From: pjd@hpespjd.fc.hp.com (Paul Dorweiler)
Subject: Space Cadets!  episode 16
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 23:53:59 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Fort Collins, CO
Keywords: gravity, man, gravity...

Spaaaaaaaaaace Cadets, episode #16:  "The Search for Andrea"

<Fan note: due to the fact I was gone for a wedding last weekend, and Ender
 will soon be gone on vacation for awhile, this may or may not be the last SC
 episode until almost the end of November.  --pjd>

===============================================================================

{MROC here -- to recap for anyone who might not remember back to episode 14:}

[Dohram grabbed a large load of equipment, weapons, and all other kinds of
 miscellaneous stuff from his lab, and proceeded to cram it into the Shark.
 He pulled MORC, a much smaller AI that he'd just started bringing to life,
 from the room that houses most of me and installed MORC in the place in
 the Shark designed for MORC to reside.  That done, he loaded food, an
 emergency med kit, and an extra spacesuit into the Shark, and then somehow
 managed to squeeze himself into the Shark.  I was amazed he could even get
 himself in there.  Where he would put Andrea, assuming of course that he
 even survived the jump, much less the Gizmonics defenses, I had no clue.

 That done, he flew the Shark out beyond the range of Heymon III, and I
 brought the GGPlat to within twenty kilometers of the Shark.

#Good luck, Dohram.

#Thanks, MROC.  ..If I don't survive, Ender is your new boss.

 I synchronized the limited FTL of the Shark with the GGPlat's ultradrive,
 dumped all the power into the ultradrive capacitors, and created a fold
 between the Shark's position and the coordinates Dohram had specified.

 The Shark disappeared from the Heymon system.]

===============================================================================

(Hi!  My name is MORC!  I've been waiting for awhile to be able to tell you
 my part of the story.  I'm an AI unit, just like my bigger brother MROC, but
 I really am just a subset of him, with some important changes.  I live in
 the Shark now.  Dohram, creator superior, had only started setting up my
 anagrams a few weeks before Andrea, his faaaav femme, was kidnapped.  So,
 he had a tizzy and decided to follow the Gfold she had disappeared in.  But,
 since the Shark only has limited FTL, not a jump capability, he had my big
 bro' get us there using the Platypus' uuuuultradrive.  Back then I was just
 barely sentient, so I couldn't talk too well.  Dohram did give me really
 explicit instructions though, since he doubted he'd be conscious after we
 made the jump.)

[The Shark appears close to a cluster of five neutron stars.]

MORC: "Douhrammm!  Waaacke uppe Douhrammm!"

(Dohram was out cold.  I was still getting vitals, but didn't know enough to
 know whether they were good or bad vitals.  Meanwhile, the Shark was getting
 pulled rather strongly toward one of the neutron stars, so I set a course to
 some asteroids floating in a gravity well nearby to hide until Dohram woke
 up.)

{MROC again.  The Shark went through a twenty G surge during the HJump, due
 to the fact that there was no Eshebian field around it.  The only reason it
 wasn't more was that the FTL's inertial dampers held there.  The real force
 was something more like 3,854 Gs, so Dohram was lucky the IDs maxxed out at
 something survivable by a human in an exosuit.}

(Hey!  Who's telling the story here, bro?)

{..just shuddap and tell your vignette, MORC.}

(Hrumph!  Vignette my butt, if I had one, that is..  I waited for almost a
 half hour, and Dohram still wasn't awake, so I did the one thing I knew he
 wouldn't like.  I pulled some "music" from a late twentieth-century group.
 The style was called 'rap' -- lots of drum beats and scratchy sounds, and
 someone speaking in rhythm, rather than singing.  Dohram said he didn't even
 consider that music, so I figured if he was gonna wake up, this would do it..)

[Loud rap "music" fills the Shark's cockpit.]

D: "Uh!  Urgh!  What the....!  SHUT THAT CRAP OFF!"

MORC: "Wwweell, itititit gottott youuuuu upppppp..."

D (clearing his head): "MORC, don't talk.  Just print out what you want to say
                        on a display in front of me."

`We are here.  I hid us in a small asteroid in a gravity well between these
 neutron stars.  I don't think anyone spotted us yet.'

D: "OK, give me a full scan of all celestial bodies in the area."

`Working.....'

(I was still fighting lots of fuzzy logic loops and so wasn't very quick back
 then..)

D: "Hmmm.  Five neutron stars, three planets, all close to the center of the
    stars in a very odd orbital pattern..."

(Dohram keyed up another scan.  A map representing the gravitational lines of
 force appeared on the main display.)

D: "That's odd.  It's almost like ... Frac!  It is!  There's a black hole in
    the middle of those planets.  It's a small one, but it's there."

`Why don't the planets fall into the black hole?'

D: "I don't know, MORC.  They must be generating some _large_ antigrav fields
    to keep everything where it is.  Trouble is, no ship could possibly get
    in there without some help from them.  It'd get sucked straight into the
    black hole or smash into a neutron star.  No one has drives big enough to
    generate that much realspace thrust to maneuver in there..."

`But where is this human-type you're looking for?'

D: "Her name is Andrea, MORC, and she's a beautiful human female.  Before I
    met her I would have called her pretty, but now that I know her as a
    _person_, I know she is beautiful, and I love her tremendously.  That's
    why we're here."

`So how can we find her?'

D: "Good question.  I can't get the Shark into one of those planets unless I
    get help from them, turn myself in to them, or..."

`Or what?'

D: "Give me a little while MORC, I've got to figure this one out.  Scan for
    any incoming or outgoing ships while I think..."

{MROC here -- doesn't this remind you of that old 'Star Wars' movie where Luke
 Skywalker talked to that primitive robot-droid R2D2 in his fighter?}

(*sigh*  Big brothers can be such a pain sometimes...  ANYway, Dohram mused
 around the crowded cabin for awhile, and fell asleep.  I knew he was in pretty
 bad shape, since my big bro had told me Dohram needed sleep but he couldn't
 talk him into sleeping before he left in the Shark.)

===============================================================================

(About twelve hours later, Dohram awoke, ate a bit, and had the exosuit give
 him a skinscrub bath.  Meanwhile, I'd been trying to get rid of some loops
 so I could be more helpful to my creator.  MROC dumped a holochip of stasis
 rules and helpful information into me before we left Heymon III, and I'd
 been digesting it while keeping an 'eye' out for ships.)

D: "Hmmm.  Guess I needed the sleep.  How long have I been out?"

MORC: "Nine hours, thirty-seven minutes."

D: "Hey -- your voice got better!"

MORC: "MROC put a bunch of phone-tick training into a holochip for me to work
       on when I had the time.  It's a limited vocabulary, though."

D: "It'll do.  And I think you meant 'phonemic'.  Any ships pass while I was
    asleep?"

MORC: "Yes, three tran, transsssports went in, at regular intervals, and a
       large troop carrier left a little over two hours ago."

D: "Give me the transport's courses.  Also, were you able to scan them as they
    got close to the planet?"

MORC: "Courses on screen.  I'll talk there for your other question."

`As they went past the neutron stars, they were met by large sleds which
 enveloped them in force fields, and linked up with the planet they were
 going to by a gravimetric beam.  It seemed like they were broadcasting
 power to the sleds so that both ends were generating the beam.'

D: "Not quite how I thought they'd do it, but close enough.  We're going to
    have to make an FTL run right next to one of the next transports and
    latch onto its hull before it meets the sleds, and without them noticing.
    They'll probably be busiest when they're close to a neutron star, but
    that would be a dangerous spot to drop out of FTL at."

`How about just waiting until they hit the gravity well where the sleds are?'

D: "Not bad, MORC, not bad.  OK, let's wait for the next transport.  Plot
    three FTL courses, one to each of the sled pickup locations, and let's
    see if we can do it."

(We waited about another two hours, and then a large transport appeared and
 started toward the sled meeting point for the biggest of the three planets.)

D: "OK, MORC, let me see the course.  Hmmm.  Let's correct it just a bit due
    to the gravity effects...  There.  Standby for FTL burst."

(We waited for the transport to get to the sled meeting point.)

D: "NOW!"

(The Shark went past lightspeed from a standstill, overloading the inertial
 dampers, but managed to get past a neutron star and fall out of lightspeed
 just behind the transport.)

D: "YIKES!  Reverse thrust!"

(The Shark stopped just short of the transport.  Dohram quickly maneuvered the
 Shark away from an engine and clamped us down in a trench where we wouldn't
 stick out of the ship's hull.)

D: "So far, no interference.  Let's see where this behemoth is going..."

(Soon the sleds enveloped the transport in a force field, and the transport
 headed toward the largest planet VERY rapidly.  Dohram didn't do too well,
 but at least he didn't pass out.  As we got closer to the planet we slowed
 down, and by the time we were in orbit, the gravity was normal.  Somehow
 they were nullifying the black hole's gravity around the planet.  The
 transport headed down through the atmosphere and landed at a large complex.
 Thankfully, the Shark was on an upper surface of the ship, and so wasn't
 visible from the ground.)
 
D: "Well, we're here.  Now I've somehow got to find Andrea."

===============================================================================

Can Dohram escape capture on the Gizmonics' headquarters planet?  If so, will
he be able to find where Andrea is and free her?  And if he can find her, how
will they be able to get away from the intense gravity fields without help?

And what will Susan do to Ender and Kathy?  Tune in next time for the next
tantalizing episode of:

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCE  CAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDETSS!!!!

Dohram
Official Hobbes of the RFA, Dennis Mukai gallery owner
(and eternal bachelor... not necessarily by choice, for those who've asked)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Dorweiler  (Dohram) | Hobbes: "I don't know.  What did it sound like?"
pjd@hpespjd.fc.hp.com    | Calvin: "Sort of like breathing and drooling and
Hewlett-Packard Company  |          ripping the meat off human bones!"    
Fort Collins, CO         | Both:   "YAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"         
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