Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  "Say hello for us," George Li's cry came over the ship's com.

  A privileged message from Brenna's parents: "Be careful, kitten." "Huh! Just behave yourself when you meet the Vahnaj. Remember, you're a Saunder."

  There was no message from Morgan. Not necessary. Brenna carried him in her heart, always. Partners. As long as Morgan lived. There had been more discussion, recently, about his siring children from his cryo-stored reproductive tissue. Brenna approved. A second family for her parents, a first family for Morgan ... and maybe one for Brenna. A whole new generation of little Saunders and McKelveys!

  "Leaving Station..."

  Opening up space. The noise and the civilian hoopla behind them. The pilots settled down, going through the routine. The glory was great. But this was what it was all about—switching on graviton spin resonance drive and ripping a hole in the fabric of time and space.

  "Mission beginning. Time: 1450, Mars Central. September 17, 2076."

  The universe dimmed. They were leaping out toward Jupiter, condensing days of old-style space travel. In last year's model, the oscillator had been limited to fourteen times real-space light-speed. The improved version could jump to twenty times c. Distances, out there, shrinking so fast the science experts couldn't keep up with the developments. They would reach the outermost Vahnaj world in slightly over seven months—less time than it took to gestate a human child!

  At the rate things were going, another FTL ship, with a still better oscillator, could pass them along the way. But that wasn't going to happen. Quol-Bez and the Terran Worlds Council had agreed on the new treaty terms; no further ambassadorial mission would be sent until this one had been completed. Brenna Foix Saunder's team would have the honor of being the first humans piloting a spaceship into Vahnaj planetary territory.

  "Deviation is in the comps," Yuri reported. The other crewmen looked around curiously. They had been told about this, but weren't in on the reasons behind it.

  SE FTL Five was beyond Pluto's orbit now, timing her pseudo-speed hops delicately. The next jump was a short one. The shiny, oblate FTL ship had seemingly come to a stop. She winked out of non-space and into real space.

  Ten kilometers off her starboard quarter, New Earth Seeker rode against the eternal darkness, moving at an imperceptible rate, compared with SE FTL Five's capabilities.

  Brenna gazed at the view screen, reducing the scan so that she could see the whole planetoid-sized hibernation ship. Yuri said, "I'll go with you."

  Brenna didn't argue. She was grateful for Yuri's presence on the skidder. This stop en route had been in the program from the beginning—her option and Yan Bolotin's request. There would be other FTL ships coming along this same path on a regular basis. That was part of the new treaty. Brenna could have turned the duty assignment over to one of the disinterested new pilots in her crew, but she hadn't. Only Yuri would know just what this short side venture would mean to her. She didn't want a big audience, since she was uncertain how she would react.

  New Earth Seeker was programmed to be wary of possible collision factors, but Yan Bolotin was a controlling figure in Hiber-Ship Corporation. Brenna and Yuri had the proper code sequence. The hangar hatch opened readily for their tiny intership sled.

  Yuri had never been aboard this monster. He stared in fascination for a few moments, then followed Brenna up the ladder to Main Control. They went through the prescribed checks, relaying the data back to SE FTL Five and to the Solar System. That would confirm the figures Bolotin's group was already receiving, and alleviate some of their worries.

  The necessary checks done, Brenna and Yuri could have gone back to SE FTL Five. But Brenna made her way down a tunnel to one of the enormous spheres, remembering the tour the last time she had been aboard this interstellar colonizer.

  Bolotin had let her see the registers. He had sympathized. But he had stuck to his guns. The colonists had been aware of this possibility when they signed up. It was always in the charter. Derek had told her that. Even if faster-than-light travel was discovered after New Earth Seeker had launched, the colonists were not to be disturbed. They would continue on their long journey to the Kruger 60 system, unaware.

  Brenna lowered herself into the sphere containing the piloting crew's cryo cubicles. Yuri clung to the ladder, not descending any farther, watching her anxiously. There was no spin on the photon ramjet now, no gravity needed to make those on board feel comfortable. Brenna floated in air, sculling with her hands, hovering beside the cubicles. She looked into the still faces. Outside row. First file. Cubicle ten. Lilika Chionis. Cubicle nine. Derek Whitcomb.

  Cubicle eight was empty.

  Brenna remembered Yan Bolotin pointing to the screen, indicating the spot on the register: "Reserved for Brenna Foix Saunder."

  There had always been a place for her. Derek had always hoped—up until the final moment, when she had made her choice.

  Derek was a statue, cold, serene, vid-star handsome. He would remain thirty years old for the next seventy-four years. Brenna Foix Saunder would not. Lilika Chionis would still be young and beautiful in three-quarters of a century. She, not Brenna, would be Derek's Eve, his first wife, on that alien, uninhabited world these people would civilize.

  Brenna had thought she would weep. She didn't. The tears had been spent, months ago. What they had had was gone, locked in memory. It must stay there, as long as life lasted.

  "Brenna...?"

  She raised her eyes, meeting Yuri's worried gaze.

  "It's okay. I can manage." Brenna looked once more at the man in the cubicle. "He wouldn't appreciate it if I spoiled his plans. They worked so hard for this. We'll protect them. And when we're busy or getting older and too tired to do that, a younger bunch of FTL pilots will play watchdog. Nobody's going to foul this up for them. We'll make sure they get to Kruger 60 safe and sound..."

  Yuri nodded, very solemn. His glance shifted to Derek's cryo cubicle, and the Russian slowly saluted a fellow, former Space Fleet officer. Brenna laid her gloved hand on the edge of the case and whispered, "Good-bye, Derek. Spirit of Humanity make you happy."

  She didn't speak on the skidder trip back to SE FTL Five. But by the time they had steered well off from New Earth Seeker and engaged the graviton spin resonance drive again, Brenna was able to smile a bit.

  "It's a trust," she explained to the new pilots. "Space Fleet will take over the job eventually. But for now, it's ours. They're space pioneers, too, in that ship." The pilots were wide-eyed, impressed.

  Listening to the old-timers, Brenna thought, laughing inwardly. Yuri and she were old-timers, to this wet-behind-the-ears bunch of hotshots! Old-timers, at age thirty.

  Well, there was a lot of life in this old-timer! She wasn't going to waste it loafing along at sub-light speeds. "Let's go meet the Vahnaj," Brenna said.

  SE FTL Five was bigger, roomier, and better equipped than anything in her model class built before her. Seven-plus months not spent in luxury, but they weren't uncomfortable. And they weren't bored.

  Infinity, out there. It was taking a long time to travel to the nearest Vahnaj world—yet they wouldn't be a year older when they got there. Incredible speed! The temptation to roam off the vector was tremendous. Somehow they resisted it.

  They picked up alien signals. Not only the Vahnaj used these star lanes. Brenna heard new languages, recording them, imagining how her mother's linguistics teams would revel in these treasures. She was hearing the voices behind those names Quol-Bez had mentioned so long ago—the Whimed, the Trannon, the Ulisor. Other peoples. Other cultures. A whole universe full of them!

  And now she had the ship that would take her to meet them!

  It wasn't until they were approaching orbit around the destination world that the elapsed calendar time made an impression on Brenna. She had marked it off automatically, thinking in terms of the whole journey and how far they were from point zero and point arrival. Yuri Nicholaiev noticed Brenna's expression and said softly, "Yes. It is the same. April twenty-eigh
th."

  "Two years too late for Morgan and Rue and Tumaini..."

  "They are with us," Yuri said. Brenna took that solace, holding it tightly in her heart. Let it be so. They had deserved it, those brave pilots of Prototype II. They had always hoped that date would be immortal. Now it was. April 28, 2077: the day the first human-piloted FTL ship arrived at a Vahnaj world.

  The com lit up. The Vahnaj had learned Homo sapiens" frequency preferences many years ago, when Todd Saunder discovered the beacon messenger the alien beings had sent out into the galaxy to search for other intelligent life. Since then, they had sent an Ambassador, forgiven the destruction of their Ambassador's private spacecraft ... and perhaps begun to wonder if the humans weren't a bit quicker to catch on and faster to develop than the Vahnaj government had anticipated.

  Brenna had been polishing her fluency in Vahnaj all the way from high ecliptic Mars orbit. "Thor-i-saduo, Vahnaj. Pla chur SE FTL Five, Earth..."

  The pilots leaned toward their screens, intrigued by the image appearing there. Not Quol-Bez's. Another Vahnaj's. His face was browner, his sideburns lighter colored, and his teeth weren't as pointed as Quol-Bez's. The second member of the Vahnaj species human beings had ever seen. And very soon they would be meeting him face to face—him, her, and many, many others.

  Formal and informal, frequent social relationships with an extraterrestrial civilization!

  At last!

  "Thor-i-saduo, Eff Thee Ull Fife, Earth..." The Vahnaj welcoming them sounded mildly surprised to have been addressed in his own language.

  Brenna grinned mischievously. He was soon going to be even more surprised! She hadn't wasted her time. She had a lot of questions to ask. Brenna was going to find out, for one thing, if dangling the bait of an FTL ship in front of "primitive" sapient species was a learning tactic or a taunt. Carrot on a stick, or the tortures of Tantalus? She wanted to believe the former, but if it was the latter, that was okay, too. Because this time Tantalus had reached up and taken the bait and wrested it away from his tormentors.

  Hang onto your pride, Vahnaj. Here we come!

  "Nyo-re-sterla, Vahnaj," Brenna said, smiling victoriously. "The Ambassador sends his regards."

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Juanita Coulson began writing at age eleven and has been pursuing this career off and on ever since. Her first professional sale, to a science-fiction magazine, came in 1963. Since then she has sold fifteen novels, several short stories, and such odds and ends as an article on "Wonder Woman" and a pamphlet on how to appreciate art.

  When she isn't writing, she may be singing and/or composing songs; painting (several of her works have been sold for excessively modest prices); reading biographies or books dealing with abnormal psychology, earthquakes and volcanoes, history, astronomy—or almost anything that has printing on it; gardening in the summer and shivering in the winter.

  Juanita is married to Buck Coulson, who is also a writer. She and her husband spend much of their spare time actively participating in science-fiction fandom: attending conventions and publishing their Hugo-winning fanzine, Yand.ro. They live in a rented farmhouse in northeastern Indiana, miles from any town you ever heard of; the house is slowly sinking into the swampy ground under the weight of the accumulated books, magazines, records, typewriters, and other paraphernalia crammed into it.