Space Voyage #1

[ronthepon]

I sat at my table for an hour, pondering what had just happened. It could have been a virus, or anything else. But one thing was for sure. Someone had broken into my minicomp while I was connected to the ship's network.

 

Was it some computer technician working under 'legal' orders under the big bosses? Or was it him?

 

Whoever it was, he enjoyed playing with me for the time. He carefully blocked all the probes I sent, carefully stopped me from getting near to the core of the system. He enjoyed mocking me all the time. He enjoyed his feeling or superiority over my hacking attempts.

 

No, I decided. It could not be TheBigDog behind this. He was far too honourable, and far too direct to be so torturous. It could also be others, but who? TheFaithfulStone?

 

This was bad. This was really bad. He knew about me. But I had no idea. I was at risk. I was in danger. I needed to work fast.

 

click! click! click! bang. bang.

 

I glanced left. There, in the vent was one of those buggers. It was trying to get to see me properly with its camera. I walked towards it with determination. I was going to pick it up, and see who was behind getting it there. I would find him, and I would get him in serious trouble.

[TheBigDog]

My wait had ended. I believed now that I had the answers, and it was time to take control as the commander of the Prophesy.

 

"Con, pan back on the main view. I want to see all of our equipment in view from the perspective of earth."

 

It took a few moments, but the main view swung around like I was flying through space until the moon filled the center of the view. Around here were the familiar lines tracking the orbits of the Prophesy, the ComSats, the GeoSats, and the various landers on the moon.

 

"Con, how long have you been on duty?" I asked this of the redshirt who was manning the right control panel. He was the only one on duty at the moment.

 

"I've been on duty since the beginning, BD," was his reply.

 

"And we are clean in here?" I asked in a tone that hoped to be normal, but was a bit on the quiet side.

 

"Absolutly, BD. Janus will be here in moment too."

 

As soon as he said that Janus came walking into command and stood beside me at the console.

 

"What have you got, Janus?"

 

"Well, it has taken some doing, but I think we have isolated the start of this madness." He poked at the command console. The view changed. The picture that had filled the middle of the huge screen now moved to fill the top right corner. The rest of the screen was now the monitor of Janus's virtual terminal.

 

"As you know I got the request from Pyro a couple of days ago to check the overlord system for snoopers and such. It was strange that he said it the way that he did. Still has me worried quite frankly."

 

"I hear you Janus, but let me worry about Pyro. We would not be here if it were not for him."

 

"True, true... Just make a note of my concern, BD." That was as serious a warning as you normally get from Janus. But things with Pyro would be resolved soon enough.

 

"So lets get to the heart of the matter. Do we have a sabateur on board?" I move my gave from one to the other, locking eyes with both of them.

 

"Absolutly not, BD."

 

"Correct, BD. We are clean," echoed Janus.

 

"Good. Then what happened." It was time to get my answers...

 

Janus began.

 

"While we don't have any badguys onboard, several of them were used as pawns by various forces on earth who want the Prophesy for their own purposes. We have not untangled the entire network yet, but the closest they got to a person on the inside is the quarantine facility. That is where they smuggled the gun, the bullets, and a variety of snooping devices onto the Prophesy. By using various forms of motivation on some members of the crew they created a series of events that lead to the .... I don't know how to say it, but the compromise of Pyrotex. We have identified six crew members who are patsies in the plot. Pyro, RonThePon, TheFaithfulStone, Arkain101, Kayra.... and you BD."

 

That figured. I had reacted poorly to this at the beginning. And I had found those bullets in my luggage. Janus was continuing.

 

"Everyone's involvement seems to be indirect, with the exception of RonThePon. I am still not convinced that he is not dirty in this," concluded Janus. That hung in the air for a moment. I liked RTP, and had taken him as part of the crew against the advice of some of my trusted center circle. Would I regret that decision? Right now it was hanging in the balance.

 

"So what was the aim of all this?"

 

Now the answer came from the Con. "Just like we have suspected all along. The Prophesy could be the greatest weapon anyone could possess. From orbit she could knock out all of the other satellites with relative ease. Her anticollision lasers are a violation of the treaty banning spaced based weapons. Plus she is a huge nuclear stockpile that could be brought down on the head of anyone. There are any number of nations who would give their first born to have her for their own purposes. The USA wants her because they don't want anyone else to have her. Other countries want her because it would give them a leg up on the US is space. And a tactical advantage over the US and her military's dependence on satellite technology. And then there are terrorists, although it is doubtful that they have the coordination and resources needed to get through the layers of security we have wrapped around ourselves." Sometimes doubtful meant no chance. Other times doubtful meant certainty. What did it mean this time?

 

"And you are confident we have not been infiltrated onboard?"

 

"We have been compromised in three places. The mole at the quarantine center, RonThePon, and unfortunatly Pyrotex. The mole will lead us to more information. We have the security agencies of three countries working the case for us." This came from Janus. He was obviously upset by all of this.

 

"So, do we have any reason to scrub our mission then?"

 

"No, BD. That may have been the whole purpose of this. I think that the whole point of this was to cause enough worry so that we would stop or delay the mission," replied the man at the Con.

 

That triggered a thought. Who would profit the most from failure of the Prophesy? The only answer that came to mind was a scary one. The news. We had been big news all over the world. But we had controlled our press coverage with unprecedented paranoia. On a few occations reporters had gotten past our outer controlled information and caused huge uproars with their outlandish claims about spending, safety, corruption and time schedules. Not wanting to waste time with such distractions we had a dedicated PR group who had done wonderous work in keeping the dream ontrack ahead of those who wanted to cash in free money on any failure we may have encounered. It was unfortunate that good news did not sell like bad news. Could all of this be in an effort to change our story? From someone without our sense of pioneering and adventure who wanted to claim short term fame and fortune at the expense of our greater mission? As inconceivable as that seemed, I could not get the notion out of my head.

 

"We are going to move forward with the mission. The sooner we get away from Earth the sooner we can all get focused again on the mission. And I have taken some more action to further focus our crew if we need to."

 

"You mean the billion you stole from RG?" smiled the man at the con.

 

"Stealing is a strong word. He got what he wanted for his money. And I got what I need too." All three of us shared a smile at this. We had discussed this before and I had insured everyone that I would take care of it. Everyone on this ship was a volunteer. We compensated them, but not nearly what they may have been paid on the outside. They were all being paid by the dream. And because of our press lockout they had been given little opportunity for profiteering through fame. The money raised by every means during the past ten years had been stricktly accounted for and spent in a most thrifty fashion. Much of the services we required had been donated or exchanged for sponsorship. We had always remained ahead of the game moneywise, but the cash we had was accounted for far into the future. This billion was off the books. It was now my discretionary fund. And it was more leverage for me to use as required should the future require it.

 

"I have one question, BD..." interupted Janus. "Why did you play along and let Pyro sneek off to the moon like that?"

 

"Two reason's Janus. First, I was really shaken by the way Pyro had given me the message, and it probably led to some bad judgement initially." Always good to admit your shortcomings at the proper time. "But it ended up benefiting us. It gave us the opportunity to let the threat play out and isolate the source."

 

"That is how we discovered that the source was not onboard the ship," added the man at the Con.

 

I nodded. "And it gave me an opportunity to test the loyalty of our young spook friend."

 

"How did the test go?" asked Janus with a raised eyebrow.

 

"My friend," I said placing a hand on his shoulder, "you get to be the final judge of his loyalty." Janus looked a bit spooked at that.

 

"Lets get back to our duties gentlemen. I will prepare an announcment for the crew. And lets get Pyro back onto the ship ASAP."

 

"Wilco, BD" came from the con. Janus thumped me on the shoulder with a smile and a frown and went back out the way he had entered.

 

I dialed RTP on his phone and told him to meet me at Command. When he arrived I swithed to remote and took him with me on the short walk to ten forward. He was stiff, nervous in my presence. I knew he was shouldering a great deal of responsibility, and I knew his personality was one that demanded success. I was counting on that. We sat down on a bench at thee edge of the lawn. There were fruit trees in bloom and bees buzzing from blossom to blossom. Through the windows in the ceiling we could see alternately the earth and the moon and the heavens as the Prophesy did her steady 3 rpm to maintain our constant gravity.

 

"Ron, you are a member of this crew because I want you to be. I have been following your education for several years, and reached out personally to your superiors to give youo the opportunity to be a member of this crew."

 

"Look up there, Ron. We are in space. We are about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. Hell, a journey that would be the envy of every journey of man that has preceeded it. This ship is mankinds vessel for exploration of the last great unknown. It is the testbed for man's conquest of space that will lead to our exploration of the rest of our galaxy."

 

"I have you onboard because of your potential as a scientist, and to be my eyes and ears in places where I cannot see and hear. This is goinng to be a long journey. There are going to be highs and lows in moral. There is going to be excitement and there is going to be boredom. And in the end I need the ability to insure that we all remain on task and acheive the great goals for ourselves and for mankind that have been set. And so you are hear for those two reasons."

 

"Over the past few days there was an effort to cause unrest onboard our ship by elements who are trying to profit from us appearing to fail. Unfortuanlty both of us ended up being used as pawns in their game to make that happen. The information that was being fed to you was not from your superiors, but from another source manipulating you to try and elicit a scandal among the crew. To were far more capable at your devious game than they would have guessed, and to some extent that prevented their plot from becoming public. I am telling you now. There is no threat on this ship. We have been used. And we need to get back to our primary mission."

 

RonThePon was still staring up at space though the window. I could tell that he had been listening to me. And the tear running down his face was an indication that he hurt from finding out the truth of the past days.

 

I placed a hand on his shoulder to bring his attention to my face. When he turned I saw that is was more than the single tear swelling from the red eyes of the young man sitting there.

 

"You ready to get back to work, RTP?"

 

Relief seemed to come over his face and I could see him forcing away the tears by shear force of internal will, trying to regain the dignity of dry eyes.

 

"Yes, sir," he replied in a choked voice.

 

"Good, then go off duty and get some sleep. You report to Janus in 10 hours. You are going to be on the orbital command center with him during the Prophesy's loop around the earth."

 

RTP had not been scheduled for any extra vehicular missions. And this was indeed a huge promotion in duty for the young man. It would also give Janus an opportunity to evaluate him from several days of working in close company. And I wanted RTP to have Janus as a scientific mentor.

 

I rose and stretched, looking up at the spectacular sight outside the window.

 

"Now get to sleep. You have some busy times ahead of you."

 

And I walked by myself back to the Con.

 

Over the next four hours Pyrotex returned to the Prophesy. He arrived the same way he had left, in the cargo bay of a lander. He had gotten a personal encrypted message from me that broke much of the previous days events to him. He went directly to his quarters upon return. I knew that he had something he was wrestling with. Something that he may or may not want to share with me. That would come in good time. For now I would give him some distance and let him rest. I was sure that he had gotten very little sleep over the past few weeks. Rest was the prescription he needed right now.

 

I was still on duty 8 hours later when the orbital command module was launched. Onboard were Janus, Kayra, RonThePon and KickAssClown, as the pilot of the attached Wrangler. They would maintain control of all the lunar operations while the Prophesy returned to earth and back.

 

At the Con was the same redshirt who had been in the discussion with myself and Janus. He had been a member of the IT team before becoming a con operator. The fact that we had settled all of this actually had come with his aid. I had told RonThePon that he was my eyes and ears. This was true, but I maintained many sets of confidential eyes and ears. And this particular set had access to the overlord system. This was a layer of security in the computer systems that tracked everything. And I mean everything that happened in ships systems. It was the most sophisticated persistant observer you could imagine. He had been the designer of the system, but felt much more comfortable out of the spotlight of being command staff. So he had elected to take the Con position so he could be at the heart of things, but also be a "blue collar" member of the crew. That suited both our needs perfectly. He had drilled into the data in overlord to find the chain of communicaitons that had lead to the revelation of facts. He had listened to crew in the rec quarters and the canteen to know what rumors were floating about. And he was as sharp an analyst as anyone I had ever know, making him all the more effective as a con operator.

 

"I am ready to take the Con, BD."

 

I had not seen Pyro comingn up to the post. He looked like a new man. His cold was behind him. His stress was behind him. I realized that it had been a very long time since I had seen him without stress on his face. It was almost startling, but was exactly what I needed to see. I would take him at his word, that he was ready to take the con, and that the Prophesy could not be in finer hands.

 

"Pyro has the Con" I echoed for the record.

 

"Aye, Pyro has the Con." replied CraigD from his right hand com seat. The ship was in good hands indeed.

 

As they prepared to leave lunar orbit I went to my quarters for my own much needed sleep.

 

Bill (t+6)

[IDMclean]

As I slept in my quarters, having taken something for motion sickness a little panel opened in the corner of the Linux system's LAN monitor, it sat there blinking away.

 

I would be out cold, the last week had been far to long and there had been some kind of stirrup amongst the crew, I still didn't have clue who that face was that I saw in Engineering.

 

Which said alot to my subconscience. I had a terrible way with names, but I recognized faces intuitively, even if people didn't remember me I remembered them, and I had met the entire crew at the party, not that anyone noticed me in the corner. Sometimes I cursed my social anxiety, othertimes I found solace in it.

 

Tomorrow, I would be trying to get a LAN party together, maybe challenge some people to Total Annihilation, good Real Time Strategy really, to bad the sequal would be heavily delayed at the least.

 

I tried to stop thinking, as it made my head spin when I had my eyes closed like that, not something to worry about now. Rest was needed before our Loop.

[ronthepon]

It was certainly too much. Trying to fix my minicomp for the last few hours, I had entirely lost hope aboard the ship. It was the mainframe that hacked into my system. I knew that I had been found by the crew to be abnormally involved. TFS accepted his involvement behind the bugger in my room, and clearly told me why. I abandoned all hope when TheBigDog called me. What persuaded me to go was the unexpected lack of force in his voice when he called for me.

 

But then, I realised that the situation was very much different from what I had thought. He implied that he had found the prep behind this, and had taken care of it all himself. I broke down then. It may have been the severe lack of rest coupled with the shock at the realisation that I had been foolishly used by god knows whom, and the fact that I was still kept in the dark about who it was.

 

Nevrtheless, I resolved to work better from now on. I handed my minicomp to some guys who claimed they could fix it(and I was not takinga risk because it was totally gone), watched a movie on the DVD player I brought aboard the ship(aah, someone else had bothered to use it by now), and had a good sleep. It was all cleared up by the time I awoke. I understood that my earlier educational years of life that would be used on the ship from now on. Atleast I hoped so.

[Pyrotex]

they would expect me to take one of the shuttles to the surface. Ha!

I made sure that systems would think I was onboard, then dodged to the satellite utility bay in cargo tube 3. There would be nobody there since most satellites and their propulsion units are attached automatically from Central Sat Control in module 8-three.

 

I found a rugged surface suit, and climbed in. I went through the interior airlock and manually dragged over a Moon landing module for small cargo or sample collection devices. I strapped a Kangaroller to the top, and then myself. The automated program I fed into the controller did the rest.

 

Nobody would suspect. Robot sample missions go on several times a day. The robot arms pull me and my tiny craft to the hanger door and toss me outside the Prophecy. I drift for about five minutes before the reaction control system cuts in.

 

Goddam! This is scarier than I thought! This buggy is no bigger than a VW bug. There's no walls, no controls, and the when the tiny engine cuts in, the gee forces are high. Maybe 4 or 5 G. ****!! A full minute of blasting, and it cuts off. Freefall. My orbit will now intersect the Moon's surface about 4 miles from JayQu and the ever growing Lunar Base he is building.

 

Forty minutes later, and the Moon is coming up fast! And sliding under me at several thousand miles per hour! I hear a pop-pop-pop and the craft spins around so fast it makes me dizzy. Ka-waaaammmmm, the 5G engine cuts in and brakes my fall. This hurts! Now I'm descending vertically. Woof! That landing could have been softer. Engine off. Silence. Moon rocks all around.

 

You remember the Segue personal people mover? Two wheels, a gyro and a vertical handle bar? Well. wecome to the general purpose Kangaroller. Same thing, only articulated with pogo-stick like shock absorbers and a gas attitude control system. More smarts than your average colleg freshman. I turn it on. I click through the modes, Novice, Experienced, Expert, Knievel. I jump on, twist the hand controllers and am slammed ahead at high speed over the Lunar surface, kicking a rooster tail of dust. I must be hitting speeds as high as 60 mph. I ramp-jumped up the side of a small crater and ballistically sailed completely over it. bigger than a football field.

 

I arrive at the base and pull JayQu aside. I tell him who two of the bad guys are. The clue was my .357. It was a Smith and Wessen, with no bullets. We have two brothers on board from the Maldive Islands, Smess and Withen. The MI Activists, their motto is Battle Without Bullets. Global warming has flooded the Maldive Islands, since they were only 4 feet above mean sea level. They want the industrial nations to give them 10 square miles in our biggest cities to replace the islands they believe we destroyed. Okay, we did destroy their islands. No doubt, they wanted to use our ship to threaten the UN into meeting their demands.

 

Smess and Withen are currently staffed at the Lunar Base. JayQu will take care of them.

 

I ride at high speed back to my tiny lander, again shooting a ramp jump over the same crater. What a friggin thrill!!! And back to the Prophecy. Hopefully, nobody will even know I was gone.

 

Damn, my back and legs are sore!! I'm getting too old for this!!

[Jay-qu]

'pyro? your here?'

'what the devil are you doing on the moon?'

he was very brief and spoke in code, funny enough it was asgard speak! not easy to do, he must have spent the whole time coming to the moon thinking about how to say it, fortunatly its easier to understand than say!

'puorg eht morf yawa teg'

coming from pyro that was all I needed to hear, so I started off away from the other redshirts that where helping me out with setting up the remote research station.

I was walking blind with no idea where pyro was or how he would find me, but I knew he would. No more than 2 mins later I saw a cloud of dust approaching, he was obviously in a hurry, I peiced it together and realised he obviously was not meant to be here and was risking a lot to get to me. When he got to me he was very brief, he grabbed my helmet placed it against his own (as I had noticed he did with BigDogs earlier) and tells me that Smith and Wessen are bad guys and quickly outlines their agenda. Then he was gone, racing off in his little 'moon dune buggy'.

 

What was I to do now? I trust pyro with my life, thats enough for me. I will just have to do whats necissary and let those in charge decide.

[Pyrotex]

Big Dog turned and smiled just as I stepped onto the bridge.

"Pyro has the con!" he said.

CraigD repeated the declaration for the record.

Damn, I felt good. As talented as Smess and Withen were, it was just too sad they had gotten mixed up with the Maldive Islands Activists. Hell, it was sad that the Maldives were under six inches of salt water on a calm day, but that doesn't excuse using our ship as a means of intimidation.

 

I sit in the comfy captain's chair, thinking Kirk-like thoughts of going where no Human has gone before. Very shortly, it will be time to light that big mother engine at the axis of our ring, and sail for uncharted waters. I can't wait.

 

But there is ONE final thing to do. I have had some strange physical symptoms lately--other than stress and bronchitis. Some "personal" discomforts. I gave a "sample" to our biology lab and they quickly determined that I had an infection of bio-nano-bots!! Teensy machines assembled from a keel of artificial RNA and a superstructure of enzymes and flagella. A looped strand of RNA provided the "coding" for the tiny Turing machine computer.

 

That's right, I had cocka-nano-bot-ulism! And there's only one place I could have gotten that!

 

Junior med-tech Desiree la'Tush!!!! Damn, I THOUGHT she was awfully easy!! Now I know why!! We have our final sabeteur!! I wonder how many others in our crew she has infected??

 

And WHAT are those nano-bots programmed to DO?!?!?! :hihi:

[IDMclean]

It came to me in my dreams, I was like that, integrating things into my logical structure through sleep meditations. I had the answer, quickly I got up and went to give a ship-wide announcement. I was done, I could hardly believe it. I had it right there, I wrote it out and quickly posted.

 

Grand Unified. I had worked so hard to get to this point, and I could go farther, but I would need help. Maybe some of the crew could help.

 

My enthusiasm was disrupted however, as I noticed the blinking panel, minimized at the bottom of the screen... that couldn't be good.

 

I opened it, and quickly read what was caught by my Info-Ear program. It was a news report, a lab was found yesterday. The UN had been doing it's job of inspecting stockpiles and laboratories. This one they had found what appeared to be Techno-organic microbial bots. Bio-Nanos?

 

It was certainly interesting but what had caught it, I scrolled down. The scientist had been massacred, and plans were found regarding the Prophesy Project, Sh*t. The UN wasn't going to release the details, infact the UN had not wanted it to go public, however as the press usually does it had a contact on the inside. Bad for them Good for us.

 

I was in the zone, I need a simulator, and I needed it yesterday. My fingers flew almost automatically as I hashed out a meager little c++ program... It would take me all day at least, when I was done however...

 

Before I got to far in, I decided to pass the article on to TBD, hopefully no one would be able to crack the 128-bit PGP, excepting TBD of course.

[Pyrotex]

After some serious interrogation, I believe that Desiree la'Tush had no prior knowledge that the Associated Press ("WE Control The News!") had infected her readily available nether region with bio-nano-bots. She is just a VERY FRIENDLY young lady with a serious hero-adoration complex for astronauts. US!!! :hihi:

 

She admitted freely that she belongs to the Cosmic Church of Free Love, a rapidly growing sect out of Paris, France, and that she is a card-carrying member of AP--an associate journalist. She posts two news articles every day. I read them--very "up" and cheerful, full of small talk about our social lives here on the Prophecy, descriptions of the modules, the excitement and such.

 

But what she is carrying down in her "love oven" may be dangerous! She also freely admitted that she has had at least two dozen partners since coming onboard (no pun intended), and they include at least two happily married men from our central officer corps!! Big Dog, you have anything to say about this? :doh:

 

We should ALL go to SickBay and get checked. No kidding.

[Pyrotex]

The view is incredible! God, it is so inspiring!

 

I have External Widefield Cam 2 spread across all 3 flat-panel displays in the bridge. Lights are turned down low. Only me and a few redshirts milling about. I am entranced by the slow, waltz-like spinning of the Ring, with the distant Earth peeking between the spokes, against the silver-gray foreground of the edge of the nearby Moon. Austere and beautiful. {sigh}

 

The NewSpeak from Earth is currently focused on the excitement of our upcoming breakout of Lunar orbit, telling the World where in the sky to look for us as we zoom by the Mother Planet on a gravitational slingshot to Jupiter. In just a few hours. The last shuttles from the Moon are docking, as I can see from External Cam 17 out near the end of the cargo bay pods. Everybody but the brothers from the Maldive Islands will soon be aboard. THEY will be left on the Moon to do penance for their sins. I hear the French will be launching an Arianne-7 to the new Moon base in a few months. Smess and Withen should easily last that long. Of course, they may get bored... :shrug:

 

I twiddle the master engine displays. What a miracle of technology! Damn! The old Orion design for a nuclear pulse engine had real atomic bombs going off behind a 100-ton pusher plate, about once every 60 seconds. Hydrolics turned a 20G "smash!" into a gentle and continuous 1G acceleration. But atomic bombs are dangerous and inefficient.

 

We have a toroidal gaseous plutonium neutron reactor (TOGAPLUNER) in our tail. It is a hollow and heavily shielded sphere behind our pusher plate-exhaust nozzle. Mighty bands of superconducting magnets surround it. the Plutonium is introduced as a "mud" of Plutonium Magnesium Carbonates--the so-called "dry" fuel. It is blown with hot jets of hydrogen until it dries into a dust and circulates around the center in toroidal fashion. Naturally, the fuel densitiy will be greatest where the toroidal currents meet--along the long axis of the chamber and the ship. It is there along that engine axis that the fuel reacts.

 

Radio Frequency energy heats the fuel. the Magnesium Carbonates boil off leaving Plutonium Plasma. More hydrogen not only speeds the flow to way past supersonic, but controls temperature, provides some thrust, actually prevents leakage of Plutonium out the tail (!), and generates slow neutrons if the RF is pulsed correctly causing the plasma to suddenly become very dense at the axis. We want those pulses of slow neutrons.

 

The fuel pellets are 1-gram spheres of Plutonium jacketed in 100 grams of high-alloy steel. Seamless, polished, perfect. The Plutonium is already pre-stressed at 180 Metric Tonnes of pressure per square millimeter! We eject them into the hydrogen exhaust and pulse the RF. We get a burst of dense neutrons out the tail. The fuel pellet is triggered by the neutrons and undergoes instant chain reaction at high efficiency. More than half the Plutonium turns to ENERGY. BIG BANG, Dudes!!! :)

 

This modest 4 kiloton equivalent explosion drives our far more modest pusher plate / exhaust nozzle. The trick is: because we don't have to use huge atomic bombs and therefore a huge heavy pusher plate, we can use a much smaller one, keep it liquid cooled, and detonate the fuel much faster.

 

We don't pop off bombs once every 60 seconds, no!! We fire 30 pellets a minute!! One every 2 seconds. Our smaller pusher plate can easily cycle back and forth over a 20 meter distance once every 2 seconds. Kind of like watching a sewing machine needle!! :)

 

The Plutonium fuel is relatively safe. It's not in the form of bombs, and the internal pressure is so high that trying to open it with ordinary tools would be suicidal. Easy to store, easy to fire. I lightly brush the red ENGINE ON button with my index finger. Just a few more hours now. We will carry our visitors on the outside in re-entry pods. As we hurl past the Earth at 800 km, we will turn them loose to return to the Earth, and then fire our engines again to take advantage of every erg we can extract from the Earth's gravitational pull. The old slingshot trick.

 

Then on to the God of Planets: Jupiter.

[IDMclean]

Damn it, I had hit a major hurtle in my sim, I needed to know the value of fundemental charge... I decided to send my findings over to CraigD. He had a rep for being a fairly good mathematician. Fairly good thinker in fact.

 

I had locked myself in my room, it would take a ranking officer to override. I couldn't risk contamination...

 

Damn this trip was getting complex, and here I thought I was going to mostly be along for the ride. Here I am trying to figure out the exact structure of this nano buggers, so I could figure out what the hell they were supposed to do, and if nessessary eliminate them.

 

I sent Janus a PM over the net, I needed someone versed in orbital theories. The mechanics of my point particle model required it. i checked all the news groups, and news pages. Not much new on it yet, alot of speculations, a few possible suspects showed up in cross reference, no specifics on the vector yet for infection.

[Jay-qu]

'Time to get of this dusty rock!' after spending so long on the moon, I was glad to be going home, home to the prophesy.

 

Me and racoon sat in the main module of the lander, smith and wesson where 'stowed' in the undercompartments with all the rocks. I had disobeyed a direct order by doing so, but I couldnt leave them there, no matter what they had done or what they may do! We can drop them off back at earth when the supply ship drops down before our final slingshot to jupiter.

 

'Hold on' the pilot says, this one should be a walk in the park compared with earth, only 1/6 the gravity to compete with here! I never thought I would find comfort in the thrust of the rocket imitating gravity, but I felt so much more safe pinned down to my seat than the airy-fairyness of walking around on the moon, you feel that if you jump to high you may just not come down!

 

10mins and I will be back onboard, then I will have to go deal with a bug extermination problem!

[ronthepon]

"What?!! What the hell?!!" I hollered into the set, just after being told about the freaky mini bugs aboard.

 

"No kidding, Ron, figure out the implications." Said the guy on the radio.

 

"what am I supposed to do?"

 

"Be prepared to be made to work harder!"

 

Damn hell. One thing seems to end and the next freakishly wierdness graces the ship. Why me? Could it not have been the next one?

 

Gotta wait to be officially told.

[Pyrotex]

This is it.

The day of the Big Boost. The day we appear in Earth's sky like a Flaming Sword of Human Ambition. I was told that when we did our small boost up to the Moon, our engine didn't look like flashbulbs, which we all assumed it would. The high temperature glow of our pusher plate (honeycombed Titanium Carbide!!!) was so bright, that our exhaust plume appeared like a rippling, incandescent angel's wing, or a sword of fire, pulsing only slightly every two seconds. Must be awesome. The videos I have don't do it justice.

 

Anyway... This is the day. We have a big job getting everybody focused and back on task. Especially RTP. What is up with him? You'd think that some god just gave him the task of arranging for the end of the Earth, with only 24 hours notice. Have to talk to that boy...

 

This is the day. I just loaded the TOGAPLUNER with plutonium, and have started the RF heating cycle. We're only up to 1500 C. It will take another two hours to get to target temp of 8400 C. The "slammo-injectors" (as Turtle so fondly calls them) are loaded with 30,000 pellets. That will give us 1,000 minutes of thrust (16.7 hours) for a total delta-V of just over 65 km/sec, counting the extra 5 km/sec we will pick up from grav-sling.

 

Jupiter's distance is 650 Mkm, so (a little mental math) that comes out about 10 million seconds. Call it 115 days. Actually, since we will be slowing down from the pull of the Sun's gravity, it will take 150 days, or 5 months. Can the crew live with that?? Are we prepared for such a long, lonely trip with no visitors, no weekends at home, no trips to the beach?

 

Speaking of beach... I have a date with Desiree in garden module code-named "Tahiti", the one with a tiny beach and artificial surf. Of course, my purpose for doing this is intelligence gathering. Of course. I would much rather have someone else interrogate Desiree, but quite frankly, I am the only man on board who has any chance of resisting her womanly charms -- and those tiny thong bikinis she is fond of wearing.

 

Pray for me.

[ronthepon]

It was getting harder and harder to put up with the continued silly nonsensical problems that were sprouting up frequently. Just seconds ago, I had been informed of a door to a chamber that had been blocked by a banana peel, and knew that GAHD would ask me to assist in getting the door removed!

 

I had to assign some of men under me (even they were very few) with some of the more menial tasks. I had been doing them from the beginning, but had been generously promoted. I had even sensed that more men would be put under me.

 

Just as I almost started to glow at the future prospects, I recieved a rather demoralising... chat from Pyro. He had no idea what I would have done to him during the chat I was planning for him earlier...

 

Oh well, you can't have everything...

[TheBigDog]

I lay in my bed staring staring at the ceiling. It was deadly quiet. The adrenaline from the past two weeks had worn off and had been replaced by emptiness. Sleep was not coming easily, although I wanted desperately for it to drown out the thoughts that had lingered into my suddenly idle mind. I was surrounded by the greatest companions I could ever know. I was embarking on the greatest journey in man's history. And fulfilling my dream, and the dream shared by all the others on the ship with me. But even with the dream fulfilling, even with the camaraderie, even with the busy days and great driving purpose, when I was alone, I was still alone. And at this moment that void in my life ached.

 

I flipped the pillow to the cool side and rolled to face away from the empty other half of the the bed. Eventually I slept.

 

Bill

[Pyrotex]

TOGAPLUNER core at 8,520 C and holding steady. Befuddling pins aligned to within 1/1000 percent. Excellent. Slammo-injectors with 30,000 plutonium "caps" are armed and ready. Neutron flux test on the money.

 

BigDog, JQ, Janus, RTP, KAC and all other officers...

 

WE ARE GO FOR BIG BOOST!! :cocktail:

I repeat,

WE ARE GO FOR BIG BOOST!!

RF turbines revving up to 105% They're screaming!!

Give me the word....!!!

WE ARE GO..............................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

<his sweaty finger twitches over the big red button>