Chapter 12

Since the Frenchmen had caused the loss of Catfish, Space Excursions refused to return the money they had paid for the trip. Dammit, we lost Catfish because of their carelessness, so they should have to pay something! They tried to sue us, but, since the trial had to take place in an Alabama court, the case never came to trial. Prof. Le Harve was a broken man, and I thought he deserved it! This did result in the French government refusing to let us buy any more nuclear units. But GE had designed one for us by now, so we just switched to American made power units, and that ended the argument.

New rule: No passengers are allowed to approach the pilot or the control console, except by invitation.

We had so much business with Space Excursions that we ordered five spaceships from our usual suppliers. One of them was named Catfish II. These all had the same hull as Emily VI, including all the machine gun positions. This hull had worked out so well that we would probably be sticking with it for a while. In keeping with Naval tradition, we called the hull design the Emily class.

One day I had an unexpected visitor. Oh, he had an appointment, that wasn't what was unexpected. He was a representative of The United Congregation of God churches. Mr. Threepenny, after the usual courtesies, said, "Mr. Hawkins, I am here to ask your help in furthering God's work. Specifically, we want to spread the Gospel throughout the galaxy by populating unoccupied planets with our believers. We understand that, on your first visit to Alpha Centauri-b, you found a planet that looked Earth-like and you tentatively named Jenny.

"To your knowledge, has anyone taken any further interest in the planet? If not, we would like your cooperation in surveying the planet for human occupation. Of course, we would pay for your trouble at your usual rates. Why we need your help is because your fleet of spaceships is booked out for something like the next 10 years, and we simply don't want to wait that long to get started.

"We would like for your company to lease a ship to us for an indefinite time span. We want your company to provide the pilot and the service facilities at this end of the line to get us started. Once we are established, we would like to purchase a ship from your company and have several of our people trained as pilots. But we are spread too thin right now to do the mundane things like maintaining and flying a spaceship. We want somebody else to do that for us until we get established. Are you interested?"

"Well, Mr. Threepenny, I will say that your proposal does sound interesting, but I would prefer that you handle the business details through our sales department. They have the costs and other things at their fingertips, and, of course, I would have to go to them for the data, anyway. Suppose I call the Manager of Sales and have her set up an appointment for you to work out the specific details. I do find your proposal very interesting and would like to cooperate as closely as possible. In fact, I will call her now if you like."

"Please do, Mr. Hawkins. Your courtesy is greatly appreciated by me and by the Congregation."

I placed the call, "Gail, I have a high priority one for you. It has my personal interest. There is a Mr. Threepenny in my office right now who would like to talk to you about a rather complex lease agreement. I would appreciate it if you would talk to him this afternoon, and get started on helping him out as soon as you can. I'll talk to you later, once you have heard from him about what he wants. I want to do this, even if it means buying and outfitting another hull ... You can? Excellent! I'll send him over, now. Good bye for now."

I hung up the phone and buzzed my secretary, "Suzy Jane, please find an escort for Mr. Threepenny to take him to Gail's office over in sales. She's expecting him, so I'd appreciate you expediting this ... Thank you."

"Mr. Threepenny, within five minutes, an escort will be here to take you to see Gail Harvester, our Manager of Sales, to discuss the details of your case. Please be patient with us."

"Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I am impressed by the way you have handled my request. I want you to know that the Congregation and I appreciate all that you have done for us, today."

"You are quite welcome, Mr. Threepenny. Ah, here is your escort. Please have a good day."

As soon as Threepenny had left, I had Suzy Jane set up a stockholder's meeting in the Executive Conference Room.

"Folks, I called you here on such short notice because a great opportunity just left my office less than an hour ago. A representative from The United Congregation of God wants to hire us to help them establish a colony on the planet Jenny at Alpha Centauri-b. I want to help them all that we can and for a very selfish reason. I know you all remember that chilling message that Jenny and I found on Mars. Well, I want humans scattered to as many planets as possible throughout the galaxy so we can never come that close again to being wiped out. It is only pure luck that enough people survived for us to be here, and there are so many ways that we could be wiped out that I want to buy some insurance against it.

"I am no fan of The United Congregation of God. They make Southern Baptists or Mormons look like libertines, but this is an opportunity to make the first step in moving humans through the galaxy. Of course, we will profit from this in our pocketbooks, but it is also the beginning of the grand experiment. I hope that the rest of you are with me on this."

Bert said, "It makes no difference whether or not we agree with their theology or their politics, they are a potential customer with deep pockets. I say that we go after it. And I agree with Derek about spreading humanity through the galaxy."

Everybody else agreed with Bert, so we were able to advance with the whole family behind the project. Fortunately, I am not that close to the day-to-day management of Mars Enterprises, so I was not sorely missed when I decided to give most of my attention to the colonization project.

Bert did suggest that we form an new subsidiary to work on the colonization. Therefore we formed Jenny Exploration, LLC, to operate our end of the project. The people at The United Congregation of God did not mind as long as it did not interfere with their plans. In fact, when they realized that I was giving the project my practically undivided attention, they were wholeheartedly in favor of the idea.

The only thing that grabbed my attention away from the project, and it was early enough that it really didn't make any difference, was the birth of Mary and John Hawkins. Jenny delivered the two babies with no complications and settled into being a mother under the benevolent attention of her mother. Emily and Jenny worked their asses off with the babies, but managed to spoil them only marginally. That was left to me, primarily, though Joe and Bert were not far behind.

Since we were going to build a new hull for the project, I ordered one about 20% larger in all dimensions. I wanted to be able to carry more provisions so that I could stay out longer. We made a few other relatively minor changes and came up with a new design I named "Pilot Fish." For one thing, this design had more guns. I was reminded of that one time we were attacked, and I didn't want to get caught short.

While we were waiting for Pilot Fish to be ready to fly, we used Emily VI for the early stages of the project. We wanted to be sure that no sentient life already existed on Jenny, so we did an extensive survey, almost square foot by square foot. Say what you will about The United Congregation of God, they were scrupulous in their efforts to cause no harm to an existing sentient population.

The atmosphere was mainly 20% oxygen and 78% nitrogen, with the carbon dioxide level quite low, at about 0.07%. There was about 1.5% methane in the air, and the rest was various inert gases, such as argon. There was some talk of a "greenhouse" effect from the methane in the air, but the temperature was so pleasant, nobody seriously complained.

No matter how hard we searched, we could find no sign of a sentient population, though there were other creatures already living on the planet. Careful laboratory work showed that the majority of the plants on Jenny were, at best, completely edible and nutritious, and, at worst, only mildly poisonous. The fauna on Jenny was mostly herbivorous, though there were a few carnivores from as small as mice to as large as lions. Initially, it was going to be necessary to be armed while wandering in the wilds of Jenny. All of the large herbivores were edible, and most tasted like pork. There were no birds to be found, but it was decided not to introduce them until much more was known about the ecology.