Pegasus In Space

HISTORICAL NOTES

The second A-ship, the Arrakis, was launched from Padrugoi with a complement of four thousand colonists and crew, bound for a "likely" planet in Procyon, eleven light years away. As with the Andre Norton, most of the passengers would remain in cryogenic suspension.

The keel for the third projected A-ship, the Avalon, was laid in the construction facility at Padrugoi Space Station.

The first Mars colony was established at the former Space Authority Mars-polar site near the southern pole where sufficient water had been discovered to sustain a colony. This installation would also supply and assist Asteroid Mining, a branch of the Space Authority, which started "claiming" the suitably named and numbered asteroids they would use. If the person named on the IAU files was still alive, they received royalties. There is no record of any such transactions in the last decade of the twenty-first century.

Using the highly specialized Gadriel Gestalt Generators, the Talents moved the asteroid Tithonus from the Patroclus cluster to a new orbit around Callisto by kind permission of Space Authority and with a deed of grant in perpetua, for services rendered by an organization known as Federated Telepath and Teleport. FT amp;T was registered with a board of directors including managing directors, Peter Reidinger and John Greene (retired U.S. SpaceForce). Also listed were Lance Baden, Madlyn Luvaro Sakai, Amariyah Bantam, and Scott Gates. Rhyssa Owens Lehardt, David Lehardt, Professor Emil Gadriel, and Sascha Roznine were listed as consultants.

Construction began for an atmosphere dome on the former asteroid Tithonus, now Callisto's satellite in a stable orbit about its adopted primary. Immense generators were buried deep in the asteroid while a blunt structure rose above the surface. Miners seeking supplies or just a change of scenery called it the "Tower"-or Callisto Tower.

Federated Telepath and Teleport was licensed by the World Congress and the Space Authority to become formally chartered as communicators and transporters on a first-come, first-served basis. FT amp;T guaranteed the training and supervision of all its parapsychic talents who were graded from Talent 1, or Prime, since the recipient of that title had to be both a strong telepath and telekinetic, down to minor abilities at Talent 12.

The first B-type ship, the Bradbury, was teleported by Callisto Tower forty-five light years away, guided by the time-resolved imaging spectrophotopolarimetric of their destination in Capella.

Anne McCaffrey is best known for The Dragonriders of Pern, but her loose Talents series about superpsychics has been running almost as long. It began with the near-future To Ride Pegasus, continuing a couple of generations later in Pegasus in Flight. Book 2 introduced a crowd of new characters, notably the paralyzed boy Peter whose telekinetic talent can move not only his body without help from his ruined nervous system, but-with practice-even lift payloads into orbit.

Pegasus in Space follows directly, with mayhem and mutiny, at the opening of a manned space station, which Peter and talented friends helped build. Further hassles ensue during his training for space haulage work: obstructive bureaucrats, crooked suppliers, murder attempts, and skillful sabotage. McCaffrey specializes in feel-good adventure SF, full of romance, warm friendships, and hearty meals. Somehow her villains never quite convince, though, and their evil deeds are so rapidly annulled that the story rarely builds up much suspense. Meanwhile, the orphan girl Amiriyah who's adopted into Peter's family has a mysterious, subtle talent of her own, one that we soon guess will change his life. Our young hero's ambitions foreshadow later far-future books in the series (beginning with The Rowan) in which "kinetics" hurl cargo across huge interstellar gulfs. While most people think his talent needs careful conservation, Peter has already teleported supplies to the moon and has secret plans for Mars, the asteroids, and the moons of Jupiter.