‘Does it help?’ I asked as I switched on the video adapter on the newly repositioned Celestron. Hopefully, it would allow Mary to zero-in on planet D.
‘Surprisingly, it does. Look,’ Mary said, pointing at the spolding viewscreen where a tiny grey spot sat almost dead centre. ‘We’ll know when I set the crosshairs.’
She played with a couple of dials and I watched the crosshairs move across the screen. The grey spot was off-centre and she used a joystick to move the screen to bring the spot into line with the white lines. Eventually, the crosshairs covered the speck. She pressed the targeting button.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘Not sure if it’s a good lock,’ she said and began adjusting the controls. ‘I don’t know, Mark. If we took this as the destination and it was wrong, we could end up missing completely.’
‘What would happen if we did miss?’ I asked.
‘That’s still a matter for debate. We hadn’t resolved that before we set off on this mission and, frankly, we never imagined having to get back to a star system via one of the smaller planets. You’ll remember that I was perfectly happy I’d managed to target Jupiter from Haven,’ said Mary.
‘I suppose it’s only now, because we know what has gone wrong, that we are more aware that a miss could add to our problems?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Again, then,’ I said, ‘what is likely to happen if we miss?’
‘The biggest worry is that we might keep on in hyperspace until we encounter some other world by chance. That could mean forever. The reactor might fail before that happened. Either way, we’d all end up corpses in our seats.’
‘Thinking of the reactor – can’t we rig something to cut it off at, say, two hours?’ I asked.
‘And what would happen, Mark? Would we be in some sort of limbo in hyperspace or would we drop out of hyperspace? If the latter, we could recover the situation. If the former, it would depend upon whether we would be able to retarget. That wouldn’t be possible if we were still frozen in our seats.’
‘Right. I see.’
‘Anna is currently working on a piece of code which will ensure we drop out of hyperspace after a fixed period of time but it will be experimental,’ said Mary.
‘Is that even possible?’
‘It might be, Mark, but Anna’s programming skills are borderline. Chi would have been able to do it. Anna is passing everything through her entity and then giving it to me to do the same. We don’t have facilities for testing the program without actually using it and that is never a good scenario. You know what code can be like. One missing semicolon or bracket and the whole thing would fail.’
‘Okay. Let me know how it’s going,’ I said and floated through to the common area for a meeting with Tosh and Bill.
Tosh said, ‘Medical supplies and spares are unlikely to cause us any problems within five years.’
‘Which means we’ll likely be dead of starvation before then,’ added Bill. ‘That rationing plan I gave you sees us surviving twenty-seven months. It is reasonably generous, but I felt that we’d need to keep our morale and energy levels up if we’re dashing from planet to planet throughout that period.’
‘I’m setting up Chi’s cabin to grow some potatoes,’ said Tosh.
‘What about other veg, Tosh?’ I asked.
‘We do have beans and one or two other seeds, but I’d need to perfect it with potatoes first.’
‘I should add,’ said Bill, ‘that on my rationing plan, we could survive on a third less. For every three months that we do that, we gain another month’s supplies, but I wouldn’t recommend it until we’re at least eighteen months into the mission.’
‘No,’ said Tosh, ‘really low rations would likely cause a lot of friction and five of us living in an enclosed space for a couple of years could cause problems despite our even temperaments!’
Bill and I laughed at Tosh’s obvious reference to his bursts of temper.
‘Oh, shut up, you two,’ he said, chasing after his tablet which had slipped from his grasp and was heading for the reactor room door.
‘Have either of you got much experience programming?’ I asked.
‘I have,’ said Tosh, having retrieved his tablet. ‘Anna asked me if I’d give a fresh eye to something she’s working on. I’m very rusty though and she’s not ready yet.’
‘Yes, I’m rusty too,’ I said.
‘I’d be no help,’ said Bill. ‘Is this for the spolding drive cut-off program she’s working on?’
‘It is,’ I said.
‘I was thinking,’ said Bill. ‘How much difference will it make if we travel from here to Haven instead of to planet D?’
‘I don’t know. That’s an interesting thought,’ I said.
At that moment, Mary headed through to her cabin. ‘Mary. Got a second?’ I asked.
The astrophysicist swung over to our side of the common area. ‘Sure, what is it?’
‘Bill was wondering whether it would really matter if we returned to Haven rather than D?’ I asked.
‘Hmm. Well, we’ve no way of knowing,’ said Mary. ‘What we’re trying to do is backtrack as accurately as possible. Arriving at Haven instead of D might have little effect on the parallel worlds’ situation because the distances will be almost identical. Then within the Trappist-1 system, we could ensure extremely accurate distance hyperjumps by getting the orbiting positions of the planets right.’
‘So, it might be okay?’ asked Bill.
‘It might or might not. Not knowing how the parallel universes are aligned is the crucial factor. Supposing this universe is adjacent to our own Earth, we could end up in an even worse situation, but if the universes are side by side, it might make little difference at all.’
‘That’s the problem,’ said Tosh. ‘We could be screwing ourselves even worse!’
Anna appeared in the cockpit doorway. ‘Are you coming back, Mary?’
‘Sorry, my fault,’ I said. ‘Come over, Anna. Let’s get your input.’
Mary outlined the arguments and added, ‘If we don’t worry about targeting D, we could leave now and see how it has affected the entiroverse. By checking the orbit of the abandoned Rimor and the instruments we left on Haven, we might be able to see how close we are to our original parallel universe. If it did get us close, then we’d save a lot of time.’
‘I’ve found a way of compiling and testing the spolding shutdown program,’ said Anna, ‘but it’s going to take a week or two.’
‘We aren’t short of time right now,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Mary, ‘but if it didn’t work we would be left with the same dilemma. If we go back to Haven instead of D then we know we can make that journey.’
We fell into a short silence.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Show of hands. Who wants to attempt Haven now?’
I decided to wait to see what the others chose. I could be a casting vote if it was a tie. Tosh raised his hand. Anna and Mary followed.
‘Bill?’ I asked.
‘It’s a majority anyway,’ he said, ‘and I don’t really feel qualified on the matter. What about you, Mark?’
I raised my hand. ‘Okay. Let’s get ourselves and the ship ready to jump.’