“Thanks Lenny, we’ll take it from here,” Christopher radioed as Ops began to maneuver the metal blob around the colony toward Jove.
“You got it, Chris. We’ll be over by Jove and wait for you to get in position. Hey, just between you and me, are the shields going to deflect everything in our path?” Lenny asked.
“Has Peanut ever failed us?” Christopher answered with a laugh.
The blob of metal was maneuvered next to the Jove spacecraft, tucked in close. Then Andrea and Lenny also tucked in close on opposite sides of the main body of the ship, just forward of the attached construction module and they activated the tractor fields that would hold them in place next to the larger spacecraft and to each other, then locked the jumpers in place.
Christopher informed Ops that they were departing. Peanut had stationed himself there, watching the developments outside the colony via his external cameras, and wished Christopher and the others Godspeed. He told them to come back alive and bring the rest home with them.
Andrea let Lenny take the first shift in blasting a hole through space to get to Earth traveling at a half a million miles an hour, so she could closely monitor the jumper’s sensors. Even at that speed, there wouldn’t be much to do during the trip. Christopher made it clear that the colonists would be having no contact with the Jove crew. He would be checking in with Chuck every few hours to see if the situation had changed on the ground.
Of course when Dr. Harris’ detector saw the ships exiting the colony, the Pentagon was informed, although NASA was already aware that not only were separatist ships on their way to Earth, they were towing Jove along with them.
At the speed the spacecraft were traveling, everyone, from the seamen monitoring the gravity wave detectors deep underground on up to the President of the United States, was convinced that the world was facing the real possibility of an attack.
* * *
The colonel wasn’t speaking to anyone. He had no way to contact Star City, and he knew that his ship had been destroyed in retribution. There was no way to contact Jove from the module as the comm system had been removed.
The Jove crew had strapped in when the two jumpers came alongside the ship, ready for acceleration when they ship started moving, though they were completely unprepared for the complete lack of the sensation.
“This is interesting!” Susan said as they got underway.
“No kidding. At the speed we’re going to be traveling we’ll even experience relativistic effects,” Peter said excitedly.
“How’s that?” Bianca asked.
“At this speed, time is actually going by a fraction slower in the ship compared to someone standing still, like on Earth. Einstein’s original work postulated that the faster you go, the slower you experience time until you reach close to the speed of light, then time virtually stands still. At half a million miles an hour, time is going to be passing a fraction slower here,” Peter explained.
“So that means I’ll actually be younger than if we had taken the long way around? I’ll take it!” said Rachel, laughing.
“Don’t get too excited. Given that light travels 186,000 miles a second, our speed is not going to be anywhere near a significant percentage of lightspeed, but it would be enough to measure if we were set up to do it,” said Peter.
“How would you do that?” John asked.
“The easiest way would have been to synchronize two atomic clocks, one back on Earth and one on the ship. Then take off at the speed we’re traveling right now. When we returned to Earth we could compare the clocks and we’d see that they were out of synch.”
“What I don’t get is why we don’t feel any acceleration at all,” said John.
“Obviously their propulsion consists of manipulating the gravity field. They accelerate everything at the same time, not by pushing it, so the ship, the air within, us, everything is moving together. You know, I really can’t explain it because we don’t know how they do it,” Peter confessed. “That was one of the things we had hoped they would share. But I guess when someone sends soldiers to your home, and then chases you down and fires missiles at you, the chances of you giving up the keys to the universe are mighty slim.”
“That guy, the new voice, sounded pissed. And their ships are unbelievable. I’m surprised we haven’t heard back from mission control about their people. It doesn’t sound like they’re playing around,” said Chester.
“Both Bianca and I have conveyed the colony’s demand to release their people on Earth. Neither of us has received an answer. If the authorities are stalling, waiting to see what the separatists will do, then they’re idiots. The speed we’re traveling should be a warning, but I’m guessing it won’t make a difference. To the military mind, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; no offense, Harriet,” Susan said.
“None taken! But you’re right. Someone pretty high up has made the calculation that holding their people is a safe bet based on sheer numbers, or the country’s military might. According to parallax calculations we are traveling faster that any human has ever done before, except for the separatists maybe, and regardless, there’s military minds in the Pentagon who will refuse to back down no matter what,” Harriet observed. “By the way, we can get out of these seats. If their technology somehow fails, we’re all smears of jelly anyway. We may as well be comfortable.”
“Someone take a look at the camera in the compartment, see what our guests are up to,” Susan requested.
On camera, the Svoboda crew appeared to be organizing the supplies Phyllis and John had brought to the unit, with the man who must be the colonel just hanging in midair in one of the small bunk compartments.
“Looks like they’re doing inventory, and that colonel guy is in one of the bunks by himself,” David reported.
“It’s just for a little over a week. We’ll have to see what happens when we’re back in Earth orbit,” John said.
“Yeah, maybe. But that asshole fired missiles at us, remember?” said Peter. “What if they spring a leak that we don’t fix in time?”
“That’s not what we’re about! As much as I’d like to kick Levkov’s balls up into his throat, I’m content to leave him alone and let the authorities on Earth deal with him. I don’t think the U.S. or the U.N. is going to let him get off scot free,” Susan replied.
“She’s right. And if the separatists didn’t hang the guy, I doubt they’d let us off him either,” David said.
“Let’s not worry about them. We have enough on our plate as it is. We’re going to be home in less than two weeks, and we’ve all been weightless for almost three weeks. I know that I haven’t been as diligent with exercise as I should have been because I figured I’d have more than six months under acceleration to get in shape. Judith, would you check everyone out and make your recommendations on what we should be doing to prepare for return to Earth?” asked Susan.
“Sure, that will be no problem. I haven’t really had to do much as a doctor on the trip, this would be a welcome change. After lunch, if everyone would sign up for an examination, we can get this over with quickly. I only need about twenty to thirty minutes each,” said Judith.
The crew dispersed to their tasks in maintenance and the myriad experiments scheduled. With the greatly foreshortened return journey home, eighty percent of the scientific tests and observations simply weren’t going to get done.
The only person with a new set of experiments to contend with was Peter, whose observations of stars, local gas density and other measurements at their terrific speed were making physicists on Earth salivate at the unprecedented opportunity.
John was doing his best to keep busy, trying to keep his depression at bay. He had volunteered for every EVA task, although no one much wanted to chance leaving the spacecraft while it was underway at such speed. But he tended the air recirculating system, he cooked, he cleaned up after meals and monitored
the communications console. He briefly toyed with the idea of dropping Pete a note, but when he thought it all out, the turn of events and getting home early, he decided to save the NASA censors the trouble.
The ether was strangely silent between the approaching spacecraft and mission control. It was as if no one wanted to say or do anything until they had some idea of what the separatists had in store once they reached Earth. But no message informing the mission that the separatists’ people had been released was received.
Bianca was surprised that the U.N. was just as silent as the U.S. authorities. She was sure the flap over the Russian/EU mission attacking the colony and Jove was the cause of much discussion, but none of that was reaching Jove. It was as if they were under a communications blackout.
* * *
President Laughlin was still under protective custody in the bunker, not much different from the two being held in Chicago, he thought. He had the chief of staff checking in on them daily to ensure they were treated as well as possible, just not released. He had several discussions with the Secretary General of the U.N. about keeping them in custody. They even discussed releasing, but keeping a very close tail on them, hoping they would lead them to others, or a spacecraft. No one was pretending that getting their hands on one of those ships wasn’t a top priority for every single government on Earth.
The threat from the separatists was not taken too seriously by the United States military. In the only two close encounters with the colony’s ships, the strategy was avoidance, leaving the military leaders to conclude that stealth and speed were the only tools at the colony’s command. Reports coming from the underground detectors on Jove’s speed returning to Earth gave many pause. Dr. Milton and his people at NASA realized that their efforts, as cutting-edge as their technology was, looked like toys by comparison. GST’s board hoped that the Jove mission in general, and John’s efforts in particular, would be bringing them technological advances that would open up vast new sources of revenue. Even the scientific experiments in long-term space travel were of interest. Now that Jove’s design had been vindicated, replicating it was merely a matter of prefabricating components on Earth and then hoisting them into space for assembly. GST already had a space station in orbit that could support almost fifty people at once, several times larger than the International Space Station.
The board planned two immediate revenue streams from their station, construction and tourism. Their next big project was lunar landers, ships capable of landing on the moon’s surface and taking off again. Once the Navy SEALs were evacuated from the separatist outpost, GST had plans to convert it into a high-ticket resort, ushering in the beginning of tourism on the moon. The board was biding its time, believing that should the authorities capture one of the colony’s spacecraft, GST would be the lead contractor to build America’s next fleet of spaceships. The board knew John had made successful contact with Sydney Atkins, and they were quite pleased that their strategy had panned out. John had proved that the separatist community wasn’t so insular that they would refuse all contact with Earth. With trillions of dollars potentially on the line, GST was taking an extremely long view of their future in space exploitation.
The president was well aware of the rift that had developed with Debra Dawkins. She was not happy with the risks he was incurring by keeping the two men in custody, only one of whom was identifiable as being one in the roster transmitted back to Earth.
Even though the older man was definitively identified as Lucius Walker, successful civil rights and corporate attorney, retired, Laughlin and the majority of his national security team were convinced that Walker’s role with the separatists was obviously significant. This was evident to them given that the separatists kept insisting that both men be released. Dawkins was civil, and not in any way disrespectful or unpleasant, but there was no doubt in his mind that she disapproved of his refusal to release Walker and the other.
Laughlin picked up the folder on the background of the captured separatist and scanned it again. Julius Stanford was a former Marine helicopter pilot, detached to Bell Boeing to become one of the first flight qualified for the MV-22 Osprey. Honorably discharged, moved on to civilian transport and part-time fire fighting. No family, disappeared in 1994; one day he didn’t come to work and was never seen again.
There wasn’t anything there to really hang a hat on, but Laughlin could imagine the kinds of slights a black pilot could face in the Marines. He must have been good, though, to be sent to Boeing to help develop the Osprey. No police record, top marks in college. Graduated from the University of California-Berkeley with a degree in civil engineering. How Stanford and Walker fit together was a mystery. Laughlin was tempted to call them and simply ask. He even gave some thought to having Dawkins question them, but that wasn’t practical, and would just put him further in the doghouse with her.
Every time he looked at the military status boards and watched the display from Shelter 14, he could barely imagine the blistering speed of the Jove spacecraft.
Dr. Roscoe had sent back a detailed report of their last few hours parked next to the space colony, including the destruction of Svoboda. Laughlin’s national security team knew that two of the colony’s spacecraft were towing Jove like a toy, and that the Jove crew was merely along for the ride. Visual observation from Jove’s external cameras showed them to be about the same size a NASA shuttle, but with no visible means of propulsion. The ships were mostly cylindrical, rounded, no sharp edges or corners, and flat black. They would be extremely hard to see at night or against the blackness of space. There was no way to determine their top speed since they were towing Jove, apparently with ease. They didn’t appear armed, but they were able to melt the Svoboda spacecraft from a distance.
Laughlin was worried about the capabilities of these two ships, even though his overconfident Pentagon advisors were convinced their conventional weapons would be able to inflict damage on the ships. When Laughlin reminded them that they would have to locate them first, since the closest the military had gotten was the fighter that actually got within range to fire off a couple of missiles a decade ago, they immediately protested that their technology was vastly superior now. Laughlin had laughed and then asked where were the two birds that had entered Earth space three weeks ago? The silence was telling.
Laughlin knew Dawkins was right, but he lacked the political will to let them go. His feeling of foreboding was eating away at him, and other than Dawkins, he had no one with whom to discuss his reservations. In any case, he thought, all questions would be answered in less than a week.
* * *
Christopher was happy that they were close enough to Earth that the communications lag was down to less than two minutes. It made talking to Chuck bearable. From his read of Christopher’s mood, Chuck was worried that his friend was going to do something so extreme that he would put himself at risk. The private messages from Peanut, Patricia, Sydney and Maxwell had implored Chuck to do whatever possible to keep Christopher safe.
Christopher had always been driven by anger; rage, even. As Lucius had described to the early recruits in Chicago, it all began with the death of his father. It started with the unfairness of a Veterans Administration that didn’t care that his father’s legs, severely injured in the war, were slowly poisoning his body and eventually had to be amputated. As a preteen, Christopher demonstrated an adult’s rage about the fact that the U.S. government just couldn’t treat its Negro wounded as well as its white soldiers. That was all it took. Being accused of cheating on his college entrance exams because he scored higher than any white student in the county added to the tote board of worse than unequal treatment of those with dark skin color. And when Christopher’s mother just gave up emotionally and mentally after her husband’s passing, he was through. No “we shall overcome” for him, no search for equality, no going along to get along, Christopher was through. He, Chuck, Peanut and Riley pledged to find their own place w
here they could live without the influence of white America, and they did!
All he was looking for was a place to be left alone with his kind. The first home was invaded by soldiers, and when they moved to a better neighborhood, the invaders tried to destroy their home with missiles.
Chuck knew his lifelong friend, his brother, was loaded for bear. He didn’t need any message from home to tell him that. The fact that Christopher was on his way, and no one could talk him out of making the trip, told Chuck all he needed to know.
In their conversations Christopher didn’t discuss his plans at all, knowing that if he did, Chuck would be able to counter with an array of reasons why it couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be done in that fashion. Chuck was extremely happy that Andrea was piloting Christopher’s jumper; she was the best-trained combat pilot in the colony. And the fact that they were using the twin Jupiter jumpers was also fortuitous. They were the most combat-ready ships in the colony’s fleet.
So all Chuck could do was probe Christopher for what he had planned, and try to head off anything too risky when he arrived in Earth space. Lenny was an accomplished combat pilot before he had taken on the task of sneaking people out of their lives on Earth and onto the moon. His pride and joy was the retrofitted VW Microbus equipped to travel to and from the moon, but his skills as a combat pilot weren’t far behind Andrea’s. Chuck was confident that everyone from the colony on the mission were the best possible people to protect Christopher and back his play. The only person who wasn’t worried was Christopher.
Julius and Lucius were still cooling their heels in the Chicago federal building; they had been brought books, newspapers and magazines to pass the time, but were allowed no phone calls or any contact with anyone but their jailers. They were well fed, the food healthy and of good quality, and they were allowed thirty minutes a day in the building’s gym.
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