“Good morning, Valerie,” Rob Milbank said.
“Good afternoon, Rob. How are you today?” asked Valerie Laurent, the director of the planetary council on Earthsea.
“Good. Very good. We’re getting ready to send out missions to some of the new colony planets we found, so I thought we should talk about QE radios.”
“Sounds like a good idea. What were you thinking?”
“I’m not sure,” Milbank said. “When we added Amber to the QE network, it took four radios to create two links. One to Earthsea and one to Arcadia. But the next planet would require six new radios, the one after eight, and so on. That can’t be how you’re linking your cities on Earthsea.”
“No. You’re right. That would be untenable, but it’s also unnecessary. We have links to all the cities here in Bergheim, and also in Innsbruck, our second largest city. So all the other cities have a link to both. That’s four radios per city. The network routes all the messages to where they need to go. When traffic between two other cities gets high enough, they put in an additional link between them to offload the centers. I’m not clear on the details of all of it, but four radios per city as the basic setup I’m sure of.”
“So you think four QE radios per planet, Valerie?”
“That’s right, Rob. One link to the primary net center, and one link to the secondary net center. So there’s actually two radios on each planet, and then one radio for each planet in the two net centers.”
“OK, that makes sense.”
“And I think Arcadia should be the secondary net center.”
“Arcadia as opposed to some other location?” Milbank asked.
“Yes, for two reasons. First, from the colony maps you’ve put out, Arcadia is a natural transportation hub based on its location. So there will be a lot of net traffic to and from Arcadia, as well as a lot of ship traffic. If we need to replace a radio from here, or ship additional radios from here, it would be simplest to do it to Arcadia, given the ship traffic we expect on that route.”
Milbank nodded.
“Makes sense to me, Valerie.”
“And second, Arcadia is the one planet I don’t expect to try to work around the billing once we start charging for network services.”
“You don’t think we’ll cheat?”
“Compared to that woman on Amber, for instance? No, Rob, I don’t expect you to cheat. You’ve been great partners. And Sal is a big fan of Arcadia. We’ve talked about it, and he doesn’t expect it, either. He thinks the Chen would remove the prime minister if a later government tried.”
Milbank nodded. He thought it interesting that Romano had such a good feel for the lay of the land in Arcadia.
“So how do we handle this, then, Valerie? We have two planets we’re going to visit who are on the other side of us from you – Olympia and Aruba – and two that are past you from us – Tahiti and Playa. And Hyper-1 should arrive in Earthsea this week from Amber, to drop off Mr. Costa at home and bring the shipboard radios here.”
Laurent took some time to think it through.
“The shuttle can take eight containers, is that right?”
“Twelve if they’re light enough,” Milbank said.
“OK, so Olympia and Aruba each get two. You need four for the Arcadia end of a link from each of the four planets. Plus we want to send the self-contained ship radios. You should probably be carrying one on each hyperspace shuttle as it is, so you can do rescues if nothing else. What’s that come to?”
“Four, plus four, plus three ship radios, plus one container for personal cubic and water makes twelve, Valerie.”
“Huh. I wish we could send more ship radios. They’re a lot smaller as far as the radio part, but being self-contained they also have the power supply and cooling, so they’re still a full container.”
“Well, we could put one on each of the hyperspace shuttles heading to Olympia and Aruba, and save one for Star Runner. The other two hyperspace shuttles headed for Tahiti and Playa will stop at Earthsea. They can pick up their own shipboard radios, plus two each for the colonies themselves. They’re leaving here soon.”
“That’ll work,” Laurent said. “And if your ships to Tahiti and Playa come back through here with their ambassadors, then we can load them up with more shipboard radios for the leg to Arcadia.”
Milbank nodded.
“That’ll work. Just make sure the radios are all stenciled with their ultimate destinations, so we get the right ones going to the right places. We’ll take care of getting them there, Valerie.”
“All right, Rob. That’s how we’ll do it.”
Rob Milbank also met with Haruki Tanaka, his new foreign minister. Arcadia had not needed a foreign minister before contacting other colony planets.
“We need four ambassadors to make first contact with these colonies, Haruki.”
Tanaka nodded.
“I’ve been considering that as I’ve been building up staff, Rob. Of course, the problem is that we have no diplomatic service in place. No experience with the sort of issues someone may need to deal with. Our best experience right now lies with Loukas Diakos and Sasha Ivanov, and they’re both assigned already, to Earthsea and Amber.”
“You have Peter Dunhill as well, who is Loukas’s aide on Earthsea. Should we call him home? Assign him to one of the new planets?”
“That’s one option,” Tanaka said. “He could come back from Earthsea on Hyper-1 once they drop Mr. Costas off at home. By the way, how are we going to bring up all the new radios without Mr. Costas?”
“We have people in the operations group who have been taking training classes over the network. Tying in to the Earthsea technical training. And given multiple links from here to Earthsea already, they can access and debug new radios over the existing links.
“But back to the ambassadorial assignments, I think Earthsea and Amber are in good enough shape we can put new people in those slots, and have Loukas and Sasha open up new planets.”
“So Sasha is on the way here from Amber already. Should we send him off to Olympia or Aruba?”
“Olympia, I think,” Milbank said. “We need to find out where those other colonies are.”
“OK, then Dunhill comes back from Earthsea to here on Hyper-1, and we send him to Aruba?”
“Yes, I think that’s the easiest mission of the four. Why wouldn’t they want to be a hub planet and have an interstellar freight transfer station?”
Tanaka nodded.
“And we have a backup there in any case,” he said, “because there’s another colony planet in that two-planet bridge between the Orion Arm and the Perseus Arm.”
“Exactly,” Milbank said.
“Then we can send a replacement ambassador to Earthsea on one of the shuttles headed in that direction, and Loukas can take his seat for transfer to either Tahiti or Playa.”
“Playa, I think. We need robots for servicing the hyperspace ships once we bring Star Runner and its sisters into service.”
“All right,” Tanaka said. “So what I am really looking at is one more ambassador for opening up Tahiti, and two for taking over already-friendly relations on Earthsea and Amber.”
“That sounds right to me, Haruki. Oh, and for Tahiti?”
“Yes?”
“Send someone older. Tahiti has those anti-aging treatments. Maybe he can try them out while he’s there.”
When Hyper-1 dropped out of hyperspace in the Earthsea system, there were mails waiting in their mailboxes.
“So you see we got new assignments?” Justin Moore asked his co-pilot Gavin McKay.
“Yeah. We ain’t even home yet. And they’re splitting us up.”
“Only one pilot per ship. I guess they figure the computer is one, a human pilot makes two, and they don’t need three.”
“Yeah,” McKay said, “but the big problem is there just aren’t enough guys can fly the bigger birds.”
“Probably so. And we’re taking Sasha and Peter back to Arcadia with us.”
“Yeah. I guess they have new assignments, too.”
“Well, at least the prime minister isn’t letting things lie,” Moore said. “He’s keeping things moving along.”
“He’s keeping us moving along, that’s for sure.”
“May not be so bad on the way home this time, though.”
“How ya figure?” McKay asked.
“We’re gonna try out the QE radio on the way home. If that works, we’ll have the same access to the network as if we were sittin’ on the couch at home.
“Oh, that’ll be different. Wouldn’t that be somethin’?”
As soon as Hyper-1 dropped out of hyperspace bound for Earthsea, Ivanov checked in with Milbank. The prime minister had news for him.
“A new assignment?” asked Sasha Ivanov, Arcadia’s ambassador to Amber. “Rob, I’m not even home yet from the last assignment. And the last assignment is still mine, for that matter.”
“I know, Sasha. But I need you to head out one more time. We need to get those colony coordinates from Olympia. That’ll open up everything. Then you can come back here and be Haruki’s senior guy in terms of giving help to other ambassadors we’ll be sending out. He’s really got his hands full here, because there’s no experience base to draw on. Other than you and Loukas, that is. And Peter, I guess.”
“Loukas is moving on as well?”
“Yes,” Milbank said. “I need him to go to Playa. They’re cybernetics specialists, and we need robots for servicing the big hyper ships in orbit. They can work in vacuum. The hyperspace shuttles we can service on the ground, but the big ships will never see atmosphere.”
“That makes sense.”
“I worry he’ll be disappointed we’re moving him away from the mountains, though. Nothing like Earthsea’s mountains on Playa.”
Ivanov chuckled, which surprised Milbank.
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry there, Rob. I talked to Loukas over dinner last night, and he misses the Blue Mountains on Arcadia. The mountains on Earthsea were just a bit much, I think.”
“For Loukas?” Milbank asked. “That’s surprising.”
“Rob, pictures just don’t do them justice. I think he tried, mind you. Even the locals considered him kind of crazy. But, when all was said and done, the mountains defeated him.”
“Boy, that’s a surprise. It’ll make it easier for him to move on, though. And I have a little extra enticement for you as well.”
“What’s that?” Ivanov asked.
“In addition to knowing the first twenty-one colony sites, Olympia has fusion reactor technology. All the fusion guys went to the same planet. They actually have something.”
“The fusion guys have been saying that for three hundred years, Rob. They’re just twenty years away.”
Milbank laughed.
“That’s what I said, but Chen ChaoLi tells me they’re running commercial plants. They’re about to go mass production on them. That’s not the enticement, though, Sasha. The other thing Olympia has is a specialty in distilled spirits. They make outstanding single-malt whiskeys, brandies, and cognacs.”
Ivanov perked up.
“Mr. Prime Minister, you are correct. We should not keep such a deserving planet waiting. I will be happy to be Arcadia’s ambassador to Olympia. We need to ensure against a lesser diplomat failing to achieve their entry into our trade consortium. That, sir, would be an interstellar tragedy.”
Milbank laughed.
“Thanks, Sasha. I knew I could count on you. And then it’s home to Arcadia for keeps. I promise.”
It was John Gannet’s weekly meeting with his top-level supervisors in the operations department. They met in the conference room at their headquarters, the old hyperspace research facility at the Arcadia City Shuttleport.
“We’ve got some new marching orders from downtown,” Gannet said.
There were groans up and down the table.
“No, I think this is gonna be OK. Better than OK, actually. First, we have four new orbit-capable shuttles coming in this week, and four more four weeks after that.”
That got some applause. The operations people were an expressive bunch.
“And Hyper-1 is coming back and will arrive in another six weeks.”
More applause.
“The counter to that is we’ll be sending all four hyperspace-capable shuttles out interstellar over the next two months. Two of them will leave next week or the week after.”
Back to groans.
“How are we going to handle that, John?” one staffer asked. “We don’t have the pilots for that level of activity.”
“Well, we are bringing people up, starting them on the smaller atmospheric shuttles, and moving the atmosphere boys up into the orbital shuttles. But the other thing we’re going to do is go to one-man crews, at least for the hyper-capable shuttles.”
“So Gavin, Justin, Minho, and Igor all go out on the hyper shuttles and everyone else stays here?”
“That’s right,” Gannet said. “The crews of Hyper-1 and Hyper-2 are being split up. They’ll take all four hyperspace shuttles, and the other crews stay here.”
“How are we going to service the shipyard, John?” another staffer asked. “We need hyper-capable shuttles for that.”
“My understanding is they’re going to use Star Runner to run a massive load of supplies over there, and take a couple orbital shuttles along to offload her. That’ll sort of be her space trials. Then she comes back here so we can finish the outfitting. Each ship will do the same in its turn. Make the freight run to Beacon with supplies for the shipyards. Hundreds of containers’ worth at a time. That’ll free up a lot of shuttle time, too, rather than running containers to Beacon eight at a time.”
“OK. That makes some sense, actually.”
“It all does,” Gannet said. “We’re going to have all these big interstellar freight and passenger ships coming on line soon, and they need places to go. If we don’t get the hyperspace shuttles out there to open up new planets, we’re going to be short of destinations.
“So that’s what we’re about, everybody. Get the hyperspace shuttles turned and ready for long trips, get the new orbital shuttles up and running, and continue to bring new pilots into the fold as we go.
“We’re going to be ramping up for a long time, but this isn’t even the worst of it.
“Once those big hyperspace liners are running commercial flights, we’re gonna have to load ‘em and unload ‘em, cargo and passengers. Every single trip.”
The meeting ended with another round of groans.
With the short term options in place, and having approved the operations plans of John Gannet and his project manager, Chris Bellamy, ChaoLi turned her attention to the medium term.
She needed orbital freight transfer stations. At least two of them, one around Arcadia and one around Aruba. Ultimately, as freight traffic increased, every planet would likely have one, while the ones on Arcadia and Aruba would grow huge.
Modular, then.
And they would have to be manufactured in the Beacon asteroid belt and then transported to their respective planets. Assembly in orbit would be required, for which she was planning on using robot assembly workers from Playa.
But first she needed a set of plans.