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They don’t know about time dilation. Rocky doesn’t realize that Erid experienced a whole bunch more time than he did on that trip. They don’t know about length dilation. The distance to Tau Ceti will actually increase as you slow down relative to it—even if you’re still going toward it.
An entire planet of intelligent people put together a ship based on incorrect scientific assumptions, and by some miracle, the sole survivor of the crew was clever enough at trial-and-error problem solving to actually get it to its destination.
And out of that major screw-up comes my salvation. They thought they’d need a whole lot more fuel. So Rocky has boatloads to spare.
“Okay, Rocky,” I say. “Get comfortable. I have alotof science to explain.”
—
He knocked twice and leaned into my office. “Dr. Grace? Are you Dr. Grace?”
It wasn’t a large office, but you’re lucky to have any personal space at all on an aircraft carrier. Before it held the high honor of being my office, the room was a storage locker for bathroom supplies. The crew had three thousand butts that needed daily wiping. I got to keep the room as my office until the next time we were in port. Then they’d fill it up with more supplies.
I was approximately as critical as toilet paper.
I looked up from my laptop. The short, somewhat disheveled man at the door waved awkwardly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m Grace. You are…?”
“Hatch. Steve Hatch. University of British Columbia. Nice to meet ya.”
I gestured to the folding chair in front of the folding table I used as a desk.
He shuffled in, carrying a bulbous metal object. I’d never seen anything like it. He plunked it on my table.
I looked at the object. It was like someone had flattened a medicine ball, added a triangle to one end, and a trapezoid to the other.
He sat in the chair and stretched his arms. “Man, that was weird. I’ve never been on a helicopter before. Have you? Well, of course you have. How else would you get here? I mean, I guess you could have used a boat, but probably not. I hear they keep the carrier far away from land in case there’s a disaster during Astrophage experiments. A boat would have been nicer, honestly, that helicopter ride almost made me puke. But I’m not complaining. I’m just happy to be involved.”
“Um”—I gestured to the object on my desk—“what is this thing?”
He somehow became even more energetic. “Ah, right! That’s a beetle! Well, a prototype for one, anyway. My team and I think we have most of the kinks worked out. Well, you never haveallthe kinks worked out, but we’re ready for actual engine tests. And the university said we had to do those here on the carrier. Also the provincial government of British Columbia said it. Oh, and the national government of Canada said it too. I’m Canadian, by the way. But don’t worry! I’m not one of those anti-American Canadians. I think you guys are all right.”
“Beetle?”
“Yeah!” He picked it up and turned the trapezoid toward me. “This is how theHail Marycrew will send us back the information. It’s a little self-contained spacecraft that will automatically navigate itself back to Earth from Tau Ceti. Well, from anywhere, really. That’s what me and my team have been working on for the past year.”
I peek into the trapezoid and see a shiny glasslike surface. “Is that a spin drive?” I asked.
“Sure is! Man, those Russians know their stuff. We just used their designs and everything came out great. At least, I think it did. We haven’t tested the spin drive yet. The tricky part is navigation and steering.”
He turned the device around and faced the triangular head toward me. “This is where the cameras and computer are. No fancy-schmancy inertial-navigation nonsense. It uses ordinary visible light to see the stars. It identifies constellations and works out its orientation from that.” He tapped the center of the bulbous carapace. “There’s a little DC generator in here. As long as we have Astrophage, we have power.”
“What can it carry?” I ask.
“Data. It’s got a redundant RAID array with more memory storage than anyone would ever need.” He knocked on the dome. It echoed slightly. “The bulk of this puppy is fuel storage. It’ll need about 125 kilos of Astrophage to make the trip. Seems like a lot but…man…twelve light-years!”
I lifted the device and hefted it in my hands a couple of times. “How does it turn?”
“Reaction wheels inside,” he said. “It spins them one way, the ship turns the other. Easy-peasy.”
“Interstellar navigation is ‘easy-peasy’?” I smiled.
He snickered. “Well, for what we have to do, yeah. It has a receiver that’s constantly listening for a signal from Earth. Once it hears that signal, it’ll broadcast its location and await instructions from the Deep Space Network. We don’t have to be super accurate with the navigation. We just need it to show up within radio range of Earth. Anywhere within the orbit of Saturn or so will do just fine.”
I nod. “And then scientists can tell it exactly how to get back. Clever.”
He shrugged. “They’ll probably do that, yeah. But they don’t need to. They’ll have it radio over all the data first thing. The information gets across. Then they can collect it later if they want. Oh, and we’re making four of these. All we need is for one of them to survive the trip.”
