Cycle of Stars Read online

  As the door recessed into the wall Dag stuck his head into the room. Everyone was asleep with their bodies still strapped in their seats. The screens were still active and there on the wallscreen was a view of space in front of the ship. He noticed there were no stars or planets close enough to resolve into discs.

  Where are we?

  Then he heard a moan.

  He looked around, it appeared to be Captain Schweiger. Dag launched himself in the direction of the captain's chair and caught the corner of the armrest. While holding himself in place he shook the unconscious man.

  “Captain, can you hear me?”

  The Captain slowly roused himself. He looked at Dag.

  “Where are we?”

  “I'm not sure sir.

  “Okay let's see. Navigator,” he said before noticing the navigator was inert at his console.

  “They are all unconscious sir.”

  “Okay help me over to the navigation console.”

  Slowly Dag and the Captain made their way from console to console until they were in front of navigation.

  The Captain asked the Emmie enabled console for the ship's location. After giving the coordinates from Earth the Captain asked more directly how far they were from their destination.

  “Over three-hundred fifty AU from the Dnoces System,” responded the console's Em.

  The Captain looked at Dag.

  “Well. I've never heard of that much error in a wormhole cast.”

  “Sir, did we enter the wormhole before the far wormhole mouth was cast and stable?”

  The Captain looked at him curiously.

  “I know you are a robot sir but why do you ask?”

  “I'm Dagmar Mach, I'm Em-based, and I have a Doctorate in Physics so I am somewhat familiar with the wormhole drive. I'm just pointing out that if we did enter too soon I wonder if we could have upset the wormhole's formation. If so that might explain this error.”

  The Captain hesitated, “Well if we did then we should be able to restart the drive and finish the jump. We'll have to get the crew wheel rotating again. As you know the drive won't work without it.”

  Dag agreed. They heard another of the crew beginning to moan.

  “You help Albert I'll start the crew wheel,” said the Captain.

  The Captain got the wheel started. Slowly artificial gravity could again be felt. More of the crew began waking. The Captain seeing the drive operator awake moved to his console.

  “Lt. March are you okay?”

  “Yes sir I think so.”

  “Can you get the drive working?”

  “I'll try sir. What are the coordinates of the cast?”

  “Same as before.”

  “Sir?”

  “That's right Lieutenant.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The Captain returned to his chair and made an announcement that a wormhole jump was imminent. He began watching the front wallscreen for the pinpoint of light that would indicate the drive had engaged.

  After a minute the Captain said, “Lieutenant March we are ready to jump.”

  “Understood sir but I have a problem. The drive seems to be working but nothing is happening.”

  “How can that be Lieutenant?”

  “I don't know sir. All subsystems are working but the drive won't open a wormhole mouth.”

  “Okay stand down. I want all of you that are able to meet me in my wardroom ASAP. Dr. Mach would you please join us?”

  Dag nodded yes.

  “Okay,” said the Captain. “I want a complete diagnostics of the drive systems. Since the Chief Engineer is still unable to join us I will leave that up to you Lieutenant March.

  “Second, if the drive diagnostics finds nothing wrong I will entertain speculation from any source. Dr. Mach I hope you will participate.”

  “Of course Captain.”

  “Navigator, how long will it take us to get to the Dnoces System with the fusion engines only?”

  The navigator, being an Auggie, that is a person with augmented implants, paused a moment as he accessed the navigation Emmies, and then replied, “At point-four acceleration approximately eighty-four days sir.”

  “No good,” said the Captain. “What about at maximum acceleration?”

  “At one-g acceleration about fifty-three days sir. But the engines will take a beating.”

  “Let the Chief Engineer worry about the engines when he wakes up. You and helm prepare to get us started. The rest of you get me some information about the malfunction of the jump-drive. Dismissed.”

  Diagnostics of the jump-drive returned nominal. There was no apparent problem.

  3

  “Okay gentlemen tell me what you've come up with.”

  The Captain was holding a briefing in the wardroom.

  “Sir,” said the Chief Engineer. “There appears to be nothing wrong with any of the sub-components of the drive. We have run them through diagnostics several times. It should work.”

  “But Engineer it doesn't,” said the Captain, obviously not happy with the report. “Why?”

  No one responded.

  “Sir if I may?”

  “Of course Dr. Mach.”

  “I believe the Chief Engineer and the other engineers are right. There is nothing wrong with the wormhole drive components. Therefore I believe there must be something wrong with the space in which we are trying to use the drive.”

  “Excuse me?” said the Captain.

  “I don't know how or in what way but the space we are currently in will not support the establishment of a wormhole mouth. Something has changed.”

  “How could space change?”

  “You are no doubt aware, as is everyone in this room, that what we call spacetime is an emergent property of the entangled states of particles and quanta. Not only that, but it is a highly tuned emergent property.

  “For instance, you have probably heard that if the strong nuclear force, the force between particles in the nucleus, was just two percent stronger, then di-protons would be stable. That is the force between protons would allow for a particle made up of two protons. But if that were true then hydrogen would fuse into di-protons instead of deuterium and helium and the physics of stars would be quite different. And the universe probably could not support our lifeforms.”

  “Yes we all have heard this but how does it affect the jump-drive?” asked the fusion engineer Ally Mekur.

  Dag looked at the young woman.

  “Well Miss another finely tuned constant is the cosmological constant. That is the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical density of the universe. The cosmological constant is on the order of ten to the minus one-hundred twenty-two. If it was only slightly larger stars and other cosmological structures could not form.

  “Now it's possible that certain sections of space may have a slightly different constant. If that is true I can imagine a region of space where the quantum foam which is the topologically churning sub-space region from which we pluck wormhole mouths is being smoothed because of that different value. It could be that there are no quantum sized wormhole mouths to expand to the size we need. At least there are not enough being formed fast enough for us to easily extract one with the drive.”

  “That is highly speculative Dr. Mach,” said Ally almost derisively.

  Dag didn't look at her but turned to the Captain, “I know. But the Captain asked for speculation.”

  “That I did. Thank you Dr. Mach.”

  After the meeting as Dag was walking back to his apartment he heard someone behind him.

  “Dr. Mach do you plan on pursuing your speculation?”

  It was Ally Mekur.

  “Yes Miss I believe I will.”

  “It sounds more like a fairy tale than a theory.”

  “That's your opinion?”

  “It is but its a learned opinion. You see I have a PhD in particle physics.”

  “Really? And you are a fusion engineer then?”

  “Well some of us aren'
t as lucky as others. I needed money when I finished my studies so I went to the place where I could make the most at my age.”

  “I see Dr. Mekur. Well, I guess then I'll pursue my theory and you can pursue yours?”

  Dag turned too quickly to see the slight smile on Ally's face as he used her title. On the ship she was usually just called crewman.

  Dag was in the cafeteria. He hadn't need of food but sometimes liked working in a room with people even though most times they dismissed him as Dr. Mekur had done.

  He was working on his theory when Ally came in. He was debating whether to continue working or go back to his room.

  “Oh Dr. Mach,” said Ally as she walked up to his table. “We had some problems and I had to work overtime. Do you mind if I sit here.”

  “Of course not,” said Dag.

  “I'm Ally Mekur by the way,” she said smiling.

  “Have you thought any more about your theory?”

  Dag noticed she had not called it speculative for a change. Perhaps she was taking it more seriously now.

  “Yes, I've been thinking Miss. It seems to me that if we take a loop quantum gravity approach we might make some progress. At least LQG provides a framework that makes sense when I express my idea in words. Of course, whether that holds up or not upon calculation is still to be determined.”

  “I was under the impression that LQG had never been tested, even after all these years. Isn't that just adding speculation on top of speculation?”

  There's that word again.

  “That's true Dr. Mekur, but we could be seeing its testing right now. As you know it's the only theory of gravity that quantizes space and time. At that scale of quantization, space appears as an assemblage of tiny loops. Almost like a woven cloth. A network of these loops becomes a spin foam or quantum foam and the topologies that it takes on include tiny wormhole mouths. And as you know its the mouths that the drive extracts from the foam.”

  “Okay, I remember my LQG. But how is it that LQG can explain what happened to the cosmological constant?”

  “Well by analogy if we consider spacetime as a woven cloth, then the size of the loops in that cloth would affect the dark energy value and that would affect the cosmological constant. So if the loops become looser the constant becomes somewhat less, if the loops become tighter, the constant becomes somewhat more.”

  He stopped, seeing that she was about to object.

  He hurriedly continued, “I know its a lot of hand waving Miss but I think it explains qualitatively what we see happening. The loops have become looser, spacetime at that scale is smoother, the energy available is less and topological objects like wormhole mouths that require greater energy no longer form efficiently.”

  “Wow that's a long line of speculation Dr. Mach,” said Ally emphasizing his title. “But of course the question is can you calculate it and then can you prove it with an experiment.”

  Dag knew she was right.

  “Calculation will take some time Dr. Mekur. Experiments are possible with a modified wormhole drive as an energy source. But ...”

  “Yes?”

  “It has already been proven experimentally. Unless you engineers have overlooked something space is preventing our wormhole drive from working. Maybe once we get out of this region of space it will work again. That would be partial proof.”

  “How wide an area do you think this quenching encompasses?”

  “Impossible to guess now. But I think we should be out of it by the time we reach Dnoces.”

  Dag had not seen Ally for a few days. It was the fifth day when she brought him some disturbing news.

  “Dr. Mach I just heard,” she said beaming.

  “What Dr. Mekur?”

  “A transmission has come back from Dnoces. In it, they confirm that they too are in some sort of jump-drive blackout. I guess you were wrong?”

  Instead of protesting Dag said something about she was probably right and excused himself.

  Ally felt a bit guilty.

  4

  The geography of the planet Adowa was similar enough to Earth that most earthlings felt completely at home. Likewise the atmosphere. Because Adowa was the only planet in the Core group of stars that could support human life without extensive preparation it had become a destination for many that wanted to try life beyond the Earth and its immediate offspring in the Solar System. Adowa not only provided a place where earthlings might want to go but it was also a political balance to Earth.

  But Adowa had one major difference from Earth. Its governments and populace were not managed by the Ems that literally ran the Earth and much of the Solar System. The result was perhaps a little less efficient but was a lot more creative even if accompanied by some chaos.

  Adowa had been settled some one-hundred fifty years before and the population had grown to over one-hundred sixty million in that time. The wormhole drive itself had brought nearly five million of those settlers.

  Adowa had become the supplier of choice for technology to the other Core settlements. Complete fusion ships with wormhole drives were built in the shops orbiting the planet. There an inquiry was proceeding in an attempt to understand the failure of the drive.

  “It doesn't make any sense,” said Charlie Martin, a wormhole drive engineer. “That ship is the same as the previous, which is the same as the previous, etc. and they all worked just fine.”

  (The news of the failure of the wormhole drive aboard Adowa One had first been transmitted by radio but then by wormhole so the Adowans knew what had happened long before radio transmission alone could have brought the news. And failures around Adowa were now starting to be reported and they were spreading.)

  “That may be true,” said the CEO of Jump-Ships Incorporated. “But it doesn't work now and that's what's important. We can't sell something that doesn't work.”

  “I understand sir, but what I'm saying is there is simply no problem with the drives. The problem is elsewhere.”

  “Well, I'll take that with me Charlie when I go down to meet the Union of Adowa's head of state, President Menelik.”

  The political organization of Adowa reflected its settlement period. The Adowa Union had been the first settled. It was a northern hemisphere state of some ninety million making it the largest political unit on the planet.

  A southern hemisphere state on the same continent, Galla, was settled next and had a population of about fifty million. Galla was the only political entity on the planet that had a strong religious background being mostly settled by Ahari Perses. While they were fewer in number their devotion to their religion made them a very stable country.

  None of the other political entities on the planet had more than a few million people and were aligned with either Galla or the Union.

  At the beginning of the space age the idea of trade between entities in space was ridiculed. It was said that the gravity wells of planets and therefore the cost of lifting masses off those planets would be prohibitive. But the skeptical hadn't figured on fusion ships, wormhole drives, space elevators, space habitats or orbital manufacturing. Trade had become a reality and in some situations critical. Dr. Payne was in the President's office discussing that issue among others.

  “Yes Mr. President, my engineers assure me that the problem is not in the technology but in the space we are in.”

  “How can space do this Dr. Payne?” asked President Menelik.

  “The scientists at the university are working on it. As of yet they have no hypothesis which is testable. But some have speculated that it could be a result of a change in the cosmological constant, the dark energy of the universe. Others believe the trigger is the unusually dense stream of dark matter we are currently passing through. One of the researchers calls it a 'dark matter hurricane'.”

  “A hurricane? How can that prevent the jump-ships from flying?”

  “Best I can discern the scientists don't have a complete answer but they believe that the dark matter is coupling to the sub-space from which
we extract wormhole mouths and preventing us from doing so.”

  “How do we stop it?”

  “Yes, that is the question Mr. President. We don't have any way to stop it but some believe things will return to normal when the dark matter hurricane dissipates.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “No one really knows. It could be months or years or longer.”

  “Longer? You know Dr. Payne that without those jump-ships we cannot maintain our trade with other star systems and space habitats and that will greatly impact our resources. Our people will suffer.”

  “I'm sorry Mr. President.”

  “Thank you for coming Dr. Payne.”

  As he left Dr. Payne noticed the Head of Defense was waiting to enter the President's office.

  And in the Gallan Republic almost at the same time, the Gallan Defense Minister was in her Prime Minister's office.

  “Yes Mr. Prime Minister we believe the Union is being placed on a war footing. We must do something in response.”

  “But Minister Aisha you are talking about starting an arms race just when we need to focus on solving the problems with the jump-ships. We should be working with the Union instead of competing with them.”

  “Ideally, of course, Prime Minister Nagassa you are right. But it is my job to make sure that Galla is prepared for any eventuality. And we can't afford to be far behind the Union in military capability or we will soon find ourselves subjugated to their agenda.”

  “I understand Minister. I will bring up your concerns with the other ministers at our next meeting.”

  Returning to headquarters later in the week Dr. Payne was met by his Chief Operations Officer.

  “What's up Kemal?”

  “Sir we have a change in requirements from the Union government for outfitting their fusion ships.”