The Only Neat Thing to Do
James Tiptree Jr.
We journey now to the far future and the far reaches of space, past the boundaries of exploration to the Great North Rift that lies between arms of the galaxy. The protagonist is sixteen-year-old Coati Cass, who wants to become an explorer and who ventures into that unknown space. She finds more than her share of adventure.
Locus Award Winner for Best Novella from the 1986
THE ONLY NEAT THING TO DO
James Tiptree, Jr
Heroes of space! Explorers of the starfields!
Reader, here is your problem:
Given one kid, yellow-head, snub-nose-freckles, green-eyes-that-stare-at-you-level, rich-brat, girl-type, fifteen-year-old. And all she's dreamed of, since she was old enough to push a hologram button, are heroes of the First Contacts, explorers of far stars, the great names of Humanity's budding Star Age. She can name you the crew of every Discovery Mission; she can sketch you a pretty accurate map of Federation Space and number the Frontier Bases; she can tell you who first contacted every one of the fifty-odd races known; and she knows by heart the last words of Han Lu Han when, himself no more than sixteen, he ran through alien flame-weapons to drag his captain and pilot to safety on Lyrae 91-Beta. She does a little math, too; it's easy for her. And she haunts the spaceport and makes friends with everybody who'll talk to her, and begs rides, and knows the controls of fourteen models of craft. She's a late bloomer, which means the nubbins on her little chest could almost pass for a boy's; and love, great Love, to her is just something pointless that adults do, despite her physical instruction. But she can get into her junior space suit in seventy seconds flat, including safety hooks.
So you take this girl, this Coati Cass — her full name is Coatillia Canada Cass, but everyone calls her Coati—
And you give her a sturdy little space-coupe for her sixteenth birthday.
Now, here is your problem:
Does she use it to jaunt around the star-crowded home sector, visiting her classmates and her family's friends, as her mother expects, and sometimes showing off by running a vortex beacon or two, as her father fears?
Does she? Really?
Or — does she head straight for the nearest ship-fitters and blow most of her credit balance loading extra fuel tanks and long-range sensors onto the coupe, fuel it to the nozzles, and then — before the family's accountant can raise questions — hightail for the nearest Federation frontier, which is the Great North Rift beyond FedBase 900, where you can look right out at unknown space and stars?
That wasn't much of a problem, was it?
The exec of FedBase 900 watches the yellow head bobbing down his main view corridor.
"We ought to signal her folks c-skip collect," he mutters. "I gather they're rich enough to stand it."
"On what basis?" his deputy inquires.
They both watch the little straight-backed figure marching away. A tall patrol captain passes in the throng; they see the girl spin to stare at him, not with womanly appreciation but with the open-eyed unselfconscious adoration of a kid. Then she turns back to the dazzling splendor of the view beyond the port. The end of the Rift is just visible from this side of the asteroid Base 900 is dug into.
"On the basis that I have a hunch that that infant is trouble looking for a place to happen," Exec says mournfully. "On the basis that I don't believe her story, I guess. Oh, her ident's all in order — I've no doubt she owns that ship and knows how to run it, and knows the regs; and it's her right to get cleared for where she wants to go — by a couple of days. But I cannot believe her parents consented to her tooting out here just to take a look at unknown stars… On the basis that if they did, they're certifiable imbeciles. If she were my daughter—"
His voice trails off. He knows he's overreacting emotionally; he has no adequate excuse for signaling her folks. "They must have agreed," his deputy says soothingly. "Look at those extra fuel tanks and long-range mechs they gave her."
(Coati hadn't actually lied. She'd told him that her parents raised no objection to her coming out here — true, since they'd never dreamed of it — and added artlessly, "See the extra fuel tanks they put on my ship so I'll be sure to get home for long trips? Oh, sir, I'm calling her the CC-One; will that sound too much like something official?'') Exec closes the subject with a pessimistic grunt, and they turn back into his office, where the patrol captain is waiting. FedBase 900's best depot supply team is long overdue, and it is time to declare them officially missing, and initiate and organize a search.
Coati Cass continues on through the surface sections of the base to the fueling port. She had to stop here to get clearance and the holocharts of the frontier area, and she can top off her tanks. If it weren't for those charts, she might have risked going straight on out, for fear they'd stop her. But now that she's cleared, she's enjoying her first glimpse of a glamorous Far FedBase — so long as it doesn't delay her start for her goal, her true goal, so long dreamed of: free, unexplored space and unknown, unnamed stars.
Far Bases are glamorous; the Federation had learned the hard way that they must be pleasant, sanity-promoting duty. So, the farther out a base is, and the longer the tours, the more lavishly it is set up and maintained. Base 900 is built mostly inside a big, long-orbit, airless rock, yet it has gardens and pools that would be the envy of a world's richest citizen. Coati sees displays for the tiny theater advertising first-run shows and music, all free to station personnel; and she passes half a dozen different exotic little places to eat. Inside the rock the maps show sports and dance shells, spacious private quarters, and winding corridors, all nicely planted and decorated, because it has been found that stress is greatly reduced if there are plenty of alternate, private routes for people to travel to their daily duties.
Building a Far Base is a full-scale Federation job. But it conserves the Federation's one irreplaceable resource — her people. Here at FedBase 900 the people are largely Human, since the other four spacefaring races are concentrated to the Federation's south and east. This far north, Coati has glimpsed only one alien couple, both Swain; their greenish armor is familiar to her from the spaceport back home. She won't find really exotic aliens here.
But what, and who, lives out there on the fringes of the Rift? — not to speak of its unknown farther shores? Coati pauses to take a last look before she turns in to Fuels and Supply. From this port she can really see the Rift, like a strange irregular black cloud lying along the northern zenith.
The Rift isn't completely lightless, of course. It is merely an area that holds comparatively few stars. The scientists regard it as no great mystery; a standing wave or turbulence in the density-texture, a stray chunk of the same gradients that create the galactic arms with their intervening gaps. Many other such rifts are seen in uninhabited reaches of the starfield. This one just happens to form a useful northern border for the irregular globe of Federation Space.
Explorers have penetrated it here and there, enough to know that the usual distribution of star systems appears to begin again on the farther side. A few probable planetary systems have been spotted out there; and once or twice what might be alien transmissions have been picked up at extreme range. But nothing and no one has come at them from the far side, and meanwhile the Federation of Fifty Races, expanding slowly to the south and east, has enough on its platter without hunting out new contacts. Thus, the Rift has been left almost undisturbed. It is the near presence of the Rift that made it possible for Coati to get to a real frontier so fast, from her centrally located home star and her planet of Cayman's Port.
Coati gives it all one last ardent look, and ducks into the suiting-up corridor, where her small suit hangs among the real
spacers'. From here she issues onto a deck over the asteroid surface, and finds CC-One dwarfed by a new neighbor; a big Patrol cruiser has come in. She makes her routine shell inspection with disciplined care despite her excitement, and presently signals for the tug to slide her over to the fueling stations. Here she will also get oxy, water, and food — standard rations only. She's saved enough credit for a good supply if she avoids all luxuries.
At Fuels she's outside again, personally checking every tank. The Fuels chief, a big rosy woman whose high color glows through her faceplate, grins at the kid's eagerness. A junior fuelsman is doing the actual work, kidding Coati about her array of spares.
"You going to cross the Rift?"
"Maybe next trip…Someday for sure," she grins back.
A news announcement breaks in. It's a pleasant voice telling them that DRS Number 914 B-K is officially declared missing, and a Phase One search will start. All space personnel are to keep watch for a standard supply tug, easily identifiable by its train of tanks, last seen in the vicinity of Ace's Landing.
" No, correction, negative on Ace's Landing. Last depot established was on a planet at seventeen-fifty north, fifteen-thirty west, RD Eighteen." The voice repeats. "That's far out in Quadrant Nine B-Z, out of commo range. They were proceeding to a new system at thirty-twenty north, forty-two-twenty-eight west, RD Thirty.
"All ships within possible range of this course will maintain a listening watch for one minim on the hour. Anything heard warrants return to Base range. Meanwhile a recon ship will be dispatched to follow their route from Ace's Landing."
The announcer repeats all coordinates; Coati, finding no tablet handy, inscribes the system they're headed to on the inside of her bare arm with her stylus.
"If they were beyond commo range, how did they report?" she asks the Fuels chief.
"By message pipe. Like a teeny-weeny spaceship. They can make up to three c-skip jumps. When you work beyond range, you send back a pipe after every stop. There'll soon be a commo relay set up for that quadrant, is my guess."
"Depot Resupply 914 B-K," says the fuelsman. "That's Boney and Ko. The two boys who — who're — who aren't — I mean, they don't have all their rivets, right?"
"There's nothing wrong with Boney and Ko!" The Fuels chiefs flush heightens. "They may not have the smarts of some people, but the things they do, they do 100 percent perfect. And one of them — or both, maybe — has uncanny ability with holocharting. If you go through the charts of quadrants they've worked, you'll see how many B-K corrections there are. That work will save lives! And they haven't a gram of meanness or pride between them; they do it all on supply pay, for loyalty to the Fed." She's running down, glancing at Coati to see if her message carried. "That's why Exec took them off the purely routine runs and let them go set up new depots up north. …The Rand twins have the nearby refill runs now; they can take the boredom because of their music."
"Sorry," the fuelsman says. "I didn't know. They never say a word."
"Yeah, they don't talk," the chief grins. "There, kid, I guess you're about topped up, unless you want to carry some in your ditty bag. Now, how about the food?"
When Coati gets back inside Base and goes to Charts for her final briefing, she sees what the Fuels chief meant. On all the holocharts that cover the fringes of 900's sector, feature after feature shows corrections marked with a tiny glowing "B-K." She can almost follow the long, looping journeys of the pair — what was it? Boney and Ko — by the areas of richer detail in the charts. Dust clouds, g-anomalies, asteroid swarms, extra primaries in multiple systems — all modestly B-K's. The basic charts are composites of the work of early explorers — somebody called Ponz has scrawled in twenty or thirty star systems with his big signature (B-K have corrected six of them), and there's an "L," and a lot of "YBCs," and more that Coati can't decipher. She'd love to know their names and adventures.
"Who's 'SS'?" she asks Charts.
"Oh, he was a rich old boy, a Last War vet, who tried to take a shortcut he remembered and jumped himself out of fuel way out there. He was stuck about forty-five standard days before anybody could get to him, and after he calmed down, he and his pals kept themselves busy with a little charting. Not bad, too, for a static VP. See how the SS's all center around this point? That's where he sat. If you go near there, remember the error is probably on the radius. But you aren't thinking of heading out that far, are you, kid?"
"Oh, well," Coati temporizes. She's wondering if Charts would report her to Exec. "Someday, maybe. I just like to have the charts to, you know, dream over."
Chans chuckles sympathetically, and starts adding up her charges. "Lots of daydreaming you got here, girl."
"Yeah." To distract him she asks, "Who's 'Ponz'?"
"Before my time. He disappeared somewhere after messaging that he'd found a real terraform planet way out that way." Charts points to the northwest edge, where there's a string of GO-type stars. "Could be a number of good planets there. The farthest one out is where the Lost Colony was. And that you stay strictly away from, by the way, if you ever get that far. Thirty-five-twelve N — that's thirty-five minutes twelve seconds north — thirty-forty west, radial distance — we omit the degrees; out here they're constants — eighty-nine degrees north by seventy west— that's from Base 900, they all are — thirty-two Bkm. Some sort of contagion wiped them out just after I came. We've posted warning satellites. …All right, now you have to declare your destination. You're entitled to free charts there; the rest you pay for."
"Where do you recommend? For my first trip?"
"For your first trip… I recommend you take the one beacon route we have, up to Ace's Landing.
That's two beacons, three jumps. It's a neat place: hut, freshwater lake, the works. Nobody lives there, but we have a rock hound who takes all his long leaves there, with a couple of pals. You can take out your scopes and have a spree; everything you're looking at is unexplored. And it's just about in commo range if you hit it lucky."
"How can places be out of commo range? I keep hearing that."
"It's the Rift. Relativistic effects out here where the density changes. Oh, you can pick up the frequency, but the noise, the garble factor is hopeless. Some people claim even electronic gear acts up as you really get into the Rift itself."
"How much do they charge to stay at the hut?"
"Nothing, if you bring your own chow and bag. Air and water're perfect."
"I might want to make an excursion farther on to look at something I've spotted in the scope."
"Green. We'll adjust the chart fee when you get back. But if you run around, watch out for this vortex situation here." Charts pokes his stylus into the holo, north of Ace's Landing. "Nobody's sure yet whether it's a bunch of little ones or a great big whopper of a g-pit. And remember, the holos don't fit together too well—" He edges a second chart into the first display; several stars are badly doubled.
"Right. And I'll keep my eyes open and run a listening watch for that lost ship, B-K's."
"You do that…." He tallies up an amount that has her credit balance scraping bottom. "I sure hope they turn up soon. It's not like them to go jazzing off somewhere. …Green, here you are."
She tenders her voucher-chip. "It's go," she grins. "Barely."
Still suited, lugging her pouch of chart cassettes, Coati takes a last look through the great view-wall of the main corridor. She has a decision to make.
Two decisions, really, but this one isn't fun — she has to do something about her parents, and without giving herself away to anybody who checks commo. Her parents must be signaling all over home sector by now. She winces mentally, then has an idea: Her sister on a planet near Cayman's has married enough credits to accept any number of collect 'skips, and it would be logical— Yes.
Commo is two doors down.
"You don't need to worry," she tells a lady named Paula. "My brother-in-law is the planet banker. You can check him in that great big ephemeris there. Javelo, Hunter Javelo."
Cautiously, Paula does so. What she finds on Port-of-Princes reassures her enough to accept this odd girl's message. Intermittently sucking her stylus, Coati writes:
"Dearest Sis, Surprise! I'm out at FedBase 900. It's wonderful. Will look around a bit and head home stopping by you. Tell folks all O.K., ship goes like dream and million thanks. Love, Coati."
There! That ought to do it without alerting anybody. By the time her father messages FedBase 900, if he does, she'll be long gone.
And now, she tells herself, heading out to the port, now for the big one. Where exactly should she go?
Well, she can always take Charts' advice and have a good time on Ace's Landing, scanning the skies and planning her next trip. She's become just a little impressed by the hugeness of space and the chill of the unknown. Suppose she gets caught in an uncharted gravity vortex? She's been in only one, and it was small, and a good pilot was flying. (That was one of the flights she didn't tell her folks about.) And there's always next time.
On the other hand, she's here now, and all set. And her folks could raise trouble next time she sets out. Isn't it better to do all she can while she can do it?
Well, like what, for instance?
Her ears had pricked up at Charts' remark about those GO-type suns. And one of them was where the poor lost team was headed for; she has the coordinates on her wrist. What if she found them! Or — what if she found a fine terraform planet, and got to name it?
The balance of decision, which had never really leveled, tilts decisively toward a vision of yellow suns — as Coati all but runs into the ramp edge leading out.
A last flicker of caution reminds her that, whatever her goal, her first outward leg must be the beacon route to Ace's. At the first beacon turn, she'll have time to think it over and really make up her mind.
She finds that CC-One has been skidded out of Fuels and onto the edge of the standard-thrust takeoff area. She hikes out and climbs in, unaware that she's broadcasting a happy hum. This is IT! She's really, really, at last, on her way!
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