Presented for you - a space battle of the near future, where the crews of two ships venture unwittingly away from reality and enter MotorDaddy space: =================== "There he is!" shouted McBride, the navigation officer. The ugly outline of the pirate's ship was finally visible on the bridge viewer, its engines glowing dots in the distance. "What's our range?" asked Captain Pike, the steely-eyed commander of the mission to end the space pirate's reign of terror. His long experience in space battles made him the natural choice when the Space Command put together the mission to bring down Salty Pete the Space Pirate. "100 kilometers and closing. Slowly," said McBride from his console near the front of the bridge. He sounded tired; the crew was on edge after pursing Salty Pete for weeks around the Solar System and Oort Cloud. They had finally detected him near Vesta, and were now screaming sunward at their top speed, their engines at full power. Their speed was incredible; they were going faster than anyone had ever gone and were approaching the speed of light itself. "Can we get any more speed from the engines?" asked Pike. "Nae, we canna!" said Lieutenant Kilpatrick, their engineering officer. "Cast yer eyes over there, we're alreada pushin' the limit of light itself." He indicated a display at the front of the bridge, currently reading 299792457 meters per second. "We're within one meter a' second of lightspeed itself! No man nor machine will ever go faster than that. Our engines thrust and thrust but canna force the ship any faster." "Hmm," said the captain. "Where does all that force go, then? And why don't we just shut them off, then, if they're not increasing our speed?" "Because this is MY space," said their science officer, Commander Motordaddy. "You just can't." "OK then. McBride, tell me when we are within laser range." "We're within range now, captain. Our weapons pods have the new terawatt lasers and should be able to take him out from here." "Finally!" said Pike. "Lock lasers on target and fire at will." "Firing!" said McBride. He pressed the firing control. In the weapons pods, matter and antimatter mixed and annihilated each other in a burst of energy. Magnetic containment fields were reinforced by the explosion of high energy plasma, and the resulting gamma rays were reflected, collimated and shot out of the front of the pod. There was a long pause while the bridge crew stared at the viewscreen. Normally they'd see scintillating streaks of light blink on and off as the ultra-powerful weapons annihilated the hydrogen and helium nuclei floating in otherwise-empty space. But this time - nothing. "Uh - what happened? Systems check!" ordered the captain. Kilpatrick scanned quickly through the diagnostic systems. "Nothin', capitain - I mean, the weapons are workin fine! Pressures, temperatures - all on the ball!" "Captain, you better take a look at this," said McBride, looking out the side viewport. Pike got out of his command chair and looked out the window. There, crawling forward from the weapons pod, was the beam of gamma radiation, marked by the periodic destruction of interstellar gas. But it hadn't even passed the window yet. "Perhaps I can explain, Captain Pike" said MotorDaddy from his station. "You see, since we are going within 1 meter per second of the speed of light, the light - or in this case radiation - coming from our lasers can only go 1 meter per second faster than we can." "What?" said the captain. "Why don't we see it going the speed of light, like we always do?" "Because we are in MotorDaddy space, and there's an absolute frame, and nothing can go faster than light in that frame." "Can we fire torpedoes?" "No, they would just hang there in space too." "Captain!" yelled McBride. "They're firing torpedoes! The torpedoes are accelerating at an incredible rate - they are going half light! Now they're going lightspeed! Now they're going almost TWICE lightspeed!" he yelled. "Didn't you just say . . . ." started the captain. "No, things can come at us at a closing speed much faster than light," said Motordaddy. "See, we're going almost plus one cee, and the torpedo is going almost minus one cee, so the sum is almost twice the speed of light." With a huge concussion, the first torpedo nicked the deflector antenna boom at the front of the ship. A direct hit would have turned them all to atoms; as it was the resulting explosion threw everyone to the ground. When Pike regained his feet he saw McBride on the floor, his neck obviously broken. "Kilpatrick! Get to the con! Engage point defenses!" Kilpatrick got up and tried to run to the control console, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion. On the screen the second wave of torpedoes could be seen launching from the space pirate's ship. "Kilpatrick, dammit! Move it! I said . . ." "Not his fault," said Motordaddy. "You see, he can't move any faster. If he did, he'd be going faster than the speed of light, and that's impossible. Why even if you tried to pee facing forward your urine would . . . " "Shut up! You get to the . . . ." With a second massive explosion a torpedo detonated just aft of the ship. The sound of tearing metal reached the bridge, and Kilpatrick reversed course and ran quickly to his engineering console. "The engines have been blown to bits, captain! We ha' no power at all!" Pike looked back down the long corridor into the engineering space at the tail of the ship. "Not to quibble, Kilpatrick, but the engines look just fine." "If I may, captain," said Motordaddy. "You see, although the engines have been destroyed, it will be almost a minute before the light from the rear of the ship reaches us." "Are you telling me . . ." said the captain, "that on this ship sound travels faster than LIGHT?" "Well, yes," said Motordaddy. "In Motordaddy space, such things make sense in terms of my take on mathematics." "Your take on . . ." Pike never finished his sentence. The third volley of torpedoes found their mark, and blew their entire ship to vapor. ============================================ On the space pirate ship, the grizzled Salty Pete, leader of the unruly band of Oort Pirates, sneered at the screen showing the dissipating cloud of vapor where the Space Command ship once flew. "Captain, they're destroyed! But there may be more," said Black Jimmy, his pilot. "Aye, Jimmy, hop to it and move the ship to safer waters, now that they're in Davy Jones locker," said Salty Pete. (He had a holographic parrot on his shoulder as well; Salty Pete was not a man to do things halfway.) "It sure is easier in this stretch of space to blast those Space Command types," commented Bloody Bart as he looked on. "Arr, me bucko. Ever since we heaved to in MotorDaddy space, we've hornswaggled the lot of 'em. Nothin' like crimpin' the laws o' physics to make a pirate's day."
Captain MotorDaddy looked out the window of his cubical escape pod. "Wow! That was close call," he said. Fragments of his destroyed ship raced past his pod at a relative speed almost twice the speed of light. "It sure is dark in here. Better work out how to turn on that light mounted on that pole the centre of the cabin", he mused to himself. Glancing at the speedometer on the front console, he noted that the escape pod was still travelling at an absolute speed of 299792400 metres per second - just a little slower than his spaceship had been travelling before he ejected at the last possible moment. His pod was moving forward in the darkness of absolute space, front end aligned in the direction of travel of the original spaceship. Flicking the light switch on, Captain MotorDaddy noticed almost instantly that the back wall of the cabin was brightly illuminated. At the front of the cabin, all remained dark. "That makes sense", thought MotorDaddy, "The light obviously hadn't had nearly enough time to reach the front wall yet." "I should send out a distress call," he thought. But he knew that sending a call to any planet behind his pod, including his home Planet Wonky, would be dooming him to die before the message was even received because the message would travel far too slowly. The speed of his pod would have to be subtracted from the emission speed of the light, which would give a net message speed of only 8 metres per second. The only inhabited planet in front of his pod was a rogue planet full of followers of the ancient god they called Einstein. Those heathens didn't even believe in reality, so he was loathe to contact them. But that decision might be made for him, because even if he did not send a message, his pod would be arriving at Planet Relativity anyway just after the time any message he sent would be received. Slowly it sunk in. Captain MotorDaddy was doomed after all. If he tried to send a message to friends, it would never reach them in time. If he chose to send a message to Planet Einstein, he'd probably crash into the planet before they even had time to react to his message - even if they were favorably disposed to help. Captain MotorDaddy heaved a great sigh as he realised he should have stayed on his ship and died with the rest of his crew. He riled at the unfairness of this universe in which he had grown up. For just a moment, he almost wished that the Einstein heresy could be true. But only for a moment. Better to die comfortable in the knowledge of one's religious beliefs than even to consider heresy. Outside the pod, dark space just sat there, not moving, as if to taunt him. And he waited for his lifetime to tick away at the ordinary rate...
