“Also I have books,” Earthshine said. “And art. Think about that. Two millennia of a different tradition.” He tapped his skull. “All stored in here—”
Kerys cut him off. “The logic is obvious. Whatever we make of you, we can’t allow you to fall into the hands of our rivals. Welcome aboard,” she said simply.
Earthshine inclined his head, as if he’d expected no other reaction.
Oddly, Beth noticed, Ari Guthfrithson the druidh appeared more skeptical; she would have imagined the scholar in him would have responded to Earthshine’s pitch.
“Well, now that’s decided, we have work to do,” Kerys said briskly. Again she glanced out the window. “I don’t need to inform Dumnona of my decision; I only need to implement it. And no need to give that lot out there any notice. Ari, take charge here; I want all these people strapped in their couches for landing in an hour.”
“Yes, trierarchus.” But as Kerys stalked out of the cabin, Ari continued to stare at Earthshine.
The virtual smiled smoothly. “Is there something more you want, druidh? After all, the decision is made.”
“Yes. But what strikes me is that in all your bamboozling presentation of the miracles you offer, you never once suggested what it is you want in return.”
Earthshine spread his hands. “Your trierarchus has guaranteed me continued existence. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not in your case, no. I don’t think it is.”
And, studying Earthshine, and the cautious reactions of Penny Kalinski and even Lex McGregor, Beth had a profound suspicion that he was right. That there was far more going on here than Earthshine was yet revealing.
But a warning trumpet sounded piercing blasts, and they hurried to their acceleration couches. There was no more time for debate.
12
AD 2222; AUC 2975
Even from the ground, on the nameless planet of Romulus, Stef Kalinski had spotted the Malleus Jesu, star vessel of the Classis Sol of the Roman imperium, orbiting in the washed-out sky, a splinter of light. But it was not until the final evacuation from the planet, as she, Yuri, the ColU, and Titus Valerius with his daughter, all rode one of the last shuttles into space, that Stef first got a good look at the craft.
The Malleus Jesu was a fat cylinder of metal and what looked like ceramic, capped with a dome at one end, a flat surface at the other. It looked as if it was held together with huge rivets. There were windows visible in the flanks of the tremendous hull, protected by venetian-blind shutters. The whole craft spun slowly on its axis, presumably to equalize the heating load it received from the sun. The walls were ornately carved with figures in the Roman style: heroic military men striding over defeated peoples, or marching from world to world. Even the rim of that leading dome was elaborately decorated, though the dome itself looked like a crude layering of rock.
Titus Valerius was a massive presence in the seat beside her; he smelled of sweat, stale wine, and straw. Titus pointed at the base of the craft. “Kernels. A bank of them. To push the craft, yes?”
“I know the theory,” Stef said drily.
“Push halfway, turn around, slow down the other half and stop at Earth.” He pointed again, at the dome. “Shield from space dust. Rock from world below. Shoveled on by slaves in armor.”
By which he meant, Stef knew by now, some kind of crude pressure suit.
Yuri, pale but intent, peered out. “It looks like Trajan’s Column, topped by the Pantheon.”
Stef sniffed. “Looks more phallic to me. The Penis of Jesus.”
“Oh, come on. This is just great. An imperial Roman starship!… We know they lack sophisticated electronics, computers. I wonder how the hell they navigate that thing.”
“The drive isn’t always on,” said Titus.
Stef realized that a more precise translation of his words might have been, The vulcans do not always vomit fire.
“Every month they shut it down, and turn the ship.” He mimed this with his one good hand, like aligning a cannon. “The surveyors take sightings from the stars. Then they swivel the ship to make sure we’re on the right track, and fire up the drive again. It’s like laying a road, on the march. You lay a stretch, and at the end of the day the surveyors take their sightings to make sure you’re heading straight and true where you’re supposed to go, and the next day off you go. Works like a dream. Why, I remember once on campaign—”
“Navigation by dead reckoning,” said the ColU. “Taking sightings from the stars—simply pointing the craft at the destination. They have no computers here, Colonel Kalinski, nothing more complex than an abacus. And they have astrolabes, planispheres, orreries, sextants, and very fine clocks—all mechanical, and remarkably sophisticated. But, Colonel, this starship is piloted using clockwork! However, if you have the brute energy of the kernels available, you don’t need subtlety, you don’t need fine control. You need only aim and fire.”
Titus pointed again at the craft. “Seven decks. Each sixty yards deep.” He counted up from the base of the ship. “Kernels and stores, farm, slave pen, barracks, camp, town, villas of the officers. Plus a bathhouse in the dome for the officers.”
Stef frowned, figuring that out. The word the ColU translated as “yard” was a Roman unit about a yard in length, or roughly a meter. “That must make the cylinder something like four hundred meters long. And, judging by the proportions, around a hundred meters in diameter. What a monster. Titus, we’ve been told very little about this flight.”
He grunted. “That’s officers for you. Don’t tell you a damn thing about what you’re supposed to do, even as they kick you up the arse for not doing it right—”
She asked patiently, “Such as, how long will the flight be?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “Four years, three hundred and thirty-six days. Same as coming out.”
“Hallelujah,” the ColU said drily. “A precise number at last. And are you under full gravity for the whole trip?” Silence. “That is, when the drive is on, do you feel as heavy as you do on Terra?”
The legionary puzzled that out. “Yes,” he said in the end. “The officers don’t want you bouncing around going soft, like you were on Luna, or Mars. The training’s tougher in flight than it is on the ground.”
“I’ll bet,” Stef said. “I know the military. Locked up in a big tin can like this, they’ll keep the lower ranks as busy as possible to keep them from causing mischief.”
The ColU said, “With the numbers the legionary has provided I can at last estimate how far we are from home…”
If the drive burned continually, exerting an acceleration equivalent to one Earth gravity, after about a year the ship’s velocity would be approaching the speed of light.
“Of course we won’t pass lightspeed but we’ll run into time dilation. Time on the ship will pass much more slowly from the point of view of an observer on Earth—”
“I have two physics doctorates,” Stef snapped. “I know about relativistic time dilation.”
“Well, I have two fewer doctorates,” Yuri said tiredly. “Give me the bottom line, ColU.”
“If the journey takes us, subjectively, four years, three hundred and thirty-six days, then eleven years and ninety-one days will have passed on Earth. That’s not allowing for small corrections because of the shutdown periods. And the double-star system of Romulus and Remus must be some nine light-years from Earth. Titus here will have spent maybe ten years traveling to the destination and back, plus another three years or so on the ground—a thirteen-year mission. But by the time he returns home, about twenty-five years will have passed on the ground.”