He Without Sin (6 page)

--Depending on the correlation value,
intervention may be indicated, the degree of which is left to the discretion
of the Commander, within the
guidelines specified by the Academy

--Safely return ship and crew to origin

There were some questions about ground based
duties, mainly from the women—and Grigor. We
were assured that at some point everyone, and he
is making the assumption for now that there will be
no surprises regarding habitability, would be
assigned to ground duties, excepting the power
and helm teams, and that individual flexibility
would be key; he is not prepared to make
assignments until later. I could sense Grigor’s
irritation at possibly having to work at something
outside his comfort zone. Too soon to worry, I say. For myself, I am looking forward to ground duty. It
can’t get much more interesting than this—a new
world to explore!

I find it distasteful that Brachus seems to cozy up to
David much of the time; in meetings he seems to
make a point of sitting right next to him. And his
constant nodding and grinning when David makes
statements—it’s all getting to me. I’m not sure why
it bothers me so much, but shouldn’t he be trying
to become more integrated with the rest of the
crew, not just with his cronies and his boss? Maybe
he is, and it’s me that’s on the outside. Could be. But the nodding—I watched and David takes no
notice of it, so it must be directed at the rest of us
saying ‘Look at me, David and I are in agreement’ or some such childish notion.

Then there was wave downtime. Whew! The techs
back home really should set up a simulator for that
one; there are no words. Strange dreams. Feeling
of being lost, not in space, but in time. Ha, and
that’s appropriate for sure. From a conscious
perceptual point of view it’s the shortest leg of the
journey; from a distance point of view it’s the
longest; from a time point of view, it’s a poser! It’s
hard to explain downtime.

Did a quick physical tour after waking, once I had
my wits about me again. David says his
transmissions are successful; he is happy. That’s all
good for me, less to do in this phase of the
outbound journey. Vanessa says Doc’s data is
archiving OK too.

Prepped everyone for linking up their genies and
biometrics. Would like to stay ahead of the game if
possible.

Shipboard

Dr. Gleshert looks at me steadily and without expression. “Shut up and be still.” I shut up and am still. There is no fooling around with Gleshert. He is a smallish man and solidly built. There is a permanent cowlick on the crown of his head. Seems like he could do something about it, but
I’m
not going to be the one to bring it up. Rumor has it that Grigor coined the Doc’s nickname, GlassHeart, aptly reflecting his brittle personality, at least when he is working. “Don’t mess up these tests; you’re not getting out of here until I am happy.”

“Could be a while then,” I foolishly say, knowing immediately it was a mistake. I suffer through another silent stare during which he doesn’t move until, I assume, he feels certain that I am not going to speak again. Behind him, Nurse Vanessa is busy with something. She apparently knows what’s going on because she looks right at me with a slight smile and shakes her head. I saw her wear some flashy jewelry back at the Academy, but there is no trace of it now. No rings, nothing.

“I meant to tell you earlier that I saw your family not long ago,” he says while continuing to check me over, performing routine tests as he does for the entire crew periodically. “You are very lucky. I have no family to speak of, only an ex and we won’t speak of her either.”

I see a spark of fire in his eyes—torch or dagger?

Doc continues, “I cannot tell you about their individual results but I think it would be safe and proper to say that there were no glitches; they are now part of the same longevity plan that you are.”

I smile and nod, silently thanking him for sharing that information.

“You know that, even though they are on the same program, there can be no guarantees?” I nod yes. “We can do a lot, but we can’t do everything. It’s always been that way and will always be that way.”

I just listen as he continues, “In the case of serious trauma resulting from an accident, for example, there is a limited window. Within that window, we can do miracles but…”

He stops speaking and moving and looks at me steadily again. “You may speak now,” he says, with a tight little smile and a bemused shake of his head.

“Why are you telling me this? About the accidents and trauma; is there something I need to know?”

“Nothing you need to know. I am simply managing expectations. I will go over this same topic with everyone who has family in the program. There will be a general meeting at the end of the mission where you will hear it again. Not to mention at mission debriefing. It’s important.”

“So how does it all work Doc? I mean chemically or genetically or whatever? I know we enjoy incredibly long life spans compared to the untreated, but what is really going on?” I ask as I get back into my clothes.

“Every single person in the program gets telomeric treatments. Crews on these long and deep missions get additional consideration. You might call it a hybrid treatment program in which we do everything possible to minimize the effects of aging. It can’t be stopped altogether, but we can sure stretch it out.”

“Hybrid.” I say, mostly to myself.

“Yes, hybrid. Is there a problem?”

“No, not at all. It’s just that ‘hybrid’ seems to be a popular concept lately. So besides the telomeric part of it, what else?”

Gleshert looks at me pityingly and says, “We don’t have the time for any more of this right now. I am a busy man.”

“You can just say if you don’t know,” I say, making the mistake that he would understand that I was joking around. He didn’t.

“You’re done, for now. Get out and take your questions with you.”

“One last thing. Grigor says we are all in danger from high energy photons and particles out here. He says it’s common knowledge that they are damaging our health no matter what the Academy says. Is that…”

“Grigor needs to stick to what he knows,” interrupts the doc. “You’re done. Goodbye.”

“Don’t make him mad. I have to work here,” says Vanessa playfully as I am leaving. Tracy brushes past me, entering as I leave. She looks me over and then I notice that she and Vanessa share some sort of look. What was that all about?

______

I return to my quarters. Up ‘til now I have been struggling with the exact procedure to adopt to archive my personal records. Meeting transcripts, digital messages, status reports and the like, both open and encrypted, are included automatically in the archive, and I want to be able to add information of my own. I know enough about the ship’s systems now that a decision is easy. I will use the required protocol for all official data and will add a separate private channel. Let’s just call it a hybrid system and get with the program. That’s funny stuff. It’s somehow satisfying to be self-amused, no? With this setup I’ll have a way to indulge myself with a personal log or diary, as well as a way to send private messages. Who will read the personal stuff besides me, perhaps, someday? I don’t know. That doesn’t matter. The writing helps me collect my thoughts and clear my thinking for the next day or task.

The ship’s communication is primarily one-way, depending on the length of the voyage. In our case, we have planned for no incoming data packets from home for the bulk of the mission. It may be possible to communicate with ships or outposts during the mission depending on their distance, but as far as I know, we are not expecting to be near enough to any to even think about it.

For outgoing communication, we do continuously send routine data toward home. The stream is highly redundant and for sure will eventually arrive, but at our planned distance it’s a long time in transit. One transmission from the field before we head back will be different. All the accumulated data up to that point is archived and encapsulated in a pod. The pod is then accelerated using the exact same system that will be used on the ship itself. The acceleration is sufficient that the pod and, later, the ship too, can use gravity waves to reduce transit time. The pod will make it home only just before we do, assuming that neither of us runs into any major problems along the way. If one is lost, the other contains the data. If both are lost, well…

It’s true, the on-board QEQ entanglement transceiver is distance-independent and instantaneous but it is for very short messages indeed. It is generally used in emergency situations only to send out an SOS or maybe an SOS with location, although adding the location data means the message length is at or near the upper limit of today’s technology.

The archive scheduler software is set to accumulate, store, and transmit data from the ship as well as all the other inputs periodically. Doc has his own system for medical records but even his makes it to the scheduler, encoded. I’m using both my genie and the console in my quarters to run a performance test for all sources and formats.

David surprised me earlier when I asked about genetic broadcast seeding, an area of interest to me and one of the automated functions of the ship itself.

“Already done,” he said. “The carriers’ release is triggered by the ship’s position. The only way we know about it is if something goes wrong, or if we deliberately pull the ship’s data. The target systems are already chosen and the mixes are preloaded. There may be a couple still to go, but I believe most have already been sent on their way.”

I try not to look at David’s mouth. He has a habit of working his tongue and pushing out his lower lip, then sort of pursing his lips as a kind of reset action before the cycle repeats. It’s evident he doesn’t know he’s doing it when he’s listening or thinking.

I ask, “Isn’t seeding this way a giant waste of resources? It seems to me that the vast majority of the specimens will be lost or frozen or burnt up.”

“Yes and no. This method has been shown to be a very effective way to seed arable tracts. How in the world could it otherwise be done that would be more cost effective? Yes, the bulk of the seed material is lost but any that does reach an environment that is or will soon become appropriate has a high likelihood of surviving.”

He adds, “The mixes are released and scattered spherically if and when each of the carriers reaches a star system. We know from past results that if there is a planet orbiting and if it is even remotely suited for life, a portion of the seeds will end up safely on the surface, be it liquid, solid or gas. And if the conditions are suitable, then the basic genetic template will be in place and the rest, as they say, is history. Literally.”

David smiled at this last comment, apparently amusing himself. I’m not the only one self-amused.

My silence signaled my interest and he continued, “The target systems will be periodically scanned using remote sensing to see if and when a significant signature of life is detected on any of the planets. The most promising ones then become destinations for missions like ours. But you know all this already, or should.”

“No, not really,” I reply. David’s expression changed to one of puzzlement. “I mean, it’s one thing to hear about it, but another thing to live it. I suspect that training will prove to be no substitute for the real thing. Look at surfing—I mean downtime. Nothing prepped me for that, really.”

David gives me a look that suggests I said something important. “Yes Jason, you are quite right about that. By the end of this mission you will be an expert on this business. We all will.”

That was one of the few conversations I’ve had with David not counting abortive, largely meaningless and uncomfortable small talk. Other than occasional encounters in passing, I haven’t seen him since the Welcome Aboard meeting before launch when he gave the brief “Our Mission” speech. He has been generally genial and polite, aside from the infrequent sharp retort, but I am still not getting any positive person-to-person connection with him. He must be focused on big issues and his other direct reports. It still surprises me though, as we seem to have similar interests and he does have a technical background. One has to take what one can get, I guess, and even that is one step at a time; we will see if our relationship develops further. What he says about past missions intrigues me. I need to dig through our database for those old mission summaries.

I still can’t wrap my head around the timing of messages and events as they relate to the family back home. Mark tells me to forget it—you have no chance to figure it out at all during acceleration and deceleration, and when we are ground-based we’ll be too busy to worry about it.

“Treat the mission like a separate history from the folks back home,” he says. “They will have a history during the time you are gone; you will have lived through the mission history. But if you try to line them up and figure out what they were doing at a certain time in your history, forget it. I’m not sure if it even makes sense to think about that sort of thing.”

Mark answered Grigor’s concern about damage
from being out here in space, but Grigor didn’t buy
it. I hope he, Grigor, is wrong about this one. Mark
says, in his grouchy way, that we are not out in space, we are inside this ship. And that’s the
difference. He went into some gobbledygook about
how the needle shape coupled with our high speed
through the interstellar medium combine to
protect the interior from any charged particles, and
that the skin of the ship itself is active and takes
care of the neutral particles and high energy
photons. They all provide energy that we can
harness, apparently. ‘Kind of a hybrid system,’ I
say, smirking, but nobody gets me. Grigor said it
doesn’t work, it can’t. But Mark wouldn’t budge
and said it does work but it doesn’t work perfectly;
we are getting no more dangerous exposure than
we would back home on solid ground. Grigor
responded with a sigh and his ‘people believe what
they want to believe’ eye roll. I said that the
explanation sounds logical and besides didn’t we
learn that the doc could detect damage and take
measures to reverse it?