by Bob Mauldin
“I mean, like, what would the U.S. do if say, the Brits or Chinese got the ship?”
“We’d have to pull an emergency preemptive strike on China, and hope we’re in time. The Brits, I don’t know. Why?”
“It’s just that I would expect the Chinese to react in the same fashion, Sir. It almost seems like the situation as it stands is perfect. The ship is completely crewed by Americans, with the exception of a few scientists. Keeping them quiet is going to be a small problem as they come back home and we get them for debriefing. We still wind up with the data ahead of anyone else on Earth.” A moment of silence passed and San Martino said, “Then we impress upon them the consequences of staying with such a traitorous bunch.”
“Do you think you can convince enough to make a difference? It seems even to me that the idea of really traveling in space is going to overcome many people’s loyalties. Or so say some of my other informants.” The Director looked at his watch openly, deliberately. “Agent San Martino, you are ordered to get someone on the inside of this group as soon as possible.”
San Martino looked the Director in the eye. “That’s going to be a problem, Sir. The ship just broke orbit and headed for the asteroid belt. They’re gonna be gone close to a year. And one more thing, Sir. They have beam technology. Like Star Trek. Press a button and vanish in a cloud of blue lights.”
The Director looked San Martino in the eye. “Then that’s how long you have to figure out how to capture at least one person from that ship. Dismissed.”
San Martino closed the door behind him and started down the hall. “Damn you, Simon Hawke. Damn you to hell.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Six days. Eighteen shifts. That was what was projected for the enormous ship to reach its destination. Stephen’s science team recommended running systems up to speed slowly, since there was no longer a reliable database to draw information from.
Simon was near collapse when Kitty lowered the boom late on the second day. “Simon, no one knows any more or less than anyone else about what we’re doing. You said so, yourself. You have a shift, I’ve got a shift, Lt. Commander Grimes has another. All three of us have assistants. I’m telling you right now that if you don’t go get some rest and quit staring over our shoulders, mine included, you’re going to have a very lonely trip, Captain Dearest. The rest of the staff are taking their off-shifts. You do the same. We’re all agreed. We need you to be on top of things when we reach Alpha. Do you want me to get Dr. Penn to make it official?”
Simon opened his mouth to argue. “No, Simon,” Kitty interrupted before he could speak. “You set up the rules. If you don’t follow the rules, you can’t complain when others don’t. So, I’m making it official.” She stood at attention and spoke an age-old formula, “Sir, I relieve you.”
He deflated and gave in to the inevitable. Answering in the same way, he smiled, “I stand relieved, Commander Dearest. You have the con.” When he thought no one was looking, he kissed her and left the bridge.
As they approached the rendezvous with a point in space that the Astrometrics Officer called Position Alpha, Kitty thought, Simon is going to be pissed. But it is my shift. Aloud, she ordered, “Helm, all ahead slow. On my mark, reverse engines and make us dead relative.” The bridge was silent for a long minute until she said, “Mark. Report dead relative.” Conversation returned to a low murmur as each station worked their minor miracles getting the ship ready to go back to standby.
At last Helm reported, “Dead relative. Position Alpha acquired, Ma’am.”
A low cheer sounded on the bridge until she hit the all-ships. “Attention all hands. This is the First Officer. It gives me great pleasure to report that we have reached position Alpha. Good job, one and all. Operations Officer, please report to the bridge as soon as possible. First Officer, out.”
Kitty looked at the arm of her chair, pressed a combination of buttons that she had rehearsed several times, and the ship settled back into station-keeping mode, vibrations that had become white noise making themselves known by their absence. Curiosity getting the better of her, she called up a view of Earth. All eyes went to the view screen as it came alive. A small voice quavered, “It’s not there!”
Kitty ordered, “Magnification ten, coordinates zero-zero.” While the stars behind didn’t seem to change size, the image on the main screen focused on the Earth/Moon system and zoomed in at a speed that made a few of the bridge crew mutter in awe. Centered in the screen was a large blue dot accompanied by a smaller white one.
Only the faintest of smiles betrayed Kitty’s emotions as she congratulated herself for all the hours she had spent with Stephen soaking up all she could about the environment she was going to be living and working in. It was difficult keeping up with all these young people eager to see their dreams come true. Her only recourse was to spend as much time as possible with the science teams learning as much as she could retain about the ship itself as well as everything she could get her hands on about the asteroid belt. She felt like a teacher just one jump ahead of her students.
She couldn’t help feeling a small bit of pride at looking like she knew what she was doing, Simon’s words echoing in her mind: “Of course it helps to know what you’re doing, Dear. But, you have to act the part as well. It will build your team’s confidence in you. As long as you’re right, of course.”
Unfortunately, not all the crew had had time to do more than learn one specific job. Looking over at her Helm officer, she said, “Think about just how far away we are, Commander Hill. Over one hundred and forty million miles. Okay, team. Secure all stations. It’s time for the construction crews to take over.”
As she shut her console down, Lt. Commander Donna Hill asked, “Where are all the asteroids, Commander?”
This time Kitty’s smile broke through. Of the nine hundred-plus people aboard, roughly ten percent were scientists of one kind or another. The remaining fraction was composed of the original thirty-five volunteers and all the contacts they had made over the months it took to get the ship fully operational again. Friends of theirs, and friends of theirs, in ever-increasing circles.
While almost all of the volunteers knew something about space, having grown up in the ‘space age’ after all, some stereotypes still remained. Kitty responded, “There is a lot of space out here, Commander. And as many as there are, most asteroids are pretty small. Under a mile, in fact. It’s not like the movies. I suggest you do some reading on the subject. You can download some material from the computer after you go off-shift.”
The young Lt. Commander took the suggestion seriously and replied in a quiet voice, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Stephen entered the bridge deflecting Kitty’s attention from the embarrassed junior officer. “Everything under control?” At her affirmative response, he winked and said, “Ma’am, I relieve you.”
Kitty stood up, waved to the command chair and replied, “Sir, I stand relieved. The bridge is yours.” The rest of Stephen’s flight operations staff started arriving and Kitty waved her crew toward the door. “See you at the meeting this evening, Stephen. Break a leg.”
Kitty walked into her quarters and found Simon sitting on the edge of their bed, reading over a sheaf of status reports. “Looks like the factories are all ready, Dear. And the flight crews are as ready as they can be without actual experience. Marshall, Johnson and Quinn will be supervising crews for a while. According to Chief Engineer Baylor, the Sundiver will be dispatched within the hour. By the time it returns, we’ll have the fuel plant finished for sure, and a major dent made in the habitat section of Orion. Looks like you and I are out of work for a while. Want to learn to fly one of those fighters?
Kitty gave him an appraising look. “Sounds like fun. But, I have something else in mind.” He looked up when her tone changed. Just in time to see one hand unbuttoning her shirt. He never saw the one that turned out the lights.
The completion of the fuel plant was two weeks behind the origina
l estimates. Nine hundred people don’t all learn at the same rate, and it takes time for a group of that size to learn to work as a team. Actually, a series of teams, or to be more precise, three sets of teams, as the plants ran twenty-four hours a day. Simon forgot that in his effort to get the entire project up and running.
There were a great many things he, and none of the others, Kitty, Gayle, and Stephen, had considered. Like how what they had could attract all the kinds of people they wanted: starry-eyed dreamers willing to take part in one of the greatest endeavors of all time just for the sake of being there as well as the kinds they didn’t want: those trying to escape from something or those working for interests other than those of most of the crew. Those who would, out of idealism, nationalism, fanaticism, or something entirely different, try to take the ship and fulfill visions of their own.
They tended to forget that most of these kids had grown up with some of the most sophisticated sci-fi scripts and graphics of all time and were damn near brain-washed from the beginning to think of life aboard a spaceship as regimented. The initial three months of recruitment had weeded out a lot of those who thought of the Galileo and Simon’s plans for her as just a game or weren’t ready to commit themselves for whatever reason. All the way up until departure, there were those who had said that it was all a hoax. And those were the very ones who wouldn’t sign on and would be susceptible to inquiries from the various agencies detailed to look into the mass disappearances of so many people.
Another problem was the fact that not all of those who had volunteered to work in the construction pods were able to do so. A significant number of people couldn’t adjust to zero-gravity. One of the original volunteers had an uncle in need of work and when she approached him, the uncle managed to talk most of his crew, some twenty men in all, all high-steel men, into coming along ... after, of course, a suitable convincing courtesy visit by Gayle and Stephen’s “smoke and mirrors.” It was from this group that most of the pod jockeys originally came. Used to working in high places, it was just another job to most of them. A welding torch was a welding torch after all. It was just the location that had changed. Simon shook his head when he realized these men wouldn’t be here if not for the fact the year two thousand ten brought more of what its predecessors had left behind: declining job-markets, inflation spiraling out of control as the yen and euro fought for global financial dominance, the stock market and dollar dropping like a stone in a pond as war finally broke out in the Middle East.
The factories were busy turning out components on a twenty-four-hour basis, but were still running below their projected optimums. The shuttles were flying far afield, their similarity to bees not going unremarked upon, scooping up small asteroids and dust in a type of force field that extended from each side of the vessel. The unloading process was simplicity itself: merely stop above the converter opening, turn off the force-fields, and move off. The tractor beams and lasers mounted around the rim of the huge hole would do the rest.
Several dozen green specks, the business ends of the pod thrusters, flitted around the installation as the finishing touches were being seen to. Completion of the plant was expected that evening, the last details of the fuel plant’s docking port and some shielding over critical components being the last items on the checklist. The small satellite stationed nearby had already been activated so that Galileo would have greater control of the docking procedure when Sundiver returned from its trip through the corona of the sun.
Simon and the rest of the command staff decreed a twenty-four-hour day of rest. In an all-ships address, he commended the entire crew for their hard work, and in a private meeting with his senior officers and department heads said, “Tell your people to have a good time. Just make sure that the one’s who have duty don’t get crocked. Let them know that their turn will come as soon as we get ourselves situated at Alpha-two.”
Over the two months Galileo had been in the belt, the daily and weekly progress report sessions had semi-officially become known as staff meetings. Who exactly started it, Simon never found out and would gladly have strangled the perpetrator. He left the latest meeting more than a little unsettled. His discomfiture was at the deference that he and Kitty seemed to be held in by the members of the crew. Gayle, and to a great degree, Stephen shared in this circumstance as well. His ingrained sense of keeping to the shadows warred with the necessity of keeping visible and visiting the various departments. Informal talks with section heads invariably filled in gaps in written reports.
It was on one of his inspection tours that he found advice from an unexpected direction. “Surround yourself with people who know what they’re talking about, Simon. God knows, you can’t do it all yourself,” Gayle chastised. She took two steps to his one until she managed to get ahead of him and spun around to block him from going any further. She poked him hard in the chest with her finger to get his full attention, then shook it under his nose. “No boss can. Presidents have cabinets, CEOs have boards of advisers. Face it, friend,” Gayle said, calling up stories Simon had told her of his Army life, “you’re not a platoon sergeant anymore.”
The two friends walked into Simon’s private office and sat down. The meeting they had just left dealt mostly with the adjustments people were having to make to work in the new environment and the close living conditions. It had been an emotionally draining experience for Simon. He still felt that there were better people for the job than he.
“No, no, no,” Gayle said, wagging her finger. Now that she finally felt that she knew the full background of the husband of her lifelong friend, she somehow felt more at ease in his presence. “While I get some of the spotlight, it’s you and Kitty who seem to have become the focus of everyone on board. You are, after all, The Captain, and these kids are romantics all the way through. Not to mention a bunch of totally indoctrinated sci-fi nerds.” Gayle held up her hand, stopping Simon from protesting. “I mean that in the best possible way, of course.” Her grin was matched by the first smile Simon had shown in hours. “These are just the kind of people we need out here right now. Idealists, dreamers, crazy fools willing to risk their lives to live in a sci-fi series. Just like you and me.”
“But why me, Gayle?” Simon asked plaintively. “I sit in those meetings week after week and those people look at me like I have all the answers. And I don’t! Sure, we decided a male figure-head was better at first, but it could just as easily have been Kitty. You two found Stephen. It took all four of us to get the first group aboard. Stephen got the scientists, and those kids as you call them, brought the vast majority of these people aboard themselves. So why me?”
The answer he got stunned him. As much by content as by its source. “Because every great endeavor needs something or someone to personify it. In this case it’s Captain Hawke and Commander Kitty. You’re it and that’s all there is to it. Besides, you don’t have to do it all alone. You’ve already got your staff in place. Use it, Simon. Let the people who have made it their business to learn about specific aspects of this ship tell you what they know, then you decide what to do with the information. That’s the job of a captain, isn’t it?”
Simon struggled to find a response to Gayle’s argument. With a shrug and wry smile, he finally accepted the inevitable. “What would I do without the women in my life? I never knew you were so insightful.”
Having cleared out a couple million cubic miles of space, it took longer to get material to Galileo, so the factories were shutting down. There were only a few things left to install anyway, so even fewer factory units were needed here at the last. Then, for safety reasons, the ship would move some millions of miles away to build the actual dock. If, for some reason, something should go wrong with the fuel plant, no one wanted the Galileo or the slowly growing base anywhere near it. Dr. Harmon was sure the blast, if there was one, would be easily detectable on Earth.
Lt. Commander Lucy Grimes, officer in charge of the third shift as much by luck as catching the Captain’s and
Commander Kitty’s attention during the initial interviews, squirmed uneasily in the command chair and punched in the sequence that brought the ship to life. She glanced at the First Officer watching from one corner of the bridge. “Don’t look at me, Commander,” Kitty said. “You have the con. I’m just along for the ride.”
The young commander faced forward, keyed up all-ships, and with a quiver in her voice said, “All hands, this is the bridge. Secure all stations. Prepare for acceleration.” She shut off the intercom and, giving herself a mental shake, ordered, “Helm, set course for Alpha-two. All ahead slow.”
Commander Kitty left the bridge shortly after they got under way, and Lucy spent the next three hours coaxing the giant ship into just the right position. She would normally have two more hours on her shift, but since they had arrived at their destination and gone back to standby, she called Stephen, who was the Operations Officer, to the bridge and turned the ship over to him.
Lucy had only moved the ship about ten million miles, but she was sweating by the time she put the ship back on standby. Only ten million miles! she thought. That’s what ... four hundred times around the Earth. We’re going to have to find a whole new way to think about our universe. Afterward, she returned to her quarters, showered, changed, and made her way to the junior officers rec room on deck two.
She sank into one of the lounge chairs, beamed up from Earth and copied by some of the factories on board for practice, with an audible sigh. At twenty-two, she was the youngest officer to sit in the command chair by quite a few years and felt as if people were looking at her all the time, judging. Eyes closed, she sat without a thought about what went on around her until she heard someone sit down heavily next to her.
Looking over through one slitted eye, she saw her shift second, Rob Greene, looking at her with a worried frown on his face. “You’re too tense, Boss. Why don’t you go see ‘Chiko? She’ll work those knots out and you’ll be able to relax.” Rob and Michiko Greene were one of the few married couples aboard. Rob was her science officer, a few years her senior, while Michiko was second shift Nav Officer. ‘Chiko, as she liked to be called off-shift, was a five-foot-one bundle of Oriental dynamite with the ability to massage knots out of a steel bar. They had both been at the DenverCon and were among the first group Stephen and Gayle had recruited along with most of the rest of the bridge crews.