Joseph Lazzarro - Ben Franklin's Spaceship

Silence on a spacecraft is a heart-stopping sound, for it means the air scrubbers have ceased working. Captain Jakeson snapped his eyes open and in the dim emergency lighting saw his clothes floating in a free-fall in the center of his cabin.

“Damn! The engines are dead!” Holding onto the edge of his bunk, he stabbed at the intercom button to call: “Bridge!”

The speaker remained silent.

He glanced out his window and saw that the giant saucer-shaped antenna was still intact. She looked like an umbrella towing a beer can. Franklin was the first electric powered spaceship, driven by microwave energy beamed across space. She converted the radiant energy into electricity, powering the ion engine complex. He had felt proud to be her master, setting new records of speed and endurance. The Franklin was the only ship that could travel funder constant acceleration, a fact that was driving the other aerospace transportation and supply companies out of their collective minds. It also changed the economics of Earth-Mars travel, substituting high-value goods for their usual passenger load. Indeed, a good chunk of the company’s net worth was tied up in this single cargo. Because of the sheer value of the mission, Jakeson had resigned himself months earlier to the possibility that his brand new ship just had to be the target of corporate and political intrigue.

Fear, determination, and a slight edge of anger filled his mind. He knew that in space, fear dulls your thinking and ultimately can kill. While easing out of the bunk he ran down a mental checklist that would isolate the cause of the power failure, and if it turned out to be sabotage he’d track it to the source with a vengeance.

Nobody screwed with his ship and got away with it!

He mentally backed up and reminded himself that the ship was of a new design and that all the bugs might not have been ironed out. He groped for the emergency flashlight and reviewed his position. With the engines out, the ship was well past turn-over, more than halfway to Mars. They were on battery power and could last only a short time.

Then a scraping noise from the stateroom entrance caught his attention and he heard the engineer ask: “Captain? You in there?”

“Yes, Smitty. Come in.”

Jakeson stood as the engineer opened the door. “All the displays just died. No intercom either.”

“You got any idea what caused this?”

“Not yet, Sir. Can’t tell anything until we get the computers back on-line. We’re working on that now.”

Jakeson pulled himself toward the stateroom door. “Have you seen any other crew?”

“Just Vinnie in the galley. He said he’d stay put until he’s needed somewhere else.”

Jakeson paused at the ladder leading upward. “Get back to the engineering section, and get ready to feed a report to Jonesie. I’m heading for the bridge.”

The emergency lights provided dim illumination at best, but he preferred their feeble glow to the total blackness of space. He tried to reason out the situation calmly, clinging to his training. He was damned sure that it was not yet time for the Franklin to go into free-fall. The computer had not announced any divergence in the flight plan, either routine or emergency, which normally proclaimed all course changes. He rifled through his brain, trying to come up with an answer.

The ship’s basic structure was not that complicated. Had the antenna complex malfunctioned, or lost its link with the transmitter? Or maybe one of the individual engines had failed, causing a system shutdown? There was no way to determine the trouble without the computers, and valuable seconds had already ticked away. At least he hadn’t heard or felt an explosion.

This was one of the “quiet” failures. Glancing up the ladder which ran the length of the ship, he saw a shadowed face looking down helplessly and bellowed: “You know what happened?”

“No, Sir, I—”

“Then stay put up there!”

He gently pulled himself up and headed for the bridge, hoping to find answers in the ship’s control center.

The bridge had a telescope and the communications antennas; the rectenna and ion engines were forward of that. He moved onward. There were no other crew members on the ladder to be seen, and he hoped they were all at their emergency stations by now. After what seemed to be an eternity he entered the bridge, its normally bright displays and computers all dark. The emergency lights barely lit the chamber, giving the scene a ghastly appearance as he spotted First Officer Suzanne Jones.

“Report!” he snapped.

Jonesie waited at her command console, a look of controlled concern playing across her face. “The first thing to determine is whether an engine failed, the rectenna malfunctioned, or if the beam stopped. I can’t give you any answers until the network comes back on-line. For the moment, we’re running on emergency battery power.”

“But why are the computers down?” Jakeson asked peevishly. “Aren’t the damn things running on uninterruptable power supplies?”

“Yes, they are, sir. I don’t have a good technical explanation. Perhaps a power spike went through the system?”

“Well, reboot the damned things and let’s have some answers.”

“I’m working on that. But it’ll be a few minutes, sir.”

There was nothing to do but wait, and Jakeson grudgingly strapped himself into his command seat, glaring at the dark display screens. He rolled his eyes to heaven, knowing how finicky computers could be, and with life hanging in the frigging balance. He could operate computers, but didn’t eat, sleep, and breathe the machines like Jonesie did. She was a total computer geek if there ever was one.

After a time, Jonesie floated over to Jakeson’s station. Her face showed some relief, but she still looked as if she’d tasted sour milk.

“We’ve managed to get the computers back on-line. Good thing someone around here does triple backups. From all the data, it looks like Earth’s orbital power station simply isn’t transmitting any longer.”

“You’re sure it’s not a problem on board the Franklin?”

“Yes, sir. The orbital microwave beamer must be out of action.”

“Hmmm.” Jakeson frowned. “I really don’t like that answer. We can only rely on battery power for a few days, and that’s only if we take almost everything off-line.”

“That’s my re commendation, sir.”

“Get ready to send a signal then. I want to transmit our current status back to base, and find out what the hell’s happening back there.”

Jonesie pulled herself back to her station. Flipping several switches, she spoke to Jakeson decisively. “You’re on the air!”

Jakeson used few words in describing their current situation. They were without engine power, but with no obvious structural damage. They were running on emergency battery power, but that power could last only a few days at best. He also requested an immediate status report from base. Then, as he locked the handset into place, he queried the revived computer and found that the message would take six minutes to reach Earth. It would be at least twelve minutes before he could expect an answer.

He looked up at Jonesie. “Keep the channel open. They may have already transmitted an explanation before we sent our question.”

The minutes dragged on. Smitty reported the intercom back on-line, adding that the engines were operational—they just lacked power. Twelve minutes came and went and stretched to fifteen, and just as Jakeson was about to transmit a second, heated request for information, the channel came alive.