The Unscheduled Mission (14 page)

“We don’t have any macadam left,” Park reminded him. “It will have to be entirely concrete.”

“That’s good enough,” Arn assured him. “Terius has already arranged to have some of that miracle paving compound the Mer use flown in. Once that gets here the concrete will be a perfect foundation.”

“I’ll get the crews working on it in the morning,” Park promised.

“Good,” Arn nodded. “Will one hundred workers be enough?”

“More than enough, I should think,” Park nodded. “Then after that’s done, I’d like to keep them around to clean off and repair the old runway.”

“And build a new control tower too,” Arn added. “How soon can we have a working space port, do you think?”

“How long did it take last time?” Park asked. “As I recall, you finished it while Iris and I were out exploring.”

“I’d like to have it done faster than that,” Arn replied. “Any chance of having the strip done in a week?”

“Only if they want to land on dirt,” Park replied. “It will take longer to setup the rebar, never mind cover it with concrete and let it set.”

“Well, I’ll see how the Mer pilots feel about landing on a dirt strip,” Arn told him. “If they can do that, maybe it will be faster to repair the old one.”

“And a prefab building for control will do for starters,” Park decided, “but you know we only have two months before the rains. The dirt strip won’t hold up well then.”

“You should have it paved by then, right?” Arn asked.

“We should if we don’t have any other problems come up,” Park agreed. “And besides, We’ll need a real strip by then for
Phoenix Child
. Any word from the Galactics?”

“Terius and I are still shouting at the Moon,” Arn admitted. They know they got
Trenisi
, but they aren’t sure if any of the Mer ships are similarly armed. They aren’t, but Terius has finally decided to
mount
Sheetz
’s phasers on the flat spots where the meteor defenses used to be on their ships.”

“I sent Ronnie and Velvet overland to Ghelati on one of those anti-grav floaters yesterday,” Park told him. “They ought to be there sometime tomorrow and from there they are flying to the shipyard in Quetso.”

“Quetso?” Where’s that?” Arn asked.

“
Asia,” Park replied. “I think it’s on the Kamchatka Penisula as we would have called it. Look, I’ll talk with you in the morning as soon as I get the work started on that new runway.” They broke the connection and Park turned back to Iris and Marisea to discover they had both slipped out of the room while he was talking.

“Park, are you done yet?” Iris asked. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Just finished up,” Park replied, getting up from the couch. “Looks like I’m going to be having quite a few long days ahead too,” he commented to Marisea a few minutes later at the dinner table.

“Park,” Marisea asked, “could we start giving the Atackack students some training in piloting, navigation and gunnery? They really want to do their part, you know.”

“They should be learning their sums first, don’t you think?” Park countered.

“They picked up basic math skills quickly enough,” Marisea told him, “and they can all read too, you know. Where they lag behind is in understanding Mer and Human cultures. We’re completely foreign to them, but it’s like I said before, “They’re very quick studies and they are eager to be a part of our community. I think Tack told them they would be.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to give them some simulator time,” Park admitted. “We can see what they are good at.”

“I’m sure some of them will be very good,” Marisea replied. “The Atackack are a species of specialists, you know. Anything an individual does well, she or he does exceptionally well. About three quarters of our students are female, of course. The males are all shaman caste, leaders mostly so the idea of fighting for the Earth comes naturally to them.”

“Don’t you mean fighting for their territory?” Iris asked.

“Well, of course,” Marisea shrugged. “Is that an important distinction?”

“It could be,” Iris replied. “What if Atackack territory came into conflict with Mer or Human territory.”

“Why should it?” Marisea asked. “Mer cities are in on near water and the Atackack don’t really like water. They need to drink, of course, but they build near small streams for the most part. They could be in conflict some day with Human cities, I suppose, but that’s a very long way off. There are so few of you and the Atackack live on the other side of the world. All you have to do to prevent that sort of thing is just don’t move into their lands.”

“But someday our territory might abut theirs,” Park pointed out.

“Not in any of our lifetimes,” Marisea said with certainty. According to what I was taught, Atackack territory hasn’t changed in a hundred thousand years. We think they have reached a certain sort of population stability. The Kogack land is sparsely settled and has room for more settlements, but the other tribal lands are perfectly dense for the Atackack. When there is population pressure they fight and the population drops again.”

“If they move out of those lands they could grow still more, however,” Iris pointed out.

“Their land is sacred to them,” Marisea replied. “Some individuals, like Okactack, might leave from time to time on special missions, but they always return. I think they have a biological urge to return.”

“Maybe, and maybe not,” Park told her, “but as you say a conflict of that sort is a long way away. Right now, I’m more concerned with conflicts with the Alliance of Confederated Worlds.”

While the Mer pilots were not willing to attempt a landing on a packed dirt runway, they were able to bring supplies in overland on larger sized versions of the buggy than any of the Humans had been aware existed. The teamsters who drove the three vehicles were not particularly happy to do so over what was essentially uncharted territory to them, but they did make the trip and Park was able to restore the original runway within three weeks of the disaster. Then he started the construction teams on rebuilding the control tower and port terminal and on the second runway.

“We don’t really need two of them,” he admitted to Arn, “but having a backup is never a bad thing and since I’m building this one at a right angle to the other, I imagine the winds will be more favorable for that one on some days.”

The new runway was not finished by the time
Phoenix Child
was ready for her shakedown cruise that would bring her from the shipyard to Van Winkle Town by way of three orbits about the Earth. Park and Iris rushed to the distant shipyard in order to inspect the new vessel and be on her for her maiden voyage. Marisea wanted to go along with them, but even she had to admit that cutting her first week of university-level classes was probably a bad idea.

“You keep studying and no wild parties in the house while we’re gone,” Park told her, only half seriously as he was packing.

“Uh uh!” Marisea shot back at him boldly. “I’m going the fill the place with boys and have a lot of fun!”

Park merely chuckled a moment and replied, “Yeah, right.”

“You don’t think I could?” she challenged him.

“I don’t think you would, dear,” he replied. “Your father brought you up too well.”

“I’ve been meaning to have a talk with him about that,” Marisea replied with a growl that couldn’t disguise the grin on her face. “When are we going to Luna?”

“That all depends,” Park admitted. “Arn and Terius are still screaming at the Moon and not getting anywhere much, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they decided to send me up there with a hold full of bombs, but I don’t expect it. I am planning to take Dannet and Sartena with us on the maiden voyage, however.”

“Huh?” Marisea asked. “Why?”

“Because I want them to report that we have a new, fully armed ship and anything they report will be taken a lot more seriously if they can say they’ve actually been on board,” Park explained.

“Isn’t there supposed to be something called military secrecy?” Marisea asked pointedly.

“Oh, I want the Galactics to know what we have on board,” Park smiled. “Some of it anyway. Actually, I’m probably going to have to tell Dannet to send a report. The kid is so darned honorable he won’t do anything against us so long as he’s on parole and, even after his ransom is paid, he’s not likely to turn on us. Sartena is more practical. She’s our friend too, but she knows she has a duty as an officer of the
Alliance.

“However, I’m not telling them how it all works and I’m not planning to tell them everything either,” Park went on. “The
Alliance should already know we have missiles. We’ve destroyed several of their ships with them. If they don’t find a way to defend themselves against them, that’s their lookout. They should also have guessed we have something that shields us from their plasma-casters, although I think I might not bother to stress how much better the new model magnetic shields work. And if they don’t know about our version of the multi-phase lasers, I don’t mind letting them know what we have, since I’m kind of interested in what they might have to protect themselves against it. It turns out their defense against an X-Ray phaser is radiation shielding similar to our magnetic plasma shields, but that won’t help much against visible light. Ronnie has a few new tricks up her sleeve, but that we’ll keep to ourselves for now.”

“Such as?” Marisea asked.

“I’ll let you know if they work,” Park promised.

“Such as the stasis plating?” Marisea pressed. “We all know she’s been working on that.”

“I understand there are still a few bugs left in that,” Park smiled. “We’ll see.”

Phoenix Child
represented a new class of Mer-built spaceships. As planned, she was half again as large as her predecessors and had she been similarly equipped she might have held twice the crew, but her designers had other plans in mind. She had two multi-phase lasers mounted on the wings. “Different frequencies,” Veronica Sheetz explained to Park, Iris and the others. “Our original phaser was green, but it seemed to me that someone might be able to counter that once they knew our frequencies, so the second one is indigo blue. I’m trying to work out a way to change colors on the fly, but that will take a whole new means of producing laser light.”

Park noticed that the shape of the ship’s nose still sported the traditional flat spot
 
just underneath. “Couldn’t get the Mer to get rid of the old meteor defense mount?” he asked.

“Oh, I have plans for that,” Ronnie replied. “I’ll tell you about that when we get back to Van Winkle, but you’ll notice that area can be opened up now. There’s a space underneath for another weapon – maybe a third phaser if my other idea doesn’t work out. We also have two missile racks in the bay for twice as many shots, and a few special missiles, like heat-seekers, which should work really well in the coldness of space and if you like I could tip one or two base-busters with a nuclear device.”

“I’d rather not,” Park shuddered at the thought. “We won’t need them against other ships and I’d rather not attack the Moon base if we can avoid it. If we can’t, conventional explosives should do the trick.”

“So, no antimatter then?” Ronnie asked.

“You’re kidding, right?” Iris demanded.

“Well, it is not impossible,” Velvet replied when Ronnie merely smirked, “but do you have any idea what would happen if the containment fields failed suddenly.”

“Yes,” Park nodded, “I have a very good idea of what would happen. Pass on the antimatter. Now about the color of this hull. Why did you paint all the flames coming from the nose and across the wings?”

“Because we could,” Ronnie replied. “The Mer have paints that can withstand the heat of re-entry, even though this bird won’t be coming down on a blanket of fire. Her skin could take it once, in an emergency landing, but generally you will re-enter more gracefully. We figure there won’t be that much need to come down fast, most Mer shuttles don’t and the Mer engineers were shocked by the way we did it, so now we won’t. Slower re-entries will prolong the life of the ships anyway. Actually we just figure that with the name
Phoenix Child
the flames would be appropriate and it gave us something to do this past week while waiting for you all to show up. Come on inside,” she invited them up a boarding ramp.

The ramp led to the middle deck. “The lower deck is where we keep most of our engines and weapons systems,” Ronnie explained. “It’s pressurized, but isolated from the other two decks. We got that idea from the
Alliance ships. For that matter, each cabin can be pressurized independently in case of a hull breach. The hatches will all slam shut if there is a sudden drop in pressure.

“Now back here,” she went on, stepping through an open hatch, “We have the engineering section. Our drive fills the entire rear section, including a shaft down the length of our hull, just like before, but now we have space for our people to work without getting in the way of mission specialists.”

“Where are the crew’s quarters?” Park asked, looking around the seemingly empty cabin.

“Right here,” Veronica gestured all around. “We felt we might need the open space, so the bunks fold up into the walls, just like in an old efficiency apartment.” She turned a knob and pulled down a panel to reveal it was really a cot. Then she started pulling a cloth panel out of the wall as well. “We had to make the privacy walls of cloth, as you can see, but they work like window shades only sideways. Just pull this section out and stick the blue rod in the corresponding hole in the floor and turn to lock it in place, then pull the red rod and the cloth attached to it to this other hole and do the same thing. No doors, I’m afraid, but the next panel completes the room.”

“It will have to do, I suppose,” Park admitted. “And where does the crew sit during take-off?”

“Look at the floor,” Ronnie told him. “Those panels are actually seat backs.” Velvet went over to one and released the catch. The panel was spring loaded and it rotated up and became the back of what looked like any airplane chair. The rest of the seat rose
 
up out of the floor, but it was necessary to pull it up the last few inches until it locked.