Proxima
From CleanPosts
PROXIMA
Proxima was one of the smallest stars known, only 130 times the mass of the planet Jupiter in the Sol system. Exiler emerged from the wormhole about 40 million kilometers in radial distance from Proxima, which looked smaller than half of the diameter of the sun from Earth. The red star gleamed with such feeble light that it almost did not dazzle the eyes to gaze upon it, and no discernible heat could be felt coming from it.
The Empire's observatory here, which was perhaps a thousand miles from the ID Grid, circled Proxima once every 144 days. Suriel noted the radio bea- con of the space station that closely accompanied the observatory and flagged that track for Barakiel's navigation panel.
Barakiel flipped the ship around in yaw to look back at the twin A and B components of Alpha Centauri, which lay close together but not so close that they merged into one bright blob. They were by far the brightest stars in the ship's sky, and third in brightness was Sol, only 4.22 light years away from here.
Proxima Centauri, so named because it was the closest star to Sol, was a very old M-class sun, so dim that any planet warm enough for water and life to exist would have to orbit in the star's very chronosphere, where tiny but steady drag effects would cause the planet to spiral in to its doom long before life evolved.
Any life that did manage to get a foothold before the end would face Proxi- ma's sudden random fits when it flared up to 230 percent of its normal brightness and heat. Sol only fluctuated by four percent.
Even before the ancient gravitational capture by Alpha Centauri A/B, Proxi- ma had been stripped, by passing stars, of every planet and possibly every asteroid and comet too. Binah had found none, but not from a failire to look. As far as anyone knew, Belial's expensive telescope, its attendant space station which had once been Binah's lab, and the nearby ID Grid were the only objects in orbit around Proxima.
What made the system useful for astronomy was its location. The telescope here and its twin at Palato provided a very, very long baseline for paral- lax measurements of nearby stars. By triangulation, the elusive data of stellar radial distance could be nailed down to incredible precision. But only the Emperor and the Imperial Astronomer knew the true significance of that research. Others only had a strong hunch.
The station was a 300-foot wide gray disk, a giant hockey puck with a hole drilled in it. The telescope itself was a sphere, a great silver eyeball 300 feet across as well. Two giant precision-machined flywheels (at right angles to cancel each other's reverse torque) provided the firm anchor against which the telescope turned to orient itself at a target star. Com- modore Lahatiel instructed Barakiel to approach the disk in a way that steered well clear of the sphere.
The way to dock with a spinning object was to hover first over its north or south "pole" and match rotation. When Barakiel made gentle contact with the station the ship looked like a tall Coke bottle surrounded by six short beer bottles, sitting on top of a garbage can lid.
The lander under the ship was with its head down facing straight into the station's central axial core. A flexible tube came out from the inner wall, did a 90 degree bend, and made a tight seal with the lander. Now the Exil- er's crew had their access way into the station.
Lady Lauviah was about forty, slight of build, with a dour oval face. Har white hair was drawn back into a bun, presenting the appearance of the stereotypical shrew. Sha reminded Lilith of the WDF's Bunners, of course, but no Gina allowed herself to reach forty before swapping bodies for a younger model.
On the station's huge portico, which was really the innermost and "topmost" of the stations fifteen levels wrapped around the central core, Lauviah received har son with icy formality. With the exception of Commodore La- hatiel, who knew har better, the crew of Exiler took Lady Lauviah to be a class A bitch.
But in har heart of hearts sha was very glad to see Marou after more than two years of absence. Sha simply did not find it appropriate to shower hym with maternal affection in front of the Exiler's crew. Thus sha had been trained. Lady Lauviah knew aristocrats must always bury their true feelings when it was time to put on a dog-and-pony show before their lessers.
When Marou hinted to hyz mother of the hardships hy endured the previous two months at the hands of the Iron Fist, it melted some of har self- maintained ice, but hy refused to elaborate about his ordeal until hy spoke to hyz father first.
The observatory's support personnel, and the support personnel for those support personnel, totaled only forty souls. Half of the forty served only Field-Marshal Ithuriel and his five surviving wives, an arrangement Baraki- el thought to be very inefficient, but there were certain traditions and perks associated with aristocracy which the Empire was loath to dispense with, and they were in fact strengthened anew recently during the reign of Azibeel.
No ships were permitted to pass near the actual telescope to prevent the instrument from being fouled by corrosive gas. Leaving three of his col- leagues at work aboard the telescope, Ithuriel crossed the silent five miles to the station alone in a "Buck Rogers" rocket pack, which was pro- pelled only by compressed nitrogen.
Seeing one of the Emperor's frigates parked over the stations north pole, which was his customary way in, Ithuriel came in by way of the south pole instead. Hand grips lining the inner core permitted hym to gently match movement with the spinning disk, which revolved once a minute.
"Hyz Lordship is arriving," hyz valet announced, and hy was joined by two other servants after the airlock processed the Imperial Astronomer through. Together they unpacked Ithuriel like cargo from his frosty vac-suit and set hym on his feet. Gravity here in the inner ring was very gentle, less than 1% of Earth. It was just short of being free fall. Indeed, it was hardly gravity at all, more like a tendency to drift to one side.
Hy paused for a moment to gather his wits about him. Ithuriel was only about sixty years old, but hy was beat down by having just logged thirty hours of observation time uninterrupted by sleep. When his servants removed his inner gloves hy smiled at hyz son and made a fatigued gesture of wel- come to the group of officers standing around hym on the portico. Then hy whispered something to Lady Lauviah and with an apologetic look hy turned to stumble into the family chambers in that full quadrant of the station which was designated as his manor.
"Hyz Lordship is quite exhausted," hyz wife told them, "and begs leave to delay any further greetings until after hy has drawn his bath, and after hy has caught up on his sleep. I shall have you notified when hy is ready to receive you. Please accept our hospitality in the meantime."
Marou retired to his own rooms, which had been kept in perfect order exact- ly as hy left them two years prior. Rooms were also given to the Commodore and to each of the officers after the Field-Marshal's valet had given them all a full tour of the facility. Exilers crew was grateful for the break. It meant a quiet nights sleep away from the ship, off the endless watch rotation, and separated from each other. The last was particularly refresh- ing.
The next morning the Field-Marshal received the travelers in his elegant Sitting Room, where a metal shield slid up on a window revealing red Proxi- ma and a whirling sea of stars.
"Sunrise in the third system," Ithuriel said as everyone took a place on a seat around him. "So it is that my son has deigned to spend his Spring Break at home after all."
"I've had quite an adventure, Papa."
"I can well imagine, son. It was during the visit of a supply ship last month that I first learned you were being held hostage on Xanthos. The Emperor was diligently inquiring as to the status of one of my lines of research here, the one you know very well. I passed a message back to him, through the agency of the supply ship, that I was on the cusp of a break- through, but I found it difficult to continue while worrying about your health and welfare on Xanthos."
"Azibeel the Emperor is dead, sir," Commodore Lahatiel said. "For the time being Belial remains just Belial. He is finding it difficult himself to reach Thammuz, the Emperor's son."
"That I did not know."
"As you can see, sir, Young Marou is well, thanks in no small part to the talents of the crew of Exiler which were put the test for the first time in the rescue of your son, but had I followed Belial's orders to the letter, I believe things would have turned out otherwise. I have those orders with me, if you would care to look, sir."
Ithuriel nodded, and Lahatiel slid the sheaf of documents over to him with- out further comment. Ithuriel was an intelligent man, he would be able to see through the surface content to get at Belial's hidden intent.
After reading the orders, Ithuriel said, "So number one, Belial did not put much stock in your crew's ability to retrieve young Marou safely alive, and number two, Belial held my research to be more important than Marou's life in any event."
"My interpretation of the orders exactly, sir," the Commodore said. "But the happy denouement of this whole affair, as your Lordship has discerned, is that we've delivered your son none the worse for wear, but perhaps a little wiser."
Marou then told hyz father all hy knew from his two months of captivity, punctuated by rough treatment, followed by the brief flurry of activity when Commodore Lahatiel arrived.
"And what of your studies at Danae?"
"They are quite finished, Papa. I need only to recreate and transmit my dissertation on Europan iceworms back to the campus on Xanthos, and they cannot fail to award my degree. If the Dean has a problem with me complet- ing my course in absentia I am confident that pressure from the mainstream media will prevail upon him. Otherwise, what would they say on the Grid? Imagine, me, the very son of the Imperial Astronomer denied my degree in the aftermath of my abduction and rescue, all laid to the account of a technicality."
"So you remain dead-set against taking over for me here?"
"Father-mine, I love you dearly, and I have always respected your work, but my only interest in astronomy is its utility in identifying candidate worlds for my true life's work, which I need not tell you again is exobiol- ogy. In fact, I should rather like to stay aboard the Exiler and get the first look at some of those candidate worlds." Marou glanced at Commodore Lahatiel hopefully.
Lahatiel shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid, master Marou, that you are ask- ing the impossible. Every one of my officers seated here has had your four years of college. Lieutenant Adnarel even had those four years of educa- tion compressed into only two years. But they have in addition to that some rather intense military training, and I myself hand-picked this crew. Their journey is about to begin in earnest."
Major Suriel said, "There is one thing you said just now, young master Mar- ou, that strikes me as a little odd. You said you wish to get the 'first look' at your candidate worlds for exobiological research. Surely there are no planets or large moons at Sol or Centauri which have not been visit- ed by someone by now."
Lahatiel said to Ithuriel, "Allow me, sir, to introduce Major Suriel, my ops boss."
Marou eyed Lahatiel then. "You didn't tell har, sir? None of them know?"
Lahatiel said, "I declined to tell them until they accepted their billet on my ship, and after that, there has been no time to explain why we have been so happily burning our bridges all along our way to Proxima. The discovery belongs entirely to Field-Marshal Ithuriel, so I will leave it to him to make the announcement."
Ithuriel said, "I'm afraid the toothpaste is already out of the tube, Com- modore. Marou will never have a family of his own under Belial's system, my wife Lauviah and I both insist that he never enter the armed forces, and it is not Marou's desire to serve as well. Naturally, his politics have gravitated to the Reformist side of the house, and his sympathies lie en- tirely with Chokhmah rather than Belial. It was to Ariel that Marou broke the news of my discovery here, and I suppose Ariel in turn told you, did sha not?"
"Yes sir," Lahatiel said, "but I am given to understand that the number of people and gods outside of the Proxima system who also know of your re- search can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and one of those fingers, Azibeel, has been snapped off."
"The Emperor knew I was very close to a breakthrough, but he did not real- ize how close, nor does Belial realize I have already made confirmation of the basic theory with an unmanned probe. I held that information back to see what the Emperor could do about freeing my son. Now I have my son safely back home, but only in spite of Belial's wishes not as a direct re- sult of them. Perhaps I can be forgiven if now I do not wish any part of my discovery to fall into the hands of Belial. Filling the universe with endless replicas of Gorpai, all beholden to Belial and subject to his twisted laws, suddenly seems distasteful to me."
"Field-Marshal Ithuriel, you will find that like your son, none of your guests seated before you today love Belial. Our quest was commissioned by Lady Ariel herself. One of the officers present here is literally the wife of the human incarnation of Binah."
Ithuriel focused directly on Lilith. "Indeed! Welcome, General Gervasi. I wondered why a human woman had been accepted by Commodore Lahatiel as part of hyz crew, but I was slowly getting around to that."
Lilith said, "I'm not exactly part of the Commodore's crew, sir, more like a passenger right now, but I wonder how you knew I was human? I know yeng and men are easy to tell apart, because yeng are much taller and larger, and they have furry faces, but to my eyes a short yen and a tall woman such as myself are virtually identical."
"It's obvious once you know what to look for, General. Hair color! As simple as that. There are five families on Gorpai, which can be equated in some ways to your now discredited notions of race. They all have very fair complexions, because Gorpai is an ice world after all, but each family does have a distinguishing mark in the form of the color of their hair.
"Look, for example, at Major Suriel. Her black hair tells me she is of the house of Larund of the East Lands. Yet there are streaks of white in her hair, which speak of a small contribution from the House of Gerash. That is how hair color is expressed in nephilim genetics. But if Suriel were hu- man, the lightening Gerash factor would result in her whole head being somewhat less than jet black, perhaps a very dark brown. Then I look at you, and your hair is a very unusual light shade, somewhere between red and blond. We nephilim lack the word for it, of course."
"We humans say it is strawberry-blond."
"Lovely! Now, if you were nephilim, General, your hair would not be that wonderful blend, but would separate out as patches of pure red and pure blond, visibly declaring your genetic inheritance as a cross between the House of Antero and the House of Sala."
"I can see how that simple fact has informed Gorpai history," Lilith said, "much as skin color was the factor behind much suffering on Earth. Family Gerash for instance, the white beards, the white hair, obviously a symbol of purity that attracted Belial long ago. They are the ruling House on your world. And within each family, the noble ones are the ones who have only black hair, or only red, which only reinforces the mutation. Not even your very old nephilim experience a change of hair color or loss of hair, as humans do. Each one of you are the product of thousands of years of racial warfare!"
"Very astute, General Gervasi," Ithuriel said. "Now imagine our eternal race war carried to every star in the galaxy and beyond. That is the issue at stake here before us."
"Ah, yes, your mysterious discovery," she said. "Please describe it for us, sir."
Before hy could comply, Ithuriel invited all of the officers to take the morning meal with hym in an adjoining dining room, where servants had set out a hearty breakfast at nine places around a large table, with Ithuriel at one end, with hyz sister-wife Lauviah and son Marou to hyz left and right, and Lahatiel at the other end with Lilith and Suriel to hyz left and right.
Lilith found the breakfast quite excellent, but the crew of Exiler was slightly disappointed. It was standard Navy rations, which was fine enough in its own way, but the officers were tired of it after long overexposure, and the more exotic food recently stashed aboard the ship by King Strong- hammer was more to their liking.
When everyone had finished about half of their breakfast and there was a lull in the small talk between them, Ithuriel began to reveal the thing that Marou and Lahatiel knew, but the rest of them did not.
Hy said, "All of you just traveled three light-months from Rigilkent to Proxima in no time at all, using the agency of a wormhole. What would you say if I told you it was possible to travel from Proxima to Sol in no time at all, without using a wormhole?"
"I would say that was absolutely impossible, sir," Kushiel offered.
Lahatiel said, "Field-Marshal Ithuriel, please allow me the pleasure of introducing Sergeant Kushiel Bellon, my engineer, possibly the finest our Navy has ever produced."
"Oh, excellent, Kushiel, then just like Captain Barakiel you and I will have very much to talk about later as well! But why do you say reaching Sol from here quickly is impossible?"
"Sir, we have known for about a century and a half that the speed of light in a vacuum represents a hard limit as well as a hard constant. Suppose we were in Exiler going almost the speed of light, such that with only the gain of one more mile per hour we would be traveling precisely at the speed of light. And suppose that our weapons officer fired a pulse from the big lase straight ahead. If you were watching us from the side, you would see the wavefront of har laser walking ahead of our ship at the leisurely rela- tive pace of one mile per hour, just slightly over and above our already enormous speed. But to us aboard the ship, the beam of light would seem to rush ahead of us at the same velocity it always must, c, the speed of light. To maintain that illusion, our own ship's clock and heartbeats and even our very thoughts would be slowed by a factor of 670 million.
"Because in our universe, sir, the rate of the passage of time is negotia- ble, but the rate of the passage of light is not negotiable. This has been firmly established by experiment beyond any doubt for many decades. And so, Field-Marshal Ithuriel, no matter how hard one tries to surpass the speed of light, time itself works against you, and if by some strange mira- cle you actually reach the speed of light, time stops for you, you turn into a sunbeam, and no further change is possible."
"I agree with all that you just stated, Sergeant Kushiel," Ithuriel said, "and indeed there is no possible argument against the basic fact of rela- tivity as you so concisely laid out, but would you agree that for nearly as long as relativity has been understood, we have also known that the uni- verse is expanding, based on observations of the doppler-based red shift in the starlight of distant galaxies?"
"Yes sir, that is correct, we have known that for about a hundred and thirty years. And as a general rule, the more distant a galaxy is from us, the faster it is receding due to the general expansion of the universe, in the same basic way a larger sum of money in a bank grows faster than a smaller sum, even with the same rate of interest applied to both."
"Then Sergeant, perhaps you will also agree with me that as our telescopes gradually improved over the years, both at Centauri and at Sol, we were able to see galaxies which were more and more distant, until we penetrated to billions of galaxies whose red-shift corresponded to a recessional ve- locity that was greater than the speed of light. Yet we are still able to see them!"
"Yes, sir, I agree that we have done exactly that, but you are engaging in a bit of slight-of-hand here now, if you will forgive me for being so bold. You know perfectly well, sir, that space is continuously created between the galaxies. So it is the matrix the galaxies are embedded in which is flying apart, but the galaxies themselves, in real terms, move only very slowly. They might even approach one another, as the Milky Way and An- dromeda do."
"So Sergeant, you're saying the matrix might be expanding, but the galaxies and spaceships and people forced to exist in that matrix must follow the rules, including the rule about never going faster than light."
"Yes sir."
Ithuriel took a salt shaker and set it on the tabletop in front of his wife. "This salt shaker is the Exiler, Sergeant. The table is the matrix you spoke of. Lauviah is Gorpai and I am Proxima. How did you get all the way from Lauviah to me without crossing three light-months of real space? Because that is a voyage that would take a hundred years through your ma- trix at the best speed a fusion motor can deliver."
He lifted the salt shaker off the table in an arc. "You left the matrix of real space where speed rules apply and traveled up here, through the trackless Void where time and distance have no meaning, using a wormhole that connected the two points."
And he set the salt-shaker down once more in front of him.
"Now we want to get our salt-shaker from Proxima to Sol, which is where Marou is sitting, but we can't use a wormhole. How do we do it? First we need to get our salt-shaker up off the table of only two dimensions into the space over the table, which means traveling through a third dimension. This is a simplified analogy for Exiler. We want to get your ship up out of our matrix of three dimensions into the Void 'over' the universe, which means traveling through a fourth dimension. We need a special thruster, then, which produces an exhaust that travels into the Void below the table, but at the same time produces an opposite reaction that kicks the Exiler into the Void above the table. So the particles produced by our special thruster need to have elements of the three dimensions we know, but also elements of the four dimensions of the Void.
"Fortunately we have an answer from mathematics. You know a simple line is one dimensional. It has only length. A unique point on the line can be identified by a single real number. But how long is a coastline? It depends on what scale you use when you look at it. Look at a globe of Earth. How long is the coast of Cascadia? Two thousand miles? Now look at a detailed map showing every fjord and every bay, and you're talking ten thousand miles. Walk the coast yourself, following up every stream until you can jump across it, and you are up to a hundred thousand miles. Now trace out the coastline around every grain of sand, and it's a million miles.
"Mathematically, a coastline is somewhere between a line and a plane. It's between one dimension and two. It has a fractional dimension, in other words. And this has been shortened to the word 'fractal'. California has a relatively simple coastline, with only one major bay, so it might be a fractal of only 1.2. Cascadia to the north is far more complex, so it might be closer to 1.7.
"Now as we set about to develop the technology for our Void thruster, we needed to find single particles which expressed a fractional dimensionality somewhere between three and four. We needed fractal particles. For various arcane reasons, the particles which can be most easily produced have a fractional dimension equal to the number pi.
"That gets the salt-shaker off the table, but now what? How do we move through the Void? Simple motion won't do it. As far as the Void is con- cerned, a spaceship coasting at just under the speed of light is exactly the same as a ship perfectly at rest. It is only with acceleration that our ship can establish a unique direction in the Void. Once we've done that, and once we're in the void, speed has no meaning at all. It takes just as long to go from Proxima to Sol as it does to go from Proxima to another galaxy.
"And it follows that we should enter the Void far from the gravitational influence of any planets or stars, because gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration, except it is not self-acceleration but acceleration im- posed from the outside, and instead of defining your vector it will simply knock you out of the void back into real space. That gives us something we call the Seventy-seven Percent Rule. We have found by experiment that any attempt to enter the Void closer than 0.77 times the square root of the mass of the nearby object, in AU, with the mass of the Earth's sun Sol set to unity, simply fails.
"The big upside to that rule is that it provides a handy way of getting out of the Void once you enter it. You simply travel in a straight line until you hit an abstract surface which is point seven seven AU from the center of Sol, and there space curves to such a degree that it bounces you right out of the Void into real space again. The big downside to that rule is that if you miss the bubble around Sol, you just keep sailing in a straight line until you hit the bubble of another star, possibly in this same gal- axy, but more likely in a very distant one. And nothing in this universe is more certain than the fact that you will never return anywhere near your starting point if you once miss your target. You might not even be able to see the Milky Way galaxy from where you end up, it could be well beyond your local observable horizon."
Commodore Lahatiel said, "Brrrr! And now all of you know why I insisted on a mixed-gender crew, with our wives along for the ride, and representation from each of the Five Families of Gorpai. All it will take is a single miss of our target star and we become involuntary colonists somewhere far across the universe."
"I see a glaring technical problem with your scheme, sir," Lieutenant Ad- narel said. She didn't wait for the Commodore to make her introduction to the Field-Marshal. "I am the weapons officer on Exiler, sir, my name is Lieutenant Adnarel Sala. I'm looking at this problem from the point of view of someone who wants to hit a very small target from very far away. If I aim right at the star, I'm going to plain miss it, because I'm aiming where the star was four years ago. But if I shoot ahead of the star like I'm trying to hit a duck with a shotgun, I've got another problem. Sup- pose I think it is 4.23 light years to Sol from here, but it's really 4.22 light-years. It seems to me the target I'm trying to hit is only a few light-minutes across, but even the small error in my example is already about three or four light days."
"You are absolutely right, Lieutenant! Fortunately, this will not be a problem for your first leg from here to Sol. The distance to Sol is known to within a fraction of a light-second because a powerful universal time clock radio broadcast originates from Mercury and Major Suriel will be able to pick it up from here. It will mismatch your own ship's clock by exactly 4 years 81 days 9 hours 28 minutes and 48 seconds. And the relative veloc- ities of Sol and Proxima in all three axes is known to within a few tens of feet per second. These things will tell your navigator exactly how much to lead the 'duck' as you put it.
"But when you begin to explore suns beyond Sol and Centauri, the informa- tion I will provide Captain Barakiel will be somewhat less reliable. Not dangerously so. That is the very reason this observatory exists, you see. That is the essence of our years of work here. We have compiled data on hundreds of nearby stars. It is safe to say you will not begin to have problems with position error until you get beyond about twenty light years from Centauri. Somewhere along the way you will need to establish another observatory just like this one and compile a new database."
Now Field-Marshal Ithuriel himself had an objection. He said, "It occurs to me that Belial expects me to be fitting out the Exiler with the FTL Pod as soon as possible, and that he expects you to return immediately to Cen- tauri so he can claim his prize. But I gather that you do not intend to return to Centauri anytime soon, is that correct?"
Lahatiel acknowledged hym in the affirmative.
"So I imagine in a week or two Belial will begin to get restless, and cer- tainly after a month has gone by he will send a much larger warship through the wormhole to inquire after your vessel. And some of the answers we will have for hym, well, Belial mightn't like them. In fact, it is entire- ly possible that the Eyes of Belial could reconstruct my work after taking possession of my papers and lab equipment and putting me and my associates to torment. Then a whole fleet of FTL equipped ships would look for you."
"Sir, I have assurances from Lady Ariel that you need not worry about Beli- al. The purpose of the ID Grid, after all, is to identify vessels for the elohim, not so much for the Navy, and it takes three elohim to conjure up a wormhole large enough to permit a warship to pass through. Belial cannot do it alone, sir; it would kill him even to try. The gods Chokhmah, El, and Bat-El will create a wormhole precisely two more times. Once to bring a vessel here to evacuate your observatory and space station, and the sec- ond time to bring your crew safely to Hybla-Dia. The only thing you have to worry about, sir, is how long it might take before Hybla-Dia is made safe. Because when Belial finds out he cannot use the wormholes anymore he will throw a classic tantrum."
"We have sufficient resources to hold out for a year, I believe. I will have my people take stock of what we have and prepare at once."
Lilith said, "Sir, if you are worried about yourself and your family, or perhaps some of your closest associates, there is room aboard Exiler for about a dozen more people. I would be honored to receive you as my guest at Fortuna City on Luna. You need not fear the Eyes of Belial there, or fear being taken back to Palato to face Belial. The ID Grid in the Sol system has not existed for the last seven months and more."
"Thank you, General, but that's not my style. I will stay here, and share the hardships of my people, and if no rescue is forthcoming within a year, I will die with my people. To do otherwise, to leave them alone here not knowing if or when help would come, but knowing only that I left and took my loved ones with me. . . no, that's unthinkable."
Now there was one remaining objection, and this time it came from Commodore Lahatiel, and only hy would have dared to ask it. Hy said, "Field-Marshal Ithuriel, if the things you have been describing to us are true, it would literally be the most important thing nephilim or humans have ever discov- ered. It would open the universe to us, free from the control and influ- ence of Belial and the other elohim. But I pride myself as a rational yang, sir. So far I have been proceeding on pure faith: Faith that Ariel and Yeshua are not deluded, faith that your son Marou did not deceive them, faith that you have indeed made a breakthrough with traveling faster than light. Now please don't take this the wrong way, sir, but do you have on hand any physical proof that your claims are true? Anything at all?"
Ithuriel said, "I am not offended at all, Commodore. After all, I am a scientist. You are simply asking for falsifiable evidence which you can examine for yourself, and this wouldn't be science at all if I could not comply. Certainly when you find yourself in the Sol system only a number of days from now that will constitute sufficient proof, but I can validate my discovery now, in this instant."
He caused a square monitor to flip up out of the tabletop. A lighted key- board appeared on the surface of the table. After working for a moment, he caused a broadcast from a popular news network based out of Earth to be displayed on two wall panels so everyone could see it. An extraordinarily beautiful news anchor was describing the run-up of various gubernatorial races as they faced off-year elections in the New Confederacy, scheduled to take place precisely a month after she was speaking, on Tuesday, November 3, 2037. On the red byline superimposed over her at the bottom of the screen, the current date was given in yellow text: Tuesday, October 6, 2037.
Ithuriel said, "I recorded this broadcast from Earth just in the last few weeks using instruments aboard one of our space 'trucks' after it made the crossing. It's a small one-yang vehicle we use to service and inspect the exterior of the space station or even to travel to Palato through the worm- hole if need be. But it is not large enough to stock sufficient oxygen and water and food for a round-trip using the FTL device, and I am confident that Lieutenant Adnarel can tell all of us exactly why that is true."
"Yes sir. When you transit between stars you might barely have the skill to hit your target bubble, but exactly where you end up on that target bub- ble is a complete crapshoot."
"Very good! I would have used different language, but that's exactly right. You can see that my space truck arrived at Sol on October the 6th to record that broadcast, but when it came back here to the Proxima system it was not very close to the observatory at all. I anticipate its arrival in five more days.
"I offer this recent broadcast as proof that my claims are true, Commodore. If I simply picked them off the air from here, it would not be the fall of 2037 but rather the summer of 2033, which in fact is what the Universal Time signal purports to be. Of course I could have cheated and sent my space truck through the ID Grid to Sol, much as Marou himself did last year when he flew to Europa to make field observations for his paper on exobiol- ogy. But General Gervasi just reported to us that the ID Grid has not ex- isted there for the last seven months, and that comports with what the yeng from the last resupply mission told me."
Lilith said, "There yet remains one wormhole link from Sol to the Land We Know, however, but it is only big enough for one person to cross at a time, and it is a very wet passage. I would have known about anyone using that way at any rate."
Ithuriel smiled. "So there you go, Commodore. The space truck hit the Proxima bubble millions of miles from here and it will take a total of nineteen days to return. Nineteen days is rather good, actually, it could have been as many as fifty days, which is somewhat longer than the time the little vehicle has the capacity to support life. That is why I prepared the truck to make it's voyage as an automated probe. But following its return transit I was able to copy by wireless the probe's complete set of gathered data, including this broadcast from Earth. The flight was a per- fect success."
Barakiel said, "Then sir, I gather you have never tested FTL with a live subject?"
"No, Captain, as a matter of fact, when the space truck returns and we in- stall the FTP Pod in Exiler, you and your crewmates will be my 'guinea pigs', so to speak."
Barakiel didn't look very happy at that prospect.
The Field-Marshal smiled and presented hym with a memory card filled with data which his navigation panel could interpret. "Here is the fruit of all our work here at Proxima, young Captain Barakiel. These are the positions and proper motions of thousands of nearby stars, pinned down to a very small margin of error."
"Thank you, your Lordship."
"Commodore, I have just given your navigator the keys to the universe, but as much as I love my son Marou, I still do not believe we are square for his rescue from the Iron Hand gang and safe delivery to me here. You said earlier that you were supplied with water during your layover in the King- dom of Menkal. But I know King Stronghammer is generous to a fault. You omitted to mention the great quantities of food he no doubt also laid up in storage aboard your ship."
"You are quite right, sir. It did slip my mind."
"Do you know what happens when you eat the food of a single supplier, day in and day out, no matter how good that food happens to be? You get thor- oughly sick of it, and anything looks better. But Commodore, in only a week or two you can be eating in the finest restaurants in the Sol System. Therefore I require the greater part of the food and juice from the Land We Know that you have stored aboard that fine Navy frigate. You will, of course, continue to lodge with us on the station and feast on the food the Empire of Belial has provided us in the last supply mission, but after you depart whatever leftovers you have in your mess hall refrigerator must tide you over until you get some real food."
"Field-Marshal Ithuriel, you are a flinty-hearted negotiator, but I agree to your terms." He knew Ithuriel was simply seeking to stretch out his sta- tion's supplies a little further with the excess food from Exiler in case it was needed here, but this was also an entertaining game. The Commodore was also sensitive enough to realize without spoken words that the inter- view was over.
After wiping his mouth with a white napkin, Lahatiel stood up and said, "By your leave?" The rest of his people stood up immediately as well.
"In five days time, Commodore, I shall require the presence of Sergeant Kushiel as we transfer the FTL Pod to your ship. Until then, please con- tinue to make yourself at home as best you can on my little station, you and all your dependents. My people will enjoy meeting and coming to know all of you, and they will attend to your every need. Anything at all."
After a curt bow to Ithuriel and Lahatiel and their son Marou, the Commo- dore backed away respectfully. Followed by Lilith and the rest of the Exil- er crew they left the presence of the Imperial Astronomer.
When the Field-Marshal said his people would attend to their every need he meant precisely that, in every sense. The next few days were largely occupied by pairing off and finding various hidden nooks and crannies of the station, under different gravities, to engage in the age-old time- killer known in textbooks as sexual intercourse.
The crew of Exiler were largely tied down by the companions they had brought along, but Lilith was free to date one of the station's inhabi- tants. She attracted the eye of Ithuriel's valet, a yang named Yomael, and in his relatively lavish quarters hy more than satisfied the curiosity she always had about what it would be like to bed one of the nephilim. She, like thousands of shags in the Land We Know over the centuries, dis- covered to her delight that human-nephilim sex was not awkward at all.
Yomyael had two penises, but Lilith learned that it was really just a sin- gle human penis which had been separated and realigned, such that instead of two bulbs of erectile tissue inside them, they each only had one. The single organ of a human male was somewhat thicker. This suited Lilith fine as she crawled on top of hym. Yomyael had two organs, she had two places for them to be, and there was no discomfort at all.
They spent at least an hour enjoying each other's body. She moved rhythmi- cally on top of him while he cupped her breasts in his hands or ran his fingertips over her smooth thighs, shiny now with a layer of sweat.
She looked down at him, and the word bestiality ran through her mind. Yo- myael was of the House of Bellon like Kushiel, his face and body were cov- ered with brown fur. Yomyael's first orgasm triggered Lilith to have her own orgasm. Her very enthusiastic vocal response in turn triggered Yomyael to have his second orgasm. For about maybe two full minutes, a long time as such things go, the two of them literally went crazy. Lilith would cer- tainly never forget it.
The following week after all the preparations had been made and they were well clear of the station and observatory, Captain Barakiel turned Exiler to face the constellation called by humans Cassiopeia, which resembled a large "W" when you connected the dots (the nephilim called it the Serpent Root). The last and brightest dot was Sol. Using the new data from Field- Marshal Ithuriel, hy found the blank spot in the sky where the star Sol was supposed to be in real time and had the computer circle it in red.
Kushiel revved up the macro and feathered his six engines until hy found a sweet spot around one-ninth of a gee where most the vibration canceled it- self out.
A yellow dot representing the computed real-time vector sum of the ship's acceleration was buzzing around on the view port heads-up display like a fly as Barakiel fired the side thrusters and tried to keep it centered in- side the little red circle.
The best hy could manage was to get the yellow dot to make repeated clumsy passes through to the edge of circle, giving the Commodore no time to safe- ly turn the key.
"This is impossible!" Barakiel muttered as the minutes wore on and intense performance pressure began to mount. Hy was trying to hit a lousy one-and-a-half AU circle viewed telescopically from 266,353 AU away. Li- lith watched with interest.
"When the Commodore is ready to actually go to the Sol system," Lt. Adnarel said after nearly an hour had passed and there was still no sign Barakiel was getting lucky, "he will order the Navigator of Exiler to be relieved by the weapons officer."
Lahatiel looked at Adnarel and considered har suggestion. Hy hated to un- dercut Barakiel's confidence, but this was turning out to be far more dif- ficult than anyone thought. Finally he said, "Captain, stand down. Lieu- tenant, take Navigation please."
"Yes sir," Barakiel said with a sigh, and he was quickly clear of his post before Adnarel could draw near, lest she accidentally brushed hyz hand with hars. Adnarel floated over to Barakiel's console and took over the con- trols for the helm, which were really just a pair of large joysticks, dark red and dark green, bristling with buttons.
"Damn," she muttered to herself as the yellow dot indicating the sum of the ships acceleration just missed the circle, and Barakiel developed a smug look on his face. But she quickly learned the trick of it and soon with little taps on the ship's thruster controls sha just nudged the dot into the small circle, where it seemed to linger. Barakiel merely gaped at har. Commodore Lahatiel knew it was the perfect moment and turned the key.
