Galactic Milk The Greatest Space Opera Ever Told. Really.

22. Chain, Chain, Chain

“The sheer chances of that starship hitting this planet at that time were mind-boggling. Astounding. I mean, choose your rhetorical response. However, it did hit that planet and landed just meters from where Larry Milk stood. I mean, seriously, what are the odds?”

-- From “My Politics” by Adamants leader Ignacio Sheets

Eight years before Larry Milk began changing his clothes to get a good night’s sleep in his Rueclanahan apartment, something extraordinary almost happened.

Within a small string of planets named the Blanchard System 3,276 light years from Earth spun a small, aquamarine body that a bored scientist with a huge government grant discovered. He would later call the planet “Megus,” The scientist discovered that Megus is much like the planet Neptune, an ice giant about four times the size of Earth composed of water, hydrogen, nitrogen and helium.

To a great many glasses-wearing, 11-year-olds building Styrofoam solar systems speaking to science fair judges, Megus had the distinction of being “the farthest planetary body from Earth that could be discovered, ever.” Megus also had a rocky, tumultuous surface that looked very much like “the ass end of Norway,” according to the scientist who both discovered and named Megus, Dr. Peter Blanchard, saying so during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Scholars, critics and journalists alike regarded the famed astronomer and physicist as someone of higher intelligence, but curtailed vocabulary.

“There is nothing but tundra as far as the eye can see. That’s blanketed by massive sheets of ice and thick piles of snow composed of helium, ammonia, and equal parts despair. We have recorded wind speeds greater than two thousand kilometers per hour and there are thunder and lighting events that roll across the planet. Compared with the other thirteen planet-like bodies within this system, Megus is a doozy. Mountain peaks reach several miles into the atmosphere, clustered like soccer moms in front of the doors of a Nordstrom Department store that’s selling Dooney and Burke purses for 20 percent off the retail price. The largest of these peaks are buoyed by even larger glaciers that stretch for hundreds of kilometers,” Dr. Blanchard told a mostly bored crowd of sophisticates and bureaucrats who were more concerned whether or not the smoked salmon served at the mixer following the event would be chilled and the booze would be free.

By the time his 45 minute dissertation ended, audience members asked just two questions.

“Why,” a reporter asked, “did you call it Megus?”

“Well,” Dr. Blanchard said, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Then, a man in large round-rimmed glasses and a brown tailored wool suit asked the second question fiddling with a gold pocket watch. Dr. Blanchard recognized the man as a noted quack and a denizen of all things conspiratorial. Dr. Blanchard also knew the man as something of a pioneer in individual space travel, an astrophysicist of some note published the world over and a holder of better than 100 patents who followed in the footsteps of Dick Rutan and others

However, Dr. Blanchard winced at the thought of answering any question from Dr. Maximillian Pendragon Chain. So, when the Dr. Chain raised his hand to be recognized for his question, everyone in the room noted the visible tension that accrued in Dr. Blanchard’s shoulders, neck and face. After all, as Dr. Blanchard recalled, by anyone’s standard of being long-winded, Dr. Chain was a hurricane churning in the Gulf of Mexico. A simple question such as “where is the bathroom” could cost someone an entire afternoon, whether Dr. Chain would ask the question or be responding to it.

However, the audience, scholars that followed, and future acolytes of Dr. Chain’s work would also note the surprise Dr. Blanchard felt by the brevity of Dr. Chain’s question.

“Can,” Dr. Chain asked, “this planet sustain life?”

Stunned, Dr. Blanchard waited almost 20 seconds for the next 27 parts of Dr. Chain’s question, but none came. A broad smile crossed Dr. Blanchard’s face. He removed his reading glasses and smiled. He elaborated for a few minutes on the gaseous properties of the planet followed by some meteorological data he had on hand, and noted that the planet’s interior is mostly ice and rock. And after spending almost five minutes saying many of the same things he had said previously, Dr. Blanchard said this:

“Yes. I would say it is capable of life.”

Dr. Chain thanked Dr. Blanchard, and then scurried through a side door.

Six months later, sunk into the bowels of a Manhattan high rise, Dr. Chain began the countdown sequence to launch his life’s work into space. How had he managed the logistics of moving that much Earth? How did he bring in that much steel and titanium? How did he do it all without so much as a snoop from the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other government watch group? The start of the countdown made the culmination of the day even sweeter.

Not that there weren’t pitfalls. Tedious came the creation of the Boron nitride walls and constructing the massive inner magnetic coil for the base thrusters. Acquiring enough Uranium from illegal sources across the globe and its handling? Warp sequencing calculation that crashed massive racks of data-processing servers over and over again. Chain, now 86, wondered why he hadn’t died at several points of this creation. And the finishing calculations for the cryogenic sleep cell were still not complete. However, the time was now. Max Chain knew it.

Dr. Chain’s journal noted that he would climb into the capsule at approximately 8:54 p.m. At 8:55 p.m., he ignited the revised ion boost thrusters. At 8:59, he started the fusion processing core for the Pendragon Warp Drive. At 9:07, Dr. Chain’s assistants sealed the hatch, bidding the reclusive madman goodbye.

The next morning, the New York Times reported that the roof and most of the concrete and steel infrastructure of Normandy Owners Corporation at 140 Riverside Drive in Manhattan exploded as if a bomb went off. Many thought some sort of terorrist incident struck the city again. Thirteen people inside the building were reported dead and another 46 injured by falling debris. Many witnesses watched a massive silver column lifting silently into the sky, a glowing blue streak trailing behind like a comet’s tail.

The space vehicle broke through the ionosphere a little less than four minutes from its leap out of Gotham. Dr. Chain realized long ago that he could serve no other purpose on Earth and now, his opportunity for change lie elsewhere. He reached a gnarled hand toward an LCD touch screen littered with the ship’s controls. He pressed a button labeled “Megus” and hoped the computer would do the rest.

The ship’s onboard computer showed that Dr. Chain had 30 seconds before the cryogenic freeze system kicked on and put him into a frozen sleep for the journey across light years. Dr. Chain lie back, closed his eyes and thought of the rolling hills of his Bavarian boyhood home.

Thirty seconds later, the Pendragon Warp Drive clicked on. In the blink of an eye, the rocket screamed across galaxies. It ripped through the atmosphere of Megus in less time than it took for Dr. Blanchard to leave Stockholm, Sweden, catch his flight back to Los Angeles, drive to his condominium near Jet Propulsion laboratories and click on his TiVO recording of Mike Rowe’s “Dirty Jobs.”

However, not everything went as planned. Although everything other system worked as Dr. Chain designed, the landing system failed. The computers miscalculated both speed and distance. Dr. Chain’s rocket managed to wedge itself between a pair of titanic, frozen ammonia-based glaciers.

There, Dr. Chain remained for better than seven years, collecting atmospheric data and keeping Dr. Chain alive.

However, six galaxies away, at about the time that Larry drifted to sleep after the arduous arguments with Savjetna Pennywise, Dr. Chain’s rocket stopped collecting data and brought him out of his hibernation.

When the effects of Dr. Chain’s hibernation wore off, he stared out a mostly frost covered window, breathed a heavy sigh and muttered only three words.

“Damn. Wrong planet.”

With that, he reactivated the ion engines. The thruster buckled at first, but then ripped free of the massive ice blocks holding them back. Not sure entirely where he was or exactly where he should go, Dr. Chain put his life to chance again.

Instead of using scientific calculations and pinpoint theories to move himself back to Earth or onto the “right planet,” Dr. Chain instead inputted the 11-digit phone number of his daughter living in Germany and the record of the New York Yankees during their 1927 World Series run and pressed ‘Accept.’

The Pendragon Warp Drive began whirring to life. However, his calculations wouldn’t require him to undergo the cryogenic freeze again. So, he sat up, pulled some freeze dried food fro ma locker and enjoyed the ride.