A month went by. The stored ship’s rations were ok, but not as good as food produced by the replicator. There was no fresh fruit, and vitamin pills were a poor substitute. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were from a variety of different recipes, all kept frozen until cooked with a microwave oven. While none of the meals were bad, Deborah felt that they weren’t authentic in some way, that the replicated meals were better.
Both Deborah and Walter had thought of some places to go in the Jupiter system, but none of them seemed really worthwhile to go there, and they were concerned that their orbit around Europa might need correcting, so they didn’t want to splurge.
The time travel system had been surgically removed, so they couldn’t travel in time. The transporter system had also been surgically removed. Unrar had made one mistake - he underestimated the redundancy in Adelle, so they still have a working ship’s computer. The ship’s library was also intact, so they had access to literature and music. Deborah had discovered an interest in Bach, and Walter found an interest in American rock n’ roll from the 1960s to the 1980s. They went jogging together, 10 kilometers a day, spent an hour a day in the exercise machines, and spent two hours daily of Deborah learning martial arts from Walter. At the end of 4 weeks of this routine, Deborah went to see the autodoc.
“How can I help you?”, the autodoc asked.
“My menstrual cycle has not begun”, Deborah said.
“How long has it been since you had your last period?”
“About 6 weeks”
“I am going to give you a urine collection bottle. I want you to urinate at least 5 milliliters.”
A urine collection bottle materialized on the table. Deborah took it, and produced the sample. Then she put the bottle back on the table. The bottle de-materialized - it was gone.
“Please wait 2 minutes while I analyze this sample”
“Can you play a little music while I wait?”
Immediately, the Well Tempered Clavier began to play. After 2 minutes, the music ended.
“You are pregnant”, the autodoc announced.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“Oh... I had unprotected sex with my husband. It never occurred to me”
“That would explain it. Do you want counseling about your options with regards to this pregnancy”
“Yes, I would”
“There are essentially two options. You may abort the pregnancy or you may carry the child to term. If you elect to have an abortion, then you should have it done soon. I can give you a drug to cause an abortion but it is best taken in the first trimester. It is possible to do an abortion later, but it will be harder for you and your unborn child will suffer more.
“The other option is to carry the child to term. If you wish to do so, then I am quite capable of delivering the child either naturally or through cesarean section as you prefer.”
“What about raising and educating the child?”
“The ship’s library contains educational materials in a variety of subjects and languages”
“Food?”
“That will be a problem in a few decades”
“I have to think about this”
She found Walter on the flight deck, flying an airplane at high speed through a mountain range.
“Can I talk to you?”
Walter pressed a button and the game froze.
“Sure, what can I do for you?”
“I’m pregnant”
“That’s a very feminine thing to do”
“Well, I’m a married woman, so I guess that makes sense”
“Are you going to carry the child to term?”
“I haven’t decided yet. We have enough food for 50 years for two people. If we had three mouths to feed, then we would have enough food for 33 years.
“There’s that. There is another thing to think about: we will eventually die of old age, perhaps before we starve to death. Then your child would be all alone in deep space”.
“Not a very pleasant prospect”.
“I wonder if we could plant a garden and extend our food supply that way?”
“Adelle”, Deborah raised her voice.
“Yes?”
“Do we have seeds for edible plants in ship’s stores?”
“No. However, the instructions for creating seeds are in the ship’s library, and the autodoc can prepare them”, Adelle answered.
“Oh, really now?”
“Yes”
“Walter: come with me. I have an idea. I have to talk to the autodoc”.
They walked down the hall to the Autodoc.
“How can I help you?”, the Autodoc asked.
“When you examined me about an hour ago, how did you create the urine collection bottle?”
“I have a replicator.”, the Autodoc replied, “ The pharmacopeia is much too large to put into storage. Some of the drugs are perishable. The ship’s designers did not know what kind or how much of each drug they would need. Also, there are some things that we won’t need for a while, for example, an endoscope. I can replicate anything up to 150 centimeters in any dimension.”
“Could you replicate other parts, not medical supplies?”, Deborah asked, hardly able to contain her excitement.
“I can replicate anything that has a suitable description in the ship’s library, and is smaller than 150 centimeters in every direction”
“Deborah, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”, Walter asked, the gleam in his eye visible at 2 meters distance.
“We can go home”
“It will take years”
“But don’t you see? Once we the time travel system working, we can go back to the day after Unrar leaves Earth for Europa”
“Bad plan”
“Why”
“Because after Unrar leaves for Europa, he comes back to Earth. He will detect us, and probably decide that we’re too dangerous to leave alive.”
“Oh. So we have to wait until he’s gone”
“Yes. Also, it’s still going to take us years of real time to effect repairs”.
“Once we have the time travel system fixed, then we could go back to the future and have a repair crew fix the systems we can’t fix. They’d do it much faster than we could because they have the parts and the know-how”
“Unrar has a way to detect us when we time travel”
“He also had a way to detect us when we did a very fast orbit change”
“He could have done that with conventional technology”
“Adelle”
“Yes?”
“If we were to use a minimum energy orbit to travel from our current orbit around Europa to Earth 700 km circular orbit, how long would it take?”
“A launch window opens in two years and the trip would take 6 years”
Walter piped up. “Adelle?”
“yes”
“If we refilled our water tanks from Europa, and used 90% of the reaction mass, how long would it take to travel from our current orbit around Europa to Earth 700 km circular orbit, how long would that take?”
“A launch window opens in a year and the trip would take 4 years”
“So we could be back in Earth orbit in 5 years. That’s not that bad”
“Walter, why did you specify 90%?”
“I want to have reserve in case something goes wrong, such as a close encounter with an asteroid”
“I want to think about this a little bit”
Deborah was sitting in her chair on one of the flight desks, reading some dense text in one window while typing away furiously at another. Walter came in, looked over her shoulder.
“What’s that?”
“This is damage control procedures for the ship”
“And this?”
“I am making a list of things to do and trying to prioritize them”
The list read:
“Why is fixing Adelle highest on the list?”
“Because if anything happens to her, then we’re screwed. We have 5 working autodocs, so we can afford to lose one or two. But we only have 2 CPUs”
“Why is repairing the time travel system lowest on the list”
“Because Unrar might be able to detect us, so I am unwilling to use the time travel system until we come up with a way of masking our time travel. We will eventually need the time travel system to get home. Everything depends on Adelle working properly, so she gets highest priority. Then we need to replicate the replicators so we can build the parts we need to repair the transporters. Once the transporters are working, then we can beam up water from Europa. Fixing the hull is important because we may need the supplies and we will need the space to store the reaction mass. Repair the weapons is down the list because I don’t anticipate us going into combat again any time soon. Nobody is going to attack us now except Unrar, and he thinks we’re going to die of old age above Europa. We think Unrar can detect time travel, so we won’t travel in time until we’re ready to go home.”