Timemaster
Page 13
After a short period of time, the orbital elements, physical properties, and major constituents of the planet had been identified. The orbital elements were most unusual—the planet was in a very close, near-polar orbit around Proxima, while all the rest of the known gas giants were close to an "ecliptic plane" that passed through the equator of Proxima. The high inclination and close distance was probably why the planet had been missed despite deliberate searches with infrared telescopes on Backside for "green" planets. The orbit was slightly elliptical and had a "year" of only 33 hours. Although the tidal forces of Proxima on the planet were thousands of times stronger than the Sun's tides on Earth, the planet was not tidally locked, with one side always facing the star. Instead, like Mercury, the planet was stuck in a 3:2 spin-orbital tidal resonance, giving it a sidereal day of 22 hours and a solar day of 66 hours.
"I don't understand that," Randy muttered, a puzzled look on his face. Being an amateur astronomer, he understood the interaction of the spin rotation of the Earth and its orbital rotation about the Sun. The Earth spun on its axis once every sidereal day, which was 23 hours and 56 minutes, but because the Earth was orbiting around the Sun once every 365 days, the solar day from noon to noon was longer—four minutes longer. He tried to picture the planet spinning with a sidereal day of 22 hours, moving with an orbital rotation rate of 33 hours, and coming up with a solar day that was 66 hours—twice as long as the "year". He couldn't do it.
After two days, the telescope had taken enough pictures of all sides of the planet so that the scientific data bank could generate a virtual image of the planet on the videoscreen for Randy to play with. Randy got out the virtual-world helmet and gloves that he used for entertainment and put them on. Ahead of him was the blue-brown planet, and off to one side was the small red star, looming large in its proximity. Manipulating the imaginary joyball control in his virtual-glove fingers, he zoomed his imaginary airplane across the computer-generated landscape.
There was a large continent at the north pole with a thin shield of layered ice in the center. The south pole had no continent and no pack ice—the strong tidal flows prevented any buildup. The whole southern hemisphere was mostly ocean, with two Australia-sized island continents connected by a chain of very large Mars-sized volcanic islands, hundreds of kilometers in diameter and twenty kilometers high.
The north-pole continent was connected by another chain of large volcanoes to a long, flat continent that went almost two-thirds of the way around the equator. The continent had a large rift in the middle that nearly split it in two, like the Red Sea splitting off Africa from Eurasia. Within a few million years there would be two continents.
At the east end of the continent was one of the two "hot" poles of the planet, those places where high noon occurred at closest passage to Proxima. Randy flew his plane to the hot pole and landed his imaginary airplane on the top of a curved mound of weathered mountain that had once been a volcano.
As he waited in the early-morning twilight, he looked east over the rolling landscape. It looked like good real estate, even if it did get hot every "summer". Randy shot out his virtual cuff-comp from his virtual sleeve in his virtual jumpsuit and used the cuff-comp to turn off the weather and hasten the passage of time to one hundred times normal. The light on the horizon increased and Proxima rose rapidly. Randy knew it was much redder than the Sun, but his eyes automatically adjusted to the color, and everything looked normal except that the blue jumpsuit that he normally wore in virtual-world was now black.
Although physically smaller than the Sun, Proxima was much closer, and so looked larger than the Sun. It covered over ten percent of the sky. It grew even larger, and slowed down, as the planet moved toward periapsis and noon approached. The stars were moving through the sky three times faster than Proxima. Randy was taken aback when Proxima came to a stop, reversed its course to pass back through the zenith, then turned around and came back again before proceeding toward the western horizon, decreasing in size and increasing in speed until it set, thirty-three hours after it had risen. Even though he had seen it, Randy still didn't understand it. He took off the helmet and, shaking his head back on the "real" world of Rosita, touched the menu on the control screen to bring up the temperature data that had been collected.
The temperature data was surprising, since the radius of the planetary orbit was technically far outside the "life zone" of the very-low-luminosity star. Fortunately, the large tides supplied a lot of heat to the planet, keeping the water from freezing.
The planet was bigger than Mars and smaller than Earth, with forty-five percent Earth gravity. The ratio of continents to oceans was also about forty-five percent. Except for its quantity, the atmosphere was a disappointment. It was mostly carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor, with traces of rare gases. There was plenty of it, almost two Earth atmospheres' worth, but no oxygen, no hydrogen, no methane, no ammonia, nothing reactive and short-lived that would indicate life was there, exhaling.
"A large, warm, wet, gassy Mars," Randy finally concluded. "Ripe for terraforming." He mused on that thought, then dictated a memo into his cuff-comp to have Andrew change the name of the division to the Interstellar Transport, Trade, and Terraforming Division.
The last picture the telescope on Rosita took, as it turned away from the receding Proxima Centauri system and turned its attention to the approaching Alpha Centauri system, was that of the newly discovered and newly named planet, "Hunter".
THE EXPLORATION of Alpha Centauri A and B was less exciting. The close double-star system had two Sun-like stars, but the two stars had swept up into themselves or blown away most of the primordial planetary nebula, leaving very little remaining to make planets out of. The only planets Randy found were those already discovered by the telescopes on Backside, either baked rocks orbiting close to one of the two stars, or frozen gas giants circling around the pair at great distances. After doing a careful scientific survey, Randy returned to Proxima Centauri and the planet Hunter.
His first task was to match velocities with Earth so the warpgate could be dilated and he could warp home. Proxima Centauri had a significant differential velocity with respect to the Sun, some twenty-four kilometers per second in transverse motion and minus-sixteen kilometers per second in radial motion. In anticipation, the Reinhold crew monitoring the Silverhair at the other mouth of the wormhole had taken their Silverhair across to the other side of the solar system and accelerated it up to twenty-nine kilometers a second to temporarily cancel out most of the velocity difference. It was now up to Randy to adjust the speed and direction of Rosita to bring the differential motion to near zero. By measuring the frequency of the light from a laser beacon sent by the solar weather polestat sitting motionless over Sol, Randy and the ship's computer set themselves in motion to track the Silverhair sitting in the other end of the space warp back in the solar system.
"Everything seems right," said Randy as he measured his motion with respect to Proxima and found it was near zero. "Time to suit up, Gadget," he called, unbelting himself from his swivel seat and floating across the room. Gadget was waiting there, bright-red manipulators holding the relaxed tightsuit for him. While Gadget checked him out, Gidget cycled the lock leading to the hold and opened the inner door. The bright-yellow form of Godget was waiting there, ready to accompany Randy into the hold.
With Godget leading the way, Randy made his way through the narrow passageway around the drive room and down to the spherical chamber in the hold that held the Silverhair. The Silverhair was glad to see him.
Randy started some slow waltz music, fired up the plasma gun, and commenced a half-hour-long feeding dance with the eager, hungry Silverhair, weaving his way around the support posts for the drive plates that kept the Silverhair safely centered in the spherical chamber. The feeding dance was time-consuming, but the Silverhair's obvious enjoyment of his company made it endurable. Ove
r the suit radio, Randy could hear it singing to itself.
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When the Silverhair started to play with its food instead of unfusing the iron into protons and neutrons, Randy turned off the plasma gun, replaced it in its bracket, and turned on the laser probe.
"The warpgate is opened," said Godget, looking at the indicators.
"Good!" said Randy. "Widen it up so my replacement can come through. I'm ready to go home!"
The transmitting lens on the laser probe changed shape, and the solid laser beam changed into a hollow laser beam and started growing larger.
"It will take a number of hours before the warpgate is large enough to transmit humans," Godget reminded as they both watched the warpgate widen.
"Watching the Silverhair eat made me hungry," said Randy. "I think I'll go have lunch."
BY THE time Randy had finished lunch and returned, the hole through the warpgate was large enough to peer through. Randy looked through the video monitor boresighted with the hollow laser beam and saw space-suited figures clustered around the laser probe instrumentation at the other end of the short, silvery tunnel that was two meters long on the inside and 4.3 light-years on the outside. One of them was tiny and slim—that was probably Siritha, his replacement. One was wearing a Chinese Space Agency-style tightsuit—that was probably C.C. Wong. He couldn't figure out the others, but they probably included Hiroshi Tanaka and Andrew Pope. He had already been informed that Rose had decided that she and Junior would wait for him back on Earth.
Soon the tunnel through the Silverhairs was large enough that Randy's tiny body could have floated through, miniature space suit and all. But he waited. The semi-intelligent Silverhairs only responded well when human trainers were around. If he were to leave now, and the Silverhair were to get lonely and discouraged by his sudden absence, the warpgate might collapse. Then, since the warpgate had to be opened from the Proxima end, it would be up to Gidget, Gadget, or Godget to do it, and experience had shown that the probability of the Silverhair cooperating with a robot was less than ten percent. If a robot insisted on trying to force open up a warp when the Silverhair didn't feel like cooperating, the Silverhair would simply eject a jet of negmatter excrement at the annoying robot and nullify a hole through it.
Finally the tunnel was large enough for Siritha. She stretched out in free-fall inside the hollow laser beam. Her jetpack fired a burst and she floated through. Randy caught her as her jets brought her to a stop. She gave him an excited hug.
"I did it! I did it!" she squealed, her dark-brown eyes flashing with excitement. The large dot of seductive red makeup on her forehead and the feeling of her lithe body against his through the thin tightsuits sent Randy's hormones into high gear.
I'd better get back to Rose in a hurry, he thought to himself.
Siritha's eyes lit up again. She pushed some buttons on her chestpack, and the radio waves carrying the melodic strains of the "Blue Danube Waltz" filled the large chamber as the limber body of the master trainer danced with the waving fronds of the gigantic alien. Randy bore the delay, knowing full well that he owed a great deal to this semi-intelligent being.
Plant! he reminded himself. Semi-intelligent plant.
When the dance was over and the Silverhair had quieted down, Siritha came to help Randy warp through. He put on the miniature jetpack with its beam riding autopilot, straightened out inside the hollow laser beam, and rode through back to the solar system. The first round-trip interstellar journey had been completed. Hiroshi and Andrew caught him on the other side.
"Why aren't you back at the office minding the store?" Randy asked Andrew in a bantering tone.
"You can't tell me what to do!" said Andrew, unafraid of his diminutive boss. "You're only the owner, president, and CEO. I'm a division manager and get to do what I want until you fire me—and I wasn't going to miss this event for anything. After we've done all the necessary things, I'm going to warp through myself, go outside in my space suit, and look at Proxima and Hunter with my own eyeballs. I'll consider that my bonus for the year."
"Be my guest," said Randy, pointing at the warpmouth. "Save me the five-million bonus I was going to pay you for pulling off a successful mission."
"It'll be worth every cent," said Andrew, grinning.
They were interrupted by Hiroshi, who had been monitoring the slow increase in the warpgate tunnel diameter.
"The warpgate is now large enough for you to pass, Mr. Pope," he said.
"Great!" said Andrew, reaching for Randy's jetpack. "I'm going through."
"You have fun," said Randy, heading for the vacuum lock in the spherical chamber. "I'm going to catch the next ship home to my wife and son."
Chapter 6
Welcome Back
THE STENCH and dirt of crowded humanity closed in on Randy the second he took off his helmet. The spacecraft that had husbanded the Silverhair at the solar-system end of the Sol-Proxima warpgate had been built about the same time as Randy's exploration ship, six years ago. Although it was not as small as the tiny one-man exploration craft, it had been crowded every second of those six years with dozens of scientists, engineers, and visitors who had set up and monitored Randy's five-year trip to the stars.
Randy could see two brightly colored clones of Gidget and Gadget busy cleaning, but the scratches on the wall from six years of contact with the sharp edges of equipment were now filled in with dirt, and the whole inner surface of the ship was darkened by an impervious coating of grey grime. The cold blast of freshly filtered air coming from the ventilator system still retained the moist taste of sweat and the rancid smell of dirty human bodies. Randy grimaced, but managed to shake hands all around, thanking everyone for the good job they had done.
"I really need to get out of this tightsuit, use the head, and clean up," he finally said, trying to bring the welcome to a halt.
"Your room is at the end of the hall where it has always been—waiting for you to return," said someone. Randy ottered quickly down the hallway, entered the master stateroom, and shut the door thankfully behind him.
The air in the room was stale with disuse, but it was clean and dry, so he didn't turn on the air conditioner. There was a slight hint of Rose's strong perfume in the air, for she had been the last one to use the room. Randy quickly floated to the small private toilet, found his stash of handwipes, and tore open one of the packets. The solvent had leaked out during his long absence, but he reactivated the wipe with a small ball of water from the sink and carefully cleaned off his tightsuited right hand where it had recently met so many fervent but grimy palms. That taken care of, he put his room Gadget to the task of thoroughly scrubbing the shower, while he relaxed his tightsuit, peeled it off, pulled off the codpiece, and tossed everything to the room Gidget. With a sigh of relief, he closed the door to the free-fall bathing stall and took a long hot shower until he felt clean again.
Randy's arrival on Earth to a hero's welcome as the first true astronaut was marred by one ugly demonstration after another organized by the Animal Rescue Front. Frustrated everywhere he tried to travel, Randy finally had to cancel all of his invitations and go directly home. The last A.R.F. demonstration was inside the Princeton Enclave, right outside his property line. Oscar Barkham's father had died two years ago, and Oscar's mother was in a rest home, leaving the Barkham billions and property in Oscar's control.
"You had better fly in from the northeast, sir," said the pilot of the Reinhold Astroengineering Company VTOL jet as he let his diminutive boss handle the controls of the powerful airplane from the copilot seat.
"But the wind is the other way," protested Randy.
"Mr. Barkham has the southwest app
roach blocked by makeshift barrage balloons, sir," said the pilot.
"I can't believe that guy!" said Randy angrily. "I've got to see this."
They flew a few minutes longer, and soon the Princeton Enclave was in sight. All along one side, where the Barkham and Hunter properties touched, was a string of large weather balloons tethered to the ground by strong steel cables.
"That's kind of stupid," said Randy. "Even a novice pilot could avoid those."
"If we had our customary afternoon low clouds, those balloons would be hidden in the cloud bank, and those steel cables are strong enough to slice this aircraft in two," said the pilot grimly.
"That murderous bastard!"
"We tried to get an injunction," the pilot said. "But the Animal Rescue lawyers argued that the injunction would impair Oscar's right to free speech. And if you were stupid enough to fly into the balloon tethers, it would be all your fault, especially since you would have been flying too low over his property."
Randy flew along the long row of balloons. They had messages on them, each message separated from the next by a balloon carrying the jet-black and scarlet-red symbol of the Animal Rescue Front: a vicious, large-toothed dog biting the bloody hand of a human with the words bite back underneath. The messages were large enough to be seen from the interstate, and varied from trite to vicious:
free our silvery alien friends.
silverhairs are animals, not plants.
stop the exploitation of intelligent beings.
kill the dwarf slaver!
Randy was taken aback by the last one. "Can they say that?" he exclaimed. "Can they come right out and say 'Kill someone'?"
"According to our lawyers, the only time the authorities will prosecute someone for saying 'Kill that person' is when it is said to someone who has a gun pointing at that person, and the gun goes off."