Collective Hindsight (Book 2) - Aaron Rosenberg [6]
“You mean a slingshot?” Blue asked, and Stevens nodded. Tev had already begun typing commands into his padd, but Gold was lost.
“Hold on a second,” he said. “Indulge an old man—slingshot?”
“It’s a way to use the gravity of a sun or planet for momentum,” Gomez explained. “The ship circles the object, entering its gravity well and gaining speed from the added force, then whips around it fast enough to break free of orbit. Cut it too close and you’re trapped in orbit for good, too wide and you don’t actually gain much, but do it right and you boost your velocity significantly, and with no real fuel cost.”
Tev looked up and nodded. “I have calculated the effects of the Dancing Star slingshotting around the supernova, and believe that Mr. Stevens is correct.” Gold was fairly sure that was the first time Tev hadn’t referred to Fabian as “Specialist” or “Technician.” “I have put the new information on the screen.” The image had changed—now it showed the line starting a little past the supernova. “The ship’s initial speed would have been warp one-point-three, well inside its capabilities. After circling the supernova, it would have reached a speed of warp nine-point-eight. It would have reduced that to three-point-one by the time it reached Randall V.”
“Good work, everyone,” Gomez stated, and Gold admired the way she had carefully included all of them in the praise—a subtle reminder that they could do more together than alone. “Now we know where it came from, and we’ve solved the riddle of its excessive speed. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing, reevaluating and reexamining, and see what else we can figure out.”
She stood to go, and Gold watched them all file out of the room, sparing one last glance at the screen before he exited as well. A part of him was horrified by the notion that this runaway ship could move so fast, but the explorer side of him just thought, Oh, to fly so far, so fast.
Chapter
3
“Look at this input capacitor,” Sonya muttered. She and Tev were back in the Dancing Star’s engine room, examining more of its equipment, and the more she saw the more impressed she became. “It’s got a cascading valve structure—brilliant design. How much would you say this could take before overloading, Tev? Twelve gigawatts?”
He stepped over to examine it, then nodded. “Twelve-point-one, possibly twelve-point-two. Impressive design.”
She gestured around them. “And this is just one of fifty like it. That’s over six hundred gigawatts this ship can absorb at once. Amazing. Most cities can’t accommodate that much energy!” She ran one finger lightly over the capacitor. “This ship could have slingshotted through the supernova instead of around it.”
Tev glanced at his tricorder. “Yes, it could have. Within the corona, certainly—it would have been able to absorb more energy that way, and still been far enough from the core to escape.”
She nodded, thinking that one over. A ship that literally dove into a supernova for energy and acceleration! Amazing! The more she saw of this ship, the more it impressed her.
Another thought occurred to her, then. Salek’s report hadn’t mentioned the capacitors at all, or estimated the ship’s absorption rate. He had noted that it used stellar energy for fuel, of course, but had suggested a more passive approach. Still, Salek’s main concern hadn’t been the ship’s operating specs, just what it was doing there and how to get rid of it quickly.
As they continued their investigation, Sonya let herself wonder about the Vulcan she had replaced. She had never met Salek, of course, but she had read his files and his record, and had heard stories about him from Fabian, Carol, Pattie, and of course Tev’s predecessor, Kieran Duffy. Salek had been a good commander, and his handling of the situation at Randall V had been exemplary, sacrificing himself to save everyone else.
Instinctively, she thought, Just like Kieran did at Galvan. She banished that thought quickly.
But Sonya found herself wondering about how