To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn M. Drennan

Author:Kathryn M. Drennan [Drennan, Kathryn M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 16

Catherine Sakai hit save and exited the database. The final planetary stop on her itinerary, UTC67-02C, code-name Mjollnir, was now just an entry on her flight log and a closed report awaiting delivery to the Ops ship that awaited her on the other side of a jump gate four days away.

She had never felt happier to be in hyperspace and this first day had been just as uneventful as her last two planetary stops had been. Uneventful, but not unsuccessful. Mjollnir had proved as bounteous as Glasir, more than offsetting her disappointing fourth stop at UTC59-02B, aka Skirnir. Two successes out of five tries was a very high percentage under any circumstances. Sky dancer was bulging from the collected mass of rich soil and rock samples she was bringing back along with her detailed reports and data compilations, which she figured should make everyone happy.

And she had encountered absolutely nothing out of the ordinary at these last two planets, enabling her to set aside thoughts of mysterious destructive aliens in favor of geology, chemistry, and orbital mechanics, subjects she much preferred.

But best of all she was on the first leg of her journey back to Babylon 5 and Jeffrey Sinclair.

Her sensor panel sounded a low warning tone, and she immediately checked it out. Before entering hyperspace she had set her sensors to extreme sensitivity and had been rewarded all day long with frequent warnings. This one, like all the others, was just a hyperspace artifact, not a ship and not any kind of danger.

Hyperspace frequently “knotted” itself into little eddies, whirlpools, and temporary clumps that highly tuned sensor equipment could detect and would sometimes report as an object. This meant a pilot had a choice: keep the equipment highly tuned and put up with the many false warnings that resulted; or turn down the sensitivity for a little peace and quiet, knowing that any encounter with other ships or real objects would be at much closer range, occasionally closer than was comfortable.

Most pilots, including Sakai, usually chose the latter option, on the practical basis that such encounters in hyperspace were relatively rare; and even if they did occur, there would still be enough time to react; and in most cases the spatial displacement that formed around all objects in hyperspace actually helped to prevent collisions.

That’s what she usually chose. Not this time. She had chosen instead to put up with the constant pings, bells, and buzzers that sounded as the sensor panel warned her of what it thought were various-size objects. She was too close to getting home to leave anything to chance. If she were to encounter any unknown aliens in hyperspace, she didn’t know how, or even if, they would register on her sensors, so she was content to check out each and every little warning until she left hyperspace and reached the Ops ship. Just in case.

According to the chronometers, day one in hyperspace was just about over, and it was the scheduled time to go to bed.

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