SWNOVELS Chapter Why wouldn’t they wish to help you? 27th August 2060
In space, on route to SEG002
Gabriel and Ginny were sitting in the seats in the flight deck. Gabriel was drinking hot chocolate. It steamed gently. Gabriel wondered idly how the starship controlled their environment; how it maintained their oxygen level, how it coped with the steam from the hot chocolate.
Ginny was gazing out through the cockpit canopy, still enthralled by their being in space.
Gabriel looked over at Ginny. He knew that they both had questions on their mind. Now seemed a good time to voice them.
“Ship?” said Gabriel.
“Yes, Gabriel?”
“What do you think happened ... to cause the motor to fail?”
“Well, Vicky and I think that the long, slow journey method is what caused the problem with the rocket motor,” Ship said.
“Are you sure?” Ginny said.
“Well, that is possibly what caused the problem,” Ship qualified, “but we cannot be really sure.”
“Would it help if we completed the remainder of the journey to SEG002 very quickly, then?” Ginny suggested. “That way the motors would be working at the levels that work best for them.”
“That may be a good idea, Ginny,” Vicky said, “but Ship and I think that there may be a problem with the overall plan. With one of the motors exhibiting an intermittent fault, there is a reasonable chance that it may fail altogether at some point in the journey. Either on the way to SEG002 or on the way back to Earth.”
“But we still have the other motor, don’t we?” said Ginny. “That one works fine, doesn’t it?”
“Our concern,” said Ship, “is that if the faulty motor fails completely, if we then get a fault in the remaining motor, then we would be unable to complete the journey back to Earth. We already know that ACME INC is unable to provide replacement motors, and you would be ...”
“We would be stuck in space,” said Gabriel, sounding horrified.
“Exactly,” said Ship.
“Do you guys have any suggestions, then?” asked Ginny
“Do you remember when I mentioned to you that the old off-world mining operations used teleports that don’t use the space/time coordinates database?” said Vicky. “They were set up before the coordinates database was put into use.”
“I remember that you mentioned it,” said Ginny. “You didn’t think it would be any help, though.”
“Well, maybe,” said Vicky, “we could use that feature to get you back to the Earth.”
“How do you mean?” said Ginny.
“Well, if we manage to get to SEG002,” Vicky continued, “we could use their teleport to get back to Earth. It would take you to whatever storage deport it is configured to use ... it wouldn’t have the facility to select another location ... but crucially, you would be back on the Earth.”
“So, we would just need to go and ask them if we could use their teleport?” said Gabriel, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
“Why wouldn’t they wish to help you?” Ship asked.