The Orthogonal Galaxy
Chapter 18

The pilot leaned back in the seat of his C-320space craft as it floated serenely through the expanses of space. The C-320 was the most recent engineeringmarvel at NASA. Capable of traveling at0.6 times the speed of light, it was the fastest space craft everconstructed. Now that it had completed arigorous three years of testing, it was on its first mission to the outer edgeof the solar system. The C-320 had theappearance of a white bullet, although on closer inspection the shape was moreflattened than rounded, and had wing-like protrusions on either side. It was spray-coated with some of the highesttech material ever invented. Alight-weight, elastic and resilient polymer, it protected the ship and itspassengers from impacts with space objects.

Inside, the ship could be deemed cozy at best,but astronauts never seemed to use that term upon return to earth, where theyalmost certainly proclaim that “sardines have no idea.” Even so, space explorers were clamoring foropportunities to take the new-fangled vehicle for a spin somewhere in thegalaxy, simply because of the excitement of exploring the far reaches of thesolar system where no man had ever traveled before.

“Allsystems check. Having successfullynavigated through the asteroid belt and beyond the orbit of Jupiter, we’veobtained cruise velocity and are on time with a rendezvous at the edge of thegalaxy. The Magellan-Victoria is allsystems go,” the astronaut voiced into a headset and then lifted the microphoneaway from his mouth. “You see, Tef…everything is going normally.”

“I know, Jainn, and that’s what has meconcerned,” replied the pilot. “There’salways a problem on these voyages, no matter how small or insignificant. So far, there has been nothing. It’s almost too quiet, too eerie. I just want to get that anomaly out of theway, so I can relax and enjoy the trip.”

Jainn shook his head. “You’re too superstitious. Everything will be fine.” The confident navigator reclined as far as hecould in his seat and gazed out into the expanses, stars blazing in panoramicsplendor from the cockpit. “Would youjust look at that, Tef? What an amazingview!”

Tef reclined his seat, wanting to forget hisconcerns. “You’re right about that,partner. I’m still surprised that we’retraveling faster than any human ever has, and it feels dead still, just the humof the ion thrust engines.”

“Yeah, it definitely doesn’t feel like we’removing… I mean I know that those stars are very far away but it still surprisesme considering the speed we’re traveling that you hardly notice us moving.”

The two star-dazed astronauts enjoyed the variousquality of brilliance and color that filled the black canvas behind them. Even Tef, the paranoid pilot began to relaxand forget his worries.

While the astronauts were watching the spectacleoverhead, they could not notice the tiny particles of ice and dust left behindfrom some far-flung comet, speeding by as they intersected its orbitalpath. However, the C-320 was verywell-equipped to sense them, and alerted them to their presence with an audiblealarm. Both returned their seats to afully upright position simultaneously to assess the situation.

The pilot lowered the microphone on hisheadset. “Victoria reporting to missioncontrol on a debris sensor. It appearsas if we are being impacted on the right side by minute debris field at anangle of 254 degrees. We’re commencingnavigation first to minimize angle of impact.”

Tef worked a joystick to cause a gentle andgradual roll of the craft in the direction of the stream, to allow particles toglance off the right side of the craft. Jainn monitored the sensor data of the craft and watched intently forany other alarms signaling problems while navigating out of the debris field.

Tef spoke clearly into his headset. “Missioncontrol, we’re going to pitch up at an angle of 13 degrees from the galacticplane to take ourselves away from the field. Frequency of impact detection is decreasing rapidly.”

Taking a deep breath, his turned to hisnavigator. “Well, Jainn. Hopefully, we’re out of the woods. There’s that anomaly I was worried about… mayit be the last.”

“Yeah,” said Jainn panting slightly. “I love this job, but I really hate...” He was interrupted abruptly by a jolt whichrolled the craft slightly to the right. An alarm indicated some kind of breach on the wing. Jainn looked out of the right side window inorder to get a visual on the incident and grew pale instantly.

“Tef, I’m seeing vapor coming off of the end ofthe wing!” he exclaimed. “Oh no, I’mseeing sparks… and...” His voice trailedoff as he saw a white piece of debris floating in space just behind thewing. “Tef, we’ve sustained damage.” The tip of the right wing had been shearedcompletely off of the craft by one of the minute particles they were attemptingto avoid.

Tef continued in a business-like manner. “It looks like I’ll need to continue thedirection of pitch in order to pull up from the debris. We really need to distance ourselves from theportion of the vehicle that’s traveling right next to us. If we veer into its trajectory, it could domore damage still.”

The wing tip fell out of view as the craftcontinued to pitch up, but what the unsuspecting astronauts couldn’t see wasthat the particles, although fairly sparse now, were continuing to bombard itpushing it closer and closer to the back of the craft. As it slammed into the rear, the C-320 yawedfrom side to side. An alarm indicatedthat damage had indeed been sustained in the back of the craft now and thatoxygen was escaping into the vacuum of space around them. Vital cables, electronic equipment and hardwarebegan to ooze out of the gash like blood, and each lost object was only addingto the damaged exterior as it was sucked into the volume of space.

While the astronauts struggled to regain theircraft, shouting orders to each other, closing off pressurization breaches,sweating nervously, and listening to a litany of alarms, the craft began topitch and yaw violently until the ion generators in the rear of the vehiclewere severed. Tef, previously fighting thejoystick, let up and leaned back in his seat

“Tef!” barked Jainn. “What are you doing?! We’re spinning out of control and need torestabilize the craft!”

“We can’t,” proclaimed Tef calmly, while fixinghis gaze somewhere out into space.

“Why not?!” shouted Jainn as he glanced all over the panel, dazed by the number oflights and alarms.

“Listen, closely. What do you hear?”

“Alarms… I hear alarms. All over the place.”

“Exactly! You hear alarms. But, do you hearthe engines?”

Jainn strained to listen to the remainder of hisenvironment. He silenced all of thealarms to get a better fix on any other sounds in the cockpit. Then, he noticed the panel of flashing lightsthat were lost by a sea of red, yellow, and white lights pulsing from thepanel. The engine failure alarms hadindeed come on. Breathing heavily, heracked his brain for a solution to the problem.

“Ok,” Jainn struggled to control the emotion inhis voice. “Let’s think thisthrough. We need to get back there andrestore power to the engines. Since thecraft still has power, we haven’t lost the ion generators yet.”

“We’ve sealed off the cabin, Jainn. Nothing short of a spacewalk would get usback there, but we don’t even have an airlock that we can reach. Even if we did, we have no way of stabilizingthe craft.”

“How bad is our destabilization situation?”

“Can’t tell, the sensors have been badly damagedor lost, so I don’t trust them, but if you look at how quickly the stars arespinning, my guess is that we’re rolling very fast, and pitching a littletoo. In fact, I’m guessing we havevelocity vectors in all three directions. We couldn’t possibly calculate a successful jump-off from the craft.”

After an uncomfortable and eerie silence, Jainnasked his pilot, “So, what do we do now, Tef? We can’t simply sit here and just float off into space completely out ofcontrol! What are our possiblescenarios, captain?”

“Well, in the worst case,” the pilot stated in amatter-of-fact manner, “we get pulled in by some nearby object’s gravitationalfield and we’ll begin to accelerate toward it, eventually slamming into thesurface and creating a deep crater.”

“And the best case?” asked Jainn. “The worst doesn’t sound very encouraging.”

“In the best case, we become one of theuniverse’s most bizarre objects orbiting around some planet or solar system asa frozen memorial to the mission.”

Having muted all of the alarms, the astronautssat there in complete silence and near darkness as the power being served fromthe damaged generators weakened. Theirattention was immediately drawn to a large orange button in the middle of thepanel that was sounding with a harsh, pulsating buzz accompanying it.

“Mission Abort!” read Jainn. “I don’t remember seeing that button. What does it mean, Tef?”

Tef didn’t get a chance to answer as a final electricpulse shot through a vein-like series of circuits throughout the surface of theaircraft. In complete simultaneity, athousand small explosions on the surface of the craft reduced the Victoria andall of its contents to dust. For a splitsecond, all of the oxygen remaining on board turned into a fireball of brightorange and searing blue flames, before quickly evaporating into the quietblackness that existed before Victoria wandered into the region.…

Maril Scoville sat straight up in bed. He found himself sweating profusely andbreathing heavily. He clutched hischest, feeling his heart pound rapidly under his ribcage. It was as dark as the vastness of spacesurrounding the recently destroyed C-320 Magellan-Victoria. The harsh pulsating alarm from the C-320cockpit panel persisted. Slowly, Maril realized that it wasn’t a panel alarm atall. Instead, the noised emanated fromhis digital clock alarm which read 5:00 AM.

His wife rolled towards him and rubbed hisback. “What’s the matter, Honey?”

Composing himself with a deep breath, hewhispered, “Another nightmare.”

“What happened this time?”

“Tef Alline. He was… he was on a mission with the new astronaut, Jainn Tucker… and…”His voice trailed off. “And the shieldfailed them.” He hung his head andrubbed his face with his hands.

“Oh, Honey… I’m sorry.” She tried to focus her hazy thoughts to saysomething comforting, but was having difficulty at this time of themorning. After a few moments of silence andreduced breathing she continued, “Where are Tef and Jainn now anyway?”

“I think Jainn is onfamily leave with a new baby. Tef waspreparing for a mission to Mars. He wasgoing to replace the Russian astronaut on the next shift change.”

Maril stood up from the bed and put on hisslippers and robe.

“Will you be ok, Sweetie?”

“Yeah, you go back to sleep, Love.”

5:00 AM was earlier than Maril’s normalalarm. This was going to be a long dayfor the burgeoning rocket scientist. Asa project manager over a team of 30 engineers working at the Jet PropulsionLaboratory adjacent to the CalTech campus, one of his biggest tests would occuron this day. The efforts of his teamwould be scoured by resident engineers and visiting authorities from Ames,Langley, and of course NASA headquarters.

Maril’s project was deemed critical to thesuccess of Star Transport. His job wasto develop the Star Shield. One of themajor headaches facing theorists on interstellar travel was how to protect thecraft from random space debris at speeds approaching the speed of light. Sincethe speed of light in a vacuum is a fixed value just under 300,000 kilometersper second, propulsion scientists referred to this value as warp speed—a termwhich was borrowed from the works of twentieth century science fiction. An object travelling at the speed of lightwould be considered to be travelling at Warp 1.0.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to considerwhat could happen to a spaceship that has a head-on collision with space debristraveling at this velocity. In fact,some of the mathematical modeling performed by Maril’s team demonstrated that aparticle of dust no bigger than one millimeter in diameter could havecatastrophic effects on a space vehicle if the impact was just right—or perhapsbetter said, just wrong. Computersimulations demonstrated that a head-on impact on the wing of the StarTransport design would not only impale the wing, but could saw it cleanoff. It didn’t take long for hiscomputer models to translate into nightmares that were coming with greaterfrequency. In these dreams, visions ofshuttle parts being ripped apart, disintegration of the entire vehicle, orsudden explosions provided more of an effect than a science fiction movie.

On thenight before the design review, Maril slept tolerably well, all thingsconsidered. But on his commute downInterstate 210, Maril’s thoughts were focused only on the details of the designreview. Did Physon get the remainder ofdata from the particle tunnel? Had heremembered to ask Kelcey to print the handouts for the presentation? Did the final simulations finish upovernight? His cell phone rang severaltimes on the way into the office with all sorts of issues he’d have to solve asquickly as possible.

Problem number one occurred at 6:03. “Maril, the simulations are still a couple ofhours away.”

“Ok, then let’s adjust the agenda accordingly.”

At 6:12, the following detail was announced. “The techs are telling me we may have aproblem running the demo in the wind tunnel.”

“Well, those things happen. Just set up a flat panel display in theauditorium, in case we need to do a computer demo instead.”

Perhaps most importantly was the call that heanswered at 6:27. “Don’t forget your tuxat the cleaner’s. The party is tomorrownight. You know I’ve been lookingforward to this all summer.”

“No problem, honey. It’s just around the corner from the office,so I’ll have Kelcey pick it up before her lunch break.”

Finishing up another call as he entered into hisoffice at 6:45, he thought to himself, “You know, maybe I should just get oneof those ear-implants.” His phone evenhad one of those new terabyte holographic drives where all of his favoritemusic and talk show broadcasts were stored.

Pocketing his cell phone, Kelcey handed him fiveother urgent messages that had come in that morning, briefed him on the agendaand catering for the design review, and presented him with a stack of handoutsof the presentation. “I really need togive this girl a raise,” Maril reminded himself for the umpteenth time as hesat down at his desk and made the final preparations for the review.

…

The auditorium was packed like never before. While Maril had met nearly all of thescientists present, he’d never seen so many of them at one time. He was surprised to see experts from nearlyevery other NASA site in the country. Johnson, Kennedy, Ames, Langley, Dryden, and Goddard were allrepresented. From Washington, there werepolicy makers and worse yet—finance committee members. He was not told that the finance committeewould be represented, but he also didn’t know that it was simply coincidentwith their visit to his father, Ballard Scoville, just the day before.

He was pleased to see that most of the 200-memberteam on site had come to aid or simply provide moral support to Maril’s teamthroughout the day. Electrical,mechanical, chemical, computer and aerospace engineers were all represented inan effort to convey to the bigwigs that the project was well staffed.

At precisely 8:00 AM, while most were stillenjoying the fruits, muffins, juices and coffee that was constantly replenishedon the counter in the back of the auditorium, Maril began hisintroduction.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for yourattendance here today. I recognize thedistance that many of you have traveled for this important review, and I amconfident that you will leave here at the end of the day with all of the datathat you will need to confirm that this project is making great progress andthat all of your questions will be answered satisfactorily.”

Maril took just a few minutes to bring his teamonto the stage, introduce each member by name, and list the various credentialswhich they bring to the team. Pausing toallow the team to return to their seats in the front row, Maril then used hisremote control to lower the lights, draw the curtains from the back of thestage, and bring the projector to life.

“As you are all aware, Star Transport is slatedfor an intra-stellar flight mission in the third quarter of next year. It is intended to journey towards the outerreaches of the solar system and will then race back to the center of our solarsystem, passing within just one tenth of an astronomical unit—or eight millionmiles—of the surface of the sun. TheStar Shield that my team is working on will be thoroughly tested in threephases of this flight.

“The first test comprises the asteroid belt,lying between Mars and Jupiter. We knowmuch about the asteroid belt, and the materials of which it is comprised. We believe that this will be an easy maneuverfor the shield to handle, because of the low distribution of asteroids. Our computer scientists have developed a setof algorithms that can quickly process magnetic field data in order to detect thepresence of an asteroid and steer clear of it. We believe that with these algorithms, Star Transport will be able tonavigate through the asteroid belt at Warp 0.68. That’s nearly 204 million meters per second.

“The second phase—the Kuiper Belt and OortCloud—proves to be much trickier. Whilewe have discovered much recently about the Oort Cloud, we still can onlytheorize about its density at its outer boundary. As such, we’re not convinced about the speedat which we’ll be able to approach solar systems with similar clouds. However, this is typically a trivial matter,because it is commonly agreed that the amount of time traversing through suchclouds is minimal compared to the time required to travel between starsystems. At this point, the conjectureis that the inner portion of the cloud—believed to be denser—will only bemaneuverable to Warp 0.25, whereas the outer portion of the cloud should allowthe vehicle to reach speeds of Warp 0.45. Calculations show that such speeds would allow us to traverse the cloudin about two to three months. Of course,we will continue to explore these assumptions as astronomers around the worldcontinue to map out the cloud. Obviously, we’d like to do better than to keep our fine astronauts tiedup in our own solar system for so long. We’d be much happier getting them through the cloud in just a few weeksat most.”

“Now, while the first two phases are involved inlarge body avoidance, the final test phase will prove out fine particle andheat tolerance. By traveling close tothe sun, the Shield will be prone to vast quantities of high speed gases anddust emanating from the sun. It willalso test its ability to withstand the higher temperatures within thisregion. To make the test even moreproblematic, Star Transport is expected to approach the sun at a speed of Warp0.75. The speed of the craft, coupledwith the speed of the solar particles will accurately simulate the effects onthe Shield of particles approaching speeds that, for all intents and purposes,would be the same as traveling at the speed of light.”

At this last comment, several of the visitorsinched forward on their seats in suspenseful recognition of the meaning ofMaril’s words. If such a test couldprove successful, then the more perplexing problems of Warp Speed travel wouldbe solved. Both large object avoidanceand small particle tolerance could be checked off of the list for interstellartravel. For some, the realization thatsuch a test was literally just around the corner gave them chills.

…

While a litany of design reviews were heldthroughout the day, none were more important or more impressive than the onedemonstrated in the the particle tunnel. There analysts could see the impact of small high-speed particles on theshield. Maril was on hand personally, ashe felt that this was the most critical aspect of his part of the project: to make sure that the vehicle and astronautswere adequately protected from unavoidable high-speed impacts.

“Gentlemen,” began Maril confidently. “I’d liketo walk you down a timeline of our efforts on the Star Shield project heretoday. First, if I can direct yourattention to the video monitors, we’ll demonstrate our early materialsexperiments, where we studied the effects of high-particle impact on a flat,square piece of material three millimeters thick.”

Maril then demonstrated a parade of materials,where he placed no fewer than twenty different three-millimeter thick sheetsinto the particle tunnel and revealed the effect. He showed the frustrations that wereencountered when they marched through sheet after sheet that didn’t make thegrade. One was too susceptible topenetration. Another was simply tooheavy to measure up to the vehicle specifications. Other materials were too brittle, notmalleable enough, more susceptible to radiation, or had lower melting points.

“Now, if I can draw your attention one last timeto the video monitors,” announced Maril. Everyone turned their heads away from the speaker and back to the videodisplay. Maril was able to convey that aparticular metal hybrid composite was able to deflect all particles up to fivemillimeters in diameter at speeds of Warp 0.3—the maximum speed the technologyallowed at the time, even though the sheet itself was only three millimetersthick.

“Gentlemen, I think the results speak forthemselves. In this ultra-lightweightcomposite material, we have a very durable material to use as the outer skin ofour Shield.”

“Mr. Scoville,” called out a reviewer formally,“this experiment only convinces me that we will be safe at Warp 0.3. How can we be sure that this material willwork up to Warp 1.0?”

“Excellent question.” Maril was prepared for this. “What you are seeing is the effect on a flatsheet, where particles are allowed to strike the surface at precisely ninetydegrees. As reviewers are gathering inthe wind tunnel presently, my team is demonstrating to them the novelaerodynamic shape of the shield, which will guarantee that no particle strikeany part of the shield at an angle greater than sixty degrees. Our calculations prove that this would equateto a particle tunnel speed-up factor of 2.5.” “But that’s still not goodenough, Mr. Scoville,” scowled the critic. “If we only need the vehicle to travel at Warp 0.75 that would befine. But the specification is clear. Warp 1.0”

“Yes, indeed,” Maril did his best not to getirritated by the pessimism of his visitor. Besides, these were the types of questions that needed to be asked inorder to replace any holes in critical assumptions which could jeopardize theproject or the mission. “Keep in mindthat this is just the skin. We also haveshield impact response sensing software that will ensure that we prevent damageto the shield or vehicle under high-impact events. For more than 99.99% of the time, the vehiclewill be able to travel at Warp 1.0. However, when traveling through high-dust regions, such as the KuiperBelt or Oort Clouds, the drive will be reduced sufficiently in these lessfrequent scenarios.”

Maril had already put the arguments of thereviewer to rest, but added one more detail to ensure that any doubts beeliminated in full. “For those nastierspace objects that are in the gray area—for example, anything that may belarger than a pea, and smaller than a beach ball—these cannot be detected withthe avoidance software, these will be pulverized by the electronicdisintegration mechanism layer which is placed just underneath the skin. These electronic pulses will radiate throughthe skin and break up these types of objects before they reach the skin. Our simulations show that at Warp 1.0, suchdisintegration will sufficiently break down these objects before they reach adistance of ten centimeters from the shield.”

Question after question, Maril did all that hecould to convince the reviewers that this most critical piece of the puzzle wasready for prime time. Now, he justneeded to convince his subconscience in order to avoid all of those annoyingnightmares he was having.

…

Ya Ming was a young aerospace engineer taking onher first responsibility as a team lead. Maril Scoville was impressed with the CalTech graduate turned JPLemployee when he met her eight years earlier. He had been impressed enough with her work that he invited her on theStar Shield team as a team contributor. When the shield design lead left his post with NASA for a corporateengineering position, Maril felt that Ming was a perfect fit for the job. Had he seen her efforts during the windtunnel portion of the design review, he would’ve been confirmed in hispromotion of her.

“NASA fellows,” she began, “I thank you for yourpresence here in the wind tunnel today. As I make my presentation to you, please feel free to interrupt to askany questions that you may have.”

Ming appeared confident enough in front of thepanel of reviewers, but inside she was quite nervous about her first majordesign review presentation. She didn’tknow if she was more nervous about the presence of all of the senior visitingauthorities, or whether it was the fact that the director of JPL, Dr. Rawson Cornell,was there as well. Maril thought that itwould be useful for Cornell to attend, in case Ming needed any help or supportduring the review.

Ming continued, “Before we fire up thedemonstration in the wind tunnel, I would like to begin with a brief presentation.” Ming gestured to a projector screen, whereher computer presentation was already queued up.

“On this first slide,” she noted, “you’ll see thecone-like shape of the Star Shield. Wehave taken measures to minimize the angle of approach of particles impinging onthe shield. The design is such that 90%of particles will approach the shield at an angle less than 23.5%. Computer models show that most particles of reasonablesize will glance off of the shield without harm at this sharp angle.”

A hand raised among the crowd. Ming acknowledged the visiting reviewer,“Yes, Mr. Callahan. You have aquestion.”

“While it may be good that most of the particleswill deflect, it seems to me like it would only take one particle approachingat the worst case condition to impale the shield, and perhaps the vehicle,”expressed Callahan.

“If you were to take cross sections of theshield,” Ming answered quickly, “you will notice that the cone is perfectlycircular until you get ten centimeters from the nose of the shield. At that point, the circular cross sectionsbegin to slowly morph into octagons, which is calculated to reduce the roundingeffect at the tip of the cone. Continuedown and these octagons will get smaller and smaller until about three centimeterswhere the shape of the octagon becomes irregular. In this region, you will notice that the nosebegins to point slightly downward until it comes to a point. That point actually is bent three degreesbelow the directional axis of the vehicle. In order to get a direct ninety degree impact of a particle on theshield, it would need to approach the vehicle at three degrees from below. While the vehicle is traveling atsufficiently high speeds, it is impractical for any object to impact the shieldat zero degrees. In fact, the vastmajority of particles will impact at angles well below fifty-five degrees.”

Satisfied with the answer, Callahan gestured toMing to continue with her presentation.

Ming clicked on her presentation controller toadvance the presentation. “On thisslide, I show the layers of the shield. The skin consists of a three millimeter single-molded sheet of a highlyspecialized metal-matrix composite material. It is extremely light and very impervious to high-speed particle impact. It is molded into a single sheet to avoid anyseams which might cause degradation in performance.

“The second layer of the shield consists of atwo-dimensional array of impact sensors. The sensors relay the amount of pressure on the shield to the main guidancecomputer system. There are over twelvemillion microscopic semiconducting sensors in the array, placed in immediateproximity in order to assess not only the force of impact but also the size ofthe particles in question. The computercalculates the size by assessing the simultaneous force of impact onneighboring sensors. The larger theobject is, the more sensors that will transmit a simultaneous reading to thecomputer. Size and force together arethe two key components which dictate the potential damage to the shield.”

Ming paused and looked around for questions, butshe had apparently described the second layer sufficiently for the reviewers tocomprehend the usage of the second layer.

“The third layer consists of electronic pulsegenerators, or EPGs which can pulverize larger particles into smaller ones justprior to impact. For the most part, thevehicle will prefer to decelerate in areas of higher density debris. However, some objects will be too large tosafely deflect but too small to avoid. In these instances, the vehicle will first decelerate to an acceptablespeed and will engage the EPGs. Thesecan turn a basketball-sized particle into multiple golf-ball sized particles assoon as it approaches within twelve centimeters of the shield, even while thevehicle is traveling at Warp 0.5.

“Miss Ming,” interrupted another reviewer. “How long can the vehicle sustain the amountof energy required to engage the EPGs, and how is that energy restored? I trust we will not be able to place interstellargas stations along the route, right?”

Ming chuckled respectfully and answered, “At Warp0.5, we expect to be able to navigate through dust fields as large as 500astronomical units. We expect theseevents to be rare, compared to the asteroid fields that the shield willcompletely avoid impacts altogether. Inmost galaxies, dust has coalesced to form asteroids. Only in very new galaxies, will the vehiclehave to contend with large quantities of dust. The most typical use of the EPGs will be while navigating through chunksof ice scattered behind the tail of a comet. However, these will only cause the EPGs to be turned on for a very shortperiod of time.

“I am afraid that I am not able to answer yoursecond question, since that comes from the Star Energy team, who is handlingthe energy generation and consumption requirements for the vehicle. We were given a specification from the teamthat the EPGs must consume no more than 100 kilowatts of power in a singleburst. From this, we calculated thenumbers I provided before. That is, 500astronomical units at Warp 0.5.”

“If there are no further questions…” There werenone. “I would now like to demonstratethe shield in the wind tunnel.”

The team was able to note the deflection of windacross the shield. They paidparticularly close attention to the effects of the wind at the tip as well asalong the flat octagon-shaped portion of the shield. They briefly examined the effect along thecurved portion as well.

One reviewer asked if an EPG demonstration couldbe provided, and Ming was able to oblige by leading the party into anelectronics lab. She took two three-footsquare metal screens and placed them upright in front of a small canon-likedevice. She took a couple of averagelooking rocks each about five inches in diameter and loaded them one at a timeinto the canon. The first one was fireddirectly into the metal screen with the EPGs disengaged. The screen was completely impaled by the rockas was evidenced by the five-inch hole in the middle of it. Ming then turned on the EPGs, which causedthe shield to dance with blue glowing pulses of electricity. The second rock was fired into the newscreen. The effects were vastlydifferent. Several gasps of air and acouple of high-pitched whistles convinced Ming that her party wasimpressed. To finalize the effect, Mingtook the screen and showed them the profile, where there were several dents inthe screen, none of which were larger than about five millimeters. Then she showed them the floor below thescreen where a collection of fine dust had accumulated from the disintegrationof the rock.

“Miss Ming,” announced a senior reviewer, “itappears to me that your team has done a magnificent job in your research anddevelopment. Congratulations on a job well done, and keep up the fine work.”

Ming bowed graciously. Words nearly escaped her, until she was ableto fumble out an emotional acceptance of the praise. “Thank you, Dr. Janos. I am glad to have been able to demonstrateour work here today.”

…

At 8:45pm, Maril collapsed into the leather seatin his office. In the quiet of hisoffice, the only sound he could hear was a dull ringing in his ears. After introductions, design reviews, anddebriefing sessions, Maril found himself alone for the first time since walkinginto his office earlier that morning. Had it really been just that morning? It felt so much longer than that.

Heaving a deep breath of air and finishing off abottle of water that sat on his desk, Maril collected his computer bag, andstarted to walk out of the office. Hepaused as he noticed a freshly pressed tuxedo bag on a hanger behind thedoor. He smiled and reminded himself outloud, “I really do need to give that girl a raise.”