There were a number of items, large and small, to take care of before leaving Arcadia.
Bob expressed a desire to return to the service of Loukas Diakos.
“It was very satisfying, ma’am, to complete the outfitting of Star Runner. But you will be well served aboard Star Dancer, and Mr. Diakos currently has no assistance.”
“I understand, Bob,” ChaoLi said. “Thank you for all your help.”
“It was my pleasure to serve, ma’am.”
Bob would come down in the shuttle passenger container that would take them and the rest of the crew up to Star Dancer.
ChaoLi and JieMin also took their leave of Chen Zufu and Chen Zumu.
“We will be gone a year, Chen Zumu,” ChaoLi said. “More or less.”
“Not so long, ChaoLi. And we will be in touch. I will expect your progress reports as before.”
“Of course, Chen Zumu.”
“Good spacing, ChaoLi, JieMin,” MinChao said.
“Thank you, Chen Zufu.”
The day of departure arrived, and ChaoLi and JieMin watched the shuttles come down at the Arcadia City Shuttleport. Six shuttles with passenger containers, one for each of the six hyperspace liners that would be leaving today. They would all be taking on the rest of their crews. With six ships, several hundred crew filled the hangar space at the operations headquarters.
“All right, everyone. Make sure you get on the correct shuttle so you end up at the ship you’re assigned to,” the speakers in the observation lounge, meeting rooms, hangars and shuttlepad aprons announced.
Headquarters crew were servicing the shuttles, mostly running from shuttle to shuttle with fuel and oxygen trucks. Baggage crews were also filling the baggage space on the passenger compartments with everyone’s personal cubic.
All ChaoLi’s and JieMin’s family came out to the Arcadia City Shuttleport to see them off: ChaoPing and JuMing, with LingTao and JieJun; LeiTao and her husband, DaGang, and their children, XiPing and GangLi; and the twins, YanMing and YanJing.
There were lots of hugs and well wishes in both directions. They held back until everyone else was aboard. ChaoLi’s heart was in her throat as she and JieMin turned and walked out to the shuttle for Star Dancer.
As they walked to the shuttle, JieMin took ChaoLi’s arm. She looked at him and he pointed up into the sky. Sunlight glinted off the string of hyperspace liners orbiting Arcadia every ninety minutes. Seven tiny glinting jewels, strung out across the blue of the sky.
As they approached the shuttle, a robot walked down the short stairs from the passenger container. The first robot to set foot on Arcadia. He walked up to ChaoLi.
“Hello, ma’am. I am Bob.”
“Well, hello, Bob. Thank you again for all your help.”
“Not a problem at all, ma’am. I enjoy being useful.”
Bob looked around, at the shuttles and the hyperspace headquarters complex.
“I am somewhat at a loss to know how best to find Mr. Diakos.”
“Do you know where he lives, Bob? His address?”
“Yes, ma’am. And I have located it on a map of Arcadia City. Should I walk there?”
“Overlay your map with the map of bus routes for Arcadia City, Bob. I think you can take a bus to get much closer, and walk from there.”
Bob hesitated for perhaps two seconds.
“I see, ma’am. The bus stop should be right there,” Bob said, pointing, “on the other side of these buildings.”
“That’s correct.”
“Excellent. Thank you, ma’am. And good spacing to you both.”
With that, Bob set off for a path through the hyperspace headquarters complex.
JieMin watched him go, then turned to ChaoLi.
“Will Arcadia be the same when we return?” he asked.
“No,” ChaoLi said, looking after Bob.
She turned to JieMin.
“Nothing will.”
When they got on the shuttle, there was a robot at the door that scanned their communicators and checked them against the manifest.
“This is the shuttle for Star Dancer,” he said. “You may take a seat anywhere.”
There were fifty or so crew aboard, both men and women, and half a dozen robots stood across the back wall. ChaoLi and JieMin took seats up front, by the forward display, next to David Bolton and Chen YongLin. Once they were aboard, the robot at the door shut the hatch and checked it.
The robot at the door turned to everyone in the shuttle.
“We will be taking off soon,” he said. “We will have gravity from lift and acceleration until we approach Star Dancer. At that point, we will lose gravity and be in freefall for approximately two days. It is my understanding that for many of you this will be your first time in zero gravity, all your training having been completed on the planet in simulation.
“You should have a bag ready in case you lose the contents of your stomach when we go into zero gravity. Having those contents floating about the cabin would otherwise be unpleasant for your fellow crew members and passengers. I will announce when this period approaches. We also have medications aboard that can help if you have problems.
“During the two days we are in freefall, you will all likely need to void your bladder and bowels. There are facilities aboard for that purpose. It resembles a regular toilet, but operates more like a vacuum cleaner. We stand ready to assist you in the use of these facilities. You should not be embarrassed to request our assistance, as we have no interest in human biological functions other than to be of assistance to you.
“We will also be distributing meals and drinks during these two days. Their content and packaging has been designed for use in freefall. We can instruct you if you have any difficulties in their use.
“To use your time most effectively while restricted to the shuttle, you will find that we will maintain contact with the planetary network. All the entertainment and business materials and resources you are familiar with will remain available during this period. We ask that you remain belted into your seats during this period, particularly while sleeping, so you do not float about the cabin.
“If you need anything, at any time, please do not hesitate to ask any of us. My name is Tom.
“We will now begin our takeoff procedures. I hope you enjoy your flight.”
With that, Tom and the other six robots took seats and strapped themselves in. The speakers started playing the tower communications channel, and they could hear the pilots of the shuttles checking in with Arcadia Air Traffic Control.
As Star Dancer would be the first hyperspace liner to depart Arcadia, their shuttle would be the first one off the pad.
“Shuttle Jixing-14 to Arcadia Control.”
“Go ahead, Jixing-14.”
“Jixing-14 requesting takeoff clearance and departure clearance to Star Dancer. Over.”
“Roger, Jixing-14. You have clearance for takeoff on a departure heading of nine-zero to Star Dancer. Heading nine-zero. Traffic to the north does not intersect your flight path. Over.”
“Roger, Arcadia Control. Takeoff and heading nine-zero to Star Dancer. Traffic to the north does not intersect. Jixing-14 out.”
ChaoLi noted it was a robot’s voice for shuttle Jixing-14.
She wondered how long it would be before it was a robot’s voice for Arcadia Control.
ChaoLi watched the takeoff in her heads up display, accessing the shuttlepad viewing cameras at the hyperspace headquarters complex. It was strange feeling the takeoff as the shuttle shook around her, while watching it from the outside.
The sensation was that of riding on a very fast elevator. She watched the shuttle clear the pad and head east out over the southern part of Arcadia City. The forward display, in the upper part of her vision, showed the view forward, and she watched as the city fell below and behind them.
Then they were out over the ocean. The shuttle continued to gain altitude quickly even as it flew east.
Five minutes later, she watched a second shuttle take off, then a third. Six in all, at five minute intervals, the shuttles headed to orbit to meet up with their parent ship. The shuttles themselves were each part of their ship’s complement of four, to be used to load and unload ships at their destinations.
Each of the hyperspace liners, plus Star Runner – which would be leaving in another week or ten days, once she was unloaded and loaded – were heading to different planets, each running its own route. Between them, they would hit every one of the twenty other colony planets.
Rob Milbank, Valerie Laurent, and Jean Dufort had by now contacted all the remaining colonies. All had eventually signed up for the trade agreement, some with more handholding and persuasion than others.
So JieMin’s routing of the seven liners had been designed to cover all the colonies, getting each of them some immediate benefit to reinforce their joining the trade consortium.
Of course, each colony would not receive imported goods from all the other colonies at once. All would get Arcadia tea and spices. Some would get imports from other, earlier planets on their route. They would all have the opportunity to export their own goods, though, and sooner or later they would all see all the other colonies’ goods showing up in their imported items.
The ultimate solution to the problem of being able to send anything anywhere would come with the hub and spoke system ChaoLi envisioned, which would have to wait for enough hyperspace liners to be available and the construction of the interstellar freight transfer stations on Arcadia and Aruba.
Two years, perhaps. In two years it would all be in place.
In the meantime, everybody got something from some other planet, and the other planets’ products would gradually move around the trading network.
Sooner or later, everybody would be importing everyone else’s export goods.
The forward display showed a truly amazing sight. All seven hyperspace liners, strung out in a line, as the shuttle came up from behind and below them. They were trading velocity for altitude now, and the shuttle was slowing as it approached the front of the line, passing under each in turn.
Apparent gravity in the cabin was only a portion of one gravity now, and dropping, but they were not yet in freefall.
Tom stood up and faced the cabin.
“Prepare for free fall. Less than five minutes now,” he said, and then sat down and belted himself back into his seat.
People sought out their plastic bags in case they got sick.
A warning bell sounded, and then they were weightless. A couple of people got sick. ChaoLi swallowed hard a couple of times, then imagined herself swimming, and she was OK.
She looked over to JieMin. He didn’t seem discomfited very much.
“Like swimming,” ChaoLi said.
“Yes. Of course.”
David Bolton, on JieMin’s other side didn’t look particularly discomfited by zero gravity, but YongLin looked a little green. She closed her eyes.
“Like swimming,” she said. “Oh, that works. Thank you, ChaoLi.”
It was another twenty minutes of a thruster push here and a thruster push there before the pilot hit his mark and latched onto the Star Dancer. That was the last piece of the puzzle for her captain.
“Star Dancer, ready to depart Arcadia. Thrusters at full power.”
ChaoLi felt quite a bit of gravity back into her seat as the Star Dancer left orbit. That was initially, as a dozen JATO bottles were used to get the big ship moving. Time to the hyperspace limit was highly dependent on how fast you could build velocity early on.
When the JATO bottles had burned out, the ship continued thrusting at a lower level as it steadily built velocity and altitude.
Using the bathroom was interesting. ChaoLi did ask for assistance. She had had five children and any body modesty around medical professionals had been lost long ago, much less around robots.
JieMin similarly asked for assistance, as he seemed to treat his body as just the thing he rode around in. Like a vehicle. If the mechanic wanted to look under the hood, that was fine.
Most of the crew did not request assistance, as they had all had crew training before being assigned to Star Dancer, and had used identical equipment before, albeit not in zero gravity.
The meals were palatable if not particularly memorable. The drinks, though, were very refreshing.
Two days to the hyperspace limit was what it was, and everybody tried to make the best of it.
ChaoLi spent most of the time doing paperwork. She also had one business call with Naomi Thompson, just to make sure things were going fine.
Finally the time came for transition to hyperspace. JieMin was very interested in this part. It was his first personal experience of what he had postulated so long ago.
As it was, it was nearly a non-event. The captain of Star Dancer announced the transition, and then announced it was over. The front viewscreen went blank. That was about it.
JieMin, though, selected the unblanked view of hyperspace in his heads-up display.
“Hmm.”
“What, JieMin?” ChaoLi asked.
“It looks nothing like I imagined.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s formless. Your eye keeps trying to see something that isn’t there, which is disturbing to some people, I guess. But it’s featureless.”
“Are you surprised?”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought I would see something, but it’s just too alien.”
The real benefit of the transition to hyperspace was that Star Dancer could use the screw-drive. As the ship’s rotation increased, gravity came back slowly. When it got to a quarter gravity, Tom stood up at the front of the cabin.
“We now have enough gravity for people to find their way to their cabins aboard Star Dancer,” he said. “You should have your interim assignments in your mail accounts. These will be upgraded in the next few days as the interior spaces of Star Dancer are fitted out. Your baggage will be delivered to your interim cabin within the hour.
“Please let us know if you need any assistance.”
With that, Tom and one of the other robots opened the cabin hatches in the front of the passenger container, on either side of the forward display.
ChaoLi and JieMin got up from their seats and queued at the hatchway. While they were in line, they accessed their mail accounts and found their assignment as well as a map of the ship indicating where their cabin assignment was and how to get there.
They stepped across the hatchway into Star Dancer and followed the map down the corridors.