“Normally, on a long flight leg like this, some of us could go off-duty. But with full inertia, that would be dangerous. Even my break to let Kibi get a little command experience was a risk. And now we have to decelerate with inertia. Give yourself about forty kilometers, Mati.”
She nodded, and began carefully pulling back on her flight control.
“Our bodies are used to one gravity of acceleration downward, and they can handle two or three without discomfort. Our seats support us well for forward acceleration, but any other direction is a problem above one quarter gravity. In an emergency, we can flip the ship around so our seats cushion a rapid deceleration.”
“Thirty kilometers,” Sata announced.
Everyone felt their inertia straps holding them as Mati slowed the ship.
“The island is alive with birds!” Rini declared.
“Twenty kilometers,” Sata said. “Chart on channel five.”
“Full stop a kilometer from the island,” Ilika commanded, “then go in dead slow. Kibi, landing site selection, without crushing any birds or nests.”
Kibi nodded and began studying her display.
“Eight kilometers,” Sata reported.
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The small, rocky island had no trees or bushes, just a little grass where soil had collected in cracks and crevices. Thousands of sea birds called it home.
As Mati hovered the ship nearby, the island most closely resembled an agitated bee hive.
“That flat place looks free of nests,” Kibi noted. “Some birds are walking around, but I bet they’ll move when we get close.”
“I need a view straight down,” Mati said.
Rini touched his controls. “Down view on channel four. Strong wind from the west.”
“Look okay, Kibi?” Mati asked when she was directly over the proposed landing site.
“Um . . . there’s a nest in that nook. Can you move back a little?”
Mati nudged her flight control until Kibi nodded, then extended struts and carefully lowered the ship. They could all feel a bump at the moment of contact. “Sorry.”
Ilika nodded. “Manessa is changing shape to shed the wind. Kibi is out first to check for site dangers. We’ll need boots and cloaks.”
The island extended less than a hundred meters in all directions, and if the visitors wandered near any of the nesting areas, birds started whizzing by their heads in warning. Even so, they welcomed the wind in their faces and the smell of salty air, the cry of gulls and the view over the open ocean, seemingly endless in all directions.
Back inside, as Rini assembled a snack, Ilika spoke.
“You know about ions. You know they move very easily when in a plasma,
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like fire. Manessa’s ion drive creates a region of frictionless flow around the hull. Combined with an aerodynamic shape, the ship can move through a fluid — air or water — at about a hundred times the speed that’s possible with ordinary thrust.”
“We could have made the trip here from the narrow passage in . . .
seconds!” Sata said excitedly.
“That’s right. Boro has studied his ion drive controls, but never used them. The open ocean is a good place to practice, but first you all must take to heart some life-or-death warnings.”
Rini put the snack tray on the table, an assortment of crackers and other finger foods. Then he sat as everyone listened to their captain.
“The ion drive is NOT capable of slow acceleration. ANY inertia from it is deadly. It is ALWAYS used with zero inertia.”
They all wore grave looks and slowly nodded.
“You CANNOT fly by visual references. By the time you see something and try to respond, it is far behind you, or you have crashed into it and died. You MUST have a known clear flight path in front of you to use the ion drive. That puts a new responsibility on the navigator to carefully examine all elevations the ship will pass over. Safe clearance, except in some dire emergency, is one thousand meters.”
Frowning, Sata nodded her understanding.
“Of course, there are advantages. If you need to get away from something FAST, like an avalanche that’s two seconds from burying you, the ion drive will do the trick. Manessa will even pick a course if you don’t have time to set one, usually straight up.”
Boro’s mouth opened.
“We will start with a demonstration. We will fly toward another island, at an altitude one thousand meters higher than the peak of the island, and I want Mati to try to stop the moment she sees the island.”
Mati’s grin looked somewhat forced.
When they finished the snack and returned to their stations, Ilika went from person to person. Rini only needed to provide visual displays. Sata calculated the course to the target island. Boro double and triple-checked that
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the anti-mass drive was set for zero inertia, then hesitantly warmed up the ion drive with Ilika watching.
“Pilot, lock in an altitude of three thousand two hundred meters,” Ilika commanded. “Verify that, navigator.”
“Um . . . yes, two thousand two hundred plus one thousand.”
“Steward, departure procedure.”
Kibi looked over the landing site from her console and closed the hatch, then selected views of other parts of the interior. After personally checking the galley, she declared the ship ready.
Ilika noticed a worried look on Boro’s face. “Report your concern, engineer.”
“Shouldn’t we . . . use inertia straps?”
“They wouldn’t help. Without the anti-mass drive canceling all inertia, we’d just die, straps or no.”
Boro swallowed and checked his controls again.
“Also, Manessa would yell at us if we even talked about using the ion drive without full inertia canceling.”
“That’s good,” Boro said with relief.
“Pilot, take us up to the target altitude and hover.”
No one could feel a thing as Mati lifted the ship and retracted the landing struts, but the little island and its many winged creatures quickly shrank on their visual displays. “Three thousand two hundred,” Mati declared.
“Make the target bearing our heading and select your display.”
Mati rotated the ship slightly and put the forward visual on her main screen.
“All stations, report readiness for ion drive.”
The nervousness on the bridge was thick, but no one could think of anything else they needed to do.
“At your leisure, pilot.”
Mati smiled. She could clearly remember a time, less than a year before, when nothing had ever been at her leisure. Now a deep-space response ship was under her fingertips, and her heart beat a little faster at the responsibility
— and pleasure — of the situation. After a breath for courage, she touched the ion drive symbol.
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The ocean below became a blur, and only the horizon and distant clouds remained in focus. A few seconds later, something gray flashed into view, and Mati jerked her hand off the ion drive control.
“Good work, Mati. You just piloted the Manessa Kwi across more than three thousand kilometers of ocean. Ion drive off, Boro. Let’s see how far back the island is.”
After blinking a few times, Mati turned the ship. Everyone could see the cone-shaped island sticking out of the water a ways behind them.
“We’re almost thirty kilometers past the island,” Sata reported, moving the image of a measuring scale on her display.
“Any questions about the possibility of using visual flight references with the ion drive?” Ilika asked the entire bridge.
“If we’d been at two thousand meters . . .” Rini began with wide eyes.
No one finished his sentence.
Deep Learning Notes
An acceleration force sideways would be like someone giving us a shove.
When standing, we are top-heavy, so receiving a shove can knock us off balance. If we see the shove coming, we can spread our legs to form a wider base.
Why would Ilika ask his crew to not crush birds or nests? The answer is in NEBADOR Book Three, chapter 16.
Do you remember the meanings of “heading,” “track,” and “bearing” from NEBADOR Book Two? “Make the target bearing our heading” translates to
“Point the ship the way we want to go.”
“Visual flight references” is piloting by what you can see out the window. It is also called “pilotage.”
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Chapter 15: Boro’s Volcano
“Why is it smoking?” Sata wondered aloud. “Does someone have a fire down there?”
“This is one of Boro’s requests, a volcano. I picked an active one — I didn’t think you’d be too impressed with a cold, dormant one that just looks like a mountain. Boro, you are in command to guide Mati on a complete tour of your volcano. This is new land rising out of the sea. No human being has ever set foot here, and probably none have even seen it . . . until now.”
Boro’s mouth was open. “Um . . . I thought it was going to be . . .
something little . . . like the hot springs.”
“Actually,” Ilika said, “this is small as volcanoes go. They can be five or six thousand meters high. Come, sit in the command chair. I’ll cover your station.”
With a very unsure expression, Boro slowly rose from his seat. When he saw the proud look on Sata’s face, he took a deep breath. “Um . . . Kibi got to just command from her station . . .”
“Kibi can see the entire bridge from her station, you can’t.”
Boro slowly seated himself.
“While Boro explores the volcano, Kibi will be looking for a safe landing site for lunch,” Ilika announced.
“Um . . .” the engineer began with a scrunched face, “let’s start at the top.”
Mati turned to her console, and Ilika seated himself and looked over the
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control board at the engineer’s station, then leaned back to relax.
The glowing orange lava fountain in the volcano’s main crater made Boro very concerned about distance, until Rini reported that it was cooler than the fire the priests had built.
Sata shrieked when molten rock splattered onto the hull. The captain assured them that Manessa was okay.
Under Boro’s hesitant command, Mati followed rivers of lava down the sides of the volcano as most crew members stared at their displays with open mouths. Kibi wore a frown, but wasn’t looking at the lava. She went to Rini’s station and asked about the outside air.
When Boro’s tour finally reached the sea, they watched in awe as globs of molten rock plunged into the water and huge clouds of steam billowed up.
“Have you picked a landing site?” Boro finally asked, turning to Kibi.
“No. And I’m not going to. There are a few places we could perch with the hatch closed, but poisonous fumes are lurking everywhere. It’s just not a picnic place.”
Ilika smiled. “So, where should we have lunch, Kibi?”
“Well . . . if the engines and fuel are okay . . . I think we should just hover, somewhere upwind. We can open the hatch and watch the thing smoke and sputter while we eat.”
Ilika touched some controls on the engineer’s console. “We have enough fuel for the anti-mass drive, at level one, for about . . . eight years.”
Kibi
smiled.
Ilika nodded at Boro, still in the command chair.
“Mati,” Boro said, “please pick us a nice lunch spot, somewhere upwind with a view.”
Mati grinned and moved her flight control.
With the hatch wide open and the salty smell of the ocean filling the ship, Sata served a tasty left-over stew made back in the desert.
“Kibi demonstrated something,” Ilika began, “that I want you all to understand. To do your jobs well, you have to be willing to say no. You have to be willing to recognize when you can’t safely function within the limitation
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you have been given. Then you and the commander can decide if the situation warrants a greater risk, like Kibi’s idea of perching somewhere with the hatch closed, or something else entirely. Everyone see?”
Several heads nodded.
“But what if things are happening fast,” Boro said, “and someone needs whatever you’re supposed to do?”
“Then you do three things. You get them what they asked for as best you can, you point out the problem, and you prepare an alternative. Try it with your situation, Kibi.”
“Um . . . there’s a place we could land the ship down there, but there are poisonous fumes and we can’t open the hatch, and I suggest we just hover.”
“Good. Now you try it, Boro, with your overloaded thrusters from this morning.”
“Okay . . . um . . . thrusters are still working, but they’re red, and . . . um . . .
I’m increasing to level two . . . or we could slow down.”
“Excellent. Once you know your jobs well, it’ll be easy.”
After lunch, while the others looked on, Sata concentrated on the ocean chart filling her display screen. Using the controls at her fingertips, she drew several different straight lines from their present position to the deepest ocean trench, their next destination. Each time she drew a line, Manessa displayed depth and clearance numbers. “Seems like there’s always some little island or reef . . . wait a minute . . . it looks better up here at the north end of the trench . . . yes! More than four thousand meters deep.”
“Good. Send Mati that heading. Stations.”
Everyone
scrambled.
“Preflight. Anti-mass one. Submarine topographics. Remember your underwater visual filters, Rini?”
“Yep!”
“Take us down to a depth of one thousand meters, pilot.”
Mati was able to enter the water much more smoothly than on her first attempt, almost seven weeks before.
“Hull integrity check, steward.”
“Yikes! Hull status is purple, not usable, totally broken!”
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Without a word from anyone, Mati quickly had the ship back on the surface and several meters in the air. Ilika dashed up to Kibi’s side. All the crew members stared at him with anxious eyes when, a moment later, he burst out laughing. “Manessa still has some lava stuck to the hull and doesn’t like it.”
Boro and Rini quickly joined the laughter, followed closely by Sata. Mati and Kibi just smiled.
“Extreme rotating shapes, Manessa,” the captain requested of his sentient ship.
Mati watched as part of her console lit up with symbols she hadn’t studied.
They could all see chunks of rock falling past their visual displays.
When the process was complete, Kibi repeated the integrity check. “Hull status is blue-green . . . yellow. Thank you, Manessa.”
“You are welcome, Kibi,” Manessa said in the language of Nebador, in a pleasant voice that was neither male nor female, using words they had all studied.
Sata’s mouth dropped open.
Mati spun around, eyes wide.
Rini grinned with happiness.
Kibi’s eyes lit up. “That’s the first time Manessa talked to me, except in lessons.”
“As I’m sure you’ve all noticed,” Ilika began, “I’m beginning to use the language of Nebador when I give commands.”
Boro nodded vigorously. “We’ve noticed.”
“You will soon be able to chat with your deep-space response ship to your heart’s content.”
Deep Learning Notes
By giving Kibi a problem (a safe landing site for lunch on the volcano) that has no answer, what is Ilika teaching her?
The method Ilika taught them of fulfilling a command that is not safe
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(preparing to follow the request, explaining the problem, and preparing an alternative) is almost beyond human ability because it requires both assertiveness and humility in the commander and the crew member. If you can learn to do this, you will be ready to tackle extremely hard and complex problems in a teamwork situation, but don’t be surprised if other members of your team are not capable of it.
The Manessa Kwi, a sentient but not sapient deep-space response ship, challenges us to think about the meaning of the word “person.” Some people will only grant that status to other human beings (and sometimes only if they are in the correct nation, race, or class). Other people grant personhood to higher animals (dogs, cats, horses, dolphins, etc.) Few would give it to a machine that has simple controls. When Manessa didn’t “like” the lava on her hull, and spoke to the crew in a conversational situation, did she gain
“personhood” in your eyes?
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Chapter 16: Sata’s Trench
The trip by ion drive through the water took longer than their previous flight by air, Ilika explained, because of the greater density, but none of the crew complained about fifteen seconds for one thousand six hundred kilometers of ocean.
“Ion drive off,” the captain ordered. “Anti-mass one, thrusters three. Do you have good visual and topographic displays, pilot?”
Mati tapped at her selectors. “Yes. It looks like it gets dark down there.”
“The water quickly blocks all the sunlight. You can pilot by your three-D, and then I’ll show you the exterior lighting controls when we get to something interesting.”
Mati sat quietly and took in the shape and direction of the huge canyon in the bottom of the ocean. Nearly a hundred kilometers wide at their current position, it tapered as it plunged into darkness. As soon as Ilika had received a status report from each station, he gave his pilot leave to enter the trench and proceed south.
The first thousand meters of depth, lit by the sun above, allowed them to peer into mysterious underwater fissures that cut into the sides of the main trench. Countless creatures clung to the rocks, some reaching out with tentacles, other with fronds that waved in the current. Schools of small shimmering fish, and occasional larger creatures, darted away as Manessa approached.
Soon the light from above dimmed, and Mati began to pilot by her
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instruments. “Two thousand meters.”
“Bridge lighting to minimum, steward,” Ilika requested, and Kibi touched her controls until the upper deck was almost dark, allowing them to better see their displays.
For the next few minutes, everyone was silent as the last hints of light faded and their visual displays became useless. The pilot continued to steer the ship downward into the trench. “Four thousand meters.”
They all listened to their hearts beat for another minute, while scanning their controls and displays.
“Ilika?” Sata called with a sharp voice that suddenly cut through the silence.
“Yes,
Sata?”
The navigator swallowed a few times. “Oh, nothing,” she responded in a shaking voice, but didn’t turn around.
Mati glanced at her friend, could see a tear on her cheek, and noticed the tension in her clenched jaw. “You have to tell him, Sata. We can’t be a team unless we all do it together.”
By this time, Ilika was kneeling next to his navigator, who was starting to breathe in troubled gasps. He looked at her but waited.
“I . . . I don’t know what it is,” Sata burst out without looking at her captain. “I can’t . . . breathe! I feel like . . . I’m trapped . . . like I’m suffocating.”
“Kibi, internal air diagnostic,” Ilika commanded without taking his eyes off Sata.
“It’s . . . just fine.”
A moment later, Sata began gasping for air, while her eyes strained to see something on her visual display.
Ilika extended his hand. “Come on, navigator. Let’s take a break.”
After a moment of embarrassed reluctance, Sata allowed herself to be guided up to the passenger area, gasping and crying as she went.
“Boro, you’re off-duty too. Come sit with your friend.”
As soon as Sata and Boro were comfortable in two passenger seats, side by side, Ilika went to Kibi’s station and selected a video of wide-open outdoor scenes. Boro took Sata’s hand and held it tightly.
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Ilika glanced at the engineer’s station, checked on his pilot who announced twelve thousand meters, then returned to the passenger area. Sata was breathing much easier, watching the video, and wiping at her tears. “I’m so sorry, Ilika. I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t anything I can put into words. It wasn’t fear or anything like that. It was just something my body did, and I can’t explain it.”
“That fits with what I’m seeing, Sata — some kind of reaction to . . . the darkness outside? The silence? I’d like to try something.”
Ilika returned to Kibi’s console and selected a lively piece of music with an interesting melody and a strong beat. Moments after it started, Sata was smiling and drying the last of her tears.
Kibi started moving to the beat in her chair. “Ilika, can I get up and dance?”
“You’re still on-duty,” he replied with a grin. “We can play when we find a landing site tonight. Where are we, pilot?”
“Holding position at the bottom of the trench, twenty thousand seven hundred meters down, waiting for you to show me how to turn on the lights.”
Ilika worked with Mati for a moment, and suddenly their visual displays revealed a bizarre scene of strange colorless plants, worm-like creatures, and inky jets squirting upward from the deep ocean floor. Noises of amazement came from all around the bridge.
“Nice,” Ilika said. “Kibi, put this on the passenger screen and tell me how Sata takes it.”
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Kibi touched a symbol, then swiveled around. “She’s still smiling!”
“These creatures have never experienced light, so they have no eyes.
Photosynthesis plays no part in their life cycles, only the geothermal activity you see, which adds heat and minerals to the environment.”
“I never thought something could be so beautiful and yet so strange,” Rini commented.
Ilika smiled. “This is pretty ordinary compared to things we’ll see on other planets. How are you doing, Sata?”
“I’m okay. It must have been the darkness.”
“Hmm . . .” Ilika mused, looking around the bridge. “It’s time for a little demo. Mati, I’d like you to go off-duty, take the navigators chair. Sata, you are in the command chair, and Boro is back on-duty.”
Sata looked a little forlorn with tear stains on her face as she hesitantly took Ilika’s chair. The song ended, so Kibi selected the next song on the list, equally good at uplifting the mood of the crew. Ilika sat down at the pilot’s station.
“There’s a knack to this that I haven’t completely mastered,” Ilika shared,
“but the idea is to fly to the beat of the music. I know pilots who can make a ship dance. Engine check?”
“Anti-mass one, thrusters three, all yellow.”
“Inertia straps, all stations. Full inertia, engineer.”
For the next few minutes, with Manessa lighting up the bottom of the undersea trench, Ilika give his crew their first taste of artistic flying. He swooped the little ship among the rocks, strange translucent plants, and jets of black water with movements that matched the beats and phrases of the music. He glanced back at Sata often, who continued to look happy. Kibi swayed in her chair, anxious to let her feet move along with the dancing ship.
When the song ended, Ilika brought the ship to a halt on the bottom.
“Twenty-four thousand meters, about as deep as this trench goes. What’s the outside pressure, Rini?”
“Um . . . about two thousand times normal atmosphere.”
“You okay hearing that, Sata?”
“Yeah. I trust you to tell us if Manessa can’t handle something. I feel fine.”
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“Could someone go out there with a harsh environment suit?” Boro asked.
“No. This would take pressure suits, the red ones.”
“My turn!” Mati said with a big grin, bouncing up and down in the navigator’s seat.
To another piece of lively music, the pilot guided the little ship out the southern end of the deep ocean trench. She knew her piloting wasn’t as smooth and rhythmic as her captain’s, but everyone clapped when the song ended and they headed for the surface.
With the sun approaching the western horizon, Sata navigated to a small uninhabited tropical island, and Kibi selected a pristine beach in a protected cove. Mati settled the ship carefully onto the sand, and a few minutes later everyone was outside, dancing as best they could to the music that poured through the open hatch, music that could not be composed, nor performed, on that planet for at least another thousand years.
Deep Learning Notes
Sata’s reaction to the ocean trench is on the border between a psychological (mental) reaction, and a physiological (body) reaction. No physical force was acting upon her (like reduced air pressure), but neither did it spring from emotions or beliefs. There exists a level in our minds that is very difficult to access, and is closely tied to the functioning of our bodies. This mental level can cause us to be incapable of doing certain things, or living in certain environments, and no amount of therapy (drug or cognitive) will help.
The ecosystem on the deep ocean floors was only discovered very recently, and has a completely different metabolic process than anywhere else on the planet. Instead of green plants making food from sunlight and minerals through photosynthesis, the ocean trench ecological niches rely on the heat from volcanic or tectonic activity. This process is called chemosynthesis.
The water pressure deep in the oceans makes it impossible to bring back
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living creatures. When brought to the surface, they immediately fall apart and die, just as we would in a vacuum.
Flying to music must be done with awareness of the limitations of the craft.
When I am flying a Cessna 152, for example, I have to remember that it will not handle acrobatic maneuvers.
The extreme pressure in the deep oceans would require a suit primarily designed to deal with that pressure. Our “deep-sea diving suits” can only handle a fraction of that pressure. We can only visit the ocean trenches in small ships called bathyspheres or bathyscaphs. The crew’s green harsh environment suits were for extreme temperatures, but normal pressure.
