Chapter 5

The little fleet jumped to an unoccupied area well out on the galactic arm. There was no time during the transit, so they had to plan a course of action after they arrived. No one was so foolish as to believe that just their two small ships were enough to defeat a whole civilization—this was just a scouting mission.

A thorough sweep of the volume of space, 100 million klicks in radius, showed one spaceship, but it did not look like the kind that they had been fighting. This ship was moving at about .8 c (80% of the speed of light), so it was certainly not a merchant ship or a war ship. However, it was large enough to be hauling a large number of people, provided they were in some semblance of suspended animation.

Jacob and Abner agreed that the vessel needed to be investigated. If nothing else, they might be able to give them a gravity machine so they could travel to their destination via the Lurie Effect. 'Michael' and 'Susan' closed in on the other ship by using the transporter after they matched speeds.

The communications officer, Andy, aboard 'Michael' began using the combination of FTL radio and the universal translator as soon as they were stationary relative to the colony ship. It took a few minutes to get a reply from the ET ship, but the translator was able to do its work in short order. Andy asked to speak with the captain of the ET ship, and a voice came on, full of questions.

"Who are you, and why are you threatening us? We have no hostile intent. We don't want to fight!"

Jacob answered, "My name is Jacob, and we are members of the human race from nearer the center of the galaxy. Our home is approximately 1,600 lightyears from here. We are oxygen breathers and we mean you no harm. We wondered if you were having some sort of difficulty and needed our assistance. As you must have surmised, we have FTL flight capability, and we are willing to share with you if you need it."

"My God, your generosity is mind blowing. We have no such FTL technology, as you can readily see. What would you want from us in exchange for that capability? As you can see, we don't have much, but we would pay almost anything to gain FTL flight."

"Don't worry about payment right now. All we really want is to be friends with anyone we meet. We would also like to hear your story of how you got here. First, though, what kind of atmosphere do you breathe? We would have to visit your ship to install the FTL machinery."

"We are oxygen breathers, and our normal atmosphere is 13% oxygen and 87% nitrogen. There is some carbon dioxide, but we scrub that out as fast as we can. There are some other trace gasses, but I doubt that they would bother you. We do not have any artificial gravity, so we are nominally living at 0 g. The temperature is maintained at 15 degrees C. Is that close enough to your requirements?"

"Yes, we can handle that very easily. May I come visit you? I would like to bring my Engineering Officer so that he can see what changes we might have to make in our machine to allow it to work with your ship."

"Please do come visit. I am afraid, though, that you will have to provide the shuttle. There is an airlock here at the bow that you can use."

"We don't need a shuttle. We have a transporter that can move us to your ship with no difficulty. Oh, I forgot to ask, what is the vertical clearance in your compartments? We are around 1.8 m tall. Will that be a problem?"

"No, that should be no problem. When can we expect you?"

"How about right now?"

"OK, come on."

The ET gave a muffled shriek as Jacob and Tom suddenly appeared standing by his side. Jacob said, "Oops, I'm sorry to startle you. That certainly was not our intention. By the way, I forgot to ask, what is the atmospheric pressure?"

"It's about 1.4 times your normal."

"Good, that will compensate a lot for the reduced level of oxygen. I am Jacob and this is Tom. You never gave us your name."

"I beg your pardon. My name is Adar, and these people are Ogely, Stinner, and Xyzby. I am amazed at how closely you resemble us. It would be virtually impossible to tell who is human and who is Wiffer in a crowd."

Jacob and Tom were given a quick tour of the ship by Adar. When they returned to the control room, Tom said that he could not see any problem in installing a gravity machine in the engine room and running the control cables to the control room.

Tom jumped back to 'Michael' to arrange for a gravity machine to be duplicated and transported to 'Harlow, ' the ET ship. This was a nine-hour job, so there was something to keep the crew of 'Michael' busy for a while. Meanwhile, Janet could not hold her curiosity, so she jumped to the control room of 'Harlow' to join Jacob in talking to the ETs.

She got to the Control Room just as Adar was telling his story to Jacob. Their planet had been attacked from space, but they managed to beat off the attackers by the slimmest of margins. Realizing that they had been lucky to escape the complete annihilation of their people, they decided that they had to move to a safer location. Unfortunately, they did not have an FTL drive, they knew that they were stuck with a long trip at less than the speed of light. Nevertheless, they built the 'Harlow' ('Desperation' in their own language) and selected 1,000 people to travel in it to some unknown destination. They just wanted a place safe from the marauders who had attacked them.

The vast majority of the people aboard 'Harlow' were in suspended animation, and they would stay that way until 'Harlow' reached its destination, wherever that might be. They had no particular target in mind, but they hoped to find a place out of the billions and billions of planets in the galaxy.

The people on board were of both genders, so they expected to be able to keep their race going once they found a suitable planet. There were more females than males, simply because that was the way to build up the population as fast as possible.

One of the great virtues of traveling in suspended animation was that it staved off the loss of bone mass that 0 g caused, so the people who were "asleep" would not have to worry about regaining their strength the way the operating crew would have to do. As it was, the operating crew rotated through spells of suspended animation to cut down on the rate of bone loss as much as they could.

Jacob apologized to Adar for not inviting him over to their ship, since the humans maintained a 1 g gravity so that they did not lose bone mass. Adar expressed regret that he could not tour 'Michael' for that reason, but he appreciated the thought. Janet and Jacob promised that Tom and a couple of helpers would be back to install the gravity generator and controls as soon as they were completed.

Back on board 'Michael, ' Janet said, "I just had an idea. Why can't we invite Adar and his Wiffers to visit Earth? They should be able to handle the atmosphere, and those in suspended animation should be OK in the gravity. The operating crews could live on the moon until they got acclimated."

"That same idea had occurred to me. There certainly would be plenty of room for them, and we humans could use the increase in population. Let's get some sleep and bring up the subject in the morning. Before going to sleep, they broached the idea to Bill, and he was agreeable.

The next morning, Janet explained the idea to the crews of 'Michael' and 'Susan.' Everyone agreed that it was a good idea, so Jacob told Adar the offer the humans were making. He was enthusiastic. Here was a planet that was close to what they needed and already had an infrastructure, so they would not be starting from scratch. The rest of the Wiffers who were awake also were happy with the idea, so the decision was made to jump to Earth as soon as the machine was ready.

This was the largest ship that Tom had ever worked with, so it took a little longer than expected to complete the installation. Once that was done, the run up to speed was begun. Tom stayed on board 'Harlow' to operate the gravity generator, not because the machine was so difficult to manage, but because Adar and his crew were just nervous about the whole thing.