The crew was gathered around the oval table in the main dining hall. Some had to take up seats along the walls – the hall was designed for them to eat in shifts. There were twelve members of the crew. Euphrankes, Zins, and Aria made up the command. Ozymandes was to serve as an engineer, and as the ship's chaplain, should anyone have second thoughts, or want to talk about The Protectors, or the lore of their own planet. He took both roles very seriously, and was particularly pleased to have been chosen to be among those allowed access to the ship's log, and to be part of the communications rotation.
Euphrankes stood at the head of the table. He had a seat, but he could no more have sat down in it at that moment than he could have flown without the ship. His nerves were on edge, and his eyes were bright. If he still had doubts, they were absent from his words and his expression. He paced back and forth, studying each of those gathered.
"What we are about to do," he said at last, "has been described to me over the past few weeks as remarkable, foolish, courageous, and suicidal."
There was a smattering of nervous laughter, but there was too much possible truth in every one of the descriptions to laugh too hard.
"I prefer to think of it," Euphrankes continued, "as an aspect of destiny. Everything we are – everything we've done, studied, figured out, argued about and lived has brought us here to this moment. Together. There isn't one among you who has not contributed their part, and we haven't even left dock. Before we are done, I suspect we will all have our chances to explore whether we are courageous, mad, foolish, or a strange combination of all of the above.
"Everything we experience will be new. We have studies and theories, but in the end, that is all we have until we pass the Second Veil. Once we are in space, where we believe it to be a vacuum without atmosphere, that is when we will begin to actually learn. From that moment forward, we will observe, record, and experience facts. We have to be quick and clever. We have to be able to assimilate what we find and encounter, and learn from it on the fly. There is no experience to fall back on, and in many cases we may discover there are no second chances.
"That said, if there are any among you having second thoughts about making this voyage, now is the time to speak. I will ask this question one more time, when we are moored in Urv. After that, we are committed, every one of us, to this adventure. The very future of our planet may depend on what we find, how we react to it, report it, and adapt. Are you ready for that responsibility?"
There was a subdued murmur of assent. Every face was serious, but Euphrankes saw his own eagerness to be underway mirrored on every face. He had studied and worried over the choices for the crew, and now, seeing them assembled and ready to fly, he smiled. They were the best of the best. All of those he'd most wanted to have with him had come, and the few who he'd not counted on, like the young priest Ozymandes, had proven invaluable already.
Oz, as they'd begun to call him after only a single day of working with him, had a very quick mind when it came to mechanical engineering. He also had years of practice drawing, recording, and "ritualizing" maintenance procedures. Since the Tangent was new and many of her systems would be tested for the first time under fire, it was good to have someone along with a background of and tendency toward careful, practical procedure.
Zins would serve as navigator, officially, but Euphrankes knew the man could be counted on in any capacity. He wasn't an engineer, but he could fly an airship, and he could lead. When things got tough and it was impossible to be in enough places at one time to keep an emergency under control, Zins would be another version of himself. It would also be good to have him for conversation, once they were alone in space. They shared dreams and visions, and Zins had known Euphrankes' father.
They'd also ended up with a good mix of men and women. They didn't necessarily want to encourage deep relationships between crew members, but Euphrankes had Aria, and he knew that if they'd brought only men, or only women, eventually trouble would ensue. There had to be some semblance of normalcy, and there was just no way to gauge how far they'd be traveling, or how long they'd be gone.
Food was somewhat of a problem, but this time it was Bonymede who'd come through with a solution. In a chamber near the rear of the ship he'd rigged a second dome, not as large as that they used to navigate on the bridge, but sufficient to catch light from suns and stars. Rigged up around that chamber were powerful lights, aimed at an array of narrow rows of planters.
One of the mysteries of The Protectors was where the first seeds had come from, and how the equipment they used in the cities to drill into the planet's surface to find and sift the proper soil and chemical mixtures to grow the food that kept them alive. There wasn't much variety to it, but it sustained, and Bonymede had created a miniature garden in the image of one of the larger plantations. He had soil, and enough chemicals to enrich it when necessary.
Cyril had presented them with one of the miraculous distillation machines that created the water they drank. No one had even begun to fathom how these worked. The cities recycled everything. Water, waste, and air were reconstituted by great machines. Certain chemicals drawn up by the same drills that produced their soil were shifted over to the distillation plants, combined with the city's waste, filtered and distilled, and provided a seemingly endless stream of fresh water.
What Cyril had given them was a very small version of one of the distillers, and several tanks of chemicals. Bonymede had tied it all together with the ship's waste management system, and – by all indications – they could produce more water and food than they should be able to use, allowing them to store and hoard supplies. All of it was miraculous – Oz's word for it. Every possible trouble that Euphrankes' fertile imagination could invent, someone on the crew, or in the cities, or at The Compound, found a solution for.
"I am proud to fly with you," Euphrankes said at last. "Every one of you. I spoke a few moments ago about destiny. Look around you at all we have created. Think about the things that stood between us and success, and how this crew – this small group of individuals – grew into a single powerful force to overcome them."
He stood for a moment as his words sank in, and then went on.
"Okay, everyone to your posts. Strap in. Get the lines cleared, and be certain the ground crews are ready. We will launch for Urv in ten minutes."
Without another word, he turned and headed back up toward the bridge. The others rose quickly, glad to have a purpose, and glad to have a few moments to think, not only about what Euphrankes had said, but about the short journey to come, and the much longer one in the near future.
None of them said it, but they were all proud to serve under Euphrankes. Even those who'd been with Zins before, or who'd never served on a crew of any kind. His enthusiasm was infectious, and his confidence that they were doing the right thing inspired them.
They spread out through the ship, setting controls and releasing moorings. Slyphie and Bonymede slowly decompressed Freethion into the membranes surrounding them and very gently they lifted to the length of the few remaining restraints. Engineers below decoupled the airlocks, dropping back through and sealing the locks behind themselves, glancing up through protective helmets at the bottom of the Tangent's huge hull.
The ship was easily twice the size of the Vector or any other airship they'd manufactured in the past. It was long and sleek, less oval and more cylindrical. The hull was reinforced by Imperium straps around the outside of the already nearly impenetrable Imperium hull. Every inch of the ship glistened, and as it pulled away from its moorings and drifted up toward the Second Veil, those below thought it was like a great, silver star in the sky.
Then the ship leveled off, spun lazily, and started off toward Urv, gaining speed. Euprhankes put the ship and the crew through their paces, intent on shaking out any bugs before they reached their destination.
In only a few moments, The Outpost shrank to the size of a small child's toy, and then winked out of sight.