Star Traders

It quickly became apparent that the inhabitants of E-6 had little or no need for oil other than for a simple lubricant. Their power was electrical but the method of generating that electricity was far different than on E-1. Dran himself had discovered a natural power source he called a “Gravity Well”. Every body in space has the attraction called gravity. Dran discovered that Gravity Wells of varying sizes surround all the planets and suns in the universes. The Gravity Well is energy surrounding a central point. Dran himself theorized that they might be “Black Holes” of a very small size. They could not be seen but he devised a method of capturing them that was very simple. He merely made a net of an impervious material and cast it into space near a planet or moon. Then he dragged it aboard. There he had a way to identify each well as to size and to encase each in its own solid; generally a light metallic material. Gravity wells tend to gather around planets and suns. Should a Gravity Well be strong enough, it would gather about itself the debris of space and coalesce into suns, planets, moons and moonlets. The smaller ones just gathered about the larger ones. Those smaller ones may very in size from a few inches across to miles across. Later on Dran discovered a way to find the wells that was even easier than casting a net.

The Gravity Wells all had a natural affinity to never be able to invade the space of other Gravity Wells. They actually repelled one another to a degree and at the same time attracted one another. Dran, however, discovered a way to bring small Gravity Wells inside the territory of larger Gravity Wells by completely enclosing the smaller wells with a solid material. They could then be passed through the environs of the larger well and could operate within that wells individual space as if they were independent. Thus he was able to capture the wells for his own use and developed a locator device to find the wells. The device, in the form of mere glasses with a special tint, could locate and define the wells. This helped enormously, for he could then waste little time searching for the desired size and quantity.

Dran had his power source. The Gravity Wells had the quality of being able to have their power directed in any direction. By enclosing the well in a solid, and then opening a small section in the direction one wished it to go, it would move in that direction. The implication was amazing. Unlimited power was at the fingertips of the Larn race. Dran, by making a simple machine from a small Gravity Well with the use of a drive train, hooked up a generator to create any amount of electricity that was needed. Each building had its own power source for heating or cooling and for the running of every household appliance. Power for transportation and flight was never a problem, for the number of available Gravity Wells never seemed to diminish. The ideal size for small vehicles was about a foot in diameter. Larger vehicles for flight and planetary visits demanded larger Gravity Wells and that was standard at about three feet across.

Speed was no problem, for the Gravity Wells could maintain an interplanetary speed of 10% of the speed of light. The Dran discovered early on to never exceed that speed within a planetary system. It was the maximum that could be attained within a system due to the actual number of “wild” wells in space. The large number of Gravity Wells a ship had to pass through created a drag on the speeding ship and would cause it to break apart. All this happened instantaneously, creating, for all purposes, a massive explosion.

Atmospheric flights also incurred a similar problem. At about mach 12 that explosion occurred within an atmosphere. Consequently, governors were placed in all ships to limit the speed of a vessel to less than mach 12 in atmospheres, and 10% that of that of light within solar systems.

Outside of solar systems, a spaceship could attain a speed close to that of light safely. It is this limitation that forced the Dran to be limited to light speed when traveling between suns. Since suns are often hundreds and even tens of thousand of light years apart, such ventures between planets most often took many thousands of years to complete, and large interplanetary vessels had to be built to accommodate crews for generations as the ship completed it’s intended journey. Any such venture, of course, was a one way trip. And just as naturally, trade between planets was unheard of. The distances prohibited anything but FTL communication.

Carrying sufficient water for a trip between the stars had been a problem from day one. Dran had come up with a plan to recover and reuse all water used aboard the ship. The very use of water indicated a certain loss however. In the event a shortage of water became critical, the ship would stop within any system to attempt to recover water. It was found that surrounding every sun that had planets, many of the meteors and planetoids surrounding that sun consisted of ice. The space faring people would stop and mine whatever ice they needed along the way.

The standard Dran interplanetary spaceship was in excess of five miles long and was composed of hundred of smaller ships such as the Earth Princess surrounding a central core. The small ships were hooked together; haphazardly it seemed, by passageways. Each small ship had its own gravity within its specific well, and could be set to whatever gravitational configuration desired.

For the long flights between the stars and just for ease of the crew, most units were configured to the same gravity direction as the core vessel. Much of the vessel was given over to specific farming. Some units grew vegetables, others grew fruit, and still others were given over to the raising of livestock for food in the long trips between the stars. Three of these huge ships were found in orbit around E-6. They were maintained in flight readiness at all times and the Earthmen enjoyed visiting the mammoth ships just to stand in awe of the accomplishments and tenacity of the people who traveled in them.

Captain Jayne Rice sat with her head bowed over her desk in her cabin, Sheba resting on her lap, wondering how in hell she got herself into this predicament. Then she smiled. She knew how in hell it happened. Hormones. Both hers and those of Eric the Younger.

Soon after the final attack on the terrorists on E-1, Eric the Younger had appeared on Jayne’s doorway in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He stayed for a week. At the end of that week he invited Jayne to join Lodge 16. They drove the 60 miles to the Lodge that had been built near Seney, Michigan and met with other prominent members of the lodge. Surprisingly, Eric the Elder, Ted Sobieski and Hans Gruber were part of the reception committee. The last she knew, all three of those individuals were supposed to have been killed in the Pan Am 103 crash over Lockerbie, Scotland. Jayne found they had used that flight as a cover to disappear and follow their new interest; that of exploring space around the Sol system.

Eric the Elder and the others had experimented with the Dran method of creating Dran from Larn. The process left them with a far greater intelligence and a longer life span than the average Earthman. No one knew the exact intelligence or the expected life expectancy of the enhanced men. The men looked better than they had when they had disappeared in 1989.

Eric the Elder had quickly discovered a method of by-passing the gates from one world to another and that allowed them to transfer to any of the ten universes at will. He also discovered he could physically follow the communication lines previously used by the Dran. Man could now travel from star to star at a speed of 100 light years per hour, provided they had the “phone” number of the system they wished to visit. These identification numbers were the identity of special coordinates of the systems occupied by the Dran. The E-6 universe was open to earth, and Earthmen were the only ones with the capability of visiting all those worlds in a single lifetime. Specifically, the members of Lodge 16 had that capability, for the members of the Lodge had reservations about sharing that discovery with the rest of the planet Earth.

Eric the Younger and Jayne spent the next few weeks on E-6 in a small cabin on what is Waikiki Beach on E-1. They visited all the adjacent worlds in the Sol system during that time.

Jayne was amazed to find the extent of the infrastructure built by Lodge 16 and PerSec on some of these worlds. Factories, mining industries and farms stretched for miles around the gates, still the primary method of moving from world to world.

Jayne found she enjoyed tremendously piloting the strange vehicles powered by the Gravity Wells and became more expert than most. Controls consisted of one central control console and two foot pedals. The left foot pedal was used to reverse the ships and stop the vessel. The right one was used to increase to the desired speed. Movement of the vessel came as the wheel in the console was moved in the direction desired. Left was accomplished by turning the wheel left. Motion up and left was accomplished by moving the wheel back and turning slightly left. The rest followed as the direction desired. Up was back on the wheel; right was right and forward was down. Originally, the controls had just a stick to do these maneuvers, but Eric the Elder had many of the ships modified to be easier for the Earthmen to pilot the ships. The modified controls were more familiar to them than those originally put in by the Larn. Other modifications were in the form of better and more familiar computers and screens. In addition, a button in the armrest of some of the ships also dropped the ship into Hyperlink, that condition that allowed the vessel to move through that space.

Jayne loved the speed and maneuverability of the vessels. A peculiar aspect of the Gravity Well was that those inside the ship apparently had no independent personal motion outside of the Gravity Well. When Jayne stopped the ship on a dime, no one or anything within the vessel had the tendency to continue to move forward. The same was true of rapid turns and speeding up. The ship itself absorbed all of that kinetic energy. Those inside the ship felt nothing at all.

Landing the ship took some skill, for one could not just drop the ship to the ground, or even in a cradle. The ship, being quite heavy, would be apt to drive itself into the ground some distance if one was not careful. The Gravity Well kept working when the ship was at rest, and the ship could be placed at rest at any time and in any place by merely letting go of the helm. It would automatically go back to the neutral position and the ship would hover. The trick was to get the ship close to the ground without hitting it. The Gravity Wells that powered the ships were an integral part of the hull, and should the hull be breached, the well would escape through the breach. Care, then, had to be taken on landing the craft. Jayne became very good at that.

Eric the Elder had tried to explain to Jayne how the drive worked. Apparently, when a small opening was created in the vessel, a force detached itself from the Gravity Well and attached itself to solid objects, thereby “pulling” the vessel in that direction. The pilot, on the other hand, had to be very observant, for the vessel, if it is not continually changing solid objects to attach to, would merely crash into the original solid object it had attached to. The pilot must continue to “drive” the vehicle much as one would drive an automobile on Earth. Crashes did occur at times; usually resulting in the death of all aboard the vessel, for once the solid hull of a vessel powered by a Gravity Well is breached, the Gravity Well is released and returns to space at a high speed, leaving the shell of the vessel it had powered with no power at all. The ship would drop like a rock. At the speeds attained by the Gravity Well-powered vessels, little remained of a ship when that vessel collided with a solid.

Jayne had more questions about how the drive actually did what it did, but Eric the Elder seemed impatient about explaining it. His enhanced intelligence apparently didn’t bring with it any degree of patience with those less able to grasp the concepts he took for granted. They had to be satisfied with being able to operate a system they couldn’t fix if anything went wrong. Not a bad thing, really, for most people couldn’t fix the automobiles they drove back on Earth either.

“Where did all the Earth people come from who are here on the other Earths?” she asked soon after observing the throngs of Earthmen around the sites of transfer.

“We stole them!” Eric answered with a grin.

“Stole them?” she asked, incredulously. “How? And from where?”

“From E-1,” Eric explained. “We took the best. We offered them everything they desired. Doctors, contractors, engineers, managers, farmers, miners. You name it, we found them. We only had one rule: They could never go back. They were here permanently. Few turned us down. It didn’t matter to us what their nationalities were. Here, they are of one people. They all speak the Larn language. In fact, it is illegal for any of them to speak any language but Larn and English. We picked English because it is the only other prominent language and we felt we may have to use it someday to withhold information from the Dran, if it ever came to that.”

“So…. None of these people can return to E-1?” Jayne asked.

“Nope. Not a one,” Eric smiled. “The only ones who have the freedom of movement in and out of E-1 are certain selected members of PerSec and members of Lodge 16. PerSec is the organization we use to recruit all of the people we send to the various Earths in the ten universes. For the last three years, recruiting for these planets has been the main job of PerSec. They have the final say as to who will join us and who will be passed up. Needless to say, we only go after the very best and then screen those to get the best of the best. Since 2000, when my father, Ted and Hans went through the enhancement process, we have been able to recruit the very top people. We picked up virtually all of those who would have been retired. Most people are not ready to retire anyway. They are forced to do so by laws or health reasons far sooner than they desire. Most feel that they are finally getting to where they want to be when the health problems force them out of their chosen fields. We offer them an alternative few can turn down. We offer them health and continued work far beyond their wildest expectations.

“All of these selected people are offered the intelligence enhancement method used by the Dran. As far as we know, there is no downside to that treatment. It allows additional intelligence and a degree of health beyond anything they could possibly hope for back on E-1. Those invited accept the conditions gladly and they help us out tremendously. Such people are continually developing new areas of study and advancing our knowledge in many fields far beyond what they could have accomplished on E-1.

“We are just beginning to realize how these people are going to be changing the human impact on the various universes. They have already come up with a theory of FTL travel that may just make our present mode as outdated as a propeller driven airplane. It is just a matter of time to turn that theory into practical use. Instant travel between stars will be realized in the near future.”