Iron mw-1

by Poul Anderson

  She halted. Markham sat alone, looking. His face was haggard. “Well, hi,” she said tentatively.

  Markham gave her a glance. “How do you do, Pilot Fenger.” The words came flat.

  She plumped herself down in the chair beside him. “Quite a sight, eh?” He nodded, his gaze back on the screen.

  “A trite thing to say,” she persisted. “But I suspect Juan’s wrong. He hopes to find words grand enough. I suspect it can’t be done.”

  “I was not aware Pilot Yoshii had such interests,” said Markham without unbending.

  “Nah, you wouldn’t be. You’ve been about as outgoing as a black hole. What’s between you and Dorcas? You seem to be off speaking terms with her.”

  “If you please, I am not in the mood for gossip.” Markham started to rise, to leave.

  Carita took hold of his arm. It was a gentle grip, but he could easier have broken free of a salvage grapple. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’ve been halfway on the alert for a chance to talk with you. Who does any more, except ’Pass the salt’ at mess, that sort of thing? How lonesome you must be.”

  He refrained from ineffectual resistance, continued to stare before him, and clipped, “Thank you for your concern, but I manage. Kindly let go.”

  “Look,” she said, “we’re supposed to be shipmates. It’s a hell of an exciting adventure—Christ, we’re the first, the very first, in all this weird wonder but it’s cold out, too, and doesn’t care an atom’s worth about human beings. I keep thinking how awful it must be, cut off from any friendship the way you are. Not that you’ve exactly encouraged us, but we could try harder.”

  Now he did regard her. “Are you inviting me to your bed?” he asked in the same tone as before.

  Slightly taken aback, she recovered, smiled, and replied, “No, I wasn’t, but if it’ll make you feel better we can have a go at it.”

  “Or make you feel better? I am not too isolated to have noticed that lately Pilot Yoshii has ceased visiting your cabin. Is Quartermaster Ryan insufficient?”

  Carita’s face went sulfur black. She dragged her fingers from him. “My mistake,” she said. “The rest were right about you. Okay, you can take off.”

  “With pleasure.” He stalked out.

  She mumbled an oath, drew forth a cigar, lit and blew fumes that ran the ventilators and air renewers up to capacity. Calm returned after a while.

  She laughed ruefully. Ryan had told her more than once that she was too soft-hearted; and he was a man prone to fits of improvident generosity.

  She was about to go when Saxtorph’s voice boomed from the intercom: “Attention, please. Got an announcement here that I’m sure will interest everybody.

  “We’ll hold a conference in a few days, when more information is in. Then you can ask whatever questions you want. Meanwhile, I repeat my order, do not pester the science team. They’re working around the clock and don’t need distractions.

  “However, Arthur Tregennis has given me a quick rundown on what’s been learned so far, to pass on to you. Here it is, in my layman’s language. Don’t blame him for any garbling.

  “They have a full analysis of the sun’s composition, along with other characteristics. That wasn’t too easy. For one thing, it’s so cool that its peak emission frequency is in the radio band. Because the absorption and re-emission of the interstellar medium in between isn’t properly known, we had to come here to get decent readings.

  “They bear out what the prof and Laurinda thought. This sun isn’t just metal-poor, it’s metal-impoverished. No trace of any element heavier than iron, and little of that. Yes, you’ve all heard as how it must be very old, and has only stayed on the main sequence this long because it’s such a feeble dwarf. But now they have a better idea of just how long ’this’ has been.

  “Estimated age, fifteen billion years. Our star is damn near as old as the universe.

  “It probably got slung out of its parent galaxy early on. In that many years you can cover a lot of kilometers. We’re lucky that we—meaning the human species—are alive while it’s in our neighborhood.

  “And… in the teeth of expectations, it’s got planets. Already the instruments are finding signs of oddities in them, no two alike, nothing we could have foreseen. Well, we’ll be taking a close look. Stand by.

  “Over.”

  Carita sprang to her feet and cheered.

  Once when they were young bucks, chance-met, beachcombing together in the Islands, Kam Ryan and Bob Saxtorph acquired a beat-up rowboat, catrigged it after a fashion, stowed some food and plenty of beer aboard, and set forth on a shakedown cruise across Kaulakahi Channel. Short runs off Waimea had gone reasonably well, but they wanted to be sure of the seaworthiness before making it a lure for girls. They figured they could reach Niihau in 12 or 15 hours, land if possible, rest up in any case, and come back. They didn’t have the price of an outboard, but in a pinch they could row.

  To avoid coping with well-intentioned busybodies, they started after dark. By that time sufficient beer had gone down that they forgot about tuning in a weather report before leaving their tent—at the verge of kona season. It was a beautiful night, half a moon aloft and so many stars they could imagine they were in space. Wind lulled, seas whooshed, rigging creaked, the boat rocked forward and presently a couple of dolphins appeared, playing alongside for hours, a marvel that made even Kam sit silent in wonder. Then toward dawn, the goal a vague darkness ahead, clouds boiled out of the west, wind sharpened and shrilled, suddenly rain slanted like a flight of spears and through murk the mariners heard waves rumble against rocks.

  It wasn’t much of a storm, really, but ample to deal with Wahine. Seams opened, letting in water to join that which dashed over the gunwales. Sail first reefed, soon struck, stays nonetheless gave way and the mast went. It would have capsized the hull had Bob not managed to heave it free. Thereafter he had the oars, keeping bow on to the waves, while Kam bailed. A couple of years older, and no weakling, the Hawaiian couldn’t have rowed that long at a stretch. Eventually he did his share and a bit at the rudder, when somehow he worked the craft through a gap between two reefs which roared murder at them. They hit coral a while later, but close enough to shore that they could swim, never sure who saved the life of who in the surf. Collapsing behind a bush, they slept the weather out.

  Afterward they limped off till they found a road and hitched a ride. They’d been blown back to Kauai.

  Side by side, they stood on the carpet before a Coast Guard officer and endured what they must.

  Next day in their tent, Kam said, unwontedly solemn—the vast solemnity of youth—“Bob, listen. You’ve been my hoa since we met, you became my hoalohal but what we’ve been through, what you did, makes you a hoapili.”

  “Aw, wasn’t more’n I had to, and you did just as much,” mumbled the other, embarrassed. “If you mean what I suppose you do, okay, I’ll call you kamnwrat, and let’s get on with whatever we’re going to do.”

  “How about this? I’ve got folks on the Big Island. A tiny little settlement tucked away where nobody ever comes. Beautiful country, mountains and woods. People still live in the old kanaka style. How’d you like that?”

  “Um-m, how old a style?”

  Kam was relieved at being enabled to laugh. “You won’t eat long pig! Everybody knows English, though they use Hawaiian for choice, and never fear, you can watch the Chimp Show. But it’s a great, relaxed, cheerful life—you’ve got to experience the girls to believe—the families don’t talk about it much when they go outside, or invite haolena in, because tourists would ruin it—but you’ll be welcome, I guarantee you. How about it?”

  The month that followed lived up to his promises, and then some. Recollections of it flew unbidden across the years as Ryan worked in the galley. Everybody else was in the gym, where chairs and projection equipment had been brought, for the briefing the astronomers would give. Rover boosted on automatic; her instruments showed nothing ahead that she couldn’t handle by herself
for the next million kilometers. The quarter master could have joined the group, but he wanted to make a victory feast ready. Before long, they’d be too busy to appreciate his art.

  He did have a screen above the counter, monitoring the assembly. Tregennis and Laurinda stood facing their audience. The Plateaunian said, with joy alive beneath the dry words: “It is a matter of semantics whether we call this a first- or a second-generation system. Hydrogen and helium are overwhelmingly abundant, in proportions consistent with condensation shortly after the Big Bang—about which, not so incidentally, we may learn something more than hitherto. However, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silicon, and neon are present in significant quantities; magnesium and iron are not insignificant; other elements early in the periodic table are detectable. There has naturally been a concentration of heavier atoms in the planets, especially the inner ones, as gases selectively escaped. They are not mere balls of water ice.

  “It seems clear, therefore, that this system formed out of a cloud which had been enriched by mass loss from older stars in their red giant phase. A few supernovae may have contributed, too, but any elements heavier than iron which they may have supplied are so scant that we will only find them by mass spectrography of samples from the solid bodies. They may well be nonexistent. Those older stars must have come into being as soon after the Beginning as was physically possible, in a proto-galaxy not too far then from the matter which was to become ours, but now surely quite distant from us.”

  “As we dared hope,” said the Crashlander. Tears glimmered in her eyes like dew on rose petals.

  “Oh, good for you!” called Yoshii.

  “A relic-hell, finding God’s fingerprints,” Carita said, and clapped a hand to her mouth. Ryan grinned, nobody else noticed.

  “How many planets?” asked Saxtorph.

  “Five,” Tregennis replied.

  “Hm. Isn’t that kind of few, even for a dwarf? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. We would have found anything of a size much less than what you would call a planet’s.”

  “Especially since the Bode function is small, as you’d expect,” Dorcas added. Having worked with the astronomers, she scarcely needed this session. “The planets huddle close in. We haven’t found an Oort cloud either. No comets at all, we think.”

  “Outer bodies may well have been lost in the collision that sent this star into exile,” Laurinda said. “And in fifteen billion years, any comets that were left got… used up.”

  “There probably was a sixth planet until some unknown date in the past,” Tregennis stated. “We have indications of asteroids extremely close to the sun. Gravitational radiation—no, it must chiefly have been friction with the interstellar medium that caused a parent body to spiral in until it passed the Roche limit and was disrupted.”

  “Hey, wait,” Saxtorph said. “Dorcas talks of a Bode function. That implies the surviving planets are about where theory says they ought to be. How’d they avoid orbital decay?”

  Tregennis smiled. “That’s a good question.”

  Saxtorph laughed. “Shucks, you sound like I was back in the Academy.”

  “Well, at this stage any answers are hypothetical, but consider. In the course of its long journey, quite probably through more galaxies than ours, the system must sometimes have crossed nebular regions where matter was comparatively dense. Gravitation would draw the gas and dust in, make it thickest close to the sun, until the sun swallowed it altogether. As a matter of fact, the planetary orbits have very small eccentricities—friction has a circularizing effect and their distances from the primary conform only roughly to the theoretical distribution.” Tregennis paused. “A further anomaly we cannot explain, though it may be related. We have found—marginally; we think we have found—molecules of water and OH radicals among the asteroids, almost like a ring around the sun.” He spread his hands. “Well, I won’t live to see every riddle we may come upon solved.”

  He had fought to get here, Ryan remembered.

  “Let’s hear about those planets,” Carita said impatiently. Her job would include any landings. “Uh, have you got names for them? One, Two, Three might cause mixups when we’re in a hurry.”

  “I’ve suggested using Latin ordinals,” Laurinda answered. She sounded almost apologetic.

  “Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta,” Dorcas supplied. “Top-flight idea. I hope it becomes the standard for explorers.” Laurinda flushed.

  “I have agreed,” Tregennis said. “The philologists can bestow official names later, or whoever is to be in charge of such things. Let us give you a precis of what we have learned to date.”

  He consulted a notator in his hand. “Prima,” he recited. “Mean orbital radius, approximately 0.4 A.U. Diameter, approximately 16,000 kilometers. Since it has no satellite, the mass is still uncertain, but irradiation is such that it cannot be icy. We presume the material is largely silicate, which, allowing for self compression, gives a mass on the order of Earth’s. No signs of air.

  “Secunda, orbiting at 0.7 A.U., resembles Prima, but is slightly larger and does have a thin atmosphere, comparable to Mars. It has a moon as well. Remarkably, the moon has a higher albedo than expected, a yellowish hue. The period tells us the mass, of course, which reinforces our guess about Prima.

  “Tertia is almost exactly one A.U. out. It is a superterrestrial, mass of five Earths, as confirmed by four moons, also yellowish. A somewhat denser atmosphere than Secunda’s; we have confirmed the presence of nitrogen and traces of oxygen.”

  “What?” broke from Saxtorph. “You mean it might have life?”

  Laurinda shivered a bit. “The water is forever frozen,” she told him. “Carbon dioxide must often freeze. We don’t know how there can be any measurable amount of free oxygen. But there is.”

  Tregennis cleared his throat. “Quarta,” he said. “A gas giant at 1.5 A.U., mass 230 Earths, as established by ten moons detected thus far. Surprisingly, no rings. Hydrogen and helium, presumably surrounding a vast ice shell which covers a silicate core with some iron. It seems to radiate weakly in the radio frequencies, indicating a magnetic field, though the radio background of the sun is such that at this distance we can’t be sure. We plan a flyby on our way in. Quarta will be basic to understanding the dynamics of the system. It is its equivalent of Jupiter.”

  “Otherwise we have only detected radio from Secunda,” Laurinda related, “but it is unmistakable, cannot be of stellar origin. It is really curious intermittent, seemingly modulated, unless that is an artifact of our skimpy data.” She smiled. “How lovely if intelligent beings are transmitting.”

  Markham stirred. He had put his chair behind the row of the rest. “Are you serious?” he nearly shouted.

  Surprised looks went his way. “Oh, no,” Laurinda said. “Just a daydream. We’ll find out what is actually causing it when we get there.”

  “Well, Quinta remains,” Tregennis continued, “in several respects, the most amazing object of all. Mass 103 Earths—seven moons found—at 2.8 A.U. It does have a well-developed ring system. Hydrogen helium atmosphere, but with clear spectra of methane, ammonia, and… water vapor. Water in huge quantities. Turbulence, and a measured temperature far above expectations. Something peculiar has happened.

  “Are there any immediate questions? If not, Laurinda and Dorcas have prepared graphics—charts, diagrams, tables, pictures—which we would like to show. Please feel free to inquire, or to propose ideas. Don’t be bashful. You are all intelligent people with a good understanding of basic science. Any of you may get an insight which we specialists have missed.”

  Markham rose. “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Huh?” asked Saxtorph, amiably enough. “You want to go now when this is really getting interesting?”

  “I do not expect I can make a contribution.” Markham hesitated. “I am a little indisposed. Best I lie down for a while. Do not worry. I will soon be well. Carry on.” He sketched a bow and departed.

  “What do you know, he is hu
man,” Carita said.

  “We ought to be kinder to him than we have been, poor man,” Laurinda murmured.

  “He hasn’t given us much of a chance, has he?” replied Yoshii.

  “Stow that,” Saxtorph ordered. “No backbiting.”

  “Yes,” added Dorcas, “let’s proceed with the libretto.”

  Eagerness made Tregennis tremble as he obliged.

  In his galley, Ryan frowned. Something didn’t feel quite right. While be followed the session he continued slicing the mahi mahi he had brought frozen from Earth, but his mind was no longer entirely on either.

  Time passed. It became clear that the Quarta approach was going to be an intellectual orgy, the more so because Quinta happened to be near inferior conjunction and thus a lot of information about that planet would be arriving, too. Ryan wiped hands on apron, left his preparations, and stumped up toward the flight deck.

  He met Markham coming back. They halted and regarded each other. The companionway thrummed around them. “Hello, there,” the quartermaster said slowly. “I thought you were in your cabin.”

  Markham stiffened. “I am on my way, if it is any of your business.”

  “Long way ’round.”

  “It… occurred to me to check certain stations. This is an old ship, refitted. Frankly, Captain Saxtorph relies too much on his machinery.”

  “What sort of thing did you want to check on?”

  “Who are you to ask?” Markham flung. “You are the quartermaster.”

  “And you are the passenger.” Ryan’s bulk blocked the stairs. “I wouldn’t be in this crew if I didn’t have a pretty fair idea of how all the equipment works. I’m responsible for maintaining a lot of it.”

  “I have commanded spacecraft.”

  “Then you know each system keeps its own record.” Ryan’s smile approximated a leer, or a snarl. “Save the skipper a bunch of data retrievals. Where were you and what were you doing?”