D G Hervey [Hervey - Calypso Outward Bound

With a failed attempt to have the departure from the asteroid belt be a secret, the spaceship Calypso is heading past Jupiter, leaving the solar system on a journey that is expected to take more than a lifetime. There are slightly more than seven hundred young adult, educated, fertile women aboard Calypso who expect to bear the children, initially all girls, who will establish the first colony about another star, a gravida two for humanity.

Almost a fifth of the women have been artificially inseminated by resident doctors, using sperm from a genetically diverse sperm bank aboard the spaceship. There have been no births yet; now they are much anticipated. The other eighty percent of the young women await their opportunity to choose a donor from the sperm bank so they may similarly be artificially inseminated. All of the women expect a three-year interval between bearing a child. Each of the young women colonists was screened, selected, and recruited by ML, the richest, most powerful person in the Solar System. She conceived and secretly managed the creation of Calypso.

When passing Mars on its journey from Earth to Calypso, MLs Spaceship 1 was attacked by an unidentified adversary. Spaceship 1 made stops at two of her companys C Developments in the asteroid belt. There employees disembarked and supplies were loaded onto Spaceship 1.

After Spaceship 1 reached Calypso, the adversary attacked again. MLs insightful responses prevented the attacks from doing significant harm to the passengers or her fleet.

To protect the inhabited C Developments she owns, the primary basis of her wealth, ML left Calypso to return to them. Upon that departure, she did not anticipate being able to rejoin Calypso after its gain of speed when passing Jupiter. She no longer expected to get to live her dream and be present for the establishment of an extra-solar-system colony, humanitys first.

The women of Calypso wanted a father figure aboard - the only adult male their daughters might get to know as they grow up. They chose a retired loving couple, Jon and Marie, to accompany them. Jon met MLs requirement of not being able to father offspring of his own, thus ensuring that there would be MLs intended level of genetic diversity of Calypsos generations of people yet to be born.

ML recruited Jon and Marie, who had retired on a small farm in Houston County near Crockett, Texas. Marie uncharacteristically made the snap decision to assent to MLs proposal. ML transported them to Calypso aboard her Spaceship 1 piloted by Captain Fran.

As ML was about to leave Calypso, she paid Jon and Marie for the property she had them hurriedly leave behind and give away in Texas. Thus, Jon and Marie became the wealthiest individuals aboard Calypso.

As she would not accompany them out of the solar system, ML transferred ownership of Calypso. This included the structure, its infrastructure, and all of its attendant scout spaceships. Most of it she gave to the newly formed government, but the living spaces she gave to the colonists who were already living in them.

ML had Jon draft a constitution for a republic during their trip from Earth to Calypso. Once there, the colonists approved it and then elected Agnieszka to be their first president. Agnieszka had been MLs executive in charge of Calypso once the development was habitable.

To get a start on profit-motivated capitalism, Agnieszka suggested to Jon and Marie that they should support entrepreneurs who were interested in starting their own businesses. This led to Jon and Marie getting quite a few proposals for businesses. They were always on the board of directors of any enterprise to which they provided financial startup capital. That way they expected to get to know a number of the women.

The front half of Calypso consists of twin, counter-rotating cylinders, named Subtle and Hidden, three kilometers across and ten kilometers long. The third deck of Subtle and Hidden, with the residential pods, provides simulated one-G, Earth-normal gravity that is created by their rotation. The back half of Calypso behind the living spaces is a rigidly attached, similarly sized trailer with asteroids to be mined. It also provides structural support for the ion-thrusters that accelerate Calypso virtually continuously. The trailer has its separate power plant and complete database.

Jon and Marie live in a pod in Subtle with six young women. Each pod has its own, large common room with adjoining living spaces for each womans anticipated family. Privacy is almost non-existent, since the living and working spaces of Calypso have monitors in every room. Pictures and sound are recorded continuously in the facilitys databases. They are monitored by artificial intelligence (AI) in real time, to ensure no rogue individual takes action that might endanger Calypso. Anyone aboard can pay to see any cameras view at any time.

All of the databases are continuously updated with the information that Earth shares with its solar-system developments. There are three databases on Calypso and one on each of the two staffed scout spaceships, Ek and Dui. Earths updates are forwarded to Calypso and augmented by ML.

All of the young women use a Parrot, an electronic device with an ear bud that is in constant communication with a cylinders database. Jon and Marie choose not to have a Parrot. To permit confidential work, at the presidents discretion, output of the monitors in Calypsos governmental offices on the third deck may go unrecorded in the facilities databases; when this is the case, the women are not permitted to have a Parrot inside those offices.