Precession

7 Resolution

Veronica Mason piloted the cruiser to Hana's co-ordinates and David ejected the reactor core. Glowing red and spinning slowly, it fell in a parabolic path toward Capella's four stars, a light-year away, sometimes approaching but never touching the network of gamma stream emitters and freely-orbiting hyperspace beacons on the way.

Two days later, anyone watching from a south-facing window on the space station would have seen a great flash of light in the direction of Capella, as if a star had been newly born, briefly flared and quickly died.

The reactor core exploded safely. Computers monitoring the gamma stream energy supply to the station and nearby beacons registered a slight flicker as power sources from a couple of the beams dropped for a second and then restored themselves. There was a report on the evening news, and a short video, but no panic.

******

David Mason resigned from the governing council and made a public apology for unwittingly endangering the space station. No criminal charges were brought but David was so ashamed that he made plans to leave Capella, at least temporarily.

He confessed the whole story to the governing council, with Mrs Malkin and Arthur present.

He was in financial trouble and liable to lose his hotel, including Veronica's jewellery shop, due to some risky investments that had gone wrong. He was so strapped for cash that he could not afford to have his spaceship's fusion reactor fixed. Nor could he sell the cruiser in its faulty state for more than a fraction of what he paid for it.

He chanced everything on another loan for a big new investment. If it succeeded, he could pay off his creditors forever and send the cruiser to an engineering station to be mended. The investment went bad and David was in an even worse position.

After Hana and Morty were apprehended trying to smuggle onboard his ship, David ordered the reactor core to be shielded to keep secret the fact that he could not afford to fix the spaceship. This was for commercial reasons, not to hide the danger from the public, which he did not know about. He was worried his creditors might learn that he was in financial difficulties. If they foreclosed on his loans, he would be completely ruined.

Now there was no hiding the disaster, David and Veronica were returning to Earth to try to rebuild their fortunes.

There were few recriminations from the councillors and no charges against Charles Debben. David shook hands with the councillors and went to await the bank's receivers, who would take possession of his hotel, jewellery shop and space cruiser.

To prove there were no hard feelings toward Hana and Morty, David invited the young investigators to his apartment. Arthur and Gareth brought their children. After an awkward few moments in the hallway, because everyone was too shy and polite, Veronica asserted herself as hostess. When they were comfortably seated, she gave Hana a beautifully-wrapped package. Hana looked at her father for permission to open it. He nodded.

Inside was a jewellery box containing a gold pocket watch. When David learned the story of how Hana and Morty discovered the space station's precession, he remembered that one of her constellations was called 'The Pocket Watch'. Veronica rescued the watch from her jewellery store just before the bank's receivers took over.

"Please, Mr Mason, I can't accept this," Hana said, profoundly moved.

"I want you to have it, Hana," Veronica said. "So you'll remember us kindly."

"Daddy?"

"You can accept it, Hana."

"Thank you," said Hana, with tears in her eyes.

"And this is for you, Mortimer," Veronica said, handing him a flat square package.

He also sought permission from his father to open it. Inside was a calligraphy set with a dozen gold nibs of various sizes and angles. He was thrilled and Gareth was happy to let him keep it.

******

With the resignation of David Mason from the governing council, there was a vacant seat to be contested.

Mary stood in the election a month later and this time she won. It helped her that Hana and Morty, the saviours of the space station, proudly supported her on the hustings. Public affection for the famous pair was not the only factor in Mary's election because she was a committed, conscientious and active woman. A little bossy, like all good teachers, and strict with people who did not pull their own weight, Mary was full of ideas and passion. She deserved to win.

Her first suggestion to the council was to hire two specialist teachers: an advanced physics teacher for Hana and an art-teacher for Morty.

******

Despite saving the space station, Hana and Morty were not relieved of their gardening duties. Hana went back to her work with pleasure and Morty happily came along to watch her.

The old gardener had a surprise. He marked out a new bed in the centre of the park destined for a flower display. He allowed them to do the design.

They went to the task with relish.

Morty sketched out colours and shapes. Hana chose the plants to realise his vision. She did most of the work, though Morty carried the watering can and pushed the wheel barrow.

The centre-piece of the display was a floral rabbit. There was also a pocket watch with a chain made of marigolds and a tugboat planted with heathers and alpines.

With her four daughters in pretty dresses, ribbons in their hair, Morty in long trousers and her husband in a cleaned and pressed uniform, Councillor Mary Jeffries proudly opened the new flower display before an admiring public.

8 Epilogue

Hana's specialist teacher was a keen young man with long hair and a masters degree in astrophysics. He wanted to travel a little and try teaching before he got a proper job or embarked on a Ph.D. He had a good effect on Hana by adding structure to her itinerant studies. He could also advise her on the best schools to apply for because it was Hana's plan to go to university when she was 13.

When Hana was 13, she took ten advanced level exams. She passed with perfect scores in five science subjects, three maths subjects, history and geography. On the strength of these results, she was allowed to sit the university entrance exams for all the top academies on Earth, to study astrophysics. She passed the exams and was offered places regardless of her age. Most offers came with scholarships, so her parents would not need to pay her university fees.

Now she faced the problem of persuading her parents to send her to a university on Earth. Arthur was still worried about how dangerous Earth could be, though his strongest motivation was that he could not bear to part with his daughter. For now, Mary supported him and they persuaded Hana to wait until she was 14 before applying to university.

Hana threw herself into a big new project, which she continued even when her specialist teacher's year was over and he moved on. She studied everything she could on one of the most interesting unsolved mysteries of cosmology, one that had eluded the best physicists for a century or more: the unification of hyperspace theory and quantum gravitation.

Hana did not need to remind her parents of their promise to send her to university when she was 14. Mary knew it was time to let her go and used her negotiating skills to persuade Arthur. She began by noting the change in their daughter.

"She's so quiet and well-behaved," Mary said.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing."

"But even Morty is studious and attentive. It's good that he's taking his studies seriously but where's the mischief? When was the last time they had a telling off for racing the wrong way on the moving walkway or for sneaking into a restricted area?"

"They're growing up."

"They're becoming domesticated, institutionalised. All Hana does is study cosmology and help out her sisters."

"Which you appreciate as much as me."

"I do, very much so, but I also miss her girlish mayhem. Her domesticity means she's just marking time until it's time to leave. She's ready and I worry that we'll stifle her if she stays here longer than she needs to."

Arthur thought about what Mary said and had to agree, however painful it would be to part with Hana for almost a year at a time.

When they told Hana of their decision, Arthur suggested an American East Coast college. Yale, Harvard and MIT had already looked favourably on her application. She would be close enough to his family in New York that they could help her if she needed it.

Mary shared some of Arthur's fear for Hana being alone at university on Earth, but she knew how sensible Hana was. The girl needed friends and a nurturing environment, which any college geared up for early entrants could supply. Mary looked toward her home in England, with its prestigious ancient universities in Oxford and Cambridge, or the elite London academies of University College and Imperial College. None the less, her relatives in Cornwall were too far away to come immediately to Hana's aid if she needed them.

Hana herself was inspired most by Caltech, though it was a continent away from Arthur's relatives and a world away from Mary's family.

The answer came from Hana's honorary aunt Hestia, who was friends with Doctor Danielle Goldrick, the famous astrophysicist now on Celetaris, an Outworld colony about 150 light-years away. Outworld colonies were much safer than Earth. Celetaris had one of the lowest crime-rates in the whole galaxy, Arthur discovered, with no crimes ever recorded on the university campus in Arts City.

Hana admired Doctor Goldrick, inventor of the Beltway hyperspace junctions and a new kind of hyperspace travel. She was even more attracted by the idea of studying with Professor Hendrik Jakovs, head of the astrophysics department, a famous expert on cosmology and someone who was known to be interested in the problem that Hana had dedicated herself to solving: the unification of hyperspace and quantum cosmology.

Hestia was going to Celetaris, to stay for a time. They could travel together and Hestia could help Hana settle in.

The cost would be a problem unless Hana won a scholarship, which was likely. The only other question was whether the Celetaris Institute for Science would take Hana almost five years early.

The university entrance exams that Hana had already passed with perfect scores were not good enough for Professor Jakovs, a notorious stickler for exceptionally high standards, despite running a small department in a provincial university. Hana had to sit another exam, which she did in a closed room at the school with a videolink to Celetaris, where two of Danielle Goldrick's students acted as remote invigilators, watching over Hana's shoulder (quite literally) to prevent her using a computer to cheat.

Hana never cheated. She had no need to.

The invigilators were two girls, whom Danielle introduced as Samothea and Yael. Yael was instantly friendly, giving Hana a huge smile, genuinely happy to meet a fellow physics student, wishing her luck.

She had long golden hair, big brown eyes and a face of such angelic beauty (even more beautiful than her aunt Hestia) that Hana had to stop herself staring. Samothea was also pretty, with wavy black hair and electric green eyes. She was friendly but calm and not so enthused as Yael.

The invigilators could watch Hana from many angles and Hana could see them by a holographic projection in front of her, in case she needed to talk to them.

She began as she always did by reading right through the paper, instantly working out the answers and writing them by the side of the questions. Then she would go back through the paper and show her working-out. As she worked, she noticed that, although her invigilators were not talking, they were none the less communicating by hand-signals.

Hana watched Samothea and Yael communicate out of a corner of her eye as she wrote her answers out in full. It was fascinating to her, seeing people talk and not know what they were saying. Hana had gone through the paper and knew she did not need all three hours to complete it. She could spare five minutes to pick up what the girls were saying.

She deliberately wrote down a wrong equation. Immediately, there was a flurry of hand-signals from Yael. Hana replaced the equation with another faulty one. More hand signals from Yael. When she wrote the correct equation and surreptitiously looked for the signs, she saw that she had been found out. Samothea took hold of Yael's hands and stopped her communicating.

Smiling to herself, Hana was pleased to learn that Samothea was so quick. Now she had half-a-dozen words of their language, she went back to concentrating properly on the exam and had a revelation. Returning to the problem with which she teased her invigilators, she realised her original answer was wrong after all. There was a trick in the question, a clever little device to trip up the unwary. She worked out the correct answer, writing it down at the speed of her thoughts, which was almost too fast for Yael and Samothea to follow.

She went to the next question and the next, studying them properly, looking for the trapdoors. She found three more cunningly disguised questions that would wrong-foot a naive student. She finished the paper very pleased. Hana loved being tested but, better than that, she was learning the mind of Professor Jakovs. She liked what she learned. She was sure he had devised the test and it revealed his sense of fun as well as his desire to sift out weaker candidates.

Two hours into the three-hour test, Hana drew a big line under the final question and signed her name with a flourish. She pressed 'send' to transmit the answer sheets to the Celetaris Institute for Science to be marked. Leaning back in her chair, she made a hand signal to her invigilators in their own secret language:

"I've finished!"

Yael was delighted and signed back, laughing: "Well done!"

Samothea was also pleased and signed: "Good work. See you on Celetaris."

******

Hana was the first person ever to pass Hendrik Jakov's astrophysics exam with perfect marks. Even Danielle Goldrick got only 95%. Hana sent a personal statement videoed by Morty. It helped to secure her a place at the Celetaris Institute for Science.

When Hana was 14, she prepared to leave Capella Space Station for the first time, going by hyperspace liner to Celetaris with her aunt Hestia.

They had a leaving party and, the day after, Hana and Morty snuck into the basement storeroom of the Star View Promenade to say goodbye.

They sat by a porthole and gazed at the stars.

Morty had a present for her.

It was a pen and ink drawing of Hana in a bulky space suit, just like the astronaut in the videobook they had loved when they were five. She was floating in space, above a ghostly flower bed and a watering can. An open physics book with gobbledygook equations, done in the finest calligraphy, floated beside her. On the background, dotted on the blackness of space, were the stars of Hana's Pocket Watch constellation.

"It's beautiful," she said, her eyes shining. "Thank you."

She looked at Morty. He had grown quickly in the last year and was now six inches taller than her. His brown hair was just as tousled, his hazel eyes just as alert, but there was down on his cheeks and on his upper lip. It was a sign that he was changing as well as her.

"I don't want you to go," he said.

"I want to go. I want to see the galaxy and study with real cosmologists. What are you worried about?"

"That you'll forget me."

She raised her eyebrows in the same way that her mother did to her father when he said something questionable.

"I know, you've got a perfect memory," Morty said. "You won't forget me. But you know what I mean. I don't want you to forget to think about me."

She smiled.

"I'll think about you if you send me a video every week."

"Will you send me a video every week as well?"

"I will."

"Hana, you know how I feel about you?"

"I do."

"Do you feel the same way about me?"

"Mortimer Cedric Bowman," she said, smiling. "I'll miss you ... and your pet rabbit."

"Hana Louise Jeffries, why can't you say you love me?"

She put her hand on his cheek.

"You're an idiot," Hana said.

Morty smiled with relief.

"That'll do," he said happily.