Version Innocent

by Pete Molina

Chapter 40

  Damon Harding was relaxing aboard The Golden Rule in his suite which took the entire fourth deck of the ship when the communication from Agent Dawson came in. He glanced over it through his implants. Finally something is happening, he thought. Julia, have the ship plot a course to Europa. Use the trajectory report that Dawson included to have the Nav system plot a course that will allow us to arrive within a few hours of the Express.

  Certainly, Damon, Julia responded. Damon just hoped that the Nav SS system wouldn’t come back and say they needed to thrust at more than one g.

  The NAV SS System reports a course which will require one point four g’s to reach Europa within three hours of the Express. The Powel will arrive fourteen hours ahead of the Express on her present course.

  Well, one point four. I guess I’ll get used to it, Damon thought. Julia, have the ship depart immediately. It took two minutes for The Golden Rule to begin thrusting. Damon had kept the simulated gravity at a full g while he was waiting in low Earth orbit, so the extra point four wasn’t so bad.

  And at least that damned simulated gravity will be off. Damon didn’t care for the simulated gravity at all. It upset his stomach, and he hadn’t been able to enjoy a decent meal since he made orbit. He was one of the few that just didn’t seem to be able to handle the s-grav; he’d had people at his research institutions working on it for a while now, but they didn’t ever seem to be closer to being able to help him. Damon wondered if that was intentional. How hard could it be? Full immersion stim could simulate most sensations. Why couldn’t his implants null them out.

  The only thing about the trip that was really pissing him off was that the farther away he got, the less control he had over events on Earth. He had a lot of lackeys that could keep things going for a while, but at some point something would come up that required his immediate attention and he’d be too far to respond adequately. The delay from message to response would be unbearable once he reached Europa and he hoped this little expedition didn’t keep him away for too long.

  Hopefully they’d locate Storm 6.7 on Europa and solve that problem. Whoever said, “It’s good to be the King,” had never tried to run a solar system before. It was exhausting work, but Damon wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s better to be in control than not. As the name of his ship expressed, he had the gold and he made the rules. But there wasn’t any point worrying about Earth now that he was on his way to resolve this Storm business before it got out of control, and he would make sure nothing like this could ever happen again. He’d already tightened security at the LNRC so that nothing happened unobserved and no one could leave without the most thorough and invasive search of their life.