Winter
Page 36
“There go a pair of magnificent and righteous women,” Keeler said.
The pilot shrugged. “I reckon I’m a man now, sir.”
A few seconds later, Leo dropped below the deck and onto the launch rails.
As Always, whenever we leave a planet, we try to have some idea of a way forward. We want to have some idea of where a planet is going to go.
Also, our mission is one of science as well as exploration. While the Commander and the Tactical Chief were gallivanting all across the planet and Goneril Lear was licking the genitalia (metaphorically, at least, as far as I know) of people on the planet she thought were powerful and influential, cadres of geologists and climatologists were studying the 10 004 Horologium System. We found millions of datapoints on the other planets in the system, as well as its suns.
If our calculations are right, they may have to think of another name for the planet.
Climatology Laboratory – Deck 42
The subject of the lecture was “Climate Evolution on the Planet Winter.” Kayliegh Driver stood at the front of the laboratory before several hologram projections of the planet Winter. It was her job to explain to Keeler, Lear, and a few section chiefs what the ship’s Science Core had been doing while the more interesting parts of the crew had been playing out dramas on the planet’s surface and in the decks below.
“A lot of planets have ice ages,” she began. “Before the colonial area, Sapphire had several ice ages, most of which lasted several thousand years.”
“So, you’re saying Winter isn’t a permanent ice-world,” Keeler prompted, grumpily.
“I am saying it hasn’t always been. We have some recovered some fossils showing Winter was once almost subtropical. Which makes sense in context. It’s very difficult for cold worlds to develop sustainable ecosystems. From the perspective of life, warmer is better.” Ah, thought Keeler. A scientific statement I can relate to, ‘warmer is better.’
“So, we in Science Core asked ourselves, is Winter a permanent ice box, or is it in an ice age. To find out, we have done some ice core sampling using probes, measured ion flux on Winter and the other planets, and did some solar radiation modeling. Winter’s primary star has increased its energy output 0.04 per cent over the past century. It will probably increase another 0.08 percent over the next century.” Keeler nodded professorially, “Za, I see.”
“The climate changes are already manifesting themselves in increased surface and atmospheric temperatures. There have already been changes. This is why that colony pod…” Keeler cringed “was at sea instead of land.”
“The seas have risen that much?”
“That was a partial factor, but part of it, too, is the glaciers on the other side of the continent have melted a little bit. The continent has been slowly tilting, and this side has lowered. Basically, in another thousand years or so, Winter could be turning into Spring.”
This really shocked Keeler, for reasons he could not name. “Will the inhabitants still live forever in the new climate?” Keeler asked.
Driver shrugged. “We never established a link between the climate and the longevity of the inhabitants, or that their longevity was permanent for that matter.” But Keeler knew it would. When Spring came, they would begin to age again. He knew this with absolute certainty in a way he could not explain. If asked, he might have said that the planet had kept them alive, somehow, as though it needed company in its long Winter’s night. As spring arrived, and life returned, it would no longer need them, and they would no longer be paying for their lives by spending it on the planet’s cold wet surface.
He might have said this, but it would have cast grave doubt on his sanity.
So, anyway, at this point, Winter is about to be left facing our ass end. Ship mostly okay, planet mostly harmless, and crew mostly all right. The question is where to point Pegasus. We had an itinerary and there were still many colonies left in this Quadrant to explore, including a bunch we got from the Indies. So, our alternatives have already been expanded. Not to mention our urgent need to re-supply at one of the Odyssey Project Way-Stations.
If we had recovered the charts from the library, we probably could have chosen from even more, or found some worlds that were interesting or dangerous. However, the possibility also arose to do something really insane and stupid that could get us all killed or permanently lost, so, what do you think the boss is going to decide?
Prime Commander’s Study
“… and so, I said to them, ‘so long, farewell, live long and prosper… well, prosper anyway, you seem to have the living long part down. Adios amigos, until we meet again, which we won’t, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Hey, what am I saying? What haven’t you guys done that I wouldn’t do?’ Then, I gave them a little chin wave, like this.” Keeler demonstrated his chin wave.
“And so concluded the captain’s final official words on behalf of the people of Republic and Sapphire to the people of the planet Winter,” Lear said, drily.
“Za,” the Prime Commander agreed, grinning like he was back to his old self, although, in retrospect, he thought he could have done better.
“So, onto our next order of business,” Lear said, efficiently. She brought up a schematic, the glassoid object passed from Ziang. “Technical Core passed several different scans through it,” she explained, as though the object were hers, and as though the scanning protocols had all been her idea. “We finally hit on an ultraviolet wavelength that produced a response.”
Sigils and characters appeared floating in the air above the scanning beam. The language was like nothing they had seen before, lines and slashes and curlicues going every which way.
“Another wavelength provided a translation matrix. There are two types of data on the object. Part of the data appears to be a star chart.” Lear displayed it above the table.
“What’s the rest of it?” Keeler asked.
“Music,” Lear sniffed.
“Anything good?” Keeler asked.
“Let’s focus on the important matter, shall we?” Lear snapped. “The star charts describe a point in space, whose coordinates are… about 1,340 light years from here. Lt. Navigator Change will explain their significance.”
Eliza Jane Change was there, and she had unaccustomed glow about her, but was otherwise as flinty as they had all come to expect. “I’ve checked and re-checked these coordinates General Ziang gave you.” The Commander prompted. “And…”
“There’s nothing there, Commander. The nearest star-system is 31 light years away, and it’s uncharted. That spot is literally in the middle of no where, it’s the most isolated spot in this entire sector of space.”
“Not quite empty,” Lear said. “I correlated those coordinates with the Deep Space Mapping Mission undertaken by a remote telescope outside the Republic System, sponsored by our Ministries of Science and Space over three hundred years before Pegasus launched.”
“And…”
“Navigator Change is quite right, there are no stars in that vicinity, but there is something there, something that puts out almost as much gravity as an F-class star.”
“A black hole?” Redfire asked.
Lear shook her head. “Possibly, but I don’t think so. The gravimetric profile doesn’t equate.”
“Dark matter?” Alkema suggested.
“Possibly… a large dark matter mass could account for the readings, but why travel so far off our course to visit a clump of dark matter?”
Keeler agreed. “Za, if you want to see a clump dark matter, just let me drink a tall glass of warm salty water and wait a few hours.”
In the lack of laughter that followed, Lear asked, “Did General Ziang give you any more of a clue as to what awaited us at … Galactic coordinates 347 by 082 Perseus?”
Keeler shook his head. “Neg, he said if we lacked the hearts of true crusaders, we were not worthy of what lay at those coordinates. Then, he suggested my preferred form of sexual gratification involved small dogs with odd haircuts. I a
m really going to miss him.”
“So, we’re to alter course on the word of a madman?” Change groused.
“So what if we do?” Keeler asked. “How long would it take us to reach Ziang’s coordinates.”
“It would be a long transit,” Change told him. “Nearly seven Sapphirean months.”
“Any colonies in the middle?”
“None that we know of. There is, however, a way-station only a few degrees off that course. It would add another three weeks to the transit…”
“… and we desperately need to restock our armaments,” Redfire said.
“Damn all,” Keeler cursed. “Why does everything in space have to be so damned far away from everything else in space? What would our next colony stop be if we don’t go to Ziang’s coordinates?” he asked.
“Ba,” Lear answered.
“Sorry, I asked, but there’s no excuse to be rude.”
“Ba is the name of the next colony,” Lear explained impatiently. “In one of the ancient Terran languages, it was the word for a mythological goddess of drought. We believe it to be a desert planet.”
“Did you say dessert planet?” the captain asked, imagining sugar swept plains and ice cream ice caps.
“Desert planet.”
“Oh, that’s very different,” Keeler stared at the star chart. “Let’s do it. Lt. Navigator Change, plot a course to that way-station, then a course to those coordinates, and if you can, find a nice planet for my favorite tactical lieutenant to get married on.” He winked. “Seven months in hyperspace can make a young man pretty randy. We better get you a wife as soon as possible.” Set by own hand
Queequeg
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Log Entry: Nine Zero Nine
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