Eric Flint - Slow Train to Arcturus

"At least one of them," replied Howard. "I'm taking steps for him to go the rest of the way, soon."

"I'm glad to have you back, Howard," she said. "I always wondered if it was possible to go out into the outside world and return."

Howard smiled. "Yes. It is possible, and indeed, necessary. Every elder from New Eden must do it, and soon, if you are to survive. There is God's universe out there, and we're part of it. Now, I need to find as many of the local elders as I can. I've got a lot to do, and I need their help as much as they need mine. I've removed the bones from this airlock doorway, and it is ready for use. And I've found where the repair 'bots are in storage. This place needs some repair, before you get to the promised land."

"But…" said Sister Thirsdaughter, feeling like a leaf in the recirc of this new Howard's purpose. "This is the promised land, Howard."

He shook his head, and the girl at his side said, "No. There has been some confusion over the years. This is just the ship, getting us there. It's such a big ship that people forgot they were onboard."

"New Eden was just the Ark," said Howard. "Mount Ararat is ahead and you need to get ready or you'll capsize after four hundred and thirty years of safe journey."

He took Sister Thirsdaughter's arm, and the woman took her other one.

"I'm looking forward to taking Brother Galsson to look on the glory of the Almighty," he said cheerfully. "I don't think he's going to like discovering how great it is and how small he is."

"I hear that you were the midwife who delivered Howard," said the young woman with him, as if this were the sort of conversation women had in front of men. "I'm expecting his baby."

The screen showed a long procession of people. Respectful people, come to pay their respects to the ancestor, and perhaps hear his words of encouragement and advice. It was strange advice at times, but it had led to a remarkable disappearance of the men in brown uniforms with red braid and gold buttons.

"We have nearly eighty years to bring them up to speed," said the Osprey technician. "Then they've got thirty years on their own before they'll drop into orbit around a new sun. Mr. Ji will be able to help us. There has been a big call for Mr. Ji to stay here. We're transmitting and receiving from the head…"

That gentleman shook his head. "No," he said. "I go with Brother Howard. Is atheist place this." He smiled wryly. "I sinned much. Now have found God. Need to be close to God. And my wife say Howard he is the hand of the ancestor. She will not stay here. We recruit fifty people for the new farms." He scowled. "Need them to counter those uThani. And the women who do no work."

Unity-the habitat once called "Aryan Freedom"-went into the final and most dangerous phase of a Slowtrain habitat's existence: deceleration. Cameras from the surface of New Eden recorded it. Unity's own human and Miran cargo were in gel cases, deep in the safety of the water at the far pole, in the combination cosmic ray storm/crash shelter. They traveled with genetic material-plant and animal tissue-from uThani and New Eden and even some rice seedlings from the Workers' Paradise.

The chemical severing of the cable midway between habitats happened so unspectacularly-as planned-as to be virtually unfelt by the occupants of New Eden. The equatorial spin ion jets had shifted slightly to separate the now decoupled Unity from merely fellow-traveling with the rest of the Slowtrain because of their matching momentum. The jets now turned Unity so that it was no longer spinning on its axis, ninety degrees from the direction of travel. Instead it turned to spin in the direction of travel. The huge probe-cable that was the equatorial ridge began to uncoil.

To the cameras on New Eden's surface, sending images to the watchers in four habitats, Unity looked like a ball, with whirling, barely visible rings around the equator and at either pole. Close examination showed how the forward momentum of Unity was transferred at the crucial moments into the launch of a sequence of probes-which is what the whole equatorial ridge had been. Some went on to explore wider before using their momentum to head back to Earth. Others, containing a sea of sociological and psychological data about the behavior of isolated humans, were heading home directly.

By the time the last probe had been launched, the rotation of Unity was almost entirely damped. The cable, which had been undergoing its own chemical metamorphosis, began to fray out into a vast gossamer sheet-into two enormous lateen butterfly wings, several thousand times the size of Unity itself.

And then, in a blaze of terawatt laser, came the Slowtrain's fusion plant's parting blessing. The sudden flash on those braking wings that had alerted the Miranese astronomers. The Slowtrain proceeded onward at its steady pace, to drop the next seed of humanity-New Eden-at a star 7.7 light-years away.

Unity continued its braking infall on Miran's sun and her companion. It would take two years to get into a suitable orbit before the solar sails must be converted to solar harvesters, and a lifecraft set out on the final leg of the journey home for the two Mirans aboard.

^ Epilogue

"Gentlemen, you miss the point of space engineering. The equipment needed to build a single habitat by melting an m-class asteroid, spinning it so that we centrifugally separate the metals, and then using the 'mosquito' to remove the fraction wanted for other purposes, and then injecting water to 'blow' it into a bubble is expensive, yes. But the process itself is simple and relatively cheap, even if getting there and setting up isn't. The point is-once we've got there and set up we're not just going to build one bubble. Even when humans get to other stars, the first thing they'll do is build more.

"We build. That's what we do. That's what we are."

Transcript of Dr. W. Andrea Asiago's address to the new-formed Interstellar Colonization and Exploration society, considered by many to be the germinal point of the Slowtrain Project. From: A Concise History of Human Space Colonization. P233, Chipattari, H, and Shah, G.D. (Ed)

There was much work to be done, but Howard made time to come to the observation pod. It was accessible from within the habitat through an airlock, having been hidden under the equatorial ridge. Now, as Unity spun on her axis, he could look through the floor and see the Slowtrain-an ever-shrinking, racing string of beads lit by their future sun. Then, when the habitat turned, he could see Miran's suns.

And in between, the vast emptiness. The glory of stars and space.

Lani put her arm around him. It was good to have him to herself for a bit-and to get his nose out of a screen. He read too much. He wanted to read everything.

He smiled at her.

"A penny for your thoughts. As long as they involve me and supper," she said lightly.

"Actually, I was being philosophical."

"Oh, dear. Why did I ask?" She gave him a squeeze. "Tell me."

"Well… Earth sent out its misfits. I suspect it also, unwittingly, sent out many of its best. I don't know that they realized that the two were one and the same, a lot of the time, and that they needed us, not that we needed them. They sent us their danger-loving probes, their troublemakers, their fighters, their radicals and their arch-conservatives. From what I have now read they sent us the stock that have always founded colonies. I think humans are like plants. You can't plant the same crop on the same ground forever. The plants use up the soil, even if they die there and fertilize it. Our species is a colonist one. A frontier one. We need to move and mix and dream."

Looking at the double star they were heading for, and the endless panoply beyond, Lani squeezed his hand. This was the dream. This infinity was space enough-just-for the biggest dream. She looked away from it and back at Howard, also looking out at infinity, at the same dream. She touched his cheek and kissed him. "Do you realize that-populated or not-each of the habitats is a laser relay station? We can send messages back to Earth… at lightspeed."