“Oh, thank heavens I wasn’t the only one that felt that way,” Gina said.
“Make it three,” Angie said from the kitchen.
All three men raised their hands, smiling in agreement.
Carey nodded. That made her second suggestion a more likely solution.
“So before we let anyone get near those rings,” Angie said, “we fix that problem. Damned if I know how. That would be up to the scientists, but we need to fix it.”
“And we fix the fact that those screens around galaxies can’t be really seen through enough,” Gage said. “We have to make them invisible.”
Everyone nodded to that as well.
“You know,” Benny said, “I used to hate moving into someone else’s old house.”
Carey felt the same way and that was her second suggestion. Matt was nodding.
“The Ancients have flat said that living in those rings caused them to grow stagnant,” Carey said. “So even if we could fix the safety issue, not sure we would want to move Seeders into the rings.”
“You thinking we just shut it down?” Angie asked, bringing in a bowl of fresh salad and putting it in the middle of the table.
“Not so much shut it down,” Carey said. “Fix the safety issues, sure, and the screen issues, but then maybe find another purpose for it.”
Matt laughed. “Seems like the purpose would be obvious.”
Everyone sort of looked at him. Carey could see the glint in his eye, which meant he had the most obvious solution to something that should have been obvious to all of them.
“We seed it,” Matt said, smiling. “Let humans and Gray and Cirrata have it.”
“Duh,” Benny said, shaking his head.
Carey laughed and everyone applauded.
Matt took a pretend bow. And at that point Angie got Gage to help her serve dinner.
Carry had no doubt Matt’s idea was a perfect one for the Center and all the galaxies around the Center. But there were so many more things to deal with.
And that would take time, something Seeders clearly had in abundance.
THIRTY-NINE
OVER THE NEXT six months, Matt felt as if they were back in the early days of the alien war effort. Scientists were poring through the breadcrumb network from human space to learn from the Ancients.
And the scientists who had been here for over a year studying the drives on Arcadia Case had already made headway and now with the Ancient engineers in Command, they believed they would be ready in just six months to retro-fit the first Seeder ship and test it.
From the reports Matt saw and from what Star Fall explained to him and Carey, once the retro-fits started, it would go quickly. In fact, Star Fall felt that its engines could be done safely and tested in under a month.
The six of them had not mentioned their plan for the Center to anyone else. They wanted to hold on that until they had most of the more advanced technology.
And all of them had agreed that the military ships would remain a part of Seeder culture going forward. Matt was very happy they had all agreed on that because having the military there made everyone feel safer. The universe seemed to be a never-ending place, from what the Ancients hinted at, so better to be safe than sorry later considering how far out they planned to go over the centuries coming up.
The six of them had decided to have dinner together two nights a week now. And they had some great discussions, not the least of which was about what to do with Seeders left on human planets to live as humans.
Not a one of them had an idea about any long-term plan, but all of them sort of agreed that each Seeder should be made aware of their genes and given the choice. And that would entail a massive new Seeder department that they would set up sometime in the very near future.
Matt could only imagine being a member of that department, having to talk with people who thought they were just normal people, living their lives, and then suddenly learn they had special genes that would allow them to live forever, never be sick, have a stunning memory, and travel long distances in space if they wanted the genes activated.
Gage had said that department would be exploring really, really strange new worlds. Matt agreed completely there.
They all six agreed that Seeder mother-ship production should be increased. They told Cannard that decision and he and Marie just beamed. It seemed that it really bothered the Ancients that they had lost the desire to seed humanity through the stars.
The biggest discussion the six of them had was about the other major groups of Seeders out there. Six hundred groups in theory. But who knew how many splinter groups off the original six hundred.
And if each group of Seeders had moved the way Ray and Tacita’s group had moved, there were more billions of human galaxies out there than anyone could imagine.
The six of them were pretty much in agreement that they should find and contact the other groups. But how and when was where all agreement broke down.
Thankfully, it wasn’t something that needed to be decided at once.
But for some reason Matt kept coming back to that issue. It ate at him, as if something was very wrong but he couldn’t put his finger on it. So one evening he suggested to the other chairmen that they have a meeting with Cannard and Marie and ask them if they have kept track of the other six hundred groups as they did with Ray and Tacita’s group.
All six agreed, so the next day they requested a meeting with Cannard.
They ended up back in the meeting room on Star Mist.
After Cannard gave them an update about how excited his engineers and scientists were working with the Seeder engineers, he smiled and said, “I have a hunch this meeting has a direct point.”
“It does,” Matt said, taking the lead since this bothered him the most. “We are wondering if you and your people kept as good of track on the other six hundred Seeders groups you started as you did ours.”
Cannard shook his head. “We did not, I’m afraid. Many of them are extreme distances away, even with our speeds. We basically seeded one planet and left ships to help them get into space and learn how to activate their Seeder genes. And we guided each culture to becoming Seeders. But after they had seeded the first few galaxies and were moving forward, our ships returned home.”
Matt sat back. That was the worst answer Cannard could have given.
Beside him Carey had gone white and Benny was just shaking his head.
None of the six of them said a word.
After a moment Cannard said, “I see my answer upset you all. Can I ask why?”
“We just spent three hundred years fighting a human experiment gone bad,” Matt said.
“If we had not contained that alien experiment,” Benny said, “It would have eventually reached here long after taking out all of human space.”
Cannard sat back, clearly realizing what they were saying. Matt found it interesting how Ancients could sometimes not see obvious things right in front of them. Ray and Tacita had had that problem a few times as well.
“We need to find those other Seeder groups and do it fairly quickly on the scheme of things,” Benny said.
“Very quickly,” Matt said. “We don’t need to tell them we are here or even introduce ourselves, but we need to know what is happening with each group. See if they are still alive or have started something like we started with that alien experiment.”
Cannard nodded. “I will get you the locations of their origin galaxies seven million years ago. I am sure your ships can update for galactic shift over time and locate them. But again, distances are extreme.”
Carey looked at Matt and smiled. “So we make our ships even faster.”
“Well, that will be a challenge for not only our engineers, but yours,” Benny said to Cannard.
All Cannard could do was sit there looking a little stunned.
That was the problem with putting kids in charge of the store. Innovation was difficult to those stuck in the old ways.
Especially ways that wer
e millions of years old.
FORTY
OVER THE NEXT two months the pace of everything picked up. But Carey found it enjoyable to have so many things to focus on as well as being in a very wonderful routine again.
This morning was Matt’s turn to cook them breakfast and he had decided on waffles with strawberry jam for her. She loved the waffles when he made them and she remembered during the Tip-to-Tip she ran through vast kilometers of strawberries, just enjoying the incredible smell.
So his waffles with strawberry jam really were a wonderful treat.
He was in the kitchen sort of humming to himself as he cooked and she was sitting at the kitchen table studying reports on the progress of the new, faster drives for the ships.
The new drives were now going to push the ships factors faster than even the Ancient drives could do. Arcadia Case, the Ancient’s ship they had found first, had said it could get from the edge galaxy of the sphere to the Center in three hours using what it referred to as trans-tunnel thirty.
Star Fall’s top speed was trans-tunnel twelve at the moment. All of the ships on board were also capable of doing that speed.
Trans-tunnel drive was basically opening a hole in space to allow ships to travel faster than light through the tunnel. The breakthrough of higher speeds had come when some scientists had figured out that you could open another trans-tunnel inside the first one, getting factors more speed.
Trans-tunnel twelve meant that Star Fall at that speed was moving through twelve open trans-tunnels, one inside the other. Trans-tunnel thirty meant the ship was moving through thirty open tunnels at the same time, one inside the other.
Star Fall had taken over fifty years, exploring all the way, to get from the Milky Way Galaxy to the Center at half speed, or basically trans-tunnel six. Trans-tunnel thirty would allow Star Fall to return to the Milky Way in just under a month.
The engineers from both the Seeders and the Ancients thought that forty was possible safely, meaning that Star Fall could return to the Milky Way Galaxy in just two days.
From the massive map that Cannard had given them of the locations of the other Seeders galaxies, it was going to take that kind of speed to get to them. Star Fall was still trying to update Seeders star maps with the extra information. The maps showed so much space far, far beyond the edge of anything the Seeders could see before.
After seeing that map, Carey was even happier they had all agreed to keep the military part of their exploration. No telling what was out there. And she was starting to think that the Ancients not having a military force was pretty damn stupid.
Sure, the universe seemed empty of life except for humans, Gray, and Cirrata. But the universe also seemed to be an endless place full of endless possibilities.
Matt finally brought over the wonderful-smelling waffle and put it in front of her along with a small dish of strawberry jam. The jam almost smelled better than the waffle.
“I sure loved running two years ago through the strawberry farms,” she said. “You can never get too much of that smell.”
He laughed. “I had two kilometers in the onion fields. Trust me, you can get too much of that smell.”
She spread the jam on her waffle and took a bite, enjoying the wonderful taste.
“Speaking of running,” he said. “It’s one month before the normal start date of the Tip-to-Tip. We going to postpone it again this year?”
She looked up at him sort of surprised. “Wow, that was a fast year.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” he said, smiling as he sat down with his waffle. He put peanut butter on his waffles with maple syrup. She had tried it once and decided to stick with her strawberry jam.
“I don’t see any pressing reason to postpone it again, do you?”
“Nope,” he said. “And I think we should open it up to teams from Star Mist and Star Rain.”
“And all the scientists who are here,” Carey said, starting to feel excited about the race once again. “And even the Ancients can field teams if they want.”
“It’s going to make it the biggest race yet,” Matt said. “But I think the course can handle it.”
“We can set up The Tip Lounge with levels going back from the center course, all covered in tables and chairs for the duration of the start and end of the race,” Carey said. “So people from all over the entire lounge can see the runners as they leave and enter. That way the place can seat thousands, all drinking and partying.”
“That could be really fun,” Matt said, laughing.
Carey dug back into her waffle, feeling more and more excited the more she thought about it.
“Privacy screen down,” Matt said. “Star Fall, if we had over two thousand teams in a Tip-to-Tip race, all starting at ten minute intervals, how long would it take for every team to start?”
“Just under fourteen days,” Star Fall said.
“Ouch, going to need to cut that down,” Carey said, laughing.
“It would only take seven days for every team to start at 5 minute intervals,” Matt said. “That’s possible.”
“Very possible,” Carey said, smiling at the love of her life. “So we going to do this?”
“Oh, heavens, yes,” Matt said. “And that means this afternoon I got to get to the track. You up for joining me?”
“I am,” Carey said, as she finished off the last of her waffle and pushed her plate forward. “And that’s why I am not going to ask for a second wonderful waffle.”
“Oh, oh,” Matt said, smiling at her. “It’s getting serious.”
“It is,” she said. “Got to go call the race committee and get them going on this. You better call your team, see if they have all recovered from their injuries from two years ago.”
Matt laughed.
Carey was impressed that he didn’t remind her that he had won last time. But she had a hunch she would hear enough of that over the next month.
And she was right.
SECTION NINE
The Race
FORTY-ONE
MATT WAS STUNNED at how fast the month went from when they decided to once again do the Tip-to-Tip relay to the start of the race. Now he and Carey were in their apartment getting ready to jump to The Tip to start their teams on the race. And both of them were so excited they could hardly talk.
During that month the Seeders and the Ancient scientists working on the drive speeds had actually managed to jump the top speed to trans-tunnel forty-two. And they all swore it would be safe, but they were going to try it on some drone ships in about a month to make sure.
And even better news, the refitting of the existing ships drives would be minor. Very minor, actually. And also a lot quicker.
So if the tests worked, in three months or so, they could start refitting and within one short year all Seeder ships here in the Sphere would be faster.
A week ago they had sent out the call to all the other Starburst ships to turn around and head for the Milky Way galaxy at top speeds. But if the conversion to the new faster speeds was as easy as the scientists were saying, teams of engineers could go through the breadcrumb trails left by all the Starburst ships and upgrade them to get them back faster.
Just as in the war, the Seeder technology was taking a giant jump forward.
So far the six chairmen had not mentioned to any of the Ancients the plan for their old home. Until a century or two had passed and all the science was even between the two cultures, the chairmen could see no reason to. Their focus now was to find out what was happening with all the other seeded groups of Seeders.
And that was unofficially the next mission for all the Starburst ships once all the upgrades were done. Only the six chairmen knew it at the moment, since the time wasn’t right just yet to mention that either.
He and Carey had actually underestimated how many teams would be foolish enough to sign up from the other two Starburst ships. And there were even twenty teams full of Ancients from Command running the relay.
As Cannard said to
Matt when he made a comment about that, “We may have lived a long time, doesn’t mean we can’t still exercise.”
So the total number of ten-person teams starting the nine-thousand kilometer relay was two-thousand, six-hundred and five. And even though none of the other four chairmen were running, they all had an unofficial bet as to which ship would have the most finishing teams.
Matt had no doubt Star Fall’s teams would win that easily because they had the most teams starting at eight hundred and nine. Besides, Star Fall teams had been doing this crazy race for twenty years. But he had a hunch that in a year the other two ships would put forward enough teams to give them a challenge.
Matt moved over to where Carey had just stood from tying her shoes. “Ready to go?”
“Excited and nervous, just like every year,” she said.
He took her hand and they jumped to an open spot near the starting line.
The sounds of a thousand people all talking and laughing at the same time smashed into them. Matt couldn’t believe the noise level.
And the feeling of excitement.
It seemed that after a year of stress and worry, this was exactly what a lot of people needed.
The other nine of her team were there, all excited as well. His team was all gathered nearby, also smiling and laughing.
And sitting off at a table near the starting line were Benny and Gina and Angie and Gage and Ray and Tacita and Cannard and Marie.
They were all drinking wine and clearly having a great time in the fantastic party atmosphere of The Tip.
Since they had another five minutes before she started, Matt took Carey’s hand and they walked over to the table of other chairmen.
“We had to see this craziness for ourselves,” Cannard said, almost yelling to make himself heard.
“Never seen a party like this before,” Marie shouted, her smile filling her face from ear-to-ear.
Star Fall: A Seeders Universe Novel Page 12