Precession

This is a non-erotic story. It has no sexual content at all, and barely even a mention of sex. I put it in the science fiction category because of its theme and content, not in the non-erotic category. I hope no one will be misled.

The story is a sequel to Murder on Capella Space Station and fits alongside Every Man's Fantasy.

Chapter 26 is coming. I interrupted it to write Precession.

Enjoy!

Erinaceous.

**********

Precession

1 Hana and Morty

When Hana Jeffries was five years old, she wanted to be an astronaut. She had a holographic videobook which told the story of a spaceman in a bulky white spacesuit, who travelled in a sleek rocket with long orange flames shooting out of its exhaust. She and her best friend, Morty Bowman, watched the book over and over for hours at a time, enthralled by the tale, as the spaceman bravely flew from silent moon to bustling planet to spinning asteroid to pelting comet.

It inspired Hana to learn about astronomy. Aged five, she knew about escape velocities, the masses of planets and moons, distances between the stars and how to tell the temperature of a star from its colour.

Hana was gifted. Her parents worried that she might not be given the right kind of education on a space station, whose only school had to teach children of every ability. It was a problem because Hana had two younger sisters, whose care left her parents little time to attend to her peculiar needs. For now, her parents gave her books many years in advance of other children her age. She devoured them all and asked for more, especially science books.

******

When Hana was seven, she had a serious question for her parents.

"Is Morty backward?" she asked.

"No," her mother said. "He's one of the brightest in the class."

"But I'm much better at sums and reading than him."

"You're better than everyone, Hana, but you mustn't be too proud of it. Why don't you try helping the other children?"

Hana did try to help the others but it was frustrating being able to see things straight away when others saw them only after they were explained (and sometimes not even then).

Hana's parents discussed sending her to a school for gifted children on Earth. They could afford it if the girl stayed with her father's relatives in New York; but they could think of nothing worse than parting with any of their daughters, or sending Hana away from Capella Space Station to somewhere so dangerous as Earth. Her parents agreed to devote more time to her, but with full-time jobs and a fourth child on the way, there was little they could do. Most of the time, Hana was left alone to educate herself.

None the less, she leapt so far ahead of her peers, especially in maths and English, that she was put into a class with ten-year-olds.

Although he fell behind her in almost every subject, Morty and Hana remained best friends. He made her laugh, so she decided he was not backward after all.

******

When Hana was eight, she wanted to be a policeman like her father, Arthur Jeffries, the Constable of Capella Space Station, who was the strongest and gentlest man she knew. He could easily lift up all four of his daughters and carry them around in his arms. His love was limitless, though his blue uniform was sadly crumpled and its buttons dull with wear.

Her parents discussed sending Hana to a special school again and, again, decided they could not bear to part with her. Instead, they applied to the governing council of the space station to hire a specialist teacher for gifted children.

The governing council rejected their request on grounds of cost. It was not a good reason. Capella Space Station was extremely rich. It was privately owned but many residents of the station were shareholders who had a voice in its government. Hana's mother decided to stand for a seat on the governing council, to try to change things, if not for Hana, then for future children like her.

This meant buying shares in the space station, to convert their status from permanent residents to stakeholders. Arthur supported his wife, so they made the investment and Hana's mother became a candidate for political office.

******

When Hana was nine, she and Morty invented a zodiac for the space station and inscribed its eighteen constellations on the windows of the basement storeroom beneath the Star View Promenade and Restaurant.

This was their favourite place to go and hide, after Hana worked out the combination for the entry lock system.

The zero-gravity storeroom under the promenade was left unused by the restaurant staff because its criss-crossing support struts were a nuisance; but it was perfect for two mischievous nine-year-olds who wanted to play games in their own secret room.

They had fun kicking off from one wall to float through the triangular gaps between the struts to the other wall, taking up as many different postures as they could on the way, doing somersaults and spins. Or they would bounce a ball off the opposite wall and have to be agile to thread through the gaps to catch it.

They did all the gymnastic exercises they could have done safely in the low-gravity exercise hall but with the added risk (however slight) of getting caught, which always made it more exciting.

Capella Space Station was shaped like a gyroscope, with a spindle ten miles long and a wheel six miles wide. The station rotated hundreds of times a day to create an Earth-normal artificial gravitation on the inside rim of the great wheel.

The only part of the space station that did not spin on its axis was the Star View Promenade and Restaurant at the very top of the spindle, which always faced away from the four stars of the Capella system.

The space station's orbit one light-year from Capella was so slow (a 'year' for the station would take nearly 30,000 Earth-years) that the view of the heavens from under the plastiglass dome of the promenade barely changed from day to day or even from month to month. Thousands of prominent stars seemed fixed in place, gleaming proudly in front of a million pin-point dots and the thick glowing band of shimmering dust that was the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

Because Hana and Morty were nine years old, and because the band of the Zodiac constellations on Earth was 18 degrees wide, the numerology was compelling. They would have nine constellations each.

Hana made a 360-degree chart of the stars visible from the storeroom portholes in an 18-degree-wide band and divided it into 18 sections of 20 degrees. She isolated the brightest stars in each section.

The traditional constellations looked so different from Capella Space Station, about 43 light-years from Earth, that they were mostly unrecognisable, so those who had the time and the imagination made up their own constellations. In a world of holographic star-maps and computerised navigation systems, however, there was no need for constellations, so none of the designs invented by inhabitants of the space station ever caught on with the public.

None the less, Hana and Morty had fun making their own constellations. They stared at Hana's 18 star charts to see what they suggested, drawing lines between or around the brightest stars to build an image.

To reflect the time she had spent helping her mother with her three sisters (whom she loved, despite how annoying they were), Hana named four of her nine constellations 'The Rattle', 'The Cot', 'The Booties' and 'The Feeding Bottle'. She also named 'The Egg-timer', 'The Ladle', 'The Hole-Punch' and 'The Spaceman' (in honour of her old videobook). Her ninth constellation was 'The Pocket Watch', after her father's most precious heirloom.

Morty had a pet rabbit, which explained why his nine constellations included 'The Foot', 'The Ear', 'The Tail', 'The Nose' and 'The Rabbit'.

"It looks nothing like a rabbit," Hana protested.

"Sure it does, from the back and underneath."

"It does not."

"Well it's better than your hole-punch," Morty insisted. And, as it was his constellation, he stuck with its chosen name.

His last four constellations were pretty random: 'The Doorknob', 'The Baseball Bat', 'The Rubbish Bin' and 'The Space Ship'.

This was how Morty discovered a love of art. He converted his own sketches and Hana's doodles into realistic but stylised drawings, with accurate perspective, delicate colours and a sense of contrasting light and shade. Hana had to agree that, due to his skilful rendering, the stars of 'The Rabbit' constellation really did look like a rabbit (from the back and underneath).

They etched their own constellations onto eighteen of the portholes in the basement storeroom with a laser penknife, showing the stars in the positions they had been on the days they were born. Now, with up-to-date star charts, they could compare the etchings with the current positions of the stars.

For fun and to test herself against the computer, Hana made accurate measurements and calculated how far the space station had moved during their lifetimes. They made a pact to always visit the storeroom on their birthdays to measure the new positions of their constellations.

Defacing the basement windows was the most mischievous of the many illicit things the pair did to entertain themselves. They were lucky not to be found out because the punishment would have been severe.

******

When Hana was ten, she decided she would be a teacher, like her mother, Mary, who was the head of mathematics and science at the only school on the space station and (so far) an unsuccessful candidate for a seat on the governing council.

Mary gave Hana advanced maths and physics books to read, to prevent her getting bored in lessons. Hana loved astronomy and decided to be a physics teacher.

At ten, Hana was so far ahead of everyone in her class of fifteen-year-olds, especially in English, maths and science, that even here she was left in a corner with her books to teach herself.

She and Morty continued to plan mischief, though they never did any more damage. Most of what they did unlawfully they would have been permitted to do anyway, if only they had asked. But it was more fun to find a sneaky way around the rules, such as when Hana used her perfect memory and maths skills to break the entry codes to the dockmaster's office on the freight dock.

There were public viewing-points on the spindle for all four docks. The private vessel dock and the large passenger dock were on the spindle above the great wheel. The busy freight dock and the secure military dock were below the wheel. But the views from the dockmaster's offices were the best, especially the dockmaster's office in the freight dock, where they could see the human work involved in helping giant spaceships attach themselves nose-first to the station in a ballet of magnificent power and precision.

They delighted in seeing the powerful tugs push or pull great ships into place with magnetic tractor beams. There were blasts of manoeuvring rockets and the glow of ion drives as ships sped up or slowed down to match the angular rotation of the station. And there was satisfaction on the faces of the docking crew when another huge craft safely attached itself to a bulkhead with an airtight seal.

2 Punishment

When Hana was eleven, she and Morty received a well-deserved punishment for risking their lives by leaping between the fire-escapes of two tall buildings on the West Causeway.

One day they took a lift to the 60th floor of the Excelsior Hotel. They climbed out of a corridor window onto the fire-escape.

Standing on the edge of the safety barrier, they looked around. The nearest building was 50 feet away, across a street 800 feet below. The balconies opposite were clear of obstructions. The people in the street below did not look up.

There was less angular velocity at 800 feet up, so artificial gravitation was reduced. It was possible to make huge leaps through the air. Hana calculated that they would fall only 20 feet if they made a powerful enough push off, which they practised on the ground and in the low-gravity exercise hall.

They were to jump clockwise because the great wheel spun anticlockwise. To jump the other way, the Coriolis effect would make the destination recede from them. The danger was to miss a hand-hold or not land safely on a balcony but fall into the gap between the buildings.

But the fun was in the danger, so they stood side-by-side, balancing on the handrail, ready to make the leap.

"Three, two, one, go!" Morty said and they jumped.

They floated in an arc through the air. The wind caught Hana's long hair and puffed up her dress like a sail. Morty floated as he did in the exercise gym, with arms and legs spread wide, catching as much air as he could.

They landed on a balcony opposite with a thump, exactly where Hana predicted. Morty rolled sideways as he had practised but Hana tried to stay upright. She overbalanced, ran into the wall, bounced and headed for the fire-escape steps, feet tripping and arms flailing. Morty jumped up and grabbed at her, holding the back of her dress. It was enough to arrest her momentum. She hit the hand-rail, which knocked the wind out of her. She sat down for a minute before she could breathe properly.

Then they laughed, thrilled by the danger and the achievement.

Unfortunately, they were seen from the hotel, recognised and reported to Hana's father, who had them escorted to the police station on the East Causeway. Here the Constable of Capella Space Station's stern look drove away their laughter and instilled a less exciting kind of fear.

"What on Earth were you doing?" Arthur demanded of the miscreants standing before him in his messy office.

"Having fun," Hana said.

"You can have fun in the exercise gym or in the park without the risk of falling to your deaths and upsetting your mothers."

"Yes, Daddy."

"Yes, Sir," said Morty.

"I know you understand the danger. You know how the Coriolis force works."

"It's an effect, not a force," Hana said.

"Do you think this is the right time to correct me on physics, Hana?"

"No, Daddy. Sorry, Daddy."

"You're both grounded," Arthur said. "Literally grounded. When you're not at school or doing your homework or in bed asleep (when Hana ever sleeps), you'll report to the head gardener in the park and he'll make you work. You'll be on solid ground all your spare time. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Yes, Sir. How long, Sir?" Morty asked.

"How long what?"

"How long will we be punished for?"

"How long do you think you should be punished for?"

"A week, Sir?"

"I think it should be longer than that, so we'll compromise. The punishment will last for some time between one week and the rest of your lives. When I'm satisfied you've learned your lesson, I'll think about releasing you. Now go away and behave yourselves."

******

It was not an onerous punishment, though it interfered with their adventures. Morty took his sketchbook to the park after school and Hana found she enjoyed getting her hands dirty, working the soil, digging, planting, watering, pruning and weeding. It was mostly weeding. After some instruction, the elderly gardener left them to it and concentrated on growing his over-size vegetables, his delicate orchids and, by exuberant contrast, his showy plastic dahlias.

One day, while Morty let Hana do all the work as usual, he noticed something interesting about some of the flowers he was sketching. Hana was planting geraniums in an ornamental border up against the rear wall of the garden. Morty had already drawn pinks, aquilegia, iris, delphiniums and cineraria. Now he was sketching a passion flower that grew up the wall. The mathematical properties of the flower, with its three sepals and two sets of five petals, hit him.

"Have you seen this," Morty asked, showing Hana his sketchbook. "At first I thought the number of petals was random but there's a pattern."

"It's the Fibonacci numbers," Hana said, skimming through the sketchbook. "It's well known that flowers have 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 or 55 petals in an ascending sequence."

Morty stared at her. He knew Hana was gifted but most of the time she was so normal he forgot.

"You're only eleven," he said. "How do you know this stuff?"

"You're already eleven. Why don't you know it?"

"Ha! I've got better things to do with my brain than fill it with education."

"What better things?"

Morty opened his sketchbook at a back page. There was a drawing he started a week ago and put the finishing touches to the previous evening. Drawn in soft dark-grey pencil with charcoal smudges and just one colour, orange, applied with an oil pencil, it showed Hana kneeling down as she was now, leaning on one hand, with a trowel in the other hand, planting marigolds. The light caught her cheek, the top of her neck and her mid-brown hair in its regular pony-tail.

She was concentrating on her task but she seemed happy. Morty even made her look pretty, despite her fleshy nose and pointed chin, by emphasising her long eye-lashes and her look of intelligent purpose.

"More water, please," she said.

While Morty ran off to fill the watering can, Hana gave the sketch a closer study.

"It's very good," she told him on his return, "but it needs a frame. Will you draw one?"

"How big?"

"Whatever you like, just to make the drawing stand out."

Morty took a very soft pencil and marked the corners of a rectangle at what looked like good places. He joined the corners with thick straight lines using a ruler and filled the frame in with cross-hatching. He showed Hana the result.

"You like it?" he asked.

"Very much. Now measure the frame."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me how high and how wide the inside of the frame is."

He did so with his ruler.

"About 30 centimetres wide."

"Exactly?"

"28.8 centimetres wide and, um, 17.8 centimetres high. Why are you smiling?"

"What is 28.8 divided by 17.8?"

"How would I know?"

"It's about 1.618, which is the Golden Section. It's the proportions of a rectangle that painters use more than any other because people naturally find it to be a pleasing shape."

Morty stared at her again.

"You're still only eleven," he said.

She ignored his comment.

"It's also the number that the Fibonacci sequence converges to when a higher number is divided by the next-lower number."

"The what and who?"

Patiently, Hana explained.

"The Fibonacci sequence is the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and on up. You make it by adding a right-hand number to the number on its left to make a new right-hand number. If you divide a right-hand number by a left-hand number, such as 89 divided by 55, which is 1.618182, then, as you ascend the sequence, you gradually get closer to 1.618034, which is the Golden Section."

"So the shape I chose for the frame is the same angle as the number of petals on a flower?"

"It's a ratio, not an angle."

"And it all comes down to those funny-bunchy numbers?"

"Fibonacci. You said it wrong on purpose."

Morty laughed.

"I forgive you for educating me but what happens when my brain's full and I need it for something important?"

"You're an idiot."

"And you're a genius. Together we make two normal people. ... You're lucky you've got me. Who else would put up with your peculiarness?"

"How many in your class can draw as well as you?"

"None."

"So you're as peculiar as me."

"I am," he admitted, smiling.

She smiled back and returned to planting the geraniums.

"More water, please," she said.

******

When Hana was twelve, she wanted to be a prostitute. She admired her honorary aunt, Hestia, more than anyone on the space station. Hestia was the most glamorous woman Hana knew. Always perfectly made up and gorgeously attired, even when she was in causal clothes, Hestia was also the happiest woman Hana knew. She enjoyed life in every possible way and was never sad or lonely. Hestia went dancing in the Goat and Chariot pub every night with a different man. Hana wanted to emulate Hestia and be an Entertainer.