I have told this story - this incredible story - from the viewpoints of the two main characters, Sertain and Usguard 4. In doing so I have tried to present the events in chronological order, and have been very fortunate in being able to draw on eye-witness accounts, though in some cases second-hand.
This involved me in many travels around our world, for I believe we can now truly call it that, listening to the fabulous tales of many different peoples.
I am only able to tell of these legendary happenings because of the changes they brought to pass. What took place, and the fantastic being who was the essential catalyst, made this possible.
I have also tried to explain the many terms, units of measurement and other abbreviations and descriptions alien to us, for the easy understanding of the reader.
I ask my audience to indulge me if I appear at times to be using a writer’s licence and embellishing the facts with my own suppositions. I assure you that my intuition is as good as that of my forefathers and allows me a good measure of insight into what really happened in those far-off times!
Usguard 5
AS115
-0-
Sertain was a tiny dot in the corner of some complete blackness somewhere, somewhere inside his head, and he felt rushing in towards him a bright, hard, sharp dart of light. It got brighter, faster, hitting him and exploding, taking over the black and drowning him with light, blinding and deafening him. Then ELE’s voice broke through:
‘Wake up. Captain. Wake up.’
He blinked in the quiet, still cabin, his return to reality painfully sudden, like being dipped in a cryogen. Simultaneously the PCM (physiomental condition monitor) passed a cocktail of hormones into his system, bringing him up to full survival readiness.
He felt almost as if he had a headache.
‘I’d prefer not to be at full alert in this condition,’ he thought.
He looked at ELE intently. Neither disintegration nor destruction were imminent, and after a pause he casually cleared her screen.
ELE could not - or would not - say where they were. Sertain was unable to find anything comprehensible on the screens.
‘Where am I,’ he thought, keeping his thoughts to himself. ‘Surely we cannot be beyond navigable space?’
He decided to go through all the sensory systems with ELE. Although it was inconceivable that she was damaged, ELE seemed strange somehow, not her usual self.
As he called up each function in turn, Sertain found out why. It was as if she had been blinded, all her sensors blunted. He had never known such disablement, so implausible that he began seriously to doubt her, guarding his every thought.
Then as the screen changed, he thought he had seen something.
‘What was that?’ he asked her.
ELE did not know. She re-ran the principal status systems, but to no avail. POSITION, VISUAL, ENERGY ENVIRONMENT - all produced blank screens, a dimly-flickering grey that was a frightening indication of ELE's impotence and his helplessness.
But then there it was again! - Zing 1’s orientation clearly showed gravitational influence. ELE told him this indicated a medium-sized star at about 0.05 liers. (1 lier = 5,865 billion miles).
Assuming her analysis was correct, it meant their blindness was total. Zing 1 was drifting towards an active star, so close to them, which they could not detect, let alone visualize. At least Sertain knew now that they were not hopelessly lost in utterly empty space, and there might be hope of salvation.
Despite himself, he dwelt on that, for it would be much more than being lost. It would be the same as a cessation of existence - non-existence in pure space, a void so completely black and infinite, devoid of anything, physical or spiritual, as only the endless nothingness beyond the edges of the Universe could be.
Even with Zing 1's infinite drives at full thrust there would be no movement, no destination, no future, no hope. It would be suspension in oblivion.
Sertain firmly quashed those thoughts. If there really was a star, ELE could home in on it, following the gravitational pull.
‘Confirm it is possible to achieve stellar orbit,’ he ordered.
‘I confirm.’ ELE was reassuringly definite.
‘Wake me on obtaining near-space orbit.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
He shut all the screens down and returned to his bunk. His finger-tips touched the panels on the side of the bunk as he lay down and the PCM, reading his mental and physical state, prepared him for full subliminal mental restoration, flooding his system with soothing drugs and inducing unconsciousness.
He found himself back on patrol from the outpost beyond Gleamworld (Satellite 5), watching two massive Transworlds ferrying populations from a dying planet. Sertain kept turning the images of their collision over and over in his mind until they began to register. The sheer enormity of the catastrophe, involving the ultra-safe Transworlds - each the size of a small planet - many millions of lives, and the cataclysmic release of energy from the annihilation of the most powerful and advanced space-drives known was beyond belief.
Distant though they were from the supernova-scale holocaust, the blast ruptured Zing 1's hull membranes, knocking out ELE's sensors. What Sertain saw on the screens was really ELE’s panic; no simulation could convey the true image of such a shock-wave, carrying as it did imminent destruction.
Her bland, technical-style computations, appearing impassively on the screens like some design draft, showing the possible effect on herself, Zing 1 and the Captain, presented the most frightening information Sertain had ever seen. The images distorted as ELE attempted in vain to compute and re-compute what she was not able to envisage – her own death - and as the blast hit them, Sertain blacked out.
The spaceship, tested beyond her energy-absorption capability, was hurled deep into unknown space.
Sertain woke slowly, the PCM at neutral, feeling very refreshed, but his mind full of those astonishing events. For a while he was overcome with disbelief and emotion at the magnitude of what had happened to him, despite his vast experience in space. How could he be the one? A chance in a billion, but he was lost.
As the memories were removed again from his conscious mind and the focus faded, he was left with an eerie feeling of isolation, orbiting an unknown star with Zing 1 shutdown and still, lost and alone – perhaps forever.
Still lying on his bunk, he looked round the square, colourless cabin, the screens blank, his plain command-seat alone in the middle of the floor. He turned to look at the screen next to him, to go through the log, maybe in the hope of identifying a course back home, or maybe just to see his comrades.
He got up and walked to the command-seat, the screen by the bunk dying and the main screen coming to life so that Thortain's face filled the cabin as the last transmission from his commander came up from the log. He had not seen Thortain look like this before, his thoughts a turmoil of anxiety.
Thortain had brushed aside Sertain's immediate reaction that there could not be a problem with the course of both Transworlds:
‘Read the simulations! We are getting no response from either spaceship. There is nothing we can do - you must evacuate!’
As Sertain looked at Thortain’s face in the past, running and re-running the log, his thoughts drifted, becoming abstract as he wished what might have been. He abruptly stopped the log and shook himself back to the present.
He had to force himself to concentrate on his situation and decide on a plan of action.
‘Damage assessment,’ he ordered.
According to the data scrolling round the screen, the inner hull membranes were mostly dead, and Zing 1 was blind to nearly all external energy sources. The outer hull, pervious to energy, would surely be sound, designed as it was to withstand the greatest forces calculable. Usually the inner membranes absorbed only the energy the ship wanted and expelled the excess, but that had not happened this time.
The question was, had ELE suffered a direct energy hit, unheard of though this was? Had she been traumatised, causing her strange behaviour?
The re-generate function - auto-repair of the ship's active 'flesh' - was virtually inoperative. Less than 0.1% of the restoration of the inner hull membranes was complete, according to the data on the screen.
‘Report on energy reserves.’
Zing 1's negma-reactor drive was infinite where dark matter existed, but ancillary energy was not, and, if ELE was right, had been massively depleted. Re-generation could not realistically take place without further energy supplies.
ELE interrupted the data with an estimated simulation of their star, calculated from the effect of its gravity on Zing 1. Sertain studied it and was suddenly elated:
‘Confirm there are planets in the picture.’
‘The star is approximately 50% spent. The relative position of two planets suggests they are capable of life support, that nearest the star the likelier,’ ELE reported.
Sertain's elation subsided as he considered what little advantage his discovery might be to him. IF he decided to chance a landing in the hope that ELE's preferred planet was life-supporting, would they survive it? He had no means of navigation, or of controlling the spaceship.
ELE could not tell him what their velocity would be, or their distance from the surface, how much reverse thrust should be applied, and when.
With a cold, hollow feeling of fear in his guts, it dawned on him that they could only present themselves to the planet's gravity and allow themselves to fall helplessly to the surface. Even Zing 1 might not be able to withstand another shock such as that.
A life-supporting planet - maybe with intelligent life - in all this empty space! How in all the universe could he reach it?