Sabato droned on about his winning the Life Lotto while Anaya arranged an IV ready to use, and pasted a couple wireless sensors on his neck and wrists. He just reached out and touched the ceramic taster pad when she requested it, and didn’t protest like he had on entering Home.
Anaya looked briefly quizzically at the result of his touch, and held up a forestalling digit to interrupt his ongoing babble. Custom Tailored Genes also held the contract to manage the database for habitat entry and exit. In checking to make sure who she was treating Anaya saw Sabato self identified as Donald Duck. That made a much deeper impression than his continuing monologue.
“Do you want me to explain the steps of today’s procedure and detail what I am administering to you?” Anaya asked.
“No, I’m told you guys are the best, and I wouldn’t understand the technical stuff anyway. I filled the form out for what options I want. You see how lucky I am, how would you like to hook up, go out to dinner, and make an evening of it with me after my treatment?” he asked, with a leering waggle of his eyebrows.
Anaya leaned in close nose to nose and her own brows furrowed in anger, ruining the calm flat canvas for her bindi which almost disappeared in a crease. Sabato leaned back hard in the chair, uncomfortable because invading someone’s personal space was something he did to others. He wasn’t used to it being applied to him.
“I’m a professional, who would never socialize with patients under my care. If you weren’t my patient, I never slum date anyone not my social peer. Your run of luck was all used up winning the Life Lotto and you never ever had enough luck to think you would get lucky with me.
“It’s only because I am a professional that I would never vindictively pick the interlocution enzymes controlling your genes to give you webbed feet to match your name, Mr. Duck. Do I make myself perfectly clear? Just quack yes or no, without elaboration, and we can move on.”
Sabato managed a slight nod yes, difficult because he had his head pressed back hard against the headrest. For a wonder he even managed to squeak out a rare, but very sincere, “My bad.”
Anaya stood back straight, out of his space, unclutched her fist from around her bejeweled dagger and took a deep breath. She even forced a smile that was nowhere near as sincere as Sabato’s curt apology. The rest of his procedure went well, and in silence. She had no need to call Tanya to manage her patient. That was all to the good for him. Tanya could be scary.
* * *
“It would be cozy,” Arnold Woodleigh admitted, “but you are welcome to sleep in our tent tonight if you want. The radio said no rain for tonight but everything will be covered in dew in the morning.”
“No thank you, Arnold,” Vic said. “I don’t like being closed in like that. I’ve sleep outside in much worse weather than this.”
Arnold’s eyes slid to Eileen. He was probably thinking she might not be as thrilled to rough it as Vic, but to his credit he said nothing.
Vic led her off to the tree line and picked a route in among the Aspen with care, stopping to look back at the clearing a couple times. There were a few stouter trees a little ways in and he walked around examining them and looking back to the clearing. Eileen had no idea what he was he was hoping to find.
When his face suddenly relaxed, she knew he’d found it. He opened the fanny pack he’d worn and got out a hammock.
“Big enough for two,” Vic informed her with a wink. “Watch how I tie it up so you can do it another time. It doesn’t require preparing a flat smooth ground area and you can be in among the trees where you are much less visible.”
Next he pulled a very thin rip-stop tarp out and it was hung loosely with two corners toward the trees that supported the hammock. The uphill corner away from the clearing was tied up on a line to another tree, and the corner towards the clearing and the Woodleigh’s tent was fastened near the ground with a twist in ground anchor.
“I have a mosquito net too, but we won’t need one this early,” Vic told her.
Eileen watched as he took a couple bundles of mottled brown cord and strung trip lines between the trees all around their camp just above ankle height. They were almost invisible in the day, at night they’d be impossible to see.
The last touch was to put a tiny game camera on a tree, looking back at their camp. It was motion activated and they’d check it on returning and know if somebody visited the site in their absence.
“OK, now let’s go to the party,” Vic said.
When Vic walked away they didn’t follow the same path back out of the woods. He took them parallel to the edge so they came out well away. Eileen could see the logic of it all, but it was so well hidden she wasn’t sure she could find it in the day, much less in the dark after the party. She said as much to Vic.
After he thought on it a bit, he replied. “I’ll add a roll of braided fishing line to my kit. We can tie it off near the camp next time and run it out to an easy to find spot, a big tree or something, and you can wind it back up as you follow it in.”
The party was fun. In a way less stressful than attending single, but the electricity in the air of being looked over and looking back in turn was gone too. The girls who had given her such a hard time at the last get together stared in open mouthed astonishment that she came with Vic, not her family. Things had moved ahead faster than they could possibly imagine, without anyone consulting them. It was all Eileen could do not to laugh out loud at their indignation.
Chapter 18
Surely it was a miracle better than any magician’s trick to tell the computer “execute” to leave one star and arrive at another before your heart beat again. April felt that Abracadabra would probably make more sense than “execute”. The rest of the crew were alert and calm, but surely they felt the same thrill inside she did, even if discipline prevailed over expressing it.
“Spectrum confirms it’s Virginis 61,” Alice reported. “Thanks,” Delores said. “Nothing big and solid enough to return our radar to about ten light seconds. Starting optical scan,” Alice continued. Delores didn’t bother to acknowledge that. “Distance to star is about one point six light hours by disk size and astronomical data.”
“Can we also get a finer base point to navigate in-system from comparing pulsars like we could back home?” April wondered.
“That’s running concurrently. It will finish first, if we hold position here a bit while letting the optical scan for planets run,” Alice said. “I can’t give you a super accurate position from this point if we jump again in just a few minutes, but if I can get a half hour of observations and at least four known pulsars in the clear, that is that we aren’t observing through too high a gravitational gradient, I can relocate us within about five hundred meters.”
“What if we jumped within say – five minutes?” April asked.
“We’re coming up on that pretty soon. I could bring us back on this point in the ten to fifteen kilometer range,” Alice said.
“That seems like plenty of accuracy for missing planets,” April said.
“Yes, but if we start nosing around a gas giant’s moon system or rings it isn’t nearly accurate enough to find a particular rock or snow ball again,” Alice said.
“My intent,” Delores told April, “is to sit here until the optical scan has identified everything down to largest asteroids, then jump at about a forty five degree angle from our present heading pointed directly into the star, but correcting into the system plane of rotation. A two point seven light hour jump will take us to a point about ninety degrees around the star. I’ll repeat that, do a full optical scan from each quadrant, and have a pretty decent map of this system once our computer integrates all the readings.”
“Sounds like a plan,” April agreed cheerfully. She would have looked at the system from opposite sides, looking down at the star’s poles first, but both ways had their own advantages and she didn’t want to interfere in Delores’ command.
All four of them sat relaxed but alert, letting the sensors work and compile
data. There wasn’t anything happening externally or with systems that needed comment. Boring on the bridge of a ship was good, given the alternatives.
“Our optical survey is complete,” Alice eventually announced. “We have three gas giants, four rocky planets, one of which is far on the other side of the star that we’ll need a better look at later. Two have definite atmospheres, but not enough free oxygen to be detectable by spectroscopy. I also have a couple asteroids and one body you might want to call a planetoid. We’ll know better when we have a closer look.”
“I’m correcting to the plane of the star’s rotation and will follow that around,” Delores said. They could feel the ship twist under them as she turned it. April could see her typing in commands, but the keys were silent. She could have called the commands up on her screen but didn’t bother, leaning back in her couch so she could see all three of the other screens. She couldn’t read them, but the status lights told her everything important was fine.
When the star lay off to the left of their nose Delores said, “execute.” The light immediately went from streaming into the back of the cabin where April was, to shining from out of their sight behind into the left ports and just illuminating the rear of the command seat.
“Ship, rotate and hold directly, addressing the star, execute,” Deloris said instead of keying it in, because it was such a simple unambiguous command there was little that could go wrong. The ship again smoothly turned under them and the forward ports darkened until the star was straight ahead. It was still slightly bright to stare at directly for long. Deloris didn’t like that so she said, “Ship, reduce transparency of the center two viewports to point five percent.” That left a disc visible that didn’t dazzle.
“Alice, you may start your optical survey,” Delores said.
“Survey started, nothing in range of our radar again,” Alice reported.
“Why are we emitting radar with such limited range?” April wondered.
“There might be a rock out there with our name on it,” Delores said.
“It doesn’t draw enough power to use much fuel,” Alice added.
April didn’t say anything, not wanting to argue, but Alice asked, “Why wouldn’t you have it on?”
“Well it’s visible from much further away than it actually lets us see,” April reminded her. “It’s kind of like shouting – Hello? Is anybody home?”
“If anyone of consequence were home I think we’d have heard their radio chatter when we arrived,” Delores said.
“True, I totally agree, for any sort of technological inhabited world that would be a security concern for us,” April said.
“What else would be here?” Delores asked.
“We’re here aren’t we?” April pointed out.
“What are the chances two star faring races would happen to explore the same system at the same time?” Delores insisted.
“I have no data at all to work from to answer that,” April said.
Delores looked satisfied, nodding affirmatively, like that proved some point. For the first time April felt a twinge of worry that Delores didn’t have sufficient imagination for her command. Lack of data wasn’t affirmative of anything.
“Permission to make us some coffee?” Barak asked, with a formality April hoped was humor.
“Alice, can Barak move around and not mess up your scan?” Delores asked. April hadn’t thought of that. He had enough mass to jar the ship around while they were reading very small angles, and not smoothly at all.
“Give me another twelve minutes please, to finish up the x-ray survey, and then after I have the pulsars located he can move around freely and not have to worry about doing it slowly or bumping anything. The optical scan is much less fussy. I’m not trying to nail down orbital periods and rotations out to the twelfth significant figure.”
“In that case I’d love some coffee. Call out to him when you are done,” Delores instructed Alice.
Maybe Delores wasn’t the tyrant April had starting thinking if she didn’t demand they come back and check with her again. Time seemed to go slower waiting for just a few minutes to pass. A whole hour you could sit back and dismiss it from mind, if not watching the seconds blink over.
Finally Alice announced time up, and told Barak he was free to move around. It wasn’t long until April could smell it brewing, and Barak returned with a mug for each of them.
“Barak,” April asked, “are you still working on the problem Jeff gave you about selecting crew?”
“I gave him my preliminary thoughts, but that’s the sort of thing I don’t just dismiss from further consideration and consider it done. I know he will continue to be interested in refining his methods. If I come up with something new, or even feel the need to contradict something I told him before, I’d report it to him. Why? Have you some sudden insight from sitting back there observing us?”
“Mostly the realization all four of us have no trouble staying alert for an hour while the optics compile data. We might not all do it the same way, but I can think of several people I know who couldn’t do this. They would fall asleep or be forced to do something to stay sane while sitting so long without some stimulation, music at a minimum.”
“How do you cope with lack of any strong stimulation?” Barak asked back.
“I always have a dozens of ongoing projects to think about. I’m trying to figure out how to make my cubic on the Moon pay for its own development without my constantly needing to be there and manage it.
“I’m trying to figure out myself a little bit. I’m finding I have associates with all sorts of positive things going for them, but I don’t have this feeling of liking them for social things, and it makes me guilty, especially if they like me. There are other people who haven’t done anything special for me and aren’t nearly as smart or helpful who I do like without understanding why. Maybe I should audit a psych course to help me sort it out.
“Jeff has been having people used to the Earth banking system asking for him to issue derivatives, and he sees no honest way to do so with our system of banking. We don’t issue credit as money and interest rates are unregulated and tied to market demand. He insists what they want is insurance, but sees no rational way to assess risk and write a policy anybody could afford. Earth central banks just set interest rates, so how can he predict that? Every crash the Earth economy has experienced in the last hundred years has wiped out any benefit people holding credit default hedges had because the counter parties are always over extended and can’t pay. Yet they are all still eager to buy into a system they have seen fail every thirty years or so. He’d love to be able to accommodate all these people waving money and demanding product, if he or I can find any way to do it ethically.
“But what I was thinking about right now before you asked, was that you could test crew applicants, should test crew applicants, for the ability to sit and watch for a change on a screen or an audio signal without falling asleep or into such a mesmerized haze they might as well be asleep.”
“If you have need to run other short jaunts like the one we are doing right now, you could use them to evaluate crew for much longer flights without revealing every quality for which you are selecting. It’s much harder to fake your way through a test when you aren’t even sure what behavior is being observed,” Delores suggested.
“Yes,” Barak agreed, “that might be so effective it would be worth spending the money to add such testing and training as part of other--”
“What’s that?” Alice called out. There was a hard >thump< like somebody had stomped on the deck hard and a violet spark appeared beside the star at which they were pointed. Whatever it was, it was going so fast it visibly receded even as they watched.
“Respectfully request you turn the damn radar off,” April said.
“I already have,” Alice said, and added, “Sorry Ma’am, my own initiative,” to Delores. “There was no return on the screen when I shut it down, and whatever that shock was moved us enough to terminat
e my scan.”
“No problem. I expect such initiative from crew, and I’m glad we discussed this before, even if I was skeptical about its probability. No need to curse the radar, April. If you wish to curse the commander directly I will allow I had insufficient imagination. If you wish my immediate resignation, speak, and I’ll offer it. Do you wish to activate the weapons board?”
When Deloris offered to resign, April noticed she reached and turned the ring Heather had given her as a token of her authority with her other hand. It might have been an unconscious gesture, but it was the first sign April saw to indicate Deloris didn’t consider it a silly affectation. Apparently it did mean something to her. If April accepted her resignation, who would she hand the ring to? April didn’t want to find out. Firing her would be a horrible precedent.
“I was out of line to say that,” April admitted. “They aren’t shooting at us, and I doubt they have eyes to see this deep inside their drive cone emissions, but it sure would make me feel much better if you would allow me to bring the board up just on standby and check system readiness.”
“Do it,” Delores granted.
“And off it goes,” Barak said, as the light blinked off. “I don’t want to sound stupid, but please confirm, did I just see what I thought I saw?”
“It’s a jump ship, after the pattern of James Weir’s ship. They have to make a long run to jump under acceleration to have sufficient velocity to make a transition, a jump, to the largest mass at which they are aimed,” April explained. “They come through accelerating and once here they will examine ahead of them for debris or large bodies, and then shut down the drive once they are sure they don’t have to maneuver immediately to avoid collision.”
“Are you scanning all the frequencies we can hear?” Delores asked Alice.
“Yes, and we have nothing incoming so far. Of course I doubt they would waste watts transmitting anything to the rear, in the cone of their exhaust plume. I have no range, but with a little luck our own radar pulses will out range them before they turn and burn on an exit vector to another star, or flip over and brake to stay in this system.”
Been There, Done That (April Book 10) Page 27