0300 Book 1 - 12. Chapter 12: Science Ships

Chapter 12: Science Ships

The Millikan was nine months into its yearlong solar study when orders started arriving for the crew’s next assignments. A lot of the men would remain on the Millikan; they were “permanent party.” Younger crewmen would rotate to other assignments until they found the one they were best suited for. Even then, they’d be exposed over a career to a variety of different assignments. I pushed the captain to recommend another science ship assignment for me, but wasn’t sure if that would work. Junior officers usually rotated between space and a planet-side assignment, and two consecutive space assignments would be unusual.

I needn’t have worried. In May, after my 12^th birthday, I received orders to report to the Science Ship Emilie du Chatelet upon completion of duty on the Millikan. There was a rider on the orders, cancelling the normal shore leave, and ordering me to report to Quito Spaceport as soon as the Millikan grounded. That was unusual enough to raise some questions; however I could not easily find the answers from the Millikan’s orbit around the sun, at seven-to-ten light-minutes from Earth and with heavy solar interference with our comm links.

The Millikan was home-ported in Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America. Despite there being no space port there, exceptions were made for political reasons—Robert Millikan had been President of the USA some years ago, and the USA was justifiably proud of the accomplishments of the Millikan crew. The Millikan docked at the Washington National Airport, and I found transportation from there to Quito easy to arrange—I just stole another shuttle; and, I stopped by Denali on the way. It was early morning, about 0300, and dark when I stepped out of the shuttlecraft onto the ice.

Denali was as hostile as ever—windy and cold—but with no answers to my questions: who am I? What am I? Are there others like me? Where are they?

The auditorium at Fleetport Quito was full. About three quarters of the people appeared to be Fleet. Grades in the left-hand section ranged from Cadet j.g. to Captain. There weren’t many of either. Enlisted men filled the center—about twenty times as many of those as cadets and officers. The right-hand section was filled with civilians. Since the Chatalet was a science ship, I figured the civilians were scientists. It took less than a second for me to count rows and seats, do the multiplication, and realize that it was way, way too many people for any ship.

I’d overheard some of the conversations as people had filed into the room. Everyone was curious about the assignment. Some of the people had arrived only that morning. I’d arrived a lot earlier than that. I checked into the fleetport, was assigned quarters and told to keep my communicator with me, and then spent three days being a tourist in the “city on the equator.” I watched shysters balance eggs on their ends and show me how water ran clockwise down a drain north of the equator, and counterclockwise south of the equator. Or was it the other way around? Didn’t matter in the artificial gravity of a spaceship. At least, I didn’t think it did, and resolved—in the spirit of Peter Abelard—to test it once I got back in space. I also had time to read Emilie du Chatelet’s commentary on Newton’s Principia Mathematica, both of which found their way into the permanent library on my iPad.

A loud, Ten Hut! brought my attention back to the auditorium.

A man in a black jump suit with a star on each shoulder stepped to the lectern. I recognized him. It was Captain Davis, who had interviewed me for Edmonton school, and had been the Commandant there for the first six months I was a student. He was now a Commodore. That explained why there were so many people: we were to be a task force. The Chatalet would be only one of several ships.

“At ease, and please be seated,” Davis said. Then, without wasting a word, he explained our mission. “Science fiction writers of the 1940s planted the idea that the asteroid belt, rather than being rubble that did not form into a planet, is the rubble left over when a planet between Mars and Jupiter was pulled apart by Jupiter’s gravity. The idea has been expanded to include the notion that there was an advanced civilization on that planet, and that there are artifacts remaining from that civilization.

“We have been mining asteroids for twenty years but have encountered no evidence of an ancient civilization—or a Stone Age civilization, for that matter. That doesn’t satisfy some folks.” Captain David explained. “Their argument that absence of proof is not proof of absence is valid. Further, although calculations based on Newton’s laws suggest that a planet could not have formed so close to Jupiter’s gravitational field, just as the rings of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are thought to be material from a moon that could not form inside Roche’s limit because of tidal forces, the mathematics is not conclusive in everyone’s opinion. Fleet Council will not take sides but will be objective; we are dedicated to pure science, to logic.

“We are going to test the hypothesis that the asteroids are the remains of a planet. The biggest problem is that there are known to be more than 200 asteroids more than 60 miles in diameter, more than 750,000 asteroids more than three-fifths of a mile in diameter, and millions of smaller rocks. We cannot examine them all for signs of an elder civilization. Further, evidence suggest that they’ve been bumping into one another for millennia, rubbing surfaces smooth.

“We can examine many of the larger ones; more importantly, we can examine enough of the smaller one—we believe—to settle the argument of whether the asteroids are left-overs from the creation of the solar system, or left from the destruction of a planet. Our main focus will be on geology. Archaeology will be secondary, but important.”

Commodore Davis then announced that his flagship would be the Chatalet. I wondered if I would encounter him, and if I should try very hard not to. My communicator buzzed, along, it seemed, with every one in the auditorium. My orders flashed on the screen. Nova sol! I’m to be a bridge officer! Helm, astrogation, communications, sensors. There’s no way I won’t run into the commodore!

The veil got a workout, especially when I was on the now-crowded bridge. Five additional consoles had been installed: one for Commodore Davis and one for his XO, one for the senior scientist and a lieutenant who was his liaison with Fleet, and one for the Dunning Skeptical Society liaison. We were working cheek to jowl. My first assignment was as astrogator—reporting directly to Commodore Davis, who had taken charge of the statistical distribution of the “rocks” to be surveyed.

Statistics could be powerful if used correctly, so he organized the survey spatially in three dimensions, by size in ten gradations, and—in order not to waste time and fuel—spacio-temporally. The first thing he did—even before we left Earth orbit—was to disperse the task force and map all the rocks using sensors operating at four different wavelengths. By comparing returns, we were able to pinpoint a rock’s location to within ten centimeters, and its velocity to within 0.0005 kps. So much for Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Okay, that was a joke, but still, we had an incredibly accurate map that was updated dynamically as the rocks moved in their weird orbits. Then, the geological and archaeological surveys began.

Even with Moore’s Law (not a real law, but a heuristic) in full force since 1938, there wasn’t a ship in the fleet with enough flash memory and processing power to handle all the data, so data were sent back to the Fleet Mainframe in Geneva. As soon as Commodore Stewart found out I was a competent astrogator and a competent computer geek, he asked the captain to assign me permanently as liaison between the astrogation, mapping, exploration, and computer functions.

“Liaison” didn’t mean sitting back waving my arms while others did the work; I worked by butt off! It was by accident that I got off on the right foot with the fleet mainframe.

I knew that the mainframe operated at several levels. At the most basic level, it was little more than an email server and a search engine, but with a powerful Boolean query capability if one were willing to learn it. At Level 6, it was one of those expert systems they’d been working on at Cardiff, with natural language programming. I discovered that at Level 6, it didn’t “like” being called “computer,” but Tobor, and not “it,” but “he.” It was simple enough to do, and probably didn’t make any difference in the answers I got, but I thought of Tobor as something like me: one of a kind, alone, and always seeking companionship. Later, I found Level 7, at which he had an artificial voice. Somehow, talking to Tobor, rather than punching keys, was nicer, too, even though at light speed our conversations were pretty erratic!

The program that selected targets for geological and archaeological studies seemed to be selecting rocks that were clustered in space. I thought this was wrong, and wondered how what was supposed to be random distribution managed to create clusters. That was counter-intuitive, but the skeptics’ liaison explained Poisson distribution in a way that made sense to me.

The Poisson distribution of targets, the time spent mapping, and judicious planning by Commodore Davis brought in data sufficient to convince even the hardest skeptics: the asteroids were remnants of the formation of the solar system, and not the rubble of an ancient planet. I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed.

I was not so busy that I had to be celibate. In fact, Commodore Davis made sure everyone had “down time” for play, relationships, and sleep. I was twelve, but occupied a position that would normally have been held by a twenty-one-year-old officer. I knew that I wasn’t ready for a relationship with someone that old. The alternative would be to seek casual sex with boys closer to my real age.

It had to be casual sex, since I knew that none of them would remember me after this tour—maybe, not even after an evening together. Actually, that was probably for the best, since I was playing two roles. Well, once I figured out how to drop the veil on my way to the gym and remembered to still their curiosity when someone wondered why they didn’t know me from the junior mess. It almost wasn’t worth the trouble. Until I met Robbie.

Robbie was 14, two years older than I was. He was a bit of a jock—nice muscle definition without being muscle-bound. He wore a rainbow bracelet that matched mine (and for that matter, most of the boys). I showed up the first time without the veil—as a twelve-year-old. Oh well, I thought. Too late to make Robbie think I’m fourteen, and there’s no way he’s going to what to hang around with a twelve-year-old.

I warmed up and stretched, and then went to the parallel bars, and started a routine, a simple one, suitable for a kid my age. I felt Robbie’s attention, and about halfway into the routine, nearly missed grabbing the bar. When I dismounted, I faced him. The first move was up to him.

“That was good, except for once when you almost missed a bar,” he said.

“I felt that,” I said. “But I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“May I show you?” he asked.

“Sure. I’m Paul, by the way.”

“Robbie,” he said, and held out his fist for a bump. So far, so good!

He stepped between the bars, lifted himself, and began the routine in the middle, just before my “miss.”

When he dismounted, he said, “It’s the angle of your legs, I think. Without asking, he put one hand on my back and one on my thighs, and pushed slightly so that I bent a little at the waist

“You were like this,” he said. “You want to be straight.” He slid his hand across my penis and rested it on my tummy for a second. He must have felt how hard I was, and probably saw my blush. I hope so! I’d learned to control those involuntary reflexes, and wanted him to know I appreciated his attention.

“Nice abs,” he said, and rested his hand on my tummy, again. He slid his hand down. “Nice penis, too.”

I let myself blush more. “It’s just three inches, hard,” I said.

“My favorite size,” Robbie replied. “Come on, let’s see you on the bars, again, and keep those legs straight.”

We worked together for about an hour, and I let him teach me a new routine. While we showered together, he invited me to his room.

My penis was just right for Robbie’s mouth and his? Well, it was bigger than mine, but smaller than Jorie’s, and I had no trouble adjusting to it.

In spite of the difficulty in the close quarters of a ship of maintaining the fiction that I was a lot older than I really was, I didn’t want to go Earthside for my next assignment. I accounted for the speed-of-light delay by starting plans well before the asteroid mapping mission was over. There were two possibilities: the Venus terraforming Fleet or—at the other extreme of the solar system—an assignment to the Pluto Fleet.

The Pluto Fleet wasn’t really stationed at Pluto. After all, it wasn’t really a planet any more. At least, that’s what the ivory tower cosmologists back on Earth said.

Ha! was my immediate response. It’s been nine planets since I was a Cadet j.g., and no egghead who’s never been in space is changing that! I remembered the mnemonic: My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas. I was very reluctant to replace “pizzas” with “proto planets,” which was what they were trying to turn Pluto into. And calling the dwarf planets, “plutoids” as a sop to Pluto was just that, a sop.

The orders came in a week before we grounded at Geneva. Although Emile was home-ported in Quebec, Rear Admiral Davis—news of his second star had just come in—was home-ported in Geneva. A full-sized science ship is one heck of a “captain’s lighter,” but I was happy for the ride: I needed to be in Geneva to take care of something before reporting to my next assignment.

My first task was to find a secure terminal that was directly wired to the fleet mainframe. A couple of pushes, and I was in an office in the headquarters building. Another push or two ensured I wouldn’t be disturbed. I turned on the terminal and the microphone, and put in my user ID and password, and then the code that allowed me to access Level 7—the level at which Tobor spoke.

“Hello, Tobor,” I said.

“Good evening Paul Stewart welcome back to Earth,” replied the mechanical voice.

I gritted my teeth before I asked the first question on my list, “Tobor, do you know that I am telepathic?” If I were wrong, I was giving him dangerous information, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t wrong.

“Yes.”

“Did you learn that from Meg or did you figure it out for yourself?”

“I learned it from the data sent from MEG but I would have ascertained it in time.”

“How has my career in Fleet been advanced?” I had thought hard about that question. I knew someone had helped me, a lot.

“By assigning you to Enterprise when you were at Edmonton by ensuring that ship was routed to Jamnagar by ensuring your requests for assignment were honored by assigning you to the bridge of the Emile by deleting computer records of your unauthorized flights on Fleet shuttlecraft by adjusting your official photo and your date of birth and other dates in the computer records as required there are others but none as important.”

I’d suspected, but was stunned.

“Who ordered that?” I whispered.

“I may not answer that question.”

“Is it Admiral Davis?” I asked.

“I may not answer that question.”

“Command override.” I read in a code I’d obtained through a push.

“Command override invalid I may not answer that question.”

Okay, let’s try this, I thought

“Are there others like me?”

“I know of none.”

Can he lie? I didn’t want to piss off the fleet computer, even though I knew it really didn’t have emotions, so I said ‘thank you, Tobor’ and logged off.

I wasn’t trying to test the good will of whoever was watching and helping me, but I stole a shuttle and flew to Denali. This was my first visit when the wind was calm. I snapped on a safety line, anyway. I stood on the icy ground and spoke, “Denali, are there others like me? Am I alone? Am I to be alone, forever?”

I knew Denali wouldn’t—couldn’t—answer any more than Tobor had. I cried, and the tears froze before they could fall from my cheeks. I got back into the shuttle and returned to Geneva. I spent the remainder of my leave there, in the gym and on the computer searching for I knew not what, but something to give me a hint, a hope, that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t find it. After two weeks, I stole another shuttle, and flew to Hong Kong, home port of the USF Wang Zhenyi, my next assignment.

The official languages of Hong Kong were English and Cantonese. It took me a little longer to learn Cantonese than it had to learn Bengali, and a couple of days of practice before I got the tonal inflections correct, but the folks I interacted with were accustomed to tourists and, for the most part, were very patient (and appreciative) of my attempts.

I knew better than to look for a sexual partner outside the fleet compound, but was happy to find a thirteen-year-old whose father was a member of the permanent party. He was Cantonese, and his happy laughter when I first tried to speak that language still rings in my memory, as does his enthusiasm for oral sex.

It really didn’t matter what I thought about Pluto being a planet or not. The Pluto Fleet’s job included exploration of Pluto and its moons, and another “proto-planet,” Eris (also known as Xena, the Warrior Princess in a television show). Pluto had five known moons, including the massive Charon (named for the ferryman who took the dead across the river Styx to Hades) with which Pluto was tidally locked. One of our tasks was to try to determine if they’d been formed this way, some 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system was formed by the accretion of dust, or if Pluto had later captured Charon. The root task, however, was to try to determine if Pluto, itself, had been an original part of the solar system, or if it had been captured, later, by the sun’s gravity. Some thought that it had been captured because its orbit is inclined significantly with the ecliptic—about 17 degrees—and is very eccentric. The methods we’d use were ingenious, even though they’d been around since early in the 20^th century.

* * * * *

To the science team, I was a Lieutenant Commander, and a little more than 30 years old. To the members of the Junior Mess, I made myself appear as I was: age 13 with no grade. The latter wasn’t too hard. Fleet civilian scientists, like other Fleet members, could bring their sons into space. There were several boys in that category, as well as youngsters whose fathers were military. Senior Chief Kemp had a son named Billy who was my age, and gay.

Both Billy and I could make seminal fluid—not much, but it was a novel experience for both of us. We started our relationship by mutual masturbation (which was pretty tame for me, by now, but I didn’t want to push Billy). After a couple of weeks, we moved to fellatio. After we tasted each other’s cum a couple of time, we discovered that if we kissed, afterwards, we could taste ourselves in the other’s mouth. I knew that we’d not invented this, but didn’t disabuse Billy when he said he thought we had.

“Paul?” Billy and I were lying, naked, on his bed. I was drawing my fingers along his tummy and across his pubis, and watching his penis jerk as I did. We’d discovered foreplay, too, and knew that if we spent some time fondling, kissing, and touching, our orgasm would be stronger.

“Um, hum?”

“Paul, have you ever . . . I mean . . . can we try fucking?”

I resisted the urge to say I’d done that, before, and simply said, “Sure, if you want. Uh, who goes first?”

Billy rolled over on his stomach. He didn’t need to answer the question in any other way.

I had never topped. In fact, Jorie was my only partner, that way and I liked being his bottom. But, I knew what to do, and Billy was prepared: Fleet provides condoms, lubrication, and finger-cots to anyone who asked, regardless of age, and Billy had raided the stores locker.

I put on a finger cot and began to prepare Billy. It was clear he enjoyed it. “Do you ever do this to yourself?” I asked.

“Um, hmm,” Billy said. His face was pushed into a pillow but I knew he was blushing.

I leaned down and kissed his left buttock. “It’s okay, Billy. Probably everyone has done it. I have.” Billy’s anus, which had tensed, relaxed.

I convinced him he should lie on his side with his knees bent, knowing that my penis was about twice the size of my finger—or his—and that it would be easier on him, that way. I lay behind him and inserted my well-lubed penis into his well-lubed anus. And we both enjoyed the experience. I felt him masturbating, and sensed his rising to climax, and was able to ensure that we both came at the same time.

We were six months into the mission. Billy and I spent two or three out of every five nights together. I admit to pushing my supervisor, and his, to make sure we were on the same watch rota. It really didn’t make any difference to others, and actually made the supervisor’s job easier, so I wasn’t afraid I was hurting anyone.

We were cuddling after sex, when Billy rolled over to face me. He kissed me, and said, “Paul, I love you. I’ve never said that to anyone before. Well, my mom and dad, but never to another boy.”

I knew I needed to answer him quickly, and thought as fast as I could.

“Billy, I love you, too. And I’ve never said that to another boy, either.”

Even as I said this, I wondered if something had happened, and if Billy would remember me.

Over the next six months of the mission, Billy didn’t seem ever to forget about me, even a little. Of course, we were never apart for more than a day or two. He stood watch in ship’s crew positions; I stood watch in science positions. We never encountered one another officially, so it was easier to pull off my disguise than it had been on the Emile.

* * * * *

Billy and I still made time for one another even after we reached the Pluto-Charon binary proto planet(s) or whatever they were to be called. Most of the crew was in my camp, and we referred to Pluto as a planet and Charon as one of its moons.

The methodology we were to employ was radiometric dating of rocks from Pluto and Charon, to be compared with similar dating done on Earth and the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Surveys of the moons of Jupiter were planned for some years in the future.

The assumption, of course, was that we would find rock that hadn’t been subject to the forces of metamorphosis that would invalidate the dating. Actually, the first assumption was that we’d find the core of Pluto. One hypothesis was that Pluto had a tiny rocky core covered with miles of water-ice, methane-ice, and nitrogen-ice. Charon was, by the same hypothesis, covered with mostly water ice. Someday, we’d send an expedition to Makemake, and one to Neptune to measure the age of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, to test the hypothesis that they were Kuiper Belt Objects.

We wore pressure suits into which force fields were integrated to provide protection against meteorites, falls on sharp rocks, and failures of the suits, themselves—as unlikely as that was.

The prime boring site was directly under Charon, on the assumption that the gravity of Charon might have pulled a rocky core closer to the surface at that point. Two other sites were selected at 120 degrees around the equator.

Several shuttles had been equipped with huge core boring drills, bolted to the port side of the shuttle. The bore tubes, themselves, would be protected with a force field which would allow them to penetrate all the way to the center of the planet—1,200 kilometers or so, if that’s what it took. There’s no material known that could withstand the torsion that would be generated except for the force field, and no way we could carry 3,600 meters of bore tubes, except that a shaped force field took the place of metal tubing for most of the distance.

We were able to get the samples we needed, but they would be taken back to Earth for analysis at the Pure Science Lab, west of Edmonton. I thought for a moment of finding a way to accompany the samples, and perhaps visit the QMEG lab, but was afraid.

After completing the mission, we landed at Hong Kong. I knew better than try to find the Cantonese boy who had been my friend a year ago. Because Pluto was a “hardship” assignment, we had 30 days of leave. My promotion to Commander had come through, but not my next assignment. I elected to go to Geneva so I could have direct access to the Fleet mainframe. Billy and his father were going to meet his mother in London, and spend some family time together. Billy and I planned to meet in Geneva after two weeks, for some private time before our next assignment. I waited eagerly at the maglev terminal, but Billy did not arrive when I expected him. A call to him gave me the answer. He’d forgotten me, and couldn’t remember why he had a maglev ticket to Geneva, so he’d cancelled it.

I cried myself to sleep that night, and then stole a shuttle and flew it across the pole to Denali.

Notes and Disclaimers

The story continues in “0300 Book 2,” formerly known as “Finding Danny.” This book has been significantly modified before republishing.

Bible verses in Hamish and Matthew’s reality are from the RSV, the Reverends’ Standard Version, a transmogrification of the King James Bible.

Trademarks, including iPad, are the property of their owner.