Dragon's Egg

by Robert L. Forward

  “Don’t you recognize me, Red-Sky?” Swift-Killer asked.

  “No!” Troop Commander Red-Sky replied.

  “You and I came from the same clan, and you joined my Troop shortly before we went on the expedition to the east pole mountains,” Swift-Killer said, immensely relieved that the one cheela with real authority in this town was someone that she was sure she could convince. Swift-Killer formed a pseudopod, and reached into a pouch that had not been opened since she had left the clan to join the troopers. She pulled out her clan totem and held it out to Red-Sky.

  Red-Sky shuffled nervously. He took the totem and examined it carefully. Then, still holding on to it, he circled around Swift-Killer, examining her very closely. The visitor was one of the largest cheela he had seen since his early youth.

  “Do you remember this scar?” she said, thrusting out a portion of one side. “You gave it to me when I was teaching you short-sword drill in my training camp.”

  “You’re dead!” Red-Sky said, trying to command order back into his bewildered mind.

  “No, I am not,” Swift-Killer said, taking advantage of Red-Sky’s hesitation. “And I want your help in getting a message back to Trooper Headquarters in Bright’s Heaven.”

  Faced with the physical reality of the huge Swift-Killer body that he had known in his youth, and convinced by the clan totem and four buttons of authority on her breast, Red-Sky finally overcame his bewilderment at seeing Swift-Killer in a youthful body, when he himself was almost ready to be an Old One tending hatchlings. He dismissed his armed guard. After arranging for Swift-Killer to send messages to the Central Region Troop Headquarters, the Inner Eye Institute, the Leader of the Combined Clans, and her own clan family, he took them both down to the trooper camp, where finally Cliff-Watcher was able to drop his burden of dragon crystal.

  TIME: 08:05:15 GMT MONDAY 20 JUNE 2050

  Seiko’s announcement came as no real surprise to Pierre. He had suspected the time differential from the surprising rapidity with which the mounds had risen. There was no question in his mind that the job of communication with another race took priority over any other scientific mission, and without hesitation he went to the propulsion console and initiated the move from the east pole to the mound formations ninety degrees around Dragon’s Egg. Because of the mass of the tidal compensators, and the necessity that they all move together to keep the tides from harming the fragile human flesh inside the Dragon Slayer, the move had to be done slowly. As soon as the new position was set into the propulsion command subsystem, he pushed himself from the console chair and floated over to join the group hanging in the air around Seiko and Abdul.

  “We should be shifted to the new position in half-an-hour,” he reported as he joined them.

  Without looking up from her screen, Seiko said, “At a million to one, that will take the equivalent of sixty years.”

  Pierre had already made the calculation himself, but there was no way that he could make the move any faster, the herder probe propulsion systems for the tidal compensators were not made for speed. He gave a quiet shrug, which looked odd on a body that was floating in midair.

  “We have a more serious problem,” he said, addressing the whole crew. “After we get there, what are we going to say?”

  Seiko spoke up, her eyes still on the screen. “There is no way that we can carry on a two-way conversation with a million-to-one time difference. By the time we can think of anything intelligent to say, the person down there who asked the question would have died.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Pierre said. “Of course we don’t know how long they live, but if they last seventy of their type years, then …” He paused to think and Seiko finished for him.

  “There are pi times ten million seconds in a year, times 70 years is 2200 million seconds, which is 2200 sec or about 37 minutes of our time.”

  “Well, that isn’t so bad,” Jean said. “At least we can talk with a person for long enough to get to know him.”

  “He is going to get awfully tired devoting his entire life to a casual conversation with you,” Seiko retorted.

  Pierre took charge. “We are going to have to come up with material for our side of the conversation, and we are probably going to need more than one communication link going at a time. Abdul, how many communication links can we set up?”

  Without turning from the console, Abdul replied, “We have been using the laser radar mapper as a communication link, but it isn’t designed for that job. It has a pulsed modulator and can’t handle high bit rates. The microwave sounder is also available, and I think its modulator can handle up to 100 megahertz. The laser communicator would be ideal, since it can handle a few gigahertz modulation, which at a million to one, would be like the bandwidth of a telephone line; you could send slow facsimile pictures through it, but nothing like a television picture. Unfortunately, the laser communication antennas were never designed to point at the surface of Dragon’s Egg; they are on the main body and one or the other is always pointed out at St. George.”

  “We will have to make do with the laser radar mapper and the microwave sounder until we can get one of the laser communicator dishes reoriented,” Pierre said. He turned in midair and surveyed the faces hanging in the air around him until he found the one he wanted.

  “Amalita,” he said, “put on your suit and get one of those laser communicators dishes pointing at Dragon’s Egg. Meanwhile, I will be contacting St. George and tell them we are going to cut off one of the laser communication links with them.”

  A voice broke in from the communications console around on the other side of the central core.

  “We have been monitoring, Dragon Slayer.” The speaker was Commander Swenson. “Continue your course of action.”

  Amalita pushed off to the suit room. As she went, she called over her shoulder. “I am sure I can mount the communication dish on the laser mapper mount,” she said. “I can’t guarantee the boresight accuracy, but they should be fairly close.”

  Pierre turned to Jean. “I want you to go through the ship’s library for anything that is designed for initial contact with other species. Look in the fiction HoloMem for science fiction stories if you have to, but I think that somewhere in the ship’s encyclopedia you might find something on communication languages.”

  “Meanwhile, we will have to have something to send while Jean is searching the data banks. I will put my children’s books into a computer file for Abdul to put on the communication links. I’ll start with the most elementary books first, then build up to the more adult ones.”

  “But they all presume some sort of prior knowledge,” Cesar protested. “Even your A-B-C books assume the reader knows what an apple is.”

  “They will work if we send all the art work with it,” Pierre said, going around to the console on the other side of the main deck. “Don’t forget, they are going to have lots and lots of time to figure out what each page means while they wait for the next one to print out slowly on their equivalent of a facsimile machine.”

  Cesar left to check out Amalita’s suit before she exited. Abdul had finished sending the crude pictures, and was monitoring the story file that Pierre was building up in the computer.

  Suddenly Seiko announced, “They are replying again. This time it is to the west of the east pole mountains.”

  Moving rapidly, Abdul read off the coordinates that the computer had flashed at the top of Seiko’s screen and keyed them into his communication console. Almost instantly the laser radar was repositioned to beam down to that point, and the messages continued to trickle slowly down to the surface.

  TIME: 08:18:03 GMT MONDAY 20 JUNE 2050

  Swift-Killer’s messages back to Bright’s Heaven caused surprise and shock. Having once been almost forgotten, as is the case when one does not have an immediate family, but merely is one of the members of a large, far-flung clan, Swift-Killer’s strange story made her known throughout the nation. However, the most exciting news for Swift-Killer was
the reply from the Inner Eye Institute. Their first message back to Swift-Killer told her that about eight greats of turns ago, the slow messages from the Inner Eye had stopped. Then about four greats ago, they had started again, only this time they were much faster. The pictures had been sent with pulsations of light that could be seen by everyone, without having to have a dark detector or be one of Bright’s Afflicted. There then followed a copy of the first picture.

  Swift-Killer let Cliff-Watcher read the message string from the Institute for himself, then they both worked on translating the linear string of dashes and blips following the message into the fringed tally string arrangement needed to make a picture. They laid it carefully out on the crust and Swift-Killer flowed onto it.

  “Our message got through, Cliff-Watcher,” Swift-Killer said in a soft whisper. “That climb was not in vain.”

  “How can you tell?” Cliff-Watcher asked.

  Rather than reply, Swift-Killer flowed off the tally fringe and let Cliff-Watcher sense the pattern of knots in the strings.

  “It is like the first one that we sent,” Cliff-Watcher said. “It shows Bright’s Eyes over the east pole and a needle pointing to a position over the Holy Temple, except the needle is a funny skinny one, with a chevron at the tip.”

  “That must be their symbol to indicate direction,” Swift-Killer decided. “It is too thin to support itself, and has odd, unnecessary, sticklike, angular projections. Such strange creatures! Their symbols are as sticklike and angular as they are.”

  “This message must mean that they understand us and will move to a position over Bright’s Heaven,” Cliff-Watcher said.

  “I hope it means that,” Swift-Killer said. She turned some of her eyes up to the seven points of light in the sky. “I don’t see that they have moved yet.”

  Cliff-Watcher repeated Swift-Killer’s glance with his practiced astrologer’s eye. After a moment’s pause he reported, “I think they have moved. Let me get some astrologer sticks.”

  They hunted down the local contingent of astrologers. After a turn of observations, it was concluded that the Eyes of Bright had definitely shifted position. From a viewing point in the town of Swift’s Climb, one of the far-away stars in the sky used to go behind the Inner Eye once every turn. Now the point of light grazed the top of the Inner Eye. The Inner Eye was moving!

  With two-way communication established, Swift-Killer’s strong inquisitive drive took her over completely. She would have to find out more about these strange, slow-living, sticklike creatures, and their magical power that let them float in the sky, impervious to the all-powerful pull of Egg. She had many questions to ask, and her busy mind started working on ways to ask those questions in a fast way that could be done with simple pictures. But first, she had a lot of negotiating to do. She went back out to the swift-sender to send some messages to the Commander of the Eastern Border and the Inner Eye Institute.

  Within a half-dozen turns, Swift-Killer had changed professions. The Commander of the Eastern Border was relieved when Commander Swift-Killer asked to be mustered out. He had been wondering what he was going to do with a trooper commander who had tallied more than enough turns to have been mustered out long ago, yet according to reports looked as youthful as the youngest recruit. Besides, he didn’t have a troop for her to command. He was so relieved, in fact, that he readily agreed to let Swift-Killer have the use of a swift-sender.

  The Inner Eye Institute also had no hesitation in accepting Swift-Killer’s proposal that she join the Institute. If it had not been for her brave climb into the mountains, they would still be gathering pictures at a rate of one dash every few turns. In fact, since Swift-Killer was closer to Bright’s Eyes from her place near the east pole, it was decided to have the first replies come from there, and Swift-Killer would be in charge of sending them.

  Within less than a dozen turns, Swift-Killer had her own swift-sender set up in the compound of the local astrologers, and was beaming out picture after picture into a glancer set at an angle in the crust, to bounce up into the sky toward the Eyes of Bright. She was overjoyed when after two dozen turns she noticed that the Inner Eye started slowly blinking back at her. She could see it with her own eyes! She was at last in communication with another race of beings—and she was Keeper of the Sender.

  TIME: 08:18:33 GMT MONDAY 20 JUNE 2050

  Amalita Shakhashiri Drake slipped neatly into her spacesuit, her long, lithe, ballet-trained body making the usually clumsy procedure look like a dance. She carefully read through the check list, even though she knew it by heart. She should, for she had been supervising emergency suiting drills for the past two years while St. George had slowly made its way across the 1/30 light-year distance that separated Sol from Dragon’s Egg. The neutron star now lay 400 kilometers outside the hull of their tiny science flitter, Dragon Slayer.

  She was in a hurry to get the laser communication dish repositioned, but the crew of Dragon Slayer were too few in number to afford any mistakes. So Amalita waited patiently until someone came to give her a final checkout.

  Ship’s doctor Cesar Ramirez Wong came flying headlong into the upper room, performed a neat somersault, and absorbed his momentum on the ceiling with a carefully programmed flexing of his knees. He rebounded slightly and soon was hanging upside-down in front of her. She noticed idly that the tidal compensators were not working perfectly on the upper deck, for he was slowly drifting up to the ceiling as he read off the check list.

  “… main and emergency air tanks—full. Time to put on your helmet and check air and cooling,” he said.

  Amalita was ahead of him and her muffled voice spoke from behind the visor. “Helmet on—air and cooling fine.”

  He glanced back at the checklist. “Magni-stiction boots …” Amalita flicked a switch on her chest console that rearranged the pseudo-random pattern of the magnetic monopoles in the soles of her boots so that they matched up with the hexagonal pattern of monopoles built into the inner plates and hull of Dragon Slayer.

  Electromagnetic boots would have been simpler if Dragon Slayer could have been built out of steel, but since the neutron star and the tidal compensators outside had significant magnetic moments, the engineers had had to come up with a substitute. Amalita’s boots clanged onto the floor, each foot twisted 30 degrees to the outside as the boots conformed to the hexagonal pattern in the plate. She looked down at her feet and thought idly, “What a sloppy third position. My ballet instructor would never have let me get away with anything that poor.” She flicked off the magni-stiction boots, then slowly rose into the air as Cesar droned on through the check list.

  “You are checked out,” Cesar said as he floated over to the lock controls. “Out you go. Try to move that communication dish to the swivel mount as fast as you can. Don’t forget that if those neutron star creatures are really living a million times faster than we are, fifteen minutes to us is like thirty years to them.”

  Amalita opened the hatch to the air-lock and went in, dogging the door behind her. She signaled to Cesar through the port and felt her suit stiffen as the pressure dropped. The outer hatch swung in, and Amalita held onto her safety line as she cautiously looked out. Although she had been outside St. George a dozen times on repair jobs in the long journey out to Dragon’s Egg, this was the first time she had been outside Dragon Slayer, and she knew the scenery was going to be very confusing. Anything in space that causes confusion is a prime source of accidents, and she had not lived this long by taking chances in out-ship jobs.

  Amalita looked out of the air-lock set in the middle of Dragon Slayer. Since the ship was inertially stabilized, the stars remained fixed in the sky. However—flashing in front of the port five times a second was the bright white globe of Dragon’s Egg. At 400 kilometers distance, the 20-kilometer-diameter neutron star was about five times bigger than Sol at Earth and took up an appreciable part of the sky.

  “If only we were orbiting around it at a faster rate, so that it would blur out into a ring,” she
thought. “At five times a second it is right in the visual flicker band and is going to be a real annoyance.”

  She moved to the portal and put her head out. With her view enlarged, she now saw the complete ring of tidal compensators encircling the ship. They revolved about their common center at five times a second while simultaneously orbiting about Dragon’s Egg. Because there were six of them, they seemed almost fused together into a solid ring.

  Amalita paused to get accustomed to the sight. There was a bright white globe of light circling about the middle of Dragon Slayer, and at right angles to that a ring of glowing red that twirled about the ship like a wedding ring spinning on a table. The spins of the two matched so that the plane of the ring was always perpendicular to the direction to the neutron star.

  “How are you doing?” Cesar’s voice came through the suit communication link.

  “Fine,” Amalita said. “I’m just waiting here to get used to the whirling scenery. It reminds me of the time back in the Lunar Ballet Academy when I tried to break the Guinness Book of Records mark for the most number of fouettés in a row. After twirling around on one foot for over one hundred turns, I missed my kick, lost my spotting point, and the vertigo got to me—I don’t think things were whirling around as much then as they are now.”

  Amalita looked up at the top of Dragon Slayer to the large central turret containing the solar mirror, laser radar, microwave sounder, and other star-oriented instruments. The turret was rotating five times a second, keeping the instruments pointed at Dragon’s Egg. “You haven’t turned off the turret,” she complained. “I can’t work on it while it is spinning around.”

  Cesar replied, “Since you first have to remove a laser communication dish from its mount on the hull, and won’t be ready to install it on the turret for several minutes, I thought we should wait to de-spin the turret. Once we stop it, we will have to cut off communication to the neutron star beings. Abdul is now making up a simple message to let them know that we will only stop for a short while, so they don’t think we have given up and gone away.”