Travels of the Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 3)

by Laer Carroll

  Perhaps the most surprising, though it shouldn't be, is how smoothly they have integrated themselves into the economy of our world.

  Eco - Why is that, do you think?

  Rom - The very advanced civilizations in our interstellar neighborhood, which we mistakenly call the Galaxy, are thousands of years old. The two who deal most with humans are the Cats and the so-called Lizards.

  Eco - Which means?

  Rom - Their sciences are thousands of years old. This is not just the so-called "hard" sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology. This includes psychology, sociology, political science, and economics among the several "soft" sciences. Except these sciences for Cats are true sciences, as "hard" as the physical ones. They can calculate exactly how to get along smoothly with humans, how to engineer relations with us to get a desired result.

  Eco - Interesting. What is an example of how they have engineered their interactions with our economics systems?

  Rom - One way is that they partner with Earth businesses. Most obviously is the transportation function of Cat spaceship 101347. They contracted with the several airlines which have or want to have flights to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere. Effectively the Cat and the Earthly companies become one. S-347 in popular parlance becomes just another vehicle owned by the airlines. Or I should say aerospace lines now.

  Eco - That's a pretty big aerospace craft. It's a mile long!

  Rom - True. It works by sending down its own shuttle craft, each as large as a midsize jet, to various airports. They then dock in the big vehicle, which makes the trip to the Moon, Mars, Bastet, or elsewhere. For longer voyages passengers make use of the shops in S-347. Did you know there are 47 MacDonalds on it? Run by humans who live as well as work there for year-long stints?

  Eco - Wow. I've got to take a trip via Cat Airlines sometime soon.

  Rom - Do it in one of their honeymoon suites. Surprise your, ah, spouse with an anniversary honeymoon.

  Eco - What is another way the Cats have engineered Earthly economics systems?

  Rom - Kittens, as some call young Cats. Although for Cats the kittens can be as old as thirty and are still classified as children. You may think it callous to deliberately manipulate humans, but kittens genuinely like, even love humans. They think WE are cute.

  My daughter, who is ten, is crazy about Kittens. She and her friends even have one, Dora, in their neighborhood, who gives them rides in the park as if she were a horse. Dora is as loud with her whoops and hollers as the human kids are. Some times several Kittens will act as mounts for kids to play polo or the like.

  Eco - Ahh, is that safe?

  Rom - Quite. Kittens even very young are more mature than some human grownups I know. Plus they have all sorts of gadgets to keep themselves and Earth humans safe and treat them if they hurt themselves by some rare chance.

  Eco - This brings up the question of Cats selling medical advances to humans. How is that working out?

  Rom - The Human Interstellar Confederation, of which Earth is part of as a Candidate System whether we like it or not, limits sharing the most advanced medical advances by Confederation medtechs. This most importantly includes the forever-young treatments.

  However, there are lesser treatments which Cats may sell. Such as the FatAway and WrinklesAway products which beauty lines now have available to them as partners with Cat medtechs.

  Continued at THIS link.

  <>

  Meanwhile Jane acquired a classified facility in one of JPL's buildings and a small crew of Space Force scientists to build up the theory and mathematics of hyperspace transition and travel.

  All this took over a year. Finally she reached the point where she could have built hardware to test out the computer models. JPL had the 3D printers and machine shops to do this and keep the details from the several spies that infested any area that did advanced technology. The Chinese especially were still busy in these efforts despite several publicized failures and sanctions.

  There remained one big problem. Jane's experiments on the Moon had shown that powering on test equipment and running tests could have dangerous side effects. She insisted all tests be done in deep space.

  She issued an RFQ, a Request for Quote, for a space vehicle to transport her and an on-board lab out beyond the Moon to run tests. Of several companies Boeing came in with the lowest quote. It happened that they were constructing prototypes of a craft which could routinely and cheaply transport passengers and cargo to and from the Moon. They weren't the only company in the US (where the Space Force insisted the FTL research be done) to build such ships, but they were the furthest along.

  <>

  Phil went with Jane and her executive assistant Captain Smithson Leftwich in a Flyt rental car to the research park near the Long Beach Airport operated by Boeing.

  At the Boeing Headquarters in nearby Lakewood they were met at the reception desk by Deborah Minh, the Director of the Boeing Spacecraft Manufacturing Group. She was a tall third-generation Vietnamese. Accompanying her was the Assistant Director of the Group, Jason Manalo, who had a Filipino background.

  She was all effusive enthusiasm, coming down from the top floor of one of the multistory buildings of Boeing Lakewood Center with her assistant. She shook hands with the two of them and ushered them into an elevator up to her office. There she sat them at the head of a table in a small conference room just off her office. Phil sat at Jane's right hand across from Minh and Manalo and Leftwich sat next to Phil.

  "I understand you're here to pick up the Moon Lander final prototype. Is this your co-pilot?"

  She indicated Leftwich. Like Jane he was clad in a flight suit.

  "Yes. Captain Leftwich is a multicraft pilot as well as my right hand in the squadron. Both he and I have passed your Artemis flight simulator tests."

  "And this is…?"

  "…my friend, Phil Newman. You may be familiar with the movies he produces. Or the soccer teams he owns. He is also the sponsor of a Moon Quidditch team. He's along because he's interested in anything which might let more people travel to and from the Moon."

  Manalo stood and reached across the table to offer his hand to Leftwich and Phil. They likewise stood and shook his hand.

  The man said, "I'm pleased to meet you both. I happen to know that Director Minh is swamped today with budget proposals, though she would never let on. Perhaps we should let the Director get back to her work while I escort you to the hangar where Artemis 11 is housed."

  The woman stood and said, "There are a few problems I really should attend to, but I couldn't miss an opportunity to shake the hand of the woman who opened up space for humanity. It has been an honor, Colonel Kuznetsov."

  Jane stood. "Well, that's nice. But I'm just as honored. I know how Boeing Spacecraft Manufacturing has prospered under your leadership."

  "Oh, well, just doing my job. Made infinitely easier by Jason here."

  With that her assistant led Jane and her two companions out of the room by a doorway into a hall while Minh retreated to her office through another doorway.

  As Manalo led them to an elevator he said, "She really is busy with budgets. We're coming up on the start of the next fiscal year and Congress always wants to screw around with the budgets. Mostly I think just to convince themselves and everyone else that they have a real job."

  Jane smiled. "I'm not unfamiliar with the syndrome."

  The elevator took them to an underground garage where Manalo ushered Jane into the passenger seat of a sedan and her two companions into a back seat. He drove up and out of the garage onto Lakewood Avenue for a half-mile drive to Long Beach Research Park just adjacent to busy Long Beach Airport. He parked near a large building which turned out to be a hangar for a spaceship.

  Artemis Working Prototype 11 stood some sixty feet or three stories high on six legs ending in round feet, a white vehicle resembling a fat flying saucer from their viewpoint just inside the hangar door.

  Phil said, "I already know what the press is going to call
it. A flying soup tureen."

  Jane laughed. "They wouldn't be far off. It IS like a couple of soup bowls with one acting as a lid."

  "I think," said Leftwich, "it looks more like a flying loaf of french bread."

  Neither description was far off. It was an elongated ovoid fifty feet high minus its legs and a hundred feet long. Leftwich told Phil that it would fly horizontally in the long direction till the atmosphere thinned, like Constellation. Then it would fly in the upward direction to supply artificial gravity via the force of acceleration.

  Jane said, "This may be the last group of spaceships to use acceleration to supply artificial gravity. Generated AG is getting good enough to use on all future spacecraft."

  Manalo added, "Which you invented, Colonel Kuznetsov."

  "Call me Jane now that we're away from your boss. You and I have chatted enough via Scope about Artemis design that now we're face to face I'd like to call you Jason."

  "Sure...Jane. Now let's get the paperwork done and you can fly her wherever you're taking her."

  There was literal paper to sign despite most documents nowadays being done on slate computers. Then Jane and her two companions entered the elevator which had been let down from under Artemis to ground level. It took them to the control room atop the vehicle.

  Unlike Constellation this room was more like an aircraft's control room though it was roomier. There were two seats for the pilot and copilot and two seats behind them for a navigator and a flight steward supervisor. Vision screens simulated actual super-hard plastic windows.

  "Are there actual windows in Artemis?" Phil wanted to know.

  "Yes," said Jane. "They're normally covered on the outside but in a pinch there are two behind those visions screens. There are others all around Artemis. Each has electrically operated outside covers which can be manually operated if necessary."

  Jane gestured Leftwich to the left, pilot's, seat and took the copilot's seat. Phil sat behind the pilot so that he could easier see Jane's face. The pilots donned ear-covering headphones with a tiny microphone held on a wire near their mouths. Phil followed suit. A moment of fumbling and he could hear Jane say to Leftwich, "You got it, Second."

  The captain powered Artemis up from Standby Power to Operating Power levels, retracted the elevator into the body of the spacecraft, and engaged the floater fields at their lowest power setting.

  He spoke on the exterior speaker system to the ground crew of three men and one woman. They were visible on the virtual windows.

  "OK, Ground, can you hear me?"

  The woman ground crew member, clad in a white tee-shirt and camo pants and boots, lifted both hands with the thumbs up. She spoke loudly: "Loud and clear, Artemis."

  "Thanks, Ground. Going airborne. Please open the door and direct us to the outside."

  Leftwich increased power to the floater field. This lifted the craft off its legs and he retracted them. Artemis was now in the air and mobile.

  "Ground, direct us to a takeoff spot."

  The woman on the ground crew began to back out of the hangar, hands in the air with thumbs up and gesturing Artemis to follow her. About a hundred feet clear of the hangar she dropped her hands then with both hands pointed upward twice. Then she moved a dozen feet further away and saluted.

  "Thank you, Ground. We're up and away."

  Leftwich had been on the radio with Long Beach Air Traffic Control and had received permission to lift off.

  "Long Beach, Artemis 11 ready to fly. We still OK for lift-off?"

  "You are indeed, Artemis. Be advised that you are clear to follow your previously logged flight to Burbank Airport."

  "Artemis 11, Long Beach. Lifting...now. Following standard path to Burbank AP."

  The spaceship moved forward and into one of the runways of the Long Beach Airport just as if it was an ordinary jet airplane. It made a short run along the runway then lifted above it at the same angle as a plane and like those planes climbed swiftly toward its cruising height of 31,000 feet.

  Surrounding cities spread out below them. To the south the busy 405 freeway showed its hundreds and thousands of vehicles flowing rapidly in both directions, here mostly east and west.

  "Long Beach, Artemis, turning into northern leg of flight path."

  "Artemis, Long Beach. Have a good trip."

  The Earth fell away rapidly. The clear blue South California sky above began to darken noticeably. The city and then the ocean to their right and west acquired a faint blue cast.

  Over his earphones Phil heard Jane say to him, "We're coming up on six miles height. We'll be leveling off soon... Well, now actually."

  The Earth which had been tilted at an angle leveled.

  "Now we're going to head north. Nobody should be near us. And I just noticed Leftwich double check that. We are alone."

  Phil could see the Earth move underneath them, LA center coming toward them and then below putting them north of downtown LA.

  "Descending now, Phil."

  He could tell that by a slight upward moving of his insides as if they were in an elevator starting down. The sensation soon passed.

  Below the Earth expanded at a rapid rate. Then the rate slowed and he could see the long stretch of the runways at the Long Beach Airport.

  They expanded some more, and more slowly, then more slowly still. Phil could see numerous aircraft in the air and on the ground. Over the earphones he could hear Leftwich talking to air traffic control.

  Finally they grounded and floated a short distance. A hangar became visible in front of Artemis. People came out and shepherded them inside. The craft finally set down and Captain Leftwich powered it down to Standby Power. Somewhere in the vessel, Phil knew, a mighty antimatter power generator went to sleep, leaving only a house-sized superbattery to provide standby power.

  The pilots took off their headphones and stood, so Phil did too. He waited for them to walk by him then followed.

  On the elevator Jane said to him, "Enjoy your flight?"

  He took her nearest hand and tucked her arm into his. "I did indeed. Thanks for inviting me along."

  <>

  Using JPL's industrial-quality 3D printers and machine shops a small spacecraft was made which could be flown remotely. In addition each contained a hyperspace-entering and -exiting field generator. Once the craft entered Hyperspace 1 it would automatically follow a predetermined path and exit H-1. It would start with a ten-second in-then-out flight which traveled nowhere. Later ones would go one mile, ten miles, a thousand miles, then several longer and longer flights up to a million miles.

  Assuming the hyperspace generators worked, and worked as expected.

  Finally Test Vehicle One was done. It had a big slot where a superbattery could be installed but was left empty. Jane didn't want even the slightest chance for the hyperspace generator to turn on.

  By this time those of her twenty-three scientists and engineers who hadn't been space-qualified before had gone through the training to become so. Everyone also had a spacesuit qualified for extended work in vacuum.

  On the Monday just after Thanksgiving Jane had her people load the six-foot long hyperspace craft into the cargo hold on the bottom of Artemis and lock it into place. They also loaded and secured near the vehicle the high-capacity superbattery which would power it.

  Then everyone boarded Artemis and settled into their assigned stations. This included Jane as copilot, Leftwich as pilot, several people who kept the spacecraft's antimatter power generator and giant superbattery backup operating well, more who made sure the test vehicle functioned properly and launched on cue, and others who would man the sensory suite which would look after and record data on the flight of the test vehicle once it was launched.

  Jane merged with Robot and Artemis and the dormant test vehicle, observing every event. So far everything was in order. SHE dropped back fully into her biological self and told Leftwich to take off on their planned flight.

  He did so: talking with Burbank Airport Traffic C
ontrol then lifting the vehicle onto its floater field, buttoning up Artemis, and entering the runway just as if it were another aircraft. The flight path was the same as an ordinary aircraft too even though it could accelerate straight up. Reaching 35,000 feet it did just that, headed for the Moon and beyond it at one then five then ten and finally twenty gravities of acceleration.

  As Artemis whipped around the Moon it began to decelerate. At three million miles from Earth it came to a halt relative to the planet and directly in line with the Moon. The satellite thus acted as a shield for Earth in case some great catastrophic explosion or other disaster happened.

  Jane gave the order to move the test vehicle's superbattery into its slot and lock it in. Then from her copilot's seat she became a cyborg again and powered on the little hyperspace craft.

  Nothing untoward happened that required the superbeing JANE to take action. SHE moved that part of HERself which was the test vehicle outside HER and sent IT a thousand miles further from the Moon. To HER biological body it felt as if SHE reached out with a limb.

  Then, with all HER researchers tensely looking on SHE punched an opening into hyperspace and shook off HER...hand?

  The shock of losing part of HERself sent HER tumbling out of HERself.

  Jane reeled and gasped at so abruptly becoming merely human again.

  She wasn't the only one but their gasps were hidden by cheering.

  Beside her in the pilot's seat Captain Smithson Leftwich turned to her and grinned.

  Jane pulled herself together, smiled at him, and spoken over Artemis's ship-wide speaker system.

  "Look alive, people. We're only at the halfway point. Don't sluff off now."

  Leftwich sobered and turned his attention back to his instruments. So, presumably, did the rest of the crew.

  The ten seconds before the test vehicle returned seemed like an eternity. They would have felt that way if Jane were in her cyborg state which paced off milliseconds instead of seconds of experienced time.

  Suddenly the sensor displays echoed from Jane's and Leftwich's control panel onto the middle of several virtual windows into space bloomed with readings. A thousand miles up ahead of Artemis their hyperspace test vehicle had returned from the nearly empty alternate universe of Hyperspace One.