24.
“So in summary, Commander, Captain, I have absolutely no idea how the engine works,” Rajesh said. “It is absolutely amazing and exciting! It seems to generate limitless energy from nothing at all, according to the documents that I have been reading.”
“That is not exactly true,” Renosa said. She had been assisting Rajesh in the investigation of the ship’s power source, it’s FTL drive, and it’s sub light speed drives. “What you are calling a generator is in fact three interlinked systems which each bring a different hyperatomic or subatomic plain closer to the material dimension. This results in a friction between the three dimensions and the material plane which is translated into four different forms of energy which are then absorbed by the ship to power its functions, including the devices which bring the dimensions together.”
“Exactly! It is a complete violation of the laws of thermodynamics! It powers itself!” Rajesh exclaimed. “And the math which supports it is … well, I honestly would have to study it for decades to make sense of it. But it makes the theory of everything look like a toddler scribbling on a chalkboard.”
“It is in fact one of the more limited versions of harnessing inter-dimensional energies in a usable format. The military ships only use an engine of this sort as a backup to more powerful options,” Renosa explained. “You must remember that this ship is designed with the safety of children in mind, however, and is therefor limited in power. There are no containment shields which we would worry about failing, no terrible fallout if a reactor core or fusion bottle is broken. It is perfectly safe to touch the engine’s components while it is running, and if one piece fails in the middle of the mission, the others will continue to pick up the slack at between thirty to sixty percent power. It will take two points of failure before a breakdown occurs, and the emergency beacon is set to sound at the first point of failure.”
“That sounds remarkable,” Captain Moon said over the radio. “Is it possible to use this sort of technology planetside?”
“Regretfully, no,” Renosa admitted. “The tri-dimensional generator requires a low gravity environment in order to function. Typically children are brought aboard via a shuttlecraft designed specifically to bring them back and forth between the planet and the Toormonda. We are happy to provide your planet with several of those as well.”
“We have a space elevator which is currently serving that purpose,” Captain Moon stated. “But we shall keep your generous offer in mind.”
“Regretfully, most atmospheric shuttles do not possess FTL drives for a variety of reasons. If you choose to accept such a vehicle from our government, we will be required to ship it to your homeworld via a craft that is capable of delivering it between stars,” Renosa said.
“Thank you, Renosa, that will be an important point for consideration,” Captain Moon said. “Rajesh, have you been able to understand how the Toormonda’s FTL system works?”
“Aye, and you’re going to like this. It’s the same principal as the tunnel drive, it’s just pulling on a different dimension!” He exclaimed. “The principal is the same. It uses a hyperatomic plain to wrap the ship in a bubble, then creates a wormhole between the bubble and the destination. The pressures between the hyperatomic plane and the material plane do the rest. The universe literally shoves the ship through the hole at supra-light speeds.”
“Do you think that it is technology that we could develop using our existing technology?” Anders asked.
“I’m not certain. I don’t understand all of the math for the hyperatomic plane that it uses yet, and I’m not certain how the engine interacts with it,” Rajesh admitted. “I will love the process of figuring it out, however!”
“So it will never need to be refueled?” Anders inquired. “It will run on a perpetual motion machine forever?”
“Well, there’s no theoretical limit to the primary energy source,” Renosa said. “However, for safety concerns, each Toormonda is retired after two hundred years of service. That is often enough for hundreds of individual journeys, and each ship often has thousands of passengers during its years of operation. It is often a local news event whenever a Toormonda is retired from service, resulting in a fair bit of nostalgia.”
“So you’re giving Earth a fleet of vessels designed for scientific inquiry that fuel themselves and will operate for two hundred years,” Captain Moon said.
“That is the offer that is being presented, Captain. It is a gift freely given.”
“But one which might reveal the location of our home,” Captain Moon pressed.
“Yes. Regretfully this is a possibility which I understand that you cannot overlook,” Renosa agreed.
“It remains a very generous offer, one which the governments of my planet will truly be grateful of when they learn of it. I truly regret that I am unable to either accept or decline the offer at this time due to security concerns and what I feel is a lack of authority given my people’s inability to get in touch with our home government,” Captain Moon said.
“My government understands and assures you that there is no time limit on this offer,” Renosa said. “We are happy to build the promised number of these ships and send them to whatever stellar coordinates you wish.”
That caused Anders to perk up slightly. “Would it be possible to send it to a location which we would be able to travel to via our existing faster than light method, and then transfer vehicles?”
Renosa considered the question carefully. “I would have to speak with the others and the leaders of my civilian government. The concerns about your Tunnel Drive remain.”
“If they are willing, that is an important note for consideration,” Captain Moon said, and Anders strongly agreed. “It will significantly increase the security of our planet for the ships to be delivered to a secure location.”
“I agree,” Renosa said. “But at this time I an unable to promise that it will be so.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“We understand. Thank you for your help, Renosa. You have been most useful in navigating this difficult political situation,” Captain Moon said.
“You are most welcome.”
“Captain, we are approaching the one hour mark until bingo,” Anders stated. “I think that it’s time we return to the Seeker. We have a lot of matters to discuss.”
“Indeed we do, XO. Okay then, if you think you’ve learned all you can from this excursion, then I look forward to seeing you aboard the Seeker upon your return.”
The radio clicked, but remained open. Anders ordered everyone to meet up at the airlock. They brought everything with them that they’d packed in, plus the bags of medicine which the medical bay had printed for them. The Yonohoans had assured them that the gravity drive of the Toormonda was accurate enough to send them precisely back into their own airlock, but they still held on to their personal MMU’s. Antoine held his with a near deathgrip.
They cycled through the airlocks of either ship and traversed the void between, then proceeded to go through the hour long process of decon.
The decontamination procedure was long, arduous, and involved a lot of water. First they showed and scrubbed each other down using hot water while wearing their vacuum suits. Then they repeated the process with cold water. Then hot water again.
Once they had completed that, they carefully assisted each other in removing their protective gear. They stripped down all the way, and spent thirty minutes in the shower, carefully scrubbing their bodies with special soaps of different compositions. Their bodies were pink and their skin was sensitive by the time that they finally finished.
The water itself was cycled to its own holding tank, where it would be distilled rather than filtered before being returned to the ship’s water supply. It was an unfortunate limitation on their current mission parameters that they didn’t have enough water to do more than two such decontamination sessions without impacting the amount of water that they had on hand, and it would take almost a week for the water in the holding tank to be distilled.
Still, aside from Diego, nobody was particularly eager to be told that they couldn’t return to the Seeker because they’d failed to complete Decon.
The all staff meeting which followed the away team returning to the Seeker was filled with wonder and excitement as Antoine, Rajesh, and Takeshi detailed what they had learned while aboard the Toormonda. Not just about the ship which they had been sent to investigate, but about the scope of Yonohoan technology and the universe itself.
Anders had taken Liu aside before returning to the ship and instructed her not to share all of the details they had learned about the progress of their neural degeneration. Liu had simply scoffed at him and said “I’m not an idiot, Anthony. I know what is a command discussion and what’s okay for a general meeting.”
And when it was her turn, she eagerly detailed the extreme quality of the medical facilities of the Toormonda while carefully avoiding what they had learned about the cost to their bodies that they had all agreed upon in order to participate in this mission.
There were questions, and excitement, and more questions than answers.
A question was asked, “How did the sensitivity of the instruments compare to the ones aboard the Seeker?”
Takeshi answered “It is hard to say, because there are esoteric words which their computer is not entirely confident are being translated correctly. But I’m reasonably certain I can say that once we have crossed the language barrier off the list of problems, the Toormonda blows the instrumentation aboard the Seeker out of the water. Our instruments barely detected any of the phenomena that occurs when we apply power to the Tunnel drive. The Toormonda lit up like a Christmas tree spinning around with sparklers lit from its branches. It’s truly amazing that we missed that.”
“Did we miss it?” Gabriel asked. “Did we think to look for it and didn’t find it? Or did we look for it and didn’t see it? Or did we see it but not think that it was relevant because we didn’t know that it could be used to trace us, and neither did we think that anyone existed to do the tracing.”
“I don’t know,” Takeshi admitted.
“I’m afraid I don’t know either,” Rajesh admitted, and neither did any of the other engineers or particle physicists.
There were questions about the sleeping arrangements, and the answer was fairly simple. The Yonohoans had converted the dormitory accommodations with small private rooms for the adults that most Toormondas had into twenty equally sized and virtually identical bunk rooms. Compared to the rooms aboard the Seeker , they were spacious and private. If necessary, it would be possible to double up in a room.
If the Earthlings really, really needed to, they could take the Toormonda and leave, abandoning the Seeker .
That option wasn’t discussed too much except for placing it down on the table and acknowledging its existence. But the knowledge that there was a way back that didn’t involve the use of the Tunnel Drive reassured many of the crew members.
Surprisingly to Captain Moon and most of the crew, it was Anders who began turning the discussion in the direction of how the team could use the Toormonda to adapt the Seeker’s original mission to the new ship that they were being offered.
Captain Moon concluded the meeting with an announcement.
“I am approving what I call ‘project radio tower,’” she said once she had everyone’s attention. “We will be engaging in cultural exchange using the unencrypted radio waves. All crew is authorized to make a recording up to one hour in length and submit it for review by command staff. I am also authorizing the sharing of our people’s music via this same method, so if anyone feels like playing a DJ, please feel free. I’ve already pre-approved pretty much every song that has been uploaded to the folder created for that purpose on the shared network drive.”
This was met with a round of applause, and after the meeting concluded many members of the team began pulling out various recording devices to get started telling their stories to the Yonohoans.