Attunga - 33. Part 33

ATTUNGA Part 33.

***

“What are they doing?”

Thom's day had involved taking the Comet to K74 to see what was happening. The situation was very interesting with the ten newly completed Cadre ships and twenty more almost finished and he was explaining what he'd seen.

“Collecting asteroids. Big ones. They've brought back five so far and two more are on the way. The ones that have arrived are parked close to the ship construction sites.”

“How big?”

“They're all about a cubic kilometre and it looks like they're meant to be the source material for a whole new round of ship construction.”

“More ships? Ridiculous!”

“I know, and it's crazier than you think because Quambi tells us that when the other twenty are finished the plans show that every construction site will keep working.”

“Another thirty Cadre ships? Thom, that's scary.”

“I know. It fits with the idea that they want to be big in the solar system though, and having Quambi-K is speeding things up for them.”

“If they like everything big it's a wonder they don't go for a monster class of ship, like over a kilometer in length?”

“If they knew enough about engines I'm sure they would but they still have troubles with the ones they use now. Look how interested they were in the Freedom drives.”

“Did you find out anything else about them while you were there?”

“Remember those weird cradle things we saw them constructing on the stealth exercise day? Well they're a way to connect to other ships or asteroids and move them around quickly. They're way faster than normal asteroid collectors. One of the five asteroids was from so far off it would have taken three weeks with a standard tug but because of its big engine the Cadre ship did it in less than a day.”

“Sounds like we should put those things on a few of the Comets.”

“No way. Ordinary asteroid collectors do the job perfectly. All you need is proper planning.”

“Did you talk much to Quambi while you were close?”

“Yes, he's been doing all sorts of stuff. He was talking to the Freedom AIs about when they were cut off by that jamming we couldn't get through and he's been building extra sneaky communication channels to try and make sure it never happens to him. The big thing he's done though is build his special pico-factories into the other two backup areas so he can do anything from any one of them.”

“That's a good idea. That should have happened right from the start.”

Wirrin knew about this.

“Not really. The probability of him being discovered is practically zero so there was no need for extra pico-factories, and AIs work on probabilities a lot more than we do.”

“So why have they changed their minds?”

“I don't know, but it was Quambi and the companion AIs who made the decision this time.”

“Why did you go so close to K74 when Quambi sends us all that information anyway?”

“Training. We had our special group of pilots and they need real experience.”

“Does that mean it wasn't you controlling the Comet?”

“I did take over for the final approach because it's a bit tricky with all the extra activity they've got going on.”

“These pilots must be getting like experts themselves with all the training you give them.”

“Me? I hardly train them at all. Just special finishing off stuff.”

***

“Every single pod has its own ranger? Where did they all come from?”

Wirrin was amazed at how everything seemed be running perfectly only five days after their return from Earth. The previous evening Calen and Sonic had related some of the logistics of the dolphin re-settlement program, outlining its magnitude, and extolling the brilliance of Turaku's planning.

One hundred and twelve reaches occupied with an average of four or five pods each, and another nineteen allocated to the seven hundred and eighty-five independent males. These males were an unexpected outcome of the trip and a new factor in the running of the reaches. According to Calen they should have realised that appealing to the idea of adventure and describing bountiful food sources would be an especially powerful attraction to independent, maturing young dolphins. Luckily, the number of Attunga reaches coming online had been compounding recently with the completion of large new sections of Attunga's dolphin level, and despite the sudden influx there were still reaches to spare and many, many more close to completion.

Calen found Thom's question rather amusing.

“Thom, there are thousands and thousands of people who want to be dolphin rangers. Ever since Meeting Day when Sonic spoke to the Habitats the number of people applying to work with dolphins has gone crazy. You've seen the trainee Rangers at the dolphinarium.”

“But they're not proper rangers yet and I don't remember seeing enough for all these reaches anyway.”

“Of course you've seen them. They've been there since the first Earth dolphins arrived. All the rangers on Warrakan have three or four trainees assigned to help them at different times during the week and that's been happening ever since the Warrakan reaches opened. They might not be officially qualified but Turaku expects they'll do an excellent job. And he'll be watching and available if they need any help or advice anyway, the same as Yajala does for all the Warrakan rangers.”

Wirrin shared Thom's impression, but of course Calen was right. Every Warrakan reach you went to was buzzing with humans on their skimmers or active in other ways and when you added them in an overall picture it really did add up to hundreds of people. Thom was nodding his own realisation.

“The new rangers must be extra excited at all these dolphins arriving then?”

“Everyone is. ...What do you mean?”

“Well, most of them would have had to wait years before they could have their own pod to work with. How often do new pods start up on Warrakan?”

Wirrin started an Info check but Calen already knew.

“Our expected birth rate for the next six or seven years is around 500, so that actually converts to about twenty-five new pods a year.”

“And exactly how many pods are there on Attunga?”

“... It's not exact because they are still sorting themselves out, but it's way over four hundred.”

Thom and Calen both gave Wirrin the querying look.

“...Calen's right. It's not final, but so far 478 rangers have pod assignments.”

“Wow! Nearly 500 ...That means some of the new rangers would have had to wait twenty years for a pod. That's amazing. They must be extra keen to work with dolphins if they knew it could be that long a wait when they joined up.”

It wouldn't have been twenty years. The birthrate would increase as the dolphin numbers grew, but Thom certainly had a point.

“They are keen Thom. They know this is the start of something special and they want to be in on it.”

“You mean the Enhancement program, or Attunga dolphins in general?”

“Both. Attunga's suddenly got 9000 dolphins who will never be Enhanced so they'll be working with them for fifty or sixty years while the Enhanced side of things starts to build. It will be slow at first then faster with each new generation.”

“Dingoes! The doctor must be working like crazy. Have all these dolphins had their health checks yet?”

“The standard ones were started on the Comets and all done in the first couple of days. Now they're onto the follow-ups and developing individual healthbots.”

“Are many of them needing follow-ups?”

Follow-ups was Calen's term for the treatment of any immediate health problem which the initial health check uncovered, like the liver weakness Peggy from Martin's pod had suffered.

“Many? Almost all of them Thom. They're nearly all wild dolphins who've never had any kind of check up ever.”

“That can't be right? They've nearly all got something wrong?”

“Natural things mostly, like parasites and viruses and traces of toxic substances. Earth's oceans aren't a controlled environment like our reaches, and they're still recovering from the pollution times.”

“The oceans looked good at all the pick-up places we went to.”

“They are, compared to what they used to be. These dolphins are tougher than ours and when their problems are cleared up they'll be incredibly healthy and active.”

“Tougher? No way. Our dolphins are bigger and stronger than all of them.”

“Not that kind of tough. These dolphins have naturally fought all their life to survive through hunger and sickness and predation without any help from humans. Our dolphins don't face anything like that.”

This was interesting and Wirrin thought it might be tied in with Sonic's shark reach idea.

“You think our dolphins have it too easy then?”

“I don't, but Sonic talks about it with Yajala sometimes.”

Calen suddenly swerved his skimmer in a new direction. Wirrin and Thom automatically followed, and looking ahead, saw a group of other skimmers in the distance.

“Sonic might be with this pod. I bet I see him first.”

***

“Three and a half days? That's a long trip.”

'Pirramar is happy for you to go. Because you miss some of his work he'll arrange another challenge program for your spare time.'

No he wouldn't. Sonic was making that part up because Wirrin would have to miss out on a full day of the AI studies he was always talking enthusiastically about.

“I'll make up some challenges for you then, and we can do them together.”

Sonic made a happy sound that Wirrin was now included in their next adventure, his description for the trip he'd researched and planned, and was just now informing them of. Calen would automatically be going, and so would Thom because the Comet would have to accompany Sonic. Wirrin was the only one who needed special arrangements and if Pirramar had already said he was happy then Sonic had obviously already cleared the way.

“Hang on. I want to know where we're going that will take so long. We could have another adventure on Earth in that amount of time.”

Thom was referring to everyone's eagerness to return to the underwater ice caverns at the Antarctic.

'Travel will take twenty-one hours if we make good speed Thom, and we can use the rest of the time for exploring. I found this adventure in a distant place on our asteroid belt.'

A holo of a strange looking asteroid flipped into view.

“What is that?”

The trio were staring at a convoluted mass of rock and ore.

'I searched for traces of comet collisions and I found this. It will be a good adventure.'

“That thing is an asteroid?”

'A remnant of an even bigger one.'

Wirrin linked to the holo, called up the information Sonic had collected, and scanned through it while Thom and Calen stared at the startling shape.

“That thing is 256 kilometers across. If it's a remnant the original must have been huge.”

“256? Dingoes! That main hole we can see must be enormous.”

'It is forty-seven kilometers across, and it might be the path where a comet penetrated. We will explore and find out how deep it goes.'

“Wow! What about those other holes then? Some of them look like volcanic craters ...Except you can't have volcanoes on asteroids ....Maybe smaller comets made them? ...That's the weirdest looking asteroid I'd ever seen. ...When do we leave?”

Sonic whacked his tail excitedly on the pool surface and gave his special laugh as he drenched the three of them.

'Seventeen days. ...And I will fly your ship all the way.'

***

“It still doesn't feel right, no matter what's he says. It's his adventure and he should be here.”

Wirrin and Calen totally agreed. They'd all protested for a postponement but Sonic insisted the expedition to the mystery asteroid should go ahead as organised.

Each evening in the pool for their relax time they'd planned and discussed some aspect of the trip and Sonic's keen anticipation had been a big part of the enjoyment and interest they all felt. Finding out just a few hours before they were to set off that all the pod leaders for the Enhanced dolphins needed him at a meeting of some kind had seemed like a minor setback which would mean delaying the departure for a few hours but then word came back that the meeting would continue the next day and Sonic told them to go without him.

Calen said he'd stay with Sonic, because it must be something important, whatever it was, and that meant Wirrin and Thom didn't see much point in going. Sonic overruled that, and using his definite tone, said he expected Calen to be his eyes and ears. Calen couldn't say no then and in a somewhat subdued manner the trip had got under way.

“I know why he's made us go. It's because if we wait for him to be free we mightn't ever get there. It's over five months since he said adventures were going to be a regular part of his life.”

Calen gave a resigned snort of agreement.

“You're right. He's just too busy and we can't stop him. Yajala's been trying to organise him to have activity days that match up with ours but something always happens and it's always too important to ignore.”

“Well, if we have to wait another five months before he can come anywhere with us we won't be going anywhere either, because that's getting close to the move to Titania and he'll be busier than ever then.”

That got nods all round.

“Hey, at least we can take him on half day adventures to the moons once we get there. He'll be able to fit that in.”

There was silence for a while. Calen played with the viewing screens but they were too deep into space to see anything but stars. Wirrin superimposed a position reference on the proposed course for him, but since they'd only been travelling for half an hour it looked like they'd hardly moved. Thom was concentrating. What was he doing?

...Hmm! Why a was he running a full diagnostic on the engines? Whoo! 23.7 G?

“Thom, why are we going so fast? Can the engines cope?”

Thom's expression was now one of satisfaction.

“They're showing a hundred percent perfection Wirrin. Sonic said we'd need to push so that's what I'm doing. We're a full 2G faster than any of the Comets and this is still the best ship in the solar system.”

Calen twisted to look at Thom.

“Is this the highest acceleration ever?”

“For a ship with human level grav-compensators it is, and ours are operating at complete max. I've been a little bit faster but only for short times.”

“How long will it take to get to K137 if we stay at this rate?”

Thom activated one of his controls.

“Another nineteen and a half hours with an error margin of fourteen minutes.”

“Where does the error margin come from? You always know the precise times.”

“It's because we don't know it's exact location. All the information Sonic found is thirty-four years old so I'm sure there'll be a variation in its predicted position. We won't really know till we're in scanning range.”

Wirrin had done his own search to see what he could find but come up with the exact same data as Sonic. It turned out to be from a Mars initiated robotic survey for improved knowledge about the size and distribution of objects in the asteroid belt, and the only existing data about K137, which was frustrating but, in a way, intriguing as well, with the prospect that they'd be the first people to see it. They'd started calling it the mystery asteroid and Thom kept stating that they were going to find a cosmic dragon.

“It'd be funny if we get there and can't find it.”

“Calen, we'll find it. You can't not find something that big.”

“If another comet hit it, or it collided with something else in the last thirty-four years we mightn't. Maybe we should turn off now and head for Mars instead. That's the closest place and we definitely know where it is.”

Thom gave a look as if his not being able to find K137 was a loopy idea. Wirrin did a quick check.

“Mars isn't the closest. There's a habitat called Ascension about five hours away and Mars is seven.”

“That's one of the early habitats. It's one of the big ones isn't it?”

“Yes. It started off as a spinner then converted to grav fields. It's got 4.8 billion people.”

Spinners were a type of habitat developed before the development of directed grav fields and worked by rotating a series of concentric cylindrical structures to produce the equivalent of normal Earth gravity. Each layer had to spin at a slightly different rate and that made them very complex.

“Five hours? Can we go past it on the way to K137?”

The trio exchanged glances, their interest piqued. Thom did some calculations then shook his head.

“It's too much of a course change and would add an extra four hours even without slowing down for a proper look. The only sensible way to see it would be to forget about K137 and I don't want to do that.”

None of them did, so for a while they contented themselves with looking at holos about Ascension which Wirrin pulled from the ship's general database.

***

“It's easy. You won't have to do anything except wake me up if the automatics do something unusual.”

Calen was feeling weird about being in sole charge of the ship for the next six hours while Wirrin and Thom had a sleep. Not too weird, because the automatics were completely capable of reliably controlling the whole journey if need be, but Thom, being Thom, preferred having someone on watch, as he called it, all the time.

Wirrin would officially take the second six hours though it wouldn't be that long because Thom would never sleep for twelve while the ship was travelling. Wirrin would, any time he got the chance, and he'd definitely sleep the last several hours of approach till Thom and Calen woke him.

“So how am I supposed to know what's unusual? We could be heading for Pluto and I wouldn't know the difference.”

“You don't have to. I've set it up so all you have to watch is that bank of blue panels and if any of them turn red the automatics will tell you to panic.”

“What?”

“Calen, they won't turn red. The ship systems are too clever to let anything go wrong.”

***

In the strange quietness and solitude as the ship made its way through deep space, Wirrin, settled at his console for his turn on watch, contemplated the familiar constellations and stars shining from their ebony background. He smiled as he recalled the ancient idea that they were holes in the vault of heaven, revealing the light beyond and letting water through to fall as rain on the earth.

Calen would be asleep by now and Thom wouldn't wake up for another two or three hours so he had the ship to himself. This calm and solitude was strange and Wirrin suddenly realised he couldn't recall ever being in quite the same situation. He watched and thought for a while then felt like doing something.

Hmm! Thom's ability with the pico factory was ok at a basic level but to get the best from it needed either special knowledge or an AI. Well, there was no AI but Wirrin definitely had the expertise. All he needed was more familiarisation with this particular system. For nearly two hours he applied himself. Focused intently on mastering the complex range of capabilities available to the pico-factory, the awareness that something wasn't right took a moment to register.

One of the panels was glowing red! What? That couldn't be? Thom had said the panels were really a token and the automatics would handle everything.

Wirrin was about to link to the panel to try and find out what was happening when a message appeared on the visuals directly in front of him. The automatics were making sure they had his attention.

ALERT! ALERT! PRIORITY MESSAGE INCOMING.

HOLO ACTIVATION REQUIRED.

Wirrin leapt from his seat, rushed to the open door of the little cabin where Thom and Calen were sleeping, and watching in case the holo started, yelled for them to wake up.

“Quick, the alarm has gone red. Get out here quick.”

Thom lifted his head so Wirrin headed back to the console and with questions racing through his mind, activated the communication mode. Taking one look he shouted again.

“Thom! It's a priority message from Pirrimar. I'm starting it now.”

***