Chapter 17: Magic Carpet Ride

The three of us departed Uxe’s quarters and made our way to the nearest subway terminal. This time we rode the heavy shuttle on the top level of the gravity train. Since this trip was in the daylight period I got a good view of the park. There were dozens of humans including kids enjoying the small slice of recreated outdoors.

We arrived at the subway dock a few minutes before the next car arrived. There were five others already waiting so Uxe took me around on a meet and greet. She knew virtually everyone here on Vesta as it was a fairly small community. The others were polite and kept their questions impersonal and brief, despite their obvious curiosity over my lost decade.

Soon enough, the subway car arrived, and we boarded. The acceleration couches (now deceleration couches for this trip) had been configured to face aft and I climbed into an empty one by Uxe. The hatch sealed and our car started to be lowered out of the gravity train’s docking well and down onto the magnetic subway tracks located in an extended trench carved into the outer wall of the huge toroidal tunnel.

A slight hum grew as the magnetic brakes activated and began to slow our car from its current six-hundred-kilometer per hour speed down to zero relative to Vesta. As it did, I grew lighter and lighter, and the couch slowly rotated so the new low-gravity ‘down’ pointed towards the center of the asteroid.

Finally, we arrived and stopped moving at the low-G terminal end of the ride. Ohmu was already moving and helped unstrap and pull me from the car. We waited for the other passengers to leave before us as they were likely in more of a hurry. Once the terminal was empty, Ohmu helped me along as we followed Uxe down a series of corridors until we came to one of the main radial tunnels heading inwards towards the central spaceship construction bay.

The distance to the construction yard was just over a kilometer so we used mag-plates to pull us quickly down the corridor. The plates rode along magnetic tracks set into the tunnel’s mostly circular side walls. A spidery mobile unit grabbed me and gently positioned my back against one of the wall plates.

I felt active tethers on the plate attach themselves to the tabs on the back of my shirt. Another tether wrapped around my lower legs and held them securely as the unit verbally reminded me to keep my arms tight to my side. Now securely attached to the mag-plate, I felt like a taxidermy display mounted to a wall plaque. Thankfully the position was not uncomfortable in the asteroid’s ultra-low gravity.

The mag-plate started accelerating down the tunnel heading towards the central construction complex. I would estimate my top speed was less than twenty kilometers per hour but I was still thankful for the small wind screen that had wrapped around my head and face all the same. I glanced behind me and saw that Uxe and Ohmu were riding their own wall plates and were holding formation.

There were eight tracks arranged around the circular sides of the tunnel. Half were colored red which meant they were devoted to travel in the opposite direction. I met one of the return plates in use as it flew by fast enough that I could barely make eye contact with its rider.

The journey seemed quick, or more likely I was too thrilled by the ride to notice the few minutes it must have taken. My mag-plate started to slow as it approached the inward enlarged end of the corridor. When the plate came to a full stop my tethers were released and I floated down to the flattened floor section of the tunnel.

I pulled myself into a side alcove chamber to clear the area so the waiting mobile unit could transfer my plate to the outgoing side of the tunnel and take on returning passengers. Ohmu and Uxe soon joined me in the alcove and we continued our journey inward on foot. We were now entering a higher security area which included enhanced oversight from Ganasium AI.

He (his use of a synthetic male voice caused humans to refer to it that way) was the AI in charge of the design and construction of the interstellar colonizer starships and all related technologies. The AI also acted to oversee humanity’s exodus from Sol system and its successful colonization of the nearby stars. We passed through the first of two sets of pressure doors and in the process were scanned by the AI.

“Welcome to the main construction docks, John. You are fully cleared to access all areas,” the synthetic deep male voice said.

It had not addressed Uxe or Ohmu. The former likely being a known daily visitor while the latter was probably contacted digitally via the area network. The airlock doors behind us sealed shut and the next set opened. We entered the main lobby of the starship construction yard site offices. Off to one side were break rooms and meeting areas. I spotted a dozen humans in various states of virtuality or in actual face-to-face discussions.

Ahead was a large wall of glass and beyond that, illuminated by many bright spotlights lining the kilometer-wide shaft, were the visible portions of Gambado, humanities fourth interstellar starship and colonizer.

I made my way to the window and took in its glory. Oh my God she was big! Much bigger than her predecessors. The gigantic ship filled a good portion of the shaft beyond the glass. I looked down to see that the construction shaft extended towards the center of the asteroid many additional kilometers before being obscured by equipment and that the vessel filled a good third of the visible depth.

Looking up I could see the underside of the inner of the two main inflated spheroidal hatches separating the dock from the vacuum of space. The construction shaft beyond the window was under a partial pressure with an atmosphere of mostly argon. This aided in the manufacturing efforts by preventing vacuum bonding and allowing for simple traditional welding instead of by electron beam. Humans could function just fine in the low-pressure environment without a suit but would need to have a reliable supply of breathing oxygen.

I found myself comparing the Gambado to the earlier ship that I had been heavily involved with. That ship had been the Evadere, the first starship humans had constructed. This vessel had to be at least six times larger and many more times massive than that vessel and I was surprised that my pride suffered from it.

Uxe came to stand next to me and held my hand as Ganasium AI began explaining the various parts of the ship in our view. My smart irises activated and began to show an overlay of data that matched the AI’s description.

I learned that the bow’s massive bulbous shape visible directly in front of us contained the integral impact shielding and also the deployment mechanisms for the deployable leading shield discs. The bulk of the space below the armored nose was tankage spaces which contained the carbon feedstock used to manufacture the graphene shield disks themselves.

The AI explained that Gambado had enough carbon reserves to recreate its full fleet of shield disks six times over or thrice the number expected to be needed for its interstellar flight. The minimum of twice was because one set was needed during the launching phase while the second was deployed during the coast phase.

The first set was kept ahead of the accelerating vessel by launching laser pressure passing through the main vessel’s photon sail by Fresnel lens ports. The lenses adjusted the force of the lasers to both steer and maintain the graphene shields at the proper distance ahead of the Gambado to intercept high-energy debris or particles. Luckily, these were few as the powerful laser beams coming from Sol did a fair job of clearing the vessel’s path.

The second set was deployed during the vessel’s long coast period. It should last the entire coast phase of the mission unless the vessel needed to alter course. In that case, further sets would need to be created. After the coast phase, the discs would no longer be needed as the high-powered gamma exhaust would blast a lane clear once the deceleration positron engines were lit.

The nose area also contained the triplicated and armored snouts of the debris rejection lasers. These were the powerful beams that would disintegrate or deflect any objects too large to be fully stopped by the leading fleet of shield discs.

Ganasium moved its explanation downward along the visible portion of the vessel. Slightly below the level of our observation window was the forward reserve hydrogen tank. This was a central rigid spherical mass over a hundred meters in diameter. This lower half of the sphere and the long trunk below were surrounded by multiple torus-shaped balloon tanks.

These tanks were currently empty and were in their shrunken, stowed configuration which allowed us glimpses of the vessel’s inner trunk truss structure. There, inside the main truss were the shielded crew and bio-suspension areas. Far below the balloon tanks was another large rigid spherical hydrogen tank. Its large round bulk hid the remaining lower parts of the ship from our view.

“Come, John,” Uxe said, pulling me gently by my hand.

She led me to a small airlock chamber off to the side where a small aerial pod was docked. The three of us passed through the airlock and into the pod’s interior. The pod resembled a bloated version of my aircraft Hoss except that there were no seats. The pod also had much smaller lift fans at its corners as larger fans were not needed in the faint gravity of Vesta.

I strapped my legs to the floor of the pod next to Uxe near the front window. Ohmu grabbed a handhold behind us after manually sealing the pod’s aft hatch. Ganasium must be controlling the pod as we detached from the wall of the construction yard almost instantly. The small lift fans whirred in the partial argon atmosphere, and we began to gently spiral down in a clockwise direction while simultaneously moving closer to Gambado.

I smiled as we passed a human in a wing suit flapping along. He or she was glowing like a firefly with the suit’s flashing illuminators as, despite the spotlights, the yard was very dark in some areas. Uxe relayed that the wing suits were a good way to get exercise and the exposure to the large open spaces in the yard helped counteract the claustrophobic smaller spaces through much of the asteroid complex. The flyer did a quick loop around us and waved as we dropped by.

Up close the interstellar vessel was even more impressive. We were dwarfed by the hydrogen tankage toroids as we passed by them at twenty meters distance. As we came around the far side of the interstellar vessel I noted four other, smaller vessels under construction. I pointed these out to Uxe.

“Those are four new torch ships under construction. Stellux AI shares this yard with Ganasium. Because of the yard’s large physical size and the high metal output from the mines deeper below, there is an excess of construction capacity here. Especially now that the bulk of Gambado’s structure is finished,” she explained.

We continued our spiraling descent and now passed the bottom-most spherical tank. Below that tank was an enormous grid of lattice braces. The empty lattice frames would latter hold the specialized ESUs that stored the positrons. These were currently near Mars orbit where a large space-based solar array drove the many particle accelerators which were creating the positrons. Only in the final weeks before the eventual launch of Gambado would those ESUs be brought on board. Yes, we had made them safer than ever but still, accidents could happen.

Below the currently empty positron storage lattice were the normal electron ESU’s. These were already stacked in their very dense final configuration. These would be slowly charged by Vesta’s abundant fusion power plants via portable DET units. There were too many to count as we dropped past them.

Next came the intricate miracle of the main positron and electron annihilation engines. Gambado had three of the drives and they would mostly be used for the deceleration phase of her journey. Each was mounted around a strong-looking central truss and were each angled a few degrees outwards from the centerline of the interstellar vessel. This allowed the final lower tip of the ship to be armored against deceleration debris.

This area was also where the bulk of construction was happening and was surrounded by hundreds of busy mobile units and active work platforms. My smart irises activated to filter out the harsh light of too many welding units in action in the area. It looked like much of the current work was focused on the huge molten metal spray radiators. I asked the AI about the construction activities.

“We have recently developed new technologies which harness a higher percentage of the waste heat produced by the annihilation engines, John. This will permit a four percent reduction in the size of the main radiator assemblies. The overall efficiency gains will allow a reduction of travel time of three years,” Ganasium explained. The AI followed on with more technical details which I mostly ignored.

As we were now near the aft end of the main vessel there were large radial braces extending from the sides of the construction cylinder supporting the bulk of the vessel. I remembered the design of the previous interstellar vessels and realized that what we saw here was just the deceleration stage of Gambado. I mentioned this out loud.

Ganasium explained that the booster sections were currently under construction deeper in the yard below. There were two booster stages. An initial stage which would be used at the start of the voyage and a second stage which would be used later to accelerate the craft up to nearly nine percent of light speed.

The first stage was a large, bulky cylinder consisting of tens of thousands of Orion-type fusion bomblets. This stage would get the vessel moving and accelerate Gambado up to almost one percent of the speed of light over the course of two weeks. It would then be ejected to allow the second stage to deploy.

That stage was the photon sail section which would deploy an ultra-lightweight sail many thousands of kilometers in diameter. The sail would be pushed by the thousands of high-powered launching lasers located in orbit around Mercury. This slower acceleration phase would continue for over two decades before being shut down and abandoned when distance finally caused the laser energy reaching the sail to drop below practical minimums.

Now at its fastest speed, Gambado would travel on by coasting for the next one hundred and sixty years until it approached its target star. It would then begin a four-year-long period of deceleration using the three electron-positron annihilation engines which we had just observed.

If all went well, these engines would bring Gambado into orbit around the K7 type star Groombridge_1618. Our telescopes had scanned the system for decades and a possible habitable planet had been found. There were many unknowns, so the colonizer module of Gambado was larger and more flexible than those humanity had sent to other stars previously.

This was due to the likelihood of harsher conditions existing in the Groombridge system. A space-based or an underground colony could be a possibility because large-scale terraforming of the already-detected target planet was a likely necessity.

I was distracted from studying the ongoing work on the starship’s radiators by motion coming into view from further down the construction shaft. It was a large rotating module which was revolving around the inside of the kilometer-wide cylinder at around two revolutions per minute. The module had suddenly flared bright orange and emitted a huge gout of smoke and steam. Had there been an accident?

I pointed it out to Uxe who explained that this was just a metal foundry. The smelting process needed gravity to process their ores into refined metals, in this case, titanium, and had to revolve similar to the main gravity train habitat.

There were many more of the gravity smelters in operation in the deeper portions of the construction shaft, down near the bottom at the ten-kilometer depth where the mining activity was highest. The bottom of the cylinder was riddled with branching side tunnels which led to automated mining machines that were busy hollowing out the core of the asteroid.

We continued to fly lower in the cylindrical construction yard leaving the deceleration stage of Gambado behind. I cringed slightly as we passed close by the exposed gigantic spinning gravity train, but no more gouts of hot gasses emerged. Ganasium must have had a handle on the operations and was keeping us safe. I did observe that some of the smelter modules where hundreds of meters long and fifty meters high and resembled moving skyscrapers as they rotated by our pod just a few dozen meters away.

I could now see the heavy automated ladles pouring molten metal into large vats of the extrusion machines. The argon atmosphere here became very hazy from the venting smelter gasses and I saw that the clouds were moving. Instead of slowly rising, they were being drawn into large vents ringing the cylinder of the yard. Ganasium explained that these led to scrubbers busy removing the contaminates and keeping the argon purity levels high enough for production and good visibility.

Our ride became bumpier as we flew through the hot gasses and winds surrounding the smelter train. Soon we were below most of the heat and turbulence and our ride became smoother. Now we were approaching the one-hundred-meter diameter fusion bomblet Orion booster section. This cylinder-shaped module was at least half a kilometer long and had hundreds of openings which were being slowly loaded with fusion bomblets.

I had once seen something similar but many, many times smaller back on Earth. This had been at the Baltra Island launch facility which had been under the control of the enemy AI at the time. One difference between this booster and that smaller one was that this one had gigantic physical shock absorbers and a large shield mass on its detonation end. We were dropping past these titanic structures now. The distinct color of superconducting coils surrounding the shock absorbers was apparent.

They dampened the forces of each fusion explosion magnetically, transforming the Newtons of sudden force into ergs of electricity while softening the blow felt by the starship. This captured electrical energy was then used to ignite follow-on fusion bomblets much the way a magneto energized a sparkplug in an old internal combustion engine.

“Where is the photon sail stage?” I asked out loud as we dropped past the huge Orion booster stage.

“The second stage is being assembled in the extreme microgravity of a higher orbit around Vesta, John,” Ganasium AI explained. “Even the asteroid’s extremely low gravity here would hamper the efforts to properly fold the thousands of square kilometers of molecule thick sail into its compact launching package.”

We dropped deeper into the construction shaft. The open spaces became less open as more smelting and manufacturing equipment filled these areas of the yard. The diameter of the cylindrical space was also reduced to just a few hundred meters at this depth. The atmosphere was much murkier than above due to the outgassing from the smelters. My smart irises displayed radar and sonar overlays to show areas around our pod that were obscured by the fumes.

We finally stopped descending after passing through the kilometer-deep maze of heavy manufacturing machinery and material transfer gondolas. A large side tunnel came into view which we entered. After a hundred meters we came to a docking port. Our pod reversed itself and attached to the hatch. It looked like our pod ride was over. The feeling was reinforced when Ganasium announced that we were now leaving its area of enhanced oversight.