Re-entry was completely normal. Once again it took two days to cruise on impulse power to the planet, Kroatzy 2. One never dropped out of light drive too near the target, too much chance of hitting something. Once you are in the alcumberie drive bubble, unless you pilot yourself into a star or something you have nothing to worry about, the spaceship basically just bounces away from anything solid. Small asteroids, comets, chunks of ice, all of that is pushed way by the bubble you travel in, or pushes the ship away. The gravity wave created by the drive offers a pretty high degree of protection for the people in the ship. However you leave light drive traveling at something close to 10% of the speed of light, and you have to decelerate, and when you pull out of it there is always a risk that something might slam into the ship. Basically there are known re-entry points, that are clear of debris, and you shoot for those points. Traveling blind, in unmapped, unknown territory is a lot more dangerous. You can pull out of light drive, and wammo, smash into something solid, and you are going before you even knew what hit you. Another reason that people only travel in the open areas of space, and stay out of the closed zone. Oh yea, you can always buy maps and things that purport to give you clear directions in the closed zone, but you never know the quality of what you are getting. The further out you go, the more problematic everything gets. The big space cruisers, used for exploration, have enormous shielding systems, that can protect such a ship on reentry, but such things cost enormous amounts of money, and energy. The load of UUP we were carrying would last you about a month in such a ship, and that's if you are lucky, just flying around. Generating a force-field strong enough to protect you on reentry in such a ship would burn off half our load of UUP in a half an hour or so.
After the reentry, and shut down of the light drive, we prepped the ship for docking at Kroatzy's station. Its a space station orbiting the second planet around Ross 248. holds about 2000 people. There are a number of mining operations on the surface of Ross 248b, and a small colony there, of about 50,000 people. All underground. The place is a frozen rock. It took close to thirty years to build the structures underground there. Deep underground, more than 500 meters down. The mining operations go much deeper than that. It's a rich source of titanium, and a lot of the Ti that comes from there is used in spaceship production. There are two large refineries on the surface, mostly automated, but with some human workers. They take the raw Ti and refine it, and mill it. There is also a construction base there, for building hulls. Usually you build up the hull there, and then tow the thing to someplace like Alpha Centari, Proxima Centari, or Tau Ceti for outfitting. Sometimes they tow the ships back to earth for out fitting. On the other side of the open region you can go to Sirus or even Epslion Indi, but those places usually out fit ships coming from the other side of the open region. Ross 248 has unbelievably pure Ti, and also everything else you need to put a hull together. The drives are usually manufactured on earth, and then shipped out to the various space ports for final assembly.
“Alexi, we are getting comm from the station, they want ID and certificates.”
“Sure send them all of it.”
She entered the commands in the computer, and shortly we got clearance for docking. It would still be almost two days before we were there, but here people check ship ID carefully. Its a long way from earth, and one never knows exactly what might be popping up into the region. Pirates are an issue. There is a large group of renegade ships that lives on the edge of open space, and actually some in the closed zone, and there is always a possibility of some kind of attack. Kroatzy's station is well armed, and has four space destroyers stationed there at all times. They are very powerful warships, and can take out the little converted freighters used by most of the Pirate groups. Destroyers carry about seventy people on board, and an array of high powered weapons. Most pirating operations use old freighters, sometimes newer ones, with improvised weapon systems. They can easily take down a small freighter, but are not a match for Space commission warships. The federation has fifty destroyers and frigates in the system. Most are generally stationed around human settlements, and keep the riff raff far away. There are some frigates that patrol open space, and a few more in the closed zone, hunting pirates, but that's a bit like looking for needles in a haystack.
The cruise in was totally uneventful. Eventually we came in visual of the planet, and the station. It's a massive structure, in high orbit over Ross 248B. First contact with the station was by computer. Then we came into radio range. Usually today radio isn’t used until you are damn near on top of the people you want to talk to, it's easier to digitize everything and send it that way.
“Freighter ISF2319, this is Kroatzy's station. Welcome back to the world. We are sending you docking instructions, port 47a. Please load into your nav system. Your certificates say you are carrying UUP, do you have anything else to declare?”
“No, just about 3000 kilos of UUP.”
The mans voice came back on after a short pause. “Sounds like a good payload. How long are you going to be staying?”
“Not long. Buying supplies, selling some of the load, and then heading out again. Maybe three or four days, at most. We are planing on heading to Epsilon Indi, and taking a vacation.”
“OK. Space comm will be along to inspect you, should be routine. Don't leave the ship until after they have cleared you for docking.”
“Roger that. Looking forward to some down time.”
The docking was all automatic. At this point in space development it was easy enough to let computers do all the grunt work. The ship approached the station slowly, and it filled the window in front of us. Basically it looks like a much larger version of most of the space stations you see in ancient movies. It has four levels, connected by large tubes. Each level is circular, and the whole thing spins around a central core, generating about a half G of gravity. People live in the outer rings, and the inner rings are used for storage and freight, and supplies. Since there is no gravity in the inner core, it makes it pretty easy to move stuff around. In the center is an enormous fuel and water storage system.
The docking was uneventful. We waited for the inspectors from space commission to open the airlocks, and once we had a green light we opened ours. Four men in SC uniforms greeted us. They inspect freighters to make sure you aren’t carrying anything illegal. We took them aboard, and in about twenty minutes the they were finished. Not exactly a friendly bunch, but then they never know what they are going to find when inspecting a ship. Ships traveling alone usually have no problem, but if say, four freighters show up at once, they are very careful. It's easy for pirates to pretend to be a freighter and then storm a station, grab what they can and run. All part of the bureaucracy here. Once they finished with checking out the ship, we were free to go about the station.
Kroatzy's has a couple of social places aboard, basically big bars, an entertainment center, a hotel of sorts. Basically it's like a big truck stop, from 200 years ago. Also you can buy supplies for credits, there is a bank, and a small hospital. Then, of course, there are living quarters for the personnel that work there.
We exited the ship, and made our way down the corridor to the outer ring. There is a locking system at the end of the corridor, that allows you to basically lock your ship, without closing the airlock. We took the pass cards from the computer, and headed down to the main corridor.
It was strange to be around people again. We had been in our freighter for almost fifty days, just the two of us, and it was always a little weird to suddenly be around people again. Our plan was to stay together, at all times, sell some of the UUP, and buy supplies. Then get a hotel room, and relax for a day. If we just blew into the place, sold our goods, and left it would look a little odd. Jochim was on the surface, but I needed to contact him first and let him know we were coming. He was working in the space commission office, for the directorate of operations and science. We were going to stay here for 48 hours while we dealt with selling the UUP, and getting some supplies, and then head down to
the surface. Then we would give him our report, and then head out immediately. In fact we were going to invite him aboard the ship, give him the report there, and then fly out. That way we had some maneuvering room.
First we went to the trading board, and sold half the load, 1500 kilograms. Fifteen Million Credits. Not bad. We took payment and went to the various traders markets. Booked a years worth of supplies on the ship,including 4000 Kgs of water. Generally I didn’t load the ship up full, as it affected maneuvering at lower than light speed, but in this case I wasn’t taking any chances. It was going to be a full full load. Add to that 3000 Kgs food enough for over three years maybe more if one is careful, and it was going to be a heavy load. That would leave about 2500 Kgs for other payloads. The ship,(officially ISF2319, but which I had named Starchaser years ago) could actually carry more, but then it limited the systems you might be able to land on, and burned fuel like an old diesel highway truck. But then if we were on the run, we would be a long way out, and unlikely that we would be meeting up with star commission ships. In fact we would be looking for a really lonely corner of the galaxy, someplace we could hide for a good long time. There were plenty of places like that. Finding water and and oxygen supply weren’t all that difficult either. Anywhere there was water, there was oxygen, and anywhere there was oxygen one can use the water distiller and native hydrogen to make water. Food is another matter. That’s a lot harder to come by. But there are rogue traders one can always buy from, and places one can locate something to eat in the open region. And I kept pretty decent notes on where supposed locations of planets were in the closed system if it came to that. As far as entering a star system, if one is smart, one can always cruise in from, say two weeks out, and check the situation before you go closer. It's hard to get caught by Star commission ships, if you are trying to avoid contact. Getting back to earth though, that would be a different matter. So far we have only found four planets with breathable atmospheres, one each around Tau Ceti, Procyon, and a binary planetary system around Wolf 1061 (Gleise 628). The first two were pretty well settled, the last not at all, mainly due to the incidence of poisonous plants and creatures there. But that's another story. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
After we did our shopping, and made arrangements to have everything delivered to the ship, the next day, we booked ourselves into the hotel on board. Single room, double bunks. Hotel is a bit, shall we say, ambitious, as its more like a cubicle. In space, space is at a premium. Pretty much like living on the old submarines of 200 some years ago. But it had two nice bunks, full bath, full screen computer, even a small coffee table, sofa, and sitting chair. We dropped our packs, and turned on the computer. Today, computer, radio, television, videophone, etc, its all in one device. We turned on the interstellar news channel. Really not much was going on the known world. Since the Scientific Empire Movement had forced its way into control of things almost eighty years ago, a general sense of stability prevailed, in the areas open to human exploration. Life was a lot easier that way. 120 years of continuous war, first on planet earth, and then spreading throughout the solar system, had left society pretty ambivalent about conflict. A large part of the SEM movement was a turn away from self seeking aggression, and towards science and the arts. The collective memory of that 120 years of war still permeated humanities consciousness, and no one really had much interest in conflict anymore. People drawn to that usually ended up in careers exploring the closed zones, pirating, or in some kind of sports. There was a latent resistance movement against the SEM, but generally it was pretty small and inactive: participation could get you sent to a penal colony for ten years or so on one of the exploration missions in the closed zone, and that was a pretty dangerous proposition. Really the world was better off without all that aggression. We still have a market economy, but its really a sort of social democratic system, with a heavy emphasis on the social part. Poverty, at least in 21st century terms has been eliminated. Even the poorest people today have decent lives, medical care, vacations, educational opportunities. People have finally accepted the fact that about five to ten percent of any society is just generally not very productive, and it's better to take care of them than to leave them in the gutter. Leads to a lot more peaceful set of outcomes. Everyone else is pretty much free to do what they want, as long as they don’t try to take over the world, corner the market on various commodities, and use the world for their own devices. Everyone sees a psychologist, or what you would call a psychologist on a regular basis, and sociopaths are carefully monitored. Of course by doing this we eliminated most of the people who ran the big corporations in the 21st and 22nd centuries, and got rid of a lot of self anointed religious leaders, and the problems associated with them. That pretty much eliminated about 85% of the worlds problems. Funny how that worked out. Hardcore cases are generally shipped off to exploratory groups in the closed sectors. And they are not the kind of people I would like to deal with, If I can avoid it.
Laura plopped herself on the sofa, and I made my self comfortable on the big chair, and put my feet up on the table. It was the usual series of reports. News from the grand council, about mundane political matters in the world. Sports reports. The latest scientific discoveries. The latest news on pricing for various commodities. Decisions on details related to the next five and ten year plans for the the SEM. A couple of news reports about missing freighters. Some trouble on one of the exploratory colonies in the closed zone, the usual problems that you get when you send a bunch of sociopaths off to a place, and they have troubles there.
“Alexi are you really interested in this?”
“Nope, but it never hurts to stay informed. Sometimes there is stuff you need to know about.”
“True, but right now it looks pretty boring out there.”
“Agreed. Suggestions?”
“Old movies?”
“Sure. Never watched very many. What do you suggest?”
“Hmm... How about... Um... You like action adventure? Comedy? Drama?”
“Like I said, never really watched too many. I like fiction, and complex stories though...”
“Hmm. How about... Gone with the Wind?”
“Sure. What's it about?”
“American civil war, 1861 to 1865. Love story, but also pretty historical, for its time.”
“Sure, I'll try it.”
So we hit the remote, and ordered up the movie. All of that stuff is free now, long out of copyright, digitized, and available anywhere. You can carry around most of mans' knowledge on a couple of memory plates these days. Quantum memory broke the bank on memory. Now storage is the cheapest product in the universe. Oh sure, if you want tons of scientific data, the latest holographic plays etc, it takes a little more, but not much really. I’ve got most of this stuff in the ships memory banks.
We sat back and watched the film. After a while Laura got up and went to the cooler.
“Hey they got wine in here you want a glass?”
“Sure, what did we get with the room?”
“Something from France. No idea. It's red tho. Some kind of bard-ox thing.”
“Bordeaux. That’s boord—oo”
“Is it any good?”
“Yea should be, as long as it isn’t too cheap.”
“Right now I don’t care. I'll try it.”
“OK, me too. But we are not getting ripped at this point. Bad idea.”
“Yea I know, but a glass or two won't hurt.”
“Sure.”
She poured the wine, and brought it back to the coffee table. I looked out the window.
It was not very big. You could see the planet down below, a big reddish gray rock, half lit by the sun, and half in darkness. It looked... Alien, and foreboding. The colony down there was deep underground, with only a few systems on the surface. You could see faint blue ice caps on both poles. The planet, which locals called Blackrock, wasn’t an easy place to live. But it was profitable for those who lived and worked there. And once every five years you
got a free six month vacation on earth. All expenses paid (with a upper limit of course, but pretty generous) anywhere you wanted to go. Or for that matter, everywhere. The gravity level was very close to earths', about 105%, so health problems, over the long term, were few. Generally you didn’t come here to work on the surface unless you were in a steady relationship. There were single people, but not so many. Loneliness is a problem in space. For most people.
I'd paused the movie while she was pouring the wine. We turned it back on.
“Funny, how people dressed then.”
“Yea, well fashion always changes.”
We watched the movie for a while.
“Why were they so gung ho to go to war? Didn’t they realize many of them would die?”
“No, they all thought it would be someone else who would die.”
“Stupid people”
“Yea, to a degree. But remember, times were very different then. People were much more religious. Different world. Also they thought war was glorious.”
“eewwwww”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“How could they think that?”
“Easy. Weapons weren’t as deadly. People were more romantic about everything. Probably because life was easier, in some respects, than traveling around space.”
“People really had slaves then?”
“Yup”
“eeeeeewwwwwwww”
“Yea, not a pretty thing. Useful economic solution for the rich, pretty bad for everyone else.”
We went back to the movie. Finally the intermission came.
“Alex, it's interesting, but I'm ready for a break. How about a dinner somewhere? Hey I got a bunch of money for the first time in life. How about if I buy?”
That sounded like a good idea. “Sure why not, we can go try the one of the three restaurants. Let's do it.”
We pulled ourselves together and left the room. The door slid silently shut behind us. We walked out into the hall, and down to the lobby. Again, more people than either of us had seen in almost forty five days. It's funny you spend all this time alone, and suddenly people seem a bit strange not bad, just strange.
We turned out of the hotel, which was located on the outer ring, and into one of the main corridors. We walked around it, it's sort of like walking on a Ferris wheel. That’s what makes the gravity here. Rotating station. More people in the corridors. Presently we came to the restaurant section of the station. There were three choices. A low budget place, with stuff from all over earth, a sort of food court, small, but with the technology well equipped. Two other places where you could sit down, one a cafeteria, and a small formal restaurant, with actual waiters and waitresses. Highly expensive, but a real treat this far from home. It held about fifty people, at twenty tables. We decided on the fancy place. Why not, might be the last good meal for a long time. Food was flown out every month, deep frozen, and cooked here on the spot. Vegetables came from the hydroponic gardens far below the surface of Blackrock. Not bad for almost seven light years from earth. A waiter took us to a table, dressed in a traditional black suit. This was going to cost a small fortune, but who cared, we had a pretty big one after the haul on Kruger 60. We sat, looked at the menus and ordered. She had Argentinian steak, with asparagus, green beans, and baked potato, with sour cream and a salad. I had surf and turf, a lobster with a small steak, another baked potato, and salad. We ordered a bottle of wine to go with it, another red.
We didn't have to wait long before the salads came. We started in on the food.
“Alex. I got a question.”
“OK Laura, shoot.”
“How come you are traveling around out here alone? You seem like a really good guy. How come you don’t have a regular companion? Or should I leave off the subject?”
I paused for a moment.
“No you don’t have to leave off it. Of course what ever you as me about, then I think I can ask you about the same topics, if I choose, OK?”
“Sure.”
I ate some more of my salad.
“Well, long story really. I had a wife once. She got killed in an accident. That was ten years ago. Since then I've basically been on my own.” I took another bite.
“Oh. OK, bad subject then.”
Again I paused for a moment and resumed. “No, it's not a bad subject. I just haven’t talked about it much over the years. I guess I'm not always sure what to say about it. But no, its not a bad subject. How about you. Why are you alone?”
Now it was her turn to pause.
“Well, I had one boyfriend once. But it only lasted about two years. It ended badly. Since then I lose myself in reading. And trying to survive.” She ate some more and took a rather large sip of wine. “I guess you could say I got burned by someone I trusted, and since then, given what has happened in my life, well, I never had time for it, or wasn’t willing to risk it again.” She drank some more wine. “Really, you are the first person I have met in about five years that I feel like I can trust. I haven't exactly had it very easy. And drifting around space, well you don’t always meet the nicest people.”
“True.”
We finished our salads.
“Are you happy with this life?” She asked me.
There was a quiet moment.
“Yea, basically. Sure it could be better, but it could be worse. I like space travel. It's not something most people get to do on a regular basis. Sure it's a little lonely now and then, but on the other hand, well, are people on earth always happy? And do they get to see what I get to see? No, not really.” The waiter arrived with the main courses. Once we were settled in I went on.
“You know, people have been dreaming about this kind of life for hundreds of years. Well, I get to live it. There are risks involved. Sure. But, well, that’s what you get in this life. Yea overall, I'm happy.”
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. One of the things that was growing on me was that Laura wasn’t one to waste words. If she wanted to talk she would, but she was equally as comfortable not talking. That suited me. It suited me well. Or maybe we were just hungry for something that didn’t come out of a freeze dried package, or was hermetically sealed in foil. Presently we finished the main courses.
“So Alexi, what do you want for dessert?”
“Hmm that’s easy. A double helping of caramel flan and and a slice of tiramisu.”
She laughed. “OK, so you have a sweet tooth... A really big one.” And then I saw her really smile, for the first time.
“Well I don’t get those things out there. Yea sometimes... Sometimes I like a nice dessert. And now would be one of them.”
“Sounds great to me. I'll have one of these big strawberry sundaes. Hell, and maybe some tiramisu as well. It might be a while before we get to have such a nice meal again.”
I smiled, and jumped in. “Yup, very true. One of the things spacefaring teaches you is to enjoy the moment.” The waiter returned. We ordered.
“OK, so I think back to the movie after this, its pretty good, even if it's really old timey. And then I'm going to take a real bath. Can we get bubble bath here?”
“Yea sure, probably just ask at the desk. These space port hotels usually have a pretty good stock of all the little stuff.”
“This is a lot nicer than sleeping in the hostels. Or crashing in an unused storage area.” She was silent a minute. “I guess you can figure out I haven't exactly been living very high on the hog recently.”
“Yea, I sorta guessed that. When did you get to space anyway?”
“My Ex. He as a construction worker on the space station around Somera.” Somera was a planet around the Proxima Centari system. “Came up with him. We met on earth while he was on holidays. I was eighteen. That lasted, like I said, about two years. When I met him he seemed like a really nice guy.” Desserts showed up from the kitchen. We dug in. Yes, you can get all kinds of sweets in packages for long storage, but this was special. After she had inhaled about half the sundae, which was huge
by the way, she went on.
“Well, I found out as time went on he had a drinking problem. And there were other things about him. He wasn’t as nice as I thought. I was on my own before I met him, and I decided I would be better off alone. So one day when he was working on the station I simply packed up and split. Caught the first freighter off the station. It was headed to Tau Ceti. So I spent two years there. Worked odd jobs on the colony there.” She inhaled some more of the sundae. “I like being off planet. It's exciting, and I like seeing the places I read about as a kid. The sundae was about gone. “Anyway I stayed out here. Seeing the world and all that.”
I finished my flan and started in on the tiramisu.
“I think its in some peoples blood, myself.”
“Well, I think it's in mine.” We smiled at each other at the same time and laughed.
We finished dinner, and true to her word she paid the bill. I made a mental note to pick up the next one... Where ever that might be. We walked back the hotel room and let ourselves in. she poured some more wine and we plopped down on the couch and chair, as before. I started the movie back up.
We watched the rest of the movie, and then turned on a news channel. Nothing important was happening.
“Alex, what do you think will happen when we tell them?”
I was silent a while then answered.
“I'm not really sure. Could be any reaction from we will take a report and look into it to... Who knows?”
She got up and stretched. “OK, well I'm ready to turn in. I'm going take a bath and then crash.” She walked over to the bath area. I clicked thru the various news channels. Nothing really exciting was happening in the world. I thought about what she had asked. What would happen? I didn’t think they would lock us up, not really, but then I knew some things about the past she didn’t. My past. And Jochim's. I flicked thru the channels and then flicked to a tone channel. The tones played as usual. A soft ever shifting, ever changing melody of seventeen tones. I closed my eyes, and tried to think. I lay back, and put the world out of my head. But no good ideas came to me. I might have dozed off for a few minutes, as presently she came out of the bath, dressed in a long heavy robe. She got in the bed on the right, and opened up her tablet. She really was into reading. I looked at the computer, and decided it was late. I climbed into the bed on the left, and turned out the light.
Jochim