immediately.”
The interior lived up to their expectations of luxury. It was organized around a kind of saloon from which one could look directly up a half flight of steps to the control bridge, where Persath now seated himself.
“No crew, Persath?” inquired Rachel.
“No organic one.” Persath didn’t look up from the control panel, and his irritability would have been obvious even if the translator hadn’t reproduced it. “The ship is almost entirely automated, and I am qualified to perform those piloting functions which are not. And now, please prepare yourselves for takeoff.”
The preparations were not as elaborate as might have been supposed, for the ship, unlike the ground-to-orbit shuttles with their brief flight times, had a complex system of compensating artificial-gravity fields that gave it a ventral-equals-down orientation and largely cancelled out the feeling of movement. This enabled its reactionless drive—quite powerful relative to the mass it had to push—to pile on an acceleration that quickly brought them to one of Tizath-Asor’s transition gates. (Even among the Lokaron wealthy, private individuals simply did not own ships with their own transition engines.)
Once the kaleidoscopic tunnel of light had vanished into infinity astern, leaving them in featureless blackness, Andrew turned to their host. “All right, Perath. We’re in overspace now, and as we all know that means we’re cut off from the normal universe with no possibility of communication. So could you please gratify our curiosity about our destination?”
“I suppose it can do no harm,” Persath conceded with no good grace. “We are bound for the Kogurche system.”
“The Kogurche system?” echoed Rachel. She sounded as stunned as Andrew felt at the mention of the system in Lupus that had been the proximate cause of the late unpleasantness between Gev-Rogov and the CNE.
“I believe that is what I said.” Persath did not look up from the controls, with which he was peevishly preoccupied. “I assure you that this vessel, with its high thrust-to-mass ratio, will get us there in a reasonable length of time.”
“But are you saying that Reislon’Sygnath has been there all this time?” Andrew couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.
“No. He moves around. But he spends a fair amount of time there, and I have excellent reason to believe it is his current locale.” Persath’s eyes were still on the instruments.
“But what’s he doing there? And how is he able to operate there undetected nowadays? And—”
“The answers will become apparent in due time.” Persath finally looked up. “I suggest that at the moment we have more immediate concerns.”
“Such as?”
“A vessel passed through the transition gate after we did. This ship mounts military-grade detectors, by which I can ascertain that the other ship has matched our course, far enough behind us to be beyond the range of ordinary civilian detectors. In short, we are being followed.”
***
Earth had been the first non-Lokaron world ever found to have made the twin breakthroughs of the scientific and industrial revolutions. To fit it into their edifice of comfortable assumptions of superiority, the Lokaron had been forced to devise elaborate theories assuring themselves that it was an unrepeatable freak.
Then, a decade after the tumultuous events of 2030, explorers from Gev-Rogov had discovered the Kogurche system. The Lokaron had been picking up the pieces of their theories ever since.
They tried to tell themselves that it was a matter of chance, for Kogurche was an unusual system. In the first place, it had a binary star: a G0V primary component with an M2V red dwarf in an orbit which, while quite eccentric, hadn’t prevented the formation of planets around either component. Those planets formed a tightly organized system around the central star, and masses and orbits had fallen into a pattern that made terraforming a more practical
The interior lived up to their expectations of luxury. It was organized around a kind of saloon from which one could look directly up a half flight of steps to the control bridge, where Persath now seated himself.
“No crew, Persath?” inquired Rachel.
“No organic one.” Persath didn’t look up from the control panel, and his irritability would have been obvious even if the translator hadn’t reproduced it. “The ship is almost entirely automated, and I am qualified to perform those piloting functions which are not. And now, please prepare yourselves for takeoff.”
The preparations were not as elaborate as might have been supposed, for the ship, unlike the ground-to-orbit shuttles with their brief flight times, had a complex system of compensating artificial-gravity fields that gave it a ventral-equals-down orientation and largely cancelled out the feeling of movement. This enabled its reactionless drive—quite powerful relative to the mass it had to push—to pile on an acceleration that quickly brought them to one of Tizath-Asor’s transition gates. (Even among the Lokaron wealthy, private individuals simply did not own ships with their own transition engines.)
Once the kaleidoscopic tunnel of light had vanished into infinity astern, leaving them in featureless blackness, Andrew turned to their host. “All right, Perath. We’re in overspace now, and as we all know that means we’re cut off from the normal universe with no possibility of communication. So could you please gratify our curiosity about our destination?”
“I suppose it can do no harm,” Persath conceded with no good grace. “We are bound for the Kogurche system.”
“The Kogurche system?” echoed Rachel. She sounded as stunned as Andrew felt at the mention of the system in Lupus that had been the proximate cause of the late unpleasantness between Gev-Rogov and the CNE.
“I believe that is what I said.” Persath did not look up from the controls, with which he was peevishly preoccupied. “I assure you that this vessel, with its high thrust-to-mass ratio, will get us there in a reasonable length of time.”
“But are you saying that Reislon’Sygnath has been there all this time?” Andrew couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.
“No. He moves around. But he spends a fair amount of time there, and I have excellent reason to believe it is his current locale.” Persath’s eyes were still on the instruments.
“But what’s he doing there? And how is he able to operate there undetected nowadays? And—”
“The answers will become apparent in due time.” Persath finally looked up. “I suggest that at the moment we have more immediate concerns.”
“Such as?”
“A vessel passed through the transition gate after we did. This ship mounts military-grade detectors, by which I can ascertain that the other ship has matched our course, far enough behind us to be beyond the range of ordinary civilian detectors. In short, we are being followed.”
***
Earth had been the first non-Lokaron world ever found to have made the twin breakthroughs of the scientific and industrial revolutions. To fit it into their edifice of comfortable assumptions of superiority, the Lokaron had been forced to devise elaborate theories assuring themselves that it was an unrepeatable freak.
Then, a decade after the tumultuous events of 2030, explorers from Gev-Rogov had discovered the Kogurche system. The Lokaron had been picking up the pieces of their theories ever since.
They tried to tell themselves that it was a matter of chance, for Kogurche was an unusual system. In the first place, it had a binary star: a G0V primary component with an M2V red dwarf in an orbit which, while quite eccentric, hadn’t prevented the formation of planets around either component. Those planets formed a tightly organized system around the central star, and masses and orbits had fallen into a pattern that made terraforming a more practical
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