Behind the carousel was the shroud-control house. Aft of this extended the many folded spars. The spars and members would, during deceleration, deploy the light-sail package that presently formed the main bulk of the vessel, gossamer-thin fabric wrapping the xenon propellant cells. Behind this was the folded silver of the mirrored parasol meant to shield the forward parts of the ship from laser radiation.
Farther aft, on a long and fragile spindle, were the many rings of the ion accelerator.
The NTL Hermetic was a bastard of sail and motor, launching under her own power, but carrying a breaking sail in anticipation that Croesus, receiving the millions of code-lines of radio-programmed instructions, would have constructed a working deceleration laser by the time the halfway point was passed. Since lasers do not disperse in a vacuum, the source and the endpoint would impart the same degree of counterthrust. Once in the braking beam, Hermetic could decrease the rate of her deceleration merely by adjusting the light-permeability of her canvass.
Behind the hybrid design was a political, not an engineering consideration. The world might trust Croesus-brain, fifty lightyears away, to build and fire an antimatter-powered super-laser potent enough in output to boil a planet like a poached egg. No one on Earth trusted his neighbor enough to have such a monster nearby. For that matter, no ship could trust any government, any institution, to shoulder such a huge drain of power, such an expense, for the quarter-century acceleration would last, without being interrupted by wars, depressions, disasters, or changes of policy. Unlike the Croesus-brain, men are fickle.
The NTL Hermetic was a beautiful ship, graceful as a work of art.
The hour was one that would never come in history again, an hour so many had predicted for so long would never come: Earth’s first manned expedition to another star.
The robotic probe Croesus had been sent seven generations ago, during the First Age of Star Flight. Had it not been for the Little Dark Age, the follow-up expedition would have departed fifty years later. Instead, it had had to wait until now.
Generations of dreamers had anticipated a time like this. The moment was indeed pregnant with all the hopes of Earthbound mankind. Why should anyone look at Menelaus Montrose?
His visor had been down, tuned to half-gain, so that the cabin around him was overlaid with ghostly images. One image showed him, not the famous ship he approached, but an inset displaying the distance from Earth. The little red line turned blue, indicating that the punt was in International Space. Unclaimed. As far as he was concerned, an experiment illegal on Earth was legal now.
Menelaus was sure no one had seen him break the Red Cross seal and slide the illegal needle out from the medical kit riding the thigh of his pressure suit.
But then he hesitated. For a crucial second, he stared down the bore of the needle.
Thinking of it as a pistol barrel was less frightening. More than once in his short life he had found himself looking down the muzzle of a pistol, and those events had not ended as badly as might be. He was still here, was he not?
He knew what to do when looking down a pistol-bore. Shoot first. Don’t miss. Don’t hesitate, don’t flinch, don’t regret. Call his doctors to come to the fallen man, whether the Regulators come or no. Amazing what they can mend these days. If the other man dies bravely, be sure to say so. If the Regulators come, say nothing. Even if they haul you before the dock for it, or put you on the gallows, say nothing. No gloating, no vaunting, no apologies, no explanations. If the Regulators don’t come, and the doctors don’t come, let the man have an ampoule of morphine, if he needs it, and cover his face with his jacket, if he doesn’t. Most men are thoughtful enough to wear a diaper under their trousers when they go to settle disputes Out of Court, because you never can be sure of walking away, and you never can be sure your bowels and bladder are empty, and someone will always take a picture with his phone, even if everyone swore not to (the little phones could be hidden in a ring, a pistol stud, a thumbnail, a molar). In a case like that, doff your own jacket, and cover his legs. Only polite. He’d do it for you. You can take his weapon, but you cannot touch his widow, even if she was the one who asked you to meet him. Those were rules he knew, and knew how to live by. Or die by.
This? This needle was the event horizon. An event horizon was a boundary where no information about the events beyond can ever reach, in the same way light can never escape a supermassive dark star. No one knew what was on the far side.
He had waited a second too long. Like a cricket chirp in his ear, he heard the punt pilot say, “My friend, what is this I see? Are you hurt? I have a ‘suit open’ light here on my board, and your medical kit is pinging a query. What are you doing?”
Damn.
3. A Question of Intelligence
There had been no way to check beforehand, of course. Menelaus had relied on the black-market software package he’d bought in New Silicon Valley, the smuggler’s paradise. The Hindi security programs, as usual, had been more subtle than what Western science could match, more intrusive than what Western notions of privacy would allow. Everyone who talked about the “new global agora” or who said the Little Dark Ages were over still could not explain the gap between Indosphere and Anglosphere craftsmanship.
Menelaus’s internal suit status showed his helmet and medical kit still shut. But apparently he had fooled no one’s monitors but his own.
The pilot was a Spaniard named Del Azarchel. His first name was Ximen, which Menelaus could not pronounce, so Menelaus called him “Blackie,” a nickname that suited him in more ways than one. He was a mathematician of some fame from his studies of the Navier-Stokes equations, especially their application to logic-flows within analog computing structures. His work on the underlying mathematics of the Ship’s Brain was as important to the expedition as Montrose’s work on suspended animation.
The dashing young Spaniard had won all the tests in simulation back at Space Camp, humiliating older and more experienced Hindu candidates, and so he won the coveted duty of chief pilot. Piloting was the most delicate and demanding of shipboard tasks, requiring not only an ability rapidly to organize mathematical calculations, and perfect spatial visualization skills, but also the ability to do so under stress, in a short time, and in high and low gravity. Automatic computers could make possible, but could not replace, the human pilot; and the task was akin to shooting a bullet precisely enough to strike the face of a nickel spinning in the air without striking the buffalo.
Only on the punt was a pilot needed. The great ship herself would face no navigation problems Isaac Newton could not have solved: the simple act of accelerating in a featureless vacuum for twenty-five years, rotating aft-to-prow, and decelerating in a featureless vacuum for twenty-five years required no more piloting skills than a railroad engineer. Nonetheless, the honor would still be attached to his name: for the next century, even while he was in slumber, Del Azarchel would be the Ship’s Pilot.
He and Menelaus had been something of a pair of troublemakers together in space training camp, the facility in Northern Africa where the crew first met. It was not that the Hindus had deliberately shunned anyone; but somehow it was always these two, a Spaniard and a Texan, who found each other sneaking under the camp shock-wire during late nights off to go find a stiff drink or a pliant girl in the shantytown not far away, when the other astronauts-in-training were lawfully in their bunks.
Del Azarchel, with his droll smile, dark good looks, and silvery guitar could always sweet-talk the local girls into compromising positions, and Menelaus, gaunt and ugly as a scarecrow, could not. But Del Azarchel lacked a certain drive and boldness when it came to climbing electrical fences and breaking into Hindu pleasure houses where “Franks” were not allowed, and Del Azarchel needed Menelaus to inspire him to that extra level of gumption, the level where sheer cussed-mindedness outweighs common sense. They were a mixmatched pair, and Menelaus had not known him long, but he knew he could count on him.