The Guranaki Melor was a small freighter whose captain and crew were willing to make the long trip to Earth, travel around the vicinity, and then make their own way back to civilization once the six month contract was up. The little ship could carry about four hundred tons of cargo and had a crew of twelve, with berths for another dozen if needed. They knew what they were getting into, helping to uplift a civilization that had only had one First Contact situation.

Nick wasn't sure whether he would ever return to Ooafa or Arrurra, so he was careful to say goodbye to everyone he had interacted with significantly. He downloaded a big batch of greeting messages that Arrurran civilians had sent for the people of Earth, trying to be a part of history. Apparently, they had made something of a contest of it, and they were all rated and ranked according to Yirahyah sensibilities.

Once he had explained the concept to the Ooafans, a large fraction of their entire population recorded video messages saying hello to Earth. It's another way to keep themselves from vanishing utterly in the cosmos, I guess. "I Was Here. I Existed. Remember Me." Nick's throat got a bit tight when he thought about it too hard, so he made very sure that he had multiple copies of everything.

They had a discussion about the Goldaskian exiles on Ooafa. After a debate, the fuak!a decided that once the New Hopehad returned to Ooafa, the exiles would be permitted to leave. They had extended the contracts on the visiting ships, paying out nearly all of the Medical Swarm Petra had produced so far, and promising more on their return, but a condition of the contract was that they leave the exiles undisturbed until told otherwise.

Finally, they topped up the building supplies for Petra, including filling the cargo hold of the Guranaki Melor with some of the low value elements. It was going to be a long trip to Earth, and Petra's printers onboard would be working constantly the whole way. Not only did they have to produce the Medical Swarm for payments to the ships, but Nick also had to print out as many devices as he could, assuming that he was going to lose control of Petra at some point.

He also was planning to keep creating hard drives and stuffing each one full of blueprints. It was one thing to have a fusion reactor, it was another to have the detailed blueprints for making fusion reactors. He wanted to be careful to get all the prerequisite devices, too—the machines to make the parts to make the power plants. He kept making production schedules, and kept changing them as he found more things he wanted.

The New Hope and the Guranaki Melor left the Ooafan System in what Petra claimed was early March back on Earth. Nick had mostly lost track of time, between the screwy day-night schedules and the alien calendars and clocks. But, Petra would easily tell him the exact date whenever he wanted.

I'll get home in late May. I wonder how much has changed on Earth since I left? First, there was the portal thing, and I don't even know whether anyone knows I disappeared through a portal that day. I would guess so?

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Then months later, the Goldaskian warship shows up and basically ignores the human race, taking over a busy intersection in Boston for a week or two, taking their measurements or whatever, and then leaving again without a word of explanation. I could imagine the portal being dismissed as a hoax, but a Goldaskian warship in orbit and aliens clogging Boston traffic? That had to rattle the world.

Two months from now, I'm going to show up at Earth with a basket of goodies and like six alien races. In that same warship, plus a hire. There is really no way to do this on the down low. Hopefully, people will have had a little while to think about things and chill out. Because, if I can't guarantee that nobody's going to get vivisected, I'm not letting any aliens land on Earth with me. Maybe I'll have to have them drop me somewhere remote and isolated and jump back up to orbit.

They decided not to tour the worlds along the way, because that would triple the travel time or worse, and Nick couldn't afford to hire the cargo ship for that long. They did have to make a lot of brief stops, though. It was a matter of the technology.

To Nick's surprise, not only was there no way to communicate between the ships while traveling faster-than-light, but they didn't have scanners that worked FTL either, despite the Goldaskians being hundreds of years ahead of Earth in tech development. It was, apparently, a very tough nut to crack. As a result, ships going FTL were flying blind.

To keep their tiny fleet together, they basically had to keep picking a system a dozen light-years ahead and agreeing to meet there. Then, both ships traveled in isolation. Whoever was first waited for the other one. That way, if anything happened to either ship, at least they would know the stellar neighborhood where it happened.

They took advantage of the stops to transfer materials, getting ingots from the freighter and slowly filling the freighter with what was, to the contracted crew at least, low-tech goodies. It was impossible to hide that they had sophisticated manufacturing capabilities on board the New Hope. Fortunately, that was just to be expected of such a ship, and the New Hope had printers of its own, after all. With luck, though, it would not be too obvious that they had an actual UMP. Nick even had Petra add a few extra decorative bumps and ridges and swirls to make the tech look slightly different.

The two or three hundred systems they stopped in had the same proportion of life-bearing worlds as they had seen previously. They stumbled across four more civilizations that were spacefaring but not starfaring. In each case, they left the system before there was time for messages to go back and forth; the locals probably never knew that they were there.

Nick got recordings of everything. It seemed crazy not to stop and explore, to make friends with the strangers, to appreciate the beauty and variety the galaxy had to offer. But, they were on a schedule, and despite all the wonders, he needed to warn Earth and help humanity advance before more strangers showed up. And...he wanted to go home.

He talked with Sana, who did not seem to be bothered by the prospect of Nick staying on Earth while she headed out into the galaxy without him. He knew that theirs was a relationship of convenience, but it still jarred him a little. He was going to miss Sana, but it was for the best. He didn't even want to think about the religious nut jobs attacking her for being a "demon." There was no way he could believe that she wouldn't be in danger the moment she set foot on Earth.

Nick had plenty of time to run through possible scenarios, talking with his alien friends, getting their advice. They had some good ideas. He mapped out a bunch of contingencies. I may not be smart, but give me enough time to get ready and I can fake it for a little bit.

I just hope it's enough.

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