Author's apology:
Thank you for your patience, your comments and your votes. I'm sorry for such a long break. I took a few months off to help the campaign to re-establish my country as a liberal self-governing democracy, which was happily a success; then I spent some months basking in that success, as work piled up and my story lay neglected.
I've also changed the format of the story. I thought there were two chapters left but it will be three, possibly four, so the present chapter is a little shorter than intended.
For this chapter, recall that Ezra Goldrick's sister, Danielle, designed a new hyperspace engine, manufactured on Earth by her previous employer, Oakshott Industries, and its partner company, HyperStar Japan. The motor worked well but the communications probe sent to Samothea crashed into the planet; since when, the Samothea Project has been stalled because the Nakatani Corporation, a powerful industrial firm, took HyperStar Japan and Danielle to court for breach of copyright.
Meanwhile, Danielle, while teaching astrophysical engineering at the Celetaris Institute for Science, designed and manufactured a microwave air-suit, which was a commercial success.
Ezra crash-landed on Samothea about four years ago. He was rescued from the sea by Wildchild (also called Samothea) and Tamar (also called Yael). The Woodlander, Mariner and Herder Tribes all adopted him, giving him the duty of sleeping with those tribeswomen who want children. He now has thirty bedmates and more than thirty children. He cannot take bedmates from the Cloner, Farmer and Miner tribes, who still practise cloning to avoid a genetic bottleneck.
Yumi Takahashi stowed away on-board Ezra's ship and now lives in the Cloner City with her son, Hayate.
The communications probe that Danielle sent to Samothea transmitted a message before it exploded. Ezra read the message on one of the emergency escape pods salvaged from his spaceship. It proved that a rescue mission would likely be sent.
Annela (Ezra's first bedmate) began to develop symptoms of a brain-tumour. She was persuaded to enter the spare emergency escape-pod, and be put into suspended animation to await more visitors from space, who might bring hope of a medical treatment.
1Doctorates and deals
"No, certainly not, Goldrick! And don't ask again!"
Danielle Goldrick was enjoying a friendly argument with her erstwhile boss, Stephen Oakshott, an argument made somewhat surreal by the fact that Danielle was on Celetaris and Stephen was 170 light-years away on Earth, so there was a twenty-minute gap between their exchanges.
Danielle started the dispute by offering to pay Stephen back the money he gave her as a monthly stipend, now that she was supplementing her university income from sales of her microwave air-suit.
Stephen pretended to be insulted.
"The money I'm paying you, Goldrick, is to make sure you come back to work for me when this academic whim is over. It rather defeats the purpose if you pay me back!"
So Danielle moved on to her next offer:
"I'd like Oakshott Industries to become the Earthside partner for my air-suit business, to manufacture and sell the suits in the Homeworld markets. You know how lucrative that will be."
"I know nothing about air-suit technology," he replied, "and we're not a suitable company to market the product."
At least Stephen didn't pretend his business didn't need the money. Danielle knew that Oakshott Industries was having a torrid time financially because the Beltway Hyperspace Project (including her award-winning work on its hyperspace junctions) had finished and the Samothea Project had been on hold for more than a year, its signature motor subject to a legal dispute that progressed at glacial speed through the Japanese courts.
Thus Danielle arrived at her third offer:
"Will you host the auction to find an Earthside manufacturer to produce the air-suits under licence?" she asked. "And will you make sure you take a thumping great commission for doing so?"
Stephen Oakshott was a wily operator but it was only later that he realised Danielle had manoeuvred him into accepting an offer he might have rejected had she begun with it. At the time, however, he merely smiled and gratefully replied:
"All right, Goldrick, I'll organise the auction. But you must know that your ideal partner is the Nakatani Corporation. They could swallow up the entire production of your air-suits without missing a breath. You would make a fortune if you sold the licence to them."
"I know," Danielle replied. "So you'll have the pleasure - if someone from Nakatani foolishly comes to the auction - of telling him to get lost. I'm glad you're taking the job, Stephen. Promise me you'll gouge the winner?"
******
Danielle's Ph.D. students, Rosa Silverstein and Li Qu Yuan, were awarded their Doctorates two years after Danielle moved to Celetaris, about four years after Ezra left for Samothea. Their papers on the technology of the Samothea Project made a stir as the new theories of hyperspace travel percolated through the scientific community.
Li accepted a place at CalTech on a research team run by Jonathan Wright. They both remained essential members of the Samothea Project.
Rosa's boyfriend, Herman, stayed on Celetaris for further study under Dorothy Martlebury. The galaxy's foremost expert on programmable mathematics had extended her visit to the Celetaris Institute for Science for another four years, so convivial did she find the academic climate.
Rosa also remained on Celetaris. She told Herman she was staying for Danielle's sake and she told Danielle she was staying for Herman's sake but, in reality, she stayed for her own sake. Rosa was in the grip of an intriguing new problem, an original discovery she wasn't yet ready to reveal.
Danielle wrangled a post-doctorate position for Rosa at the Institute, on the strength of their collaboration on the Samothea Project. She used all her diplomatic skill to reconcile Professor Jakovs to a second female member of staff.
In fact, that sour old misogynist had slightly mellowed, now he was nearing retirement and would occasionally smile benevolently on the two women, Doctors Goldrick and Silverstein, whom he called 'the precious metals.'
After a month of intense work, Rosa revealed her discovery to Herman, who devised some clever additions. A fortnight later, she was ready to show Danielle what she and Herman had done so far.
The three sat in Danielle's office, halfway up The Vortex, the twisting plasti-glass tower in the middle of the Science Park, which housed the physics department. It was a foggy winter's morning. The suffused office-lights reflected yellow on the glass walls, seeming to trap them in a prison cell.
Rosa projected a graph from her computer pad. It looked like an exaggerated mountain-range, with prominent peaks at irregular points along the graph.
"This is the electromagnetic spectrum of the black-hole anomaly near Samothea," she explained, standing to point with a laser-pen.
"I found a way to reverse-engineer the signal from the last three microseconds of communication between the traveller and the plume, as the traveller veered off-course and crashed."
"Really? I didn't know that was possible," Danielle said. "That's an amazing result, Rosa ... if it's correct."
Rosa flipped a document to Danielle's computer to show her working-out. Danielle scanned over the pages of formulas and calculations. She was impressed.
"When did you do this?" Danielle asked.
"I started six weeks ago," Rosa said.
