Chapter 1.2

John glanced around, as if wanting another, possibly different, opinion.  Sadly, there was none.  Had anyone put forth a differing viewpoint, I would have lost my resolve as well.

The wheel was turned, and I heard a the air pressure adjust a bit more, then silence. John let out a loud sigh of relief, then spun the wheel quickly. He stopped it just before the dogs released, then made the final turn slowly. I couldn't blame him.  Apparently there was air on the other side, but what else?

The group around us drew close, as if to guard anyone, or anything from getting through to the rest of our people, but after the last few days, I didn't see that much could be done in that regard.  We had never been fighters.

The door finally swung open to reveal only darkness beyond. I'm not sure how he found the fortitude, but John stepped into the corridor and a little way to the right. We could hear him fumbling for a control in the dark, then dim lighting came on.

"Looks like they turned off our main power as well," he told me as I stepped out of the bay as well.  "Can you see if Marc Dodson is with us?  He helped design the electrical system in this station."

I stepped back over the lip of the hatch and held up my hands to signal the need for quiet.  "Is Marc Dodson here?" I called out.

A man who appeared to be anywhere between twenty-five and…  Well…  Who knows?  Each of us carried a complement of nanites in our bodies which were constantly making repairs from the inside out. We rarely thought of them, but we didn't age.  I suppose the term immortal would be used by some, but in reality we weren't.  There were injuries that could, and eventually would kill us.  Take the doctors who had been ejected out of the station, for example.

The man stepped up to me and introduced himself.  I gestured to the hatch, and he stepped through, looking for all the world like a man who expected some wild creature to grab him as food for its young.  I followed a bit more sure of myself.  

What they were doing made little sense to me, so I went back into the bay to see if I could help the men and women who were there.

Strangely, I realized there were no children present, but I realized Caesar probably figured he could remove the “faulty ideas” we had instilled in our children.

I began to circulate to see if anyone was injured.  Not that my help would be required, but it gave me something to do.  Not surprisingly there were no physical injuries.  Mental was another matter.  I gave what help I could, but I felt useless.  Anyone who had anything to do with the field of medicine had been jettisoned.

I’m not sure how long I worked my way through the people, but I began realizing the size of the bay, and the number of people here.  I had, at first, thought there were about four thousand. I now revised my estimate to twice that.  Perhaps three times.  We would have to make a count.

Partway through my circulation, John and Marc returned and gained everyone’s attention. I returned to the hatch, which was a considerable walk.  

“We have some news,” John said, “but I would like to establish a few things first.” Everyone waited expectantly.  He cleared his throat.  This wasn’t easy for him.  He indicated himself and me.  “We have been the leaders of our people for several years.  I see no reason to change that,” he stated.

I looked out at the sea of people.  Several nodded.  No one argued.

“I think we should make it a triumvirate now.”  He indicated Marc Dodson.  “Dr. Dodson understand’s this, I guess ship is the best term now, better than anyone else.  That will give us the care and maintenance of our home in him.”  He indicated himself, “Research,” then he pointed at me, “and the arts.”

Again, there was no argument.

“Our news, is strange.  The other bays are not empty.  They have been turned into what appears to be quarters for all of us and other necessities.  Twenty-nine bays.”  He shook his head, then continued. “I’m not sure why, but it appears that we weren’t meant to die out here.  This station is huge, and we have several farming facilities in hydroponic setups.  Another couple of bays appear to be stacked to the ceiling with crates of some of our belongings.”

“Caesar must have been planning this for awhile,” I commented.

“Yes, he was.”

Our populace spread out through the ship, each finding an apartment.  There were some married couples who took some of the larger ones, but most of us were single.  After we moved in, which was simply to claim an apartment, we started distributing our belongings.  I had several crates that contained instruments, and my cooking utensils, and another containing my clothing.  That was the extent.

Almost everything had been damaged, apparently quite deliberately.  I had a drum set that I unpacked, with every head destroyed.  My piano had several broken keys.  I had no strings on my guitars, and my brass instruments were dented to where they were unplayable.  I had learned bagpipes in my younger days, but I couldn’t find them initially.  At the bottom of one of my clothing box, under a kilt, I found them.  The bags blended perfectly with the tartan of the kilt, but they were destroyed.  The chanter was actually broken into three pieces and there was no reed in sight.  

Everyone found their clothing in shreds, and my cooking utensils, while usable, were all damaged.

Those were put to use first.  It would take awhile to get food from the hydroponic bays.  Thankfully some of our people were specialists in the field, so they were happy to get the massive project going.

My job was to take several of the ground level apartments and refurbish them into a cafe.  My normal gourmet restaurant was not to be.  At least not immediately.  At the bottom of each storage bay was crate after crate of cans of food.  Nothing special, but at least they were there.

And then one day, a week after we had set out on our voyage, I received a call to the control room.

I entered and looked around.  It wasn’t what I expected.  I suppose that from what I had seen of ancient television, I expected a circular room with stations all around the perimeter and a center seat where the commander sat.  There wasn’t even a navigation station that I could see, but then, this wasn’t a ship, but a station.  It was supposed to sit in orbit of our planet and not navigate anywhere.

“Ah, good.  You’re here,” John commented as I looked around, taking in what I could understand.

He grinned as I said, “Well, this isn’t what I expected.”

There was the sound of a throat being cleared, and John gestured to Marc Dodson.  “He has something to show us.”

We stepped up behind Mr. Dodson and he turned to the console in front of him.  He flipped a switch and one of the screens in front of him lit up.  It showed little except a red dot in the center.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“That’s the sun,” Dodson said.  Both John and I looked at him, incredulously.

“I’m not one for the sciences, but every painting or picture I’ve ever seen has the sun as yellow, or white.”

Dodson nodded, but before he could say anything, John asked, “Why is it so small?”

“Thankfully, both your questions can be answered at once.  Our speed.”

“To go this far in a week, we’d have to be travelling faster than light.” John shook his head.  “That’s impossible.”

Something was tickling at the back of my mind.  Something from my boyhood.  Suddenly I had it.  “Red shift!  We ARE going faster than light!” I exclaimed.

Marc  shook his head.  “John’s right.  That’s impossible.  What is actually happening, however, is even more confusing.”  He stood and stretched.  He’d been sitting there for quite some time, apparently.  “We are going incredibly fast, but not in excess of ‘C’.  What is happening is, in fact, red shift, but in theory, it can’t happen if you’re going faster than light.”

“Why?” I asked.  These guys were scientists.  I knew very little about astronomy.  My specialty was gastronomy.

“Well, if we were moving faster than light, how would lt be able to catch up to us?  Relativity says that since it started from our sun, it’s travelling at ‘C’ relative to there.  That’s why it’s shifted red to us.  The waves are coming slower.  By the same token, any light produced in N21 is travelling at ‘C’ relative to the station.  That’s why colors are normal here.”

I tried to wrap my head around it.  “Okay, but you haven’t answered John’s question.  How are we this far away from the sun in a week?”

Dodson looked first me, then John in the eye, and very deliberately said, “We’re not.”

“Huh?” I said, feeling like an idiot.

Marc sat down again and turned to another screen.  “Let me show you something else.” He punched a few buttons and the screen suddenly showed what appeared to be stars, moving stars.

“Those can’t be stars,” John seemed confused. “Asteroids? But so many visible doesn’t seem right.”

“As I said, John, we haven’t arrived here in a week.”

I had glanced back to the first screen, and the red dot seemed to be somewhat dimmer than it had been just a few moments before. “Uh, sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but, uhm, where’s the sun going?”

Marc sighed.  “To get where we are, even at the speed of light, would take several hundred years.  In fact, it has taken several hundred years.”  He paused a moment and I saw John swallow hard.  Then he slowly nodded.  Dodson continued.  “Time slows down for you as you approach the speed of light.”

Again I remembered something I hadn’t thought of for a few hundred years, and I understood what was happening..  “Okay.  Correct me if I’m wrong.  We are moving so fast, and at such a slow apparent time, that in just a few minutes, we’ve seen our ship move several years.”

“Relative to Earth,” John stated.

Marc nodded, and I looked at the other screen.  “This screen showing what is on our side, is showing stars, not asteroids, but again, we are in a few minutes, seeing what would in actuality be several years… If we were still observing time normally.”

“Uhhhh….” Marc started.

“Yes,” John interrupted. “Let’s keep this simple,” he told Marc.  “No offense,” he added to me, almost as an afterthought.

“None taken,” I said as I stared back at the screen showing our home.  “Well, that pretty well decides turning around and going back,” i said quietly, “Even if we had the fuel to do it.”

Even as I spoke, one of those coincidences that will freak out even the most logical mind happened.  The constant low level vibration of our new home ceased.  We felt some machinery work from both sides of the station, and then everything was still.  A moment later, we saw a long tube accelerating away from the side of the station.  There appeared to be a thruster on the front and back of it, pushing it out into the void between stars.  It was moving at the same velocity that we were, but it was picking up speed.  Without even looking, we knew the same thing was happening on the other side.

“This sets our predicament in stone,” John’s voice was a monotone. “We now have no engines.”

“We will drift at this speed,” Marc said.  He pushed a button and the screen showing our sun changed again.  Now it showed lots of stars coming towards us.  As we watched I expected to see new ones appearing.  They didn’t.  They were thinning out.

“We’re going to leave the galaxy,” John observed.  “He turned to me.  I’m curious what you meant when you said we couldn’t turn back.”

“Simple,” I replied.  “The planet no longer exists as we knew it.  We have only aged a week, and our technology hasn’t grown.  Theirs has.  By over a thousand years.”

“More,” Marc said.  “We were accelerating until we lost the engines.”

None of us felt like speaking.  We just looked at the screen that held our future.