The same morning Mildred Plakson called Rob Milbank, Chen ChaoLi asked him for an appointment, and he sent back an invitation to join him for lunch in his private dining room.
“I had good news this morning, ChaoLi,” Milbank said. “The prime minister of Aruba told me they were going to approve the trade agreement and the interstellar freight station. It’ll just take them a while because they’re in the middle of election season over there.”
“Which just puts point to my reason for this meeting. Rob, we need to get this show on the road. We’re not moving fast enough. We’ve got seven planets now in this trade agreement, we now know where fourteen of the others are, and I have a total of four ships in outfitting and three more under construction.”
Milbank nodded.
“We have a serious ship shortage. And a shuttle shortage. And we’re not moving fast enough to catch up.”
“What do you suggest, ChaoLi?”
“Triple the number of ships under way. At least. Have all the factories in Beacon duplicate themselves, then have those new ones duplicate themselves. Maybe a couple rounds of that. We desperately need more hulls.”
“Can you outfit them that fast, ChaoLi? Can you crew them that fast?”
“No, but I can speed that up, Rob.”
“How?”
“First is not to outfit them to quite as high a standard as we are now. Rob, the cabins don’t all have to be to the standards of a five-star hotel room. But the second thing is I’ve changed my original idea as to the first destination of Star Runner.”
“Where does she go first?”
“Playa.”
“Ah. Robots. Of course. For outfitting, or for crew?”
“Both. Much of what needs doing is just the sort of thing they can do.”
“Is that going to cause you trouble with your employees, ChaoLi?”
“I don’t think so. I’m already hiring pretty much anybody who shows up at our offices with a pulse. The humans will all end up supervisors of a robot work crew.”
“So how does that work? They come back here as cargo?”
“And as crew. And as passengers. We’ll pack ‘em in to the deckheads, Rob. They don’t eat and they don’t generate biological waste.”
“What about the exchange rate?”
“I’ve been talking to Oliver Nieman about that. For the time being, we’ll carry them on the books as robots of type XYZ, in exchange for so many tons of this tea, that tea, the other tea. Same thing with Earthsea cheeses. Once exchange rates and pricing stabilizes, we’ll square the books.”
“Does that work? Carrying it on the books like that?”
“I’ve already talked to the Bank of Earthsea about it.”
Milbank nodded.
“So you run out to Earthsea because it’s on the way, full of tea?”
“And spices. Right.”
“And you drop, say half.”
“Or two-thirds. Right.”
“And fill back up with cheese, and go to Playa, and unload the rest of the tea and half the cheese.”
“Then come back here with cheese, and a can-full of robots. Right.”
“So what do you need to make the trip?”
“A skeleton crew, and some of the orbital shuttles.”
“A skeleton crew?”
“It’ll be a full crew on the way back, Rob.”
“Right. Of course. Full of robots.”
“Exactly.”
“Who can then start fitting out new ships.”
“But to a lower standard of luxury,” ChaoLi said, nodding.
“So we need to expand the shipyard, generate new hyperspace shuttles, and start rolling out many new hulls.”
“One of the first jobs of which will be to bring back here the components needed for the interstellar freight transfer station.”
“How are you going to get those big crew quarters here, ChaoLi?”
“Fly them here, then pull the engines as spares. And they’ll be full of parts for the trip. The robots can weld it all together, then fly a second one to Aruba.”
“Wow.”
“Like I said, Rob. We need to get this show on the road.”
Chen JieMin had previously worked out the locations of the six new colony locations they had learned from Playa: Samoa, Hawaii, New Earth, Westernesse, Fiji, and Nirvana.
The deployment vehicles had been sent out without knowing where exactly they were going. They had each been diverted in hyperspace onto a course to their destination using one of the self-contained QE radios they were all carrying.
Now JieMin had the other six colony locations from Olympia: Endor, Dorado, Tonga, Spring, Numenor, and Atlantis.
JieMin added those six new colony locations to his bubble map. The last three unfixed bubbles moved around. There were actually quite a few locations where those might fit, on the edges of the existing clusters.
JieMin worked out new minimum-distance routes through all the remaining colony locations using his nascent routing algorithm.
It would take six months to drop a self-contained QE radio into orbit around all the colony planets, but it was what it was. With every hop being six weeks, and without routes that were all adjacent colonies, it would take what it would take.
JieMin sent the new routes on to John Gannet and Chris Bellamy in the operations group.
They were laying on the surface of the salty water in the lagoon of their secluded cove, arms locked so they wouldn’t drift apart from each other. They had brought a picnic lunch, then made love on the beach. In the afterglow, they lay nude in the warm water in the sun.
“ChaoLi.”
“Yes, JieMin.”
“When you send Star Runner to Playa? You’re sending a skeleton crew and few or no passengers, right?”
“Right. Maybe a few passengers. Maybe none. Couple of dozen crew, because there’s no passengers to take care of.”
“So you don’t need as many container positions in the rear cargo compartment of the ship, is that right?”
The rear cargo compartment wasn’t for cargo at all, but for supplies. It was only one container deep, not six like the forward compartment. It included water, food, and waste storage for the trip, plus the passenger transfer containers.
“Yes, that’s right,” ChaoLi said. “Lots of empty positions available.”
“Fill them all with containers of fitting-out supplies.”
“Fitting-out supplies?”
“Sure. The robots can start their work fitting out the ship on the way back from Playa. You can do that with all the ships. As soon as they have enough compartments completed for the skeleton crew, send them out on freight runs and have the robots finish them out during their trips.”
“Oh, JieMin, that’s brilliant. I can send most of the ships we have out to colonies now.”
“Well, once the first batch of robots gets back, anyway. It’s probably worth waiting for that.”
ChaoLi nodded.
“And Loukas Diakos is on the way home from Playa with one of the robots. Maybe we should ask if we can borrow it, JieMin. Have his robot observe all the fitting out processes on Star Runner, then go with her to Playa.”
“Well, I assume the robots know how to do painting and carpentry and wood finishing and electrical and things like that. But having him see the way we’re applying those to the ship is probably worthwhile.”
“I’ll give Loukas a call tomorrow.”
ChaoLi would have to get project planning and operations to rebuild all their schedules tomorrow.
Everything was going to move up.
“Sure, ChaoLi. You can borrow Bob for six months or a year. I’m not quite sure what to do with him anyway.”
“Well, as this all proceeds, I’m sure there will be a six-month lease rate on robots, so Jixing Trading will compensate you. We’ll carry it on the books that way for the moment.”
“OK. I won’t turn it down. I’m just glad it’s going to be a help, though.”
“Loukas, a question for you. Bob is there, right?”
“Sure.”
“Can you ask him if he and the other robots know things like carpentry, hanging drywall, electrical wiring, painting, and wood finishing?”
Loukas turned to Bob, sitting next to him in the rear seats of the shuttle cockpit, and repeated the question.
“Yes, sir. On Playa, houses and office buildings are constructed entirely by robots from plans. These skills are part of one of our software modules, which we swap in and out of our memory at need. As long as we have access to the software library on Playa, it won’t be a problem.”
Diakos turned his attention back to his heads-up display.
“Yeah, ChaoLi, they know all that stuff. One of their standard modules. Bob says on Playa they build entire houses from the plans by themselves.”
“What about flying cargo shuttles and delivering containers to orbit, Loukas?”
Diakos repeated the question to Bob.
“Flying cargo shuttles is no problem, sir. Delivering containers to orbit would be new to us, but if there are complete flight recordings of human pilots performing those operations, I can process those and build the required enhancements to the software module.”
Diakos repeated the information to ChaoLi in his heads-up display.
“I’ll send you access to the flight recording data, Loukas. We’ve made extensive recordings as we went along so we could do post-mortem analysis and program the flight computers. Why don’t you give Bob access to those and let him build his software enhancement on the way?”
“I’ll do that, ChaoLi. We’re just sitting here anyway.”
“That’s great, Loukas. OK, thanks. Have a good rest of the trip.”
“Thanks, ChaoLi. See you in a couple-three weeks.”
John Gannet just stared at the wall for half an hour after he got off the call with ChaoLi. She had sent out her planning document, then called him about it.
Now he sat stunned.
He shook himself and called in his project manager, Chris Bellamy.
“Hi, John. What’s going on?”
Seeing the look on his face, she grew concerned.
“John, what’s the matter?”
“ChaoLi just threw the schedule in the trash. We’re going to be sending out Star Runner in a month.”
“What? How can we do that?”
“Skeleton crew. No revenue passengers. She’s going to Playa via Earthsea, to pick up several thousand robots.”
“Several thousand?”
“Yup. And when they get back here, they’re going to be set to outfitting work and ferrying containers.”
“John, can we even use that many without them getting in their own way?”
“ChaoLi is also going to double and re-double the size of the Beacon shipyards. They’re going to start rolling a hull every month.”
“We don’t have the shuttles for that, John.”
“The eight new orbital cargo shuttles we’re getting, Chris?”
“Yeah?”
“Make that forty-eight.”
“We don’t have the pilots.”
“The robots are going to be the pilots.”
Bellamy stared at him.
“ChaoLi is getting impatient,” he said.
“Boy, I’ll say.”
“So throw everything out and start building a new project schedule. Assume one new hyperspace liner a month, fifty-six orbital shuttles, robot pilots, and robot outfitters. The robots work twenty-five hours a day and have no food or waste requirements.”
“That’ll kick things into high gear.”
“Oh, and robots will go along on the initial flights. They can do the outfitting while the ship is under way.”
“Hello, Oliver.”
“Hello, ChaoLi,” Oliver Nieman said. “It’s good to speak with you again.”
“And with you. I wanted to see if we could nail down how many robots we could bring back with the Star Runner when she arrives in Playa in four months or so.”
“When quiescent, they do not take much room, ChaoLi. They can literally stand shoulder to shoulder in the ship’s passenger spaces. Fifty will fit in a ten foot by ten foot space without problem.”
“That would be thousands of them, Oliver. Do you have that many to spare?”
“We have millions of robots on Playa, ChaoLi. We normally keep an inventory of twenty or thirty thousand new robots on hand. In case something comes up. You know. Like the desire for a new building complex or something.”
“So you could send me ten thousand robots in four months, Oliver?”
“I could send you twenty thousand today, ChaoLi.”
“That’s amazing.”
Nieman shrugged.
“It’s sort of what we do here.”
“I see. Well, let’s plan on ten thousand, Oliver.”
“Very well. And we’ll carry them on the books in kind until exchange rates get sorted out, is that right?”
“Yes. I think it’s going to take a while for prices to settle out. There are a lot of other colonies still to come on line, and we just don’t know where things are going to settle out.”
“Understood. But in the meantime, let’s not let that keep us from forging ahead, ChaoLi. We need to get this interstellar economy going, to the benefit of all.”
“Thank you, Oliver. I agree completely. Let’s get it done.”
The first eight new orbital shuttles came on line in the nick of time. They spent two weeks loading Star Runner with two thousand containers of tea and spices bound for Earthsea and Playa.
Despite the relative inexperience of the new shuttle pilots who had moved up from atmospheric shuttles, there were no accidents. They had each spent the prior month co-piloting with the existing pilots in orbital operations.
While this was under way, Star Singer showed up from the Beacon shipyards. Star Runner, Star Tripper, Star Gazer, Star Dreamer, Star Rover and Star Singer were all now in orbit about Arcadia. The open factories in Beacon were now duplicating themselves.
When Hyper-4 showed up in Arcadia space with Jeong Minho, Loukas Diakos, and Bob, ChaoLi had an assignment for them on the way to Arcadia: drop Bob off on Star Singer. That completed, they made re-entry and landed at Arcadia City Shuttleport. Jeong and Diakos went straight home and to bed.
Following instructions, Bob walked about Star Singer, inspecting the interior spaces of the big ship. This was the way the ship arrived from the shipyard, with outfitting not even begun yet. He was then shuttled to each hyperspace liner in orbit in turn, inspecting their interior spaces through the process of outfitting, ending up on Star Runner.
During the shuttle transfers from one ship to the next, Bob inspected the outside of the ships.
When his inspection tour was completed, he reported to ChaoLi, as he had been instructed to do by Diakos.
“Do you understand the outfitting process now, Bob? What it is we are doing at every stage?” ChaoLi asked.
“Yes, ma’am. It is straightforward construction and detail work, of the type we already know how to do.”
“And have you worked out how to fly one of the orbital cargo shuttles? How to do orbital pickup and delivery of containers?”
“Yes, ma’am. The flight data was complete, and I was able to add the appropriate portions to our existing shuttle flight programming.”
“So you would be comfortable doing surface-to-orbit and orbit-to-surface delivery?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well, Bob. You should remain on Star Runner, and you will go with her to Earthsea and Playa. You will be flying an orbital cargo shuttle taking containers to the surface and back on both stops.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So we’re sending four orbital cargo shuttles along with Star Runner?” Bellamy asked.
“Right,” Gannet said. “And three pilots.”
“Three pilots?”
“The fourth cargo shuttle is going to be flown by the one robot we already have.”
“OK,” Bellamy said.
But she didn’t sound sure.
Once loaded, her skeleton crew transferred aboard, and the three shuttle pilots camped out in mostly completed cabins, Star Runner accelerated forward in her orbit, leaving her companions behind. It took two days for the massive ship to reach the hyperspace limit.
Then her crew turned on her hyperspace field generator, and Star Runner disappeared from normal space. She made her turn in hyperspace, and started for Earthsea.
The crew was running her hyperspace field generator in screw-drive mode, and the counter-torque started the big ship spinning. As she spun faster, the internal apparent gravity gradually came up to one-half g. The captain switched the hyperspace drive to ripple-drive mode.
Star Runner had entered hyperspace for the trip to Earthsea on Thursday, October 23, 2369, two months ahead of ChaoLi’s most hopeful estimate.
Then again, Star Runner’s interior spaces were not yet complete. She had dozens of containers of outfitting supplies in her aft containers, though. The containers that were accessible during the journey. With short staffing and no passengers – without the need to carry a full complement of food and waste containers – there were plenty of container positions for supplies.
During the trip, Bob worked on completing Star Runner’s outfitting. In twelve weeks, even working twenty-four hours a day, he would not finish the work by the time they reached Playa.
With ten thousand robots on the way back, however, they would probably finish the work in a day or two. The biggest issue would be not getting in each other’s way.
Finishing Star Runner would be satisfying. Bob liked to work, and he liked finishing a project.
It was good to be useful.
After six weeks in hyperspace, Star Runner appeared in the Earthsea system and made her way toward the planet, using her thrusters to brake the big ship all the way.
Blazoned along her bows was her name, and under it, two Chinese characters:
Star Runner
吉星
Ji Xing.
Lucky Star.