Splashdown

This episode contains a sample chapter of Infinity Machine.  It also shares some reader's letters and discussion and includes the drawing for the original manuscript. If you like this series, yo ucan now buy the books in an ebook form on both Amazon and Barns and Nobel.  It is also available through Smashwords.  Please find me on facebook under through the fold to get continued updates on future postings! Thank you all for listening! Paul J. Joseph

Sally and her crew return to Earth to implement the plan that sounds crazy.  And in an unlikely spot in an urban neighborhood a miracle takes place.

Ian awakens to new challenges as the ship nears Earth.  But are Sally's unusual plans for their return to Earth too paranoid or is she the only voice of reason?  As the clock ticks on, decisions become more critical.

As Sally begins her long journney home, she has time to contemplate the question of the fate of the Ultrablitz.  As she begins to explore the story of the mission, a critical clue comes to light.  But does she have the right to interfere with history?

Sally and her crew are now on course for Earth, but they have a long and difficult journey ahead of them.  Worse, they are now only beginning to explore who they may trust and who they shouldn't.  And facing them is the memory of a longer journey that is yet incomplete.  It is to this that Sally must find a solution.

Sally and Ian are reunited in the field of debris that is all that remains of the ultrablitz.  But there is one more battle that must be  completed before they can safely leave Baltan territory.

Sally's standoff with Dr. Beasley leads her to discover that her situation isn't as bleak as she first thought.  But then all hell breaks loose as Ian carries out his deadly mission on the Ultrablitz.

Diego alone explains the plans to help Sally and Jackie escape the city, and he explains them only as they are about to be put into motion.  The plan is insane, but it's all that's left.  But, even as they approach the finish line, one critical detail is missed.

Sally confronts Diego after finally becoming fully alert and aclimated to the present.  She questions his loyalties, but admires his discoveries.  She also becomes aware of a machine he has restored which opens up a new world for their species and another.

Sally begins an operation that may prevent the dreaded blight from taking hold of one of her patients.  But the stranger returns in the middle of the operation, bringing mahem.  And then Sally wakes up to discover which reality was which.  Now they must flee the city if they can do so in time.

While Sally struggles to survive Earth's attack on Baltan and save as many people as she can, she is confronted with a stranger with a familiar face and an impossible tale.

Sally's efforts to prevent the attack on Baltan prove less than successful.  Instead of avoiding the bloodshed, she must now witness it.  And she has a front row seat!  Meanwhile, several hundred years ago in another world, a different battle occurs, resulting in no deaths at all.

Still stuck at the train station, Sally now tries to enlist the help of the very people who sent her on her mission.  But they are not as she remembered, and they have different lives now.  In the midst of this an old mystery is revisited concerning the loss of an ancient ship at sea.

Sally arrives on Baltan six years before she was captured, but she arrives the very day of the infamous attack.  With no time to lose, she makes her way towards the central tower.  But everyone from the train conductor to her former secretary on Earth do not believe a word she says.

Sally is led through the city to a place she didn't know existed for the purpose of carrying out her sentance.  But will the strange attempt at time travel work or prove fatal?

Sally's trial opens and more details of Earth's supposed atrocities are revealed and no obvious attention is given to her defense.  But the sentance the court imposes on her is anything but conventional and it may not even be possible.

Sally's deposition in preparation for her trial is made more difficult by the impending mystery of Mercy Collins' strange involvement with the Ultrablitz.  The unfolding story proves that their problems are bigger than they would appear.

Details emerge concerning what the Ultrablitz first saw when it's journey was concluded, but more questions emerge with each revelation.  Meanwhile, Sally waits for her trial to begin and gets an unexpected visit from Ian.  He now knows why the multicraft's systems did not fail when the other systems did.  His new plan is a long shot and could be deadly even if it works.

As Sally prepares for her trial, she and Jackie compare notes on what the mysterious alien found onboard the ship might have looked like.  We also learn more of Travis's original mission and what happened when they engaged their mysterious funnel initiator.

Sally and Ian continue to explore the Ultrablitz's past in an attempt to understand the notorious Funnel Initiator.  But in the middle of a critical discovery, Sally is taken back into custody to await trial on Baltan.  And, while Diego is describing alien technology, Rachel Poole makes another appearance, giving Ian a critical clue.

Ian is tasked with trying to stop the mysterious ship, but his knowledge of how to do so is dangerously limited and the one man who could help him is barely alive.  But his last words represent a secret they could not have been prepared to hear.

Sally calls on an old friend to help her in her study of the cybernetic creatures that are the remains of the crew, though her analysis of the technology has less than useful results.  In the mean time, Ian has been getting acquainted with future events in the ship's database, but he doesn't like some of what he sees.  And, twenty years later, Travis meets the Eeeetoop for the first time.

The time has come to board the ancient ship and Ian and Diego are to be the first to see what is inside.  The ship is an ancient ruin, yet fits the design specifications of ships well known.  And there is one remaining crewmember onboard to greet them.  An ancient man, more machine than human, fragile and barely aware.  He pays homage to a long dead alien creature that is the stuff of nightmares!  But which of them was in charge of the ship?

When Sally finally sees Jackie, she is forced to realize that Dr. Beasley may not be as innocent as she was led to believe.  She and Ian also get a better look at the approaching mystery ship, which is now moving to intercept the city.  Clearly somebody is flying the ship and it uses a technology that Earth knows nothing about.

Following the difficult meeting with Hans Melba, Sally is introduced to another of Baltan's secrets, namely the mystery of the Lower City, a vast area she originally assumed to be empty.  Next, on a tense visit to a hospital, she is introduced to the blight, a disease that is as strange as it is grotesque.  And finally, she meets the Sovereign Judge, the man who will ultimately determine her fate.

Sally's situation deteriorates further when she finds herself under arrest by an angry group of people known as the Mercy Party.  She soon finds out that Baltan City has been taken over during the time she was in flight, and the fact that she flattened one of their leaders won't help her case.  But what do they want from her?  More mysteries await.

The journey to Baltan City is turbulent.  The space port is filled with armed guards and terrorism is the watch word.  Worse, the hush hush nature of their departure forces them to trust people they don't know.  But things grow worse after the launch.  The ship goes off course for unknown reasons and their arrival on Baltan is anything but warm.

In this first installment we find Sally unhappily at work as UN space commissioner, buried in paperwork and struggling with bureaucrats.  Earth is at war now with its first space colony, now hidden beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and everybody has a different opinion concerning which side was in the right.  In the midst of this, Ian discovers a mysterious ship approaching the solar system from somewhere far away.  And this ship appears to be from the future.  The implications of how this will affect the war are too big to ignor, and Sally must decide whether Ian's suggested mission is brave or foolish.  Either way, she will probably have to go.