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CHAPTER 32

December 20, 2090 (Earth timeline)

March 13, 2090 (Ship timeline)

approximately 6 light-months from Earth

3.64 light-years from Proxima

“Damn. Still off course,” Crosby grunted. Twenty-three hours had passed since they reset the PINS and performed their first trajectory correction maneuver and now Crosby knew there would have to be another. The same group was gathered again in the mess hall, which was, to no one’s surprise, the most likely location aboard ship to congregate. Even in deep space, breaking bread together was still among the most social of activities for humans. They had just finished their lunch when the latest navigation status data was calculated. Good food even helps to assuage bad news.

“The correction we made yesterday should put us back on course at least for the next six months or so. The problem is that we are going faster and faster and the errors grow more quickly. We really need a better way because I’m not excited about going to cryo with an unproven nav computer steering our way,” said Roca, moving toward his datapad. He could control most ship systems from his datapad. The entire Samaritan network was accessible if you had the proper codes and hardware. Roca had set up a routine to take the new navigation data and feed it directly into the AI for the appropriate course correction.

“Did we have any clues as to what’s wrong with the PINS?” asked Zhao. “I mean, Roy, Cindy, there has to be some way to find out what Gaines did to it.”

“I still say we build a completely new system,” Lin added.

“No way to really test anything out here other than just do it for real and keep correcting everything. We’ve run our input data through the PINS, through the backup system, and even through the system simulator and it appears to be working fine. The problem appears to be local. The fact that the data going into the PINS is good rules out any problems with the pulsar telescopes. The issue has to be in the PINS hardware itself or its programming,” said Burbank.

“I say we reload the PINS software one more time. I can delete the current load and replace it with the code we know works back home that Roy brought us. Maybe something is wrong with the software we’re running,” Cindy Mastrano said. “If that doesn’t work, Lin, you might be right about building a new system of some sort.”

“I’ll keep thinking on a new nav concept with tech that is in our inventory or can be printed,” Patel offered in agreement with Lin.

“Me too,” Roy agreed.

“Okay CHENG, reload the software. It’s worth a try. I will want a plan B. We should all be thinking about that.” Crosby looked about the table at all of them to see if there were any further questions or comments. Hearing none, he was ready to adjourn. He waited for a brief moment before rising and turning to the door. “In the meantime, I’m going to get some rack time.”

* * *

“None of us want to go into cryo until the problem is resolved. It’s completely understandable to me. I want to know that I can trust what’s driving this ship,” Crosby said to the CHENG as they entered the galley. Burbank, Zhao, and Roca were sitting about a table in the middle of a heated game of Scrabble. From the looks of it, there were only a few letters left and the game was nearing completion. They’d all been focusing on the navigation issue for so long that the captain had ordered everyone who was still up to take a two-hour break from all things PINS related. They needed to rest and reset their minds. They were all too close to the problem and most certainly too emotionally connected to it.

“It’s been a week since we got the message from home and found out about the problem and nothing has fixed it. We’ve had to perform a correction maneuver every day based on handmade observations with the digital sextant system on the bridge. That will get incredibly old really quick and it looks like we’ll have to continue to do this or we will never arrive anywhere. With the replacement software still giving us bad data, I’m out of ideas,” Crosby told Mastrano as they took a seat around the table. The other three looked up from their game.

“Where’s Lin and Patel?” Crosby asked.

“Sack time,” Roca responded without looking up from his letter tiles.

“I guess we’re going to be awake for the duration, then?” Zhao asked. “I mean, in three-person shifts?”

“I ran that by the AI psychologist and it said that would be a recipe for disaster. The AI gives it an eighty-nine percent chance one of us will lose it, perhaps even become violent, if we try. Seven years is a long time to be stuck with only each other for company. However, it did give us a good chance of staying awake a few months at a time, each in cycles. Not as easy as closing your eyes and waking up at the destination point, I must admit!”

“There’s got to be something we’re missing.” Zhao shrugged. “Some bit of data that we can get from another system. The optical telescopes, the radar, something. There has to be a way to automate a new completely trustworthy system?”

“We’ve been through all that before. The optical telescopes will help us refine our trajectory when we get close to Proxima Centauri because they’ll have several things to see and use as reference points—three close stars, multiple planets whose locations are well known, etcetera. But that’s only when we get close. Out here, the radar can only see things that are relatively close and there isn’t much. Just the occasional pebble and the Interstellarerforscher out there in front of us by a few light months,” replied Crosby.

“The Interstellarerforscher. Hmm, how well can we see it in the forward cam sensors?” Roy Burbank stopped paying attention to the Scrabble game and looked up at the captain.

“I don’t know. It’s one helluva bright UV beacon so all of our systems are filtered for it,” Crosby replied and then turned to Cindy Mastrano. “CHENG?”

“Yeah, we can see it a bit with the larger observation scopes but it’s mostly filtered out,” Cindy explained. “Roy, you could spell something with your Q and that A right over here.” She pointed at the board.

“Not my turn.” Roy pushed back from the table, causing the chair legs to squeal against the deck plates like fingers on chalkboard. “Are the filters on a wheel, in software, or what?”

“Filters?” Roca stopped paying attention to the Scrabble game and made eye contact with Burbank. “What’re you gettin’ at, Roy?”

“The Interstellarerforscher. I don’t know why none of us thought of it before. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.” Roy was disgusted with how dull, tired, and depressed he’d become. He thought he was beginning to get himself right, and then he’d think about never being able to meet his little girl. He thought about never seeing his wife again. He’d cry. He’d get angry at Gaines and want to kill the bastard. Then he’d get angrier. Then start the cycle over. He’d take his mind off all that by staying busy. But the busy he stayed wasn’t creative busy, it was one foot in front of the other shell-shocked busy. That shit had to change or he might as well just jump out an airlock. And he wasn’t going to do that.

“What? How can the Interstellarerforscher help us?” Captain Crosby asked.

“Because she’s close, running only a few light-months ahead of us, making sure the path is relatively clear, and she has a functional PINS that appears to be working correctly or we’d have been told about it. Simple enough to take our trajectory and lay it over hers and see, but I suspect Gaines never had any reason to mess with the probe. That probe is on target,” Roy explained. “We just need to be able to see it better.”

“A big, bright, ultraviolet beacon in the sky leading the way,” Zhao added. “That could work, but the filters are in the housing of the instrument box behind the Optical Tube Assembly, if I recall. Hold on and I’ll pull up some drawings.”

Roy and the others waited while Zhao tapped at his imaginary keys in the virtual heads-up display his contacts were showing him. And then he made a throwing motion at the table and the datapad in the center of the table changed from showing a Scrabble board to a three-dimensional diagram of the Forward-Looking Optical Telescope Assembly, or FLOTA (they all called it the “flo-tah”).

“Dammit, Zhao, you better have saved that game. I was winning!” Roca growled at him. Roy didn’t really care, but he did at least feel a flutter of laughter pass through his body.

“Relax, Bob, I saved it. Besides, I was about to lower the boom with a triple word score.” Zhao chuckled lightly.

“Gentlemen?” Captain Crosby looked across the table at them with a raised eyebrow. “Can we get to work here?”

“Sorry, Cap’n,” Roca replied sheepishly. “Go ahead, Zhao.”

“Oh, no, not me. Here’s the drawing. Roy, Cindy? The filters are in this box here.” Zhao pointed. “I have no idea how we’d modify the thing without breaking it.”

“Only one way to make an omelet. Right, Roy?” Cindy said. Roy watched as she tapped at the icons floating in front of them and then a virtual toolbox appeared. She reached in, extracted the electric socket driver, and handed it to Roy. “You go first.”

“Uh, mmm, okay. How hard can it be?”

Roy took the virtual tool from her and started tracing the virtual version of the telescope in front of him for modular connectors. He followed the edge of the box to a corner where there were several space-rated exterior bolt fasteners. He pointed the tool at them and the bolts backed out and vanished. He peeled away the panel that in reality would have been about a meter in length and half that tall. The material was labeled as spacecraft aluminum, titanium, zinc alloy. He dropped the panel in the storage file and then reached into the virtual world with both hands together, separating them so to zoom in on the drawing.

“Ha! I bet that little bugger is it right there. You see how the optical tube here comes out the back of the telescope Optical Tube Assembly here and then there’s this box, right here, about ten centimeters across on either side?” Roy asked to nobody in particular. He did hear Cindy and Roca making affirmative sounds. “Then look here at this box with the tubing going in and out of it. Here, this one is labeled LN2, liquid nitrogen. That must be the focal plane array.”

“Yeah, I see that, Roy,” Cindy agreed. “The trick will be to pull the filter wheel out, the box just before it, replace it with a spacer box we’ll have to build, and all without knocking this thing out of alignment.”

“Sounds like a pain,” Roca added.

“Hold on a minute. Look here.” Roy zoomed in on the filter box. “See this?”

Roy pointed.

“What am I looking at, Roy?” Cindy asked. “Zoom in.”

“Sure. Here.” Roy spread his hands again zooming in a bit more. Then he put his finger on a little stud sticking out of the filter wheel box. “That is an electrical install-before-flight terminator.”

“I’ll be damned!” Roca nodded. “I’d have missed that.”

“Because you’re not a ship builder and tester.” Roy smiled. He tapped the little stud with the information wand and a datasheet window popped open near it. “Let’s see . . . filter wheel test port A3 . . . pinouts see Appendix F9, page 341 . . . There we go.”

“Rachael, open Appendix F9, page 341 of the Ship Design Manual Drawings Package,” Cindy told her AI assistant. Her datapad quickly shook hands with the table and displayed the manual.

“All we need is right here. This connector was put in place by the instrument builders to test the filter wheel and for internal alignments after installation. Then they locked it all down and sealed it up and terminated it. I’ll bet you there’s a hundred thousand of these little connector ports throughout this ship.” Roy nodded knowingly as he explained. “All we have to do is pull this panel, connect a cable to that connector, run the internal component test software from the vendor, which should be somewhere in the database here, and tell it to rotate the UV filter out of the way.”

“Roy! That might work!” Cindy slapped him on the back. “That might work.”

“Who’s doing the EVA?” Crosby asked.

“Shit. Somebody’s gotta go out there and rig that thing,” Roca said. “I hate EVAs.”

“Two-man job,” Cindy said. “I’ll go.”

“I’ve done plenty of them at lunar dock,” Roy added. “I’ll go.”

“CHENG, you’ll stay put and monitor from inside,” Crosby interrupted them. “Patel is our best EVA astronaut. Roy, if you are up for it, fine. Zhao, go wake up Patel and Lin and let’s walk through this several times and make certain this is the right path to take.”

“In the meantime, Captain,” Roca said, “I’ll get started on a nav software package to follow the Interstellarerforscher.”

“Right. Get to work, everyone.”



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