Di351 An Incandescent Hardness

By Raymond F.Boudreau

This book is written to have a sci-fi reader interested in what could happen in the future. Cutting edge technologies are advanced in the novel to suit the story. Realities described in the novel are for the reader to imagine and invoke pictures of the mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond F.Boudreau
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223262015

Book preview

Prologue

The Diamainium Nova Series story ‘An Incandescent Hardness’ is the second novel of a series about the travels of Ray Aloyisius Tenner, alias the ‘Rat.’ It is set in man’s far future where only the reader’s imagination sets the tone for the imagination of this story.

Long after man’s mindless warring and reckless environmental turmoils, some of the left over races and distorted countries came together into ‘Six Regional Alliances’ in mutual friendships because their very survival greatly depended on it.

The background to this story is a calamitous inter galactic event.A supernova explosion that occurred 168,000 years ago is called SN-1987A. It has two large luminescent objects orbiting around the bright center of the glowing rings around the ‘neutron’ nova remnant in a specific way. An ever-expanding glowing energy ring that has come from the progenitor star has puffed up around the nova remnant. This is the source of danger in this story for the ones involved.

Ray Aloyisius Tenner (the Rat), forced to retire due to injuries as a futuristic baseball star, has now turned into somewhat of a scientist and a ship commander. He thinks he and his longtime companion, Ian Shelton the 23rd, have found a way to retrieve these potentially valuable ‘orbiting luminous objects’ around SN-1987A. The exotic metal 'Diamainium,' found on Earth in micro, tiny amounts, is thought to be there in abundance (by the mega ton). Ray Tenner and Ian Shelton want to get to it before anyone else does.

‘An Incandescent Hardness’ is a story of wanting courage and defiance by the people that have the guts to venture near SN-1987A and upstage a few greedy Earth Alliance Council political renegades. These truly brave members that are trying to save the Earth are at the heart of this story.

Ray and Ian don’t know exactly what these objects are, but they have caught the ear of a political insider in the Earth Alliance Government who will supply Ray and his team of ‘techs’ with a galactic ship, tools, and power to get to these mystery objects that are at 1987A and retrieve them. Accompanying Ray. A Tenner are Nina Cutov (Ray's second officer), Oscar Duhalde (Ozzy, pilot extraordinaire), John Ignatius Germane Stehl (Jigs), a Stem Cell Engineer, and (Hillbilly) Bill Hill.

As a Quantum Electron Mechanic, Bill Hill is Ray's protector/science officer. He heralds from the Ozark Mountains of ‘Old USA’ now called ‘North Am.’ These crew members are the indispensable supporters of Ray, who, more than once, get him out of trouble in their continuing adventures with him.

Rat (Ray Tenner), Cutov (Nina), Hillbilly (Bill), Jigs (John), and Ozzy (Oscar) feel they are dedicated to the cause of Earth’s extended survival. Great natural changes have ensconced itself on the Earth. Our future globe has become super warm. Sea levels have risen by hundreds of feet. Land masses have had drastic changes made to their coastlines. The Earth does not look the same as it did five hundred years ago. Changes like, North and South America are not connected anymore. They are separated now by elevated water levels, and Australia is half its continental size because of the risen water. Great swaths of land from above and below the tropics have literally turned to dust and desert. No liquid(s) or organic matter survives in the globe-encircling desert except the giant sand lizards brought to Earth from another star system. These huge sand lizards are responsible for supporting the giant trees surrounding them and holding the global deserts in check. These imported trees grow five or more times as high as any other tree on Earth. These high trees keep the deserts from expanding and contain the blowing sand. The great global desert that exists now makes the Mojave, the Great Australian, and Sahara Deserts look like backyard sandboxes. The desert covers the whole seas, rivers, and forests like the Mediterranean Sea, the great rain forests of the South Am Amazon, African jungles, and Asian wetlands. The ever-blowing sands extend landmasses, like the upper western part of Africa at the equator, to many hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, westward, towards old North America. The Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic have become warm habitable zones. People live there comfortably now. There is no natural ice or occurring snow left on the surfaces of the Earth. Very rarely does it ever get below fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit in these North and South latitudes. (19 or 20 degrees Celsius)

Hundreds of millions of people have had to move north and south to get away from the climatic calamity of the expanding deserts. Man has had to improvise and move if he wanted to survive the newly expanding deserts. Billions died trying to either escape the deserts or tried to stop the swirling sands from over running them.

Earth’s sport of pleasure and past time now is a futuristic re-designed game of baseball, set in all of its majestic savage electronic wizardry. Advanced baseball has moved far northward and southward because of the climactic changes on Earth's land masses. All other sports take a back seat to the Alliance Professional Major League Baseball. There are great 'Pro' leagues set up in each of the Alliance’s territories that play against each other to see who will get to the World Series Alliance Baseball finals to win its coveted trophy and riches. Ray Tenner was an exceptional athlete and longtime baseball player but was almost fatally killed in the game. He also lost a great friend to the game, Lenny Peechay, because of the brutal way it is played. And also because of rifts in his personal friendship between Dean Luthbert and himself that forced Ray and his friends to the breaking point of sanity as they played the deadly game of Major League Alliance Baseball against each other. (to the death).

Ray’s life rebounds from the physical challenges endured playing Alliance Baseball when a genetic engineer (future medical doctor designation), who goes by the moniker name of ‘Jigs,’ saves him from crippling injuries and allows Ray to live comfortably on.

Ray then pursues his other life’s passions which is inter-stellar travel and the transportation of goods company to and from Earth.

Ray teams up with Ian Shelton the 23rd, who’s been studying ways to try and recover the mystery objects of his scientific research in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Ray’s interest peaks when Mr. Shelton tells him what he’s after. Ian Shelton is the great-grandson of the original discoverer of the supernova 1987A that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud just outside of the Milky Way Galaxy in the tear of 1987.

Ray’s crew originally went out to the LMC a few years ago, but their first trip ended in disaster. They don’t have the experience or technology to handle being around a Magna-Tar, and they barely scrape themselves back to Earth. It took them months to get back because their ship’s engines were damaged to the point that they could only get 40% propulsion out of them, and it took twenty times as long to get back to Earth than it did to go out to 1987A, meaning it took several months rather than weeks to travel in sub-space than the two weeks to get to 1987-A. They are scorned for their returning ‘empty handed’ and for giving what sounded like weak excuse stories on past happenings at 1987A, because of the constant put-downs from the World Alliance’s ‘Corporate’s’ like Collin Bendshaw and Ricardo Narzani, Ian and Ray keep to themselves the secret of SN-1987A. Others are watching them closely and will want to take away their prized secrets.

They go on a second venture, and this is where this novel picks up the story of their journey, again, out to the Large Magellanic Cloud.

In the ‘Large Magellanic Cloud’ where a puzzling discovery is to happen, there is an event about to unfold that has been ongoing since the SN-1987A's nova event that was recorded in the year 1987. A brightening and dimming of SN-1987A neutron star has been happening for over one hundred and sixty-eight thousand years. The two bright objects circling the nova’s central remnant neutron star made by the nova’s calamity have been studied for centuries by Chromatic Specialists of Earth to try and reveal its mysteries. Ian Shelton the 23rd has made Supernova 1987A, and the supernova remnants his life’s work. Pouring over information gathered on SN-1987A, over the ages, Ian thinks there is a finality going to occur, and he wants to be there when SN-1987A gives up its treasure, whatever it is!

‘BELD’ is a special robotic player to look for in this fictional space opera novel of ‘An Incandescent Hardness.’ BELD stands for a ‘Bio Executive Learning Designate’ that features sentient trickery up its sneaky robotic circuits. We’ll call him ‘He’ in this story, and Beld is a sentient AI that can sum up human interactions quickly and knows who to trust when it comes to honesty by humans. Some wonder whether Beld can hold to his explanation of a long history of running a damaged planet. Some even doubt stories of ancient beginnings and truths of the race that caused SN-1987A, that Beld would have all believe. Ray the ‘Rat’s’ first meeting with Beld does not fair well, and Ray is forced to submit to Beld.

Others from the Earth Alliance Governments, like Ricardo Narzani and Collin Bendshaw are also interested in SN-1987A and in what Ray and Ian are looking for. Ray and Ian believe the super metal Diamainium metal is located at SN-1987-A in abundance. If controlled by just one person, it would certainly upset the balance of power between the Earth's Alliances and plunge Earth into mindless wars and dictatorships. This is an unwelcome thought by Ray, especially after hundreds of years of peace and harmony have ensued through the co-operations of the six ‘Alliances’ of Earth.

Pamela Jay, who is an Earth Alliance Executive member, is the buffer Ray and Ian need to get started again on their second adventure out to the Large Magellanic Cloud. Be assured that in this epic novel of adventure and risk someone will come out with the prize at our galactic edge!

Read on; there is a saga unfolding here only the ‘Sci-Fi’ fan can comprehend!

Regards: ‘Themondo 13’

Diamainium

Nova Series

––––––––

Book 2

Di351 ‘An Incandescent

Hardness’

Below is a picture of what I want the ‘Lenny P’ to look like as the traveling ship Ray and his crew will use going to 1987-A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The supernova pic will be in the top right-hand corner, and the ship will be in the lower left corner of the 1987-A cover picture.

Chapter 1

A Cool Clear Night

It’s about to do it again, any second now. Said the class’s modern-day chromatic astronomy teacher, Ian Shelton, the 23rd. It was a cool, clear night in June 2900 something, atop a large and high mountain a hundred miles inland, off the coast of old Southern Chile. Chile is now a province of the South-Am Alliance of Earth, and this is where we start our story of intergalactic travel and political wranglings, up high in the Andes Mountain Ranges of South Am. The hunt for the ‘Diamainium Nova’ begins.

An almost perfect night, Ian thought, for observing the dark, star-filled southern skies of South-Am. I haven't seen it this clear in these mountains in a dog's age. Ian Shelton the 23rd lamented quietly to himself.

Class, are all your chromatic telescopes in position? Ian asked his eager students. They should all be at co-ordinates for SN-1987A, which are: right ascension 05h 35m 28.03s, declination 69 degrees, 16 minutes and 11.79 seconds. Our observation point will be in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The Astronomy class Ian is teaching has twenty-four students. Each pair of students shared a twenty inch reflector chromatic telescope that gave them a digital computer display of what they were looking at on a monitor screen in front of them. Ground-based telescopes have become obsolete in the study of distant objects. They are now used as an educational tool to get budding astrophysicists to know what they are looking for in the heavens before they actually go to the places they are studying. Chromatic telescopes are the future as they give a thousand times the resolution the old Jame’s West #4 telescope gave astronomers long ago.

Yes and in unison came the expected answer from his advanced learning astronomy class as each automated telescope clicked almost in unison on the galactic object they were interested in.

There, now, right there! Ian said intently, 1987A did it. Did everyone see that? Trying earnestly to get his group of budding astronomers involved in his star-watching class.

The neutron star in the Large Magellanic Cloud we are observing in these southern skies just winked out for several seconds and then flashed back on again without a gamma-ray burst. Can anyone give me a theory as to why it did that? Queried Ian to his class.

Sir, can I offer an answer? Asked Shandi Alahan, a young teenager from the Pak-Indostan Alliance studying in South-Am, who had put up his hand first to answer Ian.

Yes, Shandi, please tell us your theory. Give us your answer so that all in this class can assess your findings. Ian responded.

Sir, I think that the neutron star we are observing has an accretion disc that rhythmically collapses rapidly onto the surface of the SN-1987A remnant neutron star. It has carbon and iron latencies. There is no binary companion circling it, such as a white dwarf, to disrupt this accretion disk, so it, the remnant accretion disk, momentarily blots out the light from the neutron star we are observing when it condenses onto the surface of the observed position. Once this has happened, the power expenditure light degeneracy of the star is momentarily suspended, and the Chandrasekhar Limit has been exceeded for a few seconds. This covering over the neutron star causes a force of gamma/cosmic nuclear power to build up emanating from the dense neutron remnant and sets off the thin layer of hydrogen coming from and under this collapsed accretion disk. The dense neutron star, with the afore mentioned elemental latencies, pushes the collapsed disc off of its surface without great fanfare, not like a supernova, because the accretion disc is made up of only dense carbonaceous particles such as crystallized deuterium water containing no explosive hydrogen and it sends it back out into its original orbit to begin the cycle all over again without a gamma-ray burst. Each time this happens, the latency of the remaining nuclear degeneracy power in the neutron star is diminished, and sometime in the future, the accretion disc will ultimately cover the central neutron star, and these occurrences will cease because the light from the neutron star will be terminated by this carbonized covering. When these sub-major explosive events happen, it looks like, from our vantage point, that it (the star) ‘winks out’ then ‘flashes’ back on in a mini observed 2a nova explosion flash of light. It's only a minimal output of gamma and cosmic radiation that is produced, with only a few neutrinos being recorded from the event each time as compared to the original event that sent billions of trillions of neutrinos blasting all over this galaxy out of the Large Magellanic Cloud from the Sanduleak 202 star to all observers in our Galactic neighborhood. This winking out of the central neutron star happens on a timely and regular basis as there is no binary companion star to feed the neutron star to cause it to erupt with major gamma power outputs. The dust in the super dense carbolic-like accretion disc just slowly creeps back at the star's surface in regular cyclic intervals, and we get the ‘winking effect’ you say, Mr. Shelton, that is happening there at 1987A. Finished the bright, answering Pak-Indostan student.

Great answer Shandi Ian replied. Anyone else got a theory?"

There were a few given by two other students, but they didn’t even come close to Shandi’s intelligent response.

Hmm, Thought Ian, He really doesn’t know how close he has come to the real answer. Something is collapsing onto the star, but it is something more substantial than just carbon stardust lightly laced with iron around a white/red and intense, magnetar neutron star. After this evening’s observed event, I want everyone to give me a short thesis on how this phenomenon occurs and why. I really want you students to go into your notes and any other creditable material you can find on SN-1987A. Try to give me an as original account as you can. I’ll be watching for copycat notes, so there are no collaborations on this one. Today is Friday, and I expect your accounts to be in on Monday, Ian said.

The whole class just moaned at Ian’s homework assignment. He heard a few stray comments about it being the weekend and why they had to do homework on the weekend, blah blah blah... from the teenage alumni.

Kids will never change no matter what era they are in. With all of our great libraries and the technology available to them, you’d think that they would jump at the chance to become leading Chromatic Astronomers or 'Geo-Astrophysicists in a field that would send them to the far corners of this galaxy on adventures they couldn’t imagine. Mused Ian in his mind with a chuckle.

After the students had left their night time outdoor classroom, Ian would always neatly and articulately put away all of the equipment used to study the heavens. He was consummate at having everything in its rightful place before leaving his remote classroom. He believed that order made life ‘flow’ much more conveniently, just like the universe they were studying did before him. Anything to do with cluttered chaos always made his life seem to slow down and become muddled in confusion. The clutter of a messy work place made events drag on for him in a nightmarish way. His future, little did he know, would soon be a twenty-four hour seven days a week slow-moving, chaotic, merry go-round of keeping things in order on a trip he would never forget.

That starry night after he closed the doors to the small village-sized planetarium classroom in the Southern Chilean Province of South-Am, Ian took a half-minute to gaze up at the southern sky that was generously sprinkled with celestial observational points. Just as he did, a meteor, a bright one, made a hissing sound as it passed overhead, burning itself out in an all-consuming fire, flickering brightly as it went speeding toward the horizon. It reminded him of his days in the Gia Academy when the ships he served on would do the same thing as the hissing meteor he just watched. These meteoric ships would come burning through the atmosphere at great speeds and then land humbly, like a normal plane. That was over two hundred years ago that Ian first observed this phenomenon. Ian couldn't believe his age now, and he was two hundred and twenty years old! Life for humans had advanced unbelievably, and you might say biblical if you were to believe that way. Yet Ian looked like a forty-something man.

Nowadays, the ships are much more technically advanced and come directly down from space using the Mag-Graviton Engine, cutting the dangers of a fiery re-entry from open space to nil by lowering the high angle re-entry speeds and heat to a kind of ‘low speed floating’ if you will. Man, in his ingenious ways, had conquered weak gravity and thus is now able to control objects in and around the Earth so they gently float to anywhere they are commanded up to ten miles above the surface of the Earth after entry to Earth’s atmosphere. It kind of tugged at his heart to maybe get back into space and finish what he had started out to do at the LMC. But now, all of the tragic memories came flooding back. The friends and fellow comrades on the ships lost, searching for the ‘classified goal’ in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). It made him shudder at the losses. At heart, Ian was a ‘Flower Child’ of older times and always wanted peace.

A familiar musical chime pushed him out of his mental musing. It was his vid-phone telling him he had a direct call to answer. Ian answered it with a dry throated Hello?

Did you see it? Came the question from a familiar voice and face on the vid-phone.

Yes, I did, Ray, Ian answered.

What was the timing and the energy levels? The anxious person on the other end asked.

From what I got from your Chroma Scope’s readouts, it was 2.13 x10 to the 8th-kilo joules, and it was two days late, Ian said.

See, I told you, Ian, that it has been slowing down probably exponentially. We’re not going to get another chance at this if we don’t get out there now! We have to get out there before someone else beats us to it or lose it forever in the neutron star's grip! Exclaimed Ray

The man on the vid-phone is none other than Ray Aloyisius Tenner, or Ray the Rat for short. Ray was a logistics scientist/star ship pilot from North-Am. He is a retired professional Major League Alliance Baseball player. He is one of six other surviving crew mates that were with Ian when they went out to have a closer look at the supernova remnant of SN-1987-A, two years earlier. Ray is also a ship’s commander and ‘bean counter’ of ships inventories. Ray could tell you exactly how much skin you would lose (to the gram) on a trip to, say, to the Peleiades from Earth and how many times it would be recycled in the waste management concentrate/nutrient pond. Then how many times would you eat it before your trip was over? Ray had a knack for those kinds of things, along with all the other things relating to a space ships needs for interstellar travel. Ray had a vested interest in the previous mission that went awry because he and Ian were the only ones who really knew what was out there at the remnant of SN-1987A, in the LMC.

Of course, there were others on that ill-fated mission like Bill Hill alias ‘Hillbilly.’ a ship operating specialist who can get anything operating when broke, just don’t ask him how he did it. A Mac Giver of old times. Bill Hill is also from North-Am and was raised on and in the Ozark Mountains with his ‘Grand Pappy Oliver.’ His grand pappy taught Bill to survive anywhere on next to nothing as a mountain man in those mountains. Bill Hill is trained as a ‘Quantum Electron Field Mechanic.’ That is, he’s knowledgeable in the mechanics of altering electrons in and around molecules used for ‘near light speed engines’ and entry into Alcubiere Drive Mode Drive for interstellar travel in sub-space super lineal drives. He knows how to travel through distant space quickly and to evade calamities such as undetectable brown/red dwarfs and asteroid impacts along the way through galactic space.

Next is Oscar Duhalde, the 33rd pilot extraordinaire. He can fly in any condition with almost any Earth Alliance ship but is afraid of heights. He is of Chilean Mayan descent from South-Am. ‘Ozzy,’ as he’s known, has been Ray and Ian’s pilot of star ships for years since Ray's retirement from Major League Alliance Baseball. Oscar is also a great mag-saber fighter like Hillbilly. Oscar is also a descendant of the astronomer Oscar Duhalde the 1st, who helped Ian Shelton, the long ago, the original discoverer of 1987A supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Next, we have a suicidal tactical security officer named Nina Cutov, alias Cuts. She hails from the Euro-Russo Alliance and is no slouch when it comes to handling herself when she is around men. Nina is six foot one, weighs in at one hundred and ninety pounds, and can throw a wicked knife or use martial arts in close quarters like any man. She also doubles as a science officer on the bridge of Ray’s ships. Nina runs the ships that Ray owns, given to him by the ‘Ancients.’ She is Ray’s second in command when on missions. Nina also works with Hillbilly on anything science related and knows how Hillbilly thinks. She has an uncanny ability to know what Bill may do and has a great understanding of quantum electron mechanics taught to her by Hillbilly. So they are an inseparable pair on any mission because of their knowledge of near-light speed engines and initiating Alcubbierre Drives to go into and out of sub-space. They are just good friends.

Last but not least, we have a molecular, crisper genetic stem cell doctor by the name of John Ignatius Germane Stele, or ‘Jigs’ as he likes to be known from his moniker. One of the greatest body repair and body altering specialists to come out of Earth’s advanced medical academy in North-Am.

Jigs can change your body to suit your ‘any’ needs as well as repair it to certain degrees. He can give you a head that looks like a pumpkin at Halloween with the carved look and all by splicing your genes with that of the noted garden squash. All it would take is that you sit in his ‘med chair, close your eyes, and sleep for a couple of hours, and viola, you wake up a pumpkin head for the party. Changing you back was just as easy, provided you didn’t get your pumpkin head squashed at the party. If that happened, Jigs would be fuming because it would mean a lot more work on his part. It meant that he would have to put your molecular head back together in the same gene sequential, original way without giving your face the squashed orangey look of the pumpkin squash. This usually would cost the partaker of the broken, altered gene look of pumpkin heads a lot more than they bargained for. But I digress. Jigs is good at his field of work, genetically repairing people.

Ian, Ray said slowly over the vid-phone, "We’ve got to get back out there, to the LMC, before someone else does, or else we’ll be giving up the greatest discovery since Interstellar Gravitational Travel was mastered.

I know, Ian said with a bit of unwillingness. But how are we going to get out ‘there’ again. Being careful not to say exactly what ‘there’ was in case someone was eaves dropping on their conversation. We don’t have anything left from the Corporate's economic assets who paid for us to go out the first time. They’re not going to sponsor another mission, especially when the first one went rather badly, and we came back with only injuries, a wrecked ship, and stories.

Ray cut in on Ian, saying, I’ve got an in on a private military investor, who, at this time, doesn’t want to be known. They are willing to give us a specially designed ship, much better made and equipped to make the trip out to and back from the LMC. It is faster than our last ship and much safer. He has a newly designed, state of the art Mag-Hydro-Electron Drive engine that will get us out there in less than four days or even faster. Your chromatic telescope tells us ‘a rare metal’ is there in great quantities and that it is a rare wanted commodity in the Alliance Systems. This 'metal' that is out at the LMC is what we need to get us ahead in the interstellar trade of the Earth Alliance Inter Planetary/Stellar Trade Commission that Narzani is currently running.

Those kinds of engines haven’t been fully proven to be safe or dependable on such a long trip out of our Galaxy, Ian said cautiously.

They’ve gone wildly out of control on many tests, and anyone who has been testing them has never come back to tell us what went wrong. They just kept right on going out of the galaxy at thousands of times the speed of light through unstable space, never to return. We still don’t know where these ships went or why using these engines will help us. As for the 'metal' detected, that's out at 1987A. You are correct in acknowledging that there is a lot there in that system. It would be great to be able to bring back tons of it, which would make us unbelievably rich and make the Earth a better place to live. Finished Ian.

Well, partner old Hillbilly himself has been testing these new Mag-Hydro Electron Star Drive Engines, and he says he’s mastered how to get them up to eighty-five percent ‘C’ before entering any sub space speeds, Ray said enthusiastically. He got our ‘corporate’ to let him work on the newer model engine; he just happened to have lying around. Hillbilly went in and around the Orion Constellation and back in 2 hours flat, even got a close-up look at the ‘Horse’s Head Nebulae,’ and Hillbilly says he just got the engines warmed up, working like his grand pappy’s Clydesdale's back home on the farm and is ready to really lets'em fly so’s we can git out to get the danged job done wee’s set out to do in the first place, said Ray his voice copying Hillbilly’s Ozark drawl.

Well, Ian said slowly, You’ll have to forgive me if I sound a bit reluctant, but if Hillbilly can get that newer star drive engines to work and we can get our crew together again, then I may just be interested in going back. But what about the space shear and neutrinal cascade that gave us all the troubles? That nearly ended it all for us the last time we got near 1987A! Those conditions there nearly tore our ship to shreds, and they still exist there today, according to my chromatic readouts. Hillbilly will have to get us around that problem before we even think about going back to the LMC to 1987A because of these spacial disruptions.

Not sure about that one, Ian, Ray said coolly. You’ll have to talk to Cutov and Hillbilly about the nit pickings of the neutrinal imbalances. Those two seem to have the shear and cascade problems solved. All I know is that we have a second chance to redeem ourselves if we get back out to 1987A. I’ve set out all the requests we need to get started; just have to finish up the fueling procedures and the red tape for this new ship that our anonymous donor has supplied. The red tape is what it is, we need to get by the Head-Feds to give us a tail run at the stars, ‘so to speak,’ to the LMC. That we have to leave things up to Pamela Jay\Laine, the Head Federal Senator who is appointed head of the Earth Alliance Council for all regions of Earth, she’s the real boss of Earth. What she says goes by Earth standards unless she’s unanimously opposed. Her word is the law according to the constitutional laws of North-Am.

Who are the Head-Feds we’re dealing with? Asked Ian anxiously.

Collin Bendshaw, outgoing transport minister of the Earth’s North-AM Alliance Government, who’s now head of the North-Am Alliance Regional Government. Ricardo L. Narzani, the Interplanetary Trades minister from the Euro-Russo Alliance who may soon become head of that Euro-Russo Regional Alliance. Ray said annoyingly.

Just the two individuals who came down real hard on us when we came back the first time from the LMC, Ian complained. We were lucky not to be locked up for all the ‘set up’ blame they heaped on us. It was their official’s fault; he ordered us to fly at the converging objects at SN-1987A to see what they were when we really didn’t want to. We warned them that getting too close to the remnant neutron star might be dangerous and we should wait a day or two until the danger had subsided so we could get more statistical evidence. Also, that strange planet that was there that we didn't get to investigate got sent off to god knows where when the 'Event' happened.

Ray confidently explained, I think our ‘Corporate Backer’ will also be able to help us to make this trip as this person is on the executive board of the Earth Alliance Council that helped sponsor us for the first trip and had the most to lose, but he has the most political control of the other corporates. Ray explained. He just wants to keep our motions quiet until he can announce that only he is sponsoring our next flight out, so the Alliance Council can’t do anything about it to hinder our departure. He is the only sponsor that has the resources and doesn’t really need their approval.

But that doesn’t mean that the Alliance Council won’t send a military science team of their own ‘Techs’ after us to keep an eye on us, Said Ian.

"This new engine Hillbilly’s working on will give us a great head start of about a week, and we can get to the LMC first, to 1987A, before anyone can interfere. It will also let us find out what the hell went wrong the first time when we were there.

"Hillbilly says he’s got an engine and a ship that will get