Really Really Really Big (part 2)
"You didn't have to do that, you know." Walder glared at Dugar when they'd returned to their drinks after the drill. The others at the table, mostly regulars, a few other friends, and an occasional enemy or three, caught Dugar's sweet returning smile. "It's not as if we were in any danger, even if it hadn't been a drill. We all know how over-designed the evacuation and lifepod systems are."
"Interrogative, Walder-human?" The Sumnar at the table, two meters tall, roughly ovoid and speckled with a flaming red mosaic of skin-tiles, waved one of its four voice organs in the air at the human. "Was it not one of your own genotypes that defined the axiom that 'one who fails to memorize historical precedent is preordained to reconstruct it in a personal manner'?"
Walder turned to the Sumnar, setting his glass of wine down on the table rather forcefully. The emphasis sloshed the purple liquid onto the table; a poised tentacle of the bartender, curled around an absorbent pad at the ready, deftly wiped it clean. Those at the table were well-known in F'nordalp'leen's.
"Maybe if we were talking about the rise and fall of planetary civilizations." Walder's voice was loud, his arm gestures wide and dismissive. "We're not." He grabbed for his glass, spilling more. The bartender's tendril caught the dripping alcohol before it hit the table. "We're talking about technology known and in place over century-cycles."
"Confused am I," the Sumnar replied. "Is this not a human sociological imperative for all events? A truism of the species?"
Before Walder could respond, Maggie cut him off.
"Truer words were never spoken, Sumnar-kin." Walder looked at her with seeming amazement.
"Oh, and I suppose," he said, the sarcasm evident in his voice, "that you have some crazy story that shows this is true even for something as blindingly obvious and trivial as an evacuation pod? Please. You can't be serious." There was an ominous silence in the bar. Somehow, whenever Captain Gale had a story to tell, there would be bets placed.
She nodded. Fingers, pseudopods, sensory orifices and other digits signaled to Ro#chon at the bar.
"The usual bet says I am." There was more activity near the bar. Ro#chon's talons flicked over the tablet, registering more action.
"Right. A vintage bottle of port from Freedman's Planet." Credits, crystals, rare genetic signatures, and planetary mining claims changed ownership. The denizens of F'nordalp'leen's would bet on anything, including the prize of one of Captain Gale's wagers.
"And the bet is that you can't give me an example that shows we have still to learn from history about something as tried and true as the lifepod evacuation system."
"Done."
"It also has to be something we can verify, too - not one of your own wild stories." There was a hush from those listening in. It was poor form to question the word of a ship captain, especially one as respected as Maggie Gale. Her tales of exploration, First Contacts, and diplomacy aboard the Vortex of Chaos were well known in the sector.
Maggie looked across the table, her hand gesturing to an empty seat.
"Admiral Irwin Smith is one of our regulars at the table. You know him well. He can confirm the entire tale when he gets back from his inspection run to Ormando. He's been far too modest about the whole incident anyway. He deserves some credit."
"Gale-human, interrogative." The third of the Sumnar's four voice organs was directly in front of Captain Gale, fully extended across the table. "This tale of any significance cannot be. Would it not have significant public visibility if there were great relevance? Does this not insist logically of a small impact?"
"No, Sumnar-kin, this is a really, really, really big story."
"Of this I have unsurities of high probability. I would join Walder-human in this wager, if acceptable."
"Done."
Maggie cupped her fingers around the stem and bowl of the small wine glass, picking it up to sip at the remaining port. Shimmers of deep violet reflections, languid and sensuous in the crystal, slowly escaped from the liquid, echoes of the various pools of light illuminating F'nordalp'leen's depths. As she removed the drink from her lips, a tentacle from behind the bar arched over the patrons in the space between. The tendril was wrapped around the neck of a fresh decanter of port. Maggie nodded, and her glass was refilled.
"Sumnar-kin, are you familiar with Carpenter's Hyperfield Mechanics?"
"Negation, Gale-human. Mathematics of such enlightenment is unnecessary for a spinner of economic reportage. Is such understanding required for this wager?"
"The details are not necessary, but some general background will help."
"Proceed, then. I shall interrogate, should the exposition prove beyond my capacity."
"Fine. Hyperspace is a place, as you have undoubtedly seen in order to get here. It is outside of normal space, and coexistent with it. Physics works differently, which allows us to exceed the speed of light." Maggie stopped, to take a small sip of the deep violet wine.
"This indeed have I seen, the pale spectral shifts of terrains of the nether space."
"To reach hyperspace, ship engines generate an energy field of specific shape, size, and frequency. We wrap our ships with a vibration that slips us into another dimension. What you have seen, Sumnar-kin, are the energy potentials of that dimension, a metaphorical mathematical landscape that literally translates into hills and mountains, valleys and passes. This geography shifts, usually very slowly, dependent on objects in our normal space."
She stopped, pointing to the expanse of diamond-glass that separated F'nordalp'leen's from the vacuum of space outside the station. There were only a few talonfuls of visitors pressed close to the transparency, so there were few obstacles in seeing the whirling vortices of electromagnetically shaped gases of the maelstrom that was McCutcheon's Nebula. It burned and writhed, grasping streamers of incandescence clutched around a great cosmic conflagration.
"The Nebula, for example, is as beautiful in hyperspace as it is in normal space. It is also quite beneficial. The masses and geometry of the Nebula's young stars shape this vast expanse of hydrogen and helium. They also shape the hyperspatial neighborhood."
"The terrain of hyperspace determines where it's possible to get to. Small ships, like my Vortex of Chaos, can push themselves out of the energy valleys. We can only reach certain 'altitudes', though, based on the mass of the ship. Smaller ships can reach more interesting places."
There was the start of a chuckle from Dugar, which Maggie silenced with a sharp glance.
"Larger ships, like the new Armas cruise liner Certainly And Truly Destined To Arrive On Schedule, have much larger masses. Despite their powerful engines, much larger than those in the Vortex, they cannot push their way very far up the energy inclines. They have to travel along well-defined hyperspatial paths - those of the lowest potentials. That's why the Certainly goes from Grassobil to Dan Hee by way of Tamarazzo Tam, which is more than a hundred light years further than one would expect. There is no direct navigable route between the two ends of the journey; ethereal mountains stand in the way. McCutcheon's Nebula bends nine hyperspatial valleys into one junction. That's why this station and the bar are located here. This is an easy and convenient place to get to."
"Look Gale," Walder interrupted, "are you going to bore us completely? We know the stories, the fairy tales of the final voyage and the missing passengers of the Celestial Happiness, the myth of the runaway reactors on the P'th'rdy, and the legends of the Roaming Rigellian. Why don't you just admit that you don't have a story and concede the bet?"
"It was eight years ago, and I was on Armas with Vortex. She was having some serious damage repaired, and I was looking for something to do to cover some of the costs. I decided to look up Irwin..."