Читать книгу Star Map - Fabienne Gschwind - Страница 9

It was January, a Sunday afternoon to be exact, the crew worked every day, but today was declared a holiday. The previous week they had set a new record: They had traveled 1800 light-years in a week, three times faster than anything possible before. A pond was responsible for this. Ponds were subspace formations where it was completely peaceful and there was no danger. They had descended almost to the abyss and caught a favorable wind there. So deep down in the curvature of dimension, the light-years flew by like nothing. Now they had emerged into normal space and had done a full scan to measure the surrounding stars and solar systems.

A lavish Sunday brunch was arranged for the festivities and the cooking robot was programmed accordingly. After brunch, everyone was stuffed and they snuggled into the sofas. Lex had rehearsed a poem and recited it, which sparked a discussion about 22nd-century poetry.

Sunday or not, Jay insisted on daily emergency training. The three biggest dangers in subspace were the monster wave, the vortex and the typhoon.

Monster waves were a kind of pent-up subspace energy that appeared suddenly. One had only short warning times and the survival depended only on the fact that the ship was positioned correctly in the wave to "surf along".

The crew had here the best protection: Jay had “ridden” whole twelfe monster waves and was considered world-wide as the most experienced pilot in this topic. And so the crew played out the monster wave scenario. In their 14 year mission they had already experienced three waves and the danger was real.

With the typhoons, the crew had been lucky and thanks to the extreme sensors, they had been able to detect these "subspace storms" in time and get out of the way. Typhoons were not particularly deadly, but they could cause a ship to drift tens of thousands of light-years in the wrong direction. How many astronavigators had been driven far off their route by typhoons and then simply not made it back was not known. But it was a real danger and in the StarMap contracts it was clearly stated that a return was not guaranteed - in the worst case the crew would have to spend the rest of their lives on an alien planet.

The chance of dying in subspace was very real to them. The StarMap balance was 10%. 10% of ships were lost in subspace. Another reason it was so difficult to recruit people.

The vortex was the most deadly subspace hazard and was the least understood phenomenon. The problem was that you only saw it when you were already in the strong downward currents.

Nemo was the only living person who had survived a vortex experience. "But also, only because we had turned off on time before we were in the maelstrom".

The emergency maneuver that Nemo's then-captain had performed had flung Nemo's old spaceship into a white-water area, from where it had collided violently into a cliff. Nemo had survived because he was wearing his high-end technician suit, which had protected him from the pressure drop. The fact that he was wearing this suit saved his life when the ship’s hull was torn open. Fortunately, they were on their way back, and thanks to the subspace maps they had sent earlier, an ambulance ship reached him in time. He was the only survivor.

Milo took the opportunity to show some sensor data from Vortex-like phenomena that he had recently recorded. It seemed that there might be a particularly large number of vortexes in this area. The general hypothesis was that the ships were pushed into the deep abyss, where they were torn apart by tidal forces. Milo was about to give a lecture on his latest hypothesis, but Jay interrupted him.

The Captain, noting that everyone had loitered enough, took the lead and invited the crew for a Sunday stroll along the long corridor of Deck 8. Using virtual goggles, he had designed a walk that took the crew to the Dolomites, well-planned changes in gravity gave the feeling of going up or down. The evening ended with a poker game, in which Milo won, as always.