“Nothing complex. We just need a legally incorporated society, no special requirements, board of directors, etc. I'll email my family contacts once you have it set up, then we'll go from there.
Conan nodded. “So, you're forming a prospective colonial group composed exclusively of Johansson descendants?”
“Not exclusively, not even predominantly if we get enough interest. But I want as many of ours out of here as we can manage.”
“FAITH might step in. They don’t have the clout right now, but by the time you're ready to shove off…”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. The constitutional guarantees, plus the original documents of agreement they signed with me back on Earth, will establish the legal requirement to let the colonists go. We need to be ready though, if they decide to go for brinkmanship. Let’s talk about in-system assets that are still Bob-controlled.”
Conan smiled and popped up a graphic. Almost as if he'd been expecting this.
8. Survey Results
Bob
July 2333
Outskirts, Eta Leporos
Will, Bill, and Garfield were in attendance, in anticipation of some useful returns from our scout drones. Orbital mechanics being what they are, the drone destined for planet Boogen arrived first. We were a little concerned about the possibility of deceleration attracting attention from the Boogens, but finally decided that a) there is no reason to expect them to be more interested in powered objects in particular since they’d cleared the system of everything and b) we didn’t have much choice.
In any case, the drone settled into a low orbit around planet Boogen with no issues or incidents, and ejected all its scouts.
It was immediately obvious why there was no sign of life: this was a dead planet and not by natural means. The panorama below us combined the worst of an Others attack with Earth's fate at the hands of humanity. There had very clearly been an exchange of nukes. Blackened blasted circles where cities might once have been were still putting out enough radiation to forestall any possible misinterpretation. Impact craters indicated at least some orbital bombardment, although nothing as big as what the Brazilian Empire had used on Earth.
The planet hadn't spiraled into nuclear winter, but even so there was no indication of living vegetation. Large swathes of what might once have been forests were burned to the ground, with not the slightest trace of new growth. Finally, I reached forward and turned off the big monitor. I said to Guppy, “Let me know if anything anomalous shows up. Otherwise, record and archive everything, then recall the scouts and leave the drone in orbit for now.”
“Acknowledged.”
I pulled up the data stream from the other cargo drone, which was slowly pulling up to the megastructure. The scale of the thing was such that you can only see one thread at a time. The other two loops were so far away as to be invisible.
“So, what I want to do,” I said, “is spread the SUDDAR scanning drones along the length of the megastructure, so that we get a full scan of a long segment with enough overlap so we don't lose any detail. I'm going to assume that whatever stretch we pick at random is going to be representative of the structure as a whole.”
“Seems reasonable,” Will replied.
We settled back to wait for the drones to reposition themselves. I still had some concern about the Boogens. They hadn't bothered us yet, and we had some pretty good countermeasures for non-SUDDAR detection methods. But I didn't know if they might have an A-game or something for guarding the perimeter of the top populace. Although, common sense would tell you to keep watch farther out not let anything get this close in the first place. Anyway, the drones reached their assigned stations without any fuss. Bill and I gave each other simultaneous thumbs up. This was the moment of truth.
“Okay Guppy, start with full reach scans for each drone and cut the range in half with each subsequent scan until were down to a 2-mile range, which should be enough to scan the inside surface. Then start taking snapshots every second until we have a full revolution recorded.”
“Acknowledged. Scan results coming up.”
“It, uh, doesn't actually look like it's rotating,” Will said. “Are you sure about your assumptions?”
I grinned back at him. “I did some reading. A lot of the design choices for O'Neil cylinders will apply to topopolees as well. Chances are, there's an outside shell that doesn't rotate it will be thick and designed to absorb micro meteor impacts and high-energy radiation. You don't want that much mass loading the rotating sections, so the much thinner but structurally stronger inner shell will rotate, giving simulated gravity on its inner surface. There will be magnetic bearings or some such between the two shells.”
“Say, you know a lot about this thing for not having scanned it yet.”
“It's all theory, Bill. Let's see what we've got.” I turned to Guppy and nodded. There was no dramatic change to the monitor window, but smaller data windows began stacking up in various locations. We watched the action for a few milliseconds, then I reached over and tapped one of the scans. The window expanded in front of the main monitor and Bill and I leaned forward to examine it in detail.
“You were right about the shells,” he said. “The inner one is generating 0.86 g.”
“Which is exactly the gravity on the second planet,” I replied. “So that's the Boogen-makers’ homeworld.”
“Air is not even close.”
“Are you surprised? The pounding, the fires, and no life to provide homeostasis, nothing could live on planet Boogen the way it is right now.”
“I guess not.”
“When will we be able to get a detailed scan of the inhabitants?”
“Not until we’re down to the rotational snapshots, let's just leave it running.”
We sat around the control room, variously drinking coffee, beer, or Coke. I looked askance
