Les Johnson - Going Interstellar

Ackley had been studying the immense craft. “And since the war—?”

“Since then, the Ark and its tug-tenders”—small, distant specks, following the same high orbital track, but to port and starboard respectively—“have been abandoned, secured for long-term storage.”

“But why? The ship’s technology—”

“The ship’s technology is why, except for a small, automated monitoring station, it has remained off-limits. The Houses could not agree on how to share its advanced machinery.”

“And they are still unable to do so, after three and a half centuries—of course.”

Harrod smiled. “Of course.” According to records of the prior Exodates, collaborative use of an Ark was rare. Agreement arose on the matter only when the ship was needed as a garbage scow, to haul the latest batch of undesirables to a still further refuse heap in the stars. And, being the product of that long string of genetic disposal missions, being repeatedly orphaned by gulfs of time and space and strife, the Houses had forgotten their own roots, their true home world. Which, Harrod conjectured, was probably the first and last place that humans had known stability, acceptance, unity with their fellows.

Ackley had his palmtop computer out. “So, what are we looking for?” He stared up at the six immense thrust bells, arranged in three pods of two engines each.

“Micrometeoroid damage to the bells and their housing—an easy task, compared to our internal surveys of them.”

“Where we will be assessing …?”

“Primarily, the condition of the laser ignition chambers. We must anticipate complete rebuilds of half the systems, and major maintenance upon all the rest.”

“Even though they’ve been stored in a bath of inert gases?”

Harrod glanced at the younger man. “Three hundred fifty years is a very long time.”

Ackley shrugged. “What else?”

“The mothballing manifest indicates that several cartridges of the deuterium ignition cells—the hohlraums—were stored along with the engines, to provide examples for later reproduction. We will need to be very careful handling the hohlraums: it is unlikely we could produce enough in time without exact models to copy.”

As they moved past the vaguely spheroid ignition chambers capping each of the thrust bells, they passed a black plate, transfixed by the keel of the ship. Ackley stared at it. “That shielding seems to be very light.”

Harrod nodded. “An advantage of using deuterium-to-deuterium fusion; far fewer stray neutrons.”

“And better speed: exhaust velocities of 6.8 percent the speed of light—”

Harrod turned, summoned a smile, and took pains to ensure that it did not look patronizing. “You speak of the engines of the Dread Parents, Ackley. These engines will achieve only a little bit better than half of what theirs did.”

“Why? It is the same design.”

“Our craftsmanship and knowledge is not theirs—does not begin to approach it. After all, they also had—and reserved to themselves—the secret of traveling faster than the speed of light.”

“Even as their Injunctions forbid us to do the same—along with their prohibition of high-power radio communications.” Ackley snorted. “Assuming you choose to believe such superstitious nonsense.”

“I need not believe it to know that the Overlord would slay you where you stand for such blasphemy.”

Ackley’s tone became marginally more careful. “I offer the— hypotheses —that the Dread Parents never existed, that the speed of light is an unbreachable barrier, that no such Injunctions were imposed by whatever world we originated upon, and that we cower in fear of our leaders’ conveniently constraining fabulations.” As Harrod silently conceded the probable accuracy of all those hypotheses, Ackley—cheek muscles bunched—pointed at the long, smooth, tanks clustered behind the shielding and bundled around the keel like a fasces comprised of sausages. “What about the fuel tanks? Anything special to look for?”

Harrod nodded. “Yes; micrometeoroid impacts and breaches in the tanks.”

“I thought they are fairly sturdy.”

“They are, but they held hydrogen for decades. And if they were incompletely vented when the ship was decommissioned—”

Ackley nodded. “They could have been brittlized by the hydrogen left in them. I don’t see any sign of diminished integrity, though: maybe the old crew did a good job of flushing all the fuel out of the system.”

“Let us hope so; it would make the restoration much easier.”

Passing the tanks, they came upon a ring of other, smaller thrusters. For the first time, Ackley’s confident tone sounded genuine, rather than nervously overassertive: “The plasma thrusters appear to be in good shape—and look identical to our own.”

Harrod nodded. “Not surprising: ours were developed from these. So replacement, if necessary, would be only a minor setback.”

The last of the gargantuan aft structures finally dropped behind; their craft altered course to stay centered above the keel as it moved forward. Ackley inspected the modular trusses, running quick mental calculations as he did so.

“A problem?” Harrod asked.

“The storage superstructures: there are not enough of them, not for all the cryogenic modules. With over four thousand bodies to store, we—”

“We will not have four thousand, unless I guess incorrectly. Probably only three-quarters that amount.” Harrod acknowledged Ackley’s perplexed stare: “Expect a relaxing of the current marriage prohibitions upon the better Lines of my House’s Evolved—and some other reductions as well. Consequently, I am more concerned about that.” Harrod pointed at what appeared to be a large collar that was sleeved around the keel, its circumference marked by eight evenly-spaced coupling points.

Ackley squinted, shook his head. “I’m not even sure I know what that is.”

“It’s the rotational sleeve for the old habitation ring—and judging from the scoring at its aft margin, it appears to have seized during operation—over three centuries ago. That could be quite a job.”

“Do we still need it to rotate? We don’t have a ring, and no time to build one.”

“We will still need some rotational habitats, even if they are only pods on the ends of rotating booms. And that means we’re going to need a rotational armature.”

“We’ll also need a complete rebuild of the navigational sensor arrays and laser clearance clusters.” Ackley nodded in the direction of the bridge module: just beyond it, the irregular booms and dishes that were the ship’s eyes, ears, and shield against high-speed impacts showed extensive pitting by micrometeoroids. In a few instances, whole subsystems trailed at acute angles, or were sheared off entirely. Which inevitably meant that—The ramscoop—resembling nothing so much as a bow-opening gossamer parasol—was in tatters, shredded by centuries of intermittent meteor storms.

Harrod turned to Ackley, and found the younger Intendant already staring at him—now more in desperation than defiance. Harrod nodded and answered his unuttered question:

“Yes, we have much work to do. Much work, indeed.”

Bikrut Mellis’s voice was bored, his face expressionless. “And the ignition trials?”

Harrod nodded. “Success, my Overlord. We will achieve output sufficient for standard acceleration of .35 gees by the middle of next month. I suspect maximum output will be achieved the month after that.”

Bikrut’s answering nod was the closest he ever came to fulsome praise. “And the ship’s fusion power plants?”