Part Twelve, Chapter Two - Hyperspace is Boring

In most works, faster-than-light travel, whether done through warp drives or hyperspace or a dimensional portal or whatever, is a bit of a narrative event no matter how mundane it may be in the setting.  It's a leap into the unknown, a way to describe the mechanics of your universe, and there's usually blurring starfields of dazzling tunnels of energy involved.  For movies it's an excuse to have some neat special effects, give the guys watching in the theater a real show, like they're the ones blasting off.  Writers have it a little harder in that they lose the visual medium, but unlike filmmakers they don't have a special effects budget, so the only limits are their imagination and ability to express themselves. 

Hubbard chooses to show the effects of the infamous Will-be Was "time drives" mainly through automated warning messages, like the "fasten seat belt" signs that light up on an airplane.

Gris is strapped into his cot, a nervous wreck coming down from his high and trying to shake himself to pieces.  Then warning lights flash on the wall - I guess through a projector - FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS!  And then DO NOT MOVE!  SHIFTING TO TIME DRIVE!  Then HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS UNBALANCED.  There's a brief moment when Gris feels like "weights were wrenching" at him, there's a flash as they break the light barrier, but before too long the "hypergravity" gets balanced again and the signs declare that it's safe to move around.

That's it. 

Gris spends the next sixteen hours watching the room's clock, wishing for the sweet release of death from his drug-induced spasms.  A crewman comes in at some point to give him a drink, which Gris is grateful for until he decides he'd rather have died of thirst.  Then he gets heart palpitations, and then a headache.

The most Gris has to say about the Will-be Was engines is that they aren't as smooth as warp drives, and the occasional jerks really hurt his head.  But mostly he's aching from the shakes.  And he stays in his cot for a total of thirty-six hours after launch, with occasional food and drink from crewmen.  No mention of potty breaks.

Just when he's starting to feel better, the MIDPOINT VOYAGE warning pops up, declaring that the ship is now decelerating.  The FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS warning flashes again before a moment of zero-G, then the hypergravity synthesizers... reverse?  And the whole room gimbals around so it's reversed?

Well, this confusion is certainly a refreshing break from the boredom.  So, even though this spaceship has artificial gravity that's able to completely nullify the effects of lift-off from a planetary surface, the act of decelerating in deep space requires that the rooms swivel around?  How would this help?  My car seat doesn't reverse every time I squeeze the brakes, nor when I put it in reverse (in case this is one of those spaceships that has to spin around and fire its engines in the opposite direction to decelerate).  And if the passengers are already strapped in, why does it matter which way their chairs are facing?

I need to dig through some "classic" sci-fi and see if this was a common idea.  I guess I'm just spoiled from Star Trek and Star Wars, I've never put this much thought into whether or not my spaceship's furniture should swivel around.

With a howl the time drives disengage, the ship's systems compensate for the deceleration, and it's safe to move around again.  Gris, nauseated from the moment of weightlessness, takes the opportunity to read the mysterious letter he found in his pocket.  There's two notes - the first advises him how an enclosed five-pointed amulet can be used to control the formerly-pirate crew through electroshocks and "hypnopulses," the second is a warning from Lombar Hisst that Gris' going away party for Mission Earth almost got him killed, but Hisst decided to stay the order.

So Gris gets to freak out about the possibly of an assassin stowed away on the ship.  He gets up to toss the letter in the disintegrator, but gets zapped by static, even though he's wearing that insulated pressure suit Heller gave him specifically to avoid such issues.

Even the ship was striking at me!

I collapsed on a bench and wept.

Aww.  This is the first time I get to say "the chapter ends with Gris feeling miserable" for the new book.

A few more notes, though - there's a footnote in this chapter from the translator, explaining why curses have been (bleep)ed out.  In it a Monte Pennwell is also mentioned as a contributor, so I finally know what that name was on the map pages.

Also, we get our - drumroll please - first theological reference explained!  The star-shaped pendant Gris got is "one of the religious kind," depicting "the God Ahness, the one they pray to to avert underhanded actions."  ...Okay, maybe "explained" was a bit much.  But at least one of the Gods or Devils or Hells that Gris is mentioning actually has a name now.  A name that I'm pretty sure will pop up later as an explanation of where we humans get the word "honest."

I'm wondering if I should have mentioned what color the warning messages where.  They varied from orange to purple to red and beyond, but there's no mention of those "hyperluminal" colors the translato-bot discussed in the book's intro.

Still no explanation as to how these "time drives" actually propel a spaceship, but there's plenty of chapters left in the book, eh?


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