“Okay,
everyone, settle down,” Macomber addressed the auditorium.
The
auditorium’s buzz of conversation faded into the unlimbering of data slates,
audio recorders, and old-school paper notebooks.
“Shen-Yu
has agreed to run tests as to whether or not tachyons can interact with the
platinum-cobalt mesh from Hermes’ ion engine. But I don’t want to just leave it
in their hands, especially since they don’t have much that’s confirmable. I
want more theories, and better information. I have to brief the Secretary in
four hours, and I don’t want to tell her that it’s all in the hands of a
Chinese facility that has yet to scientifically validate its findings. So, let
the theories fly.”
And the
theories flew. Peterson, Andrews, Carr, Davis, and Nichols, shot down most of
those theories from their row of chairs to the right of Macomber, mostly due to
a lack of data from the vehicle’s passive sensors. Quantum entangled strings, chemical
acceleration, wormholes, space-time wave distortions, and even riding
gravitational waves all got shot down. Until, finally, someone did the smart
thing and asked a question.
“If the
vehicle was accelerated to superluminal speeds, why didn’t it peg the
gravimeter?”
The gravimeter
would register new gravimetric pulls, offset by the ion engine’s constant
acceleration. But such a strong acceleration would register on the gravimeter
as a very strong external force, and it hadn’t.
Macomber
looked to his right.
“We don’t
know,” said Peterson, who had finally gotten on board with the reality of
Hermes’ position. “The satellite registered a brief gravimetric event at less
than one G during the time frame, but that was it. We think this was when the
mesh was torn off the spacecraft.”
“Excuse
me,” said a young woman, who raised her hand.
“Yes, um, I
don’t know your name.”
“Dr. Nina
Elsbeth,” she said. “If the ship was accelerated up to the speeds shown, what
caused it to decelerate to its present speed?”
“Our best
guess,” Andrews said, “is that we’re dealing with physics that distort if not
downright violate Newtonian notions of inertia and acceleration.”
The room started to grumble, but
Andrews kept going. “After the mesh was torn free, whatever was acting on
Hermes was gone, so it reverted to a state as if no force acted upon it, and
then its own engine began to accelerate it.”
The room
erupted into chaos with all protesting the impossibility of the lack of
Newtonian reactions. Young and old alike jumped to their feet, calling into
question Macomber’s team’s work. Except
for Dr. Elsbeth who is performing some kind of calculation.
Andrews and
Peterson—especially Peterson—vocally defended their assertions, and Nichols and
Davis joined in, though with less gusto. Carr, as usual, sat back, letting
others burn out their energy.
“Carr,”
Macomber said, covering his clip-on mike with his palm, “Conference room, all
of you, in half an hour. Bring Dr. Elsbeth.”