In the hour before dinner, Bull had changed to a more presentable in-station outfit. He found Ying-tai looking even better, too. She’d taken time to enhance her makeup and hair and put on evening clothes. They made her look like a tourist, but Bull accepted that; she was a greenhorn, after all. They ate in the restaurant-bar of the hotel.
“Deep spacers all have their hobbies,” Bull said. “Some are pretty strange, but almost all are tolerated because they keep us going out here.
“Legend has it that more than one deep spacer is a serial killer, but if he or she is a million miles from another person, who cares? We spend years in space, we spend days on a transfer satellite like this one, then we spend years in space again. That is, if we come back. Deep spacing may be the dullest thing mankind does, but it’s not the safest. Those of us who are old deep spacers get treated pretty well, as long as it’s clear we’re going back out again soon, or that we’ve saved up a big bankroll.” Bull leaned forward and said quietly, “But there’s nothing sorrier than a deep spacer who’s lost his nerve and his bankroll.”
Ying-tai nodded and kept enjoying her meal. Bull straightened and took a bite before continuing.
“Anyway, one of my hobbies is finding the Honeycomb Comet. And what is the Honeycomb Comet, you may ask?”
“I’ll ask,” she said between sips of wine.
“Well, it’s what I call the mother of those rare honeycomb meteors that have been found a few times now.”
“Honeycomb meteoroids? Never heard of them.”
“If you’re going to be a deep spacer,” Bull smiled, “you’re allowed to call them ‘meteors’ even before they burn up. We leave ‘meteoroids’ to the astronomers and the tourists.
“Anyway. There aren’t many, and they’re considered a minor curiosity by everyone else who knows about them. Most people think of meteors as solid rock or solid metal—throughout history mankind has known that’s what they are. Well … that’s not completely true. Now that we can catch them before they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, we’re finding more variety, and that makes them good prospecting tools.
“Meteors are chips off of something bigger. If you find a meteor with lots of lithium, for instance, it came from a lithium-rich asteroid. Backtrack its orbit to the point it was blasted away from the asteroid, then run time forward with your best guess at the asteroid’s trajectory, and you find the asteroid. Jonas 4 was found that way. Elias Jonas was one hot prospector, and lucky too … but then any deep spacer who’s rich and alive is lucky.
“Now to do this hot-prospect-asteroid finding right, you need to find a couple fragments that came flying from the same asteroid and that got blasted off at the same time—preferably recently. You track their orbits carefully, mix in a whole lot of computing power provided by Trajectory Central for a price, and voila! A location and vector for the mother asteroid comes out.”
“It’s as easy as that?”
“Well, the location is a probability spheroid, and if your data is fuzzy, or the collision is old, or something deflected one of the meteors, or they came from different collisions, the spheroid can extend from Jupiter to Mars. And you’ve spent a lot of computer power and cash for not much help.”
“Bummer.”
“Looking too long for answers from TC has bankrupted more than one deep spacer. We all keep our fingers crossed, and we keep close tabs on how well it’s going, so we know when to cut bait.
“However, I feel real good about what I’ve got. There have been three recorded honeycomb meteors—very lightweight meteors made of something a bit like pumice. Those exomineralogists who’ve bothered to look at one are interested in it, but not excited about it. I look at the honeycomb and I see a cheap, lightweight construction material. If these meteors are coming from a honeycomb planetoid, it would be a mountain of the cheapest, strongest construction material available in deep space. Any of the Belter construction companies would be very interested in the find.”
Bull leaned forward again. “But even more important to me, I’ve looked at the honeycomb carefully. It’s more like bone than foam, Ying-tai. Besides, how are you going to get rock to foam without gas being rapidly depressurized? And depressuring gas means gravity, planetary-size gravity, not asteroid-size. No, the Honeycomb is a genuine mystery, and I aim to solve it.”
Bull leaned even closer. “There are two unrecorded finds of honeycomb. I found them! That’s my secret, and I got good trajectories on them. The way I figure it, anyone lucky enough to find two honeycombs is lucky enough to find the Honeycomb Comet. I call it a comet because my preliminary extrapolations put it out in the Kuiper Belt. And that’s why I’m going there.”
“The Kuiper Belt? Beyond Neptune?”
“Way beyond Neptune.”
“That’ll be a long trip.”
“Not that long, six years, I’ve got constant acceleration on my ship, but then you probably know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, point-one G from solar wind … all the way there and back. Ummm, it’s the hottest thing out here in the Belt. … But you’ve got only two trajectories?”
“Three. A friend of mine who knows about this hobby of mine just found another. He didn’t bother to collect it, but he sent me some careful measurements.”
“So now you’re burning up the nanoseconds on Trajectory Central?”
“I’m in the queue even as we speak.”
A shadow came over Ying-tai’s face. “So you’re asking me to sign up for a six-year voyage to the Kuiper Belt to help you with your hobby? Which is to find a strange comet that may or may not exist?”
“Six or seven years, yeah. This is no space tanker run, Ying-tai, this is real deep spacing. It may be for you, it may not.”
“How come you’re telling me about this … secret comet?”
Bull looked confused for a second. “Secret comet? Oh … the Honeycomb! Remember, I said this was a small community. Everyone here knows about my hobby. It’s no secret, they’re just not interested. Everyone has their hobbies. Van Cleeve is into watching girl-girl wrestling, and he sincerely believes there are Dark Ones waiting for us beyond Pluto. That’s one reason I can’t take him on this expedition. He’s a good deep spacer, but he does have his peculiarities.
“Kasravi loves horses, and she’s trying to bring back Voyager 10. Van Cleeve thinks that’s a great idea so the Dark Ones can’t find us. But Kasravi knows Van Cleeve is playing with a short deck, so she won’t ask him for help.
“Hobbies are tolerated, but nobody thinks much will come of anybody else’s. I’m back from my seventh run. I’ve been modest in my station spending and lucky in my prospecting. Searching for the Honeycomb is a hobby I can now afford. Everyone knows that and everyone knows I’m outfitting for it. In fact, I’ve invested heavily in getting this constant acceleration drive technology developed so that getting to the Kuiper Belt becomes feasible. The drive supports my hobby, and the company developing it should be a good investment in the long run. People know what I’m doing on this.
“No, I’m not trusting you with any deep secrets yet. We work together awhile before that happens, if ever.”
“If ever?”
Bull looked at Ying-tai. “We don’t have many secrets up here, Ying-tai, but those we do have are dearly kept. We may trade some at some later date, we may never feel that close. We’ll see.
“In the meantime, that’s about all there is to say about this Honeycomb expedition. We’ll be out there searching, and we may come back by way of Pluto. Does this still sound like your cup of tea?”
“Pluto?”
“Yeah, there hasn’t been a manned expedition there in twenty years. I should get a fair chunk of change from the government for providing one. This may be a hobby, but that doesn’t keep it from being a paying hobby.”
“Isn’t it out of the way?”
“That, my dear, will depend on what Trajectory Central comes up with. But when you’re that far out, the gravity well is essentially flat and orbits are really slow, so it’s simply a matter of point-to-point distance. There’s nothing complicated about the math. If it’s on the way, we stop by, if not, we don’t.”
“When do we find out anything?”
“TC will have a first pass tomorrow morning. In the meantime, would you like a tour of the ship?”
“Sounds good.”
It was a short walk to Bull’s ship, the Blue Yonder. There he began by introducing Honey, the ship’s computer, that Ying-tai had heard him addressing. Then they toured the control room, the workshops, and the labs. They peered into the cargo area though they didn’t suit up to enter it.
But back in the control room Bull called up screens that showed the various unmanned probes, the legged crew-carrying walkers for exploring a planetoid or meteor’s surface, and the jetted rovers that shuttled the walkers from the ship and back.
“This is no space yacht, Ying-tai, but it is designed to be comfortable for long journeys. It’s a prototype. The company I’ve invested in is making more of these constant-acceleration ships for commercial application. The Blue Yonder has been shaken out breaking several speed records between places here in the Belt, so it’s not going to surprise us with an unexpected breakdown on a journey well beyond mankind’s usual stomping grounds. I don’t need surprises out there… not from my ship, anyway. Do I, Honey?”
“No you don’t,” agreed Honey from one of the speakers in the control room.
Finally, he showed Ying-tai the galley and the exercise room with its cleaning booth and his virtual reality exercise suit.
“We’ll fit your gear in here, if you’ve got any. If not, you pick, I’ll buy, my treat.”
Bull’s smile disappeared and he faced Ying-tai. When he had her full attention, he asked, “So, are you in?”
“Why did you pick me, Bull?” she responded.
Bull grinned again. “Easy. Like you, I did some research. You’re the best available crewmate who might take the challenge. Everyone else here has a place in the planetary system. We’re about to take a step beyond, to the edge of the Solar System itself. That calls for someone new. Is it you?”
Ying-tai didn’t think long before she shook her head. “It’s not me. It’s too far. It’s too long. I’ve known you for less than three hours. But thank you very much for honoring me with this offer.”
“Suit yourself,” said Bull. He escorted her out of the ship.
As they walked back to the hotel, he told her quietly, “Ying-tai, what I said about secrets is not quite true. People know I’m going, they know what I’m buying, but they don’t know how much information I’m sending to TC. You can talk all you want about our evening, and I’ll try to help you get on with Kasravi, but please don’t mention my unrecorded Honeycombs, OK?”
“OK.” She smiled. “Those are our secret.” They finished their walk with nothing of substance to say.
After she left, Bull headed into the Luck of Jonas Café. Without a word, Ivan poured him a fine Australian Muscat.
“I take it she never heard about my second hobby?” said Bull.
“Not from me, she didn’t,” said Ivan.
“Smart, resourceful girl. Too smart for deep spacing. She’ll be back on Earth in a couple weeks.”
“Well, there’s lots of fish in the sea.”
“Which is a long way from here. No, it’s just another deep spacer fantasy—having an attractive partner on a long voyage.”
“Keep trying, you’ll get lucky one of these days. Personally, I really thought she might have been the one.”
“Yeah … “ Bull finished his drink. “Well, there’s an expedition to plan. Catcha later, Ivan.”
And thus it was that Bull Bomorov did not have a codiscoverer of the Honeycomb Comet.