Exiled to the Stars

by Zellmann, William

  Lars nodded. "We're on our way. You should have power in a couple of hours."

  Ken nodded and clicked off. "Computer, what is the status of the 'net now?"

  "The computer net is functional. However, traffic is approaching overload levels."

  Ken grinned sourly. "I'll bet it is. Everyone is calling everyone else trying to find out what happened. I’m surprised I haven't had hundreds of calls."

  "You have, dear." Evelyn's image replied. "Since you were engaged, I have been requiring callers to leave messages. There are currently 924 messages."

  Ken winced. "Good. Continue taking messages, but accept calls from Vladimir Renko, Lee Jenson, Lars Norstrom, or Jana Matuchek. Can you override the 'net, and put me onto every tablet in the colony?"

  The image nodded. "Yes, of course, dear. As Administrator, override authority is available."

  Ken nodded again. "Good. Then override. I need to let people know what's happening."

  "Yes, dear. Your thumbprint will be required."

  Ken chuckled and shook his head, but he mashed his thumb on the contact panel. Evelyn's face disappeared, replaced by his own.

  "Good evening," he began. "I apologize if I have broken into an important conversation, but I know you're wondering what's going on, and what we're doing about it."

  "Most of you know that our ship was powered by something called the 'Cobb Drive', a matter/antimatter drive system that permitted us to travel light years in weeks. But the Drive was too dangerous to bring down to the planet. So, before we descended, we detached the Drive and left it in orbit, where it continued to operate, and beamed power down to us.

  "The Cobb Drive was very unstable, and we were fortunate that it continued to operate as long as it did. But now, it has finally destroyed itself. This is what caused the intense flare and the loss of power.

  "But as I speak, fusactors aboard the ship are being activated. Within two to three hours, full power should once again be available. In the meantime, please limit your use of the 'net. There have been no casualties except for minor accidents, and there is no danger. It is not necessary to call everyone you know to make certain they are all right. I assure you, they are.

  For those of you who have tried to call me, please understand that I am very busy at the moment. If your call relates to this emergency, please consider this the response to your call. I apologize for this impersonality, but I'm told I have nearly 1000 messages. I assure you, we will keep you apprised of events as they occur. Thank you for your cooperation." He clicked off and sat back with a sigh.

  "Lee Jenson is calling, dear," the comp said. "Should I connect him?"

  "Yes, of course," Ken replied. "Hi, Lee. I guess you heard my little speech."

  The younger man nodded. "Yes. Very effective. How much of it was true?"

  Ken started. "All of it. Lars and Jana are here now, getting the fusactors on line. We'll have power restored in a few hours."

  Lee smiled. "Good. I think that was the scariest few minutes of Kerry's life: her vocoder didn't work!"

  Ken chuckled. "So, how is that wife of yours? I hope she didn't really panic. I'm rather counting on her at the moment."

  "Naw, she's fine, since her vocoder's back online. Do you want to talk to her?"

  Ken shook his head. "To both of you, actually." Unsurprisingly, Kerry Jenson's head appeared alongside that of her husband.

  Ken smiled. "Ah! Eavesdropping again, eh, Kerry?"

  She snorted. "Are you kidding? I'm a Newsie, and my husband is talking to the Administrator in the middle of a colony-wide blackout. Of course I'd be eavesdropping!"

  Ken grinned. "Well, this time it won't be necessary. Everything I said was true. The Cobb Drive has blown up, and Lars and Jana are lighting off the fusactors. What I'd like the two of you to do is try to calm things down. The last thing we need in the middle of a blackout is panic. Kerry, I'm sure the bloggers are already hard at work. The trouble is that some of them are just rumormongers, willing to report the most outrageous rumors, as long as they'll get readers.

  Kerry smiled, but her eyes narrowed. "They're like me, you mean."

  Ken shook his head. "You know better than I do what I mean. You're an effective advocate. But you were never one to spread rumors or provoke riots just to see them happen.

  "If you would, I'd appreciate it if you'd use your blog to try to lower the excitement level. Keep people calm. I give you my word; there is no threat, nothing to fear. I hope you'll help me convince people of that."

  Her smile faded, but her eyes remained narrowed. "You know, Administrator, you have an annoying ability to get me to cooperate with your plans. Pretty soon, I'm going to start disagreeing with you just on general principles." Abruptly, the smile flared again. "Sure, I'll do it. I always enjoy throwing mud at the competition. In fact, this might be fun!" Her face disappeared from the screen.

  "Thank you, Kerry," Ken said, But Lee smiled and shook his head.

  "Too late, Ken. She's already dictating madly to her vocoder. So, what can I do?"

  "Well," Ken replied, "Since Kerry's submerged in the 'net, and unlikely to surface for hours, why don't you come over to Cesar's old office aboard the ship. This situation is going to light off a whole mess of forest fires for us to pee on."

  Lee nodded. "Sure. I'll stop off and drag Vlad along, too. He'll argue, but he'd be hurt if we left him out."

  "I'd be hurt if we left him out. In a situation like this, Vlad's as valuable as you." Lee nodded, and Ken clicked off after a quick goodbye.

  "Vladimir Renko is calling," the computer said in Evelyn's warm contralto. "Should I put him through?"

  Ken smiled. He should have known Vlad would be calling. "Yes, put him through."

  "Finally!" Vlad almost shouted. "I was beginning to think I'd never get through!"

  Ken grinned. "You're slowing down, old man. Lee was quicker on the trigger."

  Vlad looked shocked. "Me? Slowing down?" He snorted. "Ridiculous. Just ask Susan. No, on second thought, don't ask Susan. So, where are you, and what do you need me to do?"

  "Lee will be coming by in a few minutes to get you. Meanwhile, see if you can get hold of Ron. I'd like him to round up as many Explorers as he can to help Colony Security keep order for the next few hours."

  "Expecting trouble?"

  Ken shrugged. "Not once the lights come back on. But too many people are going to think this blackout is party time. Or a chance to get rich."

  Vlad nodded. "Gotcha. I'll get onto Ron as soon as I can. I guess I'll see you when Lee comes by." He clicked off.

  "Computer," Ken said, "When the first fusactor comes on, route its full power to the colony grid. We need to get the lights on as quickly as possible. Continue ship operations using emergency reserves. When the second fusactor comes online, you can resume normal operations using the fusactor power."

  Evelyn's always-cheerful face nodded. "Yes, dear."

  Lee and Vlad appeared some twenty minutes later, accompanied by Ron Creding. Lee looked around at the dusty room. "So this is your hideout."

  Ken chuckled. "Not a bad idea. Sometimes I could use one. But this time, it was just the first place I thought of when I realized the only way to talk to the comp was from inside the ship."

  "Good thinking," Vlad said. He, too had been looking around. "Lots of memories here," he said, "some good, some not so good. But lots of 'em." He straightened. "So, what can I do to help?"

  Ken nodded. "I'd like you to call all the Council members. They're sure to be getting dozens of frantic calls, too, and some of them will be frantic themselves. You might have trouble getting through, but keep trying. It's important that they feel they're getting 'inside' information."

  "What about me, Ken?" Lee asked.

  Ken smiled. "You can help me respond to the messages flagged 'urgent'," he replied. He shrugged. "Who knows, some of them may really be urgent."

  "Ron," Ken continued, turning to the young man, "What's it like out there? Were you able to get Chun
some help?"

  Ron nodded. "I got through to about a dozen, and they're trying to pass the word to others. I called Chun. He was glad to have our help. Ever since the Scouts became 'Colony Security', he's been feeling overwhelmed." He shrugged. "It was pretty quiet, at first. But after a while, it started to look like a party. The longer it goes on, though, the more the creeps will begin to come out." He grinned. "Jack Brooks has all his dealers and callers standing around in front of the casino with lasers. I hope they don't shoot anyone."

  "I dunno," Vlad said from across the room. "If they shoot someone, maybe it would give Chun a chance to move in on that dump."

  Ken sighed. "I don't want anyone hurt, even Brooks. Besides, everything the man does is legal. It may be immoral, but it's legal."

  "Emergency Fusactor number one has just gone online," Evelyn's voice from the computer was startling in the silence that had followed Ken's glum pronouncement. "As instructed," it continued, "the power produced is being routed to the colony grid. The grid is now at full power.

  "Administrator," it continued, "You have a call from Lars Norstrom."

  Ken breathed a sigh of relief. "Put him on. Lars!" He said as the big man's face appeared on the monitor. "I've just heard you got Number One online."

  Lars grinned. "Yeah. No problem. You should have Number Two in about an hour."

  Ken nodded. "Great work. When you get done, please come to the Dorm 7 training room."

  Lars' heavy eyebrows lifted. "Cesar's old office?"

  Ken smiled. "That's the one. We need to discuss a long-term solution, and I'll want your input."

  Slightly less than an hour later, the comp reported Fusactor #2 online, and shortly thereafter, Lars and Jana came into the room.

  "See?" the big man boomed as he came in, "I told you it was just a hiccup!"

  Ken shook his head. "Maybe for now," he said, "but I'm not comfortable running the entire colony on what amounts to two emergency generators."

  Lars snorted. "The only reason they're 'emergency' anything was because some EarthGov optimists actually thought a ship might survive the explosion of the Cobb Drive. Those fusactors are good for at least twenty years."

  "Still," Jana put in, "I agree with the Administrator. We're going to need more capacity before long.

  Lars held up his hands in surrender. "I wasn't arguing," he protested. "I even told Ken earlier that we'd need to build a bigger one. The point is that these will provide enough power to meet present needs. They give us time to plan the thing properly.

  "For instance, we'll probably have to locate it away from the Castle itself; we're surrounded by farm fields, and it would be stupid to displace fields, and have to transport the crops farther. Of course, that raises transmission issues. Should we, could we make cables and run them for several klicks? Or can we use the broadcast method?"

  He shrugged. "You see what I mean. We have to plan for the future of the colony, and not just the immediate future, either!"

  Ken frowned. "That reminds me, Lars. We've got a fusactor up at the mines, of course. Do you think we need to put one in that fishing village that 'Berto Gomez thinks I don't know he's been building over on the river?"

  Lee grinned. "You know about that, huh?"

  Ken grinned in return and nodded. "Alberto didn't like all the fighting in the Council when we wanted to build a permanent settlement up at the mines. He thinks if he can get this village built before we notice, he'll be able to just say, 'well, we've already done it, so deal with it'.

  Vlad shook his head. "That's an old maxim: 'it's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission'."

  Ken nodded. "I know. I've used it. Any real politician has. But this power problem adds another factor. We've lost the power broadcasts, and we don't have any way to get power over there. Besides, we're going to be a little short of power for awhile ourselves. I may have to tell him to drop it."

  Lars frowned, but it was Jana who replied. "Oh, don't do that, Messer Terhoe. That's just going to be half a dozen houses anyway. It's a little out of my field, but before you stop them, I think you should look into solar power. It's a bit cumbersome, and the output is low if you're not using orbital mirrors, but I'd bet it would work well enough for their needs."

  Ken looked at Lars, who shrugged. "Sorry, it's bigger than a muon, so I don't know anything about it."

  "Ask Angel Koh," Jana supplied. "One of his degrees is in Astronomy. If he doesn't know about solar energy he'll know who knows about it." She shrugged, causing distractions for all the men in the room. "Of course," she continued, "You could ask the comp, but I don't think you've got time for that."

  Lee grinned at her. "I thought you two broke up years ago," he said.

  She flushed. "We did. But…well…he would know." She turned hurriedly to Lars. "Uh, we should be going, Lars. These people have work to do." She hustled the big man toward the door.

  After a few steps, he stopped. "Uh, Ken, I know you're up to your eyeballs now, but when things finally calm down a bit, would you let me know? There's something we need to talk about." He let Jana drag him out.

  Lee looked at the closed door. "Well, well," he said musingly. "That's interesting. And Angel's never married, either." He turned to Ken. "When you call Angel, you might mention who referred you to him."

  Ken rolled his eyes. "We do have a small incident that happened this evening to discuss," he said, shaking his head. "I'm afraid that love will have to wait."

  Ken considered himself lucky to have snatched a two-hour nap in the training room. The problems began immediately, most of them dealing with effects of the loss of broadcast power on the colony equipment and vehicles. Lars and Jana's efforts had been restricted to the emergency fusactors, originally intended to power the ship itself. But the designers had realized that they might be called upon to power a colony in an emergency, and a small broadcast facility had been built in.

  But experimentation proved that the broadcast range was very limited. They could power most of the colony, but the power broadcast faded less than a klick outside the wall of the Castle. This meant that some farms lost power, of course, but more importantly, it meant that colony vehicles would not function past that point.

  The ship had been designed to establish an immediate colony of 5000, and the EarthGov planners had foreseen the failure of the finicky Cobb drive. Critical parts and the design of a large fusactor were aboard, along with the design and critical parts of a large distillation plant designed to use the waste heat from the big fusactor to produce fuel alcohol. The ship contained conversion power units for nearly all the vehicles. For the heavy equipment and larger vehicles, the units were designed to work on biodiesel. The smaller vehicles would run on alcohol. Throughout the night, conversion units had been brought out of the ship and carried to the maintenance shops, where the conversions would be installed. They would be installed only in vehicles expected to leave the Castle; local vehicles could still use broadcast power.

  Ken spent much of the morning talking, arguing and fighting with the farmers. The new power systems would require vast amounts of plant materials. New fields would have to be opened, farms expanded, new ones established, new farmers found to operate them. The ship contained seeds carefully bred to produce large amounts of fuel. Sugar beets, for example, bred to enhance the production of sugar to the point where they were practically inedible. But used in the colony's still, they would produce large amounts of high-quality alcohol. Other plants maximized the production of oil that could be used in biodiesel. How many hectares and who would get them were subjects for hours of debate. Farm wastes would no longer be allowed to be just plowed under; the harvest leavings would be gathered and carried to the still to produce fuel alcohol.

  Then, with their available transportation cut by more than half, they would have to use every horse, mule, and carabao that was broken to harness to pick up part of the slack. Farmers resented losing their best animals, and protested loudly and angrily. The reason those animals wer
e broken to the harness was because their owners needed them. But finally, most admitted the colony's need was urgent, and it was temporary. A number of draft animals would be assigned to farm use, moving from farm to farm to perform vital tasks until the vehicle conversions could be completed and fuel produced.

  By the next afternoon, the empty compartments that had contained the fusactors, still, and conversion units were being filled with hydroponics tanks. There was no worry about atmospheric contamination here; it wouldn't matter, for fuel. But the Council hoped that hydroponics could be used to get alcohol and biodiesel production underway much quicker than the normal growing cycle on the farms outside.

  Within a few days, much of the excitement had died. Outlying farms, powerless since the explosion, were being outfitted with solar panels and methane generation systems as quickly as possible. Essential freight was being hauled by wagons. Horse drawn wagons had hauled power conversion units to the mines, and were hauling metal ores to the Castle. The mines had barely noticed the failure of the broadcast power. Both the mines and the smelter were powered by their own fusactor; only the ability to bring in supplies and transport their products had been affected.

  It took over three months for the new fusactor and still to be built, and the alcohol fuel to begin to flow. The biodiesel had been faster, since it required only pressing the oil out of the crop plants. Even so, it'd had to wait until the hydroponic crops were available, and even with the expanded plant, hydroponics could not produce the amount needed.

  Still, inside five months, a sense of normality had begun to once again fall over the colony.

  In retrospect, Ken didn't regret the loss of the broadcast power, though he didn't admit it, of course. He'd always suspected that its limitations had been a large factor in the colony's lack of development. Now, they could produce their own fusactors, their own solar panels, and their own motor fuel. Instead of the slow, cumbersome, solar-powered airships, they could begin to make more use of the helicopters, now that fuel was available. The flitters had been converted to alcohol, but then, flitters weren't important vehicles anyway. During the emergency, they'd been pressed into service as local couriers for time-critical deliveries.