Space Shortcuts Boxed Set Read online

  Space Shortcuts Boxed Set

  by F. P. Adriani

  Copyright © 2020 by F. P. Adriani

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, without express written permission from the author and publisher.

  Published by F. P. Adriani

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  *

  Stories:

  Lucky And Unlucky

  Adrift

  Second Reflection

  The Light In The Shadows On Braxton-4

  Wink-A-Blink

  *

  Lucky And Unlucky

  The Maxwell had just shot out of a jump corridor into the Sine system when most of the electrical equipment on the ship suddenly shut off.

  The Maxwell’s engineering crew scrambled to locate the source of the problem before the ship lost all of its crucial systems for life support, but then the electrical problem righted itself within only minutes.

  Angela McKay, the Maxwell’s lead engineer, felt like literally scratching her head in confusion as she spoke over the engineering level’s intercom to John Kramer, the ship’s captain. “I can’t really explain what’s happened, Captain. A high-energy EM pulse from space engulfing the ship as we exited the corridor seems the likely cause, yet the battery room’s power system was fine. Partly because the Sine star’s a mobile one, weird pulses that aren’t detectable except through their effects happen here sometimes—that’s why ships rarely enter this fold of space.”

  Many years ago humanity had learned that some areas of space were folded in an accordion-like fashion, making the galaxy a lot larger than humans had previously thought; the galaxy was full of unexplored nooks and crannies, which effectively meant that space had other dimensions. But the Maxwell was both a Galactic Industry Commission mining vessel and a GIC exploratory vessel, so, the out-of-the-way, more difficult parts of the universe were where the Maxwell often had to go.

  The enormous spaceship had been built to last and had been built for everything, with the strongest, best materials. But even the toughest stuff humans could build could be rendered weak compared to the extent of power available in the universe.

  That was one reason why when the Maxwell’s scanners detected the natural bimetal, X-bilon, in the Sine system a few hours after the ship’s odd power failure, the Maxwell’s crew changed their prior course to one for the planet Kraaton, where the bimetal had been detected.

  X-bilon had extremely high compressive strength. Each of the many microscopic layers of X-bilon’s two metallic components was oriented a slight amount off compared to the layer below; the numerous, X-shaped crystalline grains of the layers created a superstrong metal network. An X-bilon manufactured part would only rarely plastically deform, even under the stresses of mining in high-pressure environments in the most matter-dense planetary and space environments.

  Not only did the Maxwell’s hull contain X-bilon, so did the ship’s retractable equipment, which allowed the crew to mine in space without ever having to leave the ship, under ideal conditions. Unfortunately, while working in space, conditions were rarely ideal. Parts broke; engines naturally didn’t run at 100% efficiency; power supplies fluctuated; and repairs were needed….

  “I’m still running tests to figure out what happened earlier,” Angela said on a sigh over the intercom again to the Maxwell’s captain. “Everything seems to be fine since, but it’s still possible we’ve developed an intermittent electrical problem, no matter that the ship’s computer says we haven’t. It, too, is part of the electrical systems here, so it’s not a source of unbiased information.

  “But there’s only so much I can run a diagnostic on while we’re in flight. When we land on Kraaton, I can turn off more functions, reroute with shunts, and therefore isolate each system better for testing. Right now, I think it’s best if we get and remain on the ground because if we were desperate, we could use the portable solar-power system to power up the portable atmosphere processors and maintain full life support on one level of the ship for days.”

  “You’re not making me feel confident about landing on Kraaton,” Captain Kramer said in a dry, almost sarcastic voice.

  Angela could feel her face flush at his tone. Though she was a few years older than John Kramer, they were both still quite young in their thirties. “I’m not that confident myself, Captain,” she said now. “Sometimes neither of the choices you have are good. But, you’ve still got to choose. If a pulse caused the power problem before, another pulse could come again if we remain in flight. But Kraaton’s atmosphere might protect us from anymore pulses.”

  There was a sigh over the intercom line toward Angela now, and when Captain Kramer spoke again, his voice had an ironic edge. “Good thing the power came back on because we’re still alive. But, I’ve sent a message about what happened to Roundabout Station. Unfortunately, we’re too far away to get help from them for a day at least, if we wind up needing help for anything.”

  *

  For another hour, the Maxwell uneventfully remained on course for Kraaton.

  The planet had almost the same atmospheric pressure as Earth and almost the same gravity. However, Kraaton’s atmospheric composition wasn’t breathable, and there were enormous particle storms that raged for months on end as they traversed the planet. While sitting on one spot on the surface, you couldn’t necessarily detect anything even only a few miles away if a storm boundary separated the two areas.

  “Fortunately, there’s a large break between the storms now,” Angela said to Tony Rialto, one of her engineering assistants, when she was standing at her central station in engineering. “We were lucky the ship’s scanners spotted the X-bilon. Its presence gave us another reason to land.”

  Tony was younger than she was, and he seemed to have a perpetual nervous streak running through him that agitated him quite a bit. He rolled his dark eyes fast now as his long fingers manipulated a battery hook-up in the battery room. “Both lucky and unlucky in one day.”

  “That’s life in space,” Angela said. No matter her young age, she had been working in space since her teen years. She knew the difficulties—and the rewards. She knew the discoveries, the amazing sights, even the amazing money sometimes; she and some of the other crew would get a royalty on any new finds, like with the X-bilon: though it was a tough material, it wasn’t very common.

  Angela thought about her nice little house on Earth, about how sweet it always was when she would get back to it and stay at it for three uninterrupted months out of the year. Though she’d always loved being in space, she also loved having her feet planted on the ground. She didn’t want to ever lose the option of doing either.

  She finally left the Maxwell’s battery room and walked into the engine section of the engineering level, her eyes on the silver portable scanner in her right hand as she checked the fuel status of the Maxwell’s jump engine.

  Nowadays, ships of any size could easily land on surfaces: their jump engines created jump corridors through atmospheres too; that way, repeated entries and exits from places normally wouldn’t cause much wear on the ships and especially wouldn’t cause much damage to atmospheres.

  The atmospheric jump corridors weren’t as high energy as the outer-space corridors, because the latter normally had to traverse much longer distances. But, calculations were sti
ll involved in making a safe, intra-atmospheric jump.

  Angela and several of her assistants used the Maxwell’s computer to run those calculations now, and when the Maxwell finally reached near Kraaton, the ship’s crew and the ship’s engine executed a perfect jump down to near the planet’s surface.

  Angela was at her usual panel-table in front of a large wall viewscreen when the ship was finally soaring over the land below. It was a very orange land containing rocky hills and mountains made of flake rock, a very flat, slate-like rock that tended to form in vertical packs. The packs could be stacked very high, were typically partially melted and crushed into the hill-like formations. But the weathering processes from the planetary storms would destroy some of the hills and scatter the pieces across the land, making it even more rocky beneath its pale, greenish sky.

  The last known survey of Kraaton was five years ago, and there had been a large storm over this area of the planet then—probably why the surveyors never recorded the presence of the X-bilon….

  Angela continued watching both the Maxwell’s flight and the numbers on her panel for the location of the X-bilon, but she felt a little too sweaty and a little too flushed as she worked. She normally wasn’t the type of person who would feel sick in flight, but she now realized that she couldn’t shake a slightly disoriented feeling inside both her mind and her stomach. The sensation seemed to have started when they’d left the jump field. It was probably another effect from whatever had hit the ship. She just hoped it hadn’t affected her body in a damaging way. She would pay a visit to one of the ship’s doctors—later. No time now.

  Tony was working at his usual computer terminal on her right, and now he said, “I’m slowing our flight. We’ll reach the general area of the X-bilon in less than two minutes. As we’ve gotten closer, our ability to pinpoint the exact location of the deposits has improved of course, but it’s weird: the deposits are very non-uniform. There appear to be large ones in certain spots, yet only trace amounts in others, which is inconsistent with the normal geological formations here….”

  The crew of the Maxwell soon got the answer to that mystery when they finally reached the area where the computer’s scanners said the closest bit of X-bilon was. As the ship hovered over the land, Angela’s eyes remained mostly on the viewscreen, but the rest of the time, her eyes and fingers were working on the panel-keyboard below her.

  “Oh no,” she finally said in a shocked voice, her fingers immediately stilling on her panel. “These aren’t natural X-bilon deposits here; they’re debris. From a ship.”

  Captain Kramer had set the bridge intercom line open to engineering. “What!” he shouted over the line now. “Any survivors? Was it a crash?”

  “I don’t know,” Angela replied fast, pushing one of her panel buttons to start a scan. “No life signs on the planet. But the crash can’t be recent. The chemical dating on the debris and compared to the weathering of the natural materials here—the debris is probably from at least a decade ago…oh my god.” Her mouth dropped open in astonishment, and her already too-sweaty face and neck now sweated even worse.

  “Shit!” Tony yelled from nearby.

  And his yell was no doubt because of what Angela had just seen too; she had enlarged the viewscreen image to focus on a very large hill of flake rock up ahead, where an enormous, silver panel jutted out. The panel was half-crushed and had bits of things hanging off it—who knew if they could have been bones….

  Where Angela’s face had been sweaty before, it now almost immediately paled; she’d enlarged the viewscreen image of the exterior even more—and she finally saw the blue, ring-like, GIC insignia, and the black letter M….

  “No!” she heard someone else in engineering shout.

  And then Captain Kramer’s alarmed voice said over the line, “Engineering, are you seeing what we’re seeing up here?!?”

  “Y-yes!” Angela said, trying to recover her breathing, which was almost too fast to recover now. She forced herself to take several steadying breaths as her fingers began flying over her control-panel, both activating a further materials analysis on the debris and running a check on the Maxwell’s hull and shields, which the computer’s systems immediately indicated were completely intact.

  Tony rushed up to her right side, his dark eyes locking onto hers. “But how can this be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m working on it. Get back to your computer and start another fuel injection into the jump engine.” Angela whipped her eyes back to her panel, where the data-screen now showed a verification of what the crew had seen with their own eyes: the part of the ship buried inside the flake-rock hill was from the Maxwell.

  “Captain Kramer,” Angela barked over the line now, “I think we better get out of here.”

  “I was just about to tell you the same!”

  Someone started the ship’s high-toned alarm. Then the captain made an abrupt ship-wide announcement that everyone should prepare for an emergency lift-off, but the crewmembers in engineering around Angela were falling apart: Tony’s hands were shaking so badly as he tried to work at his computer terminal, his fingers kept slipping off the controls; one of the other engineering assistants was rushing across the broad engineering space, pacing back and forth and mumbling something to herself; and yet another assistant was crying in the corner near where the break room was.

  Angela’s pallor was gone and her sweatiness was back as she shouted, “Pull yourselves together or else we’ll make what we saw with our own eyes come true!” She ran away from her panel and over to the jump engine’s control-panel, all the while barking more orders at the engineering crew.

  Silently in Angela’s mind, she couldn’t believe it. How could she? It just didn’t make any sense. Were they all dead and this was some kind of after-life—would they never leave this place—what the hell was going on—

  Tony rushed up to her, and then she said to him, “We’ll lift off on the maximum atmospheric-setting, so if there are any technical problems maintaining the corridor, we’ll have reached way past escape speed. We never got to do better systems checks, and now this happens.” She pressed her lips together hard, out of fear really: this would be the ship’s third jump today, and the ship’s second jump after an unexplained large power failure. Jump engines manipulated spacetime to negate time-dilation effects, and though atmospheric jump corridors required less energy than outer-space corridors, all jump corridors still required a lot of energy.

  Maybe this third jump they were about to do was how what was now buried in that Kraaton hill got buried there in the first place.

  *

  The Maxwell’s engineering crew managed to pull themselves together enough to set up the next jump. Angela had to turn off the ship-wide alarm as she worked. “I’m sorry, Captain Kramer. The sound was making my head hurt, and it was hurting even before that.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “Everyone on the bridge has been having problems too, including the captain…. Do whatever you need to do to get us through the atmosphere in one piece.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Angela said.

  And she did do her best even though she felt at her worst: the ship was soon traveling only a relatively short distance through an atmospheric jump corridor again, but this ride felt like the longest jump ride Angela had ever been through. Her eyes were glued to the large engineering viewscreen and the swirling silver motion the jump-corridor space created around the Maxwell. The motion seemed to swirl in the air around her head too. Maybe she would sink into the swirls; maybe she already had. Somehow, in some other way, in some other time, she had wound up dead….

  Some other time.

  There was a frown on her face now, and as the last of the jump-corridor motion ceased, she was thinking about something—

  “We made it!” someone in engineering yelled when the Maxwell shot into the black of space again. The view of space on the viewscreen looked normal. Only….

  Angela’s eyes traveled around the room now,
looking at the other crew, as she remembered how they’d begun falling apart psychologically. Even now, in their happiness at not having crashed back into the planet, a few of them were crying. Angela felt like crying too.

  But, this wasn’t like them; it wasn’t like her. The crew indeed must have been feeling some physical, some psychological effects from their first entry into this fold of space, from that first jump ride.

  Angela’s fingers now rushed over her panel-table’s controls just as Captain Kramer’s relieved, booming voice came back into engineering over the line.

  “I’ve never been prouder of all of you,” he said. “Now, I just need someone to tell me what the hell happened down there.”

  Angela was frowning down at her panel as her eyes scanned the data the ship’s computer had just given her, the data about the state of space in the fold. And now she felt her heart really sink.

  “Captain,” she said in a wary voice, “something’s wrong: I just realized Sine is in the wrong position in this fold for this time of year. It’s been in the wrong position since we first entered the fold. I can’t be sure, but it seems…we’re not in the same time anymore.”

  A sharp silence fell among the people in the engineering level and over the intercom. Angela’s breaths now hurt her chest because her heart was pumping so hard during the breaths.

  “Wh—what?” Captain Kramer finally said over the line.

  “Captain, jump engines always create a field around a ship that manipulates spacetime. I now think a high energy pulse of some kind actually struck the Maxwell while we were in the jump corridor, before we entered this fold. And that pulse and field interaction somehow pushed us into the future.”

  Tony and his shaking-again hands rushed to one of the engineering panels near Angela. “But, Angela, the scanners are still detecting the X-bilon from on Kraaton’s surface—”