Proxima Adventure

Chapter 17. Test Run

Chapter 17. Test Run

When Charles joined with Carl, Dave and Robert on the engineering deck, he was the object of kidding, and complaining.

"I heard that the big three came to your quarters last evening. Did they come in their underwear?" Carl asked him.

"Nope," he replied with a hint of a grin. "They were wearing robes."

"I think they're nuts," Dave said. "You would think we were back in our junior cadet days at Space Command."

"Yeah, they act like they're teenagers," Robert said.

"Let them have their fun," Charles said. "They had better have the math right about this faster than light travel or their hairbrained social project will come to a quick end."

"Why do we need math?" Robert asked. "Didn't the manual spell out how much power it'll take?"

"There was an element of probability in it. That's why I asked the women to sharpen up their calculations before we try a test run."

Carl gave him a confused expression. "When are we going to do a test run?"

"Tomorrow at 0700," he said, sounding as if it were a sentence.

Tomorrow came quicker than any of them really wanted it to. Charles, Carl, Dave and Robert joined in the command deck and began the process of engaging all the power sources and engine warmups needed to go out from the L2 location. Charles decided to plot the course so that there would be little chance of crashing into an object, at least anything known.

"How do these tachyon particles make this vessel go faster than the speed of light?" Dave asked.

"That's because if tachyon particles slow to zero, their energy would be infinite. In other words, they go much faster than light speed so that their energy stays down."

"How faster than light are we talking about?" Robert asked.

"Well, if we can't go hundreds of times faster than light, we may as well not bother. Most star systems we want to explore are hundreds, if not thousands of light years away."

"Hopefully, our brainy female scientists have worked out the math properly," Carl quipped.

"They scare me," Robert said. "They're geniuses, but they act like naughty teens."

"Unfortunately, we may have to put up with their antics forever," Carl said.

"Not to change the subject, but will the Graviton system handle the crazy speed this boat will go?" Dave asked.

"According to the brainy women's calculations, it will," Charles replied. "If not, we'll be like smears on the wall."

Where are we going?" Robert asked.

"p Eridani," Charles told him. "It's a binary star system a little less than 27 light years away." He activated the ship wide warning system, which began blaring a warning that the voyage was about to begin.

When he pressed the button to begin the process, there was a pause, a silent dead period that lasted several minutes before the ship began to move. At first, it didn't seem as if the acceleration was all that hard, but the screen that showed what was going on outside displayed what looked like a blast of white streaks originating from an imaginary spot directly ahead.

"Holy shit!" Carl exclaimed. "We're already at ten times light speed!"

"And it's still climbing," Charles told them. "I don't feel much of anything that would indicate we're accelerating that quickly."