Boat on a time river
“...what?”
The speaker said: “Uiii...Khrrr!!!”
Perfect! The damned carpet-moths now infested even the direct line. During years in the fifth dimension they mutated beyond belief. Now they preferred the rubber of electric insulation over any other food.
I took a gulp from a bottle and put my ear to the speaking tube. Classic technology never fails. However, on a space frigate comparable to a medium-sized planet, it takes time.
“Chondrite! A great one! Hic!” exclaimed stinky pipe after a delay. Then someone flushed and transmission died out in a noise of water. Damn! It looks as though I have to appear in person.
Crackled illuminators barely dispersed the darkness in the corridor. Painted luminescent directional lights on the corners flaked out to the bare metal. I had not been in an engine room for nearly two years, I was not sure if I can find my way through the passages. Damn the carbon-loaded chondrites to the hell! If we weren’t so low on fuel, nothing would make me leave my cabin! But chondrite it means carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Without these elements we are at the end our journey.
I sniffed the air. In the maze of dark corridors one finds directions best by smell. I started to wade through the puddles of liquid crystals. Excited by static charge on the soles of boots they lit up and stubbornly displayed my path in digital zeroes, ones and diamonds with a central line.
After an hour I arrived at a porthole. The boat was stuck in the blue-violet current of time condensate, running around like river rapids. A relativistic storm howling outside was chaotically changing the values of all known physical constants. I noticed that the flimsily patched hull was watering in multiple places. We were helplessly rocking in the fifth dimension like a dead sperm whale. Monstrous paddle wheels of propulsion units were turning majestically in a slow pace, parked in an energy saving mode. The service reports were correct, in the last two months we had barely moved forward a light inch. Without fuel we were stuck in place.
Aroma flooded a hallway and my mouth immediately watered. I washed saliva down with a pull from my canteen. I was almost at the destination.
The Control room welcomed me with an echoing: “Hic!” The Boatswain saluted and slurring heavily as he reported: “Performing an inspection of eng…hic...engines.”
I sized up the situation with a single look at a half burned out screen.
“All ahead flank!”
“Plop!” two thousand men uncorked their reserve canteens and with enormous force leaned against the bars of the capstan. Cryogenic elements transferred pressure into superfluid helium and the paddlewheel started to turn in the dense blue-violet time condensate. The boat jerkily launched upstream.
The Boatswain’s eyebrow curled: “That was the last reserve, captain.”
“We will have plenty of fuel,” I smiled triumphantly pointing to a monitor. His bloodshot eyes slowly deciphered the meteor analysis data.
“Complex esters...” he beamed in disbelief. “We are saved!”
We both knew the crucial role of esters in the synthesis of high quality bourbon.
Translated from the Czech version Loď na řece času.
