Assessing the Damage

"We'll solve it", Hereshoff answered. "Yeah, we'll solve it. You mean I'll solve it, because I always do. Because I have to solve it is why!" Without giving Hereshoff time to even think about what he said, Captain Wallace started on the solution. "Can that ladder fall off?",  he asked. "I don't think so.", Hereshoff paused, "Unless we hit some atmosphere or something." "Something?, What?" Hereshoff began to anger. He had a slow fuse. He was always like that. "You know, I'm the one that got you through school! How can you call me stupid? Sir!" "I didn't call you stupid. I said it looked stupid!" "Turbulence, resonating dust or a vibrating hull from the engines, any kind of harmonic motion might throw it off, but it's not likely." Hereshoff was not only a genius, he actually liked this stuff. Captain Wallace barely passed his tests and he hated everything about spaceflight. He was, however, an excellent commander, and he would solve this problem. He understood people very well.  

"What  actually happened?" Jim thought hard.. He had to resist  blaming anyone, especially Heshy. Larry Hereshoff and Jim Wallace both were students at the Dartmouth "A and E". Larry was a natural. He seemed to have ship design and function in his blood. He loved it as well. It excited him. Jim was in class because his dad forced the issue. Perhaps for this reason, he hated it, and the theory gave him enormous difficulty. His genius was with people and business. He was no end of fun and help. He was outgoing where Larry was shy. So they teamed up and the pair became enormously successful at nearly every activity open to them at school.

When Jim received his commission for search and salvage from the space agency, his first act was to name Larry as first mate. Together they put together quite a record. Unfortunately, they became bored after a few years and started playing games like they did in college, which is something you don't do in deep space rescue.
He remembered now. Coming up the ladder, faint blue starlight reflections, thinking about Wheelock Hall. Laughing with Heshy, coming in through the cabin door and then going blank, totally blind for an instant. He could never tell anyone. He knew now.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Forgot Something?

Two minutes to go and Captain Wallace gave the crew the time signal. He looked at the camera relays from the dock and noticed what looked like the cabin access ladder still attached under the cabin door. "Can't be", he thought. "Lieutenant Hereshoff, take a quick look at the upper cockpit dock camera and let me know what you see", he tried to keep any urgency off the intercom. "Can't see anything now sir, the vibrations are blurring the picture." Lieutenant Hereshoff looked over toward the Captain, trying to understand his concern. "Roger that Lieutenant. Set  for Launch". Captain Wallace gave the final command.  Each communications station echoed the Set for Launch. "Thirty seconds." Captain Wallace checked his major indicators and emergency screen patterns. "Ten Seconds" They were smoothly accelerating at a moderate G force. "All systems A Function." He turned and gave Hereshoff a hand signal to come up by him. The young Lieutenant undid his seat belts and came right by the Captain. "What is it?" He whispered in response to the signal. "Get me a clear picture of our cabin door". The Captain was visibly upset. "Roger that Captain", and the Lieutenant was off to his console. A few seconds later and there it was, a nightmare solidifying. The access ladder was still attached. Hereshoff forgot to pull it into the cabin and stow it. No real problem, of course, except their insurance would no doubt be revoked and there went his Captain's license as well. Wallace signaled Hereshoff over again. "Look", he said. "You forgot to pull it in. It's all over." You said to leave it, Captain." Hereshoff was worried now too. "I meant to leave the hatch, we can check it inside, how can you possibly leave the ladder outside?" "This has got to be a joke Heshy, right? Tell me it's a joke?" Hereshoff was becoming more and more pale. "It's all recorded. They'll see that and laugh. There's nothing we can do about it. They can't miss it, we might as well start looking for new jobs. Thirty years of intense training and the cockpit access ladder is actually out there right now. Do you have any idea how stupid that actually looks?"

 

The Effort of this Story

Rather warm again today. It's currently about 92 degrees F outside my kitchen window in the shade.
The humidity is up around 50% and there's a special weather statement by the National Weather Service about thunderstorm possibilities in a couple of hours. I'm thinking of hooking up the air conditioning - though up here in Northern Vermont, it's rarely necessary.
I'm not sleeping as well without it. Strange, the things you get used to!

The last few entries are to introduce Jim and give him some sort of character. I also have to set the future time with a realistic background of today as 2013 and 300 years of probable events. That's a lot of prediction. I'd like to give him a New Hampshire college education - which is an interesting idea I think. Dartmouth in 300 years from now. Will students still travel the required distance to attend classes at a university 300 years down the road? Should they? Even though electronics and gadgets like holograms would be expected in science fiction literature - after all, even books seem on their way out! - why not insert a bit about super fast holographic lesson communication - you know Microsoft University etc. The charm of this story though is humor and realism told across a significant length of new and largely unknown, certainly unproven, human history/activity. I think sitting in classes with students at desks would be fine actually - and somehow reassuring. Pencils too! and alongside the professor and his podium is a lifesize holographic video image monitor which students in the class can see as well as students at great distances - also with their textbooks and notebooks and pencils. I think that will fly! Aristotle and Weber both would be dancing with that idea!

So, here we go:

The little blue dots of starlight did more to light up the ladder to the cockpit than most people would believe. It was something Jim remembered each time out. Next was the pull of the cabin door. Hard and stiff, the door came open and Jim knew they were on their way. It would take three hours to launch and eight crew made ready their stations. Batteries and fuel supplies were checked first, three hours of check lists.
Lights went on softly and silently and the comfortable feeling of ready power and familiarity with the procedures grew and became their home.
All communication channels were open and recording. "Ten minutes to undocking", Jim informed the crew and anyone else listening casually, matter-of-factly to their flight countdown. "Where's Pluto?", Heshey asked. ""About three O'Clock and 15 degress up - way too faint to see, maybe 2 au away", came the captain's answer. Heshey stared up through the cockpit windows in that direction and wondered about the ice and rock of Pluto that would have been where they were docked approximately 300 years ago. "It would have been right here in 2013", Heshey returned. "Yeah and Dartmouth would have still been pretty much what it was today." Jim thought about the way some things seem to continute relatively unchanged through history; The Pyramids, The Ten Commandments, Oak Trees.

Larry Feldman Travels to Dartmouth

About 50 years ago a classmate, Larry Feldman, had come back from a trip to Dartmouth College for a Lacrosse game I think. He told me some nice things about the campus. He was right. Very clean and carefully landscaped - just what a new england ivy league college should look like. He might have added, "nice people too", and been very right. I've been there about half a dozen times now since moving up here to Vermont, usually to go to a bank that has no branches in Vermont. Each time I remember Larry and his enthusiasm for this campus - and that was 50 years ago! Some things change slowly. I wonder if our main character, Jim Wallace, would ever have heard of Dartmouth? Perhaps.
Anyway, I had to go down there this morning again and it was expecially beautiful today. Warm and bright and many students around, even at this mid July date. I felt very much at home there. "My people", I thought while looked around and a pretty girl walked by and smiled as if in acknowledgement. One of those days!

Well here's a fragment for today. I hope to get in something substantial by day's end.

Jim started feeling critical about Vivi's family decisions. Weber said that many irrational feelings stem from earlier life experiences with people, forgotten lifetimes and events. Jim didn't know that feeling critical was actually irrational and as far as knowing Vivi in an earlier life, he felt he hardly really knew her now and they'd been working together a long time. No, there was no burning need for her to be on a research mission. She should have stayed home and helped her family. What kind of new depth was that?

Getting on with "Dance of the Deep"

Here's a little detail about the trans-neptunion object - VE 95 "Gary's Castle"

The shuttle "New Horizons II" beat a new path each time out toward the edge of the solar system.  Such was the nature of deep system space. You were never quite sure what you might find out there. Jim's own ship was "docked" or locked in a very tight orbit around a plutino they called VE₉₅ or "Gary's Castle" after Gary Schaumbacher, a rocketeer who called VE₉₅ home for many years before his untimely death.

Quotations from Homer Gardener

"It was so beautiful this morning that it really made you appreciate all those gray rainy days last week." Homer Gardener August 1877 "The Vermont Farmer"

Truly, it was intensely beautiful today, especially so after dropping about a billion tons of mental charge on a headache that seemed to have been around as many billions of years! It's difficult to find suitable metaphors for this outside of the homespun down-to-earth philosophy of Homer Gardener. "If you've waited your whole life for something and it still hasn't happened, it's worth it." Homer used to say.

Seriously, though, sometimes all the good things seem to come together and make life just about perfect! I don't know what Homer would have said, but I say "Thank You".

Jim

This morning started earlier than usual. I watched part of a movie called "somewhere" and nothing really happened, but I was taken by the character's lack of "being". He had virtually no place on earth. He wasn't really a person. No opinion. No person to defend as himself. So I thought a bit about this and decided to give Jim more of an existence in the story. You know - like a real person. He'd need some sort of rationale for life - some way. Today and before now, here in the west at least, there's been beingness by religious codes. Morals and customs. What about 300 years from now? Would that be the same? So I decided to try this with Jim. Give him a set of beliefs and a rationale. A person with a purpose. Something you could depend on for the person to do and be and say and feel. Not just a ball of putty - you know!? Jim follows the philosophy and basic thinking of Jan Weber, the New Depth Cosmology founder. New Depth holds that traditional values are placed here in life, in the physical universe, already - a long long time ago. The only things that are new are the fabrics woven by thinking persons, artists , dreamers, inventers, who play their ideas and emotions against the "always been" the state of the physical universe and life - let's say- and develop a new reality that fits what always has been - call it divine intention - or whatever you like - original creation - whatever - and succeeds according to its values and harmony with the needs of people, life, and the physical laws of the universe. Don't take this too seriously - I just made this up to try it on Jim to see what happens. If he comes alive here in the story.

Jim took a long look out the viewset and wondered why he was sitting where he was. The chicken was good. All seemed so still and yet here they were travelling at hundreds of miles a second toward their destination port, Vivi right next to him, parallel tracks through the heavens. He wondered what kind of effect they were weaving here. Did it really matter? "So how's life at home?", he looked at Vivi. She liked when Jim would turn his New Depth intentions on. It made her feel special and needed. She smiled. "Harry didn't want me to leave on this trip you know?" Jim knew and he didn't think she made the right decision either, leaving her family behind for a year of scientific research, but he wouldn't tell her that. " Yeah, I remember all that". Jim noted. "How's he feel now?"  "He still blames me", she answered. "Just do well here and everyone benefits - the good sticks and the bad's forgotten over time." This had become a cliche by 2310. Jim tried another piece of "Jumpin' Chickin" and wondered about the new depth they were creating on this venture. "Thanks for asking", Vivi smiled.