But still, even so, Newhope had been the first of the great Queendom starships, and even after 250 years she was still the pride of the Barnardean fleet. She had never—truly never—had a crew person this green, even at the very start when she'd been designed to keep as many hands busy as possible. Eustace's training for the mission had, Conrad imagined, consisted of nothing more than a few weeks in bed with Feck. And that was a poor preparation indeed for what lay ahead.
“I suppose we could go right now, then,” Xmary mused.
“Absolutely, ma'am,” Feck replied.
Xmary looked at Conrad. “Any objection?”
Conrad was about to deny it, and give his blessing for the journey to begin, when a second holographic window opened beside Feck's, and within it was the image of King Bascal, as real as life itself. He was wearing his diamond crown, whose weight pulled down the skin around it, giving his face a saggy appearance, an air of gravity. But this was his only concession to majesty; he was otherwise dressed in loose gray pajamas, with no adornment of any sort.
“Ah, Conrad, I thought I might find you here,” he said. This was technically a breach of protocol, since he should first address the Information officer and request an audience with the first mate. But Bascal's adherence to Queendom-style protocol was spotty at best, and today he seemed particularly irate.
“Hi, Bas,” Conrad said to him.
“What're you doing?” the king asked. It was an honest question. He knew something was going on, and he didn't like it; but at the same time he was curious, and part of him was maybe even a little bit amused.
“Just running a little errand,” Conrad answered.
Bascal nodded absently at that. “Uh-huh. Except that the crew of Newhope was off-loaded at Bubble Hood about four hours ago. As near as I can figure, you've got three people onboard that ship.”
“Four, actually,” Conrad corrected.
Bascal scowled, his voice growing firmer. “I'll ask you again: What are you doing?”
If Conrad had had any say in the matter, he would have cut the channel right there and then. But Newhope was a giant block of nanobe-tended wellstone, intelligent all the way down to the molecular level, and Bascal's Royal Overrides could command the obedience of all but the most critical systems. Those, fortunately, were safety locked and required biometric authentication, which could not be performed at a distance.
“I think maybe we should skip the refueling,” Conrad said to Xmary. “Let's just light up and go. Just go, now. That refueling is only for safety margin anyway, right?”
“Yes, I concur,” Xmary said. Then, glancing at the other window, “Feck?”
Feck nodded firmly. “Firing the engines now, ma'am.”
“You people are in a lot of trouble,” Bascal said, in a manner that was almost friendly. “You do know that, right? That starship is a very valuable—in fact irreplaceable—piece of property. My property. Using it without authorization is a serious crime,” his eyes settled on Xmary, “even for a captain.”
Then, anything else he might've said was drowned out by the rising groan of Newhope's engines. Fully loaded like this, kicking directly to full thrust, the start-up transients were at once louder and gentler—more damped by mass—than usual. And thanks to the ertial shields, the effective mass of Newhope was very small, so that the acceleration, which was barely perceptible from the inside, was in fact quite impressive. On holie windows all around the bridge, Planet Two could be seen shrinking beneath them.
“Planetary escape velocity . . . now,” Feck was saying. He had moved most of the helm functions down to Engineering, so he could steer and navigate while keeping the engines stoked. “We have broken orbit and are falling sunward. Eccentricity of our Barnard orbit is 0.2 and climbing.”
“Good,” Xmary said. “When it gets to 0.987, cut the engines and resume coasting.”
“Aye, ma'am.”
Eccentricity was a measure of their orbit's height and narrowness—its resemblance to a parabola rather than a circle. Numbers just under 1.0 meant the orbit was a flat ellipse, long and thin and very fast, like the trail of a short-period comet. As in their long-ago departure from Sol, the orbit would graze the chromosphere of Barnard—its hot middle atmosphere—and then the sails would unfurl and the engines would light up again, and the eccentricity would blow right past 1.0, breaking the top of the ellipse, opening it into a parabola whose arms stretched out to infinity. And then as their speed continued to build, a hyperbola, which reached infinity a hell of a lot faster, and also happened to be pointed back at Sol.
“Jesus,” Bascal said, the color draining from his face. “That's a sun-grazer. Unless you're committing suicide, which would be damned peculiar under the circumstances, there's only one reason for an orbit that tight: to fire at the bottom and boost your apogee. You bastards, you're going interstellar. Back to Sol? To Mommy and Daddy? Why are you doing that? Just four of you, sneaking away like dogs. In my ship.”
“Not sneaking,” Conrad said, unable to help himself.
“Not sneaking,” Bascal repeated. “Hmm. What are you up to, then? You and Xmary and some freshly printed ta'ahine I've never seen before.”
“Eustace Faxborn, Sire.”
“Be quiet, dear,” said Xmary.
“And who else?” the king asked. “Feck the Programmable Spaceman? My people tell me you're carrying five cargo pods which went up the tower just this morning. That's quite a load. What's in the pods?”
“Eccentricity .987,” Feck announced. “Cutting engines.” The groan of deutrelium fusion had quieted considerably over the course of the burn as the reactor's vibrations damped out, but now it cut off entirely. “Velocity relative to Sorrow is 30.59 kps. Relative to Barnard, 3.7 kps. We are falling, ma'am, and will enter Barnard's chromosphere in 122.5 hours.”
“The hell you will,” said Bascal. “Turn that ship around. If you do it now, I promise to hear out your grievances and be lenient in your sentencing. If not, I'll set Security on your trail, and by the time Ho's finished there won't be enough left to freeze. I mean it.”
“King's Fist is docked at Bubble Hood,” Conrad said, “and half her crew, including Ho, are on shore leave at the moment. This was a consideration in choosing our departure time.”
Bascal clucked his tongue angrily. “My, my. You always were a careful mutineer, Conrad. I give you enough rope to hang yourself, and you spin a fucking hammock with it. Maybe I knew that. Maybe I was sloppy or generous, but I can't let you get away with this. The colony can't afford it.”
“You could,” Conrad said, “for old times' sake.”
The king touched his nose, his lips, then trailed his fingers through his hair, brushing it up away from his face. “You could turn around for the same reason, boyo. Just tell me what you're up to. Please. You're my dearest friend. Don't force me to kill you without even knowing why.”
“I'll tell you when we're safely away,” Conrad said. “When we've gone hyperbolic.”
“Not good enough. You'll tell me now.”
“Or what, Bas?” Xmary cut in. “You're not going to catch us. Even if you hustle Fist's crew up the Gravittoir in the next ten minutes, it'd take them all day to match speeds with us, and even when they did they'd be hours behind us in our orbit. And out of fuel.”