Mike got me up at a quarter to five. Surprisingly, Miss Rover hadn't beaten him to it. She was lying on the foot of the bed, snoring gently.
My first inclination was to make her get down. We put a stop to that when she was about a year old. She developed the habit of climbing up between my wife and I, putting her back against me, and pushing on my wife with all four feet. She actually managed to push the wife off of the bed twice. After the second time, I called a halt to Miss Rover being allowed on the bed. She will still get up on the bed to get me up, if she thinks I need to be up for some doggy reason. Those reasons can be serious, or can be a total false alarm, but she has to get onto the bed to get me up as a rule. She was putting up with a lot of strange stuff and doing well, so I didn't have it in me to make her get down at this late stage of the game. She'd be up and about as soon as I hit the floor anyway.
I spent about ten minutes just lying there thinking. Today was the big day. Bigger than big, in a lot of respects. The Earth was not only going to find out that it was not alone in the Universe, but that the Universe was moving in right next door. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Miss Rover finally realized that I was awake. I don't know how she does that. Usually, I get one eye open, and she knows I'm conscious, and gets herself up and wants to do the whole morning thing. She stood up and wandered up to the head of the bed and stuck her nose in my ear and snuffled loudly. Then, she licked my face.
“Bad dog. No licking. You know better than that.”
She backed up a step, and bounced up and down a couple of times. That meant that she wanted me to get up and take her out. And I did so.
I stuck my nose into the kitchen on the way to the back door, and about the time that I noted that the coffee was made, Housekeeper #1 handed me a (round) mug of coffee. I smiled, said “Thank you!” and went on out the door with the dog.
We spent about a half hour out there. I was being contemplative, and Miss Rover was finding a lot of roses to smell, or something of that nature. I think that the unfamiliar nature of a lot of the vegetation had finally registered, and she wanted to smell all of these plants and get them fixed in her memory. She tasted several of them, and looked dissatisfied. She is a grass-eating fool about three or four days a week, and I needed to get a plot of Bermuda put in for her. That's what she prefers to eat at home, anyway.
I'd finished my coffee, smoked a cigarette, and stalled all I could. It was time to go back in and get involved with changing the world. My first priority was that I needed a lot more coffee before I was ready to start changing the world. We went back in and I got another cup, answered some messages. Then I went back upstairs and got ready to face the day.
We still had until almost midday, ship time, before the ball started rolling, and Mike was working me over. He was giving 10 of the AI's that were going with the shuttle into communication range a capsule of his best guess of how I'd react to most any suggestion from a real representative of a Government. If we had someone get into communication before we moved the ship, they would pretend to be Mike's version of me, and set things up. They would commit to nothing, but would supposedly make the same suggestions that Mike thought I would. He'd been living in my head for a while, and claimed that he could predict which way I was going to jump about 90% of the time.
I don't claim that I can predict which way I'm going to jump with 90% accuracy, so I wasn't too confident, but since the AI's were under strict cautions not to commit to anything other than the fact that we'd be at the L5 point in a few hours, I wasn't too worried. I'm not female, but I do still reserve the right to change my mind once in a while. We'd manage on that front.
Miss Rover and I went back outside and played some ball for a while. We were just getting into it when Heather sent me a message that she was on the way. I replied that I was out back with Rover, and that she should just get coffee and come on out. I did also message the Housekeepers to please let her in and hand her a cup of coffee on the way through the house. I figured they would regardless, but I prefer to be sure.
Don arrived about two minutes behind her, and the other three guys drifted in together about ten minutes later. Don and Isiah had brought their own coffee mugs, but Curly and Scott were reduced to using square Karn ones. Heather had managed to get the use of my spare by arriving first. I briefly regretted not getting another dozen of them, recalled how much difficulty I'd had with the stuff I did get, and decided that I didn't really feel bad about not getting any more.
Everyone was a bit anxious, but all anyone could do until about lunchtime was spin their wheels. I kept getting messages asking “What if.......” and proposing some other strange response or other that we might get from Earth. I developed a fairly universal answer which I was deploying in response to nearly all of that kind of question. “It depends on who it is. If the President of the United States or the Head of State of some other World Power starts getting goofy on us, stall and we'll get me on line with them ASAP. If it's the President of Samoa or something like that, just be polite and let him ramble. If it's not a Government or the News Media, hang up on them.”
I did clarify a bit more than that, but the capsule version was that there was a serious limit to the amount of unserious stuff we were going to tolerate. That included the Media, for the record. One of the reasons that we were putting all those AI's within telephone range was so that as soon as the news that we were talking to Earth got started circulating, they were going to call about a hundred select media outfits and do telephone interviews. It was all going to be background type stuff, but it would get the media all wound up, and we'd be on every television on the planet pretty quickly, I suspected.
We'd also be sending video. The Chairman of The Board had recorded a nice message of greeting and an overview of why we were here along with a once-over-lightly regarding our plans for trade and establishing a Hub here. We had some stuff from some of the other Board members, notably excluding me. We had documentaries about the ship, some of the industries we practiced on board, and a lot of “Karn in the street” stuff explaining how the average Karn lived, worked, and played.
I anticipated the whole thing about us intending to take over the world and steal their stuff, so we'd addressed that, too. We had video of Karn scientists explaining how a modern spacefaring civilization harvests metals. First, you find a solar system that had a couple of Gas Giant planets, or more, and had it's sun go Nova a few million years ago. You go to those Gas Giants, which don't have much gas left after the Nova passed by. You send down your mining robots, and they find where specific metals plated out. They then cut them out in blocks as large as can be conveniently handled, and ship them up into space for refining. Some things are relatively pure. Copper, for instance, usually runs about 90%, which makes refining a lot easier.
Rare earth metals usually only process out at 20 to 30%, but that's still a reasonably good return.
In other words, to make it clear to the paranoids, we have access to a whole poultry farm, and sure don't need to come steal your little flock of chickens. It just wouldn't make sense economically, even if we were inclined to be criminals, which we aren't anyway.
We also had literally years and years of video available about other Xenos. Nobody was going to be able to process it all in any given century, but we'd cheerfully pass it all along. I figured it'd give some folks at most Universities something to do besides seeing who could come up with the dumbest new theory of Economics or Gender equality.
I was answering messages and participating in the whole discussion thing until Housekeeper #2 came out and announced that the morning meal was ready. Everyone seemed ready to eat something, even though Karn breakfast foods were not what anyone was used to. The consensus was readily reached that we needed to import ham, eggs, and hash browns. Scott observed that if we were actually planning on having as many humans involved in this operation as it seemed we were, we might just want to set up an Agricultural cube and start raising pigs, chickens and potatoes. It seemed to me that he probably had the right idea.
That, however, was tomorrow's problem. I noted to the guys that I had scheduled an appointment with the Chief Engineer tomorrow morning to demonstrate our firearms. I had remembered to bring some along, and he had asked if I had remembered, so I took it that he was interested and would make the time for it. He clearly could, and had eagerly scheduled it. I told the guys because I had intentions of bringing them along for the demonstration. I was betting that all of them were more competent with guns that I was, and probably knew more about them.
Shooting was going to be interesting. The Karn kept the manned cubes of the ship at about .82G, which was not a large enough difference to give anyone massive coordination problems, but was going to have a huge effect on where one should aim at longer distances. I mentioned that fact, and we all geeked out over it for about a half an hour. Heather finally got bored and announced that she was going to take the dog back outside and get away from all the Trigonometry that we were spouting.
My first inclination was to make her get down. We put a stop to that when she was about a year old. She developed the habit of climbing up between my wife and I, putting her back against me, and pushing on my wife with all four feet. She actually managed to push the wife off of the bed twice. After the second time, I called a halt to Miss Rover being allowed on the bed. She will still get up on the bed to get me up, if she thinks I need to be up for some doggy reason. Those reasons can be serious, or can be a total false alarm, but she has to get onto the bed to get me up as a rule. She was putting up with a lot of strange stuff and doing well, so I didn't have it in me to make her get down at this late stage of the game. She'd be up and about as soon as I hit the floor anyway.
I spent about ten minutes just lying there thinking. Today was the big day. Bigger than big, in a lot of respects. The Earth was not only going to find out that it was not alone in the Universe, but that the Universe was moving in right next door. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Miss Rover finally realized that I was awake. I don't know how she does that. Usually, I get one eye open, and she knows I'm conscious, and gets herself up and wants to do the whole morning thing. She stood up and wandered up to the head of the bed and stuck her nose in my ear and snuffled loudly. Then, she licked my face.
“Bad dog. No licking. You know better than that.”
She backed up a step, and bounced up and down a couple of times. That meant that she wanted me to get up and take her out. And I did so.
I stuck my nose into the kitchen on the way to the back door, and about the time that I noted that the coffee was made, Housekeeper #1 handed me a (round) mug of coffee. I smiled, said “Thank you!” and went on out the door with the dog.
We spent about a half hour out there. I was being contemplative, and Miss Rover was finding a lot of roses to smell, or something of that nature. I think that the unfamiliar nature of a lot of the vegetation had finally registered, and she wanted to smell all of these plants and get them fixed in her memory. She tasted several of them, and looked dissatisfied. She is a grass-eating fool about three or four days a week, and I needed to get a plot of Bermuda put in for her. That's what she prefers to eat at home, anyway.
I'd finished my coffee, smoked a cigarette, and stalled all I could. It was time to go back in and get involved with changing the world. My first priority was that I needed a lot more coffee before I was ready to start changing the world. We went back in and I got another cup, answered some messages. Then I went back upstairs and got ready to face the day.
We still had until almost midday, ship time, before the ball started rolling, and Mike was working me over. He was giving 10 of the AI's that were going with the shuttle into communication range a capsule of his best guess of how I'd react to most any suggestion from a real representative of a Government. If we had someone get into communication before we moved the ship, they would pretend to be Mike's version of me, and set things up. They would commit to nothing, but would supposedly make the same suggestions that Mike thought I would. He'd been living in my head for a while, and claimed that he could predict which way I was going to jump about 90% of the time.
I don't claim that I can predict which way I'm going to jump with 90% accuracy, so I wasn't too confident, but since the AI's were under strict cautions not to commit to anything other than the fact that we'd be at the L5 point in a few hours, I wasn't too worried. I'm not female, but I do still reserve the right to change my mind once in a while. We'd manage on that front.
Miss Rover and I went back outside and played some ball for a while. We were just getting into it when Heather sent me a message that she was on the way. I replied that I was out back with Rover, and that she should just get coffee and come on out. I did also message the Housekeepers to please let her in and hand her a cup of coffee on the way through the house. I figured they would regardless, but I prefer to be sure.
Don arrived about two minutes behind her, and the other three guys drifted in together about ten minutes later. Don and Isiah had brought their own coffee mugs, but Curly and Scott were reduced to using square Karn ones. Heather had managed to get the use of my spare by arriving first. I briefly regretted not getting another dozen of them, recalled how much difficulty I'd had with the stuff I did get, and decided that I didn't really feel bad about not getting any more.
Everyone was a bit anxious, but all anyone could do until about lunchtime was spin their wheels. I kept getting messages asking “What if.......” and proposing some other strange response or other that we might get from Earth. I developed a fairly universal answer which I was deploying in response to nearly all of that kind of question. “It depends on who it is. If the President of the United States or the Head of State of some other World Power starts getting goofy on us, stall and we'll get me on line with them ASAP. If it's the President of Samoa or something like that, just be polite and let him ramble. If it's not a Government or the News Media, hang up on them.”
I did clarify a bit more than that, but the capsule version was that there was a serious limit to the amount of unserious stuff we were going to tolerate. That included the Media, for the record. One of the reasons that we were putting all those AI's within telephone range was so that as soon as the news that we were talking to Earth got started circulating, they were going to call about a hundred select media outfits and do telephone interviews. It was all going to be background type stuff, but it would get the media all wound up, and we'd be on every television on the planet pretty quickly, I suspected.
We'd also be sending video. The Chairman of The Board had recorded a nice message of greeting and an overview of why we were here along with a once-over-lightly regarding our plans for trade and establishing a Hub here. We had some stuff from some of the other Board members, notably excluding me. We had documentaries about the ship, some of the industries we practiced on board, and a lot of “Karn in the street” stuff explaining how the average Karn lived, worked, and played.
I anticipated the whole thing about us intending to take over the world and steal their stuff, so we'd addressed that, too. We had video of Karn scientists explaining how a modern spacefaring civilization harvests metals. First, you find a solar system that had a couple of Gas Giant planets, or more, and had it's sun go Nova a few million years ago. You go to those Gas Giants, which don't have much gas left after the Nova passed by. You send down your mining robots, and they find where specific metals plated out. They then cut them out in blocks as large as can be conveniently handled, and ship them up into space for refining. Some things are relatively pure. Copper, for instance, usually runs about 90%, which makes refining a lot easier.
Rare earth metals usually only process out at 20 to 30%, but that's still a reasonably good return.
In other words, to make it clear to the paranoids, we have access to a whole poultry farm, and sure don't need to come steal your little flock of chickens. It just wouldn't make sense economically, even if we were inclined to be criminals, which we aren't anyway.
We also had literally years and years of video available about other Xenos. Nobody was going to be able to process it all in any given century, but we'd cheerfully pass it all along. I figured it'd give some folks at most Universities something to do besides seeing who could come up with the dumbest new theory of Economics or Gender equality.
I was answering messages and participating in the whole discussion thing until Housekeeper #2 came out and announced that the morning meal was ready. Everyone seemed ready to eat something, even though Karn breakfast foods were not what anyone was used to. The consensus was readily reached that we needed to import ham, eggs, and hash browns. Scott observed that if we were actually planning on having as many humans involved in this operation as it seemed we were, we might just want to set up an Agricultural cube and start raising pigs, chickens and potatoes. It seemed to me that he probably had the right idea.
That, however, was tomorrow's problem. I noted to the guys that I had scheduled an appointment with the Chief Engineer tomorrow morning to demonstrate our firearms. I had remembered to bring some along, and he had asked if I had remembered, so I took it that he was interested and would make the time for it. He clearly could, and had eagerly scheduled it. I told the guys because I had intentions of bringing them along for the demonstration. I was betting that all of them were more competent with guns that I was, and probably knew more about them.
Shooting was going to be interesting. The Karn kept the manned cubes of the ship at about .82G, which was not a large enough difference to give anyone massive coordination problems, but was going to have a huge effect on where one should aim at longer distances. I mentioned that fact, and we all geeked out over it for about a half an hour. Heather finally got bored and announced that she was going to take the dog back outside and get away from all the Trigonometry that we were spouting.
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