The search for Kalid/2

Flammis


After remembering the conversation with Sybil, Leone’s mind came back to the present and he began to watch the planet called Flammis through the window. The ship's long-range scan indicated that it was a small terrestrial planet, so theoretically people could survive there, but it was completely green. A green planet! Flammis was not "green" in the sense of "full of life" or endowed with a rich ecosystem and green plants... no, this was a green planet due to an exotic chemical process in the atmosphere. Leone had heard that the reason for this kind of strange color on planets like Flammis was that such worlds had their atmosphere consumed by a green goo, a type of destructive and uncontrolled nanite. Such green planets were generally assumed to be uninhabitable.

So Leone was shocked and disappointed. What kind of crazy mission was this to a dead planet? Well, at least the planet existed, indeed. And there was nothing on the Empire records about it in those coordinates. So, Sybil was right, in part. The Empire did not know about its existence....or maybe the Empire's cartographers had felt the planet was too unimportant to list in the standard navigation catalog. Still, it was odd that Flammis was not listed in the standard Empire catalog of planets. If nothing else, green planets were notable as something to be avoided. Had Flammis become "green" recently, since the time when this system had been mapped? Now Leone was more surprised than before that he had never heard of Flammis... maybe the Haldus Order did have some special technology... or just enough money to bribe Empire officials. Apparently this was a minor world that had "gone green" before ever becoming heavily populated and famous.

Leone had never previously visited a green planet and it was hard to guess what conditions might be like on the surface of Flammis, but the ship's instruments were reporting a thick and solid green cloud cover that would seem to mean this world was dead. Flammis appeared to be suffocated under a destructive nanite cloud, contrary to Sybil's belief that it was a great center of learning for students of mental powers. Leone wondered, why hadn't Sybil mentioned that Flammis is a green planet? Was it some "minor detail" that slipped her mind? Leone thought: this bunch of mental psychos (psychos not psychics, according to Leone) would not stand a chance against the mighty Set. Leone cursed himself for being so naive in trusting and following the advice of Sybil. Maybe the destiny of all members of his Antiquist Party was to die from betrayal and misplaced trust. But... would Sybil betray him? Maybe she was just a blind believer in the Order.

At the start of this journey Leone had been very suspicious and doubtful of "mental powers", but he had trusted that Kalid could be found. However, it now looked like this visit to Flammis was a complete waste of time! The Thot spaceship was now very close to the green clouds, but had not received any message from the planet. Leone imagined that if the Masters were actually on Flammis and if they were so "advanced", they should have sent a warning message or something, by means of either a conventional signal or, if Sybil was correct, by some sort of telepathic impulse. Maybe they were afraid of being detected by someone else, though. Maybe the Masters were making sure that this first ship, marked as a ship of the Haldus Order, had not been followed.

Leone's hopes of finding Kalid were now quickly evaporating. He had never believed a word of what Sybil had said to him about mental powers, but he had hoped that by meeting Kalid, the Master, might share what he knew about Set's weaknesses... if there were any. How could Leone, a man of science, trust any of these claims about "mental powers", and if Sybil believed such nonsense, why trust anything she might say?

Leone watched Flammis closely and examined incoming results from the ship's automated scanning routines. Leone wondered if maybe they had already been detected by the Masters and were being allowed to scan the planet. If so, it should be possible to detect human residents on Flammis from this altitude. Nevertheless, he was not too sure what to expect about their “Powers”...who knew what might or might not be possible? If what Sybil had said was true, maybe all the instrument readings were false and being altered by the Masters on Flammis.

Leone was trained in a skeptical manner and relied on the scientific method, therefore he did not believe anything about "psychic powers". Where was the evidence for such things? Leone was an engineer with strong scientific background: mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology... "mental powers" was something beyond the domain of science. However, Leone was willing to admit that science had not discovered everything yet, so such "Powers" could exist.

Someone with scientific skepticism could never be sure that something was impossible... there was really no way to prove the nonexistence of something. Leone did not believe in clairvoyance, remote vision or the divination of the future... there was no evidence for such things. However, the Empire was in a time of decadence, and maybe the poverty, suffering and past wars were the reason why most people turned to belief in those strange arts, Leone thought. "Spiritual hunger" at difficult times.

There had also been a renaissance of belief in Ancient Egypt, Hermeticism and magic in general. Haldus Order. Priestess of Isis. "What is the popular appeal of Ancient Egypt?" Leone asked himself. Egypt was not even a common history subject in schools. Concerning one's self with Egypt was like talking about Australopithecus, too far in the human past to be of any practical importance.

Aristark had heard Leone's muttered question about Egypt. He was also analyzing the incoming data from Flammis. "Not looking too promising down there, is it? If the Haldus Order does exist, surely they could find a more hospitable world!"

"Well, a green planet might be a sensible hiding place, I guess." Briefly, Leone's attention was brought back to the scan results, but they continued to show no signs of any human presence on the planet. His thoughts kept drifting towards what little he knew about mysticism and "ancient Orders". After meeting Sybil, Leone had done some reading about Egypt legends. Maybe the fabled Egyptian civilization had never even existed. Leone was no historian, but his reading on the topic had exposed Leone to the work of some historians who claimed the whole idea of Egypt was only a myth, an invented civilization, like Atlantis, a myth that was only used to revive magic and useless mysticism. In Leone's opinion, the greatest part of the Egypt story was the pyramids... but Earth had been carefully searched and the pyramids could not be found.

Of course, Earth was not easy to search! Like Flammis, Earth was now a green planet, lost to the scourge of uncontrolled nanites. So even if evidence for Egypt did remain on Earth, it would never be easy to find that evidence. Still, something as large as the mythical Egyptian pyramids should be easily detectable from orbit using conventional scanners.

Leone believed it was possible that Egypt had indeed existed in ancient times. For Leone, "ancient" meant from before the 20th century, a time before the Space Age. Leone knew that he lived in the 25th century, as time and years had once been counted on Earth. Earth's year was still the "standard year" of the Empire. Within the Empire, everything from more than 200 years before the present was considered classical or Ancient by most people, due to the rapidly increasing rate of scientific advance and social changes.

Now, within the Empire, the years were not numbered that way (25th century) anymore, but Leone knew how to convert from the Empire calendar to the classical Earth numbering system. In the Empire's nomenclature of times, years were numbered since the founding of the Empire's capital, and they were in year 108 ANE (After the New Empire). Leone thought it was silly that the Empire called itself the "New Empire". He did not know of any past Space Age Empire, but his limited knowledge of Earth history did include some ancient examples such as the Roman Empire. Maybe the founders of the current Empire had wanted to trace their origins to Ancient Times, to make the Empire seem like Destiny for humanity.

Something that Leone found funny and amusing was "Set", the name. Leone had learned that in Egyptian mythology "Set" was thought to be some evil god. If the person Set believed in such crap maybe that could be one of his weaknesses, believing in false and exotic things. Leone could imagine that there had been an Egypt on Earth, but he did not doubt that belief in esotericism and secret knowledge handed down from Ancient Egypt was a complete fantasy. Leone had no reason to suspect that Set was murderous and evil in anything other than a perfectly conventional way. However, a strange thought came to mind....

“Do you believe in mental powers?” Leone asked Aristark, without any introduction.

“What?” said Aristark. Aristark was busy making calculations for how much light might penetrate the green cloud of Flammis and was not thinking along the same topics as was Leone.

“Do you believe in mental powers?” Leone asked again.

“Not at all,” answered Aristark. “Why do you ask?”

“Because we are searching for a Master of 'mental powers' and Sybil claimed that this green world is inhabited by a group of people who practice mind control,” Leone said.

“I don’t know what to believe about that, yet. My position is skeptical, but I could believe some of it if there were enough proof to support these claims. Maybe if these 'Masters' can read my thoughts or damage my laser gun with their mind, maybe then I will start to believe in 'mental powers'. If they don't prove it I will not believe a single word of Sybil's nonsense. It's the same as for any wild claim, they will have to show me evidence that supports their claims.”

“Yes, that's the point, but some mystics claim the existence of 'mental powers' cannot be proved to skeptics. According to them, you must first 'have faith" in the Powers. That is what I read about this 'Haldus Order' and the idea that they have an ancient tradition of 'mind powers'. They never show their powers to skeptical people, that is, to people outside their 'Hermetic' Order. Of course, a skeptic would say that their refusal to demonstrate their powers might be because they have no powers at all. Maybe their 'powers' are just something like a prestidigitation trick,” Leone said.

“Prestidigitation? What is that?”

“A practice from Earth's history in which a performer tricked other people by making illusions. Common tricks were pretending to make objects disappear and making them appear somewhere else or making it look like the trickster could magically escape from death traps.”

“Oh, my Graviton! Those ancient people actually payed for the 'pleasure' of being tricked, right? Weird!”

“Yes, through human history that type of showmanship has gone in and out of favor. Times are too dismal now for people to be entertained in that way. But maybe Sybil and Kalid and others in this 'Haldus Order' are tricking people and will try to trick us too,” said Leone.

“You are right. Maybe they know nothing about 'mental power' other than how to confuse and trick weak-minded people, 'mind control power'. But if this 'Haldus Order' has been able to hide here, then one thing they could do was to hide from the Empire. And that is no easy task,” Aristark said.

“Maybe Sybil's whole story about Flammis and the Masters escaping detection by the Empire is just self-deception. Maybe the Empire has laid a trap for the 'Haldus Order' and is just waiting to conquer them... and any allies who come to visit Flammis. Alternatively, it might be that the population on Flammis is too tiny to be of interest to the Empire. See," Leone pointed out the window, "It is a dead planet and according to our scans it does not even have any significant amounts of minerals either. I believe that 'mind powers' garbage is a fairy story invented to frighten or entertain kids...” Leone said.

“Fairies? Oh, I remember, some little mythical female creatures. Yes, that could be. But maybe there is more to this 'Haldus Order' than we know. Maybe these people like Sybil and Kalid are really hiding and conspiring... maybe they are few in number but still a force the Empire would be concerned about...”

“Do you really think that is likely?” Leone asked, surprised.

“I trust Ketar. Ketar would not tell you to take Sybil seriously unless there was something true in her story. I've been thinking I had heard something like her story long ago, anyway. There is a legend, a 'story invented to frighten or entertain kids' that I heard from my mother when I was very young... something about a mighty hermetic order that will overthrow the Empire and will rule instead of it.”

Leone shook his head. Both of his parents were rationalists and had never burdened Leone with such fantasy stories. “A legend is a legend, it gives false hopes to miserable people. Predictions of future events... that is just another invention of story tellers. Many people have dreams about a better galaxy, but they do not pretend to see the future. Anyhow, we are in the closest possible orbit now and the scanner results are all coming in. We will find out soon if this 'Haldus Order' exists and if these Masters are as mighty as Sybil claims...”

After that conversation, the two counselors resumed their work. Leone went to the main control room and prepared to take the ship off autopilot. He had already started making a list of possible landing locations, coordinates on the surface of Flammis near anything on the surface that seemed like a possible human base. Aristark went to the main engineering room where he could continue to study the scanner results and also prepare equipment for landing. By the looks of things, they would need special protective equipment in case they actually landed under the green nanite cloud that shrouded the planet.

In preparation for taking manual control, Leone connected himself to the spaceship. He took command of the ship by plugging in some electrodes that he attached to his head with a small cap. Now, to command the ship he did not need to touch any buttons; he could just use his mind and the associated electrical brain activity. He leaned back into the command alcove and let a powerful magnetic projector rest against the back of his head, directly over his visual cortex. By way of the projector, he saw the appearance of a virtual control panel for the spaceship right in his mind.

A second magnetic projector now moved against the left side of Leone's head. “Thot welcomes you. I am prepared to land on the spot you choose,” Thot, the main computer, said, with a neutral voice, with a slight male tone.

“Show me a 3D model of the planetary scans you have done so I can choose the landing point.”

The computer showed him the 3D model it had built. Since the computer was connected to him through the neuro-computer connection there was no need for anything as primitive as a display screen. Thot now projected images on Leone’s visual area and "talked" directly to his language processing area in the brain. This neuro-computer interface was a new invention that only a few spaceships had and few planets could afford to buy. But Sakkara was a planet where science was a leading force and technology was at its peak. Sakkara was part of the “Associated Planets”, that is, the planets who did not pay direct tribute to the Empire. These planets lent services to the Empire and they were a little more independent than other planets. But this independence was only relative. Some on Sakkara complained that 'Associated Planet' was just a 'feel good' title because their government and economy were fully controlled by the Empire, just like the “Tribute” planets.

Dead world
Leone tried to stop thinking about "Associated Planets" and “Tribute planets" and focus on the boring task at hand... searching a dead planet for signs of life. As they continued their orbital swing around Flammis, their 3D model of the planet's surface became nearly complete. There were nearly a dozen anomalous surface features that the spaceship's artificial intelligence had scanned and flagged and which showed with flashing red highlights in the model that was now being projected into Leone's brain. Leone asked, "Why are most of these surface features dark red but one is bright red?"

The Thot artificial intelligence replied, "All the red features appear to be human settlements that were destroyed by man-made explosive devices. The dark red sites were destroyed many decades ago and appear to have been human bases located on the surface of the planet. The bright red site was recently destroyed and appears to have been an underground base."

Leone's heart began to beat very fast. "What do you mean by 'recently destroyed'?"

The machine explained, "The craters are still cooling. They must have been made within the past few days."

"How deep was the base? Is there any chance of survivors?"

Thot was slow in answering. "The scanners on this ship are designed for use in space. I cannot penetrate the depths of the shattered rock at that site. I believe that antimatter bombs were used and some exploded at depths of more than ten kilometers. I doubt if anyone could have survived."

Leone muttered, "Too late. We arrive too late." But who could have arrived here just a day or two earlier and obliterated the inhabitants of this little-known planet? And why was the planet attacked twice, once long ago? If this had indeed been a hiding place for members of the Haldus Order, who was their enemy? Why did the Haldus Order have enemies who would pursue them to the death across space and across time?

Leone's spaceship was now completing its first orbit of Flammis. Still, there was about fifteen percent of the surface that they had not yet been able to scan, so theoretically there might be some small human base down there that had escaped destruction. Maybe the Masters had used a trick and offered their enemies a false target... maybe the Masters remained hidden at another site on Flammis... or deep below its surface. Now that Leone understood the nature of the potential landing sites and that they were all sites of destroyed bases, he had no immediate interest in attempting a landing. He instructed the ship to let its orbit stabilize over the location of the recently destroyed base.

Assuming that there might be scattered survivors, Leone was now prepared to send a signal to the planet to ask for permission to land. The Thot spaceship was trying to swing into a geostationary orbit around the planet where it could wait for the “Masters” to send them a signal. Leone was about to start transmitting when the spaceship trembled. Both Leone and Aristark felt the odd motion of the spaceship and alarms began to sound. They both had imagined that the planet was dead, so this strange event surprised them completely. Although Leone was a veteran of a thousand trips through space, he had never been in a battle. The hundred year long history of the Empire was one of peace. The movement of the spaceship felt like being in the epicenter of an earthquake, but being in space they had nowhere to run. Leone had grown up near geologically active mountains on Sakkara and had been trained from an early age to run out of buildings during an earthquake. But now he was in a spaceship and surrounded by the interstellar void.

Under attack
“What is it?” asked Leone, expecting no reply.

“I have no idea,” answered Aristark, notably scared.

Leone reasoned that if Flammis had recently been attacked then those attackers might still be nearby. Alternatively, the Masters of Flammis might still have means of self-protection and they might be attacking out of fear that Leone's ship was here to attack Flammis. Leone said to Aristark, “Well, we are under attack, there is no other explanation.” Leone was frustrated by the limited scanning equipment of the spaceship, equipment that was adequate for routine space travel but which was useless for detecting particle beams and other weapons. “But, from where? Radar does not show any spaceships around us. Thot has only logged some damage to our spaceship but there are no traces of the aggressor. Thot, activate the force field.”

Thot obeyed instantly and activated the protective field. In the next few seconds, the attack continued, but the shields limited the effects of the attack. Leone manipulated the available scanning instruments as fast as he could, but still could not detect the source of the aggression. With nothing showing on the scanners Leone was forced to think whether true “ghost ships”, invisible to normal spaceships, might be in use by the Haldus Order right now... against them. They were continuously being struck by some form of destructive energy and the attack went on and on. The worst thing for Leone was that he could not counterattack; the instruments showed nothing. Leone's spaceship was not entirely defenseless. Sometimes pirate ships dared to attack spaceships, so they were always equipped with ways to use the power of their matter-antimatter engines for both defense and for offense. In his academy days, Leone had been trained in how to fight pirates, but he had never needed that training... until now. The scanners still detected no other spaceship or asteroid weapons platform or projectile in the surroundings. Shots hit them instantly, as if they came out of nowhere.

“It cannot be! Thot does not detect anything, it is as if they were confus...”

At that very moment, Leone understood it all. In the beginning, he had thought Sybil was a naive priestess, but what had happened now was confirming her beliefs. It was true that the Thot's sensors were confused... They showed no signal of the source of the attack. And Leone remembered now when Sybil had mentioned that sensors could be confused... by “mental powers”, in her own words. So, that was the warm welcome by Kalid, from Flammis. War!

“What?” Aristark asked, because he did not understand it yet.

“This is the nonsense Sybil said!” Leone shouted. “She was telling us the truth. They are attacking us from Flammis, but since they possess that 'mental technology' to hide themselves, our sensors cannot detect the projectiles before they are making contact with our defensive shield. Every projectile they fire is protected with some mental shield or whatever it is. They could destroy our entire spaceship and the damn sensors would not see anything at all! Not even Thot's fast response time is of any use for shifting our shield strength to the location of each new impact!" The apparent mystery of the attack was that easy to explain... Leone just had to shift his thinking to include the idea that Sybil had told the truth about "mental powers"...

“Do you need something, Captain? I cannot understand the order” said Thot, in its neutral voice.

“No, Thot. I just mentioned you in third person.”

“Then, are we forced to believe in those 'powers' this way?” Aristark asked. “But, why?”

“Why are we forced?”

“No. Why are they attacking us? We have Sybil's equipment 'on', so they should recognize us...”

“Maybe that is the reason why they are attacking. I feel inclined to think that this is all a trap set for Sybil and me by Kalid. For whatever reason, Kalid wanted to destroy us. Now, everything is very clear to me, we will have to counterattack!”

“What? Counterattack? It is like killing a ghost. Besides, we would be one single ship against an entire planet. We do not even know if they are attacking us from land or space! We do not know the locations of their remaining bases. Any attempt to fight would be a suicidal mission, we are blind and helpless. We will have to flee, that is our only choice.”

“Let's attack first and try to buy some time so that we can think,” As ship's captain, Leone pronounced his decision in a solemn manner, as if he had said the most wise thing in the universe.

And, in spite of Aristark's doubts, they both prepared to make a counterattack. Nevertheless, Aristark thought their counterattack would not last very long; soon enough they would have to flee because the shield created by Thot's force field was weakening, already down to 40% of peak strength after only 5 minutes of use! So, they had to act very fast. Each of them made use of a Thot interface in the main control room and they both shot indiscriminately towards the planet. They had no target, but Leone had read about ancient wars on Earth in which "anti-aircraft fire" was blindly used to good effect against unseen bombers over cities. Aristark even shot several times "with his eyes closed", without using the targeting system... there was no difference when doing that since there was no target.

Aristark had never bothered to use the targeting system, he just watched the display of the shield's power level and integrity. As soon as the shield's energy was down to 15%, Aristark got up from his chair, convinced that it was useless to fight and that it was time to flee.

Aristark shouted at Leone, “You are completely insane! I am sorry to say that, but we have no option but to stop the counterattack and flee. It is not like I am a coward; the graviton-damned shield is below 15% and we do not have enough time to repair the generators. I won't help any more in this suicide mission. I am going to escape, right now, in one of the lifeboats. I prefer to die trying to escape than being here, locked in a death grip with an invisible enemy and striking out at empty space like an idiot."

“Go back to your place, Aristark!” Leone shouted, now enraged even more by Aristark than the relentless attack. “Cursed graviton! Now half of the crew has rebelled. If I were alone, I would fight until I had 1% shield's energy!”

“You are very conscious of the fact that you could not escape with only 1% left. I never thought that you, a rationalist and my best friend, had such self-destructive tendencies. Your rage and desire to fight makes no sense. I am not going to continue this useless discussion, bye captain, I leave you to die with your ship”. Aristark made a military salute at this moment and fled from the control room, running down the passageway towards the lifeboats.

Leone did not care to answer, as angry as he was, but Aristark's words finally penetrated to the rational part of his mind. He now noticed that his hands were trembling from the effects of adrenalin in his blood and fear in his mind. He felt as if too much of his blood was in his head and he felt on his face a very strange heat and rolling drops of sweat. Still, it was hard to back down from this fight... if they both had continued firing, maybe they... But, what was he doing? After all, Aristark was right, in some sense. It was something for a psychopath to just keep on fighting until 1% shield. It was obvious he would not wait until that moment. Leone guessed that the shield should still be near 15%. He moved his attention away from the complex offensive targeting controls and glanced at the defensive shield display: it was down to 8%. Well, he could not take any more risks now, he knew exactly what he had to do in that moment. He always had a flight program for those cases... He approached Thot and loaded the software from his fingerprints. The program was inside his fingers and Thot scanned it like an ancient bar code. Thot loaded it and executed it. Leone also closed placed an emergency lock on all the lifeboat gates of the ship, to prevent Aristark from escaping. It was not that Leone wanted Aristark to die, but Aristark was, in Leone's eyes, a subordinate and could not disobey him or abandon the the ship without orders, under any circumstances. Besides, in spite of everything, Aristark was completely right, maybe he had saved them both their lives... If it was not for Aristark's insubordination, Leone might have failed to look at the shield's power level before it was too late. And now Leone realized that there was a programming error in the systems of this new type of force field: the shield had not activated automatically and there were not enough pre-programmed set points for Thot to provide alerts to Leone if the shield power dropped. Aristark had performed that vital function and saved the ship.

Leone relaxed into the softness of his chair. Now that the emergency routine was activated they would escape in less than a minute. A shout of fury was heard from down the hall and Leone listened to it with pleasure. It was Aristark, when he discovered that he was locked and forbidden from exiting the ship. Aristark's miniship was completely disabled and he was now stuck in the emergency lifeboat room, helpless. After a few more seconds, they could observe the approach of the intense black of hyperspace, something never fully seen by human eyes....they lost consciousness as the hyperspace jump was initiated. Such loss of consciousness was the usual thing when spaceships made a quick exit to hyperspace from a position too near a planet. The last thing Leone saw in his mind before losing consciousness was the last percentage of the shield, he observed: 1%. After that, the entire spaceship transferred his matter to hyperspace, disappearing from the normal space-time fabric.

Back to the universe
After many hours, the matter and energy of the ship condensed in some place of the universe and all the information about it came back from hyperspace. The hole that communicated both places was closed and some moments later, Leone and Aristark woke up, a little confused and oblivious to the world. Leone disabled the locks of every door in the ship and waited for Aristark's burst. Aristark soon entered the main control room, where Leone was at that moment.

"Cursed you will be." Aristark said, in a low voice. Now in a loud one. "You are completely INSANE; I can imagine you waited until we had 1% of shield or even less... Know that this is my last mission with you. I do not want to die yet and I will not follow you in any of your suicide missions."

"You are right" Leone added. Aristark was a bit surprised of that reply. "Our best option would have been to have fled instantly. A single spaceship cannot enter in battle against a whole planet and less if they are using that kind of mental technology or whatever they call it. I do not even understand exactly why I did it, I am a bit obstinate but never that far..."

"Maybe you trusted too much in Thot or our shield."

"It is true. I think I must apologize for what happened."

"All right. Now, what will we do? or better said, what will YOU do?"

"I have no idea. I am not even sure if we should contact Sybil right now. Everything could have been just a trap."

"I do not personally think so. I do not trust Sybil but if we think about it a bit, Sybil could not have betrayed us that way. There was always the possibility that we could escape and took revenge on her or her people. It would be just too simple."

"That would be the very reason why it would be possible..." Leone added, enigmatically. "However, I think this time you are right; Sybil would not betray us using that evident approach. Traitors do not act in daylight, do they? They need to make their mischief in secret, where none can discover them, I guess. Now, let's go towards Ketar, he will know what to do next. But... what is this? Are you hurt?"

"No, it's just me. I like to make holes in my skin just for the pleasure of seeing my blood flow, it gives a meaning to life... Obviously, I am hurt. But, what else did you expect? I got locked inside the exit room in the same moment the shield was penetrated in that room. Maybe it even got to 0% and debris hurt me. This is what I came to talk about, initially. We should unplug or abandon that room to space; it is going to be penetrated by interstellar space soon. It was cracking moments before I came in."

"Right. Then we will have to get to Ketar for you to be cured. Try to hang on."

Now Leone was depressed. He could see Aristark trying to stand the pain without complaining. Aristark was hurt due to Leone's behavior, there was no doubt about that. Besides, Leone could not explain to himself why Kalid had attacked him. Was it a mistake? And back to the mental technology... maybe it was only technology and they added the mental adjective to surround it with mysticism... Nevertheless, Sybil could have betrayed them or Kalid, at least. Sybil only mentioned that Kalid could be there, it was not certain at all. But it was his planet, so why were they attacked from there? Or maybe they got to the wrong planet and that was why it seemed devoid of life, after all. But that was not very likely. Leone tried to relax and put order to his own ideas, ready to report to his boss.

Due to the fact that they had taken an emergency hyperspace exit, they had had no time to calculate the destination. The jump was called when the spaceship entered hyperspace and then re-entered the universe at another place. The term had been taken from ancient science fiction novels from the beginnings of that far 20th century, Leone had found out. It had been translated to Standard Imperial language, of course. The full name of it was "hyperspatial jump". Leone thought it was very curious and intriguing that some writers 500 years ago could have predicted how the jump would actually be. Hyperspace travel was not much different as could be read in that kind of novels; Leone had even got some of them, in original format, something they called book. It was something small, portable, made of plants and could include much information inside... although not as much as the information you could store on a single memory chip those times, anyway... Now, very few people actually possessed books, everyone would read content using a small screen which could store entire encyclopedias. And it had search commands and links to chapters, something very useful and portable, too. The advantage of the invention was that it was not consumed by age, heat or humidity, as it happened with paper books. In spite of everything, Leone enjoyed having a collection of those old books.

Leone connected to Thot's virtual reality interface again and began preparing another hyperspace travel, this time towards Ketar's planet. First, he observed its location, 120 parsecs from there. When someone made a fast exit to hyperspace, the spaceship could re-enter at a random point in a 200 parsecs radius. Distance did not mattered, zero time was spent when entering and exiting hyperspace. The delay in the jump was for all the matter and energy to materialize again. Only information could enter hyperspace, there was no energy or matter in there. When that information re-entered the universe, the universe had to restructure the position of each particle for them to be in the same state of quantum uncertainty they were before the jump. As it was a huge amount of particles, the process took time. When discovering that new field of science, experimenters saw entire spaceships come from hyperspace, full of errors and humans seldom survived the trip. When they could survive, they lived all their short life with symptoms of several mental illnesses, epilepsy and other abnormalities. Those changes were usually irreversible; their brains had not be transcribed accurately. Sometimes the process affected DNA, with the side effect result of multiple chronic illnesses. So, scientists had been ordered to stop human experimentation and they had to use animals instead due to public concern on the matter. At the beginning, when they were allowed to use humans, they received much pressure from governments, companies and politicians in order to show results. However, when people found out about the real dangers of applying that new technology, many politicians voted on several Counsels to forbid hyperspace experimentation involving human beings, until certain guarantees could be met. After many years of hard and long work, hyperspatial jump could be finally fixed to perfection.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that this new field of science could be used, it could not be understood thoroughly. Some theoreticians argued that our entire universe could function as a big quantum computer. They went on with this analogy by saying that the matter and energy of a spaceship, which was analogue to a data structure or object with all of its processes and internal objects, was transferred to hyperspace... but it was not the matter and energy which was transferred; it was the information about them. When the information traveled through hyperspace and got to its destination, the universal computer moved that information, similar to copying or moving a file on a computer network. So, the computer transferred the information of the spaceship to their new position and, therefore, it had to place every particle in such a way that it would reflect their original uncertainty in position, forces and energies surrounding them. It was analogous to the old quantum process of transferring matter, quantum teleportation. That was the first trouble scientists found initially... they should find a way to detect the position and energies of every particle in order to make a copy of them. But, as had been demonstrated much time before, particles and their states cannot be just copied; that was, there can never be a matter replicator, because, when measuring the position or momentum of a particle in order to transfer it, the particle's information was destroyed. Scientists kept on doing research on those topics until a new field of mathematics was born... the one they needed to solve the equations of hyperspace and the science of interstellar travel was born.

Leone finished the calculations, helped by Thot, and ordered it to start the sequence towards there. He tied himself to his own chair because the travel, in a random way, could generate some extra inertia in the inside of the spaceship, pushing him towards. If he were not tightly tied, the speed he would be pushed would be so strong that when re-entering the universe, he would be dead. In every room of Thot spaceship there were such chairs, so Aristark did the same when Thot announced the incoming hyperspace travel. They both sat and tied themselves to each chair and waited for Thot to start the travel. They tried to relax, they felt a sudden acceleration and fear and they passed out...