jookeejook—The "pig" of the Jolly food chain, but the "chimpanzee" from an evolutionary point of view. The Jolly word "jookeejook" means literally "person that is not a person." The jookeejook is a cultivated omnivorous mobile plant that has been bred by the Jollys to eat garbage and produce delicious fruits and meat. A jookeejook is built along the lines of a Jolly, with a trunk, vestigial leaf crown, mouth, and six legs, but the jookeejook always walks on all six legs and seldom uses a leg as a "hand." Its eyes and gatherers are connected to the main body by semipermanent umbilical cords connected to the back of the heads of the motiles, which severely limits the range of the motiles. The umbilicals to the eye motiles are like fine stiff wires that arch up through the fronds to partially support the eye out at the tip. The eyes have wings so they can move around to change their view, but the wings are not large enough for the eyes to fly well.
A jookeejook eye or gatherer motile is normally permanently attached to its umbilical. If the motile is pulled upon or becomes caught in something, however, the motile will detach from the umbilical, somewhat like the disposable tail of some earth lizards, except that the motile can be reattached to the umbilical. When separated, however, the jookeejook motile is incapable of independent purposeful action, unlike the more intelligent motiles of the Jollys. Although it is difficult to see exactly how it happened, it is expected that future studies of the comparative physiologies of the jookeejook and Jolly will help establish how the Jollys evolved their semi-intelligent free-roaming eyes and gatherers.
peethoo—The banyan tree of Zuni. A large low tree covering many acres. The long limbs from the main trunk are supported by "saplings" that grow down from the bottom of the limbs to the ground. The leaves are large and spongy, and soak up all the water that drops on them. By staying low to the ground and using multiple trunks, the peethoo tree minimizes trunk mass versus leaf mass. They are susceptible to taller trees shading them at the edges, but once they have become large enough, the leafy area in the center keeps the whole tree going while the outer edge engages in subterranean root-killing warfare with the neighboring trees.
thook—A semi-intelligent thorn thicket that is cultivated and trained by the Jolly tribe to protect the Jollys from raids by tentacle trees and other Jolly tribes. The thook branches grow in coils that can be hydraulically contracted and expanded quite rapidly (from a Jolly point of view), impaling an intruder on the sharp thorns. Humans can usually move fast enough through a large hole in the barrier to avoid being caught. The thook thicket recognizes the members of the tribe, and automatically coils its branches back out of the way to allow the Jollys of the tribe and their gatherers through.
boobaa—The Zuni equivalent of a coconut palm tree. The boobaa is a very tall tree with a bare trunk, large leafy crown, and large spongy tough fruits. The boobaa trees live in interconnected "families." Their crowns meet at their edges and cover a wide area. They live off the energy-rich nutrients in the rainwater like most plant life on Zuni. When one of the boobaa trees is attacked by a climber vine attempting to take over the canopy area, that tree passes on its stored resources to its neighbors through their interconnected root system, deliberately shrinks in size, and lets the neighboring boobaa trees grow to shade it. This results in the killing of the climber vine by making it use up its stored resources climbing the trunk while not allowing it to gain anything in the end for all its effort. The tree grows fruit up high which it drops during severe windstorms, hoping that the fruit will roll to a place where some tree has been uprooted, so it can take over the space.
keekoo—The keekoo, or "tentacle tree" as the humans call it, sends out very fine threads along and under the surface of the ground to great distances. Upon finding a source of nourishment, such as a dropped fruit, dead plant, or dead animal, the tree pumps resources to that section of thread, which turns the thread into a strong snake-like tentacle that grabs the food object, constricts to kill it if necessary, and then transports the object back along the thread to the main trunk to nourish the root system.
feebook—The "ivy" plant of Zuni. The feebook plant grows in soilless steep areas and rocky creek beds where normal plants and trees cannot grow. It spreads out wide, waterproof leaves over the rocks and barren ground that form a groundcover. The large waterproof leaves prevent the nutrient rain from soaking into the ground, and funnels the rainwater to the central plant at the bottom of the creek bed.
peekoo—An edible bivalve shellfish with a soft pink body and six legs with pincer claws. The bivalve shell is not symmetric, but instead is constructed with a flat bottom shell and a domed upper shell, somewhat like a six-legged headless and tailless tortoise. It detects the approach of predators with an array of small scallop-like eyes peering out from under the shell, and either scampers away on its six long legs or holds fast to a rock using a combination of claws and suction.
CASTING
HUMANS
The initial crew of the Barnard Star Expedition consisted of twenty people when it left the solar system in 2026. One of the crew, Dr. William Wang, during the long process of curing the rest of the crew from an infectious type of cancer, died from the same cancer while en route to Barnard. Although the crew spent forty calendar years traveling from the solar system to Barnard, their aging rate during the long journey was slowed by a factor of four through the use of the drug No-Die. As a result, upon arrival at Barnard in 2066, the effective biological age of the crew had only increased ten years over their age at the start of the mission. The crew spent the next two years decelerating to a halt in the Barnard planetary system, then three years surveying the entire system from space, exploring the surfaces of the two lobes of the double-planet Rocheworld, and exploring the surface of the Gargantuan moon Zulu, before moving on to the surface exploration of Zuni. The ages for the humans are given in terms of their effective biological age at the time of their crash landing on Zuni, now known as Eden, in 2073.
Landing Party
The landing party for the surface exploration of Zuni consisted of ten crew members:
Major General Virginia "Jinjur" Jones—Commander of the Barnard Star Expedition. Height: 158.5 cm (5'2"). Weight: 61 kg (135 lbs). Effective Age: 57 years. Jinjur is short and solid with dark-black skin and a no-nonsense black pixie Afro haircut. She graduated high in her class at the U.S. Naval Academy and chose the Marines. During her first tour of duty with the Marine Recruit Training Command, she distinguished herself in the Greater San Diego tourist riots in 2009. She rose to become commander of a Space Marine fleet of lightweight solar sailcraft that kept the spacelanes swept of debris, inspected foreign spacecraft for compliance with the Space Treaty, and resupplied and protected the Laser Forts. Jinjur's nickname (bestowed on her by her Space Marines) was taken from the name of the spicy female general that conquered the Emerald City in one of the lesser-known Oz books.
Reiki LeRoux—Computer programmer and anthropologist. Height 163 cm (5'4"). Weight: 53 kg (117 lb). Effective Age: 44. Reiki is the daughter of a Japanese woman of good family, who met and fell in love with a US Navy aircraft carrier pilot stationed in Japan. His family were oil-rich Louisiana Cajuns. The couple married, but he was killed in a training crash before Reiki was born. Reiki spent her childhood in Japan among a large family, who loved her, but found her alien appearance constantly unsettling in the community. Her skin is almost apricot, her black hair is curly, and her dark eyes are round. With money no problem, she was sent early to a good boarding school in Scotland, where she pursued a wide variety of courses and excelled in them all. She specialized in computer programming and anthropology at Glasgow University, graduating with honors. Of medium size and pleasantly curvy, she has had lots of experience with many different kinds of people, and has learned the skills of cooperation to a high degree. This manifests itself in a passion for etiquette, which the others find entertaining. She is a quiet person, very good at her work, which is designing user-friendly computer interfaces, and keeps a detailed diary in her slim electron
ic journal that goes with her everywhere.
Shirley Everett—Chief engineer and pilot. Height: 190 cm (6'3"). Weight: 85 kg (185 lbs). Effective Age: 48 years. Shirley is the epitome of a tall, strong, tanned, blue-eyed, blond-haired "California Surfer Girl." At USC, she obtained a B.S. in electrical engineering with minors in nuclear engineering and mechanical engineering. She played on both women's and men's basketball teams in college, and became the third woman to play on a men's professional basketball team, but gave up her pro-basketball career as a second-string forward for the Los Angeles Lakers to return to USC to get an Engineering Doctorate. After learning to fly, she went to work for the company that designed and built the aerospace planes used on the Expedition. With her eidetic memory, Shirley knows everything about the spacecraft they fly, except details of the computer software programs, where David Greystoke takes over. She can fix anything, not with the proverbial hairpin—she is too well trained and equipped for that—but could if she had to.
Cinnamon Byrd—Levichthyhusbandry specialist, medic, and pilot. Height: 172 cm (5'8"). Weight: 53 kg (117 lb). Effective Age: 43 years. Tall and skinny, Cinnamon wears her long straight black hair in two low braids to cover her large ears. Cinnamon was born in Alaska to an Eskimo woman and her outback doctor husband, altruistic scion of a prominent East Coast family. By 16, Cinnamon had become both a pilot and an emergency medical technician in order to help her father during emergencies. She studied oceanic fish-farming (ichthyhusbandry) at the University of Alaska. Through the International Space University, she did graduate work in levichthyhusbandry at Goddard Station, where she met Nels Larson and proved to be invaluable to him. She was brought along on the Expedition largely at Nels's request, although it helped that she aced the GNASA piloting tests and qualified as a back-up pilot for both the rocket landers and the aerospace planes.
Richard Redwing—Planetary geoscientist. Height: 195 cm (6'4"). Weight: 110 kg (225 lbs). Effective Age: 49 years. Richard is a very large, very strong outdoorsman of American Indian heritage. He was a college champion weight lifter and won a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. He earned his B.S. in geophysics in 2014 and started work for a mining company in the Alps. He was also a part-time mountain-climbing guide who distinguished himself in a mountain rescue that cost him his two little toes. He grew tired of the lack of mental challenge and returned to school to get his Ph.D. in planetary physics and geophysics. He did his post-doctoral field training on the Moon and Mars, participated in the Ceres and Vesta expeditions, and was part of Callisto field crew when he was accepted for the Barnard Star Expedition.
Carmen Cortez—Communications engineer. Height: 165 cm (5'5"). Weight: 80 kg (176 lbs). Effective Age: 43 years. Carmen is a chunky, very feminine Spanish seÒorita, with black, nearly-afro, curly hair. She always wears makeup and a tightly tailored uniform. She went to the University of Guadalajara in 2015, and became president of the College Radio Amateur Club. She was in charge of the generator-powered base station during a radio field day, when the 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck Salamanca, Mexico in 2018. For 48 hours she ran the only operational emergency communication services in West Central Mexico. She obtained her B.S. in Engineering from the University of Guadalajara in 2019, then a Doctor of Electrical Engineering magna cum laude from University of California, San Diego in 2022. She applied for the Barnard Star Expedition upon graduation and was placed on the back-up list. She was in training on Titan for the Alpha Centauri Expedition when she was activated for the mission at the last minute in order to replace a primary crew member who had to return to Earth for health reasons.
Arielle Trudeau—Aerodynamicist and aerospaceplane pilot. Height: 165 cm (5'5"). Weight: 50 kg (110 lbs). Effective Age: 50 years. Arielle is thin, delicate, beautiful, shy, and fair-skinned, with short, curly light-brown hair and deep-brown eyes. She was born and raised in Quebec, Canada before the secession of Quebec from Canada. She emigrated to the United States and became an American citizen after the absorption of the rest of the Canadian provinces into the Greater United States of America in 2006. Her father taught her how to fly at an early age and she has hundreds of hours experience in a glider. She obtained a Ph.D. in aerodynamics at CalTech and entered the space program as a non-pilot mission specialist. On her first flight into space, there was a cockpit explosion that killed both Super-Shuttle pilots. Single-handed, encumbered by a spacesuit, she brought the crippled Super-Shuttle safely down in the smoothest landing ever recorded in the shuttle program. Arielle was given special dispensation to take Super-Shuttle pilot training after public acclaim, later became one of the best shuttle pilots. She was training for lunar pilot status when the Barnard Star Expedition let her travel to the stars.
John Kennedy—Engineer and nurse. Height: 183 cm (6'0"). Weight: 80 kg (176 lb). Effective Age: 47 years. John bears a striking resemblance to his distant relative. He tried the premed curriculum at USC, but gave it up when he didn't get a high enough score on the MSATs, and went on to get a Ph.D in electromechanical engineering. He didn't feel satisfied working solely on machines and went back to get his R.N. His strange mix of talents just fit a slot on the Expedition.
Nels Larson—Leviponics specialist. Height: 178 cm (5'10"). Weight: 75 kg (165 lb). Effective Age: 48 years. Nels has very muscular arms, a barrel torso, and a large handsome head with a strong jaw, light-blue eyes, and long yellow-white hair that he combs straight back. When Nels was born with flipper-like feet in place of legs, his parents quit their jobs on Earth and moved to Goddard Station where Nels grew up. He took college courses by video and apprenticed in levibotany and levihusbandry at the Leviponics Research Facility on Goddard. He initiated the famous Larson chicken breast tissue culture ("Chicken Little" to most astronauts) and many new strains of algae with various exotic flavors. Nels's initial primary duties were on Prometheus, where, with its near free-fall environment, legs were more of a handicap than a help. While on Rocheworld, Nels was instructed by the flouwen on a method for regeneration of limbs in advanced species. Using this knowledge, Nels built a custom-made hydroponics "bed" where he grew himself a new pair of legs.
David Greystoke—Electronics and computer engineer. Height: 158 cm (5'2"). Weight: 50 kg (110 lbs). Effective Age: 50 years. David is short, thin, and red-haired, but quiet and calm in temperament. He has perfect pitch and perfect color sense, and can see color differences in the flouwen that others cannot see. An undergraduate at the prestigious liberal arts college at Grinnell, Iowa, he went on to Carnegie-Mellon University for a Ph.D. in robotics and computer programming, with a minor in music. He wrote most of the programs used on the computers operating the various vehicles. David's hobby is creating computer generated animated art-music forms and laser light shows.
Sailcraft Crew
The backup crew in space, on Prometheus, consist of:
Colonel George G. Gudunov—Second-in-Command of Barnard Star Expedition, commander of the sailcraft Prometheus. Height: 185 cm (6'1"). Weight: 100 kg (220 lbs). Effective Age: 66 years. George is the oldest person on the mission. He obtained an Air Force ROTC commission from University of Maryland and was first in his class in flight school. His first assignment was with the Space Command Laser Forts project. When a twenty-three-year-old Captain, he suggested testing the laser fort system by using them to send interstellar probes to the nearest star systems. When a number of space laser forts suffered catastrophic failure under this two day test, he was commended by Congress for exposing the problems, but the military brass never forgave him. When the positive reports from the Barnard probe came in twenty-four years later, he had only just made Lieutenant Colonel. Despite his age, he was promoted to Colonel and allowed to go on the Expedition.
Katrina Kauffmann—Nurse and biochemist. Height: 150 cm (4'11"). Weight: 45 kg (99 lbs). Effective Age: 55 years. Katrina is a small, compact, efficient no-nonsense scientist with a short cap of straight brown hair. Trained in Europe, she had started out in a nursing school, but after getting her R.N. she found she liked wo
rking more on scientific problems than working with sick people, so switched professions. She received a Diploma in Biophysics at the University of Frankfurt a.M., Germany in 2010, and went on to get a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. She came to the Greater United States on a post-doctoral fellowship and stayed until picked for the mission.
Captain Thomas St. Thomas—Astrodynamicist and lander pilot. Height: 188 cm (6'2"). Weight: 85 kg (187 lbs). Effective Age: 48 years. Thomas is good looking and clean shaven, with Air Force trim short black hair, and a light-brown skin from a Jamaican heritage. After graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy, he became a Rhodes scholar in 2014, and obtained his Ph.D. in astrodynamics at Oxford in England. On return, he went into Air Force pilot training and became a heavy-lift rocket pilot in 2019. He had over five years of experience raising and lowering the heavy, cumbersome rockets in Earth's gravity before joining the Barnard Star Expedition. He is also an amateur photographer who takes strikingly artistic photographs of the exotic locales visited by the Expedition.
Caroline Tanaka—Fiber-optics engineer and astronomer. Height: 165 cm (5'5"). Weight: 60 kg (132 lb). Effective Age: 48 years. Caroline has long dark-brown hair, brown eyes, and light-brown skin from a mixed Hawaiian heritage. Although moderately good-looking, she is an intense, hard-working engineer who pays no attention to her looks. Caroline did all the design, fabrication (with the help of the Christmas Bush), installation, and check-out of a laser communicator that was left behind for use by the flouwen on Rocheworld after the humans had departed their world. The flouwen use the laser to communicate with the Expedition crew on the lightcraft Prometheus, as well as human scientists back in the solar system.
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