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Lieutenant Beigan and Spinrad had spent ten straight hours trying to find a problem with the fusion drive or one of its supporting systems. But nothing seemed amiss.
“Okay,” said Spinrad. “Not one failed diagnostic and the visual inspection with the spider-cam looks good.
So, what does that leave?”
“I hate to say it, but I think the problem is this space,” said Beigan.
“We know fusion engines will work in the bulk; it's been proven many times by robotic exploration ships,” said Spinrad.
“Yeah, but they were very small, not at all like a huge, manned ship stuck in a chunk of frozen spacetime,” said Beigan.
“You mean you think that the frozen spacetime spheroid is interfering with the function of the fusion engine?” asked Spinrad.
“Well, we've looked for anything that would make sense, so now is the time to entertain ideas that don't,” said Beigan.
“So, how do we prove or disprove your hypothesis?” asked Spinrad.
“We need to move the pinch point where fusion occurs as far from the front of the ship as possible,” said Beigan.
“But the engine isn't designed for that,” said Spinrad.
“No, but that point can be moved according to how we warp the magnetic field,” said Beigan.
“I know that's theoretically true, but I don't know if it's ever been tried,” said Spinrad. “And if something goes wrong and we lose containment of that plasma, then what?”
“Then, we won't have to worry about being stuck here,” said Beigan.
The two explained to the captain what they wanted to do, and the dangers the procedure entailed.
“You both think this is the only chance to break free of the frozen spacetime?” she asked.
They both agreed; it was the only way.
“Okay, do it,” she said. “We have no choice. We stay here until our supplies are gone or we break free.
Staying means certain death; I would rather take a chance on life.”
Leonard Post was surprised he hadn't found another job yet. It had been over a month since he left the newspaper, and even though he had applied, both formally and informally, for several jobs, there wasn't any response. He had some savings, but he would have to do something soon if he wanted to stay afloat financially.
In the meantime, he was starting his own news channel with the help of his AI. The AI would search for news and do a rough draft, which Leonard would then go over and finalize; that way, he could give it a human touch. He could also choose the most sensational stories to get the clicks he needed to make some money. He called his show “The Muckraker's Manifesto” after an old-fashioned term not used anymore. He also called it deep-dive investigations, though some were soon calling it shallow-click misrepresentations.
Leonard picked up where he had left off, trying to connect ship disappearances with damage to bulk space and always ending with speculation as to the many disasters that damage to the bulk could cause.
He soon came to the attention of a large media group, News Beat, known for their scandal filled, sensationalist journalism; he was offered a job and his own show. Since it was the only offer he had received, and the larger organization would give him more clout with people and organizations he wished to interview, he took it.
After several shows insinuating that there was a government cover-up, Leonard decided to use the organization's influence to get an interview with General Slateman. Slateman was reluctant but had orders to do his best to assure the public that the military was not covering up anything, so he agreed to the interview.
“Thank you, General, for coming on my show,” said Leonard.
The general only nodded.
“First, I want to ask you for an update on the missing ships Liberator and Avenger.”
“Technically, that is classified information Mr. Post. But I can tell you that the investigation still continues.”
“That means you believe that the crews are still alive?” asked Post.
“There is no reason to believe otherwise.”
“But their supplies have got to be running low general, don't you think there is a chance that they may have run out by now?”
“There is no reason to think so, and I can tell you that Captain Wilson and Captain Stilwell are excellent officers. I'm sure they have implemented the proper procedures to get their crews through the incident,”
said the general.
“Moving on sir, I want to ask you a question that I know some consider impertinent, but I think it must be asked. I've said before in other settings that the use of the bulk by all these boundary drive ships could lead to a change in that space and a resultant threat to our space. I have talked to some very knowledgeable people who believe it a possibility. My question is, should we be using the bulk like a highway without knowing how we might be damaging it?”
“There is not one credible scientific finding that supports your thesis Mr. Post. If, and that's an unlikely if, anyone should come up with some peer-reviewed research that indicates what you asked about, then the
Space Force will do everything in its power to avoid such an outcome. We will implement to the letter whatever orders come out of Washington concerning such,” said the general.
“But it could be too late general,” said Post. “The damage could already be done.”
“Again, that is purely hypothetical and there is not one shred of evidence that such a scenario is real,” said the general.
After the interview, the general asked his adjutant, “How'd I do?”
“Excellent sir, you stayed on message throughout.”
“Well, it was easy,” said the general, “since it's the truth.”
Mark Dreyer had gotten his first set of data from the companies and had run an analysis. The bulk was turning out to be almost featureless. The information from gravitational waves collected by the SCR detectors was quite uniform. There simply wasn't anything in the bulk except a background of gravitational waves which, so far, Mark had been able to trace to other ships using a public database of crossings. He thought that without those ships, there would be a very low level or no background.
Mark had trained the AI to recognize the gravitational signature of the ships in the data and to alert on anything that was not such a signal. It was during the second batch of data that the AI alerted.
At first, Mark couldn't tell what he was looking at; the object definitely wasn't a ship traveling inside its spacetime void. He kept looking through the data file for another incident of the signal. He found it in the file from another ship that had passed nearby the first ship, and so the datasets overlapped.
The first impression Mark got was that the object was big and it was moving much slower than the boundary drive ships. Eventually, he got a mass value of several times that of Earth and a speed much, much less than the speed of light. As he followed the path the object had taken through the bulk (that is its gravitational wake) he was surprised again. It had entered through a boundary; it wasn't intrinsic to the bulk.
As he thought about this discovery, he realized that it must be a planet that had “escaped” from its world brane. It wasn't impossible that a planet sized object could find its way into the bulk, unlikely, but not impossible. Entrance to the bulk, the large extra dimension, wasn't like launching a rocket into space.
That's because the extra-dimension was everywhere. It exists at many points in the four-dimensional universe. Getting a probe out into the extra-dimension then is a question of precision, but the same could be accomplished after many, many random tries.
To find an entrance, it is necessary to find the space coordinates in addition to a time coordinate. So, the trajectory and the timing of that trajectory are both important. That's what made it magnitudes harder than sending a probe out into the Solar System; finding the “corners” of the fifth dimension, buried in trillions upon trillions of four-number coordinates, was hard. And so, it was quite probable that some object out of a huge number of objects moving randomly in their world brane would eventually find a corner, a gateway into the fifth dimension.
Mark looked further through the data to follow the path of the object through the bulk and noticed something else. The gravitational wake left behind by the object was diminishing. The only explanation he could think of was that the mass of the object or its speed was diminishing. He asked the AI to do the calculations and was again surprised; the velocity was constant, that meant the mass of the object was getting less and less.
The object wasn't breaking up; if that were so, Mark would have seen signs of multiple gravitational wakes. The object had to be dissolving, vaporizing, disappearing in some way unknown. This would be a huge result if he could confirm it; what he needed was to follow the object until the signal disappeared and then find another object traveling in the bulk to confirm the results. He would wait for confirmation before announcing, but this result didn't bode well for the missing ships.
He wondered:
Could they dissolve also?