Chapter Four

"Ish." Bosun Riles swung her seat forty-five degrees to face her new Bridge 'Ox'.

"Yes?"

"We're coming up on the Ryan Asteroid Field. I'd like you to take a scow and place auto-miners. Feel like doing some real piloting?"

I thought my chest would explode with excitement! I would be a command pilot! Well, true, it was a microcosmic command, but I would be pilot of a vessel and that was considered a command position, no matter how lowly. Of course, I'd be 'commanding' robots and not humans, but for a young man dedicated to spacing, a cargo scow was better than nothing.

"Processor-central will notify you when the boat is ready. Kabila's on her way to the bridge now, so when she arrives you can return to your quarters and prepare for extraship voyage."

"Thank you, Riles."

She turned her pilot's seat back to her array of monitor panels floating over her work surface. "Sure, Ish. Don't blow it."

"I'll certainly try not to," I answered. Did she think I was going to deliberately screw up?

As soon as Shanti Kabila relieved me I made my way to my pad. I sat in front of my processor screen. With no one to observe me, I navigated the database until I found the manual for the XA23 Cargo Scow. Just for review, you understand. I had flown the thing for hours and hours in the simulator at the Academy, of course. And the simulator was real in every sense but the most important: you wouldn't die after a mistake in the sim.

My proctor at the creche had told me many times that "a good spacer never takes any command for granted." Of course, that was his duty, as a proctor, more or less to be a father-figure, a role model of exemplary spacer behavior. Silas Warner was his name. I hadn't thought of him for years, but as I reviewed the control panels of the boat his image seemed to hover over my shoulder, nodding approvingly.

The scow, like all machines, was Intelligent, with a capital I. All machines were, to the degree necessary to perform their functions. The complexity or duration of these tasks varied, obviously, so a simple surface maintenance 'bot might spend its service life of a hundred years doing nothing but scrubbing and repairing carbonfiber structures; a spaceship might spend a hundred years or more processing terabytes per second and executing millions of complex tasks. So why are humans in space at all?

It is the age-old debate, hearkening back to the very foundations of space exploration, centuries ago on Earth: robots or men?

Robots have nearly every advantage in space: they do not require complex lifesupport systems, only minimal temperature/radiation/moisture protections. They have virtually unlimited life spans, decade after decade of function without rest or relief. Certainly they are subject to accident, wear and malfunction, but if they failed it was only money lost, not a human life, unique and never to be seen again when claimed by death. The only quality robots lacked to be perfect space explorers was the one quality at which humans excelled: ambition. Robots' only motivation is their programming. If the programmers did not anticipate a situation, the robot was incapable of dealing with it. Despite the complexity of current robots, no one has understood how to make a robot curious, independent, or greedy.

I am not being cynical when I list greed as one of the uniquely human qualities that has sent humanity across the Milky Way. The House of penDragon was spawned in greed. It was the acquisitive nature of the Founding House Captains that sent probes, then explorers, then colonists, then great interstellar clipper ships, bearing information and goods and culture everywhere within their reach. Humanity will breed. We are organic, we are animal, it is our nature. As humans populate, then over-populate, we need the space. While we have changed over the centuries, evolved and changed, like all other components of the universe, we are still animal life. If stars and galaxies change and evolve, why not we, the products of those stars and galactic forces? After all, we are stardust, literally.

And the universe is big enough to accommodate us; we haven't even begun to infect our galaxy to its limits, so why consider a future lying a billion years away? At this point in my career we had encountered a few other planets with Earth-like ecologies, but none contained species with culture—the ultimate definition of humanity: an animal with culture. Some worlds were closed to exploitation because the Exploration and Settlement Directorate deemed them too important to the future to be exploited in the present, but there were a lot of planets available, when you include those amenable to terraforming, so few Houses grumbled when the Directorate closed a system to exploitation.

My processor chimed and a text message glowed on the virtual screen.

Scow Virtue is ready for extraship voyage.

I grabbed my voyage kit and fought myself not to run to the hanger deck. The trip seemed to take hours, although it was only minutes until I stood at the hanger entry port, which irised open when the scanner read my ID implant. The boat Virtue squatted about twenty meters away, her impulse engines glowing in warm-up mode.

Scows have an unglamorous role in space, but they are vital, nonetheless. XA23s were capable of robotic spacing (spacers never say flight), but when a pilot was available, and I certainly needed the command time, human-piloting was standard. The ship is essentially a space-worthy, self-powered container, elliptical in shape, with a wide cargo door and bay in the stern, a tiny command station in a bubble-extrusion on the dorsal bow.

(Ship surfaces are named like the surfaces of a body: dorsal=top, ventral=bottom, bow=front, stern=rear. Left and right are used for clarity, rather than the old nautical terms. Since ships are not streamlined in any way, except for gravity-well lifters, various parts' locations may be designated as proximal or distal, medial or lateral to the central axes of a ship.)

I entered through the open cargo hatch in order to inspect the load. The automining satellites had all been loaded robotically, each magnetically locked into place until dispersal. I verified that all the magnetic locks were glowing green, then entered the accessway to the cockpit.

"Close the cargo hatch," I said as I settled into the pilot's couch. A light on the virtual screen went dark. The restraints on the couch locked into place, a reassuring feeling, although after a few hours the confinement became most uncomfortable. Pressure-reducing pneumatics in the couch began a rhythmic massage to prevent injury to this fragile flesh that contains the Mind that is I.

"Odysseus Control, Virtue is ready for launch."

"Odysseus Control, roger. Virtue is ready for launch." I could not distinguish the owner of the voice. It may have been robotic.

I scanned the processor screen, saw all indicators were 'in the green'.

"Board is green. Commencing launch cycle."

"Magnetic port will be go in T-minus thirty." The rotating 'vacuum' beacon and warning klaxon started their cycles, informing anyone in the hanger they had better leave the area now if they did not wish to become a frozen corpse drifting forever in interstellar space.

I touched the control that toggled autopilot to 'off'. I would take Virtue out of the hanger under my own control. No one would expect me to give my first launch over to robot control.

"Port is clear. Virtue is go for launch. Good voyage, Ish."

"Port is clear. Virtue go. Thank you." Despite the personal wishes at the end, I still could not be certain it wasn't just the ship's processor routines that wished me a good voyage.

I nudged the control joystick with my thumb and forefinger, felt the split-second delay as the scow's control circuits processed my actions, then Virtue lifted from the hanger deck and edged forward. I was concentrating too hard to revel in the moment. I pushed the joystick forward a bit more and with the slight rushing-fluid noise of the impulse jets, the little bug-like scow seemed to scuttle forward and squirt out of the hanger bay like an ejected watermelon seed from an accomplished spitter's lips.

I was in space! The ship emerged from the schooner's shadow. I looped around and over so I could see Odysseus against the starlit background of space. My mind was brought to silence at the sight of the ship, my ship, my home in space, my village in the vacuum.

"Engage auto-navigation. Bear for Marker Point Alpha."

"Roger." The Virtue used a female voice. I could have reset the preference panel for any of a dozen possible voices, but the default choice was fine with me.

Now that the ship was autopiloting, I could relax and enjoy the view. How can I describe the universe to a planet-bound human? What words will fill that limited perception with the enormity, the sheer prolific spectacle of our galaxy?

Odysseus' route lay in the Sagittarius A arm of the galaxy, so the view out the ports was thickly packed with stars. Great gas clouds lit from within like some cosmic lampshade hung in the distance. Spacer-clones are genetically engineered to perceive a wider spectrum of light than other human-derivitives, so for me the space around me shone with jewel-like colors, every possible hue from the sickly purple of ultraviolet to the throbbing glow of infrared. The stars beamed perfect and steady, unfiltered by atmosphere, undimmed by any nearby star's light.

We were passing one of House penDragon's star systems designated SagGamma3, where we, or rather I, would release fifty robot mine/factories, which would locate, recover and process various metals and chemicals from the drifting chunks of rock and ice. Every few years a schooner would orbit close enough to send another scow to collect the products, possibly even old Ody herself. I checked the rangefinder to verify it was set to automatically detect and avoid collisions. Some jockeys like to shut that feature off when in deep space, as being unnecessary; and spacers dislike anything unnecessary. "It can't fail if it isn't onboard." Even now that comparative luxuries are a routine part of shipboard life, spacers dislike anything, with mass or without, that is not necessary. It's just something else to go wrong.

My viewpanel created a digital display of our section of space, with the Ody designated as a warm yellow dot, our destination in blue, and the Virtue in red, with a trail of small dots indicating our course, green for ahead of the ship, an arc of orange dots showing our course so far. Another window on the screen showed an image of the asteroid belt itself. Behind it, glowing like a great orange and red ball, I could make out the disk of the nearest planet, a gas giant no one had bothered to name or catalogue. Gas giants were too common to be interesting for resource development; nearly every star with a planetary system had one or two. All the frozen methane you could want for the taking. No, a far-away gas giant was useless and uninteresting, but the asteroid belt it had created sometime during the system's evolution, that had valuable metals and chemicals, even sometimes water and interesting biologicals, depending on the type of asteroids present.

I was scheduled for a six-hour voyage. Two out, two there, two back. Easy trip, just something to give the newbie a shot at piloting and evaluate my performance. Of course The ship was in constant communication with Ody's processors and voicecom was immediately available if required. The ship knew where I was and what I was doing every second, the voyage data constantly recorded and analyzed for any interesting anomalies that might increase profit or improve safety or any other aspect of penDragon interests that might find some bit of datum useful.

On schedule the field grew in size in my viewfinder, the visual display adjusting to give me an enhanced perspective of the field. If I looked out the forward canopy there was nothing to see at all, for little chunks of rock, even those ten kilometers across, don't show up so well until so close an encounter could wind up being permanent. The display condensed and processed the information to make it comprehensible at a glance. We were approaching the field from about thirty degrees below the plane of ecliptic. When we were close enough, the ship would match orbits with a reference asteroid, then accelerate so the ship was moving faster than the field itself as it orbited the double star in the distance. Then the autominers would be released periodically and begin their exploration, survey and development of the field.

Just for the experience, I brought the Virtue into position manually, just using the instruments. I used quite a bit more fuel than the ship's own processors would have, of course, but I managed to match orbit and speed on my second attempt. My reward was a message on my viewpanel: "Orbital insertion successful."

A voice crackled from the cockpit speaker, broken up by cosmic radiation.

"Good job, Ish. Now go to auto, please."

"Roger, Riles. I was about to switch over."

"Roger that, Ish. Enjoy the ride."

"Will do. Out."

"Odysseus out."

I basked in the public compliment and tapped the touchscreen stud that turned the ship over to processor control. I suddenly felt confined in the pilot couch and squirmed and twisted to try to relieve my restless muscles. I tapped the couch control to increase the stimulation/pressure relief system, thinking the feeling was caused by blood pooling in my extremities. That relieved some of the discomfort, but on and off for the next four hours the feeling would return, an almost irresistible urge to move, to be able to stand up, walk about, turn over...anything but be on my back, held like an object in a gloved hand. I think it's simply a deeply-rooted instinct against remaining immobile for too long, a need that hearkens back to our days when we were prey as often as we were predator. Even after all these eons we are still prisoners of our ape ancestors' needs.

Virtue was now moving at ten times the orbital period of the asteroid field. When the first autominer was ready, a green light glowed on my screen, the hydraulic latches on the cargo door released and the door opened. I felt a mild vibration as the first satellite was loosed from its magnetic locks. The cargo-area viewer displayed the autominer sliding on its track to the open door, then tumbling into space. The processors onboard the satellite then took over, impulse engines fired and the autominer traveled on its long voyage into the field. One by one the ship's processor launched her cargo into the field as we traveled. From time to time I could see enhanced images of some of the larger asteroids on my realtime display.

"Odysseus to Virtue."

"Virtue here."

"Sensors...(static)...high-energy...(static)...on...(static)...stand-by course correction...(static)...".

I concluded that Ody was trying to tell me a stream of cosmic radiation had been detected in my area and the processor was implementing a course correction to avoid it. I touched my control screen to see what Virtue's own instruments detected and immediately the screen displayed a powerful stream of charged particles crossing my course. The processor was calculating a new route, the figures displayed in a sidebar legend faster than I could follow. Suddenly, all around the ship a purple-ish glow began, rippling in ghostly waves as the ship's hull encountered the outer edge of this river of radiation. There was nothing for me to do, since the ship's processor could handle such situations far faster than I could. I waited, unconsciously holding my breath for a long moment.

The auxiliary maneuver jets kicked in, causing the Virtue to lurch violently right and ventral, angling the ship below the margins of the charged particle stream. The g forces pressed me against the couch, the restraints cut into my limbs, I felt blood pooling in my belly and legs, then surging into my head, causing me to feel as if my brain would crack my skull open.

The violent thrust-vector changes caused the ship to roll and change attitude rapidly. I focused my vision on my datascreens, avoiding the sight of stars whirling about outside the cockpit ports. The processors were working at capacity. One datascreen window indicated no contact with the Ody's processors, so the ship had to rely on its own sensors and data. The eerie glow of charged particles surrounded the ship. I heard the faint sizzle of interference in the processor circuits as the ionized atmosphere of the ship interfered with the electron streams the processor used. A large trickle of sweat ran down my forehead and dripped from the end of my nose, the first indication that my brain was beginning to appreciate the nature of my situation.

Although we were leaving the stream at full emergency power, this river of charged particles was wide and deep. Small crackles of energy roved over the Virtue's hull, like miniature lightning strikes. The cockpit was filled with sizzling sounds, the dataviewers started to break up, displaying only random pixels of light. There was a loud bang as a particularly strong static charge leapt from the ship's hull to contact some tiny piece of space debris. The entire cockpit went dark, while the ship began to roll slowly to the right, dead in space.

I was in a completely disabled scow, two shiphours from any assistance, drifting in space. Ody's sensors would have great difficulty locating me without any signals emanating from Virtue and the interference of the particle stream.

I was literally on my own.