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CHAPTER 25

The Pioneer

“Oh, that’s not good!” Enrico Vulpetti watched the engineering simulation of the Samara Drive being brought up to two gees. A chaotic oscillation began and after a few minutes the mooring trusses ripped away from the Pioneer, causing catastrophic ruptures in the hull. “Jesus.”

“My sentiments exactly, Enrico,” Evonne agreed through the virtual conference window between the ships. “Grag and I have run this thing a thousand times, and anything over a half-gee thrust ends up catastrophic.”

“How could we have missed that in our modeling and sims back on Proxima b?” Captain Crosby asked.

“I’m not sure I understand that either.” Vulpetti shook his head back and forth while shrugging, palms up. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Evonne, can you bring up the top-level modal analysis diagram?” Roy Burbank floated behind the captain, holding his thirteen-year-old daughter on his back, which would have been near impossible in gravity as Samari was nearly as tall as he was and still growing. “I mean, show me all the main damping components and forcing components.”

“Well, yes, here.” Evonne brought it up for them to see. “There’s only one forcing function, really, and that is the drive.”

“Right. I get that,” he said. “But I want to see the coupling between each of them mechanically.”

After a moment or so the model appeared on everyone’s virtual screen. There were the two ships connected and floating in front of them. Evonne reached up and twirled it around and then pointed at the mooring points where the failure modes occurred. She turned and shrugged at Grag, who was floating by her very stoically. She had no idea what he was thinking.

“Okay, can you run the model? My hands are full at the moment,” Roy said as he twirled his daughter in front of him and then around behind his back again. The two of them were enjoying something akin to a daddy-daughter microgravity ballet. The only things missing were a pink tutu, ballet slippers, and Tchaikovsky.

“Uh, sure.” Evonne replayed the simulation.

Once again, the vibrations grew and then the two ships began flexing. Each ship had a standing longitudinal wave running back and forth, bow to stern, like a wave traveling down a Slinky. Then there was a violent rupture at the mooring points.

“There! Stop it there!” Roy shouted, causing Evonne to jump. She stopped it and backed it up a few frames to the point Roy had wanted.

“Right there. What is the frequency of that longitudinal wave on both ships?” Roy asked.

“Hold on, let me see, uhh…” Evonne was moving icons in her view to make some calculations when Grag interrupted her.

“Ninety-two-point-three-four-seven hertz as near as makes no difference, Dr. Roy,” Grag said.

“Aha. I thought so.” Roy laughed at his daughter as she acted like she would be motion sick from the spinning. “That’s the frequency of the power conditioning unit. I found it when I was connecting the ships’ communication systems. Hell of a hum until I filtered it out. I suspect the Samara Drive is oscillating in amplitude ever so slightly due to the power fluctuation. I mean, it is really clean power, but it is oscillating a bit at that frequency.”

“Dad, I’m gonna take a break,” Samari interrupted him by pushing away using his larger mass as a launch pad. Roy had to steady his spin as she drifted across the bridge and grabbed at an empty chair at navigation.

“Go ahead,” Roy mouthed quietly to his daughter.

“And that is causing this forcing function that we are measuring?” Crosby asked.

“Looks like it to me.” Roy turned his attention back to the conversation. “I mean, that’s the exact frequency I’ve already measured in the power system. I didn’t try to fix it because it didn’t matter to the data network. I filtered it out, mostly. So, I guess the natural frequency of the ships, which are basically big, long, metal cylinders, is somewhere in the ninety-hertz range. Think of them like crystal wineglasses. This signal in the Samara Drive is acting like an opera singer at the right frequency, causing them to ring and then burst.”

“So how do we fix it?” Mathison chimed in.

“You put water in the glasses,” Grag said.

“Water in the glasses?” Mathison asked.

“He’s right, of course,” Roy agreed. “We have to change the natural ringing or resonant frequency of the glasses, so the opera singer’s tune is at the wrong frequency to excite them.”

“How do we do that?” Vulpetti asked as he rubbed his chin in thought. “That would take significant mass in the right locations, or maybe stiffeners along the periphery of the ships.”

“Can’t we do like Dr. Roy did and put a filter between the power and the Samara Drive?” Grag asked.

“Out of the mouths of babes.” Evonne smiled back at Grag. “Roy? What do you think?”

“Oh, I’m not the power guy. But it should work,” Roy responded.

“Enrico?” both captains asked simultaneously.

“Um, that’s gonna take weeks of work. First, we need to rig a new intake at the power junction for the drive—” Vulpetti started but was interrupted.

“No, we don’t,” Dr. Jenna Rees said. “We had almost that exact problem with the Pioneer during the shakedown flight. It was a slightly lower frequency but there was a parasitic oscillation in the Samara Drive limiting the thrust output. We put a tunable power coupling filter on our drive, and it worked fine.”

“But didn’t your Samara Drive explode?” Vulpetti asked.

“Well, yes.” Evonne smiled. “But Jenna is right. That’s a spare part we do have!”

“Wait.” Burbank held a hand up now, paying much closer attention to the conversation. “Didn’t I read in the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis report on your engine failure that it was the power coupling that blew out?”

“Uh, yeah,” Evonne affirmed.

“Then why did it blow out?” Roy pondered. “I mean, the Samaritan has never had a problem with any oscillations like this until it was connected to the Pioneer. Something isn’t adding up.”

“Roy makes a great point here, Evonne,” Vulpetti agreed. “There are no records of this type of positive feedback oscillation in the Samara Drive for our ship. And now you’re telling us that you guys have seen this from the shakedown flight of yours.”

“That is a good point, Enrico. Roy, I don’t know what to say about that.” Evonne looked perplexed.

“And why did the Pioneer make it almost all the way here before the failure of your power coupling filter?” Grag asked. “The Samara Drive had been running fine for nearly four years. Why did it take so long to fail?”

“Grag, that I think is the ultimate question,” Roy said. “Orion?”

“Hello, Dr. Burbank.” The AI’s voice boomed through the Pioneer’s bridge.

“Can you show me the vibrational data of the Pioneer’s Samara Drive on the shakedown flight before the power coupling filter was added?” Roy asked.

“Of course,” Orion said, as simultaneously the mechanical vibration spectrum of the engine curves appeared on the viewscreens and in everyone’s virtual views.

“See, there is the vibration mode at…uh, eighty-one-point-four hertz.” Jenna pointed at the viewscreen. “Like I said, it was a little lower.”

“Right.” Roy nodded, then pushed toward his daughter, who was pretending to fly the ship at the navigation console, and whispered to her quietly. “Don’t touch anything, princess.”

“I suspect the added mass of the mooring trusses, the transport tubes, and another ship altered the frequency somewhat,” Vulpetti added.

“Orion…” Roy was only half listening as he had ideas.

“Yes, Dr. Burbank?”

“Do you have data from the first test after the filter was added to the power coupling?” Roy asked.

“Of course. Here, you can see it now,” Orion replied.

Once again, the vibrational spectrum appeared and this time the floor noise was mostly flat, or at least orders of magnitude below where it had been. And the vibrational signal from before the test was nowhere to be seen.

“Okay, that looks good,” Evonne announced. “And there’s no sign of the parasitic resonant signal anywhere.”

“Right,” Vulpetti agreed. “So, why did it come back?”

“That is the wrong question, Enrico,” Roy replied stoically and remained silent for a few moments. Evonne, Grag, and Jenna looked at him as if he had gotten stuck on pause. Then, before they could ask, he continued, “The right question is, when did it come back?”

“When?” Evonne sounded puzzled. “We know when. It came back when the thing nearly blew up the ship.”

“Roy? What are you thinking here?” Captain Crosby had been watching quietly from the bridge of the Samaritan for some time now.

“Huh? Oh yes, Captain, we actually haven’t looked for when it started,” Roy said. “I don’t recall seeing that in the FMEA report. Understandable, because Evonne was more busy keeping the ship functioning and not dying than worrying about how it all happened in detail. No fault there. But…Orion, do a reverse tracking algorithm and watch the data from immediately before the explosion all the way back until the vibrations started.”

“Certainly. That will take a moment,” Orion said.

“A moment being…?” Evonne asked.

“Uncertain, but approximately three to five minutes. Please stand by.”

* * *

“Orion, you are certain this is the timestamp?” Captain Mathison asked the AI.

“Yes, Captain Mathison. The parasitic oscillation begins exactly thirty days to the microsecond of accuracy before the power coupling failure occurs,” Orion explained.

To Roy, waiting on Orion to complete the sorting through the data seemed to have taken forever. In reality, it had been four and a half minutes. But once it had been completed there was no mistaking what had happened. In fact, Roy had been through something similar himself. He could tell by the looks on the team with him on the bridge of the Pioneer, and the look on the Samaritan crew’s faces through the screens, that they were all puzzled to no end. But not Roy.

“Orion, please give us a diagnostic reading of every cryobed starting at the moment the parasitic oscillation starts and go backward from there until something changes,” Roy tasked the AI.

“Certainly, Dr. Burbank. That will take a moment or two. Please stand by.”

“What are you thinking, Roy?” Evonne asked him.

“Somebody turned the filter off. That much is plain as day.” Roy shrugged.

“Sabotage?” Captain Mathison protested. “Nobody on this crew would do such a thing. We were all volunteers, for Christ’s sake!”

“We’ll see,” Roy said patiently. “I’ve been there and done that. Just wait and see.”

“Roy, are you suggesting there is sabotage now?” Captain Crosby asked him. Roy looked back at the screen and shook his head.

“I don’t think so, Captain. I have a hunch, but I don’t want to say anything yet,” Roy said.

“The data has been analyzed, Dr. Burbank,” Orion stated.

“Okay, were any of the beds opened?” Roy asked.

“As far as I can tell, there were no cryosleep protocols stopped and/or restarted for several months all the way back to the midpoint awakening of the bridge crew and engineering team,” Orion said.

“So, your hunch was wrong, Roy. No saboteur.” Captain Mathison grunted.

“Uh, no, ma’am. That is exactly what I expected the logs to say,” Roy replied. “Orion, display on this screen the pressure, temperature, and power usage of every bed in a graph. Overlay all the beds’ curves atop each other.”

“Very well, Dr. Burbank. You can see it now on the main screen,” Orion responded.

Roy whistled, shook his head in disgust back and forth, and then frowned. The graphs all overlaid one another within the engineering tolerance of the bed design, which was pretty damned good. The pressure, temperature, and power usage curves of two hundred some-odd beds were layered upon each other, making three fuzzy lines with only slight variations. But four of those beds, at precisely the same times and duration, had the exact same, within tolerance, changes in pressure, temperature, and power usage on two specific occasions.

“See that? Damn.” Roy pointed. “Orion, overlay a graph of pressure, temperature, and power usage of a perfectly functioning bed opening after sleep, and then going into sleep.”

“Sure, Dr. Burbank,” Orion said. “It is displayed now.”

“An exact match,” Evonne uttered with exasperation. “But why would anyone do this?”

“Orion, display the names of the crew in those four beds,” Captain Mathison said urgently.

“Yes, Captain.” Orion then showed files for four crew members as he spoke their names. “Dr. Elizabeth Juliet Jones, Dr. Majel Kasim, Dr. Farah Rene Smith, and Dr. Xi Jian Wu.”

“Captain Crosby!” Captain Mathison said, her voice commanding. “You need to have a security detail immediately apprehend and detain Dr. Farah Rene Smith.”

“Why not the others, Captain?” Crosby asked.

“The others died in cryosleep during the power failure,” Mathison explained.

“That’s convenient,” Roy muttered.

“Damned convenient,” Mathison agreed. “Crosby, I’m headed your way.”

“Understood,” Crosby replied. “The XO has already detached security. She can’t go anywhere.”

* * *

“I thought we’d been past all that nonsense with the Emissary making it without any issues,” Vulpetti said as he slurped down a microgravity meal that was floating in multicolored droplets before him. “I mean, after what happened with Roy and all, I thought security was better.”

“Apparently not,” Evonne countered as she chewed on a meal bar and then squeezed a red liquid into her mouth from its bottle. She let the bottle go and its magnetic base slowly pulled it to the metal tabletop of the booth she was strapped into. “To what end? I don’t get it. I have known Farah for three years. We trained together. She never seemed like a murderer to me.”

“Was it on purpose that the accomplices died in the power failure?” Jenna Rees was every bit as curious. “Orion is running diagnostics on those beds, but there was so much damage done. Who knows if we’ll ever know what happened.”

“Smith isn’t talking. According to Artur, the XO, she hasn’t said a word. He’s got her locked in the holding cell,” Roca told them. “What a waste.”

“I wonder if she will still want to participate in our society?” Grag asked. “I mean, it is a waste that a female will go to prison forever when females are in such short supply on my world.”

“Thinking you might get lucky there, Grag?” Evonne goaded him with a playful look.

“Lucky…em? Oh, my no!” Grag exclaimed through blushing cheeks. His embarrassment was apparent.

“She’s kidding you, Grag.” Roca laughed.

“I see.” Grag sounded confused and not at all as if he “saw.”

“Alright, kiddos.” Evonne slapped the tabletop, forcing her body to float upward against her restraints. “We still have a lot of work to do. Enough of this goldbricking.”

“Slavemaster!” Jenna grunted through the last bites of her meal. “The power coupler filter is connected and will be online in a few hours, Evonne.”

“Great. The sooner we can get everything back up and running, the sooner we can get Loverboy here home.” Evonne elbowed Grag as she laughed out loud.

The next few days’ work consisted of bringing systems back online one at a time, and then testing the Samara Drive at different power levels. The filter had done the trick. As far as any of the teams could determine, there were no parasitic modes to be detected. All systems were functioning and ready to be implemented. Finally, the Samaritan could bring the Pioneer and its crew to their new home on Proxima b.

Over the course of the next several weeks, the crews of both ships carefully and methodically adjusted their thrust vectors. They used the Samara Drive in tandem with the conventional thrusters to change their course, gradually bringing the Pioneer into an elliptical orbit around Proxima Centauri that would enable them to bring the drive up to full power and push them home over the course of eleven months. It was a delicate dance in the void of space, requiring precision and patience but the navigators, captains, and the AI of both ships were up to the task.

The crews had worked tirelessly for years, months, weeks, days, and endless hours to reach the distant star safely, but nothing was ever easy with interstellar space travel. Exacerbating the difficulties of interstellar travels with sabotage made achieving their goal even more sweet as the Samara Drive powered up to full speed. All of that had taken just shy of a month, which required a symbiotic relationship between the two crews. Supplies were continually transferred from the Samaritan to the attached ship, ensuring that everyone had enough food, water, and resources to sustain them throughout the extended mission.

The crew of the Pioneer, once facing an uncertain fate, now had hope and the support they needed to survive and complete their mission. In fact, once the ship’s repairs had been managed and the hybrid combination of the two ships was functioning properly, most of the Pioneer’s crew had returned to their own ship. After all, that ship had been their home for almost five and a half years.

The weeks turned into months as the two spacecraft continued their journey at a velocity approaching ninety-nine percent the speed of light. The crew of the Samaritan had remained dedicated to their mission, united in their commitment to bringing their fellow explorers back to the Proxima system safe and sound. The dim red glow of Proxima Centauri served as a constant reminder of their ultimate destination from any of the forward viewing viewports. The fate of the Pioneer and its crew was no longer hanging in the balance. With each carefully calculated maneuver, they inched closer to the Proxima system, determined to overcome the challenges of deep space and bring the stranded explorers with their new home among the stars.

Finally, the work was done, and the ship had been placed into the hands of the Samaritan’s AI, Beth. Beth and Orion could keep things running smoothly for the next eleven months or so as they made their way home. Grag couldn’t wait. Being in space had been an adventure. He had learned a lot. He was planning to learn another two full years’ worth of Terran graduate school on the trip home during cryosleep training. He was looking forward to that. But mostly, he wanted to see his friends, his family, and his home world. Grag also couldn’t wait to introduce Evonne to them.

“All hands, this is Captain Crosby,” Grag heard as he watched the blue liquid flowing into his wrist and felt a cool rush of air hissing over him. “Great work, everyone. Before we know it, we’ll be approaching orbit around Proxima b. Good luck and sleep tight.”



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