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2048 March 29 2:40 UT
Test Year 20, Day 165, 2:35 CST
Interstellar Space, 1.2 ly from Tau

Vesna’s hair had grown so long in her sleep that she had braided it so that it wasn’t slowly tied into knots by air currents and Coriolos. She had been re-assigned, by the General no less, from the 27th Watch to the 39th and so had slept far longer than between DA-1 and running into the Techer’s light cone. At least her nails had been trimmed at some point in there: that fashion had gone out a few centuries ago, after all.

The astronomer was again sitting at the table in Gamble’s warm deck, but now it was scuffed and dented by four subjective years of Watchers and it was General Christina Noriega, Captain of Gamble, who sat across from her. Akira, Vlad, and Zhujing were cold. It was still incredibly disconcerting to help someone you’d last seen in a coma flex and clean the inert body of someone you’d last seen doing the cleaning.

Vesna had seen the recordings of the first two years of the Test, all that Gamble had been able to receive before they left the Screamer’s beam. She had seen the records of the flyby of Bluv. The two red dwarfs had been blue-shifted to the color of Sol as they approached and the smaller sail carrying the surveillance package was released. The nearer one, UV Ceti, oscillated through blue to red, followed by the second, BL Ceti, as the package was decelerated and left far behind as Gamble tacked, pulls on the sail shrouds adjusting the angle of the sail to the appropriate nanoradian, compensating for the buffeting of the winds of both stars. Vesna seemed to remember a slow dream of terrible pressure: her suspended body’s perception of the gravity loads as the massive velocity of Gamble was rotated by only a few degrees.

Possessed by boredom and worry, she had seen the records of the monitoring station, which had found a bunch of asteroids, and three small planets between the two stars. The largest was just slightly smaller than Tau: three tenths of an Earth mass. It would have been in the habitable zone of UV Ceti, and might have been the target of Gamble, were it not for the red dwarf’s stellar wind and flares. They had stripped the planet’s atmosphere, and now it was nothing but an uninteresting chunk of rock, coated by a thin layer of ice and a whiff of carbon dioxide and water vapor.

She had read two years worth of news summaries from Earth. Little Mina had learned how to walk, was fascinated by the ducks in the river outside her parents’ apartment. Kal had landed an itinerant grant with the SETI Array, so she’d have to spend one month a year in the Atacama, but Janez figured that he could manage. Lissajous had sent along the designs for Gamble II, bound for another planet once the Pusher was expanded to push the larger vessel to slightly higher speeds.

So, after three days spent doing the chores and catching up on the news, Vesna had nothing to do unless she wanted to write more papers on archival data. Now she waited, on the orders of the General. This was the earliest time a response could be expected from Tau, assuming that they had received the message fourteen months ago and immediately repointed their transmitter (or would they have another one by now?). There was disagreement between the two Gamblers as to the probability of that response.

They waited. Ten minutes from the minimum time, twenty. Noriega had expected a much longer wait. But then there came Gamble’s voice: “Signal detected from Tau Ceti. Matches the previously observed format. Transcribing text, to be followed by images, audio, and video data.”

“You win, Lieutenant.” Noriega tossed over a 1972 US dollar coin, one of the ones that had the Eagle landing on the Moon. “Gamble: Show us.”

Thus did Vesna learn about her brother-in-law, her elder niece and her nephew; of the ending of Andrew Chao and the Failures; of the years of the Test; how the Techers had become attached to Tau more tightly than they had thought possible at the beginning. There was also Will’s invitation to General Noriega.

The Techer Foreign Secretary offered an alliance with the Gamblers, to begin building the technologies that the Four had designed. This alliance had the implicit caveat of Noriega becoming creative in her agreement with the Group, as she had modified “support and defend the constitution of the United States, against all enemies” to include flying Gamble into the void.

Vesna did not have the same reservations in this that Noriega did. Her sister was there and she herself was, after all, merely a Eufor Lieutenant by courtesy. But the General took her duty to the United States quite seriously. She had been given her rank by the United States Senate in 2030, and even if she was officially listed as ‘missing in action’ in the China Sea to keep the Group’s secrecy and her position on the general’s list had been reassigned, she wasn’t going to betray her government. Of course, there were a lot of United States citizens on Tau …

Noriega did give answer, dictating a response to the computer, to be received at Caltech in another fourteen months in the standard-of-rest. “I cannot give allegiance to your government since I’m not sure if you are legally legitimate members of the United States, or a sovereign state, or stateless, or even legally dead. I am allowed to do the following.

“First: my orders from the Group were to establish, protect, and help develop a human colony on Tau Ceti d, which would be an independent state pending recognition by the Group governments. Territorial rights would be assigned on the basis of the Outer Space Treaty or later agreement. If I am to follow those orders, I will have to work with you.

“Second: my orders do not mention negative matter, but it may be considered a potential weapon of mass destruction. Standing orders are that those in possession of such weapons shall submit to inspection and search, and that after sufficient data is collected a secure report shall be made to my superiors, that report being declared top secret. There being currently no way to prepare such a report quickly, and to insure its safe delivery, I will not transmit any such classified information.

“Third: as a senior officer of the United States armed forces, I promote all current cadets serving on Tau Ceti d to active service, with all the rights and obligations that those entail, with the exception of officer’s pay. Oaths will be administered by Dr. William Chamer, as he has demonstrated the qualifications for the office. All members of the US military present on Tau will follow the two orders given above, or resign both their commissions and their cadet service.”

Turning to Vesna: “That is all on the record Lieutenant. Off the record: they are right to keep the knowledge secret. I wouldn’t transmit it even if the Examiners give us their blessing: it’s too dangerous.”

“They fought over that, General.” Vesna had found the description of the missiles and Chao’s hostage bomb. “But they say they will trust the Examiners, and they will trust humanity. And, …” Eyebrows wrinkled. “… they mention someone called Gully Foyle. The Stars My Destination.”