The Temporal Knights (78 page)

“Ready partner?”
He asked then looked back at the women. “Partners?” He amended.

“Let’s go already,” Murphy said and looked back at Giffu who smiled and nodded.

“All right then,” Thane answered and looked quickly back at his own wife. She smiled at him, loving him, but he could see the sweat on her forehead, and could tell she was very tense but she nodded in agreement.

“Let’s be gone from here,” she echoed.

Matt turned back to the controls, and within seconds they were lifting off, the muffled roar of the crowd the only sound. He moved the ship away from the town, and then shot forward due east. He flew low and fast for nearly thirty seconds before turning back and streaking toward the watching crowds. The ship whizzed overhead and then up, straight up, and up, and up...out of sight, out of the atmosphere and into space.

“Powering main engines,” Captain Giles announced calmly as they streaked out of orbit. The moon was ahead, but fifteen degrees to starboard. On their trip to the beloved satellite, they’d not come anywhere near using the full power of interstellar engines and both Matt and Murphy were curious on how they would perform. They would bring the engines to full very, very slowly.

“Accelerating to one-tenth,” Matt said automatically and activated the main engines. He was under control, but still very nervous. He had never flown this fast except in the computer simulators back on old Earth. The engines ignited and pressed them all back in their seats, and the moon suddenly shot past them and was left behind. Matt heard a gasped come from the back seats, but he wasn’t sure if it came from his wife or Murphy’s, not that it mattered.

“Continuing along planetary plane,” Matt said.

“Acceleration optimal,” Murphy answered, and the women in back wondered just to whom they were talking. “Switching to reverse monitor,” and they all watched as the small blue ball they called home quickly shrunk until it was just a pinprick of light.

“All systems nominal,” Matt reported, feeling their acceleration in his back and kidneys rather than seeing it with his eyes. He checked the readouts, astonished even though everything was normal. “Time to Saturn...710 minutes,” he added and smiled at Murphy’s grunt.

“We wanted you to see this,” Matt said looking back at Ellyn. “Aside from Earth, Saturn is the most beautiful planet in the system...a real jewel...I wanted to see it.” Then they were all quiet for many long minutes, each feeling the steady acceleration.

“Confirm heading,” Matt finally said several hours later, breaking the silence, growing nervous once more.

Murphy checked and rechecked the computers. “Heading confirmed...Saturn dead ahead in 585 minutes. “It’s just too bad that Mars and Jupiter are on the far side of the system. It would have given us something to do in the mean time.”

“You bored?” Matt asked with a grin.

Murphy shook his head. “I’m about ready to soil my britches,” he answered truthfully, and the two women giggled behind him. The constant acceleration continued as their speed increased steadily, until their velocity was even beyond the comprehension of the two pilots.

“Confirm heading...” Matt requested once more.

“Heading confirmed,” Murphy replied just as the engines suddenly cut off. “Speed one-tenth...Saturn dead ahead 417 minutes.”

The two men looked at each other, each knowing that they were now traveling at approximately 67 million miles an hour and accelerating, but even at this speed, Saturn would take almost six hours to reach. The numbers were unimaginable.

“Saturn has rings,” Giffu informed Ellyn, and Murphy looked back at her and nodded.

“Leoforic showed me a picture of it on the computer...it didn’t seem real,” she explained.

“It’s real, and coming up fast,” Matt answered, then turned to his co-pilot. “All systems go. Everything seems to be functioning normally.”

Murphy nodded. “Scary isn’t it?”
Matt nodded back.

“All systems nominal,” Murphy reported a half an hour later. “Would the Captain like us to accelerate to one-fifth?” He asked in a broken Scottish accent, the allusion lost on the two women in the back, but not on Matt, who smiled.

“No Scotty, I think we should keep it here. Even at this speed I’m not sure how much of a peek we will get at her as she goes by,” he replied, grossly underestimating the vast size of the planet. The women began to chat idly in the back as the hours ticked by.

“Time to Saturn 282 minutes,” Matt said. “It’s still over four hours away. If any of you wants to get up, use the head, get a drink, we have plenty of time,” he added and they all took turns getting up, stretching and moving about the ship.

Saturn was still over two hours, or about 125 million miles away when the planet began to take on a distinct disk shape, and over the next hour they watched it grow until it was about the size of the moon in the sky. The cloud bands were very distinct, the colors bright and the rings absolutely beautiful. They all sat quietly, watching as the planet approached very, very slowly. The view was surreal. Occasionally someone would comment at the beauty of the scene, and everyone would mutter their agreements and then it would grow quiet again until the next person felt they had to say something.

“My God, it’s huge,” Matt finally exclaimed, surprised that the planet seemed to be coming up on them so slowly, though they were moving very fast, and they were still so many millions of miles away.

“Time to Saturn 62 minutes,” Murphy reported, checking the computer regularly though he was reluctant to take his eyes off the growing wonder before them. “All systems nominal.”

They watched Saturn grow for a spell.

“Confirm heading,” Matt asked not taking his eyes off of the large gas planet.

“Heading confirmed...43 minutes to Saturn.” The planet and its exquisite rings now filled the forward window. It was growing very fast now, finally their great speed beginning to reveal itself. To their eyes it appeared as if they’d already reached the ringed planet though they were still nearly 70 million miles away. This was a very, very large planet and would grow much larger before they hit their nearest approach at just over a million miles.

“Confirm heading,” Matt said, the planet so large now that they could not even see all of it. Something must be wrong; they seemed to be heading directly for it.

Murphy paused a moment “Heading confirmed,” he answered, momentarily sharing Matt’s worries. “We’ll pass just outside the orbit of Titan. I recommend we turn fifteen degrees aft, and that will take us several million miles farther out.”
Matt nodded. “Negative, have the computer take us out of the planetary plane, and then plot a course for the Skawps home world.”

They all continued to be transfixed by the planet before them.

“It’s so beautiful,” Ellyn commented, her eyes darting all along the planet and the nearest section of rings.

“Heading confirmed to take us out of planetary plane,” Murphy said moments later, and Matt nodded.

“Proceed on new heading,” Matt ordered and almost imperceptibly the ship moved out of its original trajectory. Very slowly Saturn began to move up to the top of the windows and was soon lost overhead.

“Increase speed to one-fifth,” Matt said and then fired the engines. They were once again pressed against their seats by the steady acceleration of the almost silent engines. They sat quietly, just riding for a long thirty minutes.

“Moving out of planetary plane,” Murphy finally reported. “Heading to Skawp home world confirmed.”

“Plot course...reverse screen on monitor.” Again Saturn filled the forward screen and was shrinking much faster than it had grown. From this point their sun beyond was no more than a bright star. 

It took nearly five hours of constant acceleration to reach one-fifth the speed of light, and they immediately confirmed their heading and began acceleration to one-third, which would take nearly a week. Then, after a complete systems check, they would begin the acceleration to one half and almost an entire month of constant acceleration.

The month past quickly, though there was little to see and less to do, but after all they were newlyweds and so kept very entertained in the privacy of their rooms. When they finally reached one-half the speed of light, the ship was moving through space at nearly three hundred and fifty million miles an hour, though even at this speed the stars in the field of view appeared completely stationary. The engines cut off in what was to the crew, the middle of the night, Greenwich Mean Time, but both Matt and Ellyn woke immediately.

Matt climbed quietly from the single bed he shared with Ellyn, since they were both unwilling as yet to sleep apart. Ellyn, her hair in delightful disarray, mumbled softly and immediately rolled over. Matt met his copilot in the cockpit. Murphy turned and smiled at his friend’s unruly hair.

“Rough night?” he asked but Matt just grinned. Ellyn was growing pleasantly bolder in the bedroom with each passing night, and Matt did everything he could to reinforce her budding confidence…but he wasn’t talking.

“I need coffee,” was all the Major said before they got to work.

They spent the next three days doing another round of complete systems checks before they were finally satisfied that the engines were performing optimally. However, before they fired the engines again, they also completed a complete diagnostic on all of the ship’s systems, most notably life support. They were now moving quickly away from the only planet nearby that could support human life. But even though the engines were cut they still continued on at a constant speed while Matt and Murphy checked and rechecked the systems.

When they were finally satisfied that everything was functioning normally, they fired the engines and began their journey to seventy-five percent of the speed of light. Five hundred million miles an hour! It would take eight times the amount of energy they’d used thus far and nearly four months to reach their target speed. The energy increased exponentially along with their mass, but inside the ship, everything appeared to be normal. They felt the same; their weight remained the same and their perception of time remained the same.

The only evidence any of them had of their great speed was a slight increase in sinus pressure that only Matt and Æthelgifu felt. The other two seemed immune. Nor did any of them notice anything different about time, though both of the American men knew by theory that time was slowing down for them. To them inside the ship, the trip would take just under three years to complete, but back on Earth, where time was unaffected by their speed, approximately four
hundred years would pass by, and another four hundred years on their return trip. It was a daunting notion, strange and incomprehensible, but in the here and now the speed appeared to have no affect on them at all.

§

Six months later the excitement and novelty of their space travel had long since worn off. They quickly fell into a routine, rotating shifts so that either Matt or Murphy was always awake and on duty to check the instruments and the engines. Thankfully up to this point the Skawp ship performed flawlessly, but if they were to survive it would have to continue to do so. They were a very, very long way from home. Rotating shifts as they did allowed for at least a few hours of privacy for the two couples, which was essential on a long voyage on a small ship. While they were awake, the four of them found time to eat, watch movies, or listen to the endless supply of music stored within the ship’s computers. Fortunately, both couples got along well, growing closer to their prospective partners as they traveled through the heavens. All of them were respectful and easygoing, though it was soon very apparent that Æthelgifu was far more driven to study and learn than was Ellyn.

Matt was not truly concerned about Ellyn’s sporadic interest in her studies. Despite her lack of focus, her education was still progressing at a remarkable pace. They studied Spanish every evening and she’d become addicted to reading, music, and lately had taken to exercising. All in all they enjoyed being together and cherished their time alone. They were very much still the newlyweds.

Murphy and Giffu were more introspective in their daily lives and their relationship, mostly because Æthelgifu worked on her tablet to the point of distraction. She studied mathematics, science and of all things philosophy when they were alone and only read fiction, or watched movies when the others were up and about. She exercised as little as possible, and Murphy had to force her off the computer at times. She was however, a dutiful lover, never refusing any of Murphy’s advances, though she made very few of her own. As time slipped by, the two settled into a comfortable existence and neither had any complaints.

When their closed environment became too much for them, Matt allowed time on the VRA, or Virtual Reality Array. Integrated to the computer system, a specially designed set of goggles allowed them to experience the wide open spaces of Earth. There were dozens of programs designed to give the greatest feelings of freedom and contentment. Walks along the beach and hikes through the mountains were everyone’s favorites. Time on the VRA however, was strictly monitored and enforced very stringently since it was well documented that the virtual world was highly addictive. Interactive programs were forbidden and left behind for that very reason. Every program in the database was carefully designed to mimic the wide open glory of nature for the sole purpose of combating cabin fever.