All is not lost; the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield.

-John Milton- 

When Marty and Angie entered the Area 51 Air Force Aeronautical Engineering briefing room, they were greeted by enthusiastic clapping and cheering. The claps and cheers came from their crew: Uma, George, Lia and Ferris as well as Clarence, Arthur and General Wilson.

Uma ran to Angie and hugged and kissed her. She repeated the greeting with Marty. Angie was embarrassed. Marty was not. He liked it.

"We love you. You are our heroes," Uma said, bubbling over. "Thank you." She turned to the others and gave them a thumbs-up. "We are going to the stars, people!"

The others cheered.

"Thank you," Marty said, waving like a politician at a state caucus.

Angie fought back tears. "I'm so happy to see all of you."

"Believe me," George said. "We are very glad to see you.” He looked at Marty. “How was it?"

"Not bad at all. Just a bit unnerving, that's all."

General Wilson stepped forward. "You both are a credit to the US Air Force. I can think of no one else to entrust this great craft and these new missions to deep space." He saluted, eliciting salutes from both.

Clarence took the podium. ”From this moment on you will be the only people who know the full story of the X-2001. Your training will continue with the goal of a launch in May."

"Where are we going?" George asked.

"Your first mission will be to the Centaurus system. Then you will be sent to more distant stars that are likely candidates to have planets with life, stars much like our own."

"Will we be making contact?" Ferris asked

Clarence cracked a brief smile. "This is all new to us. We have no idea if you’ll find life let alone sentient life. What we are looking for is knowledge of what is in our section of the Milky Way. Are there Earthlike planets around stars like ours? And, if there are, do they contain life?"

"What are the criteria for these nearby stars?" George asked.

Arthur came forward. "I believe they chose main sequence stars of spectral type K1 to G6 that are old enough and stable enough to support Earthlike planets. They also used data from the Kepler Mission. All of these stars supposedly have Earth-sized planets."

Clarence held his hand up. "There will be ample opportunity to discuss the technical aspects of these missions." He smiled. "We'll leave you to your celebration. Thank you."

Wilson pointed at Marty and Angie. "You two are scheduled for a briefing at 0700."

"Yes, sir," Angie said.

Clarence, Arthur and Wilson left.

"Okay," George said. "Give us the real story. What was it really like?"

Marty grinned. "It felt like pins and needles and it looked as if the entire ship had been stretched through a meat grinder."

"It didn't last that long, maybe a few minutes," Angie said. "We have no lasting effects, at least not yet."

Marty frowned. "Yeah, they ran us through every medical test known to man. That was worse than going through the worm hole."

George flashes a momentary grin. "That was it? You felt like pins and needles while you were being squashed through a wormhole? It sounds too easy."

"I believe that it's simply a distortion of space," Angie said. "It doesn't destroy space. It pulls two distant locations close. Our bodies were distorted but not destroyed." She flashed a facetious smile. “Obviously.”

"I still find it difficult to believe," George said. "How far out did you go?"

"A parsec," Angie said.

George shook his head. "You went out 3.26 light years and it only took a few minutes? That's outrageous."

"Yeah," Marty said. "We can jump a little over two parsecs at a time. We can easily get to Alpha Centauri in one jump. Hell, it'll be faster than going to Mars in the X-1001."

"So much for the notion that aliens from distant solar systems can't visit Earth," George said.

That resulted in several minutes of silence.

###

Dr. Marvin Evans was chief engineer of the X-2001 project. He was short in stature but not brains. His balding dome and bushy mustache gave him an intellectual appearance. A product of Cal Tech and MIT, he had a prodigious ego to match his intellect.

He switched his gaze between Marty and Angie at a rather alarming frequency. "We have a slight discrepancy in the computer records of your passage through the singularity. The time stamps indicate that you arrived before you left. It’s only a few hundredths of a second but it has been verified."

Marty couldn't resist a quip. "That will be great if we're in a big hurry."

Angie gave him a frown. She turned back to Evans. "What does it mean?"

"Dr. Woronowycz has verified our observation and has calculated that this time reversal effect is an unforeseen consequence of jumping through a singularity, a quantum uncertainty effect if you will. The bottom line is that you become younger every time you jump."

Marty chuckled. "Wait till Hollywood starlets find out about this. They'll be standing in line to sign up."

"It's not that simple. We recorded similar data with the animal tests but we haven't noted any long-term effects. Your medical tests revealed nothing. However, we don't know what could happen with multiple jumps."

"We didn't sign up for this project because we wanted to be safe," Marty said. "This is a one-time life experience that is important enough to chance it."

"I agree," Angie said. "And, I'm certain that the others feel the same."

Evans cracked a rare smile. “Thank you.” His expression quickly returned to serious concentration. “I have these data disks for you to study.” He handed them to Angie. “They summarize the main systems of the X-2001. We’ve made many improvements in the navigation, propulsion and armament.”

Marty’s eyebrows rose. “Armament? Are we expecting trouble?”

“We don’t know what to expect. It’s the great unknown out there. We just wanted to make sure that we have all the bases covered.”

Marty saluted. “We understand. What exactly do we have in the way of armaments?”

“Two particle canons, an energy beam and antimatter devices.”

Marty grinned. “Wow! We can kick some serious ass.”

Angie frowned. “Hopefully, we won’t need to.”

A nod from Evans seconded that sentiment.

###

After the debriefing, Angie and Marty decided to take a break in the common mess of the barracks that they shared with their crew, but their presence acted like a magnet.

“How’d it go?” George asked as he ambled into the mess.

Marty looked at him before turning back to his can of beer. “Okay. The only thing they were concerned about is a quantum uncertainty effect.”

Uma, Ferris and Lia wandered in.

“What does that mean?” George asked.

Marty looked back up at his concerned crew. “Evidently we get younger every time we jump.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, he’s not,” Angie said. “It didn’t cause any medical problems with us or the animals they’ve tested, but they are concerned. We told them that we still wanted to go and that we felt that you would agree.”

“You mean that we get younger when we go to the stars?” Uma said.

Angie nodded.

“This is like a dream,” she said. “We are the luckiest people on Earth.”

“Well,” George said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could certainly use this quantum uncertainty effect.”

Marty laughed. “Amen to that.”

“It looks like Ponce de Leon was right,” Lia said. “He was just a few centuries too early.”

“This whole thing is unreal,” George said. “Here I was, putting around in my observatory at Mauna Kea and next thing I know I’m going out on missions to places I never dreamed that I could go. And, I’m going to get younger as a bonus. Someone wake me up.”

“Not to change the subject,” Angie said. “But, how are things going here?”

Uma plopped down on a chair around the common table. “This place is terrible. There’s absolutely no contact with the outside. Our families have no idea where we are. For all they know, we could be dead.”

“There are some who wouldn’t mind if I were dead,” Marty said.

Angie gave him a frown.

“We have no mail or internet and the only entertainment is a few cable channels,” Ferris said. “There’s little else to do here.”

“I can’t wait to go out on a mission,” Lia said. “At least I’ll be doing what I’ve been training to do all this time.”

“What have you been doing all this time?” Angie asked.

“We’ve been training on the new scanning equipment and researching astronomical data.”

“That sounds like fun,” Angie said with a facetious grin.

Marty looked over at a computer near the far wall. “We have some tech docs on the new ship. Perhaps this would be a good time to look them over.”

He turned the computer on and stuck an ultra high definition disk into a slot in the front of it. A screen with a menu appeared. He selected the propulsion system button and a complicated diagram appeared.

George came over first and peered over Marty’s shoulder. “That looks like fun. I’m glad I don’t have to service it.”

“Look at this,” Marty said, pointing to a round chamber in the center of the propulsion unit. “This must be where the antimatter is stored.”

“That looks large enough to hold several kilos. That much antimatter is powerful enough to blow the planet in half.”

Marty laughed. “Yeah, and we’ll be right on top of it.”

“A cheery thought.”

“Look at all these weapons,” Marty said. “They must think we’re going to run into bad aliens.”

“How can they predict what kind of weapons we will need?” Ferris said.

“That’s a good question,” Lia said. “I think that they’re holding back on us.”

Nobody refuted that assertion.

###

Marty entered the mess and headed for the fridge, ignoring all four women, despite the fact that they all were barefooted and wearing skimpy shorts and halter-tops.

"Get me one," Angie said.

"Me too," Uma said.

The other two mimicked her.

Marty grabbed five Buds and headed to a seat near his female crew.

"I thought that Hindus were not allowed to consume alcohol," he said when he handed Uma a can.

"I am being led into perdition by my sisters," Uma said with a big smile.

Her sisters laughed.

Marty popped his can, took a healthy swig and smiled. "You people are out of uniform."

"It's too hot to wear clothes," Uma said. "Why don't they fix our air conditioner?"

Marty chuckled. "You know how the military moves: like a big slug."

"We are like prisoners," Uma said. "They are torturing us. They strapped us onto metal tables and stuck needles into us."

Marty's brow wrinkled. "What?"

"She's exaggerating the vaccinations," Angie said.

His brow relaxed. "Oh."

"When will the ship be ready?" Lia asked.

"It should be cleared for launch by next week," Marty said.

“I can’t wait,” Lia said. “This place is boring.”

“She is right,” Uma said. “We are suffering here.”

After flashing a soothing smile, Marty looked around. “Where’s George?”

“He’s out in the sandbox,” Angie said.

“Sandbox?”

“Yeah, that’s what we call the patio.”

He chuckled. “Oh, yeah.” He got up. “I think I’ll go cheer him up.” He nodded. “Ladies.”

They smiled back.

Marty found George sitting in a lawn chair out on a patch of sand outside the barracks. “You look relaxed, George. How come you’re not in there enjoying the women?”

He took a big swallow of beer. “I can’t stand them. They drive me nuts.”

“I hear you, but we have no choice. We have to live with them.”

He looked up at Marty and shook his head. “They’re acting weird of late. It’s almost as if they’re trying to seduce me.”

Marty laughed. “That’s not a bad thing. They’re certainly not hard to look at.”

“That’s the problem. They’re starting to look like beauty queens. It’s like I’m living with sex goddesses.”

“You’ve been cooped up with them too long. They’re bored. That’s why they’re acting weird.” He took a swig of beer. Besides, what did you expect from women?

“I have no idea. I’ve never worked with women before.”

Marty laughed again. “Brother, you have a lot to learn. Rule number one is that they’re always right. Rule number two is never criticize them.”

George gave him a glazed eye look. Marty didn't know if that was from too many beers or exhaustion.