A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  “I’d wait until we can see him to say more,” Eileen said. “I don’t trust the sat phone to be totally secure. We need to ask Cal which coast the driver is talking about, and a lot of other questions too difficult for a short text message. But if he does any trade in gold it should be for good money. The business segment of the news on the phone hasn’t been too blunt, but I’m reading between the lines that dollars and euromarks aren’t what they used to be. Have him research that if you trust him to get the right of it.”

  Eileen visibly had another thought. “If the tank truck driver is bribable, we might buy a ride with him someday. That could get us most of the way back to wherever his terminal is.”

  “I think Cal does a good old country boy imitation pretty well, but he’s older than me, and he’s been doing fine for himself. I think he’s shrewder than he projects,” Vic suggested.

  “I hope so,” Eileen said. “It’s hard trusting people or planning anything when you can’t sit and talk things out.”

  * * *

  “There is activity to report,” Chen said. “They just brought the Constitution back to dock at the station and the shuttle is on a long slow approach to dock at the other side of the station.” He had the triad, crew, and Tetsuo all notified.

  “Why would they do that?” Jeff asked. “They must be suited up already. They could have just gone straight across to the Constitution and been on their way.”

  Walter gave a little snort of amusement. “You talk about Earth Think, but there is Space Think too. Sometimes you are so immersed in your way of doing things you don’t see the difference. Don’t expect them to undock and leave in any big rush.”

  “Maybe true, but if you can compare our thinking, explain why,” Jeff asked.

  “You’ve told me how the first jump to Centauri was a surprise and you were looking down at your board and missed it. But later, when you sent a crew out to another star what did you do?”

  Jeff looked at him puzzled. “We rather thoroughly briefed them. Three times as I recall, and the last time when we had lunch with them. There was some discussion about the mission mixed in a few other times when doing business, and we had to reach an agreement on their compensation. When they finally boarded and lifted, which is analogous to what we’re seeing the North Americans do, we’d already talked everything out and they knew what they were going to do. We didn’t hang around jiggling their elbows and making a pest of ourselves. They had work to do.”

  “What do you imagine the Earthies are doing right now?” Walter asked.

  “I’m not sure and that makes me nervous,” Jeff admitted.

  “Well, first of all, they have to take video and stills of the crew together and with the station commander for the news services. They may rehash other achievements because this could be released to the public later as a propaganda piece if all goes well. Then they’ll probably do a few other group pictures with those having enough rank to be considered important for internal consumption.

  “The station commander will make a speech about how important the mission is and how it reflects favorably on his command, his service and their nation and add an actual formal briefing because he’s their CO.

  “If there is a rep there from the primary contractor for the ship, he’ll get to make a short brag speech too. If he isn’t on the station, they’ll tie him in by video conference. Then maybe the ground-side head of the service and a few politicians. Certainly, the President will tie in to speak, even if he only takes five minutes or so to say how it’s a credit to his party. It will be the usual dog and pony show.”

  “That sounds like it’ll take all day,” Jeff said. “They will just have come in from their shuttle flight and will be tired already. By the time they get done with all that talk-talk, they’ll need to sleep before they’re fit to fly anything.”

  “Right you are. If you rush out to position yourself right now, I predict you’ll end up waiting at your board, strapped in your seat, for least twelve hours, waiting for them to sleep, undock, and do whatever last-minute checks are needed once they board the Constitution. They’re not going to just go with no ceremony,” Walter assured them.

  “You’ve convinced me,” Jeff said. “Anybody else have an opposing opinion?”

  Nobody disagreed with Walter.

  “Let’s put off boarding and positioning for another twelve hours,” Jeff said. “Even if they board in that time, they still need to maneuver to a higher orbit to depart. I’m betting they do so on the opposite side of the Earth from us again. We can still plot an intercept before they can jump.”

  * * *

  “The little killer bots April left us haven’t caught anything lately,” Nick said.

  “I know. I’m not stupid,” Diana assured him. “Whoever was probing us stopped right about the time we found Ele’ele watching across the fence. If I were them, I’d have continued to send a few bots in just so I didn’t establish a pattern and link the two events.”

  “That’s because you are sneaky and devious. I like that about you,” Nick said.

  “I’m older than you,” Diana said plainly. Something she’d been waiting for an opening to discuss. “It’s easy to ignore because I don’t look as old now, but it does make a difference. Probably less on Home than here. But you don’t do me or yourself a service to forget it entirely. I have a lot more experience in everything. I didn’t run through five husbands sitting at home eating bonbons and watching soap operas. I paid attention to how each of them successfully conducted their businesses. The ability to see it from the inside was educational. I could probably pass the bar from husband number three, and I’ve done just fine trading my own accounts, since number four was a stockbroker who dabbled in commodities.”

  “Since we’re being blunt. Does that mean I should I consign myself to being a temporary boy toy?”

  ‘I’m fond of you,” Diana said. “As we both get older the difference between our ages will get smaller. This is something the Spacers are just coming to understand. I’ve heard them talking about it, trying to figure out how it will work. For right now, be content for us to be good friends. You didn’t have any immediate aspirations to be husband number six, did you?”

  “Not immediately. But it didn’t seem impossible to me. Don’t we get along marvelously? I’m aware you have years of experience ahead of me. Listening to all your stories about each husband I was aware you picked up knowledge from each, and keenly aware that even though I got a decent position in the government by supporting the revolution, I don’t have the level of life experience they did. I think I have the potential,” Nick said. “Perhaps watching me, you could add navigating public service to your skills list. I might even be happy to simply remain friends and be business partners. It seems to work for April, Heather, and Jeff.”

  “It does, though I’m not sure how. Jeff can be infuriating, April is downright scary, and Heather, the closest one of them to normal went and made herself Queen of the Moon. They are all such odd birds it’s a wonder they get along with anybody, much less each other. I’m afraid if I asked, I’d just expose how full of Earth Think I still am, and ruin what progress I’ve made with them.

  “You don’t want to be too closely associated with me now anyway. The islands seem pretty Spacer friendly, but I consider things still in flux. I have Home citizenship and nobody has told me I can’t retain both, yet. I’d miss my place here, but I could lift for home and never come back if things turned against me. You seem more attached. I don’t think that would be an easy decision for you.”

  “I can’t see Hawaii turning hostile to Home. We need allies against North America if they ever get their mainland problems sorted out and decide to annex us again.”

  “And yet, somebody was trying to snoop on us and was in my yard messing with Ele’ele. I can’t see how I’d interest a foreign government,” Diana said.

  “Maybe, probably even, since we found the pistol on this side,” Nick allowed.

  I went down
later and used a special light,” Dianna revealed. “There were blood traces on the grass and wall, and a long track of smears leading uphill on the other side.”

  “Why would you have cop or spy stuff like that?” Nick asked.

  Dianna waved that away. “It’s not exotic. Hunters use it to track wounded game. If you want to talk about spy stuff, who else but spooks have a pistol with no serial number or maker marks?”

  Nick didn’t say anything to that, but looked unhappy.

  After a bit, he spoke again. “I’m not sure I’d care to emigrate to Home. It was strange to me when I was up there. But I would like to tie them closer to Hawaii. I’m just not sure how to do it. Tourism is an obvious possibility, but having truck bombers attack your ship doesn’t exactly sell that. I can offer Jeff coffee and fruit they can’t grow on the Moon, but I want a weekly shuttle that will lift passengers going back. So far, I can’t offer enough to induce him to set up regular service. They get some of those things through Australia, and we need Australia too. We don’t need a trade war with them.”

  “Being very direct works well with Jeff. He wouldn’t think it odd for you to just ask what you can do to get them to schedule regular shuttle service. Things constantly change,” Dianna counseled. “Be ready to grab any opportunity.”

  * * *

  “They undocked again and a whole bunch of people went over to the station from the Constitution,” Chen told everybody. “Five, which is more than I would have believed could fit inside with the crew too.”

  “Anybody have a problem with one hour until we undock?” Jeff asked.

  They all checked off on that, one by one.

  At the north spindle, ready to board, April stopped and looked hard at Otis and Mackay.

  “Your armor is different already. Are you guys down to monthly obsolescence now?”

  “Not quite that bad,” Otis insisted. “This is the vacuum rated version of what we wore in Europe. It only has a few minor improvements. We have to be suited up to fire the gun.”

  “Or board them after,” Mackay added, patting the Halligan tool on his hip.

  “Jeff never said anything about boarding them,” April said.

  “I brought that up,” Mackay said. “If they won’t yield, what else are you going to do?”

  “Bring them back and wait for them to run out of food?” April suggested. “They aren’t doing more than a quick turn-around yet. They probably have just a couple days of supplies.”

  “Bring them back to Home with three stand-off nuclear weapons aboard? No thank you. Maybe drop them off disabled in a slowly deteriorating orbit around Pluto to think about the error of their ways.”

  “Inside Mercury’s orbit might put the heat on them better,” Otis suggested.

  April couldn’t say anything. Not with her history of putting North America’s feet to the fire. Jeff must have somewhere in mind to bring them but hadn’t said where.

  “I just checked the video feed and talked to Chen,” Jeff said. “They haven’t moved. We’ll board and open the hold door for you. You can go out the maintenance lock the service and fuel guys use and board directly.”

  “It would be nice to dock with both the cargo hatch and man lock attached,” Otis said.

  “Easier to put a lock between the command deck and hold,” Jeff said. “But every time we add something like that, the Chariot is a half meter longer and a couple of hundred kilos heavier. We’ll never standardize everything to the docking collar. Some spaceplanes have to standoff with a passenger tube and oversize hold hatches that are too big to mate to a SpaceX standard. If we mate both at once, we have to mandate them all to be inline and spaced the same. Other habs have different lock spacing too.”

  “I can dream,” Otis grumbled.

  Jeff, as the pilot in command, was strapped in and activating everything. “I have an idea,” April told him. “When we build an exploration lander, I want it to have a big enough hold to carry an all-purpose rover. But it is nice to be able to attach to a standard docking collar. I wonder if you could put a standard docking collar and utilities in the center of an over-sized hatch? So it can serve both purposes?”

  Jeff paused for a full second, hand poised over his screen.

  “Sure, we can do that for you. And if we make it strong enough to be a load-bearing part of the hull I can put one on the other side too. Then, when you want to bring home something too big to fit, we can just let it stick out both sides if we limit our acceleration.”

  “Wouldn’t that be cute,” April said. “Or we can have both open and retrieve aircraft by flying them right inside, or set up the hold deck for a BBQ with all the ventilation we need, and the crew safely off the ground.”

  “Or sling hammocks and enjoy the alien breezes,” Jeff said getting into the spirit of it.

  “Our commander is crazy,” Otis said on the common radio channel.

  “Our commander is crazy, sir,” Mackay reproved him.

  “Hringhorni in position at the edge of Home controlled space,” Deloris interrupted them. “Please contact me on the local and suit frequency at lower power after we have made our first jump. I’ll let you slave my ship to yours if you want to position us,” Deloris offered.

  “Getting clearance to join you at the control limit now,” Jeff told her. “I’m advising home control we will be leaving the area with you in ten minutes. I’ll show you where we are going to sit and watch. Chen is arranging a link be aimed at that point to show us what our friends are doing.”

  For such a short distance, Jeff moved Dionysus’ Chariot on thrusters to come alongside the Hringhorni. “I show your board slaved to mine. Our destination is on your screen. Do you concur, Commander?” Jeff asked.

  “Looks good to me,” Deloris agreed.

  “Orienting. Jump in thirty seconds,” Jeff announced.

  The stars didn’t move, but when Jeff rotated the ship together, they were further along the Moon’s orbital path looking back at the Earth with the Moon much smaller beside it.

  “Now, what’s this matter you wanted to keep somewhat private?” Jeff asked.

  “I just want to remind you that we are going to bracket this boogie, so if you start shooting non-explosive rounds at him, they might come through and hit us. I’d appreciate a heads up so I can move out of the line of fire,” Deloris asked.

  “You are of course welcome to move your vessel any time you perceive a risk to it. You even have my permission to program your ship to release from my control if you give it any command to move. That could save you a half-second. But if you hear me say “bugout” that indicates you should remove yourself.”

  “Works for me,” Deloris agreed.

  “Permission to take a nap, sir,” Mackay requested.

  “Yeah, go ahead. We’ll chat here and wake you on the command channel,” Jeff said.

  * * *

  “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Jeff called in a joking sing-song voice.

  “Somebody else was napping too?” Mackay guessed.

  “Surely you are familiar with the fairytale,” Jeff insisted. “There’s a very famous old Disney flat animation of it.”

  “My parents raised me oddly. I’m not familiar with a lot of that stuff. I wasn’t allowed to sit and stare at a screen until I was five. Then they started allowing me to watch some very limited videos. It’s a good thing they sent me to private school. If they’d known, the state might have taken me away for child abuse.”

  “And yet you seem so normal,” Jeff teased.

  “Appearances are deceiving,” his partner, Otis, assured them sotto voce.

  “They’re boosting to a higher orbit, but in no particular hurry,” Jeff said, going back to business.

  “We have no idea what the sweet spot is for efficiency with their drive,” April said.

  “You guys are spoiled,” Mackay said looking at the numbers. “One and a half g is a perfectly fine acceleration level for long burn if you don’t have fancy acceleration couches to make
it bearable. When are you going to chase him?”

  “When he takes off at a tangent and reveals what his target star is going to be. Or if it looks like he’s going to go around the Earth from us. We’re pointed the right direction to follow and I don’t want to have to search and find his drive again because we let him get out of sight.”

  “You could have let me sleep a little longer,” Mackay said.

  “And miss the excitement of the chase?” April asked.

  Mackay just made a passable fake snore in answer. That was kind of funny since he didn’t snore when he was really sleeping.

  “Fortunately, I have a big book loaded in my pad,” Otis said, and settled in to read.

  Otis was on chapter three before Jeff interrupted him.

  “Course change. They are doing a burn again,” Jeff said. “Another half hour and we’ll be able to compute their probable target star.”

  Otis looked up from his pad. “Security work never changes. Hours and hours of crushing boredom, and fleeting moments of screaming terror. This gig promises to be even less satisfying than usual.”

  “Why’s that Otis?” April asked.

  “It’s vacuum work,” he said, like it was obvious, “we won’t be able to hear them scream.”

  Jeff and April looked across at each other. April shook her head and they silently agreed not to pursue that. Otis was back in his book, oblivious to their discomfort.

  “OK, I don’t need a half-hour,” Jeff said in ten minutes. “The solution isn’t refined, but the only thing he could be aiming for in that direction is Epsilon Eridani,” Jeff said.

  “That seems like a terrible idea,” April said.

  “Why’s that?” Otis wanted to know.

  “We rejected it as an early target because it has a big halo of dust and likely more substantial particulate crap all around the star. Maybe later after we know more and can control how we arrive in another system better. We have a better drive and still didn’t want to risk the initial insertion into that dirty mess. One grain of sand size particle can do a lot of damage at the velocity with which they will arrive.”