15 August 2018
Lawrence gazed at them expectantly. They said nothing for a long moment. "Bloody hell, can't you people do magic?"
"Hermione, could you make a Portkey?" Cho asked suddenly and slightly desperately.
"It wouldn't work," Hermione answered. "The Muggles explained it. How does it work?"
Pierre floated over. "The more dimensions zere are, ze higher any...object's ratio of volume to surface area. If zat ratio eez too much for a cell, such az ze ones in your body, it can't take in what it needs or throw out ze waste. When you Apparate, or you use a Portkey, you are entering higher-dimensional space. The magic keeps everything where it belongs so your cells are not with the insides out, but the cells now have much less...mmm... surface area than they should. So, you feel as though you are being suffocated, and crushed. Your brain continues to work well, though, because your neurons have to be very big to work properly. So they are very...le mot, le mot elongated, so as to, minimize, zat ratio, which means some new dimensions, do not matter much."
Hermione had understood most of that. Sometimes she wondered whether, in some ways, it might have been better to grow up as a Muggle. They certainly understood the universe, the stars, and even their own bodies at a far deeper level. Wizards had used magic for centuries, but they hadn't even understood how or why it worked until this project. She quickly forced her thoughts back to the current situation. Cho, despite her knowledge, made little sense of it. "So if we tried to Portkey back, we would suffocate?" Cho asked.
"Yes. Or Apparate. This is why Apparition is not normally do-able across ze continents. It takes too long in hyperspace, you get too much oxygen...hmm...owed, and you become unconscious before reaching your destination. As Mrs. Weasley explained yesterday, zere are also problems with...quel est le mot...navigation. This ship fixes the first problem. Now we know it doesn't fix the second."
"Mr. Gaston, have you finished your work?" Lawrence demanded formally.
"No, Mr. Lawrence, I have not," he answered in kind, and quickly returned to his calculations--after another glance at Cho.
"It's possible, Hermione, isn't it?" Cho asked/demanded. "I mean, when people Splinch, they don't usually bleed to death if they aren't sorted out, r-right?"
"Ron nearly did during the war," Hermione answered. "But no, they usually don't, so come to think of it, there must be some kind of connection or sealing off, at least." She thought desperately. Everything she had ever read about Apparition (which, of course, was a considerable amount) seemed to have left her mind the moment she'd passed her Apparition test.
"Could we try to go back?" she asked finally, still thinking.
"I'd rather not," Lawrence said,"if there's any other way. Based upon this first trial, we could wind up nearly anywhere. And I doubt we would have enough energy to try it more than a few times."
"We've got to try something!" Cho almost shouted.
"Miss Chang, we do not have time for panic, pull yourself together," Lawrence ordered. There was a long silence. Hermione patted Cho's shoulder. Mortal danger had always strengthened friendships quickly.
"I have a fix on Vega and Alpha Centauri, Steve," Bernard reported. Everyone looked toward him. "Based on the magnitudes, we aren't that far away from the sun. I mean, in terms of the galaxy." He fiddled with the camera controls. "If I'm right, Sirius should be somewhere in this direction. Okay, gimme a moment." He fiddled with the camera some more. "Okay, got it. Computer's working on this now." The stars appeared on the 3D display, and lines traced from them toward a common center--with several jerks as the computer backlogged. By this time everyone except Pierre was clustered around him. The lines converged, and some numbers flashed up. "Okay, from Earth, right ascension seven hours 45 minutes, declination positive four degrees 54 minutes, range...approximately one point four light years." He released a breath. "Basically, a light year and a half in the general direction of..." he cast around, "Procyon."
Lawrence opened his mouth, then closed it again, nodding briefly as though resolving to deal with something minor later. "So that's it," he said. "Even with full consumables we would starve or suffocate long before we could get back in the, er, normal way, even if we had a working engine. We can only try to Apparate again. Unguided." He swore. "This project was you people's idea."
"We have not more time for panic than we have for complaining," Pierre said sharply. Lawrence nodded.
"Guided..." said Hermione to herself. "Guided..." She was remembering this now. "I remember! When Splinching happens and there's no blood--when the pieces are still attached through higher-dimensional space, as you would say--the teachers did it to Susan Bones when we were learning to Apparate, one Summons the smaller detached portion through higher-dimensional space. The incantation is Accio Spatium Superior."
"But it wouldn't do any good to summon the other part of the ship here. All that would do is give us a little while longer before we starved or suffocated," Lawrence answered. "We would have to try another uncontrolled transit."
"Well, maybe we should try to diagnose the problem, then," Bernard suggested, joining the discussion. "Do any of you have any ideas what happened?" He considered for a moment. "Mrs. Weasley, did you notice anything? Or do people ever report things like this?"
"You can call me Hermione," she said with a brief smile. "I just Apparated like I would any other time. I was thinking of our target, the orbit of the moon--our destination. I deliberated on the target--I thought of learning about astronomy and the moon, eclipses, moons of other planets, the orbit--"
"Hermione, you must not have been determined to get there, then," Cho said sarcastically. "I'll never forget those three D's."
Hermione laughed weakly. Bernard spoke a moment later, but without confidence. "Maybe that was the problem? She...umm...was thinking about the moons of other planets, so...we ended up there?"
Lawrence looked startled. "None of this should have happened if the navigation instruments had been working. But, if we passed near a gas giant in the outer system, the magnetic field might have disrupted the connection between M--Hermione and the spacecraft."
"And if we were that close, you'd get a very strong gravitational assist from the planet. Doesn't gravity break the...dimensional barrier?" Bernard suggested.
"Gravitons can leave our brane and enter the bulk," Pierre said. "I had ze minor in it in undergraduate," he said with a shrug when Lawrence glanced at him.
"So that could have done it. Flung us at random, while disengaging part of the ship from Hermione's magnetic field," Bernard suggested. "But if that's what happened, I'm surprised the spacecraft's still in one piece. The g forces must've been immense. Not to mention we must have been practically skimming the cloud tops. I'm surprised we didn't hit anything..." He trailed off.
Hermione had been following their logic and did not like it. "So without Jupiter, or Saturn, or one of those planets, we can't get back?" she asked grimly. Lawrence gestured to the two witches, conveying quite effectively "you should know, because I don't." There was another silence.
"If you can do it one way," Cho suggested, "couldn't you do it the other way?"
"We don't even know if we are still attached," Hermione pointed out. "And this is not an ideal time to be trying new spells."
"There is one of ze ways to find out," Pierre said. "If we open a oxygen line. And the leaking is not what it should be, then we will know zere is still a...connection, yes? And then, if that works, we could do what ze lovely Miss Chang is suggesting."
Lawrence didn't even ask whether they had oxygen to spare for this test; he knew that Pierre would not have suggested it if they had not. Instead, he asked,"Could you carry this out now?"
Pierre reached into a locker "above" his console and pulled out a printed operations manual (in case the computer failed, which effectively it had). He began flipping through it. "I do not know what is the override code," he explained. "It does not generally come up, yes?"
18 September 2015
"It's not the construction that costs so much. That's all standard stuff we've known how to do since Apollo and costs us less than it did then. The problem is the R&D. You have to understand, this is something which no one has any scientific understanding of. We've had to go through five prototypes already and the design is still unsatisfactory."
NASA's Administrator was not happy, as he was arguing with the President of the United States, which is an activity that tends to make people unhappy. Worse yet, he was arguing against giving his own agency more money, which was a very annoying thing to have to do. At least, the Chief of Staff imagined it would be annoying.
"Look, what I'm telling you is, we're having to cook the books like crazy to get the budget for this thing. We're having to pretend that the Terrestrial Planet Finder is way over budget, and Congress is talking about canceling it. We're having to pretend the R&D work for the Ceres mission is way over budget, and people are complaining about that. Yes, I know you're doing what you can with the black budget, and I appreciate it. But we still don't know whether this contraption is going to work, and if it doesn't, that's going to be the end of serious space research for two or three election cycles, minimum. You're a lame duck almost, the Republicans are going to be out for blood in 2016, and they aren't big on spending...Yes, of course I'm speaking metaphorically. The point is, you know what they think about that fiscal cliff deal you made them go along with back in '12."
Barack Obama answered, inaudibly to the Chief of Staff.
"No, I agree, I don't think the Europeans are going to want to do that. They're coming out of an economic crash just like us."
The Chief of Staff began sorting his papers while Obama replied.
"I'm not arguing with your priorities. Your priorities are fine. I'm concerned about how this is going to look to the public. Yes, I know you've known about these people since you were elected, and I know Area 51 holds our national school for these wizards, but I only learned about this less than a year ago, and I don't have as much confidence in this magic."
The Administrator obviously did not like Obama's response. "Look, technically, Congress is supposed to be setting our budget and priorities, not you. I don't consider myself entirely obligated--"
He listened for some time. "I understand you're a busy man. Feel free to call me back later." He hung up.
"You know what's ironic?" the Chief of Staff said. "For the first time, we actually are covering something up. And no one knows about it."
The Administrator massaged his temples. "Please tell me you have good news."
"The tests of the magnetic joining system have succeeded," the Chief of Staff explained. "But we're having trouble minaturizing the coils enough to fit on the spacecraft without them overloading."
After a discussion, they decided to err on the side of allowing them to overload, on the logic that they would then be small enough to bring spares along.
Test Flight by William Brennan
Chapter Notes: I know there's very little personal stuff in this chapter either. I'll get some of that into the next chapter; there'll be time for that for reasons that become clear then. Also note that nothing I've said or implied about President Obama implies or says anything about how he actually has behaved or will behave.