WARPING EFFECTS / CH. 19:EQUAL AND OPPOSITE
DEEP SPACE, ONE LIGHT-DAY FROM JUPITER BASE, MARCH 2296
“Why do we need to try to tug this space rock again?” The pilot asked his brother, copilot on the especially modified guillemot they were in charge of and were going to earn for their trouble. His brother had paid more attention during physics lessons than he did; that wasn't actually very hard. From habit, he'd turned off as soon as the physicsists had tried to explain about forces and such like. But he's paid careful attention when they'd said that he and his brother would be earning this guillemot if they took on the mission. “No idea,” the co-pilot said. “The physicists weren't saying why.”
“Everyone knows that the antigravity drive's going to move us — and the rock, as long as the cable is good.”
“It ought to be, that's apparently the stuff they use as the anchor cable on a container vessel.”
“Hmph. OK, taking up the slack, and it is now tight. Companion rock is in the right place too.”
“Instrumentation agrees, distance to rock one hundred metres. Program set to engage force that'd be one gee accelleration for thirty seconds, starting at the moment you press the button.”
The pilot pressed the button, having braced for the sudden accelleration. There was a slight lurch, then nothing.
“Hmm. I'm not noticing anything. Who gets to tell Boris the cable's broken the emitters? Not to mention who's going to get us home?”
“Emitters registering OK, cable tension is reading a force of around two hundred kilonewtons.” the co-pilot replied.
“But we're not accellerating.” the pilot replied, with a puzzled voice.
“I'd noticed that. Unless we are moving and they've done something to the drive that makes it include us, too.”
“That'd be handy for emergency stops.”
“It looks like we're rotating a bit, but no linear motion, based on the signal from Jupiter” the co-pilot said.
“This is crazy. We can't travel a light-day from home then be expected to get answers with instrument failure.”
“It must be something about this rock,” the co-pilot guessed, “we're pulling hard enough to accelerate at a gee, it's just not happenning.”
“I'm going to abort.” the pilot decided.
“Three seconds left. Your call, but they did say only abort if it was dangerous...”
“Fine. we'll let them have all their useless data.”
On schedule, the drive shut down. The ship lurcheed a little as the tension in the cable started them drifting towards the rock.
“So, what just happened?”
“End of experiment recorded.” The co-pilot replied, reading from his panel.
“No, I mean to this ship?” the pilot insisted.
“According to the instruments, absolutely nothing. Except that we're heading towards the asteroid at.. hmm, a centimetre a second.”
“No, I mean, why didn't we move?”
“The asteroid we're tied to didn't want to, it seems. It's like we were trying to accelerate by pushing against the asteroid, but the Boris drive doesn't do that!”
“I'm confused.”
“Me too. Let's hope we can get home and they can explain it all to us.”
“What's so special about this particular asteroid anyway? Three weeks getting here, half a day planting the beacon on the other rock, one day wrapping that stupid cable around the rock in the exact pattern they wanted, thirty seconds of nothing, and now we wait half a week in case they want us to do anything else before we go home. What a way to run a research programme!”
“The pay's not bad for the actual work though, brother.”
“True. Even when you include the travel time. Oh well, in a couple of days we might even hear from the mad scientists what they make of the data.”
“Hey, the other rock's changed orbit!”
“This is crazy. Let's send a personal note.”
“She did promise we'd get home, didn't she?”
“If you trust a seer to interpret what she sees.”
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HEATHER'S OFFICE. FORCEFIELD LABORATORY, MARS.
“Heather, Astronomy called, they're getting data busts from your intrepid explorers out in almost-flat space,” her father said.
“Oooh, exciting,” Heather said. “Let's hope the data's not too garbled to be decrypted.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“It shouldn't be, and you'll be in time for the re-transmit in a few minutes.”
“Have you used othersight on any of these theories, Heather?” her father asked.
“Not deliberately,” she replied, “but... you know how I struggle not to use it, Dad.”
“Yes. So you're expecting the data to show something significant?”
“I'm expecting that the ship and asteroid only accelerate at half what they should, Dad, you know that, surely?”
“And so prove the restricted space-time theory? I thought you wanted that firmly disproved?”
“I do. But it looked the right one to test. I'm just holding out hope that
there's some other reason, like something to do with the pilots' personal lives.”
“Oh. I still don't understand why you chose those two, rather than anyone actually on the team.”
“They were the ones God led me to.” Heather replied with a shrug, “His reasons are not always discernible to humanity. Let's call everyone to go and see the data.”
“Which sort of everyone?”
“The sort that includes loved ones and excludes cleaning staff. I might need some more hugs.”
“Just because the bubbles didn't show up, love...”
“Dad... I know. 'The Boris drive doesn't form a grid of almost-touching bubbles.' I wrote that down after the failed x-ray tests, and it glowed as truth. We're going to ruthlessly test everything else now, get some experimental data that constrains the theorists, and then I can get married and apologise to everyone who started out on a physics course hoping to join a non-existant twenty year research programme, because I was wrong.”
“Heather dear, that's not the truth.”
“There are no bubbles in an operating Boris drive, Dad. There never were. I was wrong.”
“I'm not convinced. Let's see what the data says.”
“Dad, I love you, but I know what I saw.”
“And Maggie will agree you've never misinterpreted anything?”
“Ouch.”
“So let's pretend we can't cheat and look at some actual data, shall we?”
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MESSAGE FROM DEEP SPACE
Data attached.
Personal note: very confused here, and worried. Almost abandoned experiment. No acceleration felt, nothing on acellerometers either. No sign of changed doppler on Jupiter signal, before / after / during. Small amount of extra rotation. Has drive broken? It was fine getting us here, and is able to stop us falling into asteroid, but it seemed to just try to push asteroid away. Even companion asteroid got affected, according to computer it's periapsis (that's closest approach, right?) has dropped, and is an impact hazard in 20 orbits +/- 5 (uncertainties on precessional rate) = roughly 2.5-3 days if we stay here. Quick reply on what to do very much appreciated. Depending on what computer says we might have to try to move early, of course. Regarding rotation: thrust was not off axis, have triple checked. We are still rotating with asteroid, but sped up relative to stars. Rob just got computer to re-calculate total angular momentum of us + main asteroid + rock. No change to previous measure. Hope Boris / anyone can explain this. Do your sky-hooks tug back, cousin?
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“They're your cousins, Boris?” Heather asked.
“Third, I think it is. Why did you send those two? They're not exactly famous as meticulous rule-followers, hence pulling in exactly the wrong direction relative to the rock.”
“God said they were the right ones. But the results don't make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense, Heather. You've just proven the core long-distance result predicted by your Bubble theory. That companion rock giving them angular momentum is a perfect result, and this drop in periapsis is precisely what the computer says your theory ought to give if they pull the wrongway.”
“But the gamma-ray tests showed there weren't any bubbles!” Heather protested.
“Win some, lose some.” Boris said with a shrug. “But how can Bubble theory be true if there are no bubbles?” Heather protested. “And there aren't bubbles, there never were bubbles, I got it wrong!”
“First statement truth, second and third, error.” Simon told his daughter. “I peaked.”
“What?”
“Most of your thesis is true.” Simon told her. “Bubbles are true. Maybe not all the truth, but they looked true to me.”
“Heather?” Alice said, “Can I inject something that's confused me a long time? Wouldn't observable bubbles mean distorted space-time? I thought you'd patiently told me enough times that that distorted space-time meant there should be gravitons?”
“There's no mass hanging around to cause the gravitons, Mum. ”
“So how is space-time distorted? Shouldn't your bubbles pop or something?”
“They do collapse, mum, that's how ..... I'll try to explain later, sorry.” Heather grabbed her workstation and impatiently opened her thesis file and instructed the computer to take over the wall-display.
“Right, people, this is the maths for the size and the lifespan of the bubbles that we didn't see.
Short range there's either a mistake or Dad's othersight is wrong, the theory is rubbish and we need something else that matches it at long range. What have I got wrong?”
“We know the workings, Heather, there's no mistake in the maths.” Matthew reassured her.
“That's what people said for years about antigravity not being true, then uncle Boris found the mistake. What have I done wrong? I must have got something wrong, or the bubbles would have been visible.”
Alice looked at her daughter's face. It carried an expression she'd not seen in ages — the desperate and vulnerable mixture of frustration, self-annoyance and desperation of her little girl getting to the end of her resources and realising that she needed help. Matthew saw it too, and went to hold her hand. She shook him off, not wanting compassion.
[Heather] Alice snapped at her. [Just because you're frustrated with yourself, don't push the people who love you most away.]
“Sorry Matthew,” Heather said to his hurt-looking face. “I don't want compassion, I want help.”
“How can I help?”
“Find my mistake.”
“But the maths is good,” Boris said.
“Then why isn't it right?” Heather asked.
“I see the word 'assuming' in there, Heather.” Matthew said. “What if pi-prime isn't the same as pi, and you can't cancel the imaginary part? And Boris, are the emmitter's actually on a perfect plane?”
“Eh? No, not on an Albatros. It doesn't seem to matter.”
“But if it doesn't matter, that means....” Heather shook her head, brushing away her tears, said, “Uncle Boris, question one, you did check the units on my bubble size calculations, didn't you?”
“Yes. And then I double-checked after the gamma-ray tests.”
“Then Dad, while Matthew gives me a hug, can you and Boris confirm that any imaginary part to that equation is going to make the 'bubbles' into something resembling your hedgehogs?”
“Very very like hedgehogs,” Simon agreed, immediately seeing the similarities with the equations he'd been working out two decades earlier. “And if so, they're going to be correspondingly smaller, aren't they?”
“By a factor of at least fifty. And shorter lived,” Heather said. “So maybe you did see them,” Simon pointed out. “That sporadic interference you picked up sometimes.”
“Uncle Boris, can you draft a reply to your cousins? Tell them they've just made a lot of physicists happy, and can come home now.”
“You don't want to do the extra tests?” Boris asked.
“They'd need to reposition the cable, while not getting hit by the rock,” Heather said. “I'd say it's safer if they just come home.”