This is the seventh blog where I will be sharing chapters from my next book. Read the previous chapters here.

My second book in the Outbound series follows Virgil since his adventures in book one, Outbound: Islands In The Void. I will be releasing parts of my next science-fiction novel in draft form hoping to get some feedback from interested readers. You are always welcome to offer comments at: richard@richardandersonauthor.com. 

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Three months earlier

The Spindizzy launched from Ellie 5 on May 10, 2260, destined for Mars. This was 103 days after Eternal Hope left with Dr. Virgil Greenly on board. Daria Aquila-Greenly and Simone Beaulieu were its only passengers. They hoped to arrive at Mars just a few days after the Eternal Hope.

The Spindizzy spaceship was designed and built by the two women with the assistance of Daria’s Anni working with assembly robots. Anni connected to Daria’s mind just as Ofelia connected to Virgil’s mind. The virtual beings, though separate entities from their hosts, were entwined with their respective brains. Daria and her husband had the only virtual being implants left in existence. The implants were once relatively common among the elite but were declared illegal by Secretary General Draco Osbornes GSU Parliament. The implanted virtual beings imparted instant access to the totality of human knowledge to the host human. Draco saw that as a direct threat to his power.

As a result, all but Anni and Ofelia had been destroyed more than a decade ago. Now, under the governance of Outbound Nation, Anni and Ofelia were permitted as both Dr. Greenly and Daria Aquila were thoroughly vetted by a team appointed by the aging Secretary General Ali Ebrahim. Even now new sentient beings are not allowed. As it was, only a few of Virgil’s and Daria’s most trusted friends knew of Ofelia’s and Anni’s existence. The implanted interfaces gave the husband and wife instantaneous access to unlimited information and each other through the data cloud. The virtual beings also controlled aspects of the recipient’s metabolism. Both Dr. Greenly and Daria Aquila-Greenly expected to live for hundreds of years as a result.

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The Spindizzy proposal was the result of arduous planning by both Daria Aquila-Greenly and Simone Beaulieu. But the final seal of approval came from Dr. Virgil Greenly. Both women were comfortable with the safety measures that they had built into the trip. Dr. Greenly accepted their plan with trepidation. The essence of the Spindizzy was its two double-walled spherical capsules connected by a passageway made of high tensile strength materials. The passageways connected across a center tube that ran perpendicular and contained mechanical, life support, and propulsion systems. Acceleration and/or rotation of the Spindizzy created standard gravity within the inner surface of the spherical capsules. The spacecraft achieved low mass primarily by not carrying a heavy fuel load.

Most of its mass was radiation shielding in the form of water between the double walls of the spheres. The innovation of the ship was its power source. It did not need to generate its power, so no bulky solar arrays or massive nuclear power generators. The Ellie 4 Lightspeed Laser transmitted power to the Spindizzy. With that remote power source the reaction mass, a stream of ions could be accelerated to very high exhaust velocities. Acceleration was continuous until deceleration was needed for insertion into Martian orbit. It was almost error-proof. 

Dr. Dag Harlow at Ceres Island had designed, built, and sent five robotic drones to Mars months before. Each was equipped with ram jet engines in addition to rocket motors. They were presently in Martian orbit, refueled and ready. Should the Spindizzy lose power from the Ellie 4 Lightspeed Laser these drones could chase her down, intercept, attach and bring the Spindizzy into Martian orbit. The contingency plan was still not foolproof, but it improved the odds for a successful completion of the mission.

There were several reasons why the two engineers believed this was a good rescue model for their mission: The drones had no payload other than rocket fuel and once they achieved sufficient speed the ram jets would kick in to give added acceleration. On a rendezvous mission, the robots would launch on multiple intercepts along the Spindizzy calculated trajectory. Those maneuvers would improve the chances of capture. There was still a risk, but the two engineers felt it was minimal. They estimated the odds were 98% that their trip would succeed. Virgil worried at the 2% chance it would not.