A Handful of Stars (Star Svensdotter #2) Read online

  A Handful of Stars

  Dana Stabenow

  For

  Joanna Carlson,

  a civilized human being

  Contents

  Introduction

  1: Nonlinear Computers

  2: Space Apes

  3: Hitching Up

  4: Should-Be-Ables, Inc.

  5: Paper Tiger

  6: Staying in Motion

  7: Bacteria and Blue Whales

  8: Buckaroos and Bluenoses

  9: Ghosts

  10: Sleeping Alone

  About the Author

  Introduction

  ANYONE WHO HAS EVER READ ANYTHING about the Klondike Gold Rush knows exactly where this story came from. Ladies Margaret and Melisande, as improbable as they sound, are based on real-life counterparts lifted very nearly whole from Pierre Berton’s The Klondike Rush. So is Caleb’s Star Guard, based on Samuel Benton Steele’s gallant, unfailingly polite, and extremely effective cadre of young Mounties, who saved countless stampeders from starvation and drowning.

  Homemade Homes, on the other hand, comes from people who live or lived much closer to now, visionaries like Carl Sagan and Ted Taylor and Freeman Dyson and Gerard K. O’Neill. John Desmond Bernal gave his name to the Bernal sphere, and I never had a thought about space colonization that T.A. Heppenheimer didn’t think up first.

  The Missing Planet story comes from the Phaeton hypothesis, and probably a little from Robert A. Heinlein’s Space Cadet, too.

  Nothing is created in a vacuum.

  Well. Star might take issue with me there, and rightly so. Let me say instead, then, that no book is ever created in a vacuum, and certainly not this one.

  — 1 —

  Nonlinear Computers

  …a nonlinear computer weighing only 160 pounds, having a billion binary decision elements, that can be mass produced by unskilled labor.

  —Scott Crossfield’s description of an astronaut

  THE CAPTAIN SPAT OUT A HANK OF MY HAIR and swore. “Star, either you tie up that mess or I take a knife to it here and now.”

  “I’m sorry, Crip,” I said meekly. He was right. The cockpit was a small one and crowded enough with crew and controls and backseat drivers as it was. “Does anyone have a piece of string?”

  “With all the zerogee traveling you do I don’t know why you don’t just shave it off.” He rubbed a hand over his own smooth scalp and resettled his headset. “Where the hell’s my checklist?”

  “Move to parking orbit checklist, Captain,” the navigator said. She handed his copy to him and a roll of gray tape to me. I gathered my hair into a hasty braid and wound a piece of the gray tape around the end of it.

  “Why don’t you strap down in your cabin, Star?” Crip said, peering through one of two tiny forward ports. “Ellfive Traffic Control, Hokuwa’a, radio check, one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one.”

  “Hokuwa’a, Terranova Traffic Control, it’s Terranova now, Crip, how many times do I have to tell you? Your radio check is five by. Stand by for the mayor of Terranova.”

  Crip glanced back at me and rolled his eyes. “Standing by. On the intercom, Denise.”

  “Aye, Captain, on the intercom.”

  We waited. There was a click and a low buzz. Someone muttered a curse down the channel. The static cleared, and sounding like fingernails scraping a blackboard, Mayor Panati’s voice bounced off the bulkhead all the way downship from bridge to crew quarters to galley to freight to pressure plate and back again. Crip lunged for the volume control and Panati’s voice dropped to a more endurable level. I settled back and resigned myself to the standard hearts and flowers farewell. After a few unintelligible whispers, Panati’s voice said, “Is Star Svensdotter in the audience?”

  “I am, Your Honor.”

  “Good. Now then, where’d I—oh, thanks.” He cleared his throat. He was still squeaky, like someone rubbing a balloon. “Members of the First Terranovan Mining Expedition, this is Mayor Charles Panati of the independent nation of Terranova speaking.” He paused. “Think about those words for a moment. Mining expedition. Independent nation. Sound good, don’t they? Well, keep in mind that there would be no mining expedition and only an American Alliance colony known as Ellfive were it not for the courage and determination of one woman. I’m sure you know of whom I speak. I’d bet big money she’s riding in the jumpseat behind Crip right now because she’s convinced he can’t get the Hokuwa’a out of orbit without her.”

  Denise gave Crip a swift, sidelong glance. I glared at the back of his head and dared him silently to laugh.

  “Well, maybe she’s right,” Panati went on. “Star Svensdotter led Ellfive to freedom in the One-Day Revolution, and on to independent nationhood as Terranova.”

  Sort of, and kind of from behind.

  “Star Svensdotter opened a dialogue with the first extraterrestrial visitors to our solar system.”

  If you can call a one-way, one-time tete-a-tete a dialogue.

  “Star Svensdotter oversaw the construction of the first self-supporting, self-governing space colony in human history, which made all of the foregoing possible.”

  I did do that.

  “And now Star Svensdotter is leading a mining expedition to the Asteroid Belt in search of those elemental materials so desperately needed here at Terranova for the completion of construction of Island Two. Terranova will never be able to repay Star Svensdotter all that we owe her. Of course we are grateful, but gratitude alone doesn’t balance the books. Star, so you know that wherever you go and whatever you do, you will always have a home on Terranova, the Habitat Assembly has deeded to you title in perpetuity to the house and accompanying plot of land in the Rock Candy Mountain foothills, heretofore occupied by the director of construction of Lagrange Five Space Habitat, Island One. It will be maintained by the Terranova Assembly against the happy day of your return. And the heartfelt thanks of every Terranovan goes with it.”

  I was dumb. Without looking Crip reached a hand around behind him and smacked my leg, hard. I jerked and stammered something into my headset, God knows what. It must have been all right because Panati sounded satisfied.

  “You are very welcome. Now then. To Star and to her crew at the beginning of this momentous voyage, we bid farewell and bon voyage. But it has been said before me, and better said at that.” Panati cleared his throat yet again and his voice deepened. “ ‘A health to the man on trail this night. May his grub hold out. May his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire.’ ”

  The last echoes of Jack London’s Klondike toast echoed throughout the ship. I had a lump in my throat the size of a cantaloupe.

  “Cleared for separation, Hokuwa’a,” Terranova Traffic Control said in a low voice, “and safe journey, Crip.”

  “Roger that, Terranova,” Crip said gruffly, “and thanks, Bolly. Navigator, you have comm.”

  “Aye, Captain, I have comm.”

  Crip fiddled with the controls in front of him for a few seconds. He cleared his throat and swiveled around to look at me. “You look like you’ve been stuffed, woman. Why don’t you go on down to your cabin like I said? There’s nothing for you to do now but sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  I was determined to match him nonchalance for nonchalance. “Was that a tactful way of telling me to get the hell off your bridge? In your dreams, Crip.”

  Crip gave a slight smile, one a little rusty around the edges, but a smile nevertheless. It was good to see. I checked my straps and worked on getting my gut under control. I coped with travel between Terra and Ellfive by willing myself to sleep through the entire twelve-hour flight. We were leaving for the Asteroid Belt today. I
t was a journey that would take six-plus weeks and I had long since faced up to the grim fact that I’d have to be awake at least some of the time.

  “Captain,” Denise said, “we have a go for egress from Terranova Traffic Control.”

  “We have a go, aye,” Crip said. “Make ready to fire forward verniers.”

  “Making ready to fire forward verniers, aye.”

  “Increase to forty percent thrust.”

  “Increasing to forty.” Her hands moved, flicking switches, pushing buttons. One by one, red lights changed to amber, amber to green. “Green board, Captain.”

  “Fire verniers, starboard one, portside one, on my mark. Mark.”

  “Firing verniers.”

  We heard the vernier thrusters, distant pops like firecrackers around the corner and down the block. I leaned forward and craned my neck to watch through the cockpit’s portside viewport. The long, silvery cylinder of Ellfive began to recede.

  “Switch monitor to aft camera.”

  “Switching monitor now.”

  The picture on the main screen centered above the cockpit instrumentation panel changed. The Warehouse Ring was a designated stationary orbit surrounding Ellfive’s equator ten klicks out. We could see the LIMSH tender dock and the netlike mass catcher and the windowed soccer ball that was Maria Mitchell Observatory. The spaces between were taken up by assorted spacecraft in parking orbit, from SeaLandSpace freighters to Piper solarsleds to Patrol shuttles. We were headed for transient parking. Seated behind and a little above, I watched Crip’s hands work the controls. Lean and sinewy, sprinkled with gray hairs, they were almost careless in their competence. Almost.

  He reached overhead and pushed a toggle switch. “Fire aft verniers, fifty-two percent thrust, port and starboard, on my mark.” The Express-class ship had eighty-eight separate directional thrusters spaced around the hull. Crip was using two. He was also looking out the viewport. With all the state-of-the-art electronic gear and computer instrumentation and digital readouts at his fingertips, he was eyeballing our way in. Pilots. “Mark.”

  “Firing verniers now, Captain.”

  Crip waited, his hands relaxed on the yoke. I leaned forward to glance over his shoulder at the telltale. The little toy ship on the screen slid effortlessly into the little toy parking space, no pitching, no yawing, no rolling, just one smooth slide right into the money.

  “Fire reverse thrusters.”

  “Firing.”

  “Dead slow, and… stop. Position.”

  Denise consulted her control panel. “Maria Mitchell Observatory a thousand kilometers off the port bow. We have achieved orbit in Transient Parking Space One. Bull’s eye, Captain. TTC says nice work.”

  He yawned. Like I said. Pilots.

  The monitor switched to Mitchell. “Magnify image now.” And there was Tori Agoot and Ariadne Papadopoulos and the rest of Mitchell’s crew crowded into Mitchell’s largest viewport, along with approximately half the population of Terranova, including Petra Strongheart, Rex Toranaga, and Ariadne-Two, Ariadne Kennedy, who used to ride shotgun for Crip but had chosen to sit this trip out. I wondered if she regretted her decision yet. It wasn’t a question of if, only of when.

  They were all waving furiously. Tori was yelling something. He probably wanted me to run just one more navigational sim, get me lost just one more time in the Greater Magellanic Cloud. And Sam, who was along for the ride, would probably see to it that I did. Whoopee.

  They couldn’t see us, of course, but I found myself lifting a hand in farewell anyway. “Want me to punch ’em up?” Crip asked.

  “No,” I said. “We said our good-byes last night.”

  “Launch checklist, Captain,” Denise said. She handed Crip yet another clipboard.

  “Security, report.”

  “Security reports all secure.” As usual, Caleb sounded composed, unexcited, if anything a little bored.

  “Everyone strapped in?”

  “Everyone I could find. Is Star up there?”

  “Yeah, she won’t leave.”

  “You want me to arrest her and throw her in the brig?”

  “I don’t know.” Crip looked over his shoulder at me. “Do we have a brig?”

  Crip had actually made a joke. I’d thought he’d forgotten how. Denise, a serious-minded professional who objected on principle to levity during business hours, tapped her fingers meaningfully on the control panel.

  “Cargo bay, report,” Crip said obediently.

  “Cargo bay reports everything liable to kick up a fuss is strapped in, tied down, tethered, lashed and leashed better’n my mamaw’s mule on a Sunday-go-to-church morning! Let’s light this candle!”

  Crip looked around at me. “Claire sounds pretty confident for someone who learned how to pack an Express-class spaceship just last month.”

  “Doesn’t she, though?”

  “I hope she knows what she’s doing.”

  I did, too, especially when I thought about some of the cargo. Please, oh, please, I prayed, let me not have forgotten anything. At least not anything important.

  I didn’t get an answer. I didn’t expect one. When you’re leading a mining expedition to the Asteroid Belt through 450 million kilometers of merciless vacuum, the only God there is, is you.

  “Red light firing panel,” Crip said. “Stand by.”

  “Red lights across the board, Captain,” Denise said. “Standing by.”

  “All hands, all hands, stand by for primary ignition. You’ve got five minutes”—Crip checked the readout—“correction, you’ve got four minutes fifty-seven seconds to double-check your areas. It’s going to be a bump and a half, people, so look sharp.”

  There wasn’t exactly a thunderous rumble of activity down-ship. It was more of a rustling, like mice in the grain bin. I thought of my 250 handpicked mice, all skinny tails and pink noses and inquisitive whiskers. Half of them were on board the Hokuwa’a with me, the rest would follow on the Voortrekker in a week. Were they as smart as I thought they were when I hired them? As able?

  “All stations, sound off,” Denise said.

  “Archy gives us the go, Crip,” Simon said.

  “Engineering standing by, ready for ignition, Captain,” Whitney Burkette said crisply. He was the only other crew member besides Denise who called Crip Captain.

  “Cargo, aye, go, go, go!”

  “Security?”

  “Security, aye,” Caleb drawled. “Kick it.”

  “Medical secure for thrust, Crip,” Charlie reported. “Mind the babies.”

  That reminded me. I slid inquiring hands over my bulging stomach and was soundly kicked for my pains.

  “Make ready for drop,” Crip said.

  Denise’s hands fluttered over the controls. More lights turned green. “Ready to drop, sir.”

  We were moving nose forward, out of Warehouse Orbit now, making ready to boost. I knew enough of the process to follow it mentally. By now the propellant charge would be shifting into the ejection chute.

  “Fire CAK.”

  “Firing.”

  “Drop charge.”

  The bullet-shaped nuclear charge, pushed by small blasts of compressed air, would be sliding down the chute and out the Hokuwa’a’s tail.

  Denise watched a monitor, her small, sharp face lit by the readout on her screen. “Charge clear of hull, sir.”

  “Move charge out to thirty meters.”

  “Thirty meters, aye, sir.”

  “Switching to aft camera.”

  We looked up at the monitor. Maria Mitchell Observatory disappeared, to be replaced by a close-up of the propellant charge. It was a tiny thing, for all of its power, tiny and silver and glittering brightly in Sol’s rays. The Hokuwa’a’s pressure plate dwarfed it. I could feel every muscle in my body begin to tense.

  “Launch a remcam.”

  Denise set a dial, pushed a button. I heard a thud. The scene on the viewer changed again, this time taking in a section of the Hokuwa’a’s pressure plate with
the silvery projectile floating off its stern. The Orion propulsion system was simple and pretty unsubtle; still, fission was fission. And I was not what you could call relaxed.

  “Triangulation.”

  Denise entered figures on a keypad. “Triangulation confirms, propellant charge at thirty meters.” By now I was stiffer than the seat in which I sat.

  “Acknowledged. Did you know, Star,” Crip said, running absentminded fingers over the control panel, “that the tide on August 3, 1492, that Columbus sailed on to the New World was the very same tide that exiled the first boatload of Jews from the Spanish Inquisition?”

  “No.” But I knew that back in the last half of the last century, Von Braun’s Saturn series completed thirty-two launches without a single major failure.

  “I figure we’re just like Columbus.”

  “Really?” Of course, only fifteen of those Saturn rockets were manned.

  “Except we know where we’re going.”

  And I refused even to think about the Challenger or the Challenger II or the Zumwalt or the Tereshkova. I swallowed and said, “You heard ’em, Crip. Kick it!”

  Crip smacked the flat of his hand down on the large red button on the lower right-hand corner of his board. The kick came moments later, the boot thudding into the back of my chair. It pressed me into the jumpseat even as it thrust me up from high earth orbit, out of the plane of the ecliptic, away from Terranova. Me, and 113 crew members, and 10 nuns, and a cartographer from the Royal Geographical Society, and a hold stuffed with coffee beans, microchips, Tampax, and the other necessaries of life. And at the end of our journey? Who knew?

  Crip was wrong. I didn’t feel like Columbus. I felt like Marco Polo. I wondered how he’d staffed and provisioned his caravans.

  — 2 —

  Space Apes

  Even a space ape must urinate.

  —Desmond Morris