FM Busby Long View 8 Rebels Seed

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itself, we very well could."
Unconvinced, Lisele said, "Say we do that, and then there isn't anything
habitable? We'd be stuck; right?"
The man nodded. "That's true, of course. But on the other hand, why don't we
wait until we see at closer range what the system has to offer, and then make
our decisions?"
"And for the time being," the captain said, "ease back on decel, as much as we
can and still be able to snag orbit on the star or its big planet. To conserve
our Drive capability."
Lisele couldn't argue with that logic, so she didn't.
Time passed. Unlike deWayne Houk, Darwin Pope was easy to get along with; he
and Delarov and Lisele settled into an easy routine that still kept good check
on things they needed to know. Goal Star neared, and
Tinhead confirmed its earlier guess that the system harbored Earthsized
worlds. Two, as it happened, but only one of those orbited in the zone that
allowed water to be liquid. The ship's light-amplifying
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circuits showed atmosphere around that planet. But whether it was enough and
not too much, or breathable, Tinhead could not yet determine.
"If we can get ourselves there," Delarov said, "it's possible that we might
have a chance."
Privately, Lisele thought she'd rather ride
March Hare in freeze, into Earthspace, and take her chances on rescue.
For the first month after her hair fell out, Lisele knew it was too soon for a
comeback and didn t expect one. As the second month passed and nothing showed,
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she began to worry: maybe this thing was permanent, after all. Discouraged,
she stopped checking in the mirror when she got up from sleep.
But one "morning," while brushing her teeth before that mirror, on her
reflected scalp she saw faint darkness. Looking closer she found a few hair
tips showing, sparse and scattered. Then she noticed more dark dots, and
realized these were new growth that was close to surfacing but hadn't quite
made it yet. Still awfully scanty-but now she remembered that follicles had
their individual cycles, and certainly wouldn't all have been at the same
stage when the radiation hit.
So it would take some waiting. But eventually she would look more like herself
again.
Well ahead of her time to relieve the skipper on watch, Lisele went up to
Control, to see if Delarov was showing any similar progress.
She was, and a little better. But the funny part: until Lisele told her, the
captain hadn't even noticed!
By a certain amount of fine-tuning, plus disconnecting the power drain of the
inoperative Hoyfarul
FTL circuits, Darwin Pope stabilized
March Hare's
Drive. "Houk should have thought of that," he grumbled, "but his oversight
hasn't cost us anything of more than marginal importance. We're leveled off at
roughly forty-two percent of redline capability, and quicker action might have
got us forty-seven. Which still wouldn't have slowed us sufficiently to orbit
an Earth-class world, at Goal Star."
Parts of his explanation went over Lisele's head, so she asked questions. All
right; the FTL gear itself was undamaged, but the deteriorated Nielson Cube
couldn't muster enough power to fire it up.
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Lisele felt herself scowling in concentration, and forced those muscles to
relax. "Is the Cube down for keeps?" Because she knew, vaguely, that at least
once Tregare had traded a sick Cube for a rebuilt one.
"As far as we're concerned, yes. Groundside I could fix it, but we can't get
there. Even aboard it might be done, we had a replacement power supply to
keep the ship running. But we don't."
if
Well, that was a stopper-or was it? "Hey-just a minute! What if-why don't
we-how about the scout's
Cube?
I know it's smaller, but shutting down all the drain we don't really need-"
Pope looked first startled and then interested, but after moments he shook his
head. "I like your thinking, Moray, but the idea isn t physically possible."
She wouldn't quit without an explanation, so he gave one. "If it were a simple
matter of changing to a new
Cube, a job of only a few hours, we wouldn't even need to go to scout's power.
The ship's accumulators could handle our minimum emergency load. But
troubleshooting and repairs, in place ..." He shook his head. "No telling how
long that might take. Weeks? Months? We could run out of power totally."
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And no, the scout's Cube couldn't be installed in
Hare, because of the differing sizes: "I'm a fair machinist, but all those
adapters? Again, the situation simply doesn't give us enough time."
Glaring, although Pope certainly wasn't to blame for her frustration, Lisele
stood. "Galley break time. Sit in for me?" At his nod, she added, "Anything
you'd like me to bring up for you?"
He smiled. "At this point, and the hell with regs for the moment, I could use
a beer. If you can locate a cold one."
She could, and did. Then she asked questions about putting ships into orbit.
Except for the math part, such maneuvers didn't seem to be Darwin Pope's
specialty. So she'd have to ask the skipper.
As
March Hare came closer to Goal Star, Tinhead gave more and better information.
The system contained two gas giants, but the smaller was far to port of the
ship's course, and maybe not massive enough for its needs.
Whereas Jumbo, the one first spotted, was only slightly to starboard and now
well on the far side of its primary.
"So we can pass the
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star if we like," said Katmai Delarov, "and have a chance for some kind of
look at the inner planets, before deciding whether to orbit Jumbo or not."
Accordingly, there were two opportunities that could be taken, to stop in this
system, before Lisele's own suggestion might be considered.
She made a mental shrug. Because now that she thought about it, Lisele wasn't
all that enthusiastic about riding freeze for a long time, and no guarantees.
Maybe waking up to a future in which she knew no one but her shipmates?
So, reconsidering, she said, "That's good. The more choices we have, the
better."
Running deceleration as hard as the Cube would give it without alarm-noted
protests, March Hare slowed into Goal Star's reach of space. On this side of
the system no large planets appeared; Jumbo and Junior now rode the far
quadrants.
So for a time, noting only cosmic debris of little importance, Lisele and her
captain waited. Until closer approach might tell them something about the two
inner, smaller, detected planets.
One was too far out to be habitable; well, Tinhead had already indicated as
much. The other, though: Sitdown, they'd called it, possibly hoping the naming
would influence its characteristics. But as yet, even hi-mag didn't show
enough detail to call it livable or not. Another day or two might tell.
Leaving watch-duty, Lisele wished the waiting could be over.
Waking up, she felt good. She showered, then checked the mirror to see how she
looked. Not too bad; some of her hair was nearing a centimeter in length while
other parts were barely poking through, but in another month the differences
wouldn't show, to speak of. And meanwhile only she and the captain and Darwin
Pope, who was only beginning to sprout at all, were around to notice. So, good
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