“Sir,” the quartermaster of the watch stuck his head through his cabin door. “System entry into the Mu Ori system in about forty-five minutes, sir.”
“Roger that. You woke up the captain yet?” Weaver stood and rolled his head left and right, stretching his neck.
“No sir. He’s next on my list.”
“Right. Carry on.”
“Aye.”
“Bill? You still there?” Miriam said into his ear.
“Uh, how the heck…”
“Sir, we’re about to do a multiple system entry for chill and astrophysics survey,” the quartermaster of the watch said.
“Got it,” the CO said, sitting up. “Tell them I’m up there in… Wait, did you say astronomical survey, astronautical survey or astrophysics survey?” During chill times they’d done both of the former, respectively studying stars at long range but getting their “true” distance from Earth by triangulation and mapping for smaller but dangerous gravitational anomalies, potential black holes or neutron stars and the other “rocks and shoals” of deep space.
An astrophysics survey, though…
“Errr…” the PO said, looking at the written note on his pad. “Astrophysics, sir.”
“How in the hell did I forget there was an astrophysics survey?” the CO asked, standing up and hitting his head on a beam. “Mothergrapper!”
“ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, SET CONDITION TWO THROUGHOUT THE SHIP! PREPARE FOR SYSTEM ENTRY AND CHILL. ASTROPHYSICS SURVEY TEAMS READY YOUR POSTS.”
“What in the grapp is… oh grappin’ maulk, not this again. Goddamned astrophysics survey?” The COB looked down at the ceiling of the toilet stall and with lightning fast reflexes grabbed his coffee mug from the toilet paper holder, covering it with his other hand, just before he fell on his head. But, he didn’t spill his coffee until the contents of the toilet fell on him.
“Maulk!”
“Oh maulk!” Berg grabbed a stanchion as the ship suddenly lurched, and swallowed hard against a wave of nausea. He fell to his knees heaving as his inner ear raced to find an up or a down or a left or a right. Maulk, any direction would have suited his balance system, but Berg’s head spun and he heaved again.
“Grapping astrophysics survey! I don’t remember an astrophysics survey on the schedule!”
“ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, SET CONDITION ONE! SEVERE SPATIAL FRAME DRAGGING ANOMALY! ON-BOARD GRAVITATIONAL FLUCTUATIONS.”
“Astro? What the hell?” Spectre held onto the command chair restraints and choked down his stomach. The spin in his head was about like a flat spin at four g. He’d felt that once before in an F/A-18 Hornet, years ago, and he didn’t like it then.
“I dunn—” the lieutenant commander said, then vomited onto his control panel. Fortunately, it was the middle of the night and he had skipped supper. What came up was mostly fluids.
“Commander Weaver!”
“Working on it, sir,” Bill said, swallowing his gorge.
“Commander Weaver?” Spectre shook his head and the spinning subsided for a second. Just a second.
“I don’t get it, sir,” Bill snapped, looking at the readings. “There is not much worse gravity here than at YZ Ceti and we’re farther out. But there is some serious frame drag—” Weaver heaved but managed to use a bag this time.
“Eng reports Ball is nominal,” the XO said, then grabbed a sickness bag.
“I’m, uh, trying to figure it out sir.”
“Weaver?”
“Tchar?” Bill asked, looking at a small video screen. The Adar rarely got involved directly in the running of the ship.
“The ball particle counters are showing a largish background radiation across the spectrum of particles. We could be getting anomalous particle stream or even a-null impacting.”
“I’m getting that… data now Tchar,” Bill said, then grabbed another sickness bag and used same. The nausea from this transition was worse than anything he’d ever experienced in his life, and he’d spent a fair amount of time in both zero-g and fighters. “Thanks.”
“Commander Weaver, how is it coming over there?” Spectre was beginning to lose patience. He had reluctantly agreed to the astrophysics survey in the flight plan, but he had been assured that the distance would be safe and that they had to chill anyway. Fool me once, shame on you…
“The algorithms from previous anomalies are not helping, sir. It must have to do with the serious gravitational frame dragging due to there being an A class star with four F class stars in extremely close orbit around it.” Bill gulped again and looked down at the port side bulkhead just as down became the starboard bulkhead.
“CO?”
“Go XO.”
“We really need to chill sir. Thermal readings exceeding eighty-seven percent of max.”
“Not till we get this anomaly under control,” Spectre ordered. “Commander Weaver, can we just back out of here?”
“That has never really worked for us in the past sir,” Bill replied.
“Right. Work faster.”
“Commander Weaver?”
“I’m running a sim now sir. I… think it’s…” He paused and grabbed another sickness bag. The conn was rapidly running out. “I think it’s going to tell me what is happening at least.” Some… detritus had gotten on his screen and he surreptitiously wiped at it with his sleeve.
He was the first to see Miriam enter the conn. The linguist was normally the first to go down from motion sickness but something had changed that. As the relative “up” shifted to port the linguist easily handled the shift, even seeming to anticipate it, and walked up to his station along the top of the ballast controls.
“Is there unusual frame dragging in this region?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Data reduction and simulation is… coming in now,” Weaver said, looking at her oddly. “Why are you asking?”
“I was just thinking about what might happen in a frame dragging scenario,” Miriam said, grabbing a stanchion just before another gravity change and bracing sideways. “What do you think about, oh, adjusting the permeabilty factor for membrane modification during oscillations of the muon and muon neutrino density? I mean, if you have to realign the frame dragging coefficient for entry into nonstandard metrics from modified flat plane metric motivation?”
“Miriam!” Bill said, slapping his forehead. “You’re brilliant!”
“Well, yes, but do you think it will work?”
“Uh, let’s assume that I’m not so brilliant and explain this to me,” Spectre said. “And XO, get a work party up here with some more sickness bags!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Muon and muon neutrino density, sir,” Bill said. “That is what a plus pion or pi-meson decays into. That is what we use to power the box, pions. Maybe we’re pounding it with too many.”
“Well, we’re going to chill anyway, can’t we just cut them off?” Spectre asked.
“Good idea,” Weaver said. “Maybe.”
“There was one more thing.” Miriam said. “I think that the first excited state of the flavor neutral must have the required rest mass of three zero nine six point nine million electron volts in oscillating flux density but the half life of the up-type pair must be longer, frame relative, than the rest frame seven point two times ten to the minus twenty-one seconds. The modulation and control of the flux density and pair half life can increase or decrease the flat space metric within the motivation metric to accommodate potential well suitability. But it’s just a guess.”