“They can use one hyperspace ship for that,” ChaoLi said. “The other one is going to be headed for Earthsea.”
“Oh, right. Sending a manned visit out to them, I suppose,” Huenemann said.
“That’s right,” ChaoLi said. “So how do we fit this new vessel out, with it being constructed that far away?”
“Oh, once it’s bare-bones operational, we fly it back here, send the fitters aboard, and have them finish the job. We’ll spin it up to give them gravity, and they can live aboard.”
“Will it have environmental by then?” ChaoLi asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Huenemann said. “The current design has the environmental – the hard parts, anyway – being made groundside and then taken up as containers. They plug right in.”
“OK,” ChaoLi said. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll talk to operations.”
“All right, everybody,” John Gannet said. “I just got our marching orders. We need to get both of these birds turned around for new missions.
“The first one, we’re gonna send some people over to Earthsea and see if they can’t make some friends over there. We may even get some new playtoys out of that trip. But we need to get that bird ready for four passengers and crew on the way there. It’ll have four passengers and crew on the way back, too. We can assume they’ll help our guys load it up at that end for the return trip, but we need to have a load list for them to work from.
“The second one is our operation front to back. We need to go find some raw materials already in space for building the hyperspace vessel. They got a factory can do a lot of the work, as long as we can find the raw materials. So we’re going to be looking around for that.
“That second one is also an opportunity for us to give our new hyperspace pilots some operational experience. Our two seasoned veterans are going on the Earthsea mission. We want that expertise on that mission, since they’ll have VIPs aboard.
“For the raw materials mission, it’s just our guys aboard, so we’ll have a chance to get our newer guys some more stick time in the hyperspace birds.
“All right. You know what you’re about. Let’s get to it.”
Loukas Diakos met with the prime minister in a pricey restaurant in downtown Arcadia City. Michael’s was known as much for its security as its food, and its food was legendary. But the entire premises was swept for electronic eavesdropping devices daily, and all the dining booths were subtly soundproofed from each other.
It was the place movers and shakers went to discuss, well, moving and shaking.
“This way, sir,” the head waiter said when he arrived.
He led Diakos around to one of the super-private rooms in the back, opened the door, and waved him in.
“Loukas,” Milbank said. “Good to see you.”
“And you, Rob. How’s Julia?”
“Good, good. Have a seat.”
The headwaiter took their drink order and disappeared.
Both men considered the menu. When their waiter returned with their drinks, he did not enter, but knocked on the door. Milbank pushed a button on the wall above the table to release the door lock.
The waiter came in, served their drinks, and took their food orders. Then the two men got down to business.
“Loukas, I have an assignment for you if you’re willing to do it. You’re my first choice. I haven’t asked anybody else.”
“Sure, Rob. What is it?”
“Ambassador to Earthsea.”
“Ambassador to who?”
“Earthsea. Another colony government. We know where they are. We sent a hyperspace ship past the planet to collect radio data, and analyzed it. They have a democratic government, and we want to establish trade relations with them.”
Diakos nodded.
“What’s the trade deal look like?”
“Well, we’re building hyperspace ships, big ones, which we can sell or lease or sell transport on, both passengers and cargo. We have a lot of fine teas, which they apparently don’t have. For their part, they have some good cheeses and some other things, but what we really want are quantum-entanglement radios.”
“Quantum-entanglement radios? They have zero-time-of-flight radio?”
“Yes. And we want them. To buy or lease or whatever they want. You see why, of course.”
“Of course. We can talk to anybody, anywhere, in real time. We can put one on each ship, for that matter. Space out to a colony, and negotiate a deal in real time from here.”
“Exactly. Loukas, I need someone to put that deal together, at least enough to get them to send an ambassador with a QE radio here so we can negotiate the details. And I thought of you.”
Diakos nodded. The deal of the century, maybe the millennium. We have hyperspace ships, you have interstellar radio. That was a hell of a combo.
“What’s the planet like, Rob?”
“All the land area is very mountainous. People are scattered around in the valleys and coasts in a lot of smaller cities. Nothing like Arcadia City there, because there’s no clear spot big enough.
“So their planetary government is a little different. The city-states are nearly independent, with the central government mostly concerned with the currency and balance of payments among the city-states and such.”
Diakos nodded. That made sense.
“Now, all we got right now is the small hyperspace ships. After the two pilots, there’s only two other seats. So you and an aide, and it’ll be cramped as hell for the six-week transit, and in zero gravity. That’s it until we get the big ships running in a couple-three years. You can take as much cubic as you want, but for people we only have two seats.”
Diakos and his wife had separated after their kids were grown and out of the house. They just didn’t have enough in common to hold them together after the kids were gone. It had been an amicable parting of the ways, and they were still friends. Diakos, in his mid forties now and darkly handsome, had not had any problems with companionship in the meantime. When he wanted it.
“That’s not a problem, Rob. And the mountains sound interesting. You know I’m a climber.”
“They may be a challenge to you. They’re pretty rugged.”
“Even better.”
“All right. I have a briefing package I can send you.”
Diakos nodded.
“Sounds good.”
“All right. And, Loukas? Keep this confidential. We want to announce successes after the fact, not pre-announce attempts that might fall through.”
“I understand, Rob. But we’ll get a deal. It’s too important to both of us.”
The waiter showed up with their dinners and Milbank buzzed him in.
The food, as always, was excellent.
Mission To Earthsea
When Loukas Diakos stepped down from his seat in the House, it fell to the leader of his party to name his replacement to serve out his term. As he was in the majority party, that was up to Rob Milbank.
Most of Diakos’s staff stayed in the office, serving as the staff for the new guy, Leslie Carpenter. Les had campaigned for a seat in the last elections, but their district had voted in two of the majority party and one of the minority party. He had been edged out.
As a result, though, the staff all knew him and he knew them, so it worked out to keep the same staff in place.
The one exception was Diakos’s chief of staff. Peter Dunhill had hooked on to Diakos’s rising star fifteen years before, and knew that Diakos was where the action was. If Diakos was stepping down from the House to take this position, that’s where Dunhill wanted to be.
“So what are these guys Diakos and Dunhill like, anyway?” Justin Moore asked. “We’re gonna be livin’ with these guys for six weeks of zero-g in a thousand cubic feet.”
“They’re OK, by all accounts,” Gavin McKay said. “Diakos is an outdoorsy type, rock climber, and a ladies’ man. Dunhill is an ambitious sort, and has decided Diakos is on the way up. Anywhere Diakos goes is OK with him.”
“Hu
h. Well, I’ll guess we’ll see.”
They would be making the trip with two containers latched below the hyperspace ship. One container held all Diakos’s and Dunhill’s private cubic for the trip, including all Diakos’s climbing gear. That container also held almost everything they needed for the trip back other than rocket fuel and liquid oxygen, both of which they knew were available on Earthsea. Food, water, and other essentials, though, were packed in that container for the trip home.
The other container was full of tea, a gift from the prime minister of Arcadia to the director of Earthsea. Milbank hoped it would help prime the market for Arcadia’s products on its new trading partner.
Passengers and crew would all be wearing comfortable fleece lounging outfits and booties for the duration of the trip. They would also have plenty of weightless-sickness pills for the trip, in case any of them grew ill from the prolonged zero-gravity conditions.
The food packed aboard was all low-residue meals ready-to-eat, designed and packaged for consumption in zero-gravity. There was plenty of water, as the big water tank in the first container was piped into the cabin.
It would be a long, uncomfortable trip, but it wouldn’t be any more uncomfortable than it had to be.
Passengers and crew had a get-together the week before the trip. The four ate lunch together in the conference room at the hyperspace facility next to the Arcadia City Shuttleport.
“I want to request one thing for the trip,” Diakos said.
Here it comes, Justin Moore thought. What special treatment will his lordship want for six weeks?
“Sure,” Gavin McKay said. “What do you need?”
“For the six weeks’ trip, we’re just four guys on a camping trip. Other than Mr. Moore’s status as ship’s captain with regard to the ship itself, we should all just act like four guys out on a lark. No special status, no titles, none of that nonsense.”
“Of course, Mr. Ambassador,” Peter Dunhill said.
Diakos chuckled at that, but he was watching Moore and McKay. He saw Moore relax.
“That sounds best to me,” Moore said. “It’ll be plenty uncomfortable enough as it is without trying to maintain all that hoo-hah.”
“Exactly,” Diakos said. “I’m an outdoorsman, and have been in more than my share of uncomfortable situations. The group has to pull together and be a group of equals to have the easiest go of it. That’s what’s always worked best for me.”
Diakos shrugged.
“At least we won’t be cold.”
“Nah,” McKay said. “We’re sitting on a nuclear reactor that’s powering the hyperspace drive all the way there. Cold won’t be an issue.”
“Well, that’s good,” Diakos said. “Cold was always the hardest.”
“The other thing I would recommend is bringing plenty of entertainment,” Moore said. “We’ll be out of touch with the colony computer network the whole way, but we have plenty of storage capacity aboard, so bring along whatever books or videos you want. If you have plenty to do, it won’t seem so long.”
“A good suggestion,” Diakos said. “How do we get it on the ship?”
“I’ll push you the access pointer and give you privileges,” Moore said. “Load it up with whatever you want. Both of you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Moore,” Diakos said. “That should work out well.”
When departure day came, it was very low-key. There was no send-off party or cheering crowds. Diakos had met with Milbank to get his final instructions over dinner the night before. They had all said their goodbyes to friends and familiars earlier.
The departure itself was something of an anticlimax. They all four climbed the portable stairs to the cabin door, got into their seats, and strapped in. Moore and McKay took the shuttle off as they had hundreds of times before. The shuttle maintained thrust – and gravity – until it had the velocity away from the planet that it needed to reach the hyperspace limit in less than a day.
It was only after they had killed the rocket engines and gone to zero gravity that it was really much different than a normal shuttle ride on the planet.
“OK, that’s it,” Moore told his passengers. “It’s all zero-g from here until we make re-entry on Earthsea.”
Diakos shrugged.
“Doesn’t bother me,” he said.
Dunhill, though, looked a little green.
“Don’t concentrate on it, Peter,” Moore said to him. “Just think of it like a long fall off a big building, but without the nasty splat at the bottom. Or like swimming. That’s nearly the same thing.”
Dunhill nodded and seemed to get his mental feet under him.
“Anyway, we’re about twenty-two hours from hyperspace transition, and that’s the next big thing. Until then, it’s going to be pretty boring.”
As it was, the hyperspace transition was very nearly a non-event. There was no internal change, no sensation of the transition. The windows went to being blanked out, so they lost the view of the stars, and a bit of gravity returned while the ship made its turn for the vector to Earthsea. the ship had been rotated so the outside of the turn was the down direction in the cabin, and about a tenth of a gravity returned while the ship turned.
The turn complete, zero gravity returned, and passengers and crew of the first manned interstellar flight to another human planet settled in for the long ride.
“All, right,” Moore told his passengers. “We’re about to come out of hyperspace. This is a reconnoiter stop, to see where we are with regard to the planet. Then we’ll make another short hop or two to get there.”
The ship dropped out of hyperspace, and the computer took its bearings. The windows unblanked during the stop, and they could all see a star blazing bright nearby. They could not see the planet with the unaided eye, but the computer could with its RDF sensors.
After just a couple of minutes, the windows blanked again and they were back in hyperspace.
“The good news is, the computer figured out where we are and we made it,” Moore said. “That’s Earthsea’s sun we saw there.”
It was mere seconds before they dropped out of hyperspace again. Then back into hyperspace once more, very briefly. An Earth-type planet, blue against the eternal dark, lay in front of them.
“Earthsea, gentlemen,” Moore said. “I guess I ought to call them and let them know we’re here.”
Moore had the frequency of Earthsea air traffic control from the radio capture the flyby mission had made. He had the radio on the speakers and they all heard the conversation in the cabin.
“Earthsea air traffic control, this is shuttle Hyper-1, inbound from colony planet Arcadia. Estimating arrival in twenty-two hours. Over.”
Earthsea air traffic control was one of the planetary government’s services, it being a centralized service to all the city-states of the planet.
Earthsea’s air traffic controllers had never received an inbound message from an interstellar shuttle before, but the flat, professional delivery of air traffic controllers was unshakeable.
“Roger that, Hyper-1. Maintain profile. Call in when two hours out for airspace and landing clearance. Earthsea over.”
“Roger that, Earthsea. Call in for airspace and landing clearance when two hours out. Hyper-1 out.”
Having given his instructions, Roger Clement just stared at his display for a few seconds.
Clement could not see Hyper-1 on his display, as he had no sensors to pick up any ship incoming from outer space. And a quick database check in an inset window confirmed Arcadia was the name of one of the twenty-four colony planets established over a century ago.
“Wait,” Dieter Kurtz said from the next console. “Did he just say what I think he said?”
“Yeah. Arcadia’s not a city. It’s another colony planet.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah,” Clement said. “Somebody apparently figured out how to fly here from there.”
“I’ll be damned. Now what do we do?”
“I’ll advise
higher. Give them the problem and let them figure it out.”
The message got passed up through channels and eventually reached the office of Director Laurent.
“Repeat that,” Valerie Laurent said to her aide, Salvatore Romano.
“Earthsea Air Traffic Control just received an arrival message from a ship claiming to be from Arcadia, a colony planet. Their call-sign is Hyper-1. They’ll arrive tomorrow about noon.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
“It can’t be true,” Romano said.
“Why not? We got here somehow. Who says someone else can’t figure it out.”
“Yes, but– After all this time?”
“No time like the present,” Laurent said. “Hyper-1. They must have discovered some sort of hyperspace to travel in. The science types have been talking about that for ages.”
“So it’s a different form of interstellar travel than the one that brought the colony here?”
“It must be. They didn’t just appear on the planet, which is how the colony was transported. They’re still almost a day away.”
Romano nodded.
“But if they have discovered hyperspace travel, they represent a huge threat.”
“And a tremendous opportunity,” Laurent said. “If we can deal with them. What are they like, I wonder.”
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Nonsense. If you were going to send someone to another planet – to another planet, mind – who would you send?”
“An ambassador of some sort, I suppose,” Romano said. “Someone who could speak for me. Who had instructions of what to say, what to do.”
“Exactly. And what would he bring with him, do you think?”
“Information about their planet. A backgrounder for us. I see where you’re going.”
“Yes,” Laurent said. “Let’s re-establish contact with them and see if they have any advance information for us.”
GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3) Page 17