Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

“Sawyer… you okay?”

Daniel Beck had been paying little attention to his eldest son. His wife, Wendy, was dominating most of his concern. Her fingernails had been digging into his arm, off and on, for the past hour. He measured her distress by the intensity of her grip. Every new squeak, murmur or beep she heard generated a sudden increase in pressure to which he would frequently give his reassurance that everything was going to be okay.

“Yeah,” Sawyer promptly responded to his father’s query along with a nervous nod of his head.

Both of Sawyer’s hands were tightly gripped to the armrests of his seat. Daniel noted his son’s unease from the beginning, but he expected this to fade once they were under way. By this time, the other members of the Beck family were experiencing no discomfort. Daphne was fascinated by the event and Adam’s enthusiasm for it was contained only by the seat belts that kept him from bounding about the compartment. Daniel was indifferent to it all for the most part. His worry for his family overrode his own minor trepidation with traveling in a spaceplane for the very first time.

The Beck family was on an adventure that they anticipated to encompass the remainder of their lives. Return trips to Earth were normally for rare visits. The expense of taking them up and away from the planet was considerable. Nearby Spacers, occupants of orbiting and lunar habitats, were the few exceptions. Their visits were more frequent. But the final-destination for the Becks was the Starship Amundsen, which was situated in solar orbit adjacent to a planetoid in the asteroid belt. This was to be their new home for the foreseeable future. However, to get there, they would first have to transfer onto the spaceship Gallivant.

The craft that was ferrying them up to their interplanetary transport ship was an eighty yards long, delta winged spaceplane. Its fuselage was widest at the back and it tapered to a point at the front. Twin repulsor engines at the back generated its thrust. The spaceplane had escaped the pull of Earth three minutes earlier. Despite this, its engines continued to power it on to ever greater speeds. At this point, the worst of the flight was behind them. Outside of Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational field, the spaceplane was free to make maximum use of its repulsor-engine technology.

Despite the acceleration, the contents and structure of the craft experienced no inertia. This was accomplished by an artificially generated zero gravity environment. This effect was dubbed a Zero G Chamber. Anti-gravity generators had the effect of canceling out inertia within an enclosed system. This was achieved through no small expenditure of energy. The amount of power needed to sustain the effect was decided by the mass of the craft, the weight of gravity, and/or inertia pulling at the chamber.

The first Zero-G Chamber was created by accident. The initial purpose of the experiment was the development of a repulsion shield for spaceships. Damage caused by micrometeorite impacts was the incentive for the research. On a regular basis, fast moving objects the size of a marble or smaller went unnoticed until it was too late to evade or destroy them. All spaceships were fixed with particle beam guns for just this purpose. They were very effective at disintegrating small objects. Spaceplanes, because of their size and quickness, were expected to evade these objects. If both these defenses failed, a micrometeorite was capable of doing considerable harm to a spacecraft. Thrusters, windows, and docking bays were particularly vulnerable. These mishaps were rare events. But when they did happen, they had the potential to be fatal to someone or everyone aboard a spacecraft.

The repulsion shield was developed to protect the entire spacecraft. The technology produced a welcomed added benefit. The discovery that the repulsion shield was capable of dampening inertial forces within the ship spawned a whole new interest in the technology. The first anti-gravity environment was achieved not long after this discovery. This technology opened the solar system to humankind. It revolutionized air and space travel. New, more powerful, repulsor-engines did not have to be regulated to stay within the structural limits of the ship and the physical limits of its crew. It only needed to stay within the limits that the Zero-G Chamber could absorb. The anti-gravity generator countered stresses to ship and crew.

Daniel Beck expected his children to acclimate to the weightless environment of space in short order. But he had no illusion that Wendy would be so quick to adapt. Her discomfort with excessive speeds and heights were well known to the family. At this time, they were all grateful that nausea was not a condition that accompanied her discomfort.

“Is it going to be like this on the Gallivant?” Wendy implored with heavy breaths.

“No,” Daniel assured in a pleasing tone. “The Gallivant has a habitat ring.”

Wendy already knew this, but her ill at ease with the sensation of falling unnerved her to the point that she needed this understanding reinforced. It was common knowledge that starships were simply large habitat rings with a spacecraft attached or built into them. What was less commonly known was that spaceships like the Gallivant were primarily interplanetary crafts with a small habitat ring attached. The early spaceships of the late twenty-first century were regularly constructed without these habitat rings. The whole ship simply rotated. Since the development of Zero-G Chamber technology, every interplanetary spaceship was designed and built with one inside. The Gallivant was just eight years-old. This made it relatively new by comparison to most. And its habitat ring was capable of accommodating 250 occupants.

“How long before we get there, Dad?” Adam questioned excitedly.

Adam had been eagerly awaiting this trip off world ever since he learned they were going. After the completion of each segment of the journey, his enthusiasm focused in on the next leg of their journey-much to the annoyance of his sister.

“It’s right there on the monitor,” Daphne instructed with attitude. “Stop asking dumb questions.”

Each of the fifty acceleration chairs within the passenger compartment of the spaceplane had a flat screen computer monitor built into them. These monitors swiveled up out of the side of the chair on an arm. Much of the details available to the flight crew was accessible from these monitors. Daphne had been studying this information near to the exclusion of all else, tapping and re-tapping the screen for more and new information. Sawyer frequently accessed it as well, despite his unease with the flight. Daniel gave it rare nudges for new information. Wendy and Adam ignored it altogether. She was in too much distress and he was too thrilled by the sensations of the flight.

At ten years of age, Adam was the youngest of the three Beck children. His older brother, Sawyer, was twelve and his sister, Daphne, was fifteen. The Becks were five of the thirty-eight passengers that were making the transition up into space on this flight. Their home for the whole of their lives, up until then, was in the Great Lakes Alliance, a sector of the North American continent that encompassed, among others, the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati and St. Louis. They specifically resided in the megacity of Chicago, a metropolis that took up the land area around the whole southern end of Lake Michigan, engulfing Gary, Indiana in the process.

During this time of human existence on Earth, it was uncommon for couples to have more than one child. This was due entirely to the fact that most the planet’s human inhabitants survived off government assistance. Because of the extreme overpopulation within the megacities, government assistance could afford to do little more than maintain a string of state operated soup kitchens. Slums made up sixty percent of the urban landscape. To squelch the pangs of hunger among the masses and ease the financial burden upon the state, governments around the world instituted their own variation of population control. All of them were designed to affect a rapid reduction of the populace. Within the Great Lakes Alliance, this was being done by what was termed reproductive rights rationing. In effect, what it did was allocate a limited number of progenies that each individual could produce. To enforce its control over population growth, the governments made varied methods of birth control widely available. This included lacing the food within the soup kitchens with birth control medication. Harsh penalties were also imposed on individuals that carried a pregnancy to term without a permit from the state.

During this time within the Great Lakes Alliance, all individuals were given one-half of a single right to produce an offspring. And this right could only be exercised with a permit from the state. A limited quantity of these permits were doled out yearly. It was done in this way to control the number of newborns per year.

To ease the burden on the state’s welfare program, reproductive permits were only given to those that could afford the expense of raising a child. Individuals and couples that could afford to purchase the reproductive rights that others were willing to sell could conceivably be given multiple permits across their lifetimes. These exchanges were encouraged by the state. This selling of reproductive rights did not endear the affluent to the impoverished. For most of the population, the affluent were considered one step above a Spacer. This perspective was driven heavily by the fact that nearly all the people that immigrated to a starcorp came out of the middle-class or affluent communities.

Daniel and Wendy Beck were just such a couple to benefit from this restriction on reproduction. It was not uncommon for affluent couples to have two, three, four and even five children. This was due primarily to the fact that thousands of destitute and desperate individuals hungrily sold their reproductive rights every year. It was a buyer’s market. On post-World War III Earth, children were symbols of affluence. However, not even children could compensate for the vexation that most these parents had with the prospect of living out their lives in the ruins of planet Earth.

Daniel Beck had a pending application to go up to a starcorp since before his marriage to Wendy-seventeen years earlier. He hoped that his aptitude in the field of computer systems would get him selected. This proclivity had served him well in the past. He had learned at a very early age that being of value was the key to living above the poverty line. This was a precept that was preached to him by his mother. In conformance with her teaching, he applied his genius level intellect to the task of acquiring a degree in Data Communications System Technology.

There were no graduate schools on post-World War III Earth. The large universities collapsed beneath the broken, global economy. Trade and technical schools filled in the void left behind by their demise. Individuals skilled in the necessities for maintaining the cities and the industries within them were in high demand. Anyone that tested high for an aptitude that was of value could have their training subsidized by an industry or the state, provided he or she rendered services to the same after graduation. Daniel attended a technical school between the ages of seventeen through twenty on a subsidy from the state. He began working for the megacity of Chicago the day after his graduation.

Starcorps were equally interested in these tech school graduates and attached access to them as a provision for the aid they provided to the earthbound states. Several thousand graduates from these technical schools were recruited by a starcorp annually. Signup sheets for starcorp membership could be found in nearly every trade or technical school on the planet. Where the nation states of earth needed skilled people to repair and maintain their civilizations, the starcorps needed them to grow theirs.

Starcorps judged propagating in space to be a risky business. Despite this perception, babies were born there. But this occurred infrequently, and only when permission to do so was given by the Human Resources Division of the starcorp. The reason permission had to be given was because Spacers, in general, lived for a very long time. The medical industry in space, coupled with the science of genetic engineering, made it possible to undo much of the naturally occurring effects of aging. Seven percent of the population living in starcorps was greater than 100 years of age, and all of them showed no visible evidence of being older than forty. Given their longevity and the limited room in space, indiscriminate propagation was not permitted.

Despite this prohibition against unchecked reproduction, children had their benefits in space. Starcorp communities were all top-heavy with high IQ residents. There was an ever-present demand for people to fill blue collar positions, and there was a continuous deficiency of people that performed these tasks well. Individuals born and raised in space, with an aptitude for hands-on work, filled most these jobs. Earth recruits regularly filled many of the remaining vacant positions.

Even with managed reproduction, starcorps learned early on that there would always be a significant percentage of newborns that grew up to be liabilities that had to be fed, clothed, housed, policed and oxygenated. The starcorps concluded that this was an expense that they could not allow to grow. Despite this concern, there was no measure or test that could tell them who or what a newborn would be as an adult. Subsequently, Spacers that were convicted of an offense punishable by incarceration were routinely ferried down to Earth for their confinement and retirement. There was simply no room in space for a growing population of people that served no purpose. It was for this reason that cherry-picking new members, adults and their children, from Earth became the preferred method for expanding their numbers.

The Becks were not the only family going up to a starcorp. Recruiting a whole family was a regular practice. So long as all the members tested and interviewed well starcorps had no problem factoring them into their numbers. A small family took up little more space than a single individual, and if the whole of that family had skills and aptitudes that were deemed useful, then the starcorp counted itself the better for the addition. The IQ, aptitude and disposition of Daphne, Sawyer and Adam did the Becks no harm. They showed a predilection for academics and stable demeanors. But it was Wendy who pushed their application over the top. Her talent in the field of botany was clearly at a high level of genius. Daniel’s value doubled the moment he married her, and their stock had been on the rise ever since. In the year 2182, Starcorp DCT01E21480610 issued an immigration invitation to Daniel and his family ahead of nine other applicants.

Becoming a Spacer was a lifelong dream of Daniel’s and the hope of his mother. Daniel watched her die impoverished in her bed when he was at the age of fourteen. The hospitals had neither the room nor the time to give to someone that could not pay the bill. Visiting nurses and neighbors did what they could, but this was not even close to the attention she needed. The loss of her in this manner made Daniel more determined to make a better life for himself and his family. He grew up in his uncle’s care after his mother’s death, then set off on his own at the age of twenty-one. At the age of twenty-two, he met and married Wendy. She was twenty at that time. Their paths crossed inside a vertical farm. She was maintaining the crops and he was maintaining the computers. His love for her and the children made him even more determined to migrate to a starcorp.

Wendy’s priority was to make the best of her life there on Earth. She saw her marriage to Daniel as the means to this end and, by comparison to most, they were living a very good life. Nonetheless, to please her husband, Wendy cosigned Daniel’s standing application for immigration into a starcorp. She did this while praying that it would never come to pass, and she had more than a little confidence that this would be the case. In her mind, there were far too many other people more qualified than they; and because of this, she gave it little thought up until the moment the application was approved. After that, she could think of little else.

“What’s happening?” Wendy questioned with a look of shock towards her husband’s monitor.

The information on the display indicated that something new had just transpired.

“We’re decelerating, honey, that’s all,” Daniel reassured her with a pat on the arm that was attached to the hand that was gripped to his own.

Wendy relaxed a little, but it was only noticeable to Daniel.

“Are we there?” Adam suddenly questioned with an intonation of surprise.

“No,” Daphne stressed with a lecturing tone. “We’re just halfway there.”

Dejected by the knowledge that he could not yet float free from his seat, Adam relaxed beneath the restraints of his chair. His wait was only an hour long, but anxious anticipation made this time feel like an eternity for him. The other thirty-seven passengers aboard the Gallivant endured the wait only slightly better than he. Their impatience was due, primarily, to the absence of windows in the passenger compartment. The spaceplane gave most of them a feeling of being confined. The only means they had for knowing what was happening outside of the ship was through the computer monitors attached to their seats. The pilots advised them that the lack of windows was no great loss and that there would be nothing nearby to see until they reached the Gallivant. And even with that, their monitors would give them a far better perspective than any port window.

The only windows built into the spaceplane were in the cockpit and those were seldom used for anything related to the operation of the craft. The cameras about the spaceplane gave them 360-degree visibility on their monitors; and even this was insufficient for the purposes of navigation. Above all else to navigate their surroundings, the information generated by the sensor field was the window that the pilots depended upon.

“There it is,” Daphne announced with excitement.

A speck on the video monitors in front of the other passengers had been enlarged on Daphne’s to near the width of the screen. It was the spaceship Gallivant. In appearance, it looked like a toy floating motionless in space. At the front of the craft was an enclosed disk that housed the habitat ring. It was 60 yards high and 200 yards in diameter. Connected to it was a rectangular fuselage, 150 yards wide and 60 yards high. At the back end of the fuselage was the engineering section. The primary thrusters were attached behind that. In all the Gallivant was 800 yards long.

All thirty-eight passengers aboard the spaceplane spent the next twenty minutes watching, via their monitors, as their spaceplane approached and then maneuvered its way through an opening in the side of the Gallivant’s fuselage. Inside was a large, well lit, docking bay and cargo hold. This space was 300 yards long, 140 yards wide and 40 yards high. Two other space-planes, of equivalent dimensions, were already parked inside at the front and mid-section of the bay. There was only enough room for three spaceplanes of this size. Each spaceplane in the bay had its own access door to the Gallivant. Two on one side of the ship at either end of the bay. The third set of doors was on the opposite side in the center. The Beck’s spaceplane gently settled alongside the second parked spaceplane. One minute after it attached to a docking arm, the large twin doors to the bay began to slide shut. This took all of two minutes to complete. At the end of this time, the captain made an announcement over the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Gallivant.”

Thirty seconds after this announcement the door to the aircrew cabin opened and the flight attendant floated out of it. He closed the hatch behind him and launched himself down a short passageway bordered by four lavatories, two on either side. At the end of the passageway, he entered the passengers seating area. He was a moderately tall, decidedly slender and a relatively handsome man that looked to be about thirty years of age. As he floated past the thirty-eight passengers and towards the back end of the compartment, he instructed them all to unbuckle themselves from their chairs and to follow him.

Spaceplanes were built around the idea that floating inside of them would be the primary means of individual movement. In the crew and passenger compartments and walkways, the walls and ceilings were padded and the floors were carpeted. Evenly spaced padded hand rungs were built into the walls and ceilings to assist in locomotion and control. The floor-to-ceiling height of the crew and passenger compartments was seven-feet. The acceleration chairs were embedded into the floor.

The thirty-eight passengers floated up out of their chairs in seemingly slow motion. All of them were wearing one-piece brown, flight suits. Many of them had small, identical carry-on bags slung across their torsos. Wendy held on to Daniel’s flight suit and let him do the work of locomotion and navigation. Out of habit, the children followed behind them. This took extreme constraint from Adam. He had all he could do to control his desire to fly free.

At the rear of the compartment, the flight attendant touched his luminescent bracelet to the display by the exit hatch. A second later the hatch swung open automatically. The flight attendant hesitated in front of the opening just long enough to note that the passengers were ready to follow. He then floated out of the hatchway. All thirty-eight passengers followed behind him in a single file. A walkway and staircase were located on the other side of the hatch. The walkway spanned the width of the spaceplane. At one end of it was the hatch that opened in and gave access to the cargo hold in the aft-section of the spaceplane. The staircase descended two levels to the bottom of the craft. The flight attendant floated down the staircase to the spaceplane’s lowest level. There were two hatches at this level, one that opened in and gave access to the aft-cargo hold, and a second that opened in and gave access to an airlock along the side wall of the spaceplane. A door on the other side of the airlock opened in and gave access to the exterior of the spaceplane. The flight attendant waited in front of the first airlock door for nearly a minute. His thirty-eight passengers congregated behind him. Moments later, a report on the monitor beside the hatch confirmed that a shuttle craft had attached itself to the far side of the airlock and had opened its hatch. The flight attendant manually opened both doors of the airlock after receiving this report and ushered the passengers through the hatch. All thirty-eight of his passengers followed his lead. When all were through, the flight attendant secured the hatches as he followed the thirty-eight into the shuttle.

The shuttlecraft looked to be little more than a box with windows and airtight doors at either end. There were no seats. And there was no one inside driving it. The spaceplane’s thirty-eight passengers filled up the shuttle. They used hand rungs to secure themselves while the shuttle disconnected from the spaceplane and floated towards the front end of the Gallivant. Out of the windows, the passengers could see two more shuttles docking to the spaceplane: one for the spaceplane’s crew and a second for the luggage of its thirty-eight passengers.

At the front end of the docking bay, the shuttle attached itself to an airlock door for the Gallivant. The portal was situated high up upon the wall. The shuttle hatch opened automatically a second after it locked into place. The flight attendant opened the two airlock hatches on the outer side of the shuttle. What looked like a tunnel to the passengers, appeared on the other side of the airlock. Evenly spaced lights embedded in the walls illuminated a padded circular passageway which was five yards in circumference. Clusters of four padded hand rungs were built into the walls at evenly spaced intervals. The rungs were arranged in a cross formation. The length of the passage was twenty yards. The flight attendant used a hand-rung to secure himself by the open hatch. He then gave his final instruction.

“You will find someone at the end of this passage to help you get settled aboard ship. Welcome to DCT01.”

The thirty-eight passengers acknowledged his greeting with nods and/or smiles before floating through the airlock and down the passageway, one after the other. The Becks were in the middle of this procession. They came out at the other end into a long chamber that was clearly curved along the perimeter of the habitat ring; the chamber itself was stationary. There was no artificial gravity. The chamber was oval, ten feet high, fifteen feet wide and thirty yards long. Situated in the inside wall of the curve and across from their point of entry were the entrances to six transport pods. The entryways were rectangular and spaced ten feet apart. Next to each transport door was a Ship’s Steward. They anchored themselves to the wall by hooking their feet under hand rungs in the wall that were situated near the lower end of the door closest to them.

The thirty-eight passengers of the spaceplane floated into the chamber cautiously. They all looked to be unsure of how to handle themselves in the zero-gravity environment. Many fumbled and tumbled about in desperate attempts to secure themselves. Daniel quickly grasped the concept of propelling himself towards his destination. With Wendy grasped tightly about his torso, Daniel propelled himself towards an available cluster of hand rungs, catching one deftly. Wendy held on to him tightly through it all. Most of the children floated about the chamber in playful discovery. Sawyer maneuvered himself from one rung cluster to the next with only a minor look of unease. The inertia generated by throwing himself towards the next rung gave him some relief from the hollow sensation in his stomach. When this activity finally settled down most of the passengers were secured to a rung in the same up/down orientation as the stewards. Three children were upside down; and Adam was one of them.

“Welcome aboard the Gallivant and to Starcorp DCT01. My name is Karen. I’m the senior steward aboard ship.”

The other stewards in the chamber were comprised of four women and two men. Karen was situated next to the transport door that was third from the right. Each of the stewards had small waist packs strapped to them. Their waist packs appeared to be bulging with something inside of them.

“To my left is Jerry,” Karen continued to speak without pause. “And to his left is Dalia. To my right is Kumiko, and to her right is Leo. And at the very end, down there, is Jana,” she finished with a point.

The group of passengers, plus the three excited children situated upside down, listened mostly in silence to Karen’s words, with only a few giggles coming from above.

Karen paused just long enough to pan a smile to all before continuing.

“We’re going to be calling you up, one at a time, or in a family group. We will then assign and activate your com-link wands.”

As she reported this, Karen held up what looked to be a fourteen-inch-long rod. She bent it to show how flexible it was, and she displayed the one that was wound about her wrist and worn as a bracelet. The other stewards followed her lead and displayed their com-link bracelets. Karen gave about two seconds to this demonstration and then continued her address.

“After that, you will get into the transport pod and go to your assigned cabins. The ship’s computer will guide you once you’re logged into the system.”

Karen hesitated and gave them all a look to see if they had a question. Once she was convinced that they understood what was happening, she continued.

“It is important that you keep your wands on you any time you’re out of your cabin. If the ship’s computer detects you moving about without a com-link, it will generate an alert. And trust me, you won’t be able to move fifty yards outside of your cabin without being detected by a sensor. This will hold true inside the Starships as well as here on the Gallivant. So, get use to wearing them, because you can and will be fined if you make it a habit of moving around without it.”

Once again Karen paused to see if everyone understood before continuing.

“When the transport pod comes to a stop you will be inside the habitat ring, so be careful. It may take you a few minutes to acclimate yourselves to gravity again. When you get to your cabin, the ship’s computer will begin the process of orientation. You need to go through the orientation from beginning to end. You can do this individually or as a family group, it doesn’t matter-but you must finish it. The system will not process you into the healthcare, financial, employment and education database until you have done this. Are there any questions?”

Karen paused once again to see if everyone understood. After about five seconds of silence, the process began. Each of the stewards produced a small computer tablet from out of their waist packs. The device looked to be nothing more than a small, rectangular, pane of glass that was tethered to their waist packs. The tablet activated when they touched it to their com-link bracelets.

The bracelets were pencil thick, round strips of flexible plastic. A slight glow of white light emanated from them. They were long enough to be wound no less than twice around the wrist of any wearer. They were flexible enough to be worn as a choker, a head ornament, or even an ankle bracelet. When in a linear configuration, they resembled wands. How they were adorned was subject to the choice of the wearer.

The com-links were also capable of glowing or blinking radiant colors. This was a decorative affectation that was subject to the preference of the wearer. The com-links had multiple capabilities: they were personal computers, cellphones and modems that maintained connections with external computers and monitors. In addition, with a tap of a finger, the luminous plastic displayed the time.

When the tablets became active, the stewards began calling out the names that appeared on the screens. One-by-one, the stewards assigned com-links to all the newcomers, logged them into the system, and dispatched them into the transport pods. The entire procedure was quick and simple, and the stewards performed it with practiced expertise. It took about ten minutes to process the entire group. Beck was the second name called by Kumiko. The entire family was summoned forward for her handling. She verified each of their identities by palm print. After each of the verifications, she produced a com-link wand for each of them. After briefly touching the wand to the tablet, she wound it about the wrist of whichever Beck she was processing at that moment. This process only took about thirty seconds for each family member. Once the Beck family was logged into the system, Kumiko instructed them to climb into the transport pod and to follow the instructions from the computer.

From the inside, the transport pod looked to be a large, padded, hollow ball with seating built into the sides. The interior was eight feet across. There were no video screens, keypads or controls to be seen anywhere inside. Six-inch-wide speakers were situated near the top of the pod in four, evenly spaced, locations. A single, overhead light fixture illuminated the pod’s interior. There were seven seats built into the lining of the pod. Each seat had its own armrest that the Beck family members used to maneuver themselves. A border of lights around each chair lit up the instant the armrest was touched. Once they were floating over the seat, the sensation of a mild suction of air could be felt pulling them down. It took the Becks less than a minute to become sucked into their seats. Once they were all seated the pod door closed and the transport began to move.

The sensation of inertia caught the family’s attention. This was something they had not felt since before their liftoff from Earth. It took the pod approximately fifteen seconds to arrive at its destination. At the end of this time, the Becks could feel the sensation of gravity, and the lights bordering their chairs blinked off. A few seconds later, the door to the pod opened and a computer voice from inside the pod spoke:

“You have arrived at your stop. Your assigned cabins are out the door and to your right. Your cabin designations are displayed on your com-links. Please go to your cabins and complete the orientation process. And welcome to DCT01.”

The feeling of standing up against gravity had all the Becks mesmerized for a brief time. After stepping out of the pod, and into a concourse, the family took a short time to examine this new gravity. The concourse they were in was five yards wide and ten feet high. At either end, the concourse trailed out of sight beneath an uphill curve. At first, this visage gave them cause to be unsure of their balance. But the effect was gone after several moments. Wendy and Sawyer were the most grateful members of the family for the sensation of gravity. They felt this way despite their unease with being in an airtight container that was floating in space.

The concourse was nearly empty of people. Two individuals were seen passing by and another was seen walking away. The passersby, a man and a woman, directed a nod and smile their way ahead of proffering a soft, “Hi.” They continued by after this as if they had somewhere to be. Their clothing was casual. They were not wearing the jumpsuit of a passenger or the uniform of a crew-member. Daniel assumed they were passengers that had arrived ahead of them. After returning their smiles and salutation, he encouraged his family to push on to their cabins.

The Beck family had no trouble locating their compartments. Their addresses were displayed on whichever side of the com-link bracelet was facing up. The habitat rings had a simple configuration. There were two levels. Cabins were situated on either side of the second ring down. The ring above it was where the offices, workrooms, infirmary, cafeteria, and recreation areas were located. The Beck family noted that their com-links were indicating that each of them had a separate cabin. They found all of them ten yards down the concourse-situated side-by-side. Each cabin was five yards wide and fifteen yards long. The head of a full-size bed was affixed against the sidewall at the center of the room. A large video monitor was built into the wall opposite the bed. A water closet was in the farthest corner of the cabin. This varied from right to left depending upon the cabin. Inside the water closet was a single person shower, a wash basin and a toilet. Also, affixed within the cabin was a clothes cabinet, a desk and a small table with four chairs. Situated at the front end of each cabin was a door that connected to the adjacent cabin to either side.

After examining each of their cabins and finding them identical, the Becks congregated in Daniel’s cabin and began the interactive orientation process together. The Amundsen’s mainframe computer began guiding them through a series of questionnaires in between brief lectures on DCT01E21480610’s history, assets, short term goals and operations. Halfway through they were interrupted by the delivery of their luggage. They quickly navigated the bags to the correct cabins and returned to the orientation. The entire orientation took nearly an hour to complete. At the end of it, the Becks knew all that they needed to know to live and function within Starcorp DCT01.

One of the many things they learned was that their com-links had a myriad of functions. First among these was that they identified them through fingerprint and voice match. This information was communicated to the ship’s mainframe computer through a wireless connection. Also, the com-link was a cell phone, a personal computer, display goggles, a card key and their wallet.

The wand had a built-in capability for transforming into a crescent shape so that it could be used as a telephone. The owner needed only to hold it in hand and speak the voice command, “wand telephone.” Positioning one end by an ear and the other in front of the mouth made private communications possible. The voice command, “wand glasses,” instructed it to reshape into display goggles that fit snuggly over the eyes, about the head and on top of the ears. In appearance, they looked like tanning goggles. The inside of the lens displayed images provided by the processor. The outside of the lens emitted radiant energy that the wearer’s hands could interact with to give instructions to the processor. The ends of the goggles produced sounds provided by the processor.

When the com-link, in any configuration, was touched to a tablet or monitor the information within them became accessible from that device. Once this connection was initiated the com-link wirelessly maintained it until directed to stop, or it was out of range. In addition, the com-link monitored and transmitted the vital signs of the wearer. With the com-link in place, DCT01’s mainframe computers were prepared to comply with any reasonable request. Without the com-link, an individual was regarded as an intruder.

By the end of the orientation, the Becks were aware that they had another seven hours of personal time to consume before the next leg of their journey began. Knowing this had them all conflicted about how to spend this time. They had just climbed out of their beds on Earth five hours earlier. And their travels, so far, had them all awake with excitement and anticipation for what was to come next. Taking a nap was an option they all passed on. Instead, they decided to explore the ship. They began this excursion by changing into their everyday attire. Ten minutes later they were walking the concourse outside of their cabins. It did not take them long to discover that all was basically the same on the bottom ring. After traversing a quarter of the way around it, they decided to take the staircase to top level above.

There were eight staircases located at equal distances apart on the concourse. Each staircase was situated where a cabin normally would have been. Two flights of stairs connected by a midway landing, enabled the staircase to zigzag up to the next level. When the Becks stepped out on the ring above, they found a completely different floor plan. In place of the cabins bordering a single concourse, there was an expanse of space thirty-five yards wide. The ceiling was twenty feet up from the floor. A meandering, ten-foot-wide path trailed up the curve of the ring. Potted vegetation, trees, and flowers were everywhere. A minimum of half-a-dozen people could be seen at any given time as they walked along the path. Benches and lawn furniture were scattered about in this park like environment. The Becks soaked it all in visually as they moved through this indoor park at a casual pace.

“Hi,” a young woman greeted Wendy when they caught each other’s eye.

Wendy returned the greeting with a smile and a “hi.”

The family continued to move on, repeating this social obeisance on three more occasions before coming upon a decidedly different scene. This new path led into a hallway along the extreme left of the ring. To the right of the path was a structure that connected from the floor to the ceiling, twenty feet up. Upper and lower level windows on the side of the structure looked out upon the park they had just traveled through. Etched in the double glass sliding doors on this side was the word infirmary. The Becks noted this and then continued down the corridor that went along the side of this structure.

The corridor they walked down went on for thirty yards. Ten yards down the path was a food court. The Becks went inside and found an area that was ten yards wide and twenty yards deep. A kitchen and receiving line bordered the back end of it. The infirmary had a door that opened out into the food court. On the other side of the food court was a door with the words “Captain’s Quarters” etched on it. The Becks took note of all of this as they lingered there to examine it all.

Seated or moving about in the food court were more than twenty people; most were casually dressed in civilian attire. Daniel noted only two individuals that appeared to be in uniform. The smell of food was coming from the kitchen area. Most of the people there were eating and drinking at the tables. Many were conversing with another person seated across from them.

The Becks were comforted by the sight of so many people that looked to be enjoying themselves as they ate and conversed. It suggested that life would be pleasant and comfortable in space. Wendy was happy to see a variety of ethnicities. The group inside the cafeteria was only a small sampling, but Wendy inferred from it that there was a generous mix of different ethnic identities within starcorps. Her worry about this issue was due to her African-mix lineage. It was Wendy’s practice to avoid places that she feared would not welcome them. Her worry extended to starcorps despite the widely publicized and touted report on its rich mixture of existing ethnicities. Starcorps proudly advertised their constant search to recruit skilled and talented people from all ethnic groups.

In starcorp board rooms everywhere, the common position on what constituted a good fit was any applicant with a mindset that was in harmony with spacer communities. Race and color were not a consideration; prejudices were not to be tolerated. Religious teachings for adults was permitted. Comparative Religious Studies for adolescents was mandated. Limited religious’ accessories were tolerated on adults; none were allowed on adolescents or children. The acceptance of diverging political views was expected. Respect for the majority or dominant vote (whichever was applicable) was demanded. It was comprehensively accepted that authoritarians, militant fanatics, and self-righteous zealots had no place in an airtight container that was adrift in the vacuum of space.

These requirements produced the predominant thinking that the Board of Directors had no right to govern the consensual acts of the populace that did not do direct, or indirect, harm to another. This collective mindset came about through the practice of vetting immigrants in place of the wholesale acceptance of people that met the minimum requirements. The borders of starcorps were virtually impossible to penetrate without the permission and assistance of the government.

The Becks were accustomed to interacting with a broad mixture of races, as were most people in the twenty-second century. By the start of the global war, all the population centers of Earth were integrated with every known ethnic group by a notable percentage. The aftermath of the war thickened this mixture tenfold. The large cities became catch basins for the survivors of the worldwide holocaust of World War III. Ethnic discord became a minor issue as the collective populations of the cities struggled to fend off disease, famine and the shutdown of municipal services. This was the world the Becks knew. They had only advertisements and rumors to prepare them for the world they were entering.

“Come on, let’s eat,” Wendy encouraged with a smile.

Wendy wasn’t hungry, but she did want to get some food into her family since she didn’t know when their next opportunity to eat would be. She also wanted to get some nap time in this break period. The family followed her lead and filed into the serving line. There were only two servers behind the food bar and only two other people in line to be served, a young man and a woman who looked to be together. Wendy and family came to a stop behind the couple as the servers gathered up their food.

“Hi,” the tall, attractive, brunette woman in front of Wendy spoke with an excited expression.

Wendy was momentarily surprised by the exuberance in her greeting. With a slight hesitation, she responded back with a “hi” while beaming a broad smile.

“Is this your family?” The brunette questioned enthusiastically.

Wendy confirmed that they were with a nod and a soft “yes.” Before she could say more, the brunette tossed out a quick introduction.

“I’m Angela Lynch and this is my husband, Stuart. We’re both medical students. We both tested very high. So, we’re going up to continue our studies. How about you?”

Wendy was both amused and enthralled by the speed of Angela’s delivery. After giving Angela a brief acknowledging smile, Wendy responded with her family’s particulars. Daniel and Stuart followed their spouses lead and joined in on the meet and greet. Excited about their new adventures, the two couples began a discourse that continued an hour past their lunch. Seated at a separate table, Daphne, Sawyer, and Adam finished their meals in short order and then continued with their exploration of the ship.

When Daniel and Wendy ended their converse with Stuart and Angela, they contacted their kids, via their com-links, and summoned them back to the cabins. The family reunited there and settled in for a short rest. They were all aware of what was to come in just a few hours’ time. And they were all looking forward to it with either dread, excitement, or a mixture of both. Three hours later the video monitors in their cabins were switched on remotely. A broadcast image of the First Officer appeared on their screens. While this was happening an alarm in the concourse began blaring. With three brief repetitive statements, the First Officer directed all aboard to “make preparations for launch.” The Becks commenced doing so as if they had done it a hundred times before.

The civilians aboard the Amundsen had nothing more to do beyond redressing into their flight suits and going to their assigned launch stations. When the Becks arrived outside of the transport pod dock, they found more than a dozen people in line ahead of them. Their wait did not take long. The pods arrived on an average of four times a minute. It seemed as if there was one always waiting. The degree of adeptness of those getting in ahead of them was the greatest holdup. When all the Becks were aboard the transport pod, Daniel instructed the ship’s computer to “execute.” There was no need for him to say more because the computer had one primary function when the Captain gave the command for all aboard to get to their launch stations. It would take an overriding command authority to instruct the pods to go anywhere other than the appropriate launch station for its occupant.

The ship’s computer identified the passengers by their com-links and navigated the transport pod to the port closest to their space capsule. Two seconds past the closing of the transport pod door, the Becks began to feel gravity fall away. In less than 30 seconds, the Becks were weightless above their lighted seats. The feel of unease with the environment had returned for Wendy and Sawyer. The rest of the family noted it with either indifference or excitement. When the transport pod stopped and the doors opened, the family pushed themselves away from their seats and floated out the open portal one after the other.

On the other side of the portal, the Becks found themselves in a padded chamber once again. This one was much smaller than the one they first arrived in. The curve of the room was much more pronounced. The Becks were near the center of the habitat ring and knew it. The location of their space capsule was part of their orientation. The chamber they were in had three transport pod portals situated along the wall on the outside of the curve. Built into the inside wall of the curve was a single hatch with the label “Space Capsule 4” written on the wall beside it. Secured next to the hatch was a ship’s crewman. He was of average height and build, and with plain looks. When the Becks hesitated to move, the crewman quickly responded with words and actions.

“Go into the capsule and secure yourselves inside an acceleration pod,” the crewman instructed with a beckon of his hand.

Motivated by the continued beckoning of the crewman’s hand, the Becks propelled themselves toward the hatchway. The opening was round and four feet across. The inside of the space capsule was round and ten yards in diameter. The space between the ceiling and the floor was five feet high. Fifty escape pods, arranged in three successive rings, were built into the floor at forty-five degree angles. Each of them was a one-person capsule. With a touch of their com-link to the external control panel, the lids slid down, and the interior of the pod became accessible. Each pod had the potential to become an airtight chamber, this was an emergency feature. Inside each pod was an acceleration chair and a cockpit that was linked into the ship’s mainframe computer. For individuals who had problems with confined spaces, it was a claustrophobic nightmare.

The Becks floated into the space capsule and moved down along its perimeter. Because better than half of the acceleration pods were already occupied, they were hesitant to jump into the first one they found. It took them about a minute to find the ideal grouping of five pods, which they climbed into without delay. For Wendy, the configuration of the space capsule’s interior was discomforting. In her mind, the space capsule was too cramp, and the escape pods were frighteningly similar to caskets. Sawyer found the close quarters inside the space capsule comforting. The small, enclosed, confined space helped him to deal with the sensation of perpetually falling. For the rest of the family, the space capsule was neither good nor bad. Their intrigue with the coming event held the bulk of their attentions.

The Beck family did not expect anything of great note to happen. It was common knowledge that the interior of a space capsule was the safest place anyone could be while in space. Aboard a spaceship, the space capsules were used as command and control centers, safe-rooms, and lifeboats. In times of emergency, they could be jettisoned away from the ship. During the launch and acceleration phase of a space flight, all occupants were required to be secured in a space capsule. This was a mandatory precaution. Seasoned space travelers saw it as a holdover from the time when there was a great need for this precaution.

The inertial stress generated during launch and acceleration had the potential to rend the ship apart if the Zero G Generator or any of its external components, faltered. Separated from the ship, the space capsule was a battery operated self-sufficient spacecraft, with its own Zero G Generator. detached, it was capable of self-navigation and withstanding an immense amount of inertia while its battery lasted. But in all the years since the development of zero gravity generators, this safety system had never been used, and everyone knew this. Very few Spacers took this precaution seriously. Most did not bother to fasten themselves into the seats. In this situation, they would bring the lid of the pod up most of the way to stop themselves from floating out. Another common deviation from their assigned use was the sight of couples snuggled together in a single acceleration pod. This they would do so that they could cuddle together as they slept through acceleration and deceleration phases of a journey. Wendy was quick to take advantage of this unofficial privilege and followed Daniel into his pod. For Wendy, space capsules were reminders of the risks associated with space travel. Most of the other passengers were far more enthralled with the fact that they were about to leave the vicinity of Earth.

“Launch in ten minutes,” announced the crewman that was previously situated outside the capsule door. “The acceleration phase will last for forty minutes. After this, we will spend the next eighteen days freefalling towards our destination. You’ll be free to return to the habitat ring during that time. You will have to come back here for deceleration. That will commence at roughly two hours out from the starship. Enjoy the trip.”

The crewman floated through the capsule as he made his announcement. Fifteen minutes had passed since the Becks first entered the capsule. By this time, nearly all the acceleration pods were filled with passengers. The crewman floated directly to the one pod that was secured for him by a locked lid. It opened the instant he touched it with his com-link. He slid into it with practiced ease. His pod was in the first ring out from the center of the space capsule. In the center of the space capsule were six floor to ceiling monitors arranged in a five-foot-high hexagon. Built into each pod was a control station with several small monitors. Each pod had the potential to operate all aspects of the Amundsen, but their activation had to be given by a command authority.

“Two minutes to launch,” the crewman yelled out.

There was no sound from the spaceship beyond the slight hum of the space capsules electronics.

“One minute to launch,” the crewman yelled out as he monitored the displays in front of him.

The Becks had been talking to one-another for the whole of their time in the space capsule. The report of the one-minute mark diverted their attentions away from these conversations and down to their personal monitors for the first time. In front of them, they could see a launch clock display ticking away the seconds. Nearly all the passengers tensed in their seats in anticipation of some kind of sensation to occur when the primary thrusters ignited.

“We are thirty seconds from launch,” the crewman called out. “If you look up at the large monitors you will see something that you may never see again.”

The crewman had a magnified view of the Earth displayed on the monitors in the center of the room. The image of it nearly touched the top and bottom of the screen. Most of the passengers already had their personal monitors focused on this view. Shortly into everyone’s observation of this, the crewman began counting down from ten seconds in sync with the launch clock. At the count of zero the primary thrusters ignited. The glow from four massive engines could be seen glaring onto the video from the bottom left of the monitor. All the passengers in the space capsule searched about them for signs of some effect upon the vessel, but they saw and felt no change. Outside of the ship, the view of the Earth seemed unchanged for nearly a minute. At the end of this time, the Earth appeared to be shrinking at an infinitesimal rate. Two minutes into this, the Earth looked to be smaller on the screen by one-eighth. The black of space filled in the vacated areas along the perimeter of the monitor. As this was happening the rate of the Earth’s reduction became increasingly more obvious. After another minute, the edge of Earth’s moon began to move into view from the left side of the monitors. Two minutes later and the moon was fully visible. Distant stars and galaxies became brighter as the glow of light off the diminishing Earth became less and less pronounced. By the end of another minute, the universe looked to be growing in scope by the second. The Earth and moon appeared to be falling away at an increasingly rapid pace. In three more minutes, they were both lost from sight in the background of space.