Chapter 24: Blessed are the Children

The children stared out of the view ports, the younger ones holding tightly to their mothers' necks and arms, goggle-eyed at the sight of the cloud-shrouded planet rotating beneath them. Rowena, the six-year-old, clung most tightly to her mother's neck but she giggled almost uncontrollably while she watched the planet covered with patterns of clouds, and the sunlight reflecting from the world's oceans.

"Pretty! So pretty!" she kept exclaiming and pointing down, then ducking her head shyly against her mother's neck.

Roberta, her seven-year-old sister, was quite frightened. She clung desperately to her mother's waist. She buried her face against her mother's side. Each time they tried to get her to look, she'd cry loudly that they were going to fall!

"Momma, we're gonna fall! There's nothing holding us up here, momma! We're gonna crash down! It's too far down..." and she'd spin and bury her head against Kathy's side.

"Don't worry, it won't last long," she reassured the other mothers. "She's always been afraid of something sudden and strange, but she's also the most curious of our three. Believe me, her curiosity will soon win her over. She'll have her nose pressed tightly against the viewport any minute now. Then we won't be able to shut her up!"

The two boys, Ben Thomas, Jr, age eight, and Robbie Evans, age nine, hid their nervousness. They were manning up to the challenge. They stood spell-bound, shoulder-to-shoulder at an adjacent viewport. They were too nervous and awe-struck to say much. They would nudge each other and point when they saw some familiar geographic shape or outline on the planet below.

Dee'rah and Lyn'na-ra sat facing the older wives, Julie Tibbets and JoAnne Briggs. Their husbands, Tib and Chuck, were up forward with Michael and Berl'ahan, the shuttle's pilots. Ben Thomas and Randall Evans, the crewmen, sat to either side of their officers.

"Michael tells me that we will move out of earth orbit soon, and we'll take a course to intercept the Galaxy Explorer in her lunar orbit," Dee'rah announced. "You'll not notice any change, except the earth will seem to move away from us, slowly at first, but then it will seem to jump backwards, and will be gone from sight. Perhaps you may wish to mention it to the older children, so they'll know what to expect," she advised.

"I'm sure you've read of the NASA lunar missions and the many days it took to travel there and back. We will make the passage much more quickly. Our acceleration changes are dampened so we'll not feel the effect. The view screens will blank out until we drop back to normal speed and prepare to intercept the ship. Do you have any questions? I'll try to answer as clearly as I may, so you'll understand," Dee'rah offered.

"No serious questions. We feel very safe here," Julie answered. She seemed to have assumed the leadership role of their band, with her friend JoAnne as second in command.

"How is it that we will feel no acceleration, if we must jump as you say, to a tremendous speed to cover that distance? Wouldn't we feel that?"

"Normally, yes, of course," Dee'rah replied. "But our engineers long ago devised methods to dampen the inertial effect. I assure you, we'll feel nothing but the slightest twinge, perhaps."

"How long will we be traveling, then? I remember it is a great distance; more than a quarter million miles, isn't it?"

"Approximately so, yes," Dee'rah answered. "Using your standard metric measure, it is 384,400 kilometers, or by your nation's common measure, 238,900 miles. We'll move about 450 miles away from Earth before accelerating, and will allow about the same buffer distance to decelerate and intercept the Galaxy Explorer. We'll cover the intervening distance of 238,000 miles in three and a half hours, Earth time."

Julie stared at Dee'rah with astonishment. "My Lord..." she muttered.

"That's ... why, that is... " JoAnne did a quick mental estimate. "Why, that is 68,000 miles an hour! Do you really mean ... that we will go... ?"

Dee'rah smiled innocently. "Yes, of course. If we went more slowly, well, it would take simply forever to get anywhere!"

Julie continued staring, until her eyes narrowed and her mouth broke into a sly smile. Without warning, she slapped Dee'rah on the shoulder.

"You're an impossible tease, and you have a wicked sense of humor!"

"Moi?" Dee'rah giggled.

Forward, in the command section, Michael and Berl'ahan were giving their four guests a similar briefing. The four men would be the first humans ever to see an alien shuttle jump into hyperdrive mode, the speed range bridging sub-orbital gravitic propulsion and the inter-system translight modes. Hyperdrive was most useful for intra-system movements, from planet to moon, or planet to planet.

"You'll feel nothing, gentlemen, but if you are watching the aft-viewing monitor, you'll notice that the planet will seem to jump backwards when we engage hyperdrive. Then the screen will blank out and the view ports will become opaque. We've found that the outside view becomes distorted and is a little ... nauseating, if you watch it for very long. So we darken the view ports. You'll see everything here on the command monitors, of course, and the instrumentation on these panels. I'm sure some of this will be familiar to you. It's not very different from earth-type LCD or plasma display screens, and many flight-simulator systems," Michael lectured.

"Hyperdrive ... engaged!" Berl'ahan announced.

"How long to reach your ship's orbit?" Tib asked.

"We'll be three and a half hours, and then about a quarter hour to intercept and dock," Michael answered.

Tib and Chuck glanced at each other, but were distracted by Randall when he dragged a calculator out of his pocket and started punching keys.

"That's about 238,000 statute miles," Michael interrupted. "We'll be running at 59,090 knots, or 68,000 mph for the duration, until we drop out of hyperdrive and flip over for deceleration. And in case you're wondering, we have a linear hyperdrive system capable of any speed between maximum gravitic speed, to just under what you'd possibly think of as warp one or the speed of light. We're actually just loafing along at 59K knots, to avoid hard braking at the other end. If we were hard pressed in flank speed mode, we could make the trip to Luna much faster, but we'd have to do a rather dramatic braking circuit around her to enter lunar orbit. We thought we'd spare the women and children the excitement of that. If it were just you gentlemen, we'd entertain the notion," Michael grinned.

"Oh, and if the need should occur, the barf bags are in the compartment panel right by Ben's elbow."

Ben glanced at Randall; both men turned a pale shade of gray.

"Uhh, speaking of nausea, why don't we feel any weightlessness?" Chuck asked.

"Oh ... I forgot. We just take it for granted. We don't like fooling around with weightlessness if it isn't absolutely necessary. We've got an auto-grav system in the shuttle. It's part and parcel of our gravitic system. It's a nice spin-off, if you want to think of it that way. It really takes very little more energy, and the benefits are certainly worth it. I enjoy putting my coffee cup in the seat holder, confident that the cup will stay in the holder, and my coffee will stay in the cup!"

Berl'ahan grimaced at Michael, with a stern scowl. He'd heard of Jon'a-ren's unfortunate experience with Michael's horrid coffee and he had no desire to taste it for himself. He was uneasy enough that Michael insisted on bringing a Thermos container of the evil brew aboard and he did, indeed, keep a cup in a holder he'd jury-rigged to the side of his command seat.

The ship loomed large in the shuttle's forward view screen. As they moved closer, the ship grew even larger until only a portion of it filled the screens. Tib had a distinct sensation of falling forward into a landscape of metal covered with sensors and ports and seams.

"My God, Michael! That ship ... she's immense!"

"I agree. The first time I saw their ship rise out of the Siple Island ice, I very nearly messed my pants! I had no idea that anything that huge could hold together, or that anyone, human or alien, could design and build such a thing. But there it is! Truly, seeing is believing."

As the shuttle approached, Berl'ahan and Michael moved their hands away from the controls and relaxed, watching the portal of the docking bay grow larger, opening to receive their craft. Tib watched the auto-docking computer pilot their shuttle along a glowing pattern of guide bars and symbols projected outward from the docking bay.