Arrival, part 1

"So there it is. Sarlight Corporation has decided that it no longer wants to fund our studies of para-velocity acceleration, and we are all supposed to ship home to wait for re-assignment."

"But what about our side work? I've been keeping an eye on the iceteroids out here for two years, and now I'm supposed to drop it all?" It was the mineralogist, Mac Starr. His work wasn't germane to the acceleration experiments, but still, Jon Fedlin had made room for him on the research station. And Jon had carved off a piece of funding for Mac’s iceteroid probes.

"Mac, you know that's not official. Any more than my side work is. But we can't expect Sarlight to keep paying us to stay out here. Especially for what, in their eyes, are personal indulgences." That wasn't exactly fair, and he knew it. The main reason that they had fallen out of favor with the Corporation was because of Jon's side experiments, not Mac's or anyone else’s.

His work involved using residual findings from the laboratory station's official work, to prove his own theory. The theory was not entirely his, nor entirely new. But it was reasonably sound. The premise was that there exists a region of folds 'between' normal Newtonian space, and that it's possible to navigate across the folds. The 'official' work of the laboratory was to play with acceleration without time dilation, and touched on the space-folds idea somewhat. So, on the side, he ran simulations, planned his own run of tests, and experimented with equipment to navigate the folds of space.

What made the Corporation not approve of such work were the Separatist members of the board. Ever since the last FTL ships from Earth stopped coming about 200 years ago, there had been a number of different viewpoints and movements among the leaders of Calefactor to give up on re-contacting the worlds of the now-defunct Terran Dominion. Over the past few years these movements had gotten much worse, to the point where the Separatists proposed forgetting completely about all other worlds. Their success in spreading this viewpoint was so broad, that they even stopped the public sharing of data broadcasts from other Dominion worlds. For some reason, they felt that beamed news from another world, even if it was 30 or 40 years old when it reached Calefactor, would hurt their plan of isolation.

"I am sure that the corporation already has an idea of where they want to reassign us." Jon continued, "Every member of this science team is an expert in his or her own field, and we are much too valuable to Sarlight for them to just cut us loose. However, having said that, I wish to say that I will personally see about private funding for my own research work. Anyone who is interested in helping this effort please let me know in the next day or so. Meanwhile, Sarlight is sending a couple of Cutters out this way to retrieve us, and our research data. They are effectively shutting down this station, and we are being sent, temporarily, to the hydrogen facility over Hephaestus."

As Jon spoke, Cafi Neuborn was showing slides on the big communications panel behind him. As his partner on the project, she knew ahead of time some of what he was going to say, and now she showed an image of the large greenish gas giant, Hephaestus; one of two orbiting Kappa Fornacis. Their home, Calefactor, was the second world in orbit around the star, and past that there was a planetoid belt, and the two gas giants, Vulcan being the giant nearest the sun, and Hephaestus was the farthest body out in the system. That was part of the reason for basing their research station near one of the moons of Hephaestus - it would give them room to operate with their high speed probes and ships.

"Well, boss, if you get some private funding, then I'm with you. The last thing I want to do is end up working on some gas pumping station over Hephaestus." Mac was the most vocal, but the rest of the research team murmured approval.

Part 2