"Hmm." The Rahlicx peered at the holographic tank display one more time, as if wanting to reassure himself that the facts hadn't changed before making his report. "No, the Breoll blockade ships are not moving position. I think that they might think that stopping here might have been a ploy to draw them out and in."
"They'd have to move eventually, if we just stayed put," Michael put in. "I mean, if they actually wanted to get us. Do you think that they would try to come in and take us out by force?"
"I'm not sure," the guard captain said with a predatory expression. "Kaalto may be little but we're fierce. They wouldn't want to invade us if they really expected us to resist, and the mood here is pretty resistant." Isabel flinched slightly when the word 'invasion' was mentioned, as if it reminded her of something that she couldn't quite remember. "On the other hand, they might try to move in just enough to put us under siege. There are trade lines that we're reasonably dependent on, and we wouldn't fare as well trying to break the siege out in open space."
"Will they try that within the next day or two?" Lonnie asked. "In your opinion. I mean, nobody can predict the future perfectly, but..."
"No, not until they're pretty sure that it's not just a ploy, which could take four or five," he said. "Our actual plan will probably surprise them - at least, I hope so."
"Alright," Max said. "Is there anything else of importance to report?"
"No, sir. Sanctuary and the homeworld have ceased communications, because the Breoll are close enough that they might be able to overhear any signals. Inside, things are quiet - there is no sign of any adverse reaction to your arrival."
"Well, thanks," Liz told him. "I guess we'll leave you to your duty."
"Thank you, sir." The officer gave an odd alien salute, but nobody tried to send it back to him, and he didn't really expect one. The group of Roswellian expatriates filed out of the orbital and system defense office and gathered in a rough circle.
"Okay," Alex said. "What do we want to do now?"
"Hmm." Ava looked back and forth, but nobody seemed to have an idea immediately. They were in a mid-sized corridor in among the government and armed services offices, and it wasn't really a place that anybody wanted to stay, so without anybody leading the way, they all started to drift off towards the doors by which they'd entered that section. Quickly the circle broke apart and reformed as three lines, of three, three, and four people.
"I actually want to go and see this concourse, since I haven't already been," Maria pointed out. "Max, Liz, would it be a terrible bore for you guys to go again?"
"No," Liz said, just at the same moment as Max put in a "Kind of," and they both laughed after realizing that they'd contradicted each other. "Umm, you can go with Maria and M... and anyone else who wants to go," Max told her. "Or, I'll come along too, if you really want. Didn't figure that we had to be inseperable though."
"Don't come with unless you really want to," she told him with a big smile, and a kiss. "Is it going to be just a girls' thing? Michael, there's really some fun stuff that I think that you'd like."
"How about... I'll go, but not stay with the girls," Michael suggested. "Along with any other guys who want to tag along. I have this sneaking suspicion that we'll be interested in different things."
And that was the plan that was settled on - all five girls went, (including Ava, who had also seen the shopping district the day before, but didn't mind going again. Max and Rath were the only holdouts from the guy's group.
"Okay, so do you want to do something for male bonding, or just let me wander on my own?" Rath growled at him.
"Umm - wander away," Max said, and then started to reconsider tagging along with Alex, Michael, and Kyle.
He ended up going back out to the ship by himself instead. The door responded to his handprint, which was nice, and nobody but the engineer was inside, and he seemed to be in the middle of some involved procedure with the engines, didn't need any help, and didn't want to talk or anything.
And he didn't want to sit in his and Liz's room without Liz - he'd be spending enough time there, and headed back into the outpost.
And tried to find the other guys on the concourse, which took about an hour and a half.
#
"Come on, Michael, this is important," Maria insisted, glaring at her reflection in the mirror.
"Okay, fine." Michael looked up from the little handheld computer hookup and considered her. "You look really hot. Absolutely does not make your butt look too big or anything."
That was obviously not the right things to say, because the glare was suddenly transferred from the mirror to Michael himself. "I didn't even ask about my butt."
Michael squirmed slightly under her fierce regard. "But - but you would have, right?"
"Maybe, but not..." She was about to huff into a huge temper tantrum, and then managed to deflater herself slightly with difficulty. "So you weren't just trying to reassure me because you did think..."
"No, really I wasn't," he insisted, getting up and putting his arms around her. "Just - well, sorry, it was the wrong thing to say at that moment, and I'm sorry. Okay?"
"As long as I know it was coming from a good place," she admitted. "Sorry... I guess all of this homesickness stuff is making me pretty irritable." Michael managed to avoid commenting on that one. "Well, what about you, what are you going to wear to the club?" She considered herself in the mirror once again. "Oooh, I still need to accessorize."
"Oh, right." Actually, Michael had to admit that she'd probably fit in better at the club if she didn't show up exactly like she was right now - especially the barefoot part, but experience had taught him that 'accessorizing' was something that he didn't want to get too close to when Maria was doing it. Fortunately, that might distract her from his own plans to just show up in a white wifebeater and his black jeans. He sat back down and made approving noises whenever she asked a question that it seemed safe to agree to, all the while thinking that 'really hot' was probably an understatement. She had settled on a dark blue skirt, probably a 'miniskirt' by the book definitions, (the ones that hadn't been updated since the miniskirt heyday of the sixties at least,) but wasn't particularly short or tight. In fact it was definitely on the loose side, sort of flowy, and had a tendency to rise a little bit depending on the air currents, which was definitely sexy. Paired with this was a long-sleeved red top, sort of tight with a v-neck. The overall effect was scorching.
Her hair was a bit disappointing, though he wouldn't have said that to her in those words. He'd never been a big fan of the french twist updo, and even though this particular version of the style had something to recommend it, he would still have had to take off points for it - if he was actually assigning points, that was. Wondering if he was nuts for daring so much, he got up to stand next to her again as she was checking her two-inch hoop earrings, and breathed. "Let me try something, okay?"
"Umm, sure - but we're supposed to meet them in five minutes, so nothing that I'd have to dress again for, and... wait a second, either you're not dressed yet, or - you're just wearing that?" There was a second's pause as Maria considered. "It's not horrible I guess, but..."
"No, no undressing you - yet," Michael said, choosing his moment to distract her. With a wave, her hair was freed from the french twist and fell straight back behind her. The effect was simple and yet dramatic, Michael thought, with the mid-brown hair, (close to Maria's natural shade he thought, though it was still a bit hard to tell,) sparkling just a little even in the plain light of the bedroom. "What do you think?"
"Hmm... the twist was that bad?" she asked, considering her straightened hair critically.
"Umm... I can put it back like that if you want," he volunteered after a moment. "And put on something nicer for you."
"No, that's alright, on both counts." She rose up onto tiptoes in her black boots to kiss him. "The hair's pretty, a nice change at least, though I hope that Liz didn't go for the same things, since it's pretty close to her usual 'do. And those clothes are fine, you look very handsome and just a bit dangerous." Another kiss. "There's something a bit familiar about the ensemble, though I can't quite put my finger on it. Like I saw it on tv somewhere."
"Probably not too important," Michael said. "Let's go."
#
Their arrival at Prianus caused quite a stir. Firstly, the fact that all of them looked completely human, even the hybrids, had some of the regulars talking about whether it was a good makeup job or a batch of new quarterbreed/purebred earthling immigrants, or what. (Very few of them had heard about the real reasons for their ship's landing at Kaalto.) And then, there were the relatively 'authentic' earth clubbing clothes, especially on the girls, some of whom would have been nervous about wearing such outfits into a real nightclub back on Earth. But here, they were guaranteed to be safe, nobody else really knew where the bounds of propriety and convention fell back on the mother planet at this point in time, and it seemed unlikely that anyone in the more liberal Rahlicx society would condemn them for wearing suggestive clothing. The guys also attracted some attention in their 'impressively realistic' duds, and the ones who were partnered generally didn't mind their ladies showing off in a situation like this, confident that nobody would be going off with a stranger - well, except maybe Lonnie, but she was free to do so if she wanted, and more than competent to take care of herself in any situation that didn't require the intervention of an available bodyguard.
Liz and Max went up to the bar first thing, and tried the 'diet pepsee', which tasted more like a mix between a coke, a root beer, and grape juice - but Liz liked it a lot, and Max ended up switching to cold water. "So, are you going to want to dance with me?" he asked in her ear, as the sound system blasted unrecognizable pop-technoish music at them.
"What... do I even have to ask?" Liz said back. "Would have thought that you wouldn't be able to wait to get me out onto the floor - especially in this little number." Liz had managed to contrive a kind of a light gray bodysuit, which stretched and clung to her legs, her hips, and her torso, fitting closely around her ankles, wrists, and neck. Max couldn't deny to himself that the prospect of Liz moving up against him, wearing that, was sorely tempting. "I thought so," she replied to the look on his face. "So the only question is - do we start with a fast number - or a slow dance?"
Isabel and Alex were already out on the floor, and starting to get naughty in public. Ava, Rath, Maria, and a few strangers actually cheeres as the two of them danced very close, fondling each other's bottoms, fronts, and Alex stroking Isabel's smooth thighs below the hem of her short black leather dress. (Well, not real leather, it was an alien facsimile that looked and felt just like real leather, which was more practical and less cruel.) Max just turned away, trying to pretend as if he didn't notice any of the commotion, and Liz giggled, knowing that he was having difficulty with his darling sister making a spectacle of herself this way, but didn't really feel like he could pitch a fit any more - after all, he and Liz may not have acted like that in public, but that was about the only thing that she and Alex were doing that he hadn't...
The whole group had a great time - meeting up with Neil, who had indeed been allowed to come so that he could meet his 'special friends' just passing through, and a few people that Neil knew from classes and work details. Kyle flirted outrageously with one of these acquaintances, a pretty hybrid girl with bright silvery hair called Lyzed, and she ended up flirting back, and taking him out on a tour of the dance floor. Lonnie was more reserved about things, (despite the semi-transparent black negligee outfit she had worn,) but eventually got talked into having a friendly drink by a tall, dark, and kinduv handsome alien man.
Most of the partnered girls got offers for 'cutting in', and a few of the guys, but few of them took strange suitors up on the offer. The second time it happened to Liz, she got an odd flash from the green-skinned man making the offer, a sensation of rampant lust that was both cheerfully cruel and that he didn't seem to be trying to disguise. She had to fight off a case of the creeps even after he had quite willingly gone away and left them alone.
"You know, I didn't even pay much attention to the decor," Kyle commented as he, Lonnie, Max, Liz, Michael, and Maria headed back towards their suites. (Alex, Isabel, Ava, and Rath had wanted to stay, but promised that they wouldn't be up too long.)
"Yeah, it wasn't as outrageous as anything I was expecting from the Crashdown," Liz admitted. "Mostly like a real American nightclub - like that one that we went to back in Dallas, remember?" She paused, working out that Max was the only one who had both been with her there and was present now. Everybody else had been stocking up on food supplies and other necessities during the Dallas stopover of their road trip, while Max, Liz, Isabel, Alex, and Ava had gone to check out a mysterious sensation about the club, which had turned out to hold the first clue towards finding Christin - and escaping Kivar's pursuit by leaving Earth. "Well, it reminded me of that place - except that the pictures on the wall were a little over the top - all those replica photographs of celebrities from just about every historical period back to the 1910's at least, and famous places all around the world."
"The fact that some of the lights were little glowing earth-balls was a bit weird too," Michael pointed out. "But I'm glad that we went."
"Yeah," Lonnie said in a quiet tone.
#
Ship's personal log.
Nobody was really happy to be awake this morning when Christin rousted us all out of our suites, saying that takeoff was in fifteen minutes and everybody had better bring ourselves and whatever we wanted to take along. I pretty much took her at her word, (well, except for the implication that they'd actually leave without some of us if we were a few minutes late,) pulled on a few clothes, gathered up my clothes and other essentials, plus the few souvenirs that I'd gotten down at the concourse, and spent the next eight or nine minutes helping Isabel pack up her own much more extensive shopping and convincing her that she really didn't need to get freshened up now, that everybody would be able to use the on-suite bathrooms back on board ship once we were there. I think it was actually more like half an hour before we were really set and all aboard, but that wasn't too bad under the circumstances I think, and possibly what Christin was hoping for when she said fifteen minutes. (If she'd allowed half an hour, it would probably have taken 50 minutes at least.)
We were rising out of the atmosphere by the time I actually heard anything about why the departure had been so sudden - actually, I'd just gotten out of the shower and was looking for Isabel, and she was with Max, asking Christin that very question.
"Basically, we saw one of the Breeolyn ships, a pretty tough cruiser, leaving its position and warping over here towards Kaltonin. After a bit of hurried discussion, the system defense commander and I agreed that if we moved our departure up as much as possible, we'd be well able to enter Warp ourselves without any real chance that they'd intercept us inside the gravity well, and that seemed a prudent move."
"Hmm... yeah, better not to let that ship get into the vicinity of the colony, where it could play cat and mouse with us, while we were still around," Isabel admitted. "So, did we make it in time?"
"Well, let's see." Christin pulled up a computer display on the wall and looked at some readings. "Estimated time to warp space transit, nineteen nimins. And, based on the best estimates from the Kaalto warp sensors, it'll be twice that before the enemy arrive." She smiled. "We're laughing. They won't even try to follow us through hyperspace, especially once they see that we're heading towards the interference zone, and won't know at first what we've got up our sleeves."
"In that case, you might not have hurried us quite that much," Max put in, but from the tone of his voice, that was a joke - he understood about the need to be better safe than sorry in a situation like this. Anything might have slowed us down getting out of the solar system. That was about when Isabel noticed me, and Max went off to find Liz, and the five of us ended up sitting in the ship's lounge watching our progress on computer diagrams of the projected course, waiting until we were safely away.
"So, one thing I thought of - umm, recently, but couldn't find a good time to ask down on Kaalto," Isabel put in. "What sort of holidays are there in... in Antarian society, or the others nearby? Do they vary much from planet to planet?"
"Oh, quite a lot," Christin said with a smile. "And they get figured in several different calendars, which makes things confusing. Let's see..."
"Actually, that came up with Neil, while you guys were sleeping," Max told her. "He was telling us about getting out of school for the Founder's day celebration - an anniversary of when settlement construction first began on the planet, according to the local solar year. Good food, gathering with strangers, public light and music shows, that kind of deal."
"Yeah, a lot of colony worlds have something of the sort," Christin agreed, "including Vrelayan, though the details differ. There, they have a marking of the first exploratory party landing, called - well, the local term is Gorveenar, and I'm not sure where the term comes from actually. Among other things, you're supposed to make a list of the blessings in your life and the reasons you're glad you live there..." Liz snickered at the implied patriotism there, "... and give little tokens of apreciation to people in your life, especially the ones you're not particularly close to, like work associates and club members. Spending time with family on Gorveenar is also big, which means that it's resented by some people, who don't have family around to go back to."
"Alright," I said. "We don't really need a whole big list I think - that's enough to get an idea. There's more in the computer, yeah?"
"Definitely," Christin insisted. "I'm surprised by all of the cultural stuff that they can come up with sometimes, though finding the right search term to look under can be tricky."
"Yeah, but the crossreferences help," Max said. "It just figures that you'd ask about holidays, Izzie."
"Hey, what do you..." she trailed off, blushing slightly. "Oh, no, come on, you're not going to bring up..."
"Isabel has a habit of getting very, um, well, of throwing herself into holiday festivities to a slightly insane level of intensity," Max said to Christin, who probably looked the most confused out of all of us, though I was probably giving her a run for her money. "Christmas was her favorite back home, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Gorveenar Nazi has just come into existence."
"Max!" Isabel exclaimed crossly.
"I... I don't understand," Christin said, not sounding much more impressed. "What did the Nazis have to do with intensity around the holidays?"
"I admit I'm a little stumped on that one myself," I said, reaching out a supportive hand to Isabel.
"Nothing directly, and it's kinduv a mean joke," Liz said, looking knives at Max herself. "One of the other things that the Nazis got a reputation for beyond the strictly obvious was for controlling even tiny things to excessively tight specifications - how people ran their businesses, what the streets looked like, I dunno what else. So when somebody has a very clear vision of, say, a perfect Christmas, and is very insistent on everything living up to that ideal - she gets dubbed 'The Christmas Nazi.'"
"I... I never thought you minded that much, Iz," Max said, not that convincingly.
"Did you never hear about... no, I forgot, you weren't in Roswell for Christmas," Liz said, looking at me. "Tess had taken you 'off to Sweden' by then. I always thought that was really weird - what sort of a student exchange program takes kids away from their families just in time for the holidays?"
"Well, probably once Tess had gotten home from New York, and her struggle with Rath and Lonnie - she had everything that she needed to put her plan into operation except for the book translation, and couldn't wait for Alex to give her that," Max said unhappily. "As soon as she had the plan she started to go with it."
"Yeah, I wondered about that," Isabel said in a low voice. "The powers that Tess used to control Alex, to subvert you a bit too Max - was that something that she'd already known, or something that Lonnie had, or something that she synthesized out of a bunch of different parts?"
"Rath talked about that, when I was supposedly dead," I told her. "Apologized for it, even." That got people's attention. "I don't think that either of them have done it lately, but back in New York, they both altered people's brains with a contact connection - nothing too subtle, but a good way of changing somebody's mind quickly. Tess must have seen that, and realized how she could do it less obviously and better with a refinement of her mindwarp powers."
"Ahh," Liz said. There was a long pause. "Okay, this topic of conversation is dead - and how close are we to that warp point?"
"Four minutes or so left - you guys don't have to wait here."
"Nah - at least for me, I'd rather see it through," Max put in. "Wouldn't say no to some breakfast, though."
That notion was greeted by agreement from the other three of us, since nobody had really had time for food yet during the day, and by the time anybody was done with eating, we'd gone through the transition, (it was a bit of a rough transit and Isabel spilled some orange juice when the ship shook,) and started the hyperspace hop without incident - not that anybody really expected anything interesting.
Isabel and I went back to our room after and fooled around again. Well, no, actually, fooling around together was what we used to do - we made love. It seems odd to type those words in, but they make sense. I really do love her a lot, and sometimes I can believe I was lucky enough for her to fall in love with me too. Hopefully I never manage to screw this up.
#
"Hmm?" Michael cocked his head at the door of the room he shared with Maria, (until Ava managed to convince Maria to give it up, if that ever happened, at least.) There was some sound that he could just about hear, even through the fairly good soundproofing, though he couldn't really make out what it was. Not wanting to interrupt Maria, he checked the door programming, and saw that she'd set it on semi-private, where he could come in without getting cross-approval from her, but not otherwise. Well, all right. He slipped in quickly, so as not to disturb anyone else with whatever...
... loud alien music was playing inside. Maria looked up from the desk area, must have immediately caught a look of surprise and displeasure crossing his face, and cut the volume. A few seconds later, perhaps on a second thought, the sound was either cut off entirely or paused. "Umm, hey, how's it going?" she asked.
"Well... not badly, actually," he admitted, "but I have to admit, I can't quite stop from wondering just what that was and why you were listening to it."
"Okay, let's see," she said as he sat down. "It's called 'Your love sucks me in like silver sand', and it's number one on the most recent Antarian hit parade that Kaalto had gotten, which was about ten days old."
"Hmm." Michael smiled at the thought. "So they have top forty countdowns on Antar?"
"Top thirty actually, which seems a bit low to me, but who am I to tell them how to run their music industry?" Maria laughed. "At least, not to start. Gotta run with the industry as it is, at least in terms of conventions. Actual artistic ideas I can introduce early, they might be a 'hook' that'd let me get a foot in the door early."
"So - you're familiarizing yourself with the alien pop music scene in order to try and break into it as a performer?" he asked.
"Considering it," she admitted. "Not sure if I'll have much luck with such a... a public path to my life, considering that I'm with you and you're already a politically controversial figure yourself, or what, but..." She sighed. "I always wanted to try for the big time with music, and if I can, I'd still like to try that, even if it isn't the same big time scene that I always pictured."
"I have to say, I think that that's amazing," Michael told her, reaching out to hold her hand in his, and stroke the top of her forearm. "Show them that Earth girls know how to rock it. Teach 'em a thing or two about the old blues, or... wait a second." He took a deep breath. "I know that nobody's ever said anything, but do you think there's any possibility that Elvis really was abducted by space aliens?"
"I checked in the library," Maria told him with a straight face. Michael blinked. "Nope. Not even a breath of truth to that rumor, as far as I can tell. Apparently, there was a group of tourists who were really obsessed with the Beatles and made a serious attempt to kidnap them, but... well, it didn't actually come to much, although one of their London bodyguards ended up dead." She sighed.
"Seriously?" Michael asked. Maria nodded. "Tourists from where?"
"Umm... one of the five planets - Talernar?"
"Taliernar," Michael corrected automatically. "Okay, well... I didn't mean to interrupt you..."
"No, it's okay, I can only listen to so much of this stuff right now." Maria got up, walked over to the bed, and sort of fell onto it so that she was sitting across Michael's lap. "I need to have a different kind of fun."
"Hmm... just what did you have in mind?" Michael teased, but already Maria was taking off her top and wriggling around on top of him in a way that made pretty clear what was on her mind.
"Have - have you thought about what you'll do 'once we get there'?" she asked him afterwards, the two of them lying side by side, both feeling very relaxed and satisfied. "I mean... will you join up with the rebel armed forces, and be a general, like... like the original Rath was? Or - or try art again, or cooking, or - well, I don't know what."
"Hmm... haven't put a great deal of thought into a specific role in life on an alien planet," Michael admitted. "Guess I thought it might take quite a while to settle in and learn enough to even understand what all the options are. I mean, when you think about it - yes, people around our age are supposed to have some idea 'what they want to do' with their life, to be mature enough to pick something and go after it - but there's this hidden assumption that they've learned enough about their world in nineteen-odd years to have a clear idea what choices are open to them, and what they have a reasonable chance of achieving. Well, we've learned plenty in our nineteen-odd years, but most of it was about Earth, and earth isn't where we're going to be, so I think that an extension isn't too unreasonable. I... I do want to know more about the fight against Kivar, though I'm not terribly eager to put myself in any great danger now that you're in my life, especially since I know that it would be really hard for you to sit home while I'm off on a mission or anything like that, and I don't think that you have the temperament to sign up and go with me either." Maria snorted in complete agreement about that last judgement.
"And yeah, I want to learn more about art, and cooking, and if I really have any talents in those areas that are actually worthwhile in the Antarian world. Obviously working a short-order grill isn't something that will really apply to my life any more, but you never know if the basic idea might apply somehow."
"Well, that's fair I admit," Maria said, and sighed. "Maybe I should just take some time off and learn too, before diving into something new." All of a sudden the walls and the bed trembled again, and when that was over there was a faint siren going whee-wee, whee-wee. "What's that, now?"
"Umm... we're out of hyperspace," Michael guessed, reaching for some pants. "Warp space, sorry. Either there's an enemy ship in range, or..."
"Or what?" Maria asked him, looking halfway between upset and scared.
"Or - well, if everything is going according to plan, then we've emerged from warp space into the Einsteinian universe at a significant fraction of light speed, relative to the closest stars. Maybe the siren is just to warn everybody about that - this sort of speed we're talking about can be dangerous."
"Yeah, but I never really understood that," Maria said, pulling on some clothes herself - an oversized sleeveless sweater that would fall halfway down her thighs. "It's not like there's really traffic out here that we might crash into. All of the other ships this far from a star system will be in hyperspace, and thus we can't collide with them."
"I'm not sure I understand all the details myself," Michael put in. "But just because there might not be any ships - any contructed artifacts... and there might be somebody around here who doesn't know how to reach warp space and is getting from A to B the slow way - well, that doesn't mean that outer space is empty."
"You mean asteroids or meteoroids drifting around between stars?" Maria asked. "I'm not the astronomy whiz like Liz is, but I know that those are really rare."
"Maybe - but considering how far we're going, it's just possible that we might hit one anyway, and hardly see it coming before we do." Now Michael was shrugging on a kind of vest that didn't close in the chest and heading straight out the door. Maria followed. "Think more like dust and gas, though - not much of it at all, but too much and too small to see and avoid, and every little bit of it we're colliding with at high speeds. High enough that the particles of gas, as I understand it, begin to take on the properties of deadly radiation."
"Oh, man," Maria mumbled, seeing it. "So what can we do about that?"
"Just a moment." Michael poked his head into the games room, and chuckled. "Hey, guys, we started the run?"
"Yeah, looks like it," Max agreed. A bunch of board game counters were sitting ignored on the table as he, Liz, Christin, and Captain Variun were checking more important displays and schematics of their course and the ship's systems. "Everything looks nominal. We're waiting on a broadcast from Kaalto, to feed us the positions of the Breoll ships and tell us how hard and fast we're gonna have to push the limit."
"Good," Michael said. "Now, can one of you bright people explain to my darling Maria this reverse ramscoop field? And tell it to me again as well, because I'm still not sure that I really get it."
"Hmm." Liz looked at the aliens, who didn't seem to want to volunteer, and then over at Max. "Why don't you start, mister sci fi reader?" she told him gently. "I'll be ready to jump in with the hard science, but you explain it pretty well, and maybe I was getting too technical for Michael and the others last time."
"Hmm... okay - why don't we sit down over there?" Max suggested, waving to the other end of the room, away from where Christin and Variun were working. "Well, I think that the idea started with a real rocket scientist, back in the sixties, not an author or anything, though it was picked up in the science fiction field pretty quickly. To build a rocket ship capable of travelling between stars, the most obvious problem was carrying enough fuel. And at high speeds, hydrogen gas between the stars was also a possible hazard."
"Yeah, Michael explained that part to me okay, I think," Maria said.
"The idea of the ram scoop was to turn those gases into a fuel source. You generate a fairly strong cone-shaped magnetic field in front of your ship, and it charges the gas particles and then sucks them in towards your forward fuel port. You feed the concentrated hydrogen gas into a nuclear fusion engine, shoot the exhaust from that engine out the back of the ship as your rocket thrust, and draw power from it to feed the magnetic field and the rest of your ship's systems."
"Sounds like a good idea," Maria said a bit doubtfully. "If you have a nuclear fusion engine and powerful enough magnetic fields."
"Yeah," Max said. "Now, in this ship, we don't need a ramscoop for fuel - I'm not going to try going into detail about how the power sources work, but they've been topped up and are good for weeks. And there's no need for solid propellant, even if we need to increase our speed - the same technology that gives us artificial gravity inside the ship can be used as a reactionless engine - a force that will push us forward through space without anything having to go backward."
"Yeah..." Maria was starting to wonder what all of this had been leading to.
"But we do need protection against gasses and dust in space, so we turn the ramscoop field idea around, literally. Instead of a funelling cone to channel all that stuff inwards to a particular part of the ship, we use a sort of a point-forward cone, or a bullet-shaped field, that drives those small particles away and around us. It doesn't work perfectly, any more than the other kind of field would, but it should protect us reasonably at speeds of up to point one five cee, easily - for a day or two, at least."
"And we're waiting for the information from Kaalto, to see if that's going to be enough to outrun any Breoll ships who might be running towards us at warpspace speeds on the other side of the blocade, yeah?" Maria asked, and Liz nodded gravely. "So when do we find out?"
"Not for a while, yet," Liz admitted. "We don't need to accelerate immediately no matter what, and it'll be hard for them to get a fix on us, especially we're moving so fast."
"Hey," Michael put in. "Does the speed difference mean that the signal they send us gets... red-shifted?"
"It would, if it were radio or some other form of lightspeed-based radiation. Apparently, with the hyperwave stuff they use to communicate more quickly, things get more complicated than that with high velocities," Max said.
"Well, if it's more complicated than red-shifting and blue-shifting, then I don't want to hear about it," Maria said. "How about we try playing that game? If our good crew won't be able to get back to it anytime soon."
"Please, go ahead," Christin said. "We should probably be doing this elsewhere anyway."
"Alright, so what are the rules?" Michael asked.
#
Isabel happened upon Kyle, just standing in the hallway and staring at a few numbers on one of the walls. "Hey, what's so fascinating?"
"Just trying not to get completely freaked out," he muttered. "Point one eight cee relative to Kaalto, radiation exposure level from the shield leakage reaching approximately one point nine five rems per hour." He sighed. "I don't like the sound of that 'rems per hour' thing, and not just because I don't really know what it means. It's going to take us more than a day and a half to cross this thing even at such high speeds, which means that we're gonna get... what, sixty, seventy rems total?"
"Which is right under the level of 'mild radiation sickness,' if I have it right," Isabel assured him. At seventy five rem exposure. That's probably why they picked this speed - we're pushing things about as hard as we can without getting to that point."
"But we may have to push even harder, based on how things go with that Breoll ship that's going to try to catch us on the other side of the blocade, right?" Kyle asked, and Isabel made an uh-huh sound. "Also, that seventy-five rems figure, is that for human, Rahlicx, shapeshifters, or hybrids?"
"Oooh, you had to ask that, huh?" Kyle nodded. "Well, if we're going to keep talking about this stuff, let's not do it here. Is Rath back in your room?"
"No, I think he's in the lounge with Ava," he explained. "What about Alex?"
"Playing checkers with Maria in the game room." They headed inside, and Kyle say on his bunk while Isabel took the single chair available. "Seventy-five is humans. I think that the alien crew are hardier, and will be able to stand up to a hundred or so without problems."
"What about hybrids?" Kyle asked, and Isabel stayed silent. "Come on, with all of the halfbreeds running around the local area, they must have some idea."
"They do - but it seems to vary widely depending on the specific genetic factors inherited from each side." Isabel groaned. "Range roughly from seventy to ninety, if I remember the figures that Christin showed us. Nobody's done that much testing, because although there are a lot of hybrids around, they aren't seen as especially... important or anything."
"And... and since all of you guys aren't just ordinary hybrids, but specially engineered people - to pass as humans on earth and not show obvious signs of your Antarian sides, among other things..."
"Then nobody really knows how we'll react under cosmic radiation exposure," Isabel admitted. "But don't worry - even if we get sick, that doesn't mean it'll be anything life-threatening or crippling."
"Hmm... just what is radiation sickness like, then?" Kyle asked. "Guess all I know about radiation I learned in the movies."
"Basically, you can't eat much, you feel really tired, and you barf." Isabel giggled nervously. "Takes a few weeks to get over."
"Oh, now that's a lovely image, people getting sick here on a crowded ship..."
"Yeah, I know," Isabel admitted. "But obviously that's a lot better than getting anemia or problems having kids later on, or stuff like that."
"Eww," Kyle remarked succintly. "How much exposure do we have to get before we're worried about stuff like that."
"Not sure," Isabel admitted uncomfortably. "The reference I found said that issues like that generally don't crop up until you're around two hundred rem, but every type of radiation is different and cosmic stuff is more prone to permanent damage than most others." She sighed. "But they're doing everything possible to keep it from coming to that. To a certain extent, it's just morbid to dwell."
"Hmm... okay," Kyle admitted after a moment. "D'you wanna try catching up with Ava and Liz? I heard her say that they'd be watching Gevinian movies in the royal cabin."
"Hmm..." Isabel wondered briefly which 'her' Kyle had heard, but it didn't really matter."Sure I guess, as long as they don't mind company. On the other hand, I kind of feel a bit hungry now." Was that a subconscious drive to assure herself that she wasn't sick yet, since one of the warning signs was loss of appetite?
"Well, they have a perfectly good food slot, and I don't think anybody would mind you using it," Kyle pointed out, which was perfectly true of course. As they headed up the corridor, Isabel tried to think of something else nice to say to Kyle.
"Best of luck trying to figure out what to do about the whole Tess/Lonnie thing, by the way."
Kyle made a bit of a surprised face at the way that she'd put that, and Isabel was a little startled at what had come out herself, but at least it was something that she really meant. "Thanks. Of course, it's strongly tempting to just stay away from both of them and see what my other dating prospects look like when we get to Sanctuary - assuming of course that I'm not some hideous radiation-scarred wreck by then." Isabel was tempted to stick her tongue out at him for that one, but couldn't bring herself to, so she just scoffed. "Some of the hybrid girls back at the club on Kaalto were pretty cute, and the one I managed to strike up a conversation with seemed cool personally as well. Heck, even a pure-blooded alien wouldn't be entirely out of the question. Little hybrids have to come from somewhere - not that I'm eager to father any alien girl's children, I just mean - obviously it's happened before."
"Yeah, I guess that's true," Isabel admitted, and was very glad that they'd arrived at the door and she could signal for entry. Ava called to come in, and they did.
They were in the middle of something called "The soulfulness of Alfarren leaves', and Isabel thought it was pretty good, though Kyle didn't think there were nearly enough aircar chases. They all got boneless roast chicken and macaroni with tomato-chile sauce from the food slot.