Fundamental Force Episode One Read online

  “Let me pass please, excuse me, sorry,” he kept on repeating, stepping over the many legs, arms and satchels of those sitting on the floor. The school pupils shyly moved out of the way to let him through. There was only a difference of a few years between them and the students, but what a difference in behavior... If he’d tried to force his way so unceremoniously into a hall full of students, he would have been eaten alive!

  Clive suddenly stopped speaking when he noticed the annoying motion being caused by Steve as he pressed forward through the tangled undergrowth of people’s bodies. Steve waved to Clive in greeting. The irritated expression on Clive’s face was instantly replaced by one of pleasant surprise. He nodded in reply, then turned back to his presentation display on an enormous screen.

  “Here on Earth, the speed of light may seem incredibly fast, even instantaneous, but in space, everything is quite different. Even the distances within our own star system, however negligible they may be on the scale of the Universe, are so great that photons of light need minutes and even hours to traverse them...”

  Steve moved on without stopping, getting closer to the stage, half-listening to Clive’s speech as he went. Today, his voice sounded strange in the auditorium somehow, unusual. For him, an assistant professor in a complex technical discipline, this was quite remarkable. Yes, the appearance of the aliens had meant that their specialty was the one most in demand in the entire university, but the difficult technical subject matter unceremoniously separated the true space romantics from those simply following the current fashion, who could barely last one semester. The lecture halls, packed to bursting at the beginning of the year, rapidly thinned out after the first exams.

  “The finite speed of light gives us astrophysicists more trouble than anything else,” continued Clive. “It is something which restricts our frontier of knowledge in the Universe. When we turn our telescope lenses to the limitless expanses of space, we catch the light of remote stars and galaxies. That is how we learn about the Universe. Unfortunately, the only light available for observation is that which has had time to reach our Solar System.

  “As you know, our Universe was formed fourteen billion years ago. Over this period only the light from those galaxies at a distance of not more than fourteen billion light years has had time to reach us. It is this distance which is the horizon of our knowledge in the limitless sea of stars.”

  Steve eventually stopped, deciding he was now sufficiently close to the podium. With his back resting against the nearest wall, he began paying more attention to what Clive was saying as he waited for the event to end. They usually ended at eight, so he could wait fifteen minutes, even in this uncomfortable position.

  Clive stopped talking and pointed to somewhere in the hall where a hand had gone up requesting permission to speak.

  “But the aliens could travel faster than the speed of light, couldn’t they?”

  Clive, who could not abide questions about the aliens, threw a quick glance at Steve. Clive was just like a colleague of theirs who had been born in Transylvania and hated questions about vampires. But the situation obliged him to explain patiently.

  “During our observations, they moved at sub-light speed. They never once exceeded the speed of light.”

  “Even so, they were able to move from one star to another through their portals. Is that not exceeding the speed of light?”

  “In order to understand the concept of the finite speed of light, we must go into the details. Our everyday experience tells us that speed cannot be finite and physicists long accepted this falsely obvious concept, taking it as axiomatic. To their dismay, the better our instruments became, the more precise our experiments were and the more obvious it was that there was something wrong with their idea of speed. It took many centuries for scientists to finally resolve this riddle.

  “As I said earlier, the maximum speed of transmission of a signal in our space-time is the speed of light in a vacuum. However cunning you are, whatever clever tricks you think up, you cannot overcome this barrier. At least as far as accelerating any object whose mass at a state of rest is greater than zero.

  “And suddenly we are visited by aliens who have travelled from a neighboring star system at a distance of hundreds of light years from us in a matter of minutes. Does this not mean that by doing so, they have refuted the Theory of Relativity, which postulates that speed is finite? Does this fact not contradict what I said earlier?

  “Not in the least. Not at any moment in time did the aliens travel faster than light. They simply shortened their route by going into hyperspace. An analogy with a labyrinth is probably appropriate here: if you travel along the corridors from entry to exit, you will travel a long way. A kilometer, say. But if you climb into a bulldozer and smash your way through the walls, your route will be drastically shortened.

  “And then you reach the exit from the labyrinth. What was the average speed of the bulldozer? To answer that question, you need to know the distance travelled. So what distance do you take in this case as a point of reference? If you take the length of the labyrinth corridor, your bulldozer will prove to have travelled at the speed of a sports car, which is impossible. This means that your speed from point A to point B depends not only on the speed of your vehicle, but also on the method selected to cover that distance.

  “It’s the same with the aliens. With the aid of their portals, they found a way to shorten the route, but their ships never at any time exceeded the speed of light.

  “To our great regret, after the event known as ‘the Andromeda incident’, the existence of such portals is no longer possible.”

  “And apart from their portals, is there no other possibility?”

  “In theory there are many possibilities, but until they are built and tested, it is not clear which of them are practical and which are not.”

  “Could you give examples?”

  Clive hesitated slightly, fiddling with a pencil.

  “I’m not a fan of science fantasies, I don’t like listening to them or telling them...”

  “But all the same?”

  “The outcome of the Andromeda incident was the reconfiguration of the fundamental constants of our Universe. Whether it affects the entire Universe or only part of it, we do not know. But the fact is that the parameters have been changed in such a way that the portals used by the aliens to jump from our galaxy to another have become impossible.

  “Today, now that a few years have passed, we have been able to look at the reconfiguration more thoroughly, and we have come to the conclusion that these changes were not spontaneous, but were specifically targeted at the destruction of the portals. Portals of a particular type, those the aliens used. This enables us to hope that not all the possibilities are now closed off, but only the one used by the aliens.”

  “So there is the possibility of faster-than-light travel?”

  “In science, anything remains possible until proven otherwise. So such travel remains theoretically possible. From the point of view of our present-day knowledge in the field of physics, it cannot be ruled out, though we don’t actually know a method of doing it.”

  “Has our study of the aliens’ technology advanced us in any way, as regards creating such methods?”

  “We haven’t actually had much chance to study their transport technology. We never flew right up to their ship, so we had no opportunity of looking inside, of studying the materials, the engines... So the aliens’ technology has not given us any knowledge new in principle. But at least they have pointed to a lot of interesting ideas, which I hope will bear fruit in the future.

  “Furthermore, let us not forget the sphere, which is now supplying us with virtually unlimited energy. This broadens our opportunities considerably, because it reduces costs in fields of high energy consumption and gives us far more energy for research needs.

  “I understand your interest in questions connected with our visitors from another planet, but I would like to return to astrophysics.”
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  “So do we now know that there is life in other galaxies?”

  “Other galaxies? We know for certain that in our galaxy alone, a minimum of two intelligent races exist. Our own, and that of those who visited us. And from what the aliens told us, though unfortunately we have no way of checking it yet, there are many others too.

  “In scientific circles, after the appearance of the aliens, we were almost sure that life exists in other galaxies even before the Andromeda incident. The incident simply showed that we were right in our assessment.”

  Clive glanced at his watch.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for finding the time to visit this event and I hope that most of you decide to become astrophysicists. I wish you a very good evening.”

  The silence was instantly broken by a roar. The crowd split up as it rushed to different exits and Steve waited patiently until the hall was empty. When the aisles were free again, he went up to Clive.

  “Shelby hasn’t asked you in for a chat, has he?” asked Steve, sitting on the edge of a nearby table.

  “No, why?”

  “I’ve just come from him. He was asking if I had any desire to join the expedition.”

  “You? But the team hasn’t been chosen yet, has it? There are more than enough people who want to get as far away from our Solar System as they can, without you! What did you say?”

  “I refused to fly on a one-way ticket, naturally.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “But is wasn’t exactly a direct offer. Shelby was talking in riddles. It seems to me he knows something that others don’t.”

  “Anything is possible. Since the incident, he seems to have remained an advisor to the military on matters of interaction with other races.”

  “And he hasn’t discussed anything of the sort with you?”

  Clive thought it over for a second or two, then shook his head.

  “No. Not directly, at least. Maybe he hinted, but I’ve never been much good at understanding hints. If he wants something, let him say so straight out. But anyway, what did he hint to you?”

  “That the expedition might possibly not be one-way.”

  Clive finished putting his things in his briefcase, locked it, and stared at Steve in surprise.

  “You mean to say they’ve found a way?”

  “How else would it be possible to return?”

  Clive paused for thought again. He always took all questions literally. Steve clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Relax, it was a rhetorical question.”

  “Hang on a minute. Do you remember the Denebola photos?”

  “What about them?”

  “It was lined up with the Moon at the time and its light was strangely distorted somehow...”

  “The static? I remember... What about it?”

  “But was it? We were the ones who decided it was static. What if it was from the Moon where they are conducting the remote manipulation experiments?”

  “They warn us when they play with gravity.”

  “Exactly. But that static was very like what happens when they ‘play with gravity’, as you put it. They don’t tell us about everything...”

  4

  The main advantage of being president was that you never had to wait for anyone. The participants in the show had already taken their seats to wait for him. Beaming with a practiced smile, the president entered the hall, greeting the public and his opponents with a modest gesture.

  As LeRoy had suggested, they looked the way he wanted them to. Although Gates was still trying to appear in a good mood, continuously sipping cold soda water, McAllister was in quite a bad way. The buttoned collar of his shirt pressed tightly on his swollen neck and large beads of perspiration glistened on his broad forehead. His green shirt and tie emphasized his unhealthy appearance, creating the impression that his face had a greenish tint to it too. Yes, LeRoy knew his way around cunning plans...

  “Their brains will still be splashing about in the left-overs of their evening cocktails,” he had explained. “They’ll have trouble thinking straight. You’ll easily fool them. All you have to do is talk a lot and the cleverer you make it sound, the better. Drown them in floods of information. Their little grey cells won’t be able to cope with it all so quickly. Talk them to death!” he insisted.

  If there was one thing the president could do better than anyone else, it was to talk without stopping. And he was in the mood for chattering today. The disheveled appearance of his long-standing critics gave him added energy. Just wait, you jerks. You’ll get your comeuppance for all the crap you’ve thrown at me in the last few months and years. It was shaping up to be an enjoyable evening.

  “Where should I start with my criticisms?” said Gates, when he finally managed to get a word in edgeways. “Let’s assume that over the whole voyage, not one serious technical problem arises. So our flotilla steadily approaches the Gliese system and – surprise, surprise! There’s nobody there! Empty planets, not a living soul on them. No-one! Though maybe we’ll get lucky and find something there that will recoup costs equal to thirty-five percent of the world gross annual product! How can you be sure the game will be worth the candle? So far we don’t have a single scrap of scientific proof that life exists on the Gliese planets...”

  “Why shouldn’t it? The aliens themselves told us they’d colonized the Gliese system. What more proof do you need?”

  Gates laughed theatrically.

  “Mr. President, from a man of your level of intelligence, I would have expected a less naïve attitude to general statements. As a politician, you must know how little words are worth.”

  “The best criterion for assessing my capacity for accurately evaluating what has been said is the result. And if we look at the whole history of our dealings with the aliens – their first appearance and more particularly their second one, when they offered us this splendid project – I have always been right.

  “Believe me, I was surrounded by many very clever people who made some very solid arguments against the project of terraforming and building the sphere. I was faced with a great river of arguments for and against and my task was to weigh all these appropriately and take the right decision. I took it, and it was the correct one.

  “Thanks to my shrewdness – I’m not afraid of calling it that – we now possess the energy resources of a whole star! Five years ago we entered a new era. We became a different civilization, we reached a new level! The events of recent years will go down in history alongside the first space flight, the Moon landings and the colonization of Mars.”

  After a pause to catch his breath and wet his whistle with a mouthful of water, the president threw a glance at Gates, whose face showed he was thinking intently. He had clearly lost the thread of the conversation and was trying to find a reason to butt in with some scathing comment. But just as he had breathed in enough air to say something, the president put his glass back on the table in front of him and continued.

  “Returning to your objection... Up to the present moment, they have not deceived us in anything. Yes, they prefer to leave some things unsaid, as is more or less customary in politics, but they don’t lie.”

  “But why the great hurry, Mr. President? Perhaps it would be more sensible to wait for confirmation from the scientists that life exists in the Gliese system before rushing headlong into a venture with an unknown outcome?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Gates, but your inexperience in ruling a state is blatantly obvious. The outcome of projects on a strategic scale are never known in advance. That’s life, Mr. Gates. Even after confirmation from the scientists, the project will still be one with an unknown result.

  “But let us imagine for a moment that you are right and the Gliese system is uninhabited. Would that really be such a problem? Our scientists know for sure that it has at least one planet in the Goldilocks zone. If it is empty, we shall simply colonize it!”

  “That idea is likely to create a million new problems...”

 
“What problems do you have in mind, Mr. Gates?”

  “I don’t believe we are capable of colonizing a whole planet twenty light years away. For the spacecraft we have today, that distance would mean a voyage taking a century. Even if we could, technically, colonize such a star system, it would never belong to us. It would be an autonomous colony, created at the expense of our taxpayers, which would never be linked to Earth. It’s all costs and no income. Why, they could even declare war on us eventually!”

  “Perhaps you are not fully informed of our plans?”

  “Mr. President, you are always insinuating that only you have a broad enough view to assess the project properly, but this is not the case. Any right-minded person is quite capable of realizing that this is an extremely risky plan. It is a reckless venture, a crazy idea!

  “You have no right to finance such a venture from general taxation. I know quite enough about the project to tell you unhesitatingly that we are on the way to a fiasco... The project has already cost us 20% of gross world product and by the time it is completed, we can add another 15% to that. Mr. President, stop this madness before it is too late!”

  “Well, in that case, let me inform you, and Mr. McAllister, and all those watching us, that we have found a very elegant solution to the problem of the great distance. We have a technical means by which the travelling time between our systems will be reduced to just a few weeks.”

  “But, but... that’s... impossible!” babbled Gates after a brief hiatus. He fell silent, unable to find anything coherent to say in reply and looking almost pleadingly at McAllister in the hope of hearing some intelligible criticism from him. The president and the program host followed his glance.

  McAllister sat in his chair with his head on his chest. The green ring on his microphone lit up when it was switched on, but instead of his voice, the sound of quiet snoring carried across the studio. The president could hardly stop his face taking on a triumphant expression. He looked back offstage, where LeRoy, along with his two secretaries, was observing the discussion. Even from that distance, a wicked smile could be seen spreading across his face.