No warm-up: it suddenly appeared, an impossibly brilliant rainbow speck just over the horizon. It gleamed for several minutes, then dimmed slightly with a haze, and slipped away.
Most of the United States wouldn’t see it until it came around again, some two hours later, turning night into day, competing with local pyrotechnic displays. Then every couple of hours after that, Charlie would see it once more, then get on the shuttle. And finally stop having to call it by the name of a dead politician.
September 2076
There was a quiet celebration on L-5 when Daedalus reached the mid-point of its journey, flipped, and started decelerating. The progress report from its crew characterized the journey as “uneventful.” At that time they were going nearly two tenths of the speed of light. The laser beam that carried communications was redshifted from blue light down to orange; the message that turnaround had been successful took two weeks to travel from Daedalus to L-5.
They announced a slight course change. They had analyzed the polarization of light from Scylla/Charybdis as their phase angle increased, and were pretty sure the system was surrounded by flat rings of debris, like Saturn. They would “come in low” to avoid collision.
January 2077
Daedalus had been sending back recognizable pictures of the Scylla/Charybdis system for three weeks. They finally had one that was dramatic enough for groundhog consumption.
Charlie set the holo cube on his desk and pushed it around with his finger, marvelling.
“This is incredible. How did they do it?”
“It’s a montage, of course.” Johnny had been one of the youngest adults left behind: heart murmur, trick knees, a surfeit of astrophysicists.
“The two stars are a strobe snapshot in infrared. Sort of. Some ten or twenty thousand exposures taken as the ship orbited around the system, then sorted out and enhanced.” He pointed, but it wasn’t much help, since Charlie was looking at the cube from a different angle.
“The lamina of fire where the atmospheres touch, that was taken in ultraviolet. Shows more fine structure that way.”
“The rings were easy. Fairly long exposures in visible light. Gives the star background, too.”
A light tap on the door and an assistant stuck his head in. “Have a second, Doctor?”
“Sure.”
“Somebody from a Russian May Day committee is on the phone. She wants to know whether they’ve changed the name of the ship to Brezhnev yet.”
“Yeah. Tell her we decided on `Leon Trotsky’ instead, though.”
He nodded seriously. “‘Okay.” He started to close the door.
“Wait! Charlie rubbed his eyes. “Tell her, uh . . . the ship doesn’t have a commemorative name while it’s in orbit there. They’ll rechristen it just before the start of the return trip.”
“Is that true?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t know. Who cares? In another couple of months they won’t want it named after anybody.” He and Ab had worked out a plan – admittedly rather shaky – to protect L-5 from the groundhogs’ wrath: nobody on the satellite knew ahead of time that the ship was headed for 61 Cygni. It was a decision the crew arrived at on the way to Scylla Charybdis; they modified the drive system to accept matter-antimatter destruction while they were orbiting the double star. L-5 would first hear of the mutinous plan via a transmission sent as Daedalus left Scylla/Charybdis. They’d be a month on their way by the time the message got to Earth.
It was pretty transparent, but at least they had been careful that no record of Daedalus’ true mission be left on L-5. Three thousand people did know the truth,
though, and any competent engineer or physical scientist would suspect it.
Ab had felt that, although there was a better than even chance they would be exposed, surely the groundhogs couldn’t stay angry for 23 years – even if they were unimpressed by the antimatter and other wonders ….
Besides, Charlie thought, it’s not their worry anymore.
As it turned out, the crew of Daedalus would have bigger things to worry about.
June 2077
The Russians had their May Day celebration – Charlie watched it on TV and winced every time they mentioned the good ship Leonid I. Brezhnev – and then things settled back down to normal. Charlie and three thousand others waited nervously for the “surprise” message. It came in early June, as expected, scrambled in a data channel. But it didn’t say what it was supposed to: