Frontier: Book One - The Space Cadets Read online

  The link was a miraculous little piece of technology. As they were in a closed environment, within reach of access points to the ‘nets every few feet, it was part cell phone, part communicator and part computer. Aisha had heard of them, and had seen crude replicas on Earth, but she finally held one in her hand.

  She snapped it onto her wrist and touched the curved screen. Instantly it projected a map into the air above it, with an arrow pointing towards her quarters. She looked to Soo-Kyung.

  “Apparently we are roommates,” said the Korean girl, holding her wrist near Aisha’s. The directions were identical.

  “What are the odds?”

  “I think that they are smaller than you think. They’ve probably been profiling us for weeks, and matched us for maximum compatibility. As a result, it’s likely no mistake that you chose the seat near mine on the shuttle, and no coincidence that we get on very well. In hindsight, I think, it must be obvious. Logical, even.”

  “You sometimes sound like a Vulcan.”

  “A what?”

  Aisha joined her first two and last two fingers together and stretched them out in the shape of a ‘V’, the famous Vulcan salute.

  “You know, Star Trek?”

  “I haven’t seen much TV.”

  “Oh, well, given that we live here, now -- it should be required viewing.”

  After rounding a few corners and traveling down similar-looking corridors that offered tantalizing glances at the rooms within -- some with games, some with simulators, others showing well-stocked gymnasiums -- they finally reached the destination flagged on their links as their quarters.

  After Major Carter’s pep talk, they were expecting a basic, utilitarian apartment. They opened the door, and gasped simultaneously. Their quarters were gorgeous. Built around an enormous bay window that protruded from the side of the station, giving a 270-degree view of space, they each had a bedroom, equipped with the latest and greatest in terminals. A shared kitchen and entertainment area capped off the common area.

  Their bags had been thoughtfully delivered into the room, and were waiting for them.

  “This is better than a hotel!”

  “I’ve never been in a hotel,” said Soo-Kyung, matter-of-factly. “But this seems excessive.”

  “I’m not complaining!”

  “Agreed.”

  Soo-Kyung stood in the bay window, leaning out and looking along the rim of the station. “It appears that all the living quarters are similar. See how the windows blister out?”

  Aisha nodded. “Yeah. I wonder if they have curtains.” She nodded her head in the direction of an apartment below them, where two boys were walking around shirtless.

  Soo-Kyung giggled nervously. “Good thing the bedrooms are on the back wall, away from the windows!”

  Between the bedrooms, directly behind the kitchen was a small shower stall.

  “Water is a precious commodity in space,” said Soo-Kyung, pointing at how the arrangement made the kitchen, shower and toilet plumbing fork off from the same source. “We probably recycle much of what we use.”

  Aisha peered at the stingy-looking shower head. “I’m sure we’ll get used to it.”

  Soo-Kyung shook her head. “Spoiled!”

  Aisha laughed and raised her hands in defense. “You got me.”

  She walked back to the common area and took a stool at the main counter. Calling up the school schedule, she realized something. “It’s late,” said Aisha. “Station time.”

  Soo-Kyung nodded. “And we have orientation first-thing tomorrow. Better get some sleep.”

  “Which room would you prefer?”

  Soo-Kyung looked from bedroom to bedroom. “They’re identical.”

  “But you still need to pick one.”

  “So do you.”

  “I’m trying to be nice and give you first pick.”

  “Oh,” said Soo-Kyung, finally. “In that case, this one.”

  She pointed at the bedroom behind the common area, furthest from the kitchen.

  “Suits me,” said Aisha. “Good night, Roomie.”

  “Good night,” came the reply. Soo-Kyung was picking her words carefully. “Roomie.”

  ***

  The bed lay in an alcove in the bedroom, with what looked like a window, covered by a metal panel beside it. Aisha had finally been able to change, and Soo-Kyung didn’t spend much time in the shower, so, refreshed and changed, she was ready for bed. The ‘window’ had a control button and handle. Gingerly, she reached out and touched the panel. The panel slid up, revealing a large video screen. Presently it showed fields and rolling hills outside. A reminder of home. She felt like she was sitting in a French cottage, enjoying the countryside!

  Smart, she thought. One of the few places on the station where we can have solace, so they give us views of home. Aisha touched a panel, and was looking out at a big city. Another touch, and she was on a boat in the middle of the ocean. They can’t have us going crazy in here.

  She liked the ocean, and heard the soothing sounds of lapping waves. She lay back, and reached that moment when you are about to drift off to sleep, but not quite there, when the doorbell rang.

  She stumbled sleepily towards the door, but before she could reach it, Soo-Kyung’s hand was on her arm.

  “Wait,” said Soo-Kyung. “You’re not fully dressed.”

  Then she noticed that her roommate was in full uniform. Aisha had seen one hanging in her closet but hadn’t tried it on.

  “Why do I need to be dressed?”

  “Our first night in the school? I’m sure there’s a special student welcome.”

  “Oh.”

  Aisha turned back towards her room, while Soo-Kyung stalled whomever was at the door. Quickly, she slipped into her uniform.

  On first glance, it looked like it would be too tight, and too form-fitting. In reality, it was extremely comfortable. She tested it by stretching and bending and it held very well. Despite its tightness, it was padded slightly with a gel-like material.

  It made sense -- in weightless conditions, it was easy to bump into things and the padding in the uniform would protect her from minor scrapes and bruises.

  The tightness also meant that the uniform wouldn’t get caught on surfaces, and potentially cause injury.

  The shoes on the other hand were bulky, leather, masculine monstrosities. She took one off and looked at it. Bending it in her hand, she felt its strength and springiness.

  They looked like they’d be great for jumping. It might be fun to try them out in weightless conditions.

  She heard Soo-Kyung call the all-clear and stepped back into the apartment.

  Two boys were waiting in the foyer with Soo-Kyung, in full uniform. She recognized one of them as the Canadian boy, Smith, from disembarkation.

  “Good evening,” he said. “I guess we are your welcoming committee.”

  Chapter 7

  Secrets

  Someday we will go to the stars. I will not be around to see that day, but, from what I’ve learned, it will happen in your generation. We are closer than you might possibly think. If nothing else, I want you to go there. I’m asking your mother to make sure that whenever an avenue opens up for you, that she push you through that doorway as much as possible. You don’t understand why, but maybe someday, you will…

  Soo-Kyung folded her arms and faced them down. “Welcoming committee? You expect me to believe that?”

  Smith smiled, warmly. “Yes.”

  “I’ve been in academies before, and by welcoming, they usually mean hazing.”

  “Not here. We’ve come to just show you around, help you to get to know the place before classes begin.”

  “And you expect me to believe that?”

  “I really don’t know what to expect, I can only tell you that I’m speaking the truth.”

  The other boy stepped forward. His nameplate bore the tricolored flag of Ireland and the name Murphy. “Soo-Kyung,” he said. “I can understand how all of this might
seem unusual, but, to be honest we requested to work with you guys, for the very reason that you might be worried about hazing, and we’re here to prevent anything like that.”

  Aisha raised an eyebrow. “How do you know her name? It’s not on her nameplate. That only reads as ‘Kim.’”

  “We know a lot more about you than you might think,” said Murphy. “And we are on your side.”

  He looked over his shoulder out into the corridor, and then he and Smith exchanged glances. Smith nodded, and Murphy continued. “It would be great to show you around this place.”

  There was something about his voice that gave Aisha pause. Soo-Kyung seemed to notice it too. It was like Smith had something to say, but didn’t want to say it here. He seemed trustworthy and sincere enough.

  Soo-Kyung met her eye and nodded. “I’m not sleepy yet. Maybe a short walk around the station will help. I’m so curious about what’s out there.”

  “Agreed.”

  She gestured to the boys to lead the way. They smiled and walked out.

  It felt like a double date when they paired up. Aisha couldn’t help but wonder if Soo-Kyung deliberately took the Irish boy, whose name she discovered was Seamus, so that Aisha could spend some time with Smith. Her friend had already noted Aisha’s instant attraction to him. Or maybe it was the other way around. She felt confused. Maybe that meant she really did like him.

  Smith, for the most part was quiet, smiling gently and pointing out the essentials. The station was designed to be extensible, and had been extended many times. Each ‘section’ was a large wheel, and the rotation of that wheel provided artificial gravity. The habitat was at the very outside rim of the wheel.

  “You would expect the floor to be curved, and for it to feel like we’re always walking uphill,” he said. “And, to be honest, it is. But it has been carefully designed so that there are no long corridors. Apartments and rooms ‘stick out’ into the corridor, so that our distance view is blocked.”

  He was right -- she had wondered why their course was a zig-zag one, but it made perfect sense. This way, even though they were in a gigantic wheel, it felt like they were walking on a flat surface. With their eyes being fooled, their brains were too. It was one small thing that made life in space that little bit easier.

  “Right now there are ten sections,” said Seamus. “Six of them rotate at a speed that emulates Earth’s gravity. One emulates the moon, one emulates Mars.”

  “What about the other two?”

  “Nobody is telling.”

  Soo-Kyung stopped, and looked him in the eye. “Other planets?”

  “We think so.”

  “We?”

  “It’s something I didn’t want to talk about in the apartment,” said Smith. “But yes, we are keeping an eye on what’s going on around here. What’s really going on.”

  “But we just got here.”

  “I know,” interjected Seamus, before she could finish. “And many of our group worried that you might be on their side.”

  “Their?”

  “Those who run this place. The ones keeping the truth from the rest of us.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I know,” said Seamus. “When we heard about the whole open-enrollment thing, some of our suspicions were confirmed. So we gained access to their records, and researched most of the new kids coming aboard. You two are different.”

  Aisha stopped. “Different?”

  “Because we’re celebrities,” said Soo-Kyung, matter-of-factly.

  “Not because you are, but why you are,” said Smith.

  They walked on in silence for a while. The girls not knowing what to say, the guys not knowing if they should discuss it further.

  Finally, Seamus broke the silence, addressing Soo-Kyung directly. “My country and yours are very similar in many ways,” he said, looking her in the eye. “Divided north and south, primarily because of foreign powers. Lots of violence and lots of death, but nothing changes.”

  She stopped in her tracks, looking at him directly with a ‘you’re not serious’ expression on her face.

  “So,” he continued. “When I heard they were doing open enrollment, I started looking into who they were going to bring in, and why. You jumped to the top of my list.”

  She turned away, coolly. “I know who you are,” he continued. “And I know how you survived the wars.”

  She stopped again in her tracks, and turned back towards Aisha.

  “We’re leaving,” she said. “Now.”

  Chapter 8

  Mysteries

  I remember the night I had my epiphany. I was sitting in a trench, afraid to put my head up in case it was shot off. It was like the previous century and a quarter had never happened. Then, there was a blinding flash of light, brighter than a thousand suns, and I knew civilization had begun its grind to a slow and painful halt…

  “Interstellar travel,” said the teacher, Miss Abby, who seemed impossibly tall and blonde, “isn’t just possible, but it’s in the here-and-now. We have it!”

  Her legs were so long that Aisha wondered if she was born in microgravity. But then her words sunk in. Interstellar Travel. No longer the realm of science fiction. It was real.

  “However,” continued the teacher, “to understand the nature of it, you’ll understand why it is we can’t do it easily. Not yet, anyway.”

  She called up a graphic, showing the solar system, with the sun at the center, and the planets orbiting along the plane of the ecliptic.

  “Every solar system,” she said, “has a sphere of icy debris surrounding it. It’s called the Oort Cloud. In our case, it’s about fifty thousand A-U’s from the sun. That is, fifty thousand times’ the distance of the Earth to the sun. It’s really far away.”

  “But studying it gave us some clues about the nature of gravity, and in particular the force properties of gravity. It has a wave like nature, like any other force. But what happens when waves interfere with each other?”

  A French boy, Jacques, answered. “You can have constructive and destructive interference.”

  “That’s right,” continued Abby. She spread iron filings on a piece of card, and turned on a speaker beneath the card. Classical music filled the room. The deep bass caused Aisha’s ears to throb. The fine filings vibrated from the sound, and started to form patterns. She turned on another speaker, and the filings began to form patterns for that too. In some places there were no filings at all.

  “And just like with any other destructive interference, there are null spots, like these.”

  “Wait,” said Aisha. “So if there are areas of null gravity, from destructive interference between two stars, then--”

  “Then the space around that area forms a kind of bubble. If you travel into it, headed in the general direction of the other star, you are instantaneously transported towards the Oort Cloud surrounding that star.”

  “That’s how we get interstellar travel? No warp drive or hyperspace?”

  “Nope. But what’s the problem with this approach?”

  Soo-Kyung spoke up. “There are many,” she said. “Not least, how do we send a ship the fifty thousand A-Us to the Oort Cloud in order to find one of these null zones? And once we’re there, it’s still a very long journey to any potential, prospective planets.”

  “Correct,” said the teacher. “But also, how do we get back once we’ve done so?”

  “How do we even know the ship made the journey successfully?”

  “Wait,” said Aisha, a thought growing in her mind. “You’ve done it already, haven’t you? The closest star is just over four light years away, so you might have sent a ship four or more years ago, and then detected their transmissions, which would take four years, at the speed of light, to let us know that they made it in one piece. Or at least their transmitter did.”

  “So,” said Soo-Kyung. “Did you?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Abby. “We did. And just over a year ago, we got confirmation
that the ship made it all the way across the gulf between the stars.”

  “Amazing,” said Aisha. “Travel between the stars. The galaxy is open to us.”

  “Not quite yet,” said Miss Abby. “But maybe soon. A few problems to solve first.”

  “Wait,” said Soo-Kyung. “You got confirmation just over a year ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “And wasn’t it just over a year ago that the Academy opened enrollment to anybody that could qualify?”

  “Why, yes it was. Your point?”

  “Is there a connection?”

  “There’s always a connection, in everything. The question is, of course, whether that connection actually means something or not.”

  “Does it?”

  “Time will tell.”

  “Time will tell?”

  All eyes were on the exchange between the teacher and this brash young Korean student. And when people saw the flag on her nameplate -- that of North Korea -- there were gasps.

  “Wait,” said Aisha. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “What could you mean?” There was mischief in Abby’s voice. She was waiting for someone to make the connection.

  “We discovered it very easily,” said Aisha. “Surely, if there were other alien races, they would discover it, too. And one of the reasons why we believe we’ve never encountered aliens is that it takes too long to travel between the stars. But this discovery makes star travel quick and simple, relatively speaking,” said Aisha. “So where are they? Surely we would have seen some evidence of them by now.”