Timemaster
Page 18
"It is larger and more massive than Earth," said Konstantin. "So it has kept most of its volatiles, including its nitrogen, producing an atmospheric pressure of nearly one atmosphere. But it is further out, in the equivalent of a Martian orbit, so most of its water is in the form of ice in the large frozen lakes or snow in the large polar caps. At spots near the equator the lakes show evidence of being ice-free during the summers. Over the years, they have probably converted most of the primordial carbon-dioxide atmosphere into carbonate rocks."
"Any sign of life?" asked Randy.
"No," said Konstantin.
"All it needs is warming up and some oxygen, and it would be a pretty good substitute for Earth," said Randy. "We could manufacture large space-mirror sails to hover over the dark side of the planet and reflect sunlight back on the polar caps and frozen oceans. The extra heat will have the planet warmed up in no time and we could start planting. Even before that, people could start colonizing using simple oxygen masks."
" 'No time' is not correct," said Konstantin. "Assuming the aluminum content of the nearby asteroid belt is similar to the solar-system asteroids, and assuming a modest investment in automatic film fabricators to make the space mirrors, it would take a full twenty-three years to get the average temperature of this planet up to ten Celsius."
"In terms of the age of the planet, twenty-three years is as close to 'no time' as you can get!" said Randy, pleased to hear the computer's estimate. "Let's get the experts here and start terraforming!"
"I shall set a course that will match speeds with our station back in the solar system," said Konstantin. "That way, equipment can be sent through the warp without having to enclose it in negative-mass pods. Fortunately, the relative velocity between Sol and Epsilon Eridani is small, so we can stay in formation for many months without leaving the planetary system here."
"How long will it take to match speeds?" asked Randy.
"Considering our present velocity, twenty-three minutes at one gee."
Randy got up from the pilot's seat. "I'm going to put on my tightsuit," he said to the icon. "As soon as we've matched speeds and you put us in free-fall, I'll dance with the Silverhair and open up the warp."
"Very well, sir," said Konstantin. Randy felt the motion as the ship's computer turned the ship to its new heading.
"Hmmm," Randy mused as he passed a small door in the wall. "It's going to be a long day. Stuck in a tightsuit to boot. Better make a pit stop while I'm still under gees."
AS RANDY floated out the vacuum lock into the large, spherical chamber, he was greeted by the Silverhair.
Randy groaned. Just before she had left, Rose had taught the Silverhair to dance to "Bolero", and it had been the Silverhair's favorite tune ever since. Randy suspected the reason the Silverhair liked the tune was because it ran so long. The Silverhair never seemed to tire of dancing, even though its human keepers did. Randy set his suit radio so it would broadcast the "Blue Danube Waltz" and he started to waltz around the room, but the Silverhair just drew in its silver threads.
I'd better give in, Randy thought, coming to a halt. I'm going to need its cooperation to open up the warpgate back to Earth. If only someone could come up with a mechanical method for holding open a warpgate mouth so we don't have to depend upon trained animals—he corrected himself—plants.
Randy changed the music chip selection to the opening beats of "Bolero" and started the jerky dance around the electrode support posts. The Silverhair joined him, twisting its strands of silvery tendrils as it sang along in its melodic tongue.
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BY THE next day, the Silverhair's spherical chamber in the hold had become a cargo transfer station. With the two ends of the warpgate moving at the same speed, there was now no strain on the Silverhair as cargo was transferred back and forth. Under urging from the cold touch of the red column of laser light, the Silverhair dilated until cargo two meters in diameter could be floated through the warpgate, then out a cargo door that opened into space. Most of the cargo was one way, but tightsuited humans floated back and forth over the eleven-light-year distance as if a trip to the stars was a short stroll down the office hallway. The continuous stream of cargo was going to be used to assemble a spaceport station and a fleet of ships to fully explore the new planetary system.
Once every eighteen hours, the warpgate traffic was shut down and the Silverhair was allowed to relax a little. For the next hour the Silverhair was danced with and fed. Then, after a vigorous game of poof-ball, it was back to work. Fortunately, the Silverhair didn't need sleep, just food, entertainment, and human company.
After the first few rooms of the space station had been constructed, a special container was sent through the warpgate. Randy, Hiroshi, Siritha, and some roustabout robots were waiting for it on the space station. The cargo inside the container was another Silverhair, its tendrils shrunk in length so it would fit inside. Siritha was right there to greet it.
"Just a minute," said Siritha through her intersuit radio link.
"Lift it out gently," Siritha instructed the robots on another channel. Their six long arms had large electrodes at the ends. Using electrostatic fields to push on the electrically charged negative-matter creature, they lifted it from the pod. Using their built-in negmatter drives, they moved the Silverhair to the center of a spherical room in the central hub of the space station. The room had electrodes to maintain the Silverhair in the center of the room and electromagnetic guns for the transfer of cargo pods. Siritha swung out a large machine with multiple ports from its holder on the wall.
"You'd better turn down the volume on your suit radio," she warned. Suddenly Randy's ears were blasted by the overamplified screeches and staccato drumming of a heavy-metal rock group. In addition to the usual instrumental sounds, there was an electrical zapping and crackling tone, with an occasional lightning bolt thrown in, but all in time to the music. The singer had an amazing vocal range, although the words were unintelligible.
"What in hell is that!" yelled Randy.
"The Silverhair's favorite sound track," Siritha said in a resigned tone. "The Deadly Scum wangled a visit to one of the Silverhairs in Earth orbit. The visit turned into a combination free-fall dance and electronic jam session—with the Silverhair supplying the vocals and the electrical sound effects. The videotape of the session is now a worldwide best seller." She pointed to the machine. "This gun is a multiplasma generator the Deadly Scum sent the Silverhair as a thank-you present. They've also given the Silverhair a share of the video royalties. Alan Davidson is holding the money in trust for all the Silverhairs."
Randy and Hiroshi watched as the Silverhair fed, and then Hiroshi turned to Randy. "Now that we have this Silverhair set up in a cargo transfer room on the space station, we can release yours so you can travel around freely in Spacemaster and look at all the planets."
"Good!" said Randy. "I'll warp Rose and the kids through, and we'll all take a little vacation tour around the system."
ROSEY and Junior were thrilled by their first warp-through. Randy had put on a tightsuit to welcome his family. Rosey was nine and still a tomboy. She wore her hair in a long ponytail, even though she knew it annoyed her father. Junior was approaching sixteen and his voice couldn't decide what register to settle in. He must have been using Randy's gym at home, for his chest and shoulders were almost as muscular as those of his father.
After they had gone to the dressing rooms and changed out of their tightsuits into street clothing, Randy was appalled by the children's clothes, even though Rose assured him they were the latest style at the Princeton Enclave school. Junior wore an open-necked purple velvet tunic, a broad black leather belt with a large silver buckle, black tights with a grotesquely large codpiece, and black swashbuckler boots. His ears were covered with pu
rple amethysts, and his long bobbed hair, wavy chestnut-brown like his father's, was topped with a purple velvet cap sporting a long feather. Randy had to admit that the outfit looked good on the kid, although the tights looked a little sissy.
"What's with the codpiece, Junior?" he asked. "Even mine isn't that big."
Rose interceded. "The principal tried to put a stop to it, but some of the older boys really needed something that large. And of course none of the other boys would want to admit that they didn't ..."
"Well, OK ..." Randy sighed.
Rosey was more acceptably dressed in a pseudo-fifties outfit. White blouse, white wool sweater, pleated skirt, bobby sox, and white tennis shoes. Her dark brown ponytail looked good with the outfit, but Randy thought it looked too mannish. He would try to do something about that while she was here.
While Konstantin took them off at one gee to see the other planets in the Epsilon Eridani system, Randy and Rose showed the kids around the ship. Junior and Rosey were pleased with their bedrooms, especially since they didn't have to share a bathroom but could mess up their own private bathroom to suit themselves. Junior soon had pinups on the walls of his room, while Rosey installed a terrible picture of the Deadly Scum on one wall that made Randy sick every time he saw it.
Junior had brought along two HoloHelmets, and soon he and his dad were stalking wild animals in the garden. The Holo-Helmet projected three-dimensional color laser images against the scenery around them, taking into account the real foliage in the background to hide the animals and adjusting the laser light intensity to compensate for the variances in reflectivity.
"This is even better than a virtual game," said Randy, looking carefully around as the two of them walked side by side across the circular mossy island. Each was carrying a laser pistol. A peccary scurried off through the orchard beyond, and Randy and Junior both fired at it, but they missed. The HoloHelmets were also good for World War I dogfights and Star Wars space battles. Randy flew his recliner and Junior flew the sofa. They did well working as a team, except when the enemy attacked from the direction of the fireplace. The laser projector couldn't compensate well for the pitch-black soot, and the enemy craft were often on them before they could see them coming.
Randy also spent a lot of time with Rosey. She had brought along a maglev space chessboard. It was the standard three-dimensional chessboard, except that the pieces were made of room-temperature supermagductor material, and the board had a complex magnetic-field pattern generator in it that allowed the chess pieces to float in arrays in empty space. Randy was impressed with Rosey's chess-playing skills. Her sharp analytical ability had also shown itself in her science and math grades in school. In fact, both kids made good grades, which pleased their parents.
Randy kept bugging Rosey about her hair. Every morning at breakfast, he would walk around behind her on his way to the head of the table and tug lightly on the end of her ponytail.
"Hmmm ... getting a little long," he would say. "Like me to give you a little trim?" Finally, Rosey had had enough. One morning after Randy had sat down, she pointed her cereal spoon at him.
"Look, Dad," she said, "I'll make you a deal. You beat me at space chess, and I'll let you cut my hair. If you lose, you shut up about my hair for a whole year."
Randy paused. It wasn't much of a risk for Rosey. She had been beating him at space chess five out of six games. But he really had been getting obnoxious about her hair and ought to quit bugging her about it anyway. Hair length wasn't really all that important.
"It's a deal," he promised.
Rosey eagerly hurried through her breakfast and had the chessboard ready before Randy was done. It was a hard-fought contest, and the advantage passed back and forth many times. Late in the game, Rosey moved a piece.
"Check!" she said gleefully. Then she gasped as she saw something she had missed before. "Oh my God!" she groaned. "What a stupid move! I was too eager ... I should have looked around the board before I took my hand off the piece."
Randy thought it had been a very good move. His king was in check and he didn't see a way out of it. He had been about to concede, but if Rosey had seen something, then it was there.
"Hmmm ..." He frowned, looking carefully around the chessboard. He finally found what Rosey had seen, and reached out his hand. His space bishop slid all the way across from the other side of the board to simultaneously block the check and pin Rosey's queen on the diagonal to her king.
Rosey put up a good fight, but with her queen gone, she didn't have a chance.
"Oh, well ..." she said as she finally gave up. "It was getting too long anyway."
Randy set up a stool in the kitchen and a sheet on the floor, draped a towel around Rosey's neck, and took the comb and scissors that Didit handed him.
"I can't stand to watch," said Rose. "I think I'll go into the living room and watch the Lunar Olympic Trials with Junior." She left the room, leaving father and daughter together.
"Don't make a mess of it, Daddy," Rosey pleaded, although her dad had cut her hair before when she was little.
"I won't," promised Randy. "When it comes to the delicate parts, I'll have Didit do it." He undid the ponytail and started combing out the shoulder-length hair.
Rosey enjoyed the attention and made a humming sound in her throat.
"What?" asked Randy.
"Nothing," said Rosey. "Just purring ..."
"Oh." Randy kept up the combing. After a moment he said, "I suppose you and your mother have had a talk about growing up and sex ..."
"Of course," said Rosey. "A couple over the past years. I even brought along some supplies in case I should start early."
"Good," said Randy. "Now ... let me give you some advice about boys, and all the lines they will try to hand to you when you get older ..."
ROSEY also joined her dad in the daily visits to the Silverhair. She still looked like a young boy in her tightsuit, but now that Randy had cut her hair short, you could at least tell she was a girl.
"I brought along a new chip," she said, holding up a petarom cartridge, then inserting it into her chestpack.
"Not the Deadly Scum, I hope," replied Randy with a grimace.
"Don't be silly, Dad," said Rosey. "The music the Deadly Scum plays is great for concert shows, but you can't dance to it. This is a chip of Simon and the Bolivars' latest hit, 'Dancing on the Moon'. It's climbing to the top of the chip charts." As they cycled through the airlock into the chamber of the Silverhair, she turned on the music. It was a spirited, rapid melody that made your feet move. After all the electronically modified popular music that Randy was used to hearing, the simple woodwinds and drums the Bolivars had adapted from the music of their Bolivian Indian forerunners had a refreshing newness. Yet the tunes and beats of the Bolivian dances were not simple; they were very complex, indicating significant embellishment over the centuries. Randy found himself enjoying his chore as he followed his slim daughter in and out among the suspension electrodes, trying to imitate the intricate dance steps her feet were making. The Silverhair enjoyed it too.
"That's enough," said Randy, panting. "I'm pooped."
"I'm not," said Rosey. "You rest and watch." She started the next tune. "This one is called 'Sun Fairies'," she said, and started dancing with the Silverhair again. Randy watched her lithe movements with pride.
She will be a beautiful woman, he thought. Like her mother ...
He watched her some more, and the bouncing bob of short hair on her head reminded him of his month-long battle with her over the length of her hair. Feisty, too ... like her mother ...
"OF ALL the planets, I like this one the best," said Rosey. She was sitting on the sofa in the living room between her parents as they all looked at the image of the surface of the planet moving by on the living room view-wall. Yellow sand dunes, rust-red mountain ranges, grey-white icy lakes, and white polar caps alternated in the view as Spacemaster moved in a terminator orbit th
at followed the shadow line around the planet.
Spacemaster was in an acceleration-augmented close orbit that decreased its orbital period from a nominal ninety minutes to sixty minutes, while at the same time producing a comfortable one-gee environment on the ship instead of the free-fall environment normally associated with orbiting a planet.
"Anyone want the last marshmallow?" said Junior, holding up the toasted brown delicacy from his seat in front of the fireplace. When no one answered, he popped it in his mouth.
"What are you going to name it, Dad?" asked Rosey.
"Well," said Randy, "it is mostly rust-red and sand-yellow, like a Picadilly rose ..."
"You aren't going to name it 'Picadilly', are you?" asked Rosey in disgust. "That's a groaky name for a planet!"
"No," said Randy, smiling. "I'm going to call it 'Rose'."
"Wow!" said Junior, impressed. "Mom is going to have a planet named after her."
"It's named after me, too," Rosey piped up.
"No, it isn't," said Junior. "He didn't say Rose, Junior, he said Rose."
The grandfather clock chimed.
"Ten o'clock," said Rose. "Time to go to bed. We have to warp back tomorrow and catch the two o'clock rotovator to Havana Spaceport. Then, day after that, school starts again."
"Groan," said Junior, getting slowly up and brushing the fireplace ashes off his tights.
AFTER the children were off in bed, Rose and Randy cuddled on the sofa in front of the fireplace, watching the surface of the planet Rose pass by on the view-wall.
"I wish you could come back with us," said Rose.
"Afraid not," said Randy. "Tomorrow I start a three-day long-term strategy meeting with my top executives to plan our development of the Epsilon Eridani system. I'm holding it here in the system to get across the physical reality of the magnitude of the problems and the prospects that lie before us."