She, Smith thought, had been his fourth companion at dinner, had politely asked a pair of extremely sensible questions of him, directed to understanding the internal politics of the Anglic Union, but had not been very informative when asked questions herself. Of course, most foreigners had no understanding of the Seldon Legion or its relationship with any government. He nodded agreement.
“I have your departure date from Sol system. If it’s not a secret, how did you manage to get here so quickly? There is a nominal shortest path, but there are a lot of jumps in between, reasonable delays at each warp point due to lines of ships and the like, so you were expected not to be here for several days yet.”
“That’s actually not a secret,” Smith said, “it’s a matter of the design of our ships. The Stellar Republic doesn’t need to know every detail, but there are inspections of our ships on intellectual property issues. Our ships use the nominal root-point design for alpha nodes. Our beta drives are optimized for real-space faster-than-light speeds, meaning there are several points along the trip in which it was far faster for us to go from star to star in real space, rather than having to go a very long way around by traveling from warp point to warp point. The net result is that our trip was significantly shorter than you would’ve expected, given the nominal shortest path.”
“I know what a root-point design is, but why do you use it for your alpha nodes?” She asked.
“Patent royalties,” Smith answered. “At the time our design was laid down, it was unclear whether or not we could obtain the needed intellectual property rights to use a patented design. However, the original root-point design cannot be patented, so we used it. That design corresponds to a really large node, one whose warp field is an oblate, not prolate, ellipsoid. As a result, no one has used that design in a faster-than-light ship in an extremely long time, going back to early in the First Empire.”
“Thank you very much,” Ekatarina said. “I see that the Grand Supreme Admiral of the Fleet and one of his staff members are leaving, so, as you may not be familiar with our customs, and would not mean to give offense, that means that we are now free to go. The party will doubtless go on for some considerable time, with more and more vigorous singing and drinking, but the formal social event has come to a close.”
Smith looked at the far end of the room, where indeed the Grand Admiral and a spectacularly attractive, much-younger woman had stood, waved to various people, and were backing out the door behind them.
“Thank you for explaining your customs on this matter,” Smith said. “I was noting the extent to which wine was being replaced with stronger liquor, conversations are becoming louder and louder, and wondering how I could gracefully make my escape. I believe I should be on my way to be back in time for the staff meeting tomorrow. Do your schedule still show that happens tomorrow afternoon?”
