Garden at the End of the Universe
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Outside the control room door, the three of us formed a little huddle to decide which in-system craft we should take. There were three possible kinds, all based on the same original design but with different passenger and cargo capacities. "We could all fit comfortably into the small variant," Adele pointed out. "True," Michael agreed, "On the way over. But what if we are asked to bring many people or large cargo back again? We should take the biggest version, just in case." "That would use more fuel," I argued. "Also true," Michael said, "But the distance is tiny, really, and we can always separate out more Deuterium and Tritium." Deuterium and Tritium are heavier isotopes of Hydrogen used in the fusion reactors which power the Endurance's engines and, in smaller form, the shuttles. They are found in vanishingly small quantities in chemicals made up from Hydrogen, but we had billions of tonnes of water and methane and ammonia to refine to make more. "Okay," I agreed, "The big version it is." The in-system ships are made from metal alloys and carbon fibre, augmented with engineered ceramics. Iron and Aluminium and Titanium are all trace elements in the ice but, when you run hundreds of tonnes per second through separation plants before ionising the remainder to use as engine propellant, it does not take long to amass the raw materials to construct a perfectly conventional spacecraft. Michael pulled a tablet from his pocket and prodded it a few times. "The closest one is L04, also called Clarity Space," he announced, "It's in standby mode, so only basic systems are running, and the reactor is in trickle configuration." "The engines?" I asked, "And the inertia field suppressors?" The latter were my own speciality, particularly those of the Endurance itself: effectively artificial gravity, essential for survival and comfort at the kinds of accelerations these ships could sustain. Michael manipulated his tablet again. "Cold. Completely off-line. We'll have to do a full restart." This was what I had anticipated. After all, in our original plan, we had not expected to use these ships for years. There were of course documented procedures for restarts, and I was quite sure we would want to perform all the checks we could think of before firing up the titanic energies which even a small craft demanded. Adele had produced her own tablet. "It's this way," she said, indicating a branch in the corridors. We set off, Adele pointing out the way. The corridors got noticeably cooler as we approached the hanger, even though they were lined with the same highly effective insulating material as the rest of the habitable areas. Michael continued poking at his tablet as we walked, to the point where I had to prevent him from walking into the walls on a couple of occasions. we stopped in front of a heavy airtight door, one of three sets of airlocks we would have to traverse to enter the Clarity Space. "I've ramped up the reactor a couple of notches," Michael said, "To get the internal heating functioning, and the atmosphere management running acceptably. Give it a couple more minutes and we should be able to open the doors." As he spoke, a red telltale on the door itself was replaced by a flashing yellow, accompanied by displays which showed the temperature and pressure on the other side of the door were increasing rapidly. After a slightly impatient wait, at least on my part, the telltale turned green. Michael leaned forward and pressed a button; there were several loud thunks and hisses as the locks released themselves, and the door swung open. The hanger volume allocated to the Clarity Space was open to the outside, and so in hard vacuum - there were closed spaces elsewhere for ship repairs, of course, but spacecraft are in generally just fine in, ah, space. The airlock door opened on to a long and not-quite straight corridor, being a flexible pipe which connected the Endeavour to the Clarity Space. The smaller craft was more firmly connected by a series of clamps which we would release before we departed. Michael entered codes on both his tablet and a touch screen on the outer door itself, which opened immediately and with much less fuss. We stepped inside; a large flashing red button on the inner door made it clear what to do next. Michael pressed the Big Red Button; the outer door closed and the inner opened almost immediately. We were in. The chilly but rapidly warming atmosphere inside the craft was something of a shock for a moment, but we all ignored it and settled down to work through the checklists. Adele focussed on the engines and secondary thrusters, where she was an expert; I tackled the inertia nullification systems, and Michael got stuck into the myriad of other controls and subsystems. Of course we checked carefully each other’s work; this was all part of the established procedures we were following. We encountered only the most minor of problems - one control subsystem reported itself as unstable, but seemed happy enough once a full reboot had been performed - but basically the Clarity Space appeared to be in excellent condition. One by one, status indicators on the screens moved smoothly from the black of 'unpowered' to the green of 'ready' or the blue of 'running'. Still, there were some things we could not properly test while still inside the *Endurance*, the main engines and the inertia suppression fields being two of them. Right now, the *Clarity Space* was still inside the fields generated by the *Endurance* itself; these projected well beyond the icy shell of the craft itself. We were therefore all still subjected to the 1.1 earth artificial gravity which felt normal and allowed us all to work most effectively. We would have to move outside to test both field generators and fusion plasma engines. "Okay, are we ready for engine testing?" Michael asked. I took one last look and my screens, then said, "Yes." Adele said, "All set." "Strap in," he instructed, settling himself in the pilot's seat and fastening his own restraining harness. After one last check of the screens, he pressed a button which disengaged the clamps holding the two ships together and engaged a pre-programmed firing sequence from the secondary thrusters which gently nudged the Clarity Space away from the Endurance and thus outside the larger craft's artificial gravity. I knew it was coming, and I steeled myself for it, but the stomach-churning sensation of the apparent gravity suddenly dropping away to almost nothing still took me by surprise. It took me a moment - well, quite a few moments - to get my insides under some kind of control; I suspect that Adele and Michael felt the same, judging by the sudden stillness. After a minute or so, Michael said: "Are we ready for engine light?" I glanced over my displays one last time, then said: "ready to go"; Adele did the same. Michael engaged another preprogrammed sequence: the thrust from the engine built quickly pressing us backwards in our seats. I watched my displays closely: when the thrust reached 2.1 gravities, the inertia generators kicked in and the apparent gravity swung around to a perfectly normal value beneath our feet, even as we accelerated further. Michael performed a number of manoeuvres intended to test the coordinated operation of engine and artificial gravity. All seemed well, and he eventually punched up another sequence which reversed the whole process and positioned us neatly back in the hangar space in the Endurance. Michael seemed pleased, even smug. "Time to give Captain Tan a call."
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Part 1