Collin took in the compartment, which spanned about forty feet in width, from one side of the ship to the other, and about a quarter that footage in length. “What is this area?”
“It’s an airlock. You understand what that is?”
“Yeah, I know what an airlock is.”
Cine moved forward and, with a soft
clang
, the hatchway split apart into four segments, disappearing into the bulkhead. They entered a grimy, dimly lit corridor. “To the left are crew berths. All are identical.”
As they moved forward, toward the bow, Collin noted several smaller corridors off to the left, each with numerous hatchways spaced every ten feet or so. He figured there were close to fifty individual quarters located here. Cine picked up his pace and soon they left the crew compartment and entered what looked like a galley, off to their right, and a wide-open mess area opposite it. There was a stairway off to right, just past the galley. Cine did a U-turn into the little stairwell and led the trio up to a second level.
“Hold up, Cine.” Collin took in what must have been some of the ship’s operational stations. Chairs, more like metal stools, were positioned in front of consoles. “What is this area?”
“I don’t know. Probably environmental or geological diagnostics were done here. This is … was … a survey ship … for mining, that sort of thing.” He continued on toward the bow. Again, he seemed to be in a hurry.
“Hold up there, Cine.”
Collin was practically jogging to keep up. “What the hell … slow down!”
Cine didn’t slow down—in fact, he bolted straight ahead for the next hatch. Like the others, the hatch separated into four segments and opened as he approached. Now sprinting after him, Collin saw Cine dive into the compartment. Barely having time to sling his MK5, he dove in right after him. He landed hard on the deck and just missed catching a grip on Cine’s right foot.
It occurred to Collin that the question he hadn’t asked Cine was if he was alone—if there were others on board the ship? Now he knew the answer to that question. Sprawled on the hard metal deck, what must have been the bridge, Collin looked up to see two more furry, cat-like men pointing weapons at his head.
“I’ll take your weapons,” Cine said.
Collin glanced back and saw that the hatch was closed. Bubba and DiMaggio wouldn’t be able to help him. Slowly, Collin unslung his rifle and handed it over to Cine.
“That, too,” he said, gesturing toward the Beretta holstered on Collin’s hip. “Very slowly.”
Collin did as told and handed that one over as well.
“You can call him Orman, our leader, and the other one is Pack.”
Both of the cat-like men fingered the devices around their necks as Cine had done earlier.
“Another from the blue planet?” the biggest of the three aliens, Orman, asked Cine.
“He is their leader,” Cine answered.
“I’m not the leader of anything. But I suggest you lower your weapons. That is, if you ever want to leave this ship. Cine will tell you, you’re outnumbered and the people I’m with are not the type you want to make your enemy.”
Orman seemed to consider this. “You and the others … you are not full grown. How is it you command your own spacecraft?”
Collin was about to correct the alien but then realized what he was alluding to: the jetliner. As far as they were concerned the ship was more than a vessel transporting people from Chicago to Los Angeles. They had no way of knowing if it could leave Earth’s orbit or not. “On my planet, people my age have much responsibility. As you saw, Cine, our spacecraft was sucked up into this … what did you call it, a sim rover? We’re in the same situation as you are. It makes sense that we all work together to get out of here.”
“We will not be your captives,” Orman said.
Collin determined two things in that instant: First, the three of them weren’t the cleverest bunch. They had full leverage right now and were seemingly ready to give that away. Second, they had about them the stink of desperation. It was a term Collin’s father used when he talked about people giving up … on a situation … on life.
“We … I’m not interested in keeping anyone captive. What I do want is to get my people secured on board this craft before that aperture opens up to space again. Help me do that and I’ll help you get this ship functional again.”
They looked at each other.
“You know how to repair this type of spacecraft?” Cine asked skeptically.
Hearing his uncertainty, Collin took a long appraising look around the small, cramped, bridge. There was a windshield, or viewing window, at the front of the compartment that looked out upon the endless expanse of the green-lit mountains of metal beyond. Inside, there were three curved consoles arranged in a U shape. Certainly more advanced than anything Collin had ever seen before, yet, compared to the cockpit of the 777, its high-tech functionality still seemed pretty basic. Where the jetliner cockpit had a myriad of switches and dials, this cockpit or bridge was all about tiny, colorful display screens. There weren’t any switches, per se, but there seemed to be a method for interfacing each display that Collin would need to figure out.
Collin turned to Bubba. He knew his dad owned an auto repair shop and that he, Collin himself, was a natural with math and the sciences: physics, chemistry. If he hadn’t been abducted into space, he was in line to begin a full scholarship to MIT, beginning fall semester.
The three cat-men creatures tickled the devices around their necks and began speaking in a language that sounded more like growling and purring than typical speech.
They seemed to have come to some kind of agreement. Again, with the tickling of the neck device, Orman said, “We will trust you. You will lead us out of this sim rover. After that, we will need to talk more.”
Again, he’s spieling this leadership crap
, Collin thought. He’d never been the leader of anyone. Even the thought of it made him nervous. But, in all truth, hadn’t he been leading ever since they’d been abducted? Wasn’t he already taking charge? His mind went to Darren, who was comfortable in that position … in fact he strived to always be in command. But the thought of handing the reins over to him, let Darren even try to get them out of this predicament, was ludicrous.
Collin nodded. “Let’s work together … but we’ll need to work fast.”
Chapter 12
Cine opened the hatch, startling DiMaggio and Bubba. Both looked up in surprise. Collin, seated at a bridge console with Orman, broke off their conversation to signal them to come in.
“Frost! You all right?” Bubba asked, looking ready to kill someone. The cat-like man looked at him warily and then at Collin.
“It’s okay. We’re going to work together. Truth is … our chances of survival depend on us being able to work together.”
Bubba and DiMaggio looked skeptical. “Why do we need them? How do we know they won’t try to F- with us later?” DiMaggio asked, his eyes never leaving Cine.
“We’re going to have to trust them … just as they’re doing with us right now.”
Collin changed the subject. “Bubba, I was wondering if you could help us figure a way to get this ship operational. You know, since your father owns an interstellar spacecraft repair depot.”
Bubba smiled at that and was about to say something when, seeing Collin’s serious expression, he caught himself. “Um … I guess I could try. I am … better with the more mechanical aspects.”
“That’s fine. It’ll be a learning experience for all of us. Orman, here, is conveying his fairly good knowledge of this spaceship. We’re starting with bridge operations. Next, we’ll move on to Engineering … it’s there he believes there’s a problem.”
Bubba took a seat next to Collin.
“And what do you want me to do, Collin?” DiMaggio asked.
“I want you to take Cine with you and bring everyone back here. We need to get everyone on board as quickly as possible.”
“You serious? Darren’s not going to—”
Collin cut him off, holding up a hand. “Do whatever you have to do to get him and everyone else back here within the next hour or two. Do whatever you have to … use your imagination. Hell, lie to him if you have to,” Collin said with a crooked smile.
* * *
Over the next two hours Collin learned as much about the spacecraft as possible. There were times, Collin guessed, when Orman was becoming suspicious of his lack of knowledge concerning even the basics associated with space travel. It was only Collin’s rudimentary understanding of physics, and what he’d learned reading Discovery magazine and watching Nova, that he was able to maintain any semblance of believability. What kept getting in the way for him was the simple fact that, at current levels of human understanding, space travel between interstellar bodies wasn’t even remotely possible. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, objects will always gain mass as they accelerate to greater and greater speeds. To get an object, like a spaceship, to move faster, you’d need to give the vessel some sort of monumental push. A spacecraft with more mass would need an even bigger push … say, than a smaller ship with less mass. In any event, if an object did reach the speed of light, it would have an infinite amount of mass and would need an infinite amount of push, or acceleration, to keep it trucking along. There was no amount of thrust—no rocket engine, no matter how powerful—that could accomplish this feat. In fact, as far as modern Earth science was concerned, nothing could exceed the speed of light.
What Collin was inadvertently discovering was that space travel was made possible not so much by bending the rules of physics, but by compartmentalizing those rules. When Einstein was working out the fundamentals of his principles behind the relativity of time, he wasn’t keyed into other, perhaps even more important, rules of physics associated with string theory and quantum entanglement. Everything changed when one type of
mass
was no longer the same mass we had come to understand. What we as humans in the twenty-first century believed to be hard physical laws, in reality were only one subset of a much greater theory. Just as science has observed the wave-particle duality aspects of light, what Collin was coming to terms with was that mass had the same dual attributes, under certain re-creatable situations.
Collin felt as though his head was going to explode. The more Orman spoke, the more Collin wanted to interrupt and have him go back and provide the basic principles behind the science—the barebones physics of it all. But he didn’t, and eventually he was able to piece enough of it together for a novice’s understanding of things. As the conversation moved to the ship’s engines, which Orman referred to as drives, Collin started to feel somewhat better. Sure, he was talking of things such as dark-matter containment pods and something called the special manifold construct … which apparently let the spaceship, and all space-faring vessels, travel within some kind of bubble or shield, where the rules of physics were not only taken advantage of, but used against one another to create an entirely new form of physics.
For hours, Orman was incredibly patient and it now occurred to Collin that he was probably well aware of the teen’s ignorance of even the basics of space travel—the fundamental science behind it all.
So why is he still helping? Why continue the ruse?
The only thing Collin could come up with was the simple fact that, after several weeks of being stranded in this junk-metal hell, they’d made zero progress getting out of here. For some time, Cine had watched them back at the jetliner from a distance; maybe he had seen something in the Earth beings? Collin didn’t really know and, at this point, figured it didn’t much matter.
“Can you show me the engines … the drives?”
“There’s only one drive.” Orman stood. “Follow me.”
Collin got up and saw Bubba getting to his feet as well. He’d totally forgotten about him being there. He’d been as quiet as a mouse, listening to them for hours without a single interruption.
Once Orman exited the bridge, Bubba pulled Collin in close. “Man … I had no idea you were that smart. You’re like some kind of genius or something.”
Collin thought Bubba was pulling his chain: rubbing in the fact that he was clueless about much of what the furry alien had spoken about. But he then realized Bubba was serious and replied, “Let’s just hope they think I’m as smart as you do.”
Engineering spanned two levels and was reachable from both the upper and lower decks. Orman took them through the upper deck’s compartments, which were in somewhat better shape than the lower deck. The three of them entered Engineering, in the stern of the ship. This part of the craft was outright tidy compared to the rest. About the size of a modern-day Starbucks, both the compartment and sub-compartments had floor-to-ceiling technology.
Collin spun around, taking it all in. If he was out of his element on the bridge, he was even more so here. Orman began speaking again:
“The primary power plant for this vessel is, of course, here.” He gestured with a small clawed finger to a barrel-shaped section at the farthest back area of Engineering. “Like all antimatter drives, it’s always in a ready state. As you can see,” he stood up tall and pointed to a series of waving and fluctuating optical meters high above, “our output power levels for the anti-matter reactor are well within optimal range.”
For the first time Bubba said something. “Sounds like a transmission problem to me.”
Both Orman and Collin turned around to face him.
“Well, it’s a drivetrain problem … If it’s not the engine, which clearly it’s not, it’s got to be another aspect of the drivetrain. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Collin was ready to signal Bubba to put a sock in it, but saw Orman actually taking an interest in what the big guy was saying.
“Show me how the anti-matter reactor connects to …” Bubba hesitated, “to the rest of the propulsion system.”
Orman stared at Bubba for several beats and then walked to the other end of Engineering. Bubba followed him and looked at the complex assortment of rounded-looking canisters, tubes, lines of varying sizes, and more small display screens—which were showing fluctuating readouts of something incomprehensible to Collin.