With a tasty casserole of beans, rice, and vegetables on their trays, along with sticks of hard cheese and cups of sweet tea, the entire crew of the deep-space response ship Manessa Kwi gazed at the large display screen above the steward’s station. For five of them, the world of their birth filled the screen and turned slowly as they watched.
After journeying the entire width and length of the small kingdom where he found his crew, Ilika was almost as attached to the place as they were. He recalled the many faces in the room full of slaves he had tested. He remembered Kodi and his sticky fingers, Miko’s leap from boulder to boulder, and sweet Neti who was left to grieve and find a new partner. Toli had tried very hard toward the end of the journey, but was just not Transport Service material. Buna had chosen another path, and Ilika would always miss her.
“Our business here is done,” he began. “This beautiful planet is the only place in the Sonmatia solar system with good air to breathe. The people who live here will not appreciate that fact for a thousand years or more, and will probably come close to destroying their atmosphere before they learn to take care of it.”
“That’s stupid,” Kibi grumbled. “If anyone even looks funny at Manessa’s air system, they’ll have to get through me! I kind of like breathing.”
Everyone around the table smiled or chuckled. They also knew their beloved steward wasn’t joking.
Ilika grinned at his lover. “So . . . if everyone is ready to say good-bye to
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this little planet for a while . . .” He stopped and looked around the table.
Rini smiled, but still carried a measure of guilt about his recent orbit excursions. Boro nodded slowly, trying to hide his nervousness about warming up the ship’s interplanetary engines for the first time. Mati sparkled with longing, knowing that only a few planets separated her from healers who could fix her knee. Sata, leaving parents and a brother behind at not quite twelve years of age, took a deep breath, planted her feet squarely on the floor, and grinned.
Ilika saw that Sata’s grin was a bit forced, but after a moment, he continued. “Interplanetary space is scattered with countless wandering molecules, bits of rock and ice, and occasionally bigger things that Rini can detect and we will avoid. The ship uses a very slender shape, a repulsion field, and high levels of ion drive. You have all studied the necessary engines, controls, and instruments. Now it’s time to use them.
“As you know, we measure interplanetary space in light-minutes. It’s about eight light-minutes from here to the sun — an hour at one-eighth the speed of light, Manessa’s cruising speed in space. I’ve started a new flight list.
We’re at navigation point one, and I’ve entered a proposed flight plan. See what you think of it.”
Ilika collected empty trays and stepped into the galley.
As the captain of the Manessa Kwi did the dishes and started a pot of soup, he didn’t have to look to see what his crew-in-training was doing. He had been through the process himself, and from words he overheard now and then, could clearly imagine their thoughts.
For a while, they huddled around Sata’s navigation console. Then they moved to the engineer’s station, where Boro slowly and carefully expressed his concern. Back at the large table, no less than three knowledge pads were in use, with Kibi routing their displays to the big screen when one of them had something to share. Ilika kept his eyes on his galley work.
More than an hour after starting, they spent a few minutes at Rini’s watch station, then returned to the table.
Ilika could tell by the dead silence behind him that it was time to cover his soup pot. Rather unfriendly looks greeted him when he turned around, but he
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had expected as much. “So . . . what do you think?”
The others looked at Kibi.
“We don’t like it one bit,” the steward said in a firm voice.
Ilika held in his smile. “What’s wrong with it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the trip from here to the sun,” Mati explained.
“It’s the part about hovering over the surface of the huge thing,” Boro went on, his voice getting louder.
“At that distance, the gravity will be so great,” Sata declared with despair,
“that we’ll need the anti-mass drive at level seven!”
“That will take all three anti-mass inducers,” Boro explained, almost gasping for breath, “and leave us nothing extra for an emergency.”
“What about orbit?” Ilika asked, trying to keep a straight face.
“Orbiting the sun at that distance would require one-quarter the speed of light!” Rini squeaked. “Manessa can’t go that fast.”
Ilika smiled. “You guys are good! We might take a risk like that in a dire emergency. We certainly won’t any time we can avoid it. A good flight plan includes at least two paths to a safe destination. After a break, you can rewrite it so everyone’s happy.”
All five crew members sighed with relief. Kibi shooed Ilika out of the galley so she could find snacks.
After a few calculations, Boro was happy with the new hover altitude, giving him anti-mass power to spare. Rini, however, reminded them that if the anti-mass drive failed, they’d have to use space thrusters.
Mati frowned and grabbed a knowledge pad. “Thrusters only give me a thousand meters per second,” she complained. “That’s not escape velocity anywhere near the sun.”
Ilika scrunched his face for a moment. “You’re confusing velocity and acceleration, Mati. Manessa’s thrusters can give you that much change in velocity, per second.”
“Oh . . . yeah . . .” Mati mumbled with embarrassment as she tapped at the knowledge pad again. “Okay, I’m happy.”
“But . . .” Sata began with a cringe, “wouldn’t that much acceleration kill
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us?”
Mati frowned again and looked at Ilika.
“Yes,” Ilika replied, “but Manessa wouldn’t use maximum thrust with anyone on board. Look at emergency acceleration curve two.”
Mati worked with the hand-held device, peering at its screen in silence for a moment. Kibi stepped to her station and sent Mati’s display to the big screen so everyone could see.
“Okay, I get it,” Mati said with a much happier voice. “It starts slow so we can get into inertia straps, or grab something, and backs off after eight seconds, but builds plenty of speed.”
“Right. Your planet has a gravity of about twelve meters per second squared,” Ilika explained. “This curve gently takes us to about six times that.
We’d be moaning, but we’d live.”
After Rini presented his chart of all objects along the way larger than a grain of sand, Ilika looked over the entire new flight plan, smiled, and said,
“Stations.”
Slipping into their console chairs, the crew began pre-flight checks while Ilika secured the soup pot. As soon as he took the command chair, he spoke.
“We will no longer be working Mati to death on every flight. She will be on-duty at the beginning and end of each flight leg, and Manessa will remind
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her eight minutes before each navigation point so she has time to climb out of the bathtub, or wherever, and get to her station.”
Mati grinned and gestured toward her crutch. “For me, make it twelve minutes. But I think I’ll stay close this time. Leaving my station with the ship moving feels scary.”
Ilika nodded. “Sata and Boro are also off-duty once we get moving, but Rini’s job is critical.”
The freckled lad smiled, turned back to his console, and started a solar wind chart.
“All stations, report flight-plan readiness,” Ilika commanded.
“Pilot has the plan,” Mati reported, “an elliptical course ending in a solar hover. Um . . . I want everyone in inertia straps.”
“Good use of flight command, Mati,” Ilika said. “Continue with reports.”
“Manessa likes the plan,” Sata announced. “Universe transponder on.”
“Ion seven is green,” Boro declared. “Full inertia canceling and repulsion field.”
Rini touched another symbol on his console. “Flight path is clear, and I’ll be watching it like a hawk.”
Kibi finished looking over the inside of the ship from her console. “Ship is secured for flight.”
Evening light was fading as Noni leaned on her staff and looked up at the crystal clear winter sky. It would be a bitter cold night, and she envied her sheep their thick coats. Suddenly she saw a shooting star streak away toward the lingering sunset light in the west. She smiled and made a wish.
Just then Bo barked, signaling he needed help with a stray, so she pulled her old cloak tightly around her and went back to work.
Deep Learning Notes
The speed of light (and all other frequencies of electro-magnetic energy) appears to be a universal constant. In a vacuum, it is about 300 000 km (186 000 miles) per second. Combining that with our standard units of time,
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we get units of distance that are well-suited for use in space.
The light-year is about 9 461 000 000 000 km (5 878 000 000 000 miles) and is handy for inter-stellar (between stars) distances. The nearest star to our sun (Proxima Centauri) is about 4.2 light-years away.
The light-hour is about 6 500 000 000 km (4 000 000 000 miles) and is useful for the long distances in a solar system, such as between the outer planets.
The light-minute is about 18 000 000 km (11 000 000 miles) and is handy for short inter-planetary (between planets) distances, such as between the inner planets. The orbits of Earth and Mars are about 4.35 light-minutes apart.
Since Nebador uses base eight, how many minutes are probably in their
“hour” (instead of 60)?
Could any one of the crew members, working alone at his or her station, have analyzed the proposed flight plan?
“Escape velocity” is the relative speed an object needs to escape the gravity of any body in space without using additional thrust. On Earth, it is about 11
km/sec or 7 miles/sec.
Sometimes the illustrations show just what the characters are seeing, sometimes they are translated into the English language and Arabic numbers, and sometimes they are a mixture, depending on what is important in each illustration.
Speed (or velocity) is distance per time. Acceleration is CHANGE in speed per time, so its unit is distance per time per time, or distance per time squared. A constant speed does not cause any stress (gravitational force) upon our bodies. Only a CHANGE in speed (or direction).
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“Speed” and “velocity” are not technically the same, but for most practical purposes, they are interchangeable.
The gravity we are used to on Earth is the same as an acceleration of about 10
meters (32 feet) per second squared. We call it one “g” or one “gravity.”
Amusement park rides let us experience 2 or 3 gravities. If our bodies are well-supported, we can tolerate 5-10 gravities for short times. If the acceleration is too much, or for too long, we will black out, and eventually be injured, then killed.
What was the shooting star shepherdess Noni saw? What is the most common type of shooting star?
