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CHAPTER 30

August 26, 2090 (Earth timeline)

May 3, 2090 (Ship timeline)

“We’ve searched this ship from top to bottom, Captain, and found nothing out of the ordinary.” Cindy Mastrano rubbed at a scrape on her forearm she’d gotten while crawling in one of the equipment tubes in the engine room. She needed to clean the cut and put some dermaseal on it before it got infected. “Whatever Gaines was doing, we can’t put a finger on it.”

“He was in the PINS sensor room,” Roy added. “I finally figured it out once I realized that the testing we’d done back at lunar dock was using simulated sensor data because it wouldn’t be red or blue shifted from acceleration as we were effectively sitting still. I had gotten out of bed to go check the path between the PINS and the telescopes when . . . ”

“So, we tore everything apart in there between the telescopes and the main PINS boxes and found nothing out of the ordinary,” Cindy interrupted, so Roy wouldn’t have to go into his traumatic experience. Roy was trying, she could tell. But the poor guy was just a shell of the man he was when she’d first met him. Right now, he acted as if he were running on fumes. She was concerned what would happen when he ran out of those fumes.

“Dr. Renaud has gone over all the code and found nothing?” Bob Roca asked her.

“As far as we can tell, all the flight software seems normal, Bob,” Roy added. “At least down here it does. Have you found anything anomalous on the bridge?”

“Not yet. Zhao and Mr. Tarasenko have looked for any signs of hacks and we’ve yet to find anything from top down. Whoever the Gaines guy was, he was good,” Roca said. “Or at least he was better than us.”

The flight crew, Roy, Dr. Renaud, and the cyber-warfare expert, Victor Tarasenko, had been taking the ship apart and putting it back together one piece at a time looking for signs of intrusion, hacking, malicious or nefarious intent, but they had found nothing. Captain Crosby had called the senior flight team and Roy into his ready room to discuss the possible scenarios. Cindy had been working herself ragged to find what Gaines had done, while at the same time she was handholding Roy, trying to get him back into the game. Roy just looked checked out. Currently, he looked like he was paying attention, but she could see he was millions of miles, almost a light-year, away.

“CHENG, are you telling me that nothing was done? Maybe Roy interrupted him before he could finish or even get started? Or are you telling me you just can’t find it?” the captain asked. “We need to know either way.”

“There is just no way to tell, Captain. At least, not until we see some type of perturbation in our navigation or something. We’ve checked, and right now as far as we can tell we’re on trajectory for Proxima. But a tiny error right now might not show up for a year or more in our flight data. It could be just like with the atomic clock chips that Roy discovered back before we left Sol,” Cindy explained. “I suggest we increase our verification testing rate on our navigation.”

“So, you want eyeball and hand calculations? How often?” Roca whistled. “That’s going to be hairy math.”

“Not really,” Roy nonchalantly replied. “Take the images from the six telescopes with the atomic clock timestamps on each measurement. We correlate those with a stand-alone computer and compare it to the PINS output two-line-element arrays. We could actually set them up to compare to each other regularly, but I’m not sure connecting them to each other is smart from a hacking standpoint. Hacking isn’t my expertise.”

“Right.” Roca nodded his head in agreement. “I see that. The computer does most of the work. We’d need to pick a computer and strip it down from any outside software and connectivity to other ship’s systems so we know it isn’t hacked or compromised in any way. Maybe we even shut off the wireless just in case Gaines left some sort of malware floating about that we’ve yet to find.”

“Get on that, Bob,” Crosby ordered. “XO, once we have decided that the ship is in order, we need to get our sleep schedules realigned. I want to make certain that there is always somebody up that has knowledge and is trained on the stand-alone nav system.”

“I’m on it, Captain,” Artur replied. “Maybe we should start training the other awake parties during their awakened cycle as well?”

“Good idea. Do that, Artur. Dr. Burbank, I have one more request, if you would oblige?” Crosby asked.

“Certainly, Captain.” Roy shrugged uncaringly.

“We’ve all heard the great news. And we want to see some pictures of this pretty girl of yours.” Captain Crosby turned and looked knowingly to Cindy.

“Aha! Yes, we also have something for you.” Cindy clapped her hands eagerly and then pulled something from her backpack that was typically filled with data pads, tools, and various CHENG things. She intentionally fumbled a bit as if she couldn’t quite find what it was she was looking for, and then finally, she sat a small package on the conference table in front of Roy. She smiled at him with a large toothy grin.

“What’s this?” Roy asked uncomfortably.

“It’s a little something from all of us,” Cindy answered. “Go on. Open it.”

Cindy watched as Roy looked at the little package in front of him. It was a small box about six to eight centimeters on a side. It was in pink wrapping paper with a rose-colored ribbon holding it together. Roy rolled it over in his hands several times. Cindy grew impatient.

“Go on, Roy. Open it!” she urged.

“Okay, okay.” Roy tugged on the ribbon and released it from the box and then opened it. Inside was a small data-cube projector. By his continued fumbling, she could tell Roy was having trouble finding the switch to turn it on.

“For God’s sake, Roy, press the button on the bottom and then set it down,” she said.

Roy found the switch and turned the device on. Then there was an audible ding and a voice asked, “Please approve database access.”

“Access to what?” Roy asked.

“Oh, it needs permissions to look at your imagery and videos you have on file,” Cindy explained.

“Okay. Nigel?”

“Yes, auld boy?” The Scottish accented AI’s voice filled the room. Cindy almost laughed.

“Handshake with this thing,” Roy told the AI.

“Done.”

PROCESSING DATA. PLEASE STAND BY. appeared in solid three-dimensional letters above the cube. Then suddenly a three-dimensional image of Samaritan Ro Burbank appeared in front of them above the cube looking back at them. Roy peered through the hologram for a moment silently and Cindy could see in his eyes that he was going to break down again. So, she quickly got his attention by explaining what the device did.

“It’s not just a single image, Roy. Zhao, Bob, and I created a rendering program that will take data from each video you get and update the image in real-time, assuming you give the program permission to intercept your mail, and you will have a day-to-day live growing image render of your daughter. You’ll be able to see how she grows from video to video this way.”

“I uh, well, thanks,” Roy said sheepishly, doing his best to hold back the tears.

“You’re welcome.”



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