She shut off that line of thought hastily. She had had entirely too much time to think, even though she'd cut the travel time extensively. Often she'd considered canceling, turning back, daunted by the enormity of the problems. She kept remembering Yuri's woebegone face when he had begged her not to leave and asked if she were coming back. And she didn't dare think about Morgan and that accusing, silent stare he had given her when she announced she was going to see Derek at New Earth Seeker's orbit.
Her tracking monitors sharpened a view on Hiber-Ship Jovian Base, masking Jupiter out of their calculations. Grids shaped around a large cluster of man-made objects. Brenna's destination point. Matsumoto's Jovian Orbital Station was over the visibility horizon, at present. This "Station" was strictly temporary, unlike the Orbital Colony. Jupiter's disk drifted farther and farther to port. Brenna fired thrusters according to program, decelerating precisely on schedule. Though she itched to take manual control, Brenna let the computers handle nearly everything. This was no seat-of-the-pants lark, flying through heavy Earth atmosphere, or a Chase ship cruise through empty space. The man-made complex ahead contained asteroid-sized structures, a lot of them. There was constant mini-skidder and cargo barge traffic between the orbiting objects, and it was dangerous for a newcomer—hotshot space pilot or not—to zip through congestion like that. Out here, she obeyed Hiber-Ship's traffic systems scrupulously. This was their bailiwick.
"Hiber-Ship Jovian Base, this is Saunder Enterprises Craft Fifty-five. Do you copy and track?" Brenna signaled.
After the lengthening communications gap from Mars, FTL Station, and even Kirkwood Orbital Station, it was a bit of a shock to receive an instantaneous answer. "SE Craft Fifty-five, we copy you loud and clear. You are on our boards and cleared to dock at Construction Shack Seven. We have your guidance locked in. Welcome!"
Brenna sat back, letting remote automated systems take over her ship. She didn't enjoy being a mere passenger, but it gave her leisure to look things over while she approached the mammoth multicity in space. She had been here in '72, but, as Derek had said, things had changed. People had changed, too, in the interim. When Brenna had visited the project, she had been more defiant than curious, ready to heap scorn on New Earth Seeker, if for no other reason than that it had lured Derek away from the dreams she and Morgan had shared with the former Space Fleet pilot. New Earth Seeker hadn't looked like much at all then. Brenna had studied holo-modes of the now nearly completed interstellar ramjet before she had left FTL Station, but they hadn't prepared her for the astonishing growth that had taken place.
"Mankind's greatest adventure!" Hiber-Ship boasted. The complex looked the part. The dots on the monitor screens enlarged until each structure was visible to the naked eye. The constructs were enormous, the supporting sections nearly as large as Goddard Colony. For months they had housed the work gangs and collected the incoming supplies and the volunteers in training. Hiber-Ship had built as much on site as possible, constructing and installing the cryogenic stasis boxes and machinery here, pulverizing nameless asteroids for materials and refining them in these mills and factories. There had been other industrial output as well, of course, to make the project economically feasible. The bulk had gone into New Earth Seeker, one of the most farsighted investment efforts in mankind's history. Earth-based companies like Bolotin's Alliance Manufacturing had spent heavily to bring New Earth Seeker into being. The recruitment, the concept, and the about-to-be achieved success had channeled off not only funds but a volatile and restless portion of Earth's population. High Aggressiveness rating on a psych profile didn't keep anyone off the roster. Medicine could harness that, to a colony's benefit, and the challenge had attracted a great number of volunteers who might otherwise have died to no purpose in Earth's controlled-violence arenas.
"Earth's brightest and best..." And the ones who wanted to take hold of the future with their bare hands and tame an unknown planet.
Hiber-Ship Jovian Base was home for five thousand people. Twenty-five hundred of them would be aboard New Earth Seeker when she set forth. The rest were here to build not only this starship but the ones that would follow. Hiber-Ship Corporation was becoming a self-supporting operation, thanks to the mining finds in near-Jovian orbits.
Brenna floated in her safety webbing, watching. Traffic pulled her ship in slowly, weaving through the obstructions. Planetoid-sized collections of housing pods and storage facilities hung in nothingness, surrounding her. Shiny metallic bugs darted among the gigantic structures—ships like Brenna's and space sled mini-skidders running errands and delivering small cargo. If any one of the orbiting warehouses or dormitories touched its neighbor, dozens of ships would be crushed to atoms. But there was no danger of that. Everything obeyed the laws of physics, moving inexorably along a path laid out by gravity and velocity, the entire complex following mighty Jupiter in its course around the Sim.
Construction Shack Seven filled Brenna's viewports and screens now. Her ship appeared to be sliding down a long, brightly lit tunnel—the docking area. Forward thrusters fired delicately, and Brenna lifted a few centimeters forward out of her couch as the Chase ship braked. Motion was timed to milliseconds. Tether snakes reached out for the incoming craft. Chase One's forward momentum now matched that of the Shack. Brenna heard the magnetic anchors clamp onto the hull. Lines tightened, easing the berthed spacecraft into the bay Traffic had reserved. Brenna had never seen the procedure better handled anywhere.
Permission to come aboard was granted. By the time Brenna reached the air lock, the Debark access tunnel was fitted snugly against her ship; she could float directly into a pressurized environment. She was still in free fall, at the hub of the Construction Shack. Seven was a parking lot for incoming ferries and Space Fleet patrols who used the Hiber-Ship Base as a convenient refueling station—and thereby helped Hiber-Ship's financial balance. From here workers and New Earth Seeker crew members rode skidders or satellite jumpers over to the interstellar ramjet.
As Brenna swam out into the arrival area, Derek hurried toward her. He gauged his speed expertly, sluing to a stop, one hand on a safety bar and the other closing around Brenna's waist and drawing her to him. "You really did come!" he exclaimed.
"I said I would. You knew I would. I don't make promises I can't keep," Brenna said.
She wished their spacesuits didn't separate them. But there could be no privacy, even if they took the suits off. Arrival Bay was busy. Many other people floated by them or drove small cargo carriers past on their way to the loading areas. Intercom chatter, coming through Brenna's helmet, was a steady, murmuring presence. None of that really mattered, though. It was all unimportant. What counted was seeing Derek. She had traveled all the long distance to be this close to those turquoise-blue eyes and that smile that rivaled sunlight, to be this close to him.
Derek reached out as if to touch her face. He, too, had forgotten where they were. A sheepish expression spread over his features. His gloves and Brenna's faceplate made actual touch impossible. Derek glanced at the passing crowds. "It's pretty busy here. Did you have a rough voyage? I can arrange for sleeping quarters in the transient cabins section here at Seven, if you..."
"Uh-uh! I've had a week to rest in," Brenna said. "I'm fresh. You said you'd take me on a tour. When do we start?"
Balancing in the air, Derek put an arm around Brenna's shoulders. He led her along the safety rail toward the mini-skidder area. "All right! Let's pick up a sled. We're already in our pressure gear ... nothing to slow us down."
The skidders were parked at the far end of the Construction Shack's hub. Along the way, Derek responded to dozens of greetings and wisecracks from the workers. There was no mistaking his status at Hiber-Ship Complex. Not many of these people would actually be riding New Earth Seeker out of the Solar System, but they plainly respected the young captain who would be one of the leaders of the stasis ship. Derek Whitcomb had served the corporation well; he was famous and popular, and about to go into the history tapes.
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br /> "Got a two-seater checked out for you, Captain," the dispatcher said when they swam into the skidder berths. The hangar crew made a quick visual survey of Derek's and Brenna's spacesuits, to be sure they were fully equipped for the ride across to New Earth Seeker. Once cleared, Derek and Brenna climbed aboard the little space scooter. Brenna felt as if she were reliving her childhood days at Goddard Colony. She wedged herself into the second seat. There was barely room for her legs and shoulders inside the cockpit. Derek identified himself with Base Traffic Control, set flight course, and they shot out of the hangar into space.
The skidder was a frisky vehicle. Brenna begged to take the controls for a few minutes. Derek indulged her, since Traffic had override powers and could take them back if they got in trouble. Brenna enjoyed the brief, exhilarating piloting excursion, but she soon returned control to Derek. She wanted to watch the sights en route.
They cruised between city-sized structures. The skidder had some freedom of movement, and Derek did some hotshot flying, never endangering his own craft or others, yet coming in close to give Brenna a good view. Now and then, Jupiter popped into sight suddenly, as they zoomed out from behind the bulk of a construction shack or depot. Then the minuscule two-seater broke away from that grouping and started across a comparatively open area. Twenty kilometers away, New Earth Seeker waited. Even at that distance, she filled Brenna's eyes. Jupiter, in a dangerously close approach, must dominate one's vision and senses in just this manner. The stasis ship wasn't sleek and enclosed, the way old-time vid-style space dramas pictured a starship. She was an awesome collection of gleaming spheres held together by kilometers of struts and tunnels. Laser control systems bristled from the outer perimeter. The scoop that would pick up interstellar hydrogen and use it for fuel was incomprehensible, too enormous to be accepted as a man-made device. The thing bulged ahead of the stasis ship like part of a planet sheered away from its core and chiseled to suit a god's artistic pleasure. That was the only "pretty" detail about New Earth Seeker, however. She wasn't neat and buttoned up, as an FTL ship would be. Yet the sight left Brenna dazed with admiration.
"How do you like her?" Derek asked proudly. The mind-boggling starship might have been an infant, and he her doting parent.
"She's beautiful," Brenna said, with sincerity. Derek swiveled in his seat and gave her a glowing smile.
"Skidder Two-Four-One, you are okay for Level Thirty-five..."
"Thank you, Control. ETA, ninety seconds."
Like a swooping bird, the skidder paralleled the orbiting stasis ship's track. Derek was doing a flyby, letting Brenna inspect the myriad tunnels and spheres and connections. There were shuttle craft attached to the main spheres—each shuttle as big as a standard SE passenger spaceship, and each was a completely self-contained planet lander. They would be carried for decades, waiting, their on-board computerized self-repair systems maintaining them at peak operational efficiency. When the ship arrived at its destination, the shuttles would be needed. The enormous main ship could never enter atmosphere. She would assume orbit around her target world, and the colonists would board the shuttles for descent to their new home.
Everything was ready. The final countdown had begun. Hiber-Ship Corporation had picked the best brains, drawn investments from some of Earth's and the colonies' most powerful people—including Brenna's aunt Carissa. They had recruited from the bravest and most adventuresome stock of humanity-volunteers like Derek Whitcomb. And now the ship they had worked ten long years to build and the crew that had taken five years to reach full roster were ready to depart.
The skidder dived in between two of the spheres, maneuvering carefully. Each sphere was half a kilometer in diameter, with ten meters of strutwork between it and the next sphere in line—leaving plenty of room for a skidder to land. A hatch opened at the base of one huge globe—a hangar door, large enough to admit five skidders abreast at once, but the portal was no more than a spot of sudden light amid the shadowed surface of the sphere. Derek had made the flight countless times, and his sure touch on the controls showed that. Brenna recognized the pilot's tricks—tripping the hatch-close relays before they were actually inside the hangar, not lowering the skids ■until the last possible moment.
"Showoff," she muttered fondly as they coasted to a stop. As Derek had planned, the hatch hadn't closed too soon and cut them off, and they hadn't done a belly slide but had landed perfectly.
They clambered out of the hangar and into a nearby locker room, where they discarded their suits. New Earth Seeker was solidly on her own life-support systems by now. The air was recycled but oxygen-heavy, quite breathable. From the locker area, Derek led the way up a ladder. The ship had gravity, not Earth pull but the equal of Mars'. New Earth Seeker was so enormous Brenna hadn't been conscious of the gravity-creating spin when they were approaching her. Instruments and logic had told her Hiber-Ship would provide gravity for the workmen's comfort while they were putting the finishing touches on the spacecraft.
The ladder ended at a catwalk. Brenna and Derek had been climbing up between the hulls of the sphere, and now they paused to look out into the main part of this ship's section. Concentric levels, lightly suspended from interior strutwork, held coffin-sized containers and accompanying cryogenic machinery. Techs worked their way through the maze, checking stasis settings. In each container there was a body, a man or a woman in seeming sleep—or death. They didn't move, didn't breathe. The casings secured them in a coldness rivaling Mars in winter. Once New Earth Seeker was underway, most of these cryogenics areas would shut down external heating plants; those were on only for the workmen and techs. The people inside the cases wouldn't need warmth, and the stasis equipment operated just fine at conditions near absolute zero.
Brenna gazed at the scene, involuntarily shivering. The faces were serene. These weren't condemned criminals, resisting their sentence of frozen imprisonment. Every one of these colonists had gone willingly into a stasis cubicle. In time, there would be more than two thousand of them, scattered throughout the silvery spheres. Sleeping—a sleep that would last for nearly a century.
And one of those calm-faced, confident sleepers would be Derek.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Choices
Derek hadn't pulled any punches and hadn't softened his pitch. He had begun the tour in the place Brenna had the most reservations about. But from the cryogenic storage area, he escorted her to an adjacent sphere to see things that were easier to take. Derek skipped stuff that might have interested an Earth-oriented vidcaster. That was run-of-the-mill, old hat to a space pilot.
The propulsion system tour fascinated her, when it would have been over the heads of the average tourist. Derek pointed to the connecting channels lacing through the outer sections of each sphere. "The Isakson photon pulse regulators. Links everything all together. We'll reach seventeen percent of c in only six months."
"Impressive." Brenna whistled. It was indeed. She compared the facts to Breakthrough Unlimited's progress and squirmed inwardly. For all Breakthrough's successful unmanned tests, they had never proved their theories by breaking the light-speed barrier with a manned voyage program. Hiber-Ship had done so, more than six years ago, with a trip beyond Pluto and back again, and with cryogenic stasis volunteers revived, living, and volunteering to go into stasis again, for this much longer trip. Brenna gestured to the kilotons of machinery filling the sphere's interior. "That's not propulsion equipment."
"No, it's for colonization—the heavy agricultural tools and land transports we'll need when we make planetfall. Come on, the next sphere's even more interesting."
It was. Brenna stepped out of the connecting tunnel into a garden of Eden. There were levels of grass and trees, cleverly engineered to turn with the sphere as it rotated independently and made its own gravity. The central area of the sphere held a holo-mode "sun," one that generated a useful spectrum and stimulated photosynthesis. Animals, specially bred for adaptability to odd gravity and environmental conditions, roame
d the artificial meadows or lolled in the warmth of the "sun." She saw cattle, sheep, swine, several horses, and a few domesticated dogs and cats. The scene resembled a mythic re-creation, even though there were no lions to lie down with the lambs—in fact, no lambs or any other juvenile animals, only adults. The beasts, probably because of their genetic makeup, were coexisting in remarkable harmony. The animals were proof that New Earth Seeker's colonists looked forward to a world where they would have few terraforming needs, as humans did on Mars. It was plain Hiber-Ship also anticipated a colony that relied on food animals and some beasts of burden and useful pets. "You aren't expecting these poor things to keep on chewing their cuds or gamboling on the green like this for seventy-five years?"
Derek smiled. "Negative. Remember the brochure tapes? These are the last of the breeding animals. We won't put them in stasis until just before departure. This area's a popular relaxation one, and we're maintaining it in its natural state as long as possible." He nodded, and Brenna noticed other "tourists" on catwalks at the opposite side of the sphere, enjoying the bucolic panorama. "When it's time, the vets will tranquilize them and put them in stasis. Of course, this isn't a tenth of our full stock."
"Adaptable multi-populations, via cryo-stored animal sperm and ova," Brenna said. "And already-fertilized prize embryos, ready for implantation when you arrive. Makes sense," she admitted, giving Hiber-Ship planners their due. Quite a few reactionaries—quaint Earth First Party adherents, mostly—back on Earth had objected strenuously to this procedure. Brenna couldn't imagine why. Humans had been eating meat produced by artificial insemination and embryo implants for nearly a century now, as well as from animals produced by cloning methods. Presumably a great many humans never stopped to consider where their protein was coming from, however, or how that tasty morsel came into being. In the majority of Earth and colonial markets nowadays, food production was high technology, coming off assembly lines of syntha proteins, cloning, and implant husbandry, an output of trillions of kilograms. What difference did it make that Hiber-Ship Corporation had rounded up samples of live animals and their genes and embryos from prime domestic stocks to set up its first colony in style? The reactionaries saw nothing contradictory in espousing assassination-oriented attitudes at the same time that they ranted against "unnatural" means of preserving life and letting humans and animals reawaken years from now, near a distant star.
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