Entropy Risen (The Syker Key Book 3) (5 page)

“I’m activating the drive now,” he said to nobody except the radio in his ear.

“Roger,” came the reply.

The tug was about twice the size of a large semi truck & trailer, but only carried about two thirds the cargo. The rest of the space was taken up by the cab, airlock, and most importantly the drive.

The drive was the real innovation, though Pan knew it had been secretly in use for decades by the military, and millennia by the aliens who had been controlling mankind. It was nothing more than a plasma generator, one that was able to actually manipulate neutrinos, push and pull them in any way demanded by the driver.

The effect was artificial gravity, and two separate generators were actually used in the ship: One outside, to propel the ship, and one inside, to provide controlled gravity for the occupant. The math had suggested the craft was capable of withstanding over twenty gravities of acceleration. It would actually get the craft from Earth to Mars, depending on their orbits, in anywhere from less than ten to just over fifteen hours.

The entire frame was made of carbon fibre for strength, which made it very expensive, but it was the only material readily available that could withstand the forces generated by the drive. The hull itself was titanium, with a thin layer of lead sandwiched between to help with radiation shielding. Under normal circumstances the lead wouldn’t be required, since the drive itself had the effect of being able to block all harmful radiation.

Thankfully the nuclear power plant at the heart of the ship’s system wasn’t a large radiation contributor; it was a simple thorium salt reactor designed by Toshiba, a design they had been trying to market for years that finally found a home. Pan didn’t imagine they had never envisioned it being used in a glorified truck.

He hit the start switch, and there was a low hum throughout the ship. Within a second, gravity was gone, and Pan was glad to be strapped in. He hated zero gravity, and quickly reached for the controls that enabled the internal gravity.

“Switching on fake gravity.”

Another second later and almost normal gravity was restored. That was it. The ship could now be hung upside down or on it’s side but to the occupants they would always feel “down” as being the deck plates. Pan grinned. He’d half expected it not to work, even though he himself had already tested it. Things always tended to go wrong when the world was watching.

“Control, we have gravity.”

He looked out at the New Mexico desert, the midday sun hiding all shadow and betraying the distances of objects. He could see Spaceport America, off to his left, gleaming, it’s population doubled in the last few weeks as the prospect of a new space race attracted literally billions of investment dollars. A lot of people were watching his flight.

“Roger Endeavor. Pad reports your mass is null.”

That meant the outside drive was working as well. Perfect. Time to pick a direction and throttle up.

“Control, I’m cranking it up.” He couldn’t resist the familiar language, steadfastly refusing to use the military-grade speak that the space program demanded. Another stab in the back of the insane powers that had held the planet in it’s grip for so long.

Pan slowly lifted the craft, pointing the nose towards the sky. “Pressing the big red button in three, two, one.”

He keyed the sequence to accelerate, and the craft quickly started climbing, as if falling into the sky. Inside, Pan felt nothing, no acceleration, no indication of movement.

He knew he could pull sudden right angle turns and it wouldn’t,
shouldn’t
, have any impact on the vehicle or the occupants, but this test wasn’t about doing anything too radical.

The ship’s engine was at one gravity, meaning it was truly moving forward as if falling towards Earth. Instead, it continued to accelerate into the sky. In less than a minute it was in space, and Pan entered the key sequence to increase the acceleration to five G. The ship started falling into a hole five times more powerful than Earth’s gravity.

In less than two minutes he was forced to turn the ship around and use that same gravity well to slow the ship down; halfway to Luna already.

For someone used to using teleportation, travel was always slow, but as travel went, this was pretty good. It wasn’t long before he was at Luna. He didn’t need to orbit since the Moon’s gravity had no impact on the ship, but he flew around it anyways. He wanted to see the property he’d bought, though it was ridiculous because without the computer to tell him where it was he had no idea exactly what to look for. He knew where it was
near
though.

“Control, I am now looking down at the Sea of Tranquility.”

“Roger Endeavor, reaching the moon in under six minutes is a confirmed new record, by three days.” Pan could hear the laughing and cheering in the background. He smiled.

The ship worked.

And the new space age had begun. For the first time in centuries, Pan felt like humanity
might
have a chance.

John was amazed at the progress they had made. In five years the human race had no fewer than two hundred and fifty thousand people living off-planet. Many were on Luna, some in the asteroids, and the rest on Mars. A new massive space station was even under construction, and it was going to orbit Hermes, not Earth. It would spin to produce gravity, since artificial gravity was a bit of an energy sink, and would look much like any of the round space stations from science fiction.

John realized he was living in the age of that very science fiction become reality. Space tourism sprouted up within months of the mining operation, and there were now three companies catering to the growing industry.

Boeing, who had helped with the construction of the Virgin space tugs, was now retooling their entire operation for the new drive technology, since it was going to apparently make flying safer everywhere, not just in space. Their own fleet of 700 series aircraft were obsolete overnight, and they were trying hard not to be left behind.

Likewise Airbus started to design and build passenger craft with the same technology, and in typical Airbus fashion, theirs were both larger and more luxurious. For a price.

Fuel was probably the biggest driver, however. A 747 burned a gallon of precious jet fuel every single second. It was very expensive. In contrast, the thorium salt reactor at the heart of the new power trains was economical; thorium salts were easily extracted from the ground, and were hardly exclusive to any region. So instead of paying for fuel for the trip, you were paying for the service.

Manufacturing and processing weren’t cheap, which was the only thing saving the old flying craft, but the price of production was already starting to tumble as more firms wanted in on the action. Toshiba was the largest player, but at least fifteen other firms were now either selling or actively developing competing thorium salt reactors. It was going to be a busy market.

The other thing that had saved the other airlines and given them time to recover was the sudden drop in the price of oil, allowing them to reduce ticket prices to nearly match their technically superior competitors. With perceived demand for oil dropping, consumption actually went up, at least for a time while companies struggled to produce enough thorium reactors.

As for airliners, Boeing was first out the gate with their 1101, the first commercial thorium salt/gravity drive passenger airliner. Alaska Air was their first customer. They undercut every other carrier by 30%, made a huge profit, and cut travel times by eighty percent. And they were taking it easy. It also make Alaska Air the second airline to go interplanetary (behind Virgin, who had simply retrofitted some of their tugs to carry passengers) since the same Boeing 1101 worked to take passengers to the planets just as easily as to Pittsburgh.

The countries that embraced the new technologies saw their economies explode; those that dragged their feet, buried in decades of bureaucracy driven by the sociopaths were left stagnant, and even home-grown businesses left for greener pastures; most of Boeing’s construction took place in Peru, while Airbus distributed their facilities in Africa.

Virgin’s Spaceport America was just the first public space port, and they were in the process of constructing space ports on every continent. Even competitors like SpaceX were using their ports. The very need for a space port was almost non-existent, since the new craft could take off from any existing airport, but many nations found it simpler however to have a single point of entry for space travelers.

John’s own tug, the fifth that Virgin and Boeing had built, was named “Jessica,” and it had become his home. Converted, in fact, the first space ship to become a personal motor home, though in the past few years a few more had undergone similar conversions, the chairman of Virgin not to be outdone.

He tried very hard these days not to teleport, since he had been able to sense for some time that Jessica had been making up for the energy he expended. It was relieving and disheartening at the same time; he could sense Jessica was around, and that gave him joy, but that his actions were causing her to work harder, whatever the motivations, caused him concern. And he still missed her dearly.

John’s last teleportation had been three weeks ago, to attend Zack’s high school graduation, since he hadn’t been able to plan ahead effectively to get there in time. He spent most of his time in the asteroid belt now, on Ceres, planning.

In the years since receiving his personal space ship, the software had been upgraded three times and the engine once. It was now faster and smoother than ever, able to make the trip from Earth to the asteroid belt in under four hours. Mars, depending on the time of year, took from three to six hours. Short trip indeed.

And he was hardly the only craft out there. In fact there was so much traffic they had all had to get together to design an interplanetary traffic control system. Gravity drives hadn’t been the only secret technology kept by the military, there were many others, but one in particular was the gravity detectors, and the design of the engines was such that you could typically detect an oncoming craft easily enough, but it was still dangerous. The traffic control system was at least enough to put the minds of the tourists at ease, whatever the misgivings of the miners.

With all of this, light speed communications wasn’t fast enough. Pan and Arthur had worked with NASA to create IPC, InterPlanetary Comm. Instead of radio waves, it used neutrinos to generate microscopic gravity waves that could be detected on the other side of the galaxy...in theory. It did work at least; John’s own IPC allowed him access to the Internet no matter where he was. It was hardly fast though, barely faster than the dial up Internet of his youth. Enough for voice, not video. Yet anyways. Arthur was convinced they hadn’t even approached the upper limit of it’s capabilities and was working furiously to increase it. Their new traffic control system depended heavily on it.

It was one thing the Sirians hadn’t been forthcoming about; they didn’t see the value of simply handing over all sorts of technology, and felt the Draconian method of doing just that had caused it’s own problems.

On a lark, John had taken a day trip out and flown past Voyager 1, temporarily stealing the title of “farthest man-made object from the Solar System”. His pictures of the ancient human craft made every news program in the solar system. It spurred NASA and the ESA, and within a few months they had their own manned tugs heading out deep into interstellar space, taking measurements of the surrounding areas and confirming the electric universe hypothesis.

In theory they could keep going. With the new drive, it would take less than two years to reach Alpha Centauri, which was five light years away. Physicists didn’t think it was possible, but the simple fact was they didn’t have to exceed the speed of light to do it, since the gravity propulsion literally changed the
local
space for the ship. The ship didn’t move, but the gravity well it created was able to be projected out quickly enough that to external viewers
only
it travelled faster than light. Inside that gravity well, they were only falling as fast as gravity would permit. It was the same method the incoming Sirius World Ship used, though in their case they had chosen to spin the ship to create artificial gravity because it was more efficient, rather than use a secondary gravity propulsion.

The group on Ceres, whom he spent more time with than anyone else, had actually gone to the trouble of creating their own government and charter, and with the backing of himself, Pan and Arthur and Catherine, the United Nations had agreed to recognize them. Really they had little choice, it was an inevitability, not something that could be swept under the rug.

Damned fools had even asked John to be their President. He’d accepted, but only after much convincing from Jack. He knew it was just a figurehead position, since his friend was the one doing all the real work. But he considered the crew at Ceres to be his new family, all two hundred and thirty five of them. He had made a point of memorizing all of their names.

President of the Asteroid Belt. The chess club in New York probably had a bigger membership.

Corporations were always at risk of owning everything, but Arthur had helped push through legislation that prevented some of it; no corporation could own more than five million tons of cargo capacity, and any corporation that owned cargo ships was banned from owning any mining facility, and vice versa. In addition, no corporation could own more than ten mining stations. They hoped it would prevent the creation of the massive companies that had nearly destroyed the Earth.

Government on Earth hadn’t changed much in that time, though there had been some effort to make the United Nations the official governing body for the solar system. Even Jack had admitted the value of having a single overseeing governing body, as long as they didn’t try to control local governance.

And once in a while John would teleport out to visit the Sirians, who seemed pleased the progress Earth had been making. They had in fact even teleported to the United Nations once for meetings as well, only to see rooms full of gawking spectators. For all the talk of aliens, it was quite another thing to see them for real. Television hadn’t been able to do it justice however, since their only form of speech was telepathy, and neutrino emissions hardly worked through an LCD display.

Alath, the leader of the Sirians on the World Ship, had been noticeably absent the last few years, and a fellow named Patel had explained that she had been assigned another urgent task. Urgent task? John didn’t like the sound of it, but the Sirians never seemed to worry about anything.

Religion was certainly in turmoil, trying very hard to adapt to a larger universe, one where the big bang hadn’t happened. The Sirians knew how old the universe was apparently, but they weren’t saying, only that it was many millions of times older than what had been theorized. No big bang, no creation event, and that pulled the lynch pin from many of the big religions. The only one seemingly immune to the new information had been Buddhism. They were adapting nicely, but for the rest there had been some significant violence from pockets of the world, where disbelievers saw the entire drama as everything from a simple lie, to the work of the devil trying to trick them.

Some would never see this new universe as anything other than evil. With Pan’s Key they were able to avoid most of the plots to maim and destroy, but some religious fanatics slipped through.

Then there was Zack. John felt for his son, and felt he hadn’t been much of a father the last few years. He tried to justify it in his mind by saying he was trying to save humanity, but he knew better. He had let his son down, he had been an absentee father. It wasn’t easy being the son of a famous wizard who had changed the sky, especially since they had not shown Zack any of their magic.

John was constantly afraid for his son, but also determined to let him become his own man. So far, he was lucky. Zack was, by all accounts, a good kid with a couple of minor problems. The day he came home with half his head shaved and a cross tattoo on his neck John could only stare. Well, at least he wasn’t robbing banks.

John had moved to Ceres permanently. He’d had enough of Earth, the beautiful pearl that had taken two wives, his two loves. He discovered he preferred the solace of space; it provided him time for thought and meditation, something he never would have imagined having an interest in, but nevertheless found it incredibly reassuring.

His job still required him to visit Earth once in a while, however, and he found it ever more comforting on his return to say those five simple words.

“Ceres,” he said over the new comm system, “Tug Jessica on approach.”

“Roger Jessica,” came the reply. Sounded like Tarik Ja, one of the newer arrivals. “Pad one is clear for you. Skies are empty. Welcome back John!” Thank God he hadn’t called him Mr. President. It was the one thing he had insisted on.

“Thanks Ceres. ETA five minutes.”

It could hardly be called flying, since the computer did all the work. All you did was select a location, and it got you there. There was a joystick for those times when you wanted to feel like you were in control; John hadn’t used it in years.

He watched in silence as Ceres grew in the window. The base took up nearly half the small moon now, with thirty landing pads of various sizes, and regolith-covered tunnels connecting everything. There was even a ten story apartment building, with concrete walls three feet thick to protect against the radiation. Even at that, the rooms were massive, just over fifteen hundred square feet. Since only half the rooms were for the hotel, they had insisted that John stay in the penthouse suite. Perk of office, they said. Jack kept trying to tell him that the view alone would be enough to entice any prospective female, but had thankfully stopped trying to set John up on dates. The views were spectacular though, he had to admit.

In moments he landed, and a tube extended to mate with the airlock on his tug. John turned off the drive, and felt the gravity slip from nine-tenth’s that of Earth to a mere fraction. Walking was going to be more difficult now, but he was used to it. “Hop on over” took on entirely new meaning in such light gravity, and Jack was always keen on using the phrase.

He grabbed his duffle bag and left the tug, securing it before he left. He trusted everyone who worked at Ceres, however he didn’t trust everyone who
visited
the small moon. Hell, Jack and probably half the crew had his passwords anyways.

As the airlock opened, Jack was waiting for him, his full beard starting to get out of control. “Johnny!”

John smiled at his friend, and they hugged. “Hey bud.”

“How’s the marble?” Jack always referred to Earth these days as the blue marble, though he’d taken to shortening it recently.

“Just as busy as you remember it, probably more.”

“Come on, let’s hop over to the pub. I’m starving. Actually just thirsty, but it’s a good excuse.”