To make available for life every place where life is possible. To make inhabitable all worlds as yet uninhabitable, and all life purposeful.
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Hermann Oberth
TO THE READER
A lot of the technology and science used in this story may have been introduced in my earlier books (Mach's Metric and Mach's Mission). When that is the case the descriptions given here will be familiar to a reader of the earlier works. Sometimes the descriptions may be used as they appeared earlier or may have been slightly changed for clarity. This is a necessity if each book is to be read as a standalone novel even though they are set in the same universe with many of the same characters.
PROLOGUE
The stars had always beckoned and humanity had finally answered the call. People were out there now, some were hundreds of light-years from the original abode of life.
But the center of mankind's new neighborhood could be found some eighty light-years from Earth among the stars that were once called the Ursa Major Core.
These eleven (sixteen including binary companions) stars were anchored by the great sun-like star Kaffa and its Earth-like planet Adowa. The other star systems in this group, including the famous pair of Mizar and Alcor, often followed the lead of Adowa.
All together the stars and their planets and space habitats had become known as The Core.
Over the years since settlers first came to The Core, a half-dozen planets and many more space habitats had become home. Surprisingly, intelligent life had not been found, not even on the most Earth-like planet of them all, Adowa. The biologists were mystified. But most settlers went about the routine of life without such overwrought concerns.
Others thought the stars and planets in The Core had been cleansed of intelligent life by a powerful nearby supernova or a blazar of which there were two candidates close enough that could have caused such scenarios. But no one knew for sure. It could have been something completely unknown and unknowable. What was known was that the universe didn't seem to care for intelligent life which might be the real reason humanity had met no other.
Chapter 1
Wormhole Physics 101
9th Edition
by Dr. Elias Mach and Dr. Emmy Gibbs
The design of a wormhole generator and therefore a wormhole drive is a materials problem. The Mach device is made up of three layers, each with its own special characteristics. The innermost layer provides a solid support for the outer layers and contains the material which supplies the negative mass or exotic mass needed to open a wormhole mouth. In a fusion ship this layer is adhered to the outer surface of the crew wheel.
Next is the actuator layer which drives the Mach effect in the outermost layer and is usually made of a PZT (lead-zirconium-titanate) composite. A large voltage is supplied to this layer and driven with a sinusoidal signal.
The outer layer, the Mach layer, is made from a material with a large capacity for internal energy changes. And when it is driven by a quickly ramping voltage applied to the actuator layer it will shield the innermost layer from the universal mass exposing the large and negative (or exotic) bare mass of the layer's electrons. This large mass with it's repulsive gravity can open and keep open a wormhole.
The final essential element for designing a wormhole generator is that the layers should be in acceleration. In the case of a fusion ship this is usually accomplished through the rotation of the crew wheel, always remembering that a change in direction is also an acceleration . . .
Dag was having a difficult time with the wormhole generator experiment. Even though he had worked with the great physicist Elias Mach the actual implementation of the theory behind wormholes was still somewhat of an art form. Used every day by hundreds of spaceships no one gave it a second thought but without AI behind the scenes wormhole operation could still be as hard, and dangerous, as it had been for Elias Mach two hundred years before.
Every time Dag tried to ramp up the voltage supply it would stall at the worse possible moment, the moment in the generation of a wormhole mouth when the ruling equations blowup. Which means a divide by zero problem appears when the voltage supply tries to drive the oscillatory voltage through the zero point from negative to positive. At that point, the exotic mass and energy created by the wormhole generator tends to infinity. As the mass and energy build, gravity tries to hold it back by creating a black hole. And that leads to a real problem.
A mini black hole in a lab environment is not a good situation. The hole will begin evaporating through Hawking radiation until it ends its life, and the lives of those nearby, explosively.
Dag had seen such explosions when he worked with Dr. Mach. In fact, others had used this behavior to create a weapon, still the most destructive weapon known to man.
Dag was working quickly now to control his experiment. The three laminated, concentric hollow spheres making up the wormhole generator were spinning rapidly on magnetic supports in the bath of liquid nitrogen. The strain gauges were measuring the rapidly oscillating changes in the exotic mass and energy of the inner layer.
Eventually, the Mach Effect would be apparent as the inner sphere, shielded from the universal mass by the outer sphere, would exhibit the huge negative mass-energy needed to open a wormhole mouth.
Had that been what Dag was attempting though it would not have been such a struggle even with the balky hardware. But he was after something far more rare than a wormhole mouth. He was after a theoretical entity known as a non-local link.
Dag knew that if loop quantum gravity (LQG) were correct a construct similar to a wormhole existed in the quantum foam without having to be created from scratch. It was like a tube in spacetime that linked two distant spatial locations.
LQG postulated a smallest quanta of volume (the smallest possible amount of space) and that these quanta of volume are stitched together by loops of force to create spacetime. The quanta volumes were usually local, that is they are causally related. But not always. It is possible that a link between nodes, a stitch of spacetime, could have been established early in the history of the universe and then the linked nodes separated. Somewhere across the universe then could be an entangled node, a quanta of volume, linked to a local quanta of volume.
And that was what Dag hoped to find. He would open one end of such a link and try to image space at the other end. If it worked it would mean a Ph.D. But the balky equipment in the university's lab had other ideas.
Dag adjusted the voltage supply faster and faster. Finally, from behind the safety glass, he heard a whumpf. Looking at the experiment he could see a brilliant white light where the sphere had been. This was usual but then the light seemed almost as a projector shining upward in a cone of brilliance. Dag had not seen a wormhole generator behave that way.
At the cone's mouth, a hazy but defined bubble was forming. Milky white and striated as if something internally writhing. Then, it seemed to detach from the cone of light and float slowly upward expanding at a quicker and quicker rate.
Dag was so taken by this unusual behavior that he froze. Then the bubble of shimmering luminance seemed to explode, rushing at Dag faster than he could react. He heard and saw the safety glass shatter and turned away reflexively. Feeling himself engulfed by an invisible force that caused him to collapse to the floor. It was then that he felt his circuits begin to shut down.
Dag awoke in an office. He was on a table and a man entered the room.
“Hello Dag I'm Dr. William Chu, a roboticist. How are you?”
Dag quickly ran an internal diagnostic.
“I believe I am nominal Dr. Chu.”
“Good. We had to do quite a bit of work in there including a memory restore.”
“Yes, I can tell from the net that there is a hole in my timeline. Can you fill me in sir?”
“Of course Dag.”
Dr. Chu then explained to Dag what he knew of Dag's recent unfortunate accident.
Dagmar Mach (an honorary last name bequest by the original, Elias Mach) was fully recovered from his ordeal and speaking with his thesis adviser.
“Well from what I know Dag I think your experiment, though it didn't proceed the way you planned, discovered some very original phenomenon. That a bubble of exotic energy can be created and detached from the creation device and then travel until it dissipates has never even been conjectured to my knowledge. I would say that you've earned your Ph.D.”
“You think so Dr. Jackson?”
“Yes this is the most important find about the wormhole generator since its invention I should think. If you can write it up with reasonable speculation about how it was accomplished and how to move forward with more experimentation I will put it up as the completion of your dissertation requirements.
“I just want to say Dag that I'm very impressed by your pursuit of the degree. You've let nothing stop you. Well, nothing but a little bubble.”
Dag recognized the humor although he never deliberately joked.
“Thank you Professor. I should say though that little bubble was almost a show stopper.”
Dag was able to recover enough data from his experiment to write it up.
Starting from the beginning he showed the basics of exotic energy generation.
First, he explained the Mach Effect, how local mass is related to the universal mass. Then came a section on the design of the generator itself and how by shielding the inner layer of the generator a large negative mass-energy, the “bare mass” of the electron, is exposed. Next, he explained how the generator can project this negative-mass energy into the quantum foam of spacetime where its repulsive force opens and expands an already existing wormhole mouth.
Now he was ready to show the unique results of his experiment. He showed how to form a “bubble” of negative energy by using the wormhole generator in a slightly different manner. Then he described how it could detach from the generator.
As Dag explained it, the negative energy formed a bubble. Then it began to expand because of the natural tendency of negative energy to repulse other negative energy. However, once it expanded beyond a certain volume it became attracted to the ceiling of the lab by the natural attraction of negative energy (remembering that energy and mass are equivalent) for the positive mass of the lab's ceiling. This is when it detached from the generator and began expanding at a faster and faster rate eventually destroying the safety glass and engulfing Dag.
Dag turned in his thesis to Professor Jackson. It was accepted and published and immediately recognized as an important contribution to the physics of wormhole generators.
But an autonomous negative energy bubble, however interesting, was not a way to reach the far away stars. And that was what Dag wanted, he still needed to prove his theory of non-local links.
Chapter 2
Sci-pedia
The Online Resource for Science
Fusion Ships
Fusion spaceships have been the primary means of space transport since the late twenty-first century. The latest fourth-plus generation model is capable of a top velocity of two-tenths the speed of light.
For long voyages most fusion ships have a rotating life-support wheel usually located a third of the way from the front of the vessel. The rotating wheel section of a fusion ship provides the artificial gravity which makes the performance of most mundane everyday chores, such as eating, sleeping and cleaning much easier to accomplish. It also provides for the health of the crew although medical research has made that benefit redundant.
The wheel section of most fusion ships consists of the crew quarters or apartments on the second floor. This floor also includes a cafeteria, workout room, theater, and assembly area. The first floor, the outer part of the wheel, is used as an aeroponic's garden (a method of growing plants in which the roots are exposed and misted with water and nutrients) to grow food on long voyages. The third floor is usually where supplies and equipment are kept. Each level typically has over fifty-thousand square feet of floor space.
At seven hundred feet in diameter and rotating at one point-eight revolutions a minute the artificial gravity created is about four-tenths Earth gravity. The outer surface of the big wheel is moving at over seventy kilometers per hour.
At three thousand feet in length the fusion ships are some of the largest spaceships in existence. The spine of the ship is made of interlinked girders of a carbon composite that is strong but flexible. The composite is wrapped in a particle shield, inside of which is an x-ray shield. This design prevents most fast-moving interstellar particles from impacting the frame and weakening it over time. Closer to the fusion engines it also prevents any radiation damage. At the front is another massive particle shield to deflect particles when the ship is at speed. A magnetic field generator complements the particle shield by turning away charged particles.
The fourth-plus generation ship's engines use the deuterium helium-3 fusion reaction. The advantage of this reaction is the large amount of energy it produces with an absence of neutrons. The lack of neutrons allows a much longer engine life due to the reduced materials damage and activation levels (radioactivity) when compared to other fusion reactions. In the fourth generation-plus engine the loss of efficiency to neutron and x-ray emissions is almost nil.
It was to the planet Adowa after a stopover in the Dnoces System that Dr. Dagmar Mach was traveling with his freshly bestowed Doctorate in Physics. He would be the newest member of the faculty at the University of Jehren. He would also be the first Em-based robotic Ph.D. although Em-based robots had been around for hundreds of years.
Ems, emulated brains (also known as Emmies when in personal assistant devices), were the first form of artificial intelligence created. The first Em dates from the late twenty-first century. Ems are created by scanning a human brain and loading the resultant scan into a computer.
Starting from the Centauri System Dag would get to Adowa, eighty light-years away on a fusion-powered wormhole drive ship, sometimes called a jump-ship.
The wormhole drive had been a boon to humanity but there were problems with the drive that needed to be addressed. For one, the amount of energy used was enormous and required a ship to replace that energy after each jump, usually taking weeks of orbiting a star to recharge energy banks called isotopics. Also, the distance a wormhole could be opened (called casting) was limited to forty light-years. Any attempt to cast further would either cause problems in the wormhole transit or disrupt spacetime locally. Both problems were deadly to life. What had started as a boon was quickly becoming a bust as the drive could no longer meet the needs of the expanding sphere of human activity.
And that was why Dag was going to Adowa, to eliminate the drive's limitations hopefully with his ideas about LQG links.
Dag would be joining a very active research community on Adowa that also had as its goal to revolutionize the wormhole drive. The university was a leader in such research.
As everyone settled into their cabins the captain of the ship announced that they would be leaving the dock of the Centauri Two space habitat momentarily. They were told to buckle up as the fusion ship's wheel would spin down before they made the transition to powered flight. On the way to the jump point the wheel compartments would turn so that the gravity generated by acceleration and deceleration would be applied in the proper direction for the comfort of crew and passengers.
As the great ship, Adowa One, began its acceleration Dag was reassured by the return of gravity. Usually, some of the passengers would have trouble in the zero gravity while the ship maneuvered away from the dock. The regular crew would have to clean up when gravity returned. But Dag had no such trouble, of course.
A quarantine zone existed around any inhabited star system to prevent an accidental recurrence of the early disasters and deaths caused by the wormhole drive. Dag had studied the initial problems with the drive, especially the breakdown of spacetime, which might impact the research he hoped to do.
Current theory showed that space was an emergent property of quantum entanglement. If too much energy is applied at a point it could break those entanglements and a resultant sphere of destruction would spread at the speed of light from that point. Any material object in the sphere's path would be taken apart down to its constituent atoms. Fortunately, the disturbance would dissipate over distance thereby limiting the damage. This was why jump points were at least ten astronomical units (AU) from a occupied planet or space habitat.
The trip to the jump point would take about fourteen days. Dag passed the days reading or suspended and soon the ship was approaching the jump point. As the jump became imminent he watched the wormhole mouth form at the front of the ship.
At first no more than a bright pinpoint, the light continued to brighten until the wormhole mouth expanded enough to engulf the ship. As the near wormhole mouth seemed to solidify into a somewhat cloudy bubble in space Dag knew the drive operator was busy casting the far mouth.
Perhaps it was a result of familiarity or carelessness but the ship had already started moving toward the mouth. Dag thought it too soon, that the far wormhole mouth and the wormhole itself could not possibly be established so soon. He knew that once they entered the near mouth, the far mouth had to be stable because the transit was almost instantaneous.
Surely the captain knows what he's doing?
Dag resumed to the sound of alarms. He could tell that the crew wheel was still powered down because of the absence of gravity. He determined to make his way to the control room.
He unbuckled his belt and pulled himself to the doorway that led into the hall. From there he was able to use the backup hand pulls along the wall to make his way around the crew wheel to the control room. The door was shut but Dag knew how to operate the emergency release. Removing a panel next to the wall he was able to crank the door open.
As the door recessed into the wall Dag stuck his head into the room. Everyone was asleep with their bodies still strapped in their seats. The screens were still active and there on the wallscreen was a view of space in front of the ship. He noticed there were no stars or planets close enough to resolve into discs.
Where are we?
Then he heard a moan.
He looked around, it appeared to be Captain Schweiger. Dag launched himself in the direction of the captain's chair and caught the corner of the armrest. While holding himself in place he shook the unconscious man.
“Captain, can you hear me?”
The Captain slowly roused himself. He looked at Dag.
“Where are we?”
“I'm not sure sir.”
“Okay let's see. Navigator,” he said before noticing the navigator was inert at his console.
“They are all unconscious sir.”
“Okay help me over to the navigation console.”
Slowly Dag and the Captain made their way from console to console until they were in front of navigation.
The Captain asked the Emmie enabled console for the ship's location. After giving the coordinates from Earth the Captain asked more directly how far they were from their destination.
“Over three-hundred fifty AU from the Dnoces System,” responded the console's Em.
The Captain looked at Dag.
“Well. I've never heard of that much error in a wormhole cast.”
“Sir, did we enter the wormhole before the far wormhole mouth was cast and stable?”
The Captain looked at him curiously.
“I know you are a robot sir but why do you ask?”
“I'm Dagmar Mach, I'm Em-based, and I have a Doctorate in Physics so I am somewhat familiar with the wormhole drive. I'm just pointing out that if we did enter too soon I wonder if we could have upset the wormhole's formation. If so that might explain this error.”
The Captain hesitated, “Well if we did then we should be able to restart the drive and finish the jump. We'll have to get the crew wheel rotating again. As you know the drive won't work without it.”
Dag agreed. They heard another of the crew beginning to moan.
“You help Albert I'll start the crew wheel,” said the Captain.
The Captain got the wheel started. Slowly artificial gravity could again be felt. More of the crew began waking. The Captain seeing the drive operator awake moved to his console.
“Lt. March are you okay?”
“Yes sir I think so.”
“Can you get the drive working?”
“I'll try sir. What are the coordinates of the cast?”
“Same as before.”
“Sir?”
“That's right Lieutenant.”
“Yes sir.”
The Captain returned to his chair and made an announcement that a wormhole jump was imminent. He began watching the front wallscreen for the pinpoint of light that would indicate the drive had engaged.
After a minute the Captain said, “Lieutenant March we are ready to jump.”
“Understood sir but I have a problem. The drive seems to be working but nothing is happening.”
“How can that be Lieutenant?”
“I don't know sir. All subsystems are working but the drive won't open a wormhole mouth.”
“Okay stand down. I want all of you that are able, to meet me in my wardroom ASAP. Dr. Mach would you please join us?”
Dag nodded yes.
In the wardroom the Captain began, “Okay I want a complete diagnostics of the drive systems. Since the Chief Engineer is still unable to join us I will leave that up to you Lieutenant March.
“Second, if the drive diagnostics finds nothing wrong I will entertain speculation from any source. Dr. Mach I hope you will participate.”
“Of course Captain.”
“Navigator, how long will it take us to get to the Dnoces System with the fusion engines only?”
The navigator, being an Auggie, that is a person with augmented implants, paused a moment as he accessed the navigation Emmies, and then replied, “At point-four acceleration approximately eighty-four days sir.”
“No good,” said the Captain. “What about at maximum acceleration?”
“At one-g acceleration about fifty-three days sir. But the engines will take a beating.”
“Let the Chief Engineer worry about the engines when he wakes up. You and helm prepare to get us started. The rest of you get me some information about the malfunction of the jump-drive. Dismissed.”
Diagnostics of the jump-drive returned nominal. There was no apparent problem.
Chapter 3
Wormhole Physics 101
9th Edition
by Dr. Elias Mach and Dr. Emmy Gibbs
The Mach Effect describes a relationship between a particular mass and the universal mass. The physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach said in essence that the inertia (a measure of mass) that an object exhibited was caused by all the other masses in the universe.
This is easy to understand if one considers a single object in an otherwise empty universe. How do you measure its velocity? There is no reference by which to measure its coordinate change, therefore there can be no velocity. If there can be no velocity then there can be no resistance to a change in velocity, therefore no inertia. A subtle but logical argument.
When applied to the wormhole generator the Mach Effect shows that if a material's electrons are shielded from the universal mass then the large and negative “bare mass” of the electron will be exposed.
This argument follows from the quantum field effect that states that electrons are surrounded by a sea of virtual particles and these virtual particles have a large positive mass. The electron's measured mass is very small, therefore, according to simple addition, the electron's intrinsic mass must be large and negative. This “exotic” mass would display negative gravity and this along with the huge bare mass is just what is needed to open and keep open the mouth of a wormhole . . .
“Okay gentlemen tell me what you've come up with.”
The Captain was holding another briefing in the wardroom.
“Sir,” said the Chief Engineer. “There appears to be nothing wrong with any of the sub-components of the drive. We have run them through diagnostics several times. It should work.”
“But Engineer it doesn't,” said the Captain, obviously not happy with the report. “Why?”
No one responded.
“Sir if I may?”
“Of course Dr. Mach.”
“I believe the Chief Engineer and the other engineers are right. There is nothing wrong with the wormhole drive components. Therefore I believe there must be something wrong with the space in which we are trying to use the drive.”
“Excuse me?” said the Captain.
“I don't know how or in what way but the space we are currently in will not support the establishment of a wormhole mouth. Something has changed.”
“How could space change?”
“You are no doubt aware, as is everyone in this room, that what we call spacetime is an emergent property of the entangled states of particles and volume quanta. Not only that, but it is a highly tuned emergent property.
“For instance, you have probably heard that if the strong nuclear force, the force between particles in the nucleus, was just two percent stronger, then di-protons would be stable. That is, the force between protons would allow for a particle made up of two protons. But if that were true then hydrogen would fuse into di-protons instead of deuterium and helium and the physics of stars would be quite different. And the universe probably could not support our lifeforms.”
“Yes we all have heard this but how does it affect the jump-drive?” asked the fusion engineer Ally Mekur.
Dag looked at the young woman.
“Well Miss another finely tuned constant is the cosmological constant. That is the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical density of the universe. The cosmological constant is on the order of ten to the minus one-hundred twenty-two. If it was only slightly larger stars and other cosmological structures could not form.
“Now it's possible that certain sections of space may have a slightly different constant. If that is true I can imagine a region of space where the quantum foam which is the topologically churning sub-space region from which we pluck wormhole mouths and enlarge them is being smoothed because of that different value. It could be that there are no quantum sized wormhole mouths to expand to the size we need. At least there are not enough being formed fast enough for us to easily extract one with the drive.”
“That is highly speculative Dr. Mach,” said engineer Mekur almost derisively.
Dag didn't look at her but turned to the Captain, “I know. But the Captain asked for speculation.”
“That I did. Thank you Dr. Mach.”
After the meeting as Dag was walking back to his apartment he heard someone behind him.
“Dr. Mach do you plan on pursuing your speculation?”
It was Ally Mekur.
“Yes Miss I believe I will.”
“It sounds more like a fairy tale than a theory.”
“That's your opinion?”
“It is but it's a learned opinion. You see I have a Ph.D. in particle physics.”
“Really? And you are a fusion engineer then?”
“Well some of us aren't as lucky as others. I needed money when I finished my studies so I went to the place where I could make the most at my age.”
“I see Dr. Mekur. Well, I guess then I'll pursue my theory and you can pursue yours?”
Dag turned too quickly to see the slight smile on Ally's face as he used her title. On the ship she was usually just called crewman.
Dag was in the cafeteria. He hadn't need of food but sometimes liked working in a room with people even though most times they dismissed him as Dr. Mekur had done. He was working on his theory when Ally came in. He was debating whether to continue working or go back to his cabin.
“Oh Dr. Mach,” said Ally as she walked up to his table. “We had some problems and I had to work overtime. Do you mind if I sit here.”
“Of course not,” said Dag.
“I'm Ally Mekur by the way,” she said smiling. “Have you thought any more about your theory?”
Dag noticed she had not called it speculative for a change. Perhaps she was taking it more seriously now.
“Yes, I've been thinking Miss. It seems to me that if we take a loop quantum gravity approach we might make some progress. At least LQG provides a framework that makes sense when I express my idea in words. Of course, whether that holds up or not upon calculation is still to be determined.”
“I was under the impression Dr. Mach that LQG had never been tested, even after all these years. Isn't that just adding speculation on top of speculation?”
There's that word again.
“That's true Dr. Mekur, but we could be seeing its testing right now. As you know it's the only theory of gravity that quantizes space and time. At that scale of quantization, space appears as an assemblage of tiny loops. Almost like a woven cloth. A network of these loops becomes a spin foam or quantum foam and the topologies that it takes on include tiny wormhole mouths. And as you know its the mouths that the drive extracts from the foam.”
“Okay, I remember my LQG. But how is it that LQG can explain what happened to the cosmological constant?”
“Well by analogy if we consider spacetime as a woven cloth, then the size of the loops in that cloth would affect the dark energy value and that would affect the cosmological constant. So if the loops become looser the constant becomes somewhat less, if the loops become tighter, the constant becomes somewhat more.”
He stopped, seeing that she was about to object.
He hurriedly continued, “I know it's a lot of hand waving Miss but I think it explains qualitatively what we see happening. The loops have become looser, spacetime at that scale is smoother, the energy available is less and topological objects like wormhole mouths that require greater energy no longer form efficiently.”
“Wow that's a long line of speculation Dr. Mach,” said Ally emphasizing his title. “But of course the question is can you calculate it and then can you prove it with an experiment.”
Dag knew she was right.
“Calculation will take some time Dr. Mekur. Experiments are possible with a modified wormhole drive as an energy source. But ...”
“Yes?”
“It has already been proven experimentally. Unless you engineers have overlooked something, space is preventing our wormhole drive from working. Maybe once we get out of this region of space it will work again. That would be partial proof.”
“How wide an area do you think this quenching encompasses?”
“Impossible to guess now. But I think we should be out of it by the time we reach Dnoces.”
Dag had not seen Ally for a few days. It was the fifth day when she brought him some disturbing news.
“Dr. Mach I just heard,” she said beaming.
“What Dr. Mekur?”
“A transmission has come back from Dnoces. In it, they confirm that they too are in some sort of jump-drive blackout. I guess you were wrong?”
Instead of protesting Dag said something about she was probably right and excused himself.
Ally felt a bit guilty.
End of Sample
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