Canticle Blue

1. Terreska

Music - The Ice Faeries by David Arkenstone

"To catch a star, be caught."
—Ancient Havelian Proverb

The habitat vessel Terreska had nearly completed what was thought to be an impossible task. After three decades in interstellar space, gleaning fuel and resources from one planetoid or cometary body after another, the ship had finally felt the gravitational pull of a new sun. But, as it hurtled backwards into the new solar system with its three main engines firing continuously, it was all the crew could do to slow the ship enough to remain within it. First, they ran out of main-engine fuel. Then, desperately firing their maneuvering engines in the same manner, they nearly depleted the fuel intended for their landing ships as well. They managed to drop two landers into orbit around the fourth planet in the system, more or less in passing, then plunged almost helplessly into what, at best, would be the outbound leg of a highly-elliptical solar orbit of their own.

After choosing a site on the planet, the landers, a cargo vessel and a tanker, put down very close to one another on the shore of a tidal estuary. Their minimal crews quickly erected a habitat with a greenhouse, and used the lower stage of the tanker to assemble a fuel production plant at the water's edge. Within days the fueling unit had replenished the tanker and filled all six of its external tanks with liquid hydrogen and oxygen. It then left the planet in pursuit of the Terreska, leaving the fuel plant to continue its work. While that ship was still on its way, the Terreska crew, greatly encouraged by the news, dispatched a second tanker to the planet. When the first ship arrived, the Terreska used the additional fuel to reshape its trajectory. Gradually, with increasingly regular refueling visits, the habitat ship returned to the planet and found a stable orbit beneath its two moons.

Soon, small groups of colonists were making trips back and forth to their new home world, if only to move about on a planetary surface for a few days, an entirely new experience for those who had been born between stars.

The colonization process was slow to take hold. Although the planet had a breathable atmosphere, it was completely lifeless. Every step toward a sustainable foothold required the use of plants and animals brought by the Terreska. But the colony eventually thrived, and overspread the planet. After several centuries, however, the social structures and beliefs that had been crucial to the success of the "Great Bridge" (as the interstellar voyage came to be called) gave way to value systems based on currencies, leading to cultural divisions and isolation.

Many centuries before that, what was left of the Terreska had been boosted into a solar orbit and set adrift. Every few hundred years, her wanderings brought her back to the planet for a short time, like a grand matriarch revisiting her children. And then she continued on her way.

The colonists named their new planet Havel, after a storied "river of beginnings" on their former home world.