GROUND / CH. 6:SNEAK PREVIEW

SPACE

[Magdelena Space-Searcher iwontthinkthenextbit Karella John, am I disturbing you?] James called, as they were about a day from the Solar system.

[What next bit? I can put down my keyboard for a bit, what's up?]

[I have been requested to connect you with her majesty, your grandmother.]

[Really? Wow. Go ahead.]

[Hello Maggie,] Heather thought.

[Grandma! Nice to hear your thoughts.]

[I understand you've got a few things to tell me. You can start with the bit I know, just to get things formal.] Heather said.

[Urm. I'm not very clear what you know, grandma, but... God is good.]

[I'm very glad you've come back to that viewpoint. I think I've told you that a few times.]

[And James has asked me out.]

[Oh has he? That's certainly been a long time coming.]

[It has?]

[Probably a decade, from my point of view.]

[A decade?] James interjected.

[About that long, yes. You two were having a lovely stand up row about the difference between dolphins and porpoises, if I remember rightly, when I pointed out to your parents how shocked you were at catching him in a mistake, Maggie. Any more news?]

[Yes, Grandma. Top secret sneak preview {image}. He's called Jakav, she's called Aza.]

[You've found intelligent life. Well done, granddaughter, well done indeed!]

[And they know God, they count the week in seven days, but they didn't know the wonderful thing that Jesus did on the cross.]

[You told them?]

[Rachel and I had a lovely evening working out which stick pictures to engrave on the walls of a cave we found, and how to explain the gospel in twenty easy cartoons. James helped a lot, explaining it to them.]

[Any news of Mick?]

[No, grandma.]

[Don't worry, Maggie. He's there somewhere.]

[Thank you for saying so.]

[Silly girl! Just listen to your grandma, for once, will you? You've seen my hope-book.] Heather thought, [Mick is there somewhere. Just make sure you send him an invitation to your wedding, you don't want him accused of gate-crashing.]

[{stunned joy}] Maggie thought.

[{confusion}] was James' reaction.

[James, I'm a seer. I'm not as blatant about it as I was when I was two or three and told Maggie's great-grandad James he was a boy-mermaid. Mick is alive, Mick is on the planet you've just visited, Maggie. Mick will be at your wedding. Hmm, let me write some more ideas down. Ha, that'll take some organising! Any ideas when you wanted to get married, kids?]

[Gran, we've not even had one date yet! Not to mention James not proposing to me yet.]

[Well, let me know in plenty of time, the Lord says I'm going to be there, too.]

[And mum and dad?]

[Leave the future some secrets, Maggie. But you can tell Rachel about me being a seer, and about Mick.]

[Gran? Can I have some advice, not divine knowledge. You've shaken the scientific establishment to its core before now... Should I think of rushing back to gather more data, or spend a decade trying to play politics and get things organised like Mum does?]

[Where does your heart lie, Magdalena?] Heather asked.

[I don't know! I want to go back, I want to be with family, I always dreamed of leading a scientific mission to a strange new planet, there's this nice man who wants to marry me, building and equipping a remote lab is going to take ages, not to mention cost a fortune ...]

[Your mother is almost certainly having too much fun bossing people around and analysing interstellar plant samples to go with you, Maggie, that's a fact. Your James is going to be useful there on your new planet, of course, so I suggest you take him with you. But I point out that my old test lab is still floating around somewhere near Pluto. It probably needs a bit of airing out, since the chances are that someone left a half-eaten sandwich down the back of a sofa, but it's there.]

[Take the whole lab?]

[Of course! Why not?]

[But Gran! Fitting it with interstellar drives...]

[Was about the final thing we did before mothballing it, dear. We knew it'd be needed eventually. Didn't you ever wonder how it got to Pluto?]

[I guess I thought it went there at constant acceleration.]

[After a leisurely warp three out to look at Voyager, I drove it to Pluto at warp eleven.]

[What?] Maggie exclaimed.

[It didn't take long, I assure you. I'd had Alice and we weren't planning any more kids. It's called establishing safe parameters. Warp twelve had been determined to be dangerous, eleven was safe according to the probes, but I wanted to prove it. Eleven is silly speed anyway. Ten is plenty fast enough.]

[But eleven is safe?] James asked.

[Eleven is probably safer than a clearly life-threatening situation, say you're loosing blood and going to die unless you get home now. That's why it's there on the dial. But no two drives are a hundred percent identical, you know that; it's not a digital control. The timer was, fortunately. Six light-days in less than a second.]

[{pride}My grandma, fastest lab-driver in the universe!]

[My Martin acceptance of risk, coming through, yes. Your grandad wasn't happy when I told him what I'd done.]

[What does happen at warp twelve?] James asked.

[Is the hand-waving, imprecise, not exactly accurate explanation OK?] Heather asked.

[Perfectly]

[You need to navigate, and you need to keep a bit of the bubble attached to the real universe. That little connection bit can't be much smaller than a couple of wavelengths of light, so you can actually detect photons and see where you're going. On the warp-ship side, you need the connection to be smaller than the ship, or you can't keep the bubble open. Also, the ratio of those two dimensions determine the maximum speed. You can't get to warp twelve without breaking those two rules: either your contact point is too small to let any photons in properly or the connection on your side is bigger than the ship.]

[Hold on, I thought it was that humongous distances on normal-space side get shrunk on the other?] James asked.

[Sorry, no.] Heather said, [You're making a pocket of space-time, not just space, so things get funny. Plus of course you don't want to be crushed down to subatomic size. You need to be stretching space more to go faster, and you end up being very glad the photons get stretched as they come through the pin-hole, or you'd be fried really quickly by normal photons being blue-shifted into high energy gamma-rays.]

[Urm, I'll believe you maam.]

[Good policy,] Maggie said.

[Anyway, I'll leave you watching out for trouble, Maggie. Fly safely. Just because I know you'll get home, that doesn't mean you want to risk flying into a planet.]

[I'll make a point of avoiding that, Gran.]

“Rachel,” Maggie said, double-checking the flight computer still said there was nothing in their way, “I've just had a call from my grandmother.”

“Her Majesty? She has the gift?”

“Yes it was her, but no, she doesn't have the gift. I ought to say it was from James, and Gran was hitching a ride, as it were. She told me that her old test lab was fitted with an interstellar drive before they mothballed it. So it would be ready when needed.”

“You told her?” Rachel asked, feeling a bit betrayed.

“Gran won't tell anyone, don't worry, Rachel. Gran knows lots of secrets. Like she's known James and me would be an item for a decade, and she knows Mick is alive, and on that planet.”

“What?”

“Gran is a seer. It's rarer than the gift, and... not as precise. But she can see at a glance if a sentence is true or false. She uses it carefully, because she doesn't want to know the whole future. But apparently she and Mick will both be at my wedding. She's not saying when it'll be, fortunately. But... I get the feeling it'll be back there. You're invited.”

“Can you do that?”

“As I understand it, the research lab is still her lab, that's why it's just been left prepared, not used for anything. There's space for about fifty people, if I remember right. Assuming you want to do some more research?”

“Of course I do. There are too many gaps in what we've got.”

“The other bit of news... just before mothballing it, she flew it at warp eleven. To make sure warp ten was really safe for us youngsters.”

“Wow. That reminds me, those warp numbers.”

“Yes?”

“Why twelve times warp-factor over pi-squared? Why not factors going from zero to twelve and ten over pi-squared?”

“Because someone was a fan of old science fiction films, and thought that a scale of warp zero to warp ten was about right. Apparently they got it wrong, because warp zero equates to light speed and it ought to have been stopped. But basically I think it's decimal-centric thinking.”

“But her majesty has flown at factor eleven.”

“Yes. And in a life-threatening emergency, so could we. I'd heard that, but never realised anyone had actually done it. There are radiation risks, navigation risks, and more nasties just round the corner.”

“Hence the normal maximum of ten?”

“Exactly,” Maggie agreed.

The collision alarm sounded. “Oh great,” Maggie said, “stray bolder in space. Warp factor minus ten, aka about one old mile a second.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“It'll still hurt at that speed.”

“I know. Well, it would if we were in normal space.”

“You mean we could go straight through it in warp?”

“In pilot training, I read about some early experiments. Yes and no. You can't see, of course, and it does bad things to the asteroid, and even at this speed, there might be radiation problems from what we might call the impact flash, depending what it's made of, and it drains power really quickly.”

“So it's better to go around it?”

“Exactly. Hold on, I'm dropping to normal space, so we can use the radar.”

“One stray rock? Please let it just be one stray rock.”

“What?” Maggie asked, “You don't want to crawl thorough an asteroid belt? Yes, it's one stray rock within a few seconds' of radar range. Sideways we go at point one G, and getting a position-velocity reading.”

“Only point one G?”

“It's not that big, and getting an accurate position takes a while, you know?”

“Not as slow as if I was doing it by hand.”

“Oh great,” Maggie said looking at the radar screen.

“More rocks?”

“More radar signals, anyway, and we're in the same patch of space where we had one on the way out, too.”

“Same procedure?”

“Yes, sorry. It's the safest course of action. Follow our radar pulses and watch for echos. Oooh! Gravitons.”

“Pardon?”

“We are in distorted space. There's a gravity source over that way somewhere.” she waved imprecisely.

“Just tell me its not a black hole, and I'm happy.”

“Oh, we're not going that way, anyway. But we're certainly going to log it.”

“This counts as a navigation hazard, doesn't it?”

“Uncharted Jupitoid? Certainly. OK, I'm getting it on the radio telescope. That's the problem with this ship.”

“What is?”

“It's too multifunctional. Radar receiver also radio telescope, and radio decoder and so on sounds good, but really it just means we miss things if we don't remember to change functions. Like how we almost missed those radio signals.”

“We'd have caught them before leaving, surely? It's on the check-list, after all.”

“I know. Would have been embarrassing though. 'Here's a description of the plants and trees and the canine-like predators, and by the way we heard someone sending something like Morse code just as we were leaving.'”

----------------------------------------

GROUND, FRONTIER VILLAGE

“Welcome home!” Jakav said, “How did it go?”

“The book is re-written,” Jana said “the Biology department paid the reprinting fees and our entire travel costs, and say hello to your sister, Rachela, who's even better documented than you were.”

“You... wow! Hello Rachela!”

Rachela didn't say anything; the tiny little person was much too busy sucking.

“We thought it was quite likely you'd want to call a daughter Magdalena,” Kov said.

Aza smiled, “You're right. Did you urm, hear anything about Jakav's reports?”

“His report on the benefits of avoiding changes are to be published, his report on Magdalena's visit has been dismissed as a nice joke, for the first bit about ten digits and getting the circle number wrong, but you really lost them when you started talking about her coming from light-years away. Having the laser-wielding flying robot was apparently purest fantasy and they say the way you presented it as fact is entirely unscientific. So they don't expect to be seeing much more of your work in print.”

“His reputation is in ruins, you mean?” Aza asked.

“The academician we talked to noticed Magdalena's space-ship arrive and depart. It seems no one else did. You have one friend there, I think.” Jana said.

Kov nodded and added “But she's... odd though. Very odd. She's currently got two heads, spends practically all her time hovering, and her second head isn't just somewhere to put an extra set of eyes, it talks, and seems... semi-independent and male. She addressed it as 'experiment.'”

“Dad, that's not odd, that sounds more like seriously deranged or perverted.”

“While we were on our way home, we realised that neither you nor we had mentioned Magdalena's name, but the second head knew it, and even pronounced it with the stressed 'e' in the middle, just like she did.”

“What are you saying, Dad?”

“I'm saying that there's a mystery there, and after harvest you are welcome to go and ask some more questions, but we couldn't have got back before harvest if we'd turned round.”

“You almost didn't, Dad. First day of harvest is tomorrow.”

“I'll be there, and ready. You're right, stamina gets better when you stay in one shape.”

“No problems on the road?”

“Not worth mentioning. Oh, the other thing about that second head on Academician Lana's shoulder — it had a five-fingered hand and quoted the circle number to seven digits. In base ten.”

“Hey! Lana was the name of the academician who was involved in that disastrous research project seven years ago, wasn't she? The one where she tried to host another person to see if it would be a possible form of first aid.” Jana remembered.

“You think she's hosting one of them? One of Magdalena's people?”

“I doubt it. You've heard how the biologists host animals — they basically digest them! But I do think Academician Lana must have been informed by them, somehow. Maybe she's met Magdalena, or something like that, and has semi-podded a bit of her mind off to make the other head?”

“Would that be possible?” Aza asked.

“Frontier biology? Who knows what they've trained themselves to do. I'm sure she can't have fully podded but imprisoned her podling. That'd be illegal, immoral.” Jana said.

“I didn't think frontier biology was very concerned with morals,” Jakav said.

“She prayed for us before we left,” Kov said, “unasked.”

“OK, so she has faith, and I guess a sense of morality goes with that.”

“I think so.”

----------------------------------------

GROUND, THE UNIVERSITY, SEVENDAY MORNING.

[What are you doing, swinging your hand around like that?]

[Practicing.]

[Practicing what? And what is that rod you're holding?]

[A tool. And I've asked you not to be curious, Lana.]

[You used to hold it like a pencil, but now you seem to be waving it around as if it was a meter or two long sword.]

[Am I? How interesting!] He said, adjusting his grip, and imagining carving rock with the rock-cutter. Then he switched to five swipes at incoming depth-charges, along with taking out the propeller of a boat. It was his old exercise routine. And he was slow; Lana had told him that his original nerves were extending, connecting better to the flesh she'd lent him. His reaction speed was increasing, he'd had her test it, but it was still slow. He'd be useless against another human. Fortunately the predators here had never faced a human and lived to evolve.

[I could drug you.] Lana said.

[But you won't, because firstly, you don't know what the drugs will do. Secondly, because I've told you this can be dangerous, and you don't let drugged people near weapons if you're sane. Thirdly, you promised you wouldn't do that again; and finally because this is part of the solution to your nightmares.]

[My nightmares?]

[The ones where someone accuses you of perversion and wrong-podding.]

[How do you know about that?]

[I hear your thoughts, Lana, all of them, when I'm not asleep.]

[But... I don't hear anything from you unless you think to me.]

[I know. Horribly unfair, isn't it? Lots of humans can't hear thoughts at all.]

[That's your word for yourself, isn't it?]

[Yes.]

[What does it mean?]

[It's a word from an old language. Basically it means people. What does wrong-podded mean? At root?]

[It means that someone has taken their love for their husband too far, that their husband or lover has died, and they've taken his genetic material and used that to form a podling. Playing God, giving life to the dead.]

[You could do that? Wow. Whereas what you did with me...]

[You weren't dead yet.]

[No. I wasn't. So, not guilty, easily disproved.]

[Is it?]

[I'm genetically alien, despite the fact we don't poison each other.]

[Do you know much about your genetics?]

[Twenty three chromosomal pairs in the cell nucleus, the sex-linked one looks like an X-Y in males and two X's in females. There's some little things in the cells but not the nucleus called mitochondria which have their own DNA, and are passed down mother to child.]

[Really?]

[They process glucose for us. Technically they're incorporated bacteria, but that was billions of years ago.]

[Billions of years ago?]

[Probably. All life on earth has them. You don't?]

[We might, I don't know.]

[You'll need a really powerful microscope.]

[What's one of them?]

[Urm, glass lenses, in a tube, lets you look at small things?]

[I don't think we have those.]

[Surely... wow. Maybe you don't. That's amazing! But you have lenses?]

[Yes, of course. For telescopes, things like that.]

[Want some transferable alien technology?] Mick offered.

[Yes!]

[Find someone who knows some optics then, tell them you've had a crazy idea about using a telescope that can focus a millimeter away to see small stuff.]

[And that'll let me see mito-whatever you called them?]

[Hmm. I don't think so, at least, not without some kind of chemical dyes. You'd do better with an electron microscope.]

[What's an electron?]

[Sub-atomic charge-carrying particle. You boil them off the filament in tubes in your radio.]

[You know how those things work?]

[I can give you a hand-waving explanation based on half-forgotten school lessons, yes. You don't?]

[Not personally. What about radio?]

[Self-propagating electro-magnetic fields.]

[Oh, wow.] Lana said.

[What? Your physicists must know these things, surely?]

[Maybe. But I didn't.]

[Is it time for Church yet?]

[You really want to go?]

[You trust in God, why don't you want to?]

[Because there are lots of people there who will say or assume very bad things about me having a second head.]

[Oh.] He realised why she'd been having so many nightmares in the past week, since he'd asked about worshipping God with others. [So you think it's a big risk?]

[Yes, I do.]

[OK. Let's not go. After all, where two or three are gathered...]

[Then what?]

[Where two or three are gathered in Jesus' name, he will be there with them. That's something he promised his disciples. And then, can we safely go for a walk, or a fly, I guess, somewhere a long way from anyone?]

[Why?]

[I think I ought to show you what my little tube here can do.]

[There have been predator sightings in my favourite spot recently. And... this isn't exactly a fighting body.]

[You're an intelligent tool-user, me too. I'm sure we'll think of something. Or we could swim?]

[You're joking. With all my muscles connected to my wings?]

[OK, not ideal, I agree. So, show me your favourite being alone spot, and as long as you keep me between you and the predator, I'll do my utmost to protect you.]

[With your tool? Do you even know it works?]

[Yes. You mentioned the ozone smell the other morning.]

[It's a spark generator?]

[No, it was designed to be an engraving tool.]

[You'll protect me from a predator with an engraving tool?]

[If I had my original body, no problem. I'd serve you as much predator as you wanted to eat.]

[If I had a whole predator to eat, then... well, I'd never get off the ground. But on the other hand with that much protein I could certainly have a go at letting you try to grow some more of your own muscles.]

[So, shall we go hunting?]

[Hunting? I thought you were a scientist.]

[Hunting for food is something most of my people do, Lana. The semi-aquatic sub-species, that is. You read the report about Magdalena's knife. She's killed sharks with it.]

[What's a shark?]

[Think of a big fish, maybe as tall as us, with lots and lots of teeth, and a mouth big enough to bite a person in half.]

[Nasty place you live.]

[The sensible ones avoid us. We are the apex predators, even with just a knife.]

[Just a knife.]

[Yes.]

[What else do you use?]

[I don't have a knife. I'll have to use my engraving tool.]

[You are making no sense.]

[You'll see, Lana.]

[You're going to flatten its batteries, and I've no way to charge them.]

[It's OK, it'll take more than a little hunting trip to flatten the battery. I made sure it was fully charged before I left the last planet I visited before I came here.]

[That was years ago.]

[I know, don't worry, Lana. We can give it a wash if you like, in case it's dried out, but the battery won't be flat.]

[What if it's leaked?] she asked, knowing what happened to batteries after a few years.

[If it leaked, there'd be a big hole here, not your nice flat.]

[What's it got in there? Florine?]

[No. Unobtainium.]

[What's that?]

[A mythical element that solves all known problems. The only problem is it's impossible to get anywhere.]

[You're making fun of me.]

[Lana, it has a store of energy, I call it a battery, because that's the closest thing you know of. But it's not a chemical battery, OK? Just accept that it is a very light-weight way to store plenty of energy, and don't let any physicists near it. They probably don't know anything about it, and would get killed if they try to take it apart. Along with everyone else nearby. How accurately can you measure atomic masses?]

[Urm. Pass.]

[Because you'll find that Helium doesn't quite weigh four times what Hydrogen does.]

[Oh, yes. I've heard that. Its confusing them for some reason.]

[No microscopes, but they know about the missing mass problem! Weird planet this. Have they noticed that after iron it goes the other way? Things weigh too much?]

[I'm not sure. But you're going to start talking about unstable nuclei, aren't you?]

[No, but if they're playing with them, don't go too near. They are dangerous.]

[Because?]

[They release energy, alpha, beta particles, gamma rays, neutrons too, some of them. Ionising radiation, it can all damages cells, genetic material.]

[Good to know, how could I prove it?]

[Genetic mutation? Grow some plants next to it?]

[Your particles.]

[Photographic film of course, or a cloud chamber, ionisation detector, certain crystals let out a flash, but I don't remember which ones.]

[What sort of film?]

[You know... what do you use to make pictures of things?]

[Artists? Pencils? Ink?]

[Chemicals and lenses?] he countered.

[Urm, not as far as I know.] Lana replied.

[Oh wow. No photography but you have lasers and florescent tube lighting. Silver Nitrate.]

[What?]

[It's a good place to start. Photo-reactive chemical, stick it to a piece of paper, expose to light for a bit, cover it up, and then wash off the rest.]

[Oh! Yes, we do that. Leaf prints and things like that.]

[One of you ought to try adding a box to keep the light out and a lens. But anyway, stick some of that next to unstable elements, or an X-ray tube, and you'll see why people get sick who play with them.]

[What's an X-ray tube?]

[Another type or radiation. Slightly dangerous, but useful. We use it to take pictures of broken bones. The rays go though soft tissue but not bone.]

[Hey, why are you suddenly telling me all about these technological wonders?]

[Because I realised that I'm a danger to you, and you need some evidence to show people that I'm really from an alien civilisation. Plus I was making all sorts of wrong assumptions about where you were, scientifically. Your astronomers, for example should really want photographic film if they're not using it yet.]

[You mean, rather than spending the night putting dots on a piece of paper they could be letting the light do it for them?]

[Exactly.]

[Suddenly, I've something to talk to my brother about that he might listen to.]

[You've got a brother?]

[He's very religious. In the disapproving sense.]

[OK. Shall we prove it works first?]

[How?]

[Some of that paper. If there's different sensitivities, as sensitive as it comes. A box, black inside. A lens which would focus the light on the back of the box. A night without clouds, and somewhere without people or lights. But we could try taking some of the city at night from up the hill if you want to. It might be easier.]

[Hunting predators first then, or next weekend?]

[How about we invite your brother to the meal? Is he married?]

[I like your style.]