Twisted Spaces: 1 / Destination Mars Read online

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  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Acknowledgements

  This book would never have reached a readable state without the resilient and expert work of my editor, Mrs Rosi Milligan-Taweel, an adorable and charming American woman running a translation service in Koblenz, Germany. She exterminated my many errors and Germanisms. Her work was fantastic. Whenever you find spelling errors or bad phrasings, they are exclusively caused by me changing the text later again.

  Well, as no good deed ever goes unpunished: I guess, Rosi, you'll be stuck with my next book again.

  Thank you, Rosi.

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  The images used to create the cover were taken from the Nasa Hubble Image Library.I would like to thank you guys for the fantastic pictures.

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  The marvellous coverpage design has been done by SSE-Design/Anjana Thux. Thank you for your relentless effort.

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  Copyright 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by Stardust Software Engineering Ltd, Little Canfield, Essex CM6 1TD, UK.

  Version 2/1.0.44 of 2017/07/09

  Contact:

  [email protected]

  E.N. Abel on Facebook

  @E_N_Abel on Twitter

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  Chapter 1

  Geneva/CERN

  Monday, 17.10.2016

  Dr. Ralf Kaiser hated Mondays. He knew himself in line with a large part of the working population, but he couldn't help it; he hated Mondays anyway. The reason for this sad attitude was, he thought, that far too many people in his institute's orbit had far too much spare time over weekends to dream up a never-ending stream of highly complicated problems that - after being hurriedly pushed from desk to desk by his work force - inevitably ended up in his in-tray. It didn't help his saturnine mood that their administration had long since disposed of paper documents for such communications; an in-tray was an in-tray, no matter if the mail was stored in a plastic box or an email system.

  For Dr Kaiser it had been a slow and peaceful weekend in the autumn coloured Geneva hinterland, but that made this morning's commute to his office only more of a pain. Not even his brand new S-Class Mercedes-Benz could comfort him. So when he reached the fortified main gate, it took him some effort to give the approaching guards a friendly nod. They knew him, of course - he was their current director - and knew, like anyone else at the institute, about his foul Monday mood. This didn't keep them from checking his credentials, fingerprints and retina pattern with their normal thoroughness anyway. Just as he expected them to.

  The Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire, CERN for short, had developed into a prime target for the crazies of the world after their recently achieved progress in the production of antimatter. This success had thundered through the global media, had been distorted and exaggerated in the usual ways and thereby attracted all kinds of reactions, friendly and - sadly enough - hostile ones. Including some very serious threats from religious zealots, who firmly believed that antimatter was a gift from the devil himself. With the same deep conviction they probably also believed that the Earth was flat. But due to the fact that every third-world backwoods extremist could - thanks to technological progress - cook up nearly untraceable plastic explosives in his or her remote cave and have it delivered by UPS Same Day Delivery to any part of the world, CERN had to be very cautious indeed.

  So the invention of a feasible antimatter production method had brought his institute repeated worldwide recognition of their scientific excellence, a bunch of new patents, more funding - and a fortified main gate with armed, alert guards and biometric retina scanners.

  Well, such is the nature of progress, Dr Kaiser grumbled silently, then amused himself for a moment with the thought that the condemned antimatter would surely be the perfect terrorist weapon. Untraceable by sensors, easy to hide and with the chemical signature of ordinary hydrogen: cigarette pack sized plastic devices with the destructive power to flatten a major city. Fortunately you needed a bit more than a cave and a cooker to build one.

  For a moment he drifted back, twenty, thirty years. Those had been good years, good times, so much better than today: less threats, less admin bullshit, more research. Back then he had been a star physicist, no strings attached and courted by several top-notch American physics institutions. Having wanted to go to California all his life, the offered associate professorship at CalTech gave him the chance to fulfil his dream. He already had agreed to sign the contract, when Mandy had entered his life: Manuela Sommer, the brilliant, beautiful student in his post-graduate seminar, had stolen his heart in no time. Bound to her home country by family affairs, she hadn't been able to follow him to the Sunny State and in the end caused him to cut his US adventure short. Not that it really had hurt his career.

  Now, twenty-eight years after their wedding, she was gone. Ripped from his side by the plague of the twenty-first century, an extremist bombing attack. Here, on this same spot she had died, two years ago, waiting in the morning's commuter queue. Bled to death, her body shredded by fragments of an IED.

  Fortunately they had had their children early. The kids were all out of the house and on their own feet: academics, like Mandy and himself. But it hadn't been fair ... taking her away from him and at the same time letting the scum of the Earth live ... On a rational level he knew that there was no connection between the two facts, of course, but he had turned from agnostic to anti-religious.

  A movement in front of him pulled him back. The guards, finally satisfied that the waiting man was truly their boss, were lowering the newly installed, massive concrete road barrier to let him pass. Dr. Kaiser sighed deeply, then pointed his Mercedes towards his reserved space in the car park beside the administration building.

  When he walked over to its main entrance, he had no idea that something was sitting on his office desk which would overshadow CERN's latest successes with ease and make his usual Monday mood a joyful memory of the past.

  Chapter 2

  Spangdahlem

  Present Time

  On first sight the hall seemed to have jumped straight out of a science fiction movie: high, wide, filled with ample light and black-and-silver machinery, white plastic walls, dry warmth and a constant hum in the air. People in lab coats hurrying between the cubicles of an open-plan office area surrounding a large center space which again was dominated by a huge golden sphere. Other people were sitting in cubicles behind office desks, staring at flat-screens.

  A second look revealed a different impression. There was the large hall, yes, but it appeared to be an old factory building or an abandoned aircraft maintenance hangar, beefed up on a low budget. The walls were covered with cheap, white plastic foil, the cubicles separated by simple white chipboards, the computers and monitors a wild collection of various brands and sizes, electrical cords and network cables lying on floors and dangling from walls and ceilings like umbilical cords to the outside world. Everything seemed improvised. Only the personnel was clad in identical white lab coats with a small black-golden seal-like symbol - the stylised Greek character Psi - on their chest, marking them as belonging to a secret tribe.

  More astute observers could uncover even more: around fifty people of either sex and several ethnic groups, young, no one over thirty. Everybody was busy, as if following a well-known plan: moving around with enthusiastic strides, pecking away rapidly at keyboards, talking agitatedly in quiet voices. Motivation at its
purest.

  In the center of the hall the golden sphere - some fifteen meters in diameter, rested with its lower third on an encircling foot-wide ring from which an array of supporting struts extended - like a chemist's glass plunger in a cooking mount. All together, it formed a primitive landing gear, holding the globe a good six feet above the ground. Multi-level scaffolding surrounded the sphere and acted as a working platform. People in white plastic protective suits equipped with spray pistols were busily applying layer after layer of a clear varnish onto the golden wall. All this gave the impression of Sputnik's bigger brother - under construction.

  Right beneath the sphere a smaller framework reached up to the globe's bottom and formed a stairwell for the only visible opening - a round, man-sized hole, slightly off center and close to the south pole. A laser-printed sign had been affixed above the entrance: Welcome to the Stardust. A handwritten scribble under the text added: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

  Outside the dome, in the free space, several stacked oxygen cylinders, shining aluminium boxes with text like 'Food Supply', 'Water', 'Meds' and 'Environmental' printed on the sides, waited to be stored in the sphere.

  Work in progress everywhere. Everybody was busy, not a shout to be heard.

  Chapter 3

  Geneva/CERN

  Monday, 17.10.2016

  Entering his office, the director found two things on his desk: a handy mug of strong, sweet Columbian coffee, prepared by his assistant in wise anticipation of her bosses start-of-week mood, and a small package, more of a box, crudely wrapped in simple brown paper. It had obviously been opened and carelessly repacked. A yellow security note was attached.

  After settling behind his desk, taking a deep breath and a first sip of the always excellent coffee, Kaiser let his curiosity get the better of him. Instead of looking into his mailbox he turned his attention to the package first. A scan over the security note made everything more mysterious: due to a handwritten, underlined warning on all sides of the wrapping not to X-ray it, as was common practice in CERN's post room, it had been opened and manually checked with the usual assortment of high-tech probes. The examining postal worker had just scribbled ''contains small metal box, no explosives, no poisons, no radiation'' on the attached note.

  The director's curiosity rose. His physical mail was always carefully screened by his administration assistant, Andrea McNamara, and would never have reached this desk if not found worthy enough. Andrea was a full-fledged astrophysicist from Australia on the CERN's short-list for a slot in its post-graduate program and had taken Kaiser's generously offered position to support herself while waiting. Not only was she petite and pretty and a sharp dresser, her IQ was sky-high. Kaiser had absolute trust in her judgement, but obviously this delivery had left her undecided.

  How unusual. Kaiser opened the small parcel and removed more than the security note had mentioned: a plain, white box roughly the size of a cigarette pack but unusually heavy, a thin 4x4 inch plate of an unfamiliar metal, two cables: one standard 220V lead - with a Euro connector on one end and two simple, male connectors - one red, one blue - on the other. Then one slightly thicker electrical cord with individually formed male connectors on both sides and finally, a small blue feather and a few ordinary wooden matches.

  On closer examination Dr Kaiser found three jacks in the white box, two shaped for the 220 Volt lead, one for the wire connector. He understood immediately: this was a simple, quite foolproof assembly exercise: the standard lead into one side of the block, the other cord - the bigger one - from the block to the patch - child's play.

  Now, attaching wires and power to a block of unknown content from an unknown originator was not really a smart idea - especially when dealing with bomb-making fanatics, but the postal room security workers were usually very thorough and Andrea had let it pass, so Kaiser could view the package as reasonably safe. He assembled the kit in reverse order: connected plate to block, then block to lead. Although he worked very thorough, it took only moments and after a brief hesitation he plugged the lead into one of the 220V outlets on his desk. Then he switched it on.

  Nothing happened.

  Chapter 4

  Spangdahlem

  Monday, 17.10.2016

  In one of the cubicles around Stardust a lab-coated, more solidly built woman in her mid-twenties with long, curly red hair pushed her glasses up, peeked over the rim of her flat-screen monitor towards her male colleague sitting at the opposite desk.

  ''Mike, the grav generator has been activated.''

  Mike - a man in his late twenties - looked up. ''So he got it. Good. And the game begins.'' He grinned: ''Fifty bucks says they don't figure it out.''

  ''Deal,'' the woman smiled curtly. ''After all, it's the CERN.'' Turning back to her screen she read something off: ''220 Volt at 16 Amps. You were right, the standard lead did it.''

  ''Nice to be appreciated, Ellie. Boy, are they in for a surprise ...''

  Chapter 5

  Geneva/CERN

  Monday, 17.10.2016

  For a few seconds the director of CERN felt a childlike disappointment, then he saw the blue feather, and a memory came back to him - a memory of an eagle's feather and a hammer, both dropped at the same moment, both floating side by side down to the surface of the Moon. He picked up the feather, moved it about six inches over the metal patch - and let go.

  The feather slowly floated down, then - about four inches above the patch - stopped in mid-air, hovering.

  Kaiser watched the picture of the silently floating feather in front of him with a feeling of awe, then his thinking kicked in again. A simple electro-magnetic field could do that to a feather, if only strong enough. 220 Volts at 16 Ampere - three and a half kilowatts - that would be sufficient. He somehow felt cheated. Then he saw the matches ... It can't be ... no, that's impossible. With newly awoken curiosity he picked up a match, dropped it from a six-inch height onto the little patch. It fell, slowed down, hovered about two inches above the patch, and floated there in absolute silence. The director rapidly added the remaining matches and they all kept floating - but settled at a slightly deeper level. As a next test he slowly moved his hand just barely over the patch and felt ... a tiny force pushing his hand upward. A thought flashed through him like a thunderbolt: A force field? Can't be an electromagnetic one; the wood of the matches wouldn't have been affected by e-mag forces. What else ... could it be anti-gravity? Could this little box really be a miniature antigrav generator? Artificial anti-gravity ... if this was for real, the consequences would be truly world-shaking: first of all it meant that anti-gravity was possible after all! Entire research teams had walked down this path - and failed. And now some unknown party not only seemed to have discovered the secret, but furthermore, had engineered a device that fit into one hand, a device that could generate an anti-gravity field for real - and actually lift things!

  Provided it was actually working, this little machine would literally change the world - even more than the invention of the steam engine: a completely new type of motion would become possible - one neither based on wheels, nor streets, rails or air. Resulting in personnel and freight transport without streets, aircraft that could lift off from helicopter pads, freight ships floating over dry land, elevators without cars. Spaceships starting from planetary surfaces without rocket motors and boosters. Spaceports, airports and harbours would become obsolete: a new age of free motion would arrive. It would also allow for zones without gravity on Earth, enabling the medical industry to produce super-high-grade drugs, something nowadays only possible in orbital space stations and under extreme costs. The total economical impact of this technology was unpredictable, the monetary value beyond any imagination - but surely in the upper trillions. Then there was the impact on the military, of course ...

  Another idea materialized. Kaiser switched off the main lead. At once the floating objects fell down. Next he exchanged the input cables: plugging the red line into the blue jack, the blue into the red one. He switche
d on the electricity - nothing happened. Kaiser moved his hand over the little pad and felt a force pulling heartily on it. He balanced out the pull, then tried to pick up one of the matches against the invisible grip - and failed. It resisted until he used all his strength. Artificial gravity, about two G. If 220 Volt can neutralise one G, they would be able to increase the existing one by one G, too. Cute!

  Kaiser sighed. Whatever it was, it deserved a closer look. And that would pose no problem: as director of one of Earth's leading research centers he had some serious power at his fingertips: the world's best scientists worked here or visited regularly.

  Still gazing at the matches on the little pad he picked up his phone and began to dial.

  Chapter 6

  Spangdahlem

  Thursday, 20.10.2016

  The woman named Ellie pushed her glasses up, peeked over to Mike and said: ''Wow. Five-meg. They've overloaded it. Switched itself off.''

  Mike looked up and grinned: ''It can cope with that. Anyway, took them three days and over forty tries. And it's still in one piece - no attempt to pry it open.''

  ''You think they will try to X-ray it?''

  ''Probably. I would. But if they do, they'll be sorry. Let's initiate Step Two.''

  Chapter 7

  Geneva/CERN

  Thursday, 20.10.2016

  In the end it had taken them three full days. Assembled in the director's personal meeting room around a conference table, the full dozen men and women of the quickly formed research team represented the elite of human science. This afternoon they had to deliver a depressing message to their boss: the box was truly a gravity generator - and they had no idea how it worked.