Encounter With Tiber Page 27

  Everyone sat down except for the chief lecturer. They all looked embarrassed. With a glare around the room, he said, “Well, I suppose … for the sake of the children … we could temporarily pass up some of the material about the fourth planet, since it is in fact not a terribly hospitable place. And since the results from the third planet are quite encouraging. We have a total of one hundred optical pictures, a radar map of all but the polar areas, and a large number of instrument readings, including results from twenty impact microprobes. To talk about that, we have Teacher Verkisus.”

  Verkisus was Shulathian, of course, and very elegant looking. He brushed down the long fluffs of hair below his pointed ears, thoughtfully stroked his long nose, and began by asking, “Would it perhaps be better if I just conducted this as a tour, rather than discussing all the fine points of theory and evidence?”

  “Much better,” Kekox said firmly.

  “Not just for the children but for us,” Soikenn added. “We will be the ones who will live out the rest of our lives there, after all. I can learn the pressure gradient and viscosity of the atmosphere on the way, if that’s important; for right now, tell me about the place where I will live my last years.”

  Verkisus beamed at us. “That’s really how I’d rather teach,” he said. “I like a good story myself. Pull your seats up close to the screen, then, and I’ll show you things as they come up in the story.”

  From then until the evening meal, we were enthralled. Teacher Verkisus was a natural storyteller, and as he warmed to his subject, it felt as if we were standing on the tiny probe that, just four and a half years before (it had taken that long for the radio signal to get back to us) had raced through the distant solar system.

  There was no question now that Setepos was a living world, even though the probe had passed between the planet and its moon at such great speed that it crossed the diameter of that moon’s orbit in less than a day. The probe’s fifty-year voyage had, as its final purpose, one eightday of approach, one eightday moving away—and that single day close to Setepos.

  But such an astonishing day.

  It was a very different world from ours, it seemed to us. Where our world was a little under one-fifth dry land—and almost half of that was under the polar ice—Setepos was one-third dry land, and it looked like much more because there were large parts of the sea covered with ice. At first we were all a little horrified at how much ice there was, but Verkisus hastened to assure us that there was plenty of warm, comfortable land around the equator. “The best evidence is that they may have a very long cycle—30,000 years or more—of ice ages and warming periods, and it looks like they are just coming out of an ice age. The south pole there is very much like our polar continents, except that because of the smaller pressure gradient, the air would be breathable—though it’s still terribly cold. In fact, where we have several volcanoes that stick out almost into space, none of Setepos’s highest mountains even clear the troposphere. The gravity is eight-ninths of ours, and there’s almost a third again as much area, but most of it is ocean—the ocean area is very nearly as large as our whole world. But that still leaves room for more than three times as much land as we have. That hook-shaped land mass is about the size of Palath—and as you notice, it’s much smaller than the big land mass north and east of it. We’ve given the continents names, temporarily, but we certainly hope you’ll eventually come up with names of your own. The huge one that stretches most of the way around the northern hemisphere, we call simply Big. The one south of it, just touching it, below that long irregular peninsula, we call the Hook, because it has those big bulges that make it look hook-shaped. West of the Hook, across the narrow ocean, is the Triangle. We had a hard time thinking of what the continent north of the Triangle should be, but finally someone pointed out that it had so many thin peninsulas and things jutting out that it looked sort of like a crushed insect—you know, legs sticking out in all directions—so we named it the Bug. And finally, southeast of Big, there’s this flat piece of continent; since it’s the only one entirely in the southern hemisphere, except at the pole, we called it Southland. Rename them any way you like, though.”

  After settling us into the basic geography, he produced the ten pictures that counted the most. The tiny probe weighed only about as much as a full-grown adult, but it had been blasted away toward Setepos with one hundred times its weight in fuel for its fusion drive. It had slowed down on a magnetic brake, just as we would, but because it was so important to get some kind of look before our ship departed, in the interests of getting it there in time they had still left it moving at enormous velocity.

  As it whizzed by the planet, it had thrown out hundreds of optical sensors on long cables, each shooting twenty pictures per second and also recording its exact angle and position relative to the probe. Twenty microprobes had shot toward the planet, snapping pictures until they exploded in its upper atmosphere. The data had been compiled and recompiled to form as many accurate images as possible.

  And the images were the kind of thing that could burn in your brain. Here, roaming the plains of the Bug, was a herd of animals, many tens of millions of them. There, on Big, was a sweep of forest as big as all Palath. There were easily twenty islands larger than the largest ones on our world. On the other hand, Setepos had no mountains as high as ours. It looked like there were very few volcanoes compared to our world, and where ours were scattered in long straight slashes across the oceans on the Shulath side, most of their volcanoes seemed to sit on the edges of their giant continents. “There’s also a strange belt of hot spots running down the middle of the oceans,” Verkisus said. “Everywhere we turn, more mysteries. But of course twenty-three years is a long time, and the probes we are launching now will get there much faster than you will. By the time you land, all sorts of mysteries will have been cleared up—which, in the nature of science, means you will have a different set of mysteries to work on.”

  One microprobe picture showed some kind of gigantic sea animals swimming with their backs exposed in warm waters off the Hook; an infrared photo showed a strange kind of forest, unknown on our world, that seemed to be extremely humid and very dense, appearing on the Triangle, the Hook, and the southern part of Big—all land masses near the equator. There was a huge desert drier than eastern Palath on the Hook, and the land masses themselves were scarred with deep canyons, and mountains that ran in long, twisted ridges utterly unlike the geometric lines of Shulath or the rough parallel streaks of Palath. “There’s actually a theory,” Verkisus said, “if you look at the way that the Hook fits into the Triangle, for example, that perhaps the land masses there are very slowly moving around. Something a little like that does happen on Toupox, in our own system; maybe Setepos is a more extreme case.”

  Setepos seemed to be endlessly varied—great fields of ice, warm seas, wide deserts, vast forests and plains, immense rivers, lower mountains but so many of them—all teeming with life.

  I can’t speak for anyone else, but that night I was so excited that I didn’t sleep at all. I lay in my bed trying to imagine how there could be so many long rivers—a hundred or more that were longer than our Alpiax—or what it might be like under the tall trees of those hot, wet forests, or trying to picture the big, slow, low-energy waves that rolled over the ocean.

  Verkisus had told us, too, that the faraway moon that hung in their sky induced tides at least six times as large as what we were used to. “If there were any sailors there,” he said, “they’d have to really think about tides. If you look at these pictures of river mouths, you’ll see how there are huge areas that look very green; we think that’s because such big rivers deposit vast amounts of material at their mouths, and then the tides wash back and forth over that soil, feeding life there. Those areas must be swarming with life.”

  Something about that phrase—“swarming with life”—stayed with me. I thought of what a huge world it was, and how much more varied than ours it seemed to be. I made up strange forests and fields,
and animals of hundreds of kinds.

  When the sun came up I was very tired, but I think my eyes were still shining with excitement. Before that night I had not dreamed of Setepos as anything other than a sort of distant, “when-I-grow-up” kind of place, not unlike Mejox’s palace or a seat on the General Court or any of those other dreams children had. Now—even though it would be a quarter year, fifteen eightdays, before we departed, and I would be a full adult for a long time before I got there—I was burning with eagerness to see the new world.

  Soikenn noticed how excited I was and asked if I had a fever. When I tried to stammer out an explanation, she looked worried until Kekox said, “I felt the same way, once, about Kahrekeif.” He looked sad when he said it.

  In the long years after, I would often wonder if there had been any clue as to how differently things would turn out. Always I would arrive at the same conclusion. My thoughts had all been of joy and excitement. I had had no premonitions at all.

  4

  WE CHILDREN HAD BEEN to space together four times before, so weightlessness was no stranger to us. It wasn’t even our first time aboard Wahkopem Zomos—just a few months before we had come up for an orbital shakedown, spending three eightdays swinging out into a big elliptical orbit around Sosahy to test the reaction engines. So we knew our way around the ship and what it would be like to live in it.

  What we didn’t know was that on the day of our departure from Nisuan orbit, we would find ourselves bored, sitting around in the common dining area, making up arguments to pass the time.

  “I’d rather watch from the rear,” Mejox said firmly. “The exhaust is really going to be the big show for the first part, and then the booster separation—”

  Priekahm said, “That’s where I’m going to watch from, too. Besides, won’t that be the best place to catch our last view of home?”

  “There aren’t any adults around, so you don’t have to play dumb,” Otuz said crossly. Lately she had been angry all the time. “Who are you going to make big eyes at, anyway?”

  Priekahm tensed, but then softly said, “Otuz, I know that Nisu will be visible as a disk for six days after we start, and that Sosahy is going to be visible to the naked eye for more than a year, and so forth. That’s not what I meant. I mean it’s the last time, until we’re old, that we’ll see Nisu filling the sky, that it will be something more than just a bright light in the dark. That’s what I want to say good-bye to.”

  Otuz seemed about to jump on her again, so to keep the peace I stepped into the middle. “Orbits aren’t at all simple. Just because we’re leaving Nisu doesn’t mean that it will be behind us all the time, or even most of the time. We’ll be moving in big, looping curves, and Nisu will be on different sides of the ship at different times. Besides, once we drop the booster, they’re going to spin the ship to give us gravity, so unless Nisu is directly behind us or dead ahead, you’ll just get glimpses as the window spins by it.”

  Priekahm turned her big, warm smile on me, and once again I knew why she could always get her way with the adults. “Thank you, Zahmekoses. That was what I wanted to know.”

  “Sorry, Priekahm,” Otuz muttered. The Palathian girl sighed. “I was taking my bad mood out on you. It wasn’t a nice thing to say. We’re all on edge, I guess. I wonder what happened to all of the ‘too busy’ that they said we’d be once we were onboard?”

  We were all floating around in the common dining area, the place on the outer deck where we would eat, hold classes, and hang around with each other during free time—once they spun the ship to give us gravity. It was almost a big room, six bodylengths cubic, and was designed so that it was open to both the inner and outer decks, with spiral stairs descending from the inner deck entrances, so that the ceiling was twice as high above our heads. Supposedly this room would help us keep from becoming claustrophobic.

  There were chairs on the floor below us, but because the ship’s gravity would not start till after boost and spin-up, there was little point in sitting in them, or even in being near the floor. Instead, we floated in a loose clump in midair, about at the height of the inner deck entrances. We could see into the inner deck hallways, but not very far because they curved away from us.

  Theoretically we should already have left, but all the important people in Palath’s five royal families had to be recorded talking to the crew just before launch, and the more important ones had to go last, and among Palathian royalty you showed your stature by being late. While all this was going on there was plenty of time for a lot of last-minute suits, bills, motions, and petitions in the Shulathian General Court, a few of them trying to stop Wahkopem Zomos from leaving, but most just trying to delay it till the next launch window, thirty-two eightdays away, so that somebody’s favorite sentence could be added to the mission’s statement of principles. At least half of those motions and suits were not actually intended to work, but were strictly to impress some constituency or other.

  Meanwhile we sat in orbit, watching the clock roll down on our launch window, while Kekox and Soikenn, in the conference room, talked with ground control and tried to find a moment when it was legally and politically possible for us to start, and Captain Osepok in the cockpit and Poiparesis in the observatory kept the ship’s computers and general status updated and ready-to-go, so that when we got a chance we could take off right away. Absolutely nothing coming up from the ground made any real difference to the mission, since we would be in constant radio contact anyway for many years afterwards. But they all wanted to get their words, or motions, or whatever, into the history books as part of the departure of Wahkopem Zomos.

  “At least we’re not the adult crew,” Mejox said. “They’re all trying to fly the ship, answer stupid questions and orders from the ground, and argue with each other at the same time. It doesn’t leave them much time for us.”

  We had been banished from everywhere that anything interesting was going on because we “might” make noise or get into trouble, or perhaps do something inappropriate in front of a recording device. (As if we hadn’t been in front of recording devices all the time for the past few years!) So we were exactly where nothing was happening, left to amuse ourselves without actually doing anything. It was enough to make you wish for homework.

  “So what window do you want, Zahmekoses?” Otuz asked. “You’ve been the only one that hasn’t had an opinion.”

  “That’s because I really don’t have an opinion,” I said. “I haven’t decided. Probably I’ll just take any old window. I guess I’m not fussy.”

  “I guess,” Otuz said. She reached over and scratched my back gently, as she often did when she was feeling affectionate toward me. “Zahmekoses, if there were three bowls of stew and a bowl of rocks at dinner, you’d volunteer to choose last.”

  Mejox protested, “That’s because Zahmekoses is such a good friend to all of us!”

  “True,” Otuz said. She scratched lower on my back, right where it felt best. “But he’d still end up with the bowl of rocks.”

  “Probably,” I said. I think I was agreeing with her because I didn’t want her to stop scratching. “But in this case I really don’t have any preference, really. I can’t imagine there’s going to be a dull window anywhere on—”

  A chime sounded, and then we heard Kekox’s voice. “Are all you kids in the common dining area?”

  “Yes, sir,” we all said, almost in unison.

  “All right, good. The clever people down on the ground seem to be about to let us go, and Captain Osepok informs me that we’re ready to boost any minute. Get to an acceleration-protection spot, strap in, and stay there. If you need to get a drink or visit the head, do it now. Get moving.”

  We all said, “Yes, sir” again, and the intercom clicked off.

  “Rear study room, outer deck?” Mejox asked.

  “Sure,” Priekahm answered. The two of them shot out the door into the passageway together, his squat Palathian body framed by her tall, slim Shulathian one.

  �
�Were you thinking of anywhere in particular to watch from?” I asked Otuz. “I really hadn’t made up my mind.”

  “Let’s go to the computer lab.”

  I laughed. “That’s the other area with a good rear view. So you just argued with Mejox to annoy him?”

  “Can you think of a better reason to argue with Mejox? Besides, if he needs somebody to agree with him, there’s always Priekahm. Come on, let’s get strapped in—I’d rather not start out by splatting against a bulkhead.”

  Since they had gone out to the right, along the outer deck, we went left, along the inner deck.

  Our little private chambers all had windows, but those were small, and besides, by unspoken agreement, we all wanted to share the departure—the beginning, really, of everything that would be important in our lives—with our friends.

  Otuz and I swam above the inner deck through the narrow passageway to the computer lab, which had the two things we needed: acceleration webbing and a big rearview port.

  Wahkopem Zomos was a stubby cylinder, wider than it was long and about as tall as a four-story building, inside a wide ring that surrounded its base and extended about one fourth as high as the cylinder. We lived in the ring—once we were on our way, the ship would be spun along its axis, so that the outer edge of the ring formed the outer deck, with the gravity we were used to, and an interior deck formed the inner deck, with about four-fifths of Nisuan gravity, a little less than the gravity would be on Setepos when we got there.

  Yet despite the apparent size from the outside, quarters were fairly cramped inside. The entire central cylinder was devoted to the ship’s farm, sail room, power plant, and lander storage; life support, waste recycling, general storage, and everything else took up more than half of the ring. So we actually only lived in the outermost part of the ring, on a double deck that barely had head clearance for Poiparesis. And many parts of the living space were things like the cockpit and the biological laboratory that couldn’t be used for much of anything else and weren’t used most of the time. Even with all that space in the ship, at the time, as a child, I could already span my compartment with my outstretched hands.