by Strong, Ray
“It’s tranquilizing to think that the computers can do this automatically and with complete accuracy, but that’s the kind of thinking that drives you into a star. A computer that could do that exactly would not fit on a ship and would take too long to calculate positions. And before it finished, some mass would perturb your location or your destination, and your uncertainty would increase again.”
On the display, he opened a hologram of the Milky Way with callouts for the Sol, Lalande 21185, and Procyon A star systems.
“Here’s our current course,” he said, and a sequence of arcs appeared between Lander and Enterprise. The view changed to follow the arc of their current course with suns moving all around them. “To think that you really cannot know where you are exactly, ever, is scary. It’s better to focus on your destination,” he said, but his words drifted away into the stars.
“It’s like riding a light wave,” Meriel said as the stars and nebula moved past, and Procyon A in front of her seemed to move forward as expected. However, when she looked behind to Lalande 21185, it seemed to move backward. Oh, right, we’re FTL, she remembered.
“Don’t forget that this is not a trajectory,” John said. “We’re like quanta now, just a probability with a series of possible destinations if we jump back into real space early.”
“Sure,” Meriel said, but knowing that did not change the exhilaration she felt. She wanted to extend her arms like wings and fly the path of light without a ship’s hull around her. “How do I do this?”
“That’s what nav-3 is about.”
“This is profound, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Earthers don’t see it like that, because they’re born to see their position as fixed, first on Earth, and then on Sol, or some galactic center. Spacers don’t do that. They orient themselves within an ever-changing starscape of moving objects. Earth still publishes all our star maps relative to the Earth ecliptic, but all the nav computers translate to the Galactic ecliptic. And that’s where we live.”
John moved again to rest his arm on the back of her chair and she warmed to his attention. She wondered if Molly would approve of them using the bridge for a date but then relaxed and enjoyed the ride on the flight path. She stuck her hands out to touch the stars they passed, but then she stopped and sat up.
“John, can you overlay our sphere as we travel? And show that it gets larger as we move forward?”
“Sure, but it’s pretty small on an interstellar scale.” He flipped a key, and a gauzy sphere showed around their position. Then he moved their point of view out a few light years perpendicular to their path. As they traveled along their path, the sphere became exponentially larger.
“Can you overlay a ship along the same path but leaving ten seconds later?”
John complied, and now a new cone followed the first in a different color and on a slightly different axis.
“Now try a third ship leaving from a different station,” she said.
“Are all the clocks ET?”
“Yeah, and they are trying to meet at the midpoint.”
John did as she requested, and they watched the three flight paths approach the midpoint. As they approached each other, a new sphere appeared this one larger than the others and in a different color.
“The new sphere includes the uncertainty in ET from different stations that are light years apart,” he said.
“OK, stop them when the paths intersect. How big is the sphere, now?”
“A hundred AU,” he said. “Let’s ignore this third one. The uncertainty in station time makes the sphere much too large.”
“The closest is the trailing ship, right?” Meriel said, and John nodded. “Then how long would it take for them to actually come into contact if they broadcast their positions? You know, short jumps with inertial glide.”
John waved his fingers above the console.
“They need to touch, John.”
“Uh-huh, but not collide,” he said, and Meriel nodded. “Exponential approach.”
“About three hours twenty, minimum, if they synch speeds and do not collide. That’s four sigma. That’s the soonest. And that assumes they can locate the target as soon as they get EM, which is very unlikely.”
Meriel sat back in the chair and smiled broadly. “There’s not enough time,” she said softly.
“What?”
“There’s not enough time. The Princess jumped less than three hours after the hull breach. Even if they agreed to meet, pirates could not have reached us before we actually jumped away. It could not have been a deep-space rendezvous. It was either a short jump that Papa would never do, or there was not enough time.”
John nodded. The whole scenario that damned the Princess and Meriel’s family as drug dealers could not have occurred.
“John, can we save this? Package it up to send it to the court on Enterprise?”
“I can try, M, but it will take a nav-four to understand it. Courts go nuts with technical information like this.”
“Then we need to get them an expert witness,” she said. And Teddy will be perfect.
“John, thank you,” she said. “This could save my ship.” She put her arms around him and kissed him. And when the kiss was over, she kept her arms around him and smiled.
John pulled her closer and leaned over to return the kiss, but Meriel’s link chimed, and she turned her head to answer a call from Cookie.
“Hey, guys,” Cookie said. “Come on down to the forward mess. I’ve got something special for ya.”
“I’m kinda busy, Cookie,” Meriel said and gave John a quick kiss. “What kinda special?” Meriel asked.
“A party,” Cookie said. “It was supposed to be a surprise. And bring your date.”
“Who?”
“John, of course,” Cookie said. “I’ve sent Alf to relieve you.”
“Let’s stay a bit longer,” John said. But just as he moved in for a kiss, a surly Alf Martin entered the bridge and logged in.
“I’m feeling happy, John,” she said. “Let’s go have some fun.” She rose and pulled John from his chair, and they left the bridge together.
When they reached the corridor, John pulled Meriel toward his cabin, and Meriel pulled John toward the mess and the party.
John frowned. “I was thinking of a different kind of fun,” John said.
“Slow down, sailor,” she said with a smile and tugged him to the mess.
Rounding the corner to the mess hall, John turned to Meriel. “Nav-three may be easier for you than you think, M.”
Mardi Gras
Meriel and John found the mess hall crowded with most of the passengers and off-duty crew. Everyone seemed happy, and a few of the passengers’ kids ran between the legs of the adults. Cookie wore a strange hat that looked like a colorful octopus with bells on the end of each tentacle. Meriel and John walked over to him.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked over the clamor.
Cookie handed noisemakers to them and smiled. “Really nothing. They call it Carnival, some old annual Earth excuse for a party. I’ll get you drinks.” He gave them each a party mask and went back to the bar.
Meriel followed John to the window and a breathtaking view: a wash of blue and red with an orange halo and clusters of stars floating within it. This must be what it looks like near the Orion nebula, she thought, but she knew they were in a different sector of space.
“This is a bit off course for Enterprise,” he said. “Jerri must have brought us here just for the view. It kind of looks like a sunrise with a blue sky.”
Meriel had no idea what that would look like, except for some of the vids of Earth she had seen. Why would John make that connection? Maybe he had seen the same vids.
Cookie came back with their drinks. “Why is everyone so happy?” John asked him.
Cookie smiled. “Clear space and lots of fireworks,” he said, pointing a thumb at the nebula outside. “Nothing in the way and nothing coming at us. Just nature. Just life. Relaxing. I thi
nk it’s biological, but I don’t care. Enjoy the mood.”
Someone produced an instrument and began singing bawdies, which forced the passengers to remove their children.
“This ‘speculative destination’ you L5ers ended up in was Haven?” Meriel asked.
John smiled. “Ah, you’ve been reading. Yup, Haven. We made LeHavre from the transport ships.”
“Habitable?”
John nodded. “Close enough to make a go of it and enough resources to be self-sustaining. It surprised us. I think it surprised BioLuna, even though they did the initial survey.”
Haven, she thought. Habitable. She fiddled with the sim-chip on her necklace. Maybe Mom put something about Haven on the chip in one of the corrupted files, if I could ever read them. “What’s the gravity?”
“About fifteen percent more than Earth.”
“Artificial?”
“No. Natural.”
Meriel nodded slowly. That’s a big mass. Maybe Mom’s Home is a dead end, and our home base is Haven. I’ve got some research to do.
“Did you ever hear of a planet called Home?”
“Only the myth,” John said. “Don’t need it, really. We’re pretty happy on Haven.”
Especially after L5, she thought. “So Corp just sold Haven to you clear?”
John nodded again. “A trade for the L5 libration point. I think they hoped we’d just die there, and they’d reclaim it. We didn’t die, and they tried to take it back.”
“I didn’t read about that,” Meriel said.
“Cookie might know,” John said and waved to invite him over to their table. “BioLuna tried twice to get it back using hired mercenaries. They kept it real quiet.”
“You didn’t complain?”
“Sure did,” he said. “Lawsuit filed in court of Lander, and we won a cease-and-desist order and preliminary injunction, but there’s no one out here to enforce a judgment. Too far from Earth for the UNE Navy, and BioLuna is too rich and too well connected.”
Cookie joined them, and Meriel turned to him. “So you know about mercs and Haven?”
“Maybe,” Cookie said. “Mercs offered me a command for a big deployment, but they never mentioned where. I declined ’cause I was on my honeymoon.”
“Want to tell me about it?” she asked.
“Hell no.” Cookie said. “Say, why aren’t you kids dancing?”
“Well, I…,” Meriel stammered.
Cookie took both of them by the arm and led them to a clear spot between tables as a slow song began to play. John put a hand on her waist and started to slow dance.
Meriel was nervous, afraid of falling for a crew member, but she liked this man. Just relax, girl, she thought. A dance isn’t a commitment. She closed her eyes, laid her head on his chest, and listened to his heartbeat.
When the song finished, Cookie put on another slow song to keep them dancing. The crowd in the mess hall slowly melted away to prepare for jump, but the pair stayed. At the end of the song, Meriel looked up at John and closed her eyes, inviting a kiss. She relaxed in his arms and drifted away with the moment. It’s OK; I’ll just keep the lights off. But what if the nightlight cycles on? She stiffened. What if he sees my scars and pushes me away like those boys did when I was a teenager? I can’t go through that again. She opened her eyes quickly and pushed him away.
“I’m sorry, John,” she said and ran to her cabin.
She’d had her fill of men who could never love her, anonymous spacers on station layovers who didn’t care about the scars and only wanted sex. After the first time, her heart hurt too much. And with those who could love her, the scars were like a wall that she could not shatter. The scars would still be with her, with them, even if she were in love.
If I take the meds, I’ll forget or at least not care. Meriel shook her head. God, it’s always the damn meds. She took her boost instead, put her head on her arms, and cried until the Tiger jumped.
Chapter 5 Enterprise Station, Procyon A System
Enterprise Station—Inbound
Meriel woke from jump woozy but without the nightmares again. They had just come out of jump at one-g inertial on approach to Enterprise, and a few short jumps remained to synchronize the ship’s velocity with that of the local star system.
Enterprise dominated this sector of space as the hub for manufacturing and materials from the nearby systems and anchored the Tiger’s circuit. Everything one could think of for legal and moral entertainment lay inside. It was the only station her parents had regarded as “child safe.”
After inspecting their cargo, Meriel checked her link. She first read a text from John.
On duty. Sent nav program of Princess scenario to GRLs you provided on Lander and Enterprise. What happened at the party? Ping me.
For the first time in a week, Meriel had something. It was not exactly proof of innocence, but it was proof that the prevailing theory, the slander that the Princess had a planned rendezvous with another ship in deep space, was wrong. Sure, it was technical, but it might at least give Jeremy some time to appeal the forfeiture or open the bidding for Teddy.
After allowing a few extra minutes for synch with the communications beacon, she downloaded the latest news and messages passed from other ships and stations.
From Liz: Looking forward to seeing you on Etna…
From J. Bell Esq.: No progress. Send money.
I’ll bet he has that message programmed to send to every client, every day, automatically, she thought.
From nz: sure. come by. loiter near g2440, and keep your link live. i’ll track you.
Green-zone. He’s moved, she thought. I wonder what trouble he’s avoiding now.
From T:
Re: Ship status intractable.
M, contacted Jeremy and court on Enterprise. Something’s going on that’s much bigger than the ship. Someone has spread lots of money around quietly. Not giving up.
“Reply,” Meriel said to her link. “Have data indicating theory of intentional meeting is wrong. Transmitted nav program via Smith to illustrate. Please review. LU, M.”
Lots of merchant traffic jumped between Lander and Enterprise, which meant nearly real-time communication, allowing for light speed to the beacons, of course.
Meriel went to the mess to study, but she could not concentrate. She pulled up her link to check for new messages from the kids and noted that the J. Edwards was leaving early, and she’d not be able to meet with Tommy.
“Hey, Socket,” she said. “Can you aim a tight beam at Enterprise? I’ve got a friend outbound on the Edwards about now.”
“Sure,” Socket said over the link. “Jerri, can you spot them?” Meriel heard a muffled reply, and then the voice became louder. “Meriel, it’s on Secure E.”
Meriel switched channels and linked her visor to the console. In Meriel’s heads-up display, she saw Tommy sitting nav backup on the biggest bridge console she had ever seen.
“Ping,” Meriel said with a smile.
“Oh, hi, M,” Tommy said. “What’s up?”
“Bad news, Tommy. They want to take the Princess from us.”
“How come?” he asked, and Meriel explained the lawsuit and the settlement.
“You don’t want the money, huh,” he said. “You like the fantasy of getting us together again.”
“I want the Princess back, Tommy. I want what we had as kids.” Meriel looked away, and Tommy gave her a moment.
He sighed and softened his voice. “You can’t bring them back, M.”
“I coulda done something, Tommy. Maybe it would have been different. Maybe if I—”
“Hell, M. That’s fantasy. You were twelve; the rest of us were younger. You did what you could and more.”
“I just want the future our parents wanted for us. Is that such a fantasy?”
“The only fantasy is that you remember our childhood better than it really was. The foundation folks got involved because we looked so pathetic. And the Princess was a run-down wreck that your u
ncle kept patching up.”
Meriel was hurt. Sure, she’d taken many trips with Uncle Ed to the outfitters and recyclers scrounging for parts to fix the Princess, but until a few years ago, Meriel had thought all ships needed that kind of care. She pursed her lips. “You’re just saying that because your ship is so big and new and perfect. I know we didn’t have much money, but we were happy together, right? Or was that just a delusion too?”
“No. That was real. But kids adapt to anything, M. They’ve got happy kids on the mining asteroids who don’t know any different. Things sure picked up when Nick got us passes to the sims, though.” He sighed. “Did you tell Liz?”
“Not yet. I don’t want to just text her. I want a face-to-face. You’ll cross paths first. Can you tell her?”
“Uh, well…”
“What’s up, Tommy?”
“We’ve got history, M. She doesn’t want to see me. Maybe you can put in a word for me.”
“Jeez, you drama queens.”
“I know what you’re asking. Sure, fight for the Princess if you want. I don’t need the money, and it wouldn’t last long anyway. And the Princess might be my shot at chief of engineering before I’m sixty. But think about it, M. We’re not kids anymore. We can’t go back. If you take the money, we might set up a trust fund to use if one of us has problems.”
“I’ll think about it. Thanks, Tommy.”
They said their good-byes, and Meriel put her head in her hands.
Is Tommy right? Am I doing this just to recreate a childhood we never really had? I can’t believe that the Princess was a wreck like he says or that we were so pathetic. That would make us needy and powerless to change things, like those big-eyed kids in the cartoons.
Meriel thought about what her life would be like if she just put her burden down, but hollowness in her gut caused her stomach to cramp. Crossing her arms, she leaned over and rocked to stop the empty feeling, a feeling that returned every time she thought about life without her sister and the kids from the Princess. The emptiness gradually subsided when she imagined Elizabeth and Tommy and Harry with her.
