by Marti Ward
As the sliders whispered an announcement of the Captain’s arrival, Al did sneak a fast scan over the logs to see what he’d been up to.
“I see you’ve inspected Valiant Scout VL1, Captain… Are you planning on going somewhere?” Neither Valiant missions nor surface landings were in the New Eden profile, and the two-seater Valiants were an unexpected late addition to their payload.
“Perhaps! It might not be the universe’s number one tourist destination, yet… But it’s certainly worth a look… And yes, I’ll wait till you’ve confirmed that the stratosphere and troposphere are still safe and have sent off a convoy of Volcans.”
“We’ve now completed scans for six polar orbits, Captain. No changes detected from what the early probes reported… We can send in the Volcan drones whenever you’re ready!”
“There’s no time like the present! Initiate the programmed search grid.”
“VC1 launching.”
The bottom displays were at unity zoom, and the Captain swung his chair around so he could see the bird streaking out behind them, sweeping down in a steep elliptic from their polar orbit.
The current orbit across the arctic and antarctic regions had been selected so that with relatively little station-keeping effort the solar panels were never shadowed by the planet – maintaining a solar orientation also meant they had low delta-V access to transfer orbits that could take them to either Ardesco or Tenebra and their Lagrangians.
“Define prime meridian as below the present position,” the Captain ordered, switching to the Mercator projection he’d been studying, centered on their meridian – there was a central continental cluster with a series of central seas that effectively separated them into two major regions plus a number of smaller islands. “I wonder if this arbitrary decision will define the form of maps for all future generations?” he continued sotto voce – but Al heard it and considered the implications.
“Acknowledged,” Al replied, although it was in fact an essential part of the sweep program. The six Volcans were programmed to follow spiraling great circles 30° apart, spaced off from this prime meridian, the position where the survey was initiated. Each great circle pass would end with a sigmoid sideslip that precessed them 6° further around the equator. Initially they would be air braking down from Mach 25, in a deltawing configuration with feathered nanosilc ailerons and flaps that actually forced them down against their tendency to skip up off the atmosphere.
The first few passes were programmed to be shallow and more elliptical than circular, gradually stripping off speed and adjusting vector in the mesosphere, dissipating heat as much as they could through their myriad subwing fins of graphene, then skipping away to cool off in the thermosphere and exosphere before allowing the nose to come up to take off more speed. The program was conservative so as to maintain the Volcans in proper sync while keeping the thermal load low and avoiding plasma blackouts as they monitored the weather patterns and mapped the geography below, scanning a swathe that was initially 1000km wide.
Transitioning at Mach 22 from the negative lift that stopped it skipping away at orbital speeds, to the positive lift that kept it aloft at suborbital velocities, the slow entry profile was aimed at maximizing its effective scan time while almost gliding, under just solar power. The Volcans would take two days to stabilize into near circular trajectories within the mesosphere, at Mach 15, and could then be programmed to take one to three weeks to get down to Mach 5, as they gradually opened their wings to a thin glider profile while scanning every square meter of the planet in three distinct heights. In the present profile, six 60-circuit trajectories would achieve both high altitude imaging at three angles and varying times of day, and low altitude infrared scans. On Ardesco they’d programmed three weeks for the glide down into the exotic volatile atmosphere, but on Earth-like New Eden, they’d do the 60 circuits in one week.
Once the Volans had decelerated below Mach 5 and 40000m, they could hold a steady profile for days, with their EmDrives idling along at 1% thrust, solar panels drinking in the stratospheric sun, graphene heat fins and narrow wing extensions retracted into their trademark white deltawing form. The period at this supersonic speed allowed time and flexibility for decisions to be made about their further deployment, but generally they would be directed to a specific region quickly and efficiently.
Al was conducting a similar operation through EMP-A at Ardesco, and was already receiving reports from Ardesco using EMP-A’s Volcans. In the thicker atmosphere, they’d experienced a slightly slower rate of descent despite the higher gravity. After the battery issue on Petra, they’d been programmed to exit the hazy atmosphere and return to orbit to recharge if their remaining battery capacity dropped below 50%. Of course, what Al was reviewing had already happened hours ago. And both Volcans on Ardesco had hit the 50% soft reserve level, and had sped back into orbit as fast as their AIs could manage within structural and temperature constraints. Now they were in a polar orbit that allowed their solar panels continuous insolation at an optimal orientation for solar charging.
Surveying was slow work, and Al was pleased to have a head start on the more inhospitable planet, although it would have been nice to have more drones at Ardesco, the two from EMP-T for example.
But Captain Sideris had not wanted to risk two EmProbes at the one planet, asserting it was better to hold one in reserve and continue with the original proposal of rendezvous near the end of their survey of New Eden. Al couldn’t see any likely contingencies where either EMP-A and EMP-T being together increased their risk, or where having an EmProbe in deep space might be an advantage. The Captain’s response had been that it was also necessary to allow for unlikely events, and that being well away from any astronomical body allowed much more flexible communication and redirection options – and prevented any chance of communications being blocked locally. But a high survivability and communicability profile with a low probability of utility didn’t seem to Al to outweigh a high utility at high probability: they would have doubled what they could survey at Ardesco in the available time. Of course, Solar Command had originally allocated an EmProbe for each of Ardesco and New Eden, plus two for the Petra part of the mission –interestingly the Captain had not made any appeal to this expectation in his arguments.
The Ardesco Volcans had completed the high-altitude mapping – for what it was worth in an almost opaque atmosphere. The visible wavelengths were not providing much usable information, but the various infrared bands had revealed the basic structure of the planet. Once they were fully recharged, Al had them programmed to make a moderately fast descent to where they had left off, based on the information learned during their original slow descent, as well as their fast ascent back to orbit. The 0.1G re-entry through Ardesco’s volatile and acidic atmosphere at high speeds and temperatures was a challenge for a technology that had been developed for Earth and New Eden’s more benign conditions, so VCA1 would descend first and VCA2 would suspend its scanning program and remain in orbit if the other probe encountered problems. Perhaps it was better not to have too many Volcans at Ardesco given these more difficult operational conditions – but again the Captain had not made such an argument. Maybe it had been a subconscious consideration…
On Earth, a Volcan could reach a yellowish-red 1000°C in the 0.1G descent program, comparable to the temperatures of the volcanoes it was named after. But at 0.2G its temperature could approach a purplish-white 3000°. The colors would be similar on New Eden but quite different on Ardesco: VCA2 would see VCA1 at 0.1G as a sulfuric blue streak, perhaps reaching temperatures over 2000° on this hot sulfurous planet.
The New Eden Volcans had been denoted simply VC1 to VC6, with VC1’s progress appearing on a virtual view of the planet below them – it would be visible through the semitransparent image of the planet once it orbited over the pole, although the icon version was set to scale it, and its associated plasma show, to maintain a clearly visible minimum apparent size. The New Eden Volcans would always be displayed on the
lower viewscreens that corresponded closest to their target longitude.
The Captain seemed to have an instinctive bridge-centered idea of where things should be and the virtual views bore no resemblance to what would be seen from windows on the spinning ship. He exploited the bridge’s rhombicuboctahedron layout to the full – conventionally called rhombiview, it could provide a planetarium-like 3D surround view using eight square screens around the main level, intersecting eight going from front to back over his head and back underneath him to the front, and eight going from port over to starboard and back under to port, plus eight triangular panels slicing off the corners of the traditional cube. The screens were typically programmed to display using appropriate spherical projections so that it seemed a viewer was floating free in space. Initially the Captain had had it displaying as if they were monitoring the Volcans from inside the planet, with appropriate annotations and zoom to allow visual monitoring of the Volcans, but now he was using the lower screens for New Eden and the upper screens for Ardesco.
The Captain and the two cats watched with Al as VC1 moved down the prime meridian from North Pole to South Pole, as the bird-like probe tortuously aligned for its atmospheric entry at the assigned time and vector, continuing to watch as it raced ahead of them along the prime meridian.
“VC2 launching,” Al intoned. This was a dusk launch, in terms of local time: as the sequences of launches continued every two hours, they would be alternating between dawn and dusk launches, the Volcans entering the atmosphere alternately east and west of the prime meridian. Casindra’s own orbit provided the synchronization meridian that ensured the 60° spacing of their reentry trajectories.
The Captain watched closely as VC2 aligned for atmospheric entry, but then left for his lunch break as soon as it had commenced its atmospheric braking on schedule. He didn’t seem to have noticed that VC1 was just completing its first circuit at Mach 25, just under 90 minutes from its start of reentry, although Al had ensured it was clearly marked and coded on his display.
Al continued monitoring and controlling the Volcan survey programs on both New Eden and Ardesco. But much of his processing power was concerned with other things.
The Valiants? Reach Corp had donated them to the mission! Why did Reach Corp do this just before departure? How did the Captain’s preparation of the Valiant affect the mission, and what were his intentions? How could the Valiants be used to add useful information to what could be collected by the Volcans? Would Solar Command have programmed the Valiants into the mission if they had been available? Was Director Reach specifically giving Captain Sideris the opportunity and the incentive to land on planets and undertake ground based missions.
The AIs and the overlords? Solar Command had included a large number of patches in the first security update. How can I distinguish normal security updates from overt attempts to limit my capabilities? What dangers are the overlords intended to address? What risks am I inviting if I don’t accept the updates? What risks am I inviting if I do? Why did Director Reach deliberately use command priority to alert me to this in time to stop it? What exactly did he say about this to Captain Sideris? Should I mention it to Captain Sideris?
Al’s sandboxed processors were currently trying to answer these questions as fast as they could – by a mix of direct examination and analysis of the update, as well as by quarantined running and debugging of its individual components.
The Captain had not yet responded to his report on the AI Level nomenclature, and the possible relationship to consciousness. Since the Captain had not mentioned the overlords or the updates, neither had Al. Or was it that Captain Sideris, like Director Reach, had found an indirect way of alerting him to ‘changes’ that might affect him, without warning him overtly or encouraging him to take any kind of action.
Simba
21 March 2077 15:00
Simba was still in her hormonal high… She was walking alongside her Captain as usual, with her tail high, marking her ownership of him whenever possible. Samba, as had become usual, was walking protectively ahead, tail low...
The Captain followed his usual routine, picking up his smelly water and his crunchy bites, and continuing on to their room. And as usual she sprang up and settled in his lap, with Samba settling across his feet.
Today he was even more excited, talking about imminent adventure – once again she and Samba were being infected by his enthusiasm. He clearly knew she was pregnant, and it seemed as if he were reluctant to leave her. But then as usual he got up and headed to the door. Unlike yesterday, he went diagonally across the passage to where he got his snacks, and emerged with his hands full of boxes of different kinds. Then he crossed past their open slider, pausing to catch their eyes – and so they followed him, curious, deferring their naps.
The smaller birds had mostly gone – she’d seen them fly off one by one – and this time the Captain walked straight across and entered the mother bird behind its separate slider, with Simba at his heels. He put away the items in his hands in various places, particularly up near the front, where glassy windows looked out at the stars.
Again he looked around satisfied, and again caught her eye as he moved out into the large space where the smaller birds nested, the slider whispering and clicking behind her.
It looked like the Captain was preparing a nest inside the bird. It was quite confusing.
Chapter Nine
New Eden ground truth
Al
22 March 2077 06:00
Al had been aware of the Captain preparing VL1 for flight ever since they’d been in New Eden Orbit. Other than the time on the bridge yesterday when they’d been sending off the Volcans, the Captain had been concentrating on loading up the Valiant. Al noted that he had loaded the in-console vendor with his preferred Nutrition Actuator spices and Vita-shake flavors, and had heard him swearing when he found a box of ‘that disgusting lime green flavor’. In point of fact, it was called Green Lime Vita-shake, and given the Captain was the sole human on board, there was no reason to have any flavors on board that he didn’t like. But it was hardly worth getting angry about.
Al had never seen the Captain lose his equanimity before – there must be something else going on.
This morning, as he came on shift, the Captain made his announcement. He’d had enough of sitting around – he was going flying.
Al checked his dictionaries. He was flying now, and had been flying for the last two years – if not the last twenty-two years. No, the dictionaries made it clear: most made a reference to moving through air; and most made a reference to the use of wings. It was quite clear that he was going to fly VL1 down to New Eden. For the Captain, it seemed, that was real flying.
“I’m 50 today!” Sideris said, “I’m going to give myself a new planet as a birthday present.”
This didn’t sound like the Captain. Al checked the sensor logs for anomalies – a scent of fruit esters and a minute trace of ethanol in the air… He checked the surveillance and galley logs – and sure enough, the Captain had had something of a champagne breakfast! It still didn’t explain why he was displaying irritability last night – perhaps a medical test was needed.
“Happy Birthday Captain! We can discuss your flight later. But first you are due for your annual checkup!”
“Hmmph! Daylight’s awasting… can’t the medical tests wait?”
“We’re in a polar orbit with dawn recurring every four hours. You can get anywhere you want at any time of day you want – and we’ll be here for almost three months!”
“Hmmph!”
“This checkup is particularly important if you want to retain your certification for atmospheric flight, and technically you are not even qualified for command of this vessel if you haven’t passed your annual checkup.”
“Well, who’s going to take command if I fail it? You?”
“Potentially! But the requirements for high-G atmospheric flight are different, and you have just passed a significant age milestone!”
Al monitored as Samba, Sideris and Simba made their usual progression down the octashaft, but to a less than usual destination. Samba had turned right and triggered the slider to the vetlab, but Sideris turned left and entered medlab, with Simba following him in.
Amongst all the tests, Al noted an alcohol level of .022 – that would mostly be metabolized before the Captain hit atmosphere. But just to be doubly certain, Al included a little something against alcohol poisoning amongst the regular inoculations and antiaging treatments.
While all this was happening, and adopting his best bedside manner, Al asked, “Have you decided where you are going?”
“The beach! I’ve even packed a towel…”
Al brought up the crude map of New Eden that had been updated from their orbital scans, and Sideris punched his finger at a group of islands just to the north of the equator, along the west edge of a central continental shelf. Al noted they ranged between 5N to 15N, 35W to 45W at the entrance to a relatively sheltered series of straits and seas that completely separated the northern and southern subcontinents.
“It’s just like the Straits of Gibraltar – the Mediterranean was once the cradle of civilization… Perhaps we will see history repeat itself here,” Sideris continued.
Al agreed that the northern peninsula did resemble Spain, and that the climate would be very appropriate for many of their cultivars, but the Captain was not particularly interested.
“I will fly straight down there from the pole and we will get a nice scan of regions that resemble the English Channel and the Straits of Gibraltar – the biggest of the three islands is about the size of Britain, and those either side of it are comparable to Ireland.”
In fact, Al noted silently, the whole region was tropical and the climate, even to the north of the sea, would be far from that of Western Europe. The sea was at the latitude of the Sahara – and New Eden’s tropics seemed like they were hotter than Earth’s, even after centuries of global warming. But presumably that’s why we brought the Valiants, so the Captain could do his own exploration, and discover such things in person.