Stars

Part II (continued) - Out of Time

While the S-Drive generators wound up to a fevered pitch, Jason Idleman sat patiently at his monitor . Well, maybe not patiently, but at least quietly.

"Power's almost there, Jason. Bringing the recorders on line now." Eric Jacoby was one of the best sub-atomic video techs in the country. Not that there were very many to choose from. It was a brand new field. The technology that made it possible was barely two years old. It was, in fact, the development of the technique that made Jason's work possible. "Monitors look good, recording on your mark."

"Initiating Drop Sequence, start record... on... mark!" Jason typed the commands into his keyboard and rolled his chair over to the monitors.

Even at this extreme magnification it took a well trained eye to distinguish the S-Drive objective near the center of the chamber. Visually, all it was was a slight distortion, like heat waves off a hot road. The subject of the experiment was a little easier to spot. The carbon molecule that was dropped into the chamber looked huge on the screen. It sat, spinning soundlessly for a moment. Then it sped to the center of the screen where it continued whirling, held captive by the building power of the Drive objective. Another black ball dropped into view and darted to the center of the screen, joining the first in a frenzied dance as they vied for the center position. A third ball dropped and brought the dance to a fevered pitch. Still another ball appeared, but, before it could join the others the screen flashed a brilliant white, then, everything went black.

"Shut'er down!" Jason sprang to life as the monitors died. "Isolate the S-Drive and power down." Eric was already throwing switches.

"Temp's already dropping. Powering down the generators now." The whine of the S-Drive generators dropped in pitch and volume as Eric reigned the power in toward shut-down.

"Eric, let me know as soon as we have a null objective, I want to get in there see what the hell happened."

It took several minutes to bring the generators down to a safe level. Jason went to remove the access panel to the reaction chamber.

"Damn!" His hand pulled back even before he felt the stab of the burn. "The outside of this panel is hot! Get me some insulating sheets, I want to get this cover off."

With the drive powered down, Eric went quickly to the supply room and grabbed several sheets of poly-insulate.

Jason and Eric worked together to remove the panel, trying not to sustain any additional injuries. It took several minutes, the heat kept bleeding through the insulation and they had to keep switching sheets in order to maintain a good grip. Once inside they could see the extent of the damage. The walls of the S-chamber were scorched and warped. On closer inspection, small pock marks could be seen covering the inner surfaces of the compartment.

"Well, we knew there would be damage." Eric's comment was an obvious attempt to 'test the water'.

"Yeah, but I was expecting gravitational damage. The walls should have been pulled in, not pushed out. We didn't anticipate this kind of heat gain, not to mention the flash. We need to tear this down for analysis." Jason looked around himself with a critical eye. This mess is going to need to cool down a while. Let's retrieve the records and get the processing started."
Eric made for the recorders to pull cards. The cards were more like blocks. The high speed video equipment ate memory at a phenomenal rate. After pulling the six blocks, Eric headed to the video lab, the pair sat down and began the process of rendering the scenes.

"I've got the first series loaded, Jason. Where do you want to start?"

"Let's try a 10X speed reduction to see what kind of definition we have."