Proxima Adventure

Chapter 6. Conformation.

Chapter 6. Conformation.

Vicky and Hilary decided to take on the task of creating an image of the cosmic microwave background like the one that had been done for the universe they had come from. Fortunately, they had access to an extremely sensitive microwave anisotropy telescope probe that could be deployed from the spaceship. The detectors on this probe could reveal the precise structure of the left-over energy from the so-called Big Bang. What was even more important was its ability to determine the age of the universe they were in as well as its cosmological constant, the mathematical value that indicates how much the universe is expanding.

Alice and Judy, with help from Mary and Beverly, were assigned the task of trying to speed up the data collection in order to produce a map that was of the same accuracy as the one that was determined in twenty first century without taking years to create it.

They also activated the main telescope to search for familiar stars, quasars, pulsars, galaxies, black holes, star clusters, and other objects that were well known in their universe of origin.

As expected, they discussed social issues while they worked, and what they said was most interesting.

"Do you really believe that the commander and his cronies hired us to entertain them?" Judy asked. "I assumed that we were added to do the hard work on this mission."

Alice smiled. "Yeah, that's probably right. I just wanted to tease the guys with an alternate scenario."

"What about you?" Hilary said, turning to look at Mary and Beverly. "Did they hire you to actually do work?"

"We were added because we're experts on extraterrestrial life," Mary replied. "We were backups to the two main scientists that went down to the surface of Enceladus."

"Well!" Hilary replied with a grin. "Welcome to the sisters of assistantship. We are backups to the main scientists."

"The truth is that we are all backups," Alice said. "The guys are assistant engineers. In essence, we're all second-class space cadets."

"I think that Space Command must have figured that the main mission specialists wouldn't make it," Alice said. "They probably had a hunch that youthfulness would be a survival factor."

They all agreed with that unfortunate but questionable conclusion.

The guys were down on the engineering deck trying to figure out how to measure physical constants, but what they came up with involved less work.

"I just thought of something," Carl said, grinning. "We don't really need to measure process efficiencies. All we need do is compare what the ship's sensors measured before and after the blackout incident."

Charles chuckled. "Yeah, you're right. Hopefully, the data wasn't erased during the incident."

Carl began punching requests into the engineering system for the required data. After a pause, the data began to be displayed on the main screen. The engineers stared at the data with rapt attention to the efficiency numbers.

"Holy shit!" Charles exclaimed. "This shows a forty-to-forty five percent efficiency boost because of the blackout. That's impossible . . . unless the entropy of this universe is extremely low. I'm not sure how that's even possible."

"Is it possible that this data is corrupted by the incident itself?" Dave asked.

Charles rubbed his jaw. "That could be. I'm not sure how we can determine that."

"If you go by this data, it indicates that we used very little oxygen since the incident," Carl said. "That doesn't make sense."

Charles sighed. "If the data is corrupt, we'll never be able to figure out what's going on."