History of the Galaxy II

[capnq]

Rerta Malre felt much less nervous as the _Speculation_ left Edasich for the second time. The swirling colors inside the warp portal Lasted a bit longer before they winked out, but this time the viewscreen revealed a pair of stars, one red, the other a dim blue.

"Engineering, status?"

"Nominal."

"Astrogation?"

"Constellations match predicted view from the vicinity of the Manark binary. Thirty light-years this time."

"Sensor readings?"

"Initial scan detects six planets. Three potentially large enough to colonize. And spectrography suggests one of those has breathable concentrations of hydrogen."

A cheer went up from the bridge crew. The bidding for crew assignments on the _Speculation_ had been fierce, but the discovery bonus for the breathable world alone guaranteed a net profit for the crew members. Malre's share of the total for all three worlds would almost cover what she'd paid for the command commission.

"Now this is more like it," Malre grinned. "What about other warp portals?"

"We're picking up two strong readings on opposite sides of the system," the sensor tech replied, "roughly equidistant from our current position. Both are half a month closer than the Last unexplored portal out of Edasich."

Malwe consulted the astrogation display. "We'll set course for the spinward portal. The next system theoretically could connect to the one on the other side of the Last Edasich portal. Start the detailed scans; we'll be able to get a lot of valuable data while we're in transit."

[ October 07, 2002, 04:43: Message edited by: capnq ]