First Contact: An Alicia Jones Novel 01 Read online

  I frowned, that meant the superconductor material was, for lack of a better term, the fuel for the anti-mass field. The mini-reactor could run at hundred percent for fifty years. Based on my calculations one micron of thickness for the superconducting material would last for about fifteen days, at eleven percent power. So about a day and a half at a hundred percent power.

  How much anti-mass would that generate though? I over planned and made changed the design on the probe to be fifty microns thick and told it to start building, that should get me through the testing I wanted to perform, and give some good baselines. At that point, I should have enough data to work out the math involved.

  After all, there really wasn’t any math for anti-mass yet, at least not beyond theory. I probably had enough to submit a patent, but I wanted to verify the applications first. A working device always makes that process easier. I resubmitted the build request.

  My mind started to spin at the possibilities. FTL travel would change everything. If I was right…

  I only ever needed four hours of sleep a night. I could even function pretty normally on two to three as long as I didn’t go for too long without a full four hours. I considered it one of my lesser oddities and went with it. Regardless, when Al woke me at three in the morning to tell me the build was finished, I jumped up to start my day.

  I had Al submit a flight plan to space on the walk over to the lab. As far as beyond that, I wasn’t worried about running into anything. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and felt… furtive. Like someone would jump out and stop me, or steal my IP, or… something.

  It was ridiculous of course, there was no one around, not close enough to sense anyway. Plus, I hadn’t told anyone yet. I picked up what I hoped was the first light speed ship. It was about forty pounds and the size of a medicine ball, although it was more oval. Two tall to be considered a saucer, but it wasn’t a ball either.

  I took it outside and had Al turn it on. This one was a bit bigger, more mass, and it didn’t rise from the ground until it reached twelve point four percent power. I grinned. It literally fell toward the sky. The scans showed it as zero mass when it had reached twelve point three seven two. It took a while for it to escape the Earth’s gravity field and I was feeling a bit impatient by the time it was ready.

  “Al, set the reactor power for zero mass.”

  Al replied, “Done.”

  I blew out a deep breath, “Set course perpendicular to the plane of the solar system and engage the ion drive at one percent.”

  I wasn’t sure what would happen if it hit anything, I figured there was a lot less to hit outside the plane of the solar system.

  “Done.”

  I asked tentatively, “Current speed?”

  Al replied in a flat voice, “one C.”

  I felt a little dizzy and sat on the grass. One C was the speed of light.

  I asked, “Are the clocks still in sync.”

  “Yes.”

  I sighed. It was incredible, but that would still be four years to the closest star. Fast but not really all that impressive.

  “Increase to two percent on the Ion drive.”

  Al replied, “No change in speed.”

  I nodded, I expected that. The probe reached one C immediately. No mass makes acceleration infinite; it took off at the speed of light.

  “Increase power to the EM and anti-mass field in point one percent increments. Keep an eye on the relationship between speed and the field strength.”

  I spent the night working on it. Adding anti-mass did increase the speed past one C, but there was an acceleration curve involved. The ion drive was a consideration as well once anti-mass was introduced past zero mass, although that seemed to have the least impact on speed. Once I had enough data, I pointed it toward Alpha Centuri. With both the field and drive at fifty percent it accelerated to and maintained over fifteen hundred C, which translated to somewhat less than a day’s travel. I figured I’d run some scans when I got there, and then have the probe come back.

  So far there were no indications of forces that would harm a human, inertia didn’t seem to be an obstacle. Of course, there would be no gravity either.

  I ate breakfast while staring at my visor and working out all the math involved, creating equations out of the data points we’d gathered. I let out a big breath and had Al compile it all to be submitted for patent. A lot of tension left my body when I pulled the trigger on it and sent it in. The college would get the lion’s share, forty percent. The professor and I would share thirty each. Now I just needed to work on a paper for submission.

  I may be weird, but I was about to be very rich.

  Maybe I’d work on a full sized craft design as well. For the probe it was fine, but for the future the design would need to have backups, at least two. It was clear to me that if for any reason the anti-mass field failed while travelling above the speed of light, the craft would most likely explode as its mass converted directly to energy.

  Chapter 3

  Lira was barely awake at her post. She was dedicated to the ideals of the Knomen Empire, but this had to be the most boring posting she’d ever been in. Her record had been spotless, until the day she was running to her post on one of the Empire’s warships, and she’d bowled over that admiral. Admiral Stenz. Even worse, she’d been carrying a drink at the time… which wound up all over the admiral.

  She’d been horrified of course, but that hadn’t saved her from the worst duty post this side of M87.

  So she was staving off boredom by reading up on the latest technical advances, not that she’d ever be assigned to an engineering post on a ship again, not if that admiral had anything to say about it.

  The console beeped breaking her concentration. She looked up in annoyance but that expression turned to surprise. She was getting an alert from a probe in beta quadrant. It was on the edge of the empire and she brought up the report. The probe had detected an FTL ship from a planet under watch that didn’t belong to the empire. She sat up a little straighter and went over the navigation data to verify it tracked back to… the inhabitants called it Earth. She snorted in wonder, might as well call it ball of dirt.

  They were a pre FTL society but advanced enough that this breakthrough wasn’t that big of a surprise, or even unexpected. Although according to the data, it might have been better if they’d grown some more before this discovery. Earth wasn’t rated as inimical, but there were some reasons for caution. They were somewhat on the line, and the Empire’s sociologists were split on if this civilization would bring war or peace to the stars.

  She shrugged, it wasn’t her decision. She compiled a report with the data and sent it up the chain of command. Someone else would decide if the humans could be trusted and peaceful, or if they needed to knock them back to the Stone Age and give the human species more time to grow up.

  She pursed her lips and looked at the data again. It wouldn’t be the first time…

  She shrugged and picked up her data pad and got back to the technical paper. Who knew, maybe someday she’d make it back on a ship someday. The old bastard couldn’t live forever…

  I was a mentally exhausted and things felt a little unreal. I’d worked on the paper that same day, I couldn’t help how excited I was about the discoveries. I submitted it last night before going to bed as I had my weekly meeting with Professor Daniels the next day. I’d been sitting here for what felt like hours as he questioned me in a confrontational manner.

  I didn’t really like when he did that, but I understood the technique. Everything had to be questioned and proven beyond a doubt. Still, I kind of hated him right now.

  I knew the probe had gotten to Alpha Centauri and ran some scans and was on the way back, I was curious to see the data. There was a possible life bearing planet in the system after all.

  The gel seemed to be in perfect shape, as if the accelerations didn’t matter and inertia didn’t exist. I wasn’t entirely sure of that aspect of things yet, but I had the theo
ry the field was insulating it from the effects of the outside universe. Relative to the field the ship doesn’t move at all, and that was all that counted for some reason.

  Daniels said with a shake of his head, “It’s well thought out Alicia and you seem to understand it. But I’ll need to go over your results more thoroughly, perhaps experiment with different configurations. We want to make sure we have it right before we submit we submit it for publication. Have you updated your dissertation?”

  My eyes widened a little and I felt wide awake. I hadn’t even considered that. This kind of discovery, leading to a new math and understanding of how things worked was more than enough to wrap up my dissertation, even the point of the experiment, a strong EM field, had proven out. I hadn’t really thought in that direction before, I was actually trying to figure out how to build a ship and go. I was fascinated with the idea of exploring the galaxy, something that had been impossible until yesterday.

  Still, a more realistic approach would be to build a bunch of probes, then go if they find something, like a planet that humans could live on, or visit if they had intelligent life. A viable ship would be… expensive, and rather large. Just the gravity requirements for health reasons would make the ship as wide around as a football field, and at two RPM’s that would only create about half a G. Although higher forces were possible in smaller diameters it could cause dizziness or disorientation if the RPM were too high.

  Maybe I should just focus on designing a better probe. Although I wasn’t too sure how I could improve it. Beyond putting in redundant systems that is, especially for the anti-mass system. But not tonight, I wanted to go out and celebrate. Not too hard though, the probe would be back around two am and I didn’t want to retrieve the first FTL ship in a drunken stupor.

  I snorted. Who was I kidding? I’d design a ship too, even if I probably won’t get permission to build it. The ironic thing was it would be in the shape of a saucer, sharp corners would seriously warp the field in some places and may even interfere with super conduction.

  I nodded slowly, “We have patent pending, do you think the university would support building more probes? We could make small changes and see what worked better and to improve understanding. But I was thinking other groups in the college might have ideas on where to send them and what to gather.”

  He raised an eyebrow, “Like what?”

  I shrugged, “FTL is just the tip of the iceberg. We can cancel gravities effects completely in a field. That opens up a lot more opportunity. It means we can drop a tanker ship inside Jupiter to gather hydrogen, or even get a ship in close to a black hole to do research. FTL requires a drive, but we can use the same concepts and just use gravity to fly around Earth.

  “Obviously this technology needs to be locked down to A.I. controls the same as fusion devices, the potentials for destruction are very high.”

  I felt a shiver go down my spine, after all, the little probe I built could quite easily cause incredible damage to the Earth, not only an extinction level event for humanity, but the potential to destroy all life. I was a little surprised the government hadn’t sent an agent yet, but then maybe they just didn’t understand the dangers inherit in the technology yet.

  Daniels nodded, “Most likely, why don’t you think up a few more designs, but hold off on building until we get some feedback, could be there will be special requests. In the meantime, you should celebrate and start thinking about how to spend all that money.”

  I smiled. I realized the whole point of getting my doctorate was to find a good paying job and hopefully work on cutting edge things. All that was probably moot now, but I still wanted that piece of paper anyway. I thanked the professor and went back to my apartment while I sent a message to Kristi. It was time to celebrate.

  Chapter 4

  Carl looked at the scans and frowned. It hadn’t been a ship, just a probe. They were following it back to Earth to determine who built it and make contact. It had been apparent when reading the briefs on Earth that the higher level government people were isolated and well protected. Most likely contacting them directly would cause problems.

  In cases like this, it was recommended to contact the inventor, and then get an introduction to the people that would be making decisions for this world. They’d had people on the planet but their reports had stopped coming in a little over twenty years ago, and replacement agents weren’t sent, probably got lost in the red tape.

  After that it was fairly straight forward, he would need to extend an invitation to join the Empire. It was important to keep the races with space travel under watch. Millennia ago when the Knomen race invented FTL travel, there had been a few species that were too grasping. They were simply too dangerous. After they were attacked, the aggressor civilizations were eventually tamed.

  Of course, that only accounted for a small area of the galaxy, the Empire ran from Earth toward the central core, but the core worlds of the Empire were in the same arm of the galaxy that Earth resided. It was considered prudent to expand slowly.

  After that war, it was determined that any race entering the space age within their sphere needed to be… vetted. If they didn’t comply they would simply not be allowed to expand. Some argued the repression of these civilizations was wrong, but the fact was allowing them to build up to become a threat would be even worse.

  Carl hoped with every cell of his being the Earth would agree to the laws and become part of the Empire, but he wouldn’t hesitate to stop them if they were too aggressive. He didn’t like the idea, but at least it wouldn’t be genocide, the humans would have the chance to grow and maybe get it right the next time.

  The laws weren’t that complicated. Any planet with intelligent life or a high probability of producing intelligent life needed to be left alone. Weapons on ships were permitted, but should never be used outside of defense. The problem was, a lot of races had a strong survival instinct, this would push them to claim other planets aggressively, in some cases even planets occupied with intelligent life.

  What was ironic was the Earth itself would have been invaded five hundred years ago if not for that law, and the Empire’s protection. Of course it wasn’t all based on benevolence. The Empire feared the cost of meeting another aggressive civilization in war, it simply made sense to stop the threat before it got to that point. He’d often wondered if the reason for that law was more to salve their conscience than any moral superiority.

  That didn’t mean humans couldn’t colonize other planets, it just meant it would be harder and take more time. They’d have to find those planets on the edge that could be terra-formed with a lot of work, and patience.

  He looked into the mirror and concentrated. His hair changed to black, his eyes shifted from purple to green. His spots slowly disappeared as his skin changed from blue to a dark tan. It wasn’t his intention to deceive, just to reduce the chance of a panicked reaction when he met the human who invented FTL for their planet.

  He looked back down at the data on the planet Earth. Last time they’d grown in technology to join the interstellar community was seven thousand years ago. He hoped they’d grown sufficiently since that time to be welcomed. He thought about his wife and daughter, steeling his heart just in case they hadn’t…

  I got to the field the probe would land in thirty minutes early. I’d had some fun dancing and drinking but had been wishing Todd had given me a call. We’d had a great time two nights ago and I’d been considering breaking the three date rule. It had felt like a bucket of ice over my head when I saw him there kissing another woman.

  I was just glad I’d said goodnight at the door the other day. It was apparent his dependable meant he could be depended on to sleep around as much as possible.

  I sighed and brought up my visor. I designed a probe with three redundant EM and anti-mass systems, basic sensors as well as gravity sensors. Gravity sensors were unique in that they worked faster than light, sensitive enough to see anything large enough from far enough away so it could be
avoided.

  Normal stellar dust and micro-meteorites weren’t a concern, the anti-mass and EM shielding would push that stuff out of the way. I also designed a small fabricator that could replace the superconductor material using nanites to deliver it while the reactor was shut down. That meant the probe or ship could still fly with one backup system while the second was being refueled and even repaired. The Ion drives were also standard. I also set up the communications and A.I. protocols. Outside of that I did nothing else except design extra space for other requested equipment.

  I designed a larger ship as well, but it would probably never be built. It was remarkably similar to the probe. The only difference being the artificial gravity which would be strongest around the edge of the craft, and life support systems. I laid out crew quarters, dining halls, and exercise rooms on the outside laying on one side, so the edge of the craft would be down all the way around. The bridge and engineering would be at the center of the craft in zero G, which was fine.

  Just having gravity for sleep cycles and work outs would prevent the loss of bone mass.

  Arrayed around the bridge and engineering would be multiple lab spaces, recreation, life support systems, medical, storage, and fabrication rooms. I was sure I was missing something, but I couldn’t think of what. I was so distracted by my planning that the probe startled me when it landed fifteen feet away. It was completely silent.

  I picked up the probe, “Al, download all the data and prepare the lab to run a comprehensive scan of the probe.”

  Al acknowledged the order and I felt at loose ends when we got to the lab. Alpha Centauri B did have a world in the goldilocks zone, but there was no life. I considered going through the data but thought better of it. I needed some sleep. Besides, the data most important to me would be from the scan. I needed to see if the probe was degraded in any way before we built more.