Chapter 10

The Navy was kind of pissed at me for putting a French nuclear reactor aboard a US vessel, but to hell with them. They weren't going to let me buy a US sub reactor, so I did the best I could from the remaining options. Besides, the French saleswoman was kind of cute! You know, I wonder if that was deliberate?

Anyway, we used the internal gravity shield and artificial gravity units to fly to Auburn to our new, enlarged Auburn Space Port. I just loved tweaking the nose of NASA, but we were beginning to hurt their programs because several of their top people were asking to join Mars Enterprises.

Jeff Barstow and Hank Emerson had been the first two from NASA to join us, and we put them to work right away. Jeff agreed that the propane engine I was using was fine for putzing around within the solar system, but we were going to need something a bit more sophisticated when we ventured to the stars.

Another facet of the story raised its head. We were starting to get requests for rides to the various planets and moons by people who had serious scientific studies in mind. That hoop-de-do from finding the structures on Mars roused a lot of interest, and several people and institutions asked to rent time on the Emily V to make visits of their own. We didn't want to do that, because it would distract us from our main interest, but it seemed foolish to be selfish with the wonderful toys we had.

The submarine idea seem such a good one, that Joe started looking around for people who had old or unfinished submarines for sale. He found five that looked promising, so we bought them and mounted our special touches in them after stripping them of their war making items. Each one got a French power unit and we fitted them out with facilities for carrying passengers. We found some experienced astronauts and cosmonauts who were looking for space jobs to pilot the craft, and we were in business.

One corner of the Auburn Space Port was set aside for Space Excursions, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mars Enterprises. Bert was in his element, now, with a complex corporate structure to manage. We didn't charge exorbitant fees for our spaceships, but we did make a tidy profit, so Space Excursions, LLC, was able to operate on its own almost from the first day it carried its first passengers to the moon to look for water. NASA even bit the bullet and rented time and space from us. I really enjoyed that!

The schedule for our FTL ship looked like it was pushed out to 18 more months. Hope had resolved the problem of that fifth dimension, so we were well on our way to building the FTL device, but that was not the only hold up. The question was where to go on our first trip and who to take along. Jenny and I were going, of course. Hope, Jeff, and Hank were also promised seats. We had room for seven more, so there was some competition for places on board. This was mostly a test run and a celebratory joy ride, so we didn't need much in the way of scientific help. Emily, Joe, and Bert had all passed on the trip, but there were still a multitude of people who wanted to go on the maiden flight.

We finally narrowed down the passenger list, so we were ready as soon as the ship was ready. As a matter of course, we retained the name of Emily VI, since it would have been "bad luck" to make a change. This was going to be Jenny's last trip for a while, since she wanted a baby before she got too old. I asked her since when the late 20s was too old for a baby, and she informed me in no uncertain terms that taking care of a baby was hard physical work, and she wanted to have the stamina to be able to enjoy the experience. OK, I shut my stupid male mouth!

Our target was the classic one of Alpha Centauri. Since this was a binary system, there was a lot of chance for one or more Earth-like planets and the possibility of life to exist there. Hopefully, we would find out when we got there.

As usual, there was a big deal made of our liftoff for the first attempt at FTL flight. I lifted us out of the atmosphere and aimed for a starting point out of the planetary ecliptic so there would be less chance of an accidental collision as we build up speed to our launch velocity. We started our acceleration toward light speed and waited to see what would happen. The speed rapidly increased until we were traveling so fast that I could not get a meaningful measurement on my own, but had to depend on the instrument pointed toward the sun. Hope had the honor of being the one who pushed the go-button for FTL when we got there.

After a few hours of acceleration, we suddenly felt a kind of twinge that we couldn't identify, but it was a bit uncomfortable, though not painful. Our instruments said that we had reached 99.97% of the speed of light, so Hope pressed the button. There was a momentary jolt in our feeling of orientation, and I started slowing us down. WE HAD DONE IT! We did not yet know exactly where we were, but we could tell that we were no longer in the solar system!

I moved as fast as I could to slow us down by reversing our orientation and applying as much power to the rocket as I was able to. Before long, we were traveling slowly enough that we could get meaningful readings in our telescopes. I found Alpha Centauri and oriented on it so that we could get a navigational lock. We slowed down enough to get a series of photographs which we used to identify planets. We found two around Alpha Centauri-a and one orbiting Alpha Centauri-b that had potential as supporting Earth-type life.

I aimed us for the planet orbiting A Cen-b as being the most convenient to approach first. It took us over an hour to be in position to see enough of the planet to form an initial opinion. Damn! There were oceans and at least two continents. The planet's land surface was mostly shades of green and brown. That was very encouraging. We didn't go any closer, since we had the preliminary information we needed. Spectral analysis showed an atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, but we could not get any detail with the crude instrument we were carrying. One final point, the planet had a moon. In a fit of sentimentality and joy, I insisted that the planet should be named "Jenny." Jenny blushed, but didn't argue with me, though she insisted that the moon be named "Derek."

After taking all of the photographic data we thought would be valuable, we moved on to A Cen-a. The first planet was waterless and there was no detectable atmosphere. The second planet was much like Jenny, but had about twice the diameter, so we guessed at six to eight times the gravity. This one we named "Hope," since we hoped that it would have some form of life.

After taking a lot more photos and spectrographic readings, we returned to Earth. We had not planned on an extended visit, so we were not provisioned for that. We had been away from Earth for 39 hours. That was a round trip of about 9 lightyears, so we declared the trip and test a success!

This was the start of something that rapidly got out of hand. When we published the results of our trip to the stars, we all, individually and collectively became so completely in demand by TV that we had no time for anything else. Finally, out of pure desperation, I called for a halt. Sure, we were raking in money, but we really didn't need it. We could make gold any time we needed money, so there was no incentive to go for more.

However, the real push was for us to hire out for trips into outer space. After some soul searching, we decided to convert all of our ships to FTL capability, though some of them were limited to short excursions in time, if not in space, just because they did not have enough room to carry consumables like water in the quantity needed for a long stay away from Earth.

We suddenly had more orders for trips than we could possibly manage. We had a board meeting and decided to go for broke. We contracted with submarine builders in the USA, Russia, and South Korea to build shells to our specifications. We installed the gravity shields, artificial gravity devices, and FTL units that we were now contracted with GE to build. The only thing we refused to install was the cloaking device. We kept a few for our own use, but most of the new units were leased out long term to anybody who had the money. We had even established a school to train pilots.