Beyond The Blue

By Kent Mason

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Kent Mason
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-1479-7

Chapter One

As Dyane was leaving the shop his personal phone rang. Taking it out of the case at his waist he checked to see who was calling. "What's up Ern?" he asked.

"On my way to the Snake Pit for a cold one. Why don't yuh meet me there? I'm buying."

"That's the case I'll be there. See yuh there."

"See yuh there."

The Snake Pit was a beer bar on the base where any man in uniform could buy a drink, regardless of his age. The building was a perfectly round structure built of bamboo. The thing would have looked at home on a tropical island but it looked grossly out of place where it was in the dry desert country of New Mexico.

He found Ern sitting at a small table away from the crowd.

"Well whutta yuh think of the con-trap-shun?" Ern asked in his best imitation of Colonel Miller's voice. "Will she fly?"

"What do I think?" Dyane contemplated his next words. "Impressive-will she fly-uh she's mighty big."

"We've gotta fly er. We've got our orders."

"Yes we have." Dyane said. "So we'll fly er. Just seems so big."

"We said that same thing about the N. class when we first saw it."

"The N. is a runt compared to this thing. By the way what have you been doing all day?"

"Been monitoring the information coming in from the Betsy Ross. Veeery interesting. They say that planet shows all the signs of having an atmosphere, water and plant life. If that's true there's a very good chance we will find living creatures there."

"What do you think about taking marines with us?" Dyane asked. "Why do we need an armed guard? We carry weapons. The ship is armed. We can protect ourselves. Think they know something we don't know?"

"About there being mean people or mean animals there?" Ern asked.

"It's just that since cuss-ix was formed no ship has ever taken an armed guard with them. Now we have to. Makes me wonder."

"You think they're keeping secrets?" Ern asked. "Naw.-No way you know the military would never do anything like that. If they did have secrets would they have let me sit there at that computer all day monitoring every word that came in from the Betsy Ross?"

"It just seems strange to me." Dyane said.

"I agree. It is unusual. Here's something else for you to chew on. The Marines will be commanded by a first lieutenant, a guy named Hardy, but a Marine major named Jacobson will be going. He is an expert linguist, knows a whole lot about a whole bunch of languages. Knows what he's talking about in a dozen or more. A real brain-e-ack when it comes to languages. Why is he going? We will have a translator box with us why can't it do the job?"

Dyane knew that the translator box Ern referred to was a small computerized box that contained every language, dialect and accent on earth. If the operator wanted something translated into any language, say Spanish for instance he only had to enter the code for Spanish into the box. Then he could speak into the receiver in any other language on earth and the box would repeat his words back to him in Spanish. When it picked up the sound of someone speaking in any language known on earth it could then translate what had been said into any other language known on earth. No one knew how it would work trying to translate a language it was not familiar with. A language not known on earth.

"Well if we do meet up with some real folks out there they probably won't talk like we do. Their language may be different than any language on earth. A language brain-e-ack may come in mighty handy. He may be smarter than the box, or he may be able to get it to do something we can't get it to do."

"Think about this." Ern said. "What if we should meet up with people who don't talk at all? Who are like animals and don't have any language? We could kick this back and forth until we wear it out and still not come up with a sensible answer."

"And" Dyane contemplated. "If we were to ask we would most likely run up against that mother of all military cop outs. The one about that being on a need to know basis." Dyane had been in the U. S. Air Force and CUSSEC long enough to know that it was futile to question any decision made by the upper echelon. 'Ours is not to wonder why.' The words were burned into his mind. He had long ago lost track of the number of times he had heard them repeated.

"In the end." Ern said. "We will just go and do our jobs like good little mushrooms. The answers will be given to us when the time is right."

Later that evening Dyane lay in his bunk in the base officer's quarters intently studying the tech manual pertaining to the new version of the Warner Omega thrust engine. He was very interested in the modifications and improvements that had been made to the engine. The original version of the engine which was used in all N class ships would sometimes overheat when operated at or near maximum horse power for extended periods of time. He had encountered the problem himself when on the return leg of his second flight the temperature on number three engine had increased to the point that he had been forced to bring that engine down to an idle speed to allow it to cool down. Several times he had made an attempt to put that engine back on line with the other three but each time he tried the needle on the temperature gauge would start to edge up toward the danger zone. They had been forced to make the last two months of that flight with that engine operating at 35% of normal power output. This had delayed their D. O. R. [Date of return to earth] by ten days.

Several other ships had encountered the same problem. One flight had been aborted when only three months out from earth two of their engines overheated forcing them to turn around and return to earth.

The manual simply stated that the overheating problems encountered in the earlier Omega engines had been addressed and corrected. Dyane was not satisfied with this explanation. In his thinking it was no explanation at all. He wanted to know exactly what had been done to correct the problem. If he should encounter a problem with an engine overheating out there in space a first hand knowledge of what changes the factory had made to address and correct the original problem could help him to deal with any problems he may run into in the future.

An intimate knowledge of every single part in those engines would go a long way toward helping him do his job. He made a mental note to himself. 'Ask Colonel Miller who he could talk to in order to get the information he felt he needed.'

The next two weeks were busy, hectic times for Dyane. His days were spent at the shop observing the work being done there. At night he would return to his quarters where he would lie awake until long past midnight doing his best to absorb every last bit of information he could find in the tech manuals Pertaining to the operation and maintenance of the X. class ship.

Dyane called Colonel Miller's office and made an appointment to see the Colonel. When he and the skipper were alone in Miller's office He explained his misgivings about the wording in the tech manual pertaining to the overheating problem in the Omega engine. "Sir." He explained. "The book states that the problem was addressed and corrected. That's all it says and-."

"And you would like to know more. You want to know what the problem was. Not just that it has been fixed. Is that it?"

"Yessir.-Since I'm going to be in charge of operating those engines. I want to know...