secret history II: of how the fairies came to be


III: Spaceflight Programmes


Centaurs had always been retiring creatures. It was true, they were things of the plains in the golden days of the fairies' peaceful coexistence with the humans. But it had never suited them. Now that they lived underground, there was no need for social discomfort to bow before physical necessity. For of course, they would have chosen the forests or the mountains, if they could have, but centaurs' hooves did not take kindly to such places.

Living in the great road-plains had brought them into contact with all the races and tribes. Such regular inter-mingling with others, coupled with the centaurs' instinctual brooding and intellectuality, resulted in a race of technological superbiage. If you wanted anything invented or improved, go to the centaurs. But their vital role in the Underground civilization had never removed their basic nature.

But a centaur in a covert operation? Now that was something.


Aquinas' softscreen showed a schematic of a Saturn V rocket, rapidly filling with lines going here and there showing all the parts. "Now look. To escape the Earth's gravity well with a chemical rocket, one needs a ninety percent mass fraction. Nine parts fuel to one part payload by mass. A typical elf weighs about thirty kilograms. A hermetic space suit with complementary life-support systems, rad-hardened protection and semi-closed mass loops, about twenty kilograms. So the fuel required is about 450 kilograms, 480 to include local maneuvering thrust. But once you get up into space? Weightless." Aquinas laughed to himself, but Lotus and Nigel did not get the joke. It was not a normal thing for a fairy to know the human civilization well; then again, Aquinas was not a normal centaur.

"450 kilos of combustible to get a fairy into space?" Lotus wondered. "No wonder the humans never got any real space programme off the ground."

"Of course, that's with chemical rockets, hydrogen-lox – liquid oxygen – burners, etcetera. Childrens' toys. What they don't have is cold fusion." Aquinas' softscreen rebooted its monitor, putting up a new display of an elf with three fuel tanks strapped on its back. "This is new stuff, invented just over two hundred and fifty years ago. With fusion fuel we can jack the mass fraction all the way down to sixty. Six parts deuterium-helium-lithium colloid gel to four parts payload. Our fairy now needs about 75 kilograms of fusile – fusion-able – material. With a Moonbelt setup, about 12 kilograms by weight."

The two elves and the centaur were huddled in Nigel's living room, the only supporters of Aquinas' crazy scheme to send elves into space. It had all gone to the chutes after Aquinas' less-than-satisfactory presentation, just over a week ago. Commander Root's outburst had caused many to side with him, and those who hadn't were none too keen either to join a space programme less than a month old. They had accused him of birthing a premature technology – never mind that the Mud Men had sent their men into space since the day of airflight. Those Mud Men were stupid anyway, stupid worthless waterbags depriving the People of their rightful habitat. The racism that had began since the days of the Artemis wars had long since escalated into a hard shell of aloofness, resentment and xenophobia, the way a man might regard the ants joining and ruining his picnic.

Of course, the space programme suffered too from the stigma of being associated with the Mud Men.

"The best part of it is, the fusile residue is also combustible. Worth about an extra hundred kilograms of ordinary combustible chemical fuel. So there's no problem with getting a fairy into space."

"What about propulsion systems? Wouldn't fuel be worthless without a rocket to burn it?" Nigel was more than a little skeptical himself, though he did not know it, but he told himself that he was pushing Aquinas to think faster through the scheme.

"Well, the necessary machinery has been in place for millenia, actually. Our current flight systems are perfectly capable of entering space. The Hummingbird models are rocket-plane hybrids, made practical by the use of fissile, then fusile energy sources. It would take just a bit of modification to add in vacuum navigation, nothing more than a week to two engines. The basic component of escaping Earth's gravity well has long since been in place. You should remember that flying in itself is simply resisting the Earth's gravity for ascending to a desired altitude. Spaceflight is nothing more than a logical extension of that."

"Why are you so keen on going up there, anyway?"

"Because, Lotus, I am discontented. I don't like how things are going here. Hear this: ' Frontiers are the forcing ground for democracy and inventiveness. In a closed world, science is strangled by patent laws and other protective measures, and technological innovation is restricted to decadent entertainment systems and the machinery of war. It is a vicious cycle, of course; only smartness can get humanity out of this trap of closure, but smartness is the very thing that has no opportunity to grow...' Like that? Maura Della, US Vice-President, quoted by Stephen Baxter, renowned science fiction writer and novelist. Both Mud Men. They have caught up quickly. Without some form of advancement, we will be swamped. We have lost the physical advantage long ago. Now, our mental advantage, the advancement given us over a million years aboveground, is quickly waning too. When they have caught up there, it will be too late for us." Aquinas stirred; a speech that had gestated for far too long in his mind was finally finding expression.

"I do not hate them, those Mud Men. They are earning the right to shed that title, too; with all their work to restore the world. They have seeded ozone formation at the Poles, reforested the barren lands of the temperates – do you know that the world has never had a larger land percentage of carbon sinks? Not even in our days did we do that. They have even rebred the long ago extinct species; there are two species viably breeding today for every species alive a millenium ago, thanks to their genetic regeneration programme. What advantage do we have left over them? We don't even have the right to remain on this planet, reclusive stowaways in its rocky belly."

Lotus was stunned. Nigel took a while and digested Aquinas' outburst. "So that is what you are trying to do? Redeem the People?"

"No, even better. I am trying to find our purpose. Far too long we have – "

Suddenly Aquinas' softscreen began glowing soft silver. It was an alert, but – "I've never seen that one before," commented Lotus, and her bewilderment was genuine. She did spend a lot of time in the Tech booth, becoming quite technologically advanced herself – though she would admit, with much shame, that it was not entirely for professional reasons that she had had this training.

"Yes, a tech alert," Aquinas said softly, as if in a dream. A nightmare, exactly. "Every time the humans make a considerable improvement in their technology." He was too preoccupied for complete sentences, punching in a sequence of commands to clear the tint and reveal the offensive piece of news.

He took a deep breath. "By the gods," he exhaled slowly.

"What is it?"

"Quantum technology." Aquinas whispered, as if he was the only one listening. "While we, living where the very surroundings were minerals, never cared about such small things. It's the obvious end result of repeated bouts of miniaturisation. But never large-scale. Never like this... Lotus, Nigel, they've discovered quantum propulsion. There's going to be no end. Something like quantum propulsion may not endanger us directly, but as their field of study deepens and widens, there will be new weapons. New construction materials. They may even discover us. And when they do," he took a deep breath, "they will most probably destroy us. And, it may be no more than what we deserve."