Where is Scotty When You Need Him?
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: None.
Description: There is real science behind (rather far behind!) this tale of the near future.
_____________________________________________________________________
Where do I start?
Name, rank and serial number might be as good a place as any, I suppose.
McGregor, William Patrick: Wing Commander, Royal Air Force – British Air Force, of course: 68743172.
I have spent my adult life flying and my only experience of writing after I left school was preparing brief reports in the stilted jargon used to convey information on untried aircraft to flight engineers and other test pilots. I was pretty good at essays when I was at Dumbarton Academy and I kept a diary one year in Junior School from Christmas until almost Easter.
That journal was full of my plans to invent a totally novel aircraft while being mobbed after scoring the winning goal on my debut appearance in a Scotland jersey. This diary is a bit less ambitious: the truth is that I am trying to fill in the hours while the brand new spacecraft surrounding me inches closer to that point between earth and the moon where the gravity of both matches. Once I am there my mission can begin.
The ship has been assembled in space and I joined it two days ago. From the outside it looks very like a big doughnut. It is mostly engine and my quarters are two rather cramped rooms in the hole in the centre. There is a small amount of manoeuvring fuel on board but to conserve it, we were pushed off at very slow speed towards the neutral point. Once there, I will steady the ship, set a course and fire up the main engine. About a minute later I will be in orbit around Mars - so the boffins assure me!
About a hundred and fifty years ago, an American film maker called Gene Roddenberry had an idea for a television space opera called Star Trek. His space ship moved around by warping space. Now the theory is fine but the ship would have had to have the mass of a small planet for it to work. Sometime later a more practical warp drive was proposed by Miguel Alcubierre but it would have needed prohibitive amounts of energy to make it viable.
At more or less the same time an Edinburgh University professor called Peter Higgs showed that there had to be a fundamental particle that gave the universe mass. It didn’t matter whether it was a proton, a planet or a galaxy: if it has mass it has to have Higgs bosons. It took about fifty years to isolate the minute but massive boson and it has taken about another hundred years to harness it.
The Americans, the South American Federation, the Russians and Chinese have been working on the project but Britain has got there first! There are rumours that the Chinese have sent an unmanned craft to Jupiter and recovered it but I am the very first human being to sit at the centre of a Higgs Drive ready to warp through space. When I throw the start switch the doughnut will acquire planetary mass. This is a small prototype so the mass generated will be modest – like Earth rather than one of the gas giants. Even so, we should be able to travel to the stars in our arm of the galaxy within hours.
The basic drive is fairly straightforward once the problems of containing the bosons were solved. The delay in sending a man on the first mission has been because of conflicting theories about steering. In other words: we are pretty sure that we can go somewhere but only the British have come up with a method of deciding where we go to, and even more important from where I sit, where we return to!
Like most great ideas it is very simple once the scientists had worked it out. I nudge the craft in the direction of Mars at a few centimetres a second then let her rip. The engine will keep circulating bosons until sensors detect the proximity of a planetary mass at which point the engine shuts down. I will be fairly undisturbed at the centre of the action but I might pass-out like I would if I pulled too much ‘g’ in a supersonic fighter jet.
I have to stop to make the final checks – I will tell you more from Mars.
* * * * *
Just a quick word while I wait for final clearance from Earth. Wish me luck!
* * * * *
I am lost. The drive worked well and I was only unconscious for a couple of minutes with no lasting effects. I came to in orbit around a planet – as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz: ‘This sure doesn’t look like Kansas.’ It is neither Mars nor any other planet in the solar system. This planet has an atmosphere for one thing – I can see clouds and a glint of an extensive body of liquid. I wonder if it could be water. More likely, I think, to be a thoroughly noxious fluid better suited to cleaning drains than drinking.
We are orbiting a sun that is more orange-coloured than our own. It must have a lower surface temperature, I guess, because it is much bigger than the dear old sun. I wish I had studied astrophysics. Is my new ‘sun’ older or younger? Do stars vary much in size? I mean, I know about giant and dwarf stars but how much difference does it make?
Where the hell am I? More to the point: how the hell do I get home?
* * * * *
I feel a bit better now I have had something to eat and drink.
I have started to plot the position of the stars around me and I have sent a message back towards Earth. At least I hope that my widest aerial is pointing roughly in the right direction. There will be no help from home, of course, since it will take a minimum of five years for the message to get there!
I have supplies for about a month so I don’t need to panic just yet.
One thing I can say with absolute certainty: the steering system for Higgs Drive spaceships needs a great deal more work!
* * * * *
How did I let myself be talked into this? All our competitors are far better resourced than Britain so they should have been ahead of us. There were rumours that the Russians pulled out of the race when one of their ships went missing but there was no confirmation – secretive bastards!
I cannot make any sense of my star sights. The sky is totally different and I have no point of reference: no familiar constellations to guide me; no especially bright star like Polaris to give me a starting point. I am really struggling to keep focused. I cannot stay here; I do not know which direction to take; and I have no faith that the steering system will take me home.
* * * * *
I have had a sleep and a big meal. My decision is made: I will pick a direction, start my ship moving and engage the Higgs Drive.
In Roddenberry’s television show when the situation became desperate they would call on the engineer: ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ I could do with Scotty right here, right now!
This diary was found in the computer memory of a ship of unknown design orbiting the fourth planet of Sirius. There is no record of its departure from Earth, and the pilot named in the journal, Wing Commander McGregor, was reported killed in a flying accident when testing a prototype wave-rider jet one hundred and twenty-five years ago. The theory he gives for directing a warp excursion is, frankly, ludicrous.
If it is true, this diary places the first manned Higgs Drive flight twenty years earlier than the history books acknowledge.
Swearwords: None.
Description: There is real science behind (rather far behind!) this tale of the near future.
_____________________________________________________________________
Where do I start?
Name, rank and serial number might be as good a place as any, I suppose.
McGregor, William Patrick: Wing Commander, Royal Air Force – British Air Force, of course: 68743172.
I have spent my adult life flying and my only experience of writing after I left school was preparing brief reports in the stilted jargon used to convey information on untried aircraft to flight engineers and other test pilots. I was pretty good at essays when I was at Dumbarton Academy and I kept a diary one year in Junior School from Christmas until almost Easter.
That journal was full of my plans to invent a totally novel aircraft while being mobbed after scoring the winning goal on my debut appearance in a Scotland jersey. This diary is a bit less ambitious: the truth is that I am trying to fill in the hours while the brand new spacecraft surrounding me inches closer to that point between earth and the moon where the gravity of both matches. Once I am there my mission can begin.
The ship has been assembled in space and I joined it two days ago. From the outside it looks very like a big doughnut. It is mostly engine and my quarters are two rather cramped rooms in the hole in the centre. There is a small amount of manoeuvring fuel on board but to conserve it, we were pushed off at very slow speed towards the neutral point. Once there, I will steady the ship, set a course and fire up the main engine. About a minute later I will be in orbit around Mars - so the boffins assure me!
About a hundred and fifty years ago, an American film maker called Gene Roddenberry had an idea for a television space opera called Star Trek. His space ship moved around by warping space. Now the theory is fine but the ship would have had to have the mass of a small planet for it to work. Sometime later a more practical warp drive was proposed by Miguel Alcubierre but it would have needed prohibitive amounts of energy to make it viable.
At more or less the same time an Edinburgh University professor called Peter Higgs showed that there had to be a fundamental particle that gave the universe mass. It didn’t matter whether it was a proton, a planet or a galaxy: if it has mass it has to have Higgs bosons. It took about fifty years to isolate the minute but massive boson and it has taken about another hundred years to harness it.
The Americans, the South American Federation, the Russians and Chinese have been working on the project but Britain has got there first! There are rumours that the Chinese have sent an unmanned craft to Jupiter and recovered it but I am the very first human being to sit at the centre of a Higgs Drive ready to warp through space. When I throw the start switch the doughnut will acquire planetary mass. This is a small prototype so the mass generated will be modest – like Earth rather than one of the gas giants. Even so, we should be able to travel to the stars in our arm of the galaxy within hours.
The basic drive is fairly straightforward once the problems of containing the bosons were solved. The delay in sending a man on the first mission has been because of conflicting theories about steering. In other words: we are pretty sure that we can go somewhere but only the British have come up with a method of deciding where we go to, and even more important from where I sit, where we return to!
Like most great ideas it is very simple once the scientists had worked it out. I nudge the craft in the direction of Mars at a few centimetres a second then let her rip. The engine will keep circulating bosons until sensors detect the proximity of a planetary mass at which point the engine shuts down. I will be fairly undisturbed at the centre of the action but I might pass-out like I would if I pulled too much ‘g’ in a supersonic fighter jet.
I have to stop to make the final checks – I will tell you more from Mars.
* * * * *
Just a quick word while I wait for final clearance from Earth. Wish me luck!
* * * * *
I am lost. The drive worked well and I was only unconscious for a couple of minutes with no lasting effects. I came to in orbit around a planet – as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz: ‘This sure doesn’t look like Kansas.’ It is neither Mars nor any other planet in the solar system. This planet has an atmosphere for one thing – I can see clouds and a glint of an extensive body of liquid. I wonder if it could be water. More likely, I think, to be a thoroughly noxious fluid better suited to cleaning drains than drinking.
We are orbiting a sun that is more orange-coloured than our own. It must have a lower surface temperature, I guess, because it is much bigger than the dear old sun. I wish I had studied astrophysics. Is my new ‘sun’ older or younger? Do stars vary much in size? I mean, I know about giant and dwarf stars but how much difference does it make?
Where the hell am I? More to the point: how the hell do I get home?
* * * * *
I feel a bit better now I have had something to eat and drink.
I have started to plot the position of the stars around me and I have sent a message back towards Earth. At least I hope that my widest aerial is pointing roughly in the right direction. There will be no help from home, of course, since it will take a minimum of five years for the message to get there!
I have supplies for about a month so I don’t need to panic just yet.
One thing I can say with absolute certainty: the steering system for Higgs Drive spaceships needs a great deal more work!
* * * * *
How did I let myself be talked into this? All our competitors are far better resourced than Britain so they should have been ahead of us. There were rumours that the Russians pulled out of the race when one of their ships went missing but there was no confirmation – secretive bastards!
I cannot make any sense of my star sights. The sky is totally different and I have no point of reference: no familiar constellations to guide me; no especially bright star like Polaris to give me a starting point. I am really struggling to keep focused. I cannot stay here; I do not know which direction to take; and I have no faith that the steering system will take me home.
* * * * *
I have had a sleep and a big meal. My decision is made: I will pick a direction, start my ship moving and engage the Higgs Drive.
In Roddenberry’s television show when the situation became desperate they would call on the engineer: ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ I could do with Scotty right here, right now!
This diary was found in the computer memory of a ship of unknown design orbiting the fourth planet of Sirius. There is no record of its departure from Earth, and the pilot named in the journal, Wing Commander McGregor, was reported killed in a flying accident when testing a prototype wave-rider jet one hundred and twenty-five years ago. The theory he gives for directing a warp excursion is, frankly, ludicrous.
If it is true, this diary places the first manned Higgs Drive flight twenty years earlier than the history books acknowledge.
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.