Hayes reached up to a small cabinet in Ames’ cubicle, opened the door, and removed some items. He handed a small red pill to each one of them.
“One of these will do a good job of preventing zero-g nausea, and two of them are an excellent way to get some sleep. I think you know what these bags are for.”
Hayes watched as they both took their pill and washed it down with a squeeze from a water bottle.
“I’ll do the food prep on this trip so you won’t have to get in trouble there. The toilet facilities will require some demonstration that is best explained and demonstrated while actually in zero-g; as for now, get any sensitive gear onto your pad and get these side rails up and locked. Be sure to stay on the pad until I tell you different. We’ll be doing a normal stellar push-off so there will be some maneuvering for about thirty minutes.”
Hayes descended the ladder to the command deck just below the passenger cubicles. He stuck his head into the lower storage compartment and checked that the exterior hatch was sealed; he then lowered the hatch that sealed off that compartment.
The pilot’s acceleration pad/bunk/command chair sat next to the hull and the only transparent port in the whole boat; it gave him a good view across the spaceport and sight of two of the landing struts. He settled into the chair and tapped a couple of input pads. The four screens over his head came to life and the display for the mass resonator wobbled and steadied in the air above his midsection. He could make out the positions of Pebble--the least of the three moons of Archer--the Archer primary, and two of the other five planets even with the mass of Archer itself hazing up the bottom of the display and distorting the overall picture. He tapped the nav pad and called up the, much used, flight plan to Forest; a green line appeared in the air and started rippling, indicating a tentative, but unconfirmed, track. He knew it would firm up once he was clear of Archer’s mass effects.
A visual sweep of the screens showed everything where they should be, “Santana, say status.”
The reply from the AI came back in a husky, blonde bombshell voice, “Hello, Easton, you’re back early. Did you miss me? I missed you. Everything is just wonderful with me. Would you like to watch me take a shower?”
One of the screens changed to a view of an excessively well constructed woman dropping her robe as she stepped into a large shower stall. Hayes jumped out of his chair, lunged for the AI configuration input panel on the back of the chair support structure, and frantically stabbed the RECONFIGURE touch pad.
He heard Doctor Ames call down to him, “What was that, Hayes? It sounded like a woman’s voice.”
Hayes frantically cancelled his custom AI persona and reset the original machine voice interface, “Oh, nothing, Doc; the ground crew boys like to mess around with me.”
He looked up at the screen, which had returned to a normal data display, “Santana, say status.”
This voice was sexless with a slight metallic edge, “ALL SYSTEMS OPTIMAL - HULL SEALED - READY FOR FLIGHT OPERATIONS.”
He exhaled the breath he had been holding, closed the panel door, and returned to his chair. He heard Twisst giggling and was glad they couldn’t see his face.
“Archer Port Control, Santana ready to lift.”
“Santana, you are clear for departure route as filed.”
“Santana lifting now.”
Hayes tapped on the master input panel and voice released the AI, “Santana AI, release and activate flight plan.”
“SYSTEMS RELEASED - LIFTING.”
Hayes looked out his port to watch the ground fall away with only a slight sensation of acceleration. The two landing struts that he could see swung inward and disappeared from his sight.
“LANDING STRUTS RETRACTED AND LOCKED.”
Doctor Ames called down again, “Are we moving? I thought I felt something.”
“Sorry, Doctor; I’ve never had passengers before and I forgot that there is no way for you to know anything; I’m feeding a fore and aft outside view to your screens now. We’ve lifted off and are approaching the top of the atmosphere. We will be maneuvering for ten minutes or so while the auto-pilot vectors us out to two planetary diameters where the AI will release the isolator drive for a quick dash to the sun and then back to normal space for vectoring and a high-G boost toward Forest. The entire thing should take about thirty to thirty-five minutes.”
Thirteen minutes later: “Get ready; isolator drive coming up now for about a minute.”
The familiar wash of distorted vision and the unpleasant sensation of being squeezed through a small hole that no one had ever managed to adequately describe seemed to end before it began and gave way to the pleasant floating of free-fall. Hayes watched the Santana’s red dot track the planned course on the resonator display as it rapidly closed on the side of Archer’s primary.
While the isolator drive was steerable--to a small degree, if there was sufficient power--it was incapable of altering velocity; what speed that was attained by the isolator drive depended on the relative velocity that was attained before activating the drive. To make that reality more complex, the AG, or Anti-Gravity, or lift ring if it was a ship capable of landing on a planet, had its greatest effect when it pushed against another gravity field. The further away that gravity field was or the smaller it was, the less the repulsive effect. So, to achieve minimum transit times, ships normally pushed off from the strongest gravity field they could for as long as they could with as much power as they could. Basically, that meant lining up a course as close as possible directly away from the local star and using the planets and the star of the destination system to decelerate and maneuver to cancel out any remaining relative motion differences between the origin and destination.
The only thing that penetrated an isolator drive field was gravity to a small extent. The mass resonator detected gravitational fields and allowed for navigation and avoidance of massive objects that would distort the drive field and destroy the ship.
Santana broke out above the star’s corona and spent three minutes pouring power through the lift ring to align itself on a course to Forest; it then spent another nineteen minutes at maximum power before re-activating the isolator drive.
“Okay, you can float around if you want; we’re on our way.”
A minute later, Ames and Twisst drifted into the open space next to Hayes’ chair; Hayes eyeballed them carefully, looking for any sign of imminent upchucking.
“How are you two feeling? If you’re not doing well, I strongly recommend another pill and some sleep; that seems to allow the body to adapt with the least occurrence of unpleasant side-effects.”
Twisst shrugged her shoulders, “I feel fine; it is Jonathon that may be a problem.”
Hayes and Twisst looked at Ames.
Ames had a grip on a handhold but raised his free hand, “I admit I find this a bit unpleasant, but it will pass and I will live.”
Hayes smiled at long ago memories of similar feelings, “Doctor Twisst, do you have any children?”
She looked surprised, “Why, yes, I have two; why do you ask?”
“Woman adapt better to weightlessness, and woman that have had children do the best of all. There is no evidence for it, but the opinion is that it has something to do with having experienced physical changes during the first trimester and the usual nausea episodes.
“Like I said, take another pill and sleep, or stay in your bunk where you have a normal up and down visual perspective of the things around you. Another good thing is to read or watch a vid; those things will occupy your mind. If you want to exercise, I have a set of cuffs for the ankles and wrists that attach to elastic bands that attach,” he waved a pointing finger around the compartment, “to several points here. You hang in the air and strain your muscles against the resistance. I find that an hour or so of that followed by a bagger is very relaxing.”
“What’s a ‘bagger’?” asked Ames.
Hayes released his lap belt and pointed ‘up’ the ladder, “That’s a bag-shower. Head on
up to the top and I’ll show you how it works.”
##
The com panel at the end of the console chimed; CeCe tapped the ACCEPT pad and Commander Amanda Kraigor, the Captain of the Streak, appeared on a screen on the left side of the circle, “Hello, Amanda; are you ready to lift yet?”
Commander Kraigor saw Wills at the other end of the console, “Hi, CeCe, no; I need to talk to the Admiral.”
Wills looked up at that, “Yes, Commander; what do you need?”
“Sir, the Streak may not be available. Two of my four reactors have advanced initiator chamber neutron etching and have become unstable. The other two reactors are in good order, but our push-off would put us at Forest in three weeks. I’ll go if you need me, sir, but I won’t be there very quickly.”
Wills looked down and let out a long breath before looking back at the screen, “Repairing those reactors would take a couple of weeks and replacing them a couple of months, so, either way, it’s a losing proposition. Okay, Amanda, get yourself and your crew over to the Weasel; you have about two hours before we lift off.”
Wills smiled at the screen, “You won’t be a ship’s Captain, but maybe I can put you in charge of the kitchen.”
Kraigor grinned back, “No problem, sir, I’ve never set foot on a Rhino; I’ll need a map to find a washroom.”
Wills smiled and nodded as she cut the connection, “Well, at least the Streak was one of the small ships.” He gave CeCe a questioning look, “Say, where are the nearest washrooms?”
She pointed at the two passageways behind the observer seating, “There are facilities at the near end of both passageways and two small crew accommodations with bunk, desk, and bath in each passage.”
Wills headed for one of them, “Back in a bit.”
#
Ten minutes later, Captain Helt came walking up one of the access ramps, “What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”
CeCe and Wills exchanged a depressed look. Wills sighed, “Give me the bad news.”
“The people I had going over the lift ring found a good deal of corrosion throughout the system: support structure, induction links, coil liners; the whole thing. It’s not horrible, just bad, and they have been welding in extra supports for the last few hours. I, also, set them to installing strain gauges on all hull mounts.”
Helt tapped on one of the console system input pads; one of the screens at the back of the circle changed to a bar graph, “I’ve tied them into an open data channel. Keep power distortion across the ring within ten percent, do not exceed ninety percent of rated maximum power input, and everything should hold together. Remember that every important control system on this ship is up to, or exceeds, current standards, except for the lift ring. The Silverman has been programmed with those limits but does not have primary control of the ring; it only has control through the auto-pilot. The ring is still tied through the old stabilizer system for all close maneuvering.”
CeCe asked, hopefully, “You said something about good news?”
“Yes, provisioning is complete, and we seem to have most of what is going to be our crew aboard. Stoker and Treelam arrived an hour ago and have been given quarters on the top crew deck. The final work should be finished in an hour; after that, the ship is yours. Oh, the gear both of you sent for arrived and is in your quarters.”
Wills nodded, “Good; tell your people down on the strut platform that the crew from the Streak will be joining us. It looks like their reactors are out so they may as well come with us. And have someone bring our gear up here and put it in those quarters down the passage; we may as well camp out up here.”
Wills sat in the right-hand console chair and rubbed his eyes, “Normally, I’d be home now pouring a stiff one. Instead, I’m bolted into the biggest flying tin can humanity has ever built, getting ready to play space-cadet. That winery dedication is really beginning to look good now.”
“DOCTOR VICTORIA TREELAM AND DOCTOR ROLAND STOKER REQUEST ADMISSION TO THE BRIDGE DECK.”
The lifeless, metallic voice of the AI startled Wills, and he saw the smile cross Helt’s face, “God, that sounds like death warmed over; change that to something that sounds like this ship isn’t part of Satan’s fleet.”
To the ship he said, “AI, admit Treelam and Stoker.”
Helt was still smiling, “Hayes has a nice AI persona, but it may present more problems than solutions when we get the Foresters aboard. I’ll set it to something nice and neutral.”
Wills pivoted back and forth a couple of times before looking back at Helt, “When Commander Kraigor gets here from the Steak, have her and her first officer quartered in the two remaining rooms up here. Standing one on one watches might get a little tedious for just the two of us and they are probably the closest thing on this ship to acceptable bridge officers that aren’t needed somewhere else.”
Stoker and Treelam appeared out of a passage as Wills continued giving instructions to Helt, “Once we are underway and you judge things to be stable, set your people to instructing the new people about the ship’s systems. Divide them as you see fit to be deck guides for our passengers.”
Wills pointed at Stoker and Treelam who now stood inside the circle, “Doctors, you two know more about the Foresters than anyone on this ship. I want you two to hold classes for our crew and do your best to give them an idea of what to expect.”
Everyone nodded their agreement. Helt turned and headed for a passage, “I’m off for a final check. I’ll call.”
Stoker sat in one of the observer seats, “I guess I always knew this was a big ship; I just didn’t know how big.”
Victoria Treelam nodded in agreement, “It was very startling when the elevator entered the engineering area; I had a brief thought that we had exited the top of the ship. When will we be leaving?”
That brought Wills’ thoughts back to hard ground; he looked at the clock on the console, “Well, it’s 1737 now”; he turned his chair to face CeCe, “what have we forgotten?”
CeCe scanned the board and then the circle of screens, “Well, provisioning is finished, fuel, water, and oxygen tanks are full,” she waved a hand at a couple of the screens, “the clutter under the ship is nearly cleaned up, not that it really matters, and I see a couple of stray shuttles heading out the access road, probably the last of our crew.”
She turned and did another scan of the board and screens, “As far as the ship goes, I have a green board.” She faced Wills, “I believe all that remains is the release from Captain Helt and confirmation that we have all of our crew aboard; other than that, I would suggest that you check in with Port Control, Erica, and Nanci.”
Wills sat upright, “Ouch! You’re right.”
He spun the chair around to face the console and started tapping on the com panel. The overhead screen to the left produced the face of Gerald Falmann at the Flight System Control Center, “Ah, Admiral, CeCe, Doctor Stoker, Doctor Treelam, I see that you’re all on the Weasel; what can I do for you?”
Wills spoke, “Jerry, I need an update on the other ships. Sorry I haven’t checked in ‘til now, but I’ve been busy. Say, you’re there kind of late, aren’t you?”
“I thought I’d stick around until you were heading out; the rest of the ships have already left. The Santana was first off followed by the Melinda. The Winslow and Pugnacious left three hours later and the Gregory Falls left two hours ago. The Kellogg escorted the Gregory Falls and made sure it had a solid vector for Forest before jumping; the Rance left an hour later. The Streak is out of service, but I would guess that you know that by now. When are you lifting? There’s a huge crowd lining the walkway waiting to see the Weasel takeoff.”
Wills’ eyebrows went up and he looked at CeCe; she looked surprised too and started tapping on the exterior pickup panel. Several of the screens at the back of the circle changed to a view back toward Michigan City; there had to be several thousand people along the bay-front walkway.
Everyone turned to look at the screens an
d everyone got the same, wide grin on their faces. Wills turned back to Falmann, “Okay, Jerry, it didn’t occur to me that the departure of a local fixture would be such an event, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Anyway, Captain Helt is making some last minute adjustments, but it looks like we should be out of here in an hour or thereabouts. I’ll call in for the usual traffic clearance.”
“I’ll be here, Admiral.”
Wills broke the connection and put in a call to Erica. She appeared on the screen standing in front of a mass of people, “Well, Erica, it seems like you have your hands full.”
She smiled and looked around at the crowd, “Actually, no, Admiral; the mood is quite festive and everybody is having a good time. When do you expect to leave?”
“Oh, I’m looking at something like an hour from now. I just wanted to check with you and see if we should expect any more volunteers?”
“I don’t think so Admiral; the last call from my people at the port said that there were no more volunteers, and the people from the Streak had just arrived. Last count indicates that you should have 872 total sent out from us. I told them to contact you directly if anyone else shows up.”
Wills could feel a lightening of his tension; having competent people working around the edges of the job was a relief.
“Thank you, Erica; see you in a few weeks.”
“Have a nice trip, Admiral; bye CeCe.”
CeCe waved and Wills cut the connection, “Okay, good; so far, so good.”
The next call was to Nanci; she, too, appeared against a background crowded with people, “How are things going for you, Nanci?”
She looked slightly frazzled, “Well, I got 317 passengers from the Gregory Falls quartered here in town; 42 others volunteered to go with you, and you should have them by now. I made sure that everyone was tied into our data link system so I could keep them posted on events. I have the Marks Island Winery dedication lined up, two more trips to wineries over the next couple of weeks, mountain hiking trips, trail rides, glider flights, boating, swimming, and farm tours. Most of them are here now, and I organized a hasty cookout by the HQ building. HowmIdoingWhenyaleaving?
Ariticle Six Page 5
