They settled in, and she introduced him. Matt Darwin. “He’s a retired star pilot.”
Not really retired. Unemployed. That sounded better.
Matt never used lecterns. They got between him and his audience. He’d been seated on a tabletop, and he stood upright as the audience’s attention swung his way. “Mr. Darwin flew Academy missions. You know what the Academy was, right?” A few hands went up. Julie looked at a tall, dark-eyed girl in back.
“They used to do exploration missions,” the girl said.
In front, a male student rolled his eyes.
“Very good, Sylvia.” Julie looked down at the male. “Mr. Darwin, Harry, has been farther from Alexandria than anyone here could imagine.”
She took a seat along the side where she could watch Matt and her students.
Matt thanked her and looked around at the audience. “You have a lander out on the lawn in front of the school,” he said. “I’d like to tell you a little about it.”
ARCHIVE
The people who argue that we confront a vast unknown, that it has already shown itself to be dangerous, and that therefore we should hide under our beds, do not speak for me. Nor do they speak for the Prometheus Foundation.
That’s not to say there’s no risk involved in exploration. We don’t know what’s out there, and we don’t know what we might blunder into. But there’s a risk in just sitting home, as well. For one thing, if there are predators loose, we’ll be better off if we find them, rather than the other way around.
Moreover, if we decide to wait things out, our technological progress will slow. What’s more important is that we’ll lose any claim to greatness. We’ll become an embarrassment to our grandkids. Eventually, a generation with some courage will show up, and they’ll hold us in contempt.
—Priscilla Hutchins, addressing State Librarians
Association at Athens, Georgia, April 11, 2254
chapter 7
RUDY AND HUTCH looked at four interstellars and settled on a Grosvenor 352, the Happy Times, which the Foundation bought from Orbital at auction. The ship was forty-two years old, had hauled freight and passengers out to Serenity and the other stations, and on one occasion had been immortalized by Whitmore Covington in his Quantum Dialogues, conversations on the state of the human race supposedly conducted on the ship during a flight to Nok, whose idiotic inhabitants continued to kill one another over dwindling resources with early-twentieth-century weapons.
Despite its claim to fame, the cost was minimal because the ship’s Hazeltine engines were inoperable. That was, of course, irrelevant to Rudy. So he saved substantial money, and in addition picked up a vehicle whose historic value, if the Locarno Drive went nowhere, would allow it to be resold later. “Of course,” his occasional companion Ellen Simons told him, “if the Locarno’s a flameout, the Foundation’s going to have to shut down anyhow.”
Mouths of babes. Ellen was a pessimist, and was always ready to explain why something wouldn’t work. It was the reason she and Rudy would never get serious. But about this, she was right. The Foundation was on its last legs. Poking around the vast unknown with one Hazeltine ship wasn’t going to get anyone excited. They needed the Locarno.
PAYING FOR THEHappy Times, as well as financing the installation of the new drive, drained the Foundation’s resources. Silvestri virtually moved onto the station to assist the work of a team of technicians. That part of the operation didn’t go well. The technicians didn’t really need him, and they quickly took offense at his presence. “We’ve got the basic unit,” one of them complained to Rudy. “All we have to do is tie it in to the ship’s systems. We just don’t need him looking over everybody’s shoulder all the time.”
So Rudy arranged a series of public presentations for Silvestri. He’d be doing guest appearances at colleges and universities and talking to Rotary groups and press associations and whomever else Rudy could round up. When he presented the package, Silvestri smiled. “They’ve been complaining to you, haven’t they?”
“Yes,” he said. “Come on home. We can use the PR.”
In fact, Rudy would have kept the project quiet had he been able. He’d have preferred to present the world with a successful test rather than hang himself out there to look silly if the Locarno fizzled. But with so many people involved, word would inevitably leak out, so he called a press conference and announced what they were trying to do. It became a big story for about two days. But other events, a grisly murder in a Chicago teknopark, followed by a fresh bribery scandal involving several congressmen, pushed it aside. Meanwhile, several physicists gave interviews. All admitted they saw no reason to suppose a better drive was impossible. Nonetheless, they were uniform in predicting failure. Eliot Greeley, the renowned cosmologist from the University of London, remarked that, “Hell, anything is possible, unless it’s specifically prohibited. But that doesn’t mean you can do it.”
When he called Hutch, pretending to be upbeat, she caught his mood and pointed out that the experts had been saying much the same thing about FTL travel in general until Ginny Hazeltine had proven them all wrong.
As a counterbalance, Paul became increasingly enthusiastic with each passing day. “I think we’re going to make it happen, Rudy,” he said. “Keep the faith.”
Ah, yes. And so he did. When the Foundation’s contributors got in touch to urge Rudy on, he told them he was confident, but they should keep in mind it was a gamble. It may not work. Whether it does or not, we’ll still need your support.
The most stinging rebuke came from Joe Hollingsworth, who had been one of the Foundation’s founders. Hollingsworth arrived in his office one morning to excoriate him for wasting resources on a crank project. He was one of those intimidating figures who commands everyone’s attention when he enters a room. He didn’t stand out physically in any way. He was not quite six feet tall, part African, part Massachusetts Yankee, part Mexican. Dressed impeccably. But you knew he was there, and you always got the feeling he’d just come from advising the president. “Rudy,” he’d said, “you’re throwing money away and, more significantly, you’re demolishing the Foundation’s reputation. When the Happy Times goes out there and blows up, which is what’s going to happen, nobody will ever take us seriously again.”
“It won’t blow up,” Rudy had said.
“Doesn’t matter. Anything short of an all-out success is going to make us look foolish. Why didn’t you talk to us before you started all this?”
Why indeed? “Because I knew you’d veto it,” he’d replied in a burst of indignant candor. “Because there are always people on the board who think we can’t get the job done and somebody else should take the risk. Joe, I wanted us to be the ones to do it. Because it would ultimately give us the inside track on using the system.”
“Good.” Hollingsworth sounded as if he was talking to a child. “For an ego trip, you risk everything. If it fails, as it will, it will be the end of the Foundation. Worse, it’ll be the end of the interstellar effort in our lifetime. Well done, Rudy.”
There were others. A substantial fraction of their contributors were unhappy. They demanded to know how much the project was costing and were warning him that if the experiment didn’t work, they would be withdrawing their support.
So sending Silvestri on a public relations tour was not a bad idea. Moreover, he surprised Rudy with his ability to charm his audiences. The references to quantum fluxes and spatial entanglement were gone. Instead, he told them what the Locarno would mean. Easy access to places that had been weeks and months away. The establishment of colonies would become practical, should we choose to go that route. Travel that had once been limited to people with large bank accounts would become available to everybody. “People will be able to vacation in the Pleiades the way we do on the Moon. It will be like replacing fifteenth-century sailing ships with jets.”