The Stars Came Back (74 page)

Wait… You mean books are not supposed to have sound tracks? NOW you tell me. Shish.

The following six pictures are:
Cross section

Side view
Top view
C-deck (LG is Landing Gear)

B-deck (also called
middeck)

A-deck (also called top deck)

The story proper takes place starting in 2655. Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel was discovered in the late 21st C, but there is no FTL
communication
, so star systems are still connected similarly to the 18th century days of sail, with message-drones and ships carrying data and people between stars, often taking days, weeks, or even months for flights. Explorers might be out of touch for many months. Thousands of star systems and planets have been explored, and some have been partially terraformed. A supernova at Eta Carinae disrupted subspace enough that FTL was shut down for several centuries, and each terraformed planet (and planets that were still very much “in progress”) and colony had to survive (or not) on its own. This was known as “the deep dark” or “the big blackout”, as well as by several other names. Places still inaccessible are often referred to as being “in the dark” or “in The Deep.” This story takes place after things have quieted down a bit and stars are “coming back,” meaning FTL travel is once again possible in some places. However, subspace is like a stormy ocean, and “swirls” in it can make FTL flights faster, or slower, than normal, or even shut them down altogether for a while.

Cultural note: the dominate cultures out among the stars are the descendants from former British Colonies, but there are scattered colonies from various other places as well.

Brief bit on the terraforming technology: Earth found a number of star systems that had apparently had planets moved around to place roughly Earth-sized rocky planets into the water-zone orbiting the star, sometimes even two or three of them, in stable orbits. Some were planet-sized moons, some ordinary planets. The unknown aliens that moved them were dubbed “Planet Movers.” The only traces Planet Movers left were the evidence of moved and somewhat engineered planets, and a message they engraved into the rock on each planet. The text of the message was always the same, but the surrounding “decorations” have some variations on a theme - chains, interlocking gears, and what appeared to be swords and spears. There is no consensus of any sort what the message means or says.

Humans
recreated how their technology worked to terraform a planet was as follows:

First, a
set of twelve giant gravity field benders that looked like huge three-prong tuning forks are placed in two sets of three orthogonal pairs. These could bend or manipulate the planet’s gravity enough to alter orbit, rotation, and core spin, in order to move it to the desired distance from a star, give it an approximately 24 hour day, a proper axial tilt (20-25 degrees), and a spinning core to generate a strong magnetic field (to protect the atmosphere from the solar wind).

While this happen
s, numerous giant automated ships (~1km diameter) called Gas Transport Spheres would ship hydrogen from a local gas giant to the planet, where they would land on top of a terraforming platform (TFP) that was grinding up vast quantities of rock (mostly silicates and carbonates) and extracting the oxygen to mix with the hydrogen to make water. A largely automated manufacturing process is set up on each planet to make a bunch of the terraforming machines (the goal was a hundred or more per planet). The terraforming machines were designed to also be similar to colony ships to establish life on the planets while they engineering the surface and atmosphere, kind of like a high-speed genesis - air, water, bacteria and algae, simple multi-cellular forms like grasses and seaweeds, then working up through more complex species as conditions allowed, starting with grazers and filter-feeders, etc. Each TFP had a population of dozens to hundreds of self-supporting colonists. Some colonies that were going strong survived the big dark just fine, some promptly expired, a few squeaked through. So, there are several hundred potential colonize-able planets, some with thriving colonies, some abandoned, some still being terraformed on total automatic.

Original opening series of scenes (for screen-play, deleted)

Roll Credits

A series of
short scenes showing the development of space flight and the expansion to other star systems and the subsequent terraforming.

● 
Stock footage of the first flight

● 
Stock footage of jet aircraft

● 
Stock footage of the space shuttle

● 
Footage of modern space craft heavy-lift rocket

● 
A glowing and turbulent star within the nebula Eta Carinae

● 
A smallish near future space craft orbits around Saturn with moons in background

● 
A large space station orbiting Mars with arriving and departing spacecraft

● 
A spacecraft moving fast (relative to a space-station), surrounded by a glow, space around it glows a bit more intensely, then it disappears as it transitions to FTL, and the glow fades

● 
Eta Carinae even more roiling and violent looking

● 
A large spacecraft around alien (more reddish) sun and planets

● 
Lots of ships around alien sun/planet/moons

● 
A pair of massive ships (terraforming platform, or TFP) that look like a cross between the
Titanic
, a sandcrawler, and a giant tunnel-boring rock drill landing on a planet and starting to grind and plow through the crust with a large spherical “balloon” (gas-transport sphere, or GTS) sticking out of the top. In the distant background a large three-pronged “tuning-fork” equipment sticks in the air.

● 
A line of GTSs coming up from the atmosphere of a gas giant

● 
A GTS landing on top of the TFP. Another is pulling away from another TFP in the background. A huge amount of water streams out of the TFP’s stern, and sand and blocks of metal shoot out from the sides on conveyor belts. Camera pans over to reveal, then pulls away from, a man in a space-suit standing at a stern railing of the closest one, looking at water streaming through the trench the TFP has dug, and water in it; camera pulls further out to show the planet is crisscrossed with similar channels, some leading to a small sea and some ending on other TPFs with a couple of the GTSs moving to and away from them. The top of the TFP is covered with clear domes full of plants, and the CAT logo in 50m tall letters can be seen. It looks like humans are taking over the galaxy.

● 
A fly-by scene of an obviously non-earth colony being built on a new world and small cities on an alien planet

● 
The star in Eta Carinae roils, convulses, then goes nova, screen goes white

End credits

Original Ending (deleted)

EXT - NIGHT - Deep space

Two ships,
Tajemnica
and the Planet Mover ship drift near each other in the near total darkness, barely lit by the nearest star a few billion miles away.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - aboard
Tajemnica
cargo bay

It is empty and silent.

CUT TO bridge

It is empty and silent

CUT TO engineering

It is empty and silent

CUT TO officers’ mess

It is empty and silent

CUT TO galley

It is empty and silent

CUT TO a view of a screen, somewhere on the ship

On it is a view of the stars. It shifts to the Planet Mover avatar, who has a sad look on his face.

Planet Mover: Your entire crew, for a
third
time? There are no words… They seemed like such nice people. So much potential. My condolences… But as you say, the threat of that madman and his followers are no more. Will you try again?

Silence is his only reply.

FADE TO BLACK