Antibodies 19

© Copyright BG Taff

Characters.
Verna Spiro Type one Virus
Nana Bev, Interplanetary prospector.
Jamie, Bev’s younger prospecting Partner.
Dennis Potter Freight manager and old friend of Beverly’s.
Jack Godfrey Yard foreman and walking boss.
Charlotte and Lucy - Jamie’s younger dancing & clubbing friends.
Rose and Violet. Cis-girl friends of Jamie.
Dr Williams Virologist
Jennifer Jamie’s girlfriend. (Sleeping partner.)
Shirley Jamie’s niece.

Chapter 19.

My first trip to the moons of Uranus and Neptune were to be the last I would take with my old ship Digger. I watched the familiar image of Mother Earth receding rapidly on my pursuit screen, then after a brief appearance of the moon the combined images started to shrink rapidly as I accelerated to interplanetary speed.

Mars was not visible, being on the other side of the sun and Jupiter only appeared as a bright crescent to sunward ringed by her bracelet of Galilean moons. Next, I turned to watch Saturn expanding in my view and plotted a rendezvous with her mighty moon Titan..

On coming into range of Titan’s gravity, I extended a gravity tether to her gravity field and concentrated the attractive force to sling me outwards to Uranus. Once happy with my trajectory I settled down to the long leg into the remote isolation of Uranus’s orbit.

Over a week since clearing Saturn I finally approached Uranus closely enough to push a gravitational tether through her gaseous surface and ‘grab’ some solid rock or ice. This reduced my speed enough to venture a lighter tether towards the moon Titania and eventually land on the moons rock and ice surface. My prospecting proved unrewarding. The ‘Ice’ proved to be mostly CO2 and Oxygen of which there were abundant quantities on Saturn and Jupiter’s moons while the ‘rock’ proved to be
mostly fragmented lumps of assorted silicas and none metallic compounds with no known commercial exploitation.

In truth I had not expected some spectacular discovery so I left Titania as I’d found her, chaste and unsullied. Uranus had lots of other moons and smaller satellites that held greater promise.

I was one of the very few who had inherited ‘grandfather’ rights to unrestricted celestial and stellar exploration and exploitation through my descent from my great-grandfather Charlie Sage. There were lots of other corporate organisations active in our solar system but they were all bound by interplanetary conventions and licensing controls.

When my great grandfather had invented his gravity engines his patents had devolved to his immediate descendants through his last will and testament. I was one of the few in the family line to have thus inherited those rights and the subsequent advantages.

Often I reflected silently upon those inherited rights when I made a lucky strike on some remote body far out in space. This voyage to Uranus and Neptune was to be one of those instances.

Eventually, I discovered a valuable lump of metallic mineral orbiting Neptune that proved manageable enough to haul back to the Earth’s moon where it could be cut up for delivery to Earth. The ‘rock’ was actually a veritable mountain of palladium, rhodium, and titanium in commercially pure condition.

Having anchored the huge rock to Digger, I then had to plot a viable course back to Earth where it would have to be cut up and processed by the Solar Furnace corporation whose processing plant was orbiting the moon. It was going to be a long, tedious journey but fortunately, once I had started it on its journey out of its Neptunian orbit and plunging sunwards I could declare it to the Solar Metals Exchange, then leave it un-attended but marked and tagged until it reached the earth.
There I could use one of the large commercial gravity tethers to ‘lasso’ the veritable mountain of metal and then carefully install my ‘quarry’ in a licensed orbit around the moon where metal companies and traders could purchase pure ingots of assorted metals produced by the ‘Solar Furnace corporation’ in which I had a modest shareholding.

It would be several years before my ‘asteroid’ reached Earth, so once I’d set it on its path, I raced ahead to declare my find and trade futures. The interplanetary metals council had long ago reached a universal convention concerning metal quarrying. All finds had to be registered so that any large discoveries did not unduly destabilise the market in that particular commodity.

This agreement benefited everybody involved in metal prospecting, mining, trading and using. In space, ‘klondyking’ was a thing of the past. Nevertheless, there was lots of money to be made if a prospector was lucky enough to find a valuable ‘rock.’

ooo000ooo

After returning to Earth and registering my find there was little I could do with it until the asteroid appeared in the Lunar sky and the requisite authorities had captured it and tethered it in Lunar orbit. For the next few years all I could do was occasionally check on my property and ensure that it was still on course to rendezvous with Earth.

I used that time to indulge in several short hops to the Lunar Base and Mars whilst sharing the luxury of growing with my children; and of course, to resume donating blood for the inoculation programme.

By now the pressure on Jamie and me had eased off considerably. A substantial proportion of the male population had either taken steps to store their sperm then stop their bodies from producing testosterone. This was being done by several different methods like the obvious processes of orchidectomies after sperm donation and storage. However the ever-ingenious medical profession had developed other processes like freezing testicles for reattachment if or when a vaccine was developed for men.

All in all, the remainder of the male population had resolved themselves to making sacrifices if they wanted to remain alive and yet father children. It was mainly the rational and balanced individuals who thus survived the onslaught of the Verona virus which meant there were infinitely less fanatics or bigots looking to somehow attack or kidnap or punish Jamie and me. The secret of our identity as the initial donors of the effective inoculations eventually leaked out but the dangers to our persons was commensurately reduced.

Besides, there were several hundred other donors worldwide who were equally vulnerable to kidnap but by and large; they were now considered saviours not witches.

With our identities now becoming public it was inevitable that any known donor would be approached with offers of money to share some blood as private clinics sprang up worldwide to offer inoculations from blood that some donors sold.

In many instances, rich relatives were involved and all over the world, donor girls kept receiving lucrative offers from rich male relatives hoping to jump any queues. Some succumbed to the family pressures, some did not. I did not; nor did Jamie. Too much pain of rejection I suppose.

ooo000ooo

The incident occurred when I returned to Dennis’s Cargo terminal after my second short hop to Mars. By now I had upgraded my beloved ‘Digger’ for a newer and larger ship whilst I had stored digger in Dennis’s yard until Jamie might decide to use her for her own purposes;- social, domestic, pleasure or business.

Jamie’s oldest niece Shirley, (her sisters daughter) was enjoying her easter break from school and she had now travelled a couple of times with me as a passenger to Mars and the moon. We had just docked and the young girl was lifting her rucksack out of my new, enlarged ship while I crossed over to Dennis’s office. On greeting me Dennis extended his hand in the usual greeting then handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?”
“Dunno. Some elderly lady turned up one day claiming to be your mother and left this with my secretary.”

“My mother!?”

“That’s what she said.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth. You were visiting Mars and would be away for a few weeks.”

I shrugged and took the cup of tea that Dennis’s secretary proffered, then opened the letter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yours sincerely,
Mam
Xx.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I folded the letter and returned it to its envelope as Dennis searched my face for clues.

“I’m guessing it’s personal Bev, so I’ll not ask unless you want to tell.”

I smiled at him. Dennis could be so disingenuous at times so I gave him the bare bones.

“Yes. It’s from my mother, apparently my father’s died and she’s seeking some sort of reconciliation.”

“And?”

“Leave it there for now, Jamie needs to see the letter, it involves our children as well.”

“Will you be seeing your mother.” Dennis asked then explained. “I’m asking because there’s a couple of valuable lifts to Mars. The colony’s embarked upon a large expansion. I suspect they’re thinking ‘Ark’.”

I grinned at Dennis.

“You make it sound so Biblical.”

“Well, they’re lucrative contracts Bev, and your new ship ‘Miner’ is a shoe-in for some of the bigger components.”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow Dennis. My passenger and I need to get home and discuss things with Jamie and her family.
Even as I stepped to leave, Shirley appeared at the door to the office trying not to look impatient. I grinned at her.

“Don’t panic kid, were off home now.”

“When’s the next trip Auntie Bev, and will I have enough time left this holiday?”

“Can’t say Shirley, there’s some family stuff that’s come up.”

Naturally, the girl tried to pump me for information for she felt that all aspects of my family were relatable to hers. Eventually, I had to inform her gently that my side was essentially a closed book to everybody except Jamia and me. She accepted my reticence with good grace and we chatted about lighter subjects including her hopes to return to Mars before the school holidays ended.

When we landed at the farm, she stepped out too quickly in her eagerness to see her family and she slipped in the mud.

“Now that’s what I call a ‘return to Earth’,” I chuckled.

ooo000ooo