The HX Chaser starship was such a major symbol for both technophiles and technophobes that no one could be on the sidelines. Hubble U, trying to be neutral about it, banned HX Chaser recruiters from campus—merely symbolic, because non-physical access wasn’t interrupted.
The Earth HX technophobes’ actions weren’t just symbolic. They lobbied for adding a new criterion to commerce screening between Earth and Titan: Would the item being sent to Titan take away from Earth’s poor? Of course first on their list was food.
When I saw the newsfeed that Solon Cyreenik of the Earth Parliament had tabled that bill, I was simply amazed. I brought the tidbit up in our house bull session that evening.
“Look at this,” I said. “Advanced as we are today, this politician brings up food as a hot button item. Why didn’t she bring up something really critical, like communication bandwidth?”
“Don’t give her ideas,” laughed Rajko next to me.
“Food is something all people—rich or poor, near or far—understand,” said Professor Touré. He was our House Master, and Sherry had him for Survey of Colonial Social Systems. “She’s appealing to the yahoo vote in her district.”
“Do you think it’s likely to pass?” I asked.
“The HX technophobes on Earth are well-organized politically, so yes,” said the professor. “But that’s not the important question. Which is how the law will be interpreted, and how HX technophiles on Titan will respond to it.”
“How do you expect them to respond?” asked Sherry.
“Well, they could make matters a lot worse, by turning this into some sort of macho pissing contest, by threatening the flow of Kansora back to Earth … making it into some sort of Food-for-Kansora deal.”
“They wouldn’t!” Yanci said.
“I hope not,” Touré responded. “It’s about their worst choice, to my mind.”
While food has been with mankind since there’ve been humans, Kansora had been with mankind about a decade. It’s a cryogenic mineral that was now efficiently mined on Titan thanks to some technology brought back by HX explorers, tech that was then Earth-restricted to the point of being effectively banned. Earth’s HX technophobes justified this because one of Titan’s bigger recent industrial disasters had been related to Kansora mining equipment. Not that those same technophobes seemed to have many qualms about buying tons of Kansora from Titan, because it’s a potent catalyst against multiple kinds of air and water pollution.
“Imagine the emotion on both sides that would latch onto an issue like that,” the professor continued. “Ancient food from Ancient Earth versus high tech Kansora from high tech Titan. We’re talking about some serious people heat if the leaders let this crisis evolve that way.”
Sadly, politicians and journaloggers alike love “people heat”. Within a week the newsfeeds were full of CEO Hountondji maintaining, “No discussions are underway about any Food-for-Kansora program. Nor will such discussions be needed … assuming that Earth timely concludes its ‘investigations’ and normalizes Titan–Earth trade.”
“Holy moly!” I said at the Gang of Three’s next lunch meeting. “The transshipment boom on Mars is going to boggle the mind! Are you sure we shouldn’t stay here a decade or so, then head off to the HX as billionaires? From the sounds of things, the HX Catcher people may need some extra cash.”
Sherry and Yanci laughed.
“How do you propose catching up to the Catcher?” Yanci asked.
“That shouldn’t be hard. It’s a long haul ship. It won’t go fast. We can get a pilot ship to intercept it. Besides, it hasn’t left yet, and it may not for a long while.”
“You’re not being as silly as you think you are,” he responded. “Haven’t you heard the latest? They’re going to do a lot of the finish work on it en route. They’ll be flying supply ships to it on a regular basis.”
“Really? You’re kidding!”
“Hountondji and the people backing her have gotten an attack of the hurry-ups and they want Chaser launched ASAP.” By then the timeline had doubled, so that the ship’s launch date was years after our graduation, causing plenty of grumbling by journaloggers and politicians alike. “They figure they can advance the launch date by a couple years if they build en route. It’s not like no one in the crew has any experience building ships. Besides, they’ll be Titan’s brightest and best … including us, I hope.”
“What’s rushing them?”
“Politics … and the thought of maybe alien ships getting to the goodies before we do. We took a lot of damage from that HX Blip, partly because we’re the closest star system to the HX other than Alpha Centauri. But that also means we can get a ship in and out before the rest of the mob shows up … or at least that’s the thinking.”
“Sounds crazy,” said Sherry. “Sounds like we’ll be the first ship to turn into a puff of expanding vapor. This is a live HX, after all.”
“And you sound like a full-blooded xenophobe, little sister. Of course it’s alive. But if there’re other ships around it, it must have exploitable weaknesses.”
“That’s a pretty big if,” I objected. “Are any of the alien ships around the Sphere or the Garden headed for it?”
“Hmm … Good question, Joe! We should ask around on that one,” said Yanci.
“If there aren’t, that may be Mother Nature’s way of saying, ‘Leave it alone’,” I declared.
We all laughed, but I was half serious about my proposal to stay. And Sherry made a good point about what it would be like to be the first ship—not just the first human ship, but perhaps the first ship ever—approaching this live HX.