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in going home again. And indeed, their mission was such that they
rarely went to the same solar system twice. Their lives, which from the
outside seemed to be millions of years long, were spent in, with, and for
The Fleet.
This consisted of over three thousand large cargo and passenger ships,
and many times that number of smaller, auxiliary vessels. The local
Space Mitchegai were contributing an additional gross of ships, and
refurbishing the rest as needed, as their contribution to the coming
venture.
The fleet also had three gross of truly massive battle ships, plus many
thousands of small, single-seat fighters. This military arm had never seen
action in its millions of years of existence, but military force had proved
to be very useful to some of the other colonizing fleets in the past.
Of the seven thousand planets sent colony fleets to date, a dozen and
ten had had indigenous populations capable of putting up a ferocious
fight. Indeed, nine of those planets had had to be completely destroyed,
since otherwise they could have become a threat to the entire Mitchegai
civilization.
And anyway, the Mitchegai always felt more comfortable when they
were well armed.
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Contents
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
The Space Mitchegai
Besides the Planetary Mitchegai, the fleet would be transporting an
additional two dozen million Spacers from Kren's solar system to the
new system as well. As Kren and his subordinates were taming the new
planet, these Spacers would be taking on the rest of the new solar
system.
* * *
The Space Mitchegai were racially identical to the Planetary Mitchegai,
but culturally very different. They had originated in the asteroid belt of
their home system, long before interstellar transportation was
developed.
While the Planetary Mitchegai preferred a placid, traditional lifestyle,
with a minimum of technology, the Space Mitchegai lived in relatively
small, high-tech habitats, scattered throughout the solar system, but
especially in planetary orbits and the asteroid belt. The Space
Mitchegai lived more regimented lives, and more active ones.
It was the Space Mitchegai who had developed what humans would
call the slow, multigeneration ships that first got to the nearer stars. This
effort was greatly aided by the very long effective lifetimes that the
Mitchegai enjoyed. Even traveling at one part in a gross of the speed of
light, with a typical trip length of two dozen light-years, they still could
make the journey in a sixth of their expected lifespan, if they were
careful. A ship's crew member might make several round trip voyages
before she happened to die.
The situation became much better once the Inertialess Field was
developed, based on the technology of a race that they had conquered.
This device put a field around almost the entire ship that temporarily
canceled inertia. When the field was disconnected, inertia returned, and
the ship proceeded on a vector identical to what it had had in the
beginning.
Mitchegai ships were powered by their muon-exchange fusion reactors,
very much like those used by humans, but smaller, more refined, and
much more powerful. These converted hydrogen into helium and
electrical power with almost perfect efficiency.
The Intertialess Field was used in conjuction with a pair of ion engines
that each fired positive or negative ions, atoms with either more or less
electrons in their outer shells than was normal. Sodium and flourine
were the preferred elements for this purpose. These two beams of ions
came out of the back of the ship at close to light speed. Once they
recombined, there was quite a fireworks display behind the ship, but
this was far enough behind to cause no damage, to the ship at least. It
was however a formidable weapon.
The exhaust ports and drive coils of the ion engine were the only parts
of the ship that were outside of the Inertialess Field. Their mass was
typically less than one thousandth of the entire mass of the ship. The
ship was therefore capable of accelerating to nearly light speed in less
than a week, while the occupants felt no acceleration at all. The effects
of time dilation were such that a long interstellar trip usually took place
in only a few years of subjective time.
A valuable side effect of the Inertialess Field was that it also acted as a
shield. Anything that the ship encountered while traveling at close to the
speed of light became inertialess just before it collided with the ship.
Particles, dust, and even fair-sized rocks caused the ship no harm.
They became inertialess, lightly bounced off and eventually drifted out
of the field.
At that point, their inertia returned, and they continued on their way,
once the ship had passed. Sometimes, when the angles happened to be
right, a single rock had been known to hit a ship a dozen times without
causing harm. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]