they might exit a wormhole at a higher speed and be vaporised almost instantaneously."
"Are they at risk when they enter the next wormhole to slow down again?" came another question.
"Possibly. We haven't ruled it out." Sam faltered in reply. "Because the generator has started operating slightly outside its design limits, they may have less control over the deceleration procedure. At present we cannot predict just how much they will have slowed down when they emerge into normal space-time again, or quite where they will be when they do come out. It's going to be a wild ride."
Sleep was difficult to come by that night as she lay in bed. It was as though her last three years with someone else had never happened, and the possibility of losing Jack in this manner was gnawing away at her usual self-confidence. Tomorrow's personal messages from the crew would be the last before they jumped again, and she wondered what he would have to say to her.
Jack was wondering the same thing, but for different reasons.
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