GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “If they actually have QE radios, that would be of tremendous benefit,” Jessica said.

  “Yes, we should probably contact them first,” MinChao said.

  “Of course. If Rob can negotiate a deal with them, then we can take a QE radio to Amber as well.”

  “We can start by inviting them to send an ambassador with a QE radio here. Then we can negotiate the deal over their QE radio channel. Rob can do the negotiations rather than a flunky.”

  “I think that would work out well,” Jessica said.

  “So how do we structure a deal? We trade technologies?”

  “No, I don’t think so. We trade in the products. I’m betting the hyperspace generator, the QE radio, and the medical nanites would all be a bugger to reverse engineer. So we can trade in products and services on an ongoing basis rather than a one-time technology swap. Let everybody do what they’re best at.”

  MinChao nodded.

  “That bootstrap factory is interesting. I wonder how we missed that,” he said.

  “We didn’t need it. And when my great grandfather did his review of the colony headquarters archives, it would have been a curiosity, no more. Arcadia had no need at the time. We can use it now.”

  “Yes. Get manufacturing moved out to some of the larger towns. Help them grow. Which also reduces transportation costs, rather than make everything in Arcadia City.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “And again, a nudity taboo,” she said. “We may be unique in lacking one.”

  “All because of the Kendall regime. Funny, that.”

  “Yes. An irony there, for sure. Kendall metastasized what he wanted to stop.”

  “Including firearms and the black market.”

  Jessica nodded and stared out over the gardens.

  “I wonder what Rob thinks of all this,” she said.

  “Well, we can ask him. He’s asked for a meeting tomorrow.”

  “Oh, good. We can plot and plan together.”

  The young man at the reception desk came around the counter when Milbank entered.

  “This way, Mr. Prime Minister.”

  This morning, the young man led him to what Milbank knew was Jessica’s tea room. MinChao and Jessica both awaited him there.

  “MinChao. Jessica. It’s good to see you both again.”

  “It’s good to see you, as well, Rob,” Jessica, as host, said. “Please, have a seat.”

  Milbank hadn’t seen his old friends since LeiTao’s wedding, what? Over a year ago now. Working on two. They were looking old. Well, he was getting on as well. Ten years their junior, but still.

  MinChao and Jessica had befriended the young member of the House when he took office and asked to be on the science committee. They had helped guide Milbank through the political minefields even as they were being groomed for leading the planet’s most well-connected family. That was over thirty years ago. He owed being prime minister to them more than any other factor, and he knew it.

  Milbank suspected that, like himself, they were hanging on to see this through. Establish the first human trading network in space. Then they could all retire with satisfaction.

  Jessica’s tea girl served them all tea and departed. Milbank sipped with satisfaction, followed by MinChao and Jessica. Milbank didn’t know which of the many Chen teas they drank when alone, but they always served his favorite when he visited.

  Milbank looked between them and saw the statue of Matthew Chen-Jasic on its pedestal in the garden. He nodded to it.

  “That’s a handsome statue,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Jessica said. “It was a gift.”

  “That’s a great miniature. I see the full-size one every day across the square from my office. Aren’t you afraid it will rust outside, though?”

  “That metal will not rust,” Jessica said, then changed the subject. “But that’s not why you have come to see us.”

  “No, it’s not,” Milbank said, and turned his attention to her. “Jessica, after all this time, we’re finally close. We’ve actually sent a ship there. To another colony. A ship with a cabin.”

  “Yes,” Jessica said. “Manned is next, I think. But who? And to which planet?”

  “Earthsea, of course. Send a ship to bring an ambassador and a QE radio back, then negotiate the deal in real time.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “That was our thought as well, Rob. You could negotiate directly with their Director.”

  “I could, or you could, Jessica. Their planetary executive is a woman. Valerie Laurent.” Milbank shrugged. “We can play it by ear. Their ambassador may have some thoughts on that as well after some preliminaries.”

  Jessica hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense to her. She nodded.

  “I’m more concerned about the mechanical aspects,” Milbank said. “We have four seats, right? And that’s a tiny cabin, with a six-week transit. Two pilots, in case one gets sick or something. So not much room. And they’re going to be living in each other’s laps.”

  “There are two jump seats. And there is a small, private bathroom behind the cabin on one side, and a locker for food and water on the other,” Jessica said. “Send an ambassador and an aide, and bring back their ambassador and his aide.”

  “Leave our people there, Jessica?”

  “Of course. Even with QE radio, you need an ambassador on-site, if only to tell you when you need to be in touch with them.”

  Milbank nodded.

  “OK, that makes sense. And if they don’t agree to the swap, our guys can come back in the ship.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “So how do we get them to agree to the swap?” Milbank asked.

  “Send along a video. About us. Arcadia. Explain what we have to offer in a relationship. What we’re looking for. Not too specific, but just emphasize things like our government, our civil rights, the things we know are in alignment with their own setup. We can help with that, Rob.”

  Jessica looked to MinChao, who nodded.

  “I think that’s right, Rob,” MinChao said. “Send a video that shows our progress as a colony. Include the representative government part, which we know they also have. I would stay away from the beach or showing anyone violating their nudity taboo. Their ambassador will just have to deal with that later, when he gets here.”

  “And we’ll have to brief our people as well,” Jessica said. “Make sure they have clothing along to local standards and styles.”

  “How will the ambassador and his aide take along their things?” Milbank asked.

  “The hyperspace ship is a cargo shuttle,” MinChao said. “It can take one or more containers along. We should probably include a gift of some sort, too. Perhaps a container of assorted teas.”

  “That’s a lot of tea,” Milbank said.

  “On a planet of twenty million people? Not really.”

  Milbank nodded.

  “OK, that makes sense.”

  “I’m more worried about the QE radio,” Jessica said. “It could be a large item. It’s not going to be a tiny communicator-type of thing.”

  “Larger than the cargo capacity of the shuttle?” MinChao asked.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t be,” Jessica said. “They deployed them to their cities, presumable by shuttle, so that should work. But it may be a couple containers’ worth, I think.”

  “Still not a problem,” MinChao said.

  “OK, so the mechanicals aren’t really an issue, other than the crew and passengers living in close quarters for six weeks each way,” Milbank said.

  “We’ll let them shower when they get here, before they take any meetings,” Jessica said with a laugh. “But that brings up the question of who you send.”

  “Yes. We don’t really have a foreign ministry. Never needed to,” Milbank said. “I was thinking one of the House members, or perhaps even the Chamber. Someone young enough for the rigors of the trip, but old enough to have some savvy.”

  “He also has to be willing to go, Rob,”
MinChao said. “For an assignment that could be several years. And somebody without a wife and family. There’s no room for them in the ship.”

  Milbank nodded.

  “Understood. Still, there are some outdoor types who enjoy going up into the mountains. On a planet as mountainous as Earthsea is, they would probably enjoy it quite a bit.”

  “You have anybody particular in mind, Rob?” Jessica asked.

  “Off the top of my head, I thought Tanaka, Ivanov, or Diakos might work out.”

  Milbank watched Jessica carefully as he mentioned the names. He was very curious about her preferences here.

  Jessica considered. All three had excellent people skills, and would be on anyone’s short list for a sensitive liaison role. But Tanaka was more politics, Ivanov was a technology guy, and Diakos was pure businessman.

  “Diakos, I think, Rob.”

  “Business, rather than political skills or technology savvy?”

  “Yes. What we want most is a business deal. We’ll trade you this for that, everybody wins. We don’t want technology transfers. I don’t care how their QE radios work as long as I can buy or lease them. Same with Amber’s medical nanites.

  “The colonies are only twenty million people apiece right now. They aren’t big enough to support multiple high-tech industries with such levels of complexity. We’re going to have all we can do to build the hyperspace ships to make this all work.

  “Specialization is why homo sapiens went through such rapid development after hundreds of thousands of years of inch-by-inch development by other hominids. I don’t think we want to give up on that now.”

  Milbank nodded. He had been leaning that way himself.

  “Besides,” Jessica said, “it makes war less likely.”

  Milbank tipped his head.

  “How so, Jessica?”

  “You don’t want to bomb some other planet if it means you can no longer buy or lease medical nanites, or QE radios, or hyperspace ships. You’re just hurting yourself. But if you make them all yourself, there is no such impediment.”

  “Inter-dependency, then.”

  “Of course. Rob, the four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room is Earth. The colonies are perhaps half a billion people, total. Probably a bit less. Earth was four billion when we left. We’re strong enough together now – maybe – to hold against Earth trying to assert dominance over us. But that’s only if we stick together. We have to avoid squabbling among ourselves.”

  Milbank nodded. He had noted that the Chens’ plans did not include contact with Earth first, but instead with finding all the colonies, and he had surmised why. For that matter, he agreed with them.

  “That all makes sense to me. Let me talk to Loukas and see if he would be available for that kind of assignment.”

  “The other interesting thing that’s come up is the bootstrap factory,” MinChao said.

  “Yes, sitting in the archives all these years, and we didn’t know anything about it,” Milbank said.

  “To be fair,” Jessica said, “my great grandfather probably saw it in his review of the colony headquarters archives, but we didn’t need it then, so it was uninteresting.”

  Milbank nodded.

  “But the people on Earthsea did need it, much earlier than it would be useful to us,” Milbank said.

  “Exactly,” MinChao said. “But we can use it now, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Oh, yes,” Milbank said. “JieMin made a point of ensuring I knew about it and knew its implications. I’ve already contacted the mayors of some of our bigger satellite cities to discuss the possibilities.”

  “But we don’t have any at this point,” MinChao said.

  “We will soon, MinChao. I’ve already put a pair of them on the production schedule for our two metafactories. Bumped the existing production queue to get them sooner, for that matter.”

  “Oh. Good,” MinChao said.

  The RDF deployment vehicle dropped out of hyperspace and surveyed the system ahead. It was a red dwarf star, but one couldn’t deploy an RDF satellite to the middle of nowhere. The deployment vehicle had to be able to find the satellite again to pick it up, and finding something orbiting a known star was hard enough. Finding it in the vastnesses of interstellar space would be next to impossible.

  The deployment vehicle re-entered hyperspace for the approach to the star. It adjusted the angle and velocity of its exit from hyperspace with finicky precision. It needed a stable orbit for the RDF satellite, or at least an orbit stable enough to last for six months or so.

  Now in orbit about the star, it rechecked the orbit parameters. Good enough. The deployment vehicle cut loose the third of its RDF satellites to deploy, then moved away from the satellite with a small push of its thrusters.

  After several hours, it was far enough from the RDF satellite to re-enter hyperspace. It generated the hyperspace bubble and disappeared.

  One more deployment to go.

  Then it would start picking up the RDF satellites it had deployed, to take them and their scan data back to Arcadia for analysis.

  Construction Plan

  JieMin had completed the analysis of the captured Amber and Earthsea data streams and was a bit at loose ends when ChaoLi had her next staff meeting for the design side of the project.

  “Your status, Karl?” ChaoLi asked Huenemann.

  “We’re doing really well, ChaoLi, but one big question keeps coming up. As we move to detailed design, it’s becoming an issue.”

  “What’s that, Karl?”

  “How are we going to build this thing? I mean, it’s not being made for planetary liftoff like the hyperspace ships. It’s way too big for that. So we have to build it in space. But we’ve never done that before.

  “Do we make subassemblies here and take them to space? Who’s going to assemble them? We don’t have any orbital construction experience. Everything we’ve put into space, we’ve built groundside and lifted to orbit.”

  “This sounds like a research project,” ChaoLi said, and turned to JieMin.

  “I’ll look into it,” he said.

  ChaoLi, Huenemann, and JieMin all knew that the orbital construction problem had already been solved once, by the colony project. The interstellar transporters, the colony buildings, and the warehouses and metafactories of the original Asteroid Belt Project had all been constructed in space.

  JieMin’s job was to see what, if any, of that prior experience would be useful for building the interstellar hyperspace vessel.

  JieMin started with the metafactories of the Asteroid Belt Project. If the hyperspace vessel was not to be a one-off, if they were going to build a commercial hyperspace fleet, they would need orbital construction infrastructure. The metafactories seemed like the best bet for such a continuing capability.

  JieMin searched through the colony headquarters archives. He found and tracked down references to the metafactories. The first of these, he found out, had been manually built in space, using the orbital construction experience Earth already had from prior projects.

  That was no help.

  The subsequent metafactories of the Asteroid Belt project had been built in an automated fashion, by the first, manually constructed metafactories. So they were built with resources already in space.

  That was no help, either.

  JieMin had just completed the Earthsea data stream investigation, and it was still very much on his mind.

  He wondered. Was there something like the bootstrap factory for space-based metafactories? Had Janice Quant put something like that in the archives, all those years ago, like she had the bootstrap factory for groundside deployment?

  JieMin searched on several different sets of search terms, but couldn’t find any such thing in the colony headquarters archives.

  JieMin switched gears, and started reviewing all the materials on the groundside bootstrap factory they used to distribute the manufacturing on Earthsea. It took him two days, but eventually he found it.

  An optional con
figuration for the bootstrap factory.

  That optional configuration made it an orbital facility.

  JieMin dug into the requirements for such an orbital facility to be operational. It would not be simple.

  It was at the next week’s status meeting that JieMin could first report his progress.

  “What have you got for us, JieMin?” ChaoLi asked.

  “Good news and bad news.”

  “Good news first,” Huenemann said.

  “Fair enough,” JieMin said. “The bootstrap factory they use on Earthsea – and which we now are making two of for use here – has an option for making it a space-based facility.”

  “Hot damn,” Huenemann said, clapping his hands. “Do we have complete plans and programming for a metafactory to make it?”

  “Yes. It’s all in the archives,” JieMin said. “As I say, that’s the good news. The bad news is that it needs raw materials – lots of raw materials – and we don’t have them close by in space. We don’t have an asteroid belt like the Earth does. Nor a sizable moon.”

  “Hmm. What about the Kuiper Belt? Don’t we have a Kuiper Belt like Earth’s sun?”

  “We should have,” JieMin said. “We’ve never gone out there to look. It wasn’t within our reasonable reach until we had hyperspace capability. I suppose we could send a ship out there to look.”

  “What are the odds we have one of these whatever-you-called-its?” ChaoLi asked.

  “Pretty good, actually. Any star that condensed planets is going to have some material left over that never got pulled together. It’s going to be a ways out, though.”

  “Well, if it isn’t in close orbit, it’s always going to be somewhere we have to get to through hyperspace, and once it is, the travel time is basically the same,” ChaoLi said. “The time is going to be dominated by the time it takes to get away from the planet. Then a few seconds in hyperspace. A few seconds more or less doesn’t matter.”

  “Right. That’s right,” JieMin said. “For that matter, an hour to Beacon wouldn’t extend the travel time much, given how long it takes to clear the planet.”

  “All right, then,” Huenemann said. “It sounds like this is a job for the operations group. Go find us some raw materials. They can use the hyperspace ships for that.”