by J G Clements
“You have some plan to get several million people off of Earth, whether the Earth governments allows it or not? You aren’t going to let the governments prevent that, are you?”
“Several million competent humans, yes. That’s what we want to do. But we didn’t have a plan on how to. Until you gave us that great idea. How much do you know about American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands?
I must have taken a second to put it all together. “You did it? You got your spaceport?”
“Thanks to you. The President wanted, and still wants, a spaceport in the United States and we agreed to it. It’ll be in the Midwest, but I think right now a dozen senators and a score of congressmen are trading away their first egg to bring it to their state.”
“How long to get a decision, and then to build something? That’s not what you wanted, was it?”
“No. They really can’t move that fast, can they? Their…I mean the individual self interests takes over, doesn’t it?” I didn’t respond. I knew she had something up her sleeve. “But we already have a port in one of the US Virgin Islands. It’s just a big open field, but to be honest, its fine for our needs right now. And your advice on how to structure it took all the wind out of the President’s sails. Everytime he said he needed time to study it, we more or less discussed calling the whole thing off and looking elsewhere. Basically, we were ceded a little over three square miles as a treaty. Something between a military base and an embassy.”
“What about logistics? Can you get enough people there to keep the recruitment going?”
In my mind, a sigh. “We think so. There is a commercial airport nearby, and they are seeing an enormous increase in their business. We are also making it clear that the ports are open, so boat traffic is really picking up. And not just cruise liners. I mean we are getting folks from almost everywhere. The only tension is when we won’t accept them for spacetravel, and they have to go back to where they came from. Thankfully, that’s a pretty small percentage.”
“But it’s not what you wanted, is it?”
“We can’t control the cost of getting to our base. We did not want a potential émigré to have to pay to get off Earth.” There were a lot of suggestions I could make, but they didn’t fit into what the Crekie wanted. They could have started a low-budget airline or purchased old cruise ships and used them like ferries, but Helen made it clear the only business relationship she wanted to have with Earth was trade. The Crekie wanted nothing to do with corporations, taxes, building permits and all the other sundries that would bog them down.
“Helen, how long would it take you to put a commercial runway in there?”
“Using our own technologies, probably less than a month. Why?”
“I have no idea what it takes to be listed as a commercial airport, but once you are, and have made sure you can handle a Boeing every four minutes or so, there will be competition on who offers the cheapest airfare to your spaceport. If you keep it open round the clock, that’s 350 flights per day, and at 200 passengers per plane, it’ll be over 70,000 passengers a day. Helen…that’s over two million passengers per month.”
Excitement in my mind. “That would work, wouldn’t it?”
“If one country wants to boycott you, or if you are still missing some sort of certificate from some agency, I’m sure there will be others willing to take over those routes.” I saw the plan gelling in my mind. “Helen, you just need to do it. Offer each airline free terminal space, but don’t pay them a dime. And don’t let them roll you into offering them an exclusive. Maybe a ‘first come, first served’ approach.”
“Will this really work? Stampeding them this way?”
“If you do it right. Now, who are you going to use for airport security?”
Blankness entered my mind. She didn’t get this. “I know for a fact that an airport has to have screeners. Folks who keep undesireables and troublemakers off the plane. That’ll be done by other countries on folks that are arriving, but you’ll need to offer that for outbound passengers. Of course, for the next couple of years you probably won’t have many folks traveling in that direction, right? Just the small number you feel you can’t accept?” I was more or less thinking to myself now. “I bet the military has some agency that competes with the civilian agencies. And other countries have their own agencies.” I made some sort of decision. “Tell the President that you want a fully staffed screening agency as part of the deal. Likewise, whatever certificates are required.”
“Recruiter…remember, right now the US government screens people entering our spaceport. They can disarm them, and if the person is a criminal they need to tell us and show us the proof. If we agree, we don’t take them. Isn’t that a sufficient screening? Besides, how would we pay for that? We are set up to barter. Not for large transfers of money. In fact, we don’t really understand most of your world’s monetary systems.”
“That’s Ok. Neither do I.” I paused as I felt her laughter in my mind. It was like a cooling rain. “How much are you planning on charging for the technology of the fusion drives, the inertial dampers, and those cool folding stairs on the Troy?” I had completely outpaced her. She was trying to follow my line of thought, but it was taking her a second or two to catch on.
“We were planning on explaining how it works. Once enough humans are in space, they’ll be building and fixing that stuff themselves. Why? Shouldn’t we give it away?”
“No. You are going to sell it. I’d start out asking for something like a trillion dollars.” She was stunned
“Really?”
“Helen…you are going to need to get a runway built, build security buildings, probably bribe a bunch of officials,” She must have been catching up cause she interrupted me.
“I thought you would be better at bribing people?”
“Probably. Most certainly, in fact. Just send me a copy of the Crekie’s extradition treaty with Earth”.
“We don’t have one. Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. Now, we get a couple companies on the line and see how far and how fast we can get. What we can’t get through industry, we’ll insist the United States Government give to us.”
Her optimism entered my mind. “No, dear. I’ll tell the President YOU want that. Remember, I work for you.”
“Don’t forget that, either.” She caught my snarkiness, and laughed. But I had some more ideas.“Oh, by the way. We need to go to France and I think Scotland. Can you call whoever is in charge there and set up a meeting?”
Trepidation. I was far ahead of her again. “When?”
“As soon as the Oddjob gets me to Earth. In a few days.”
Chapter 19. Solo Observer.
Ceres Report: Not all metals are my friend.
I figured out, almost too late, that some of these metals could be reactive with water or air. I think one of the nodules of metal had a significant amount of sodium. If I had taken it onto my ship, it could have ignited when it hit the water vapor. So for right now, I’m treating all the metals as potentially pyrophoric. And leaving them outside until I can figure a better way to separate them.
Over the next several days everyone on the Sisk was busy getting the logistics sorted out for the mission to find Swarm mines. So busy in fact that not a lot of attention was paid to what Jim planned to do. Once the news spread of what he would be doing while they were searching, a lot of the crew had misgivings. Everyone thought his plan was dangerous, except for Jim himself. Either he knew more than everyone else, or he just wasn’t someone who wasted time on worrying.
His mission profile was very simple: He’d use a modified single-man ship, cooled to a couple degrees above absolute zero, covered in ice but heavily insulated deep inside to keep him from freezing. Right after the jump to the Beetle system, the Sisk would let his ship drift out of the cargo bay, unpowered. It would appear to be just another drifting piece of ice. Then, for the next four months he would just drift, not utilizing any power. Just another icy rock drifting in the Ku
iper belt, it would use only use passive sensors.
Once he was free of the Sisk, the Sisk itself would steam inward but launch about a dozen deep space drones. No radio, no emissions…they would be launched cold just like Jim’s ship. The Chiefs had explained to Jim that the fusion drives would cause the drones to have a heat signature. Jim suggested they use a fusion drive to accelerate the drones, then de-couple from them and wish them well on their long cold voyage. They were programmed to not transmit anything unless they had a confirmed sighting, or if they detected any heat signatures. The drones were to go on different trajectories, but a drone being beamed by a Swarm would alert the other drones, even as far away as twenty light-minutes.
It took him almost a week to get the ship outfitted the way he wanted. During that time, there had been a lot of back-and-forth on what the sensor array should be. He made the decision himself to use his camera trick from his McKinse fleet days: Take two or more consecutive pictures, maybe a minute or two apart, then subtract the images. Any area that didn’t subtract to zero was examined in closer detail for the next set of photos. The hope was that anything moving in an odd direction might be a Swarm.
The biggest challenge was the waste heat he and the electronics generated. As the amount of waste heat had been calculated, it was determined that it would be just about enough to provide him with sufficient heat to stay warm. But the real fear wasn’t keeping himself warm. The problem was the heat raising the temperature of the ship, even by a half-degree, making it much warmer than the other icy boulders and comets orbiting out there. If the Swarm examined all the near objects for temperature, they might be suspicious of anything warmer than it should be. Because of that, the insulation around the crew compartment was over two feet thick. Hopefully, a balance would be struck between Jim staying warm, and waste heat radiating out of the ice fast enough. By surrounding the cabin with over twenty feet of ice, everyone hoped it would not be visible by any infrared sensors the Swarm might be using.
Sue had made a case to come along. Partially (mostly) to keep him company, but also to man a second ‘shift’ for surveillance. Jim convinced her that at his drift speed, he could afford to let hours go by between scans, and knew she’d be bored. Unable to convince him to take her, she put together over two-thousand hours of video on a hand-held monitor as a parting gift. Though it would generate a bit of waste heat itself, he would need to turn the heat on anyway to keep himself warm, so he might as well get some entertainment out of it at the same time.
He met with Jake the morning before the jump. He didn’t feel the need to, but it was Jake who wished to see him. “Ok, if we do this right, after our jump we’ll pick up some velocity and make a correction turn. When we do, your ship won’t get the message and it’ll drift out the cargo bay. We’ll launch a bunch of deep space drones on a different vector than your drift, then turn away and steam for some of the outer ice giants.” Jake deviated from his prepared mission briefing to ask Jim another question. “Are you sure they are using mines? We’ve made efforts in the past to find any traces of mines and never did.”
“Did you spend much time on the ice giants and their moons?”
“Standard recon. Couple ships mapped them pretty well.”
“Did the ship maintain radio silence? And were they cold enough or did they show a heat signature?” Jake didn’t answer because both men knew the answer. “I really think if they hear us coming, they can do something to hide the mine. I don’t think we are likely to find one unless we get very lucky.” Jim leaned back in his seat, then dropped another one Jake. “Captain, do you know why we are launching those drones?”
“To act as a sort of intelligence net? Hoping to twig some signal from a Swarmer?” Jake wasn’t comfortable with his answer, but the drones had been Jim’s idea.
“Partially. They also help disguise or at least confound anyone watching my ship leave. If Swarmers are watching us, the heat of the drones will probably draw their attention away from me.”
Jake’s jaw didn’t quite drop, but it came close. Jim wrapped layers of complexity together where most people only analyzed things one at a time. He couldn’t argue, Jim was in charge. So instead, he focused on his own mission. Mapping moons and ice giants. Otherwise, he and the Sisk would have nothing to do while Jim was drifting. Mollified, Jake continued with the run-down on his part of the mission. “It’ll take us a couple days to get to the giants, and we’ll stay for two months. After that, we plan to steam to the outer system as if we are setting up for a jump, but instead of jumping, we’ll loiter.” He looked at Jim who nodded agreement to this. “We’ll then hang out instead of jumping for about a month and a half. After that, if we haven’t heard from you, we’ll steam for your position and pick you up.”
Jim knew the Captain was rehearsing this for his benefit, and now it was his turn. “By the time I exit the cargo bay with a tangential velocity, I ought to be traveling in the wrong direction of most orbiting bodies, but it’ll look like some artifact or odd comet that got trapped that way. There will be no sign of any drive operating on my ship. During the four months, I’ll probably orbit almost ten degrees of the way around the sun, almost one-thirtieth of the way around. If I’ve calculated this correctly, the Sisk could rendezvous with me within five or six days after I transmit a signal. If I don’t transmit a signal, I’ll wait for your signal indicating you’re on your way to pick me up, and only then break radio silence.”
Jake nodded, then both men stood up. Shaking Jim’s hand, “Good Hunting”.
With almost two hours before the jump, Jim was waylaid by Sue. “Be careful, ok? The McKinsie Fleet has never lost a soul, and I don’t want you to be the first.” Encircling her waist with his arm, she was pleased at the attention.
“Sue, I’m sorry I’ll be gone so long. I know we don’t ever seem to get anytime alone, but maybe after this we can work something out.”
Not wanting to be outdone, “Maybe I can sign us up for a picket ship. Lots of free time, not much to do?” Her smile made it clear that she wasn’t serious, but it was a pleasant daydream for the two of them to entertain. Neither of them would be much good at doing nothing for any length of time.
“We should ask the Ants and the Beetles about a surfing planet. I’d be ok with that.”
*****
A few hours later, the Sisk came out of jump, then made a vicious turn to starboard. This had the effect of anything not tied down on the port cargo bay leaving the ship on a straight line. Because of the velocity of the Sisk, Jim’s ship, the TIR, was moving at a high rate of speed, in a counterclockwise orbit in a star system where everything pretty much moved clockwise. Jim would have preferred to be moving in the same direction as most of the planetary debris, but this way he would get to fly past a lot more potential targets.
A check of the few gauges his ship carried indicated that everything was fine, and he had absolutely nothing to do for the next four months. Except look for Swarm. To his knowledge, this had never been tried before. Instead, all the hunting had been on ‘active’ ships. He was convinced the lack of past success meant the Swarm saw them coming from a long way off. Grinning to himself, he realized that this mission was a lot like how the McKinsie fleet operated. Lots of coasting with little to do.
Though the Sisk was still too close to make observations meaningful, he snapped several photos using the front-mounted camera and tested the system. There were lots of other methods used than just subtracting two consecutive photos. One of his favorites was to snap about a dozen, several minutes apart, then let the stars and anything else form trails on the ‘film’. The longer the trail, the closer or the faster it was moving. Stars, many lightyears away remained as pinpoints of light. But any icy comets or anything in orbit close to him, would have a longer trail. And if he got really lucky, it might show some sign of guidance or a directional change. In a situation like this, anything out of the ordinary was worth a second look. Of course, because his viewport took in so much area, he spe
nt as much time taking zoomed-in photos and studying them. The result was it took almost twelve hours a day to examine every sector of his viewpoint.
The camera not only did visible-light objects, but could work in the infrared as well. Clearly it wasn’t much good looking toward the sun, but looking outward might prove fruitful.
It took him no time to fall into a pattern. At his speed, a series of photos every couple of hours was plenty. He set the cameras to automatic, but then spent over half a day examining each set. It was tempting to use the little hand-held player Sue had given him: He was years behind on watching movies, and it would have been good to pass some time that way. Instead, he sat in his cabin with all the lights off. Even the few instrument lights were covered. His cabin was as pitch black as he could make it. After all that, it still took him several days before his eyes truly adjusted to the dark.
Once adjusted to the constant darkness, the number of stars he could see increased. The bright ones, magnitude one and two, he could see the first time he looked. By the fourth day, he could see magnitude six stars, normally the faintest stars you can see with the naked eye. In all probability, he was seeing stars of even weaker magnitudes. The particular star they had chosen to orbit was both larger and brighter than the sun that lit the Earth, but his orbit was further out than Pluto. That being said, the light from this system’s sun, even at this distance, gave more light than a full moon on Earth.
But it wasn’t the stars he wanted to look at. He watched for any reflection or tell-tale light from anything orbiting close to him. The stars, unfortunately, just made a cluttered background that made picking out a close object that much harder. He needed to pay attention if some glint momentarily reflected some light at him. Staring into the darkness, he sat stone-still as if even making a noise would alert the Swarm. If someone had watched him, they would have seen someone sitting motionless, sometimes for hours.
