HOT TO GO

“Don’t you fucking drop that,” Mary called from the back of the loading area.

“Sure, no worries,” replied one of the loaders. “You want a go?”

“Honestly? No.”

Outside, Dr Jamison stepped off a barge, rubbed the cold out of her hands, and walked over to Claudine.

“Morning, Claude.” They kissed cheeks and exchanged a brief hug. Her breath steamed.

“Morning, Joyce.”

“Are we ready?”

“Almost.”

Dr Jamison walked into the loading bay. Three navvies loitered by their barges.

She and Mary watched silently as the last of the boxes was placed into the crane’s platform.

“All set to go?” asked Dr Jamison.

A light on the crane flashed green and the platform lifted a few centimetres. Metal chains flexed and took the weight.

Mary ran a finger over a control on a tablet and the crane slowly swung about, the boxes swayed. The loaders all stepped back.

“Slower,” shouted a loader closest to the crane. Mary focussed and the crane slowed even further. Two of the loaders reached out an arm to steady the sway. Together they carefully guided the platform onto the rail car. It sank into its suspension as it took the boxes’ weight. A loader detached the chains from the platform. Mary made a deft swipe on her tablet and the crane withdrew.

Claudine stood aside as a loader pushed the rail car, straining under the weight of all five boxes, down to the barges. Three loaders worked together to lift each box onto a barge, two boxes on the first and second, and one on the third.

One of the navvies presented a tablet which Mary signed, then they boarded their respective barges and pushed off with a hum of electric engines. Each barge sat low in the water and left a mighty wake.

A black car pulled up. Mary and Dr Jamison waved to the loaders and said goodbye to Claudine.

The barges carried the boxes down the Elbe to the docks at Helgoland in the North Sea. Stevedores with cranes moved them into two standard twenty-eight-tonne capacity shipping containers. These were both loaded aboard the good ship Bette’s Liability, a British freight hauler registered in Panama; one of thousands traversing the English Channel to the Bay of Biscay, then across the Atlantic. My visibility aboard was negligible. Three weeks later I watched the ship dock at Port of Dégrad des Cannes, Cayenne, in French Guiana. The ship’s log showed they’d encountered storms but nothing unusual. The boxes were reporting as healthy.

Dr Jamison and Mary arrived by private plane the day before and were on hand as Bette’s Liability docked to do the needful with French customs.

I watched via their phones, glasses, watches, and rings. Mary and Dr Jamison stood in the office of Agent Pierre Levasseur, Inspecteur des Douanes¹. He sat at the corner of his desk and poked an index finger at them, his voice was slightly elevated.

« Je comprends bien que l’ESA a autorisé vos cargaisons, mesdames, mais il me faut une description précise et détaillée du contenu exact de ces boîtes. ‘Charge utile spatiale Daedalus’ ne suffit absolument pas pour notre registre. Alors, dites-moi : que contiennent exactement ces cinq conteneurs ? »²

Mary spoke slowly. “Sorry. We don’t speak French. Non-um, sprecht, Englais.”

« Nous ne parlons pas français »³ said Dr Jamison.

“What ees een ze boxes,” said Msr Levasseur. “Zese forms zey need many more details.”

He waved a tablet at Mary, who took it from him. Dr Jamison peered at it.

“It’s the payload for Daedalus, the starship. You know. For the UN,” Dr Jamison tried to explain. Levasseur looked confused.

Mary tapped on a form field and entered:

She handed the tablet to Dr Jamison, who countersigned the list with her finger.

« C'est beaucoup mieux. Merci de votre coopération dans cette affaire. »¹

“Murky buckets,” said Mary. Dr Jamison handed the tablet back to Msr Levasseur.

With a whine of electric motors, giant cranes moved the two shipping containers from Bette’s Liability and onto a freight pad. Loaders in power suits manhandled each box from its container and onto the backs of five individual open-tray lorries.

Once loaded, the lorries, which had no drivers, convoyed the seventy or so kilometres along a mix of concrete, paved, and dirt roads from the port to the European Space Agency’s commercial launch centre.

“You’d think they’d have fucking finished this by now,” said Mary, who was riding with Dr Jamison in the back of a follow car.

“It’s the weather,” said Dr Jamison. “They’d have to keep paving it constantly, which is quite toxic for the local environment. So instead, they just grade it regularly and clean it up after each storm. It’s mostly done by drones.”

The road transitioned to a solid, wide paved road, bordered by dense tropical vegetation. The lorries ahead left a trail of mud, forcing the follow car to slow.

They were approaching the main entrance of the ESA’s Centre Spatial Guyanais. The road widened into distinct lanes, clearly marked ‘Personnel et visiteurs officiels²’, and ‘Visites touristiques et publiques³’.

The automated lorries diverted off to a third gate that opened automatically. The follow car stopped at a barricade.

A security officer wearing an ESA-branded uniform bade them wind down their windows.

“Mary Angel and Joyce Jamison, from the Daedalus project,” said Mary. The security officer stepped into their hut and returned with guest badges and a tablet and pen.

“Signez ici s'il vous plaît⁴,” said the officer.

Mary signed and passed the tablet to Dr Jamison, who signed and passed it back out to the officer. Another uniformed officer was passing over and under the car with a mirror on a long handle. A third opened the boot and peered inside. He ran a wand over their luggage. The handle lit up green.

“Veuillez vous rendre au centre des visiteurs, merci et bonne journée. Bienvenue à l'Agence spatiale européenne⁵.”

Mary looked over at the tourist gate; considerably more welcoming, clearly marked, with multilingual signage. A queue of tourists, families, enthusiasts, children dressed up as astronauts, waited patiently under shaded canopies shielding them from the tropical sun. Youthful guides in ESA shirts milled about assisting tourists with checking in and distributing visitor badges for guided tours.

The entire complex was enclosed by tall security fencing topped with subtle anti-intrusion measures; cameras and infrared sensors through which I watched, and subtle perimeter lighting. The facility blended security with aesthetics, using discreet but effective barriers hidden amid carefully preserved greenery, providing robust security without an oppressive appearance.

“Would you look at that,” whispered Dr Jamison. She and Mary looked up across the base at the tops of the launch towers and service gantries that loomed, scraping the sky, far off in the distance.

Claudine Summers stood at the door to a large red and white concrete building in front of them. She was holding it open with one hand and holding a clipboard with the other.

“Morning Mary,” she said. “Morning Joyce. Welcome to home for the next few weeks.” She tapped a ballpoint pen on the clipboard twice, then looked up at the sky.

“I hope this weather holds.”

They walked through a compact foyer into a large auditorium. There were screens everywhere. Launch paths, trajectories, gravity’s rainbows in white on blue.

“Let me introduce you to Jaques, the facility chief. Jaques is our launch coordinator.” Claudine let Mary and Dr Jamison through the room. Dozens of quiet people stared intently at their workstations. In the background, a steady stream of announcements; launch milestones; pattered away in French.

They crossed the room. Claudine knocked on an office door sporting a badge. ‘Jaques Turner is [IN]’.

“Come in,” called a voice, and they entered.

“Bonjour, welcome, hello,” said Jaques Turner. “Welcome to France. Our first launch is scheduled for oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.”

“We’d quite like to supervise the loading of the cubes,” said Mary.

“Of course,” said Jaques. “Claudine will take you there shortly. In the meantime, I urge you to rest, unpack, and settle in.”

Jaques handed Dr Jamison and Mary each a brass key. “We’ve got basic accommodation here, but you each get your own room at least.”