Star Stuff

Submitted By waterninja30
Words: 2552
Pages: 11

Star Stuff
Written By
Alexander Campbellα

Randy was gushing with excitement as he waited at the Conglomerate
Spaceport of Terra­II. I was really going to join an intergalactic voyage! He had dreamed of things of this gauge all his life, yet he’d never actually been able to fulfill his dream. He was a simple spacecraft mechanic for the “Terran Rejuvenation” spacecraft manufacturing Co. He knew this was a great chance! There were crates and boxes laying everywhere, containing all sorts of things, like oxygen recyclers, deployable greenhouses, a few jetpacks, some provisions for the time it takes the ship to get it’s RFS(Renewable Food System) working. Even with advanced biogenetics, it still wasn’t something that could be done within a day. A week, at least. I had been working on a Sonic Propulsion
Unit(SPU) when he heard the news that a new starship, the Infinity, was looking for crew(Like pilots, mechanics, biologists, and maybe some
Propulsion specialists, like me!)
This craft would be using the new advanced SPU’s of which were brand new in concept and design, said to be the most efficient warp­drive systems yet created. He knew, though, that the bugs weren’t fully worked out, and this nearly discouraged him, if it weren’t for the given opportunity.
He was knocked out of his daze swiftly as a staff member asked him for his forms. He’d brought his certification forms of all types. It took a while to sift them all out, but he was signed up and ready to board soon enough. As he floated to the transport shuttle in a haze, he noticed that there were many others coming on this voyage, including a very well­known scientist who created the SPU’s, Harrison Cage. This excited me even more, for I’d also dreamt of meeting this man along side of my dreams of interstellar travel. This was the man who’d made warp drives efficient. Before the SPU’s, they had to use a very tricky system of deploying four boom arms on the top, bottom, left, and right of the ship, then link them up on very specific frequencies and hope they’d stay straight as they warped space in a cylinder around the craft. The boom arms broke of many a time during warp travel due to the stress of going through bending space. The SPU is interiorly mounted with four very fortified stubby antennae on two sides and the top. These antennae

relayed the size and shape of the ship to the AI running the SPU, who then calculated the ideal diameters of bending required, and it always gave at least forty yards of clearance on each side. The largest perk, though, is that this system requires 99% less power than your average drive, which is huge due to the amount of power those old clunkers use.
Harrison Cage also invented “Warp Shielding” even before the SPU. This warp shielding reinforced the hull to stand up to warp stress. It was basically a highly reinforced force field, the first of it’s kind! I knew this was going to be a great voyage as i breathed in my last breath of Terran air for a long time, though I thought I’d be back within a few years, little did I know of what was to come…

Chapter 1:On my way!
I stepped through the shuttle into the starship and gasped. It was huge! I noticed a very formal looking official hailing me over, and I floated over to him in a daze, as I watched the buzz of the brand­new starship. There where equipment trolleys hovering through almost every corridor carrying all sorts of goods from fighterpilot headsets to food. Then I noticed a very regal procession ,more or less due to the multiple guards, most of which are more per the effect than the protection, though there were about three armed and professional ones. In the middle of this procession was a very proud looking man. Who, by his uniform, must be the Ship’s Captain. This was the very man who I’d be trusting to fly us through space in