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The Ship's Cat
MASA (n, abbr.); Military Aeronautics and Space Administration, a branch of the US military (q.v.). Established in 2235, MASA was ostensibly created to replace the aging National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, q.v.). However, in retrospect, the creation of MASA was more likely another part of the general political upheavals which followed the ratification of the 29th and 30th amendments to the US constitution (the so-called 'Neo-Animal' amendments, q.v.), and the discovery of the H-K Drive (q.v.), both of which heralded the current era of international space exploration and colonization known as the Diaspora (q.v.).
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 51st Edition, 2550 AD
Chapter 214
"Hurry, Doctor, there's not much time!" the technician called, pulling him along.
Doctor Rajendra Hanwat Singh nodded, huffing and puffing as he was quickly trotted out the gangway to the waiting shuttle. 'At least it's one of the newer ones,' he thought to himself. The notion of riding into space in an old-style shuttle, literally being strapped to a blazing rocket while the new space agency aimed the missile to the stars, did not appeal to him. Fortunately, the discovery of the Hujita-Kolesnikov drive thirty-three years ago had lead to a startling array of collateral technologies - and one of the results of these discoveries lay before him at the end of the gantry.
As he was quickly and unceremoniously stuffed through the main hatch of the shuttle (which was on the very top of the ship) and handed to a pair of technicians who began rapidly and efficiently strapping him into his seat, Singh mused on the humor of the situation. A century ago, this shuttle not only couldn't possibly have existed, but it's very appearance, determined by the technology which powered it's flight, would have caused his great-grandfather to stare in awe, and whisper about alien landings. It was, in point of fact, saucer-shaped, and quite enormous. This technology, unfortunately, was far beyond his own understanding. All he knew was what he'd seen on the usual "science" trideo shows about it - the outer 'rim' of the saucer-shaped vessel carried the meter-thick 'ring' of the anti-gravity propulsion unit, and by applying power to it, it lifted the ship into the air. Beyond that, the technology was, to Singh, simply magic. Oddly, despite the enormous size of the shuttle, easily over two hundred meters across at it's equator, it's cargo capacity wasn't much more than that of the original 'Space Shuttles' back in the 20th century. As Singh understood it, the majority of the ship was taken up by the propulsion and power generation systems.
"Are you comfortable, Doctor?" one of the technicians asked, looking Singh over as he made the final adjustments to strap Singh's life-support pack into the seat. His experienced eyes and fingers traveled over the connections between the briefcase-sized unit and the doctor's suit, making sure all was in order.
"Yes, fine, thank you," Singh replied, his voice carrying a gentle, sing-song East Indian accent that made the technician smile. In truth, however, he found it was difficult for him to really be comfortable when strapped in to an acceleration couch not merely with a seatbelt, but several dozen straps which completely immobilized his arms, legs, and torso.
"Alright - we've got you hooked up to the urinary waste recovery systems, but there wasn't time to fit you with a rectal catheter. I hope you used the bathroom before now, Doctor, as it may be awhile before you'll be able to get out of that thing."
"I'll be fine, really," Singh replied in his metered, sing-song accent, and managed a smile.
"Alright. Should anything go wrong, this seat is an ejection seat, so remember to lean back into the body mold and relax. Everything is pretty automatic - if the shuttle pilot decides to eject, that hatch above you will blow loose, and the seat will blast you out of the ship, a parachute will open, and you'll come down fairly safely. Don't worry, though, that would only happen if the AG drive failed, and that's not likely. Just don't lean forward if the pilot says you're about to eject, okay? The gee-forces will snap your neck. That's right, there you go," The technician said, looking Singh over as he leaned back into the seat. "Just lean back and relax."
"We ready in here, Charlie? You got his comm switched on and LS stable?" another technician called, poking his head in through the main hatch, above.
"Yep, LS is stable, comm is set to in-ship and VOX transmission. It's all green here, Mike," the technician beside Singh replied.
"Good, then get the lead out, we got Z-plant power-up in two minutes!"
"Shit," Charlie replied, scrambling back up the ladder. In a moment, the hatch was closed, and Singh sat alone.
Singh examined the passenger compartment he found himself in. Circular with a domed overhead, there were seven chairs permanently installed around the perimeter, so that the weight of the passengers could be balanced across the center of the saucer. The pilot and command crew, he knew, entered on the bottom of the saucer, with the cargo area being located just above them. It was an extremely spartan room - in truth, it lacked any style or beauty at all, having as much grace of form as the interior bulkheads of any military vessel. Singh sighed as his eye caught upon the only splash of color in the entire room - the MASA logo on the north bulkhead.
Singh remembered the old NASA 'meatball' logo. Born in the US to immigrant parents from New Deli, he'd seen it since he was a child. A blue sphere speckled with stars, a graceful red chevron, and a white object orbiting the chevron itself. In the 'meatball' design, the sphere represented a planet, the stars represented space, the graceful red chevron was a wing representing aeronautics (it was the latest design in hypersonic wings at the time the logo was developed in the mid-20th century), with an orbiting spacecraft going around the wing. The MASA logo was similar, yet starkly different.
Gone was the soft blue sphere, replaced by a black sphere full of stars which represented space itself. Gone was the graceful red chevron, replaced with a stark, bold, straight-lined one which pierced a blue oval - the new focus piercing the old traditions, going through them, and beyond them. The motto beneath summed up the new direction and focus of MASA - whereas NASA had been a mostly-civilian organization focused on science, learning and discovery, MASA was a strictly military organization, and focused on one thing: the exploration and colonization of space. 'Ad Astra', the motto said. 'To the Stars', in Latin. And that was where MASA was headed - and whether he liked it or not, Doctor Rajendra Hanwat Singh was going along with them.
"Good morning, Doctor Singh, and welcome aboard the Rainbow," a male voice called over the comm-system in Singh's helmet. "This is Commander Shelby speaking, I'll be your pilot for today. If all goes well, we should have you transferred over to the Santa Maria in about an hour. For now, we'll be bringing up the Zero Point Field power-plant in about thirty seconds to charge up the ship's storage coils for our flight - try not to wiggle about too much, alright?"
Singh chuckled - strapped to this seat, he could hardly move at all. "Alright, Commander," he replied, his voice picked up by the microphone inside the helmet.
"You'll feel a bit of a tingle as the Z-plant comes online, and begins to draw zero-point energy from all the matter aboard the ship - and that includes you, me, and the other five crew aboard. If you weren't strapped in, the slightest movement could send you bouncing around the cabin like a superball. You may also have a sensation like the air is getting thinner - don't worry, it's not. Just try to breathe normally, don't hyperventilate, alright?"
"Alright, Commander - I'll try."
"Okay, Doctor," Shelby replied. "Powering up, now."
Singh began to notice a low hum, starting from well below his range of hearing, more of a throb felt through his contact with the padded seat. Slowly, it increased in frequency, becoming a low, audible tone. In perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, the hum quickly passed through the range of human hearing, and beyond. "What is that sound?" Singh wondered aloud, and was startled when his own voice came out as an impossibly high-pitched squeak.
"Just relax, Doctor," Shelby's voice replied immediately, just as impossibly squeaky as his own. "The relative inertia of all the matter aboard is being tapped by the ZPF-plant, and that sound you're hearing is the vibrations of the EM-coils charging, phase-shifted by the reduced inertia of the air itself."
"Umm... EM-coils?" Singh asked, then grinned wryly. "I'm sorry, I'm a doctor, not a physicist."
"That's why you're here, Doctor Singh. I'm not a physicist either, though. I'm just a pilot - I know how to get us where we want to go, I know what to do if something goes wrong while we're going there, and I even can fix a few things that might break along the way, but I damn sure can't explain it all to you very well - particularly in the time we have remaining. Like they said in flight-school, 'you don't have to know how to build it to learn how to fly it'," Shelby replied, and chuckled as his voice slowly lowered in frequency, gradually approaching a more normal pitch. "Steady, now - we've got the coils charged to full, and we're powering down the Z-plant and bringing up the AG-drive. Launch in fifteen seconds."
Singh waited silently, his mind racing. In fifteen seconds, he would be leaving Earth - possibly forever. Had he said all his goodbyes? Had he taken care of all the last minute details? For a brief moment, Singh wondered if he had remembered to turn off the kitchen light in his apartment. Visions of returning to earth forty or fifty years later and being presented with an electric bill running into the trillions nearly sent him to chuckling.
Suddenly, there was a gentle shove upwards, which felt to Singh much like the feeling one might have when an elevator started moving up. He knew that the 'ring' that was the anti-gravity propulsion unit had been energized, and it now had what the scientists called 'negative relative gravitic coefficient'. In essence, the ring literally had a negative weight, and was repelled from the surface of the planet, carrying the rest of the ship with it. Singh could hear the whining of heavy machinery, and guessed it was the landing legs of the shuttle being withdrawn. For a long, desperate moment, Singh wished he could look outside. But, there was no viewport or window aboard the Rainbow - it was a standard AG-shuttle in that respect.
"Liftoff plus thirty, all systems green, Doctor. You can relax."
Singh smiled, despite the mixture of emotions. Part of him didn't want to go at all - he had a full life, and a moderately lucrative practice back in the San Angeles metroplex as one of the youngest to ever become Chief of Medicine at SanFran-General. He was thirty-five, unmarried and had no immediate family, but that didn't mean he had no life at all to regret leaving. Still, another part of him felt enormously lucky and incredibly privileged to have been chosen. The physician that had originally been scheduled to fly with the Santa Maria on her maiden voyage had, apparently, contracted skin cancer. While his condition was not life-threatening, they could hardly send him into space for a voyage that might last decades - if the cancer metastasized, he could die. Yes, Singh felt incredibly lucky and privileged to have been chosen to replace him on the maiden voyage of the Santa Maria, the first interstellar colony vessel of the United States of America...
...even if MASA did have to draft him.
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