by J G Clements
I smiled in her mind. Checkmate. “No. Dishonest behavior couldn’t last very long, could it?”
“That’s right. There is more to it, but it isn’t nearly as complex as what most of your Earth governments have put together. The Crekie doesn’t want large amounts of regulations. There are other aspects you didn’t ask about. For instance, anyone given a ship must name it, and keep that name on file with us. They are NOT allowed to travel anonymously, but they can travel anywhere they wish without permission. We don’t need pirates. If someone or small group tries to do that, we’d send in more ships to stop it. Likewise, several raftcities have tried to pull games where people can’t leave. When we find out, we intercede. The Ants have been a particularly interesting group. I’d say they have at least one hundred very different cultures, and it’s a struggle just keeping up with them. From their viewpoint, everyone can find a place to fit in, and I think its normal to move from one raftcity to the next, depending on where they are in life. Families seem to like one culture, older ones seem to like a different raftcities.” Huh. Even other races have the equivalent of Florida.
“And what type of culture would you like to live in, Spacegirl?”
“Soon, when this problem of evacuating humans is solved and we have a good protection around the Earth, I think you and I should discuss this?” Tentativeness tapped at my mind.
Putting it to rest, “I’d like that very much. But why should we wait till this is over? We could make plans now?”
A sigh of contentment. “No, I can’t change gears in my mind that fast. If I start planning on what I wish to do next, I won’t be fully engaged in what I must do now. It’ll be too discontinuous to me.” Then after a pause. “That’s why you are still the Recruiter. For a little while longer.” The sense of apology.
“Its really fine, Helen, but there is one caveat. When we are in Paris, I will have the Louvre opened in the evening for just the two of us.” I didn’t add, ‘And the phalanx of security folks following us around.’ Sincerity in my mind. Then, as an after-thought, “Tell me about what type of people you want to man the ships?”
“In this matter, we need your help. For starters, we don’t think age is important, though we feel 25 years should be the minimum age. They should be reasonably healthy, but more importantly, we think they need to be self-reliant. We’d like them to be capable of learning how to maintain their own ships, but we can work around that if it’s too complicated.” She paused. “What do you think we should be looking for?”
“I’m assuming small family groups would be ok? Or do you think the ships are too small for that?”
“The picket ships are good size for one or two, but I can’t imagine raising a family on one. There are ships that will make good family ships, and we’re thinking that if they do a two year or three year stint, we’d be willing to trade them a family ship for a picket ship. Would they want that?”
“Maybe. If you recruit single people, at the end of 2 years they are going to be looking for the opposite sex. What if they want to go back to Earth?”
“Oh, we just assume that we’d recruit an equal number of men and women, and hopefully that would be a large enough pool?”
“Does an individual stay on a picket ship for the two years? No Shore leave?”
“We were thinking about 30 days on, then 30 days at a raftcity. We anticipate that there will a lot of interest in building raftcities, and we would probably go ahead and start assembling some to kick-start it. The humans on shore leave would find a lot of employment on the raftcities, so the ones who wanted to work would be able to. The ones who wanted to just relax could do that as well.”
“What will you do if someone is acceptable, but they already have debts? College loans, car loans, whatever? Do they need to get them paid off somehow, or do they skip on the debt, or does the Crekie pay them off?”
“We don’t want to get embroiled in a planet’s currency. We control ours, and really try to get a barter system going for the ‘day-to-day’ needs of people. That being said, do you really think we’ll be unable to find enough recruits that are financially unencumbered?”
“I don’t know. On the other hand, if someone really wants to pay off their debts over a few years…” This train of thought led me to another questions. “Helen, how quickly will you want these volunteers? Months, years?”
“Either. We’ve been taking them while you were away, but its still just a trickle. We have an interview process set up. We’ve loaded the ones we’ve accepted onto the larger ships and trained them as much as we can while jumping toward the areas where the picket ships are waiting. We know it’ll take time to train people. But we have the ships now.”
“Will there be opportunities for more of us to leave Earth? Or is this a short term offer?” I sensed in her mind that she thought she saw where I was going, but she was wrong. “I know what you’re thinking and it would actually work, short term. We can present this as a short-term once-in-a-lifetime offer, and get a lot of volunteers immediately. But wouldn’t you want this to be a long-term arrangement? You’d get a continuous flow of emigres for as many years as you want?”
“Unless you have a better idea, we always assumed there would be spaceports, and the flow of humans off the planet would continue indefinitely. In fact, one item we’d like your advice on is what will happen if Earthmen come home. Will the countries really honor their passports? And will the ones without papers be allowed to come back to Earth? Will they be criminals or will they be free to re-enter their own countries? If they can’t come home, they’ll be leaving their planet forever. Do you think this will be a problem?”
“Of course it’ll be a problem. First, since the picket ships and the others aren’t set up for atmospheric re-entry, either you or someone will have a monopoly on surface ships. Some governments and probably businesses will complain that its unfair…as if fairness if part of their culture. You might develop your own customs department, and work with countries on passport control. That’ll make them happy, and give the humans a chance to decide if they wish to return later.” I was beginning to see a two-pronged approach here, but kept rolling on.
“Helen, do you think you can more or less land in open fields, fill up on willing humans, then take off without the consent of Earth Governments?”
“We would prefer for the governments to not control who leaves.” I knew she’d say that, and that brought me again back to my dilemma. How do I pull this off? I had a few more ideas, all provisional.
“Ok. We have the U.S. over a barrel for their own spaceport and now you have your own base-embassy on a U.S protected island. It’s a good start. France will be a good European location, and I think Scotland has something to offer us too. Another approach is to find a few small countries to put spaceports. Countries small enough that you can pretty much bribe them with something. They’ll let you build spaceports and then stay out of your way. Offer them something like a departure tax, and they’ll be satisfied. Or whoever runs the country will be satisfied. I don’t know what you’ll need for infrastructure, but they’ll need to do something so humans can migrate there and find hotels until the next ship lifts. Very workable but it’ll take some time. But I don’t like it since it means putting a spaceport in an out of the way place.”
I began to envision what Space would be like now, picket ships, fleets to hunt the Swarmers, foodworlds, raftcities, whatever Humans wanted to build. But then I saw a terrible downside. “Helen, will you let Humans have control of the beam weapons?” Her answer was brief and enigmatic.
“Sort of. I need to go now. Thanks, sweetie.” And like that she was no longer in my mind. ‘Sweetie’? I had to laugh at that as I got dressed to go look for dinner. And I really was interested in what ‘sort of’ meant.
Chapter 23. Debriefing.
Ceres Report: Schedule
I’ve been wrestling with what sort of schedule to keep. Ceres rotates in about 10 hours but of course the Earth takes 24. I decided to
try to stay on Earth time, and I have professional sports to thank for that.
I know what time the football game starts and I make every effort to watch it. That sometimes makes it odd with respect to how light it is outside, but that was easily solved: I just close the shade over the only viewport I have.
Sue had seen to Jim’s retrieval, and though Jake would like to have debriefed Jim directly, she made it clear that Jim needed to get cleaned up, have a warm meal and get a few hours sleep. The suit hadn’t done a great job keeping him warm while he was adrift, and that had prevented him from sleeping. The ship’s doctor reported he was dehydrated (folks who are cold don’t normally drink enough), exhausted, and had a low fever. No frostbite so that was good news.
The only data Jim had brought back with him was the chip he used to record the last couple of hours on his one-man ship. Jake made a decision not to look at it until Jim himself was ready to present it. Ever the commander of a submarine, Jake was able to be patient when needed.
So it was almost four hours later that Jim, shaved, showered and rested, asked to convene a debriefing in the mess hall. The implication being it was a public briefing. Jake fought the urge to have a private briefing first, but reminded himself that the Crekie didn’t like secrets. Whatever he was about to learn, anyone who was interested was allowed to hear. Consequently, he asked the Chiefs of his ship to attend. The ships were simple in construction and operation, but each weapon system, jump field, and other major functions had a ‘Chief’…someone who was considered to be the ship’s expert in that specialty. The Sisk had no less than a dozen of them.
Jake asked one of the Stewards to arrange the mess hall for a presentation. That meant three or four rows of chairs facing a display. The Sisk had three Stewards who took turns managing the mess hall. Typical of how the Crekie did things, it had been a simple matter to find humans who volunteered for duty on a ship. In this case, all three individuals had been stewards on Earth ships, and were happy to be serving again and seeing space to boot. It seemed to be a toss-up of ex-military personnel and cruise ship workers.
Part of the arrangements was a table with some of the artifacts brought back from the mine. Jim had heard some details, but not enough to make his own determination of it. And Jake really wanted Jim’s opinion before anyone could influence it.
Besides the Chiefs, and a bunch of the crew, there were over twenty members of the McKinsie Fleet on board, and they had all heard of Jim’s accomplishment. Obviously, they all decided to attend. The Steward was unflappable, and demurely put several more rows of chairs out. Before the meeting came to order, Jim was the recipient of a lot of congratulations. The arrival of the Captain, however, cut that short and the meeting began.
They didn’t use a holographic display: With only a single lens recording what happened, a flat monitor was used. Not really large enough for several dozen people to see, the signal was duplicated into a couple more monitors in the mess hall. The recording was run at a ‘fast forward’ speed, compressing two hours of data into a two minute video. Everyone watched in silence as it ran through the first time, but upon replaying it, everyone had questions.
Jake watched Jim field the questions from the Chiefs, and discuss what conclusions everyone was coming to. In a few minutes it seemed that the group had broken into several discussions, each examining the part that they found the most instructive. Everyone agreed that the Swarm ship had been a Hauler, and it did not seem to notice Jim’s ship until it had broadcast the radio message in the wide beam: The Swarm didn’t notice the directional broadcast at all.
Discussion of the blinking phenomenon came up next. Jim was more familiar with it because of his experience out past Mars. A number of the crew were convinced it was just the ship rotating on its axis, keeping its hull temperature uniform. But one Chief, though agreeing with the need to do this near a sun, didn’t see how it would be useful this far out. And that brought silence from the group. Suggestions were offered about creating microgravity, stabilizing the ship, or broadcasting on as yet unknown band like a rotating beacon.
Jim explained his theory on the ‘Ghost drive’, that somehow the ship was propelling itself through space without a fusion drive. That brought a lot of discussion, but nothing really useful. In fact, despite Jim’s data, a case could be made for the Ghost Drive, or against it: Much better video data would be needed, one with binocular lenses so the distances could be accurately measured. If the ship really was just rotating, maybe that indicated the Swarm creature itself found the spinning comforting. There was no conclusion on this subject and it seemed about to drop from further consideration. What Jim didn’t mention was something obvious to him: Why would a creature that lived in deep space want any sort of gravity?
He did point out that the blinking stopped before the beam weapon was used, and everyone agreed this made sense. Furthermore, once the fusion drive started, the ship did not go back to spinning. If there had been a need to generate gravity, the acceleration from the fusion reactor would easily supply that.
Though Jim’s video was ‘monocular’, a computer program could use the drift of his ship to create a true 3D map of the starfield. From this, a rough trajectory of the ship’s route was obtained. The Swarm had been clearly climbing out of the plane, either heading to another star system, or heading into what is empty space. This got everyone going again on intents, and Jake was pleased to see that everyone was brainstorming without fear of admonition.
“If they have a base way above the ecliptic plane, wouldn’t we have found it? There isn’t really any place to hide out there, is there?”
“Have we ever really looked above the ecliptic plane?” The lack of data on this didn’t prevent a lot of heated discussion. One of the Chiefs made a comment that maybe the best place to hide a tree really wasn’t in a forest. It was in a desert that no one visited. Jake had remained silent till now, afraid that too much input from him would sway the Chiefs from disagreeing with his conclusions. Obviously, what Jake wanted was everyone’s actual opinion.
“Let me ask everyone about the ecliptic plane problem.” The Chiefs and Jim turned to face him. “If they are out there, and we were to launch some drones…like the ones we launched earlier…if we triggered a wide-beam radio broadcast and they’re out there, what would we expect to happen?” Everyone got it, but one of the Chiefs had to respond.
“If the Swarm are close enough, they would attack. We’d see them use beam weapons and maybe fusion drives. On the other hand, if they are far enough away they might decide to withdraw and we get nothing.” He seemed to consider it a bit more. “If you can rig the drones to look for blinkers before they broadcast, that might make a difference.” He seemed to think a bit more. “If they continue to spin like Jim saw.”
Everyone understood how provisional these conclusions were, but the idea that a wide-broadcast signal from a small ship…or drone…could trigger an attack had merit. Several Chiefs were confident they could convert small one-man ships into drones, programming them to behave the way Jake wanted: Drift out above the ecliptic plane and look for blinkers. Once they found them, they’d next broadcast a narrow beam signal toward a base ship, then broadcast on a wide beam. Then wait to see what happened. If they didn’t report back again, it would be assumed they got fried.
There was discussion about the drones supporting each other, acting as a data net. They could save messages from fellow drones and report back later to a capital ship. Jim put a stop to the discussion, explaining that he didn’t want to tip the Swarm off to the fact that this was a concerted effort. Instead, put the drones far enough apart that the discovery of one wouldn’t tip the Swarm off to the whole line of drones. Anyone who glanced at the Captain to appeal Jim’s decisions was disappointed. Jake has a lot of respect for Jim’s approach to all this. Jake always thought of himself as a good tactician. But Jim was a much better strategist. And submarine warfare often worked the same way…a line of listening devices that formed its own picket
.
The only real debate ended up being on how fast the drones should be traveling. Obviously, the faster they went the more territory they’d cover. On the other hand, anything faster than the comets and asteroids out there might stand out like a sore thumb. It was Jim, after asking for Jakes’ permission, who suggested they move the ships a little faster than the comets, with the exception of a single drone. That one would be aimed toward the general location of where he had encountered the Swarm a few days ago. That drone would move as fast as they could accelerate it.
Jim never revealed his thinking to the Chiefs, but knew that Jake had it figured out. If the fast one stirred up a nest of hornets, the slow ones would see it and let the Sisk know. A beam weapon discharge or the lighting of a fusion drive….a drone would see it and send a signal. A directional signal. Even if it might be the last thing it ever did.
As they wrapped up this subject, it was Paul who asked Jim if he knew about the mine they had found, and how it had blown up? Jim had not had a full briefing, and sat down, indicating it was Paul’s turn to brief the group. Paul was a bit mortified, but an encouraging nod from Captain Jake Dubois set him at ease.
He ran through the entire set of events, and finished with what was the consensus opinion that the Swarm booby-trapped abandoned mines to prevent anyone from entering them. Not unkindly, though, it was Jim who said that probably wasn’t accurate.
“No, they didn’t”. Both Paul and Jake were startled. “They set a bomb to close the mine and hide any trace of it before they left. It just hadn’t gone off. If it had, we never would have found it, right?” He looked at them for approval. Jake already got it but Paul was a second behind. “We’ve never found a mine before, and if they were dark holes like the one Paul found, I think we would have. Instead, look at how they set it up. A single explosion and you get a landslide that fills it in and covers it. Not a trace the mine was ever there. Didn’t you say the walls of the crater were particularly steep? Making a landslide easier?”