An Infinity of Stars - SF Smackdown

Under Saturnian Skies

Art dropped his ship out of trans-space and smiled as the stars re-appeared on the viewscreen. With the ship rapidly slowing from near lightspeed to a more sedentary pace, the red tinge to them disappeared as the temporal distortion effects reduced.

“That’s better. Normal space is always nicer than the grey nothing we seem to spend too much time in these days. Eh Melrin?”

There was no reply, so Art flicked a fingernail at the robot that lurked on the control panel near his arm, eliciting a small ‘ting’ sound that rang through the cramped cabin of the cruiser. “Melrin… come on you cantankerous old sod, I’m talking to you.”

A muffled voice came from the bot. “I know you’re talking to me, and I’m ignoring you. I’m charging you moron, bog off and bother someone else.”

“There isn’t anyone else, as you well know, you grumpy old arachnid. Look, you can see Neptune’s rings. It won’t be long before we’re home.”

The metallic blob sprouted eight legs, and eight eyes swirled into life on the polished metal surface. Disconnecting from the ship’s power node the metallic spider scuttled over the controls to take a look at the viewscreen.

“Lovely. Very nice: very blue. When are we getting home?”

“You may be obscenely clever Mel, but you have no appreciation for beauty.”

“Beauty lies in mathematics and physics, not in colour and form.”

“I’ll tell Gwen you said that.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. Threaten me with the sarcastic and caustic tongue of your wife. She keeps calling me an ‘ant’. Blasted woman.”

“And she’ll be pleased to see you too, just don’t scuttle up to her and try and give her a hug like you did last time, she’s not quite got used to your new form yet.”

“It’s practical.”

“It’s a spider big enough to ride on, Melrin. It’s bound to freak a few people out.”

“Their problem: not mine.” The bot scuttled back to its docking port and withdrew its legs, refusing to engage in any further conversation.

Art sighed. It’d been some time since they’d last been home. The frontier wars always seemed to rumble on interminably. This time though they’d scored a major victory against the mixed forces of the Aengle and the frontier, for now at least, was stable. Leaving his commanders to mop up the after battle carnage, he’d grabbed his cruiser and headed home.

Thankfully travel in T-space was almost instantaneous, the drive folding space to allow travel between points. Melrin had once explained it to him in purely theoretical terms - causing a headache and several blank looks - but the best analogy he'd come across so far in his eventful life was from an old drunken physics professor in a bar, who had jokingly described his explanation as 'string' theory.

“Get a piece of string. Imagine travelling from one end to the other. That's conventional near-lightspeed travel. Now, pick up the string and scrunch it up in your hand. If you look at your string now it touches at various points, we can travel where it touches. Now imagine a massively long piece of string but you can control where it touches. Touch one end of your string / journey to the other and you cut out the loop of travel in between. Simple, give or take a little bit of physics.”

The old drunk had then chuckled and said, "Mind you, if your flight computer goes wrong, you could end up anywhere, or possibly everywhere. It’s best not to spread yourself too thinly.”

The 'everywhere' comment had always haunted him, and no matter how short the T-space journey, he always breathed a sigh of relief when the colour warped stars took over from the blank nothingness of folded space.