An Accidental Alliance (22 page)

     
She asked Taodore about it, but he was unable to enlighten her. After asking questions for several days, Iris finally called the manufactured who eventually referred her to the designer of the craft, an elderly Mer named Farn Gerocis. “Oh that?” Farn laughed. “I probably shouldn’t have really.”

     
“Why not?” Iris asked him. “Does it represent a danger to the ship?”

     
“Oh no, nothing like that!” Farn laughed even harder. “It’s just an old tradition to have it there. You see, we used to mount our meteor defense there.”

     
“Meteor defense?” Iris asked.

     
“A small but powerful laser, if you must know,” Farn informed her. “We used to mount one there on every ship. Silly of us, really.”

     
“Why is that?” Iris wondered.

     
“It’s supposed to be a holdover from the days long ago when we used to explore the solar system,” he explained. “The laser was there to protect a ship while passing through regions of high asteroid concentration. I understand even then they probably did not get much use. We still had them installed up until a century or so ago, but the need for such a thing in Earth orbit is non-existent. There are pebbles and other space junk that could do you damage, sure enough, but the chance of seeing one before it was too late? Well, it’s not going to happen. And there isn’t enough of the larger stuff to worry about.

     
“But we can be very traditional and the area on which such guns were mounted still exists,” Farn concluded.

     
“Do you have any of those meteor defenses left that we could mount?” Iris asked.

     
“Of course not,” Farn chuckled. “What would we do with it? What would you do with it for that matter?”

     
“Well, I can be very traditional too,” Iris told him. She thanked him for his time and went back to look at the flat area under the
Hudson
’s nose. Now that she knew why it was there, it bothered her. There was an aesthetic wrongness to the flat, so she started drawing again; this time with a variety of weapons. Some were fanciful but others were ones she knew were in storage deep within Project Van Winkle.

     
Iris had been angry that they had been sent into the future, prepared for a war. The hunting weapons and some of the higher-powered guns that might normally have been considered assault weapons had proven useful, even essential, for dealing with the food animals they had found in Pangaea, at least until they had met the
 
Mer. The Mer had a variety of domesticated creatures, most of whom looked ugly but either tasted delicious or could be put to work, so hunting had become more of a pastime than a necessity.

     
It was the larger guns Iris objected to; great angry-looking tubes and rods of whatever had been state of the art of warfare in the late twenty-first century. But as she tried sketching one of them into the spacecraft, it looked right. A gun of some sort right there gave the whole thing some visual balance.

     
So Iris went down into the depths of Van Winkle base and started searching. There was a lot she could work with, but most of the space-worthy weapons were missiles and their launchers could not be mounted near the nose of the craft. Finally, however, she found what she was looking for. It was sleek and aerodynamic and would work in space. In fact, the powerful pulse laser was more suited for use in space than on land. She had it taken out of storage and spent the next few days installing it on the
Hudson
.

     
“Isn’t that going to be a major hazard on reentry?” Arn asked when he saw what Iris had accomplished.

     
“Not at all,” she replied. “The Mer vehicles don’t make fiery reentries like ours used to. The return is slower and under power, so special heat shielding is not required. I tried this out on the computer models before we started the installation. It’s perfectly safe.”

     
“But why do you even need it?” Arn pressed.

     
“It completes the bird,” Iris told him. “The Mer ships used to have small defensive guns on them all the time.”

     
“But they don’t anymore,” Arn pointed out.

     
“It’s not really necessary in Earth orbit, but we do want to explore further eventually, right?” Iris countered. “It’s just a precaution.”

     
“Have it your way,” Arn shrugged. “I think you just went to a lot of work for nothing, but so long as it doesn’t jeopardize the ship, do what you like.”

     
“I will,” Iris shot back smugly.

     
Park, in the meantime had other concerns about the ship. He rounded up the people with flight experience and chose four, including Paul Gonnes and got them started on training for space. Park enrolled himself in the program as well. He justified it by saying he did not want to supervise the new astronauts without being able to do everything he asked of them, but in truth, flying a spaceship was every boy’s dream and he was having the time of his life.

     
Because the
Hudson
had been delivered early, they had time for several low orbital training flights on her. Park made sure that each time they lifted, there was a mixed crew of human and Mer, although the Mer refused to pilot the ship. “We have to maintain our story that this is primarily a human venture,” Taodore told him on several occasions.

     
“So we can’t hire a Mer pilot?” Park countered.

     
“Not until the Galactics accept you as a space-faring species, I should think,” Taodore replied.

     
“And you think having the controls labeled in both English and Merish won’t be a giveaway?” Park laughed.

     
“Well, no one would believe a colony of under five thousand would be up to fabricating its own spaceship,” Taodore replied, “so it seemed only reasonable the labels would be bilingual, just for safety sake, you understand.”

     
“You say that with such a straight face that even I almost believe you,” Park noted.

     
“It’s called being a diplomat, Parker,” Taodore chuckled. “I may have avoided this sort of job all my life, but I was trained for it.”

     
“You poor fellow,” Park chuckled.

     
“It’s tragic,” Taodore sighed. “I can only hope to save my daughter from such a fate.”

     
“That reminds me,” Park changed the subject, “Marisea wants to go up with the
Hudson
. I told her under no circumstances, of course.”

     
“Why?” Taodore asked. “You’re going up, aren’t you?”

     
“Are the Mer in the habit of deliberately placing their children in harm’s way?” Park asked incredulously.

     
“Not at all,” Taodore told him. “I just don’t see this as all that dangerous. Spaceflight is a routine matter, you know.”

     
“Not for us,” Park explained. “I can’t go taking an untrained passenger up for a joy ride.”

     
“Then train her, old boy,” Taodore suggested.

     
“Excuse me?” Park asked, incredulous.

     
“Give her a mission job and train her for it,” Taodore told him. “You know my daughter quite well by now. She is intelligent, imaginative and a very quick study. She is also very good with her hands and has assisted me in my investigations since she was a child.”

     
“She still is a child,” Park replied..

     
“She is a young woman,” Taodore corrected him, “and a talented one at that. Really, Parker, you act more protective of her than I do. Typical of a
tamovir
, I suppose, but hardly necessary. Besides, you will find Mers are uniquely suited for working in space. It is almost like swimming for us.”

     
“Well, if you insist, I’m sure I could have her train as a navigator,” Park decided. “She can stay here in the simulator in case something goes wrong up there.”

     
“That won’t be good enough, Parker,” Taodore warned him. “Oh she’ll take her turn in the simulator, like any other potential crew member, but she’ll still insist on going up when her turn comes.”

     
“I haven’t given her a turn,” Park pointed out.

     
“You should,” Taodore told him. “You will.”

     
Taodore was right about his daughter. Marisea picked up astronavigation in record time and quickly moved on to other facets and specialties that were predicted for possible space missions. She also turned out to have one of the best mechanical aptitudes from among the crew and excelled in all the satellite repair simulations they could devise.

     
“It’s like a video game for her,” Iris pointed out to Park one afternoon over tea. “In fact the simulations are video games when you get right down to it. You ought to see her at the controls of the meteor laser. She’s phenomenally accurate.”

     
“You rigged that laser’s aim to be computer guided,” Park pointed out.

     
“Computers crash,” Iris told him. “They did in the twenty-first century and they still do today. Marisea is nearly as good without the computer as she is with it. She’s also applied for the command program, you know.”

     
“I didn’t know,” Park admitted. “When did she do that?”

     
“This morning, I believe,” Iris replied.

     
“She’s too young to command a mission,” Park resisted the notion.

     
“I agree,” Iris nodded, “but she is not too young to train for it. Oh go ahead, Park. I really don’t know why you’re being so stubborn. She has the ability and she’s at the age at which Mer students begin to specialize anyway.”

     
“She’s not specializing,” Park pointed out. “She’s trying to do everything.”

     
“Just like her father,” Iris smirked, “or her
tamovir
. Face it, Park, she has two father figures in her life and neither is a specialist. Further, she loves Taodore, but she idolizes you. She’s going to emulate you both anyway.”

     
“A good generalist has to be able to specialize in everything,” Park pointed out. “It isn’t easy.”

     
“Then stop trying to make it any harder on the girl than necessary, Park,” Iris argued. “She’s going to do it anyway. I think it would be better for her to do it to make you proud than to do it just to show you she could in spite of you.”

     
“Oh, very well,” Park sighed. “You know I’m only trying to protect her, don’t you?”

     
“I do and it’s sweet of you, dear,” Iris replied, “but you’re wrong to do so. She doesn’t need protection. She needs and deserves encouragement.”

     
“She ought to at least go to university first,” Park pointed out.

     
“She has another year before she can enter,” Iris told him. “The universities here are even more pig-headed than you are. The minimum age for matriculation is seventeen. Marisea has completed all her required pre-university work, but still has to wait that extra year. So she’ll train with us for that year and then go to university. If nothing else, we’ll know she has a summer job lined up.”

     
“Only in the future can a kid have a summer job as an astronaut,” Park laughed. “You know, maybe that’s not such a bad idea at all. We’ll see how Marisea does, but maybe offering internships to the high school-level kids is a good idea. We can’t send them up as an all-teenager mission, but they can work in mission control and run the mission simulators and, depending on how well Marisea does, maybe we can allow the top interns to go up as a special treat. That is,” he continued after a slight pause, “if I can be convinced it’s as safe as the Mer insist. I’ll have to run it past Arn as well.”

     
“You should for the sake of courtesy,” Iris allowed, “but he put you in full charge of the space project. With Mer cooperation, it is effectively autonomous from the Van Winkle chain of command. Of course, your team has been effectively autonomous since we started. Arn doesn’t really know how to handle you, does he?”

     
“I confuse him,” Park grinned. “I don’t take orders worth a darn, but I do everything he wants, sometimes even better than anyone else. There was a time when he only knew me as an ROTC cadet under his command, but even then I skirted as close to the line as I could without actually disobeying a superior officer.”

     
“That was living dangerously,” Iris laughed.

     
“Well, it wasn’t a deliberate attempt on my part,” Park laughed, “But I soon realized that I thought too much to just blindly take orders the way he, or any other officer, would expect. It’s really why I did not pursue a military career. It wasn’t that I could not make it in the AeroSpace Force, but that I realized the AeroSpace Force would be better off without me mucking up the chain of command. But I was good at what I did and made a name for myself in certain circles as the go-to guy for oddball problem solutions. That’s why Arn tapped me for Project Van Winkle, in fact.

     
“I hadn’t seen him for a decade or so after I had my first degree,” Park went on, “but when our paths crossed next he was running a project out in Nevada with some experimental aircraft designs. That project’s computers kept crashing for no discernable reason during flight tests and after replacing the systems twice, all their high-power IT specialists threw up their hands in disgust and I got a call from the Defense Department.”

     
“And you solved their problem, of course,” Iris nodded.

     
“In under an hour,” Park chuckled. “Good thing I was charging a flat fee and not an hourly price.”