The Star Puppy

By Jacek Izworski

We enter the world of the distant future of XXVII century, in which people live on average for 150 years, and interstellar travel takes place at speeds exceeding the speed of light (thanks to the discovery of Carnst particles of negative mass). The space expeditions have proved that life in the Universe exists, though not in the form it would be desired. Izworski leads us with a flourish through the fantastic worlds of encountered planets: on Tema we have a green sky, in Daruma's system the crew of "Horsedealer" encounters Wena - a globe with a water atmosphere, we also visit Earth-like Gorendia and other worlds with their peculiar flora.

 

We encounter a kulonik (an intelligent pet animal) named Kondias from the planet Chikeria.

We witness the collision of our civilization with representatives of aliens and can be a great way to practice diplomacy and attempt conflict resolution...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Royal Hawaiian Press
• Release date: Dec 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393117315

Book preview

PART I

EARS FROM STAR FIELD

To say that only the Earth is the patron of life is as senseless as to say that only one e­ar of wheat could grow in a large, sown field.

(Metrodorus of Chios)

CALMERIA

Earth - the cradle of reason, but can you always live in the cradle? These words uttered nearly eight hundred years ago by one of the pioneers of cosmic thought - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky - were on our lips when, standing in front of an external videophone, we watched the homeland of humanity, which we were just leaving going to the stars, dwindling on it. I think Gondra spoke it. Nobody answered her, only after a long moment Selim whispered:

Per aspera ad astra...

So the ancient Romans said so, I thought. Through hardships to the stars. Did any of them think that someday these words would take on such a beautiful, literal meaning?

Through the thorns to the stars...

I felt as if at that moment the whole path of humanity from the caverns to the stellar spaces was open to me.

The Horsedealer, the spacecraft in which we left Earth this time, flying first to Calmeria, the Alpha Centauri planet and then further into space, was only fifth in the first series of ultra-light research vehicles. There is to be ten of them and all of them have been given or will be given the names of people who once set milestones on the difficult path of cosmonautics development.

The first of this pleiad, Copernicus, could not, of course, have anything to do with cosmonautics, but the stopping of the sun and moving the earth by him were one of the groundbreaking facts in the history of mankind. By degrading the Earth from its center of the universe and only place of life, it sparked - first in literature, then in science - speculation about its other circles.

The second ship was named after Tsiolkovsky, the precursor of the space flight theory. This son of a Polish exile, operating somewhere in the depths of Russia, far from the cultural centers of that time, already in 1903 designed a rocket engine and scientifically substantiated the possibility of its use for interplanetary flights.

Both of these explorers are especially close to me, as I was born in Wrocław, in Poland, in today's area of the Central European cultural circle - what are the names that have been invented today for these historical areas?! And even, which is already rare, I know my native language, in my case Polish. In other areas it is also the same - interlingua prevails everywhere. It greatly facilitates interpersonal contacts, but it is a pity for the ancient languages...

The next great: Gagarin - the first in space, Armstrong - the first on the moon, and Horsedealer - the first man to set foot on another planet in 2044 - on Mars, do not require any additional recommendation. Today we reach for the stars, but the memory of these pioneers of space will never die.

The sixth figure in this row is a man certainly less symbolic, but probably more important for modern science - Carusto. It was he who in the first years of the twenty-second century discovered Carust particles of negative mass, moving at superlumination speed. The colossal significance of this discovery was recognized only three hundred years later. During Carusto's lifetime, he was completely unknown. We don't even know today if he was already thinking about using these particles to propel superluminal spacecraft. Janský, who discovered and popularized his works after three centuries, claims that he is, but according to today's historians of science it is rather doubtful. Well, Carusto lived at the turn of the 21st and 22nd centuries and if he had thought about it, he would have been ahead of his time almost like Leonardo da Vinci. Besides, Carusto's life fell on one of the most turbulent periods in human history.

You know perfectly well what happened then. The entire twenty-second century was lost to the search for the most appropriate line of development for a new, united world. It is hard to believe that there could have been so many concepts back then, often quite opposing each other. The beautiful slogans of freedom, equality and fraternity were sometimes in these theories only a cover for the proclamation of ideas completely contrary to them.

Even in the Supreme World Council, the predecessor of today's Supreme Cosmic Council, several concepts clashed. It was only the famous Brussels Conference of 2222-2225 that arranged everything and reconciled everyone. It is so easy to say today: arranged and reconciled... I can imagine what happened there then!

In any case, the United World Constitution passed at that time was approved by the people almost unanimously and is still in force today with only minor amendments, initiating a logicalism in which there are no more not only classes, but also politicians, and a kind of authority is performed by the best, comprehensively educated scientists. But soon it will probably be changed, if we want to help other civilizations - the Cosmic Worlds, or at least just exchange experiences with them, because such help would contradict the current principle that everything serves the good of Man. Even today, many people believe that it has become an anachronism, because when it was passed, nothing was known about the inhabitants of the Cosmic Worlds. It should be changed to Man is a friend of everything that is intelligent in the Universe. There has been an increasingly lively discussion on this topic, but so far, in contacts with other civilizations, the so-called principle of non-intervention still applies.

It is a pity that the entire XXII century was almost lost to space, and Carusto's groundbreaking works lay among the scraps for nearly three hundred years... Finally, the Czech became interested in them - then the nationality was still important - Janský, who came to a revolutionary conclusion that Carusto particles would give be used in the construction of an engine for superluminal ships. Theoretically, he even designed this engine, which is why it was dubbed the next Tsiolkovsky, and the seventh interstellar ship will bear his name.

But the road was still a long way from theory to practice... Only after almost two hundred years, in the third decade of the 26th century, a team of scientists from Amalthea under the guidance of the genius Ganimedan Andre Durant made the actual invention of the superlumination engine. Durant will be the ninth character in this line - and the eighth will be Mishina, the famous Taki Mishina, commander of the first human expedition to Alpha Centauri in the early twenty-sixth century. A one-way journey by the photon ship at that time lasted eight years, while today using the Jansky-Durant engine it takes less than six months, but the beginnings should never be underestimated - and I sometimes encounter such an attitude, most often youth. After all, without the first discoveries of Copernicus, Tsiolkovsky, Janský, without the first - how funny today - expeditions of Armstrong, Horsedeler, Makarov or Mishina, there would be no today's achievements in the conquest of space. I recently read the touching diary of Hans Rademacher, one of the Amalthenian time periodists, The Path to Human Development and recommend it to all who say that the whole story is just unnecessary ballast for the head.

I have deviated from the topic a bit, so I am returning to space expeditions. After the first successful trials of superluminescent ships between the solar system and the Alpha Centauri system - during which a base in Calmeria was established - the Supreme Council of Space decided that no matter if and when the previous expedition returned, every ten years will send to the next stars.

People are no longer satisfied with the Solar System, although it has probably not yet been 100% explored - after all, Veina, its fourteenth planet, was discovered only in 2504 - they wanted to fly further towards the stars...

Copernicus, the first harbinger of human civilization, set off on distant, previously unknown interstellar routes in 2650 and returned after eight years with enormous scientific achievements. The adventures of its crew are probably known to everyone, the entire solar system must have read their semantics, Nessos Burnis The first among the stars. And then I read it right away, even though I was only nine at the time and did not understand much of it. However, this book made a great impression on me and I decided then that I would also go to the stars one day. And as you can see - I flew!

Eighteen of the nineteen participants of the Copernicus expedition returned - Milan Korčić, their commander, became the first victim of distant stars. But the tenth super-light ship would be named after him.

The expedition of Tsiolkovsky lasted much shorter - less than three years - and was much less fortunate. Most of its participants died in the Procyon system, a few died on the way back from a strange disease they called dalebolia; only four survived the entire trip and returned to Earth, almost causing a great epidemic of dalebolia. To this day, moreover, there are enormous problems with the mold they brought, especially in the Moon, where they landed.

Since then, the ban on bringing anything from space has been tightened even more, and the cosmonauts and their ships have to quarantine in Calmeria. The composition and low density of the local atmosphere rather preclude the development of any living organisms outside our base.

Gagarin never returned and was recently officially declared missing. What happened to his crew - nobody knows. Have they all died? Or maybe - only the ship crashed, and the crew survived and lives somewhere, among the stars, on some unknown planet? There were twenty astronauts there, seven of them women, so if they were alive they might start a new society that we might encounter sometime in the future. If, however, one of the next expeditions did it, it would be a completely extraordinary coincidence, and it would take several dozen years for any information from them.

Armstrong just recently returned. It was the longest of the hyperlight expeditions to date - nine years - but at the same time quite unlucky and the most boring of all, having spent seven years in the hydrogen nebula, unable to get out of it. They actually accomplished only one thing: they studied the earliest stage of star formation. Yet Kelvin contraction! A bit different than it was once imagined, but still it! And that's it: confirmation of one of the old astronomy hypotheses. Always something, but did it give the participants of the expedition enough satisfaction? From their own statements, I conclude that not really. They also told me a lot about the trouble they had to get out of this nebula and how they finally managed to get out of there and with difficulty, in a damaged ship, to Calmeria - but the entire Solar System knows exactly their adventures in videophones.

The unknown fate of Gagarin and the unfortunate returns of Tsiolkovsky and Armstrong did not discourage people from penetrating into space. It was only decided to slightly limit the number of people participating in the next expedition. Ultimately, thirteen of us flew on Horsedealer:

John Smiles - cosmonavigator, expedition commander;

Nikos Satrenzis - First Pilot, Deputy Commander;

Janis Karnaviczius - co-pilot;

Natalia Smith - astronavigator;

Patrick Smith - her husband, a cybemetic engineer;

Bango Kayala - Patrick's deputy, mechanic;

Gondra Dumbadze - astrophysicist and climatologist;

Ramin Kerged - a geologist from Mars;

Sogar Bonkirson - a chemist from Ganymede;

Lao Teh - zoologist;

Karel Strouhal - botanist;

Selim Neljari - semanticist;

and me, Helena Borek - a doctor.

We started the trip with the traditional flight from Earth to Calmeria in Alpha Centauri. Because there are speed limits in and around the solar system, while we can exceed the speed of light up to thirty times, this flight will take almost three months. This is the final test for the ship and its crew. The base on Calmeria is the last point where cosmonauts can rest before their journey into the unknown. Moreover, during these three months, and at Calmeria itself at the latest, final decisions had to be made on the further flight program. After leaving Calmeria, the ship completely loses contact with our world. Of course, the main direction of the expedition is set on Earth, but if the crew deems a program correction necessary, they must present it before leaving the base.

All this is very approximate, because the crew of the ship, having no connection with the human world after leaving Calmeria, must act as it is dictated by the conditions, and these no one can ever predict in advance. If an expedition did not return, like the expedition of Gagarin, unfortunately no one would be looking for it, as it would resemble the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. Therefore, each of Man's forays into these distant interstellar trails is perhaps the greatest of all possible lotteries. One needs not only to know a lot, not only to be brave, but also to have this proverbial stroke of luck to get out of the many dangers that may appear in the most unlikely form. We do have safeguards: force fields, pulsers and others, but still there - among the stars - no luck, no succes...

Will our trip have it? Will thirteen, formerly regarded as an unlucky number, prove lucky for us? Nobody knows that yet, although everything that was humanly possible was done to make it happen.

*

We reached Calmeria uneventful. I think I will always remember the ovation reception they gave to the Horsedealer for the local researcher. Nosar Baran, the commander of our Calmerian crew, gave a beautiful, touching welcome speech. And how interesting were the news from the solar system! You should have seen them rush to the journals and letters we had brought.

I am not surprised by them, but I am surprised that some of us laughed at it. They did not understand what it meant to live in such conditions for several or more years. And yet, among the inhabitants of Calmeria, there are also those who, after working off a certain number of years, do not take the opportunity to return to the solar system, wanting to return there only in old age. I imagined myself in the place of the Calmerians and concluded that I would have behaved similarly if I had had such rare contacts with the world. What will it be like when we come back here in a few or a dozen years? - I thought right away. We will come back after such a long absence... And then we will not know what happened during that time...

Of course, I try not to admit to myself that we might - we might not come back. Optimism in the profession of a cosmonaut, and especially an interstellar cosmonaut, must be a professional trait, because doubt is half a defeat.

According to the program established on Earth, we were to fly towards the Northern Crown. It is true that Gagarin had already flew in the same direction, but there was virtually no chance for its return. Even if - let's say - their ship crashed, and they survived and live on some alien planet, the chances of finding them are very small, but if they don't come back, our trip will be the first to explore that area.

The ultimate goal of our journey was the planetary systems of the two suns belonging to the constellation of the Northern Crown: the stars Daruma and Kokeshi visible from Earth side by side, although in fact the first of them is thirty light-years away, the second - seventy.

The closer we were to say goodbye to Calmeria and the human world, the more nervous we got. Each of us thought a lot about our relatives who remained far away in the solar system. I thought about my family, especially the parents I left behind on Earth. I am the youngest in my family - I was born when they were almost a hundred years old. Now I'm not forty yet, but they are old. Will I see them again when I return? I do not know, because we live for about 150 years, sometimes, rarely until 175. It is hard to believe that even in the twentieth age, turning a hundred years old was a great phenomenon, and a 50-year-old woman could no longer have children. Compared to that period it is twice as long as human life, but what is it on a cosmic scale? Little.

The oldest among us are John and Janis. The commander enjoys great authority. He is 98 years old, has enormous professional experience, was supposed to fly on the Armstrong, but something prevented him from doing so. Janis is not much younger than him - 89 years old. He has been with John for probably forty years and they are a perfect pair. All the other participants of our expedition, except Selim, about sixty, are young people, aged 33 (Gondra) to 44 (Bango). But enough of these record data. I go back to the description of our last days in Calmeria.

The day after the deliberation where we finally decided on the future direction of our expedition. Nikos, Janis, Patrick, Natalia and the commander locked themselves for a dozen or so hours in the room next to the wheelhouse, where the CUPA - Computer of Universal Piloting and Astronawigation stands. For me, who knows Polish, this abbreviation sounded terrible, so I called him Winnie and this name was adopted on the ship. The idea was to program Winnie to fly towards Daruma so that later only minor changes could be introduced, possibly resulting from the development of the situation. At superluminal speeds, a man is not able to guide the ship himself, with backlighting the computer is also a great help for him, but it must be programmed in advance. It also has the disadvantage that it leads the ship dispassionately, aiming straight at the target for which it is programmed and, as a rule, ignoring the surroundings, even the most interesting, as long as it does not pose a threat to the ship. Therefore, when the cationic spectarons register something interesting, humans command the computer to slow down below the speed of light, and then take over the ship themselves.

Spectar is now the only window to the world for a superluminous vessel, and that of a fairly limited range. Admittedly, with proper adjustment, each lump of matter can be seen on its screen in a uniform scale for a few minutes, which is usually enough to make a decision, but all this is not satisfactory. If these ultrafast Carusto particles, these cations, had a longer lifetime - then it would be easier, and perhaps even possible, to use them in communication with the superluminous ships that we so lack, but yes... Therefore, there is no this connection, therefore also the fastest means of transmitting information from Calmeria to the solar system is... a simple letter, written on paper, as in the old days. These letters are then thrown into a special box - just like in the Early Atomic Era or even earlier! And then carried away by various ships supplying the base with everything it needs to live.

During Winnie's programming, the other participants of the Horsedealer expedition were just writing letters. We didn't do it a lot because we were not used to it, because today, in the era of videophones and video walls, who still writes letters? Only Calmerians, I guess. Somehow, however, I put together a letter to my parents, although after a few days I did not quite remember what was in it - certainly information about the direction we chose to penetrate the cosmos, certainly a description of Calmeria with appreciation for its inhabitants, and probably also a lot of unnecessary comments and details.

We did nothing the next day. Nothing, literally nothing. We still walked around Calmeria, but our thoughts were already far away. We were already among the stars, among the Unknown, that was waiting for us there. Time was dragging on us like never before. Only the commander and Nikos were doing some more errands at the base, and Patrick and Bango checked some devices for the thousandth time. The rest of the participants of the expedition tried to do something - some played chess or watered-down, making a double-sided error after error, others carelessly browsing some books, or, like me, while sitting in the booths watching movies, we really all thought about one thing:

What awaits us down there in the depths of space?

Only the future will provide an answer to this question.

START IN THE UNKNOWN

Saying goodbye to Calmeria was really touching. The start of the Horsedealer was scheduled for 12 EMT - Earth Mean Time, once called Greenwich, valid everywhere officially, regardless of the local, sometimes completely crazy, time systems of the various celestial bodies, mostly based on a decimal division of the local day. Though it was not long after midnight at the local time, all the residents of the base were present.

A short farewell speech was made by Nosar Baran, then John Smiles spoke equally touchingly, though even shorter, and then we were given flowers, which meant that we were surprised and emotional for a long time to utter a word. Where do the flowers in Calmeria come from, in such different conditions?! But the inhabitants of the base did not want to reveal their secret to us. Their flowers were obviously less durable than those of the Earth and almost odorless, but I don't remember a gift as touching as these thirteen flowers - one for all of us... Then we sang the Interstellar Hymn:

Among thousand of the stars

There is also the sun,

The Earth is revolving around.

On Earth, people

They grew up in hard work,

Amidst many, many changes.

Once they did not know

Their whole land,

When they learned about it,

They started out into space

Go further and further

And they spread life.

We have already won

Solar system,

And today we are throwing

A challenge to the stars.

We're tempting today

A dangerous fate,

But the future - of people

will find among the stars.

We don't want any longer

To be in home already!

Earth behind us,

The stars - ahead of us,

We're flying into space

Expand knowledge -

Or maybe a new

reason will we meet?

Or maybe a new reason will we meet?...

So far, our discoveries in this field have been few. Copernicus has found three civilizations, but two of them are not much higher than the Neanderthals, and the third - Sarn-Gehir - so strange to us that establishing real contact with them will probably not be easy. Tsiolkovsky did not manage to find anything except lizards from the Mesozoic Era, and also this famous mold. What the Horsedealer would find - nobody knew yet; therefore, when we sang the ending of the Hymn while standing in suits on the Calmerian Cosmodrome, each of us thought about the possibility - with hope, but also with a certain fear, what such a meeting would bring.

With only a quarter of an hour left to departure, Nosar Baran said once more:

"See you, friends. I don't say goodbye, because

I believe you will come back. We will wait for you. Bye!"

Then he walked along our line and shook hands with each of us. When he shook the hand of the last of us, the commander, he began to move away quickly, and we began to enter the Horsedealer's lock. Patrick was the first to disappear in it, then me, then everyone else. The commander was last to enter, who turned once more before entering, waved his hand and shouted:

Bye!

The commander closed the airlock. In the blink of an eye it was completely dark, but the light came on automatically. The hiss of the blown air lasted several seconds. When it stopped, the inner door opened, and we went inside after taking off our suits.

As the dwindling Calmerian figures disappeared into the spotlight, John Smiles said:

Crew to positions.

Of course, that didn't apply to me or the scientists. Both pilots and Natalia went to the wheelhouse, Patrick and Bango - to the adjoining room where Winnie was standing. On the other side of the wheelhouse there was a small room connected to it, the commander's office, where John Smiles liked to work. Now he also entered this office and soon said:

There are only three minutes left to take off. Scientists please go to the booths and lie down there. There will be a lot of acceleration, although it will be largely absorbed by the gravitators, but you will almost certainly feel bad at first.

As I lay down in my cabin, I looked at both videophones: the outer one, which now showed only a still landscape, the surface of the spaceport equal to the table, brightened by a huge reflector, which was also a beacon for ships arriving in Calmeria, and the inner one, where I saw John Smiles, giving the time:

Thirty seconds to departure... twenty... fifteen... ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... ZERO, Go!

START!

We took off!

What we all dreamed of since childhood has become reality. We flew to conquer the stars!

The spaceport filled the screen for several seconds, gradually expanding. The peaks of the surrounding mountains flashed before my eyes, and Calmeria stayed behind us. Before us was the Cosmos - an abyss into which one could fall for all eternity, fly billions of years without reaching the bottom, a land of frost and darkness, occasionally interrupted by the lights of stars and distant galaxies. However, I did not feel lost in this unlimited space, on the contrary, I was thinking with pride about the power of the Man who had already started sending interstellar ships...

And suddenly I felt bad. The incompletely cushioned overload, the sleepless night, and the nerves all made me feel very weak now. A few minutes later I was asleep.

When I woke up, we were very far from Calmeria. It was just one of the many millions of luminous points on the black background of the sky. We were just passing Hesperia, the last of the five planets of Alpha Centauri. This large globe, unnecessary to anyone at the moment, was pitted with huge fissures stretching for hundreds of kilometers and gave a very unpleasant impression: a frozen clot of atoms, reminiscent of the ice end of the world after the last star went out. But reason, not even a human mind, will certainly cope with it.

We spent the whole day doing normal after-care activities, and I sat in the wardroom with a few others the next morning. We played bridge a bit, talked, and around eleven I got up and went to the galley to make lunch for everyone. First, I took them to the commander and Janis. As I stepped out of the wheelhouse, I glanced at the speedometer. The pointer already reached the number 295, but I knew that in the light range that is in the range from 290 to 300 thousand kilometers per second, it is very difficult to accelerate the ship, because its relative mass increased significantly. Were it not for the antiphoton motor, it would become practically infinite in the vicinity of a light point, and time - also of course relative - zero. This is what caused the greatest difficulties for the constructors of the first superluminators, starting with Janský. Fortunately, André Durant's team constructed a device, not very strictly called an antiphoton engine, capable of reversing this relationship, but only above 298,500 km/sec. Now mass was almost zero and time was almost infinity at a point of light. But that was not everything. Can you imagine infinite or even just almost infinite time? We would be old and die in a matter of seconds. The AIT - Amalthean Institute of Time came to the rescue.

I've always been interested in what was going on there. But it is Amalthea - the fifth largest moon of Jupiter - that is the only natural celestial body that is forbidden to enter without a special NRK pass. There is the AIC and several other, equally important plants, reporting directly to the Science Committee of the NRK, among them also the FVCP - Faster-than-light Vessel Construction Plant, where our Horsedealer was built. But why is AIC located right there instead of on Earth, where it would be easier to study the history of past eras? I didn't really understand it, it was only Patrick who explained it to me, the only one of us who was there as a participant in the construction works of the Horsedealer and a student of time technology courses. Well, this is because on Earth too easy access to time travel would have unauthorized persons who could trigger - accidentally or intentionally - colossal chronoclasmas, i.e. changes in human history. And while the principle of non-intervention in the cosmos should be respected - at least for the time being, as it will probably be abolished over the years - it just has to be over time, otherwise an indescribable chaos would reign in history. That is why the time base is located on Amalthea, where in special vehicles they first go back in time as far as they like, and then go to Earth and begin to study the epoch. Their ships were once thought of as flying saucers.

The AIC also constructed a Verey generator, which was also installed in the Horsedealer. It is it that first accelerates our time, then slows it down near a light point, and finally changes negative time to positive time after switching to faster-than-light. However, I am not going to describe all these processes in detail here, because I know myself only very generally about it. To this day, there are still many unsolved issues.

But enough about the time, it's time to come back to Horsedealer - into space.

After breakfast, Patrick said that he had to be with Winnie for some time before crossing the speed of light and he left the room. Ten of us stayed and tried to talk about something, but we all thought about the upcoming transition to faster-than-light and the conversation didn't go well, though we weren't as nervous as we were on this last night in Calmeria.

The buzzer of the videophone was finally heard at 12.10. After pressing the button, the face of the commander appeared on the screen, who said:

Well, dear ones, the solemn moment is approaching – transgression the speed of light. I invite you to join us for the ‘cosmic baptism’.

We all waited for it impatiently, so we went straight to the wheelhouse. It is true that we experienced it already during the journey from Earth to Calmeria, but then we were still in the area already developed by people. We were now crossing the threshold of the Unknown... So, we postponed our cosmic baptism