The Great Escape Chapter 12, Part 7 of 10

The Great Escape
Chapter 12, Part 7 of 10

"No, not yet. Let's see how much data there is. Computer," she commanded, "show previous star maps and add updates sequentially."

The star reappeared in the gap near Samothea's sun and remained constant as the map flipped through the years. It took only five updates before the star flickered.

"Stop!" she said. "Show details."

It was the most recent update, arriving just under a year ago. It showed the system one hundred years in the past.

"Play sequence."

The star, its catalog name glowing in red, and its local name, Sothis, added in brackets, flickered again, then became very bright and began to expand.

"What is it, Darling?"

"I don't know. It's not a true nova but a big enough anomaly to explain what happened to Samothea. Poor Ezra!"

The star continued to grow. A sphere of gas, illuminated by lightning arcing and flashing in the cloud, followed the expanding wave front.

"Why 'poor Ezra'? Is he caught up in this thing?" Roger asked.

"No. It was one hundred years ago but left a source of charged particles; that anomaly caused Li's virtual spaceship to miss its mark. It would have done the same to Ezra's. He could be anywhere, depending on how close to Samothea he expected his last jump to emerge."

"So, he over-shot or under-shot. He's probably alive."

"He could be alive - unlike any poor soul who tried to reach Samothea one hundred years ago when this star was going off."

She sat down and felt miserable. Roger sat beside her. He put an arm around her.

"A year ago," he said, "I'd never even heard of the planet Samothea. Since then, I've done my homework and wish I didn't know so much."

"Go on, Roger, tell me."

"Nearly one hundred years ago, a ship with three thousand settlers went to Samothea. It was never heard from again."

"Oh, God!"

He held her tightly. She put her head on his shoulder.

"Ezra will be safe, I'm sure," he said.

She was silent for a minute in his arms, then loaded and looked up, her eyes damp but her voice resolved.

"Yes, but the best thing we can do is get one of the big science institutions interested enough in the anomaly to send out a probe. If we could do that, it might also pick up signals from Ezra's ship. When I get to Celetaris, I'll make it my mission to arrange this and explore as close to Samothea as possible."

Rosa arrived at eleven-fifteen with a young man in tow.

"This is Herman," she said.

He was a thin boy, twenty-one, the same as Rosa. He had a prominent Adam's apple, an aquiline nose, and violent spots, but he was clean and polite. Rosa herself had tried to get her wavy brown hair under control. She even applied eyeliner and mascara, indicating to Danielle her feelings toward the gangly youth she called her study partner.

They were introduced to Roger, who got to know them, while Danielle made coffee but fruit juice for Herman, who avoided caffeine.

"Come and sit down," he said.

They all got comfortable on the couch.

"So, do you both study astrophysics?" Roger asked.

"No, I'm a pure mathematician," Herman replied, "I study number theory."

"Number theory? So how come you two are study partners?"

"Our professors suggested we could both learn from taking an extra course," Rosa explained.

"A more theoretical one for me and a more practical one for Herman. We both chose programmable math, which is where we met."

"I know what programmable math is," Roger said brightly. "It's when you let the computer do your thinking for you."

Rosa laughed, and Danielle's sigh was audible from across the open plan flat, but Herman's mouth was a perfect O.

"I apologize for Roger," Danielle said. "He's a Philistine."

"But he's nearly right," Herman exclaimed. "The question of how much thinking our computers do for us is a real problem in philosophy and psychology, not just math."

"It is?" Roger asked.

"Of course. I don't mean science-fiction rubbish about robots taking over the world, but I mean the question of how much we can trust a computer."

"Go on," Roger pressed him.

"Well, you admit that computers are cleverer than us?"

"I sure do. They're better at math, for example. They can calculate faster and more accurately than a man and are probably more logical."

"Precisely," Herman nodded vigorously. "They're less prone to some human fallacies, though computers may have illogical processes we don't know about. Hence the problem: How can we tell when a computer is right if we can't do the calculations ourselves?"

"I suppose we can ask another computer."

"That's one way, but two computers might agree and still be wrong, like false witnesses who corroborate each other's stories."

"All right then," Roger suggested, "we can test the calculation against the evidence."

"That's a second way, empirical testing. It works in science, where there are physical facts to check, but it doesn't work in pure mathematics or symbolic logic; and what about the physics of places we can't get to, such as the middle of black holes or quasars?"

"Then we can check the programs. If the program is sound, then the result must be reliable."

"Very good," Herman said, sounding like a teacher pleased by a star pupil. This made Danielle smile as she brought the drinks over.

"But what if the program is so large or complex that no one can analyze it?" the earnest young mathematician continued. "Most computer programs are now written by computers, designed by computers, and built by robots."

"Can we write a program to analyze the program?" Roger ventured.

"Yes, that's a good answer; it's the iterative method, but a program to analyze a program can still be too complex for human abilities. We call a program an 'algorithm,' and each iteration we call a 'generation.' Rosa and I are studying algorithms of the fifth generation."

Roger surreptitiously counted the sequence off on his fingers as Herman elaborated:

"We write programs to analyze programs, to analyze programs, to analyze programs, to analyze programs, to analyze programs, to analyze programs, to analyze programs that do the calculations."

"It's where I got the idea for my iterative method of steering the traveler through hyperspace," Rosa said.

"It's a brilliant idea, Rosa," Danielle added, "and now that Roger has been put in his place, let's work on it."

Herman was mortified.

"I'm sorry, Roger. I didn't mean to lecture you. I got carried away. I'm new to programmable math at this level and only realize what we can do with it."

Roger assured him, "No apology is necessary. I love to see people who are passionate about ideas."

Nonetheless, she thought the earnest young man could benefit from a sense-of-humor algorithm.

Roger had work to do, so he took his coffee to the other side of the flat. He sat at a table with a reading screen, a few hefty old-fashioned books, and a tablet for his notes. He finished the brief outline for the sequel to his video film and sent it off. Then, he began to think about his latest research.

He was soon happily distracted by historical details, listening in on the Putney Debates or watching Cato's Letters seed and germinate in the American colonies.

Danielle, meanwhile, began analyzing Rosa's method. She showed her attempt to solve its problems and then introduced Li's method.

Distracted by physics, she forgot why she'd invited Rosa over, and the two women almost forgot Herman was there.

Although more than competent in following the math, Herman was unfamiliar with physics. At first, he had nothing to contribute, but Danielle showed Rosa the holographic images of the Samothean solar system. However, he was alert when they wrote equations on the large projection screen and followed them well.

Things stopped for fifteen minutes when Roger got up to call his parents. He did so from Danielle's bedroom, inviting her to join him. They shared effusive congratulations but were soon back to their respective studies.

An hour later, Rosa said:

"I think we've reached an impasse. I can't see past the time-lag problem."

"Nor me," Danielle admitted.

"Herman, what do you think?" Rosa asked.

"I can follow the math but not the underlying physics. Can you explain some things to me?"

"Of course. How rude of me to exclude you!" Danielle exclaimed. "We'll give you the short version of hyperspace engineering. I've done this for Roger many times, poor lamb. He makes a good sounding board."

"The general principles are not too difficult, but if you don't understand, say so, and I'll explain. If you need postgraduate physics to understand something, I'll say 'relativity theory' or 'quantum theory,' and you'll have to accept it. Shall we start?"

He nodded. Roger also put down his book and paid attention. There was a point in even the schoolboy version of hyperspace physics beyond which he could never progress but always hoped to.

"The standard way of explaining hyperspace is to picture a balloon," Danielle said, commanding the computer to project a holographic image of a child's rubber balloon over the coffee table. With a finger in the air, she drew an X on one side of the balloon and a Y on the other.

"Now, the three-dimensional space of our universe is represented by the two-dimensional surface of a balloon."

"I see," Herman said.

"That's the first place I get lost," Roger said from across the room.

"I know, Darling," Danielle said. "It's because you try to imagine it, but you should follow the logic."

"I wish I could," he sighed.

"Just suppose that space has two dimensions, like a surface, not three dimensions, like a solid, so there's left and right and forward and backward but not up and down."

That made it no more explicit for her fiancé, but Danielle continued.

"So, what's the quickest way to get from X to Y?"

"Well," Herman said, "assuming I can travel only through space, then it has to be this way."

He drew a line from X to Y on the balloon's surface with his finger. Danielle smiled happily at his understanding.

"Quite right. But the actual quickest route is this one." She put her thumb on the X and a finger on the Y and squeezed the sides of the balloon together.

"A hyperspace path is like pinching the balloon so that distant parts of the surface meet. Of course, we make a bubble of hyperspace around a spaceship."

"The technical name for the hyperspace bubble is a 'plume,' and the technical name for anything the plume transports is a 'traveler.' It works by pointing the traveler in the direction you want to go, and you make a plume of a given quantity of energy. The more energy you give it, the further it goes. However, the trajectory of the plume is extremely sensitive to what we call 'anomalies,' which are any sources of energy in the pathway of the plume, except for gravitational energy."

"Why is gravitational energy not an anomaly?" Herman wondered.

"Because gravitational energy is equivalent to the curvature of space-time, which doesn't affect hyperspace," Danielle answered. "Also, 'relativity theory'."

"Go on. I'm following so far."

"Well, relativity theory says time and space are joined in a continuum, so movement in one is also movement in the other; but, in hyperspace, one can travel 'through' space without also traveling 'in' space."

He looked blank, and Roger was lost again.

"This also means that one can travel through space without traveling in time. Travel in hyperspace is nearly instantaneous."

"All right, I get that sort of," he conceded. "So, what kinds of anomalies are there?"

"Pulsars, neutron stars, strong radio sources, x-ray sources, gamma-ray sources; black holes, clouds of charged or magnetic particles, exotic matter, anything that feels the electromagnetic, nuclear weak and nuclear strong forces."

"The disrupting effect of anomalies," Danielle continued, "means we can take only short jumps, after which we stop to make measurements. We find out where we are precisely, recalculate, and jump again."

"It's costly on fuel because the real drain on energy is getting into hyperspace. 'Bouncing out' of hyperspace is energy neutral. Going 100 light-years in two jumps takes much more energy than going 200 in one jump."

"So, Rosa's method of 'jumping' to Samothea in one go would save a fortune in energy costs."

"Yes."

"But didn't you say the energy given to the plume determines how far you jump?" Herman asked.

"Quite right, but 99% of the energy is used to get into hyperspace, regardless of how far you jump."

"Would Rosa's method also be quicker?"

"Yes, because there's no need to stop and recalculate on the way. The only problem is, it won't work. Her technique involves taking measurements and recalculating as soon as the plume meets anomalies, but the calculations quickly go haywire if the mass of the traveler is not negligible."

"Why?"

"Because the anomaly changes the energy of the plume, and we need to correct that if we're not to bounce out of hyperspace a long way from the intended exit point. The more mass, the longer and more difficult the calculation to find the right proportion. The calculations become intractable and impossible in real-time for a traveler of a hundred tones' mass in a leap of more than a few hundred light-years."

"All right," Herman said, "So how come there's a time lag in traveling through hyperspace?

How come you don't travel instantaneously?"

Danielle beamed happily.

"Excellent question. 'Special relativity' and 'quantum theory'."

"Oh." He sounded disappointed.


To be continued