Fundamental Force Episode One Page 6

  He broke into a sweat, but did not let go of the handrail. These machines would break his neck in an instant no matter how brave he was, although he wasn’t feeling very brave now. He was standing face to face with his phobia, but he knew that if he gave way to it now, he would not only have to live with it for the rest of his life, but it would make him unemployable in the sort of work he did.

  He coughed briefly. Wetting his dry lips, he took a deep breath.

  “3V9G4V 53BNX4 3GS57S 3GGS45 G563F4 N29GS3 4BD8S5 T74NCN V234CC”

  The robot moved its body back, as if it had lost all interest.

  It took Zach some effort to make himself sit in the only seat in the van, facing these steel monsters with their heavy weapons. Compared with their large-caliber barrels, the miniature pistol in his own pocket was like a child’s toy.

  His feet touched something under the seat. There was a bag on the floor. Inside was a pulse attack rifle with a sawn-off barrel and several spare battery cartridges. He had seen such weapons before, but had never held one in his hands. It was one of the latest models too. Zach gripped the handle firmly, allowing its built-in scanner to read and record his DNA.

  The driverless minivan had been tearing along the motorway for four hours now. The only thought filling Zach’s head was how to explain to the vehicle that he needed to take a leak. It was cramped inside the van and if he had to do it right here, he couldn’t avoid splashing the robots. He knew they were only machines and that they were there to protect him, but he was not comfortable with the idea of pissing on two robots armed to the teeth. Not comfortable at all. He would just have to wait. Goddamn it, if he had to travel as far as this, they might have provided a ship!

  Without slowing down, the minivan suddenly turned off the motorway and continued on a dirt road, bouncing over the hummocks. Zach clung on tight to the seat handles to avoid hitting his head on the roof. With each hummock, the moment when he would be forced to relieve himself drew closer. He could already sense his bladder’s pulse quite clearly. That lousy new-fangled gnat’s-piss...

  The minivan slowed down. The road started going downhill and grass could be heard brushing against the body. They turned off the dirt track and continued across grass. He could only hope that the wheels of the overloaded minivan would not get stuck in the rough ground. As it was, he was being flung first one way, then the other, but the electronic brain cleverly compensated for the loss of control and instantly corrected its errors.

  The road suddenly started going steeply uphill. The minivan’s electric motors roared loudly, barely able to cope with the load on them. It seemed that the two robots weighed more than a vanload of people. After another turn, the vehicle’s front end dropped and it was going downhill again.

  The autopilot repeatedly applied the brakes. Several times it seemed to Zack that they would overturn, but the program knew what it was about. Unlike a human driver, it knew exactly the wheel braking coefficient, the height and location of the center of gravity and the road’s angle of inclination. Its precise knowledge of the boundary characteristics enabled it to drive the van to the limit of its capabilities.

  The wheels locked completely and the vehicle skidded to a halt, leaning slightly to the right. They had reached their final destination. Zach did not know why they were there and the holographic cube was in no hurry to explain. It simply showed a new code, even longer than the last one.

  Zach opened the sliding door and looked around. They had driven into some sort of ravine. A little way off he could see the entrance to a cave surrounded by some greenery. He released his safety belt and slung the pulse gun over his shoulder.

  As soon as he had jumped out of the vehicle, his shoes sank into thick grass. It seemed that the people who had prepared this latest package for him had no experience of conspiracy, since there were bits of garbage here and there. Even in the back of beyond, as they were here, garbage should not be scattered around a secret hideaway. It could attract the attention of passers-by on the road.

  He approached the cave cautiously, checking every step. There could be unpleasant surprises in the grass.

  Suddenly, several silhouettes appeared above the entrance. Zach raised his head and saw a long gun barrel aimed at him.

  “Hey, drop the rod!”

  9

  For space romantics like Steve and Clive, the waiting hall of the spaceport at the Lunar Base was a real paradise, an amusement park. As soon as the Sun fell below the horizon and the blinds to protect those inside the glass dome from the burning light were drawn back, the dark expanse of space spread out overhead, with all the shining lights of the stars embedded in it.

  Since the Moon had no atmosphere, after sunset, when the blinding light reflected from the ground faded to nothing, the stars shone unbelievably brightly, just as in open space itself. You had to hand it to the architects of this waiting hall. Realizing what natural beauty was to be found in the Moon’s night sky, they decided to make the dome of transparent glass and took advantage of the fact that the low force of gravity enabled them to build lightweight structures of airy appearance and enormous size.

  In addition to this, the hall’s lighting during the lunar night was localized and illuminated only small local areas, making them light enough to function comfortably without diminishing the enchantment of the night sky.

  Steve and Clive sat with their heads pointed skywards, admiring the limitless depths of space opened up before them. If you looked carefully, you could see scratch marks here and there from micrometeorites. These could reach the surface of the Moon undiminished because there was no protective cushion of atmosphere, so they constantly bombarded the dome, leaving tiny scratches. Over time, its external surface acquired a matt appearance. To prevent such a minor matter spoiling the view of the sky for those waiting in the hall, special robots crawled over the dome like snails. Unceasingly, day and night, they worked on regenerating the surface scratched by space dust and tiny meteorites by applying a fine layer of molten glass to it, which cooled rapidly in the vacuum, and then polishing it. Wherever they passed, the dome became ideally transparent again.

  Engrossed in the view, they failed to notice the approach of a man with a slim black moustache, the kind that had been fashionable on Earth a good twenty years earlier, but, judging from the appearance of the Lunar Base’s male population, had only just become popular there.

  “Good day, gentlemen.”

  Steve jumped up from his seat, higher than he had intended due to the lower gravity. The man with the moustache waited calmly for him to come down again. The comedy of the situation was made greater by his dispassionate face.

  “You’ll soon get used to the low gravity,” he reassured Steve, who was now down on the ground again. “Dr. Gray, head of the SM project. Follow me, please.”

  Gray had little to say and Steve was too caught up in the surrounding spectacle to try to make conversation. Clive, on the other hand, was simply glad not to be bothered with idle chat. They descended from the waiting hall into a long well-lit tunnel. Unlike on Earth, all the walls on the Moon were of a light material the color of lunar soil. There was no sign of boring grey concrete marked by streaks of water or fungus and this was not surprising. Water in liquid form was a rarity on the Moon and was not to be found in the form of seas or oceans, either surface or subterranean. Deep wells had to be dug for it, like those dug on Earth hundreds of years ago for coal mining. Industrial robots mined ice from them, which could then be used to produce drinking and industrial water. The cost of water on the Moon was too high to waste it by losses through leaky pipes.

  A moving walkway quickly brought them out of the tunnel and back under the transparent dome with its view of open space. They were higher up now, having left the waiting hall behind in a small crater. From here they could see most of the Lunar Base: service buildings, gas holders, lubricant stores, thermonuclear power stations, communication antennae and telescopes.

  “Why are the power stations switched off
?” asked Clive.

  “The reactors are on standby for emergencies, but the electricity we use comes from the sphere. There is no sense in us generating more, since we have so much free energy...”

  Something flashed brightly above them, imparting a bright bluish light to everything around, like a night-time flash of lightning. Steve and Clive looked anxiously towards the flare. A thunderstorm on the Moon?

  “That’s the meteorite protection,” explained Gray. “We are now passing through the tail of a comet; many small meteorites are falling on the base.”

  “The Perseids,” Clive muttered to himself.

  Gray turned his face towards them without slackening pace.

  “You are astrophysicists, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” replied Steve.

  “It shows. Yes, that’s what they are. The small ones are no danger, they just make more work for the robots on the dome, but those larger than 100 micrometers have to be driven off by a laser beam. You are a little late. This morning there was quite a show, the lasers intercepted several of them per minute. My head’s beginning to throb from all the flares. This way...”

  A spacious elevator with a matt metal finish took them up rapidly and almost silently.

  “Hang onto the handrail or your head will fly up and hit the ceiling,” Gray warned them and gestured upwards at several large marks on the ceiling.

  “Newbies are always getting bumps on the head, no matter how many times you warn them. Someone is going to break their neck one of these days.”

  Steve and Clive obediently grabbed the handrails painted in red and yellow stripes that ran around the elevator wall. When the elevator began braking, they really were pulled upwards. It felt strange to be pulled towards the ceiling.

  The elevator stopped. They were in the upper part of some sort of tower. Gray left the elevator and approached a transparent wall. From here, the whole base was laid out before them. He pointed to dark lines beginning next to a massive, squat, windowless building and running like gigantic iron rails into the distance and beyond the horizon itself.

  “Here we have the first cascade of the SM inductors,” said Gray in an unemotional tone, pointing towards the rails. “Actually there is nothing new here, if you are already acquainted with the technology of remote manipulation. Until now we did not have enough energy to conduct such experiments. Once the sphere was built, this problem disappeared, so we started on what you might call untargeted applications of the device. It proved not to be particularly difficult. We only had to learn how to keep the wave stable...”

  “Just a minute,” interrupted Clive. “Let’s keep it in order.”

  Gray smiled.

  “Order is most important in what we do, you won’t get anywhere without it. Remote manipulation technology, as we know from the experiment with Mercury, bends space-time, creating a gravity hole. The same thing happens of its own accord close to massive bodies. That is how our nature creates gravitational attraction.

  “In the past few years, we have studied many different ideas of what else could be done with this technology. It turned out that the most interesting thing was not simply to create a local gravity hole, but to generate a series of holes in space-time, forming something like a wave.

  “Along the vector of propagation of the wave, local regions of compression and expansion formed, resulting in gaps in space-time. If we place an object in one of these gaps, that is to say outside space-time, the wave will pick it up and carry it along with it. The most interesting thing is that the displacement of the object will take place at phase velocity.”

  “If the wave carries an object which has fallen out of space-time along with it, then it stays in place the whole time in its system of coordinates, doesn’t it?” asked Clive.

  “Absolutely right. Furthermore, it must remain stationary relative to the phases of the wave, otherwise it will leave the zone being carried along and simply fall out somewhere in some indeterminate place and not necessarily along the vector of the wave.”

  “So the object carried by the wave will stand still in its own system of coordinates, but move at phase velocity in ours. Is that so?”

  “That’s how it is.”

  “But for a wave to carry an object somewhere, it must reach there itself. How can you propagate a wave for 20 light years? It would have to travel faster than the speed of light!”

  “Yes, but that isn’t a problem.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. The rate of propagation of a wave within space-time is limited to the speed of light, but this restriction does not apply to space-time itself. It can be compressed and expanded more rapidly. I imagine you have heard of the inflation phase of the expansion of the Universe after the Big Bang. For a certain time interval, the Universe grew at faster-than-light speed.”

  “And how fast will such a wave travel?”

  “We don’t yet know for sure. In the experiments, it was considerably faster than the speed of light, but we did not succeed in measuring to what extent. It’s quite possible that the value is infinite.”

  “So we can travel to any point in the Universe in any time interval?”

  “In theory, perhaps. But in practice, the range is limited by the applied energy. Now that we can supply the plant with energies comparable to the radiant energy of an entire star, we can induce a wave for dozens of light years. This is enough to reach Gliese and some way further. We cannot yet manage the more remote distances.”

  “But how do you know your machine is capable of getting there? You’d have to throw out a transmitter to confirm its position. And its signals in turn would only propagate at the speed of light. They would take twenty years to return from the Gliese system.”

  “These are calculated figures.”

  “Calculated? You mean they haven’t been confirmed experimentally?”

  “Only short jump distances have been confirmed experimentally. We threw beacons out for several light hours, beyond the orbits of the planets. The precise measurements of jump distance and energy consumed corresponded to the calculated figures, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Clive and Steve looked at each other.

  “Really?” Clive muttered to himself.

  “But how do we get back? A wave always moves away from the radiation source, doesn’t it?” asked Steve.

  “Not quite. As I said, the wave will carry you at phase velocity. The direction of motion will also coincide with that of the phase, which means it’s simply a question of polarity. We can send a phase in any direction.

  “For your return, we will only have to switch the polarity to create phase motion in the opposite direction. Then, from the point of view of the Gliese system, you will be moving towards the Solar System, not away from it.”

  “I hope that this at least has been checked in practice?”

  Gray laughed.

  “You can rest assured that we have checked that in practice.”

  10

  Under the sights of the people above, Zach obediently took the automatic rifle sling off his shoulder and laid the weapon down. At once, the tall bushes at the side rustled and two armed men appeared. One of them signaled to Zach to move away from the gun on the ground. He did so, taking a few steps back. Roots and bits of garbage crackled underfoot. While one of the two kept a gun trained on him, the other went up to the pulse rifle and picked it up, whistling.

  “Where did you get a gun like this, feller?”

  Zach slowly lowered his arms.

  “Keep your hands up!” ordered the other one.

  “What if I don’t?”

  The two looked at each other. The one holding the pulse gun raised it, put the butt against his shoulder and aimed it at Zach. Grinning at the imperturbability of his target, he pressed the trigger. Instead of the shot, there was only a click and, at the same time, hydraulic muscles were heard working in the minivan.

  The vehicle leaned heavily to one side and, an instant later, the two inf
antry robots stepped out one after the other. The heavy tread of the steel soldiers was rapid and precise. Relieved of its heavy burden, the minivan’s springs straightened out and it sprang back up with a ringing noise.

  There was swearing from above and the heads and long barrel instantly disappeared. The two down below froze in horror and immediately dropped their guns to the floor, shivering.

  Zach raised his hand to face level with his fingers spread out, then closed them into a fist and pointed to the two on the ground. The electronic brains of the robots wasted no time in querying the order. An instant shower of sparks came from the barrels of the rifles attached to their shoulders as tracer bullets were fired from them. The two, who now had their hands up, fell at the same time as the two shots were heard, one on top of the other.

  Zach’s lips parted in a smile. He unhurriedly approached the fallen enemy and picked up the pulse gun from where it lay in the grass. There was a bright red diode shining in the handle, slowly pulsating in brightness. He gripped the handle firmly. The red light was replaced by a green one, which winked and went out. The gun had sensed the correct DNA and was ready to fire again.

  Zach opened his flies. At last. He had been on the point of wetting himself. Relieved, he took out his tablet and made a sign to one of the robots to relay to him the image from its cameras. A rectangular picture appeared on the screen. It was already getting dark outside, but the image on the tablet, amplified by large top-class optical lenses, looked as if it had been taken in broad daylight with the Sun lighting the area well. Even the shadows, which had almost disappeared, were clearly distinguishable on the tablet.

  He pointed up to where the heads of those aiming at him had been. One of the robots squatted down slightly before making a six-meter jump. From the jets around its hips, a barely noticeable flame flared briefly, giving him further impetus. Its metal feet came down heavily on the sandy arch above the entrance, causing an avalanche of small stones.