64: Transport Economy

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It was difficult to stay gloomy when boarding HEX-107, because as we were buckling in for the journey back to the Stalwart, all I could think about were the capuchins. We’d be spending a few weeks on the Stalwart before taking the Ironstock back to the Courageous, and I had no idea if that was because that’s how the scheduling worked out, or if Tima had arranged for a few weeks on a normal pull ship on purpose so that we weren’t stumbling around like fragile idiots when we got back to the Courageous. The Ironstock was a low-pull ship, which wasn’t as bad as zero pull, but after a month on the Dish it was definitely a good idea to build some strength back up before the journey home.

Also, the schedule had been made when we still had Hali, with his bad pull adaptivity geneset. So that might have affected things.

What I knew: the capuchins (or at least Tikka, and she spoke like it was common knowledge) believed that leaving the Stalwart for other ships was deadly, or at the very least, that it was incredibly dangerous. Tikka had been curious enough about other ships to seek me out, but was too scared to even consider going to any. The humans on the Stalwart didn’t hide the capuchins away, exactly, but definitely went out of their way to not make a big deal about them; I hadn’t even learned that they weren’t human when researching the Stalwart for the first time. The historians thought that the capuchins probably didn’t communicate off-ship very much, based on my first message from Tikka, and Fari had definitely not wanted to give me the means to contact her, but also didn’t want to make a big issue by trying to forbid me from contacting her.

At the same time, the humans on the Stalwart that I’d met were fairly protective of the capuchins. Fari and Ella both seemed to have capuchin friends, Fari talked to Tikka like one of my aunts would talk to us kids, and Ella had been very firm about me not being rude to or about them. There might be some kind of divide where some people were controlling the capuchins and others were nice to them, but I didn’t think so, because I’d been getting both attitudes from Fari. But when we got onto the Stalwart, I could talk to more humans there to find out.

I also knew that the fleet charter, as it was written, applied to every human in the fleet. Capuchins weren’t technically listed in the agreement; they hadn’t existed when it was made.

So that’s what I knew. Here’s what I suspected.

The humans on the Stalwart seemed to get along well with the capuchins and seemed to want the best for them, but at the same time they seemed to want to keep them on the Stalwart and not advertise their existence to the fleet as a whole. Tikka and the other children had probably been warned about how dangerous other ships were because they were legally protected on the Stalwart and had no reason to think they would be legally protected on other ships. They could get trapped on some distant ship and worked to death and no other ship would be in a legal position to stop it without a whole big mess that would be very slow and probably come too late.

The Stalwart could try to push for capuchins to be included in the charter, or even just make local deals with other nearby ships. They didn’t seem to have done either; in fact, they seemed to be doing their best not to alert other ships and let those things happen. This seemed confusing, if they cared about the capuchins, but it made sense if you considered the Stalwart as part of the fleet; they were really wrapped up in a colony bid, they needed to cooperate with a lot of other ships and get as much goodwill from the fleet as possible, and they did not want to cause problems. A big drama about what other animals deserved human rights would cause a lot of problems for a lot of ships, create a huge mess right when we were trying to build a colony, and involve debating whether to change the fleet charter, which was what our whole fleet depended on for law and order. There were probably other ships I’d never heard of that had other capuchin-like species, and if the law was being rewritten for one, they’d come forward, too. Some might treat theirs worse than the capuchins and not want them included int eh charter, and they’d get mad at the Stalwart. It would tank the Hexacorallia bid, at the very least. It might weaken the Stalwart for several colonies. It might, if it got bad enough, provoke a fleet split.

Private deals with other ships to let the capuchins work on them safely would be a lot easier, but it would make a fleet charter rewrite more likely when everyone on those other ships started thinking like me. I wondered how many visiting scientists from places like the Arborea and Hexacorallia were thinking like me.

Because I was thinking that getting charter rights for the capuchins was more important than some stupid colony bid. If Hexacorallia didn’t get Dragonseye, some other ship would and it would be fine. But the capuchins deserved to be able to move around if they wanted, and if the Stalwart didn’t like the diplomatic problems that would cause, then they shouldn’t have invented them in the first place.

So. I needed to learn more about the capuchins and find out whether I was right. Then I needed to figure out how to get them into the charter.

Miya helped us put special braces on our necks and shoulders as we buckled into our seats for the journey. “To prevent whiplash,” he explained. “We’re taking off at much higher acceleration than last time, and it’s possible to get injured if you get jerked around too suddenly. When we take off, lean back into your seats.”

“Why are we going faster?” I asked as he closed the brace around my neck.

He shrugged. “Why not? It’s a long journey, and in my experience, passengers don’t like being cooped up in a small HEX any longer than they have to. Weirdoes that you all are.”

“And if the Dish and the Stalwart are paying for the fuel, might as well, right?” Plia asked, causing Miya to point at her and give her a wink, like they were sharing a little in-joke.

“What do you mean, they’re paying for his fuel?” I asked her after Miya went to the controls. “Is that part of the deal that Tima worked out?”

“Nope,” Tima said. “It’s a function of electric motors.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed,” Plia explained, “the obvious advantage of the HEX jumping as opposed to most ships that use rockets for manoeuvring.”

I went to nod, but was stopped by the neck brace. “You don’t lose any fuel. Well, unless he mistimes the jump and has to use the manoeuvring rockets to reach the Stalwart.”

“Exactly. It’s all electric which, being this close to a star, means it’s very almost free. So long as the things and people inside the HEX can stand the acceleration, it doesn’t cost him anything to jump faster and close the distance in less time. In fact, it means we stop being a drain on his life support systems sooner. It’s an obvious advantage, if he isn’t going to or from Hexacorallia. I imagine this trip would be a lot slower if we had to stop off there.”

“Why?” I asked. “How are the other ships paying for his fuel if he’s not using any?”

They tried to hide it, but the way the historians looked at me out of the corners of their eyes (they couldn’t turn their heads and can only twist so much in their seats) told me that I’d just asked a really stupid question. I felt my cheeks heat up, but I couldn’t figure out what I’m missing.

“Think of it like markball,” Plia said. “The Dish is throwing us to the Stalwart right now.”

“Oh, right!” They have to stabilise themselves. In markball, if you throw a ball to someone, both of you drift away from each other a tiny bit. The same is true of ships, when other ships dock or leave; the two ships push on each other and when the transport leaves, the larger ship is pushed off course just a teeny tiny bit. This is one of the reasons that ships heavily regulate their docking; the more they get pushed off course, the more of their own fuel they have to spend to get back on it. Most ships try to fiddle with their docking angles and schedules so that the transports come in at different angles and help to push them back on course, but it’s never going to be perfectly even, and it depends a lot on where ships are coming from and where they’re going.

Most ships push away from each other very gently, and then activate rockets to accelerate once they’re clear. But HEX-107 is gaining all of its velocity for the trip in one big jump. The fuel it’s saving is fuel that the Dish has to spend. It is a bit more efficient, mass-wise, for the fuel to be on the Dish instead of HEX-107, but it does feel like cheating. At the other end of the journey, the Stalwart will be paying for our deceleration by correcting their own course.

I felt so angry with myself. It would be one thing to have been confused by that way back when I left the Courageous, when I’d never been in space and barely been out of normal pull, but I’ve been on lots of transports and in zero pull environments by now. I know how things move in zero pull. I should’ve figured it out right away without Plia needing to remind me about markball.

“And the Dish and the Stalwart are okay with this?” I asked.

Tima tried to shrug, but couldn’t because of the brace. “The mass of this HEX is tiny. If we were on another transport, the cost would probably be about the same for them because most transports are much more massive. Come to think of it, I bet a lot of the transports are hoping that Hexacorallia wins the Dragonseye bid, if only to get rid of them; they’ve been getting more diplomatically aggressive to drum up support for their bid by doing little jobs like this, and if they stay a permanent fixture of the fleet then that’s going to seriously affect the livelihood of a lot of the smaller transports.”

“That’s one way to get support,” Plia said. “Not by convincing people to help you because they want you to succeed, but because it means they get to never see you again.”

“I don’t think that would work,” I said. “Even if Hexacorallia do win the Dragonseye, there’s no reason they all have to stick around. Some might decide to come with the fleet, and if they did, who would stop them? Their whole design is based on being able to split up and go where they want, and those that stay would simply make more HEXes over time for whoever wanted to join, so the transport ships would be stuck competing with them anyway.”

“Good point,” Plia said. “Even if they do all stay at the Dragonseye, the idea will stick around. It probably won’t be that long before the bigger ships are all building vassal HEXes.”

“That’s unlikely to be a concern,” Tima said. “None of the technology in the basic design of a HEX like this is new. The transport ships have been able to hold onto their niches for a long time now, long before Hexacorallia was ever built; if Hexacorallia leaves, they’ll be able to do it the same ways they always have.”

“How?” Plia asked.

“I’m no expert in ship diplomacy,” Tima said evasively.

“Jump in fifteen seconds,” Miya announced, and we all leaned back in our seats.

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