GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3)

by Richard F. Weyand

  Both hyperspace ships were fueled up and ready to go.

  “All right, one after the other,” Karl Huenemann said. “Let’s get ‘em on their way.”

  One after the other, the big ships spooled up their engines, lifted off their pads, and jetted into the sky.

  In the empty assembly building adjacent to the control center, six construction bays for smaller vehicles were being prepared. Each would have a nuclear powerplant and hyperspace generator, but there were no jet engines or rockets, no big tanks for rocket fuel or jet fuel or oxygen, and no cabin.

  The deployment vehicles did have four sets of latches for RDF satellites, and thrusters to match velocity with the RDF satellites when picking them up, but they were much simpler than the hyperspace ships, and would go together quickly.

  While the hyperspace ships were off for four months looking for Amber and Earthsea, JieMin built the algorithm that was the natural outgrowth of his bubble model. He experimented with the result, moving the Amber and Earthsea colonies, or adding other colonies that might be found. As he did so, the bubbles in the display shifted, and the list of candidate stars for the other colony planets shifted.

  When colony locations were finalized, JieMin would be ready with the prime locations for follow-on searches.

  ChaoLi was working on her own project, a plan for how to vet planets to make sure they were safe to approach. How could one tell, short of actually visiting the planet, whether the government and people there would be safe for Arcadians to approach?

  The first steps seemed obvious, but the follow-on measures were less so. It was important, because Arcadia had no defenses against an interstellar raid.

  Janice Quant watched all the activity around the hyperspace project on Arcadia with interest. They certainly were making good progress. After a hundred and twenty years of measured progress in the colonies, things were happening fast.

  JieMin’s bubble model intrigued her. Quant ran it against her knowledge of the colony locations and it was startlingly effective. It was clear Arcadia would eventually find most of the other colonies using the methods they were working on.

  The other big question in Quant’s mind was whether she should warn Arcadia about Earth or not. ChaoLi’s work on the vetting process was incomplete, and Quant could not yet tell if it would be effective.

  Quant set that aside for the moment. It was not yet time, and ChaoLi seemed to be on the right track.

  First Results

  It would be four months until the hyperspace ships returned with the six RDF satellites and their potential results on Amber and Earthsea. Transit times were what they were, and there was no getting around them.

  In the meantime, there were six RDF satellite deployment vehicles being assembled, along with eighteen more RDF satellites. Together with the six RDF satellites coming back from the Amber and Earthsea searches, that would give the full complement of four RDF satellites per deployment vehicle.

  Two of the RDF satellites would be mounted on the top of each deployment vehicle and two below, with the JATO bottles mounted on either side. They would have to be taken up to space separately by the hyperspace ships and the large cargo shuttle and latched together in orbit, but that could all be done under computer control.

  With minimum transit times of six weeks between RDF satellite deployment locations, it would take over a year to deploy the satellites at three-thousand-light-year separations and pick them back up again, but hyperspace was only so fast and the distances involved were huge.

  Four months after their departure, the hyperspace ships returned from the Amber and Earthsea missions. They returned about a week apart because the distances to JieMin’s recommended scanning locations were a bit different for the two colonies.

  The Amber mission returned first, and the hyperspace ship relayed the results to mission control while it was still on its way to Arcadia. The results were sent to JieMin for analysis.

  Each RDF satellite had first fixed its precise position with accurate sightings on known stars. They had then scanned the very-low-frequency range looking for the power grids of the target colony. All three of the RDF satellites assigned to Amber had been located within one hundred light-years of the colony based on the parallax analysis done by the astronomy department.

  All three of the RDF satellites assigned to Amber had been within a hundred light-years of the colony, one at eighty-one light-years, one at forty-eight light-years, and one at only eighteen light-years. All of them had located and sighted on the colony.

  JieMin marked the locations of the satellites and their sighting vectors in his bubble map of this portion of the galaxy. They all pointed to the same star, which had been his first choice for the location of Amber, in the center of the parallax analysis.

  JieMin sent a message to ChaoLi and Huenemann.

  “We’ve located Amber. No uncertainty at all.”

  Eight days later, the Earthsea mission returned. The search results were again immediately sent to JieMin.

  JieMin performed the same analysis as before. There had been fewer candidate stars in the parallax analysis from the astronomy department, so JieMin’s recommended deployment locations for the RDF satellites were even closer to Earthsea’s actual location. They found the colony’s emissions signature from only thirty-four light-years, twenty-two light-years, and twelve light-years distant.

  Once again, it had been JieMin’s first choice for the colony’s location.

  JieMin sent another message to ChaoLi and Huenemann.

  “We’ve located Earthsea. No uncertainty at all.”

  After she received the message about Earthsea from JieMin, ChaoLi requested a meeting with MinChao and Jessica. They of course knew that the hyperspace ships had returned and expected to hear of the results, so ChaoLi was not surprised to get a meeting time for tea mid-afternoon the same day.

  ChaoLi left the office early and took the Arcadia Boulevard bus back to the Chen-Jasic apartment building at Fifteenth and Market Streets. She changed into lavalava and flip-flops and was shown into Jessica’s tea room, where both Jessica and MinChao waited.

  “Come in, ChaoLi.”

  “Thank you, Chen Zumu.”

  Tea was poured, and Jessica’s tea girl withdrew. ChaoLi sipped her tea, then MinChao, then Jessica.

  “I note your new statue has been moved, Chen Zumu,” ChaoLi said.

  “Yes. I gave it a place in the garden, for contemplation.”

  Jessica gestured behind her, and Chao Li looked, between the two of them, out into the garden. Across the path from the big teak-beamed doorway, the metal statue of Matthew Chen-Jasic now sat on a jade pedestal set on a stone base. Lions were carved around the stone base, which was perhaps a foot tall. Dragons flying through clouds were carved on the jade pedestal, which was perhaps eighteen inches tall. Atop it all stood the ten-inch iridium statue of Matthew Chen-Jasic.

  “It looks very nice there, Chen Zumu. The carvings are pretty, too.”

  “Thank you, ChaoLi. The lions, to remind me of where we are from. The dragons, to remind me of where we are going. And I believe you requested this meeting to update us on that very effort.”

  “Yes, Chen, Zumu.”

  Jessica raised a hand to ChaoLi, instructing her to continue.

  “We have located both Amber and Earthsea, Chen Zumu. We know which stars they orbit.”

  “Outstanding. And the likelihood we are correct?”

  “JieMin described these results as having no uncertainty at all, Chen Zumu, and he is not prone to overstatement on such things.”

  Jessica nodded.

  “What is your next step, ChaoLi?” MinChao asked.

  “We will lift all the RDF drones and deployment vehicles to orbit and latch them together, Chen Zufu. Then we will send them on their way. At that point, the hyperspace ships will be freed up to vet Amber and Earthsea.”

  “And how do you intend to do that, ChaoLi?”

  “We know we can select the velocity at
which we exit hyperspace, Chen Zufu. Up to millions of miles an hour. If we send the hyperspace ships to these colony planets, and have them fly by the planet – millions of miles out and at millions of miles per hour – we can capture radio emissions from the planet with no possibility of being intercepted.”

  “And then the ship brings the recordings back here and we see what the news wires say, for example.”

  “Exactly, Chen Zufu. And we don’t have to worry about them being faked, both because of their quantity and because they don’t know we’re coming.”

  “They could still be faking their news, though, ChaoLi. We have plenty of examples of that in history.”

  “Yes, Chen Zumu, but we will also pick up a lot of other communications, not all of it encrypted. We should be able to check for consistency between public postings and the news wires.”

  Jessica turned to MinChao and nodded.

  “Very well, ChaoLi. You have authority to proceed as you have described.”

  “Thank you, Chen Zufu.”

  “There is one more small item, ChaoLi. Finding Amber and Earthsea increases the advance payments from the government a great deal. I think it’s time you begin the design of a true hyperspace vessel. Passengers, cargo, everything.”

  “Truly, Chen Zumu?”

  ChaoLi looked to MinChao, and he nodded. She turned back to Jessica.

  “Thank you, Chen Zumu. We will begin the design effort in earnest immediately.”

  “That is all for now, ChaoLi.”

  “Yes, Chen Zumu.”

  ChaoLi took her leave of them.

  There was much to do.

  After ChaoLi left, MinChao and Jessica turned around and contemplated the garden from the doorway. The statue of Matthew Chen-Jasic looked on.

  “Is it a little early, do you think?” MinChao asked.

  “I don’t think so. Those RDF satellites will report back in a year, and then our advance payments will increase again. In the meantime, we’re not spending anything, other than for ChaoLi’s vetting project.”

  “A big project can spend a lot of money in a year.”

  “But it’s not really big money,” Jessica said. “Not at this stage. Paper is a lot cheaper than steel, and I want them to have the time to get it right. Do the simulations, work out the kinks they can in advance. I don’t want the design team rushed.”

  “All right. That makes sense.”

  “Also, I don’t want those increased advance payments to be coming in and not be spending them. I don’t want Rob – or, more to the point, his political adversaries – pondering why they’re giving us all this money if we’re not even using it yet.”

  “Another good point,” MinChao said. “OK, that all makes sense to me.”

  They pondered the garden for several minutes, both running back over the conversation in their heads. MinChao broke the silence.

  “As far as the vetting is concerned, are you happy with ChaoLi’s plan?” he asked.

  “Yes. It hangs together for me.”

  “What if one of these planets is ahead of us? They could follow the hyperspace ship home in some way. Figure out where we are. How dangerous would that be? We don’t have any kind of interstellar weaponry, if it gets dicey.”

  “Oh, but we do, MinChao. We do.”

  “We do?”

  “Of course,” Jessica said. “Consider how big a hole it would make if a heavy shipping container hit a planet’s surface going several million miles an hour.”

  MinChao’s eyebrows shot up.

  “I hadn’t considered that,” he said.

  “I had, but I don’t think it will come to that. I don’t think Madam Chairman will let things go that far.”

  ChaoLi called a staff meeting for the next day, though it was Thursday, not Friday. She, JieMin, and Karl Huenemann met in her office downtown as usual. It was to be anything but a normal staff meeting, however, and ChaoLi started it off with a bang.

  “Karl, can your and Mr. Borovsky’s seconds take over the deployment of the RDF satellites? I have a different assignment for you and Mr. Borovsky.”

  Caught flat-footed, Huenemann stammered his way through his answer.

  “I, I, I guess so, ChaoLi. Wha–, what’s up?”

  “With the finalization of the location of Amber and Earthsea, our funding will increase dramatically. We have been given the go-ahead to begin the development of a full-up hyperspace vessel. Passengers, cargo, artificial gravity – everything. I want you two to pull the best design people you have into that effort and get started. Hire whoever else you need as you go.”

  “What about the RDF satellite deployment?”

  “Oh, we’re still full-speed on that. But at this point it’s all things we’ve done before. Latching things up in orbit, getting their mission profiles loaded, sending them off. That’s become routine. We need to move the ideas people on to the next big thing, and the next big thing is true hyperspace vessels. Born and bred for interstellar missions. Karl, I want you to lead that.”

  With several seconds to think about it, Huenemann had recovered his bearings. And building the big interstellar transport had been his dream job. Now it was his.

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ll get right on it.”

  Huenemann was smiling now, and clapped his hands.

  “Hot damn.”

  ChaoLi laughed.

  “I thought you’d like it. And lean on the university math and engineering people. Don’t worry about the consulting charges. We have the money. Make sure we get the answers right. Double vetted.”

  JieMin had watched all this with some amusement. He hadn’t known what was coming, but he knew ChaoLi had a meeting with Chen Zufu and Chen Zumu yesterday, and was excited last night, so he’d made some guesses.

  Huenemann turned to him now.

  “You’re with me, right, JieMin? You’ll keep me honest? Check all the numbers? Make sure we’re square with the theory?”

  JieMin stirred.

  “Yes, of course. And the engineering types will be all over this, too. We have your back, Karl.”

  “Excellent.”

  Huenemann clapped his hands again.

  “Damn, this is gonna be fun.”

  Kicking Off The Big Project

  Huenemann went out to the hyperspace facility on the shuttleport bus. He jogged into the office and called Mikhail Borovsky over to join him.

  “Mikhail. We’re relieved. John and Chris can handle this part of the project from here forward. You and I have a new assignment.”

  Borovsky’s raised his eyebrows.

  “Which is what?” he asked.

  “We’re going to move downtown for a while and design the big ship. The one with gravity and passengers and shit.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope,” Huenemann said. “ChaoLi has the money, and we’ve been cut lose to pull the design boys and start working on it. Hire more if we need ‘em.”

  “Hang on a second. I have something you need to see.”

  Borovsky got up and walked down the hall. He came back a couple minutes later. He was carrying a sketch pad.

  “I think we need to take Wayne Porter with us,” he said.

  “The young blond kid on the assembly team? Why?”

  “Frustrated artist. This is his sketch pad. It caught my eye last week, so I just went and pulled it from his desk.”

  Borovsky put the sketch pad down on the desk, and Huenemann flipped through the top several pages.

  One of the sketches was of a large ship like a hollow cylinder. It looked like a short piece of thick-walled pipe. The blunt edge of the pipe had several rows of windows running around it, indicating the pipe wall thickness was maybe forty feet. The thing must be three hundred feet across the open end, and five hundred feet long. Arrayed around the inside of the pipe, several layers deep, were thousands of shipping containers.

  “Damn. This is great,” Huenemann said. “All the people around the outside, where the gravity is, all the ca
rgo inside the middle. I never thought of that.”

  “That’s just one of his ideas. You should see the full-up shit he’s doing in the three-dimensional display. Karl, we want that guy. He’s not an engineer, but he’s got vision.”

  “Hell, yeah. Put him on your list. And get me that list yet today or very first thing tomorrow, because Monday we’re working downtown.”

  John Gannet and Chris Bellamy were wondering what was up when they got called to the conference room. Huenemann and Borovsky were already there.

  “Have a seat,” Huenemann said, waving to chairs.

  Once they were seated, he jumped right in.

  “Chen ChaoLi is splitting up the hyperspace team into a design group and an operations group. Mikhail and I are going downtown for a while to head up the new design group, and you guys are going to have the operations group. John, you’re stepping up to my job as head of the operations group, and, Chris, you’re taking Mikhail’s job as operations group project manager. You two will report to ChaoLi.”

  “Wow,” Gannet said. “That’s a surprise.”

  Huenemann shrugged.

  “With regard to timing, maybe, but we knew something like it was gonna happen sooner or later. We just have so much going on, and somebody has to be working on the next generation of ships. So she’s splitting them up now. Lotta design first to build anything big, and we don’t already have all the life support stuff figured out like we did for the hyperspace ships we have now. Those used the shuttle cabin, so that stuff was all done already.

  Bellamy nodded. She seemed unfazed by the changes.

  “So same-same, right?” she asked. “We carry on as we’ve been going, and you guys start up the new stuff.”

  “Yeah, and then at some point it will come back to you when we transfer something over for testing. Probably a few years, though. It’ll take Mikhail a while to even get a schedule coming together on something like that, much less manage to it.”