Chapter 1: Bored

Miles of vines stretching ten stories above the ground like clouds in the dense atmosphere, blooming flowers in every color of the spectrum while four winged birds nest on trees growing on the backs of six legged walking mountains that would strike cycloptian awe into dinosaurs with a backdrop of a ringed planet whose moons sparkle like diamonds from the reflecting mercury pools that dot their surface. Wouldn’t that be cool?” Quorbin said while he day-dreamed the imagery to distract himself from the reality of what laid outside the ship: a disappointing scene of a flat, gray, dull landscape with scattered puddles and groups of mold in the pattern of droppings on the backdrop of a gray sky with just enough blue in it to seem un-exotic. “Or a planet of supermodels, I’m still open for that.”

“I stopped listening when I heard you take a breath to speak.” Terra was completing the preflight checklist, equally unimpressed by the planet Quorbin had nicknamed “Goop” due to his more than accurate assessment of what the surface seemed to be covered in.

“Do you think we’ll ever find the fabled cheeseburger planet?”

“We’re exploring the galaxy not looking for supermodels and cheeseburgers like a frat boy.” Terra took her eyes away from the piloting console just long enough to give a squinting glare. She too wished for a cheeseburger, but admitting this would involve agreeing with Quorbin.

Quorbin stared blankly across the small room for a moment while his console stored the scientific data to the mainframe storage.

“You look really nice today.” Most athletic girls in skintight cybernetic flightsuits did.

“You’d look good without a suit.”

Quorbin was intrigued by the suggestive tone

“Outside the ship.”

Quorbin was further curious

“While in space…”

Quorbin went back to what he was doing. Or at least he tried to, but at that same moment Terra hit the thrusters in gear, launching the ship upward and accelerating to escape velocity, leaving Quorbin no longer typing but clinging to his chair for dear life. Quorbin knew that Terra was well aware protocol was to issue a warning to all crew before an escape velocity burst began. He was also aware that she giggled slightly when the 1.5g burst left him flat on the floor. His only retort was his own squinting glare once they left the field of various gasses composing Goop’s “atmosphere”—in the loosest sense of the word.

Quorbin walked to the corner of the circular room containing the hatch to the lower level and dropped down to the living quarter/storage area and began reading the label of the crates taking up most of the room. As they went through more of the supplies there would be more room freed up and more space for the two them, but at the moment they were only 3 months in and a 4x10 area on the floor was the best they got for sleeping arrangements. Quorbin once again considered sleeping on the floor of one of the ship’s other levels, but between the awkward and not large enough floor space of the lab deck, the reactor a foot away from him in the engine room, and the fact the Terra refused to let him into the top piloting station without her presence, all options leaned to sharing. Quorbin found the crate containing the tools he needed and proceeded down another hatch to the engine room.

Anything that seemed slipshod or unpleasant aesthetically about this room never reached Quorbin's mind, for every time he dropped in through the hatch he took a moment to stand and smile at the center of the room where it stood: an Atlas Reactor. His Atlas Reactor. Quorbin had spent three years constructing it in his parents’ basement—of course, due to the immensely scientific population of Mars, most people’s “basements” were facilities as good as any laboratory, but the principle still stood. The Atlas Reactors were modeled after stars, and—having a similar lifespan—Quorbin always felt pride knowing that he had built something that, if properly maintained, would outlast generations. After taking his moment he moved over to the atmosphere converter on the wall, a device meant to filter through native air and replace the ship’s, creating a bit of “airflow”. Small details like that help stop people from growing crazy in a cooped ship. Quorbin had suspected that the thick humidity of Goop contained a lot of the particles covering the surface; a suspicion confirmed when Quorbin removed the inner panel and watched slime drip out of the filtration chamber. After taking another moment to be grossed out he began cleaning out the system.

Back in the lab level, Terra was just finishing setting in the course to the Savepoint station. There were six set up along the pathway they were meant to explore as giant back-up drives for the data they collected in case their systems were damaged. They were sent ahead of the intended path of the exploration mission when it was first proposed; before the funding got so tight, before a planned full crew became two people stuck in an small ship taking data like a survey team. She looked through the astronomical charts to plan out the details of their course: cross checking the most interesting to fly against the most promising of planets and scientific anomalies. None connected. She leaned back and let out a sigh. She wanted this job so badly because of the promise of being able to fly in space humanity hadn’t been in since before FTL travel—if they had been there at all—yet time and time again she was left taking boring routes through open space where the idea of cruise control was overkill. She thought about taking them through an asteroid field on the other side of the system and avert the (potential) interest of the other planet, but Terra couldn’t bring herself to do it. The one thing she and Quorbin agreed on was the importance of discovery on this mission. This could be considered the “character building” years they wasted doing grunt work or the most fascinating element of either of their carriers—and they both had worked too hard to let it go to waste. She plotted the course to the planet, blew the edge of her bangs out of her face, then looked around the lab level for something else to do……………anything else to do………something……………she decided she was hungry and headed for the hatch down.

Quorbin finished cleaning out the part of the filtration system the ooze had seeped into and put the panels back together. He knew the internal part of the system was filled with the stuff and considered the most fun way of purging it. He then realized he was spending time considering how to make cleaning a filter system more interesting and rolled his eyes. Maybe if he plugged the filter system through the reactor’s particle field? “No” he thought, shaking his head. “Not everything can be solved by plugging it into the reactor, the awesome, AWESOME reactor, plus then we might get radioactive air. Vent it into space? It would look like the ship just sneezed……….ew…….” He was running out of ideas.

“TERRA! What’s a fun way of purging the atmosphere system?” Terra’s head popped in upside-down through the hatch.

“I’m going to pretend you never said that so that I don’t have to admit how little we have to do.” She retreated back up to the storagelivingquartersspace to finish looking for a snack.

“How long until we reach the other planet?”

“It’s only a few weeks out on neutral thrust”—which was acceleration derived from allowing the radiation buffers to naturally expel through the thrusters at the same rate the reactor charged them. The Atlas Reactor was capable of unleashing the power of a small star, but most of the power in principle was folded in on itself and used to contain the reaction. When the reactor is running on idle, so to speak, it is relatively self-contained, yet there still exists an excess. “If we have the fuel to do it we can make an FTL burst.”

“It’s not the power that’s an issue Cause my reactor is awesome It’s a matter of overloading the graviton accelerators which almost blew out last time we tried an in-system jump.”

“Cause of the reactor.”

“MY REACTOR IS NOT…..my reactor isn’t the problem. The specs for the FTL drive are different than what I built it for and we didn’t have enough cash to spring for a proper converter. I had to rig one up out of parts from a ship that crashed by my house like, 80 years ago.” Quorbin moved around the reactor to the wall containing the FTL boosters and plugged in the diagnostic unit. Terra found her snack and sat next to the hatch cross-legged, chomping in between words and sentences.

“I still wanna try a websling once you get everything synced up.”

“There’s not enough planets to even make that work and I doubt these systems could handle an interstellar websling”—a maneuver named after the way an old comicbook character from Earth would shoot spiderweb from his arms, attach them to a building tops and swing. Only instead of web it was gravity and instead of buildings it was planets and stars.

“The system’s not important, it’s the same idea the numbers just change *crunchcrunch* I mean I knows it’s not practical for surveying cause we’d move too fast, but at least for a return to the Savepoints, or something.”

“Actually I started working on a protocol for it a while back as an emergency end run to back home.” Quorbin finished with the boosters and began scanning the converter he made for any decay, not wanting it to blow up while terawatts of power ran through it. Terra stopped mid-crunch.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“………………….thank you?”

“Not a problem.”

The silence that followed was strangely peaceful and calm: Terra thought that maybe after all these weeks together, maybe they were finally getting along, maybe he had learned to get his head out of his ass and just do something nice for someone to make up for his lack of regard for basic courtesy and had overcome his general arrogance, maybe-

“Feel free to just sit there snacking, cavegirl. I can take care of everything else.” Asshole. Terra closed her snack and went to find some music to play that Quorbin hated, even if she hated it. In mid-stride she found herself against the wall of the living deck, along with all the unsecured crates. In the distance half a dozen alarms sounded from the cockpit two levels above. The force holding her against the wall was at least 3 g’s and felt like it was still increasing slightly as a strange hum from the engine room grew. In front of her a crate not quite properly secured to the opposite wall began to shake its way to falling the 10 feet to her face. At 3 g’s a crate that was normally 30 or 40 pounds falling that far… This wasn’t looking good. Tension grew as her attempts at movement grew more and more futile.

“Quorbin!......Quorbin!!!!..................QUORBIN!!!!!!!!” It seemed as though at the last minute Quorbin appeared from the hatch in a feat of strength and agility that no one would have bet on, including Quorbin himself. He made a daring lunge for the crate, which snapped out of place as he leapt, while the flux in gravity created the most painful scenario possible for him. The crate managed to miss his outstretched hand and nail him in the chest, and then another shift managed to allow his shoulder blades to ram the corner of one of the secured crates. He then had to very painfully roll the crate he was struck with off an area of his chest he was sure was bruised into the makeshift aisle created by the secured crates, and then the change in the center of gravity caused him to drop toward the pinned Terra, whom he had to awkwardly avoid smashing. This culminated in an almost instantaneous sense of pain he expressed in an awkwardly high pitched “…ouch.”

The gravity stabilized to about 2 g’s and Quorbin used his awkward stance on the wall over Terra to help her sit up, then they helped each other stand.

“What the hell was that?” Terra asked in a whisper, still holding onto Quorbin for balance, looking around like the gravity shift was a person still sneaking around whom may pounce again at any moment.

“I don’t know, the extra buffers in the engine room kicked in so fast it took me a minute to realize what was going on. Could you tell if it was a change in thrust or an external gravity-“ The thrill of standing on a wall left them suddenly as they hit the floor: Quorbin’s bruised back hitting the floor, and Terra hitting his ribs.

“We need to get up to the bridge and figure out what just happened.” Terra moved from on top of Quorbin to the ladder upward in a seemingly graceful, yet driven, motion.

“I’m gonna just…take a moment here and……uuuhhh…..”

Terra was in her flight seat on the upper level of the ship in seconds and began reading through the logs of the last few minutes. The ships systems were fine, so it was definitely an external gravitation source that had caused her to get rescued by the lab geek, the idiot, leaping into danger when she called, all……….heroic- focus! Terra, focus! Where was it? She looked through the orientation of the ship, turning the helm to point where whatever-it-was could be right as Quorbin took his seat to the right and slightly behind her, rubbing his chest while wearing a look of more than mild discomfort.

“It was definitely external. I’m pulling the ship around to see what it was,……………what is THAT?” Floating by in the opposite direction they were heading was a comet of some sort: gigantic, and glowing an unbelievable blue. It coasted by them, leaving a glowing trail miles behind it. The comet was almost entirely covered in uniform craters, each spouting a mini-volcano of illuminating particles. Quorbin’s pain was instantly displaced by his fixation and he began intently working at his console.

“Scanning now… Its weird this doesn’t seem large enough to have caused what it did, unless……. Yeah, see those particle fields?”—he pointed—“those are graviton wells, a bigger concentration than I’ve ever seen naturally: this thing could create a tide if it passed close enough to an ocean. Most of the gravitons are just circling it, which is odd. I think that blue stuff is binding with them somehow. What the hell is that?”

“How did it get so close without us detecting it?”

“Uhm, we’re not detecting it now…”

“What?”

“Well its obviously THERE and I have a read on the gravitons, but I can’t seem to see anything on sensors about the body of mass itself, or what the blue thing is. The fact that there’s blue light is about all the sensors see.”

“Even then how did it get so close?”

“I’m back tracing its course now; keep it in range of the sensors.” Terra accelerated toward the comet, and then matched its speed and direction as they passed by Goop.

“Is it going to orbit?”

“No, its course doesn’t match anything possible for an orbit around this planet or this star. I think it came from out of the system.” Quorbin looked up at the object, perplexed.

“Should we move and try and sample it?”

“No way. If that thing is made of pure gravitons it’ll get exponentially worse as we get inside its field there. It’s leaving some kind of decay trail behind it; let’s see if we can track the source.” Terra turned the ship around and Quorbin set the projection on the main window to show the trail left behind. Terra accelerated towards its horizon. The trail followed back for a bit and then dead-ended.

“Did we lose it?”

“No, it just stops there.” Quorbin bounced his eyes between the console and the window. “I think this is why it snuck up on us, it didn’t start doing whatever it did, or maybe even exist, before this point.” The two of them stared out at the view, confused, and then excited they had finally found something to do—which reminded Quorbin he needed to purge the air filters. “I think I can track where it was before this; we should pursue it till its source. It does go deeper into the territory we’re scanning.”

“Sounds good to me. Send me the readings to lay in the course. Was your diagnostic done in the engine room?”

“Almost, give me a sec to secure everything.” Quorbin jumped out of his seat and headed down to the engine room, being reminded of the very painful bruises for the first time in a few minutes. He closed up the panels he was working on, double checked all the numbers, then pounced on the ladder leading upward and yelled the all clear. He started to climb, but then stopped as he heard the engines purr, taking a last moment to look back at the reactor: the 4 panels on its sides began to glow brighter and brighter and he heard the systems filter the power being sent to them; saw the components of the entire room light up with purpose as they came on line for the various tasks of sending a body of mass past the speed of light. Then at last he smiled as he heard the final sound—despite the fact that most people claimed it impossible to hear through all the paneling, he always could hear it when the reactor got to work: the sound of a burning fire of a star packed into a can he made in his parents’ basement. At the very least, he thought, I’m not bored anymore.