Firstborn

the big pits where we’ve dug out ice and rock to serve as reaction mass, the stuff that will actually push the ship forward. And there are the domes where we all live when we’re on the surface — the Liberator is a lot more comfortable than that, believe me!..”

The Trojans clustered at a point of gravitational stability on the J-line called L4, Lagrange 4, forever sixty degrees ahead of Jupiter itself in its orbit. There was a second such point, L5, trailing Jupiter.

Earthbound astronomers had named the two asteroid camps for the competing heroes of Homer’s Iliad: Achilles and the other Greeks leading Jupiter, the Trojans forever following.

L4 was a useful lode of resources, an obvious place for a base, a control point. Perhaps that was why, during the sunstorm, the Firstborn had lodged an Eye here.

“I won’t pretend I’m not afraid, Thea. I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.

I’ve learned I can put aside the fear, and get on with the job. Because I know it’s a job that has to be done.

“Maybe you know that this ship, the fourth of the new A-class, is the first to have been given a name. Because while the others made test flights, this ship will be the first to go into combat. I suppose whatever happens she will always be remembered for that. Of course we have to get through a couple of proving flights first.

“We agonized about the name. Here we are surrounded by heroes from classical mythology. But it’s the mythology of another age, remote from our own. In the end we settled on the name of one of the great aircraft that helped wage mankind’s last pivotal war, before the coming of the Firstborn changed all the rules. I hope that in the next few weeks we’re going to be able to liberate mankind from an even deadlier menace. And that then I’ll have a chance to come home to you. I—”

An alarm chimed, a green light flashed on the softwall beside her. The fuel pods were at last successfully loaded; the ground crew were leaving the ship.

And the launch window for the scheduled shakedown cruise would open in just ten minutes.

Time enough. And then she could accept her operation order for her true mission.

“Close the file, please, Libby. Snip the last bit. And get John Metternes up here.”

16: James Clerk Maxwell

The lightship that was to take them to Mars came swimming out of the dark. It was called the James Clerk Maxwell. The sail was a shadow, and Bisesa caught glimpses of rigging, rectilinear flashes immensely long.

As the hour of the pickup neared Bisesa grew even tenser. You didn’t have to know anything about the engineering to understand that a ship that sailed on sunlight must be gossamer-fragile. And their knotty little spider, a spinning lump of metal, was going to come plummeting in among this fantasy of sails and rigging. She continually expected alarms to sound, and to see a wispy mirror-sail fold around her like Christmas paper.

Myra grew anxious too, despite her own astronautics experience. But Alexei Carel was entirely unfazed. As the rendezvous approached he sat by his softscreens, monitoring obscure graphic displays, occasionally uttering a mild word that was transmitted to the approaching ship’s systems along a narrow-beam laser link. He seemed to trust absolutely the mixture of orbital mechanics and exotic celestial seamanship that was bringing the spider ever closer to the Maxwell.

In the last moments the Maxwell’s main hull came looming out of the dark. Bisesa imagined she was in a small boat, watching the approach of a liner across some vast ocean. The rough cylinder bristled with antenna dishes and booms, and around its upper rim Bisesa made out a ring of pulleys, mundane bits of technology that anchored kilometers of rigging.

A transparent tube a couple of meters across snaked out from the hull, probed at the spider uncertainly, and locked on with an audible rattle. There was a jolt as the mechanical linkage soaked up the last minor differences in momentum. Then the tube contracted like a concertina, drawing the two hulls together, until they docked with a firm clang.

Alexei sat back, a broad grin on his face. “Thank Sol for universal docking protocols.”

“Well, that’s that.” He peeled the softscreen off the wall in front of him, crumpled it up and stuffed it in a pocket. “Time to get packed up. Take everything you want; dump anything you don’t need in here.”

“We aren’t taking the spider,” Bisesa said slowly.

“Of course not.”

Bisesa felt oddly reluctant to leave the haven of the spider.

“Maybe I’m just getting too old for all this change.”

Myra squeezed her arm. She made this sort of affectionate gesture spasmodically; Bisesa accepted whatever her wounded daughter had to give her. “Mum, if I can cope with it, you can. Come on, let’s get ready.”

When Alexei opened the hatch in the cabin wall, the outer hull of the Maxwell, exposed, smelled faintly of burning. Bisesa touched it curiously, a surface that had endured the vacuum of space for long months. It felt hot.

The Maxwell’s hatch dilated away.

They crossed into an interior that was clean, brightly lit, and smelled faintly of soap. The suitcase followed with a clatter. Little sucker pads shot out of it on fine threads, fixing themselves to the walls, so that the case hauled itself around like a clumsy, fat-bodied spider.

The hatches closed behind them, and Bisesa felt a gentle shudder as the greater mass of the Maxwell reacted to the casting-off of the spider. There was no window in the hatch. She would have liked to see the discarded spider fall away.

Alexei gave them one bit of warning. “Just remember they pared off every gram to build this thing. The whole ship masses only around ten tonnes — and that includes the sail. You could easily put your foot through the hull.” He tapped an internal floor-to-ceiling partition panel. “And this stuff ’s a kind of rice paper.

Light but fragile.” He poked a finger through it to show them, then he tore off a tiny strip and popped it in his mouth. “Edible too. In case of dramas, eat the furniture.”

Bisesa asked, “ ‘Dramas’? What dramas?”

Myra said slowly, “I suppose about the worst thing that could happen is to lose the sail, or to foul it up beyond usefulness. In which case you’d be stranded, falling away on whatever trajectory you happened to be on. Rescue would be possible, but it would likely take months, if not years.”

Bisesa pondered. “How many accidents have there been?”

“Very few,” Alexei said. “And none fatal.” He lectured them briefly about various levels of fail-safe in the design of the mission profile, so that if you did lose your sail you’d still coast somewhere accessible. “It’s more likely your body will fail you before a ship like this does,” he said to Bisesa, not entirely reassuringly.

While Alexei disappeared to what he called the “bridge” to check over the ship’s systems, Myra and Bisesa explored and unpacked.

It didn’t take long to figure out the layout of the Maxwell. The pressurized hull was a cylinder only a few meters tall. Divided up by sheets of that rice-paper partitioning, it was split into three main decks. At the base was what Alexei called the utilities deck. Peering through hatches, they saw heaps of stores, life support, EVA and repair gear, cargo. Alexei’s bridge was the upper deck.

The middle deck contained living quarters. Aside from a dedicated galley and bathroom it was sliced up by movable partitions into rooms that could serve as rest quarters, bedrooms, workrooms for a crew of up to ten. The walls were thick with cupboards and space-saving fold-out bunks and chairs. Bisesa and Myra spent some time moving the partitions around. They settled on constructing three small bedrooms as far as possible from each other and from the lavatory; the paper-thin partitions weren’t particularly soundproof.

The accommodation was almost as pokey as aboard the spider.

But the cramped corridors and low-ceilinged rooms had a unique mix of architectures designed for ground and space. The sail could offer an acceleration of no more than one percent of Earth’s gravity — not enough to stick