Epitaph

Epitaph

By John M Barber

Copyright © 2012 John M Barber

Smashwords Edition

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For my Sugarbear,

To the moon and back.

-JB

EPITAPH

It’s amazing what a person can become accustomed to in only two years. The sudden silence of the engines after their constant throbbing for all that time was overwhelming. We were close enough to the star system we were entering to use the ram scoop to fuel the auxiliary engines, and they were almost completely silent. As I looked around the forward observation room, I noted the rest of the crew slinking in one by one, practically on tiptoe, as if any sudden sound they might make would draw unnecessary attention to them. Gunter, our biochemist and self-appointed master chef, was the first to break the silence. I think I’ve gone deaf. I knew that damn constant roar was no good for us.

Aw, Cookie, you just got used to not cleaning the wax out of your ears. Besides, you never listened to any of us much anyway. This earned MacAfee, the pilot, a dirty look from Gunter but it was mostly true and anyway, Doc had made regular checks on the noise level and our hearing and assured all of us that neither one was anything to worry about. Mac looked over to where I was writing in my journal and said, Now there’s dedication that goes beyond some mundane worry about the loss of a little thing like hearing. What are you putting in that soap opera of yours, Jared?

Just the usual libel and lies, Mac. I’m just trying to decide who gets to play you when they make it into a movie.

Well, just be sure you play upon my natural good looks and charm and don’t forget everybody loves a hero.

Cookie snorted and saw his chance, Yessir, I can see it now, ‘ The charming and good looking pilot, commander Don MacAfee, with no fear for personal safety, killed the entire six-pack of beer and rescued an entire canned ham from his greedy comrades’. High drama for one and all!

Mac grinned and said, Don’t be petty, Cookie, it ill becomes you. We have more important things on our mind than any canard you might spread about your social betters.

This was what I loved about these guys. They never let an opportunity to insult each other go to waste. The stiffness and formality that we had all felt at the beginning was quickly forgotten in the easy camaraderie we had developed with each other. Don't get me wrong; everyone on board was completely dedicated to the mission and there's not a one of them I wouldn't trust with my life. The friendly ribbing was just our way of letting each other know we had each other's back without getting all mushy about it.

Of course, what was on everybody’s mind, now that the end of this voyage was in sight, was the question that had dominated a number of late night bull sessions- Will there be anybody there to meet us? Our publicly avowed purpose was to find real estate that we could use for colonization purposes but we all were chomping at the bit to be the first ones to find evidence of life out there. There wasn't one of us that hadn't dreamed of that since we were kids, reading every science fiction book we could lay our hands on and playing 'spaceman' when the other kids were watching tri-d. We had all volunteered for the Space Force as soon as we were old enough and worked our tails off to be chosen for this mission.

Sure, there was a colony on every planet in our own system where men had even a chance of survival but we needed planets where we wouldn’t have to live in upholstered caves- planets where we could breathe the atmosphere and not have to wear a space suit to gaze at the stars.

Years of searching the skies with the best technology we could muster gave us a better than even chance that the system we were headed towards had just such a planet. We knew that it had some gas giants but, unfortunately, the only way to know for sure if there was an earth type planet was to go have a look and that's why we were here.

The star we were headed towards was a g-type star that could pass for a twin of our own. We hoped that it had undergone a similar development and that we would find at least one planet suitable for colonization. If the system was already inhabited, we were prepared to extend a hand of friendship.

Even the name of our ship, the Rendezvous, reflected this optimism. Everybody back home had made a sizable investment in this trip in terms of money and technology and we, each of us in the ship, had made a sizable personal investment. Not in money of course. I guess if we ever make it back we’ll all have plenty of that. But, for the first time, I really began to realize that all the things that Mac had always bored us to death with; things about relativity and such, was real. What had been for us just under two years had been almost forty years back home. A lot of the people we left behind were dead now. Hard to believe that all of those sweet young things lining up to give us sendoff kisses were now grandmothers. Even if we turned around right now and headed back it would mean another forty years passing at home. None of us had close family or anybody waiting but it was a strange feeling just the same. There was endless speculation around the dinner table about possible new discoveries back home, fashion changes, etc., etc. None of us knew for sure. I mean, look how much has changed in the last forty years! This ship is a perfect example. Even ten years ago, (I mean ten years ago from the time we left) we were told that faster than light travel was impossible.

Well, technically, I guess it still is, but for about two hours during the middle of our trip we were traveling at .99999 times the speed of light. Close enough for me. Funny thing is, that two hours made up the majority of the time dilation we experienced. Mac tried to explain it but it just gave me a headache.

Look Jared, the mathematics are horribly complicated but the idea is simple enough. All of the old physical rules were based on principles of mechanics. All of these ‘classical physics’ rules work well for predicting behavior of objects as long as they are moving slowly. It was only after we began studying objects that moved at an appreciable portion of the speed of light that we found that we live in a relativistic universe and needed a new type of physics to deal with it.

Oh yeah, Mac. Why, I must have been an idiot- it’s all so clear now!

Quiet junior, I’m not finished yet. When objects approach relativistic speeds, there’s a factor that accounts for the difference in the prediction of behavior of the objects using the old mechanical laws and the relativistic laws. This factor is determined by taking the square root of one minus the square of the velocity of the object divided by the square of the velocity of light. The answer is essentially the same for objects encountered in ordinary ballistics- say, up to about a mile per second. Even at speeds of, oh, eighteen to twenty miles per second, the variance from unity is only a few billionths. Where the difference is really noticeable is when the speed of an object reaches nearly the speed of light, such as happens with an electron- or this ship at turnover. When that happens, the length in the line of the object is altered in the direction of motion, its mass increases, and time would appear to slow down to a hypothetical outside observer. The net result to us is that the closer we come to the speed of light, the slower our time rate is relative to someone back home.

Okay, I’ll accept all that- but what would happen if, just when we are traveling at nearly the speed of light, we suddenly accelerated at full power?

Mac got a perplexed look on his face and said, "Jared, I should have known better than to try to explain a mathematical concept in words. The speed of light is an upper limit- we can’t go faster than that!"

I know, you said that, but what would happen?

I don’t know but I sure as heck don’t want to find out!