Jules murmured into my ear, “Dear, time to get up now…”  I felt woozy as I rose from the cryo chamber.  Almost four years had passed, but he said it was the equivalent of nearly a month for us.  I said to Jules, “You need a shower, darling.  And a shave.  And a haircut.”  With a chuckle, I added, “And I need a manicure!”  So on that happy note, we emerged from our cocoon.

     My mind was groggy, but racing.  First, Jules seemed fine so his ticker must be none the worse from the nap.  Aside from our having sea legs, I basically felt allright too.  What about JJ, Linda, and the girls?  How soon til we’ll reach Alchibah?  Then what?! 

     “Let’s find the kids and go to the lounge.  Maybe they’ll let me tend bar again.  You know, that’s a job I’d like to keep.”   Sure ’nough, there was JJ.  Giving me a warm hug, he said, “Linda’s in seventh heaven.  She linked up with Mariana Stuart and they’re gonna get a lab going.  Ran off to have a look see.  They’ll get Emily up shortly, but wait a bit longer for Liza and Karyn.  Dad, Mom, have you met Tim, and Jack, and Marty.”   

       Soon Jules and Hist were in deep discussion.  Jules talked about wanting to teach, really teach.  Not the jaded facts and theories spewed by the UNWG.  Maybe a one-room school house in combo with distance learning - the old with the new.  Build from both.  Maybe have Liza as teacher-in-training.  And he thought to himself, “need time with Hanna, too.  That’s what our retirement was supposed to be all about.  Time together.”

       I felt a surge of emotion in seeing the colonists again, like a mother hen.  Glenda came over, “You seem like such a natural.  How about being our permanent barkeep?”  A  far cry from dealing with the facts and figures of population control, to serve the populus itself.  “Sure!” I replied.  “I’d love to run the First Inn.  I’ll have a lounge and gaust haus where everyone could come — to hang their hat, quench their thirst, and down home visit.  The guys, they need food and grog, not just guns and equipment.  All of us, need a place to come to.”  Janie said, “That’s for darn sure.”

       As I stood up, I nearly careened into a 6½ foot mass of metal.  A tin man.  “Oh my gosh.  Excuse me.”  Do I talk to a bot or not?  “Pardon me, ’mam or sir.  I am R.-J.P.  You may call me Jeep.”  Flustered, I turned to JJ and said, “What’s that all about?”  He said, “We’ll each get one.  Most of them are named after sci-fi authors.  This one is Bart’s, and named after Jerry Pournelle, a co-writer with Larry Niven.  You can dub yours whatever you choose.”  “Who would have thought that the sci-fi Jules read, we would live out in real life!”  Silently, I thought, “Oh my Lord, be with us in this journey into the unknown…..”  

     As I gazed into my wine glass, Dave Webber and Sally Kellerman came over.  Dave’s an Electronics Technician with Communications experience, and Sally’s an RN who managed Emergency Room Co-ordinations.  Dave said he needed JJ to set up protocols for a Communications Center. 

     “I know how to build a Comm. Center” Dave said “and Sally knows how to run one, but neither of us knows how to design and implement a whole new set of protocols.  We’re going to have to communicate with exploration teams, new settlements, and who knows what.  All of that data has to get funneled to Mariana and Linda in a cohesive manner or somebody’s gonna die for no good reason!” 

     JJ nodded and said, “I can handle that!”  The plans began in earnest.

     “Emily’s waking up” Dr. Kellerman announced.  JJ interrupted his discussion, and I quickly offered, “Let me take care of Emily.” ”Thanks Mom.” 

      I sat alone in the cryo room. Emily was restless as she began awakening, with deep furrows across her forehead.  I recalled waking up more serenely; having Jules at my side, I’d been glad to emerge from deep sleep.  I whispered, “Emily, honey.  It’s Grandma.”  She half raised her eyelids, startled and confused.  Softly, I reassuringly said, “Emily, everything’s okay.  Don’t be afraid.  Mom and Dad are just down the hall.  We’re all okay, and so are you.”  “Oh Granny,” she cried, “What am I going to do?  I’m pregnant!”

As Bart finished his explanation of the Van Vogt incident, all I could do was collapse in a chair and shake my head. “That bottom feeder was in this from the get go and was still loyal to UNWG?”

“It appears so but, your summation was correct. Hamilton’s plan beat them at every turn.”

“Please tell me that the solution for Van Vogt included something very terminal?” I asked.

Rocco gave a deep guttural laugh, “Suffice to say I think Capt. Travis has been taking lessons from you guys!

“Speaking of which,” he continued, “Capt. Travis is worried about whether or not the Goonies can get communications through the wormhole. I think He is worried about another sleeper. Bart says He does not think it’s possible but, has not been able to prove it to the Boss’s satisfaction.”

“Well that’s my game anyway Bart,” I said, “how much data you got for me?”

“Are you familiar with 2×1 Ice Cube storage systems?”

“Yeah, how many you got?”

“Oh, just a 150,” he said.

I woofed out loud and asked, “And you want answers in what century? Please tell me you have them ID’d in some way?”

Bart replied, “Yep, numbered in sequence and have a diary file of major events and what cube that event is on.”

I sat and thought for about 5 minutes and said, “OK, I will put three devices on doing a hot catalog of data. Two will be placed on the cube covering the approach and entry to the wormhole. I should be able to crack the communication question in say a week or so.”

Rocco asked “That long?”

Bart replied, “What you should be asking, Rocco, is, ‘that soon?’”

I said, “OK Bart, one class of data fast scan and start the crunch. Rocco, that fast is very, very good. Did you think the ‘what century’ line was completely a joke?”

Rocco shook his head and said,“OK, I’m now officially in over my head!”

I said, “Don’t worry Rocco, this crap really is Rocket Science!”

Mariana was sitting in the anteroom off of cryo when one of Hanna Parker’s brood wobbled out of cryo and sat down. Figuring the woman needed some solace, Mariana asked, “Didn’t I see you doing first aid back in the bar on Lancer?”

“Why yes Mrs. Stuart!”

“Please, its Mariana, Mrs. Stuart was Andy’s Grandma, not to mention judging by the age of those kids of yours, I am younger than you are.”

Smiling for the first time she replied, “OK, its Linda here. And yes I was doing routine triage and treating normal trauma, you know sprains and strains. I am a full RN after all!”

“Why aren’t you with the medical personnel?”

“Well,” Linda Parker replied, “when I meet DR. Van Vogt in Med Bay I just did not like him. Can’t say why, just a bad feeling. So, I did not mention it to anyone!”

“Well, that shows your good taste. According to Bart and Rocco, He was the traitor.”

“Oh my Goodness!,” Linda said, “In that case I had better talk to someone. Maybe they need someone to run a lab or help in O.R.”

“You know about running a Lab?” Mariana asked.

“Yeah, my last job was bossing a Level 2 Bio Lab for a Regional Health Center.”

Mariana spun out of her chair like the Commando she was, shouting at the top of her lungs, “Andy, where the hell is that handheld with the inventory on it?”

Andy’s head popped out of the nearest doorway. He said, “Damn, I don’t know. Dumped the data to the ships core before we went to sleep. Battery might be dead, might have cleared the space or overwrote it!”

“And I will believe that 45 seconds after a goonie pops in here says he’s here to take us back and lives for 30 seconds Reaper!”

“OK,” he smiled with that ‘very good My Padawan’ look and said, “it’s in the room they gave us hooked up to the UPS like the sample boxes. Why the big fuss?”

“I found me a Lab tech that can spell Bio. We are going scrounging!” And turning to Linda she said, “Linda, lets go find us a Lab!”

The Travis Style

     Captain Travis was in charge, and we all knew it, though he never seemed to be giving orders. His style was something like, “Lar why don’t you and Arte do a visual and PM on the balance pumps.”  The balance pumps made sure that as we used reaction mass in the Dee-Hee drive the Mayflower stayed in trim.  “If you can, get it today, if not first thing tomorrow would be fine.”

     Or, he would say. “Bart, your last sim where you had to land the Surprise, (the Surprise was the name of his cruiser), on that 10% slope. Well…when she toppled over she hit pretty hard. During your watch tonight how about running a few more and when you’ve gotten say…”, here he would tilt his head a bit and look upwards as if in contemplation, “15 in a row without damaging the paint let me know.”

     It took me almost 2 months to get there. After a first success all the sims at each difficulty level ran progressively faster. And at the 15 mark I was trying to complete a 30 minute landing in under 17. When things went wrong, and in the sims they always did, they went wrong in a hurry. There was always a way to save the situation but some were devilishly hard to find.

     With all the time the Historian spent in the greenhouse, the captain rarely asked him to do anything else. But when he did it got done. The Historian could dictate into his log or the E/A even while working on something else if the task wasn’t too demanding. And do it in complete paragraphs with sentences, phrases, clauses, colons and semicolons. He said it was easy because that’s how he had always worked. I could never get semicolons right so just left them out of my entries.

     The Hist had a lot of his material in the Encyclopedia locked away from public access. I asked him why? and he said he was still working on some and some just wasn’t ready to see the light of day. I asked him when? He said “Some sooner. Some later. Some maybe never. In any event the Captain has the passwords.”

     We all took a lot of meals on the bridge where the Captain spent the bulk of his time. The man could cook! There was an alcove which connected to his cabin and contained a rudimentary kitchen setup. Nearly every day he would put together something much more edible than an issue MRE. It was on our Sunday “Day of Rest” meal that he really put on a show. If we run out of need for ships Captains I know where a restaurant can find a pretty fair gourmet chef.

     I once asked him, “Cap, what are your plans if we can make a go of this colony?” He listed a number of possibilities I never would have suspected. After that I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was such an accomplished painter. He spent a fair amount of time every Sunday at it and let me use some of his work to illustrate Encyclopedia entries.  He didn’t much engage in small talk beyond what was necessary for the Mayflower’s operation.

     He told me once, and it almost seemed an inadvertent slip. “Bart, I didn’t come along for the ride, or to be the Captain of the first ever colony ship. I did it because I believe, along with everyone else on board, that this is our last best chance to live as free men ought.

1001 Nights and a Day

     Of course the trip really took us three years and nine months but with a little time subtracted for relativistic effects surprisingly close. A faster more agile ship than the Mayflower could make the trip in a bit under 3 years.

     The Historian and I were both tasked to begin work on the Encyclopedia Alchibah. The Hist says that not only the data gathered during our flight but our daily log files as well will become the primary sources for most of the entries. Once we get to the planet every colonist will be a contributor. What follows are a few instances and details of shipboard life that for one reason or another I found interesting. The complete documents and recorded conversations can be found in the E/A under Log Files.

Deception:

     Captain Travis and I were eating dinner on the second day when this conversation occurred. “Why the evasive flight plan Captain? I don’t get it. I mean this roundabout route to the wormhole. How can we hope to hide our path? Even a 10 watt signal from a remote satellite is easily detected half way cross the system and our drive must be radiating umpteen giga-watts.”

     “Oh much more than that.” Captain Travis said looking from the navigational display. “But we’ve got an ace or rather 20 aces up our sleeves in the form of decoy drones. We launch them in a couple of more days. If they work as planned the UNWG won’t know where to look first. With their limited number of deep space vessels a couple of weeks delay now might buy us several years should they decide to send someone after us.”

Robots:

     Travis Spent the first several days getting Arte and Larry Monroe up to speed on the Mayflowers systems. The Hist and I spent that time along with the bots clearing rubble and salvaging what we could from the wreckage of the greenhouse. I had decided to rename mine “J.P.” or Jeep for short. It had seemed almost sacrilegious referring to him as Heinlein.

     “Damn Hist, I am going to hate farming.” I said while clearing some of the debris away from what looked to be a repairable nutrient tank.

     “You can call me Brice,” he replied, “Let’s not get too formal here. And I am sure you’ll get used to it. I have always enjoyed contemplating the pastoral existence.”

     “I don’t mind the contemplatin’ either, but contemplating won’t grow cabbage.”

     I was struggling with a large chunk of rock and glanced sideways over to where R.Jeep and R.Isaac were standing. “You boys ready to help yet?”

     R.Jeep responded in a voice I had reprogrammed to sound like the classic C3PO. All of us fiddle with the voice at first but later most go back to the neutral robot standard. That’s what I did after a couple of weeks. The slightly unnatural speech rhythms the bots produce make anything else just too distracting.

     “Boss,” R.Jeep said “As R.Isaac so aptly stated earlier, beginning such a task before we have been able to internalize the full range of motions and required actions would be contra productive.”

     “How much longer Jeep?” It really seemed a bit backwards that the Hist and I were working our asses off while Isaac and the Jeep stood enjoying the view.

     “I am sorry Boss but it is too soon to tell. We will know when the time is optimum. I can, of course begin assisting you at once but that would be….contra productive.”

     A couple of hours later R.Isaac went over and began helping the Hist by clearing away items too large for him to handle. Jeep still stood and watched.

     “What’s the matter, Jeep, is Isaac smarter than you or what?”

     “We are computationally equivalent Boss. The Historian’s working patterns are more logically consistent and hence integrate faster.”

     “You can call me Brice.” the Historian said.

     “Jeeez.”

     About a half hour later R.Jeep started to work also. That was the way many robot working sessions went. If they had a canned routine they learned much more quickly, only needing time to pick up on the peculiarities of their owner. The bots’ communication network meant that once any learned a task they all learned it. When we get to Alchibah and have all the bots up and running there will come a time when even their large storage capacity is exceeded. A bot is supposed to then begin dumping extraneous material and save that which is most relevant to its owner. We will see.

     How fast were they? On complicated tasks like clearing rubble they were perhaps slightly slower than a human would be, though 2 or 3 times stronger. On simple tasks such as throwing a rock they were like lightning. I had Jeep throw one just so I could see. As it shattered against the exact aim point I had selected I said to the Historian. “Hist”, the Hist was resigned to the name and had stopped asking me to call him Brice, “Would ya look at that! Who needs blast rifles!”

     “Impressive, Bart, but as I am sure you know at the core of their operating system is something very akin to Asimov’s three laws. They are so basic and tied into so many higher level functions that to program around them –though theoretically possible– has proven practically impossible.”

     “Sure thing Hist, and something else, the core is all in Quantum ROM and even back on Earth only a few places can make the stuff. Any Idea how Many lines of code?”

     “Not sure Bart. I heard it was the longest and most convoluted piece of coding ever written with the possible exception of Word for Windows 2045.”

     “Wow!”

Into the Wormhole:

     “On course Captain…. 2 .… 1 .… cut.”

     The Mayflower’s engines shut down and for the first time in nearly three months their subtle undertone was missing. If things were going smoothly with the decoys they all cut their power at the same time. Larry had explained earlier that we could have gone through under power but then the way the ship’s radiation signature would appear to anyone watching back in system was something that the drones couldn’t reproduce.

     “20 seconds to entry,” Travis announced.

     The rear screens showed the familiar starry background we had grown accustomed to. The forward view screen showed an expanding dim halo enclosing utter blackness with a point of light dead at center. That point of light was being lensed from 48 light years away down the wormhole center from its Alchibah end. The halo was light being lensed around the exterior at the Solar end.

     “2 …. 1 …. Now!”

     I am going to describe what the video replay shows, but for us it was over in the blink of an eye.

     The halo grew rapidly larger then expanded beyond the viewing frame. The point stayed on center, did not get any brighter, but expanded till it filled the frame. Then a new star field oddly distorted as if 180 degrees of viewing angle was compressed into a 10 degree window. Then another new star field filled the screen.

     A very bright star shown bluish white near the left edge. Our destination.

Daily Life:

     We all worked on average 12-14 hours a day with Sundays off for good behavior. The Historian tried a brief experiment using the near twenty hour day of our new home world but soon gave it up saying, “It Just Wasn’t Natural.” I wondered how the shorter day will affect us once we get there.

     I spent at least 4 hours a day working in the greenhouse and so did everyone else including Captain Travis. First at rebuilding and later at all the other stuff that goes along with raising crops in that type of an environment. God I Hate Farming!

     The historian seemed to have a particular fondness for chickens and they seemed to like him too. I think he secretly hated to slaughter those we put on the table but my were they good eating. The Hist took charge of all the growing areas and poultry production spending 12 hours or more most days keeping up with and expanding the operations. He had R.Isaac to help and often several of the other bots. Often when the owner was asleep or engaged in an activity where a personal bot would have nothing to do that bot was sent into the Historians care.

     As the crops came in there was harvesting, canning, and freezing.  Did I mention I Hate Farming? At least all of the bots got good at this. If one bot was good at anything they all were.

     At the start either Travis, Clark or Monroe had to be on the bridge at all times. Later I got enough training that they trusted me to stand around and not blow things up. That still was 6 hours a day plus the farming thing. I spent a lot of my bridge time running simulations and learning how to operate the small cruiser Travis used when he came to the Mayflower. I was going to be the deep backup we hope we never need but there just in case. I flatter myself by saying I thought I was rather good for someone who had never taken off, landed, or operated any kind of spaceship whatsoever.

     I also spent time learning the systems then setting up the scanning routines for our ships sensors. The amount of information gathered was staggering. Terabytes ain’t the half of it. Our baseline would be so long and position data so good that I had hopes about being able to determine the existence and locate any other wormholes, large or small, in the near stellar region without having to rely on lensing. Instead just using the incredibly small stellar displacements caused by their gravity. Nothing on the Mayflower could handle the computing task.  Just maybe, when Andy Stuart was revived his network might be able to to do the job. I had my doubts but we will see. And on top of all that the Hist badgered me unmercifully if I didn’t spend a little time each day on the Encyclopedia.

     Arte Clark and Larry Monroe, besides standing watch, spent a couple more hours every day, first learning the foundry operations, and then learning to roll steel and other metals. Their bots worked right along besides them. They both also performed any incidental maintenance the Mayflower required. Only twice during our entire three year voyage did something break that they felt ought to be taken care of immediately rather than just schedule when convenient and that was only to make sure a backup would always be available. A superbly constructed ship. One of the colonists’ life support units failed but it was only a matter of moments for Arte to switch in a new one. We all tended to stay out of the cryo area it was just too funereal.

Sundays:

     All the time aboard the Mayflower I never met a Sunday I didn’t like.

     We spent a lot of time kicking around ideas of almost every conceivable nature. One of the things we did was make some guesstimates of what kind of occupations and how many people in each would be needed In order to support ourselves  on the new planet. That speculation lead to the Forming a Civilization entry into the E/A. It wasn’t of much practical use but we did argue quite a bit over it so the Hist and I decided to leave it in not necessarily as something useful but to show one of the ways we spent our free time.

     I spent quite a few hours suited on the surface at the ship’s pole. The view was breathtaking but indescribable.

     We were so busy most of the time that we never grew bored with each others’ company.

Arrival:

     So now that we are finally here its hard to believe that the five of us have aged about 3 years relative to those in Cryo.  What memories and stories.  There were a thousand and one nights. This is the new day. 

We were just settling down to some serious stomping of brain cells when the old guy who had been dubbed The Historian, some small woman I had never seen before and some big guy came in. For some reason my hackles went up as I saw the big guy. “Slow down Andy, that wolf is probably on our side”, as I saw the same look coming from him.

Mariana was in the process of tying to calm down a young Lady who was obviously not in the sheepdog category. Mariana was better at that than most anyone I knew. Who would look at her and think “Wolf” and she knew how to use that reaction.

Mariana had just returned to her seat when Capt. Travis gave his acceleration warning speech. Lots of people here were going to have to learn some new reactions.

We were just beginning to feel the first gentle push of acceleration when, “Bamp Bamp” came the shockwaves of two structural explosions. I had blown up too many things to mistake the feel of those shockwaves.

Then there was Travis’s announcement of where the explosions had occurred and the room was suddenly full of action again.

The big guy in a move like greased lightning had Ash by the neck with a Glock at his head and babbling about Ash killing his Boss.

Looking Ash in the eyes I said, “Ash, I trusted you. I gave my word for you.”

“Andy, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t. You’ve got to believe me!” All I could see was the absolute confusion and fear in his eyes, he had no damn idea what was going on.

Bart’s voice growled, “Rocco, break his neck” and I squared to the scene.

My right hand began the first half of the move to put the AMT in my palm when a voice rang out “Nobody is breaking any necks right now.”

The guy we had seen identified as Clark was standing in a Command pose that would have got him plus marks at old Colorado Springs. As He walked past me in low non-carrying sotto voice, “Mr. Stuart, please relax that wrist. We might just need you and Rocco both at some time.”

He quickly settled that Ash was going into confinement. As Bart was mumbling something about taking a while I interrupted. “People, if I may. Ash, give it to me now.”

His head nodded and his right hand slapped the right breast of his flight jacket. The Springfield XD compact appeared in his hand and spun butt down and forward as He handed to me. “Take care of it Andy, Uncle CJ’s ghost would find me if I dishonored it.”

I said, “OK Bart, now put him in the cooler!”

As Bart and Glenda took Ash from the room, I stopped in front of Rocco and unloaded the XD. “I don’t blame you a bit fellow. In your place I would be an accident looking for a place to happen. But, if Ash was dirty you would now have a .45ACP Hollow point where once your heart had been. Think about it! That puppy ain’t nowhere near a tame wolf like you and me but, a sheepdog he is!”

I was walking back to the table when Steven stopped me. “Sorry about this but, Capt. Travis asks if you would lead a team to inventory the non-perishable supplies on board. We know would should be here but, not what really is. The Capt. indicated that you might have some skills in that aspect.”

Grinning I just told him, “Ask the Capt. what database format he wants the data in and give me 6 people with handhelds not wrist comps and we will get it done.”

During a rest break in the survey Mariana asked me, “Why are we getting treated like ignorant cretins?”

“Well DR. Stuart we are not. This is a data basing problem and we got put on it. But, think about it how many people on this vessel could have the data from our classified files. How many could know that you were pushing Real Estate because UNWG shut down your research project and declared you persona non grata. Sure the PHD in Bio Sciences looks good if, you are allowed to see it. Look at my patents that are published as “Originator Unidentified”. To these people we are a couple of knuckle dragging snipers and the sheep are scared of us. When we get on the ground and start doing compatibility research with the new environment, you can get back in your precious lab and I can start building a civilization.”

She said, “So Shooter, we hunker down and ride it out?”

“Afraid we do Spotter, it is best all around!”

Just then our team came in jubilant at finishing the inventory. Collecting all their results via wi-fi I had a good handle on what we actually had. Especially Steven’s much desired store of TP! The commo gear gave me about the same grin!

After the breakfast and briefing that ended a long and eventful day Mariana and I were storing our gear in a room which was to be ours after the cold sleep. I had just located the UPS power and hooked up the two small cyro transports for the DNA and sperm/ova we had brought when there was a knock at the door.

Capt. Travis stood in the corridor and asked to speak with me. “As you may have guessed Mr. Stuart, I have been able to obtain portions of your SOCOM and UNWG files. Might I ask which of you is LTC Stuart and which is SFC Stuart? “

“No offense Capt., you may ask but you will not get an answer. The answer to that question would win somebody a lot of money. You see, in the Teams we never used ranks. The Shooter was in charge until the target was in sight. Then, the Spotter controlled everything. Ranks would have gotten in the way! Now it’s a running gag which, we treat as ‘burn before reading’.”

That got the hoped for laugh and a sputtered, “OK, but who do I talk to about Electro-Mechanical systems?”

“That would be me! She is the Bio-scientist.”

“Good, come with me! Got anymore surprises for me?”

“Yeah, do not make me sing if, you want to keep your supper!”

Laughing again he said, “We compared your survey against the manifest that R. J. ordered and found a discrepancy, we have too many robots. But four of the crates are giving off some strange energy readings. I have a limited number of people I trust to evaluate them, care to take a shot?”

“Lead on MacDuff.”

The quizzical look was worth the bad old pun.

Arriving at the storage vault, I was surprised to see Rocco sitting in front of a full blown DC to Daylight Spectrum Analyzer.

“You really know how to run that thing”, I asked?

‘Run Yes, Interpret No!”

“Ok, let me look at your data.” One good glance at the screen was enough to freeze me in my tracks. That pattern was supposed to have died with old SOCOM.

“Capt., what you have here is four covert insertion self-contained cyro chambers. Developed by SOCOM but, now it’s in the sole and proud possession of UNWG Fleet Marine Recon. You have a rat in the woodwork!”

“What do you think we should do?” Travis asked.

“Go to the bridge and let me and Rocco handle this. Just promise me that when you flush the bastard, you can do what has to be done!”

‘I think I can handle this one!”

“Then Capt., go be the Capt. and let the grunts do the grunts job.”

“Yeah, see you on the other side!”

After the airlock finished cycling I looked at Rocco and said, “Luck big guy, see you on the other side!”

Without another word or look I left to go to do what I thought needed to be done.

“Bart, got a minute?”

“Yeah, what you need?”

“Understand you are going to be staying awake and I thought you might need this. Take this and use it to collect and store the data you are going to get. Crap, your background makes you a better observer than me. But, we gotta collate and analyze all that data on the other side. This little baby should do it for you!”

“I have never seen one like this.”

“I hope not, only five of them were made. That was my price for the patents I gave HP. The two programs you want to look at are DATAACQ and FINDRF. The first is an on-the-fly conformable data acquisition and database program. The second is a DC-to-Daylight Spectrum Analysis program. The source code for it is in findrf.src.code. It should not take much work on your part for it to do Astral Spectrum Survey for you. When we get to the other side I will link its four brothers up in a star array and we will have more computing power than this whole boat put together. You have a prime partition of 80 Terabytes and two secondary’s of 80 Terabytes apiece”.

“Andy, this things worth a Kings Ransom and I wanted to wax your Cuz? Would you still have given me this thing if I had gotten Ash killed?”

“If we had both still been here at this point in time, probably would. Whether we both would have; let’s just say I’m glad I did not have to make that decision. Get the data, make this trip worth it, figure out how to stop them when they come after us if they can and make some sense of this thing. I know Ash is clean, time will prove it. Life however has to go on.”

From there I went to Mariana and the chamber!

When they woke us up I had a moment of terror before the memories came flooding back. Looking to my left was Mariana with the same “Deer in the Headlights” look. “Welcome Home”, was all I said.

Dressed I stepped in to the hallway to see Rocco and Bart waiting on me. “Guess we owe you one. Ash wasn’t the plant. Want to be there when we wake him up?”

“Hell NO! If we can keep him down, let’s leave him there for a while!”

The two confused faces were worth the energy that outburst cost! “Gentlemen and I use that term loosely, do either of you understand the old southern term “Hound Dog”? It means I will trust Ash with my life, my honor, my money and my children. But, never with my booze, my best friends 19 yr old daughter, or my girlfriend. He’s a hotshot pilot and you can always tell a pilot but, you can’t tell them much. He is also a hell of an aeronautical engineer. The best way to control him is give him a problem and tell him ‘Hick, you could not spell this cat if we spotted you the C and the A’. Obsession with a problem is his control. Leave him where he is at till I can find him that problem!”

Rocco looked at me, “You were ready to shoot me over that?”

“Hell, he is my cousin. Mariana is the one who has first dibs on shooting him just on general principals.”

A laugh turned all our heads. Capt. Travis stood laughing, “OK, we will leave him there. There are a couple of others who have to stay down for various reasons. Just wish we had more medical help?”

My quizzical look was answered by Bart saying, “Let me tell you about Van Vogt!”