Download the Book - Islam and Science Fiction

"Anything else?"
"Oh, yes. The ship appears to have an illegally high mass due to
its enormous kinetic energy. There is a strong gravitational pulse, as
if a black hole had just gone by at the speed of light."
"You left out that equation," Erica said, arching an eyebrow. "I
wanted to be sure you knew about the effect. Know why it is
important?"
"Because it can muck the dickens out of normal spacetime, Jan
replied. "Not to mention knocking the observer on his butt."
"It can do more than that," Erica added. "We tested it on an
asteroid once. We didn't just vaporize it, we triggered a fusion
reaction that turned part of its mass into heavy elements. A close pass
to a planet would cause a massive nuclear explosion in the
atmosphere. It would be enough to disrupt the planet's crust. All life
would be cooked in minutes. But snuggled inside their Higgs field
and shielded with trineutronium, the starship crew would only feel a
mild jolt. Of the four basic ways you can use a starship as a weapon
of mass destruction, that one scares me the most."
Jan grimaced. "In the movies, they usually have a suicide squad
try to ram the planet. My God, it is incredible that you could do
something that awful and barely feel a jolt."
Erica nodded sadly. "And your job is to see that it never
happens. Ultimately, it is Commander Rajpal's responsibility, of
course, so you will technically be his assistant. As a practical matter,
you can expect to be tripping over me at every turn, since I have, as
you might expect, a fairly strong interest in the subject. You will be
stuck with the unenviable tasks of sorting out the paperwork. More
important, you will have to implement day-to-day measures against a
threat the average crewmember thinks can never happen. If you can't
find a way to make the program innocuous, you'll encounter a lot of
resistance. If you can't find a way to make it effective, we don't need
you."
From the Confessions:
As I waited to launch to my new job in space, I stopped at the
Houston Spaceport Bookstore to buy some reading material for the
long voyage. On my own at last, I was finally free to explore some of
the titles I had seen in Jamil's office. I found them easily, and
downloaded them onto a data crystal. I bought a new reader, amazed
at how advanced it was compared to the ancient thing I had used at
the University.
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