##
Lieutenant Hayes drove up to the boarding ladder of the Santana and waved at Chief Boreman, the crew chief for the two scout ships, who was checking something inside the entrance hatch. Hayes pulled out the two heavy bags that held his personal gear.
“Got room for these, Chief?”
Boreman looked up the ladder to the command deck and yelled, “BLAKE, YOU THERE?”
A head appeared at the upper end of the ladder, “Yo, Chief!”
“Stick these in the Lieutenant’s compartment.” He then handed the two bags up the ladder.
“How’s it going, Chief?”
“No problems, Lieutenant; all systems are clean and green, tanks are full, and provisions are aboard for you and two passengers. Speaking of which: here they come.”
Boreman pointed over Hayes’ head, and he turned to see a floater headed their way. When it stopped near the ship, Hayes went over to help with the gear.
“Doctor Ames, Doctor Twisst, I’m Easton Hayes, your pilot.”
They shook hands all around and Ames looked up at the bulk of the scout ship, “It is larger than I thought it would be; I had heard disturbing rumors that scout ships were extremely small.”
Hayes smiled, “Actually, Doc, the rumors are true.”
He turned and pointed up at the ellipsoid shape of the Santana; the fifty-two meter tall ship had a central bulge and tapered to rounded points at the top and bottom.
“The forward end of the ship houses the mass resonator and fuel tanks. The wider center section contains the four reactors, the drive, and the lift ring. The remainder of the hull below that is all there is for the control and environmental systems, food, water, and crew accommodations. You will notice that the four landing struts are only retracted into external housings on the hull. There is very little interior room, and three people are the limit.”
Ames and Twisst looked at each other; they did not look happy.
“However, on the up-side, the trip to Forest will only take three days in a scout ship.”
Hayes grabbed a couple of their bags, “Let’s get loaded and organized, the Admiral wants us out of here yesterday.”
##
The stairs to the Weasel’s bridge put them at the end of a ramp that followed the shallow arch of the top of the hull and led straight in to the flight command center. It was arranged in a complete circle with the command area on the inside. The actual command console was a low, horizontal panel with two seats in front of it and a curved seating area around a low table for guests or observers behind them. The circle that surrounded the seats and console was a ring of large screens that were currently set to give a full exterior view from the perspective of the ship’s equator just below the lift ring. It was like standing on a tower looking out over Temple Bay, Michigan City, the ocean, and the wooded hills stretching to the horizon.
Wills stood between the two chairs at the center of the display and turned in a full circle, “Finally, a view of the area that doesn’t include the Weasel.”
Helt started tapping on an input panel, “You should see this view at night when Rose is full. Commander, enter an access code.”
CeCe reached over and tapped in a series of characters. Helt tapped again.
“Admiral, your turn.”
Wills reached and tapped in a code sequence.
Once again, Helt completed the process, “You now have full command authority of the Weasel. The three of us are the only ones that can access the flight systems.”
Wills stared blankly at the console as his mind went somewhere else. He turned to face Helt, “The Silverman has never done an isolator start and was never intended to; how will it handle that?”
Helt nodded, “True, but it’s had the full Rhino operations file loaded plus the current modifications. I expect it will do a standard initiation and improve from there. The baseline procedure is to start with standard routines. I expect no problems; in fact, now that I think of it, everything we have hooked into it has run dead smooth since then or has had function errors reported almost immediately.”
Helt lifted his eyebrows and shrugged, “Everything it has touched has been pure gold.”
Wills thought and chuckled, “Yeah, I thought it was interesting that the elevator was not only waiting for me at the strut platform but the door opened before I could press the button. Okay, so far, so good; what’s next?”
CeCe had been looking at the console, “How about a crew? This console has been simplified and old memories are creaking their way out of the dust, so I’m experiencing a growing sense of confidence. The big problem now seems to be getting enough people to handle the ship and, especially, 100,000 or more passengers that have never seen our technology.”
The three of them looked at each other as that question bounced around their heads. Wills pointed a question at Helt, “How many of your people can we take with us? They’re the ones that actually know this ship.”
“Hmm . . . well, I only have fifty-three people for the entire port facility, and about thirty, give or take, were involved with the Weasel at any one time. I suppose I could bring forty-five of them with us.”
CeCe looked at Wills, “These ships usually had a crew of 1,700.”
Wills pointed at Helt, “Get on your pad and get your people on this ship.”
He then pointed at CeCe, “Call the medical people and see who they can spare. Oh, and then call Stoker and Treelam; advise them that we are on the Weasel and to get here ASAP.”
Wills got out his own pad and called Erica.
“Yes, Admiral, what can I do for you?”
“Slight change of plans; notify any crew members coming down from the ships in orbit that I need volunteers for duty on the Weasel. Also, put out a general notice to Archer that we need a few hundred volunteers with teaching, psychology, or shipboard experience; use your criminal files to filter out
