On behalf of the Government of New Utah, welcome to New Utah space. Please proceed to geosynchronous orbit at the following coordinates. Please contact New Utah Spaceport on the following frequency to coordinate escort and reception.

It was stop-and-go, but by the end of the week, there were hundreds in orbit, girdling the globe in a spreading band of cacophony. They called them winter flies.

The day finally came. Geery sent the magic words:

“We’re ready.”

Over OLaM Airfield, renamed New Utah Spaceport

The Warrior hissed in shear exaltation. There was nothing to flying, really. There was everything to flying. Ridge and wave and thermal lift sent the gossamer craft whipping ever-faster, ever-higher, spiraling up toward the top of the troposphere. Up, up, up, and then the tip, the rush, the weightlessness of plummeting earthward toward the target, in perfect verticality.

It did the practice simulation of tail separation in zero-g, then pulled up, hissing and trilling and tasting pure manna. It liked the name: Phoenix. Its solo exam was complete.

The SunFish pilot trainer called in. “We’re ready.”

New Utah Spaceport Hangar Six

Some things you could train for, others you could only test for. They picked carefully. They tested two dozen, and eliminated all but six. They started training, and eventually whittled down to three.

It became a set drill. “Ventilate!” They stepped up pumping their bellows of chests. “Pack!” They exhaled to extreme; inhaled to extreme; gulped down air to extreme. “Hold!” They switched off, into a trance of waiting. “Run!” They moved out. Meters rolled by. They held it still. Blood vessels constricted. Blood moved to brains; extremities grew weak, screaming with a pain they no longer felt.

They improved quickly. Five minutes. Nearly ten minutes. Breathing pure oxygen, almost fifteen. Then the same without it.

They climbed into the centrifuge, and started all over again. Three gee. Five gee. Ten gee. Fifteen.

“Now do it with the set tasks.”

Leaden and tired and out of air, bodies squashed flat by a ton of gravity, eyes covered with blackened hoods, they repeated the drill. Confirm chronometry. Confirm  altimetry. Engage flywheel to slow external rotation and store energy. Lock exhaust port for attitude control. Slide out of propulsion stream, roll, and brake. Vent any remaining compressed air to cabin. Wait. Blow hatch. Exit. Greet.

Finally came the pure misery.

Never mind doing it blindfolded, backwards, under pressure. They practiced until they could do it with arms of lead, deaf and dark, without breathing, stuffed three-deep inside an old packing barrel.

The chief of physiology called in.

“I think they’re as ready as can be.”

Sinbad, above New Utah

They fell out of jump, systems shut down, computers running recovery test sequences. Ali Baba was a flailing misery; a little starfish hauled from a hostile sea. The ITA rep  threw up. Except for the young fit crewmen, for all his age, Kevin recovered most quickly, but it mattered little, until Sinbad itself was out of its misery.

There were odd little sparkles in the Langston Field.

Oh criminey,  thought Kevin. What he actually thought was unprintable on most planets, but there was good reason for his ecumenical blasphemy: the jump point had shifted from their calculated trajectory, and they had actually emerged inside New Utah’s meteor belt. Not that it had many, but they were heating up, ever so slightly, from collisions with space trash.

Then he remembered that there shouldn’t be any.

Then he rallied enough to have the sailing master take a look.

Then Sinbad rallied enough to make that possible.

“Sir?” said the sailing master.

“Umph.”

“We’re receiving a lot of very-low-power RF energy.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms.”

“I mean, like, a hundred itty-bitty transmissions, on, like, a hundred frequencies.”

He tuned one in. He grinned at Renner, and punched it on. “This,” he said, “you ain’t gunna believe.”

Two hours later, HG arrived, Barthes in tow, ranting about the indignities involved in using the FairServ shuttle, and Sinbad moved to the designated coordinates.

19

Formal Accession

An anthill increases by accumulation. Medicine is consumed by distribution. That which is feared lessens by association. This is the thing to understand.

—Ovid

New Utah Spaceport

Of course, it should have all gone wrong. What was meant to take days should have required weeks, not the other way around. The Eye should have closed early. The Alderson point should have opened early. The mountain should have fogged in, scattering the beam.

But none of these things came to be. Instead, something happened when human engineering got mixed up with…Swenson’s Apes. Things just…kept moving. Once they worked right, they stayed that way. If Miners and Miner’s Helpers moved onto the line, every single time it happened exactly the same way. If something didn’t work—it didn’t work. It moved on to the next test, without frustration or waste.

They were exceptional at innovation, but in an incredibly methodical way. Things marched along. Even the weather cooperated. Bright and clear, except for one sharp lens of cloud indicating a mountain wave. And over the Eye: nothing at all. Not a single cloud, the air dead calm, not a particle of haze. And then came The Day.

What were the chances? That on such a day, the message would come, All Due Haste?

“The tramline is open. They’re here.”

Enheduanna was in direct communication. Had to be, for orders relay. The Phoenix would soar to the edge of flight possibility, but its dive must be timed with the Eye’s pulsing phase. They’d call it directly from the ground. The Seers would know how to wait.

The crew sealed in with a thimble of air; the rapid climb; the stunning view; the pulse; the tip to orient the gleaming silver egg. The weightless drop into garnet depths, like the big red target out there on the airway. The flash, the flames as earthly feathers burned away.

It shouldn’t have worked on the hundredth try. Nevertheless, against all the odds, the diamond egg streaked away.

Sinbad, above New Utah

The capsule was small. Too small. Barely big enough for one grown man, pretzeled into a fetal position. The crew milled about it, confused. One tentatively reached forward, rapped on its blunter end, and jumped back at an answering thump from within. He jumped just in time, because the thump was followed by a reverberating ba-ba-ba-BAM as explosive bolts blew the hatch a few feet across the bay.

More thumping ensued. Renner barked: “Help them!”

Two Boatswain’s mates sprang to action, just as a limp, brown arm flopped from the opening. They half-wrestled, half-dragged a dead weight from the port. The Miner’s body emerged; slid along the capsule skin; thumped to the floor with the mates scrambling down after it.

The crew froze in collective shock. They counted limbs. They counted again. Saw the brown fur. Saw the rictus of a smile, plastered across the alien face, even in death. Did the math. Were stupefied on their first contact with what they saw as a dead Motie Engineer.