The Search
Normally there would have been a wait if campers were only a little late, but because this was both an Earthman and an eminent Idaltu scientist, as soon as they were late returning and there was no answer on their communicator a large scale search was mounted straight away.
The Earthmen were told immediately that Mujib was lost. They offered all the resources of their fleet for the search. Andy was famous on the Earth for the large number of lost people he had found, and he immediately started searching.
The president himself was involved; he warned:
“Our experts believe that the most likely thing to have happened is that the flier crashed into the sea either going to the wild continent, or on the way back. If so we’ll never know what happened.”
Jack suggested:
“Can’t you search the sea bed with submarines?”
After Jack had explained what a submarine was, the president said;
“We don’t have any submarines in the system.”
Jack replied:
“We do.”
“You mean on your ships?”
“No, most of our fleet is made up of interstellar submarines. They can travel under the sea as easily as they can travel between the stars.”
After only a little thought, the president authorized the interstellar submarines to enter The Green Planet’s ocean to begin the search.
Then he asked:
“Why do you have vessels with these two abilities? The number of planets with liquid oceans, not frozen on the top and no land is very small.”
Jack told him about Aquaworld.
The president said;
“That’s a very interesting world. Why haven’t you mentioned it before?”
“We assumed that it was your people who took all those animals and plants from the Earth, and wondered why you hadn’t mentioned it.”
“I can understand why you made this assumption, but as far as I know we had nothing to do with Aquaworld. I’ll consult our historians to see if they have records that throw any light on the mystery.”
After a little more thought, the president added:
“Our people are better adapted for low gravity and any world with a higher gravity that the Earth is normally avoided completely. Aquaworld has too much gravity for us. Normally when we settle a system we chose worlds smaller than the Earth. If we need to we move these worlds to a suitable distance from their star so we can transform them with plants and animals.”
The land, sea, air and space search mounted for the lost couple was much bigger than any ever done on the Green Planet before. As well as the resources of the people of the planet, crew from the whole of the mighty peace fleet was searching. The continent was vast and much of it was covered in forests taller than most of the forests of Earth because of the lower gravity. Even the parts of the giant continent with lower vegetation were difficult to search. The search was continued for over a month with no result.
At least there was no result in the sense of finding the lost couple, but in terms of cementing friendship between the two subspecies of Human, it was the best thing that could have happened.
Mujib’s brother, Dr. Ali had always had a close relationship with his bother and had great difficulty accepting he was dead. There were other friends and relations of both members of the lost couple who also continued searching for a long time after the main search was finished. Even when all hope of finding them alive was gone their friends found it hard to accept that they were gone forever.
The interstellar submarines were on their way back to Aquaworld, and only the Highway to Heaven remained from the peace fleet.
The president announced;
“A ship has entered our system from another of our colonies. They’ve already been told about you. My eight and a half year term as president is expiring in a month’s time. The ship will be here in time for the ceremonies marking the end of my tenure as president, and the swearing in of our newly elected president.
“As retiring president I would like to invite all your crew to the ceremony and you, Ali, Albert and Behn to attend as honoured guests.”
The Earth people had been aware of the election for a new system president. The constitution of the system only allowed one term as president without at least a three term break. The terms lasted about eight and a half Earth years.”
Jack asked:
“What are you planning to do when you retire as president?”
“I have many plans. I plan to write up my term as president. I think I might call the book ‘The Coming of the Earthmen.’
“The first thing I intend to do is to visit Homeworld. I will have time to write my book on the way. On that subject, Homeworld knows nothing of you. I think it would be a good idea to cement the friendship between our two sorts of Human for your ship to visit Homeworld.”
Jack replied:
“Thank you for your invitations. We will be honoured to attend the ceremonies and will certainly visit Homeworld. I hope you will be our guest on our ship. It can do the journey in six months instead of twenty five years. That way we’ll be there before your initial radio message arrives.”
“Thank you, I was hoping you would invite me for the journey. I still have difficulty getting used to the idea that we can arrive before a radio message. This was one of the things that led us to believe that it was impossible to beat the speed of light. Our scientists have concentrated on getting faster sub-light ships.”
The president was speaking formally. Of course that was what he had intended and had just been polite in the way he had arranged transport to the main planet of his subspecies. But Jack could see tears in his eyes:
“Why are you sad?”
“I was thinking how nice it would have been for Mujib to show Mydepa your ship in action.”
War and Space Page 5