The Distant Lights

By Tom Rothschild

This futuristic science fiction follows after The Neptune Expedition and The Challenge. The novels narrator is once more a crew member on a Space craft. This mission is neither military nor business oriented. He is to assist in a research project which should change Space travel forever.
What happens is more than anyone imagined as they look for answers in The Distant Lights

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465323200

Tom Rothschild

Tom Rothschild is a Washington resident from the Seattle area since 1990. He has written other science fiction novels including Confessions of an Indifferent Witness and The Inevitable Fall. This book continues along the line of his futuristic science fictions, The Neptune Expedition and The Challenge. When not at work, Tom and his wife can be found enjoying life in the Northwest.

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Copyright © 2008 by Tom Rothschild.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

For Diane, who encouraged me to accomplish more. This is some of the result.

Chapter One

I don’t think I’ll ever get use to this job. It’s simple enough. I have a small room, or compartment, depending on one’s perspective, which I must stay in for several hours each day. I have food, drink, bathroom facilities, and space to move around in. I have monitors and gadgets enough to keep even the most bored engineer entertained and occupied. I have several picture windows with a view few could surpass.

However, my purpose for being here leaves me both confused and anxious at the same time. I don’t really do anything, but watch everything around me. I wasn’t told what to watch out for, merely to be on the alert for something. This type of guard duty is not new to me, but every other venture like this I’ve been involved in, at least gave me some clue to what I might be alert for.

The last time, for instance, when I had a similar job I was actually searching for others like myself and my crew. Well, they weren’t too similar. Most of them were high-level physicists and research scientists, while the remainder was their pilot and mechanic. Still, it was something with depth, space, and matter. The many instruments I have surrounding me would and did register their presence. In fact, our numerous instruments were second to seeing them first hand through the large picture windows I constantly scan. Their crew, led by a talented woman physicist, had a habit of appearing to other crews before any electronic detectors had alerted anyone they were in the vicinity.

This current assignment I’m on is a result of the success at getting from one place to another before anyone could identify them. They accomplished this feat with an invention they had been working on for some time. It was their primary research project, though they had other projects also on their list to solve.

What they developed was a new type of propulsion which concentrated energy from any and all sources of radiation around them. This energy focused on a point which expanded until it covered a large area in a kind of sphere. This sphere was unusual though, because it pushed out all Space within it to the outside of the sphere. How this could be done in a vacuum is still under debate. It is one of those problems physicists love to dazzle us laymen with when the problem comes up for discussion. I suppose there are vacuums, and there are vacuums.

Regardless, this sphere is fixed next to their vessel at a constant distance, as if it was a solid part of their Space craft. Focusing light on to a point would not be so remarkable of course, if heat was all one was after. However, it is this sphere, or bubble, as I think of it, which causes their vessel to move.

The events which occur after this bubble is formed, is what sets their research apart from all others. They found if they could move the bubble, as a whole, in any direction, they would almost instantaneously be moved a great distance in the opposite direction.

Of course, it was by chance they discovered this reaction. They were one day trying to maneuver their vessel around to maximize their solar collecting capabilities, when they were gone. The reaction was so smooth no one was certain anything had happened, until someone in the cockpit noticed the bizarre reading on their instruments. This was compounded by the undeniable different view they saw out their windows.

They stopped all further work until they could clarify this new data they had collected. Their instruments proved to them they had flung themselves across the solar system, in less than a second. Apparently, they had come to a stop when the maneuvering jets they used to push their craft around had stopped firing. Thus, they had controlled their duration and direction of their sudden trip.

This feat, like falling off a cliff and surviving the experience, would have astounded most people, but the crew working on that vessel happened to be searching for a new means of transportation. The current favorites were gas propulsion and steam propulsion.

I favor steam propulsion. It may not be as powerful, but we can easily carry a large supply without the risks gas propulsion is noted for. Steam has been practical on Earth for most everything, so it was a natural option for our use. Especially, the way we manage it. We keep it frozen in large containers, which make up the majority of our vessel’s total area. Once we turn it to ice, we then slice off a wafer, or several wafers, to be exact. These are transferred to a chamber where they can be heated into steam. Steam under pressure, of course, can be a very efficient fuel. We have proven the value of steam many times over.

Gas propulsion has a few hazards to it, which makes it less attractive to me. How volatile it is, even under only partial pressure, is certainly one of my concerns.

The problem of refueling is probably the worst setback, though. We have found steam or ice to be plentiful in Space. We have procedures for when we need refueling, which detours our mission for just a few days. Once refueled however, we can continue for months, if we aren’t too frivolous with our fuel. This possibility is not feasible with gas. Our only option is to return to Earth’s immediate area and get a refill. This makes it difficult, if not impossible for extended missions in Space.

The crew, who were working on the super vacuum bubble, had tried to create a third option. They were working on a theory which had grown with our advances in Space exploration. The interconnection of one event to past events is shown perfectly in this instance. Whereas my current mission was a direct offshoot, or progression of their super bubble research; their research was an extension of numerous observations made in Space, including mine.

My first mission in Space exploration was exactly that. I originally got involved in Space exploration as a miner. Yes. I was quite a few years younger than I am now, but I was legal age, nonetheless. Actually, my job was to mine ore in Space, and it was this task which put me in possession of some information worth considering. My crew at that time, daily chewed up meteors and sent anything valuable back to Earth. Of course, this took quite a while, even on the large bits of cosmic dust I like to call the Space debris we worked on.

Nevertheless, when we had succeeded in processing a large enough amount of ore, we shipped it back to factories which circled around the Earth. No, a couple of dump trucks didn’t pass through and take our load away. We had to put it into containers and send it back to Earth, ourselves.

This was actually interesting work and quite profitable. It is for me, always a thrill to be working in Space at something which I would probably consider mundane and boring back on Earth. My work in Space was never quite the same each day. Our scenery was the night sky of Earth, but the stars were never in the same arrangement as the day before. Our panorama was so amazing it looked as if it flowed around us rather than twinkled from one point to another.

We were always making progress with our mining too, so our labors were slightly different each day at the work site. But, the most unique feature of our work was as we succeeded in acquiring ore for refining, the ground from under us was steadily disappearing. This meant we had to be careful not to completely destroy the meteor we were drilling away on. If we did, we would find ourselves and our equipment adrift in Space with who knows what consequences to face.

Obviously, as I am sitting here in the cockpit, quite at peace with everything, we never had to deal with that catastrophe. We had some close calls and other adventures but destroying our worksite from under us wasn’t one of them.

The work we did wasn’t the connection to my current mission, though. It was the shipping of the ore we had mined, which could be traced indirectly to the work I do now. As noted, we didn’t have dump trucks pull up to us every so often and take our load of ore. Rather, we sent it back to Earth on its own.

We had a large supply of plastic sheeting we could use for various purposes in Space. One of the uses we put it to on a regular basis was to wrap up an ore shipment into a ball which we could catapult to Earth. It wasn’t very difficult. We could maneuver it around with ease and construct a large bag out of it.

The sheeting was clear, so as we filled it, the capacity of it was observed before any mishaps occurred. Thus, we avoided cramming it too full, due to ignorance or greed. As proof, not one of our shipments ever got torn up during the loading process, or during its journey back to Earth.

The one unusual feature we did notice however was the length of time it took to reach Earth. Sometimes the journey was remarkably less than the hours we had calculated to go from point A to point B, at a certain known velocity.

Conversely, we had shipments which didn’t stray, but nevertheless, took considerably longer to reach their destination. We talked about this problem on my first Space mission, and passed our observations on to Ground Control on Earth. They never seemed to be particularly concerned about these variations in what I thought was a routine procedure.

I concluded we had two possible explanations for these phenomena. One answer was the method we used to send our cargo on their way home. We basically filled up a huge bubble with mined ore. This bubble we attached to the front of our vessel. We then, quickly accelerated and stopped, while simultaneously releasing the bubble from our craft. Obviously, the bubble kept going, though it didn’t have any rockets or other types of propulsion hooked up to it. The bubble was thus launched. If our initial trajectory was correct [and it always was], it was then on its way to a rendezvous with Earth.

Though we never missed our target, I wondered if the velocity we launched the bubble with was the same for each and every shipment. Joel, our pilot, stated it was [and he should know], but a slight difference in speeds over such distances might explain what we were observing. At least, it could explain some of the variations we observed.

Once the bubbles were on their way, technically they neither picked up speed nor slowed down. Of course, they didn’t hit anything, and in Space’s vacuum there was simply no forces at work to take into account. We acknowledged the relatively short distances our cargo had to travel made most problems insignificant. However, if we launched each bubble with the same initial velocity as Joel claimed, and we knew the distance back to Earth, then our calculations should not have been so different from what we were observing. We were left looking for an explanation no one had ever documented before.

What we concluded was there were places in Space where our normal laws of physics didn’t apply. These places were more than a few in numbers; as we seemed to have found several on our own. Our bubbles would enter one of these areas and either slow down considerably or speed up to a noticeable increase in velocity. And, because there was no propulsion equipment on our cargo bubbles, this phenomena was remarkable.

Although Ground control assured us this was not significant, I couldn’t help but be curious about the particulars of each occurrence. Along with several others of my crew, on my first mission, we attempted to collect as much details as we could.

The first observation we made was these areas were not fixed to any precise location. We proved this by sending a number of bubbles through an area we had identified as a place where a bubble had dramatically changed its speed. Unexpectedly, we could not duplicate our findings. This meant these areas must have moved or disappeared, if we were to believe our data in the first place. However, we kept finding other areas which had similar effects on our cargo bubbles.

At this point in our research, we lost our sense of direction about what our clues were telling us. We had found areas in Space, and rather large areas, considering the size of each ore shipment, which were very different from the vacuum of Space. This is the Space we assume is everywhere around us. These areas were not only invisible to our own eyes and instruments, but they seemed to move randomly for no apparent reason.

My own experience and background made it possible for me to rationalize we might have found something alive, but evidently so beyond our comprehension, its effect on our cargo bubbles was the only way we could be made aware of it. This new organism moved around on its own course, perhaps looking for food or just roaming at will wherever it chooses to. Thus, this creature could have been curious about our shipments, or thought they were interesting snacks. It would explain what was affecting the progress of our cargo. However, why we couldn’t see it is not so explainable.

There are always conjectures about other dimensions lying parallel to our own reality, but I find them to be so much fiction. The facts to support such theories are not evident to me. I prefer to stick to something I can identify and quantify. Obviously, everything we do must eventually be traced back to a point where only faith tells us something is true. Nevertheless, I like that point to be seldom, not at every step of the way. These invisible creatures could be a striking example of something which might actually exist in some other dimension, or they could just as readily be of a supernatural or religious nature, and a common feature of our known reality. Regardless, I had few facts to back up any of my speculations, and I was continually constructing a new interpretation for these observations we studied.

Another theory which I agreed might hold promise was an extension of a phenomena we were all aware of on Earth. Earth had changed a lot over recent history. We had conceded we didn’t need a lot of the technological and industrial trends which had seemed so normal in centuries past. One of the results of our shift in direction was our industry in Space. We found more is usually better.

The more variety, the more likely each individual will find something to their liking. The conflict in life though, is the more variety we produced, the less of nature we left untouched. Razing everything to the ground and then sparsely planting plants, shrubs, and trees didn’t balance out with the concrete and steel structures which took a meadow, glen, or forest’s place.

However, our technology had reached a plateau where we could correct this ebbing of our planet’s natural beauty. This correction was a result of several accomplishments. The first was our efforts in Space. We had succeeded in maintaining many vessels out among our solar system. Not only did we maintain them, but they were often productive enterprises.

It was discovered the most toxic and destructive factories on Earth could be either scaled down until they weren’t such a menace. Or, if quantity was demanded, they could be relocated around Earth in a weightless environment. This innovation was slow in developing, but it did happen. The advantages were many.

Weightlessness tends to increase a material’s strength was one noticeable effect. Although pressure can be applied in Space, without gravity it was difficult to spread a steady pressure evenly. Putting everything in a spin however, overcame this problem. Thus, centrifugal force made all types of new materials plausible. Obviously, without gravity other attractions concerning density and atomic structuring could demonstrate a more dominant influence. This one innovation in engineering, namely spinning, made the label made in Space a sign of durability and strength.

The drawback to this new area of production was unfortunately a total imbalance to our world. Again, I’m using my own insights to explain what happened. It seemed about this time there was a plague of natural disasters all over our planet. Earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, and tornadoes of astonishing power occurred nearly simultaneously. These were all quite large in scale compared to anything previously recorded. Many reasons were given, but none of these rationales settled the question of why these natural disasters had become so numerous.

Then, these catastrophes of nature ceased, and what had been the norm, resumed. I found this period in our history to be very interesting, maybe because of the work I’ve made a career of. Regardless, I thought I saw something which stood out as a warning to us.

What had been assumed to be a coincidence of natural forces was actually a result of our own tampering. This was due directly to our efforts in Space. There had been many decades when we had thrown everything possible into Space, attempting to make it a livable environment. I can remember reading about the various types of Space stations going up, and the expected uses each one was designed for.

The more I read about this era, the more it became evident what we had done. Many people claimed many causes for the disasters they endured. One popular cause was the misuse of our environment had finally pushed our planet too far. The results were destructive.

Of course, there were many religious connotations to the events taking place. The basic theme was God had decided to step in and punish us for our sins in a major way.

Each theory had a number of facts holding it together; however I saw our Space exploration as perhaps the true cause responsible for so many natural catastrophes. The point which struck me most was no other explanation was strictly about something totally new we were subjecting our planet to. Indeed, even the religious causes were simply a continuation of something which had finally become the last straw in our assault on Earth.

Our assault on Space though, had never been done before. As I interpreted the facts, we had caused our problems by throwing everything we could into Space, thus pushing the Earth to react to this sudden loss of mass. Somehow the balance of forces holding our planet together had been shifted, and the disasters the people of that era had experienced were merely the Earth trying to adjust to this loss.

It makes one stop and wonder about the significance of everything. If my theory is correct, perhaps we each are more valuable and influential than we can possibly imagine.

Regardless, as we ran out of projects to complete, and our technology found its limit, less and less material was shot out into Space. In fact, we reached a level of equilibrium between what was launched and what returned to Earth.

It was within months of this state of status quo, when the disasters occurring all over the planet ceased. If the sudden calm was noted at the time, I didn’t read about it. Of course, the facts of what happened were there for anyone to interpret, but being that close to the events may have obscured the shift which seemed so apparent to me. Or, maybe the official version of why was explained to the public as remarkable coincidences rather than claim something we were financing as a major industry, were actually the cause of so much destruction.

Regardless, we stopped the extinction of life as we knew it, not for moral reasons, but because we couldn’t come up with anything else to do. That bit of luck I can believe.

It was only a matter of time before we came up with new research to do in Space. The centrifugal forces we had made use of so effectively were valuable for other materials beside supplies for construction. The most important materials were fuel, water, and the air we breathed. We found various ways to couple laser technology to a frozen block of air or water. This was great for many reasons. One, the solid we turned water and air into was uniform in content. This meant we didn’t distill parts of it, but, managed to keep it whole throughout all the processing it went through.

You might wonder difference this made with ice? Water is water, right? This is true, but you can’t say the same for the air we breathe. Of the numerous elements in air, most would suffocate us if we tried to breathe only those in particular. It’s the specific ratio of gases we breathe which makes our atmosphere the one which supports our species, along with most other organisms on Earth.

It was discovered in Space, if you took a pressurized container of the normal air in our atmosphere and sprayed it into a sealed rotating bubble, it would form a solid which didn’t layer out, but stayed homogeneous throughout its mass. The interesting feature of this process was when water was treated similarly; the solid it formed was unique in structure. I don’t mean it formed snowflakes which were interesting to look at. I mean the block or ice formed was significantly smaller compared to an equal quantity of frozen water on Earth.

This fact was so exciting, all research in Space halted for months while everyone pondered