GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3)

by Richard F. Weyand

  JieMin took the elevator down to the third floor, walked from the Chen Hall of Science through the pedestrian bridge across First Street to the main university building, through that building to a second pedestrian bridge across Quant Boulevard, and on into the original downtown office building.

  He took the elevator up to the design group’s floor, and walked directly to Wayne Porter’s office. Once JieMin had visualized Arcadia City as a three-dimensional grid system, when he first got to the city from the Chen family’s tea farms in Chagu, he never got lost or needed directions to anywhere.

  Porter’s office door was open, and he was in, looking into the three-dimensional display in the far end of the office. JieMin tapped on the doorframe.

  Porter spun around and leapt to his feet.

  “Professor Chen,” Porter said, and made a little bow.

  JieMin returned his bow.

  “Call me JieMin, please, Mr. Porter. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “No, no, not at all, Prof– JieMin. And please call me Wayne.”

  Porter seemed at a loss for a moment.

  “Uh, have a seat.”

  “Thank you, Wayne.”

  They both sat, and JieMin looked curiously at what was in the display. It was another spaceship design, in its early stages. It didn’t look promising.

  “I’m trying to come up with a design that meets all the requirements coming out of the operations group,” Porter said, gesturing at the screen. “It’s harder than I thought.”

  “That’s what I wanted to chat with you about,” JieMin said. “I rather like the hollow cylinder design. It’s a good design, and I think it has great promise.”

  “But there are a lot of problems with that one, JieMin. The thrust of the hyperspace generator is off-center, there’s no way to get at provisions under way – lots of problems.”

  “Can you bring that cylinder design up for me?”

  “Of course.”

  Porter used his heads-up display to change the view to the design Huenemann had showed everyone weeks ago during the kickoff meeting.

  “Yes, that’s it,” JieMin said. “What I was wondering is whether the cylinder has to be an open tube to get the benefits of the design, or if it could be closed on just one end. The rear, say.”

  “Close it off? Like this?”

  Porter converted the rendering to wireframe, connected several points, and tagged the planes between them. When he switched it back to a rendering, there was now a bulkhead across the rear of the cylinder.

  “Yes, but make it a volume, rather than a bulkhead. Perhaps fifteen percent of the ship’s length.”

  “OK.”

  Back in wireframe, Porter duplicated the new bulkhead, slid the copy forward, and rendered again.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s it. One more thing if you would. Can you slide that volume forward ten percent of the ship’s length?”

  In wireframe, Porter slide his two previous additions forward and rendered again. Porter stared at the rendering, spun it around on a vertical axis. JieMin sat and watched him.

  “Well, now the hyperspace generator could be located in that new volume, which gets rid of the off-center thrust problem,” Porter said.

  “And if you put containers around that small extension in the back?” JieMin asked.

  Porter stared into the display, then started.

  “Of course! The containers could be up against the bulkhead. Some sort of sealing mechanism, and those containers could be accessed from inside the ship. Same with water containers. Just put the plumbing on one end.”

  “Environmental, as well,” JieMin said.

  “Yes. Yes, of course. The environmental filters could be in containers and used where they are. When they need to be changed out, just swap them for fresh and renew them on the ground.”

  Porter added containers around the back extension of the cylinder.

  “We still have the passenger issues,” he said.

  “I have one thing to show you on that,” JieMin said.

  JieMin pushed him a rendering of the passenger containers that the original colonists had been moved to Arcadia in. Porter opened it up in his heads-up display, then put it in an inset in the display volume.

  “The original colonists to Arcadia were transported in these,” JieMin said. “They remained strapped in throughout the zero-gravity of the transit, and only emerged once they were on the planet.”

  “Transport the passengers the whole way in containers?” Porter asked.

  He stared at the display for several seconds, while JieMin said nothing.

  “No, of course not! Leave them in the containers until there’s enough spin built up to move them safely in artificial gravity. They can just unbelt from their seats and walk into the ship.”

  Porter looked to JieMin, who was nodding.

  “As I said,” JieMin said, “it’s a good design, Wayne. Start from there and see where you get.”

  JieMin got up, and Porter jumped up from his chair.

  “Thank you so much, JieMin. Thanks for the help.”

  JieMin waved a hand in a brushing away gesture.

  “You would have gotten there, I think. You have vision, Wayne. Real vision. Don’t get bogged down in details. Release your vision, and see where it takes you. Then handle the details.”

  After JieMin left, Porter set to it with a vengeance. He adjusted the distance of the aft bulkhead from the aft edge of the cylinder to be the optimum length for containers. He adjusted the thickness of the new volume between the bulkheads to accommodate the nuclear power plant and the hyperspace drive. He sketched up passenger containers with the entry/exit doors in the end of the container so they would be in the right place to interface to the aft bulkhead.

  Porter then sat back and let his mind run with the design. He imagined shuttles bringing up cargo containers, supply containers, people containers. Usually those containers were brought up in blocks, four across and two rows high.

  How would that work with the circular shape of the inside of the cylinder? Then again, why was the inside of the cylinder a circle? Would it not be better to have it be a polygon, with sides at least as long as four containers were wide? Then the containers would lay flat on the surface.

  Even better, have the sides be longer than the width of four containers. Cargo was often two rows of containers deep. If the sides of the polygon were wider than four containers, then eight containers could be on each side and just barely touch at their upper edge. With that in place, how would the next rows of containers be mounted?

  What about the connections for the supplies containers in what he now thought of as aft storage, as opposed to the cargo storage in the front recess of the cylinder? Those may be brought up in four-wide by two-high blocks as well. Supplies, environmental filters, water, passenger containers.

  Porter started adding plumbing connections, environmental connections, and airlocks to the aft bulkhead. He was imagining the processes involved.

  Wait! One more. There had to be at least one nuclear power plant. Maybe more than one. Those could be containerized, too, rather than built into the ship. Would it not be better to service those on the planet, rather than do it in space, while the vessel was out of commission? How about two plants? Swap them out one at a time, so the ship retained power, then service them planetside.

  Porter worked through lunch without noticing, and was shocked when people started saying good night to him through his open office door as they headed home at the end of the day. He tore himself away from his design at that point and headed home himself.

  Porter was somewhat distant that night at dinner, and he apologized to Denise for being distracted.

  That evening, he stared out the window of their apartment, watching in his mind’s eye as passenger and cargo shuttles serviced the big hyperspace vessel against the night sky.

  The next day Porter was back at it. He incorporated some enhancements he had seen in his vision the night before. He added tex
tures and slight color variations.

  Porter then imported models of cargo shuttles and containers. He started generating different types of container. A supply container, with an airlock-mating door in one end. A water container with piping connections. A powerplant container with electrical connections. An environmental container, with air-tight connections for air circulation.

  Porter also imported the model of the passenger container of a hundred and twenty years before, that had ferried the colonists to Arcadia. He modified it to have the airlock doors in the front of the container, doing all the detail work he had raced past yesterday.

  Porter then built an animation of the hyperspace ship being serviced. It was in three dimensions, with cargo shuttles loading up the forward cargo space as well as the aft supplies space. He annotated it with legends below so the viewer could tell what was being done at each point.

  It took several days to get all the textures right, all the movements right, all the lighting and shadows right. At the end, though, Porter had an animation of the hyperspace vessel being serviced and the passengers being delivered. He watched it several times through with a critical eye, then sent it on to his boss and project management.

  Porter also sent a courtesy copy to Professor Chen JieMin, attached to a short ‘Thank you’ note.

  JieMin received the ‘Thank you’ note from Porter, then opened the attachment in the display in his office.

  It was breathtaking. JieMin felt like he was adrift in space, watching from a distance as shuttles approached the huge vessel and delivered their cargoes. The polygonal cross-section of the cargo volume was new, and puzzled him until he saw shuttles delivering four-across container payloads. That was a nice trick there.

  The simulation could be pivoted around. JieMin turned the display to watch the loading of supplies in the aft container space. He noted the dedicated spots for water, electric, and environmental containers, as well as the spots with gasketed air-tight doors for cargo and passenger containers.

  Very nice.

  JieMin sent a short note back to Porter congratulating him on his work, and encouraging him to keep it up.

  “Hey, Mikhail,” Huenemann called to Borovsky. “Did you see Porter’s latest work?”

  “Yes. I think he has most of the issues handled.”

  “So do I. It’s fuckin’ great. We should send it out to Gannet and Bellamy, don’t you think?”

  Borovsky thought for a few seconds.

  “Yes, I think we probably should,” he said. “I think it’s far enough along, I’d like to know from them what they think isn’t covered yet.”

  “All right. Done.”

  Huenemann clapped his hands.

  “Now we gotta engineer it all. All the little bits and details. I love that part.”

  Borovsky chuckled and shook his head.

  Huenemann was just, well, Huenemann.

  Gannet and Bellamy both got the mail from Huenemann. They sat together to watch the attachment in the big display in the conference room.

  “Well, I guess it’s time to see the latest whiz-bang design from downtown that completely ignores our needs.”

  Bellamy chuckled.

  “Well, you never know,” she said. “Maybe they have something that does everything we want.”

  “Yeah, but what are the odds?”

  They watched the simulation through three times before they were done.

  “I’ll be damned,” Gannet said. “They got everything in there.”

  “All our big-ticket items, anyway,” Bellamy said. “I think we ought to distribute this to the operations staff and see if they come up with anything they’re missing.”

  “One thing I can come up with is the chillers for the hyperspace generator. Containerize those, too, like the nuclear powerplants, and we can service them on the planet.”

  “I’ll circulate the simulation and start a list. But I think they’re pretty close.”

  “I do, too,” Gannet said. “Somebody down there got religion, in a really big way.”

  He shook his head.

  “Surprised the hell out of me,” he said.

  Details, Details, Details

  Of course, having a basic ship design in hand left thousands upon thousands of details to be decided.

  How many crew? How many passengers? How many cabins? How many staterooms? How would they be laid out within the volume of the ship? How would wastewater treatment be handled? Would water be recycled?

  It went on and on. Rather than having worked himself out of a job, Wayne Porter had guaranteed his job security. With a workable overall design, there were a near-infinite number of design details to work out.

  Months passed as they refined the design. Pushed forward and then fell back in their efforts as some things panned out while others didn’t.

  It was high-stakes engineering, and Karl Huenemann was in his element, with Wayne Porter hammering out design after design for the interior spaces of the big ship and the engineers working out the stresses and the structure.

  ChaoPing, now twenty years old, had her first baby, a boy, named LingTao. Three months later, LeiTao, just turned seventeen, had her first baby, a girl, named XiPing.

  ChaoLi and JieMin settled into their role as grandparents with ease. It had not been so long ago, after all, that they had had their own children. Arcadia’s large families and early marriage made for young grandparents, as well as young aunts and uncles. Uncle JieJun was only nine years old.

  “Congratulations, ChaoLi. Again,” Jessica said.

  “Thank you, Chen Zumu.”

  “You may proceed with your progress report.”

  “Thank you, Chen Zumu.”

  ChaoLi gathered her thoughts, then jumped in.

  “The engineering and design work on the hyperspace vessel is going well. The overall hull design is working out well, and they don’t anticipate any changes in that as they go forward.”

  “So it will look like the simulation we have seen?” MinChao asked.

  “Yes, Chen Zufu.”

  “Excellent.”

  He waved a hand for her to continue.

  “We are anticipating the return of the hyperspace ship from Amber soon. It had the shorter distance to travel. The hyperspace ship from Earthsea should return a few days later.”

  “And we are prepared to start analyzing their network data?” Jessica asked.

  “Yes, Chen Zumu. We do not anticipate any problems there. We started from the same tech base, and encoding methods tend to be sticky.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “The hyperspace ships will then be ready for additional trips. Do you intend to send one to vet Earth in the same manner as Amber and Earthsea?”

  “No,” MinChao said. “No, not yet, I don’t think. We will hold them and await the finding of other colonies. We can also use them to carry messages to Amber and Earthsea if we wish. Set up some preliminary communications.”

  “I don’t understand, Chen Zufu. I would think vetting Earth would be a priority.”

  Jessica took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “That was my decision, ChaoLi. Earth and the colonies are not peers. There may be some feelings of ownership toward the colonies there. And Earth has a very checkered history.”

  ChaoLi looked puzzled. Jessica frowned, trying to put her thoughts into words.

  “Consider, ChaoLi. Would young people rather go to the beach with their peers or their parents?”

  “With their peers, Chen Zumu. I think I see.”

  “So we will establish communications with our peers first, ChaoLi. Make friends in the neighborhood, if you will. Then we will deal with Earth. It isn’t going anywhere. But approaching it as a group will be a better strategy, I think.”

  “I understand, Chen Zumu.”

  Three months after launch, in February 2368, the first hyperspace ship came back, from Amber. It started dumping the recordings it had made of Amber’s networks and other radio traffic while it was
still en route to Arcadia.

  The operations group started analyzing the data while waiting for the hyperspace ship to land. The entire data package wouldn’t be available until the ship landed and they could use higher-speed access methods than the ship’s radio.

  The operations group necessarily had a lot of communications people for contact with their spacecraft, all of whom were at loose ends at the moment. They confirmed the protocols used were unchanged from those they had all set out from Earth with, and decoded the raw signals the flyby had recorded into data streams.

  In analyzing the full package once the ship landed, they were quickly in over their heads. John Gannet sent the decoded data streams package to ChaoLi.

  ChaoLi called an extraordinary meeting in the conference room of her offices downtown. Attending were Professor Chen JieMin from the university, Chen MinYan from Chen JongJu’s accounting team, and Prime Minister Rob Milbank from the Arcadia government.

  “Thanks for coming, everybody,” ChaoLi said. “We have a very large analysis problem to do, and we need to get it right. It has technical, financial, and governmental aspects involved, so I need to work with all of you to get this done.”

  “Sure, ChaoLi. What’s going on?” Milbank asked.

  “We have the data capture back from the Amber colony. The communications people confirmed it was encoded the same way ours is, a legacy of our common tech base, and decoded it into data streams. We now have a capture of a very large chunk of network data from Amber. several hours worth of planetary communications.

  “Now this is all routine traffic, right? It’s not someone dictating to us all the things we want to know. It’s all the unencrypted data of everyday life on Amber. News wire articles. Public forums. People sending each other their favorite recipes. The kids’ school schedules.

  “What we need to do is try to glean from that slice of everyday routine what their situation is.”