The Return of the Manhattan (6 page)

CHAPTER 11

Roger was humming excitedly as he scurried around with last minute checks on his test equipment. They were several months past Warp speed, approaching Warp 5 and no one reported any adverse effects. He had constructed two identical test devices which would, if all his computations were correct, be able to move forward a matter of hours into the future. David and the rest of the Executive Council were present to watch the grand experiment.

He pushed a button on his computer terminal, and they watched as one of the devices buzzed and began to shake. Roger explained, “It will vibrate for a few minutes and then it will probably glow brightly and then disappear. If it works as planned, it will be missing for approximately two hours.” The object began to glow slightly and vibrate more violently as it suddenly popped and crackled as acrid smoke poured from cracks in its side.

Roger shouted, “Take cover!” He grabbed Laura throwing her to the floor and covering her with his own body as others found shelter behind cabinets and other pieces of test equipment seconds before the device exploded with a blinding flash of light. Shrapnel flew in every direction destroying everything in the room in above the table level.

The automatic fire extinguishing system activated spraying the room in a chemical fire retardant and the room was cleared of smoke moments later by the air conditioning system. David reached for Laura asking, “Is everyone all right?” Laura was crying as he comforted her, but seemed to be okay.

Roger looked about the room shaking his head, “Sorry, David, we should have taken greater precautions. Not only did we destroy both models, we destroyed this part of the lab too. It could have gotten us all killed!”

Laura quit crying and David laughed as he looked at the destruction in the room. “Well, we certainly don’t do anything quietly. All we’ve lost is some valuable time and we certainly have lots of that. I think we learned a lesson today, and nobody ever accomplished anything of this magnitude without occasional failures. Let’s pick up the pieces and see if we can determine what went wrong.”

A few days later, Kevin called another council meeting making his report. “The computer is finished with its initial search and has found five more suspects. One is Glen Talbot, one of Roger’s people and that probably explains our little accident.” Kevin activated the Big Brother program and the computer again requested identification from the members present. Four of the five were caught in the act of incriminating themselves, once during a planning session in a remote area of the ship. The fifth was a false alarm, and was exonerated. Kevin went on, “Roger, I understand Glen Talbot has been working on the time model?”

“Yes, he was a key man putting that thing together. Since you clued me in on this possibility earlier, I’ve already taken him off the project.”

Kevin continued, “I’ve requested the computer to look at all of his work particularly on the project and maybe we can see if and how he sabotaged it.

David interrupted, “Roger, did he know the magnitude of the project?”

Not entirely, although he probably has his suspicions. Very few know exactly what we are working on.”

“All right, Kevin, take a sufficient force of trustworthy guards and pick up all of them. Then I want you to expand the computer search to include any conversations about Roger’s project outside the lab. Warren, go ahead and freeze them for the duration.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the intercom priority alarm signal. David pressed the button and Larry Cole, a technician from the lab excitedly blurted out, “Roger, you better get down here quick. The device is back.”

“I’ll be right there!”

The entire council made their way down to the lab and found the device they thought had exploded, in the middle of the lab, a bit battered and scarred but mostly in one piece. Larry Cole could not explain except to say, “It wasn’t there when I came in. I turned my back for a minute and when I turned around, there it was.

Roger was excited as he examined it, “It worked! It actually worked! I wondered why we couldn’t find any pieces of this one after the explosion, but this explains it. You know we didn’t actually see the explosion, because we were diving for cover, but it must have left as programmed except it went farther ahead in time than we thought.”

David acted quickly, “Kevin, get cracking on those arrests. I don’t want any more leaks in this project.” He turned to Larry, “Did you speak to anyone else about this?”

“No sir!”

“Good, keep it under your hat. Roger, is it possible the intercom has been monitored by anyone other than us?”

“Of course! Anything is possible, David. It’s not likely, but we have to assume they heard.”

David turned back to Kevin, but he had already left.

CHAPTER 12

Roger easily found the cause of the explosion when examining the device. He explained, “I found minute traces of high explosive plastic all the way inside the core. I suspect there was enough explosive to have destroyed the entire ship killing us all. I am kicking myself for allowing the entire council, including Laura, to be present for the test.”

David responded, “Don’t worry, you’re only human, and you had no reason to suspect anything like that. But why weren’t we killed?”

“That’s the beauty of it. The damn thing worked! The timing for the detonation must have been slightly off. I think it blew at the same instant the device departed our time. Any explosion is not as instantaneous as we think, even though it occurs over a very small fragment of time. We felt only the beginning of the blast. The device must have been traveling faster than light through time so the remainder of the blast was dissipated in an apparent elongation of its exposure; hence the device was not harmed substantially.”

Warren remarked, “Pure luck, and I thought you were in the genius category. Now can you explain how it works?”

Kevin laughed, “If he could, none of us would understand it anyway.”

“True!”

“All right,” David continued, “now that it works, what are you going to do for the remainder of the voyage?”

“In theory and concept, it works. But we have to find out how to control it and make it work on its own without this ship already moving at warp speed plus. We have our work cut out for us!”

David added, “By the way, we got an urgent message from Pathfinder. They had a near miss with an uncharted asteroid. The data has been plugged in and if necessary, the computer can make course corrections. They were small enough to narrowly miss it, but we probably wouldn’t have been so lucky. If we could stay on their path, you would think it would be safer, except that the universe is not static and that particular asteroid will be nowhere near our path when we get to that point.”

CHAPTER 13

“David, it’s taken us nearly two years, but we’re almost half way. As near as we can compute, we have reached Warp 100 and it will soon be time to begin our deceleration phase.”

“Thanks Roger. It’s too bad we couldn’t have gone this fast from day one. Is there any way you could have miscalculated? At these speeds, we could skip right past.”

“There’s always the chance of error, but several of us did the calculations separately and the computer agrees with us.”

“All right, what now?”

“First we stop accelerating which I’ve programmed the computer to do within the next few minutes and then we will coast at Warp 100 for about two months. During that time, we can shut off the main thrusters and turn the artificial gravity back on. That will be accomplished gradually enough so nobody will have any difficulty adjusting to the reduced gravity. Anybody who has complained about the high g forces will have two months of bliss. This plan allows us to rotate one hundred eighty degrees and begin deceleration at the precise second required. While the thrusters are off line, we can do a little preventive maintenance. I don’t expect any problems, but if they fail while we are at this speed, we will be lost in space with no way to slow down.”

David braced himself expecting some type of body adjustment while the sight of crewmembers jumping around jogged his memory, “Roger, where’s Laura? Isn’t she usually with you at this time?” Roger had been teaching her about the ship and how it worked. Laura was only five years old, but she already showed genius level aptitudes in her studies far beyond her years.

“She’s with Kevin. I haven’t been able to have much time with her since Kevin took her into the simulator bay. She wants to be a pilot and Kevin says she does very well. She should be along soon.”

“Gee, I thought she just wanted to get away from her Dad. Although I’m glad she has shown interest in something.”

The door into the control room opened with a bang and Laura came in, full of energy seeing how far she could jump like a kangaroo instead of walking. “Daddy,” she exclaimed, “look, how far I can jump. I can almost fly.”

David bubbled over with joy as he caught her and threw her toward Roger. She squealed with delight as Roger caught her. “I am flying. Do it again!”

David caught her as Roger tossed her back. He held her a moment, “Darling, I hear you are flying in the simulator with Kevin?”

Kevin came in on cue and Laura ran over to him and playfully hit him in the chest. “Kevin, you told! I wanted it to be a surprise.” She came back over to David, “Daddy, I want to be a shuttle pilot like Mommy!”

Tears flooded his eyes as the pain and emotion of Marie’s death burst again to the surface. He fought hard to control himself as he took Laura’s hand and headed for his private quarters. He walked almost all the way before he could find and control his voice. “Laura, you can be anything you want to be, and I will help you. But I don’t know if I can handle even the thought of you being in danger like Mommy.”

She held his larger hand in both of hers and comforted him as if she were the adult. “Daddy, Warren says you have not faced Mommy’s death and until you do, you will be sad.” They both looked deep into each other’s eyes as she continued, “I can see how much it hurts and I promise I will learn all you want me to learn, but I want to keep learning with Kevin too. Can we continue this way and see how it goes?”

David could hardly believe his ears sensing so much wisdom coming from his daughter. “All right Laura, but I need to have a talk with Kevin. By the way, he didn’t tell, it was Roger.”

He cornered Kevin a short time later intending to chastise him, “Kevin, what’s going on? Who gave you the right to teach Laura about flying behind my back?” He couldn’t even convince himself that Kevin was wrong, but he tried.

Kevin shrugged, “David, you know as well as I that neither you nor anybody else aboard this ship can say no to Laura about anything. Besides, I can’t see any harm in letting her fly the simulator. We have only been at it a couple of months, and already she can fly circles around me in that thing.”

“But you’re a starfighter pilot. What are you doing in the shuttle simulator?”

“It doesn’t matter, she flies both equally well. I think I can beat her in a dogfight, but I don’t know how long I can say that. All the starfighter pilots are learning to fly the shuttle. I don’t see much use for starfighter pilots for the rest of the mission and we are short on shuttle pilots. The simulator is so good; they will be seasoned pilots by the time we reach our destination. We originally planned to spend more time and only shuttle during daylight hours. But, the way I see it, with the amount of oil we must transfer, it will take too long unless we shuttle around the clock. We have been practicing the mission in darkness, and most of the pilots are doing very well. Of course, it will only be night on the planet surface. In orbit, it won’t matter. I think weather conditions could be more limiting than darkness, although we won’t know much about the weather until we get there. I highly recommend we shuttle around the clock.”

David pondered the idea for a moment, “Good idea; I can’t even remember how long we took to ferry those empty bladders on board and every moment counts. How much time do you think we can save?”

I don’t know; it depends on the amount of gravity on the planet before we can determine how many bladders we can take on each trip. If we worked only during daylight hours, I think it would take between four and six months. We can cut that in half and probably more with the additional pilots.”

Roger joined in their conversation and seconded that recommendation. “David, I don’t know how long we want to spend on the planet, but the more time we spend, the less time we will have to construct a ship capable of going back through time when we get back to Earth.”

David agreed, “Thanks Kevin, you’re right on and I guess you can continue to let Laura fly. I guess the only difference between her and normal kids, is the size and price of her toys. By the way, Roger, how are you coming on the time machine?”

“Okay if you want to change the subject. Actually, it seems to work well, but I don’t know how to control it! We have sent it forward many times, successfully, I might add. But back in time is another story. The real problem is we have no way of testing sending an object back and seeing the results.”

“But that’s what we’ve got to do to change the past!”

“Don’t forget, we’ve got to get back too. I don’t think we will find those answers until we build the thing and put our lives on the line testing it. I’m willing to take the chance, but I wouldn’t want to make any guarantees. Everyone working on the project with me is willing to take that gamble too.”

“Well, if there’s a chance it will work, then we don’t have much choice. I’m with you Roger!”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence. I am certain it can be done with relative safety, but I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to whether we can get back to the same world we left. If you remember when we first began discussing the problem, we didn’t know how many pasts, presents or futures there are. We might return to a completely different and parallel future.”

“That’s not so bad. We would be alive and it would be quite an adventure.”

“And you’re the man who complained because his daughter wanted an adventurous career.”

“She’s too young to make that kind of decision.”

Laura spoke up, “I have an idea that could work!”

“And what would that be?” Roger asked courteously.

“Well you could remind yourself to send it back two hours from now, and then all we have to do is look around and it should be here.”

Roger laughed out loud, “By Golly, you’ve got a point. Let me think about that for a while, but it’s certainly worth a try!”