Shirley Kennett
Chapter Six ~ Chang City
Chapter 6 ~ Chang City
2221:232
Passing her auxoff tests confirmed that Lira had a slot on the Venture. After a bittersweet farewell with her parents, Lira moved to Chang City, the staging area in Earth orbit for the
launch. Chang City had been the place where the Star Venture was assembled, and now it was coming alive as more crew arrived She will live and work with the other 2,143 inhabitants of the miniature city aboard the ship.
About thirty percent of the ship’s population will be in stasis at any given time, to conserve supplies and to make room as babies are born at a planned rate. As part of the medical personnel, Lira opted to stay awake for the first thirty-year cycle, although there is only a small chance that a planet suitable for colonizing will be found during that time. There are a number of promising targets for the generational ship, but none of them is less than 200 light years away by ship’s time. Lira expected to live over one hundred and fifty, maybe as long as two hundred years, of “awake” time. With a pattern of thirty years awake and thirty years in stasis, her reach into the future would be three hundred years or more. If she was lucky, the travelers would be planet-dwellers by then.
Back on Earth, due to the time dilation effect of traveling most of the voyage at 0.87 times the speed of light (0.87c), hundreds or even thousands of years would pass until the first colony is established. But travelers on the Venture knew it was a one-way trip. At some point, the lag for communication time would become so unwieldy that they’d be truly on their own.
Since she’s wasn’t going to be in stasis right away, Lira will be aging, and in her contract there was a clause to bear two children during the first five years of her waking time. She could do it by accepting frozen sperm brought along for genetic diversity, as many women her age on the ship were planning to do. It was less complicated than finding a man on the ship to do the job, and there was an excellent support network in place so that single motherhood wouldn’t be a burden. Lira wanted to fall in love, though, and have a union agreement at least for the duration of the cycle. That meant she had, at most, a few years to find Mr. Right in order to start working on creating the next generation. She was supposed to have her children before her body was thirty years old. If she hadn’t reproduced with Mr. Right by age 26, she’d be signed up for the frozen sperm program.
She’d already checked out the male population, and glances in her direction indicated the men were looking her over, too.