“I’m telling you, there’s nothing out there, it’s a huge gap of empty space.” Terra searched though the star charts they had and couldn’t find anything remotely likely to have been the origin of a comet that wrapped itself in its own gravity field. Terra held her face in her hands and let out an aggravated sigh. “These reading aren’t enough to prove anything either, even if people believed us it’s not enough to attract any funder’s attention.” Finding his silence unusual, she looked back at Quorbin to see if the jerk was even listening. He was sitting awkwardly at his flight station, still trying to work through a face that displayed obvious discomfort.
“I’m gonna analyze the data we got further, maybe we can figure more out about it.” He was no longer rubbing his chest, but instead cringing every time he touched it. Terra got up and went over to him.
“Let me see that, you got nailed pretty hard back there.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be a guy about this, I don’t want to put up with you whining about how bad you got hurt saving me for the next nine months.” She pulled him out of the chair carefully and followed him to the lab level. Quorbin stood facing away from Terra, holding a chair for balance as she unlocked the first aid kit and pulled out its med scanner. She turned to Quorbin and began the scan of his back: bruising, but no breaks—something was wrong deeper, though. “Turn around.” Quorbin maneuvered himself to face her, still doing a terrible job of hiding the pain on his face. Her face turned into a rare look of concern as she completed the scan. Cracked ribs and even worse bruising than his back. “Take off your shirt.” Quorbin silently began pulling the red t-shirt off carefully, his lack of a sarcastic reply already an ominous sign of his injuries. The bruising was a deep purple that left a blotchy imprint of the corner of a crate across his chest. Terra felt an instant sense of guilt. She didn’t like when people picked up a check for her, so getting a cracked rib for her left her staring for a minute till a groan from Quorbin brought her back to looking through the first aid box.
Terra tried to start some conversations about their next move while applying the regen-gauze before using the bonding laser to repair the crack in his ribs. She was only half paying attention though; she wasn’t going to be able to feel right until the injuries he had were gone or started healing. Quorbin winced at her touch on his bruised skin but finally managed to speak through the pain: “Next thing you know I’ll be having to rescue you from a super-villain while you’re chained to a wall in a sexy slave costume.” Terra kept bandaging.
“Yeah, then I would really hate you.”
“Fine then I’ll just let him kill you and join him to take over the galaxy.”
“Join who?”
“The super-villain trying to kill you.”
“It’s far more likely our roles would be reversed. In fact I’m so certain of that I think you should start picking out sexy slave costumes.” Terra felt much better once the bruising began to recede. A lifetime of privilege and being waited on had left a disdain of people doing things for her. She specifically tried to be troublesome in her youth to have something she could claim for herself. If all the adults and house staff told her not to do it, they probably won’t try to do it for her. Even her own father, who was a pilot in the military himself, often tried to use his status to boost her career. She tried to remind herself that she would probably be running home for facial reconstruction if it weren’t for Quorbin. Still, her “I don’t need your help” stigma ran deep.
“Here’s your shirt back.” Terra outstretched her arm toward Quorbin with the red t-shirt draped through her hand. “You’d think after spending your whole life on Mars you’d be sick of the color red.”
Quorbin paused only a moment while considering her inquiry. “Kind the opposite actually, stops me from getting homesick.”
“You were all but strapping a rocket to your back trying to get off that rock.”
“You miss Earth at all, cavegirl?” Terra rolled her eyes at what she knew was coming next. “Cause I think I have some sticks and rocks in samples we took, I’m sure you could try and make a fire if you rub them together hard enough.” Terra could have left it alone if he had simply given an “I don’t want to talk about it,” but now he had started with this crap again, and she didn’t have anything else to do, so she let out her frustration at their dead end comet investigation on his ridiculous arrogance and perused, once again, the line of questioning as to what made the humans on Mars better then the humans on Earth.
“I grew up in a city with over a hundred million people living in it; most Earthicans live in cities, how the hell does the rest of the star system think we live in caves, or is it really just the Martians, who live on a planet that’s been dead since humanity was even around! Not to mention Earth is still the cultural, economic, entertainment capital—and influential world—for all of humanity!” This argument was built on many such arguments that had accord before the mission even began: the Earthicans and Martians—while working together regularly and, by all means, needing each other—often were like oil and water on a personal level.
“Yeah, you’re really a pristine example of what humanity is all about, going most your lives in a place too bright to even realize there are other planets out there.” A metaphor often used in similar arguments between Earth and Mars, using the imagery of bright city lights blocking out the stars as a way of saying Earth only thinks of itself.
“Humanity CAME from earth!”
“No, most of humanity LEFT Earth.” Best estimates put humanity’s numbers at around 20 billion, only about 5 billion lived on earth, about 20% under the oceans. “They got tired of going their whole lives without seeing a tree.” Quorbin began heading for the hatch down to the living storage.
“Central Park is full of trees! Hundred story trees! MY FAMILY OWNS A PENTHOUSE IN A TREE!”
“Wha, that… that does the OPPOSITE of help your argument!” Quorbin dropped down the hatch.
“And all your precious trees ALSO came from Earth you freakin hippie!” Terra made her way to the piloting bridge. “And you’re welcome for fixing your broken torso!”
“Yeah, thanks for being all helpless.” Terra looked for something to throw, found the med kit, and chucked it over at hatch, not hitting Quorbin, but making a loud enough sound to be annoying. Quorbin stuck his head out the hatch leading to the lab level Terra was exiting upward. “I’m totally leaving you to die with the super-villain! No matter how hot you look in a slave girl costume!” Quorbin went back to running diagnostics in the engine room, still steaming over the argument between him and the cavegirl. Even her hotness in the skintight cybernetic flight suit couldn’t make up for how much she aggravated him. Well that’s not true all the time; she looked damn good in that suit. This line of thought relaxed Quorbin enough to realize it would be awesome if he purged the atmosphere system into space WHILE going faster than light, and he began making the preparations necessary. He thought about telling Terra so she could watch too, but he was still too mad at her.
Quorbin was mostly mad that she made him think about Mars again and why he was so eager to leave. He remembered the anger he felt at himself the day he landed on Earth for his scholarship, how sluggish he felt in the higher gravity of Earth; he had been taking the vitamin supplements meant to help people adapt to different planet’s environments when planning an extended stay. Eventually he developed the extra muscle mass needed to walk around without sweating, his lungs adapted so he didn’t feel asthmatic, he even started to like a lot of the food, which he didn’t realize could be so different. He vaguely thought about the strange looks he would catch from Terra, though he tried to dismiss them. He didn’t consider himself a vain person, but she never explained it when he caught her and he sometimes caught himself thinking that maybe adapting to a new planet had left him deformed in some way he didn’t see. But he didn’t want to think about it.
He felt a strange glow of happiness when he thought about the day the two of them met. He assumed it was because they didn’t know each other at all, so it was probably the best part of their tenuous relationship; arguing and conflict had followed within hours of their first “Hello.” I think she had longer hair then, he thought to himself. After taking a moment he set up the rest of the prep work to purge the atmosphere system.
Terra sat in the pilot’s station on the top level, idly watching the distorted glow of the universe whisking by at faster-than-light speeds. Her mind ran through some of the things taught in school about how the universe changes when going so fast, the way laws of physics change, how to handle the throttle differently, the way direction can be shifted with navigation. She let her mind wander, but unsuccessfully relieved the aggravation at losing any leads on the most interesting thing that had happened during the whole trip. She leaned her head to the side as she heard the familiar mechanical shifts of the atmosphere system purging, however her bored facial expression turned quickly when she heard what seemed suspiciously like an explosion outside the ship. Her suspicious confirmed when the ship suddenly gave her whiplash and the hull began to let out the siren howl of strained metal. Her piloting instincts instantly kicked in and she gripped the controls. She looked forward, but was instantly confused. She shook her head and tried to remember the training: she let her eyes relax—remembered the pictures they showed about what something farther away or closer looked like, how speed was translated—and gazed outward.
From what she could tell they were moving faster than they were before—a hell of a lot faster—and it seemed that the explosion had pushed the tail of the ship sideways until they were almost flying backwards. She tried to maneuver, but they had lost their gravitational anchors. How fast were they going? She tried to have the computer re-engage the gravity lock automatically, but the annoying “I can’t do what you’ve asked because I feel like being difficult” screen came up. She yelled for Quorbin, but couldn’t get an answer over the sound of the screeching hull, which she realized was really, really bad. She looked around the controls to see if she could kill the power, but she couldn’t do that from where she was. She slowly let her hands off the controls, and, as she suspected, the ship had stabilized. The idea of Newton’s First Law was truer than ever in faster-than-light space. Terra dropped down the levels, searching for Quorbin, finding him in the engine room passed out against a wall.
“Quorbin wake up, wake up!” She shook him slightly and touched his head, looking for the spot in his hair where the blood was coming from. It felt like a minor cut, not bad enough to make him pass out; it must have been the gravity shift: the aft of the ship had been pushed forward until it was above the cockpit, so she felt very little compared to how fast this area of the ship moved. Quorbin came to just as she figured he would and let out an instant “Ouch,” mostly to her finger being in the cut on his head. “Get up, we need to stop the ship, we’re off course.” As they rose, Terra looked him over for more injuries. He seemed fine, but drowsy; like he had been deep asleep and was still putting his consciousness back together.
“Did we hit our own light boom or something?” His slightly watery eyes looked around, checking for ship damage.
“I don’t know but right now I need you up top to slow us down.” They went upward with Terra looking back to check on Quorbin along the way. They took their seats and began calling out readings to each other.
“We’re moving too fast to pick up any gravity sources to lock on to and I can’t maneuver without them, or slow us down for that matter, but even then, I’m not sure how to re-enter lower space outside of our gravity lock.” Terra got more scared the more she explained it. “Cutting engine power seems risky.”
“The reactor isn’t powering anything, or at least nothing with propulsion, I think we’re still ridding a shockwave”
“Shockwave from what?”
“The reactor runs pretty hot to power the FTL equipment, and we vent a lot of that through the propulsion system. It’s highly radio-active, amongst other things, so when I vented the slime from Goop out of the atmo system I think the exhaust ignited it and it exploded, creating the shockwave pushing us forward.”
“Wait how is that even possible?” Terra tried sorting out everything she knew about FTL physics in her mind but no answers came out. “What the hell was that stuff?”
“Just particles in the atmosphere like the layer of crap that seemed to be all over the planet. I didn’t have the equipment to analyze it thoroughly, just like I don’t have scanners to confirm what I just told you, but it seems likely; except without better readings trying to stop us is going to be a shot in the dark.”
“What do we know about the substance?” With a few taps on his screen a hologram of the atomic structure of it projected between them. Quorbin had no good explanations. “It looks odd, like its off balance.” Terra paused and stared, almost lost in her own mind, searching for the words. “There’s no symmetry to it.” Quorbin was about to point out the absurdity of the molecule looking pretty as being important, but then he looked again at the 3D model. Upset at himself from not seeing the forest from the trees, he realized she was right; the substance seemed broken off in a strange way.
“I think your suggesting that maybe this is actually a decayed substance of something else, which might be right. I can’t figure what it would bond to though, maybe not another molecule, a particle? Something physically smaller but contained by broken part?” Quorbin read out anything he could think of before Terra spoke up, so under her breath it was as though the word escaped from her thoughts instead of being said intentionally.
“…gravity?”
“Wait, what? You’re saying this is a physical substance capable of bonding to a graviton?” Quorbin looked baffled.
“Something blue maybe?” Terra waited for him to catch on, then continued when his face turned from confused by the suggestion to realizing it. “That comet was flying awfully close to that planet, so if it didn’t come from the system, there might be more of it wherever it came from, and there’s no way to tell how much of the stuff was on it since we couldn’t get a reading on the mass of the comet because its gravity field was distorted.”
“But still, an entire planet? Those comets would have had to have been coming fro…… and the planet was COVERED in the stuff it…… I….. I think you’re right.” Quorbin sat back in his chair, at a loss for words, trying to figure out what his next move should be. “Ok, so, I took a cosmic level bonding agent and used a radioactive match to light it on fire.”
“And then it exploded.” Terra wanted to emphasize that.
“And we’re on its shockwave, and because of being in FTL Land there’s no other force strong enough to stop us.” Quorbin’s eyes flickered around; Terra thought he looked kind of cute when he did that, all deep in thought, but she was more focused on making sure she didn’t beat him to death (with his own skull she planned to rip out) for putting them in this situation. Things felt a little better once Quorbin’s face lit up and he snap-pointed at her. “But it’s expanding! Expanding as its area increases, but the energy stays the same!” He looked through some readings on his console.
“So, we’ll slow down?”
“Uhm, no. The point is its effect on us is dissipating, so we only have to worry about the extra momentum in gave us.” Quorbin fiddled with some settings. “All we need to do is use whatever gravity source is ahead of us and reverse its gravity, till its opposing force slows us down enough for our sensors to get a gravity lock and slow us down below FTL.”
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