Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  Bob smiled then. “Some of you noted that your bubble resisted your attempts to put it where you thought it should go. A simple warning: this should be the last time you resist a bubble. If the compartment had actually depressurized, your bubble knows that you can survive missing a few fingers, particularly since vacuum is really cold, which will act to cauterize a wound -- say if your fingers are missing. The bubble would take them off. Simply that. Get your fingers out of the way and keep them away, or lose them.”

  “What if the equipment fails?” That was Ellen Felter again.

  “You die. No refunds,” Bob said bluntly. There was a nervous stir around the room.

  “First, the equipment. We’ve had several hundred years where a great many highly intelligent people have worked on the designs. They are simple and reliable.

  “Let me put out another fact to you and for this you need to pay special attention. As minor dependents, everyone on the Rim will do their level best to keep you safe. If you stay inside, if you don’t try for anything beyond the basic certificates, your odds of dying are only marginally worse than back on Earth -- not a very large margin either.

  “Your parents, if they attempt to work here -- that’s a different story. Ten percent. There are ten of you in this room; odds are one of you will be missing a parent in the next couple of years if they decide to continue. They’ve all stated that they want to work, and that they’ve heard and understood the same things I’m telling you now. As you, they don’t accept that the numbers could apply to them.

  “It comes back to certificates; it always comes back to certificates. I earned my first certificates when I was six, that’s the earliest you can earn one.”

  “Like you have to be sixteen to learn to drive?” That was Dee Cee again.

  “Please do not speak unless recognized,” Bob said politely. “I’ve been overlooking interruptions, but it’s not done on the Rim. Just raise your hand. I’m here to help; I will answer each and every question, I promise. But Rule Three on the Rim is: Be Polite. Interrupting is impolite; don’t do it. The person speaking might be giving emergency instructions on how to keep a lot of people alive -- kind of like what I’m doing here. By interrupting, you might be endangering those people.

  “There are a great many ways to mess up and you will mess up. I have. Count on it. Usually it’s no big deal, but you’ll know what you did and others will as well. Life is so much easier when you can look someone in the eye and say, ‘My mistake, sorry.’ When you need something, ask and say please. Say thank you. Simple courtesy. Contemplate life where you’re a rude son of a bitch and later have to ask someone to help you, because you’ve broken your leg in an accident. Accidents happen all of the time on the Rim. You can’t help it -- one will happen to you. I promise that. Sons of bitches and the bitches themselves, tend to get help last.

  “As I was saying about certificates -- everyone on the Rim has the basic ones. We are, on the Rim, a betting people; some of you may have already noticed. Probably, if you have, it’s because you’ve lost money.”

  Bob looked around and mostly saw blank looks. Inwardly he sighed. That means they weren’t getting out and about. Only at the last, did he remember Sarah Grant. He looked and saw for the first time a slight smile on her face.

  For two hours Bob lectured, mixing information with jokes, jokes with dire warnings, funny stories, sad stories, heroic stories. Fill and Shake. Fill them with stories; then shake them to their core. It wasn’t time for the worst of the latter, but it was coming.

  A few minutes before four in the afternoon he stopped, and asked for questions.

  The questions were mostly good; even the bad ones showed some thought. It was a few minutes after the hour, when there were no more. “One last little thing,” Bob told them, “and then we will dismiss. Have a nice evening, be back here at 0800. Tomorrow we’re going flying.”

  Coldly, deliberately, sure he was right, he waved at Sarah Grant.

  “How much did you win?”

  When you looked directly at her, she wasn’t as slippery. Her eyes met his. “Four dollars.”

  “On what?” Bob pressed.

  “The ombudsman for my family group bet me that I’d be sick when I told him I wanted to feel what zero g was like. He wanted to bet more, but all I had was a dollar. He hung me in the middle of the free fall area and when I wasn’t sick he bet me another dollar, double or nothing, that I’d be there an hour later.”

  She exuded a calm confidence.

  “And how long did it take you to move away?”

  “The first time he said I cheated. I latched onto him when he went to move away. The second time he said I cheated when I pushed off from him.”

  Bob grinned. “And what won?”

  “The third time I bounced my bubble off his belly.” She met his eyes. “One of the engineers on duty said that’s where I should aim, when he saw me wind up to throw.”

  Inwardly Bob grimaced and made a mental note to report the ombudsman, although it sounded like someone already had. The comment about where to aim would certainly have come from a Rim Runner -- Rim Runners purely hated morons.

  The class left and Bob stood quietly in front of the room, going over his impressions. Someone tomorrow had earned the right seat. Who? He laughed to himself. The person it would do the most good for: Sarah Grant.

  Stephanie Kinsella had shown that while it certainly helped in adapting to have been born and raised in space, there were some who were naturally at home there, no matter where they were born. Sarah was like that.

  43

  Starfarer’s Dream

  Chapter 3 -- Zinder One

  The first morning aboard the City of Manhattan, David Zinder took a seat with twenty others in a classroom. Dennis Booth stood in the front; his daughter was slumped bonelessly in a seat in the front row. Mr. Booth waved David to sit next to her, and David received a sour glance from the girl as he sat down.

  On the tick of the hour, Dennis Booth started talking. “This class is designed to teach you the rules of the road in regards to boarding tubes. You’ve all traversed at least one, to board City of Manhattan. Some of you did well, others did not. This class is designed to inform you of the formal rules of the road.”

  At the back of the room someone knocked on the door. One of the adults in the back of the room stood up and Mr. Booth said loudly, “Sit!”

  “I was going to let them in,” the man explained.

  “No. They were forty-five seconds late.” He pointed to Bethany. “You, Miss Booth, what is the average velocity of someone traversing a tube safely?”

  “Five kilometers an hour,” she spoke without hesitation.

  “At that velocity, Mr. Zinder, how far does one travel in forty-five seconds?”

  David did the math quickly in his head. “Sixty two and a half meters, sir.”

  “Very good. An error of that magnitude at that velocity can be extraordinarily dangerous. Timing, people, is everything.” Dennis Booth pointed to the man who had stayed standing. “Sit, sir. Whoever is out there may reschedule.”

  Dennis pointed to a woman in the middle of the room. “Please, if you would, explain why there are boarding tubes?”

  “Aside from the obvious desire of Runners to watch Earth-born barf?” the woman spoke, showing no expression on her face.

  She was rewarded with titters of laughter from around the room; even Mr. Booth smiled.

  “There were a number of accidents in the early days of space travel involving dockings. Humans, even computers, don’t always do things correctly. Having a hundred extra meters of safety has reduced the number of fatal docking errors to functional zero.”

  “Very good! I’m pleased that you read the book.”

  He went on to explain then, the basic rules of the road. Finally he gestured at his daughter. “I’ve covered the simple rules; now to more complex situations. What happens when you find yourself overtaking someone? When your jump was stronger than theirs? Or if they�
�ve had a collision or two with the sidewalls?”

  David thought Bethany Booth looked like she’d swallowed a very sour dill pickle.

  Bethany’s voice was icy cold. “You call ahead that you are overtaking. The person being overtaken should rotate towards you and both parties should take evasive action if possible. If a collision is unavoidable, both parties should be careful to make the collision as safe as possible.”

  “Quite correct.” Dennis pointed at David. “And you young sir, as a review, what are the rules of etiquette for jumping in a tube?”

  “Jump carefully. Try to avoid hitting the walls. Don’t jump too hard. The end of the tube will be reached, no matter what velocity you travel at. Reaching the other end of the tube safely is the goal.”

  “And if someone is ahead of you?”

  David had read up on all of this last night. “You should judge the velocity of anyone ahead of you and not jump too hard.”

  Dennis Booth nodded to Bethany again. “And when you do collide with someone, who’s at fault?”

  “The overtaking party.”

  “And what should the over-taking party do, after a collision?”

  Her face was very sour. “Apologize.”

  “Exactly so.” Dennis Booth looked at the class. “Tube etiquette boils down to the same fundamental principles of etiquette in any shape or form: be careful, be polite, and when you make a mistake, apologize. You will make mistakes; I’ve made mistakes. We get along far better with our fellows when we look them in the eye and say, ‘So sorry, I goofed!’ That’s all, thank you very much.”

  Everyone started to get up, but David was waved back to his seat by Dennis Booth and so was Bethany. When everyone else was gone, Dennis Booth stared at his daughter, without saying anything. She snorted, suddenly, and then looked at David.

  “I’m sorry I bumped you.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know what to do,” David told her. “I’ve read about docking tubes a million times -- but the reality is different.”

  “That it is,” Dennis Booth said heartily.

  “Mr. Zinder, I have apprised Bethany that you are her number two for Kriegspiel.” With that Dennis Booth brushed past where the two young people were sitting and went through the compartment door -- as elegant an exit as could be made.

  Bethany looked at David, “My father is White Force Grand Admiral of the Rim.”

  David nodded. “He told me that yesterday.”

  “Fine. We will meet in the southwest corner of the General Mess Compartment thirty minutes after dynamics lets out.” Bethany had started to stand when she said the first word, finished speaking and was out the door a second after the last word of her sentence. Her exit wasn’t nearly as elegant as her father’s, but it was significantly faster.

  “Quite a rule,” David said to himself. “Be polite if you make a mistake and have to take the blame. Otherwise, be as rude as you like. Oh, and the rest of the time? Be even ruder!”

  Two hours later David finished his first real class. He was limp and exhausted, as he’d never been before from a class. The instructor was Fleet Lieutenant Tin Tin Roeser, a tall man with eyes that were virtual black pools of obsidian. He assumed you had a firm background in the requisite math and physics. He galloped through basic theory in the first hour; in the second hour the half dozen students in the class were working on more advanced concepts.

  What kept David afloat were the hours and hours of Fleet Command, where he’d plotted courses sixteen ways from Sunday, trying for clever or bold ideas. He was secretly pleased to see that Bethany seemed to be having trouble with the class, but then a comment from her about the lack of her macros was handicapping her on the comp. David had had the same problem, but he recognized it early and had done what had to be done creating the building blocks.

  The fact was, it hadn’t slowed Bethany much either; she recovered and was nominal by the end of the first hour.

  When the class was over, David asked Lieutenant Roeser a couple of questions about the problems he’d assigned. The lieutenant had been a little sparse in some of the details and David wanted to be sure.

  Bethany had stood as soon as the class ended, listened to David’s first question and had sneered. “Drivel! Dirty-foot make-work!”

  David could see a smile on the instructor’s face; it was fleeting, but there was no doubt that what Bethany had said amused him. Bethany left without another word.

  “Perhaps,” the lieutenant said when she was out of earshot, “or perhaps not. I remind you all that in the Fleet we consider twenty-five decimal places the minimum acceptable and when we have the time, routinely run them out to a hundred or even a thousand places. We routinely make the time, as navigators. It’s our job.”

  Of the half dozen people in the class, three were still sitting, listening to the instructor. “I was deliberately vague on problem 4, asking for the force of gravity at Greenwich Observatory, England, Earth from Earth’s orbital motion. I suggest you contemplate that problem, and answer as precisely as you can.” He chuckled. “A brain-dead simple, dirty-foot make-work problem. Did I mention I was talking about the force at the top of observatory dome, on the outside?”

  David nodded. He’d been sure it was a trick question because a dozen sources gave the simple answer of what it was at ground level; it wasn’t something you had to calculate. If you had to throw in the height of the dome, there would be a calculation, albeit a trivial one.

  There were half a dozen people sitting in a group around Bethany in the mess when David came in a few minutes later.

  “You’re late!” Bethany said harshly. “We already started.”

  David simply said patiently, “You said thirty minutes after dynamics. By my comp, I’m twenty minutes early.”

  “I lied,” she told him. “Now sit down and listen up.”

  David sat down and Bethany tapped keys on her comp; a chart of names appeared on the table. “My father commands the Whites. They have four captains, a half dozen commanders, a dozen or so lieutenant commanders, and a raft of lower ranks. We have myself and Mr. Zinder, Vice Admirals. Toby Wharton,” She gestured at a young man, “who is a group captain, whatever that is.”

  The young man she’d indicated was about twenty, and rather cold-looking, David thought. What he looked like, though, didn’t matter. When the other didn’t speak up, David did. “A group captain is a captain selected for commodore, but who hasn’t been assigned a flag command. Commodore in waiting.”

  Bethany ignored David. “We have four other ship commanders, but no full captains. We have four others, two of whom are in class now, who are lieutenants or full commanders, but who’ve not earned their wavy stripes yet,” Bethany continued.

  David looked around the table at the others. Toby Wharton was sitting on top of a table, his feet on one of the seats. This wasn’t the first time he’d met fellow players face to face. For one thing, you played with a video camera, showing everyone who you were. But, while face-to-face meetings were rare, twice he’d gone to “Fleet Callouts” where players got together for a weekend or more of interacting with each other.

  So, this wasn’t the first time he’d taken an instant dislike to someone; although in truth, Bethany Booth was far more dislikeable than Toby’s casual smugness.

  Like most players, four of the others were males in their mid-teens, earnest and determined to do as well as possible.

  The last player though -- now she was unusual! Twelve years old, David thought, probably an Earth-born Asian. Not many races stayed “pure” off planet and it was getting rarer on Earth every day. The hard thing was looking at her eyes. David felt a chill run up and down his spine. David didn’t know where she was from, but he was exceedingly glad he’d never been there!

  Her eyes were a blaze of determination, more than equal to any of the others around the table. Flat, hard, determined, coal black eyes. She made Bethany look like a Welcome Wagon lady.

  Bethany, in the meantime, had continued on.
“My father has allowed us to pick the first scenario. I’m open to suggestions.”

  Toby immediately spoke up. “I have a Rogue Captain scenario I’ve been working on.” He flashed the specs up on everyone’s comps. David looked at them and wasn’t impressed. He wouldn’t have been impressed if he had liked Toby on first impression.

  David didn’t want to speak out, but when no one else did, he spoke confidently, as if were reporting the current time. “Maybe we should do something altogether different.” He remembered Admiral Carlson, three weeks before, talking on the ops channel about future directions. That it would be good to have a massive campaign; one that would take a year or more. That a number of people were going to start work on the scenarios for that.

  “Let’s do a war scenario. Mid-conflict. There should be a scenario available for something like that.”

  Bethany looked at him for a long moment. “That would be a lot of work, a lot of planning,” she said. “We’d have to spend quite a bit of time in the planning phase.”

  “Well...” David said, trying to think of a defense. Hardly anyone liked staff work.

  Bethany had, however, only started speaking. “My father will eat that up. We might,” she grimaced, “even make him and his people have to do a little work as well. I’d like that very much. And who knows, maybe we can even make him sweat some, when the attack comes in.” She nodded to David. “Good idea, Zinder.”

  David was nonplussed. Bethany Booth had agreed with him? So quickly? Was it a trick? The thought made him blush; of course not!

  “Not that good of an idea, though. We might get my father to sweat for a few seconds, and then he’ll blow us away,” she added.

  David bristled; he wasn’t used to not being competitive.

  One of the others, one of the younger teenage boys, spoke up. “Who would set force sizes?”

  Bethany held up her comp. “My father told me that he’d loaded the full suite of server programs for Kriegspiel aboard City of Manhattan. That would include the scenario evaluation module. Mr. Zinder’s idea is, as he said, going to be there. Someone will have thought of it before. There will be an evaluation; we’ll take what the computer gives us.”