The Arrival.

[Deleted]

Deep in the inky black void of space, the mammoth hull of the Nightflyer cruised silently along. Aside from the hum of the engines and whirring of the atmospheric recycling systems, the ship was quiet. Royd had been plotting the course to Earth for several days now, finally convincing the computer that he had mastered astro-navigation. He would have had the course plotted much earlier if it weren’t for the fact that the ship had drifted so far from a navigational beacon that it’s position had to be determined the old fashioned way, by looking at the stars.

Awakening in his palatial quarters amongst a pile of gold tinted satin pillows, Royd became aware of his surroundings once more and sat up. Looking to the wall of computer monitors that dominated one of the sides of his room, the young man checked the status of the ship. As always the giant craft was in working order, although recently there had been some shifts in the maintenance cycles to deal with the aging vessel and the effects of having to run some systems on reduced power to compensate for the slowly dwindling fuel supply. Although the Nightflyer had a tremendous fuel capacity, the decade and a half it took for Royd to grow up had all but depleted the supply. Now there was just fuel enough to make it to his destination and assume a stable orbit.

Speaking aloud, Royd addressed the computer.

“Lights to daytime mode please.” he stated and waited while the illumination in the chamber brightened to approximate that of Earth daylight.

“Thank you.” he added to the computer and reached out to take hold of his cane. Rising from his circular, almost bowl shaped bed, Royd made his way to his wardrobe and proceeded to dress. While he could have requested gravity be reduced to make it easier he thought it best to try and adapt as best as possible to the heavier conditions he would experience when he finally did arrive on Earth, in spite of the strain it was putting both on him and the artificial gravity system, the chief reason full Earth gravity was never maintained on the ship.

Once he had managed to get into his jump suit and then the tight fitting black space suit over that, Royd headed out of his quarters through a darkened passage that led to a hidden sliding wall. He had never known why the doorway was constructed in a hidden fashion but neither had he ever questioned it, it simply was. Passing through the doorway into the grand lounge, the young man glanced up at the artificial sky that was being displayed on the ceiling and issued another order to the computer.

“External view please.” he stated and made his way across the lounge to the attached kitchen while the image above him flickered for several moments before switching to one of the blackness of space and the whit pinpricks that dotted it.

After making himself breakfast, Royd sat and ate while the computer crunched the final numbers needed to refine their course back to Earth. Finishing his meal quickly, the young man left the dishes for one of the service droids to handle. In the mean time he made his way to the front end of the lounge where there stood a dominatingly large mirror. Another of the ship’s secret entrances, the mirror was in fact the doorway to the flight deck. As he approached the reflective portal, it slid silently up into a crevice in the ceiling, allowing him passage. Walking through another darkened passageway flanked on both sides by rows of clicking and humming computers, the only light in fact coming from a row of computer monitors ahead and the many red and orange indicators lights on the computers.

Stepping into the semicircular flight deck, Royd took a seat in the control chair, in fact the only chair in the room and leaned his cane up against the wrap around control console. Tapping a few commands into the computer he checked on their progress. The ship was already on the correct heading and was now simply waiting for the go ahead to enter FTL flight. Flipping a switch, Royd opened the blast shields that covered the view ports, opening the room to a stunning view of the stars. Then tapping a few more commands into the console, he gave the computer permission to spin up the ship’s FTL drive.

Out side, the ship’s massive hull continued to glide along as the main engines slowly powered down to minimal thrust. Moments after, two large, upright disk like structures started to slowly extend out of either side of the rear of the hull. Once fully extended the mechanisms started to glow blue with energy as the ship’s power plant diverted power from the engines to the FTL drive. The power continued to build for several minutes until the drives had stored enough energy to execute a jump into FTL flight.

Once he got the signal that the ship was ready to jump, Royd sat back and rested his hand on the execute key. Considering all of the possibilities that were now before him or rather soon would be, he summoned up the will to move his world, the ship, to another. Pressing the key, he brought his hands up and rested his chin on then, watching silently out the windows as the stars seemed to bleed across the view ports and then vanish.

Outside the ship’s FTL drives flashed with a bright, white burst of energy that seemed to travel the length of the ship, consuming it. A moment later the Nightflyer was gone, at least from that area of space. The mammoth hull of the great ship was now traveling many times faster then the speed of light, cruising back into it’s home galaxy and towards Earth.

Watching as the stars streaked by, Royd couldn’t help but feel overjoyed that he was finally going to see the planet of his forbearers. However something else was not. The Computer elicited over the intercom was amounted to a jumble of mechanical whispers to the untrained ear. Royd however fully understood what the computer had said and rolled his eyes at the machine’s comments.

“Do not worry. I have taken every precaution.” he stated to the machine, drawing another round of hushed mechanical voices. “I have taken that into account as well. I will keep my suit on at all times. You have taught me well but it is time I saw the worlds for my self.” he replied and looked to the consol as new data started to scroll up.

Watching the data at the ship’s navigation system managed to get an exact fix on their position, Royd tapped in a few commands that would allow the computer to quickly pick a landing site near one of the major cities for the anti-gravitational disk. As the ship exited FTL flight and the disk shaped pods retracted, returning power to the ship’s engines, Royd marveled at the blue/green sphere before him.

Predictably the computer interrupted such a silly, illogical action as daydreaming, breaking in with it’s eerie electronic whispering speech. Royd didn’t reply verbally this time, instead sending his acknowledgement of the message directly to one of the computer’s organic nodes situated above the viewports. Communicating with the computer telepathically wasn’t very challenging, one simply thought at it and it understood. At time Royd wondered if the vast machine it’s self was telepathic but it had never shown any signs of reaching out to him.

Resetting the internal gravity back to one sixteenth that of Earth, the normal level maintained on the ship, Royd rose from the control chair, picked up his cane and exited the flight deck, passing back through the computer lined passage and out into the lounge via the mirror door. Crossing the lounge, Royd exited the temple like chamber into a gilded and marble corridor that led to the transit tube, an elevator that also permitted movement lengthwise within the ship. Descending down to the main cargo hold, Royd donned his helmet, checked the suit’s systems and then crossed the expanse of the bay to one of the waiting anti-gravitational disks. Stepping onto the closest of the vehicles, Royd magnetized his boots and then activated the charge cycle for the craft, allowing it to take on enough energy for at least one round trip to and from the planet bellow, if not more.

[Gray Callahan]

(please read the update announcement. thank you.)

[Deleted]

As the disk charged, Royd could already tell there was something off about the ship. The lighting in the cargo hold dimmed considerably as energy was transferred from the Nightflyer’s reserve cells. This in it’s self wasn’t something to be worried about as such a large and fast transfer of energy would almost certainly have to come from the cells as they could supply power faster, but for shorter periods of time then the ship’s reactor. The problem was that as the transfer progressed, the lights should have come back to fur strength, but they weren’t.

“What is the problem?” Royd asked the computer, to which the machine replied in it’s eerie manner.

“I see. Well while I’m gone, turn off all interior lighting and deactivate life support, but don’t let internal temperatures fall bellow freezing. I shouldn’t be more then a few days and my suit radio should have the range to call back. If not, I will use the radio on the disk.” Royd instructed the computer. Again it protested his leaving with a somewhat louder jumble of hushed, electronic whispers.

“I know, you have said that before. I won’t spend any more time then I have to down there. You know as well as I the gravity alone could kill me.” Royd responded and turned his attention back to the control consol on the anti-gravity disk.

The disk was a flat metal structure, ten feet in diameter and one foot think, with a four foot high railing running around it’s perimeter except for a four foot gap at the rear of the craft. The control consol, barely bigger then a laptop computer, had a display screen with a video pickup and a keypad as well as a joystick for manual control. Beneath the craft there was another foot and a half of machinery, taking the form of on larger, six foot diameter orange lens and three smaller nine inch lenses that were in fact the craft’s gravitational drive system.

As Royd entered in the coordinates that he and the computer had worked out, the charge cycle completed and the orange lenses under the craft began to glow. Humming with power, the disk lifted off from the bay floor, it’s power umbilical receding into a port on the front of the vehicle. Then, moments later, the circular depression in which the craft had been resting, opened beneath it in eight pie segments, and revealed the rolling expanse of the Earth bellow. The opening widened to accommodate the disk as the craft descended through and then out of the bottom of the massive mother-ship.

Turning around and gazing up, Royd marveled as the mammoth hull of the Nightflyer lifted away from him, although in reality is he who was descending away from it. Once the vessel had shrunk into the distant star field, becoming just one more pinprick of light, Royd turned forward and look down upon the steadily growing vista of the blue planet. As the disk descended towards the atmosphere, it was gradually slowing it’s forward speed from the orbital velocity of seventeen thousand five hundred miles an hour and at the same time, compensating for the increased pull of gravity as it’s speed reduced.

The anti-gravitational disk was a very gentle craft, not rocketing to and from orbit in a fiery blaze of rumbling power, but instead, gracefully coasting along as his gradually climbed or in this case, descended towards the planet. Granted, this meant that the ride took longer, nearly an hour compared to the eight minutes or less it took rockets and other, faster space vessels. This form of transportation suited Royd just fine however, as his atrophied body would be greatly stressed by the acceleration and deceleration of more conventional craft. The disk also compensated for the surrounding gravitational field, maintaining one sixteenth of Earth normal, even as the pull on it started to exceed that.

Eventually, as Royd stood and surveyed the slowly approaching landmasses beneath him, he spotted his destination, an island boasting a massive and modern city that, according to the ship’s three quarter century old history tapes, was named Metropolis Island. The ride continued to be smooth and uneventful, the disk’s systems having been thoroughly checked out before hand by his the Nightflyer’s nanny of a computer, not that there was much that could go wrong with a gravity lens. As Royd descended through just a few hundred feet he refined the landing coordinates to bring him down in a clearing of a wooded area in one of the city’s parks.

The disk continued to descend until the last few feet where it cam to a complete halt and deployed six, motorized landing legs. Once the legs were down and locked, the craft descended gently to the earth and a few moments later the humming of his gravity lenses ceased as did their orange glow. All at once though Royd felt himself become heavy and he was forced to lean on the control consol until he had de-magnetized his boots and removed his helmet. One thing the designer hadn’t planned on, was the need for seats on the anti-gravitational disks. Still, although tired from standing for nearly an hour and now straining under the pull of Earth’s unfamiliar and intense gravity, Royd gathered up his cane and shuffled to the rear of the disk and made his way down a set of collapsible stairs that had extended from the back of the craft. He was finally here, setting foot for the first time on what was both his home planet and a completely alien world.

[Gray Callahan]

Detailed and intriguing. 1500 PL or Zeni.

[Deleted]

I shall go with the power. I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunuty to get the fuel I need later.