<USS Avalon> Finding the Wormhole

Finding the Wormhole
By Captain Keith Ketchum and Cadet John Forester

Staring blankly at his screen, John felt his face grow red again. He blatantly 
refused to ask the Captain for help, he was being silly, he knew what he had to 
do. Initiating another scan, John just grimaced at the meaningless results 
flooded onto his screen. Maybe they'd be better off with a more experienced 
Science officer, he thought as he jabbed at his console again.

"Right," he muttered to himself, "wormhole... like the one to the Gamma 
Quadrant? Well, it can't hurt." Adding the known specifications for the DS9 
wormhole to his search criteria, John scanned again. Nothing.

John slumped further down in his seat, trying to ignore the strange looks he 
was getting because he was muttering to himself. All the various types of 
wormholes were running through his mind, each with their various identifying 
features. "O-k-a-y, let's start at the beginning." His fingers flew over his 
controls as he set up scans for a basic wormhole based on Einstein's ground 
work. Nothing. He started to add tweaks and sophistications to his model but 
still they yielded no useful results.

Right, time to ask for help. "C-captain, sir? C-can I ask a question?" John 
said as he tried not to run screaming from the Bridge of his father's ship. "I 
don't suppose there's any specific features that this wormhole should have, are 
there?"

Keith looked over at the science station, standing he walked over and stood 
behind John. Looking at the scans already done, "Good work, Cadet." Trying to 
keep it as business on the bridge, at least. "In my initial meeting about this 
mission, they were concerned it was temporal." 

"Temporal... temporal... But that would make it a Kip Thorne wormhole, in which 
case I should be scanning for tachyons..." John felt his father still at his 
back, but forced himself to concentrate on his work. His fingers flew over the 
console, adjusting his scans. They showed nothing. 

Frowning hard at the results, John began to mutter again. "Okay, okay, not a 
simple Kip Thorne... what if..." his voice grew excited and his eyes shone, 
"what if it's not a normal one, what if it's acting as a temporal Black Hole. 
In which case I'd be looking for Hawking Radiation, but instead of the normal 
spatial virtual particles, I'd need to scan for temporal virtual particles, 
which is just a simple adjustment to the Hawking Metric, like so..." Without 
even registering the blank looks of those around him, John added the new 
parameters to his search pattern and sure enough, he began to pick up the 
signature of a wormhole in the vicinity. "I found it, sir, I found it!" 

Keith watched him carefully, he knew he was on to something when he mentioned 
Kip Thorne and Hawking. He did have his father's love for science, he could 
tell. "Very good, Cadet. Send the location over to Ms. Waterson and we'll get 
on our way. Turning and heading back to his seat, "Mr. Harak, I need scans of 
the area for ships. Mr. Shimbrodus, activate the cloak."

Beaming like an idiot at the Captain's praise, John did as he was told, 
continuing his scans just to watch the way the radiation pinpointed the exact 
event horizon of the wormhole. "I love Astrophysics," he said to no one in 
particular.

"Mr. Shimbrodus, also alert Mr. Garrity that we have found the wormhole, and he 
can begin his final preparations.  Ms. Waterson, take us in."

"Aye, Captain", came her reply.


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