“Shield’s up,” Poiparesis said.
He set the screen to show the forward view and now there was nothing to see. Though there wasn’t much of it, and we needed an area the size of a big island to catch enough hydrogen to slow down a vessel that wasn’t much bigger than a medium-sized house, still our ship was running into interstellar hydrogen, smashing it into high-energy protons and electrons, which were radiation and over time could be deadly. While we had been accelerating, the sail had sheltered us; now that the sail was furled, and the brakeloop was hanging behind us, Poiparesis had deployed two cone-shaped pieces of sail material, one in front of the ship and one in back, and given them large positive charges. They would trap the electrons, and guide incoming protons around our ship.
Unfortunately they also blocked the view, but one couldn’t have everything. Cameras on long poles let us keep looking through the screens, even though the ports showed only the dark insides of the shields. Looking to the rear we saw only the stars shining through the faint blue glowing ring of accelerated protons around the ship.
We plunged on toward our new home, the drag of the loop pulling at us constantly, and as the older and older news from Nisu seemed daily stranger and more irrelevant to us, new things began to take up our interests. We didn’t know it yet, but the happy time was coming to an end.
* * * *
7
TWO YEARS LATER, OUR VELOCITY WAS DOWN TO ABOUT ONE SIXTIETH OF lightspeed, and though Kousapex was still just a star to the naked eye, already our telescopes were beginning to resolve Setepos into a disk. It was more than six and a half years between request and reply, and the news we were getting was over three years old. Back on Nisu, the big news—as far as we were concerned—was that work was being delayed on the Imperial Hope, the immense ship that was to move several million people to Setepos a hundred years from now. Yet though the Intruder’s close pass, just five years ago, had missed Nisu as the astronomers had said it would, surely all of Nisu had seen the Intruder stretch as a hot white streak a hundred times as wide as the Sun. You would think anyone who had been of conscious age at a time to look up at the night sky would be able to figure out that a hundred years was really too short for the job to be done.
The reason the Imperial Hope was not being completed on schedule baffled the children and disgusted the adults on the Wahkopem Zomos. It had started just before the emperor died—in fact, the last message we got from him before we heard of his death had been his congratulations and best wishes for having reached the outer edge of the new solar system. We had long since gotten used to watching news and public information broadcasts and hearing almost no mention of ourselves or the Wahkopem Zomos, since after all we hadn’t been doing anything very interesting to ordinary people for the last few years—our scientific work was important but you could hardly expect the average Nisuan to appreciate it. Still, at least once a month there was a progress report on the Imperial Hope.
Because the huge ship would have to move millions of people, and the Intruder was bound to destroy any set of laser boosters and the paralenses needed to focus them, the big ship would have to take several lifetimes on its journey. It would make close passes at the Sun and Zoiroy, just as we had, and there would be a few years of laser boost before the rain of rocks and ice destroyed the laser boost stations, but a ship that size could not go as near the suns because the tidal effects were stronger on a big ship than they were on our tiny one, and with its far greater mass, the lasers would be unable to push it up to anything like our peak velocity of two-fifths lightspeed. It would take a few hundred years to cross to Setepos, during which time the Imperial Hope would be the only world our people would know.
When the emperor died, it was the right of his successor to appoint a new General Court of Shulath. Traditionally the new emperor or empress would hold an election in Shulath to decide who to appoint; in addition, many of the Imperial positions reserved for Palathians turned on popularity, so for both sides of the planet it was a grand occasion for public debate.
The politicians were telling people what they wanted to hear. That had changed a great deal in the twenty-seven years since the last general election. The old generation who remembered the First Bombardment were all dead now, along with the ones who had spent their youth working frantically on Reconstruction.
Nowadays everyone seemed to favor slowing down on the Imperial Hope. At root its argument was only that everyone alive now would be long dead before the catastrophic Second Bombardment, and since, out of Nisu’s billions, only a few million could go, it was very unlikely even that any individual’s descendants would actually go to Setepos.
If you stated the case that baldly, according to popularity studies and referenda on Nisu, people rejected it. They still wanted the Imperial Hope to be designed and built, and they still wanted the Migration Project to go on. But if you phrased the issue as one of “balance” or a “measured slowdown,” the Migration Project lost, because Nisuans wanted more for themselves, in the here and now. It didn’t seem as if it should be so difficult to “strike a balance,” as the new Chief Judge of the General Court said, “between the needs of the future and those of the present.” And the new empress clearly agreed with him.
Besides, the argument ran, if they waited, the Imperial Hope would benefit from more advanced technology. And there would still be many decades in which to get it built, so why not slow down just a little and gain the advantages of improved technology, the security of more forethought—and the chance to spend a little of the wealth that the Reconstruction had brought to Nisu?
“Why is it I don’t trust anyone I see on a broadcast anymore?” Osepok said, one night, as we watched a debate in the General Court, three and a half years old.
“Because they’re not the people who sent us,” Kekox said. “Especially the new empress is not the person who sent us. And even though if we were there, we could make all kinds of arguments—I mean, it’s just common sense—”
Poiparesis groaned. “Yes. If we were there. But not only are we not there, what they’re getting is our reports from years ago. Back when we were being really bland and dull and treating reporting back as a pointless task that we just had to do now and then. They haven’t even seen the flipover and deceleration yet. No matter how well we argue our case now, it will be years before they start to get our side of things.”
“There are still plenty of politicians on our side,” Kekox pointed out. “And though the new empress isn’t all she could be, she still says the project must go on. And there really is plenty of time, though I wish they wouldn’t use it to play around doing endless redesigns. According to the master schedule the plan should have been set and construction started by the time we land. Now I’ll be dead, and these kids will be halfway back, before that happens.”
“Shhh,” Soikenn said. “This sounds important.” We all leaned forward to listen in.
No one could remember ever having heard of this speaker before. His name was Fereg Yorock, and he was one of ten Palathian members in the General Court—back during the Emancipation, ten representative seats for Palathians had been created on the General Court, and ten posts in the imperial bureaucracy had been reserved for Shulathians. Nowadays, theoretically, all the posts except emperor were open to either race; in reality it didn’t happen.
“I don’t remember any Yorock family,” Osepok muttered.
“They couldn’t be that important or he wouldn’t be in a ceremonial slot like that,” Kekox added. “Normally it’s bad form for one of us even to talk in General Court. What’s he up to?”
Soikenn shushed them again; the introductory speaker had finally gotten done with reading all the credentials for Fereg, most of them minor posts in provincial bureaucracies.
“My friends and equals,” he began. Kekox muttered; that was the way Egalitarians began speeches. Soikenn shushed him, and meanwhile Fereg went on, “—no one can doubt that the efforts of the Reconstruction agencies and of the Migra
tion Project have been heroic and have been carried out with the utmost spirit of intelligence and cooperation. Nisu is a better world because of their efforts, and indeed our whole civilization is not only richer, but far more equal and free than it was a scant hundred and fifty years ago.
“I argue only that the time has come to consider not only our duty to our honored ancestors, and what must be done for future generations, but also what can be done for we, the living. The unprecedented advances of science and technology which we have made—moving from crude aircraft and steamships to our first starflight in only a century—is itself a rich inheritance, and I believe that without jeopardizing any of our accomplishments, we can still draw upon it for everyone’s benefit.”
“Words, words, words,” Poiparesis said. “Come on, tell us what you want to do.”
The image of Fereg on the screen smiled and said, “I have examined budgets and plans exhaustively for the last half-year, and what I have found is that we have considerable room for the improvement of life here on Nisu, for this generation. I call this the Planetary Improvement Program, and what I propose is ... “
It was a long list. Public parks, beaches free to everyone, two extra eightdays of paid vacation each year, retirement two years early for most people, a complete reequipping of the Imperial Guard with more modern aircraft and ships, two new legions of Imperial Guard to be raised in Shulath ...
“Something for everybody,” Osepok muttered. “Right. Now just what do you suppose he plans to use to pay for it?”
It took some time, because the number of things he was promising was so large, but after a while he got around to talking about paying for it. His plan had just three parts: step one, stretch out planning and design studies for an extra eleven years on the Imperial Hope, “to take advantage of technical advances and so that the large capital expenditures of the early years of the Planetary Improvement Program will not come at the same time as the start-up costs of construction.”
“Right, stretch it out, make it cost more, and get more snouts into the trough,” Kekox said.
Step two, put the missions to the five other systems known to have habitable planets on hold, since Setepos was so clearly promising, and if it should prove unsuitable, there would be time to refit the Wahkopem Zomos again and send it to the next most promising system.
Soikenn groaned. “Right. Bet the whole future on this ship.”
Step three: Delay by twelve years the power-up of the next-generation boost laser, so that the solar power satellites intended for it could be diverted to lowering energy cost on Nisu and thus “enhancing the climate for our neglected private enterprise sector.”
“What!?” Captain Osepok stood up in shock.
None of the rest of us could speak at all. Our entire plan for returning home depended on that laser, and even though it was twice as powerful as the one pushing us now, it would still take us forty-one years to get back.
The reasons for that were simple and unavoidable. At Setepos, we would have no antimatter-liquid hydrogen booster to start us falling toward Kousapex, the sun of that world. We would take well over a year to maneuver ourselves into an elongated elliptical orbit that would bring us in close enough to Kousapex, in the proper position, to get a solar boost to start us on our journey.
But that boost, too, would be smaller; Kousapex was only three-quarters as bright as our Sun, and it had no companion star to give us another boost. We would leave moving at less than one-thirty-second of lightspeed—as opposed to the more than one-twentieth at which we had left our home system.
So we would be delayed in starting, and we would leave more slowly. But the last of all the problems was the biggest: we would have to “swim upstream” in the laser beam. We could do this because once we had received enough of the beam to carry us to Setepos, an enormous lightweight mirror, five times the diameter of our sail and made of the same material, was being sent out on the beam after us. By the time we finished our mission on Setepos and were on our way home, the mirror would pass us and continue on into space, reflecting almost all of the light back toward our home system.
Our sail was beryllium on the side that faced us, and boron on the side that faced out into space. The bright beryllium reflected light; the dark boron absorbed it. Reflected light gives twice as much push as absorbed light; thus the light reflected from the mirror would push twice as hard on the beryllium surface as the light coming directly from the laser would on the boron, and we would move toward the laser at half the acceleration with which we could move away from it—if the mirrors and sail had been perfect. However, the mirror, like our sail, reflected only about nine-tenths of what fell onto it, and further, the dark boron “outside” surface of the sail did reflect about one-twentieth of the light falling on it. Thus the effective push on us for our return trip, when all the countervailing forces were added up, would be only nine-twentieths what it had been on the way out.
The only advantage in speed that the return trip would have over the outbound was that instead of electrostatic braking using interstellar protons, we would be able to simply turn the ship around and use the laser itself to brake. Because of this, we could accelerate (though slowly) almost the whole way home. Even so, with the new laser power station, twice as powerful as the one now driving us to Setepos, the return journey would still take forty-one years. Now they were talking about not bringing the new station in on schedule—which meant we would be forced to make the first part of the return trip at much lower acceleration.
“How long?” Kekox asked.
“Figuring it,” Soikenn said, tapping at a wall terminal. Poiparesis had pulled out his portable terminal, and for a long moment we all watched the two Shulathian scientists as they worked, hoping to hear a different answer from the one we knew we would hear.
“I get sixty-nine years,” Soikenn said.
“Same here. Mother Sea’s blood, you kids will just get home in time to die of old age,” Poiparesis said.
“Shh,” Osepok said, “I think somebody else figured that out and now Fereg is explaining.”
Fereg was answering a shouted question from a news-teller; he said, “No, not at all. The point is that by canceling the other missions, we can eventually add the power stations planned for them to the Wahkopem Zomos mission, which will give them much more acceleration toward the end of the trip. My experts can show you that they’ll be back in just about twenty percent more time than planned. Which will cost nothing extra—”
“Twenty percent?” Osepok said. “So even with his plan that’s still about forty-eight years. Assuming they don’t find reasons to cancel or divert that power production later. Which I certainly wouldn’t assume.”
“You know what I’m afraid of?” Otuz said. “That they’ll give up entirely, and the way we’ll find out is that all of a sudden the sail will just stop glowing, because a few years ago they turned off the laser boost, and the last of it will bounce off our sails and we’ll be on our own, somewhere in the void.”
Soikenn shuddered. “You’re going to scare yourselves to death,” she said. “Look, we’re all worried, and we’re angry, but it’s not necessarily anything to be afraid of. Politicians usually don’t mean anything, when you come right down to it. Pretty soon someone will make a fuss about how the Imperial Hope isn’t getting built fast enough, and accuse these people of destroying the Migration Project, and the same people who voted for ‘striking a balance’ will throw Fereg and his crowd out on their ears to ‘save the future’ or some slogan like that.”
But the newscast went on and on, showing more and more public protests in Shulath and even big rallies in Palath itself. It looked like the Planetary Improvement Program was very popular.
And though the politicians were always careful to talk about “balance” and “of course we don’t want to lose a century of progress,” many of the ordinary people interviewed said bluntly that they didn’t see any reason to save their great-grandchildren.
One o
ld Palathian appeared on the screen and said, “I don’t call it no century of progress. We got all this new stuff but nobody can use it, and you just know where all the jobs and money are going, don’t you? Right over to Shulath, for those tall skinny long-ears to play with. Shulath is getting rich off all this go-to-Setepos nonsense, and once they get money, all those long-ears go around acting just like they’re equal, just like they’re something special, and they forget their place—”
“Turn it off,” Kekox said. “We can always play that recording some other time if anyone really needs to see it.”
During the next few eightweeks, the news was bad every night. The Planetary Improvement Program carried easily in the General Court and the empress adopted it virtually as her own.
“The trouble is, all our constituency is either dead or not born yet,” Otuz said, as we children shared a late meal after a day of studying. We often met together as a group in the evening, to talk about our research and ongoing projects.
“That never stopped anyone from voting in Shulath, if the history books are telling the truth,” Mejox said.
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