GALACTIC SURVEY (COLONY Book 3)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Earthsea Air Traffic Control to Arcadia shuttle Hyper-1. Over.”

  “Hyper-1 here, Earthsea. Over.”

  “Hyper-1, we have a request from higher to inquire if you have any advance materials for your visit. Earthsea over.”

  Moore turned to look at Diakos, who nodded his head.

  “Roger that, Earthsea. We have an advance package. Advise frequency for transmission. Hyper-1 over.”

  “We’ve received an advance package from them, Madam Director. It’s addressed to you, actually. By name.”

  “Push it to me,” Laurent said.

  “Madam Director Laurent:

  “My name is Rob Milbank. I am the current prime minister of the democratically elected government of Arcadia. In this short video, I hope to tell you something about us, an introduction that will lead, I hope, to friendship and trade between our planets.

  “First, I should tell you that we already have some information about Earthsea. We previously sent a robot hyperspace ship through your system to collect radio data. We were concerned about what sort of people we were considering contacting. Our analysis of that data was reassuring. You are a democratic republic like ourselves, with limited government powers, strong civil rights guarantees, and a vibrant capitalist economy.”

  As Milbank continued his talk, his image was replaced by various stills and clips, beginning with a clip of the House in session.

  “We based our own government on a prototype charter we found in the colony project headquarters archives. We have an elected bicameral legislature, which selects a prime minster, who selects his cabinet. That charter also guarantees civil rights to Arcadian citizens as a free people.

  “With large rolling hills and plains to the south and west of our initial landing, the capital of Arcadia City has grown to be a large modern metropolis. We also have many smaller cities, which hold the bulk of our population. Farms both large and small provide for our food needs.

  “Without the mountains of Earthsea, we have concentrated our transportation network on trucks and buses running on highways between our cities, with shuttle flights typically being used only to our farthest-flung locations.

  “In addition to growing and manufacturing common staple goods, we have developed some more advanced proficiency in specific areas. In particular, we have a wide variety of teas grown in the mountains north of Arcadia City. I have sent a container of our teas to you as a gift from the people of Arcadia to the people of Earthsea.

  “I have taken the liberty of sending my accredited ambassador to Earthsea, Mr. Loukas Diakos. He hopes to engage in discussions with your government about trade possibilities with Earthsea. I am hoping you will accept our ambassador, and send your own ambassador to Arcadia back on our hyperspace shuttle.

  “We have discovered hyperspace, Madam Director, and learned to use it to travel interstellar distances. We are building a fleet of large hyperspace vessels to carry passengers and cargo in revenue service. We hope to find all the other colony planets and set up a trade network among them.

  “We invite you to be the first colony planet to join us in this trade network, Madam Director. My ambassador can discuss this goal more completely with you.

  “Thank you, Madam Director.”

  “Did you watch the Arcadia video as I asked?” Laurent asked.

  “Yes, Madam Director,” Romano said

  “What do you think?”

  “Clearly, they have discovered hyperspace. That does make them a threat. They could drop some large robot ship out of hyperspace inside the planet, and Earthsea would probably break up.”

  “Yes, of course, Sal. But one lesson of history is that democratically elected governments don’t typically start wars. It makes the next election campaign difficult.”

  “I understand, Madam Director.”

  “What the hyperspace drive does is make them incredibly valuable as partners.”

  “But what do we have to offer in return?” Romano asked.

  “They said we’re the first colony planet they’ve approached.”

  “They may not know where the rest of them are.”

  “I looked them up,” Laurent said. “They were third on the transport schedule, after us and Amber. So they found us and they must know roughly where Amber is, too, from a passenger compartment viewscreen analysis. Our viewscreen recordings only show us Earthsea, but theirs must show the first two drop-offs.”

  “Yet they approached us first. I wonder why.”

  “I think I know why. They want QE radio.”

  “You don’t think they have it already?” Romano asked.

  “Of course not. If they did, they could have put one on this shuttle of theirs, and Prime Minister Milbank could have spoken to me in real time.”

  “Ah. Right. So they have the hyperspace drive, granted, but we have the QE radios.”

  “Which are incredibly useful if used together. We have the makings of a deal there, Sal.”

  Construction Zone

  The rest of the project did not stop while Hyper-1 was on the way to Earthsea. Ambassador Diakos and his party were only halfway there in hyperspace when ChaoLi had a decision to make. She called a rare joint meeting with the operations team and the design team.

  “So where are we at on scouting out the possible locations for the construction site?” ChaoLi asked.

  “We’ve had Hyper-2 out to the Kuiper Belt,” John Gannet said. “Turns out our sun has one, just like Earth’s does. All suns probably do. We’ve also had Hyper-2 go out to Beacon and scan the system more thoroughly. There’s an asteroid belt between Beacon-3 and Beacon-4.”

  “Any other possibilities we know about?” ChaoLi asked.

  “Not at this time,” Gannett said. “There are dozens of systems within twenty, thirty light-years, though. We just haven’t surveyed them.”

  “I don’t want to take the time to do that if we don’t need to,” ChaoLi said. “We can switch our base of operations later if it makes sense. Are either of the two current alternatives workable?”

  “They probably both are, actually.”

  “What are the trade-offs?”

  “Asteroids are farther apart in the Kuiper Belt. By quite a bit, actually. Perhaps a hundred times. There’s much more material overall, but when you’re that far out, everything is pretty far apart. We only spectrally analyzed a half a dozen or so rocks, because they’re so isolated.

  “In the asteroid belt around Beacon, by contrast, we were able to spectrally analyze a couple dozen rocks with less effort.”

  “So those distances are already complicating things.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ChaoLi nodded.

  “What about composition?” she asked. “Do they have what we need?”

  “They both do. Most of what we need is steel, and lots of it. We have plenty of iron to work with at either site, and both sites have enough heavy metal elements to get the alloys we need.”

  “And the distances?”

  “The Kuiper Belt is centered about six light-hours out, while Beacon is three light-years away,” Gannet said. “In hyperspace, the center of the Kuiper Belt is eight seconds away, while Beacon is an hour.”

  “Neither of which matters, because it’s a day to get far enough away from Arcadia to make the transit.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “All right. I’m open to comments everyone,” ChaoLi said.

  “It’s a wash to me,” Chris Bellamy said.

  “What about the additional time for moving factories the larger distances in the Kuiper Belt?” ChaoLi asked.

  “If we put hyperspace drives on the factories, it doesn’t matter. We should probably do that in either location.”

  “That’s something I hadn’t thought of,” ChaoLi said.

  “The Kuiper Belt is closer,” Karl Huenemann said. “And it’s in-system. No doubt whose it is, and we can keep an eye on it.”

  “We could always site a monitor there, and have it run
for help if something untoward happened,” Gannet said.

  “True enough,” Huenemann said. “That would handle that objection.”

  “Actually,” JieMin said, “there’s an advantage to having it somewhere else. If we don’t tell people where it is, a bad actor wanting to hurt us would be hard-pressed to find it.”

  “We don’t tell anyone where we put it?” ChaoLi asked. “But we have to tell them something about where it is, don’t we?”

  “Sure,” JieMin said. “Tell them it’s in the Kuiper Belt. The only people who know different are on the project. And there’s no way to know it isn’t there unless you go look for it.”

  Huenemann laughed.

  “I like it,” he said. “We tell them it’s in the obvious place. If anybody figures out it isn’t, they have a lot of alternatives to sort through. You said dozens of systems within twenty, thirty light-years, right, John?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So if someone tries to knock out our construction capability, they go to the Kuiper Belt. And it’s not there. Now it’s go fish, with dozens of possibilities. Nice one, JieMin.”

  ChaoLi nodded.

  “I like it,” she said. “All right. It’s Beacon. And it’s a closely held secret.”

  She looked back and forth among them, and all seemed satisfied with that.

  “What’s the status of the bootstrap factory?”

  “Almost complete,” Bellamy said. “We should be able to launch with it next week.”

  “And our pilots? Are they up to it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Those flights to the Kuiper Belt and the Beacon asteroid belt were manned flights.”

  “And practice runs with such a heavy payload?” ChaoLi asked.

  “They have one in already, and they’ll do another this week.”

  “Two successful practice runs, in a row, before we take the factory up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bellamy said. “We’d planned on that.”

  “All the way to the hyperspace limit. With the JATO bottles.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s the plan.”

  One of the colony’s metafactories had built the space-based bootstrap factory, so it was located in the industrial park. They would take off from there, as the only way to move the bootstrap factory to the shuttleport was with a shuttle anyway.

  They came slanting in from the low-altitude flight from the shuttleport.

  “Damn, that’s a big bastard,” said co-pilot Igor Belsky.

  “Same-same,” said pilot Jeong Minho. “Four wide, two high. We’ve done this twice already, so we just do it the same.”

  “Yeah, I know Manny. Still and all.”

  Jeong settled the shuttle down on the bootstrap factory with finicky precision.

  “You got it,” Belsky said.

  “Latch it up,” Jeong said.

  “Done.”

  A fuel truck from the shuttleport port pulled up. They had taken off once already, from the shuttleport, and then been in a fuel-burning low-velocity hover across the city. There was no sense taking off without full tanks. They didn’t use oxygen this deep into the atmosphere, so it was only the fuel that need to be topped up. The truck had a boom to reach the fuel receptacle, which was thirty feet off the ground with the shuttle parked on the factory.

  “All right, Hyper-2. You’re good to go,” the voice came over the cabin speakers.

  “Roger that,” Belsky said into his mike. “Thanks for the juice.”

  The fuel technician on the ground waved and then got into his truck and moved away from the shuttle.

  “Hyper-2 to Arcadia Traffic Control.”

  “Go ahead, Hyper-2.”

  “Requesting take-off clearance from location T-17 on the grid, direct to space.”

  “Roger that, Hyper-2. You are cleared for take-off from T-17 direct to space on vector zero-niner.”

  “Roger, Arcadia. Cleared to space from T-17 on vector zero-niner. Hyper-2 out.”

  Jeong had heard the full conversation, but Belsky gave him the go anyway.

  “We’re cleared to go. Zero-niner to space.”

  “Due east. My favorite.”

  The shuttle shuddered as Belsky throttled up the engines to full power. Heavy-lift cargo shuttles didn’t need full power on take-off when flying light, but that wasn’t the case here. The engines were approaching full thrust before the factory lifted off the ground.

  Jeong lifted the nose and rotated the engines partway back as they climbed, until they were pointed straight up with the engines rotated directly aft. When they cleared thirty thousand feet, the computer started bleeding oxygen into the engines to maintain thrust.

  When they reached sixty miles above Arcadia, it was time to engage the JATO bottles.

  “Coming up on JATO ignition,” Jeong said.

  “I hate this part,” Belsky said.

  “You hate every part. You’re a born pessimist.”

  “Nah. I’m Russian.”

  “Same thing.”

  Belsky laughed.

  “JATO ignition in three, ... two, ... one.”

  They were shoved back in their seats as the JATO bottles ignited and came up to full thrust.

  The JATO bottles were being used because, without them, it would take the shuttle with the heavy factory four days to get to the hyperspace limit. There was only so fast the shuttle’s engines could accelerate the heavy payload. The JATO bottles would increase their velocity by a lot, early on, shortening the trip to one day, though not without some pilot discomfort.

  “Ah, shit,” Belsky said through clenched teeth.

  Jeong was satisfied to be miserable in silence.

  The minutes stretched out, then the JATO bottles flamed out.

  “Thank God that’s over,” Belsky said.

  “We have another seventy minutes or so on the engines before we shut them down. Then it’s zero gravity.”

  “Zero gravity doesn’t bother me. Less gravity is good. More, especially a lot more, I can do without.”

  Jeong chuckled and shook his head.

  Hyper-2 dropped out of hyperspace, the on-board computer got its bearings, and then it popped through hyperspace for a fraction of a second. They emerged within a dozen miles or so of an asteroid several miles on a side.

  “OK, the computer says we’re here,” Belsky said.

  “Unlatch cargo,” Jeong said.

  “Done. Cargo floating free.”

  They watched as the bootstrap factory moved slowly away from the shuttle on its thrusters, headed for its new home.

  “Advise when the cargo is clear,” Jeong said.

  “Roger that. It’s gonna be a while, though. It’s taking it easy.”

  “Understood.”

  They settled back to wait for the factory to get clear enough of the shuttle to head home. It was taking its time because, in space, doing things faster meant more fuel. As you often had more time than fuel, some things just took a while. They could have moved the shuttle away from the payload, but that took fuel, too, and running out of fuel on final approach to landing on Arcadia was a thrill to be avoided.

  It was over an hour before the factory was far enough clear of the shuttle for the shuttle to engage the hyperspace field.

  “Payload clear,” Belsky said.

  “OK,” Jeong said. “Let’s head for home.”

  “What’s our status?” ChaoLi asked at the next meeting with her operations staff.

  “The bootstrap factory was delivered last week,” John Gannet said. “We don’t know how it’s doing yet.”

  “One disadvantage of the Beacon location.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but we’re preparing a couple of hyperspace comm drones. They’re basically the RDF deployment vehicles.”

  “You’re preparing two of them?”

  “Yes, ma’am. One and a spare.”

  ChaoLi nodded.

  “We’ll deliver one the same way as the RDF deployment vehicles. Hyper-2 takes it to orbit, JATO bottles
to the hyperspace limit, then it’ll run in hyperspace on nuclear. No rocket engines.”

  “So then we run it back and forth to maintain contact?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Couple of times a day ought to be plenty.”

  ChaoLi nodded. She was curious as to how the bootstrap factory was doing, but space was space, and there were certain things you couldn’t hurry.

  “All right,” she said. “Let me know when you get your first report.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ChaoLi passed on the news at her design group meeting later in the day.

  “Operations is preparing a comm drone to cycle between here and the construction site, so if you have any last-minute changes to the hull design, we’ll be able to send those before the metafactories get started.”

  “That’s good to know, ChaoLi, but I think we’re good with what we sent along with the bootstrap factory. At least, I haven’t heard of any oopsies yet.”

  “All right. Well, keep it in mind, Karl. If there are changes we can accommodate them.”

  Three light-years away, the bootstrap factory had set up shop, and the first of the metafactories for the Arcadian hyperspace shipyard started to take shape.

  Arrival On Earthsea

  Bergheim was a much smaller city than Arcadia City, with only half a million residents, but, as the hub of Earthsea’s hub-and-spokes freight system, their shuttleport was just as large and even busier than Arcadia City’s.

  “The approach instructions are to come in south of the city, then make a short final turn to the north,” Gavin McKay said.

  “And you can see why,” Moore said. “Just look at those mountains.”

  McKay looked up from his instruments and out Moore’s side window.

  “Yikes,” he said.

  “Bergheim is German. It means ‘Mountain Home,’” Diakos said.

  “Well, they aren’t kidding,” Moore said. “They must have special approaches for all their cities.”

  “Listening in on ATC, it sounds like some of their stuff goes suborbital, and then comes in hot,” McKay said.