Fundamental Force Episode One (8 page)

Zach opened the
sliding door and looked around. They had driven into some sort of
ravine. A little way off he could see the entrance to a cave
surrounded by some greenery. He released his safety belt and slung
the pulse gun over his shoulder.

As soon as he
had jumped out of the vehicle, his shoes sank into thick grass. It
seemed that the people who had prepared this latest package for him
had no experience of conspiracy, since there were bits of garbage
here and there. Even in the back of beyond, as they were here,
garbage should not be scattered around a secret hideaway. It could
attract the attention of passers-by on the road.

He approached
the cave cautiously, checking every step. There could be unpleasant
surprises in the grass.

Suddenly,
several silhouettes appeared above the entrance. Zach raised his
head and saw a long gun barrel aimed at him.

“Hey, drop the
rod!”

For space
romantics like Steve and Clive, the waiting hall of the spaceport
at the Lunar Base was a real paradise, an amusement park. As soon
as the Sun fell below the horizon and the blinds to protect those
inside the glass dome from the burning light were drawn back, the
dark expanse of space spread out overhead, with all the shining
lights of the stars embedded in it.

Since the Moon
had no atmosphere, after sunset, when the blinding light reflected
from the ground faded to nothing, the stars shone unbelievably
brightly, just as in open space itself. You had to hand it to the
architects of this waiting hall. Realizing what natural beauty was
to be found in the Moon’s night sky, they decided to make the dome
of transparent glass and took advantage of the fact that the low
force of gravity enabled them to build lightweight structures of
airy appearance and enormous size.

In addition to
this, the hall’s lighting during the lunar night was localized and
illuminated only small local areas, making them light enough to
function comfortably without diminishing the enchantment of the
night sky.

Steve and Clive
sat with their heads pointed skywards, admiring the limitless
depths of space opened up before them. If you looked carefully, you
could see scratch marks here and there from micrometeorites. These
could reach the surface of the Moon undiminished because there was
no protective cushion of atmosphere, so they constantly bombarded
the dome, leaving tiny scratches. Over time, its external surface
acquired a matt appearance. To prevent such a minor matter spoiling
the view of the sky for those waiting in the hall, special robots
crawled over the dome like snails. Unceasingly, day and night, they
worked on regenerating the surface scratched by space dust and tiny
meteorites by applying a fine layer of molten glass to it, which
cooled rapidly in the vacuum, and then polishing it. Wherever they
passed, the dome became ideally transparent again.

Engrossed in
the view, they failed to notice the approach of a man with a slim
black moustache, the kind that had been fashionable on Earth a good
twenty years earlier, but, judging from the appearance of the Lunar
Base’s male population, had only just become popular there.

“Good day,
gentlemen.”

Steve jumped up
from his seat, higher than he had intended due to the lower
gravity. The man with the moustache waited calmly for him to come
down again. The comedy of the situation was made greater by his
dispassionate face.

“You’ll soon
get used to the low gravity,” he reassured Steve, who was now down
on the ground again. “Dr. Gray, head of the SM project. Follow me,
please.”

Gray had little
to say and Steve was too caught up in the surrounding spectacle to
try to make conversation. Clive, on the other hand, was simply glad
not to be bothered with idle chat. They descended from the waiting
hall into a long well-lit tunnel. Unlike on Earth, all the walls on
the Moon were of a light material the color of lunar soil. There
was no sign of boring grey concrete marked by streaks of water or
fungus and this was not surprising. Water in liquid form was a
rarity on the Moon and was not to be found in the form of seas or
oceans, either surface or subterranean. Deep wells had to be dug
for it, like those dug on Earth hundreds of years ago for coal
mining. Industrial robots mined ice from them, which could then be
used to produce drinking and industrial water. The cost of water on
the Moon was too high to waste it by losses through leaky
pipes.

A moving
walkway quickly brought them out of the tunnel and back under the
transparent dome with its view of open space. They were higher up
now, having left the waiting hall behind in a small crater. From
here they could see most of the Lunar Base: service buildings, gas
holders, lubricant stores, thermonuclear power stations,
communication antennae and telescopes.

“Why are the
power stations switched off?” asked Clive.

“The reactors
are on standby for emergencies, but the electricity we use comes
from the sphere. There is no sense in us generating more, since we
have so much free energy...”

Something
flashed brightly above them, imparting a bright bluish light to
everything around, like a night-time flash of lightning. Steve and
Clive looked anxiously towards the flare. A thunderstorm on the
Moon?

“That’s the
meteorite protection,” explained Gray. “We are now passing through
the tail of a comet; many small meteorites are falling on the
base.”

“The Perseids,”
Clive muttered to himself.

Gray turned his
face towards them without slackening pace.

“You are
astrophysicists, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh,”
replied Steve.

“It shows. Yes,
that’s what they are. The small ones are no danger, they just make
more work for the robots on the dome, but those larger than 100
micrometers have to be driven off by a laser beam. You are a little
late. This morning there was quite a show, the lasers intercepted
several of them per minute. My head’s beginning to throb from all
the flares. This way...”

A spacious
elevator with a matt metal finish took them up rapidly and almost
silently.

“Hang onto the
handrail or your head will fly up and hit the ceiling,” Gray warned
them and gestured upwards at several large marks on the
ceiling.

“Newbies are
always getting bumps on the head, no matter how many times you warn
them. Someone is going to break their neck one of these days.”

Steve and Clive
obediently grabbed the handrails painted in red and yellow stripes
that ran around the elevator wall. When the elevator began braking,
they really were pulled upwards. It felt strange to be pulled
towards the ceiling.

The elevator
stopped. They were in the upper part of some sort of tower. Gray
left the elevator and approached a transparent wall. From here, the
whole base was laid out before them. He pointed to dark lines
beginning next to a massive, squat, windowless building and running
like gigantic iron rails into the distance and beyond the horizon
itself.

“Here we have
the first cascade of the SM inductors,” said Gray in an unemotional
tone, pointing towards the rails. “Actually there is nothing new
here, if you are already acquainted with the technology of remote
manipulation. Until now we did not have enough energy to conduct
such experiments. Once the sphere was built, this problem
disappeared, so we started on what you might call untargeted
applications of the device. It proved not to be particularly
difficult. We only had to learn how to keep the wave stable...”

“Just a
minute,” interrupted Clive. “Let’s keep it in order.”

Gray
smiled.

“Order is most
important in what we do, you won’t get anywhere without it. Remote
manipulation technology, as we know from the experiment with
Mercury, bends space-time, creating a gravity hole. The same thing
happens of its own accord close to massive bodies. That is how our
nature creates gravitational attraction.

“In the past
few years, we have studied many different ideas of what else could
be done with this technology. It turned out that the most
interesting thing was not simply to create a local gravity hole,
but to generate a series of holes in space-time, forming something
like a wave.

“Along the
vector of propagation of the wave, local regions of compression and
expansion formed, resulting in gaps in space-time. If we place an
object in one of these gaps, that is to say outside space-time, the
wave will pick it up and carry it along with it. The most
interesting thing is that the displacement of the object will take
place at phase velocity.”

“If the wave
carries an object which has fallen out of space-time along with it,
then it stays in place the whole time in its system of coordinates,
doesn’t it?” asked Clive.

“Absolutely
right. Furthermore, it must remain stationary relative to the
phases of the wave, otherwise it will leave the zone being carried
along and simply fall out somewhere in some indeterminate place and
not necessarily along the vector of the wave.”

“So the object
carried by the wave will stand still in its own system of
coordinates, but move at phase velocity in ours. Is that so?”

“That’s how it
is.”

“But for a wave
to carry an object somewhere, it must reach there itself. How can
you propagate a wave for 20 light years? It would have to travel
faster than the speed of light!”

“Yes, but that
isn’t a problem.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. The rate
of propagation of a wave within space-time is limited to the speed
of light, but this restriction does not apply to space-time itself.
It can be compressed and expanded more rapidly. I imagine you have
heard of the inflation phase of the expansion of the Universe after
the Big Bang. For a certain time interval, the Universe grew at
faster-than-light speed.”

“And how fast
will such a wave travel?”

“We don’t yet
know for sure. In the experiments, it was considerably faster than
the speed of light, but we did not succeed in measuring to what
extent. It’s quite possible that the value is infinite.”

“So we can
travel to any point in the Universe in any time interval?”

“In theory,
perhaps. But in practice, the range is limited by the applied
energy. Now that we can supply the plant with energies comparable
to the radiant energy of an entire star, we can induce a wave for
dozens of light years. This is enough to reach Gliese and some way
further. We cannot yet manage the more remote distances.”

“But how do you
know your machine is capable of getting there? You’d have to throw
out a transmitter to confirm its position. And its signals in turn
would only propagate at the speed of light. They would take twenty
years to return from the Gliese system.”

“These are
calculated figures.”

“Calculated?
You mean they haven’t been confirmed experimentally?”

“Only short
jump distances have been confirmed experimentally. We threw beacons
out for several light hours, beyond the orbits of the planets. The
precise measurements of jump distance and energy consumed
corresponded to the calculated figures, so there’s nothing to worry
about.”

Clive and Steve
looked at each other.

“Really?” Clive
muttered to himself.

“But how do we
get back? A wave always moves away from the radiation source,
doesn’t it?” asked Steve.

“Not quite. As
I said, the wave will carry you at phase velocity. The direction of
motion will also coincide with that of the phase, which means it’s
simply a question of polarity. We can send a phase in any
direction.

“For your
return, we will only have to switch the polarity to create phase
motion in the opposite direction. Then, from the point of view of
the Gliese system, you will be moving towards the Solar System, not
away from it.”

“I hope that
this at least has been checked in practice?”

Gray
laughed.

“You can rest
assured that we have checked that in practice.”

Under the
sights of the people above, Zach obediently took the automatic
rifle sling off his shoulder and laid the weapon down. At once, the
tall bushes at the side rustled and two armed men appeared. One of
them signaled to Zach to move away from the gun on the ground. He
did so, taking a few steps back. Roots and bits of garbage crackled
underfoot. While one of the two kept a gun trained on him, the
other went up to the pulse rifle and picked it up, whistling.

“Where did you
get a gun like this, feller?”

Zach slowly
lowered his arms.

“Keep your
hands up!” ordered the other one.

“What if I
don’t?”

The two looked
at each other. The one holding the pulse gun raised it, put the
butt against his shoulder and aimed it at Zach. Grinning at the
imperturbability of his target, he pressed the trigger. Instead of
the shot, there was only a click and, at the same time, hydraulic
muscles were heard working in the minivan.

The vehicle
leaned heavily to one side and, an instant later, the two infantry
robots stepped out one after the other. The heavy tread of the
steel soldiers was rapid and precise. Relieved of its heavy burden,
the minivan’s springs straightened out and it sprang back up with a
ringing noise.

There was
swearing from above and the heads and long barrel instantly
disappeared. The two down below froze in horror and immediately
dropped their guns to the floor, shivering.

Zach raised his
hand to face level with his fingers spread out, then closed them
into a fist and pointed to the two on the ground. The electronic
brains of the robots wasted no time in querying the order. An
instant shower of sparks came from the barrels of the rifles
attached to their shoulders as tracer bullets were fired from them.
The two, who now had their hands up, fell at the same time as the
two shots were heard, one on top of the other.