The networks of mass attractors that tethered
the Extractor to Planet Pluto disengaged nine
Earth centuries after construction began. Pluto
contributed its orbital momentum to the launch.
In time the integrated drives of the most advanced
propulsion thrusters took on the full load, and the
dream of humankind was on its way to the Alpha
Centauri star system, on schedule.
Scientists and technicians on The Solar System's
Slingshot Control Center maintained constant
real-time oversight of the Extractor's subsystems
and structures through spunnel monitors. A
convoy of robot deflectors and screens cleared
the Extractor fleet's path of meteoroids, sand and
rock swarms and space debris. Hundreds of logistics
robots crammed the station's cavernous bays,
self-sustaining and programmed to activate
sub-systems on schedule, deploy robotic specialists
and service the machine during its voyage, and in
perpetuity thereafter.
Maximum acceleration for almost two Earth decades
increased the fleet's velocity to five percent
speed-of-light, which it maintained for more than
a Solar System Standard Century. Deceleration and
vector adjustments took another three decades.
Alignment to major concentrations of potential
sources, selection of a 'first phase' work site,
calibration of instrumentation and activating its
spunnel channels and monitors required still more.
Back along the Solar rim, the Collector remained
linked to Planet Pluto for two decades following
the Extractor's departure. Its schedule along
Pluto's orbit provided sufficient time for the
Collector's transit to its permanent station
along the rim, to track the Extractor's position
via spunnel to refine details for integrated
operations, and for positioning and calibrating the
thousands of networks that coordinate the solar
and interstellar arrays.
The citizens of the Solar community tuned in to
witness the release of the Interstellar Spunnel
Signal from the hand of the President of the newly
formed United Nations of the Solar System. It would
be the final signal to synchronize and activate the
collective controls of the Extractor and Collector.
The President keyed the Signal.
##
Remote spunnel nodes and boosters along the route
from the Solar System to Alpha Centauri monitored
the Signal and the response. Rings of laser arrays
along the edge of the Extractor's hopper flashed
alive and focused their beams on a large, slowly
tumbling planetoid hundreds of kilometers across
its minor dimension.
Sensors, analyzers, siphons and beam-guides
paralleled the lasers' signals along an
incandescent column of plasma from the dissolving
planetoid into the Extractor's processes and, when
ready, into the hopper. The truncated apex of the
Extractor's teleport gate cone glowed red, then
violet, and thirty meters of its length disappeared
into its new hyperspace home.
The invisible nozzle hurled a concentration of
elemental substance across hyperspace to its
sister station four and a half light-years distant.
The first sign of incoming was a churning,
expanding mass of violet bubbles around the apex
of the Collector. Shifting colors as it cooled and
solidified, the mass transformed into a huge brown
globe. The globe separated from the nozzle and
drifted off, replaced by another mushrooming
bubbling mass at the nozzle's tip.
A fleet of robot tugs clamped mag-beams on the
free-floating globes and hauled them off. Another
fleet of giant space tugs moved into position for
the next gift of crude but treasured substance
teleported across interstellar space from a
distant star.
The cornucopia was in flow and humankind's first
outbound and inbound highways to the greater
universe were complete and working.