"Forward, Robert L - Cheela 1 - Dragon's Egg" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)
DRAGON’S EGG was a neutron star, an incredibly dense sphere only twenty kilometers
in diameter, with a surface gravity sixty-seven billion
times that of Earth. No human could ever land on such a star. Only by the
most advanced technology could science even study it.
Yet on that impossible world, researchers detect intelligent life:
the cheela, aliens who live so fast that one of our hours is the equivalent of
more than a hundred years to them. The cheela struggle from savagery to science
in a span of days—and the astronauts orbiting above Dragon's Egg are by turn
observers, then teachers, then friends...
Then a monstrous STARQUAKE rocks Dragon's Egg, decimating
the cheela. On the surface, the few survivors fight to stay alive. Meanwhile,
high above the neutron star, their human friends face a dreadful choice: return
to Earth and let this alien race risk extinction, or remain to help...and
certainly die in the attempt!
Critics acclaimed DRAGON'S EGG and
STARQUAKE:
"Forward has impeccable scientific credentials, and ... big,
original, speculative ideas."
—The
"Knockout ... One of a
handful of books that stretch the mind."
—Arthur C. Clarke
"Exemplary hard SF . . . There is no more dazzling
practitioner of the form."
—Locus
"A tour-de-force meticulous creation of an unbelievably alien
race ..."
—Isaac Asimov's Science
Fiction Magazine
"This is one for the real science-fiction fan." —Frank
Herbert, author of Dune
"Never in the history of science fiction, I
think, have so many of the most exciting contemporary scientific concepts
played a role in a book."
—Frank D. Drake, Director
National Astronomy and
"DRAGON'S EGG is superb. I couldn't have written it; it
required too much real physics."
—Larry Niven
"Forward's plot, both simple and grand, is the whole history
of an alien civilization and the effect contact with us has on it. Those who
crave real science along with their fiction will be mightily pleased with this
mind-expanding and engrossing example of SF in its purest form."
—Publishers Weekly
"Dazzling, beautifully worked-out scientific extrapolations
... An adventure that's sure to please fans of 'hard' SF."
—Kirkus Reviews
Also by Robert L. Forward
Published by Del Rey Books:
MARTIAN RAINBOW
DRAGON'S
EGG
Robert
L Forward
DEL REY
A Del Rey® Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS •
A Del Rey® Book Published by
Ballantine Books
Dragon's Egg Copyright ©
1980 by Dr. Robert L. Forward Starquake Copyright © 1985 by Robert L.
Forward
All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published
in the
ISBN 0-345-38898-4
Manufactured in the
First Edition: August 1994
10 987654321
CONTENTS
Dragon's Egg
1
Starquake
273
DRAGON'S
EGG
Thanks to:
Frank Drake—he invented them.
Mary Lois—she named them.
Larry Niven—he gave them something to do.
—and David K. Lynch, Mark Zimmermann, Carlton Caves, Hans Moravec,
David Swenson, Freeman Dyson, and Dan Alderson, who helped me in several
technical areas. My special thanks to Lester del Rey,
who took what was practically a pedantic scientific paper and helped me to turn
it into something interesting to read, and to George Smith and the Hughes
Aircraft Company for giving me the intellectual environment that made it
feasible.
Prologue
7
Pulsar
14
Volcano
45
God
87
Trek
138
Contact
176
Interaction
206
TIME: 500,000 B.C.
Buu lay in
his leafy arbor nest and looked up at the stars in the dark sky. The hairy
young humanoid should have been asleep, but his curiosity kept him awake. A
half-million years in the future that twinkling of curiosity would have led his
mind out into the universe to explore the mathematical mysteries of relativity.
Now ...
Buu
continued to stare at the bright stars above him. One speck suddenly flared
brighter. Frightened—but fascinated— Buu watched the growing point of intense
light until it went behind a dense tree branch. He would be able to see it
again if he went to the nearby clearing. He clambered down from his nest—into
the striped coils of Kaa.
Kaa did not
enjoy his kill for long. Things were difficult for him in a world with two
suns. The new sun was tiny and white, while the old one was big and yellow. The
new sun circled constantly overhead. It never set, and he could no longer catch
things at night. Kaa died—along with other hunters who could not change their
habits fast enough.
For a year
the new light shone from above, searing the sky. Then it slowly grew dimmer and
dimmer, and within a few years night returned to the northern hemisphere of
Earth.
Fifty
light-years away from the Solar System there was once a binary star system. One
star was in its normal yellow-white phase, but the other had bloated up until
it turned into a red giant, swallowing the planets around it. The nuclear fuel
for the red giant ran out just fifty years before Buu's curiosity got the
better of him. With its fusion-bomb center turned off, the energy the star
needed to hold itself up against its self-gravitation
was no longer
available, and the star collapsed. At the center, the in-falling matter became
denser under the terrific gravitational pressure until it turned almost
completely into neutrons. The neutrons pressed closer and closer until they
were packed radius to radius.
Under these
cramped conditions, the strong nuclear repulsion forces were finally able to
resist the gravitational pressure. The inward rush of matter was quickly
reversed, and the outward motion turned into an incandescent shock wave that
traveled upward through the outer shell of the red giant. At the surface, the
shock wave blew off the outer layers of the star in a supernova explosion that
released more energy in one hour than the star had released in the previous
million years.
Beneath the
expanding cloud of blazing plasma, the core of the red giant had changed. What
had once been a large, red, slowly rotating balloon 200 times bigger than the
Sun was now a tiny, white-hot twenty-kilometer ball of ultra-dense neutrons,
spinning at over 1000 revolutions a second.
The original
magnetic field of the star had stayed trapped in the highly conductive
collapsing cloud of star stuff. Like the sunspot pattern on the original star,
the magnetic field was not aligned with the spin axis of the neutron star, but
was sticking out at an odd angle. One magnetic pole was very concentrated and a
little above the equator. The other (really a group of poles) was on the
opposite side of the star. Part of its complex pattern was below the equator,
but most of it was in the northern hemisphere.
The almost solid
trillion-gauss magnetic fields reaching out from the two magnetic poles of the
rapidly spinning star tore into the glowing debris remaining from the supernova
explosion. Driven by the rapid rotation of the ultra-dense sphere, the magnetic
fields threw the massive clouds of ions away from the star in scintillating
gouts. Like a Fourth-of-July pinwheel on the loose, the neutron star
accelerated off to the south, directly toward its nearby neighbor Sol, the
magnetic propeller leaving a glowing wake streaming out behind. After a short
while, the plasma density became thinner and the rocket action stopped, but by
then the star had achieved a respectable proper motion of thirty kilometers per
second or one light-year every 10,000 years, a tiny wanderer jaywalking across
the star lanes of the Galaxy.
TIME: 495,000
B.C.
As the
neutron star spun its way through space, the debris it attracted by its
gravitational field fell inward. When the interstellar material approached to within
a few thousand kilometers of the twenty-kilometer-diameter ball, it was heated
and stripped of its electrons by the intense gravity and the whirling magnetic
fields. The ionized plasma then fell in elongated blobs toward the star, its
velocity reaching 39 percent of the speed of light as it struck the crust in
the east and west magnetic polar regions. The
bombarded crust responded with flares of charged particles that shot back out
into space, gaining speed and radiating pulses of radio energy as the spinning
magnetic field lines whipped them outward.
Inflated by
the pulsating radiation and streams of hot plasma from the spinning star, the
cloud of gas from the original supernova explosion continued to expand at a speed
of one percent that of light. After 5000 years, the front of the shock wave
passed through the Solar System. For a thousand years the shielding magnetic
fields of the Sun and Earth were buffeted by the invisible hurricane-force
interstellar winds. The wiggling magnetic field lines lost their ability to
keep the dangerous high-energy cosmic ray particles away from the fragile
Earth. The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere collapsed, and the life forms on
Earth were subjected to a harrowing barrage of mutating radiation.
When the
millennia-long storm finally waned, a new species of nearly hairless humanoids
had emerged on earth. The original band was small, but the individuals were
smart. They used their intelligence to control things around them, instead of
letting nature and the strong-muscled have their way. It wasn't too long before
their descendants were the only humanoids left on the planet.
TIME: 3000 B.C.
Traveling at
its leisurely pace of one light-year every 10,000 years, the neutron star began
to approach the Solar System. The intelligent beings who
had been born in its baptism of invisible fire a half-million years ago had
progressed to the point at which they began seriously to study the heavens. The
neu-
tron star glowed
with a white-hot heat, but it was too tiny to be seen by mere human eyes.
Although
many times hotter than the Sun, the neutron star was not a hot ball of gas.
Instead, the 67-billion-gee gravity field of the star had compressed its
blazing matter into a solid ball with a thick crust of close-packed,
neutron-rich nuclei arranged in a crystalline lattice over a dense core of
liquid neutrons. As time passed, the star cooled and shrank. The dense crust
fractured and mountains and faults were pushed up. Most crustal features were
only a few millimeters high, but the larger mountain ranges rose up almost ten
centimeters, poking their tops above the iron-vapor atmosphere. The mountains
were the highest at the east and west magnetic poles, for most of the meteoric
material that fell on the star was directed there by
the magnetic field lines.
The
temperature of the star had fallen since its birth. The neutron-rich nuclei on
the glowing crystalline crust could now form increasingly more complex nuclear
compounds. Since the compounds utilized the strong nuclear interaction forces
instead of the weak electronic molecular forces that were used on Earth, they
worked at nuclear speeds instead of molecular speeds. Millions of nuclear
chemical combinations were tried each micro second instead of a few per
microsecond, as on Earth. Finally, in one fateful trillionth of a second, a
nuclear compound was formed that had two very important properties: it was
stable, and it could make a copy of itself.
Life had
come to the crust of the neutron star.
TIME: 1000 B.C.
Still unseen
by human eyes, the white-hot neutron star continued to approach the Solar
System. As the surface of the star began to cool through that small temperature
range that was most conductive to nucleonic life, the original replicating
nuclear molecule diversified and became more complex. Competition for the
simpler nonliving molecules that served as food became more intense. Soon the
primordial manna that had covered the crust was gone, and in its place were
clumps of hungry cells. Some clumps of cells found that their topsides, which
faced outward toward the cold, dark sky, were constantly at a lower temperature
than their undersides, which were in contact with the glowing crust. They
raised a canopy
of skin up away from the crust and
soon were running an efficient food-synthesis cycle using the heat engine that
they had arranged between a stiff taproot penetrating deep into the hot crust
and the cool canopy above.
The canopy
was a marvel of engineering. It used stiff crystals embedded with superstrong
fibers to form a twelve-pointed cantilever beam structure that raised the thin
upper skin against the 67-billion-gee gravity field of the star. Of course, a
plant's beam-structure couldn't lift its topside very far. A plant might be as
much as five millimeters across, but it could only raise a canopy up a
millimeter.
The plants
paid a price for their canopies and supporting frame. They were rigid and had
to stay where they had rooted. For many, many turns of the star, nothing moved
except for an occasional spray of pollen from the tip of a cantilever beam on
one plant, followed by the contraction of a flap at the tip of a nearby plant.
Then, many turns later, that action would be followed by the dropping of a ripe
seed pod, which rolled away in the continual winds.
One turn, a
rolling seed pod broke against a chunk of crust. Its seeds scattered and
several of them started to grow. One was more vigorous than the others, and
soon its canopy began to rise above those of its slower siblings. Suffocated in
the heat radiated from the star below and the underside of the taller plant
above, most of the smaller seedlings died.
One,
however, underwent a strange transformation as its body functions started to
fail. It had a mutant enzyme whose normal function was the fabrication and
repair of the crystalline structure that held up the canopy. But under the
influence of the distorted nucleonic chemistry of an organism near death, the
enzyme went wild and dissolved the crystalline structure it was designed to
protect. The plant turned into a sac full of juice and fibers, and flowed down
the slight slope upon which it had been rooted to a new resting place. The
twelve pollen sprayers, slightly photosensitive in order to provide the optimum
orientation for the canopy of the plant, worked their way around to the top.
Now that the organism was out from under the blocking canopy of the larger
plant, the errant enzyme controlled itself again. The plant sent down roots,
rebuilt its canopy, and proceeded to give and receive many sprays of pollen.
The mobile plant had many seedlings, all of which had the ability to dissolve
their rigid structure and move if the conditions weren't right for optimum
growth.
Soon the
first animals roamed the surface of the neutron star, stealing seed pods from
their immobile cousins and learning that there were many good things to eat on
the star— especially each other.
Like the
plants they came from, the neutron star animals were only five millimeters
across, but, lacking stiff internal structures, they were flattened by the
gravitation. The twelve photosensitive pollen sprayers and flaps became eyes,
but they still retained their original reproduction function. The animals could
grow "bones" whenever they wished. Most of the time these were
degenerate forms of the cantilever beams that were used to hold their eyes up
on stalks so they could see further; but, with a little concentration, a bone
could be formed anywhere inside the skin sac. However, speed of bone forming
was paid for in quality: the bones were made solely of crystallized internal
juices; they did not contain the embedded fibers that made the plant structure
so strong. That procedure took too much time.
Unlike the
plants, the animals had to contend with the star's magnetic field. The plants
didn't move, so they didn't mind that they were stretched into a long ellipse
aligned along the magnetic field lines. The bodies of the animals were also
stretched into long ellipses, but since their eyes were stretched by the same
amount, they were not aware of the distortion. However, the animals found that
it was much harder to move across the magnetic field lines than along them.
Most gave up trying. To them the world was nearly one-dimensional. The only
easy directions in which to travel were "east" and
"west"—toward the magnetic poles.
After a long
time, plants and animals existed all over the surface of the neutron star. Some
of the smarter animals would look up at the dark sky and wonder at the points
of light they saw moving slowly across the blackness as the neutron star
turned. The animals in the southern hemisphere of the star were especially
bewildered by the very bright spot of light that stayed fixed over the south pole. It was Earth's Sun. The light was so bright and
close that it didn't twinkle like the other specks of light. But except for
using the star as a convenient navigation beacon to supplement their magnetic
directional sense, none of the animals bothered to think more about the strange
light. There was always plenty of food from the constantly growing plants and
the smaller animals. An animal
doesn t need to
develop curiosity and intelligence if it has no problems that need solving.
TIME: 2000
A.D.
The
blinking, radiating, spinning neutron star was now one-tenth of a light year
from the Sun. After a half-million years the star had cooled, and its spin
speed had slowed to only five revolutions per second. It still sent out pulses
of radio waves, but these were but a weak remembrance of its brilliant earlier
days.
In a few
hundred more years the neutron star would pass by the solar system at a
distance of 250 astronomical units. Its gravity would perturb the outer
planets, especially Pluto, way out at 40 AU from the sun. But Earth, snuggled
up to Sol in its orbit of one AU radius, would scarcely notice the passage. The
star would then leave the Solar System—never to return.
By now the
life forms on Earth had invented the telescope, but even this was inadequate to
see the tiny pinpoint of light in the vast heavens unless one knew exactly
where to look.
Would it
pass unseen?
Pulsar
TIME:
Jacqueline
Carnot strode over to a long table in the data processing lab in the CCCP-NASA-ESA
Deep Space Research Center at CalTech. A frown clouded her pretty face. The cut
of her shoulder-length brown hair and her careful choice of tailored clothing
stamped her at once as "European."
Her skirt,
blouse and clogs were her only items of clothing. It was not that she did not
own stockings—and purses—and makeup—and rings—and perfume—and other
"women's things;" it was just that she was in too much of a hurry in
the morning to bother with them, for she had work to
do. The French government had not given her a state fellowship to study at the
International Space Institute so she could spend all morning getting dressed.
The slender
woman swiftly cleared the table of its accumulated scraps of paper and tossed
down a long data record at one end. The cylinder of paper rolled obediently
across the table, then obstinately off the end and five meters across the floor
before it finally stopped. Jacqueline left the roll on the floor and started to
analyze the data. This menial task would normally have been handled by a
computer. Unfortunately, computers now insisted on a charge number for
everything, and when Jacqueline had logged on this morning she had found that
the meager balance that she had been saving out of Professor Sawlinski's
allocation for her thesis had been swallowed up by another retroactive
intercurrency account readjustment. She knew that Sawlinski had plenty of
rubles in his research budget; but, without his budget authorization and his
personal approval to the computer (by the crypto-password that
she knew, but
dared not use), she was reduced to waiting and hand-processing until he
returned.
Actually, it
was fun working with the numbers in this personal way. With the computer doing
the analysis, the numbers would be crammed into digital bins whether they were
real data or noise, and right now there was a lot of scruffy noise on the
graph.
The data
Jacqueline was analyzing came from the low frequency radio detectors on the old
CCCP-ESA Out-of-the-Ecliptic probe that was the first major cooperative effort
between the Soviets and Europeans. Back in the early days of the race to the
Moon, the Europeans had supplied the first Soviet lunar rover with laser
retroreflectors. Then, after a disastrous experience with the Americans in
which one of
As the
spacecraft climbed up out of the ecliptic plane, its sensors began to see a new
picture of the Sun. The magnetic fields that blossomed out from the sunspots at
the middle latitudes of the Sun were now attenuated, while new effects began to
dominate the scene.
The data
from the CCCP-ESA Out-of-the-Ecliptic probe had been thoroughly analyzed by
many well-funded scientific groups early in the mission. The information
gathered had shown that the Sun had a case of indigestion. It had eaten too
many black holes.
The
scientists found an extremely periodic fluctuation in the strength of the Sun's
polar magnetic field. The magnetosphere of the Sun had many variations, of
course. Each sunspot was a major source of variability. However, sunspots were
irregular in time and were so strong in the middle latitudes that they
dominated everything. It was not until the OE probe was above the Sun, sampling
data for long periods of time, that the finely detailed, highly periodic
variations in the radio flux were found and interpreted as periodic variations
in the Sun's magneto-
sphere. It was
finally concluded that the Sun had four dense masses, probably miniature
primordial black holes, orbiting around each other deep inside the sun. These
disturbed the Sun's normal fusion equilibrium by gnawing away at its bowels.
The effect of the black holes on the Sun would become serious in a few million
years, but all they did now was bring on an occasional ice age.
Although the
human race realized that the Sun was not a reliable source of energy for the
long term, there was little they could do about it. After a short flurry of
national and international concern over the "death of the Sun," the human
race settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way that they
knew—they ignored it and hoped it would go away.
It was now
two decades later. Miraculously, one of the two communication transmitters on
the satellite and three of the experiments were still running. One of them was
the low frequency radio experiment. Its output was sprawled across a table and
down a computation-lab floor, slowly being marked up by the swift, slender
fingers of a determined graduate student.
"Damn!
Here comes the scruff again," Jacqueline muttered
to herself as she slid the long sheet across the table and noticed that the
slowly varying trace with the complex sinusoidal pattern began to blur. Her job
for her thesis was to find another periodic variation in that complex pattern
that would indicate that there were five (or more) black holes. Failing that,
she needed to prove that there were only four. (At least she had been able to
get her peripatetic advisor to agree that a well-documented negative result would
be an adequate thesis.)
However, she
was worried. The scruff was blurring the data, ruining a good portion of it. It
wouldn't have made much difference if the good part had shown some new pattern
and she could have ferreted out a new black hole to add to the Sun's problems.
However, it was now pretty obvious that she would have to be content with a
negative thesis, and this noise was going to make it difficult to convince the
examining committee that there were only four black holes in the Sun. She stared
at the noisy portion as her arms rapidly slid the long sheet of paper across
the table.
"I
shouldn't complain about this antique spacecraft," she said. "But why
did it have to start stuttering now?"
She moved
along the trace. The scruff got worse, then slowly faded away. When she got to
the clear section, she
started to measure
the amplitude averages again. In a way it was good that the computer was not
blindly working on this data. She had enough sense to ignore the noisy parts,
and thus end up with a very clean spectrum. But if the computer had been
handling the data, it would have folded the scruff in with the good data and
the resulting spectrum would have had a lot of spurious spikes that would have
given the examination committee plenty of ammunition. Jacqueline finished her
data analysis late in the evening. She looked at the neat figures in the
notebook.
"That
is the hard way to analyze data," she said to herself. "Tomorrow it
gets worse, when I have to read it all into the computer. I hope old Saw-face
has loosened the purse strings by then." Jacqueline glanced wearily at the
long tumbled ribbon of paper on the floor and, swirling it around, finally
found a loose end and started to roll it up.
"Up and
down with a double hump, triple hump, bump— repeat twice more, then
scrurrrrTff, then up and down with a double hump, triple hump, bump—repeat
twice more, then scrufffffff ..." Jacqueline stopped her semiautomatic
mouthing of the pattern on the roll. She quickly gathered up the whole pile of
paper and carefully carried it to one end of the long room and stretched it out
on the floor. She then went to one end and strode rapidly along it, looking for
the noisy portions. "The scruff is periodic!" she exclaimed.
The noise
seemed to have a period of about a day, and, as she went from one end of the
roll to the other, it slowly drifted with respect to the more regular periodic
bumps that were the meat of her thesis. She had previously thought that the
noisy portions were due to random malfunctions of the spacecraft, but now the
periodic nature of the scruff made her look elsewhere for the cause.
"It
could be that the spacecraft develops an arc in the transmitter for a few hours
every day, but that doesn't sound very likely," she said. She finished
rolling up the paper and, carrying the roll with her, went into the
communications lab. The first thing she looked up was the spacecraft log.
Fortunately, that information was in the general library file and the computer
would let her look at that without charging her. She flashed the log backwards,
page by page. Most of the entries had her name entered:
J. CARNOT: ESA: ACCOUNT
SAW-2-J: LFR DATA DUMP ,
"I seem
to be the only one using this satellite," she said.
Finally she
came to an engineering note. Once every few days or so, during slack periods,
the spacecraft engineers at the CCCP-NASA-ESA Deep Space Network communications
center would take the spacecraft through its engineering check list.
POWER 22% NOMINAL
X-BAND DOWN-LINK 80% NOMINAL
K-BAND DOWN-LINK DEAD
ATTITUDE CONTROL DEAD
SPIN RATE 77
MICRORAD/SEC
FUNCTIONING EXPERIMENTS
LOW FREQUENCY RADIO
SOLAR IR MONITOR
X-RAY TELESCOPE (STANDBY)
"Only
two experiments on," she said. "The engineers must have turned off the
X-ray telescope since the last time I checked." She looked at the number
for the spin rate, flipped the computer terminal into compute mode, and made a
quick calculation.
"Seventy-seven
microradians per second comes out to be a little more than one revolution per
day—about the same period as the scruff. The scruff must be caused by the
effect of the solar heating on the transmitting antenna or some other solar
effect."
She logged off
the terminal, took the roll of paper, and headed back through the pre-dawn
hours to her room. The roll would join the many other rolls that lay stacked in
a pile on her bookshelf, while she joined the rest of
TIME;
In her
sleep, Jacqueline was flying. No, not flying, but drifting through empty space.
She looked down and finally realized where she was. Below her was the bright
globe of the Sun. Spread out before her was the whole Solar System as seen from
above. Her astronomically trained mind had placed the dream planets in their
proper positions and she could almost
imagine faint lines
tracing out the nearly circular orbits that gave the Solar System the
appearance of a bulls-eye target from this perspective. She found the tiny
double-planet system that was the Earth-Moon pair and was straining to try and
make out detail on the Earth when the slow, inexorable rotation of her body
dragged her eyes away from the scene. Unable to turn her head around any further,
she was forced to gaze upwards away from the Sun, her arms and legs
outstretched in the form of an X. "Just like the low frequency radio
antennas sticking out of the OE probe," she thought.
Soon the
rotation brought her body around again and she admired the view. She finally
concentrated on looking at the north pole of the Sun. She had no trouble
looking at the Sun despite its brightness, and she searched for any variations
on the nearly featureless surface. As she stared, she saw nothing with her
eyes, but she finally began to notice weak pulsations in her arms and legs. A
double pulse, triple pulse, pulse ...
"I'm
picking up the complex radio signal of the orbiting black holes!" she
thought, as her body continued to revolve. Soon she could no longer see the
Sun, but she could still feel the pulsations in her arms and legs. Then, while
staring out at right angles from the Sun, she felt a rapid tingling sensation
building up in her right arm. It became stronger and stronger, nearly blotting
out the slower, rhythmic pulsations. "The scruff!" she exclaimed, and
then began to laugh at herself ...
"Nothing
like getting yourself so wrapped up in your thesis work that you dream you have
become the spacecraft yourself," said Jacqueline as she sat up in her
room. She looked at the bustling noonday traffic out her window and rubbed the
prickles out of her right arm, restoring the circulation it had lost while
trapped under her exhausted body.
She was
halfway through her belated breakfast when the dream surfaced again in her
mind. Although she knew the spacecraft's operational characteristics almost as
well as she knew the operating characteristics of her own body, it did seem
strange to her that in the dream the scruff came when she was looking away from
the Sun, not toward it.
She thought
about it for a while, then went to her bookshelf and got down the roll she had
been working on the previous night and an older one from several months ago.
She unrolled a section from each of them on the floor, one above the other, and
slid the old one back and forth until the slowly varying complex pattern caused
by the orbital motion of the black
holes was matched
up on the two rolls. She then looked along both sheets and came to the noisy
portions. They were different. First of all, the scruff a few months ago was
significantly weaker (although that could be explained by a degrading piece of
equipment or insulation), but there also seemed to be a definite shift in the
position of the peak of the scruff activity with respect to the position of the
Sun. She got out an even older roll, and checked it. The scruff was very weak
now. In fact, she remembered that the computer had had no trouble obtaining a
nice, clean spectrum from this data since the spectral energy in the noise had
been so small. Again, however, there seemed to be a delay in the position of
the peak intensity of the scruff.
"Well,
this is one time when the number-crunching objectivity of the computer is
orders of magnitude better than the highly subjective human hand and eye. It is
back to the computer for you, Jacqueline," she said to herself. "But
first you have to get some more computer time from old Saw-face."
Jacqueline
walked across the CalTech campus to the Space Physics building. The huge
edifice, built in the days when space budgets were a significant fraction of a
nation's budget, was now the Space Physics building in name only. Only the
basement computer room and the first floor offices contained space research
activities. The remaining floors of the building had been taken over by
graduate students of the Social Sciences department. If the CalTech-Jet
Propulsion Laboratories combine had not been able to talk NASA, the Europeans,
and the Russians into combining their dwindling national space budgets into
supporting one international space research center with a single Deep Space
Network, then there would be no deep space research at all.
After the
Americans had given up sponsoring deep space probes and the European Space
Agency had broken into squabbling factions after the loss of SpaceLab, the
Russian planners, without visible competition, had lowered their priority for
deep space research to almost zero and concentrated their funding on manned and
unmanned Earth orbital ventures. The cold war was still on, but it had
degenerated into an almost automatic name-calling at the United Nations. The
Russian standard of living rose, and as it did, the party planners found that
they had to give more and more attention to a no-longer docile population and
could not justify a separate deep space program.
Jacqueline
walked down the almost deserted corridors of the
Space
Physics building to Professor Vladimir Sawlinski's office. Jacqueline
hesitated, then knocked.
"Da?"
said a gruff voice.
Jacqueline
opened the door and walked in. A thin, middle-aged gentleman swiveled away from
a computer screen filled with text in Cyrillic characters and turned to look at
her. Jacqueline's Russian was good enough that she could tell that he was
reading a science news article about the supposed discovery of a magnetic
monopole in some iron ore in
Sawlinksi's
clothing was unusual for a Russian. It was a tailored suit in the latest
European style. Its very presence on his spare frame advertised that the wearer
was a multi-cultured world traveler who was given significant freedom and even
more significant financial reimbursement by a worldly wise Russian government
that expected great things from him. The man's balding head bent forward as he
peered over his reading glasses at the young woman.
"Jacqueline!"
Sawlinski said, his face beaming with pleasure. "Do come in, young lady.
How is your thesis work coming? Have you found another collapsed substellar
object?"
Jacqueline
grinned inwardly at the Russian's refusal to call them miniature black holes.
Unfortunately, the Americans and Englishmen who had first popularized the
concept of black holes were not aware that the phrase "black hole"
had a context in the Russian language that was not used in polite company.
"I have
used up my account and the computer will not talk to me anymore," she
said. "I thought I had plenty of computer time left, at least for another
month of work, but a retroactive intercurrency adjustment canceled it
out."
Professor
Sawlinski flinched. He had been afraid of something like that. His budget from
the
"All
right," he sighed. "I will transfer more money from my
main account.
But my account will also be depleted by the same adjustment. I am afraid that
this means that I won't be able to go to the
He turned
after a minute and said, "The computer will now talk to you again.
However, please be prudent in what you ask it to do, for the rubles are getting
scarce."
"Thank
you, Professor Sawlinski," Jacqueline replied. "However, I still have
much work to do to finish my thesis. As of now, I cannot find any other
periodic signals in the data. Also, the records from the probe are getting
worse. The noise on the traces is growing in amplitude, and I have to throw out
a good portion of the data. The noise itself is interesting though. I went back
through some old traces and I find it is not only increasing in amplitude but
the peak seems to shift in time with respect to the radio signals from the
Sun."
"Da,
the 'scruff,' as you call it," he said. "It
is not going away, but getting worse? Well, we should not expect much from a
spacecraft that is so old."
"But
the shift with time is strong evidence that the scruff is not generated by the
Sun." Jacqueline protested. "I think we ought to look into it."
"I can
think of many mechanisms whereby the failing electronics on the spacecraft
could produce this static," he replied with a smile. "We want you to
get your thesis done without spending too many of my precious rubles, so I
think we ought to concentrate on the analysis of the radio data that is not bothered
by the noise."
"But it
would not take long for me to have the computer go back through the data and
get a good estimate of the drift," she said. Then remembering the tingling
in her right arm, she suddenly became sure of something else, although it was
against all logic that her position in bed in Pasadena had anything to do with
an inanimate spacecraft cruising through space two hundred astronomical units
away. Yet many a scientific idea had first surfaced in a dream of the
researcher. Perhaps her subconscious was trying to tell her something.
"I am
almost positive that the scruff is being picked up by just one of the four
antenna wires," she said eagerly. "If I could get the engineers to
switch the data collection mode to read each antenna separately ..."
"Nyet!"
boomed Professor Sawlinski. "Paying the Deep
Space Network to point their
antennas to a given spacecraft to collect a one hour prearranged data dump is
expensive enough. Do you realize how much it costs to send a command to a
spacecraft?"
She started
to speak, but Sawlinski cut her off as he dropped his recently acquired
"American Professor" image and reverted to his autocratic old school
Russian stance. "Nyet! Nyet!
Nyet!" he said as he turned his back on her and switched on his
computer console. "Do svidaniya, Mademoiselle Camot."
Jacqueline
started to speak, but realized that the interview was over. She seethed
inwardly, but finally decided to leave and take her frustrations out on the computer.
At least he had transferred the money to her account before he had turned her
off. Quietly closing the door behind her, she made her way downstairs to the
computer console room.
"I
wonder how much a command change really does cost?" she thought as she
made her way down the steps. "I will go out to Jet Propulsion
Laboratories, talk to the Deep Space Network engineers and find out if it is as
expensive as he thinks it is."
With the
computer glad to see her again, now that she had money in her account, she read
in the figures that she had laboriously extracted the previous evening. She
then ran an analysis of the collected data. The peaks in the power spectral
density curve were still in four families. The four lowest peaks were the
fundamental orbital frequencies of the four black holes, while the higher
harmonics were evidence of the slight ellipticity of the orbits. The basic
pattern had not changed for decades. Although the black holes were orbiting in
the interior of the Sun where the densities were hundreds and thousands of
times greater than water, as far as the ultra-dense black holes were concerned,
they were orbiting in a near vacuum.
She searched
carefully between the four lowest spikes, but could find no evidence of another
peak. She had the computer repeat her search, and it
came up with three two-sigma candidates, but they looked like noise to her and
a quick check with a random half-data set proved her right. She was through for
the time being, for a data dump was not scheduled for another week. But while
she was on the computer, she decided to have another look at the noise problem.
She first
wrote a program to extract the noisy portions from the data sets, then to find
the maximum of the amplitude of the scruff (which was a hard concept for the
computer to grasp),
then to plot the
phase of the scruff maximum with respect to the position of the Sun. In the
process, she learned that the spin rate of the satellite had increased slightly
in the past years, somehow gaining angular momentum from the solar wind and
light pressure.
Further
examination of the drift of the phase and some calculations of the orientation
of the spacecraft with respect to the Sun found that the peak in the scruff
stayed constant with respect to the distant stars.
"That means
that whatever the source of the noise, it is outside the Solar System!"
Jacqueline exclaimed.
Then she
realized that she had never asked herself what the "scruff' really looked
like. On the hardcopy printout of the reconstituted analog signal from the
spacecraft, the scruff just looked like random fuzz. She cleared the screen and
called up the latest data dump. The curve of the low frequency radio readout
wound its familiar way across the screen. She stopped it as she came to the
maximum of the scruff. The scruff was so strong in this section that it often
saturated the screen.
She called
on a section of the data analysis program that she had seldom used before, and
a small section of the data was expanded on the screen. The hours-long humps
that were the subject of her thesis were now stretched out so much that only a
portion of one of them could fit into the screen. The scruff now dominated the
screen and looked as noisy and nasty as ever. She called for another expansion,
and the computer activated an override warning circuit.
WARNING!
PLOT SCALE INCOMPATIBLE WITH
DATA DIGITALIZATION
RATE.
PLEASE CONFIRM COMMAND.
Jacqueline
hesitated slightly, then hit the confirm key. Immediately a set of almost
random dots filled the screen. The short-term variation from point to point was
strong, but the general amplitude level seemed to rise and fall slowly, with a
period of many minutes.
Again, she
called on the computer to carry out an operation on the data that she had never
used before. She had been interested solely in the variations of the data with
periods of weeks to days. Now she asked it to carry out a harmonic an-
alysis with periods of seconds. Again the computer
complained.
WARNING!
SPECTRAL ANALYSIS SCALE
INCOMPATIBLE WITH
DATA DIGITALIZATION
RATE.
PLEASE CONFIRM COMMAND.
There was no
hesitation this time: Jacqueline had hit the confirm
key long before the computer had printed its objections. The spectral analysis
plot flashed on the screen. There was a large spike around one Hertz that
represented the one per second data digitalization rate, but at 0.005 Hertz
there was a strong spike, indicating a periodic fluctuation with a 200-second
period. However, the 200-second variation could have been caused by a beating
between the one Hertz data sampling rate of the spacecraft and some high
frequency oscillation that was close to some harmonic of the sampling rate.
Jacqueline felt from the behavior of the data that a high frequency variation
was causing the scruff, but it would be hard to prove it with the spacecraft
sampling rate set at one sample per second.
Jacqueline,
her enthusiasm finally exhausted by confusion and sleepiness, dropped the
hardcopy printouts of the data into Professor Sawlinski's mailbox and went off
to bed. She again had a dream about flying above the Solar System, only this
time she was whirling around rapidly. She awoke feeling dizzy, then went back
to sleep to dream ordinary, quickly forgotten dreams.
After
awakening the next day, Jacqueline went by Professor Sawlinski's office. His
door was open, and her data sheets were spread out on his desk. He was talking
with Professor Cologne, the astrophysicist.
"This
high frequency scruff is definitely not random noise, for there is evidence of
a strong periodicity of 199-milliseconds, or a little over five cycles per
second. The beating between the 199-millisecond pulsations and the one-Hertz
data sampling rate gives it the 200-second beat pattern. However, it is not a
200-second fluctuation because the engineering interruptions in the science
data are not exactly an even number of seconds long, and the 200-second beat
starts with a new phase after each engineering readout.
If you take enough data, and do an analysis of it, you find the 199-millisecond
periodicity."
As he spoke,
Professor Sawlinski held up Jacqueline's printout. Professor Cologne studied it
briefly, then returned it with the comment, "It
has all the earmarks of a pulsar, but there just isn't any known pulsar of that
frequency. I would suspect the spacecraft somehow has found a way to become a
low frequency radio oscillator."
Professor
Sawlinski saw her standing in the door. "Ah, Jacqueline, come in. I was
just showing Professor Cologne our latest data. I have decided that we ought to
arrange to have the data digitalization rate increased to at least ten times
per second, so we can obtain a better idea of the time varying nature of these
pulsations."
"But
the cost ..." Jacqueline interjected.
"Yes,
it will cost some money, but by the time the computer billing gets to us, we
will be well into the new planning year," he replied. "Could you
visit the JPL people and arrange for the change?"
"Norn
de Dieu!" muttered Jacqueline under her breath. "First,
not enough money, and now plenty of money."
Aloud, she
replied, "Yes, Professor Sawlinski. Do you also want to try reading out
the antennas sequentially?"
"Nyet!"
he replied brusquely. "How many times must I remind you, only
change one parameter at a time in an experiment!"
"Yes,
Professor," she said, and practically bowed her way out of the office.
Once in the
hall, she found herself automatically heading down the stairs to the computer
room. She stopped and started to turn back to go to JPL, but then she decided
to spend a little more time learning how the spacecraft command system
operated. She felt that perhaps she could not only satisfy Professor Sawlinski,
but also her own curiosity.
After a few
hours spent browsing through the engineering handbooks, she smiled and headed
up the stairs, where she caught the CalTech jitney bus to JPL. Sawlinski's name
moved her swiftly through the administrative maze and she shortly was assigned
to Donald Niven, one of the JPL project managers.
When she walked
into the office she had been directed to, she saw a chunky young man with
neatly trimmed dark hair and the slacks, sports coat, and tie that seemed to be
the professional uniform of the engineers at JPL. She guessed that he was in
his late twenties. She had thought that a project man-
ager would be
someone older, but as their conversation proceeded, she could tell from his
cool, calm, methodical questions that, despite his age, he had acquired years
of experience in the Deep Space Network organization. Their discussion was half
technical, half financial.
"So the
length or complexity of the command has almost no bearing on the cost?"
she asked.
"That's
right," Donald said. "So that groups like yours could plan their expenditures,
we worked out a standard rate for each command cycle."
"Suppose
a command has a series of steps in it?" she asked.
"As
long as the steps are something for the spacecraft computer to go through and
do not involve us, then the charge is the same for one or ten steps," he
replied. "What do you have in mind?"
Jacqueline
got our her program sheets. Donald swung his computer
console around so they could both look at it. He typed in the code for the OE
spacecraft operations manual.
"The
first thing I want to do is to increase the low frequency radio data
digitalization rate to its maximum," she said. "Then, after a week of
high rate data collection, I want to have the data taken alternately with the
four antennas, each one taking data for one minute at a time. After that, I
want to have the X-ray telescope reactivated. It has a one-degree field of
view, and I want it to scan between these two angles at a rate of one degree
per day." Jacqueline handed over the sheet of paper and he took it.
"I see
these are in spacecraft coordinates," he said, his opinion of the young
woman increasing with every second. "Thanks for taking the trouble to
convert them for me."
"It was
no trouble," she replied calmly. "I have been living with that
spacecraft so long that I practically think like it."
Together
they worked out the command procedure, and Donald transferred it to the
programming section. The computer would actually do the programming, but the
programmers had to take the computer result through several tests to make sure
that some bugs had not crept into the computer simulation in the decades since
the spacecraft had been launched.
"I'll
give you a call when the command is ready," Donald said. "It'll be a
few days before the formal procedure is finished. Fortunately, I don't think we
will have any trouble getting permission from the sponsoring agency. Although
the experiment package was built by ESA, the spacecraft itself was
built by the
Russians, so the authority for command changes rests with the Soviet Academy of
Science, and Professor Sawlinski's name should be good enough for them. Do you
have a telephone number where I can reach you?"
TIME:
As the days
passed, Jacqueline and Donald spent many hours pouring over the command time
line. It was a long sequence, with even longer delays in it.
"Why
can't we have the low frequency radio on high digi-talization rate while the
X-ray telescope is scanning?" Jacqueline asked. "That way, if the
X-ray telescope picks up something unusual, we can check the low frequency
radio to see if the scruff is active."
Donald paged
the screen to the section describing the operational characteristics of the low
frequency radio digitalization block. "The X-ray telescope uses a lot of
power, especially when it is in the scanning mode," he said. "I'm
afraid that, because of the age of the radioisotope power generators, the
voltage on the power bus will drop so much that the low frequency radio
digitalization will blank out if we ask it to keep operating at its highest
rate."
"How
fast can it operate?" Jacqueline asked.
"Well,"
Donald said as he looked through the table, "it was minimum-voltage
designed for an upper rate of eight times a second, and we have it pushed all
the way to sixteen times per second. With the low voltage on the bus, we ought
to come back to either eight or four times per second."
"Leave
it sixteen times a second," said Jacqueline firmly. "No data is
preferable to poor data."
Donald
looked at her with a slightly bewildered expression as if he were seeing past
her pretty face for the first time. He started to protest, but decided against
it and made the short change in the command sequence as she wanted it.
Slowly the
command was assembled. Jacqueline and Donald worked on it periodically during
the day when Donald was charging to Sawlinski's account. They also talked about
it over lunch and in the evenings, when Sawlinski's budget received an extra
dividend of Donald's time.
TIME:
Donald lay
back on the grass of the recently mowed lawn of the Griffith Park Observatory.
It was Saturday and a pleasant evening lay before him. First,
a visit to the early show at the planetarium where he would see the highly
touted Holorama show. Then an evening under the stars
at the Greek Theater down the hill to listen to the Star Crushers, the latest
sensation in popular music. And, to go with it all, a
fascinating and beautiful, but perplexing, girl.
The Sun had
set and Donald's mind wandered up into the lightly star-sprinkled sky as it had
been doing ever since he was a little child and he and his father would go out
into the back yard in the evening to look at the stars. Occasionally they would
both be rewarded by the quick slash of a meteor or the slow progression of a
satellite. Donald knew that since those days, his life had been fixed. He
wanted to go to the stars!
Unfortunately,
mankind's reach for the stars had faltered as Donald came of age, but his
persistence had garnered him one of the few jobs left in the field. Although it
now looked as if he would never get off the Earth himself, he was out there in
proxy in the spacecraft that he tended.
Jacqueline
took another sip of wine and watched Donald's eyes as they peered into the darkening
skies. They were as vacant as the deep space they were contemplating.
"Next
time he will make the picnic supper and I will bring the wine," she said
to herself as she thoughtfully slid the sip of wine back over her tongue.
"These
Jacqueline
knew Donald well enough to realize where his mind was. "Which one are you
looking at?" she asked, knowing that he knew the position in the sky of
every one of the six deep-space spacecraft that he was responsible for
monitoring.
"Not
one of mine," he replied, "but the first one to leave the Solar
System—the Pioneer X. It went out between Taurus and Orion. It must be at
10,000 AU by now. I was imagining that I was out there, no longer able to
communicate with Earth, pushing on alone, buffeted by micrometeors and the
interstellar wind, getting more and more tired but pressing onward and outward
..."
Jacqueline's
tinkling laugh brought him back to Earth. He rolled over and glowered somewhat
shamefacedly at her.
"Don't
be mad," she said. "You and I must be more alike than we realize, for
I too sometimes dream that I am a spacecraft."
She told him
of her strange dream, and then they both talked about the well-known phenomenon
of graduate students living, eating, and even dreaming their thesis problems.
"Your
subconscious was probably trying to tell you something," he said.
"I
know," she replied, "and I take that dream almost as seriously as I
do the results of my calculations, or at least I will until we get something
out of the spacecraft that contradicts it. But I was thinking,
perhaps if we delayed the start of the X-ray telescope scan, and first stepped
through the various dig-italization rates on the low frequency radio, we might
pick up some additional information on the exact spectrum of the scruff."
As
Jacqueline shifted from being a companion for the evening to a colleague at
work, Donald realized that the drifting mood of the picnic had disappeared, and
they could talk shop standing in line just as easily.
"Maybe,"
he said as he started to pack the basket. "Let's put this in the car and
then get in the line for the show. We can talk about it more there."
TIME:
The Deep Space
Network spent five minutes (and many rubles) to launch the command into space.
The five light-minute long string of radio pulses traveled for over a day
before it reached the OE probe 200 AU away in its high arc over the Sun. The
command was stored, and the spacecraft computer rapidly computed the check sum.
It found no obvious errors, but the string of bits was treated like a
potentially dangerous cancer virus. It was not allowed to get into the command
mechanism just yet, for if there were something wrong
in that string of bits, it could kill the spacecraft just as surely as a meteor
strike. A copy of the bit stream stored in the holding memory was sent back to
Earth. There the copy of the copy was checked with the original. Finally,
another copy of the original command string, followed by a separate execute
com-
mand, was sent
out to reassure the OE probe that it could now change its operational state.
Jacqueline
was waiting when the next data dump came into the computer. It was nearly
midnight—a typical working hour for a graduate student—only now she was not as
lonely as she had been in previous months when she had sat at this console in
the early morning hours.
"Looks
like a good dump," said Donald as he watched the Deep Space Network report
build up on his screen.
Jacqueline
turned to smile at him, but was interrupted by another, less kindly voice.
"Clean
up the low frequency radio data and do a quick plot on the screen,"
Professor Sawlinski commanded.
Jacqueline's
practiced fingers flew over the keyboard, and soon the computer was rearranging
the data from spacecraft format to plotting format. There was a lot of data now
that the digitalization rate had been increased, and it took some time.
"Here
it comes," said Donald, as he watched the plot start to build up on
Jacqueline's screen. The complex, humped pattern of the low frequency radio
variations snaked their way across the display, crowding all their variations
into a few inches of screen. Jacqueline peered closely at the display and
slowly the greenish white line changed texture, as if it were going out of
focus.
"The
scruff is starting," she said.
They all
looked as the slow variations became almost submerged in a flurry of noise.
Jacqueline
noted the time of onset of the scruff and stopped the slowly moving plot with a
few strokes of the delete key. A few more commands, and soon a new plot
came on the screen. This time the sinusoidal variations were well spaced, and
the scruff was now a distinct pulsation.
"It is
definitely periodic!" Sawlinski said. "Expand it further!"
In the next
plot, the slow variations that were the basis of Jacqueline's thesis had been
reduced to a gradually increasing trend line. And on that line there marched a series
of noisy spikes, as equally separated as soldiers in a parade, but varying
greatly in their size.
"It
certainly looks just like a pulsar," exclaimed Sawlinski. "What is
the period?"
"I'll
run a spectral analysis of this section," Jacqueline said.
Soon the
spectral analysis was on the screen. There was a
lot of noise
and some sideband spikes, but there was no doubt that the data centered
predominantly at a frequency of 5.02 Hertz or a period of 199 milliseconds.
"Something
that regular can only be manmade—or a pulsar," said Sawlinski. "I
want you to find the other sections of scruff and see if the periods are the
same. If they are, see if one section of scruff keeps in step with the beat set
up by the preceding sections. I will check the library to get the latest data
on pulsars." He went across the room and activated another console.
Jacqueline
peered at the screen and said, "If you are going to look up pulsar
periods, I would say that the period is 199.2 milliseconds, although the last
number could be off by a few digits."
By the time
Sawlinski had put the console into library mode and had obtained a list of the
known pulsars with periods of less than one second, Jacqueline had determined
that the pulses indeed kept very exact time. Although they faded away and
reappeared a day later as the spacecraft slowly rotated, the new line of
marching pulses was still in step with the first batch. She followed the pulses
through the whole set of data. They kept accurate time during the whole week.
"The
period is now 0.1992687 seconds and seems to be good to at least six
places," Jacqueline said as Sawlinski glanced at her.
He looked
through the tables of pulsar periods on his screen. "There are no known
pulsars with that period," he said. "Yet it must be a pulsar. If we
only knew exactly where to look, maybe the radio telescopes here on Earth could
find it."
Jacqueline
finally decided to tell him of her decision to add an additional command to the
original one. "Professor Sawlinski," she said, "while Donald and
I were working out the details of the command to the spacecraft to have it
speed up its data digitalization rate, we realized that the length of the
command made no difference to the cost of sending the command. We also figured
that, after a week of high rate data, we would have obtained most of the
information on the nature of the high frequency scruff, and we could then have
the spacecraft do something else."
"What
did you do!" Sawlinski barked at her.
Jacqueline
faced him and patiently explained. "After a week of data collection at
high rate, we programmed the spacecraft to continue at a high data rate, but to
switch cyclically between
the four
antenna arms. I hoped that the scruff would show up more on one arm than
another, and we could at least tell from what quadrant of the sky the signal
was coming from."
Sawlinski's
face glowered while he thought over what she had told him. Finally he relaxed
and said, "Horosho!" He then turned to Donald and asked for
the time of the next data dump. "One week from now, minus about a
half-hour." "Horosho. I will
see you both then," he said. "Meanwhile, Jacqueline, you had better
get this information ready for publication in Astmphysical Letters. We
will want the period, the apparent strength, and anything else you can extract
out of the data. We will hold off sending it in for review until we have had a
chance to see next week's data. Dobri vecher."
He turned on his heel and left them.
TIME:
The
following week, the console room was crowded. Professor Sawlinski had brought a
few radio astronomers with him, and several of the faculty and graduate
students, having heard rumors in the halls, had also gathered to get in on the
excitement. Donald had brought along a spacecraft antenna design engineer; together
they had dredged up the exact configuration of the low frequency radio antennas
on the spacecraft and calculated the exact radiation pattern of each arm. The
antenna patterns were very complex because the response of an individual arm
depended strongly on the detailed shape of the spacecraft on the side where
that particular arm was attached.
Jacqueline
was also ready with a complex data reduction program that would produce five
plots on the screen, one showing the signal detected in each arm, and one showing
the combined response of all the arms.
Donald
turned from his console, where he had been monitoring the engineering data from
the Deep Space Network.
"The
dump is finished. You should find the data in the computer files now," he
said.
Jacqueline's
hands flew over the keyboard and soon five greenish white lines were snaking
their way across the screen.
"Here comes the scruff," she said. Then leaning forward she
looked at the four top traces and exclaimed, "The pulses are showing up in
only one of the antenna arms!"
It soon was
obvious that, as the spacecraft tumbled slowly
through space with
its four long antenna arms sweeping across different portions of the sky, one
of the antennas was doing a much better job of picking up the high frequency
pulses than were the others. They would now be able to do a better job of
pinpointing the source in the sky.
The
spacecraft antenna design engineer shook his head in puzzlement. "It
doesn't make sense that one of those antennas would be that much more sensitive
than the others. After all, they are only long hunks of wire, and their antenna
patterns should not look all that different. Which one is it?"
"Antenna
number two," Jacqueline said.
The engineer
turned to his console and soon a directivity pattern, fleshed out in
pseudo-three-dimensional shape by the computer, flashed on the screen.
"I
don't see any significant directivity here," he said.
Donald had
been watching, and had noticed a frequency number at the bottom of the screen.
"The
pulses could be high frequency bursts that are higher than the nominal design
frequency for the low frequency radio antennas," he said. "Can you
calculate the antenna pattern for a higher frequency?"
"I
already have that calculated and stored," said the engineer. He typed in a
command and soon the pattern was replaced by another one. Sticking up out of
the center of the pattern was a high-gain spike.
The engineer
looked at it for a second and then announced, "That spike is called an
'end fire' lobe and is a complex interaction of the antenna with the panel and
instruments on that side of the spacecraft. We often see such spikes showing up
at the high frequency end of the design range." He turned to Jacqueline
and said, "That makes it easy; your pulses are coming from the direction the
antenna is pointing."
The radio
astronomers began to get interested. They now knew in which direction relative
to the spacecraft the pulsating signals came from. However, it took a few hours
of work with the Deep Space Network and the spacecraft engineers before they
knew exactly how the spacecraft was oriented with respect to the stars when the
pulses were at their maximum.
Within two
days, several radio dishes were pointing their narrow beams out into space,
searching for the new pulsar. Even though they knew the exact period and even
to a fraction of a second when they should see a pulse, none was found. The
mystery grew deeper.
TIME:
"Little
green men begin to sound more and more plausible," Donald said as he lay
on the grass next to Jacqueline. He had taken her to a show and had been
pleased that she had taken the trouble to put on her "women's
things." Behind her prettied-up face, the intelligence that was Jacqueline
peered out and frowned disapprovingly.
"Don't
be silly," she said. "There has to be a perfectly simple explanation,
but we just have not thought of it yet. Perhaps the X-ray telescope will tell
us something. Fortunately, it scanned over the probable position in the sky in
the second day of this week's data collection, so we won't have to wait too
long."
"Does
Sawlinski know about that part of the command?" Donald asked.
"No,"
Jacqueline said, "I didn't get a chance to tell him. In fact, he has been
so busy giving seminars and visiting radio astronomy antenna sites that I
haven't seen him for a week."
Donald
looked at his watch and said, "Well, it is almost time for the next data
dump. Let's go in and monitor it on the consoles." They rose and walked
through the darkness to the Space Sciences building.
This time
the console room held only two people. Donald sat behind Jacqueline and leaned
on the back of her chair, smelling her perfume and watching her slender fingers
play over the keyboard.
"The
X-ray data is in a different format from the radio data since it is just a count
of the number of X-ray photons detected," she said. "First, I will
get the directional plot and see if there is any significant increase in counts
in the same direction as the low frequency radio experiment detects radio
pulses."
Soon a
histogram of pulses versus the direction in the sky flashed on the screen.
"Look
at that spike!" Donald said. "Is that the right direction?"
"Mais oui!" Jacqueline's
fingers stumbled in the excitement, and she had to erase a distorted plot
before she slowed down and finally got the computer to show the number of
counts versus time when the telescope was pointing in the right direction.
"There
they are, just like little soldiers, five times a second!" said Donald.
"5.0183495 times per
second," Jacqueline retorted. "That number is engraved in my memory.
What I really hope to get out of this X-ray data is some evidence of delay
between the X-ray pulses and the radio pulses. The X-ray pulses will travel at
the speed of light, but the radio pulses will be delayed slightly by the
interstellar plasma and will arrive later. The more they are delayed, the more
plasma they had to travel through. The combination of X-ray data and radio data
will give us a rough idea of the distance to the pulsating source."
As she
talked, she was working the keyboard, and soon, underneath the marching row of
X-ray spikes, there was a similar row of spikes from the radio antenna.
"It is
a good thing you decided to digitalize the radio data sixteen times a second so
we could see the individual pulses," Donald said. "If we had tried
four times a second as I recommended, we would have missed most of them."
"There
is no delay!" Jacqueline cried, bewildered.
"Hmmm,"
said Donald, "maybe the delay is almost exactly 200 milliseconds and they
are just shifted."
"No,"
Jacqueline said, pointing to the screen. "Look—there is a very weak X-ray
pulse followed by three strong ones and then two weak ones.
You can see the exact pattern in the radio pulses, right below them. The delay
is almost zero. That must mean that whatever the source of the pulses, it is
very close to the detectors."
"...
and the closest thing to the detectors is the spacecraft itself," Donald
said. "I am afraid that somehow the spacecraft is putting spikes into both
the low frequency radio antenna and the X-ray telescope."
Jacqueline
frowned, then quickly produced two more plots with
much larger scales. The pulses were now so close together that they were back
to being scruff again. But the scruffy region on the X-ray plot was much
shorter than on the radio plot.
"No, it
is not the spacecraft," she said. "Look here, the
pulses come and go with time much faster for the X-ray telescope than for the
radio antenna. The X-ray telescope has a field of view that is limited to one degree,
while the high sensitivity spike in the radio antenna has a beam width of
almost three degrees, and these plots are consistent with the width of those
patterns."
"Well,
if it isn't the spacecraft," said Donald, "then what is it?"
"Give
me a few minutes," she said, and went back to typing on the keyboard.
Donald got
up, walked down the hall to the coffee machine and bought them both a cup of
coffee. It looked like a long evening ahead. When he returned, she had the
X-ray and radio-pulse trains up on the screen again, but now they were blown up
so far that only three pulses appeared on the screen.
"There
is a very slight time delay," she said as he walked in. "I wish I
could remember the number density for the interstellar plasma near the sun. I
worked out the values for the latest solar wind cycle last month; I will have
to go upstairs and look it up."
She made a
hard-copy printout of the graph on the screen, then
ran quickly upstairs. Donald followed slowly behind, carrying the two cups of
coffee. By the time he made it up the stairs, she had found the number for the
interstellar plasma density. She was punching away on her hand calculator when
he walked into her office.
"2300
AU!" she exclaimed. "That pulsar is only one-thirtieth of a light
year away!"
"A star that close?" Donald
asked. "Surely we would have seen it moving across the sky long ago."
"No,"
she said, "a pulsar is a spinning neutron star, and a neutron star is only
about twenty kilometers in diameter. Even if the temperature were high, the
size of the light-emitting area is so small that we wouldn't be able to see it
unless we looked in just the right place with a very large telescope. But you
are right, it is strange that it has not been picked
up in one of the sky surveys."
"If the
pulsar is that close, then why didn't the radio
astronomers find the pulses too?" he asked.
"Neutron
stars give off their radiation in beams that shoot out from the magnetic poles,
and you have to be in the direction of the beam to see the pulses," she
replied. "That is why the spacecraft sees the pulses and we can't. The
spacecraft is up out of the ecliptic by 200 AU and has moved up into the path
of the beams." She walked over to the whiteboard in the office, picked up
a colored marker, and started to pace and scribble.
Donald kept
silent as slender feet clicked back and forth across the floor in their dress
shoes. He waited patiently while long fingers scrawled diagrams and
calculations on the board. He watched in admiration as the pretty face puzzled
out the
complexity of the
mathematical transformation from one set of astrophysical coordinates to
another. Five minutes later, he was still admiring Jacqueline from behind when
she finally turned and spoke.
"It's
up in the northern sky," she said. "But it is not where we thought it
was. Because the neutron star is so close, there is a difference of over five
degrees in the angle from the spacecraft to the star and from the earth to the
star. No wonder the radio astronomers could not find it. We told them the wrong
direction."
She went
over to a star chart on her wall and carefully made a tiny cross. She turned
and, with a wry grin on her face, remarked, "And the reason it was never
picked up in a sky survey is that it is right next to Giansar, the fourth
magnitude star right at the end of Draco, the Dragon constellation. It would
take a good telescope to see the neutron star image in that bright glare."
She drank
down the rest of her coffee.
"Let's
go wake up old Saw-face," she said. "We've got a paper to
publish."
TIME:
In two days
the paper was prepared and accepted into the As-trophysical Letters computer.
The next day it was on the astro-physical information net, along with a note
from the radio astronomers that very weak 199-millisecond pulsations had been
detected from a region in the northern skies right at the end of the
constellation of Draco. Shortly thereafter, the new ten-meter telescope in
TIME:
It was
Saturday evening. Donald and Jacqueline sat on the grass of the Griffith
Observatory and talked. They were much
more relaxed
than they had been for months. Jacqueline's thesis was completed, and her
formal oral defense the day before had been a mere formality, what with the
world-wide scientific acclaim and video-news publicity being made over the
discovery.
"I
still don't understand why Sawlinski is doing the video-news interviews,"
Donald said with a frown. "You were the one who discovered the neutron
star first, not he."
"That
is not the way science works," Jacqueline explained. "A Professor
starts a research project hoping to discover something new. The student
sometimes makes the discovery, but without the Professor's research project,
the discovery would not have been made. Since the Professor gets the blame if
the project is a failure, he should get the benefit from any successes.
Besides, it doesn't upset me—after all, my career is off to a great
start!"
Donald only
felt a greater admiration for the woman of whom he had become so fond. He kept
silent and continued to look upward at the stars.
After a long
time, Jacqueline spoke. "I wonder if we could ever go visit Dragon's Egg.
At the speed it is traveling, it will be gone from the Solar System in a few
hundred years. I wish I could go myself, but I guess maybe it will be my
grandchild or great-grandchild."
"We may
be going sooner than you think," Donald said. "The latest news on the
Nigerian magnetic monopole discovery is that they have used the first monopole
in a large magnetic accelerator to generate other monopoles, and some of those
have already been used as a catalyst for a deuterium fusion reaction. The JPL
engineers are excited about the fusion results. They are already starting to
design fusion-rocket concepts for interstellar spacecraft. I don't think a ship
will be ready soon enough so that you and I could go for a visit, but I wouldn't
be surprised if, in twenty or thirty years, one of our children will be looking
down at Dragon's Egg from a close orbit."
And
inevitably, the years passed ...
TIME:
Quick-Mover
was getting tired. He only hoped the Swift was tiring faster. The Swift was
much quicker than he, but its brain
was slow, and
it never seemed to learn from its repeated failures to catch him. This
particular beast had been harassing his clan for the last three turns of the
sky, and the clan had been forced to retreat to a cluster of boulders that
blocked the Swift's rush. There was nothing they could do until the huge beast
tired and went away, or else caught one of them out in the open—like
Quick-Mover—who was now beginning to regret his attempt to get a food-pod from
a nearby plant.
He watched
carefully with six of his eyes as the Swift laboriously moved in the hard
direction until it figured it was directly east or west of its intended prey. Once
there, it would start accelerating, swiftly slithering toward him as its long
narrow body twisted across the crust. As it neared, the great, glowing maw
would open, and out from under each of the five eyes ringing the gaping mouth
would spring a long, sharp fang of crystal.
Quick-Mover
knew how sharp those fangs were, since he had one stored in a tool pouch in his
body. He had retrieved the fang from the mangled carcass of a Swift that had
been the loser in a mating duel and had used it to cut up the drying carrion
that he and his clan had enjoyed as a supplement to their food-pod diet.
The Swift
launched its rush. Quick-Mover waited until the Swift had committed itself to
its attack; then, thinning his flexible, opalescent body down, he pushed into
the hard direction with all the speed that his muscles could command. The Swift
was now moving so rapidly that it could not change its course, but it was
close. One of Quick-Mover's trailing eyes winced when a fang nicked its thick
support stub.
As the Swift
slowed its rush and turned to attack again, Quick-Mover became desperate. Soon
one of those sharp fangs was going to slash a large hole in him, and the next
time the Swift made its rush, it would catch him.
Then
suddenly, Quick-Mover had a thought. He had a fang too! He watched the Swift
shift position off at a distance and begin its rush.
He quickly shaped a section of skin into a short tendril and, reaching into the
tool pouch orifice pulled out the fang. He enlarged the tendril into a strong
manipulator, backed up with a thick crystal bone core, and pushed the rest of
his body into the hard direction again. This time, he left a portion of his
body out in the path of the Swift. It was the thick manipulator holding the
fang. Quick-Mover felt a jar, then his eyes glowed as
he saw the Swift stumble to a halt, fangs snap-
ping at its
flank, where the glowing vital juices poured out onto the crust.
Quick-Mover
looked in awe at the fang held in his manipulator. Both were covered with
dripping gobs of glowing juice. He sucked them clean, enjoying the unaccustomed
taste of fresh juice and meat. He moved over to the still-thrashing Swift.
Carefully keeping well off in the hard direction, he watched the Swift as it
grew weaker. Finally, feeling bolder, he moved the manipulator with its fang
over the center of the long thin body and struck downward. The sharp point sank
deep into the body. The Swift, struck in its brain-knot, shivered and flowed
into a fleshy pile.
Quick-Mover
raised the fang and struck once more.
It felt
good.
He was
mightier than a Swift! Never again would one of these beasts terrorize his
people!
The fang
struck again and again and again ...
TIME:
Pierre
Carnot Niven floated in front of the console on the science deck of the
interstellar ark, St. George. The thin young man pulled thoughtfully at the
corner of his carefully trimmed dark brown beard as he monitored the activities
out in the asteroid belt surrounding the still-distant star, Dragon's Egg.
"It's
still 'Mother's Star' to me," Pierre thought as he recalled his childhood
years, lying in his father's arms out on the lawn to watch the first
interstellar probes go out to explore the neutron star his mother had found.
There had
been some whispers of "favoritism" when he had been picked to be
Chief Scientist of the Dragon's Egg exploration crew, but those who whispered
had not been as driven as he. He had felt his mother had received too little
scientific recognition for her discovery, and his whole life had been spent
rectifying that supposed wrong. He had not only made himself the world's expert
on neutron-star physics, but had also taught himself to be a popular science
writer so that everyone—not just a few scientists—would know of the
accomplishments of the son of Jacqueline Carnot.
talking and selling
and explaining were through, and the scientist in
The
expedition was still six months away from Dragon's Egg, but it was time to
start the activities of the automated probes that had been sent ahead by St.
George. There would be a lot of work to do in preparation for their close-up
view of the star. Now that they had found and identified the asteroidal bodies
around the neutron star that they would need, the work could be done as easily
by robot brains as human ones.
The largest of
the probes was really an automated factory, but its single output was very
unusual—monopoles. It had some monopoles on board already, both positive and
negative types. These were not for output, but the seed material needed to run
the monopole factory. The factory probe headed for the first of the large
nickel-iron planetoids that the strong magnetic fields of the neutron star had
slowed and captured during its travels. It started preparing the site while the
other probes proceeded with the job of building the power supply necessary to
operate the monopole factory, for the power that would be needed was so great
that there was no way the factory probe could have carried the fuel. In fact,
the power levels needed would exceed the total power-plant capability of the
human race on Earth, Colonies, Luna, Mars, asteroids, and scientific outposts
combined.
Although the
electrical power required was beyond the capability of those in the Solar
System, this was only because they didn't have the right energy source. The Sun
had been—and still was—very generous with its outpouring of energy; but so far
the best available ways to convert that radiant energy into electricity, either
with solar cells or by burning some fossilized sun energy and using it to
rotate a magnetic field past some wires in a generator, were still limited.
Here at
Dragon's Egg, there was no need for solar cells or heat engines, for the
rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron star was
at one time the energy source and the rotor of a dynamo. All that was needed
were some wires to convert the energy of that rotating magnetic field into
electrical current.
The job of
the smaller probes was to lay cable. They started at the factory and laid a
long thin cable in a big loop that passed completely around the star, but out
at a safe distance, where it would be stable for the few months that the power
would be needed. Since a billion kilometers of cable was needed to reach from
the positions of the asteroidal material
down around the
star and back out again, it had to be very unusual cable—and it was. The cables
being laid were bundles of superconducting polymer threads. Although it was hot
near the neutron star, there was no need of refrigeration to maintain the
superconductivity, for the polymers stayed superconducting almost to their
melting point—900 degrees.
The cables
became longer and longer and started to react to the magnetic field lines of
the star, which were whipping by them ten times a second—five sweeps of a
positive magnetic field emanating from the east pole of the neutron star,
interspersed with five sweeps of the negative magnetic field from the west
pole. Each time the field went by, the current would
surge through the cable and build up as excess charge on the probes. Before
they were through, the probes were pulsating with displays of blue and pink
corona discharge—positive, then negative. The last connection of the cable to
complete the circuit was tricky, since it had to be made at a time when the
current pulsating back and forth through the wire was passing through zero. But
for semi-intelligent probes with fractional-relativistic fusion-rocket drives,
one-hundredth of a second is plenty of time.
With the
power source hooked up to the factory, production started. Strong alternating
magnetic fields whipped the seed monopoles back and forth at high energies
through a chunk of dense matter. The collisions of the monopoles with the dense
nuclei took place at such high energies that elementary particle pairs were
formed in profusion, including magnetic monopole pairs. These were skimmed out
of the debris emanating from the target and piped outside the factory by
tailored electric and magnetic fields, where they were injected into the nearby
asteroid. The monopoles entered the asteroid and in their passage through the
atoms interacted with the nuclei, displacing the outer electrons. A monopole
didn't orbit the nucleus like an electron. Instead, it whirled in a ring,
making an electric field that held the charged nucleus, while the nucleus whirled
in a linked ring to make a magnetic field that held onto the magnetically
charged monopole.
With the
loss of the outer electrons that determined their size, the atoms became
smaller, and the rock they made up became denser. As more and more monopoles
were poured in the center of the asteroid, the material there changed from
normal matter, which is bloated with light electrons, into dense monopolium.
The original atomic nuclei were still there; but,
now with
monopoles in linked orbits around them, the density increased to nearly that of
a neutron star. As the total amount of converted matter in the asteroid
increased, the gravitational field from the condensed matter became higher and
soon began to assist in the process, crushing the electron orbits about the
atoms into nuclear dimensions after they had only been partially converted into
monopolium. After the month-long process was complete, the
250-kilometer-diameter asteroid had been converted into a 100-meter-diameter
sphere with a core of monopolium, a mantle of degenerate matter of white
dwarf density, and a glowing crust of partially collapsed normal matter.
After the
first asteroid had been transformed, the factory turned to the next, which had
been pushed into place by a herder probe that had started its task many months
ago. The process was repeated again and again until finally there was a
collection of eight dense asteroids circling the neutron star: two large ones
and six smaller ones, dancing slowly around each other as they moved along in
orbit. They were kept in a stable configuration with thrusts from the probes,
which used the magnetic fields from a collection of monopoles in their noses to
exert a push or pull from a distance on the hot, magnetically charged,
ultra-dense masses.
The probes,
herding their creations along, now waited patiently for St. George to arrive.
As the humans approached the neutron star, the herder probes became more
active. They pushed, pulled, and nudged the two larger asteroids until they
approached one another. As the ultra-strong gravitational fields of the two
asteroids interacted, they whirled about one another at blinding speed and then
took off in opposite directions on highly elliptical orbits that would meet
again many months later at a point much closer to the nearby neutron star.
Volcano
TIME:
Broken-Petal
flowed his elongated body down through the ragged rows
of petal plants, anxiously feeling the swellings of the ripening pods on the
underside of each plant with his tendrils. He subconsciously counted the pods
as he went along, but not in terms of numbers, since his total mathematical
knowledge consisted of: one, two, three—many.
Although
Broken-Petal could not count, he was very good at equating large numbers. He
knew that, sometimes, what seemed to be many pods was
still not enough to feed the clan—for there were many in the clan and all were
always hungry. As he moved and felt, the many pods in his mind grew and, as the
number grew, his anxiety for the many in the clan became less and less. He
found his undertread adding a youthful t'trum pattern to his smooth flowing
motion as he came to the end of the last row. He let his opalescent body resume
its normal flat, ellipsoidal shape and looked at the crop with pride. The petal
plants were tall. He would have liked to have seen them all, but he was content
to rest at one end and look with only three or four of his dozen dark red eyes
down between the rows that he had struggled so hard to get the clan to dig.
Broken-Petal
remembered the time, many turns of the stars ago, when he came across proud old
Dragon-Rower with a stub of a broken dragon crystal in her manipulator.
"What
are you doing, Aged One?" Broken-Petal asked.
"I'm
tired of having to wander in the wilderness to find a petal plant that has not
already been stripped of all of its pods," she said. "I'm going to
have my own plants, right here outside my wall." She left the dragon
crystal sticking in the
crust, and flowed
back to let him see what she had been doing. As she did so, the strong
crystalline bones in her manipulator dissolved, and the muscle and skin that
had covered the thick, articulated appendage shrank back into her body until
her surface was smooth again.
"Why
are you digging those holes, Aged One? How will that get you your own petal
plants?"
She replied,
"I may be old, but I still see well and remember well. The last time the
young ones came back from a hunt, they had traveled so far away they had found
some petal plants that had never been picked. They brought home as many pods as
they could carry. There were many delicious ripe ones and some that looked all
right, but, when opened, were runny and the seeds inside were hard. Naturally,
being an Aged One, I got the overripe pods. I ate all that I could—the taste is
not bad once you get used to it—but the seeds inside were too hard to crack, so
I rolled them outside."
"I
remember that hunt," Broken-Petal said. "We never did find a sign of
a Flow Slow or even a Slink, but that patch of untouched petal plants made up
for it all."
Dragon-Flower
continued, "One turn I noticed that one of the seeds had rolled into a
crack in my wall. It had a little petal growing from it. I watched it turn
after turn as it became larger and larger. It grew into a petal plant! I was happy, I would have my own petal plant right near my door. I
would dream of picking the pods whenever I wanted, without having to go far
distances. Maybe I could even wait and have a ripe pod to eat all by myself, as
I did in the old times when I was a young warrior and went on hunting
expeditions."
Her t'trums
became sadder as she went on, "But the stones in the wall kept the petal
plant tilted to one side—and it fell over and died."
She added,
"I watched the other seeds, but none of them grew into petal plants. They
just sat there under the sky and did nothing. Then many turns ago, having
nothing better to do, I cleaned out my stockade and pushed a pile of dirt, old
pod skins and Flow Slow nodes out the door. The pile covered one of the seeds.
Later I noticed it too had started to grow into a petal plant!
"That's
it over there," she said, rippling her eye-stubs.
Broken-Petal's
eyes followed the ripples and saw a small plant growing up from the corner of a
decomposing heap of trash. The plant was still small enough that he could look
down on its concave topside, cooled
to a dark red by the black sky above, while the lumpy underside of the
many-pointed leaf structure reflected the healthy yellow glow of the crust.
"It
should be big soon," Dragon-Flower said. "I can already see some pod
swellings on the underside."
Several
thoughts ran through Broken-Petal's mind as he looked at the plant, with its
promise of food. But there was one thought that made him feel in a funny way
that he had never felt before. He felt the spark of inspiration.
"Aged One! I have thought of a new thing! Let
us take all the hard seeds we can find and put them under piles of trash that
we take out of our stockades. The seeds will grow into petal plants and we will
have all the pods that we want!"
Dragon-Flower
paused a moment, reformed her manipulator, and grasped her broken shard of
dragon crystal. "You are wrong, Broken-Petal. The seeds do not need trash.
My first petal plant was not under trash, it was in a hole in my wall,"
she said. "It is obvious that the petal plants just want to see the sky.
As long as the seeds stay out on the crust where they can see the sky they are
happy and do not grow. But if you take away the sky, they get unhappy and break
out of their hard coats and grow until they can see the sky. That is what I am
doing with this broken crystal. I use the sharp point to make a little hole in
the crust. I put the seed in the hole and cover it up so that it cannot see the
sky. The seed will get unhappy and start to push up until it can see the sky
once more, only by then it will be a petal plant, instead of a seed."
Broken-Petal
knew better than to get into an argument with an Aged One, even if he was Leader
of the Clan. He watched as Dragon-Flower continued with the arduous task of
poking the sharp end of the broken crystal into the hard crust. She soon tired
and quit, but not before there were many holes around the perimeter of her
stockade, and in each hole was an unhappy seed, covered over with powdered
crust.
Dragon-Flower's
experiment was both a success and a failure. Most of the seeds grew into
plants, and soon Dragon-Flower was on friendly terms with many, as she had more
pods than she could eat. Broken-Petal had to put his weight on a few of the
more rash youngsters and give them a good drubbing before they stopped their
raids on her plants.
"You
lazy flats!" he would holler on their hides. "Go out and find your
own pods! And make sure you bring back the best one for Dragon-Flower to
replace the one you took!"
He couldn't let them get lazy and
weak; he would need their strength on the next raid or hunt.
Then, things
got worse. The plants grew and grew until they blocked the sky over most of
Dragon-Flower's stockade. Although no one really minded reaching a manipulator
under a plant to take a ripe pod to eat, it was really nerve-wracking to have
those heavy-looking petals hanging over one. Dragon-Flower had to tear down her
walls and build a new stockade away from the plants. It was good she did, for
as the plants aged, their support crystals grew weak; then one or more of the
petals would break off under the extreme gravity; and would instantly reappear
on the crust, its crushed mass sending out a shock of vibration that went
rippling through the clan compound, making everyone nervous.
Broken-Petal
knew a good thing when he saw it, and the most important trophy from the next
hunt was not the torn-up carcass of a Swift, but many overripe pods, bursting
with hard little seeds. Then his problems began, for the cheela in his clan
were hunters.
Hunting was
not hard work. It consisted of a leisurely stroll in the country with a bunch
of friends, followed by a short period of exhilarating terror and a chance to
demonstrate how brave and strong one was, climaxed by an orgy of eating and
lovemaking that compensated for the long trek home carrying hunks of flesh.
Farming,
however, even poke-and-cover farming, was hard work, especially in the tough
crust of Egg, and there was no heroism or fun involved to make up for it. And
worst of all, after all that hard work, it took many,
many turns before there was any food to show for the effort. Broken-Petal had
to tread on the edges of quite a few before he finally saw all the hard little
seeds safely tucked into holes in the crust, unhappy at the loss of the sky.
Broken-Petal
moved to the next row and the next, feeling proud. This had been their third
crop of petal plants. The first crop had gone well, but there had not been
enough plants for the whole clan, and they still had to forage to feed
everyone. Broken-Petal had made sure that there were enough holes the next
time, and his care was made easier by the cooperation of the digging crew, who
now appreciated the long-term consequences of their labor.
As
Broken-Petal moved between the rows, he saw a white patch in the crust. As he
passed over that section of the crust,
it seemed
strangely hot. He moved back and forth, feeling the crust with his underside.
He was bewildered. This had never happened before. As he went between the
plants to check in the next row, the crust trembled underneath him. The
automatic sonar sensors that he used to track his prey sprang into action and
his bewilderment changed into shock. The source of the trembling was directly
below him! He was scared.
"Is it
a dragon?”
"No.
No. There is no such thing as a dragon," he reassured himself. The old
hunters used to tell tales of a tall, fire-shooting monster that came up out of
the crust and stopped a cheela in his tracks by searing his outer edges with
its violet-colored fire. The dragon would then fall on him from its tremendous
height, smashing him like an egg sac and then absorbing him for dinner. No one
had ever seen a dragon, but the large, very strong crystal bones that were
found scattered in profusion over and underneath the crust certainly gave a
taint of credibility to the tales, for no one knew where the dragon crystal
came from.
Broken-Petal
moved away from the area as the crust got hotter and hotter and the trembling
from underneath continued. He was halfway back to the clan stockades when some
of his rear eyes saw a spurt of bluish-white gas shoot from a crack in the
crust, searing a petal of the plant overhead.
A group from
the stockades met him as he approached. "It feels like a crustquake,"
one said, "but it keeps on repeating in the same place."
"It is
not far," said Many-Pods, one of the clan's best trackers.
"You
are right, Many-Pods," Broken-Petal said. "Whatever it is, it is
right in the middle of our field."
The clan
flowed carefully to the edge of the field and took turns looking down the
affected row as the hot smoke and gas continued to pour from the crack. More
plants were burned now.
Broken-Petal
had been thinking, and when the clan had finished looking and formed to the
east and west of him, he knew what he had to do.
"The
smoke and hot gas are going to kill our plants," he said.
"Pretty-Egg, get back to the stockades and get everyone here fast. Even
the littlest hatchling can carry a few pods. The rest of you, start picking as
fast as you can. Start by going as near the smoke as your treads can take, then pick everything
off those
plants. Even the unripe pods will taste good after the ripe ones are
gone." Broken-Petal led the way down the row as his instructions radiated
away through the crust.
"Just
when things were getting better," he thought. "The gods shall tread
the edges of the proud," the old storytellers had always said. Well, he
had let himself get complacent, and the Old Ones were right.
He moved as
close as he dared to the vent. The smoke was reaching high up into the
atmosphere now. The heat radiating down on his dark red topside from the
billowing bluish-white column was uncomfortable. Although the crust was hot, he
could still get to within three plants of the vent. He paused for a moment,
formed three manipulators, and started picking pods, ripping most of them away
from the flesh of the plant, although some of them were near-ripe and came away
easily. He stored the pods in a carrying pouch he formed in the upper part of
his body. He moved back and forth, picking pods as he went, approaching the
crevasse at a distance that was mediated by the desire for food overcoming the
unwillingness of his tread to move to hotter crust.
The first
section of plants nearest the crevasse went quickly. Broken-Petal organized
things so that the pods were dropped by the pickers at the edge of the
planting, to be taken back to the stockade by the younger ones and stored away
by the Old Ones. Although they moved as fast as they could, they lost many pods
from the plants that were too close to the crevasse. The tedious work
continued, with the laborers constantly harassed by shocks and crust dust
falling on their topsides.
Soon, all
were back from the field, their eating pouches sucking quietly on pods as they
rested at the outskirts of the clan compound. Some of their eyes scanned the
small, blue-hot hill that now grew in the middle of the devastated petal plant
field, while other eyes followed the pillar of smoke that went far up into the
sky until it seemed to touch the stars. The smoke went from an intensely
glaring blue-white column at the base, to deep, deep red clouds far up in the
cool black sky, the bottoms of the billowing red clouds tinged with a yellow
glow from the crust below.
The times
grew difficult. The food they had harvested lasted a long time, but the diet of
immature pods was a great deal less tasty and nourishing than the steady turn
after turn of feasting that they had enjoyed after they had learned about
farming.
Broken-Petal
tried to salvage things. There were no overripe seed pods from the recent crop,
so he sent out a team to forage in the far regions for more, while he had the rest
gouge holes in the crust away from the towering column of smoke. After much
labor, the holes were ready, but the hunting party returned empty-handed.
Broken-Petal
knew better than to berate them. In times like these, a successful hunting
party had its pick of love partners, while these would only have each other for
many, many turns.
"What
was the problem?" he asked.
See-High spoke for them. "We saw many hunting parties
that were doing what we were doing, out gathering every pod and hunting every
animal they could find, even the almost worthless Tiny Shell."
He went on.
"We went as far as we could before our own food ran out. It was the same
everywhere. Everyone was so busy hunting that there was no fighting. We thought
about attacking one of the other groups, but it was obvious from their thinness
that they were carrying very little in their pouches in the way of catch, and
were as bad off as we were. We even attempted to talk with some of them using
long-talk. Although they don't speak just the way we do, it was obvious from
what we could make out that all the clans are afraid of the tower of smoke and
the constant trembling of the crust."
Flow-Hunter,
the clan's bravest hunter, who had been allowed to change her egg-name after
her third kill of a Flow Slow, interrupted with a laugh. "Some of them
think that the tower of smoke is from the fire of a dragon, and the trembling
is the dragon moving over the crust to get them! All of them are talking about
leaving, saying the place has become taboo."
Then Broken-Petal
had a flash of inspiration born out of the natural instincts that had made him
Leader of the Clan. "If every clan is out hunting and stripping the crust
bare of food," he said, "we will go where they don't go."
He spoke to
the hunting party. "Go eat and load up with food. With the next turn you
are going out hunting again, only this time you are to go southward—in the hard
direction."
There was a
shuffle of discontent from the group. They had been expecting to be sent out
again in an attempt to redeem themselves, but to be sent in one of the hard
directions sounded like punishment. No one ever went in the hard direction
unless he had to—not even the powerful Flow Slow. See-High started to object,
but Broken-Petal tapped him to silence
with a sharp ripple
from his tread. His tread started again, softer this time, and the encouraging
words rippled through the crust to vibrate against the treads of the hunting
party.
"I'm
not angry with you, and I know that to travel in the hard direction means that
you will move so slowly that you will still be within sight after three
turns," he said. "Think— every clan we know is east and west of us,
and we all go back and forth over the same territory, stripping it bare. If you go in the hard direction far enough, you may
find land where there are fewer clans and more food. Now, eat and go!"
Long before
the turn was complete, the hunting party was ready to leave. Broken-Petal gave
them last instructions. "Go neither east nor west until you can see mature
petal plants; then you can go off to examine them to see if there are any seed
pods. If not—continue south until you do. But don't go beyond your food
supplies. I want you back." His tread rippled with wry humor. "After
all, there are two directions that are hard going, and if you don't find
anything in one direction, you could always try the other one."
With a
rumble of bitter humor, the hunting party pushed off toward the south. After a
half a turn, they were out of reach of short-talk, but still were visible as
figures halfway to the horizon. After three turns they disappeared over the
horizon and the rest turned to their chores—and waiting.
See-High
pushed slowly into the springy air. The most difficult part about traveling in
the hard direction was that his body kept trying to slip to one side or the
other. If he didn't hurry, but kept sliding a thin edge into the hard
direction, then expanding it to make a crack that he could flow into, the going
was steady. It was like going into a wind, but different The wind kept pushing
on him even when he was still, but the only force he felt from moving in the
hard direction was the force he himself made when he attempted to move in that
direction. If he stood still, for a while he could still feel the pressure, but
then it slowly penetrated his body until he finally felt nothing—until he tried
to move again.
See-High
looked around and saw the rest of the party slowly struggling their way along.
Ahead of him was Flow-Hunter, one of his favorite fun partners. Although he was
leader of the hunting party and shouldn't be doing such things while they were
on a hunt, the slow grind of pushing into the slippery air had made him bored.
He pushed even harder and in a little
while was right
behind Flow-Hunter. He tickled her trailing edge. "What are you planning
at break period?" he whispered, the electronic waves of his whisper
tingling her multi-hued skin.
"Stop
that!" Flow-Hunter protested. "It is hard enough pushing through this
slippery stuff without being tickled from behind. Get back or I won't be doing
anything with you for many turns, much less during break period."
See-High
persisted. He flowed forward, both above and below the trailing edge of
Flow-Hunter, giving her friendly squeezes as she tried to ripple him off. She
pushed forward harder to get away from him. Although normally she could
out-distance him, See-High found that he kept right up to Flow-Hunter with
almost no effort. Suddenly he stopped playing around and tapped her to a stop.
"I had no trouble at all keeping up with you," he said in amazement.
"There you were, pushing away in the hard direction and I felt as if I
were going east or west! Why?"
After a
little bit of experimentation (and many giggles and slaps) they found that,
once a gap was opened by a path-breaker, the gap would remain open as long as
she kept moving. Then if someone else stayed right on her trailing edge, very
little extra effort was needed for him to move forward. As See-High had found,
it was like moving in the easy direction (except for the pathbreaker, of
course).
Before long,
the hunting party was rearranged in a line. The head of the line worked at top
effort as long as possible, then dropped to the side to let a fresh pathbreaker
move ahead, while the tired one dropped into the end of the line and strolled
along, cuddled up to the friendly trailing edge of someone of the opposite sex.
The hunting party pushed forward at rapidly increased speed, with no breaks
needed except when the two mismatched males got tired of being in on only half
the fun and insisted upon being between two females.
They soon
reached lands where there were fewer and fewer hunting parties and, after many
turns, came to a region where mature petal plants could be found with pods
still on them. It was not long before they had not only plenty of ripe pods for
food, but also more than enough seed pods, bursting with little hard seeds.
They stuffed pods and seeds into carrying pouches until the pouch orifices in
their skins bulged out painfully.
The way back
was rougher, for their bulky thickness caused by the load of pods and seeds
made it necessary to open a
wider gap in the
hard direction before they could move through it. Their thickness also made
them obvious targets for attack. Their new technique for moving in the hard direction
saved them from being overcome by a large war party from a neighboring clan,
but it cost them See-High, who was at the end of the column when the war party
rushed at them from ambush out of the east as they went by. They were going to
turn and attack, but See-High ordered them to continue while he kept the
attackers at bay long enough for them to escape.
Broken-Petal
eventually saw a thicker but shorter column of hunters show up over the
horizon. At first he was bewildered by the shape and speed of the moving
cluster of cheela. From a distance, they looked like a strange new type of Flow
Slow, except that a Flow Slow was too lazy to move in the hard direction. He
started to call an alarm, but it soon was obvious that the unusual motion of
the head of the monster was the peculiar heave of Flow-Hunter as she pushed her
way along.
Soon the
whole clan gathered at the edge of the settlement and watched as the happy,
giggling hunting party returned and dumped their booty. The seeds were
distributed and quickly planted in the waiting holes by a large crew, all
munching on ripe pods.
Flow-Hunter
spent the next turn giving a detailed account of the trip to Broken-Petal. The
report of the loss of See-High caused a moment of sadness in them both, but
they turned their minds back to the present and continued on.
The nearby
volcano dominated their lives. Fortunately, it became dormant for a while, with
just a thin wisp of yellow-white smoke spiraling up into the air, but the rumbling
in the crust grew worse every turn. The crop grew well, but when the volcano
became more active again, Broken-Petal decided that they had better move
further away. The crop was harvested and the clan took the food and their few
belongings, especially the precious broken shards of ultra-hard dragon crystal,
and moved off toward the south.
There were
many in the clan, and they were not in a hurry, so a modification of the
hunting party pathbreaker technique was used. The stronger young ones formed a broad
front and pushed ahead in the hard direction. They kept up a steady pace and
the rest of the clan, packed close together, followed along behind.
TIME:
The interstellar
ark, St. George, settled into its orbit around the spinning neutron star at a
radius of 100,000 kilometers and with a period of thirteen minutes. The science
crew began their scientific surveys. Although they would get much better data
when they could go down in Dragon Slayer to look at the neutron star from only
400 kilometers away, they still could do a preliminary survey with the
long-range telescopes.
Jean Kelly
Thomas was belted into the seat in front of the imaging science console on St. George.
The belt was adjusted to accommodate the fact that she was sitting on her
crossed legs. With her cap of short red hair and her upturned nose, she looked
like a pixie seated on a toadstool (with seat belt). Her bright blue eyes
flicked over the features of the latest scan of the hydrogen-alpha ultraviolet
imager. The computer had noticed something unusual in the last scan and had
alerted her.
A blinking
square drew her attention to a small oval bull's-eye pattern that had appeared
on the image of the star. In the upper corner of the screen, the computer had
printed:
LYMAN-ALPHA SCAN TAKEN
Jean leaned
forward. "Identification?" The image
remained, but the words were replaced with:
TENTATIVE IDENTIFICATION—ACTIVE
VOLCANO. CENTER
TEMPERATURE 15,000 DEGREES.
Jean spoke
again, "Switch Lyman-alpha scanner to high resolution scan of target
region!"
She watched
as the image was replaced on the screen with a close-up of the volcano. The
image blinked five times a second as the imager took a scan at each rotation of
the star. As she watched, she could see a flare-up in the central region,
followed by a streak of brightness that flowed away from the center, the lava
flow getting dimmer and dimmer as it moved.
A detailed
history of the birth and death of a volcano was certainly worth keeping a
careful watch on. Perhaps if they were lucky, the amount of matter that built
up in the shield would become so great that it would initiate a starquake
during their visit. That should set the whole star to vibrating and they
might be able to
determine the internal resonant modes of the star and get a better computer
model for the thickness and density of the inner layers. The new volcano was
certainly a high priority item, but it would have to take its turn. She
couldn't tie up the scanner to take pictures of only one thing.
She leaned
forward again and spoke, "Assign Priority One to this target!
"Inform
if any major change or if activity stops!"
She leaned
back and pushed the print button.
"A
volcano," she thought. "
TIME:
The clan
moved very slowly southward. Travel in the hard direction against the magnetic
field lines was not easy, even for the young hunters, and was still more
difficult for the old and the hatchlings, although they were flowing into the
gaps created by the moving van of pathbreakers. The hardest thing for them all
to learn was to keep close together and keep moving. If a gap developed or if
anyone paused for a moment, the east-west magnetic field lines would reassert
their position, pinning their bodies on the lines like beads on a wire. Unless
they had the strength to begin moving south again, their only choice was to
move east or west and join the tail of a portion of the group that was still
moving.
The clan got
better at it, and by trial and error soon developed a flying-wedge technique,
with one strong hunter out front taking the full brunt of the fields, and the
rest of the stronger ones in a chevron behind, opening up the gap that was
created. The other adults soon learned to form secondary chevrons behind, with
the hatchlings and Old Ones in between. Then if a gap developed, it was soon
closed by the adults in the following chevron, and the trailing edge of the
moving clan now no longer looked like a wounded Flow Slow leaving a trail of
vital fluid behind.
They had
progressed a good distance when Broken-Petal called a halt. He knew that they
were probably still on some clan's territory, but he decided that, because so
few hunting
parties were on the
horizon, they were probably in a region between two other clans. Normally, this
would have been a poor place to stop; if they had had to depend on foraging to
the east and west, there would have been less and less food to find the further
away the hunters went. But with the ripe seeds and the knowledge of how to take
the sky away from them to make them grow, the clan could stay in one place,
always in full strength with all of its warriors home
tending the growing plants, and going out only for game to vary their diet and
to show off their prowess.
The clan
settled in with relief, and a crew was sent off to a nearby cliff to get
building stones for the stockades, pod bins, and the all important egg-pens.
As Speckled-Egg
approached the cliff with the quarry crew, the youngster grew frightened. Never before had he been so close to anything so tall. It
seemed that it was going to fall directly down on him, but he certainly was not
going to let his fright show on his first time with a hunting party.
"It
sure is tall," he remarked calmly.
"Sure
is," said Flow-Hunter. Her tread rumbled teasingly. "Looks as if it
is going to fall right on top of you, doesn't it?"
"Yes,
but it has not fallen before, so I guess it won't now," Speckled-Egg said
confidently.
"But it
will when we get through with it," said Flow-Hunter. Then turning serious
she said, "Which end looks closer?"
The top of
the cliff sloped downward toward the east. The party took off in that
direction, carrying their broken shards of dragon crystal and one unbroken,
round-tipped whole dragon crystal that they had found when digging holes for
the seeds. They soon came to the end of the vertical fault plane and began the
long, slow, arduous climb up the slope.
"It's
like traveling in the hard direction, but worse," complained Speckled-Egg.
"When you stop moving in the hard direction, you can rest. But when you
are climbing up, you might as well not stop to rest. When you do, you still
have to hold on to keep from flowing back down."
Flow-Hunter
showed him her trick of waiting until she came across a small stone before
stopping to rest, and then stretching her body out upwards from the stone. With
the stone preventing her from flowing downward, and the hard directions holding
her in from the side, she could almost relax and enjoy her food-pod in comfort.
It was a tricky technique, and Speckled-Egg found his edges flowing around the
stone more
than once, but
soon he was as accomplished a climber as any of them.
Although
they had gone east for only one turn before reaching the end of the fault, it
took them many turns and much food to struggle up the sloping hill in the
intense gravity and make it back to the top of the cliff. Row-Hunter formed a
strong crystallium core in one of her eye-stubs, held the eye up as high as she
could, then moved slowly toward the edge.
"I can
see the clan camp off in the distance. This is the right place," she said.
She stood still and looked for a long time.
"What
is the matter?" asked Speckled-Egg.
"Just
looking," she said. "Everything looks very funny when you can look
down on it. Come and see."
The last
thing Speckled-Egg wanted to do was go near the edge, but he did, one of his
eyes held in imitation of Flow-Hunter. Together they moved forward until they
could see the members of the hunting party they had left at the bottom of the
cliff.
"They
are so big around!" exclaimed Speckled-Egg, "And so funny looking.
You can see all the lumps on their topsides."
"You
would look just as big and lumpy yourself if you could see yourself from the
top instead of only from the side," said Flow-Hunter. "You are right
about the lumps though; they are funny looking. I bet that big reddish yellow
lump in the middle of Double-Seed is an egg that is about ready to be
dropped."
She pushed
her way back from the edge. "Come on, we have a lot of hard work to
do."
The climbers
started to work. The first thing they did was to push the large, whole dragon
crystal to the edge and let it fall off. The nearly unbreakable, super-hard
crystal became invisible and reappeared at the bottom, splintered into a dozen
sharp shards. The waiting group at the bottom rode out the shock and then moved
quickly forward to retrieve the now valuable hunting knives and digging tools.
When the
dragon crystal shards had been removed, the climbers at the top moved forward
to the edge and used their digging tools to gouge a long line in the top of the
cliff. The gouge line was back from the edge a distance equal to the height of
the stones that they could easily carry. They spread apart the fibers in the
crust until there was a long, deep crack, held in place by the connections at
either end of the long strip. They then went to the west end of the strip,
where the nap of
the crust would
give them a better grip, and formed a chain with their bodies. Flow-Hunter
stretched out as far as she could with the sharpest crystal shard held in front
of her in a long manipulator. She concentrated for a moment and soon several
short manipulators were arrayed at her back edge. Speckled-Egg
and Dusty-Crust flowed above and below her and also formed manipulators to
grasp hers. The rest grasped them and spread themselves
out as flat as possible to form an anchor.
"Everyone
ready?" asked Flow-Hunter. She then started sawing away at the end of the
slit, only this time cutting across the fibers in the crust. It was slow hard
work, for the fibers were the source of the real strength of the crustal
material. They switched places; to Speckled-Egg's horror, it was his turn to be
sawing away when the weight of the long section of crust overcame the strength
of the remaining fibers and the face of the cliff came away in a long curling
rip that extended the slit in the top surface down to the base.
The top
surface of the cliff, relieved of some of its stress, rebounded with a shock
wave. For the first (and he hoped only) time in his life, Speckled-Egg's tread
was not solidly in contact with the crust. He had no time to be afraid before
the crust came up to meet him with a bruising smash. They all lay quietly for a
moment and then pounded each other with triumph as they backed away from the
crumbling edge.
They hurried
back down the way they had come, pausing only now and then for a little food.
They all felt like having a little fun, too, but that had to wait (except for
friendly pats and treadings) until they got to the end of the cliff, where the
crust was flat. By the time they had returned to the bottom of the cliff with
the jumble of stones at its base, Speckled-Egg was a full-fledged hunter,
having not only been a hero by being at the point when the danger was greatest,
but having been given a hero's reward and his initiation into manhood by
Flow-Hunter herself.
Having felt
the successful conclusion of the quarrying expedition come rumbling in through
the crust, Broken-Petal had sent out an additional work crew to help drag the
stones back to camp. Soon the place began to look like home again. A pod bin
was the first task, so that everyone could drop his load of pods without having
to worry that the constant winds would roll them away. The Old Ones were most
grateful for the pod bin, for they had been tied down holding onto most of the
food store while the younger ones had been working. Now they
could move around
and get to the more important (and pleasurable) task of turning eggs and
raising hatchlings.
Next came
the egg-pen, and again another great load was taken off the clan as all the
females could drop the eggs they had been hauling around since they had left
the old home and started on their exodus.
For many,
many turns the clan grew and prospered in their new home.
TIME:
Pierre
Carnot Niven, his long, straight hair in a halo about his head, worked away at
the console keyboard, overlaying one multicolored computer display on another.
His soft brown eyes peered at a complicated pattern of lava flows that would
have hopelessly confused anyone but him.
Jean was
checking the plots showing the drift of the smoke from the volcano through the
atmosphere, and correlating it with the magnetic field measurements and the
Coriolis forces caused by the high spin speed of the rotating star. She was
developing a computer model for the magnetic field structure so she could
produce a detailed theory for the iron-vapor atmosphere and how it interacted
with the conflicting forces of gravity, magnetism, and spin of the star.
"It
looks like the weather patterns on the Earth,"
"Yes,"
Jean said. "The smoke travels mostly east-west from the volcano because it
is easier for it to travel along the magnetic field lines than across them. But
when the smoke reaches the magnetic poles, the easy direction is into the
ground, so the smoke piles up into a big crescent with the volcano in the
middle. There is some leakage at the poles though."
"Why is
the leakage staying in a belt north of the equator?"
asked Pierre, "I can understand
that the smoke leakage from the east pole would stay in the north spin
hemisphere since it is above the spin equator, but why doesn't the smoke
leaking from the west pole contaminate the atmosphere in the southern
hemisphere?"
Jean spoke
toward the console, "West pole view!" They watched as the image
rotated to the view over the west pole and stopped. Jean pointed to the screen,
"It happens that one of the strong sub-poles of the chaotic west polar
region happens to lie along the same magnetic longitude as the volcano, and it
also happens to be above the spin equator. That sub-pole has blocked off that
longitude, keeping all the smoke trapped in the northern hemisphere. The
leakage from the west pole, combined with the leakage from the east pole, forms
the intense smoke belt just north of the spin equator."
TIME:
Smoky-Sky
looked up and worried. The sky was now nearly always full of smoke. When it was
time to name him shortly after he had left the egg, the Old Ones in charge of
the hatching pens had thought a smoky sky so unusual that they had given him
that name. Now—many, many turns later—here he was, Leader of the Clan, and
haunted by his own name.
The crops
from the petal plants had been getting worse and worse. The nearly constant
cloud cover overhead seemed to suffocate the plants. It was time to move. But
could they go far enough to escape the ever-present smoke?
"I had
better move slowly," Smoky-Sky said to himself. "No use running from
a Flow Slow right into the maw of a Swift."
He moved to
the clear place between the stockades and the field of plants and t'trumed a
call for the clan to gather. Soon all but the guards and the hatchlings were
arranged in arcs to the east and west of him.
Smoky-Sky
spoke. "The times are not good. We will have to move where the sky is not
so smoky and the petal plants can grow. It will be a long journey, so we must
have much food to carry. Blue-Flow, you are to take a hunting party and look
for a better place for us. I think it will be far from here, so take as many
pods as you can carry, for you will not be
back for many
turns. Remember the words of our ancient Aged Ones—'Go in a direction others do
not go.' "
Blue-Flow
moved off to one side, followed by a crowd of younger warriors eager for adventure.
He picked a small group and led them off to the pod bin to load up on food.
Smoky-Sky watched, musing, "He will be a good leader. He has picked the
ones with stamina, even if they are not the best hunters. More importantly,
since it will be a long journey, he has an equal number of both sexes."
Smoky-Sky
turned to the crowd and said, "I don't know how many turns it will be
before the hunting party comes back, but when they do, I want the pod bin
filled to the walls. The petal plants are not growing many pods, so we will
just have to plant more of them." Amid a shuffle of groans, Smoky-Sky
pushed his way to the tool bin, picked up a sharp shard of dragon crystal, and
set off to the field to start poking holes in the hard crust, knowing that the
best way to get people working on a long hard task was for the leader to start
in first.
Blue-Flow
looked over his group. They were all well bulked out with pods tucked away in
their storage pouches. "Let's go," he said, and started to push his
way southward in the hard direction, the others snuggled up to him in single
file. After a turn of hard travel, they finally passed over the horizon and
were on their own.
For many,
many turns the hunting party moved along, the sky overhead still smoky.
Finally, Shaking-Crust remarked during a pod break, "I think that the
smoke is even worse here than back at home."
They could
not all agree then, but after a few more turns of travel it was very obvious to
all of them that conditions were worse here. The smoke filled the sky, and the
crust was covered with sickly red-yellow ash that chilled their treads as they
flowed over it. There was some talk of going back, but Blue-Flow would have
none of that. This was his first trial as a leader of a hunting party and he
would not come back with pods still pouched in his body.
Blue-Flow
drove them on, always moving in the hard direction. The difficult grind of
pushing ahead, with the poor grip that the ashes gave to their treads, took all
the fun out of the expedition. But something else was happening that added to
their discomfort—they were becoming lost!
It was not
for many turns that one of them mentioned what
they had all
been feeling. "This land bothers me," said Final-Pod. "I feel
that I am lost all the time. Yet I know right where I am. I can see the cliff
over there that we passed a few turns ago, so logically I know that I could
make my way right back to the clan with no problem, just by going in the hard
direction in the opposite way we have been going—but I still feel lost."
They all
agreed. Logically they knew they were not lost— but they definitely felt as if
they were.
"Let us
move on," Blue-How said, pushing off again. But the further they went, the
worse they felt and the darker the sky became. Then the pods began to run low.
At the next
break Shaking-Crust spoke up for all of them, "I think we should turn
back, Blue-Flow. The land and the sky just get worse and worse the further we
go. Perhaps the instructions of the ancient Aged Ones are no longer
correct."
Blue-Flow
countered, "If we tell the clan to go back in the direction that we came
from, they will just get closer to the volcano. If we have them go east or
west, we know they will run into the other clans that are fleeing the volcano.
If they stay where they are, the smoke will kill the petal plants and we will
all starve. Our only hope is in this direction. We must keep going as long as
we can."
Shaking-Crust
said, "You may go on if you like. I'm going back."
Blue-Flow
had been expecting something like this for a long time and was ready for it,
but he had never expected rebellion from his favorite playmate. Without
warning, he was on top of her, drubbing her brain-knot soundly with his tread
and knocking her out before she had a chance to move. Still on top of the
unconscious body, he whispered, "Does anyone else want to challenge
me?"
No one moved
as he flowed off Shaking-Crust, who was starting to recover from the sonically
induced shock. As her senses cleared, she heard Blue-Flow talking.
"I
don't think you realize how serious things are. The volcano is poisoning all
the Crust that it can reach. The only hope for the clan is for us to find a
place where we can survive. If we do not, the clan will die,
the hatchlings first." This last was a telling blow. For although the
cheela were not attached to a specific hatchling, and no female could even
remember which egg she had put into the hatchery unless it had some distinctive
marking, they were all very attached to the little hatchlings, who lived a
spoiled life until they were old enough to go to
work. The
thought of hatchlings dying was enough to eliminate any thought of quitting.
Many turns
later Blue-Flow was really worried. They were way past their food supply limit.
It would be a weak and thin party of cheela that came back to the clan—if they
made it back. The feeling of being lost had become worse. At the next break he
was almost ready to quit. But first he decided to have a better look ahead. He
took the longest dragon crystal spear that they had and poked its sharp end
down into the crust. It stood far up into the sky, many times higher than he
could ever lift an eye on one of his own flimsy eye-stubs. When the others saw
what he was doing, they gathered in a circle around him and applied pressure on
his edges. He formed a thick pseudopod with one of his eye-stubs at the end and
flowed it up along the shaft of the dragon crystal
spear until his eye was perched on top of the spear. The sky looked smoky right
to the horizon ...
"I see a star!" he shouted, and his pseudopod flowed
back down so quickly that they were all rippled by the energy regained from its
fall. "The sky is still smoky, but it must be thinner because I can see a
star through it. The star was right on the horizon."
Shaking-Crust
insisted on seeing it, too; after much effort, she soon had one eye perched on
top of the spear. The star was almost exactly in the hard direction, and right
on the horizon. Shaking-Crust was almost positive that it was brighter than any
star she had ever seen, but without any other stars visible to compare it with,
she was not sure.
Great-Crack
and some of the others wanted a look too, but Blue-Flow stopped the
sight-seeing. "It takes as much energy to put an eye on top of the spear
as it does to travel a few turns where we can all see it from eye level. Let's
get moving!"
With
something to aim for, spirit returned to the column, for the first time in many
turns, they made good time over the ashen land. Soon the star appeared above
the horizon, and as it did, the feeling of being lost began to decrease. By
silent agreement, the rest breaks were short and they pushed on.
Soon
Blue-Flow noticed that there were short breaks in the intense cover of smoke.
After a few more turns of travel, the ashes on the crust stopped being a
hindrance to travel. Soon other stars were visible, strange ones that they had
never seen before. But the strangest one of all was the intensely bright
reddish yellow one that hung
motionless in the southern sky from turn to turn, while all the others whirled
about it like a cloud of minor deities paying homage to a god.
It was an
awe-inspiring experience for them all as they moved forward out of the smoky
hell in back of them into a new land, free from smoke and ash, and with
untouched petal plants growing in delicious profusion all about them. There
were plenty of game signs, and soon they were all enjoying the meat of a Slink,
interspersed with delicious, perfectly ripe pods.
"There
are plenty of game signs, but no sign of a single other cheela," said
Shaking-Crust. 'The game was not particularly afraid of us. It is as if they
had never been hunted before."
"This
place sounds like an Old One's stories of heaven," Great-Crack said.
"I
guess we should call it Heaven," Blue-Flow agreed. "Bright's
Heaven. For Bright, the God Star, rules over it all, and its bright
glare keeps the smoke from coming over the horizon. Let us load up with food
and head back over the 'lost' region to tell the clan the good news. We have
been gone so long, they probably think we are
dead."
TIME:
"No,"
Jean said. "The Earth's magnetic field is too weak to affect the
atmosphere on Earth as it does here."
when the pigeon
is released in the southern hemisphere after being trained in the northern
hemisphere."
"Store
that sequence!
"Continue
monitoring volcanic lava flow pattern on Priority Two basis!"
He turned to
Jean, "Well, the main console is all yours. I'm going to get some food,
write a little, then head for bed. See you next shift."
Jean pulled
herself into the main console seat, quickly checked all the settings, and carefully
buckled herself in. "What are you writing now?"
"Well,
none of us are jealous—much!" Jean said. "We all realize that every
kid you make enthusiastic about space science is going to be a voting taxpayer
after we return, and we should come back to Dragon's Egg with a follow-up
expedition before it leaves the Solar System."
"I'm
sure the World Space Administration agrees with you. They even gave my
publisher a special rate on the cost of transmitting my manuscripts back."
He turned and pushed himself down the passageway.
TIME:
Great-Crack
was a pack rat. Although one of the better hunters in the clan, with two Flow
Slow kills to her credit, she was the constant butt of jokes from her hunting
mates because of her habit of picking up and carrying anything she found that
looked interesting—and because of her highly developed sense of curiosity,
practically everything looked interesting to her.
When it came
time for the hunting party to load up with ripe pods for the long journey back
to the clan, Great-Crack had to unpouch her trinkets so she could load up her
pouches with
pods. She went
over to a shallow depression in the crust; amid ribald calls of "What are
you doing? Laying three eggs at once?", followed by "No, just one,
but it's the size of a Flow Slow!", she dumped her precious pile of odds
and ends, with the heavier ones around the pile in a low wall that she hoped
would protect them from the constant winds. With luck, she would be able to pick
them up again when they returned with the clan.
With her
bulk reduced to fighting trim, Great-Crack flowed off the pile. Paying no
attention to the jokes, she went off with the others as they moved through the
petal plants, carefully picking off the best of the pods and storing them
inside their body pouches until the whole hunting party was loaded to capacity.
"Are
you sure that bulk is all pods, Great-Crack?" chided Shaking-Crust.
"You didn't go back for a few trinkets, did you?"
Great-Crack
was in the midst of rippling out a vicious whisper about being a better fighter
when loaded with pods than Shaking-Crust was in fighting trim, and would she
like to have her prove it... when Blue-Flow interrupted with a loud t'trum on
the crust.
"You
two stop that!" he said. Then his eyes looked around to all of them and he
called, "It's time to go back!" Blue-Flow pushed his bulk in the hard
direction, while the rest of them rapidly formed a single file and pushed off
behind him.
Suddenly
Blue-Flow stopped. "Wait!" he said in amazement. "We're going in
the wrong direction!"
They all
looked up from their crouched, streamlined positions in back of him and looked
ahead. There was the benevolent beam of Bright, directly ahead. They stopped,
confused. They had come into Bright's Heaven far enough that they had stopped
having the lost feeling that they had experienced earlier under the smoke.
Being good hunters, they knew instinctively where they were and in which
direction to go. But their instincts were leading them directly toward Bright,
while they knew from logic that the way back to the clan was in the opposite
direction.
"I
guess we will have to forget our where-sense when it comes to traveling in this
land," Blue-Flow said. He flowed to the back of the column and pushed off
again, this time directly away from Bright.
The group
soon reached the edge of Bright's Heaven. They
all cast
longing looks behind with a few of their eyes as Bright dipped below the
horizon and their sense of being lost returned. Blue-Flow kept the break
periods short since they were all in good shape and well fed, and they made it
quickly back across the "feeling lost" territory with its intense
smoky sky flowing to the west.
Their sense
of direction slowly returned, and Blue-Flow felt much better now that his
instincts finally agreed with his logic. They were following their previous
track very closely, and Blue-Flow was disturbed that he could read their spoor.
They must have been extremely discouraged to have been so careless. Well—they
were on their way back now, and that spoor of many turns ago would just lead
any trackers astray if they kept their present track clean. When it came his
turn at the rear of the column, he looked back and was pleased with the fact, that
except for a quickly fading whitish track from the heat of their bodies warming
the crust, he could see almost no evidence of their passage.
At the next
break, most of them had another pod to eat. As was her usual custom,
Great-Crack kept all the seeds from the pod in case the clan needed more.
Blue-Flow noticed that she had only added a pod skin to the burial pit and came
over to talk to her.
"You
are a good hunter and a hard fighter, Great-Crack, so I have never complained
about your bulk. But we are now on a very serious mission and everything that
slows us down hurts the chances for the survival of the whole clan. I want you
to put all the seeds and anything else you have picked up into the burial pit
and stop collecting things until we have the whole clan back to Bright's
Heaven."
"But
the seeds are valuable!" she protested.
"The
clan will have no need for seeds to plant when they are on the move to Bright's
Heaven, and there will be plenty of pods and seeds when we bring them
there," he replied.
She could
only agree with him, and he stood by watching, first with amusement, then with
amazement, as a steady flow of seeds, pebbles, worthless dragon crystal shards,
and Flow Slow nodes filled the burial pit. He did not know that Great-Crack
held back something. In each one of the food pods from Bright's Heaven, the
bottom seed in the clump had an unusual twelve-pointed cluster shape, instead
of the normal oval shape. Great-Crack's curiosity had been aroused by the
unusual shape and she had looked carefully at each pod she had opened. Ev-
ery pod had a
cluster-shaped seed, and she was especially careful to keep each one. She
wanted to plant them to see if the petal plant that grew from them would be
different in shape than the ones that grew from the oval seeds. When she dumped
her store of treasures, she withheld the cluster seeds.
"They
are so small, they won't slow me down," she said smugly to herself.
"Besides he will never notice, now that I have an egg growing."
Covering up the burial pit carefully to leave no trace of its presence, she
returned to join the others.
After many,
many turns the hunting party began to enter familiar territory. They took no
breaks now, but pushed steadily onward. As they approached the home of the
clan, they felt disturbing tremors under their treads. There were loud voices
booming through the crust and much rapid movement of treads. Some of the voices
were in a strange accent.
The clan was
under attack! Blue-Row moved ahead more rapidly. Thinning way down, he stopped
just over the horizon from the camp. He quickly reinforced an eye-stub and
raised one eye up to evaluate the situation.
A large war
party from another clan was attacking the petal plant field. He could see
movement between the rows as the war party drove the guards down the rows, so
that others could strip the pods from the plants at the ends of the rows. There
was another group that kept up feinting attacks on the pod bins and stockades
on the other side of the camp, spreading the clan guard warriors thin. There seemed
to be too few guards, and Blue-Flow could not see Smoky-Sky anywhere. There
were no enemy warriors on their side of the field, so the plan of attack was
obvious. Blue-Flow dropped his eye and whispered the situation to his group.
"The
petal plant fields are under attack by a large war party that has control over
the eastern half. We will go east from here, staying below the horizon, cross
over in the hard direction until we are in back of them, then come down at them
from the east and trap them in between." As he spoke, pods and digging
tools dropped out of pouches into a disorganized pile on the crust. Rugged
fighting manipulators sprang from their bodies and pulled sharp shards of
dragon crystal from their weapons pouches. Although Great-Crack tried to hide
them, Blue-Flow saw with disgust the small pile of funny pod seeds. He resolved
to give her a drubbing once the battle was over.
With their
killing spears of shattered dragon crystal at the
ready, the
hunting party moved east, going many times faster than their-previous rate of
movement in the hard direction. Once they had moved far enough east to be over the horizon in that direction, Blue-Flow led
them across in the hard direction until they were in back of the attacking
party.
Putting his
warriors in a line, each with one or more sharp spikes sticking out from strong
manipulators firmly imbedded in their thickened front ends, he whispered to
them all. 'They do not know we are attacking, so move as quietly as you can. If
we can surprise them, we will catch them with their brain-knots in our
direction."
They moved
ahead smoothly, keeping a low profile as they came over the horizon. They
flowed around a pile of pods that had been stacked for pickup.
Blue-Flow
whispered, "We're in luck. The pickers have gone down to fight and push
the guards further back."
They each
chose a row and with their quarry busily engaged in a battle midway down the
row, they were able to attack almost without warning.
It was hard
to kill a cheela. If hit with something hard, the fluid body
just retreated from the blow with the flexible skin absorbing the impact.
If the something hard was very sharp, like the shattered end of a dragon
crystal, it could poke a hole through the skin, and if that was big enough a
hole, some of the glowing fluid inside would leak out before the automatic
protection systems could close the wound. If an eye that was so rash as to be
out on a stub could be caught, a sharp-edged shard might slice off the eye-stub
with an accompanying shock of pain but only a partial loss of sight. After all,
if one or two of the normal complement of twelve eyes were lost, the cheela
could easily adjust the position of the remainder to have nearly complete
vision.
The only
really vulnerable part of a cheela was the brain-knot. It could be anywhere
inside the skin, but it was a good bet that, if the cheela was fighting someone
on one side, the brain-knot would be well over on the other side, far away from
any sharp spears of dragon crystal. Blue-Flow was counting on this instinctive
behavior as he rushed his enemy target from behind and flowed up onto her
topside. He felt the telltale knot under his tread and shocked it into
unconsciousness with a focused ripple from his underside, then neatly speared
it three times as his momentum carried him up and over his now-dead foe.
"Blue-Flow!"
shouted Weary-Tread, lowering the point of her spear. "Where did you come
from?"
Blue-Flow
surveyed the oozing hide of his old friend and replied, "We just got back
and we have found a new home for the clan. But come, follow me, we have
fighting to do."
Blue-Flow
moved down the row of plants until he could see a sparring trio of warriors
between the plants. Warm-Wind and Great-Crack had an enemy warrior between
them. The warrior had parried Great-Crack's initial rush and was now fending
them both off as he attempted to escape between the rows. In a rumble of
despair he saw the long shard in Blue-Flow's grasp as Blue-Flow blocked the
way, sending his spear directly into the center of the enemy.
"Another
brain kill!" Blue-Flow gloated as the foe
collapsed into a spreading disk that filled the space between the plants.
He quickly
whispered to Great-Crack and Warm-Wind, pointing with a ripple of his
eye-stubs, "You two go that way and we will go this way." Blue-Flow
turned and, with Weary-Tread covering his trail, went down the row to find more
of the foe.
With the
return of the hunting party, the tide of battle turned, and soon the enemy war
party had retreated, without their stolen pods, and with many of their number
gone.
The clean-up
work began. The stolen pods were stored in the pod bin along with the ripe pods
that the hunting party had brought back with them. The many dead, among them
Fuzzy-Crust and Star-Rise of the clan, were sliced open to let the fluid seep
into the crust, and then the meat was dried and stored.
The news
that the clan had for the hunting party was not good. They had been under
almost constant attack by hungry war parties ever since the group had left.
Smoky-Sky had died long ago in a battle to protect the fields and Weary-Tread
was now Leader of the Clan. When Blue-Flow heard this news, he turned and
looked at Weary-Tread, whose scarred hide was still oozing glowing,
yellow-white fluid from some serious spear wounds.
"Now is
the best time to do this," Blue-Flow thought. "The clan needs a
strong Leader for the journey to Bright's Heaven." He turned, raised his
spear and issued the formal challenge to Weary-Tread.
"Who is
Leader of the Clan, Old One?"
There was a
long pause as Weary-Tread evaluated her
chances. She could
still be a good Leader and did not want to be relegated to the status of an Old
One, but never had she felt so like the dreary name she had been stuck with as
a hatchling.
"You
are, Blue-Flow," she replied, and winced as the ceremonial slash from
Blue-Flow's spear added another small wound to her punctured hide.
Blue-Flow
turned and said to them all, "I am Leader of the Clan. Does anyone
challenge me?" There was no reply, and the formal ceremony over, his tone
changed as he took command.
"I have
good news. I have found a new land for us. A clean land with
no smoke. A good land with no enemies, with much game
and with many, many petal plants that have never been picked. It is a long
distance away in the hard direction and the trail will be harsh and difficult.
But we will go, for a new God Star and His Heaven—Bright's Heaven—waits for
us!"
For the next
few turns, Blue-Flow had everyone who was not out hunting meat busy in the fields
picking the edible pods and storing them in the pod bin. He was outside the bin
with Great-Crack, looking with satisfaction at the pods spilling out of the
opening.
"It is
enough," he said. "We will leave when the hunters return."
"But is
it enough?" Great-Crack wondered. "We needed to eat many, many
pods to get from Bright's Heaven back to the clan. There are many in the clan
and they will travel much more slowly than a hunting party."
"There are
many, many pods, Great-Crack. There must be enough there to feed all the clan,
for I have never seen so many pods before." Blue-Flow went off to greet a
returning hunting party.
Great-Crack
stared at the flowing pile of pods. "There are many pods," she
thought. "But are there enough?"
She played
internally with her pouch full of cluster-shaped seeds, which she had retrieved
after the battle, and thought back over the many pods she herself had eaten
while crossing the barren land between here and Bright's Heaven. Many pods
would be needed, for she had taken the cluster-shaped seed from each one as she
had eaten it, and there were many, many of those seeds in her storage pouch.
Then, in a
flash of inspiration, one of the greatest mathematical minds ever hatched in
the past or future history of the cheela made a great leap of abstract thought.
"I took
one seed from each pod that I ate," Great-Crack said to herself.
"So I have as many seeds as pods."
Her mind
faltered for a moment. "But seeds are not pods!"
It
recovered, "But there are as many seeds as there were pods, so the number
is the same."
She laid the
seeds out in a row that stretched all along the wall of the pod bin. There were
many of them. She then took out pods and put one next to each seed until she
had a row of pods.
"There,"
she said. "I will need that many pods to get to Bright's Heaven." She
put the pods to one side in a pile. She took out more pods and laid them next
to the seeds until she had another row of pods.
"Blue-Flow
will need these pods to travel to Bright's Heaven," she said as she
gathered the pods up again and put them in another pile.
Great-Crack
soon had pile after pile of pods stacked inside and outside the pod bin as she
set aside rations for each of the clan members. She was only halfway through
the names of the clan members when she ran out of pods. There was not enough
food!
Great-Crack
hurried off and brought Blue-Flow back to the pod bin to explain what she had
done. She got nowhere.
"Yes, I
see the piles of pods, but how do you know that each person will need that
many?"
"Yes, I
see that when you line up the pods next to the seeds that the line of pods is
as long as the line of seeds, but what do seeds have to do with pods?"
"Yes, I
understand that you saved one seed from each pod as you ate it on the way back
from Bright's Heaven, but what dqes that have to do
with feeding the clan? You ate all those pods and there is nothing left but
those deformed seeds."
"No, I
don't understand what you mean when you say that the seeds tell you how many
pods each one of us will need. Seeds are not pods."
Great-Crack
tried in many ways to get Blue-Flow to make the jump in abstract thought that
now came so naturally to her, but he could not do it. Finally, in frustration,
he lost his temper and stamped, "There are plenty of pods. Look at them
all. We will go now, for Bright's Heaven is waiting."
Great-Crack
flowed to block his way. "We cannot go!" she said, "We will
starve before we get there! The seeds tell the truth!"
"Seeds
are not pods," he retorted, "and I have been meaning to tromp you for
keeping those seeds after I told you to leave them on the trail."
Her reply
brought him up short. "Who is Leader of the Clan, Old One?"
She moved
toward him while he backed out of the pod bin. "No use endangering the
pods," he thought. "We are both in good shape and this is going to be
a long fight. I wonder why she is challenging me now?"
The clan
gathered around them as they moved together into a clear place between the
stockades. Blue-How watched with a combination of fear and amusement as his
opponent emptied her pouches of tools and trinkets, formed a dueling
manipulator, and raised her spear.
"Blue-Row
is in good shape," Great-Crack thought as she made a neat pile of her
precious "unusual things." "I will need every advantage I can
get to beat him. However, he must not be allowed to win—for he will lead the
clan into sure starvation!"
She finally
turned, raised her spear and repeated her challenge, "Who is Leader of the
Clan, Old One?" She paused—then punctuated the challenge by ejecting her
half-formed egg sac from the protection of her body onto the crust between
them. The clan looked in shock at the precious, tiny eggling wriggling out the
last of its life among the glowing remains of its ruptured egg-sac.
Blue-Flow
alternated his horrified eyes between the cooling eggling and the stern visage
of Great-Crack. "She is determined to win. Could it be that she is right,
and there are not enough pods?" He shifted his spear. "No
matter—things have gone too far to stop now."
Blue-Flow
returned the formal reply, "I am—Hatchling!" He lunged at her.
It was not a
pretty fight. Both were encumbered by the rule that they had to maintain
control of their spears to keep from automatically losing, but were not allowed
to use the points for cutting until the final ceremonial slash of the loser by
the winner. They wallowed, struck at each other's eye-stubs with the sides of
their spears, trod one another's edges, tried to wrest the spear from the
other's grasp, and slapped each other with muscular pseudopods in an attempt to
deliver a knockout shock to the brain-knot.
The usually
fluidless battle for Leadership ended in a shock-
ing way when
Great-Crack found Blue-Flow's spear pointing in an opportune direction and
deliberately impaled herself on it, taking it into her body. No longer in
control of his spear, Blue-Flow had lost. He shook the glowing gout of
Great-Crack's fluid off his dueling manipulator onto the crust as she repeated her
challenge. "Who is Leader of the Clan, Old One?"
"You
are, Great-Crack," Blue-Flow replied.
Great-Crack
maneuvered her body and Blue-Flow watched, horrified, as his sharp spear broke
out of the rapidly healing wound in Great-Crack's side. The spear reached over
to his surface and gave him the ceremonial cut, the fluids from the two bodies
mixing together as they dripped off the spear point onto the crust.
Although she
had suffered a significant wound, the injury would only slow an excellent
fighter like Great-Crack, and when she repeated the challenge, no one had the
courage to reply.
Great-Crack
then told the gathered clan, "We will go to Bright's Heaven, but not now.
We do not have enough food to survive the trek across the bad
lands between here and Bright's Heaven. We must grow more pods. Go back
to the fields and plant many more seeds. We will go after the next
harvest."
The clan
turned to their work, their disappointment at the delay in reaching Bright's
Heaven countered by their natural reluctance to leave their home. Within a few
turns, Great-Crack had mended, and she spent the time making sure not only that
the clan planted enough seeds, but that she wouldn't lose the services of
Blue-Flow, one of the best warriors of the clan. At every opportunity she
patted and teased him. In a few turns, he got over his sulk at losing, gave in
to the teasing, and they enjoyed a romp together. Soon she felt a new egg
growing inside her to replace the one she had sacrificed.
Great-Crack
planted a few of the funny cluster seeds in one spot and watched the plants
with interest, but to her great disappointment the plants, pods, and seeds
inside were just like the plants grown from the oval seeds from Bright's
Heaven. She could never figure out why.
While the
crops grew, Great-Crack played with mathematics. In the same manner as she had
learned to identify pods with seeds, she now had a collection of pebbles, one
for each member of the clan.
With the new
crop coming in, a new pod bin had to be con-
structed.
Great-Crack decided that it was about time to check to see if there were enough
pods for the clan. She did not look forward to hauling all those pods out of
the bins, lining them up against the collection of seeds that she had
accumulated on her trek back from Bright's Heaven, then putting them in stacks,
and back into the bins again.
Then she
made another conceptual breakthrough.
"Why do
I have to move pods around?" she thought. "I can make a collection of
seeds, one for each pod in the bin. Once that is done, then it is much easier
to move seeds than pods."
Soon the pod
bin had a smaller bin outside the opening containing a pile of seeds, one for
each pod in the bin. Monitoring the bin was the cheela's first accountant, an
Old One assigned to the task of adding a seed to the seed bin for each pod put
into the pod bin, and taking one seed out for every pod eaten.
As the
harvest proceeded, even the number of seeds grew to overflow their bin.
Great-Crack looked at the seed bin and was both pleased and appalled at the
number. Now that she had learned to use her mathematics to make her job easy,
she kept trying to think of other ways to make it even easier. She mused as she
pushed the seeds around in stacks. She then noticed that since the seeds were
long ovals, they had a tendency to form into clumps. She found that if she
arranged them so that their sides just touched, they formed a pretty cluster.
Although there were too many to count, there was always the same number if they
were all pushed together so that all the sides just touched. It was a pretty
pattern, just like the cluster pattern of the bottom seed of the pods from
Bright's Heaven. She put one of the cluster seeds next to the collection of
seeds. They looked identical. Then the now familiar habit of isomorphic
identification struck again.
"If a
cluster seed looks like this small clump of seeds," she wondered,
"why don't I just save a stack of cluster seeds, each one representing a
whole clump of oval seeds?"
Soon she had
the seed bin replaced with a smaller one containing a large number of cluster
seeds and a few odd oval seeds left over. That bothered her a little, having
some pods represented by cluster seeds and some by oval seeds, but it helped that
the cluster seeds were a little bigger than the oval ones. Her real problem
came with her accountant, who didn't understand at all.
'The old way
was very simple, Great-Crack," the Old One said. "One seed in the
seed bin for one pod in the pod bin. But
this does not
make sense. How can one seed, even a cluster seed, mean many pods?"
Great-Crack
tried hard to explain, and ran into the phenomenon that is often encountered by
one trying to teach someone something—the teacher often learns something new
herself. Great-Crack learned to count past three.
"Now
look, Old One, I will go through it carefully. Here is one pod, and one oval
seed. Here is another pod next to the first pod, and another oval seed next to
the first seed. That's two—and now three." Great-Crack moved the third pod
and seed into place, then reached for another set.
"Now
this many is ..." Great-Crack fumbled for the nonexistent word. "... the same number of ways that you can travel: east, west,
and the two hard directions." She continued adding sets. "And
this many is the same as the number of fangs on a Swift. And this many is the
number of petals in a petal plant ..."
She went on.
"And this ..." she said as she completed the pattern, "is the
number of bumps on the cluster seeds. It is as many as your eyes."
The
accountant dipped each of his dozen eyes, one after the other, as he carefully
touched each of the seeds in turn with a delicate tendril. "So it
is," he said, "That will make it easy to count them."
The lesson
really didn't sink in the first time, but after many repetitions even the
accountant was using one, two, three, travel, swift, petal ... all the way up
to a dozen, as if he had learned it as a hatchling. But soon even that did not
suffice, for there were so many pods from the harvest that Great-Crack had to
invent the name "great" for a dozen dozen of pods. The accountant was
very satisfied with her choice of word, for it obviously represented a
"great" number of objects.
With the
accountant's help, Great-Crack checked the results of the harvest. First the
pebbles, one for each member of the clan, were placed in a column, then across
the bottom were placed cluster seeds, only now the unique collection of cluster
seeds that Great-Crack had accumulated during her trip back (and which measured
the distance to Bright's Heaven in terms of pods) had been replaced by a
concept—a number—a petal worth of cluster seeds plus a swift of oval ones.
The forecast
was not good. As the cluster seeds grew out from each pebble, Great-Crack came
to the end of the seeds before she came to the last of the pebbles. Great-Crack
felt
once again the
frustration of being Leader of the Clan. The volcano had become more active and
the sky grew steadily worse. With their vision of the sky clouded, the crops
grew poorly and the harvests were meager. Their neighbors to the east and west
were hungry and restless and there had been many more attacks on the fields of
the clan. They must go. But there were not enough pods.
Great-Crack
stared at the diagram in front of her. Although the pebbles and seeds were far
removed from hungry bodies and nourishing pods, they still foretold of great
anguish for all.
"I can
strip the unripe pods from the plants before we leave, and they will get ripe
enough to eat after a few turns," she thought. "There are usually
about two nearly ripe pods per plant." She flowed over to her stockade,
where she kept a pile of seeds that represented the number of plants in the
field. She soon returned with a collection of seeds that represented the unripe
pods in the fields, but even when these were added to the diagram, there were
not enough.
"Dragon's
Fire!" she swore to herself. She shrank from making the obvious decision,
arguing with herself, "But there are so many pods, surely there are enough
for all to go." But the diagram, empty at the top and end, stared at her
with its cold logic.
"A
dozen plus two of the Aged Ones will have to stay," she decided, and
winced as the numbers changed to names in her rnind.
She called
the clan together. To solidify her control as well as to signify her
seriousness, she started with a formal challenge.
"Who is
Leader of the Clan?" she asked, and her tread
felt and marked the chorus of replies.
"You
are, Great-Crack!"
Her eyes
singled out and stared at a few warriors who were slow in responding, but soon
all had replied. She then said, "We leave for Bright's Heaven at the next
turn, but there are not enough pods to feed us all on the long journey, so some
can not go." She reeled off the names of the Aged Ones who were either too
injured or too old to be of much value anymore, and they stoically accepted
their fate, having grown weary of life after so many turns. It did not take
long for the clan to strip the unripe pods from the plants and load up the
eggs, hatchlings, pods, and their few tools and weapons into skin pouches
tucked inside their bodies. The clan left their
home, moving as
always according to the rule of the ancient Old Aged Ones: "Go in a
direction others do not go."
The massive group
of burdened cheela pushed slowly south. It was almost two turns before they
could no longer see the stockades and fields that had once been their home.
Shortly after they had gone over the horizon, one of the guards at the rear
broke ranks, pushed his way ahead and came up to Great-Crack, who was part of
the pathbreaker chevron at the front.
"One of
the Aged Ones that we had left behind is following us," the guard
whispered to her.
Great-Crack
left her place in the chevron, doing it carefully so that her replacement just
in back of her could close the gap smoothly, thus preventing any loss in the
progress she had made. She and the guard flowed quickly east and waited as the
clan moved slowly by.
Great-Crack
looked at the approaching Aged One. "It is West-Light, one of the most
able of those who were left. Why is he coming?" They waited for almost a
turn until the exhausted West-Light approached them.
"You
heard my command, Aged One!" she stamped at him. "You cannot come
with us. There is not enough food! Go back now or I will kill you
instantly!"
West-Light
stopped and emptied out his pouches. He had been carrying some half-ripe pods
from the fields that must have become edible since the trek had started, along
with some nearly ripe wild pods.
"We
were worried perhaps there might not be enough food to keep the hatchlings
healthy," West-Light said. "So we gathered what we could these past
few turns before you got too far away for me to reach. Here—take good care of
the hatchlings."
Great-Crack
whispered, "Thank you, West-Light." She moved forward to pick up his
meager offering. She then stared as the thinnest cheela she had ever seen
slowly pushed his way back to their now abandoned camp.
"He has
not eaten a thing since we left," she thought to herself. She turned and
went back to join the rest of the clan, still moving slowly southward towards
Bright's Heaven.
The trek was
dreary. The progress was much slower than Great-Crack had counted on, and she
felt the pouch of seeds that represented the remaining food get smaller and
smaller after every break. The quality of the food became worse as they ate all
the ripe pods and started on the ones that had only partially ripened in their
pouches. The littlest hatchlings didn't
want to eat
these and were constantly sick. Great-Crack sent out hunting parties both east
and west, but often they came back with neither pods nor meat. Great-Crack grew
desperate. They were losing a hatchling every few turns; for the first time in
ages, some of the clan's eggs refused to hatch and had to be left after it
became evident that the eggling inside was dead.
"All
the clan is in poor shape," Great-Crack said to herself as she worked in
the rear, constantly closing gaps that a youngster or an Old One had let fall
into the body of the traveling group. She looked backward. There was a long,
straggling column that had become separated from the rest of the group when one
of the members faltered and allowed the hard direction to close in on him. She
watched as he attempted to move forward again, but it was obvious that the
speed he was able to make in the hard direction would not be fast enough to let
him and his followers catch up with the rest of the clan. She then saw a
movement off in the smoky east that sent her into action.
"Attack
from east!" she stamped as she pushed her way through the crowded clan
members. When she got to the eastern edge she saw it was serious. It was a
large, hungry war party and they had already cut off the straggling string from
the rest of the clan. She soon had a group of warriors on either side of her
and noticed with satisfaction that the clan had stopped moving and were now in
a coherent group, with the stronger ones facing outward, spears and shards
bristling. She started forward to rescue the captives, when her trained senses
detected something from the west. It was another war party waiting for them to
attack the first group, when they could rush on them from the rear.
"Stop!"
she commanded. She led the war party back to protect the rest of the clan, then
watched in agony as the captives were killed and the precious pods wrenched
from their flowing bodies and devoured by the hungry band of marauders. The war
party stayed for a few turns, trying to figure out a way to attack the rest of
the clan. They made a few abortive attacks, one of which gave Great-Crack deep
satisfaction as she dispatched two of the enemy, partially to avenge the clan
members she had lost. Finally, the war party gave up the siege and went off
toward the west, hauling the meat from their victims with them. Great-Crack
immediately took the clan off again toward Bright's Heaven.
With their
enforced rest, the clan was in better shape, and
with the example
of what happened to stragglers still etched in their minds, there were very few
times that the gap opened by the pathbreakers was allowed to fail, and the clan
made good time for a few turns. But it soon became obvious to Great-Crack that
they were in serious trouble. At the next break she got out the pebbles that
represented the number of the clan, and after discarding the ones that had been
killed in the interchange with the attackers, she laid them out in a column.
She knew
that they were still far from Bright's Heaven, for they had just started to get
to the "lost feeling" region. She made an estimate of how many turns
it would take them to reach Bright's Heaven and laid those cluster seeds out in
a row. She then started to fill in the diagram with seeds representing the pods
left. There was no question about it—they were short by many, many pods.
She stared
at the larger empty space in the diagram, and her imaginative brain turned the
empty space into empty cheela. It was now time—she would have to risk the
chance of another attack and split her forces.
The clan
grew restless as the break grew longer while Great-Crack calculated. She
finally called her warriors together and explained the situation to them.
Blue-Row had never really learned why the seeds and pebbles told things to
Great-Crack that he could not see, but he now was very glad that Great-Crack
had prevented him from leading the clan off many turns ago. With far fewer
pods, he would have had them all dead by now. But he didn't need pebbles and
seeds to tell him that there were not enough pods for them to make it to
Bright's Heaven.
"Blue-Flow,"
she said, "I want you to lead a hunting party to Bright's Heaven and bring
back pods for us." She looked down at the diagram and said, "You will
only need a Slink's worth of pods to keep you going. You are going to arrive
very hungry—but the ripe pods at the end of the journey will make it
worthwhile."
Blue-Flow
and the others in the hunting party emptied out most of their pouches. Some of
them attempted to leave without taking any pods, preferring to leave them for
the hatchlings while making do with bravado, but Great-Crack, trusting in her
calculations, made them take their ration of pods. The hunting party took off
and was rapidly out of sight of the slowly moving clan.
With her
warrior forces depleted, Great-Crack took no
chances and moved
the clan along carefully so that no gaps developed and the perimeter always had
warriors on the lookout both east and west.
The hunting
party quickly traveled over the "lost feeling" region and soon saw
the welcome sight of Bright peeking over the horizon. As they came into the
region where the skies became clear and the petal plants flourished, they ate
their fill and then started loading up their pouches in preparation for the
long trek back to the hungry clan.
Suddenly
Bad-Turn whispered, "I see a Flow Slow moving just over the horizon."
Blue-Flow and the others soon confirmed the sighting and they thinned their
bodies to keep out of its sight.
"It is
to the east and we could get to it easily," Blue-Flow whispered. "The
hatchlings have been without meat since we left home. Let's kill it!"
The Flow
Slow depended on its armored plates for protection. This one had never seen a
cheela before, and ignored them as it ignored all small, scurrying creatures.
The Flow Slow moved ponderously from plant to plant, its armored tread plates
moving over its top surface to fall directly on the plant, crushing it to pulp, to be ingested in the gaps between the plates as the
huge body slowly flowed onward. The Flow Slow sought out plants, but, as many
an unfortunate cheela had found out, it would eat anything that happened to
fall before its onslaught.
The kill was
easy, since the Flow Slow had never tasted a dragon crystal spear before. The
cheela slipped in ahead of it, timing their moves carefully, and planted spears
in the crust in just the correct position so that the sharp points entered the
gaps between the plates as they came down to the surface.
As they
started to move away from the carcass, Bad-Turn looked back at it and said,
"Too bad we can't carry that whole carcass back to the clan. If they had
all that meat to eat, there would be no worry about food for the rest of the
trip."
Blue-Flow
replied, "I thought about that too. We could try to push a large chunk of
meat ahead of us, but we can carry in our pouches more than we can
push—especially when we have to go in the hard direction. Besides, pushing the
meat through the ashes over that whole distance will ruin it."
"If we
only had some way to keep it out of the ashes," murmured Bad-Turn, and he
went over to one of the large Flow Slow plates and looked at it. It was large,
half as big as he
was. It was a
flat square plate of material almost as hard as dragon crystal. At the front
and back edges were curved lips that had been attached to the skin of the Flow
Slow. Bad-Turn flowed onto the plate, thinking. "This could hold a lot of
meat and pods, much more than I could carry in my pouches." He flowed to
the front lip and stayed there for a moment, his back edge hanging back on the
front lip of the plate.
"What
are you doing?" Blue-Flow asked. "We should be going."
"Watch!"
said Bad-Turn, and Blue-Flow and the others saw his back edge stiffen as he
grew a long internal manipulator crystal that ran from one end of the Flow Slow
plate to the other. Since the crystal was horizontal and did not have to fight
the pull of Egg, he could make it very thin, thin enough just to fit under the
lip of the plate.
"I
never heard of growing a manipulator bone that way," one of the party said
to Blue-Flow. Then they both watched as Bad-Turn moved away, the front of his
body digging into the crust and the back edge dragging the plate along behind,
firmly attached by the strong crystal bar just under the skin and stretching
from one eye to another.
"It
feels funny, but it works," Bad-Turn said. "Once I get it moving, it
is easy to keep it moving despite its weight. With someone behind pushing, I
think we could pull much more than we could carry."
The others
tried it and they were all quick converts, especially when they tried it with a
huge pile of bulky chunks of meat that could never be crammed into pouches.
Within less than a turn, the Flow Slow had been converted into meat piled on
top of its own armored plates.
The hunting
party then moved off in single file, a pathbreaker leading the way, pushing
into the hard direction, followed by a plate-puller crouched up behind him,
hauling a plate of meat and helped along by a pusher and followed by three
other teams. The meat on the plates seemed to work as well as their bodies at
keeping the gap open in the hard direction, so they made good time. Their rest
breaks were few and short and only for downing another chunk of nourishing
meat.
When
Great-Crack observed them coming over the horizon, she saw them at a great
distance. Many turns ago she had stopped the trek to conserve food, while she
kept watch with an eye perched up on a long eye-stub. There were no longer any
pods for anyone except the hatchlings, and they were
doing poorly on
those. The whole clan was gathered in a circle, too weak to move much, and
Great-Crack herself was forced to lower her eye-stub often.
"Fine
Leader you turned out to be," she berated herself. "Leading your clan
off to die beneath smoky skies in a place where they always feel lost."
Still, she
had faith that Blue-Flow would return shortly with pods and that then they
could move again while Blue-Flow returned for more. She was relieved when she
saw the returning column, but was amazed by the bulk and length of it. Only the
obvious shape of Blue-Flow breaking path at the front of the column relieved
her worry that it was another attacking war party.
The clan
watched in awe as the procession pulled their wonderful-looking cargo into
camp. Within two turns everyone was back to a good comfortable bulk. The
hatchlings were soon feeling good enough to make pests of themselves while the
adults were more interested in pairing off and having a little fun alone.
Great-Crack listened in admiration as Blue-Flow recounted their journey, the kill
of the Flow Slow, and the results of Bad-Turn's invention.
"Bad-Turn,"
Great-Crack said, "for too long you have been stuck with that dreary
hatchling name. From now on you shall be Plate-Puller.
"Come
with me," she commanded, and some of her eyes turned to look back at
Blue-Flow as they left. "I will see you later. This new name calls for a
reward." Blue-Flow watched the couple go off, a little jealous, but he
would have his chance later this turn.
With their
strength renewed by the meat and ripe pods, the clan moved off at good speed.
It was not long before they began to feel less lost. The sky cleared and
finally Great-Crack called a halt and arranged the clan so that all, even the
smallest hatchling, could see the intense reddish yellow glow of Bright on the
horizon.
"O
Great Bright One. Brightest of all in the sky," Great-Crack intoned, all
of her dozen eyes staring at the bright star while her undertread rhythmically pulsed the crust. "We thank You
for saving us from the rolling walls of blue-white fire. We thank You for
saving us from the choking clouds of poisonous red smoke that kill the plants
and still the eggs. We thank You for leading us out of
the land of starvation and lostness to Your Heaven."
Her eyes
turned from the star and looked around at the clan. "Let us go now to
claim our reward—a Heaven where there are no enemies and plenty of food and
game. Come—all of you—into Bright's Heaven."
TIME:
The strong
limbs of Commander Carole Swenson pulled her compact body slowly along the
central shaft of St. George, her long yellow braid flipping from side to side
with the motion. Carole's eyes automatically monitored the traffic in the side
corridors, watching the to and fro motion of the humanity on her tiny planet.
Although many of the crew were still busy with their
normal tasks, there was a general flow toward the viewing ports near the
bridge. However, Carole was headed in another direction, toward the port
science blister. The view of the upcoming action would not be as good there,
but she wanted to see the closeups from the cameras on the probe spacecraft.
She swung into a corridor and with a dexterity born of many years in free fall,
launched her body unerringly toward the hatch at the far end. Bouncing to a
halt on the wall next to the hatch, she palmed the lock and floated in. No one
saw her enter, for
"How
much longer?" she asked the group gathered in front of consoles at the
other end of the room.
Carole
looked at a display across the room. The field of view of the monitor camera
contained the glowing sphere of one of the larger condensed asteroids in the
lower corner, and a small white speck representing the other large asteroid in
the upper corner. As she watched, the smaller speck moved slowly across the
screen, getting brighter as it came. Carole looked at another console, the
picture there was almost the same, but reversed. The geometry of the elastic
collision of the two large ultra-dense asteroids was almost exactly symmetric.
Jean spoke
from another console. "Video monitors operating."
"Computer
control well within margins," another voice said.
"Herder
probe propulsion units all operational," said another.
"I'll
let it go, then,"
Carole
watched one of the screens as the smaller blob grew larger and larger. Angry
tongues of fire burst rapidly in seemingly random directions from positions
near the two spheres as the computer directed the herder probes to keep the
asteroids on their correct paths. Then suddenly, in a sequence that was too
fast to follow, an ultra-dense asteroid flashed around between its twin and the
camera probe, and the screen was empty.
They all
turned to
Their
elevator was in place.
God
TIME:
God came to the cheela slowly. For
many, many, many generations, the cheela had no God. The sky was empty except
for a few tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the cold, black dome. Then God
had become lonely and made the great volcano grow, driving the cheela from
their home in the north to a new home in the south. There the god Bright had
welcomed his chosen people into the Heaven he had prepared for them.
Bright had been good to the cheela. Bright
never rose or set like the other spots of light, but stayed up in the sky,
keeping watch over all the cheela. Life was good, and the cheela let Bright
know that they were happy by their prayers that they faithfully gave every turn
of Bright's throne.
Then one
turn, when the eyes of the cheela were lifted to the skies in prayer, one of
the supplicants saw a new speck rise over the horizon. As soon as the prayers
were finished, he brought it to the attention of the Holy Ones that interpreted
Bright's wishes.
The Holy
Ones were puzzled, but did not let it show. As masters of their profession,
they had learned to say little and do even less until they were sure of
themselves.
"Yes—we
expected something like that, but let us wait and we will study it
further," they reassured the excited discoverer.
They did
study it. It was still a speck in the sky, not much different from all the
other specks, but it soon became brighter than any of the others. Fortunately,
it was not nearly as brilliant as the god Bright, as it would have been
difficult to explain two gods to a people that had been brought up to believe
in the omnipotence and uniqueness of the One God—Bright.
The new
speck grew and grew in brilliance with each passing turn, and although the
common cheela noticed the increase in brightness, it was only the Holy Ones who
noticed that the speck was also slowly moving with respect to the other stars
in the sky. A moving star! This was unheard of in cheela astrology, where the
pattern of lights, dominated by the glaring red-yellow presence of Bright, had
always remained fixed in relative position while rotating slowly about Bright's
throne in the sky.
"If the
stars are not fixed, but move around, how can one make any kind of predictions
from them? The future would be constantly changing," complained
Bright's-Second, the Chief Astrologer and the next in line for the position of
High Priest.
"I am
sure Bright has a reason for this change in the sky," Bright's-First said.
"It is up to us to use our intelligence in the service of Bright and
interpret its meaning."
The High
Priest turned her eyes toward the young novice.
"Are
you sure of the motion?" she asked.
"Yes, O
Bright's-First," said Sky-Seeker. "In my training in astrology I have
been learning how to estimate the angles between the star specks with the
astrologer sticks and have memorized almost all my number tables. I had tried
to add the new star to my memory but, still being a novice, I had failed to get
all the numbers correctly. I realized my mistake many turns later when I was
trying to cast a fortune. I then went back to the astrologer sticks to get the
numbers correctly and I found that some of the old numbers that I had memorized
did not agree with the new ones for that star."
"Unfortunately,
he is correct," the Chief Astrologer said. "At first I thought his
memory was faulty or that someone had disturbed the astrologer sticks. However,
when I checked the numbers against the ones that I had committed to memory on
the fateful turn when that star blossomed in the sky, I found out that my old
numbers were even further off than the novice's, yet none of the other stars in
the sky have changed their numbers at all."
"A
moving star ..." The High Priest murmured. "One
that moves. It must be that Bright has sent us a messenger! Perhaps
Bright will speak directly to us now."
Soon the
religion of the cheela was broadened to include the new phenomenon, a star that
not only grew brighter and brighter until it rivaled Bright in its brilliance,
but which swept majestically across the skies. There was some consternation
when Bright's
Messenger reached perihelion and its brilliance started to fade, but all the
cheela were relieved when after a few greats of turns, it retraced its path in
the sky.
The new star
set the small cadre of novices talking among themselves. Having been picked
primarily because of their interest in numbers and their eidetic memory, so
necessary for the position of an astrologer in a civilization without writing,
they soon began to puzzle over the strange behavior of the motion of Bright's
Messenger.
"If it
were a circle, then it would make more sense," said one of the novices.
"We could say that Bright and the other stars are perched on a large
crystal egg that rotates once a turn, and Bright's
Messenger would then be on a smaller crystal egg, turning at a slightly faster
rate."
"But
not only is it not a circle," another said, "it
does not even move evenly along its path."
"Another
way of looking at it is that Bright and the stars do not move in the sky,"
said a third, "but that Egg turns once on its axis every turn, and that
Bright's Messenger rotates about Egg in an elongated path."
The others
looked at her as if she had spoken heresy (which she had come close to doing),
and one quickly put her down with one of the first lessons in
"All
stars rotate about the unique brilliance of Bright, worshiping the God of the
Universe as all cheela do," one of them said. "Your picture would
have the stars standing still, when we all know that only Bright, the center of
the universe, stands still, while all else must revolve."
Knowing she
was treading on unstable crust, Sky-Seeker did not bother to reply, although
she knew as well as the others, that Bright did not really stand still but
moved in a tiny circle about an invisible point in the sky. This lack of
perfection of Bright had been a nagging splinter in the tread of the
philosophers of theology since it was first discovered by the use of the
astrologer sticks. The High Priest had assured them that they would understand
this in time, but it had been a long time and a dozen High Priests had come and
gone and Bright still carried out the tiny motion, without bothering to
explain.
TIME:
The Chief Astrologer had been wrong.
The variable motion of Bright's Messenger across the sky did not doom the
science of astrology. Indeed, by adding some complexity to the sky it gave the
astrologers much more to work with than a single set of memorized numbers that
gave the relative position of the stars in the sky. Soon, the old technique of
casting horoscopes by the star that was appearing over the horizon at the
propitious time became obsolete. The position of Bright's Messenger among the
fixed positions of the rest of the stars became the dominant factor in
predicting the future.
It soon
became evident that the technique of memorizing the numbers taken with the
astrologer sticks was not going to work. Even the best memories of the novices
could not cope with the flood of numbers that Bright's Messenger produced every
turn. The ancient accounting technique of the business merchants, who monitored
their inventory with pod seeds in bins, was adapted by the astrologers. After
an awkward time of trying to work directly with seeds, one of the novices
discovered the device of scratching pictures of seeds on flat plates of rock,
then shortly after that, because of the hardness of the rock and the laziness
of the novices, a shorthand written number system was invented. Not only astrology,
but business and science were soon revolutionized by the discovery of written
numbers. Then, shortly after having gotten used to writing numbers on a tablet,
the merchant scribes (as lazy as the astrologer scribes) found that they didn't
have to draw a complete picture of the object that was being counted for an
inventory or delivery record, but only enough so that another scribe
(presumably equally loath to make complete drawings) would be able to recognize
what it was.
Thus,
although none of the High Priests ever realized it, the cheela were soon using
the gift that Bright had sent by its Messenger—the gift of writing.
TIME:
For greats of greats of turns, the life
of the cheela was smooth. Bright kept watch over Heaven and blessed the cheela
in their growth and in their conquests of the north and east. Small, savage
bands of leathery-skinned barbarians would often leave
their smoky lands
to the north and attempt raids on the croplands in the northern part of Heaven,
but the cheela farmers in the north were well protected by roving squads of
needle troopers.
The needle
troopers carried the dreaded weapon, the dragon tooth. A very long needle of
melted dragon crystal, it was made by the forgers, who used fires of dried pod
seeds blown to a blue white heat with bellows from Flow Slow skin to melt
otherwise useless pieces of dragon crystal until they had a liquid melt. The
glowing melt was poured into a groove cut into the crust along the easy
direction. The long fibrous strings in the liquid became aligned by the strong
magnetic field of the star. The liquid then recrystallized about the fibers,
forming a two-component matrix material that was as strong as the original
dragon crystal, except that now it was longer than any dragon crystal had ever
been. A cheela trooper could envelop the blunt end of the needle and get enough
leverage so he or she could extend the light, strong needle of crystal out a
full body diameter without letting the point either touch the crust or rise too
high in the air.
The
barbarians, not having the secrets of the forge, were limited to broken shards
of dragon crystal for their weapons and were no match for a well-trained squad
of needle troopers, who moved in disciplined circles, their dragon tooth
needles bristling across the tops of their interlocked Flow Slow plate shields.
TIME:
Commander Carole Swenson was
floating above the console, watching over
One after another,
the six glowing compensator masses were dropped from their far-flung orbits to
a spot near St. George, where they were met by the deorbiter mass, which
stopped
them in their
tracks and left them dancing randomly about each other in a 100,000-kilometer
circular orbit not too far from St. George. Their huge bulk dwarfed the long,
thin mother ship, and the heat generated during their formation made them glow
like new stars in the black sky.
TIME:
One after the other, new stars began
to blossom in the sky. The cheela in Bright's Heaven continued to multiply and
prosper, but their very numbers began to strain the ability of the crust to
support them. Decadence set in and soon the needle trooper commanders despaired
of ever adequately defending the expanding frontier with the flabby, ill-fed
recruits they were sent to use.
A fifth new
light grew in the sky during the time the barbarians made inroads from the
east. Alarmed, by both the losses and the new stars, the cheela rose under the
leadership of a self-proclaimed General of the Clans and drove the barbarians
back. The spasm of energy subsided—the General abandoned his post and went off
to hatch eggs—and the cheela slipped back into their slow decline.
Yet another
star blazed in the heavens, and this time the flurry of worry and religious
concern was brief. Bright's-First still worshiped daily in Bright's
TIME:
Most of the crew of the interstellar
ark were floating in front of the viewports on the
bridge as St. George approached the site of the compressed asteroid collection.
The rest were at various observation posts where the telescopes and scanners
gave them a better view.
"I know
it's safe, but I still don't like it, Carole," he said. "Those
red-hot asteroids are not only too hot to touch, but they would crush us with
their gravity tides if we ever got too close. And we are going to live within
200 meters of six of them for over a week!"
Carole
smiled reassuringly and replied, "You know perfectly well that, if it were
not for the toasty embrace of those friendly asteroids, the gravity tides of
Dragon's Egg would crush you instead! Let's get them down there where they will
do you some good."
TIME:
Bright's-Second had been keeping a careful
watch on the collection of six lights ever since he had been a novice. Having
entered the priesthood because he was withdrawn and unpopular, he had submerged
himself in the astrologer sticks and had invented new tools to measure more
accurately the minute motions of the many lights piercing the darkness. He was
the first to notice that the tiny circle that Bright made in the sky had become
measurably smaller. He took the news to Bright's-First, who was delighted.
"That
must mean that the imperfection in Bright, minuscule as it has been, is
becoming smaller," she said. "When will be the time that Bright is
perfect? Oh that I might live to see the turn!"
"I am
afraid that when that turn comes, we will both be meat, O High Priest of
Bright," the Chief Astrologer said. "Entire clans will have come and
gone before Bright reaches its perfection."
The High
Priest was disappointed, but she didn't let it show. "Well, we must
maintain our stewardship and keep Bright's
The Chief
Astrologer listened politely, but was bursting to tell the High Priest the
other news that he had.
"My new
sticks have also informed me that something else is happening," he said.
"The Six ... I mean, the six newer lights are slightly shifting in
position and are drawing closer and closer to the point where Bright's
Messenger reaches its farthest distance from Egg. Also, if you watch The Six
and Bright's Messenger as often as I do, you will see that they do
not stay at the
same brightness from turn to turn, but occasionally flare up slightly, then
return to their original level."
"What
can that mean?" Bright's-First asked.
"I
don't know, but in about a great of turns, Bright's Messenger will reach its
maximum distance from Egg, and it seems as if all six of the other lights will
be there at the same time. If so, something interesting may happen."
TIME:
When the deorbiter came up this
time, there was going to be a spectacular show. Commander Swenson was again in
the port science blister, watching the action on the console screens.
"Check
position of compensator masses!"
Six
confirmations flashed instantly on his screen and were echoed by voices floating
through the air from six nearby consoles, where each compensator mass was being
monitored by a crew member.
"Still,"
Carole said, "it lets us get in on the fun." She watched as a tiny
speck in one corner of the screen slowly grew bigger and approached the six
glowing spheres in the center of the screen. Then, in a complex wiggle and
flash, the deorbiter mass pulled its disappearing act. The six glowing
compensator masses were gone, and the screen was empty.
TIME:
Bright's-Second had his suspicions
verified. For when Bright's Messenger reached its point of maximum distance
from Egg, it did not just pass in front of the Six, but instead grabbed East,
Sex, Crust, West, Food, then finally Sky, and flung them down at Egg.
The dozen
turns in which the sky was torn asunder by Bright's Messenger throwing down the
false gods from the sky was a busy time for Bright's
wicked cheela that
had abandoned Bright and had turned to false gods. For a while, even
Bright's-Second was worried about that possibility. But a few dozen turns
staring through the astrologer sticks assured him that although the falling
stars would come close to Egg, they would only come as close as Bright's
Messenger did. When the High Priest passed Bright's-Second's assurance of
salvation on to the cheela, the crowds flocked to Bright's
Near the end
of the fourth great of turns after their fall, the six star-specks and Bright's
Messenger drew closer, and moved more rapidly through the black heavens.
Bright's-Second spent almost his entire time out at the astrologer sticks,
writing down the numbers as fast as he could determine them. After he was
certain of the orbits, he could spend some time carefully drawing them out and
trying to understand them, but right now his full time was spent collecting the
numbers as the seven bright objects moved through the heavens. He determined
that Bright's Messenger had been affected by the interaction—not much, but an
easily measurable change had been made in its highly elliptical orbit. He hated
to do it, but he put a novice in charge of taking the numbers, and went off to
draw up the new orbits of the fallen Six.
"Strange,"
thought Bright's-Second, "they all seem to be heading for the same place
above Egg. Perhaps they will hit each other and destroy themselves, as an
example to the cheela not to worship false gods."
Suddenly he
had another thought, and shortly he was staring at still another egg-shaped
orbit—that of Bright's Messenger with its new numbers used.
"Bright's
Messenger is going to be at the same point at the same time," he said to
himself. "What is going to happen? It would be to Bright's glory if I
could predict the outcome for the people, so they could be properly
prepared."
Bright's-Second
tried as hard as he could to extract the most from the inadequate numbers that
came from the crude astrologer sticks, but all he could tell was that Bright's
Messenger and six fallen ones were going to be near the same place at the same
time.
"They
look as if they will all collide and be destroyed," Bright's-Second
reported to the High Priest. "But it could be that Bright's Messenger will
toss the other six off into different directions again, perhaps back up to
where they were. I simply don't know what to predict."
"It
would be so much better if we knew," she replied, "but perhaps
.Bright is testing us again."
Bright's-First
was wise in the ways of religious leaders and only told her people that they
were all to be praying, with their eyes to the eastern skies, when the time
came for the stars to meet.
Inexorably
the seven spots in the sky drew closer together, and now everyone could see the
irregular flaring in intensity as if they were glaring at each other.
Bright's-Second was busy at the astrologer sticks. He had the novices working
in teams, one for each of the seven lights. They often got in each other's way
and a number or two was lost or misread, but he could take care of those later.
He himself, with his practiced eyes, was estimating the relative distance
between the points of light, while the novices were measuring with respect to the
background stars. It was now obvious that they were not all going to meet at
exactly the same place. Then, as the cheela watched, they saw Bright's
Messenger swing by Sex, West, Food, East, Crust, and finally Sky, then continue
on its accustomed path back into the blackness, leaving the six standing still
in the sky!
A keening
vibration shook the crust as a great of greats of cheela treads chattered in
fear and awe at the amazing sight. Where before, the six stars had risen and
set in the skies each turn as the other stars and Bright's Messenger had done,
they now were stationary. They neither rose nor set, but slowly rotated once a
turn around a point above the east magnetic pole.
The High
Priest took full advantage of the extraordinary sight, and at the next turn
proclaimed that the new formation was composed of six of Bright's eyes, brought
down to Egg by Bright's Messenger to vigilantly watch over the cheela to see if
they were daring to worship false gods again. The proclamation was accepted by
the cheela, and the pantheistic temples were reduced to rubble by frightened
mobs cowering under the constant glare of the Six Eyes of Bright.
The new
formation in the sky bothered Bright's-Second. It was counter to everything he
had ever known about the behavior of the many lights in the sky. Having been a
trooper chaplain during the last northern campaign against the barbarians, he
had marched with the troopers across the equator to destroy a barbarian town.
There, through breaks in the smoke cover, he had seen some tiny stars that
rotated in small circles over the north pole, as
Bright did over the south pole. He could under-
stand a star
being motionless in die sky if it were near a pole in the sky, but this was the
first time an east or west magnetic pole had acted like the north and south
poles.
TIME:
"The compensator masses are
down," Carole said, turning to
The console
blinked.
PAGING CESAR RAMIREZ WONG
PAGING JEAN KELLY THOMAS
PAGING AMALITA SHAKHASHIRI DRAKE
PAGING SEIKO KAUFFMANN TAKAHASHI
PAGING ABDUL NKOMI FAROUK
Kicking off
from the console,
TIME:
It was twenty minutes to separation and
the crew of Dragon Slayer gathered in the small lounge at the base of the ship.
(the only
"real" doctor on Dragon Slayer) had the unusual combination of an
M.D. in aerospace medicine and a Ph.D. in supermagnetics. Pierre himself had a
Ph.D. in high-density nu-cleonic theory, and doctorates in gravitational
engineering and journalism. Seiko, at 32, had them all beat At
last count she had four doctorates and expected to earn another as the result
of their trip. Although each was a specialist in one aspect or another of
neutron star physics, they had cross-trained so that each one of them could
carry out any portion of the detailed science schedule that Dragon Slayer's
crew was on.
"After
separation we will be on ten-hour interlocking duty shifts. There will be a
two-hour overlap so the new person coming on duty can be debriefed on the
status of the experiments before taking over. It is now 0912 so Abdul, Seiko
and Doc are on duty, with Doc on his mid-shift meal break and Seiko to go off
duty at 1000. We had better get into the routine, so the rest of us should
relax now. I know we aren't going to quarters during breakaway, but our shift
will be coming up soon, so make sure that you get some sleep, and don't spend
your off hours just watching the others work."
The time for
separation approached, and they all went up to the main deck where each would
have a viewport. The breakaway was quiet and uneventful. The procedure
consisted of opening the hatch doors of the huge mother ship, unlocking the
attachment fittings, and slowly backing the larger ship away from the freely
falling sphere.
Cesar spoke.
"It is always awe-inspiring to be outside, and up this close. The last
time for me was when I came on board two years ago."
"I've
been out a dozen times on antenna maintenance," Amalita said. "But
you're right—no matter how often you see it, it is still impressive."
"Good
hunting, Dragon Slayer," came Carole's throaty
reply.
They drifted
away from the ark. As it grew smaller and smaller in the distance, the crew
members gathered around the port facing the retreating mother ship. Finally
faced the neutron
star that they would soon be orbiting at close quarters.
"The
deorbiter will arrive in six hours,"
The crew
went to suit lockers, where they stripped down to briefs and put on
tight-fitting wet suits with a complex array of hydraulic tubing, pressure bladders,
and a full underwater breathing apparatus. They then climbed, one by one, into
the spherical tanks. Abdul was ready first and climbed into the tank with the
hatch that opened downward into the lounge.
Once he had
Abdul safely in the tank, he turned and visited the rest of the crew. Amalita
had checked out her equipment and was climbing into her tank, while Seiko
Kauffmann Takahashi, with her typical Germanic thoroughness, was still checking
out her air system. Jean was already in her tank and Doc had carried out the final
checkout with her.
"We
would have to bottle her and pour her into the crematorium when we got back to
St. George," he thought to himself.
her methodical
check of each one of her pressure bladders, closed her hatch cover, purged her
remaining air, then turned to face her console pickup.
"Seiko
Kauffmann Takahashi secured," intoned the stolid image, the short
efficient oriental bob outlining the determined round face.
Through the
long wait they could feel vibrations and slight accelerations that leaked
through their water shields and pressure suits. These were vibrations from the
ship's rockets, as the computer brought the spacecraft and the ultra-dense
asteroid closer together.
"Down
we go!"
The drop
down into the fierce gravity well of Dragon's Egg only took two and a quarter
minutes. All was quiet for most of the fall, but in the last few seconds—as
they began to approach the neutron star—
His eyes failed
to see the glow of the deorbiter mass as it flashed again across his screen,
leaving Dragon Slayer motionless in the center of the six compensator masses
that were whirling about the neutron star and the spacecraft five times a
second. "What a ride!" a female voice said over the intercom, masked
by the excitement and the breathing mask.
"Time to get out of your swimming pools and get to
work!"
TIME:
Not many saw the faint star as
Bright's Messenger left it at the center of Six Eyes. It had been too faint to
see when it was in its high orbit above the star, since it did not have a glow
of its own like the other stars in the sky. But once it was basking in the glow
of Six Eyes, the speck reflected their radiance and could be seen by those
worshipers of Bright with the best eyesight or the most faith.
"The
new star in the center of Six Eyes does not move," the Chief Astrologer
reported to Bright's-First, the High Priest. "The Six Eyes are almost
motionless—however, they do rotate once every turn about the east pole. The new
inner star is at the exact center of Six Eyes and does not move at all."
The High
Priest was pleased with the news. Finally something logical was happening in
the skies above Bright's Heaven.
"If the
new star does not move in the sky, then it is like Bright—who also does not
move. Many generations ago Bright sent down six of his eyes to keep careful
watch on the unfaithful cheela of that time. It seems that Bright has approved
of what he has been seeing, and he has sent down his inner eye of faith to look
upon those who have been worshiping him for so long. This new eye is the Inner
Eye of Bright."
TIME:
After exiting the tanks, the crew of
Dragon Slayer gathered on the main console deck. The outside metallic
micrometeorite shields had been pulled back from the six darkened viewing ports
and they stared out. It was a dizzying sight, although they could feel no
motion.
They were in
a synchronous orbit 400 km out from the neutron star. To counteract the
41-million-gee gravitational pull from the nearby star, their spacecraft had to
orbit about the star at five revolutions per second. Yet despite the rapid
rotation they felt nothing because Dragon Slayer was stabilized to inertial
space and did not try to keep a port facing the neutron star. It was good that
it did not, for the centrifugal force in a spacecraft spinning around at five
revolutions per second would
have been enough
to crush their bodies to a pulp against the outer bulkhead.
Since the
spacecraft was orbiting but not spinning, this meant that the large, brilliant image
of the neutron star flashed by each of the viewing ports five times a second,
shining a flickering white glow on the walls of the central deck. Also visible
through the ports was a ring of six, large, red ultra-dense asteroids only 200
meters away. They too whirled about the spacecraft five times a second, their
glow alternating with the flashes from the distant neutron star.
Seiko took
in the scene at one view port with a quick professional glance. She then shut
her eyes and went limp in the air. Her arms and legs were stretched out in all
directions.
"What's
the matter!" Cesar exclaimed, looking over at her
with concern.
Seiko slowly
opened one eye. "Don't be concerned, Doctor Wong, I was merely checking
the tidal compensation," she said, slightly annoyed at being interrupted.
"At 406 kilometers from the neutron star, the tidal gravity gradient
should be 101 gees per meter. Even though my middle is in free-fall, my arms,
legs and head try to go in different orbits. My feet are one meter closer to
the star and should feel a pull of 202 gees. My head is one meter further than
my middle and should also feel a pull of 202 gees, while my arms should feel a
push of 101 gees.
"The
six compensator masses also make tidal forces of the same magnitude, only they make
tides of the opposite sign. I was just trying to see how accurately the two
tides were compensating by using my hands and feet as crude accelerometers. I
am surprised at how small the residual tide is. Only very near the hull can I
sense any forces on my arms as the ship rotates." She closed her eyes
again and continued to feel the play of the minute gravitational tugs coming
twenty times a second on her hands and feet as the compensator masses and the
neutron star whirled about the ship five times a second, rotating their
four-lobed gravity pattern about the nonspinning ship.
After
watching for some minutes, the crew began to be bothered by the flickering of
the lights. By common consent, the metal shields were activated and slid back
over the viewing ports, returning the main console room to its steady internal
illumination. The crew then turned to their job, which was to examine the
neutron star with instruments a lot more sophisticated than a naked human eye.
TIME:
The Old One watched attentively as
Sharp-Slicer carefully opened her laying orifice and deposited her egg at the
entrance to the egg-pen. "That egg does not look right," the Old One
said with a combination of concern and disapproval.
Sharp-Slicer
looked at the egg-sac with her dozen dark red eyes. The egg was much smaller
than normal, and very pale. "It didn't feel right while it was growing,
either," she replied. "I hope it will be all right after it
hatches."
"Don't
worry, I and the other Old Ones will take good care of it," Loud-Talker
said. "Perhaps it will grow bigger after it hatches and can get more
food."
Relieved of
her burden, Sharp-Slicer left the egg-pen and returned to her duties as Leader
of the Clan. The egg would be well taken care of by the devoted Old Ones.
Within a few turns, she had forgotten all about the incident. After all, when
one was as old as she was, with a half-dozen eggs contributed to the egg-pen,
they all seemed to blend into one another.
The pale egg
got lots of attention, for all the Old Ones were very concerned about every one
of the eggs entrusted to them. Loud-Talker took extra care to keep the pale
little egg-sac sheltered at all times under the flared edge of skin that he
used as a hatching mantle. He never forgot to roll the flattened oval sac over
a full dozen times each turn, to keep the eggling inside properly exercised.
Loud-Talker
was at first concerned when the time for hatching came and went, but soon
thereafter he could feel the eggling stir inside the sac. It was with relief
that he finally felt the warm flush of fluid under his mantle as the egg sac
burst and the eggling squirmed out.
Loud-Talker
carefully rolled the other egg-sacs away from the new hatchling while still
keeping them all under his hatching mantle. He maneuvered the hatchling to the
edge of his mantle and let it come out.
"Pink eyes!" Loud-Talker exclaimed in amazement,
his cool dark red eyes staring down at the small pale cheela. The dozen tiny
pink eyes surrounding the white body of the new hatchling waved unsteadily as
they stared up at the cold, dark sky.
His t'trum
of amazement brought another Old One, who had been helping in the hatchling
pen. The two Old Ones looked the new hatchling over with great concern. There
was obvi-
ously something
wrong with it, with its small size, pink eyes, and feverishly hot pale body.
"I have
never seen a little one like this before," said the other Old One.
"I have
not either," Loud-Talker said. "But when I was Leader of the Combined
Clans, I heard from my advisors about hatchlings similar to this one. They are
called Bright's Afflicted."
Loud-Talker
flared another section of his skin and slowly passed it up and over the little
one. "Why don't you take over the eggs for a while," he asked the
other, "while I take this little hatchling out to the hatchling pen and
give him something to eat?" Carefully prodding the little one along, he
went out the entrance of the egg-pen to the feeding trough of the hatch-ling
pen. There, Loud-Talker helped the hatchling put a tiny piece of pod into an
intake orifice. Soon the little one was successfully finding and stuffing
himself with more food, with almost no help from the Old One.
Loud-Talker
watched the hatchling eat. He was clumsy, but then most hatchlings were clumsy
until they had practiced eating for a few turns. However, this one seemed worse
than the others. Loud-Talker formed a slender tendril and moved it close to one
of the hot tiny pink eyes, but the eye did not withdraw into its protective fold
until the tendril was almost upon it.
"Poor
hatchling," Loud-Talker said. "I am afraid those pink eyes of yours
do not serve you well." His protective instincts swelled, and from then
on, the little hatchling became the special project of Loud-Talker.
Pink-Eyes
ate and grew, but always stayed much smaller than the other hatchlings his age.
He had courage, and tried to play in the rough-and-tumble games that hatchlings
play, but his poor eyesight put him at a considerable disadvantage. The part of
life in the hatchling pen that he liked best was listening to the stories of
the clan storyteller.
Loud-Talker
was the storyteller, for he had had many more experiences than the other Old
Ones. After each storytelling session, the other hatchlings would rumble noisily
away, pushing and shoving each other, while Pink-Eyes would stay and ask
questions about life outside the hatchling pen. He questioned Loud-Talker about
what it was like to be Leader of the Combined Clans and talk to a dozen greats
of cheela at one time, and have them all listen quietly to the words.
"It
must have been wonderful to have been so important, Old One Loud-Talker,"
Pink-Eyes said. "Why did you stop being Leader?"
"Well,"
Loud-Talker rumbled in wry humor, "I didn't really stop. It was just that
someone bigger and stronger wanted to be Leader, and after discussing it with
him for a while, I decided that I didn't want to be Leader of the Combined
Clans any longer." He unconsciously formed a tendril and brushed it over a
scar on his hide as he went on. "Besides, I was getting tired of being
Leader. More and more I wanted to come and tend eggs and play with you
hatchlings and tell you stories and do nothing else until I flow."
Loud-Talker flared his protective mantle and brushed it over the feverish body
of the eager little pale one while Pink-Eyes reflexively shrank to minimum area
and reveled in the cool caress.
TIME:
Abdul Nkomi Farouk's nimble brain
woke up softly, ready for anything. He slowly opened his eyes and grinned
inwardly at the sight of his brown arms floating aimlessly in front of him. He
was awake, but they were still asleep.
"Get
busy arms!" he thought to them. "You have a lot of button pushing to
do today if we are ever going to get that neutron star mapped."
However, the
first thing that the arms did was their now automatic twist and curl of the
tips of Abdul's fierce black mustache. Abdul's eyes watched the arms in
amusement. He then gave them his first direct command. Instantly his body dropped
from its dreamlike trance and became one with his mind. He unsealed the
sleeping cocoon and pushed off to the head.
TIME:
It was nearly time for Pink-Eyes to
leave the hatchling pen when Loud-Talker died. Loud-Talker was in the midst of
his favorite activity; telling stories to the hatchlings. He was recounting the
tale of the time he had led the forces of the Combined Clans in a punitive raid
to drive back the barbarians in the north. He was just getting to the good
part, where he personally hacked up a dozen barbarians at one time (the number
of barbarians
seemed to increase with each telling), when a fluid pump to his brain-knot
failed. The constant muscular tension in his skin relaxed, and his body spread
into a large, limp circle that flowed out and in between the hatchlings.
Pink-Eyes was shocked. This was not the first Old One that he had seen
die, but the loss of his special friend and mentor was a great blow. He stayed
rooted to the spot, not even moving when the butchering crew came to get the
body. He was still there when the hatchlings returned from watching Loud-Talker
converted into meat for the food bins.
While the
others were busy eating, Pink-Eyes wandered out the opening of the hatchling
pen and went slowly off to climb a small mound just outside the clan camp.
As a leader
of a clan that inhabited the eastern border of Bright's Empire, Sharp-Slicer
always kept half her tread listening to the constant murmurs in the crust. Her
clan was subject to many attacks by the barbarians, and although she had good
warriors out on watch duty, she never relaxed. She paused now as something
unusual rippled through the crust under her tread. It was very faint, and very
high-pitched. It was not a sentry alarm, but it definitely didn't sound like
the usual busy noises of the clan camp.
The strange
ripple sounded like a voice from a hatchling pen, but her trained directional
sense placed it well outside the camp boundaries. She moved to the edge of the camp
where the high-pitched ripple now came more clearly. She then saw the source, a
faint pale spot on top of a nearby rise. Sharp-Slicer moved toward it; as she
got closer, she realized that the pale spot was the Bright's Afflicted
hatchling, Pink-Something-or-Other.
She was
annoyed that the hatchling had been allowed to wander off this far from the
camp, but then again, there had been some confusion at the hatchling pen when
Loud-Talker had flowed. Besides, the hatchling was probably old enough by now to
be given some work, although Sharp-Slicer had a hard time thinking of what such
a small, poorly-sighted one could do.
As
Sharp-Slicer approached the base of the rise, she could hear the high-pitched
voice through the crust. She was surprised at how well the tiny ripples seemed
to travel. She stopped to listen.
"O
Bright One in the sky. Why do you punish me so, for I
have done
nothing wrong. I have always worshiped you as I should," Pink-Eyes said.
"You have inflicted this miserable pale body upon me—and now you have
taken my only friend. Why? Oh Why?"
Sharp-Slicer
was a little bewildered that the youngster seemed so attached to the Old One.
She had respected Loud-Talker herself. After all, anyone would respect an
ex-Leader of the Combined Clans. But he was meat now—there was nothing left to
respect. She supposed that this unseemly sorrow over a hunk of meat was just
one of the many strange things that was wrong with the
poor youngster. She rumbled a call in his direction.
"You—come
down at once, and return to the compound!" she said. "You know there
are barbarians not far away."
Pink-Eyes
was startled at the voice booming through the crust, for his eyes had been busy
trying to make out the blur that was all he could see of Bright, and he had not
noticed the Clan Leader's approach. He was awed at being addressed personally
by the Leader of the Clan, and quickly flowed down the hill and started back to
the camp, but a command from Sharp-Slicer brought him to a stop.
"Wait!"
Sharp-Slicer said. "Since you now feel that you can just wander out of the
hatchling pen whenever you want to, perhaps you are too big for the hatchery.
What is your name and age, youngster?"
"My
name is Pink-Eyes and I have aged a dozen greats of turns, O Leader of the
Clan," Pink-Eyes responded respectfully.
Sharp-Slicer
flowed over and looked at him closely. He was small, much too small for
training as a warrior or hunter, and even too small for tending crops. She was
going to have a hard time finding something useful for this one to do. She
finally had an idea.
"You
are to go to the clan astrologer and tell him that the Leader of the Clan said
that you are to train to be an apprentice astrologer," she ordered.
Pink-Eyes was delighted that he had finally been given something
useful to do, and immediately flowed off toward the astrologers' compound.
Sharp-Slicer
watched the eager youngster flow off, and then returned to more important
business, having never connected the pale youngster with the pale egg that she
had left at the egg-pen so long ago.
TIME:
Cesar was busy at the science
experiments console. Now that they had settled in over the east magnetic pole,
it was time to start the survey instruments. The IR and UV scanners were busy,
and the high resolution visible camera was taking shot after shot of small
regions in the mountainous territory in the east pole region. Even the neutrino
and gravitational radiation detectors were operational on the possibility that
a crustquake might occur, although the chances of that happening were not high.
Cesar now
readied the laser radar mapper. He first set it in the short pulse mode to get
the best resolution on the mountains directly below Dragon Slayer. He checked
over the laser parameters as they appeared on the screen.
LASER RADAR MAPPER:
WAVELENGTH 0.3 MICROMETERS
PULSE WIDTH 1.0 PICOSEC (0.6 MM
RESOLUTION)
PEAK PULSE POWER 1 GW
PULSE REP RATE 1,000,000 PULSES/SEC
SPOT SIZE 60 CM DIAMETER.
Satisfied
with the setup, Cesar leaned forward. "Proceed with laser radar mapper
scan!" he said. "Circular scan from sub-surface
point out to five kilometers radius!"
Cesar
watched as the screen blanked and the image of Dragon's Egg appeared on the
screen. He then saw a track of tiny little circles, each one representing a
spot where the laser radar had reflected its beam off the crust of the neutron
star, slowly winding its way outward in an ever expanding spiral.
'The spiral
scan will take about eight minutes," he murmured to himself. He watched
for a few seconds and then his fingers flicked over the keyboard as he moved on
to set up the next experiment.
TIME:
"I don't want to complain, but
I don't want him around," the clan astrologer complained to Sharp-Slicer.
"When you first sent Pink-Eyes to apprentice with me, I was willing to
give him a try, even if he does look strange. He was eager, and tried
very hard, but when we found out
that his eyes are so poor that Bright and the Eyes are only blurs, and that he
cannot even see most of the other stars in the sky, it was obvious that he
could never be an astrologer. If you cannot see the stars, then how can you
make astrological predictions?
"Despite
that," the clan astrologer went on, "I did find him useful in helping
me with the worship services. His voice is high, but the ripples carry well. I
use him for all the chants, and have him take care of the worship symbols. But
now, I am afraid that I will have to get rid of him. He's blasphemous."
"What!"
exclaimed Sharp-Slicer.
"Yes,"
the clan astrologer said. "For a long time, as an apprentice, he kept
saying that the Inner Eye of Bright was flashing on and off. We finally
convinced him that it was just his poor eyesight tricking him, but recently he
has been saying that every dozen turns or so, the flashes get brighter and
brighter, and then fade away again. The last time occurred a few turns ago. He
even dragged me up to the top of his silly hill and kept saying to me, "Look,
at them! Look at those brilliant flashes! Are you blind, Old One!'
"I
don't mind being called an Old One, for it is not long before I will get to
play with the hatchlings," the clan astrologer went on. "But to be
called blind by that nearly sightless freak is more than I can stand. Besides,
he is going around telling everyone that Bright's Inner Eye is signaling to
him—him alone!"
Sharp-Slicer
looked at the seven points of light hanging nearly motionless over the east
pole. She did not often look at the sky, as she was too preoccupied with
running the clan here on the crust. However, if there had been bright flashes
from the Inner Eye, she certainly would have noticed them. She normally did not
pay much attention to religion, but, as Leader of the Clan, she was
automatically Chief Worshiper of Bright at holy times, and it wouldn't do to
let things be disrupted by an obviously deranged individual.
"I
guess the Bright's Afflicted has other problems besides paleness and poor
eyesight," she said. "However, times are good, so we will just let
him get by without having to do any work."
Pink-Eyes was not happy with his new status. He felt worthless, and
spent most of his time off away from the clan camp, gazing at the blurry shapes
of Bright and the Eyes, talking to the spots of light and himself, and dreaming
that he was
Leader of
the Combined Clans, speaking to the multitudes that gathered around him to hear
his words of wisdom.
TIME:
The console screen flashed, and
Cesar looked up. Across the top of the screen appeared the words:
LASER RADAR MAPPER SCAN
COMPLETE.
Cesar struck
a few keys and the IR image mat he had been examining disappeared and was
replaced with the command setup for the laser radar mapping experiment.
For the next
segment of the scan, the laser beam would be shooting obliquely across the
curved surface of Dragon's Egg, and the equipment could now obtain both high
resolution height and surface position information if it were set up to use a
chirped pulse. Soon the laser was chirping in frequency from the visible up to
the ultraviolet region, while the pulse repetition rate was lowered to 100,000
pulses per second.
Cesar set up
the laser mapper to scan a one radian sector, starting from the edge of the
five-kilometer circle that he had already mapped and extending out for another
five kilometers—-well over the curve of Dragon's Egg. He then watched as the
sector scan started, the narrow fan beam taking about one second per sweep as
it slowly crept outward toward the west.
TIME:
Pink-Eyes made his way up the slight
rise just outside the clan camp. He had been so sure that Bright had been
talking to him through Bright's Inner Eye, but no one would believe him.
"Yet—it
was so bright!" Pink-Eyes said to himself. "Such dazzling, brilliant flashes of pure light. It was
Bright incarnate! Yet Bright would not let them see! Why? Why?? Why???"
Pink-Eyes
rested once again on the low rise. Using the prayers and chants that he had so
faithfully rippled into the crust every worship time, he again sought comfort
from one who seemed to have inflicted nearly every indignity upon him—except
death.
Pink-Eyes
felt his small sharp knife in his personal weapons pouch, and drew it out. He
looked at it for a long while, considering ... He dropped the knife to the
crust, where it lay, its tiny point shattered by the
fall.
Pink-Eyes
knew that his clan would not allow him to starve, even though they refused to
let him share in the work, but he resolved never to return. Without looking
back, he set forth toward the east, directly into the wilderness—the territory
of the barbarians. The sentry guards, used to the wanderings of this strange
pale one of the clan, let him pass outward without challenge.
Pink-Eyes
had no plan. Having been rejected by the clan, his only thought was to leave.
He knew he was in danger from the barbarians, but the thought of meeting death
at the points of their spears held no terror for him. He traveled onward, drawn
toward the pattern of lights over the east pole that slowly rotated, once a
turn.
Pink-Eyes
found some partially ripe pods on an isolated wild plant, and was slowly savoring the first food he had had in many turns
when he stopped, struck with awe. The Inner Eye had sent out a brilliant,
long-lasting, multicolored beam of light down ahead of him. The beam was unlike
the others that he had seen previously. Those had been short flashes of light,
so fast and so intense that there was no color to them. These were like silent
words of rolling crustquakes. They started in the deep red and slowly—taking
their time—swept through strange colors into a radiating brilliance. Pink-Eyes
waited, and shortly was rewarded by another dazzling
display. As if in a trance, he put the pods into a storage pouch and moved off
toward the beam of light. It came again and again, and soon he began to depend
upon its regularity.
As Pink-Eyes
moved forward to intercept the beam, he noticed that it was slowly moving off
to the north. A short while later, he saw that it had stopped its northward
movement. It now seemed to be coming closer and closer with every lengthy
blink. He moved to intercept its southward path, and finally stopped and waited
for it to come to him. As the turn passed he watched the brilliant, multicolored
display get brighter and brighter.
Then
suddenly it was on him. His eyes ducked reflexively under their flaps while the
crust around him sparkled with multicolored glints, but the strangest feeling
of all was the warmth on his topside. It tingled and felt good, so good it was
like
having sex with a
god. Pink-Eyes writhed in pleasure under the beaming ray, his pale body
automatically thinning out to absorb the delightful feeling. Then almost as
suddenly as it had come, the feeling stopped.
Bewildered,
Pink-Eyes drew himself into shape and waited. A short while later the beam came
down again, this time off to the south. His eyes could now stand the glare,
while his topside only felt a slight tingle of the intense feeling that it had
experienced just a few moments ago. Pink-Eyes tried to keep up, but the
blinking light moved too rapidly for him, and left him behind in its progress
across the crust.
Pink-Eyes
waited, his eyes gazing upward, as the beautiful beam slowly blinked its way
southward. He was sure it would return, so he waited, only moving to find some
food to sustain him, until he saw the beam come closer again. When it finally
arrived, he was ready, his small, pale body thinned out to its maximum to
receive the warm caress of the light. The beam struck him, and he reveled in
sexual pleasure, his tread kneading the crust in a paroxysm of prayer.
"Bright! O Bright! Pour down your blessing of love on me. Thank you! O
thank you for rewarding your faithful servant!"
For dozens
of turns, Pink-Eyes existed in the wilderness, communing with the Inner Eye of
Bright as its beam of love and pleasure swept by every half-dozen turns. His
slow wandering path took him steadily back toward his old clan camp as his pace
over the crust matched the steady motion of the scanning beam. As Pink-Eyes
moved along, he became more and more convinced that he—and he alone—had been
called to bring the Word of Bright to the cheela.
Fortified
spiritually, Pink-Eyes finally broke away from his addiction to the intense
sexual pleasure of the beam. He now moved more swiftly, and left the beam
behind him. The beam was still making its north and south movement over the
crust while slowly creeping westward. Pink-Eyes went directly toward the clan
camp. He made his way slowly up to the top of the mound near the camp where he
had previously communed with Bright. He began to preach, his high-pitched
voice, now strong with undoubting assurance, rippling through the crust.
"Prepare!
Prepare, all people! For the Blessing of Bright will
soon be on you!" sounded Pink-Eyes' voice.
At first,
only the perimeter guards came to investigate the source of the voice. When
they saw who it was and heard his strange speech, they jeered and moved back to
their posts. Af-
ter a few guard
shifts, most of the clan knew of the strange rantings of the Bright's
Afflicted. The news finally reached the clan astrologer, who went immediately
to Sharp-Slicer.
"We
must do something," the clan astrologer said.
Sharp-Slicer
agreed. "You are right. Let us go and try to get him to be sensible and
stop."
Sharp-Slicer,
the clan astrologer, and a group of warriors went out to the mound. As they
approached, they could hear Pink-Eyes preaching to a small group of heckling
warriors and older hatchlings.
"Repent
and pray!" Pink-Eyes was saying. "Repent!
For soon the Blessing of Bright will be upon you!"
Sharp-Slicer
thudded her tread against the crust, "Pink-Eyes! Stop that nonsense and
come down here!"
"No!"
Pink-Eyes said. "I now obey a higher leader than you!" Pink-Eyes reached
a tendril into a pouch that had been closed since he left the hatchling pens,
and pulled out his clan totem.
"I am
no longer of this clan," Pink-Eyes said, holding the clan totem up so that
all could see. He dropped the totem and it shattered on the crust, sending a
little shock wave through the disturbed treads of all around.
"I have
been called by Bright," Pink-Eyes said, "to lead all the people of
all the clans to greater worship of him.
"This
is enough," the clan astrologer whispered to Sharp-Slicer, "Stop his
ranting!"
Sharp-Slicer
took command of the situation, although unwillingly. It was a distasteful duty
to punish someone who was obviously mentally sick, but by destroying his clan
totem, Pink-Eyes had lost the protection of the clan.
"Since you
have destroyed your totem," Sharp-Slicer said in a loud voice, "you
yourself have left the clan. Therefore, I command you to leave clan
territory."
Her dozen
eyes shifted to pick out three warriors who were nearby. "I want you three
to escort this self-proclaimed barbarian to the border. Do not let him return.
If he does not leave, turn him into meat!"
The three
warriors moved slowly up the hill, none of them even bothering to pull a slicer
or pricker from a weapons pouch, for any one of them was more than a match for
the frail body of Pink-Eyes.
"Halt!"
Pink-Eyes said to the warriors, and they hesitated, slightly bewildered at the
strange behavior. Looking north,
Pink-Eyes saw the beam approaching
the mound. He turned all of his eyes upward toward the Eyes and started to
pray, ignoring the warriors.
"O
Great Bright! Show these wicked unbelievers the love that you can give to them
if they become your true followers." The warriors continued to hesitate,
uneasy over interrupting a prayer—yet their treads were rippling lightly with
suppressed humor.
Sharp-Slicer
was in the midst of stamping a sharp command to the hesitating warriors when
suddenly she felt herself flattening in a frenzy of glowing sexual pleasure.
Her eyes, writhing on extended eye-stubs, could see others also flowing and
thinning out around her. She felt the edge of the nearby clan astrologer
flowing over one side of her, partially blocking the intense warmth. A male
tread on her topside—normally a pleasurable feeling—did not feel good enough,
and she contracted and withdrew herself to bask her entire topside in the more
sublime pleasure that poured down from the sky.
As she
wiggled in enjoyment, she could hear Pink-Eyes' high pitched voice coming
through the crust. "Come—all of you—receive the Blessing of Bright that I
bring to you."
The pleasure
grew more and more intense, then it stopped. Slowly
Sharp-Slicer, the clan astrologer and the others regained their normal shape.
Exhausted, they waited motionless while Pink-Eye spoke.
"I have
brought you the Blessing of Bright," he said. "It will be yours again
if you will believe in Bright and will worship him."
"I
believe!" one of the warriors cried. "Bring down the Blessing of
Bright on me again!"
"First
we must worship Bright properly," Pink-Eyes said. "To do that, we
must all go into the clan camp and pray. In a half-dozen turns I want all the
clan to be gathered and worshiping Bright in the temple area."
Sharp-Slicer
said nothing as the others hastened off to tell the rest of the clan about the
miracle and the commands of Pink-Eyes. She did not like losing authority to
this pale excuse for a cheela, but with Bright seeming to back him, she had
little choice.
Six turns
later, the whole clan was gathered in the temple area and listening to
Pink-Eyes as he preached. Their bodies filled the temple to overflowing.
Pink-Eyes had allowed the
clan astrologer
to start the worship service, but he soon took over with a lengthy, hypnotic
sermon.
Sharp-Slicer
listened to the worship service from the fringes of the crowd. She had not
neglected her duties as Leader of the Clan, despite the interruption caused by
Pink-Eyes. Since Pink-Eyes had insisted that even the perimeter guards attend
the worship services, she made sure that she and the other warriors were on the
periphery of the crowd, in case of a barbarian attack. Also, despite their
protests, she made the Old Ones stay outside the egg and hatchling pens.
"When
the Blessing of Bright comes on you, it will be just as if you were having
sex," she tried to explain to Hard-Rock, the Old One in charge of the
eggs. "You will lose control of your body, and may damage an egg while you
are thrashing around."
"What
do you mean!" Hard-Rock protested. "I am too
old for sex. All I want to do is tend my eggs."
However, when
Pink-Eyes brought down the Blessing of Bright on the worshiping clan, Hard-Rock
felt a sexual surge that was more intense than the best experience of his
youth. His body thinned and his eyes stared out from extended stems as his
topside was bathed in the warming beam. Then—just at the end of the
Blessing—Hard-Rock, his eyes gazing upward at the Eyes in pleasure, saw a faint
glimmering beam of deep-colored light pouring down upon him.
"I see
it! I see it!" Hard-Rock shouted. "I believe! I believe!!"
Hard-Rock,
instantly converted, left his precious eggs without another glance and moved
through the recovering crowd. As he made his way he kept repeating, "I
saw! I believe! I want to follow you, bringer of the Word of Bright!"
Pink-Eyes
questioned Hard-Rock carefully, and finally was
convinced that Hard-Rock had seen a dim version of the dazzling, multicolored
display that was so obvious to him. When the next beam came down to the north
of them, Pink-Eyes had Hard-Rock look up at the Eyes, but the beam, not being
directly on him, was just barely visible to Hard-Rock.
Any
remaining thought that he had been imagining things left Pink-Eyes completely,
now that his visions of light from the Eyes had been confirmed. He again turned
his eyes to the crowd and spoke. "I am Bright's chosen one," he
announced. "I give you the glowing love of Bright, and I bring to you his
Word."
"Yes!"
Hard-Rock broke in, "Listen to the Chosen of God, and obey!"
Pink-Eyes
turned his eyes toward Hard-Rock. He formed a pale tendril and curled it around
one of Hard-Rock's eye-stubs. "You are one of Bright's chosen ones too,
Hard-Rock," he said. "I want you to come with me on my mission."
"I
obey, God's-Chosen," Hard-Rock said; and without hesitation, the hardened
veteran reached into a pouch that had not been opened for five dozen greats of
turns. He removed his clan totem, raised it high, and let it crash to the
crust.
Pink-Eyes
called Sharp-Slicer to him and announced, "I will travel to the west to
bring the Word of Bright to the rest of the clans. I will need food, and
warriors for protection."
"Yes, O
God's-Chosen," Sharp-Slicer said, relieved that this perplexing individual
would soon leave and allow the life of the clan to resume its normal pattern.
"We will obey."
At the next
turn Pink-Eyes, now reverently addressed as God's-Chosen, moved off to the west
with a large party of followers, Hard-Rock the foremost among them, and
surrounded by a small contingent of worshipful warriors. Sharp-Slicer had a
hard time keeping more of her people from leaving. Fortunately, God's-Chosen
had helped by preaching that Bright wanted them to stay to take care of the
eggs and hatchlings, and protect Bright's Empire from the barbarians.
The
procession moved slowly across the crust toward the next clan. A small group
led by Hard-Rock was sent ahead with the message that God's-Chosen was coming
to bring down the Blessing of Bright upon them all. Although Hard-Rock was well
known in the next clan, it was an incredulous group that gathered around
God's-Chosen as he stopped at the edge of the Clan compound to meet with
No-Fear, the Leader of the Clan, and his clan astrologer.
"Why
are you bothering our people, clanless one?" spoke No-Fear sharply.
"I only
wish to bring them the Word and Blessing of Bright, O Leader of the Clan,"
God's-Chosen said politely. "I know that you have a hard time believing
me, but I tell you that I am Bright's chosen one. Believe in me and you shall
receive his Blessing."
"I
don't like him," the clan astrologer whispered to No-Fear.
"I am
suspicious myself," No-Fear said. "But Hard-Rock has fought beside me
in many battles with the barbarians, and
he is not only
convinced that this funny pale one tells the truth, but he insists that he can
see the Blessing beam himself."
"I
still don't like it," the clan astrologer complained again.
"All he
asks is to be allowed to use the temple to pray to Bright," No-Fear said.
"That is what the temple is for, so what harm can there be in that?"
"Yet
..." complained the clan astrologer, perturbed over possibly losing some
of his authority in the clan, "it is the words that he will preach that
bother me. He insists that he is the chosen one of Bright. That cannot be. If
Bright were to choose a cheela to send his word by, it would be a strong, heroic
person, not that insignificant caricature of a cheela."
"Still,"
No-Fear protested, "he may be right, and I would not want to risk a curse
from Bright for ignoring the bringer of his Word." No-Fear turned his eyes
toward the pale one.
"We
will let you use the clan temple, God's-Chosen," said No-Fear, "if you will be sure to bring down the Blessing of Bright
upon us."
Pink-Eyes
turned a few of his eyes to the south, where he saw the multicolored beam off
in the distance.
"We
will rest this turn," he replied. "But on the next turn I want the
entire clan in the temple, and I shall bring the Blessing of Bright upon you
all, for I feel that you believe."
"Well!
I don't believe," whispered the clan astrologer to No-Fear. "No one
can order the God Bright around. If he fails in the coming turn, I want you to
order the clanless one turned into meat for speaking such outrageous
blasphemy."
"I had
already made that decision," No-Fear said quietly. "He may be able to
fool his own clan, but he will not fool us."
The bringer
of Bright's Word was not fooling. With the next turn, the following of
God's-Chosen grew. On the succeeding turn God's-Chosen left the newly converted
clan and a puzzled but convinced clan astrologer. The astrologer had asked for
and received a special prayer that he could use, for he was going to change his
temple worship services to thank Bright for having sent the Bringer of the Word
during his lifetime.
As the
caravan of the followers of God's-Chosen moved slowly west, bringing the Blessing
of Bright down upon clan after clan, the word of the strange happenings on the
eastern border reached Hungry-Swift, the Leader of the Combined Clans. It
sounded serious enough to cause him to investigate personally. Taking a squad
of needle troopers with him, he moved quickly along the pathways of Bright's
Empire, his
troopers clearing
the often-crowded way for him. Finally, Hungry-Swift cautiously arranged a
meeting with God's-Chosen and his followers.
Hungry-Swift
was too much of a politician to use his power ostentatiously. He left his
troopers and came alone to visit wilh the holy one. He had heard descriptions
of the miracle worker, but still was not prepared for the tiny pale body, and
especially the pink eyes. Feeling no fear from the little one, he went forward
to meet him.
"Greeting,
God's-Chosen," he said. "I hear strange tales about your work."
"They
are not tales, Hungry-Swift," God's-Chosen said. 'They are the true Word
of Bright."
"Tell
me more," Hungry-Swift asked. "For what I have heard has come through
many treads and has been distorted in the telling."
God's-Chosen
had been keeping his traveling band well ahead of the sweeping beam. He found
it better to keep the number of blessings to his followers down, so they would
not get too used to it. Besides, if any of them ever figured out that the
Blessing of Bright came every half-dozen turns, whether he called for it or
not, they would soon be able to receive the Blessing without having the Word of
Bright preached to them. His practised eyes found the beam in the north, and he
gauged its motion.
"I
could tell you much, Hungry-Swift, but you still would find it hard to
believe," God's-Chosen said. "Come with me for a journey alone into
the wilderness. Together we will pray and you shall have the Blessing of Bright
come upon you alone. Gather food for three turns and come with me."
"Why
wait three turns?" Hungry-Swift complained. "Why
not now?"
God's-Chosen
looked at him severely. "Because you do not believe," he said.
"And it will take three turns before I can get you to believe enough to
receive the Blessing of Bright."
Hungry-Swift
could only agree that God's-Chosen had judged the level of his disbelief
correctly. He did not believe in this charlatan at all, and he doubted that
three turns of preaching would change him a bit. However, the stories that he
had heard of this strange one were not distorted, but often came from some of
his best trooper commanders, who naturally had investigated anything that could
perturb the security of the far-flung borders of Bright's Empire.
Hungry-Swift
hated to waste three turns, but if that was what it would take to clear up this
mystery, he was willing to do it. If it turned out that there was no mystery,
he personally would make sure that there would not be enough left of the pale
body to bother collecting for the meat bins. Still, the miracle worker did seem
to be very confident and unafraid.
"I will
go with you, God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "Lead the way."
The two
loaded their pouches with a small amount of food and then God's-Chosen took
them to the northeast to meet the beam sweeping down from the north. The
trooper squad leader had protested the idea of Hungry-Swift traveling without
protection in the wilderness between clan camps, but Hungry-Swift brushed off
his protests.
"We are
well within the outer borders and there are no barbarians in this region,"
he said. "And I hope you don't think that I can't handle that pale priest
by myself. If I were just to tread on him lightly I would burst him like an
egg-sac."
As they
journeyed into the wilderness, God's-Chosen tried to preach continuously, but
Hungry-Swift would take the opportunity during pauses to ask personal questions
about the earlier times when God's-Chosen had been called Pink-Eyes. After hearing
of what Pink-Eyes had gone through as a hatchling and youngster, and about his
conversion in the wilderness, Hungry-Swift gained a grudging admiration for the
courage that seemed to fill the tiny body. Soon, Hungry-Swift stopped noticing
that the personality that was God's-Chosen/Pink-Eyes inhabited anything less
than a normal body. He was continually being surprised that Pink-Eyes was not
of normal size, as, for example, when he had to ask for help to pick a pod high
up on the side of a petal plant.
As their
line of travel came closer and closer to intersecting the path of the beam from
the Inner Eye, the preaching of God's-Chosen became more and more intense.
Hungry-Swift listened intently, for he now respected God's-Chosen, but he had
to admit that despite all the preaching, he still did not believe that his
companion was Bright's chosen one, and that he could bring the Blessing of
Bright down upon him.
"I
listen, God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "But I still have trouble
with my belief."
"Even
the act of confessing your disbelief is a motion in the right direction,"
God's
upward, and slowly
counting off the moments since the previous flash of the beam just to the north
of him, he chanted.
"Help,
O Bright! Help this unbeliever find faith! Bring down the Blessing of Bright
upon Hungry-Swift."
Hungry-Swift's
eyes followed those of God's-Chosen up to the strange formation of seven lights
that hung overhead in the sky. He was calmly wondering how they managed to stay
in one place while the rest of the stars in the sky moved from east to
west—when suddenly his body seemed to explode with pleasure.
For what
seemed like an eternity, Hungry-Swift reveled in the heaven-sent pleasure of
Bright's love. His eye-stubs reached out toward the Eyes in an attempt to
copulate with the stars. They writhed back and forth, stretching to their
limit— then suddenly they froze as they saw the beam coming down from the Inner
Eye of Bright.
"I see!
I see!!" he shouted. Then as quickly as it had come, the warmth stopped.
Hungry-Swift
composed himself and self-consciously wiped the dribbles of yellow-white mating
fluid from the orifice under each eye-stub. As he gathered his senses, he could
hear God's-Chosen praying.
"Thank
you, O Bright, for bringing the Vision as well as the Blessing to the Leader of
the Combined Clans. I pray that you will guide him to lead all the clans into
greater worship of you."
Completely convinced,
Hungry-Swift also prayed. As Leader of the Combined Clans, he was automatically
the head worshiper of Bright. However, the ritual chants that he had learned to
use in the worship services now seemed completely inadequate, and he clumsily
made up his own prayers.
"Lead
me, O Bright," he said. "Give me your Word, and I will follow it with
all that I command."
"I will
give you Bright's Word," God's-Chosen said. "For too long Bright has
been neglected. Bright has been good to his people. They have grown in numbers
and have prospered. What used to be a small clan gathered in the city of
"We
worship him often," Hungry-Swift protested.
"Yes,
but where?" God's-Chosen asked. "In tiny temple
areas. What
Bright deserves is a temple appropriate to his greatness."
'Tell me
what is needed," pleaded Hungry-Swift.
"You shall
build a
Hungry-Swift
was appalled. "That will be almost as big as the city of
"Yes,"
God's-Chosen went on, unperturbed. "For it must hold all who live in
Bright's Heaven, plus many others. At one dozen places about the circle there
shall be placed walls representing the eye-stubs of a cheela at full alert. At
the ends of each eye-stub shall be a round mound representing the eyes. Between
each pair of eye-stubs there shall be an opening in the
"I will
obey, God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "The
Still dazed,
Hungry-Swift followed God's-Chosen back to the two encampments. When the squad
leader came out to greet them, it was obvious from Hungry-Swift's demeanor that
the Leader of the Combined Clans had felt the Blessing of Bright. He was even
more awed when he learned that the Leader had also seen the Blessing, since
very few had been allowed by Bright to receive this indication of being one of
his chosen ones. The journey into the wilderness over, Hungry-Swift
automatically resumed command.
"Call
the troopers to alert," he ordered. "We return to Bright's Heaven at
once, for there is much to do."
Before he
left, Hungry-Swift returned for one last visit to his friend and teacher.
"Are
you God?" he asked.
"No,"
God's-Chosen said. "Bright is God. I am merely Bright's vehicle by which
he sends his Word and his Blessing. You have received the Word. Go and carry it
out. Yours will not be an easy task, for it will take a dozen greats of turns
to create a temple of that size. But do not worry about the time, for Bright is
patient. I will stay here and bring the Blessing of Bright to all the clans.
That too will take time, but by the time
you have the
"Bright
give me strength that I might live to see the
time," said Hungry-Swift.
"Your
work will keep you strong," God's-Chosen said. "Now go!"
At first
Hungry-Swift experienced resistance to the project of building the
Hungry-Swift
quickly eliminated all objections to the building of the
Fortunately
the barbarians were quiet during these times, and the crops grew well without
excessive tending, for soon nearly one-third of the population of Bright's
Heaven and surrounding areas was engaged in hauling rocks and loose crustal
material to form the outline of a cheela at perfect alert, with twelve round
eyes perched out on extended eye-stubs. The first thing built was a round mound
at the center that represented the Inner Eye of Bright. Then as the outline of
the
As the
greats of turns passed, God's-Chosen moved slowly west, pausing to make sure
that each clan camp was given the Blessing of Bright. As they moved nearer and
nearer to Bright's Heaven, the clan camps became closer and closer together.
They also began to spread more widely to the north and south, because the
population pressure had overcome the natural reluctance to engage in travel in
the hard direction. It soon became impossible for God's-Chosen to bring the
Blessing to each camp himself. There also came rumors of small groups of cheela
who had received the Blessing out in the wilderness without God's-Chosen being
anywhere near. God's-Chosen then decided that the time had come to give to
others the power to bring the Blessing. Since some could see the beam if it
were near, he made them his disciples. He sent them off in the hard directions,
north and south, with instructions to take
the Word to the
clans there. They were to watch the Inner Eye carefully and, as the beam
approached, time their worship services with the receiving of the Blessing of
Bright. The results were not as satisfactory as the well-preached services that
God's-Chosen conducted, but more and more of the cheela in the great Empire
felt the miracle of the Blessing of Bright.
As the
greats of turns passed, the
When
Hungry-Swift heard of the approach of God's-Chosen to the city, he came out
with an honor guard of troopers to greet him. As they moved along the pathway
to the city, the troopers would move ahead, lining the pathway and keeping the
curious multitudes from bothering God's-Chosen and the Leader of the Combined
Clans as they moved leisurely along, their pace limited by the small tread of
God's-Chosen.
The crowds that
gathered along the pathway were well behaved. The troopers would suffer
hatchlings to ooze between them, or allow an eye-stub to be rested on their
topsides (especially if the eye-stub belonged to a nubile one of the opposite
sex). The onlookers were treated to an unusual sight: a huge battle-scarred
warrior with an obvious air of command, who carried the highest rank in
Bright's Empire, maintaining pace and speaking deferentially to a tiny, pale,
pink-eyed, clanless one. Yet the pale one had an air of assurance about him
that caused the crowd to murmur as he passed. Occasional cheers radiated
outward from small groups as the two made their way into the city.
"How is
the
"The
basic foundation is done, O God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "And
the finishing work is well under way. We should have it completed well before
the Blessing of Bright is due to come down upon the
"Good,"
God's-Chosen said. "I would like to see it."
As the two
took the path to the south to visit the
came closer to
the
"It is
a fitting monument to the honor of Bright," he said with obvious
satisfaction.
"Yes,"
Hungry-Swift said. "All of us who worked on it are extremely proud that we
were allowed to contribute to such an impressive edifice. As you commanded, a
dozen greats of cheela can fit between the outer walls. One of the astrologers
calculated that the
"May we
bring down the Blessing of Bright upon them all," said God's-Chosen.
The two,
together with their honor guard, approached the walls of the
As they
passed through the
As they
entered the
"We
have come just at the end of a worship service," Hungry-Swift said.
"Bright's-First, the High Priest, is on the Inner Eye mound now. Let us go
to meet him."
They made
their way to the rear of the crowd around the mound as the service ended.
God's-Chosen was then bewildered to see a line of cheela, each dragging a sled
piled with food, slowly making its way up the mound. At the top, the
supplicants left their sleds, where they were taken by apprentice astrologers,
while the supplicant went up to the High Priest and slowly rotated around once,
while the High Priest touched each eye, one after the other, murmuring as he
did so.
"What
is going on?" God's-Chosen asked of one of the cheela slowly pulling his
heavy burden up the slope of the mound.
"I am
bringing my dozeth, and have come to get my
blessing," the cheela said.
The tread of
God's-Chosen rippled sharply on the crust, "What dozeth, and what
blessing?"
The cheela's
eye-stubs wavered randomly in bewilderment, and Hungry-Swift's voice broke in
from the side.
"The
High Priest has said that those who would divide up their harvest and kill into
twelve parts, and give one-twelfth to the Keepers of the
God's-Chosen
was shocked. His tread exploded in a furious shout.
"No!"
he shouted, and scurried up the mound as all eyes turned toward him. "The
Blessing of Bright belongs to all, and is freely given. You cannot bribe Bright
with gifts!" He moved across the top of the mound to where the apprentice
astrologers were taking the sleds of food. With a strength borne of fury, he
pushed a load of pods and meat off a sled down the slope. The pods rolled
downward, gathering speed and disappearing, to reappear as they came to a stop
against the shocked edges of the cheela at the bottom of the mound.
God's-Chosen
moved back to the center of the mound and repeated in his high-pitched voice,
"I will bring you the Blessing of Bright. You do not have to give a dozeth to receive it, but only what you wish to
give!"
God's-Chosen
turned his small pink eyes from the crowd, stared hard at the motionless High
Priest, and said, "I do not want my people coerced into worshiping Bright.
If the astrologers cannot live on free will offerings, let them work in the
fields!"
A murmur of
approval started in the crowd of supplicants, and then grew to a continuous
cheer as the crowd began to realize who the pale figure was—and what he had
been saying. As the crowd started up the mound to gather around God's-Chosen,
the High Priest moved away down the other side, his apprentices abandoning the
sleds and following after him.
Later in the
astrologers' compound, the High Priest was conferring with Bright's-Second, the
Chief Astrologer.
"He has
no idea what he is doing," Bright's-First said.
'The people
are behind him," Bright's-Second warned. "Not
to mention the
Leader of the Combined Clans and all of his
underleaders."
"But he
does not understand the importance of our work," the High Priest said.
"You cannot have apprentice astrologers out tending crops in the fields
like common laborers. They will never learn their numbers or how to cast
horoscopes with the astrologer sticks."
"You
are right," Bright's-Second said. "He ought to be dealt with in some
way. He is disrupting the important duties of the people that work in God's
service."
"Unfortunately,"
Bright's-First said, "only Hungry-Swift, the Leader of the Combined Clans,
has the authority to do anything about this rabble-rouser, and he is under his
spell."
The Chief
Astrologer hesitated, then said, "His Blessing is
a powerful one. You should have come with us when we went east to experience
it."
The High
Priest answered with a sharp ripple, "I have no need of any blessing from
the pale one."
The turns
passed; it was now less than half a great of turns until the Blessing would be
on the
Finally,
God's-Chosen held a gathering outside the eastern orifice of the now completed
TIME:
The science
experiments console screen blinked.
EAST SECTOR LASER RADAR SCAN COMPLETED.
NORTH SECTOR SCAN STARTED.
Cesar looked
up at the words at the top of the screen, and went on with his analysis of the
IR scanner data.
TIME:
Three turns before the dedication of
the
"Bright
is testing my faith," he said to himself. "For many greats of turns
the people have had to accept my word that the Blessing of Bright was coming.
Now I am as blind as they are. I must have faith."
God's-Chosen
asked that the
God's-Chosen
looked out from the central mound across the empty inner court toward the outer
walls in the distance. There was no doubt in his mind. This was what Bright had
wanted. He turned his eyes to the sky, and looking south toward Bright, began
to pray.
"O
Bright. Give me the faith that the others have, and if my belief falters, help
me to overcome my weakness so that I may believe in you and your
Blessing."
God's-Chosen
slowly moved down the inner mound and went out the western orifice toward the
astrologers' compound. As he left, the troopers, who had been keeping the
people out, finally let the crowds pour in, for the dedication was only a turn
away. For fully half a turn cheela poured through the orifices and gathered
around the inner mound. Soon the inner courtyard of the
As the time
grew near, the High Priest went to fetch God's-Chosen, who had isolated himself
in the old temple. As Bright's-First approached the old temple area, he could
hear God's-Chosen in a whispered prayer to Bright, and
even he was stirred by the genuineness of the supplication.
"Bright.
Give me the strength to do as you will have me do."
The prayer
stopped, for God's-Chosen had felt the tread of the High Priest through the
crust. As Bright's-First came nearer, God's-Chosen appeared at the entrance.
"Let us
go and receive the Blessing of Bright," he said, leading the way to the
Together the
High Priest and God's-Chosen moved through the throngs gathered in front of the
western orifice. They were followed by a large group of astrologers, all
experienced in speaking to crowds. Slowly the procession made its way through
the packed inner courtyard and up the slopes of the Inner Eye mound.
At the top,
God's-Chosen and the High Priest took up a position at the center of the mound
while the other astrologers formed a circle around them. God's-Chosen looked
out at the multitude, whose every eye seemed to be upon him. He would have
liked to have talked to them all directly, but there was no way that even his
far-carrying, high-pitched voice could reach them all. Fortunately, most of the
throng had been to one of the previous services where he had called down the
Blessing of Bright, so they knew the ritual.
God's-Chosen
scanned the Eyes. It had been many turns since he had last seen the beam from
the Inner Eye, and he was now unsure exactly when to expect the Blessing to
come.
God's-Chosen
began the service as they had planned it. He would chant the prayers, which
would carry out and down the mound to the nearest ranks of cheela. The chant
would then be repeated by the High Priest and the rest of the astrologers, the
combined treading of the chorus carrying through the crust even to those at the
farthest walls. The prayers would then be echoed by the rumbling treads of the
multitude.
"Bright the glorious!
"We
believe!
"Bring
your Blessing!"
God's-Chosen
paused, but nothing happened. He went on.
"Bring
your Blessing!
"Down
upon us!"
He paused
again, waiting in vain for the Blessing to come down upon them all. In
desperation he continued.
"We are
waiting.
"In your
"Bring
Your Blessing!"
For the
first time in many greats of turns, God's-Chosen felt his faith falter. There
was a subdued murmur from the crowd. There was nothing hostile, just
bewilderment, for God's-Chosen had never failed before.
God's-Chosen
gazed upward at the Eyes, longing for the sight of the Blessing. None came.
Without
further word, God's-Chosen moved his pale body through the ring of astrologers,
down the mound and out into the multitude, heading for the eastern orifice.
Some of the
crowd whispered as he passed, others reached out to touch his hot pale body
with a slender tendril. The High Priest, still up on the mound, tried to
salvage things by proceeding with the regular worship chants, but no one paid
him heed—not even the chorus.
As
God's-Chosen left the
By the next
turn, food had run short and the crowds became nasty. Some recalled the
original clan name of God's-Chosen, and from then on, whenever he was
mentioned, it was by his old name of Pink-Eyes.
The High
Priest went to discuss the previous turn's events with Hungry-Swift, the Leader
of the Combined Clans. Hungry-Swift was completely demoralized by the
experience.
"I am
sorry that you too were taken in by this charlatan," Bright's-First said.
"But I
saw! I saw the Blessing coming down!" protested Hungry-Swift.
"Yes—you
may have seen the Blessing of Bright, but this Pink-Eyes person was using the
Blessing of Bright to his own advantage," the High Priest replied.
"He said that he gave the Word of Bright, and that he was God's-Chosen.
But was he? No! Bright chose this way to say that he was a false prophet, for Bright withheld his Blessing before all the multitude."
"You
seem to be right," Hungry-Swift agreed.
"I am
right," the High Priest said. "I have served Bright longer than this
pink-eyed hatchling. You must do something about this fraudulent
imposter."
Hungry-Swift
was too dejected to do anything. Bright's-First took advantage of his hesitancy
and gave a command to a squad of troopers nearby.
"Bring
Pink-Eyes to the
The troopers
hesitated, looking at Hungry-Swift, who remained silent. Finally the troopers
moved off to carry out the High Priest's command. They found Pink-Eyes in the
wilderness to the east of Bright's Heaven. He had been going back
toward the Eyes,
constantly looking upward for the missing beams of light.
The troopers
had no problem with Pink-Eyes, and they treated him gently. Most of them had
experienced the Blessing of Bright and were still in awe of the personality in
the tiny pale body.
"You
are to come with us," the squad leader stated. Without a word, Pink-Eyes
reversed his direction of travel and went back along the pathway, with the
troopers surrounding him.
As they
slowly made their way back west, paced by the small tread of Pink-Eyes, the
crowds gathered again. As they passed, most of them stared, their treads
silent. Other groups, hungry and angry, muttered into the crust, and a few
rolled sharp fragments of crust into the pathway in front of Pink-Eyes. He did
not swerve but moved steadily onward, often leaving a sharp fragment wet with
his warm white juices after his tread had passed over it. The squad leader saw
what was happening, and put two troopers on either side to keep the pathway
clear.
As they
passed through the outskirts of Bright's Heaven and headed for the
The troopers
led Pink-Eyes up the inner mound where the High Priest and the Leader of the
Combined Clans waited. Bright's-First led the interrogation.
"Are
you God's-Chosen?" the High Priest asked.
"If you
believe it, then I am," was the reply.
"Well,
I don't believe it," the High Priest said angrily. "Admit you are a
fraud!"
Pink-Eyes
made no reply.
Bright's-First
turned his eyes to Hungry-Swift and said firmly, "I say we should turn him
into meat!"
Hungry-Swift
hesitated. "He did bring us the Blessing," he said.
"Maybe,"
countered the High Priest. "But where is it now? He has caused us to lose
it."
As the two
leaders talked, Pink-Eyes had been gazing alternately at Bright and the Eyes
for guidance. Suddenly he saw a beam from the Inner Eye!
"I can
see it again!" he called out.
"What?"
the startled Hungry-Swift asked. The High Priest was worried. Could it be that
this creature had arranged all this
in order to
bring down Bright's curse upon him, to destroy him, and take over as High
Priest?
"I can
see the Blessing of Bright," Pink-eyes said, but then in despair he saw
that the beam was no longer coming toward them, but instead was pointing toward
the north.
Hungry-Swift
looked up at the Inner Eye, searching in vain for the faint flicker that he had
longed to see these many turns. "I don't see anything," he said.
"I am
afraid that you cannot," Pink-Eyes said. "The beam is now going off
to the north."
"The
north!" the High Priest exclaimed in relief. "That is the territory of
the barbarians! By your own admission you have caused Bright to avert his
Blessing from us and give it to the barbarians."
There were
angry murmurs from the crowd at the base of the mound.
"Away with him!" the High Priest shouted, and
Hungry-Swift and his troopers stood by helplessly while an angry crowd flowed
up the mound and pushed and rolled the helpless pale body down the slope.
Sharp
prickers were pulled from weapons pouches; they prodded at Pink-Eyes' edges,
forcing him out the eastern orifice of the
The crust in
the field had recently been plowed and seeded, but it would be a long time
before the petal plants would grow. Now, however, a more vicious crop was
springing up, as warrior after warrior planted a slicer or pricker in the
crumbled crust, point upwards.
Pink-Eyes'
tread trembled in pain as his body was lowered down over the points. He tried
to support his body on the narrow shafts of the spears, while lifting the rest
of his tread away from the tormenting pricks. Then the spear shafts were pulled
out from underneath his trembling tread. His tortured body fell helplessly onto
the crust, the slicers and prickers glinting up through his topside, wet points
glowing white with his juices.
In agony,
Pink-Eyes attempted to lift his pale body off the agonizing shards of dragon
crystal, but with each heave he
only sliced his
body further. He gave up trying, and slowly spread out as his juices flowed
into the crust.
"O
Bright," his tortured tread cried in muffled agony, "Bring down your
Blessing—even on these—for they want you too much."
It was half
a turn before the butchering crew was called. There was not much meat on that
tiny carcass, and the meat had the same sickly paleness that the skin had. One
of the butcher crew sucked at a hunk of meat. "It does not even taste
right," she said. "I wouldn't eat this stuff."
"You are right," another
said after taking a small taste. So by common consent, the body was left in the
field to dry on the glowing crust, the shrinking skin pricked through with
sharp shards of dragon crystal abandoned by their former owners.
TIME:
Seiko Kauffmann Takahashi looked up
as her shift relief drifted in from his breakfast—early as usual. Abdul, still
sipping a squeezer full of sweet mint tea, pulled himself to the vacant
communications console. With a few practiced flips of his left hand, he soon
had a copy of Seiko's screen on his console.
"Anything
exciting?" he said as his unbuckled body floated slowly up out of the
console seat. He was surprised at the reply—for nothing ever excited Seiko.
"Yes,"
she replied firmly, reaching out to finger a panel. A picture from the star
image telescope flashed on both their screens. She did not say another word—she
did not have to.
TIME:
Pierre Carnot Niven, having finished
his ten-hour shift and a leisurely dinner, was relaxing. He sat buckled into a
seat in front of a console down in the library, his finger flicking over the
screen.
"Fatter!
"More!
"Fine!"
His finger
traced another line. "Now—the other arm—same as the first!
"Good!"
He stretched
back and surveyed his handiwork on the screen with pride. The image of the
child on the screen now looked the way it should, although the baby-fat
pudginess made it an unlikely candidate for what he would make it do next.
However, that image was just what he had been striving for. The audience for
his scan-book needed to identify—even if they couldn't copy. He leaned over to
the screen and touched the right hand of the image.
"Put a
ball in this hand!" A ball was instantly there, with the fingers of the
hand opened to grasp it.
"Now
comes the difficult part," he thought. "We'll see how good the body
action subroutine is."
He spoke
again. "Throw ball from here—along here—to here. Use
Earth gravity!" While he spoke, his finger scribed a curve leading
from the hand along a high arc down into the background area of the picture.
He watched
as the body in the image leaned back in a slightly jerky movement and launched
the ball into the air. The ball rose and then fell back to the ground—stopping
abruptly without a bounce. The computer handled the perspective very nicely;
the ball grew smaller and smaller as it sailed into the distance.
"Good—repeat
with Lunar gravity!"
The scene
was repeated with the words lunar
gravity in the upper corner of the screen. The ball now rose much more
slowly, with a significantly flatter trajectory.
The two
scenes repeated their actions. First earth gravity, then lunar
gravity.
"Display
action!"
He watched
as the action repeated, this time as seen from the side. The ball rose in a
nice parabolic trajectory. He smiled and thought, "The kids have had their
fun imagining that their bodies are strong enough to throw a ball fifty meters.
Now they will have to get to work and learn some science, which—
after all—is why
they are scanning the book." He spoke aloud: "Shrink ball by two!
"Shrink
child by five!
"Put in
graph axes—vertical here!" His hand reached out and scribed a line from
the top of the screen down to the miniature figure now tossing a baseball as
big as its head.
LINK FROM BRIDGE CONSOLE
HI
COULD YOU COME UP TO THE MAIN DECK?
THERE IS SOMETHING HAPPENING ON DRAGON'S
EGG.
WE WANT YOU TO CONFIRM OUR SUSPICIONS.
# # # # CESAR
"Sure
Doc,"
"Break
link!
"Store
under Trajectory Graph!
"Detach
job!"
He unbuckled
from the console chair and pushed himself quickly up the passageway leading to
the main deck as the computer obediently flashed confirmation after
confirmation toward his disappearing feet.
LINK BROKEN
SAVED TRAJECTORY GRAPH: EARTH GRAVITY
DETACH JOB 3;
PRESS
TIME
Cesar spoke
up as he approached. "Sorry to drag you up on your break,
Seiko handed
him a sheet. "I took these off the star image telescope this shift. This
one was taken at 0645 hours. Notice the pattern here near the west limb."
"So
far, we have all come to the same conclusion," Seiko said. 'This pattern
is not a wrinkle ridge from a collapse of the surface. Besides, we have been
monitoring the spin speed of the star, and if there had been a slump of that
magnitude in the past day, it would have shown up as a glitch in the rotation
period, and there has been none."
"Now,"
Abdul said, "show him the kicker."
Seiko pulled
out another sheet from beneath the first.
'This was
taken at 0648 hours, just before Dr. Wong finished a laser scan of that
region."
She passed
it over without further comment.
"The
direction of the oval looks generally east-west," he said.
"It
is," Seiko stated, with the calm assurance of someone who had taken the
trouble to check. "The semimajor axis is within less than a milliradian of
magnetic east, so the pattern is dominated by magnetic effects and not
rotational effects. But
the lines that
make up the oval are not straight magnetic east-west as are all the other
cliffs and wrinkle ridges in that area."
"It
looks like something that is stretched,"
He looked up
and the others watched his expression change from initial surprise to
suspicion.
"You're
kidding me," he said.
"No,"
Cesar said. "We are deadly serious. I knew you would have a tough time
accepting this without better proof, so I had Seiko fix up the star image
telescope with the filters for direct viewing."
Pierre knew
from the tone that Cesar was serious and that the image print was real—but he
still found himself diving up the passageway toward the star image telescope
control post. He floated in, quickly checked the filter settings, then flicked the switch that opened the direct view port.
The light beamed in from overhead and down onto the white frosted table top in
the center of the room. He drifted over and hung above the glaring image and
adjusted the strobe controls until the spinning image in the center of the
table slowed down and finally stopped rotating. He found the symmetric
flowerlike diagram.
They
gathered around the table and looked down at the image as
"Intelligent beings!" Seiko
exclaimed. "That is impossible! The surface gravity of that star is 67
billion gees and the temperature is 8200 degrees! Any being that existed on
that star would be a flat glowing pancake of solid neutrons."
"They
wouldn't be made of neutrons,"
Egg. The mission
was to get as much scientific data as possible from their vantage point only
400 km from the neutron star. His problem was that the magic gravitational
elevator that had put them down into this orbit a few days ago would soon
finish its complicated interlaced orbital pattern and would be returning to
take them away again. They had only a limited amount of time—what should they
do?
Abdul spoke.
"I don't really come onto shift for over an hour. Why don't I try to
generate some kind of signal to send down in case there really is some form of
intelligent life there, while the rest of you keep up with the science time line."
"Fine,"
Abdul pushed
his way to the communications console. Soon a simple one-two-three ... dot-dash
number series was beaming down to the surface, followed by a crude diagram of
Dragon Slayer inside the six tidal compensator masses over the sphere that was
Dragon's Egg. It was a dot-dash pattern, 53 by 71 dots on a side.
Trek
TIME:
Commander Swift-Killer fixed her
attention out toward the horizon. Each of her eight watch eyes reported back
that the shallow arc of a needlelike dragon tooth could still be seen, held at
guard position by one of the perimeter guards. She left the watch eyes at their
automatic duty and scanned her other eyes around the camp where the rest of her
troopers were relaxing. Most were still eating, but a few had paired off and
were now enjoying each other over in one corner of the camp. She looked at them
enviously and was tempted to pass over the watch to her second-in-command, go
get her favorite fun-partner and join them, but the last contact with the barbarians
had only been a turn ago, and they must stay at full alert.
Frustrated
in bodily pleasures, Swift-Killer turned to her other personal form of
recreation—trying to figure out why things work. She paused, concentrated for a
moment, and her body pushed out some pseudopods. She then grew some articulated
crystallium bones under the protrusions of tough, muscular skin to form
manipulators. The bones in the manipulators were small, not like the ones that
she grew to hold her shield and sword in battle. Still keeping her watch eyes
on the horizon, Swift-Killer glanced with the remaining eyes at the four
extremities, made a minor change to one of them, then reached through the
sphincter of a carrying pouch in her body and pulled out her "experiments."
One experiment
was an old one that she had come upon in the last campaign. Their pursuit of
the barbarians had taken them into strange territory where the crust was not
smooth, but had suffered a recent shaking. In that region, the crust did not
have its usual
fibrous plasticity, but was almost as hard as dragon crystal. The quake had
shattered the crust into many flat plates, their cleaved surfaces glinting with
the reflected image of the God Bright that hung motionless over the south pole. Her mind always active, Swift-Killer had
collected several plates and had played with them, turning them first one way,
then the other, to bring the image of Bright to each of her eyes in turn. She
had even held one well up above normal eye level (it had taken most of her bone-forming
crystallium to support the plate against Egg's tremendous gravity pull) and had
actually looked at her own topside. It looked weird to her, what with the deep
red color, the reddish-yellow lump of her brain nodule near the middle, and the
smaller lump of a forming egg next to it. She had hastily withdrawn the plate
and had glanced around quickly to reassure herself that no one had seen her
examining her own topside. Unless it was your lover trying to get you in the
mood, no one ever talked about one's topside, much less looked at it.
As a troop
commander, she had found an excellent use for the mirror plates. A
"glancer" was now standard battle equipment on the eastern front.
With careful aim of the mirror to reflect the image of Bright in the right
direction, messages and commands could be sent over great distances to other
squads without alerting the barbarians. They still used the old code patterns
for the commands, since the limitations of the glancer communication system
were similar to the old technique that used synchronized thumps of the treads
of a trooper squad on the crust. With this new communication technique, the
element of surprise that they had gained over the barbarians had decreased
their losses by significant factors.
Swift-Killer
placed her collection of equipment on the crust. Along with the glancers, there
was another of her discoveries, the flares. The fact that certain types of
crust would glow when pod juice dropped on them had been known since ancient
history. Swift-Killer had been intrigued by this effect, and everywhere she
went in her service to the Leader of the Combined Clans, she had always
sacrificed a few drops of her daily ration of pods to the crust to see how
brightly it would glow. She had recently come across a very reactive portion of
crust. A drop of pod juice would make a blue-white flare of light almost too
bright to look at. She had carefully used a slicer to extract some long,
fibrous rods out of the crust; these were her flares. She had visited a chemist
at the base hospital, and soon
her enthusiasm
persuaded him to use his ancient arts to separate the various components of a
large batch of pod juice, until she had a small vial of cast dragon crystal
with the concentrated essence of the factor in the pod juice that made the
flares glow.
Swift-Killer
tested out the flare by holding the vial above the end of the stick and letting
a few drops of fluid fall on the end. The eyes on that side of her body popped
reflexively into their skin pouches as the brilliant blue-white glare of light
burst forth. Swift-Killer noticed with pleasure the murmur of startled treads
vibrating through the crust to her.
"The
Commander is at it again ... now what is she up to?"
Remembering
her prime duty, she turned her attention to her watch eyes, and again assured
herself that each one still had a distant dragon tooth firmly fixed in its
vision. She noticed that one or two of them also had a fuzzy spot off to one
side, where they had picked up the momentary glare of the flashing flare. However,
true to their assigned duties, they had not ducked into their skin pouch at the
bright glare.
With the
flare ready, she then turned her attention to her latest discovery, the
"expander." She had come upon it not long ago when she had been out
visiting the perimeter guards. Normally that task was the duty of one of the
squad leaders, but since her favorite at that time had been one of the guards,
she took the opportunity of an inspection tour to get a few moments alone with
him. Of course, being on guard, he had to remain at alert with his eyes on the
horizon, while giving stiffly formal responses to her queries. Although her
questions followed the usual routine of an inspection of the guard, her actions
took advantage of the fact that he was not allowed to break his at-alert
condition.
"Who
approaches?" boomed the crust as his tread rippled at her approach.
"Troop
Commander Swift-Killer," she replied.
"You
may approach," he said. So she did ... and got closer and closer and
closer until her body was pressed up right next to his and had flowed around in
a crescent that nearly enveloped his periphery. Her cool dark-red eyes stared
right into his, while he dutifully kept his gaze fixed on the horizon.
"Report!"
she commanded, but instead of using solid talk, she whispered it with an
electronic tingle that sent thrills through his frustrated body.
"Guard
to the east under observation and secure. Guard to
the west under
observation and secure. No unknown objects on the horizon. All secure,
Commander Swift-Killer," boomed his muffled report in formal solid talk.
She then felt a soft electronic whisper as he added, "But I seem to be
under attack from Bright-side."
"At
Alert!" she barked, and felt his body stiffen.
"What
is this I see," she said, as her eyes went up on stubs to look at his
topside.
"Dirt!"
she said severely; and reaching out a soft muscular pseudopod, she proceeded to
brush imaginary specks of dirt off his topside, making sure that she had
touched all of his sensitive spots in the process.
"Just
for that, Squad-Leader North-Wind, after you have been relieved of your post,
you shall report to me for extra duty," she said, with a mixture of solid
talk and electronic whisper that trailed off into a pure whisper at the words
"extra duty" that left no doubt in his mind what that duty would
consist of.
Commander
Swift-Killer slowly slid her body along North-Wind, who kept his outer
perimeter in the prescribed circle and his eyes on the horizon. Then drawing
herself back into proper traveling form, she went off to visit the next guard
on the perimeter, leaving an emotionally frustrated North-Wind at his post, his
eyes and body at attention, but his mind full of things other than non-existent
barbarians.
"He
does not have too much longer before the change of the guard," she thought
as she moved off to inspect the next guard. "But by that time, will he be
ready!"
The next
guard had always been one of her problem troopers. She had never really learned
discipline. Although Easy-Mover had never given any trouble when under direct
supervision, she did not have the proper spirit of a real needle
trooper, and would not discipline herself to act always in the manner of a
trooper even when there was no superior officer nearby. Unfortunately, the lonely
duty of perimeter guard gave her plenty of opportunity to become lax, and she
had been caught so many times that she had never been able to keep any of her
promotions for very long.
"She is
at it again," Swift-Killer said to herself as she approached the guard and
felt a telltale grinding noise in the crust beneath her tread. Her eyes
carefully surveyed the guard, but there was not one sign of motion in the body
of the guard or the arc of dragon tooth that jutted out towards the horizon. A
challenge replaced
the grinding noise as the guard noticed her approach.
"Who
approaches?" boomed the guard.
'Troop
Commander Swift-Killer," she replied.
"You
may approach," came the formal reply.
Swift-Killer
flowed to one side of the rigid trooper and barked, "Move here in front of
me!"
There was a
moment's hesitation, bad enough in itself, and then the trooper swiftly flowed
over and resumed the formal guard position. Swift-Killer went to the spot that
the guard had vacated, formed a manipulator and picked up the two plates of
broken crust that lay there. The plates were placed one on top of the other; as
Swift-Killer took them apart, a dusty powder of ground-up crust fell to the
surface. Bored with guard duty, Easy-Mover had been holding her outside surface
at alert, but had been absent-mindedly rubbing one plate against another under
her tread. This was not the first time she had been caught doing something like
that, so it didn't surprise Swift-Killer.
"You
are already down to trooper, so I can't demote you any further,"
Swift-Killer barked at the now rigid form of Easy-Mover. "But until you
learn that troopers on guard duty are to remain at full alert at all times, you
will have to make do without recreation periods. Since this is not your first
offense, it will be a dozen turns this time!"
Swift-Killer
thought she detected a quiver of protest, but fortunately for Easy-Mover, she
recovered rapidly with her reply.
"Yes,
Commander," she said.
Swift-Killer
then took the guard through the remainder of her formal report and left to
inspect the rest of the perimeter, taking the two plates with her to remove
temptation from the scene.
"A
dozen turns with no recreation is not only going to be hard on her, but also on
about three males that I know of," Swift-Killer thought as she flowed off.
"I don't know how she keeps them all happy. One lover at a time is enough
for me."
The
offending plates had been tucked away in one of Swift-Killer's carrying pouches
and she had forgotten about them until their shape got in the way during her
fun and games with the eager North-Wind. She had put them to one side and had
attended to more important business, such as thinning herself down and
slithering under the hot kneading tread of North-Wind as their eye-stubs
entwined softly about one another.
They took
turns kneading each other's topside with their treads, concentrating on their
favorite spots. Then with their eye-stubs firmly intertwined to pull their very
edges together, their mutual vibrations raised in pitch with an electronic tingle
adding an overtone of spice to the massage. Finally, in a multiple spasm of
their bodies, a dozen tiny perimeter orifices just under North-Wind's eye-stubs
opened—to emit a small portion of his inner juices into the waiting folds
around Swift-Killer's eye-stubs.
Swift-Killer
felt the tiny globules of North-Wind as they were carried by her automatic
reflexes to the egg case. She slowly gathered herself into her more normal
shape and slid from beneath the still thinned and exhausted North-Wind. She
left him lying there and began to pick up the various things she had laid aside
from her carrying pouches. As each item was tucked away, she became less and
less Swift-Killer the lover. Finally, as she placed the four-button symbol of
her rank into a holding sphincter on her side, she turned back into Troop
Commander Swift-Killer.
As she came
to the last few items, she picked up the crustal plates that she had taken from
Easy-Mover. The plates no longer had flat surfaces; instead one was slightly
hollow and the other was slightly rounded. Some of the shiny aspect of a
freshly cleaved surface was gone, but it was still possible to see a reflection
in them. Always inquisitive, Swift-Killer looked at the two curved plates and
was amazed to see that in one of them her eye looked smaller than normal, while
in the other, it was larger.
She reached
out a soft pseudopod and wiped the dust off the surfaces. This improved the
image some. Now completely absorbed in trying to understand the strange
behavior of the curved plates, Swift-Killer the inventor forgot her lover and
her command duties while her mind wandered off into thought.
For many
turns Swift-Killer spent her spare time with the curved plates. She talked to
Easy-Mover and found that she had been carrying those plates for many turns and
had used them to relieve her boredom on many tours of perimeter guard duty.
Swift-Killer duplicated her grinding process and soon had several expander and
shrinker mirrors. She found that if she did not apply much pressure in the later
parts of the rubbing, the mirrors could be made very shiny, almost as good as
the cleaved surfaces of the original plates.
She spent a
long time on one set of plates to see how curved
she could make
them, for she had found that the more the mirrors were curved, the more they
would expand or shrink the image. Finally she obtained one pair where something
amazing happened; not only was the image of her eye expanded, it was also
turned upside down! She found that if she put her eye very close to the mirror it
would appear right side up and expanded, but as she moved back it would get
bigger and bigger, finally filling the whole mirror
with a distorted image, then would finally appear again upside down.
Swift-Killer
now held one of those expander mirrors. She knew that a flat mirror would
reflect the light from her flare, and she wanted to see what the expander would
do. Perhaps it would expand the light and make it brighter.
Swift-Killer
formed her body around in a crescent, with her four free eyes moved around so
that they were concentrated on the inner part of the crescent where they could
observe the experiment. Aware that the light would be quite bright, she had
them tucked under their protective folds of skin and had closed the fold until
each was only watching through a narrow slit. Carefully she held the vial of
pod juice extract above the flare and adjusted the little crystal valve until a
thin stream of liquid fell down on the end of the flare. Soon she had a
continuous bright arc going. Light flared over her body and up into the sky.
Using her manipulators she brought the expander mirror up near the arc. Instead
of reflecting the light off in all directions like a flat mirror, it seemed to
collect it and make it smaller. She moved the mirror back and forth. She first
found a point where the light seemed to go off in a straight beam from the
expander. She then found that there was a position in which the light was
focused into a spot on the crust. She reached out with a pseudopod to touch the
bright spot.
"OW!!!"
The whole
camp came to alert as they heard the agonized t'trum of their Troop Commander
on the crust. Swift-Killer, her burned spot sucked into the interior of her
body where it was quickly enveloped in soothing liquid, stopped the flow of
pod-juice from the vial, waited until the flare stopped glowing, and then put
her experiments back into her carrying pouches as her eyes glared around the
camp. In short order, all the troopers were very busy.
After many
turns of experimentation, Swift-Killer understood how the expander worked.
Halfway between the mirror
and the point
where her eye flipped from right side up to upside down was the point where the
flare would give off a straight beam. If it were in front or in back of that
point, the light would be focused to a point, later to spread out again. For a
while, Swift-Killer thought that she had a new weapon, a thing that would burn
at a distance, but a little experimentation showed her that it was far easier
and faster to poke a hole in a barbarian with a dragon tooth than to burn one
with an expander (assuming that the barbarian would hold still long enough).
However, the
more she thought about the long-reaching beam of light that she could make, and
the old stories about the narrow beams of invisible light that the ancient
prophet Pink-Eyes had seen, the more she thought that she ought to talk to some
of the scientists back in Bright's Heaven who were trying to make sense of the
still pulsating beams.
It took some
discussion with the Commander of the Eastern Front, but after seeing her
experiment, he decided to relieve her temporarily of her command and let her
make a journey back to Bright's Heaven.
TIME:
The road to Bright's Heaven was long
but fast. It stretched out in a straight line along the easy direction from the
eastern outpost trooper camp. The way had been smoothed by generations of
treads and baggage sleds. Swift-Killer moved along the road at her rapid
trooper's glide, her four button troop commander's insignia automatically
clearing the path ahead of her and giving her preferential treatment at the
food stations along the way.
One of the
food station keepers was well known for his interesting and nearly
inexhaustible repertoire of love kneadings, and she had enjoyed a couple of
dalliances in previous trips, but her mind was elsewhere when she passed
through this time, so she didn't wait for him to return from one of his
periodic trips to restock his pod bins. She just took the pods that she needed
and continued on her way, crushing the pod with the powerful muscles in her
food intake pouch and sucking the tingly juices in through the thin skin at one
end of the pouch.
Swift-Killer
finally arrived at Bright's Heaven, and after a short formal meeting with the
Commander of the
fense Command,
she took off to visit the Inner Eye Institute, part of the large
'Troop
Commander Swift-Killer!" the Institute astrologer greeted her. "We
are honored by your visit. The fact that you are here gives us reassurance that
the eastern border is safe."
Swift-Killer's
eye-stubs twisted with embarrassment as the Institute astrologer continued.
"That invention of the glancer has given you a reputation among the
astrologers here at the Institute. Have you ever thought about leaving the
Troopers and becoming one of us?"
Swift-Killer
knew what she was best at. Her extraordinary size, strong muscles, and quick
intelligence had led her to her natural position as a front line troop commander.
They had also given her a new name, when as a youngster just barely out of the
hatchling pens, she had killed a Swift unaided, with
only a slicer for a weapon. She enjoyed her hobby of trying to figure out how
things worked, but she had no intention of making it her life's work, not as
long as there were barbarians trying to destroy Bright's Heaven. She brushed
off the Institute astrologer's question with one of her own.
"What
is the latest news on the strange pulsating beams from Bright's Inner Eye?"
Swift-Killer asked.
The
Institute astrologer hesitated. He and the others in the Inner eye Institute
had been undergoing a difficult conversion. Fortunately it had happened so
slowly that they had had time to overcome the shock. However, they were not
sure yet, so neither the populace nor the rest of the temple priests had been
informed of their suspicions. The eyes of the Institute astrologer swayed back
and forth rhythmically as he evaluated Swift-Killer. He equivocated.
"The beams
from Bright's Inner Eye continue to bring down a message from the mind of
Bright," he replied. "The beams are invisible except to certain ones
who have what is known as Bright's Blessing, although Bright's Affliction would
probably be a better term for it, as the unfortunate individuals rarely live to
breeding age. Fortunately, the alchemists have found a liquid that is sensitive
to the invisible beams, and turns color temporarily if a vial of it is exposed
to the beam, so now we do not have to search the Empire for those unfortunate
ones and drag them away from their clans to interpret Bright's message to
us."
"The
pulsations continue?" Swift-Killer asked.
"Yes,"
the Institute astrologer replied. "And there seems to
be some
pattern to them. We are still trying to analyze what they mean. They come so
slowly, one pulse every few turns."
The fact
that the pulsations seemed to have a pattern intrigued Swift-Killer's
inquisitive mind.
"May I
see what you have collected?" she asked eagerly.
The
Institute astrologer formed a manipulator, extracted a tally string from a
storage pouch and gave it to Swift-Killer, who quickly ran a tendril down its
length.
"It is
a string of numbers!" she exclaimed. "Only it stops at ten and then
repeats twice more." She continued her examination of the tally string.
'This seems
to be a number system that only goes to ten, then goes into two symbols to
represent things larger than ten," she said.
"Yes,"
he replied, "and if you go on, you will find that after counting to ten
times ten, new symbols appear, interspersed with the number symbols."
Swift-Killer
moved quickly over the repetitious section and found the new symbols. First a one, then a strange symbol, then another one, then a
different strange symbol, then a two. The Institute astrologer kept his
tread still, while his eye-stubs watched the tense body of Swift-Killer.
Finally her eye-stubs resumed their normal wavelike motion and she started
murmuring.
"One
plus one equals two, one plus two equals three, two plus two equals four
..." she said. She then turned her attention to the Institute astrologer
and her eyes stared at him, twitching nervously. The Institute astrologer
clenched his tread muscles and waited for Swift-Killer's brain to realize what
he and the others in the Institute had finally had to face.
'This is
nothing but a primer in arithmetic, but in a number system that goes only to
ten. Surely Bright would not waste time to send such a trivial message, and
take so long to do it. This is more like an interpreter trying to learn one of
the barbarian tongues."
Swift-Killer
hesitated, for what she was about to say next went against all her early
religious training. "It is almost as if there were a
strange clan of barbarians living on the Inner Eye, and trying to set up
communication with us," she said. "But that cannot be!"
The
Institute astrologer kept his tread quiet and passed over another tally string.
This one was a fringe string, with many strings knotted to a main string, and
with each side string con-
taining many knots.
At first Swift-Killer could make no sense of it, for there were no symbol
groups, only large and small knots. She felt through the fringes, puzzled by
the large blank sections.
"It
took us a long time to figure that one out," the Institute astrologer
admitted. "In fact it was a novice who literally stumbled onto it, when he
happened to glide across the tally fringe as it lay on the crust. Here, let me
arrange it."
The
Institute astrologer took the tally fringe and laid it out as a rectangle on
the crust.
"Now
glide onto it carefully and see what your tread tells you." he said.
Following
his instructions, Swift-Killer moved her body onto the large rectangle, and
suddenly it all became clear. Whereas her eyes could only see the tally string
at such a low angle that everything was distorted beyond recognition, her touch
sensitive bottom tread could absorb the picture all at once.
"It is
like a map," said Swift-Killer, who utilized the devices when planning
large scale campaigns. "But it is not any place that I know ..."
She
hesitated, and then said, "Wait ... In this large circle, this tiny
feature here must be the
"We
don't know," said the Institute astrologer. "We are still trying to
figure that out. We have since received another picture map, and the present
signals are in the process of beaming down a third one."
"May I
feel them?" Swift-Killer asked.
The
Institute astrologer pulled out two more tally strings from carrying pouches
and laid them out on the crust without comment. They were close enough together
so that Swift-Killer could spread herself out to cover both of them at the same
time.
'This shows
the Eyes of Bright," Swift-Killer said. "But the smaller Inner Eye is
not just a featureless circle like the others. It has strange markings and
circles on it and there is a cylinder sticking out of one side. And this other
is an enlargement of
the Inner Eye,
and you can see forms inside the circle, as if you were peering though holes in
the Inner Eye."
Swift-Killer
paused. "What does all this mean?" she asked.
"We are
not positive," said the Institute astrologer, "but we think that
those things we can see inside the orifices are strange beings."
"But
they are so sticklike and angular, they would be broken in a moment," she
exclaimed.
"They
are floating in the sky above the east pole, so they seem to be immune to the
gravity pull of Egg, although why they want such long manipulator bones is
unknown." While the Institute astrologer had been talking, Swift-Killer
had been reexamining the pictures.
"The
Inner Eye looks like a giant machine," she said. "This thing at the
top of the cylinder looks like a glancer in a holder, and these other things
look like my expander."
"What
is an expander?" asked the astrologer.
Swift-Killer
finally remembered that she had not yet told him of her discovery. She had come
to give him some new knowledge, but instead had been bedazzled with one new
concept after another.
Swift-Killer
formed a manipulator, reached into a carrying pouch and pulled out the expander
and the shrinker. Then she explained their odd behavior to the Institute
astrologer as he moved them back and forth in front of one of his eyes.
'This curved
shape for a glancer means that it can send a beam of light a long way,"
she told him. "And that is probably why they exist on the Inner Eye thing,
to send the beams down to us on Egg."
The
Institute astrologer moved onto the tally pictures on the crust, and compared
the shapes of the things protruding from the Inner Eye with the object that he
held.
"The
shapes are very similar," he said. "You are probably right. But what
is this about sending beams?"
"I came
to give you a demonstration," Swift-Killer said.
"Wait,"
the Institute Astrologer suggested. "I will gather the rest of the members
of the Institute."
Soon
Swift-Killer was the center of attention as she demonstrated her bright light
source and the way the expander could bring the light into a hot spot, or send it off in a straight beam.
After
several demonstrations, Swift-Killer let some of the more eager novices play
with the new toy. As she flowed back
to talk to the
Institute astrologer, she could hear others starting to grind away at two
plates to make their own expanders.
It was soon
obvious to all in the Institute that Swift-Killer's new invention provided a
means to signal back to whatever it was in the Inner Eye that was beaming down messages
to them. After several turns, the set up a bright light source and started
sending off a coded message aimed at the Eyes of Bright. They kept it up for
many turns, but nothing happened; the pulsed beam from the Inner Eye continued
its methodical blinking, slowly finishing off the last picture. After many,
many turns, Swift-Killer had a thought. Far to the east of Bright's Heaven was
a fracture ridge that stuck up just over the horizon. Its side was the quarry
for the blocks that were used to build the housing and storage compounds for
Bright's Heaven. Swift-Killer decided to go out to the quarry, and make the
arduous climb up the slope to the top; then she would look for the beam of
light that the astrologers would send periodically in that direction.
After a
dozen turns, a dejected Swift-Killer returned to the Institute.
"It is
no wonder that Inner Eye is not responding to our signals," she said.
"I can just barely see them from the top of the quarry."
"I was
afraid of that," the Institute Astrologer said. "The Eyes are so low
on the horizon that our light beam has to travel a long way through the
absorbing atmosphere. It is too bad that the Eyes of Bright are hovering over
the east pole, if it were hovering above us, we could
not only detect their beam easier, but they could see our pitifully weak
attempt at a response."
Swift-Killer
shivered at the thought of something hanging over her in the sky, but agreed
that Bright had certainly sent his seven Eyes to the poorest spot in the sky
for seeing.
Then
suddenly, Swift-Killer had an idea.
"If we
went to the east pole, we could send our light beam straight up to the Inner
Eye. The distance through the atmosphere would be a lot shorter, and the beam
would be going in the easy direction and would not fade so much."
"But
nobody goes to the east pole," the Institute astrologer protested.
"The land is full of barbarians, every direction that you move is in the
hard direction, the sky is hot and full of volcano smoke, the crust is too
bristly to move on ... No cheela could survive there."
"I know
it is not as nice as Bright's Heaven," Swift-Killer said. "But cheela
can survive there. After all, as you said, the place is infested with
barbarians."
"Actually,"
Swift-Killer went on, "the troopers on the eastern border have penetrated
a good way toward the east pole in punitive raids on barbarian settlements. We
have them cowed enough that they would not bother a good-sized
expedition."
A discussion
of the pros and cons of Swift-Killer's suggestion continued for many turns. The
cost would be high, especially in terms of the number of troopers that would be
needed to guard an expedition deep into barbarian territory. It was beyond the
resources and authority of the Inner Eye Institute, and the idea might have
been dropped if the last section of the third picture had not been so dramatic.
The picture of the machine with the strange beings was remarkable enough (for
there was no doubt that the sticklike things seen
vaguely through the holes in the Inner Eye were beings). But up in one corner
of the picture was a similar figure placed next to the familiar (although
stretched) outlines of the
Initially,
the High Priest and the Chief Astrologer were perturbed about the Institute
astrologer's interpretation of the pictures, but finally accepted his version
as no threat to their religion by assuming that Bright worked in a mysterious
way, and that some time in the distant future, it would all become clear to
them.
The Leader
of the Combined Clans, although nominally a devout worshiper of the God Bright,
was willing to compartmentalize her mind and look at the pictures without being
bothered by the religious overtones.
"Weird
looking creatures," the Leader said. "And giants at that. Yet if they
have learned to hover in the sky without falling down, we could learn much from
them, and they seem to be willing to talk to us. It can't hurt to learn more.
Proceed with the expedition."
There was no
doubt in anyone's mind who would be the leader of the expedition. As a combined
astrologer-thinker and battle commander, Swift-Killer was the obvious choice.
With the authority of the Leader of the Combined Clans behind her,
Swift-Killer organized the
expedition. They would be gone for many, many turns, and meanwhile the work of
the Institute had to go on, so she only took a few of the younger astrologers
and novices. A good supply of flares and concentrated pod juice were obtained
under her direction, and during that time a few excellent large-diameter
expanders had been manufactured by the careful grinding of newly trained
artisans. One of the expanders was so large in diameter that only a few of the
novices could get a carrying pouch around it; once it was pouched, they could
carry little else.
For the trip
out to the eastern border, no troopers were needed for protection, and the food
stops sufficed for supplies. However, messengers were sent ahead to gather the
supplies that the expedition would need in the turns ahead. Soon, Swift-Killer
returned to take over command of her troop of needle troopers, for naturally
she had requested that they supply the guard for the expedition. Soon the
entire party was assembled. Rations were distributed, and civilians were taught
the elementary thrusts of the short sword in case a barbarian ever penetrated
to the center of the circle formation. Finally they left, gliding easily over
the crust toward the east magnetic pole.
TIME:
Dead-Troopers pulled her eye down
from its crystallium-cored stub and pushed her way off in the hard direction,
keeping her body as thin as sex until she was well over the horizon. She could
not figure out why this circle of troopers were
penetrating so far into her territory. The scouts had reported that they were
on the move, and she had acted to defend the nearest village that would have
been an obvious target for a punitive attack, but the circle of troopers had
carefully worked its way around it. Such behavior of Empire troopers was new,
and Dead-Troopers hated anything new. They were up to something, and she would
stop it—but what?
As she
slithered into the compound, she noticed with glum satisfaction that the scrape
of her tread on the crust had warned the camp. Those who were presently in her
good graces were merely very busy taking care of important matters, while those
who weren't had rapidly absented themselves when they felt the first murmurs of
her approach.
Her
second-in-command, and one of her lovers, was busy
rubbing his
unusually brilliant short sword against a chunk of crust. Although the cast
dragon crystal would usually stay sharp until the edge was notched by a hard
blow, it did help a little to keep the edge in fine hone by monotonous rubbing
against the crustal material. Dead-Troopers knew that Pink-Sky had never let
the short sword get dull since the time he had wrested it from the dead body of
a trooper whom they had killed jointly. She glided up next to Pink-Sky until
their edges were touching along almost half their length. Pink-Sky continued to
hone his sword as Dead-Troopers watched.
"They
are in full force," she said. "But they do not attack! I don't like
it!"
"There
are very few things about troopers that you do like," he replied calmly.
Dead-Troopers
paused for a moment, then said, "Well, I like this even less."
"Where
are they going?" Pink-Sky asked.
Dead-Troopers
shifted, several eyes staring at Pink-Sky while the rest wriggled in
irritation. "It looks as if they are headed for the east pole," she
said. "But that makes no sense at all. No one goes to the east pole. It is
too hot and bristly."
Pink-Sky
remarked sagely, "They seem to be getting very far from their home base,
and the mountainous territory near the east pole makes the horizons
undependable."
Dead-Troopers
paused a moment, and then realized what her second-in-command was referring to.
It was a good thing he was a lot smaller than she was, or he would have been
leader of the clan.
"You
are right, as usual," she said. "Let us gather the warriors and go
east to the first range of ridges, to the one that has a cliff different than
the rest, the one that looks as if it is a horizon until you are almost on
it."
Pink-Sky
shortly had a signaling crew together and was sending out phased messages to
the nearby barbarian clan settlements. The message took a long time to send,
since the signaling crew had to adjust their treading to emphasize the natural
resonant frequencies of the crust.
"What
is that strange rumbling sound in the crust?" one of the novices inside
the circle of marching troopers asked. "Is it a crust-quake?"
"No,"
another said. "This is the wrong part of Egg for quakes."
Swift-Killer
had felt the rumble long before the novices. De-
spite what one of
them had said, the east pole was crustquake country, but this was not a quake.
What they
felt was only a long distance signal from one barbarian clan to another. From
its similarities to others she had heard, it was
probably the call to assemble. No doubt her expedition this deep in barbarian
territory had caused some concern. Since it was a long distance message, and
not a localized call for attack, she had no need to put the troopers on alert,
but she noticed with pride that most of them had felt the presence of the
barbarians, and that the dragon teeth, which had been in typical marching
disarray, now gleamed as a single, coordinated, double row of interleaved
needles.
At the next
rest break, Swift-Killer ordered out the feeding-time perimeter guard, and
gathered the civilians to the center.
"The
barbarians have called for an assembly to decide what to do about us," she
said. "Hopefully, they will realize that we are not bothering their
settlements, and are too large to attack, and will leave us alone. However,
this is the
Moving in
one direction while looking and fighting in another direction came easily to
the multieyed, non-oriented cheela. Although each had a preferred set of eyes,
all dozen worked well and gave the cheela a complete, if two-dimensional, view
of the region around them.
Each cheela
also had one or two preferred eating pouches and elimination orifices, but with
a little concentration to break many turns of habit, the two could actually be
reversed in function if necessary. The same went for carrying pouches, which
were just immature feeding pouches. However, it was only the very young or very
old who slobbered on their collection of trinkets.
On the body
of a typical cheela there were certain sections of skin that had developed good
muscle tone and a high level of tactile sensory endings that made the best
pseudopods, and there were other chunky muscular sections that were the best to
drape about a crystallium manipulator skeleton for maximum leverage. All
troopers learned in basic training camp to form deep pockets in their skin,
backed up with crystallium sockets imbedded in their tread muscles to handle
the long, heavy dragon teeth. A well-trained trooper could perform that
function at any
point around the circle while maintaining the measured tread of the advance
ripple, and simultaneously eating, eliminating, and switching trinkets from one
pouch to the next. It was the brag of Swift-Killer's troopers that they could
engage in sex on top of all of that. But as had been proved during a few
after-battle orgies, that was more talk than
performance.
The
commander of a circle of troopers had two choices. One was to put all the
troopers of one sex in one ring, with the next ring of the opposite sex
constantly riding partially on the topside of the first rank. This kept the
troopers happy, with a constant reminder of fun either under tread or topside.
However, there was always the problem of the one or two who didn't quite fit
into the geometry of the circle. A second choice was to alternate male and
female side-by-side in each rank, with purely (nearly) platonic interaction
between ranks, although they were overlapping on topsides. Swift-Killer
preferred the second ordering since it made for tighter rank spacing, despite
the other problems it caused.
At one time,
early in her career as an officer, she had considered the possibility of a
trooper circle made up of only one sex. She could see herself, leading the
Ferocious Females to triumph in battle. But her trooper background vetoed that
bleak, joyless scene quickly. In their battles against the barbarians, the real
enemy was boredom, and a single-sex battle circle would not survive long.
Dead-Troopers
led her clan, and the out-family warriors who had
joined them, off to the east, then back again to the west.
"A long
crawl for no progress," Sinking-Cliff, one of the out-family fighters,
complained. But even he had to admit that their route had taken them safely
around the trooper scouts who would slither quickly over the horizon and back
again.
Sinking-Cliff
had been the leader of his small clan before he had decided to join forces with
Dead-Troopers' larger clan that contained many of his out-family. The
penetration of the large force of well-armed troopers into his clan territory
was of great concern, and he readily joined himself and his three best warriors
to the cause. However, he did not really like taking commands from someone
else.
Dead-Troopers
knew that she was treading on prickly crust when she heard the complaint and
made her move, but she
could tolerate no
insubordination if she were going to keep control of this halt-wild band.
"Silence!"
came Dead-Troopers' harsh whisper, and Sinking-Cliff half raised his club as a
dozen eyes on a huge form blazed down at him.
Dead-Troopers
dropped into lingua inter-familia, and applied her most diplomatic
accent—Pink-Sky would have been proud of her. "Even hatchlings are quiet
when the Swift is around," she admonished in a soft whisper. 'This
dark-side cliff we have come to is along the path of the marauding
troopers," Dead-Troopers continued. 'There is none other like it, since
all other cliffs in this region show their faces to the bright light."
The tension
relaxed, and Dead-Troopers slid a pseudopod on the topside of Sinking-Cliff as
she continued, "The path of the troopers takes them to the bright-light
side of this cliff. They will never see us behind it, and we can rush out and
take them unaware."
She removed
her pseudopod with a promising pat and glided off to arrange the attack.
TIME:
The
expedition to the east pole moved slowly on in its quiet but determined way.
Scouts moved ahead to look over the horizon, but the crust was getting prickly,
especially on the way back, so they did not range out as far as they had done
in the past. None of them realized that the horizon off to one side was not the
real horizon, but instead was the top of a precipitous cliff that sheltered a
horde of barbarians behind its sharp edge.
It was to
Dead-Troopers' credit that she held her mixed pseudo-clan of warriors until the
circle glided past. She released them with a terrible thump that shook the very
crust under Swift-Killer's tread and they attacked with a fury born of turn
upon turn of punitive raids on their loved ones and hatchlings.
"At
Alert!" t'trumed Swift-Killer, and narrowed herself down to pass through
the dazed civilians to the rear of the circle.
Her
automatic judgment of the tactical situation was verified when she saw the
stream of barbarians seem to pour endlessly out of a notch in the horizon. Her
dozen eyes lifted slightly on
stubs as they
once again evaluated the near perfect boundary between dark sky and glowing
crust, and she saw her mistake. A slight rise of the glowing crust indicated a
low cliff. Too low to see, but high enough to hide a war party of barbarians.
"East! West! North! Bright!—East! West! North! Bright!— East! ..." chanted Swift-Killer as her eyes took in
the battle situation. Her troopers moved obediently in a rigid march that took
them nowhere, as their bodies became attuned to the cooperative movement and
the deadly needles of the dragon teeth formed their impenetrable barrier about
the circle of close-coupled troopers.
The
civilians peered over the flattened ranks of troopers and some of them were
beginning to panic. Swift-Killer lowered the intensity of her rhythmic thump on
the crust as her squad leaders took up the chant to make up for the loss of her
volume.
Swift-Killer
circled around the inner rank of her troopers, sliding encouraging pseudopods
on male and female alike, as her whisper sped through the crust, its electronic
tingle emphasizing the solid thump of the squad leaders.
"...
North! Bright!—East! West! North! ..."
At the same
time, she thinned out the inner third of her body and spread a thin hatching
mantle over the bewildered non-combatants at the center. In almost automatic
reflex action, their bodies reverted to minimum area, and they huddled together
under the protective cloak. As the pressure in the center was released, the
ranks of troopers compacted, and the needle points at the outer ring grew
imperceptibly closer together.
Swift-Killer
watched the charge of the barbarians with cool detachment. Although they came
in a group, they were still individuals, and the first of those individuals
actually to make contact with the deadly circle of dragon teeth would die, and
both she and the barbarians knew that horrible fact.
"...
West! North! Bright!—East! West! North! ..." Swift-Killer added the thump
of her tread to the clamor as the barbarians approached. With a roar that shook
the very crust, they came straight along the easy direction from the west, then broke into two peeling waves that plowed their way off
into the hard directions toward the north and Bright sides.
Swift-Killer
had expected the attack to break off in the face of a well-tended circle. What
she had not expected was the rattle of pod seeds and smooth rocks rolling and
sliding across the crust toward her circle of troopers. That was all that they
were, rocks and
garbage from an ordinary pod meal, but the unexpected did to her troopers what
anything unexpected would do to any group—it confused them. In their effort to
avoid what was harmless, the troopers slid to one side or the other. Their
careful cadence was lost and the impenetrable barrier of needlelike dragon
teeth wavered.
From the middle of the still flowing barbarian horde burst
Dead-Troopers and five of her warriors. They were nearly hidden by
their load of undried cheela skin. Swift-Killer's eyes shrank at the sight, but
she had to admire the tactical effectiveness of the result. As the raw cheela
skin contacted the pricks of the dragon teeth, the natural death reflexes in
the muscular skin pouched up and grasped the points of the dragon teeth in viselike
sphincters.
Backing off
for a moment, the barbarians let the skin drag the ends of the deadly needles
to the crust, and then flowed over their grisly weapon and pinned the circle
defenses under their treads as they encountered the outer perimeter, their
clubs and stolen short swords shattering crystal and slashing skin.
"West! West! West! West! ..."
t'trumed Swift-Killer as she changed the cadence and moved the circle into the
direction of the attack. The small knot of fighting troopers and barbarians
stayed fixed, each slashing where they could at the small amount of skin
exposed behind their shields of dried skin or Flow Slow plates. Meanwhile, the
steady cadence moved the circle of troopers around the point of attack, like a
cell enveloping its struggling prey. The surprise was gone, and the next rapid
attack of the barbarians from the east did not produce the desired confusion
when a rattle of crustal pebbles and pod seeds came sliding across the crust.
The needle points of the dragon teeth did not waver, and the holders of the
remainder of the poor unfortunate cheela who had unwillingly donated his very
skin to the cause of the barbarian attack left their glowing white juices
dripping off the ends of the dragon teeth.
"Out! Out! Out! Out!"
Swift-Killer commanded. She expanded the circle in all directions, but most
importantly in the direction towards the clump of barbarian warriors. The
pincher closed and the needle points of the dragon teeth began to have their
effect.
With the
trap shut, Swift-Killer pulled back her mantle from over the civilians. Making
herself into an avenging needle, she slipped her huge bulk between two of her
troopers in the rear ranks. Three knives held in front of her and her short
sword
trailing behind, she
screeched a high pitched whisper that threw the knot of combatants into
confusion, and dove in under their bodies, knives slashing.
Swift-Killer
climbed out of the hole she had carved out of the middle of Dead-Troopers'
body, glowing juices running down her eye-stubs. She then attacked the rest of
the beleaguered barbarians from behind. Their initiative was lost, and it took
little time for the troopers to finish them all with thrusts of their short
swords.
Swift-Killer
looked across the topsides of the still quivering bags of juice and surveyed
her command. True to the tradition of trooper discipline, even if the commander
seemed to ignore it, the squad leaders had disengaged the little knot of dead
and wounded to the inside, and a nearly perfect circle of regrouped troopers
were now arrayed in rank after rank, their needle points in perfect array as
the cadence continued. "East! West! North!
Bright—East! West! North! ..." The remainder of the barbarian horde sent
taunts and curses through the crust, made weaker and weaker feinting attacks,
and finally faded off over the horizon.
Swift-Killer
shivered her skin, sending yellow-white globs of cooling juice showering down
on the bare topsides of the motionless layers of skin beneath her tread. She
slowly flowed down off the sagging mound of flesh, checking each one of her
short slashing blades before inserting them back into her lined weapons pouch.
As she descended, her tread automatically kneaded the flaccid skin beneath her
and worked out the lumps that were hidden away in the enemy skin pouches.
One cache
yielded buttons. Swift-Killer paused in shock. There were three single buttons
that signaled that each had come from trooper; a doublet button that used to
grace the skin of a squad leader; and another with four buttons that matched
the one that now glistened wetly on her supple skin.
"The
Trooper-Killer!" she said, and fury sent her short sword again and again
through the already damaged brain-knot. Her exhaustion forgotten in the
discovery, she moved the dead hunks of meat off the sworn enemy of every troop
commander of the east border, and proceeded to strip the tiniest pouch of that
dead hulking body.
To her
dismay, she found four more trooper buttons—well tarnished—in an almost
sealed-off pouch, but nothing else.
"Kill!
Kill! Kill!" she murmured. "Nothing to live for but
to kill troopers."
She went on
to the other bodies, glancing around as she did so to notice that the battle
was over and the circle was back in its proper form. One body yielded a trooper
button, but this one came from the holding sphincter of a trooper, who had died
defending its honor. She searched the periphery until she found the trooper's
heritage pouch, and she slowly kneaded it until she extracted the mementos
given to the trooper as he left his clan to join the eastern border guard. She
separated the personal ones from the clan ones, tossing most of the personal
ones to the crust but taking those that might be of value to her some turn. She
put the clan totem into a special pouch that she sealed until she might, at
some future time, deliver it to the clan chief, while giving thanks for the
assistance of that segment of the clan in the protection of the far-flung
borders of Bright's Empire.
"It is
a good thing that we lose so few troopers in these skirmishes with the
barbarians," she thought to herself, "or else the troop commanders
would be so laden down with clan totems that they would not be able to
move."
At the
thought, she self-consciously twitched the little pouch in a forgotten segment
of her body that had not been opened for over three dozen greats of turns, and
would not—until death relaxed the sphincter that kept her little piece of
homeland and kin within her.
Swift-Killer
continued her search. Two of her troopers and six barbarians.
A poor trade. And it was her fault for not having trained her troopers against
the "rolling garbage" attack. It was an old and seldom used tactic,
but in this time and in this environment it had come close to equaling the odds
for the barbarians.
Kneading a
recalcitrant pouch on one of the last barbarian skin sacks, she almost cut her
tread. Moving off and sliding a pseudopod under the edge of the folded skin,
she extracted a short sword. The fact that a barbarian had succeeded in
wresting a short sword from a trooper was not unusual, but the condition of the
short sword was. She examined its shining sides and keenly honed edge with
wonder. If only her troopers could be encouraged to keep their weapons in such
good condition! She pouched the shining sword in her weapons pouch and finished
the inspection, then finally turned to cleaning herself.
The troop
was still on full circle march alert, when she finally
finished and resumed command.
"Rest!"
rolled the command through the crust, and the
gleaming needles of
the dragon teeth stopped in space, paused, then relaxed into a disarrayed, but
still outward-facing circle.
"Make
camp!
"Post Guards!
"Squad Leaders Report!"
The commands
rippled out through the crust and the troop camp took on its normal life style
as the subordinates interpreted the Commander's orders, added a few of their
own for local order and discipline, and then gathered near the mound of cooling
bodies for a conference with their Troop Commander.
"We are
in no real hurry," Swift-Killer announced to them. "And we have a
long way to go in hostile territory without food storage depots. We will stop
here long enough to dry the meat, then we will move on
to the east."
The squad
leaders were pleased with the Commander's decision. The troopers had been on
constant march for a dozen turns, and this break would not only give the more
restless ones a few moments to relieve the pressure of their juices, but would
also give the whole command a chance to revert to a seminormal life style, not
to mention a welcome change in diet from the ever-present food pods.
The squad
leaders had no trouble in getting volunteers for butcher duty, and soon the
whole pile of eight bodies was neatly drained, the muscular meat carefully
sliced from the skin and the leathery skin stretched out as far as it would go
in the easy direction. The ends were held down with the ample weight of a
couple of otherwise useless novice astrologers, and left to dry for a turn on
the glowing crust, until they were ready to rewrap the meat hunks that they had
so recently enveloped.
When the
butchering crew came to the eggs, there was a lengthy pause. One of the
troopers and the Trooper-Killer barbarian were found to have eggs in their egg
cases. Unfortunately for the sensibilities of the butchering crew, the precious
egglings were still alive in their leathery sacs.
The news of
the living egglings brought Swift-Killer to the scene at once. As much as she
hated it, it was her duty to pass judgment. She looked carefully at the
leathery egg-sacs, sliding each one in turn under the protection of a hatching
mantle to feel the pulsating life form within.
Unfortunately,
the pulsations from the wee ones only confirmed what they all knew. Egg-sacs
with that color had no
chance of
surviving without many more turns of protection and nourishment within their
mother.
Swift-Killer
felt the terrible urge to lift the little eggling into her egg case—to give it
the protection and nourishment that it needed. But she knew full well that
within one turn, her normally protective egg case would have swollen into a
bloated anger, and the vile juices that it would have exuded would have
literally dissolved the egg sac and its precious cargo. As much as they all
would have liked to have saved them, the egglings were doomed.
Swift-Killer
softly took the two quivering egg-sacs into a holding pouch and moved off. The
butchering crew continued their work, while the rest of the expedition followed
Swift-Killer to the other side of the camp.
"Another
nasty duty," Swift-Killer complained. She drew out the flashing sword that
she had so recently acquired.
"If it
has to be done, let it be done quickly," she said. With two swift slices,
she sacrificed the juices of the egglings to the all-absorbing crust of Egg,
which glowed momentarily in response.
The others
returned to the camp, but Swift-Killer, who had had the duty, stayed on to
punish herself. As she looked at the dead egglings,
she was horrified at her inner thoughts.
"That
is a tender looking slice of meat," her appetite said.
"Not
even a barbarian would eat an eggling!" she remonstrated. Shifting her
attention from the immature egglings baking on the glowing crust, she flowed
back into the camp to supervise the wrapping of the meat, for that would be the
troop's main source of food for many turns to come.
TIME:
After two dozen turns, the
expedition began to approach the east pole. Every direction was now a hard
direction for travel, and if it weren't for the disciplined nature of the
troopers, who were used to marching in close formation, the going would have
been difficult. Fortunately, since there was no easy direction of travel, there
was also no danger of rapid attack, and their guard could be relaxed. Swift-Killer
changed the usual loose marching circle into a modified wedge. The troopers
were placed in a sharp pointed chevron formation, with the front of the chevron
thrusting steadily through the resistant at-
mosphere to force an
opening. The remainder of the troopers kept the gap open, and the small group
of scientist astrologers moved swiftly along at the trailing edge, moving
easily into the gap created by the troopers.
To break the
monotony, the squads in the troop had been having a contest. Each squad would
take a turn as path breaker and see how many treads they could keep up the pace
before having to fall back and let the following squad have their turn. Each
squad, of course, had to break the previous squad's record, and when
Swift-Killer began to notice that several troopers on the front line were
beginning to surreptitiously drop equipment and food parcels from their pouches
in order to keep up the pace, she decided to call a break before things got
beyond control.
"Cease March!" Swift-Killer's voice rolled through
the crust.
An exhausted
group of troopers halted their steady push and felt the hardness close in
around them. Since all directions were hard going, no one wanted to move from
his position, but Swift-Killer was pleased to see that the squad leaders kept
after their troopers until they were dispersed in a rough circle, with a few
individuals designated to keep one or two eyes on the horizon while they were
eating.
"They
really must be tired," Swift-Killer thought as she looked around. "No
one has the energy to pair off for a little fun."
Having
stayed at her normal position near the center of the troop, Swift-Killer had
not had to participate in the exhausting procedure of breaking path, and so had
not even begun to tax her great strength. So she was feeling fine and would
have liked to have a little relaxation after eating; but a quick survey of her
many lovers among the troop convinced her that she should let them rest.
Swift-Killer
wandered over to the clump of astrologers and approached Cliff-Watcher, who was
busy tying knots in a tally string. On the crust beside him were three tread
sticks.
"Amazing,
simply amazing," Cliff-Watcher was murmuring to himself as he added knot
after knot to the tally string.
"What's
amazing?" Swift-Killer asked, curious as always, and confident enough in
her position to ask questions of someone many turns her junior.
"Egg is
really shaped like an egg!" exclaimed Cliff-Watcher as a few of his eyes
glanced away from the tally string and no-
ticed her approach.
He then saw the bewilderment in the jerky overtones of Swift-Killer's normal
eye-wave pattern and continued, "I have been keeping a count of the number
of standard treads on our march with the tread sticks. The east pole is on a
very flat place on Egg. It takes many, many treads of travel before there is a
noticeable change in the horizon," he said.
Swift-Killer
looked ahead along their direction of travel. She could see the east pole mountains just raising their tops over the horizon. It
was true, the horizon had hardly changed for the last
three turns.
"Like
an egg?" she asked.
"Yes,"
the young astrologer said. "An egg-sac is flattened on the top and bottom
because of the pull of gravity, and spreads out in the other directions. Our
home, Egg, seems to be constructed the same way. Near the east and west poles
it is very flat and you have to go a long way to see a change in the horizon.
Halfway between the east and west pole, where Bright's Heaven is, the horizon
is very close in the east and west direction but many treads away in the hard
direction."
Swift-Killer
knew this elementary fact of the topography near Bright's Heaven, but she had
never connected it with the shape of Egg. However, neither she nor Cliff-Watcher
realized that Cliff-Watcher's calculations had misled him. The star was
spherical, not egg-shaped. It was his tread sticks that were distorted, giving
him a false impression. Everything on the star— the tread sticks, the dragon
crystal weapons and even the nuclei in their bodies—was distorted by the
trillion-gauss magnetic field of the star so that they were many times longer
along the magnetic field lines than across them. Since even their eyes
participated in the general stretching, they couldn't see the distortion;
everything looked normal to them.
Swift-Killer
turned professional. "How many treads until we reach the east pole mountains?" she asked.
Cliff-Watcher,
who was proud of his advanced education in conceptual geometry, immediately went
into a calculation trance, his practiced counting tendrils shooting forth from
his body. The tendrils began to wave and interlace with each other at blinding
speed. Finally he broke from the trance.
"Two
dozen standard marches," he announced.
Swift-Killer
looked at the east pole mountains that loomed over the
deceptively near horizon and announced, "Then I guess we had better get
the troop moving."
Without
shifting, she roared, "At Alert!" The troop smoothly
reformed and
continued their push to the east, the disruptive contest between squads
forgotten.
Cliff-Watcher
had been right, it really was about two dozen standard marches to the east pole mountains, but since a standard march between breaks
was impossible in this terrain, it really took much longer.
"It is
like constantly climbing a hill in the hard direction," Swift-Killer
complained to herself as she took a turn at the point of the chevron forcing
its way into the hard direction.
"I
know," said the trooper at her right. "Except you
never end up on top."
Swift-Killer
breasted another furry hillock in front of her. Each tiny little thread of
crust was sticking up toward the sky in the easy direction. It looked
impossible—the threads seemed to be laughing at the powerful gravity pull of
Egg. But when Swift-Killer had to push over that tiny little thread, along with
the myriad others that made up the fuzzy surface, she found they were
powerfully strong. It took a great deal of strength just to move through the
fuzz, knocking it down and pushing on over it. Then on top of it all, if the
fuzz slowed her down too much, the hard direction closed in on her and made the
going even worse.
The troop
finally reached the foothills of the east pole mountains
without further incident. Swift-Killer looked with awe at the height of the
mountains, then upwards at the Eyes of Bright, still hanging in the sky far
above the mountains, defying the mighty pull of Egg.
Swift-Killer
put the camp on bivouac status. First, long-range sentries were put out at a
good distance from the camp; then she allowed the troopers to put down their
weapons. A file of troopers went into a virgin stand of crust-fuzz and stamped
out a circular depressed region where the dragon teeth and the short swords
were stacked to block out the constant winds. In the center, the remainder of
the pods and dried meat was stored, while those who had been burdened with
their weight during the long march became free again to frolic without care.
Hunting parties were formed, with old and new couples taking off in small
carefree groups to see what was off on the horizon. Now was an important time
for Swift-Killer. She gathered the astrologers and began to set up her
experiment. She first took the flat glancer mirror and set it on a mound of
rubble at an angle until she could go off at a distance and see the Eyes of
Bright reflected off the center of the mirror.
"The
Eyes of Bright are larger and closer, and they look a little brighter,"
Cliff-Watcher remarked, as a few of his eyes scanned the cluster of seven
lights in the sky.
"I
should hope so, after all the work we did to get here," Swift-Killer said
crankily as she struggled to scrape a notch for the curved expander in the
fuzzy crust some distance away from the glancer.
"I
could never figure out why Bright chose to send his Eyes to the east pole, when
we were in Bright's Heaven," Cliff-Watcher mused.
"Perhaps
Bright did not want to see us too well, because we are so wicked,"
Swift-Killer said in annoyance. "Here, hold this while I sight through the
pointing hole."
Swift-Killer
had the large, curved expander standing vertically on the crust. It came up
almost to the top of Cliff-Watcher as he moved over to surround it and hold it
vertical. He was glad it had not been his job to keep that thing pouched during
their travels.
Cliff-Watcher
flowed his body away from the center of the expander
as Swift-Killer backed off and stared through the small hole in the plate.
Swift-Killer moved her eye until she could see the center of the glancer
through the hole. There, shining in the center of the flat mirror were the Eyes
of Bright. Now she had to tilt the expander until the image of her eye off the
flat backside of the expander was swallowed up in the hole that she was looking
through; in that way she knew that the expander was pointing at the glancer,
which in turn was pointing up at the Eyes of Bright.
"Up a
little," she said. "Hold it!" She moved quickly and soon
Cliff-Watcher's place was taken by a cluster of pieces of crust.
The message
to the strange sticklike beings in the Inner Eye had been decided long ago.
Since they had used a rectangular format with a prime number of rows and
columns to send crude pictures, they would certainly recognize that format if
it were beamed back to them—only the picture inside the rectangle would be new.
First it would show a picture of the Eyes of Bright over the east pole with a
dragon tooth pointing the way to Bright's Heaven. Then later pictures would
show the Eyes of Bright hovering over Bright's Heaven, with the distinctive profile
of the east pole mountains poking up over the horizon
of Egg. Each picture had been converted into a complex tally string, ready to
read off. Swift-Killer gathered her crew of as-
trologers and they
proceeded to retransmit the message that they had sent in vain from the
compound back at the Inner Eye Institute.
"Long
burn, flick, flick, flick, dash, flick ..." Swift-Killer intoned as she
ran the tally string through a set of tendrils. The crew of flare holders and
pod-juice controllers kept up their steady work, and flash after flash of light
glared from the end of the flare, reflected from the curved surface of the
expander into a straight beam that flashed across the crust to the glancer, then went beaming upwards toward the cluster of lights in
the sky. After several lines, Swift-Killer would take another look through the
sighting holes to make sure that the beam was being sent off in the right
direction, while the flare crew replaced their flares with fresh ones.
After the
first picture had been sent, Swift-Killer went over to the astrologer whom she
had put in charge of the dark detector. She was slightly disappointed that
there had been no darkening of the detector, but she resolved to keep on with
the rest of the series.
A dozen
turns and more than twice as many messages later, Swift-Killer finally had to
admit that perhaps the messages were still not getting through.
'The Eyes
still look dim to us, so you can imagine that our weak little light is going to
be very dim by the time it gets up through the murky atmosphere,"
Cliff-Watcher said as his thinned out body tried to knead the worries out of
the flattened Swift-Killer.
Swift-Killer
lay relaxed under the tender ministrations of Cliff-Watcher and felt the small globules
that used to be a piece of Cliff-Watcher moving slowly through her body on
their way to her egg case. Her body was at rest, but her mind was a turmoil of emotion.
"If
they cannot see us yet, then we must get closer," she said, "I am
going to climb the mountains to where the atmosphere is clearer."
Cliff-Watcher's
kneading stopped. "But that will take forever!" he remonstrated.
"So it
may," said Swift-Killer, who had slipped out from under Cliff-Watcher and
had rapidly resumed her more normal shape. She was now putting on her office of
command as she gathered and pouched the tools, weapons and trinkets that she
had cast aside earlier. "But we are going anyway."
TIME:
The climbing of the east pole mountains was like a siege. The mountains were many
times higher than any that had ever been attempted. Swift-Killer took her time
to organize her support, for once she had started up the mountain the
organization would have to run itself. The formal command structure of the
troop was dismantled, and a new arrangement organized more along the lines of a
permanent border fort replaced it. A quarry crew was sent out and soon a
fortified compound replaced the campground. Regular hunting parties were
organized, and the short swords and dragon teeth soon were sinking their sharp
fangs into wandering animals instead of their natural prey. With much
grumbling, long rows of petal plants were placed in the crust, and the business
of tending them rotated among the troopers—who in many cases had only joined up
to get away from the clan farm.
With her
supply lines secure, Swift-Killer organized the assault on the east pole mountains. Swift-Killer, Cliff-Watcher and North-Wind
would lead the climb, but backing them would be over half the troop.
Swift-Killer worked carefully, orchestrating the climb like a major battle.
Twice she backed down from a hard-won valley because the climb—although not
difficult for an unburdened cheela—would have been impossible for one loaded
with food parcels. Slowly the expedition worked its way into the foothills.
Chunks of crust were stationed on the steeper slopes for rest stations, and
soon two lanes of porters were moving back and forth from the fort on the
lowlands to the point of the climb that slowly thrust its way inward and
upward.
"That
was a terrible stretch," Cliff-Watcher complained as he lay exhausted on
the crust in one of the rare flat spots in the mountain pass. "The glancer
almost wouldn't fit through that narrow crevasse."
Swift-Killer,
her body bulging with the curved shape of the expander, ignored the complaint
and announced, "This will be an ideal place for our next base camp. I will
go ahead and rec-onnoiter, while you two work your way down to the lead parcel
crew. Take your time and make sure that you secure the path for them."
Swift-Killer
carefully emptied her pouch of the expander, and moved swiftly off as
North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher wearily dropped their loads and moved back down
the mountain.
Swift-Killer
was pleased. The way ahead was steep, but broad. They would make good progress
with their loads over this stretch. In her hurry to explore well ahead, she
thinned her body down and pushed only a narrow path through the prickly crust.
She would broaden it on her way back down, when the tremendous pull of Egg
would help instead of hinder her motion. She came around a low ledge and then
stared at the barrier ahead.
"Bright's
Curse!" she exploded. Her eyes scanned the area, but there was no escape
from the fact that the canyon they had been traveling had come to an abrupt
end. There was a tall cliff blocking the way. She moved closer to it and began
to examine the vertical cracks that rent the face in the easy direction.
There were a
lot of the cracks, for the crust had very little strength in the easy
direction, and the pull of Egg was constantly attempting to draw the soaring
cliffs to its bosom. This particular cliff must have been formed recently, for
it had not been worn much by the ever-present winds. Swift-Killer searched
along the base and then found a fairly large rent that went back a good way
into the cliff. Conquering her fear of the cliff face
towering over her, she moved up to the rent. Without looking up at the
terrifying sight of that mass of rock ready to fall on her topside, she
narrowed down and pushed her body into the crack. She soon filled the bottom of
it completely. Then, still pushing with her tread and
muscles on the outside, she forced her body fluids into the narrow crack;
slowly her body became tall and narrow instead of its usual flattened
ellipsoidal shape. Although the pull of Egg tried to drag her down, the narrow
crevasse kept her from being flattened, and since the easy direction was
upwards, it was not hard to move in that dkection, while the hardness in the horizontal
dkection actually helped her to maintain her body in the crevasse. She pushed
and pushed and felt the pressure build up in her lower body. When she felt she
could stand the pressure no longer, she took a quick, terrified glance up the
remainder of the crack and was disappointed to find that she had climbed only a
small portion of the way to the top.
Dismay and
terror weakened her hold, and she felt herself falling down and out the bottom
of the crevasse. The force of her fall caused her internal juices to form a
small wave that actually rolled her outside sack of skin over and over. For the
first time since
she was a tiny hatchling blown about by the wind, she found herself tread
upwards.
Swift-Killer
slowly righted her bruised body and moved away from the front of the cliff
while she thought. She went over to a mound of rubble and thoughtfully picked
her way through the chunks of crust that lay tumbled there. She picked up
several good-sized slabs that were thick plates. She went back to the crevasse
with her burden and, turning one of the chunks endways, pushed it ahead of her
into the crevasse. She again pushed her body into the crack, and lifted the
plate up as high as she could. She then turned the slab sideways and slowly let
it come down, where the flat edges jammed against the narrowing sides of the
crack as the pull of Egg sat it firmly into place. Swift-Killer slowly
relinquished her hold, and she watched in pleasure as the heavy chunk of crust
stayed suspended between the walls of the crevasse, just over her normal eye
height. She took another slab, a longer one this time,
and soon it too was suspended against the pull of Egg at the same height, but
further out from the back of the notch. Swift-Killer looked her creation over
with care and then flowed back out of the crevasse and shortly returned from
the rubble pile with another thick slab of crust, longer than the others. With
a great effort she lifted the slab and soon it was in place, resting on the top
of the other two. Swift-Killer hesitated, then slowly
induced herself to glide under the improvised platform to the back of the
crevasse. She again forced her body into the narrow crack, and stretching out a
narrow pseudopod that snaked up to rest on top of the wedged slabs, she slowly
pumped her juices up against the pull of Egg so that they inflated that portion
of her skin on the platform. She halted after she had several eyes transferred
to the upper level, then formed some strong
manipulators that grasped the top slab tightly. Then, firmly anchored, she
finally pushed and pulled the rest of her body up onto the platform.
All during
this long procedure, Swift-Killer had been careful to keep all of her dozen
eyes carefully concerned with watching the wall, the manipulators, the slabs,
anything but the outside environment. Only when she was safely on top of the
slab, her manipulators keeping her from flowing off the front or the back, and
the firm walls of the crevasse holding her in from the sides, did she finally
allow herself to observe the predicament she had put herself into. She looked
out of the crevasse at the horizon, then at the pile of rubble in the distance,
then at the
crust just at the entrance to the crevasse, then just inside the entrance, and
then her eyes refused to look any further. Try as she might, she just couldn't
seem to make them look down from the platform where she hunched, perched at a height above the crust that would have burst
her skin like a ripe pod if she had fallen.
"It
needs to be wider," Swift-Killer said to herself, "if we are going to
use this as a platform to make another one further up. And perhaps they should
be closer together so it isn't as hard to flow up onto them. But it will work.
We will just make floating platforms up the crevasse to the top of the
cliff."
Swift-Killer
slowly let herself down, forming a few more massive manipulators to hold onto
small ledges in the cliff walls to slow her descent. She quickly flowed out
from beneath the platform and returned to the base camp, happily breasting her
way down through the fuzzy crust.
Conquering
the cliff took many turns. Although some of the troopers soon became expert
scalers, and even found a technique to get the awkward expander and glancer up
the notch, almost one-third of the troopers were incapable of forcing
themselves to climb up on the overhanging platforms. Despite the thinning out
of her supply line, Swift-Killer pressed on, and as the double line of the
expedition wound its way through the east pole mountains,
it slowly became obvious to all that the atmosphere was getting thinner and the
visibility was getting better. Far to the north, they could see a swirling
cloud of smoke that came southward from the large volcano in the northern
hemisphere and, turning at the east pole, made its way out to the west along
the equator. However, the dense clouds didn't penetrate into the mountains.
During a
rest period, Cliff-Watcher gazed up at the seven bright points of light.
"Perhaps we could try sending a message again," he said.
Swift-Killer
had made up her own mind about that long ago.
"It is
clearer," she said. "But we could still have a better chance of being
seen if we were to go higher still, for the atmosphere is getting thinner
rapidly as we go higher. We could attempt a message now, but we have only a
limited supply of flares and pod juice, and I would rather wait to use them
when we are as high as we can get."
The climb
had taken over two greats of turns. Even Swift-Killer was surprised when she
realized that she would soon have a second egg mature inside her to be sent
back down with
one of the
plodding porters that moved back and forth between base camps, shuttling food
up the living chain. Finally, the supply line had been stretched to its limit.
There was no limit to the food supply at the base of the mountains, for the
fort had turned into a prosperous town, complete with egg-pens, hatchling
schools, farms and small businesses set up on the side by enterprising
troopers. The hunting parties and harvesters kept a steady stream of food
pouring into the base of the pyramid, but most of it went into supplying the
daily needs of the porters who used the energy to haul supplies up the mountain
against the great pull of Egg. Swift-Killer finally called a halt at a flat
place in the mountains.
"We
will stop here," she said to Cliff-Watcher and North-Wind. "I want
you both to rest and eat well to build up your reserves while the porter crews
build up our supplies. I will scout ahead and see if there is another place
equally as good ahead of us. If there is, we will move on to it to send our
message, otherwise, we will attempt it from here."
Swift-Killer
emptied out her pouches, especially the bulky glancer she had been carrying,
and moved steadily on up the canyon. She was gone for so many turns that
Cliff-Watcher and North-Wind began to get worried, but finally she returned
with good news.
"There
is another wide, level place further up the mountain," she said. "It
will be a long climb carrying the equipment, but there are no tricky traverses
or steep cliffs, just a long, upward trip."
She glanced
at the nervously twitching eye-stubs of her two compatriots. She could tell
that they were thinking about objecting to a continuation of the climb, since
the messages could be sent almost as well from their present spot. She decided
to reassert her authority.
"At
Alert!" boomed the tread of Troop Commander Swift-Killer, only slightly
muffled by the fuzzy crust.
Although
Cliff-Watcher was not a trooper, he had been living with the troop for so long
that he found his body imitating the instant response of North-Wind as the
Commander's rigid eyes glared at them.
"The
sole purpose of this entire expedition is to send a message to the beings in
the Inner Eye," Swift-Killer began. "And I intend to do that to the
best of my ability—and yours! This camp is not the best place to send that
message, so we will go on—do you understand?"
"Yes,
Commander," boomed North-Wind's formal reply, echoed by Cliff-Watcher's
awed response.
"Good!"
she said. "From now on, I want you two to obey my orders." Her body
relaxed slightly and she continued. "We three will push on in a dozen
turns, after we all have had time to rest, build up our internal food reserves,
and have a good supply of food parcels. Now for my orders.
My first order is to rest. My second order is to eat well, and my third order
is to thin out, because I have just returned from a long lonely journey, and I
am going to take you both on at once." With that she moved in between them
and shortly was enjoying being the middle layer of a triple layer orgy.
After twelve
turns of rest and recreation, Swift-Killer was anxious to be on her way. Since
they had to have other things to occupy their time besides eating and sex, she
had Cliff-Watcher learn the finer points of short-sword infighting from
North-Wind while she refereed. Then both she and North-Wind learned to make
counter tendrils and soon both could compute almost as fast as Cliff-Watcher.
They were
now ready to go. She had convinced North-Wind that there was very little
likelihood of meeting barbarians in the mountains at these heights, so they
left their weapons. They loaded up with the all-important message equipment and
as much food as they could carry, and the three set off up the mountain. The
rest of the troop was left with orders to set up food caches at the various
base camps down the mountain and to withdraw to the fort.
The climb
was difficult, but as Swift-Killer had assured them, there was nothing
particularly tricky about it. Because of their bulky burdens, however, it took
them much longer to make the climb than it had taken Swift-Killer in her
exploration climb. They ate their food rapidly as their bodies labored under
the pull of Egg.
"I
always felt that I would rather carry the food in my juices than in my
pouches," North-Wind said as he ate a pod. "It may all weigh the
same, but somehow when it is inside me, I feel it is at least carrying its
share of the load."
"I will
be glad to relieve you of any food you don't want to carry any longer,"
Cliff-Watcher said.
"Sorry,"
North-Wind said, carefully sucking the last drop of juice from a pod skin as he
pulled it from his eating pouch. "Last one."
"Oh
well," Cliff-Watcher said as North-Wind cracked open
each pod seed
with a tiny, hard manipulator and carefully ate the little kernel inside.
"Guess we might as well be on our way." He turned his attention to
Swift-Killer, who was busy calculating something.
'That will work
out just about right," she said. "We are about two turns from our
destination. We will be out of food by then, but our body reserves will last
long enough for us to send up the messages and get back to the base camp with
plenty to spare, although we will be hungry most of the way back down."
"I'm
hungry right now," Cliff-Watcher said, "and I finished all my food
last turn."
'That is
what the troopers call fat hunger," North-Wind said. "When you think
you are hungry just because you are used to eating every turn. You can't eat
every turn when you are a trooper pursuing barbarians. Wait a dozen turns, then you will know what being hungry really means."
"I'm
not looking forward to it," Cliff-Watcher said as he led the way up the
canyon.
At last they
came over a rise and entered the wide, level region that Swift-Killer had
found. With a sigh of relief, they unloaded the message equipment and spread
out on the fuzzy crust for a rest.
"I sure
could use some food right now," Cliff-Watcher said. "Even an unripe pod
would taste good."
"You
would never make a trooper," North-Wind retorted. "I haven't been
hungry since we left the last base camp. It is all just a matter of proper
attitude. Look at me, I am not even hungry for a pod,
much less an unripe one."
"Well,
that's too bad," Swift-Killer remarked. "I just happened to have
saved out three ripe pods, but since North-Wind isn't hungry and Cliff-Watcher
seems to pine for unripe pods, I guess I will just have to eat them
myself."
At these words
the two males swarmed over her, prodding her all over until they found the
pouch that held the three pods. Despite her protests that this was no way to
treat a troop commander, North-Wind held her down while Cliff-Watcher carefully
kneaded the pouch open and extracted three slightly bruised pods. They all then
relaxed, eating their last meal for some time, as they stared up at the tiny
light hanging in the sky, with its ring of six bright lights slowly circling
about it.
Soon the
three were busy setting up the beaming apparatus. The flat glancer mirror was
propped up at an angle against a
nearby cliff, and
the curved expander was placed a slight distance away. Swift-Killer organized
them into a smoothly working team. North-Wind held up the flares, and kept them
placed as close as possible to the point in space that Swift-Killer and
Cliff-Watcher had decided upon. Cliff-Watcher used his finest tendrils to
manipulate the flow valve on the holder for the pod juice, while Swift-Killer
constantly checked the alignments of the various portions of the apparatus and
at the same time rhythmically read off the calls from the tally string that she
held at her side.
"Long
burn, flick, flick, flick, dash, flick ..." Swift-Killer droned slowly as
Cliff-Watcher concentrated on turning the valve of the vial of pod juice and
North-Wind held the flare carefully at the correct position.
The message
was very boring, since it was just a picture with a lot of blank space, but
both North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher had participated in previous attempts to beam
a message up to Inner Eye and knew what they were getting into. The many short
flashes representing spaces were just as important as the dashes representing
points or the long burns that signified the beginning of a line. A few omitted
flashes could badly distort the picture and the message they were trying to
send.
Swift-Killer
had decided long ago that accuracy was more important than speed, even constant
speed. After all, the strange beings in the Inner Eye certainly took their time
in sending down their pictures—almost as if they were too slow-witted to cope
with anything faster.
They slowly
ground through the first picture message. Swift-Killer called a halt to see if
there was any darkening of the dark detector, indicating that there was a
message coming back to them in return.
"Nothing,"
Swift-Killer said, as she lifted the small vial of fluid and peered through it.
Contact
TIME: 07:58:24.2 GMT
The wide angle X-ray/ultraviolet
scanner on Dragon Slayer detected a moderately strong pulsed emission in the
east pole mountains. It had not been there when that
same area had been scanned a few seconds ago. Automatic feature extractors
singled out the region and a search-and-identify priority was assigned to the
narrow angle scanner, which locked onto the blinking light
source in a millisecond and began to record and analyze the pulses in
detail.
An
occasional pulse of high temperature thermal radiation at the east pole was not
unexpected. Fairly often, a chunk of meteoric material would be pulled in by
the star's gravity, and as it would approach the star, the extreme
gravitational and magnetic fields of the star would rip the rock apart and
transform it into a blob of ionized plasma. The hot gas would fall at near
relativistic speeds down along the magnetic field lines to impact on the
surface in a brilliant explosion of heat and light.
However,
these pulses coming from the star were not the fiery blasts from infalling
meteors. The regularity of the pulsations triggered a higher priority circuit
that kept the narrow angle scanner on the pulsations until they quit several
milliseconds later. Low-level judgment circuits evaluated the significance of
the periodicity and assigned it a moderately high priority. The narrow angle
scanner would return to that site often in its constantly varying scanning
routine, but there was nothing there of interest to the humans.
TIME: 07:58:24.3 GMT
"Let's try again,"
Swift-Killer said. Keeping the dark detector in front of one of her eyes, she
went back to the apparatus. This time she held the valve herself with a set of
manipulators, while a set of tendrils felt off the knots in the tally string.
Much later
Swift-Killer called a halt. The second message had been beamed up to the Inner
Eye, and still there was no response.
"If
only we could be sure that our weak light could be seen at that distance,"
Swift-Killer complained bitterly.
"You
could climb to the top of that peak over there," North-Wind said with mild
sarcasm. "Cliff-Watcher and I will be glad to beam a message up to you and
you could check on the reception."
For once, Swift-Killer
was silent. She could think of nothing else to do but to try again.
They were
nearing the end of the third message when a loud crash came vibrating through
the crust. Swift-Killer didn't move. The highly developed sonic
direction-finding apparatus in her tread had told her exactly what had
happened.
"The
glancer has fallen," she said. Her eyes, which had been concentrating on
the work of monitoring the fall of the drops of pod juice onto the end of the
flare, continued their gaze while Swift-Killer slowly turned the valve off,
closing it tightly to prevent leaks. She pouched the vial, and then finally
turned her attention to the base of the nearby cliff where the glittering
shards of the broken glancer lay in a shattered heap.
Swift-Killer
flowed over to the base of the cliff, forming a manipulator as she went. She
felt through the sparkling pieces, but found none that were anywhere near the
size of the original mirror.
"At
least we got some of the messages off," Cliff-Watcher said consolingly.
"Yes,
but there are still more, and we ought to repeat them as often as we can to
make sure they are received," Swift-Killer said. "We must find a way
to keep sending without using the glancer."
"Perhaps
we can find a suitable chunk of crust around here," North-Wind suggested.
"I'm
afraid not," Swift-Killer said. "I have been looking at the various
types of crust as we passed by different formations,
and all the material in these mountains seems to consist of
fuzzy crust. I
have not seen anything around here that had anywhere near as shiny a cleavage
surface as a glancer. We will have to think of something else."
Swift-Killer
tried many things. However, there was no way that she could get a beam formed
and directed upwards to the Inner Eye. She had even tried leaning the expander
up against the cliff at an angle (being careful this time to back it up with
chunks of crust), but the light from the flare came in at such an angle that
the light reflected from the expander was sprayed out in a distorted beam that
rapidly dissipated into the sky. She knew where the focus spot of the expander
was, but it was an unreachable point way up in the sky, at least a dozen times
higher than she could reach, and almost as high as the cliff itself. Then she
had an idea.
"If we
put the expander flat on the crust, pointing up at the Eyes," she said,
"then the focus spot will be up around the top of this cliff. If we
climbed up there with the flares we could make the light near the focus and the
beam from the expander would go straight up to the Eyes."
Being a
trooper, North-Wind said nothing, but Cliff-Watcher exploded. "You can't
be serious. That cliff must be twice as high as you are wide. It will take you
a dozen turns to climb that high, even if you can find a route, and we are out
of food! We will be nothing but bags of skin if we ever make it!"
"You
are not going," Swift-Killer said. "You will stay here. I will need
to have you move the expander to different positions along the face of the
cliff until we get the focus spot so it is just above the edge of the cliff
where we can reach it."
Swift-Killer
went to the broken glancer, picked up one of the larger shards and pouched it.
"Let's
go, North-Wind," she said, and took off toward the far end of the cliff,
with the obedient trooper close on the tread of his Commander.
TIME: 07:58:24.4 GMT
A fraction of a second later, the
pulsed emission started again, and this time the narrow-angle scanner caught it
early in its emission period. The semi-automatic search-and-identify circuits
kept the scanner focused on the pulsations, while the feature extractor in the
frequency analysis circuits activated a correlation program. A strong match was
then found between
the pulsation
pattern of the emissions and the rectangular picture pattern that Abdul had
chosen in his attempts at communication with Dragon's Egg. If the computer had
been a human, its eyebrows would have raised.
The new
correlation was enough to trigger an action circuit. As a result—a millisecond
later—humans were called into the loop.
PERIODIC X-UV EMISSION—EAST POLE
Seiko
glanced up at the computer message across the top of her screen. She was
floating too far away from the console to reach any of the keys, so she used
audibles, even if they were slower.
"Display!"
she commanded, and instantly a replay of the narrow-angle X-ray/ultraviolet
scanner was on her screen. She watched the regular blinking of the spot in the
middle of the east pole mountains, then glanced up to
see that the computer had slowed it down considerably for her.
1/100,000 REAL TIME
Seiko
watched it for a few seconds. The pulsations stopped abruptly. There seemed to
be no sense to them.
"Analysis!"
she commanded.
The picture on
the screen stayed, while the computer overprinted result after result of its
analysis.
POSITION 0.1 DEC
W LONG, 2.0 DEC
SPECTRUM MODIFIED THERMAL, 15,000 K
MODULATION SIMILAR TO DRAGON'S EGG COMM
PICTURE
NO IDENTIFIABLE NATURAL SOURCE
Seiko
scanned down the list and stiffened in shock. She expertly twisted her body in
a midair position-reversal maneuver, caught hold of the edge of the console and
pulled herself up to it. Her fingers flew over the keys. Within a few seconds,
Swift-Killer's second message was building up on her screen.
"Abdul!"
she called to the next console, where Abdul Nkomi Farouk was laboriously
working out a new message. "They are answering!"
TIME:
Cliff-Watcher had been right. The
path that finally took them to the top of the cliff was tortuous and hard. Both
Swift-Killer and North-Wind were hungry long before they reached the top, and
this time it was the real hunger of someone who had been working at hard labor
for a dozen turns. Swift-Killer still had plenty of reserves, but she was
beginning to worry about North-Wind, for he was not as robust as she was.
However, being a trooper, he never complained.
As
Swift-Killer approached the edge of the cliff, she pulled the glancer shard
from a pouch. "I'm sure I could never get one of my eyes to look down over
the edge to see where Cliff-Watcher is, but as long as it thinks it is looking
out at the horizon, I shouldn't have any trouble," she explained to
North-Wind. Forming a strong manipulator with a deep root embedded in her tread
muscles, she extended the shard out over the edge of the cliff.
She
clustered her eyes in a line; with a little adjustment, she could see the deep
red top of Cliff-Watcher waiting patiently next to the expander.
"I must
really be getting hungry," Swift-Killer thought. "Here I am gazing
full on the topside of a handsome young male and I am not even
interested."
Swift-Killer
turned to North-Wind and said, "We will have to move down this way."
She led the way down the cliff until they were at the point above the waiting
Cliff-Watcher. Cliff-Watcher had never thought that his hatchling name had
amounted to much, and now here he was spending what seemed to be his last dozen
turns on Egg, doing nothing but watching a cliff.
Swift-Killer
tried both long-talk and short-talk, and soon found that there was no trouble
in communicating with Cliff-Watcher if he just kept a portion of his tread
leaning up against the face of the cliff.
Cliff-Watcher
had already arranged the expander; it was as close to the base of the cliff as
he could get it. North-Wind formed a heavy manipulator like that of
Swift-Killer and slowly stretched it out over the edge, a small flare held at
the end.
Swift-Killer
removed one of the vials of pod juice from a pouch, and gripping it carefully,
extended that, too. She constantly reminded herself to hold tightly to the
vial; if it fell, the
expander would be
shattered in as many shreds as the glancer. Slowly she formed a muscular
pseudopod that slithered out on top of the hefty manipulator. The fine tip of
the pseudopod curled its way around the valve. The valve slowly turned and a
tiny stream of liquid hit the end of the flare. They both flinched from the
unaccustomed blue-white light, but soon a steady beam shot forth into the sky.
Swift-Killer evaluated it carefully. Fortunately the winds were high that turn,
and there were many dust particles in the air. Swift-Killer could see the
strong beam as it went upwards, only to come to a bright point at some unimaginable
distance overhead. Swift-Killer turned off the valve and they both slowly
withdrew their manipulators back over the edge and relaxed.
"We are
too far away from the focus spot," Swift-Killer said. "We will have
to move down the cliff."
North-Wind had
never been able to figure out exactly what Swift-Killer and Cliff-Watcher were
talking about when they mentioned things like focus spots, but he decided to
let Swift-Killer do the thinking. After all, she was the commander. He silently
followed her along the edge of the cliff until they came to another convenient
portion of the ledge where they could both get a good tread grip. Swift-Killer
again stuck her little glancer over the edge and watched as Cliff-Watcher
pouched the expander, hauled it to the new position underneath Swift-Killer's
waving manipulator, then repositioned it carefully on the crust and moved back.
This time,
when the light blazed from the top of the cliff, the beam that came out from
the expander did not refocus. Swift-Killer thought that it was still slightly
converging as she lost sight of it high in the sky, but it was good enough.
"We
will continue our message," she said as she pulled the tally strings from
a pouch. North-Wind shuffled the crust in resignation, retracted the short
flare they had been using for testing purposes and replaced it with a longer
one.
"At
least I won't have to climb for a while," he said tiredly to himself, and
settled down to hold the heavy manipulator as still as he possibly could.
Soon a
disciplined pulsation of light was beaming its way up to the Eyes, continuing
the message that had been interrupted a dozen turns ago when the glancer had
fallen from the face of the cliff. Swift-Killer did not pause long when she
came to the end. Since they were on their body reserves, it didn't help
much to rest
anymore; except for an occasional change of flare or pod juice vial, the two
troopers doggedly kept at their task.
Their job
finally finished, Swift-Killer and North-Wind started their way back down the
path to the base of the cliff. By mutual consent, they left everything but
their clan totems in a pile at the top of the cliff.
A dozen
turns later, a weary Cliff-Watcher saw two very thin cheela slowly making their
way around the end of the cliff. Swift-Killer was in front, breaking a path for
the exhausted trooper.
"Another
tread length," she would urge, and gently nudge the sides of his treads
with her trailing edge to keep him rippling. Slowly the two came up to
Cliff-Watcher.
"I
cannot go any further," North-Wind said. "Leave me here."
"No,"
said Swift-Killer. "We are all going together." She turned her
attention to Cliff-Watcher. "I know you are tired too, but we must get to
the base camp where there is a cache of food waiting. You get behind North-Wind
and keep him moving while I break path." Cliff-Watcher was too tired to
argue, and moved in behind his friend North-Wind. Together the three began to
move off and down the sloping valley.
Cliff-Watcher,
who had been checking the dark detector periodically, had just repouched it
after looking to see if there had been any reply to their hard sent messages.
There was nothing. He turned some of his eyes up to the specks of light above
him and wondered at their silence. As he looked, a rapidly falling streak of
bright light appeared to the side of the Eyes, high in the sky. The falling
meteor became elongated and grew brighter and brighter. Cliff-Watcher stirred,
and the other two raised their eyes, then tried to
draw them under their protective flaps. There was no time. In an instant the
whole sky was aflame with an explosion of light and heat that seared their
topsides and left three skinny blobs of scorched, blinded flesh that wriggled
away from each other in their attempts to escape the pain.
Swift-Killer
had never hurt so. Her last thought was that Bright had decided to punish her
for having the temerity to attempt to talk to God. The automatic protective
mechanisms in her body, activated by the lack of body reserves and the shock
from the topside bums, suddenly took over. The animal reflexes were turned off,
and for the first time in untold generations, a cheela went to sleep.
TIME:
Abdul came
flying over to Seiko's console. He halted his headlong dive with a practiced
swing around one of the support stanchions and hung motionless just over
Seiko's head.
"What
reply?" he said.
"There
is someone down there who is sending back pictures with the same format that
you used," Seiko replied, "but they are coming from the east pole,
they use thermal ultraviolet radiation instead of laser light, and they are
coming very fast. Look—here is the first picture."
"It is
a picture of Dragon Slayer and the six Tidal Compensators above Dragon's
Egg," Abdul said. "But the star seems to be badly distorted into the
shape of a pancake. It must be their star, however, because they have drawn in
the mound formation. But what is that long narrow wedge with its base near us
and its point over the formation?"
"It is
a pointer," Seiko said. "If you look at the second and third
pictures, you will see that they are almost identical, except that the position
of our ship slowly shifts toward the west, while the wedge symbol gets
shorter."
Seiko's
fingers flew over the keyboard, and soon the first picture was joined by a
second and a portion of a third.
"You
are right," Abdul said. "It looks as if they want us to move to a
position over their formation. I know why, too. The visibility through the
atmosphere is poor in that direction. It would be much better if we were
directly overhead."
Abdul
suddenly realized something else that Seiko had said. "How fast was the
message being sent?" he asked.
"The
computer had to slow it down," Seiko said. "I estimate a pulse every
four microseconds."
Abdul went
back to his console and soon had a trace of the pulses from the first picture
lined up on the screen. He leaned forward and looked more closely at the
interval between the pulses.
"They
are very irregular in spacing and amplitude," he said. "Almost
as if they were handmade. You would think that a being that could make
an ultraviolet laser could make a decent modulator."
"The
radiation is from a thermal source," Seiko retorted.
Abdul paused
as her reply sank in. "They are signaling to us with the neutron star equivalent
of American Indian smoke signals!" he said. "And each one of those
crude pulses is made in
four
microseconds—Great Allah! That means that those beings must live something like
a million times faster than we do! And I have been sending the laser pulses at
a rate of about once per second. To them that is like a
million seconds between pulses."
Seiko
quickly did the calculation for him. "As if it were
about a week between pulses."
Abdul had
another horrible thought. "How long has it been since they started to
reply?" he asked.
Seiko's
hands flicked on the keyboard, and the first picture reappeared with the time
of reception in the upper corner. "The first picture arrived almost a
minute ago," she replied, "and if the ratio is a million to one, that
is like two years ago."
"They
have probably gotten tired of waiting for an answer and have gone home,"
Abdul said. "We had better get busy— and fast!" He hesitated a
second, then lifted the cover on a panel on the side of the console and flicked
the emergency alarm switch.
"You
explain the situation to
Seiko fixed
up her screen with all the pictures displayed so she would be ready when the
rest of the crew came boiling into the main deck to see what the emergency was.
Within a few seconds Abdul had swiveled the laser radar to illuminate the east
pole directly below them, while its operational frequency had been pushed up to
the short ultraviolet. Because he had nothing better
immediately at hand, Abdul had the computer play back the pictures that had
been sent up from the surface. While they were pulsing down at a
megahertz rate, he quickly pulled in the first picture that he had beamed down,
showing the Dragon Slayer and the six tidal compensators above Dragon's Egg. He
added an arrow that curved over to a position above the mound formations, and
had the computer send that down to the east pole. He then swiveled the laser
back toward the strange starlike formation, and had it repeat the message
twice, alternating between ultraviolet and light output. Since they had seen
his first messages they should be able to detect it one way or the other. This
time Abdul hoped that nobody would die of boredom waiting for the next pulse.
TIME:
The nearly empty seared sacks lay on
the crust, quietly sleeping. Ancient plant genes, activated by the almost
complete lack of food reserves, began their strange work. The animal enzymes
were neutralized, and new enzymes were generated that attacked the very muscles
that supported the skin, turning the striated flesh into a floating cloud of
long fibers. The skin itself was thinned until it was almost transparent. Other
plant enzymes took over and used the liquid material and long fibers to fashion
large super-strength crystals. This was not the brittle crystallium that the
animal body had previously used for manipulators—this was dragon crystal. At
the center of the now flaccid tread, a tendril forced its way into the crust.
In its core was a sharp cone of crystal. Exuding acids that ate their way into
the crust, the spike slowly penetrated deeper and deeper into the hot,
neutron-rich crust. Hairlike threads spread out between the crustal fibers and
nutrients began to flow in from the threads and up the tap root. Meanwhile,
smaller spikes of crystal, thick at the base and finely rounded at the tip, began
to form in a starlike pattern at the head of the tap root. The strong dragon
crystal structure overcame the frightful pull of Egg, and jutted out at a low
angle to the surface. The dozen spikes spread out like a thorny crown. They
grew longer and longer, and the flaccid skin, long since cured of its burns,
was lifted up into the air. As the spikes grew longer, even their great
crystalline strength was no longer adequate to resist Egg's pull, so strong
tension fibers formed that went from attachment knobs just below the growing
tip of each spike to a stubby post that stuck up from the base of the spikes.
Slowly the twelve-spiked cantilever canopy raised itself off the crust until
the skin was drawn tightly to it.
The topside
portion of the skin, hanging in a smooth dark red concave arc between the ends
of the spikes, found that its shape shielded it from the glowing yellow surface
crust, and it stared straight up into the cold sky. With its spike buried deep
in the hot, neutron-rich crust, and its thinned upper surface area well coupled
to a cold heat-sink, the heat-engine-plant that used to be Swift-Killer began
to make food. It was oblivious to the fact that nearby were two other dragon
plants, the first crop since before recorded cheela history. For many, many
turns the dragon plants grew and prospered. They were mas-
sive, and
slow-growing, and had to replace a lot of food reserves, so they took their
time.
After
waiting in vain for the three climbers to return, the troop was finally taken
over by the senior squad leader, who mustered out those who wanted to stay in
this Bright-forsaken region, and moved the remainder of the troop back to the
borders of Bright's Empire, where he then had the unpleasant duty of reporting
the deaths of Swift-Killer, North-Wind, and Cliff-Watcher to their clans.
Time went on
and Bright's Empire grew and expanded its borders. Since the fort of Swift's
Climb existed, it was easy for the border to expand all the way to the
foothills of the east pole mountains. However, no one
really liked to climb unless they had to, especially in the hard direction, so
there were no visitors in the mountain paths, and the dragon plants grew
undisturbed.
One turn
there was a sharp quake as the massive overburden that the east pole mountains put upon Egg readjusted itself. A poorly
formed joint in one of the three dragon plants failed. The spike fell instantly
in the strong pull of Egg, tearing the skin and dumping the vital fluids onto
the surface. For a while the dragon plant struggled to survive, but finally it
gave up. After a dozen, dozen turns, there was nothing left
but shiny spikes of dragon crystal, a few shreds of dried skin, a clan
totem, and the double button of a squad leader.
For a long
while nothing happened. Then the dragon crystal spikes sparkled as a slowly
pulsating beam of pure blue light shone down from the tiny center speck of the
seven points of light in the sky. The pulsations went on for some time, bathing
the mountains in a blue glow, but there were no eyes to see them. They finally
stopped.
Time
continued on. The barbarians were driven further and further from Bright's
Empire, and grew smaller in number. The large volcano in the north became more
active, and billows of smoke crowded against the east pole. The unbalance in
the heat radiated from the star into the dark skies became so great that huge
wind storms grew, and were strong enough occasionally to push smoke into the
east pole region. The sky grew cloudy, the bottoms of the smoky clouds turned
yellow with the heat reflected from the glowing surface. The heat engine that
ran between the taproot in the crust and the skyward fac-
ing concave
dish of skin in the dragon plants began to fail. With food reserves high, and
growing efficiencies low, the plant forming genes began to lose their potency,
and other enzyme mechanisms were triggered. Slowly the dragon crystal was
dissolved, to reappear as firm muscle under a thick skin. The little
photosensitive bud cups at the tips of the crystal spikes reformed their flaps,
and new little eyes, still dormant, grew under those flaps.
Swift-Killer
woke up.
She felt
very strange, as if she had not moved a muscle in a long time. Fortunately, she
was feeling no pain from her burned topside and eyes.
"My eyes! I cannot see! How will I ever get
down out of these mountains without eyes?"
She then
realized that she had all of her eyes tucked tightly underneath their flaps.
She cautiously pushed out one after the other.
"I can
see light," she said, "but everything is all blurry."
She tried to
form a pseudopod to wipe off her eyes, and found that she was as weak and
clumsy as a hatchling. She soon had the fluid wiped off her eyes, but it was a
full turn before she could really see clearly.
She knew
that she must have been badly hurt by the blast of fire from the sky, but now
she felt perfectly fine, except for her muscular weakness, her clumsy
coordination and blurred vision. What amazed her was that she was no longer
hungry.
Being a good
troop commander, her first thought had been for her troopers, and she had
looked around for North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher, but could not see them. She was
too weak to travel, so she concentrated on exercises until she felt ready to
cope with the hazards of downhill travel in the vicious pull of Egg.
After a turn
she felt much better and started to examine her surroundings. As far as she
could remember, she was still in the same valley where they had been when the
flame struck, but she had not remembered the giant plant to one side, or the
fabulous collection of dragon crystal lying on the crust on the other side. She
might have ignored a plant, even if it were as big
around as herself, but she would never have ignored a veritable treasure of
shining dragon crystal. At the very least, she would have marked the spot and
arranged to have a crew climb back up to retrieve it. She went over to the
glittering spikes and picked them up, one after the other.
"Strange,"
she thought to herself, "these are amazingly shiny, as if they were brand new, or fresh cast. All the natural dragon crystals are
weathered by the constant scrubbing of wind-blown dust."
She picked
up another spike that had a shred of something sticking to it. She pulled the
shred off the spike and suddenly dropped it in a horrified reflex action.
"North-Wind!"
she whispered in horror, her eyes tracing out the faded but unmistakable
three-pointed scar pattern that had been North-Wind's memento from their last
fight with the barbarians.
Any doubts that
North-Wind had died and that his body had decayed away were gone when she found
his squad leader button and clan totem half buried in the fuzzy crust. She
pouched them and looked around in bewilderment. But what were North-Wind's
remains doing mixed up with fresh dragon crystal?
She looked
over at the huge plant nearby. She then began to get the connection between the
twelve spikes arching into the sky and the twelve spikes of dragon crystal
spread out on the crust. She wandered over to the plant and circled all around
it, looking at it closely. It looked somehow familiar, yet it was just a giant
version of many types of plants all over Egg. On one side she saw a little lump
in the thin skin. Just over it was a tiny pucker.
"A
plant with a carrying pouch?" she said to herself. Carefully—for she did
not want to meet the same fate that had apparently met North-Wind when the
heavy plant had fallen on him—she reached a slender tendril under the plant and
forced the tip into the pucker.
"It's a
pouch!" she exclaimed in wonder. Reaching further in, she grasped an
object, and slowly withdrew it through the constricting orifice. It was the
totem of Cliff-Watcher's clan!
Swift-Killer
could not believe what her eyes were seeing. But soon she had identified other
pouches and had removed a short knife and a dark detector from them. She was
finally convinced that somehow, in some way, this giant plant in front of her
was really Cliff-Watcher.
"And if
Cliff-Watcher is a living plant, then perhaps those slivers of dragon crystal
over there used to be North-Wind," she said to herself, "and
..." She continued as the logic drove her on to the inescapable conclusion, " ... I must have been
one of these
giant plants too! With large dragon crystal spikes in
me!"
At this
thought, she remembered that she had been annoyed by a hard lump tumbling
around in her body. She had paid it no attention, since it did not hurt and she
had plenty of other things to worry about at the time, but now she
concentrated, and soon the lump was ejected from an elimination orifice.
Overcoming her natural distaste, Swift-Killer wiped it off. It was a shiny knob
of dragon crystal.
Swift-Killer
looked at it with awe, and pouched it to use as evidence when the time came to
make someone believe her fantastic story.
Meanwhile,
she had a problem. Although North-Wind was dead, and
she had his totem to take back to his clan, Cliff-Watcher was very much alive,
and she didn't feel she should leave him.
Swift-Killer
finally decided to wait. She had plenty of reserve energy (she must have built
that up when she was a plant), and it would be important for her sanity to have
someone else to corroborate her story.
The skies
stayed cloudy, and soon the trigger that had revived Swift-Killer was activated
in Cliff-Watcher. Swift-Killer watched in amazement as, turn after turn, the
slender spikes grew shorter and shorter, and the thin skin began to thicken and
become muscular once again.
She was
stroking Cliff-Watcher on the topside when he woke up. She treated him gently,
and slowly coaxed his eyes out as she reassured him that he was going to be
fine despite his blurry vision, and weak and clumsy state. After a few turns,
they both felt well enough to travel and started down the mountain, carrying
the crystallized remains of North-Wind with them.
When they
came to the highest base camp, Swift-Killer sought out the food cache. It was
there and had not been disturbed by mountain animals, but the meat and pods
were hard as crust. This puzzled Swift-Killer, since a well-wrapped piece of
dried meat should be expected to be hard, but not rock hard, even after a great
of turns.
It was the
same at each cache, although some had been broken into by animals long ago.
Finally they reached the pass on the upper foothills where they could look down
into the distance and see the trooper fort. As they came over the rise, both
Swift-Killer and Cliff-Watcher
stopped in shock. The fort was gone.
"Bright's
Heaven!" exclaimed Cliff-Watcher.
"No,"
Swift-Killer said a moment later, "that is not Bright's Heaven. It looks
almost as big, but the arrangement is all wrong."
"You
are right," Cliff-Watcher said. "But where did it come from?"
"I
think that you and I were plants for longer than we thought," Swift-Killer
said. "There are going to be some very surprised people when we glide into
that town."
"Provided
they even remember us," Cliff-Watcher said pessimistically as he followed
Swift-Killer down the hill.
Commander
Swift-Killer led the way into town. When they passed the fields of crops, they both
looked over the harvesters loaded down with pods, but didn't see anyone either
one of them knew.
As they
approached the town, the four-button insignia jutting out of Swift-Killer's
breast got them the proper respect from the passers-by; but at the same time,
the obvious youthful appearance of the troop commander resulted in strange
whispers as they passed. For the first time, Swift-Killer was beginning to feel
unsure of herself.
She paused
on the outskirts of the town and said quietly to Cliff-Watcher, "I think
we are going to have a difficult enough time convincing people that we are who
we are, without antagonizing them. I think we had better just survey the whole
town before I go and announce who I am." Cliff-Watcher could only agree,
and kept looking for a familiar profile, but found none.
They stopped
at a military food station at the outskirts of town, and quietly relaxed and
ate their fill. They took their time and listened to the conversations between
the couriers as they came and went on Combined Clan business. They had expected
to hear that there was a new Leader of the Combined Clans, but were surprised
to learn that the name of the town they were in was Swift's Climb.
Cliff-Watcher
inquired of the keeper of the food station about the name. After the keeper got
over the oddness of his slang, he told them a capsule history of the naming of
the town.
"Almost
three dozen greats of turns ago, this place was a barren plain," the
station keeper said, "when an expedition came to the east pole to try to
talk to the Eyes of Bright. The
expedition was led by
a troop commander named Swift-Masher, or something like that, and he climbed up
into those hills to talk to God's Eyes and never came back. His troop stayed
around for a few great of turns, then finally they
gave up. By that time some of them were old enough to muster out and they
stayed here, while the rest of the troop went back to the border. Since then
the border has come here to Swift's Climb, and it is really a booming place, I
tell you."
"Where
can we find some of the old troopers?" asked Cliff-Watcher.
"Where
else?" the station keeper asked. "In the meat bins.
Or if they kept healthy and were lucky, they are having the time of their lives
tending hatchlings in the hatching pens."
Swift-Killer
was initially pleased to hear that the town had been named after her exploit,
but if the average cheela in the town knew as much about her as the station
keeper, she was glad that she had kept her mouth shut and had let the four
buttons of a Troop Commander speak for her. They asked the way to the hatching
pens and headed off in that direction, hoping to see somebody—anybody—who might
know them.
The road to
the hatching pens went past the face of a low cliff. As they approached the
cliff, Swift-Killer noticed a bright blinking light coming from the top. A
cheela was up there in front of some apparatus, and a bright blue-white beam
was blinking its way across the crust to the distant horizon.
Ever
curious, Swift-Killer said, "Let's go by way of the top of that rise. I
want to see what is making that beam of light."
Cliff-Watcher
shuffled his tread in annoyance, saying that he had had enough climbing for a
whole lifetime, but his curiosity got the better of him too, and they slowly
worked their way up to the top of the cliff, where they approached a soldier.
Swift-Killer
was bewildered to see the insignia of rank on the soldier operating the
apparatus. Instead of a Trooper's button, she had a horizontal bar.
Swift-Killer couldn't say anything without getting herself in trouble, since a
troop commander should address a trooper by her proper rank, so she again
decided to let her four buttons speak for her. Looking vaguely interested, she
wandered up to the trooper as if she were a visiting inspector.
The trooper
heard the military tread as Swift-Killer approached; when Swift-Killer came
within hailing distance, she quickly signed off her message and came to alert.
'Troop Signaler Yellow-Crust,
Commander," she said, "Do you have a message to send?"
"No,
no," Swift-Killer assured her. "But after you have finished, could
you please show us your apparatus?"
Yellow-Crust
thought it strange that a troop commander would be interested in such a thing
as a swift-sender, but perhaps she was an inspector out looking for trouble. If
so, she would find nothing wrong with her equipment!
In a short
while Yellow-Crust was through with her messages and showed the two visitors
how the swift-sender worked. Yellow-Crust decided that she would give them the
full drill.
Parroting
her training officer, Yellow-Crust began: 'The swift-sender is the troop's
method of maintaining contact with Headquarters and other troops. The most
important element in the swift-sender is the expander, which must always be
kept clean." Yellow-Crust opened the side of the box to reveal a very
shiny and very clean expander. Both Cliff-Watcher and Swift-Killer were awed by
the size and surface finish on the strongly curved reflector.
"We
sure could have used one of those up in the mountains," Cliff-Watcher
whispered.
"We
never could have carried it up those hills," retorted Swift-Killer.
Yellow-Crust,
ignoring the whispers, continued: "The light-juice vial is to be filled
and pressurized before each message, and the signaling valve is to be checked
for rapid action under pressure."
Yellow-Crust
closed the door, filled the container on the outside with fluid, then placed a
close-fitting plunger on top and added a weight. She then reached to the other
side, and rapidly flicked a small lever. Short bursts of light flickered out
over the crust.
Yellow-Crust
went on, "The flare should be renewed every shift, and the holder for it
should be adjusted to give maximum beam brightness without focusing in the far
field." With these words, Yellow-Crust extended a tendril and moved a small
lever back and forth and Swift-Killer could see the beam diverge and focus in
the distance. Yellow-Crust, with a trained twist of her tendril, left the beam
with parallel sides shooting off to the distance.
Yellow-Crust's
t'trum dropped the training officer twang as
she said,
"There is more about message protocol, Commander. Would you like to have
me recite that?"
"No!
No, thank you," Swift-Killer said. "Very clean and well working
machine you have there trooper." She started to move away.
"At
Alert!" boomed a commanding tread through the crust.
Yellow-Crust
froze at alert, and Swift-Killer almost followed, but instead slowly returned
to the swift-sender to await the arrival of a squad of well-armed troopers, led
by none other than the local troop commander.
It was
obvious that the troop commander was flustered with Swift-Killer's four
buttons. Having expected to take action against meddling visitors that bothered
his communication link, he found himself eye-to-eye with a stranger of equal
rank.
Equal rank
or not, he was the troop commander of this town and still in command. "Who
are you, Commander?" he asked. "I was not informed of any
visitors."
"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 pseu-dopod, 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:
Seiko's
announcement came as no real surprise to
"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."
"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,"
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.
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,"
"Amalita,"
he said, "put on your suit and get one of those laser communicator 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 communicator 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."
"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,"
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
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:
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
"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
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, stick-like 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. Jn 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:
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 re-positioned, 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 fouettйs
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."
Amalita
looked around the equator of Dragon Slayer until she could see one of the laser
communication dishes. She fixed her eyes on it, then
stabilized her personal up and down. She told her eyes to ignore the bright
objects whirling through her peripheral vision; activating her magni-stiction
boots, she stepped out onto the hull.
As Amalita
stood up, she could feel the play of pulsating residual gravitational forces
through her body, to addition to the pulsating fields, there were slight
variations in the overall compensation, since the spacecraft was slowly
shifting its orbital position from the east pole to a position over the mound
formation on the star's surface. Sometimes she was pulled outward with a
fraction of a gee, and sometimes pushed inwards.
Amalita made
her way carefully to the nearest laser communication dish. She detached the
coaxial cable that brought the modulating voltages from inside Dragon Slayer,
then the power line to the laser, and finally she started working on the
mounting bolts. It was a well-designed system, with the bolts staying captive
in the frame, so there was no chance of having them float away in free-fall.
She held onto one strut of the bulky piece of apparatus and plodded her way
carefully back over the curve of Dragon Slayer's hull.
"Start
de-spinning the science turret, Doc," she called through her suit radio.
"I'm clear of the control jets."
As she moved
over the curving hull, she could see the spin-
ning turret
slowly come to a stop while the control jets flashed on Dragon Slayer's hull to
throw off the excess momentum.
As she
approached the stationary turret she glanced upwards along the three-meter
length and found the laser radar. The radar dish was tucked under the huge
mirror that brought a one-meter diameter image of Dragon's Egg directly into
the star image table.
She was
getting far from the air-lock, so she fastened a secondary safety line to a
ring at the base of the turret. She then stepped carefully off the spherical
hull of Dragon Slayer onto the cylindrical turret. She allowed herself a few
seconds to readjust her personal up and down; then, still holding the bulky
laser communication dish, she ascended. As she climbed further and further from
the center of Dragon Slayer, the accuracy of the tidal compensation fields
became poorer. Halfway up the turret she found that the play of gravitational
fields over her body became too strong to ignore. She felt as if her suit were
haunted by tiny elves that pushed and pulled at various sections of her
anatomy. The overall tidal compensation was also off, and the laser
communication dish began to pull ahead as it gained weight while they made
their way up the column.
The
increased weight was not much, but it was significant enough so that Amalita
stopped at each step to move her safety lines from ring to ring behind her. She
finally reached the laser radar and looped the lanyard attached to the
communication dish to a nearby ring and let the ring support the burden. She
fastened another lanyard from her belt to the laser radar.
Firmly
anchored to the column with magni-stiction boots and a pair of short safety
lines, she started to remove the laser radar. Fortunately the laser power
supply line and the modulator coaxial cable connectors were the same for the
two laser systems. All they had to do was switch the cable on the inside from
the pulsed modulator used in the laser radar to the video modulator in the
laser communication console. Unfortunately, the bolt patterns for the two laser
systems were incompatible and she could tighten only one bolt. However, she had
been prepared for that problem and had brought some quick-setting vacuum epoxy
to fasten the laser communication dish onto the laser radar mount.
"What I
need is four hands," Amalita said as she reached into a pouch for the
epoxy. The twin tube had been designed for use with her clumsy gloves and even
had a tear-off top. But in her hurry to get the job over, Amalita made a
mistake.
The mistake was a very innocent one
for someone who had been living in free fall for many years. All she did was to
park the laser radar in space alongside her while she opened the epoxy. While
she was busy with the glue, the laser radar slowly floated outward, gaining
speed. When it reached the end of its lanyard, it jerked cruelly at Amalita's
middle. She found herself pulled off the turret. There was a quick second of
panic, then Amalita came to the end of her two safety
lines and rebounded. She felt a rip as the weaker joint in the equipment ring
holding the laser radar came out of her safety belt, while the two stronger
personal safety loops held. She looked down to see the laser radar module head
outward away from the ship. It gathered speed rapidly in the strong attractive
gravitational fields from the dense masses in the tidal compensator. She lost
sight of the module as it whipped out to join the whirling ring of ultra-dense asteroids.
"We
have trouble, Dragon Slayer," she said into her suit microphone. "I
lost the laser radar module to tidal forces."
Amalita
pulled herself hand-over-hand back up the safety lines to the turret and
proceeded to bolt and glue the communications dish to the empty mount and then
hook up the power and modulation cables.
She quickly
climbed down off the turret and signaled to Cesar to start up the turret again.
She watched, staying out of the way of the control jets, until the huge
cylinder was again spinning around at five revolutions per second. She then
glanced up to see an elongated glob of crushed and extruded glass and metal
come whirling back toward the hull of Dragon Slayer. The sharp points of metal
on the glob were emitting a blue corona of electric discharge built up from the
rapid motion through the strong magnetic fields of the star.
Amalita was
appalled. If that ever hit the hull of Dragon Slayer they would be dead.
Cursing herself for having been so careless, Amalita knew that this was no time
to play it safe.
"Emergency! Emergency!" she called.
Without waiting for a reply, she began a move-by-move description of the
problem and her efforts to solve it.
"Laser radar module loose and moving at high velocity in
vicinity of ship. I am jettisoning safety line and will use jet-pack to try to
catch it."
Amalita
unhooked her safety line, moved her left hand to the jet-pack controls on her
chest, and took off to capture the deadly missile.
As she
swooped around the curve of the hull, she spotted the module above the turret.
It had slowed down as the tidal forces had pulled on it. The module had looped
slowly in a large arc and was now headed back again toward Dragon Slayer. She
would have to catch it while it was moving slowly if she were going to hold
onto it, so she jetted straight up to meet it.
As she flew
past the spinning turret, her body began to feel the tidal pressures. She tried
to hunch in her head and draw up her feet to cut down her length and relieve
the forces, but it was hard work holding them in against the strong outward
pull. It was worst on her head. Her ears and nose felt as if they were being
pounded twenty times a second, while the top of her head felt as if she were
being scalped by a savage with a dull knife.
Despite the
pain, she continued upward to meet the module that was slowly gaining speed as
it fell again toward Dragon Slayer. This is where her two seasons as captain of
a free-ball team on L-5 would pay off. Her left hand played quickly over the
jet control keys on her chest. She slowed, whirled about, and then accelerated
again to match speed with the now rapidly falling chunk of metal. As her head
changed orientation, the tidal pressures changed also. Her nose, now jerked
viciously outwards, began to gush ellipsoidal globules
of blood. Peering anxiously through her red-stained visor, Amalita found a
short section of lanyard in front of her and grabbed it with her right hand while her left flicked over the jet controls. The laser
radar module continued on its hyperbolic path downward past the hull of Dragon
Slayer and then outward along the belt line. Slowly Amalita got it under
control and dragged it down to the hull. Within seconds after her boots had
clicked onto the plates, she had both herself and the distorted hunk of metal
attached by shortened lines to safety rings on the hull.
Her voice
was hoarse from the running commentary she had kept up during the chase.
"All secure," she croaked. "I will need some help getting this
inside."
"Are
you hurt?" came a concerned voice over her suit
speaker.
"I'm
sore all over, Doc, but the only real damage is a bloody nose," she
replied.
Amalita was
making her way back to the air-lock, moving her bruised body slowly from one
safety ring to another when she saw a suited figure rising from the air-lock to
help. She
was only too
glad to hand over her problems to the welcome crew mate.
"I am
sure glad to see you," Amalita said. "Even if only
through a red haze. Here—you take what's left of the laser radar module.
Watch out for it—when it got mashed in the tidal forces of those asteroids
several sharp spikes got extruded— they could nick your suit."
"I've
got it," Jean said. "Now you get in that air-lock and cycle through.
Doc is waiting on the other side with a warm wet compress for that nose. And in
case you were wondering, the laser communication link is working fine. The
first messages have gone down, and we have already received a reply back
through the ultraviolet scanner."
Interaction
TIME:
Swift-Killer moved slowly through
the compound of the Inner Eye Institute in Bright's Heaven. She was getting old
and did not bluster her way directly into the hard direction as she used to. Instead,
she slid obliquely along, letting the bulk of her still huge body do the work
against the "lines of magnetic force" that one of
The
taste-plates had also been one of Swift-Killer's many inventions. She had begun
to despair over accurately recording all the subtle nuances of the human
television signal in the form of knots of various shapes and sizes. She had
happened upon the new technique when she had been on inspection after they had broken
camp and were moving on to a new station under the westward-drifting human
spacecraft. She had flowed through the remains of the kitchen for the camp and
her tread moved across an abandoned mixing plate, stained with meat juices and
spices. Her ancient hunting senses had sprung into action, attempting to
extract every item of information from the complex chemical spoor that it found
under her tread. Swift-Killer had experimented and found that her tread could
"taste"
with higher resolution and comprehension using her ancient spoor tracking
senses than it could feel with her high sensitivity tactile senses. After a
little experimentation to find the most pungent and long-lasting spices, the
knowledge of the humans was soon being stored on long-lasting, apparently
featureless plates, that burst into a detailed, "full-colored" image
as a trained tread flowed onto it.
Swift-Killer
approached Sky-Beams, one of her apprentices, who was
busily staring upwards at the rapidly blinking Inner Eye, a set of trained tendrils
in front of him, shooting drop after drop of spice onto a fresh plate.
Leaving half
of his eyes devoted to the recording task, Sky-Beams turned the others toward
his mentor. "What are you doing here, O Keeper of the Sender?" Sky
Beams said, his correctly formal address scarcely concealing his annoyance that
the Old One was interrupting him.
Swift-Killer
knew exactly what was wrong with the youngster. He was ready to become the new Keeper
of the Sender, and she was still around. However, it didn't bother her any
longer. As she grew older, she grew more mellow and
now was actually looking forward to tending eggs and hatchlings. What stories
she would tell them!
"I came
to bring you good news, Sky-Beams," she said. 'The advisory council of the
Inner Eye Institute has agreed with my recommendation, and you are now the new
Keeper of the Sender."
Swift-Killer
flowed over toward him as the tendrils on the younger one hesitated. She
started to form a pseudopod to stroke his topside as she had done many times in
the past. He seemed perfectly willing, but she found that she was just not
interested in sex anymore. She wanted to get to the eggs that were waiting for
her. She gave him a friendly brush anyway, then said,
"Stay vigilant, Sky-Beams. The work may be tedious at times, but one never
knows but what the next page will bring a new truth to our people."
"I
will, my teacher," Sky-Beams said, and turned all his eyes back to the sky
as Swift-Killer flowed away in the easy direction, heading for the egg-pens on
the east side of Bright's Heaven.
LINK FROM
JEAN—LIBRARY
"Accept
link!" he said.
PULLED SECTION ON MATH
AND PHYSICS.
IT IS NOW CUED IN COMPUTER
AFTER YOUR
BOOKS.
CONCENTRATED ON PHYSICS
OF NEUTRON STARS.
SLOW GOING, HOWEVER.
WHAT NEXT?
# # # # JEAN
"Amalita!"
he bellowed, and soon a bloody handkerchief with two eager eyes above it was
peering down through the passageway. "Can we hook up the library HoloMem
reader directly into the communications console?"
There was a
slight pause as Amalita flicked circuit diagrams through her nearly eidetic
memory.
"Sorry,
"It
does?"
Amalita
floated over to the communications console where Abdul was monitoring the
latest transmission and flipped open a small door in one side. She reached in
and carefully removed a three-sided object. When she pulled it out,
"This
is one-half the scanner cavity," Amalita said, "and here is the
HoloMem crystal itself." She pushed a button and a clear crystal cube
about five centimeters across sprang out of the door, twirling slowly as it
floated into the room. The corners and edges of the cube were jet black, but
through the clear faces
"This
has been storing everything that has gone through the console since we
started," she said. "It is exactly the same size as one of the
encyclopedia HoloMems and we can put one of them in place of this one and read
the encyclopedia down one crystal at a time. It will take about a minute to
switch crystals and check the scanner adjustments, and about half an hour to
read out each one of the 25 encyclopedia crystals, but that should still be
faster than shoving all those bits from the library computer through the
communications computer to the console."
"Good!"
"A to
AME, AME to AUS, AUS to BLO, BLO to ..." muttered Amalita as she twirled
down through the passageway to the library, her trained legs and feet
propelling her as efficiently as her hands, which were still busy holding the
HoloMem crystal and the corner of the laser scanner cavity.
"A
complete education, from Astronomy to Zoology,"
TIME:
Suck-the-Crystal
pressed the pores of his tread to the page— absorbing again the revelation that
had come dripping across from the neutron-depleted
plates. His thrums of joy and surprise pounded the page. From the page they
were transmitted to the floor and thence to the entire courtyard of the
Sky-Talk Library—raising admonishing taps from the librarians and scholars. The
taps were soon followed by slower waves emanating from the methodical approach
of his friend, mentor and (unfortunately at this time) Chief
Librarian—Seek-the-Sky, who arrived saying, "Have you lost your senses or
is it only that you've drained your nuclei dry trying to read those depleted
plates of crystal and have gone into convulsions?"
"I am
sorry, Seek-the-Sky. It is just that I absorbed a piece of knowledge that made
my previous studies come together into one coherent piece. Here—try it."
Seek-the-Sky
flowed onto the dusty, well-tasted crystal plate as Suck-the-Crystal flowed
off. From the heading on the plate the librarian noted that it was an early
plate from the human
encyclopedia, HoloMem
2—AME to AUS. It was a table in the section on Astronomy.
"So?"
Seek-the-Sky said. 'This plate has been tasted so often that there is hardly a
neutron left on it, much less any information that has not been correlated and
cross-correlated and cross-cross-correlated by the Old Ones many turns ago.
What do you find here that I don't? This seems to be a brittle, tasteless table
of stellar nebula."
As he flowed
off the plate he stamped, "What is so important about this that you should
disturb the scholarly researches of the entire library staff?"
"But,
please," Suck-the-Crystal said quickly, "it was an entry in the table
that suddenly cross-correlated with some new plates that I helped prepare and
catalog just this turn. A few milliseconds ago, over at the Comm Input, I had
prepared the crystal plates from the turn's batch of data transmitted by the
humans, and had proof-tasted them carefully with the vibrations from the
acoustic delay line as any apprentice should. Now—most of the apprentices don't
really care what is on the plates, just as long as they agree with the delay
line vibrations—but I like to taste them and do preliminary correlations and
pretend that I am the Keeper of the Comm."
"You?" Seek-the-Sky shuffled. "Keeper of the Comm?"
"Well
..." said Suck-the-Crystal. "Yes!" He hastened to explain
himself. "Heaven's-Bounty has been Keeper of the Comm for more than fifteen
human minutes. There may be other apprentices who are older than I, but I'm the
only one who really cares about the information we are collecting. I bet when
the Council meets to replace Heaven's-Bounty, they will choose me. Am I right?—You're on the Council."
"Hmm,"
Seek-the-Sky said. "Maybe you are right—but don't let it make you spread.
Now—what is this correlation that has your edges flapping?"
"The
large veil-like nebula that is fifth on the list can be extrapolated back to a
point of origin at a certain time about 500,000 human years ago. That point is
very close to here, about 50 light-years away. That point in space and time is
also almost exactly on the path that Egg is on, if you extrapolate back along
its track."
"Very
interesting," the Chief-Librarian said. "You have probably identified
the time and place of the supernova explosion that formed Egg."
"But
what is more interesting," continued Suck-the-Crystal,
"is that the climatological
records that are coming down right now indicate a very drastic change of
climate on the human's Earth at about that time. Also, that time corresponds
with the human anthropologist's estimate for the genesis of the homo sapiens species. I believe that the laying of Egg by a
supernova explosion so very near the Solar System was the direct cause of the
emergence of intelligence in the creatures that now float above us, teaching us
all they know."
"I am
sure the humans will be amused when they hear that," Seek-the-Sky said.
"Let us go see Heaven's-Bounty and have her put that in her next
message."
TIME:
Jean was busy setting up an
alternate communication link with the infrared scanner when she heard a loud
snorting bark. It sounded like an angry seal. She quickly turned, looking for
the source of the noise.
"I fell
asleep and snored," said an abashed Pierre, who had been handing her tools
while she was head downwards inside the infrared scanner bay.
"No
wonder," she replied, pulling herself out of the bay and taking the tool
kit from him. "You missed your sleep shift when this ruckus started. You
head off to your rack and get some sleep. You are no good to us in this
condition."
"But if
I go to sleep for eight hours, there will be a thousand years of cheela
development before I wake up. That is like sleeping through the rise and fall
of the
"Set
your alarm for six hours," she replied, pushing him down the passageway,
"That will give you enough sleep to keep you going and maybe you will be
awake again before they develop spaceflight."
TIME:
Soother's-Worry paused in the middle
of his message to the human. He formed a manipulator, grew a crystalline bone
to strengthen it, and pressed the panels that turned off the image that was beaming
400 kilometers down from the human spaceship in its synchronous orbit about
Egg. The face that lay
under him on the
tasting screen flickered off, and was replaced with his own image.
"I
simply must see how gorgeous I look," Soother's-Worry thought. "Those
humans can just wait a while. Besides, with the computer slowing everything
down by a million to one so the Slow Ones can follow things, I bet they never
even notice that I stopped talking."
Soother's-Worry
absorbed his image through his tread and glowed inwardly at the sight. His
dozen eyes glistened in a deep red halo about the baroque pattern that he had
recently painted on the topside of his flattened ellipsoidal body. He turned
slowly, watching the pattern shift on the screen. The dozen shiny reflective
circles near the base of each eye-stub mirrored the black sky and stars, so
that it looked as if he had holes through his body looking out on another
universe. Winding between the circles was a stripe of highly emissive paint
that glowed a hot yellow against his deep red topside
surface.
"Beautiful, simply beautiful. Mother will
simply love it," he gloated.
He wanted
his mother to like him. She almost never visited him anymore, and seemed to
spend all her time with Soother's-First and Soother's-Pride.
"You
must remember," Soother's-Worry said to himself in an imitation of the Old
One who had had the job of raising him, "your mother is
Soother-of-All-Clans and has more important things to do than to take care of
her children.
"If
only," thought Soother's-Worry, "she had not commanded that her eggs
be kept separate from all the others. Then I would be just another cheela from
the central nursery and not have to worry whether my mother was neglecting me
or not.
"But,"
he reminded himself, "if it not been for mother, I certainly would not
have the enviable position of Keeper of the Comm. As boring as the job is, it
is certainly one of the most prestigious in Soother's-Empire."
Soother-of-All-Clans
paused at the entrance to the egg-pen. The Old One in charge of the pen, having
no eggs to keep him busy, had felt her tread and was waiting for her. He
watched with a combination of anxiety and eagerness as the egg-sac was extruded
onto the crust from Soother's laying orifice. As soon as the sac was safely on
the crust, flattened into a nice ellipsoidal shape, the Old One spread out one
of his edges into
a hatching
mantle and covered the egg gently with the thin membrane. He then slowly rolled
the egg toward him and placed it under the protection of his body.
'This one
shall be named Soother's-Rock," Soother said. "Its father is
Yellow-Rock, Leader of the Clan in the northwest. As soon as the eggling is
ready to leave the hatchling pen, it is to be sent to Yellow-Rock for rearing
as a youth of its father's clan, for it will become Leader when its father
flows."
"It
will be done, Soother-of-All-Clans," the Old One said.
Soother
turned and rejoined her chief advisors, Soother's-First and Soother's-Pride,
her first two children. She was getting a little tired of the constant egg laying, but it was one of her most important duties as
Soother-of-All-Clans.
"Who is
the next one?" she asked Soother's-First.
"There
are many choices, Mother," he said. "However, our merchant informers
in the clans to the north have told us that the clan leader Deadly-Sting has
been talking about a formal challenge to your leadership, despite the fact that
you have forbidden leadership duels. Perhaps a command to him to visit here for
a formal mating with you would awe him enough that we could get him to hold
off."
"Then
again," Soother's-Pride said, "if he gets too difficult while he is
here, we could arrange for him to flow."
"No,"
Soother remonstrated, "I don't think that will be necessary. After all,
the whole object of my reign is to soothe away these barbaric instincts in my
people, so that in future generations they will act in a civilized manner—as
the humans do."
"Shall
it be Deadly-Sting then?" Soother's-First asked.
"Yes,"
Soother said, "we will give that near-barbarian from the north a royal
welcome that will make him feel much more important than he really is. Then
after the formal mating, we will send him home with so many gifts that he will
forget all about trying to challenge my rule."
"I will
arrange it immediately, Mother," Soother's-First said, moving off toward
the Royal compound.
"I am
going to Sky-Talk library," Soother told Soother's-Pride. "I
understand that a new book about one of the early human rulers has been sent
down by the humans on one of the alternate communication channels. I want to
study it carefully for new ideas. I hope that the ideas on government by the
hu-
man Napoleon
will prove to be as interesting as those of Machiavelli were."
Soother's-Pride
watched his mother flow off toward the Sky-Talk compound, a squad of troopers
automatically shaping a chevron formation about her, their burly bodies acting
as pathbreakers for her in both the hard and the soft directions. As she moved
off, Soother's-Pride heard her tread muttering as she moved.
"What
shall I name it? Soother's-Sting? Who ever heard of a
soothing sting? Soother's-Deadly? No—that's worse ..."
As Soother
approached the Sky-Talk compound, she headed directly for the library and was
careful to avoid the Comm complex. The last thing she wanted to be bothered
with was the fawning presence of Soother's-Worry.
She was very
sorry that she had studied only the government
sections of the human encyclopedia in her youth. She had applied her new
knowledge of government to the naive ruling system of the semibarbaric cheela
of her time, and had shortly taken over the Leadership of the Combined Clans.
She had forged a mighty state that had conquered the remainder of the barbarian
tribes on Egg and had finally brought peace to the entire star. As
Soother-of-All-Clans she was now powerful enough to subjugate any unruly band
or clan, but her job now was to consolidate her rule by less violent means, and
form a hereditary dynasty that would eliminate forever the problem of deciding
who the next ruler would be, for that would be foreordained from birth.
Her first
(and she hoped her only) mistake, was trying to form the line of descendants
completely from her own flesh. Soother's-First was a beautiful example of a cheela,
and she would be proud to have him carry on her name after she flowed. She had
thought that, since he was such a handsome specimen, she could combine her
excellent qualities with his by mating with him as soon as he left the hatching
pens. Unfortunately, the result was not what she had expected. The Old Ones at
the hatchery tried to give the little one extra attention, but it was soon
obvious to all that the hatchling was barely smart enough to feed itself.
Soother had found the sinecure of Keeper of the Comm for Soother's-Worry, but
the last thing she wanted was to be reminded of her own weaknesses. For
according to the human encyclopedia section on genetics, the weaknesses that were so obvious in
Soother's-Worry were ly-
ing dormant in
her, only they were masked by other, better genes from her mates.
"If
only I had at least scanned the other sections, instead of concentrating solely
on the government section,"
she said to herself for what seemed to be the dozenth time, knowing full well
that if she had done that, she would still be in the library, and would not now
be Soother-of-All-Clans.
Actually,
Soother had almost gotten away with her scheme. The cheela biophysicists would
not determine the genetic coding mechanism for the cheela for dozens of generations,
but when they did, both they and the humans would be surprised at how different
it was. Because of the high temperatures on the neutron star that attempted to
disrupt everything into random chaos, and the all-pervasive magnetic field that
lined everything up along the magnetic field lines, the cheela genetic
structure was a triply-redundant linear strand of complex nuclear molecules. As
the duplicating enzymes would copy the genetic molecule, the check at each
triply redundant site provided an automatically correcting copying mechanism;
if one of the three linear strands had mutated, the copying enzyme would be
governed by majority rule, and the new triple strand would have the mutation
corrected. If two mutations had occurred and all three sites were different,
the enzyme would self-destruct, taking the faulty gene with it. It was only
when the two mutations were the same that an error was able to creep through.
Unfortunately, there had been too many repeated errors in those genes that had
formed the nervous system in her son, Soother's-Worry. He was mentally
retarded.
Many, many
eggs later, Soother was getting tired, yet her ambition drove her on. Her aging
body was now pouring nu-cleonic hormones into her juices that were designed to
make her slow down her aggressive drive and retire to the essential job of
being an Old One.
The Old Ones
were designed by the cheela genes to carefully tend the clan eggs that the
younger females would lay and forget, while they returned to their jobs as
warriors protecting the clan from enemies. There were no real enemies anymore,
and Soother did not want to be an Old One tending eggs, so she transferred her
developing parental instinct to the cheela as a whole and drove herself on,
consolidating her rule by using the governmental techniques developed by
generations of humans.
Finally
Soother began to realize that she could not go on forever. Eventually she would
have to flow, and the Soother-of-All-Clans would not be there to keep the
quarrelsome clans soothed. Of course, Soother's-First was quite capable and
willing to take her place and assume his duties as Soother-of-All-Clans,
however, her personal ambition kept her from relinquishing her control over her
people.
Soother then
remembered an old story about the ancient one named Swift-Killer who had first
made contact with the humans. The Leonardo da Vinci of the cheela, Swift-Killer
had invented the first communication system and was the first Keeper of the
Comm. That was long ago when the Keeper of the Comm had to know how to keep the
communication and data storage systems operating, and didn't have a team of
communication engineers and library assistants to run things.
Soother went
to visit the scientists at Sky-Talk compound. "I understand that
Swift-Killer, the first Keeper of the Comm, experienced a strange
transformation that rejuvenated her," she said.
"Yes,"
the scientist replied. "Under extreme trauma, her body reverted to that of
a dragon plant. She stayed that way for some dozens of greats of turns, and
then for some reason the dragon plant reverted back to that of a cheela.
However, the new body, having been almost completely rebuilt, was that of a
youth, while the scarred outer skin and brain was that of an older one."
"I want
to go through that transformation," Soother said, "so that I may
continue to lead my people."
"That
would be very dangerous, O Soother-of-All-Clans," the scientist said in
alarm. "Shortly after Swift-Killer's experience, the experiment was tried
by many cheela. With most of them, nothing happened, and they finally gave up
and went off to tend eggs. With others, they had starved themselves so much
that they just stopped living and flowed. There was not enough meat left on
them even to bother calling the butchers. A few tried both starvation and a
severe heating of the topside. Most of these died from the serious burns, and
only one started the transformation. However, even that one died before he was
well started. You may not have learned it in the stories that you read about
Swift-Killer, but she was not alone; there were two others with her, and one of
those died."
"Then
if it is done properly, the odds are two out of three," Soother said
firmly.
"But
Soother," protested the scientist, "we don't really know how to do it
properly. No one was there to witness the transformation."
"Still,"
Soother continued, "if I do not go through the transformation, I am surely
going to flow soon. I want to be transformed, and within the next great of
turns. You and the others are to read all that you can and make preparations. I
will return when you are ready."
"It
shall be done," the scientist said with resignation. Soother flowed away
from him without further word, her squad of troopers forming automatically
around her as she moved off.
There was
really little more to learn about the ancient transformation of Swift-Killer.
What records the scientists had were mostly old storyteller tales that had been
distorted by many tellings before they had been written down.
It was well less than a great of turns before the scientists let Soother know
that they were as ready as they could be.
Soother came
at once. She left Soother's-Pride in charge of the routine business of running
the Empire, while Soother's-First and a full troop of needle troopers came to
Sky-Talk compound to make sure that the experiment was carried out safely. When
Soother's-First and the troop commander heard what Soother would be subjected
to, they protested strongly.
"They
are going to kill you with that treatment!" Soother's-First warned.
"First
they are going to starve you until you are an empty sac, and then they are
going to sear your topside with a bank of X-ray arcs!" the troop commander
shouted.
"Yet,
that is what Swift-Killer went through, and so can I," Soother said
bravely. "I want you two to see that they do it properly."
"I
can't see how we can protect you from them," the Troop Commander said.
"What they propose to do to you does not sound like a treatment, but a
fiendish torture for a particularly nasty barbarian!"
"But
you can protect me," she replied. "For if I die,
you can see that they do also!"
The troop
commander hesitated, for to kill unarmed thinkers who had only done their best,
and under protest, did not seem like the kind of thing a decent warrior should
do, but his sense of duty overcame his principles; after all, the one giving
the order was the Soother-of-All-Clans.
"It
will be as you say, Soother-of-All-Clans," said the troop commander
obediently.
"And if
I do flow," Soother said to Soother's-First, "you shall be the next
Soother-of-All-Clans. Rule well, my son." She formed a small tendril and
stroked him lightly on the topside.
"I
will, Mother," he said.
"But
don't count on it," she cut in abruptly. "For I
intend to come back—younger than you." Her tendril whipped off his
topside and shrank back into her surface. She moved off toward the waiting
scientists.
"You
may proceed," she said.
Although
Soother had not eaten for three dozen turns in preparation for the ordeal, it
took two dozen more turns before the scientists and doctors felt that she had
been weakened enough that her body functions were disrupted to the point where
the plant transformation enzymes could begin to dominate the animal enzymes.
They could now start the next phase of the transformation.
According to
the legends of the storytellers, Swift-Killer had a blotchy
topside after her transformation. Some painful experiments with volunteers who
had suffered a small section of their topsides to be seared with lengthening
sessions under an X-ray arc had shown that the blotches were caused by blisters
that formed on the skin after a certain amount of exposure to X-rays. The
timing was critical, however, for too long an exposure caused the blistered
surface to char, and then the burn was too severe. The volunteer who had
suffered that much radiation still had a nasty scar in the small test spot. He
would not have survived if the burn had been over a much larger area.
Soother was
barely conscious when the banks of X-ray arcs were struck. The violet-white
radiation beamed unmercifully down upon her weakened body. The pain and shock
knocked her out and she flowed. The doctors were watching closely, and the arcs
were extinguished just as the blisters started.
The troop
commander and Soother's-First stood by, looking with distaste and horror on the
flattened sac of blistered skin that lay in front of them. The scientists and
doctors hovered around, their tendrils constantly touching the now sleeping
body.
"She
still lives," one of the doctors said. "But her body functions are
very unusual. Her fluid pumps are not beating as
they do when a
cheela is struck in the brain-knot and knocked unconscious; instead they are
moving very slowly. It is a state that the humans call sleep."
Soother's-First
moved toward the body and confirmed their diagnosis. "It is indeed
fortunate for you that she is still alive," he said. "Continue your
work."
"There
is nothing left for us to do," one of the scientists said. "It is now
up to her body. All we can do is make sure that she is not disturbed. We can
only wait and watch."
For two
dozen turns, nothing much happened, except that the blistered topside started
slowly to heal itself. As the healing progressed, Soother's-First noticed that
the muscle tone of the skin, which had been poor at the end of the starvation
period, now became almost nonexistent. The skin under the healing blisters
seemed to be almost transparent. Then after another dozen turns, a small,
twelve-pointed crown started to lift up under the center of the sac of skin.
"It
looks as if the transformation is working," one of the scientists
reported. "The root spike must now be complete, and that is the start of
the cantilever structure that will hold the skin up to the sky."
Inside
Soother, the hormones and enzymes were busy. The animal muscle was attacked and
dissolved, but the enzymes were careful to take their dissolution process just
so far. The stringlike molecules in the muscle tissue were carefully teased
apart into separate strands, but the strands were carefully maintained as long
fibers. The longer they were, the stronger would be
the resulting dragon crystal. The fibers floated through the juices where they
were picked up by the enzymes building the engineering marvel that would lift
the huge body up off the surface of Egg against the fierce gravity, the stiff
structures of the plant body being capable of doing something that the more
flexible tissues of the animal body could never do. Carefully the enzymes
worked the long fibers into the crystal, embedding them firmly into the clear
crystallium, to make a composite material that was many times stronger than the
crystallium itself. Things went well for a while, and the cantilever structure
grew, slowly lifting the thinned sack of skin off the ground. However, long
before the twelve-pointed structure was really finished, the muscle tissue ran
low. The growth slowed, and every strand that floated nearby was eagerly
salvaged by the enzymes that struggled to make do with inadequate building
materials. Finally
the last portions of the spikes were being made almost entirely of inadequate
clear crystallium.
Soother had
waited too long for her transformation. The ancient Swift-Killer had been a
well-exercised troop commander, and even in her starved state she had had
plenty of muscle tissue; but Soother had been an administrator too long, and
had not gone into her ordeal with sufficient reserves.
Soother's-First
was awed by the huge plant that began to tower over him. Even the scientists
were greatly pleased with the result. As the turns passed, the skin folds
lifted off the crust, and the doctors could already tell from the wastes
emitted from the still partially functioning animal orifices that new
nourishment was being generated by the plant portion of the body. Everything
looked good. Soother's-First even began to think about leaving the Sky-Talk
compound to visit with Soother's-Pride to work out the details of their
temporary joint rule for the next dozen greats of turns until his mother was
rejuvenated.
Then it
happened. The tip of one of the weakened spikes broke as it attempted to
tighten the skin. Soother's-First was horrified to see a jagged point of dragon
crystal sticking up out of the torn fold of skin. The skin held for a while,
and the scientists attempted to build a mound up against the side of the body
to support the damaged section. But before the support could be arranged, an
adjoining spike gave way under the unequal tension, and in a rapid series of
sharp cracks and loud crashes, the remainder of the twelve-pointed skeleton
broke and fell to the crust.
For a few
minutes, they all stood in horror as the thin skin oozed the last of its juices
out of jagged holes onto the crust. Then Soother's-First turned to the troop commander.
"I am
Soother-of-All-Clans," he said. His eyes took in the horrified group of
scientists and doctors.
"They
failed," he said. "Do as my mother commanded!"
The troop
commander hesitated. "But they did their best!" he protested. "There
must have been something wrong with Soother's body for the failure to have
occurred like that. It is not proper for you to punish them."
"Do not
lecture to me about what is proper, for I am Soother-of-All-Clans," he
replied angrily. "Obey me at once, or you will no longer be troop
commander."
The troop
commander felt an angry muttering among his warriors. Although they were
well-trained troopers and obedi-
ent to duty, it
would take all of his prestige to get them to carry out the order. Then
suddenly the troop commander realized the strength of his position. His
troopers were more loyal to him personally than to Soother's-First. They would
not have backed him against the legendary Soother herself, but he had no
question as to their choice now.
"Who is
Leader of All Clans, Old One?" he said quietly, and not a tread moved in
the complex as the ancient challenge rang out through the crust.
"What
is this nonsense!" Soother's-First demanded
angrily. "The leadership challenge was outlawed by Soother long ago."
His eyes swept over the large body of troopers and found a burly squad leader.
"You,"
he ordered. "You are now commander of this troop. Take command and take
this traitor into custody!"
The squad
leader hesitated. Then with the repressed violence of someone who has seen her
whole clan-oriented life disrupted by Soother, who kept track of her eggs like
a perverted Old One, she vibrated a harsh reply back through the crust, "I
take orders from my commander, not from you—you clanless mother-lover!"
The vehemence
of the reply startled Soother's-First. He looked through the mass of trooper
eyes, looking for support, but found none.
The troop
commander, now confident of his backing, repeated the challenge. "Who is
Leader of All Clans, Old One?"
Soother's-First
did not reply, knowing that he had no chance against this battle-hardened
warrior. He attempted to flow off to the west. The troop commander watched for
a moment, then accepted a dragon tooth from the
nearest trooper. After a very short chase, a well-aimed thrust to the
brain-knot ended the short rule of Soother's-First.
The troop
commander found a very strong popular support for his actions, and soon the
much larger group of "Clannists" had overcome the numerically smaller
group of "Mothers" and by popular acclaim, the troop commander became
the new Leader of All Clans.
TIME:
Seiko was watching the image of the
decorated cheela on the screen. Soother's-Worry was in the midst of one of his
con-
fused sentences
when suddenly there was a large crowd of cheela surrounding him. She caught a
glimpse of glittering knives of dragon crystal as the computer-fed display
stopped. Almost instantly the screen flashed on again. There was no trace of
Soother's-Worry, and the very plain topside of a cheela again was centered on
her screen, the dozen eye-stubs waving smoothly as the intelligent-looking eyes
stared intently at the optical pickup.
"I am
Leonardo, the Chief Scientist of the Sky-Talk science complex," the image
said. "I have been appointed the new Keeper of the Comm by the Leader of
All Clans."
Not a
flicker of surprise crossed Seiko's stolid face. One second ago, the ruler of
this world had been called Soother-of-All-Clans. Now they were back to the old
title of Leader. Well, they were probably going through their equivalent of the
consolidation of China by Ch'in or of Europe by Napoleon, and one would have to
expect rapid changes for a while until they had left their semibarbaric state
and had settled down to a method for transition of rule by peaceful
"means.
"Welcome,
Leonardo," Seiko said, slightly amused. The name was probably inherited
with the job as Chief Scientist. Right now the cheela were in awe of the
accomplishments of the humans and often took names from the encyclopedia the
humans were sending down. Within half a day, they would have surpassed the
humans in knowledge and technology. She doubted that she would meet any
Leonardos or Einsteins on her next shift.
"We are
about through with the HoloMen crystal GAM to
"Good,"
said the computer-slowed image of Leonardo. "That will give us a chance to
install the new radiation to taste converters."
TIME:
Super-Fluid was dejected. This turn
was to have been one of the greatest moments of his career, and it had been
blasted by his meeting with the Council for the Programmed Education of the
Slow Ones. The Council had decided that the humans would not be told about
Super-Fluid's new theory of gravity.
Instead, the humans would have to
rediscover it for themselves.
Super-Fluid
had wanted to have his new theory appreciated and used by the humans. After all,
they had given so much to the cheela. Yet he recognized that the only reason
that the cheela were still developing on their own was that the extensive
knowledge of the humans had been transmitted down to them so slowly that the
faster-thinking cheela had usually figured out things by themselves, long
before the detailed human explanation had finally trickled in.
The Council
had decreed that his new discoveries on antigravity would have to be sent up to
the humans in a coded form. The detailed information on his theory would be in
the hands of the humans, but they would not be able to read it until they knew
the crypto-keyword that would decipher the gibberish that they had received.
The crypto-keyword for the antigravity section was the complete nonlinear
formula that Super-Fluid had laboriously developed only after many turns of
deep thought.
"It
isn't fair," Super-Fluid thought. "Before they can find out what I
did, one of the humans will have had to think the same thoughts that I did, and
that person will get the credit!"
Yet he knew
that, although the human might receive some limited notoriety for breaking the
crypto-code to the antigravity section, it would give no real consolation to
the person who, after all, had come in second best.
"They
are so brave—so noble—those Slow Ones," thought Super-Fluid, as he
approached the construction site for the antigravity machine.
Helium-Two,
Project Manager of the Negative Gravity Test Project, watched the wrinkled
figure of the elderly scientist approach. According to reports, the Aged One
still had enough juice left in him to take an interest in his earlier
scientific exploits, even though he had served a full stint at the hatching
pens. He had been expecting a wrinkled, but still perky Aged One; but what was coming
toward him was the sorriest, most dejected cheela he had ever seen since he had
been hatched. There must be something wrong.
Then, as
Helium-Two watched, the cheela in the distance noticed his presence. Shivering
himself all over, Super-Fluid suddenly changed character and moved surely
toward him, even though he was partially off in the hard direction.
"I
presume you are Helium-Two," the Aged One said with
a firm tread.
'Thank you for arranging to have me present during the demonstration."
"I knew
that you would want to see it," Helium-Two said. "Please follow
me."
The two
cheela moved in single file across the dense crystal crust of the neutron star.
Helium-Two pushed hard, as if he were leaning into a heavy wind. His
opalescent, ellipsoidal body flattened out to force an opening between the
trillion gauss magnetic field lines. He deferentially held the gap open with a
trailing cluster of reinforced manipulator arms that allowed the elder
scientist to flow after him with minimum effort. They paused to look around; as
they did so, they felt the magnetic field close in on them again,
their bodies pinned onto the field lines like beads on a wire.
"How do
you like it, Super-Fluid?" Helium-Two asked. "Big, isn't it?"
"I
don't see much of anything except those large pumps over there and some ridges
in the crust."
"We had
to put most of the antigravity machine underground because of the high
pressures. Underneath those ridges are the largest high pressure vessels ever
made by cheela. They are formed of strong pipes wrapped around and around in
the shape of a ring wrapped with wire. You can see one ring under that ridge
and the top of the other ring over there. They are set up at an angle to each
other so that the place of maximum interaction is just above the surface in the
middle."
"I
didn't visualize anything like this when I was working on the theory,"
Super-Fluid said, as his dozen eyes took in the vista.
"You
are lucky. Very few theoretical scientists ever see their mathematical
equations turned into working hardware in their lifetime, especially when the
theoretical work involves such a fundamental change in our understanding of
nature such as does the Super-Fluid-Einstein theory of gravitation. Einstein
himself was one of the few. He lived to see his E=mc2 prediction bring about control of nuclear energy. Einstein
was lucky because it turned out to be easy for the humans to get a nuclear
chain reaction going—they just have to bring two pieces of uranium or plutonium
near each other. You are fortunate in that it is easy for us to get the very
high mass-densities and velocities that are needed to make the Super-Fluid
effect work."
"I wish
you wouldn't use that term," Super-Fluid said. "The correct term is
the gravimotive effect. People keep referring to
the effect by
my name—and I appreciate the honor, but I am thinking of the poor students in
the future. They are going to have a hard time remembering that the Super-Fluid
effect is the gravimotive effect and does not have anything to do with
superconductivity."
The two
started back toward the bunker as Super-Fluid went on, "I have always been
proud of the unusual name that the Old Ones chose for me when I was a
hatchling. Like you, I was hatched during the generation when the humans were
beaming down the superconductivity section
of their encyclopedia. The theories of superconductivity revolutionized our
understanding of the interior of our home star. It made quite an impression on
everyone to learn that we are floating on a crystalline crust over a liquid
core of superfluid neutrons."
"All
right—the gravimotive effect," Helium-Two said. "Anyway, the
gravitational engineers did a good job on the design. The antigravity machine
is a lot more efficient and compact than I thought it would be when I took on
the job of managing the design and construction contract."
Helium-Two
went around the bunker to the entrance in the rear. "Come inside, then we will give the machine its first try. We will only
take it to half-power in this first trial. We won't try to make the gravity
force go negative, but there should be plenty of interesting effects when we
get to zero gravity."
The project
manager and the scientist went into the low bunker. They raised some of their
eyes up on short conical stubs and looked out over the top. Helium-Two spent
the next few moments going over the checklist with the gravitational engineers.
"It is
a big moment for them, too," Helium-Two thought. "They have been
studying and training for many turns, and this is the first time they will be
able to see the theories they studied work."
Everything
was soon ready and Helium-Two signaled for the power to be applied. Super-Fluid
could feel the vibrations from the great pumps as they started to move their
massive loads of ultra-dense liquid. The fluid moved around in the pipes at a
constantly increasing velocity. The acceleration supplied by the pumps was so
great that the velocity of the dense fluid would begin to approach the speed of
light in a millisecond. However, that would be more than time enough for the
fast-living cheela to carry out a leisurely experiment.
Super-Fluid
could almost visualize the Einstein gravity
fields generated
by the motion of the liquid and was not surprised to see the crust in the
center of the machine lift up and flow out from the center. Soon there was a
great cavity almost a centimeter deep, as the Einstein fields took hold and
started to nullify the neutron star's 67-billion-gee gravitational field.
"So far
it has all been Einstein antigravity fields," Helium-Two whispered to him.
"Very shortly the hyper-nonlinear portion of your theory should take over
and we should get the contraction of the Einstein fields into a region at the
center."
They watched
tensely as the crust started to flow back to fill in the depression—more slowly
this time—while the whine of the pumps moved to higher and higher pitch. Soon
the crust was nearly what it had been before, but now above the crust at the
center of the machine was a distortion in the atmosphere.
"Why
can we see the region?" Helium-Two asked. "It can't be a distortion
in space-time caused by strong gravity fields. The gravity is less there than
it is here."
"No,"
Super-Fluid said, awed in spite of himself. "The
explanation is much more pragmatic than that. The low-gravity region is visible
because it doesn't have any atmosphere. The atmosphere has all flowed to the
outside edges. That is an oval-shaped chunk of outer space hanging in front of
you, and what you are seeing is the difference in the index of refraction of
vacuum and the atmosphere."
"Now
for the fun part," Helium-Two said. "We are going to inject a small
chunk of pure carbon into the zero gravity region and
see what happens."
Helium-Two
turned to the crew and initiated the sequence of events. Super-Fluid watched as
a short stubby cylinder started to rise up out of the crust right under the
distortion. He could feel powerful hydraulic pumps complaining as the top of
the cylinder started to approach the edge of the oval-shaped region.
"The
last little bit of distance is going to take some time," Helium-Two said,
as the hydraulic pumps labored under the strain. "Moving those few microns
from our normal gravity to the zero gravity in the gravimotive-effect region is
equivalent to going straight up off our neutron star into outer space. Not much
distance to travel, but it takes a lot of energy. We are going to stop the
cylinder just as it gets to the inner edge, and fire the carbon pellet from a
gun built into the piston."
The
vibration of the hydraulic pumps finally stabilized and began to beat with the
rising whine of the antigravity generator
pumps that kept
the distortion activated. Helium-Two turned a few of his eyes toward his
engineers and his undertread rumbled an order through the crust:
"Inject!"
Super-Fluid
watched as a tiny speck rose from the center of the piston and floated to the
center of the distortion, brightly illuminated by lights that flooded the
central region with X-rays. As he watched, the speck grew, and by the time it
had reached the center and hung there, it had grown to be almost as round as he
was wide.
"Why
doesn't it fall out of the zero gravity region as the
atmosphere did?" Super-Fluid asked.
Helium-Two
replied, "Those X-ray lights are not just for illumination, they are also
coupled to a servo control system. We use X-ray pressure to keep the carbon
speck centered in the zero gravity region."
"As it
gets bigger, it gets harder to see," Super-Fluid said, watching in awe and
amazement as the tiny speck of degenerate crystalline carbon slowly came apart.
Once the material had been released from the tremendous gravitational pressures
exerted by the neutron star, the nuclear repulsive forces took over and the
nuclei moved further and further apart. Now that there was space between the
nuclei, the electrons, which had been packed into a superconductive fluid
coursing through the close-packed array of carbon nuclei, began to evaporate
from the fluid to take up orbits around the nuclei, further isolating the
nuclei from each other. Soon the tiny speck had grown a hundred times larger in
each direction while its density dropped by a million.
"I
can't see it anymore," Super-Fluid said.
"I can,
and it's beautiful," Helium-Two said, waving one of his eyes after
another. "At least with some of my eyes. I think
I can fix things so we can both see it without having to move around." He
went to the servo control console and talked to the engineer there.
He returned.
"I had the engineer set the servo control so that the crystal would rotate
while staying in place."
They both
watched as the seemingly empty space suddenly sparkled into a brilliant flash
of light—then winked off again.
"You
wouldn't think that something with a density of only a few grams per cubic
centimeter would be visible at all— much less be so brilliant," Helium-Two
said.
"It is
because the crystal structure reflects the X-rays when the atomic planes of the
crystal are at just the right angle be-
tween one of the
lights and one of our eyes," Super-Fluid explained. "I have been
watching the pattern carefully as it rotates. If I am not mistaken, that is a
crystal with a cubic lattice structure. What did you say the seed material
was?"
"Carbon,"
Helium-Two said.
"I
think that is what the humans call a diamond," Super-Fluid said. "They
were right—it is pretty."
TIME:
The chimes rang again and again,
insistently.
2030, the
numbers indicated.
"I
missed my shift!"
"Six
hours," he groaned as he rubbed his face. "Six
hours— and three-fourths of a millennium. I wonder what is going on?" He quickly bathed, and, still holding a
food-stick, swung up the passageway to the back of the
communications console.
Abdul looked
up as he came in. "Glad to see you, Pierre," he said in a concerned
voice. "Did you get some sleep?"
"Yes,"
"No
problem," Abdul said. "It has been interesting watching the cheela
civilization develop almost right in front of my eyes."
"At
what stage are the cheela now?'
"They
are beginning to pass us in all areas except molecular chemistry. But since
they don't even have molecules to experiment on, you can't blame them for that.
They tell us that they can almost predict the contents of the rest of the
encyclopedia, but they insist that we send the entire text down for the sake of
their historians and humanologists. We should be changing to the last
encyclopedia crystal WAT to ZYZ shortly. Then you should erase the encyclopedia
crystals and the cheela will start filling them up with information that they
have learned on their own in the past day."
"Good,"
"I
won't take long," Abdul said as he floated out the door. 'This is too
interesting to miss."
TIME:
Floating-Crystal returned from her
vacation with mixed emotions. It had been a delightful vacation, eight long
turns in the foothills at Swift's Climb mountain resort. She had enjoyed every
millisecond of it, even though she would never get used to the idea of looking
down on things. She was reluctant to return to what everyone would admit was
often the most boring job on the star, yet at the same time she felt eager to
be back at work; while the job of Keeper of the Comm was boring at times, it
was the most important position a cheela could aspire to (with the possible
exception of the President of the United Clans).
Floating-Crystal
was feeling good as she entered Sky-Talk complex. She decided to take a
shortcut. Rather than moving along the paths in the easy direction, and then
crossing over at the superconducting tunnels, she flattened herself out and pushed
her way in the hard direction across the park that separated the compounds in
the complex. She could almost feel the magnetic field lines rippling across her
top side as she pushed herself along, her tread gripping the textured surface.
She flowed by the crumbling ruins of the gigabit receiving antenna that had
been the pride and joy of her predecessors many generations ago, and went into
the compound surrounding the huge transmitter array.
Her first
thought was to check on the Comm display. As she flowed onto its large flat
surface she could tell that the human—Amalita Shakhashiri Drake—was still in
the middle of her sentence. At the bottom of the screen the computer had
superimposed the words of the sentence. Those that Amalita had already spoken were
in one taste and the computer prediction for the words in the
rest of the sentence were in another taste. It was a long sentence, and
full of the many redundancies that humans found necessary to insert into their
speech. It was the very predictability of the redundancies that made the job of
Keeper of the Comm so boring.
Before
Floating-Crystal had left on her vacation Amalita had spoken the words:
"
Floating-Crystal
did not need a computer to figure out that the next few phonemes were "...
loMem crystal..." and that the rest of the sentence was probably something
about the holographic memory data storage crystal being full and that they
should stop transmitting data up for a minute while Pierre put in a blank
crystal.
When Amalita
had gotten to "Holo ...", Floating-Crystal
had decided it would be a good time for a long vacation and had taken off. On
her return to the display, she was surprised to find that both she and the
computer had misjudged the human. Amalita had progressed much further in her
sentence than she had expected, although the general content was the same. The
computer display of the spoken part now read:
"
"Good,"
Floating-Crystal thought to herself. "The old array has been transmitting
data up to the humans for generations. That minute will give us time to tear
down the obsolete hunk of junk and build a decent one with computer-controlled
phased-array beam steering."
Floating-Crystal
flowed off the display and went to the translation compound. Her three
apprentices were busily scanning the human-language output of a computer
generated translation of a text on cheela physiology. Although the computer did
an excellent job of translation, there were many times that a straight human
translation of a cheela sentence ended up distorted (or even bawdy) and it
required an experienced student of human culture to figure out how to
restructure the human sentence to retain the original cheela intent. Clear-Thinker,
the eldest apprentice, felt the vibrations from Floating-Crystal's tread as she
approached. He turned a few of his eyes toward her.
"Remind
me in three or four dozen turns to find a good stopping point in the data
stream," Floating-Crystal instructed him. "It is time for the humans
to change crystals."
"This
book on physiology that we are translating now is scheduled for transmission in
about three dozen turns," the apprentice replied. "It has a lot of
pictures, so the number of bits is quite high, but it shouldn't take too many
turns to transmit-even at the slow bit rates that the human receivers can
handle."
"Good,"
Floating-Crystal said. "Make the break at the end of the text."
She then returned
to the Comm display room and prepared her reply in front of the cameras. The
computer stored her performance and then played it back for her review—first on
the long, thin visual display that just showed her front edge and eyes, and
then on the human-oriented rectangular taste display. The camera for that
display looked down at her from an angle and showed her whole flat body with
the ring of eyes around its periphery. She could see the bulge that was an egg
near her middle and wondered idly whether it had been Clear-Thinker or
Bit-Cruncher who had put it there. "Not that it really matters," she
thought to herself. "It looks as if it will be ready to leave with the Old
Ones at the hatching pens pretty soon."
"I
still think the whole thing is slightly obscene," she murmured as she
examined her image in the human display. "Nobody but lovers, computers,
and humans ever see the top side of me."
She didn't
like her first performance and redid it a couple of times until the message was
short, yet clear. She then keyed the computer to transmit the message at human
rates as soon as Amalita finished her sentence.
With a long
break coming up, there was a lot to do. She contacted Comm Engineering and told
them that they would soon be able to replace the aging antenna. They were
delighted to be able to switch from maintenance to design and building. She
could almost taste the eagerness in the Chief Engineer's image as he flowed
away to tell his crew.
She then
called a meeting of the Comm Advisory Board. There had been some talk of a
possible expedition to visit the humans, but because it would involve a good
deal of direct communication, it had been put off until the next break in the
data stream.
A dozen
turns later the Advisory Board gathered. They listened to the gravitational
engineers as they explained the latest test results on their gravity-control
and inertia-drive experiments. The inertia drive was the propulsion mechanism
that would allow them to leave their neutron star home, where the escape
velocity was 39 percent the speed of light. However, the most dangerous part of
travel off the surface of a neutron star was the explosive decompression of
neutronic matter (including the neutronic matter of the space traveler!) when
it was no longer kept compressed by the gravitational pressure sup-
plied by the
star. Now the engineers were sure that both problems had been solved.
Most of the
Advisory Board had a difficult time accepting the fact that solid substances
like the hard crystalline crust of their neutron star home or their equally
tough yet supple bodies were not stable. Yet, without gravity to hold them
together, they would decompose and reform into a tenuous molecular structure
with the nuclei spaced a hundred times further apart than normally. However, these
facts were well known to Floating-Crystal. One of the Old Ones tending her
hatchling pen had worked on the original antigravity machine. He, himself, had
seen a small speck of neutronic material expand when placed in the zero gravity
region formed by the machine, and he had watched it turn into a transparent,
twinkling molecular crystal floating in space. He had given her name to her
when she hatched, and later told her about the beautiful floating crystal that
had been her namesake.
After many meetings
of the Comm Advisory Board and the engineers, it was finally decided that a
visit to the humans was technically feasible. However, the effort required was
substantial, so a commitment by the President and the Council of the United
Clans was needed.
After much
public debate, the program outlined by the engineers was approved, the finances
were allocated, and the generation long project was started. Although the focus
of the effort—"A Visit to the Humans"—was quixotic in nature, since
there was almost nothing that could be communicated during the visit, they all
knew that the real reason for the project was to crack the invisible egg-sac of
gravity that had kept the cheela bound in the hatchery of their laying. For
they all knew the cheela species could not stay on their home star forever.
The decision
for the Visit came soon after the data stream was turned off. During the period
while the cheela engineers were rebuilding the data transmitter and Pierre was
replacing the full HoloMem crystal with an empty one, Floating-Crystal took
over the Comm link to Amalita and with the help of the Visit program engineers,
told her what to expect and what to do.
"We are
coming out to visit," was her message. As the turns passed and she saw in
the display the look of astonishment and concern build on Amalita's face, she
quickly brushed aside the
protest that was
forming on Amalita's lips. "We will not explode. We will provide our own
gravity."
For the next
minute Amalita listened attentively while Floating-Crystal explained the
general outline of the planned visit. Amalita was a little concerned when she
heard about the X-ray generator they were going to use to illuminate the inside
of the spacecraft, then blushed a little when she began to realize how much
someone could see who used soft X-rays for part of his vision range. However,
the cheela already knew a great deal about human physiology. They had had
plenty of time to study the human encyclopedia and the textbooks that had been
beamed down by the humans many generations ago, so they knew that the total
X-ray dose they would be using on their human friends during their short visit
would be minimal.
At the end
of the first minute,
"We
have started the data again. First is a schedule for you to follow during the
visit. The expedition will start in about fifteen minutes. Read the
instructions carefully, for the whole visit will only last ten seconds."
Floating-Crystal
saw
"I'm
glad to see you again,
"These
fifteen-minute lifetime friendships are hard on the emotions," Amalita
said to herself as she brushed her eyes, then flicked the communications screen
to the computer and started reading the words that appeared there.
The cheela
plan was very detailed and concise, for the cheela had long since had a
complete description of the ship Dragon Slayer.
Amalita
punched for a hardcopy of the screen full of words for
closeup view showed that less than a
meter from his nose was a tiny speck a few millimeters across, and on that
speck sat a cheela—no spacesuit—no pressure container—nothing to keep it from
exploding.
They read
further and then began to realize why they had been so clumsy in the animation.
To survive in space, the cheela explorers had to bring gravity with them. Their
main spacecraft was a hard crystalline spherical shell about four centimeters
across with a rather "large" miniature black hole at the center. At
11-billion tons mass, the black hole provided 180 thousand gees at the surface
of the crystal sphere. Although far from the 67-billion gees that the cheela
lived in at the surface of the neutron star, it was enough to keep their
electron structure in its degenerate form. Individual cheela and equipment
modules had their own smaller version of the main spacecraft. The radii of the
individual flitters and equipment tugs were much smaller, so that only a tiny
black hole was needed for each one. The smaller spacecraft had separate power
and inertia propulsion subsystems, and the whole swarm fitted neatly into
hemispherical depressions that pocked the surface of the main spacecraft.
"Inertia propulsion!"
"They
probably will be able to control space and time and won't have to bother with such
clumsy things as black hole gravity generators and inertia drives,"
Amalita replied. "But now I see why we were so awkward. Their main
spacecraft will stay fifteen meters away from our spacecraft, but it is so
massive that we will experience about one-third of a gee from it, pulling me
out of the console chair and over to the viewing port. I guess I could manage
to twirl once as I fall so they can see the human joints in action, but I bet I
am going to be clumsier in one-third gee than that animation." She turned
from the screen and looked at him, "I wish you were doing my part, so I
could get to see the cheela."
"I
don't know whether you would like it,"
cording to this contour plot of the
gravity field from the individual craft, although the size and mass of the
flitters are much smaller than the main spacecraft, this one is going to come
up to less than one meter from my viewing port and my nose is going to be
pulling three gees!" He looked down at her body and grinned, "I guess
the reason they didn't choose you is they must know you don't wear a bra in
free-fall and they didn't want to give you reverse Cooper's droop."
Amalita
turned back to the display, jabbing him with her elbow as she did so, and
brought up the next screen full of instructions. "You know perfectly well
that since this is the one time that our two civilizations will be close enough
culturally to make a physical visit meaningful, they chose the earth's best known science writer and interpreter for the
interview," she said. "How long do you get?"
"It
seems ridiculous for them to go through this visit," said Amalita.
"We both have complete descriptions of each other's physiology and plenty
of pictures, both still and motion."
"However,"
she went on, "If I were offered the opportunity to visit the surface of a
neutron star and spend fifteen seconds watching a half year of cheela
civilization whirling about me, I would jump at the chance."
The console
beeped and the computer switched off the information display. A cheela's visage
appeared on the screen.
"I am
Bit-Cruncher, the new Keeper of the Comm."
Bit-Cruncher
waited out the polite response from the humans by interviewing some new
apprentices. One of them would take his place one of these turns, but all of
them would meanwhile become so thoroughly soaked in human culture that they
would almost think like humans. He was kind to the youngsters, remembering his
terror when old Floating-Crystal had interviewed him. Still, they had a rough
time ahead, for only one of them could become Keeper of the Comm.
As one of
Floating-Crystal's apprentices, he had worked hard and had not only kept up
with his apprentice work, but had developed a complex new computer program to
cross-
correlate the immense
amount of human knowledge that was still stored in the Sky-Talk Library. His
new program was now finding out more about humans than the humans knew about
themselves. For this prodigious feat he was awarded the rare opportunity to
choose a new name for himself, and it eventually had led to his being made the
new Keeper of the Comm when Floating-Crystal became an Old One and went off to
tend eggs.
"It was
the opportunity for a new name that really drove me," he rippled to
himself. "I'll never forgive that romantic-minded Old One that named me
Moby-Dick, after reading one of those old human adventure novels."
Bit-Cruncher
continued to think about prior times as he flowed back to the Comm compound. After he had been awarded the job as the new Keeper of the Comm,
his comrades and competitors in apprenticeship had had to seek other
occupations. Crystal-Blossom was now a Professor of Humanology at
"Even
though he lost out to me for Keeper of the Comm, I think maybe Clear-Thinker
might be better off," he mused. "There will be many Keepers of the
Comm, but only one Visit. In addition, although I see humans on the display
every turn, I do it through their cameras, which are made for their eyes. He
will get to see a human in the flesh, bones and all!" Bit-Cruncher
returned to the display just as Amalita was finishing.
"... meet you, Bit-Cruncher. When will the visit b ..."
Bit-Cruncher
contacted Clear-Thinker through the links and got the latest schedule. Things
were going well. The main spacecraft had made it out to space and back on
automatic control. Everything, even the unwilling Slinks that had been sent
along in cages to test the life support system, had survived without damage.
Another few hundred turns and they would be ready.
"Set a
definite time," said Bit-Cruncher, "so the humans can get everything
ready."
"All
right," Clear-Thinker said. 'Two greats of turns from
now."
"That
long? Everyone is going to be tired of waiting for the liftoff,"
Bit-Cruncher said. "But I guess it is better to be on the safe side."
Bit-Cruncher returned to the communications display as Amalita finished and
informed her that the visit would take place in exactly 57 seconds.
Amalita and
Pierre turned away from the console and got busy. Amalita opened the shields
over the viewing ports, set the automatic cameras for the focal distances and
exposures the cheela had recommended, and turned them on. She then returned to
her chair at the console, found her acceleration belt and adjusted it so she
would stay in her seat until the time came for her to twirl across to the port.
"The
last thing we want is a pile of loose junk cluttering up the ports," he
said.
The seconds
ticked away.
As they
waited, the light in the room flickered eerily as the white radiance from the
neutron star flashed into the ports five times a second, alternating with the
red glow of the ultra-dense asteroids that circled around their spacecraft,
their strong gravitational fields blocking the crushing, tearing tides of the
neutron star.
Suddenly
there was a flash of multihued light and they both glimpsed a small brilliant
white object the size of a golf ball holding a steady position fifteen meters
away. There was a moment's pause and then the golf ball seemed to explode into
a cloud of colored snowflakes that swarmed across the intervening distance. The
larger snowflakes stayed well away from the ports while the smaller ones came
in closer.
TIME: 22:30:10:0 GMT
"Holy Egg!" murmured one of
the cheela crew as they slowly drifted in between the large glowing condensed
asteroids and settled down in a synchronous orbit fifteen meters out from one
of the viewing ports. "I expected the thing to be big, but I never
imagined it would be this big!"
Clear-Thinker
mentally agreed with the crew member. He couldn't see who said it, since she
was out of sight around the horizon on their little home away from home. What
really bothered him was not that the human spacecraft was big, but
that it was
"overhead." Although all the crew had been in space and had learned
to conquer the fear that the home star they were orbiting was going to fall on
them, this object was much too close for comfort. He quickly called an
unscheduled hold in their carefully timed schedule. The humans would hardly
notice a one-fifth of a second pause and he felt a full turn of rest and
recreation while the crew got used to the sight of the human spacecraft
overhead would be worth the delay.
He ordered
everyone to stay in his assigned station on the spacecraft while he rotated the
shell slowly around. The gigantic human spacecraft passed above every crew
member several times while they all gazed at the metal skin and stared into the
viewing ports, where they could vaguely glimpse some huge shadowy shapes behind
the heavily tinted fuzzy glass. After a short while Clear-Thinker stopped the
rotation, ordered a minimum crew to stay at the controls and let the rest of
the two dozen crew members have a vacation break for a full turn. A few paired
off and wandered around to the back side to find a quiet place behind some
piece of equipment, but most gathered at the front and continued to stare at
the unbelievable sight as the slow turning of the human spacecraft around their
home star changed the lighting. At last the neutron star set behind the
spacecraft and the show was over. The darkness was also strange, but the cheela
psychologists had anticipated that problem and had made sure that the crystal
shell underneath them had all the old familiar heat and radiation
characteristics that they were used to on Egg, even though the gravitational
pull was nowhere near that of home.
With half a
turn gone, Egg rose from behind the opposite side of the spacecraft, and the
spectator crowd grew once again. It was obvious to Clear-Thinker that the
initial problem of having the spacecraft overhead had now dissipated, but he
decided to wait for one full turn before putting the crew back onto the
schedule so that their timing for the photographs and spectral analyses would
be correctly oriented with respect to the illumination from Egg.
Precisely
one turn later the crew members were back at their posts and the Visit began. A
cloud of individual fliers and many small instrument packages took off. Each
one was a tiny sphere with a sub-miniature black hole at the center to keep it
under enough gravity so that it would not explode. The first instrument
packages to get to the human spacecraft were several X-ray generators. Some
larger ones were positioned at a dis-
tance to
illuminate the general scene, their radiation varying in opposition to the
illumination from the neutron star that rose and set as the work proceeded.
Others were placed in a ring around the viewing ports and sent their
violet-white beams through the heavily tinted glass into the interior of the
spacecraft. Soon the shadows in the room became clearer. Using the pictures and
a map of the console room, the crew could identify the communications console
and the chair in front of it. In the chair was a collection of strangely-shaped
violet objects surrounded by a multicolored cloud. They increased the
illumination and then could finally make out the outlines of the yellow-white
clothing and blue-white human flesh covering Amalita's violet bones. Cameras were
set up and adjusted, and data started pouring back to the mother spacecraft
where other crew members monitored displays and tended the computers and the
communication links back down to Egg.
TIME: 22:30:11.2 GMT
"One-thousand-one,
one-thousand-two ..." counted Amalita as she felt the gravitational tug
from the insignificant golf ball fifteen meters away.
"...
one-thousand-three and twirl," she chanted as she pressed the belt
release, did one pirouette through the air and landed on all fours on the thick
glass of the viewing port.
"Rather
prettily done, if I do say so myself," she thought.
TIME: 22:30:12.9 GMT
"She is right on the time
line," Clear-Thinker mused to himself as he observed the
computer-generated image of Amalita taken the previous turn and compared it
with those taken a few turns previously. The enlarged image of the seat belt
showed it was coming apart. Now if she could turn around once while she fell to
the window, they could get some high resolution, three-dimensional X-ray images
that made so much more sense to their computers than the book-oriented, flat
diagrams they had obtained from the human physiology textbooks.
In the
following turns the crew members watched as Amalita's body ponderously fell
through the air toward the viewing port, turning slowly as it came.
Clear-Thinker kept the
X-ray illuminators off most of the
time, to keep the radiation dose on his human friend down to a minimum. At
times calculated by the computer, the X-ray illuminators would flash on, and
another snapshot of the human body in motion was taken. By the time Amalita's
body was approaching the port, the computer had built up a detailed
three-dimensional model of her body. Now the illuminators were brought in to focus
on certain portions of her body as the scientists called for more detailed data
on the glands and the corrugation patterns in the brain. The data they were
collecting would keep generations of students busy.
As Amalita's
hands and feet were contacting the viewing port glass and her body started to
bounce back, one of the human-medicine specialists on the crew came up to
Clear-Thinker and put down a computer-generated picture for him to scan. As
Clear-Thinker flowed onto the pad and tasted the picture, the specialist said,
"That is a closeup of Amalita's left breast. Fortunately she was not
wearing a brassiere so that when she landed on the window, her breasts came
forward and we were able to get a highly detailed image of the entire mammary
gland complex. The thing that concerns us is the anomalous region right at the
center of that diagram. We are sure that it is a small group of cancer cells.
They are still too small to be seen by human X-ray machines, but it is our
professional judgment that they are definitely malignant."
"Well,
it looks as if we will be able to repay Amalita for her performance,"
Clear-Thinker said. "Prepare a picture that the human doctors can
understand and we will send it to Amalita along with a warning of what we
found."
The specialist
replied, "We had already planned to do that, but we are all concerned
about the time it will take. It will be a week before the Dragon Slayer leaves
this orbit and takes Amalita and the rest of the crew back up to the mother
ship, St. George. In that week, the cancer could grow and start sending out
seeds to contaminate the rest of her body. We had another idea that we wanted
to talk to you about."
Clear-Thinker
flowed off the pad, "What is your proposal?"
"Now—you
must realize that what we are about to suggest is against all normal human and
cheela standards of ethics. All the human-physiology specialists here, along
with many experts on human psychology, medicine and law back on Egg have argued
back and forth for the last two turns. There has been a general consensus,
although not unanimous by any
means, and it was
decided to bring it to you for your approval."
Clear-Thinker
waited patiently while the specialist worked her way through the
circumlocutious argument.
"The
consensus is that because of the high malignancy potential of this growth, and
the time it will take Amalita to get to a human doctor, we should treat the
cancer now, even though we do not have time to get her permission first."
Finally it
was out, and Clear-Thinker could understand why it had taken the specialist so
much time to come to the point. She was right. By the time the slow-thinking
Amalita had been informed of her problem, and had made the decision whether or
not to let them try to treat her, the expedition would have had to return to
Egg. He also realized that the specialists would not have made their
recommendation unless they were sure that Amalita had a serious problem that
needed immediate treatment.
"Go
ahead," Clear-Thinker quickly replied. "What do you need?"
"We
will want to modify one of the X-ray illuminators to increase its frequency and
power output," she said. "Running it at a high power level will burn
it out quickly, so it will no longer be available for general illumination, but
if we do a careful scan, the focused beam of X-rays should kill the cancer
cells with only minimal damage to the rest of the breast."
"We
have plenty of illuminators," Clear-Thinker said. "Check with the
camera crew to find out which one they can spare, and proceed whenever you are
ready."
The
specialist gathered a crew and soon a modified X-ray illuminator with a large
focusing mirror and a high-intensity power source moved up to the window of the
viewing port. The computer first aligned the coordinates of the focal point of
the illuminator with the calculated position of the cancer deep within the
slowly moving breast. Then burst after burst of high intensity X-rays shot out
from the illuminator as it was slowly moved back and forth in wide arcs about the
focal point buried deep within Amalita. The cancer shriveled and died, while
the skin at the surface of the breast started to turn pink—as if it had gotten
too much sun at the beach.
TIME: 22:30:16.3 GMT
"Ouch!" Amalita cried as
she rebounded from the window. Her hand went to her breast, but the sharp hurt
was gone. "Reverse Cooper's droop?" she thought to herself. She then
turned to watch
TIME: 22:30:17.1 GMT
"It is time for the
Visit," announced Clear-Thinker at one of the planning sessions. "Get
out the skimmer and check the mush tube and waste disposal systems."
The skimmer
was a small vehicle especially designed for the Visit. It was not much larger
than an instrument shell and had only rudimentary propulsion and control
subsystems. A standard individual shell was much larger, and needed a larger
mini-black hole to keep it from exploding. Such shells had to stay over a meter
away from the viewing ports since their gravity fields were so high. The
skimmer was much less massive, so it could approach much closer to the ports.
The skimmer had two things that an individual shell did not normally carry,
however: a half-dozen turns worth of food, most of it in the form of a liquid
mush, and a disposal grate connected to a holding tank.
Most of the
crew had the decency to busy themselves elsewhere as the commander of the Visit
expedition settled himself onto the skimmer. The spherical shell of the skimmer
was only slightly larger than his body, so there was only one way that he could
fit on it. With the controls at his front, his food intake orifice was situated
near the tube from the mush tanks, while his elimination orifice was over the
disposal grid.
Clear-Thinker
formed some crystalline bones within his body, conformed
them into manipulators, took hold of the controls and raised power.
"Never
has a nickname for a spacecraft fit so well," thought Clear-Thinker, as
the "Flying Toilet" rose from the main expedition spacecraft and
moved over to the left viewing port where it stopped—just a bit less than a
meter from the tip of
TIME: 22:30:17.2 GMT
Clear-Thinker
stared up at the ghostly human face hanging in the air above him. The face was
a half-dozen times larger than the highest mountain on Egg. The only thing he
could see easily was the huge skull illuminated by the deep violet color of the
soft X-rays emitted from the X-ray arc. There were the gaping holes for the
eyes, each as large as the caldera of the
"Well—there
is no time for a long speech," Clear-Thinker said to himself. He activated
the communication link control and spoke to the human.
"Hello,
He first
formed a crystallium stiffener inside each eye-stub to keep his eyes steady.
"No need to make it thick under this reduced gravity," he reminded
himself. "I will need the crystallium for the rest of the structure."
He
concentrated and soon the eye-stubs were braced with an interlocking network of
crystalline bones that would keep him from moving too much. This last technique
was a new one to him, since like most cheela he had always limited his internal
bone-growing repertoire
of manipulators, eye-stubs and pulling bars. However, the medical scientists,
having learned much about the capability of the cheela organism from a
religious sect that had developed extraordinary control over their body
functions, had taught him the interlocking technique.
With his
preparations ready, he set the skimmer on automatic control, sipped a little
mush, and settled down for the Visit with his gargantuan friend.
"Well—so
you are Pierre Carnot Niven—are you?" he murmured up at the motionless
skull. "All right,
TIME: 22:30:18.2 GMT
"Like a
flattened miniature scallop on the half-shell,"
As his eyes
and the humming automatic cameras took in the sight of Clear-Thinker patiently
enduring his vigil outside the viewport, the speaker on the communication
console spoke Clear-Thinker's greeting.
"Hello,
As the echo
of the last syllable floated across the console room, there was a flash of
light and the incandescent speck was gone, leaving only a yellow-green
afterimage on
TIME: 22:30:19.3 GMT
The mush was gone, the holding tank
stank, and it was time to say goodbye.
"You
win—my friend," Clear-Thinker spoke up to the ghostly apparition that had
not moved during his long vigil. At that, Clear-Thinker had done better than he
had thought he would—six whole turns without moving more than a ripple.
Isomorphic exercises had helped to keep his innards from clogging up, but his
skin felt as if it would crack if he moved it. He moved—and it didn't crack—so
he moved some more; then, with a delighted dance that almost lifted him off the
skimmer with its nearly negligible gravity field, he dissolved the crystalline
bones that had kept him stationary, grabbed the controls, and flew the
"Hying Toilet" back to the main spacecraft.
After a
decent meal and some clean-up, Clear-Thinker was back in command of the
expedition. It was time to pack up and go. The specialists were still busy
taking long-distance pictures of
Actually, of
course, it was the shipboard computer that handled the motion of the instrument
spheres while it monitored the flight paths of the individual fliers. The
gravitational self-attraction of the spheres made navigation quite tricky, even
when the pilots had reflex velocities that approached the speed of light.
Unfortunately,
no one had bothered to inform the computer that the modified X-ray illuminator
that had been used to treat Amalita's cancer had been firmly connected to the
very large power source that had been used to drive it. Therefore the computer
saw nothing wrong with choosing a return path for the illuminator that took it
close to the viewport window. As the illuminator, dragging the power supply,
passed by the window, the intense gravitational tidal forces from the massive
power supply ripped a large jagged canyon out of the three centimeter thick
laminated window. Huge chunks of glass as large as mountains fell toward the power
supply. They were crushed into powder as they fell, and then disappeared in a
flash of light as they impacted the surface of the shell.
TIME: 22:30:20.0 GMT
The acoustic micrometeoroid
detectors in the frame of the viewing ports sensed something wrong and slammed
the outside metallic shields across the windows. Amalita blinked, then stared at a tiny scratch in the glass.
"...
One-thousand-ten," she said.
The Visit
was over.
TIME:
Leaving Amalita talking to
Sky-Teacher at the communications console on the main deck,
According to
their conversations with the robot cheela communicator, this latest HoloMem
crystal had a large section on the internal structure of neutron stars.
HoloMem
crystal for more information on the Elysium particle. In a
fraction of a second, his screen flashed:
PROPERTIES AND USES OF ELYSIUM PARTICLE-FURTHER
INFORMATION ON THIS PARTICLE IS ENCRYPTED. THE KEY IS THE MASS AND LIFETIME OF
THE FIRST EIGHT ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (INCLUDING THE ELYSIUM PARTICLE) TO FIVE
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES.
The rest of
the section was gibberish.
Of course,
if the humans did their research correctly, they would know practically
everything that was now hidden behind the gibberish, but if they had gotten off
on the wrong track, then the knowledge the cheela had left would correct them
before they went on to learn more about the universe that they lived in.
"Just
like a good teacher,"
As he
flipped back to the section on neutron star interiors, he mused that a
cryptogram with only sixteen five-digit numbers could probably be broken by a
large computer in an exhaustive search, but he figured that the human race
would be too proud to peek.
His console
screen returned to the original diagram of the interior of Dragon's Egg.
others, like the
Vela pulsar and the Crab Nebula pulsar, were neutron stars known to the humans.
"But
the Crab Nebula pulsar is over 3000 light-years away!"
A quick
search through the index found the answer.
FASTER-THAN-LIGHT PROPULSION—THE
CRYPTO-KEY TO THIS SECTION IS ENGRAVED ON A PYRAMID ON THE THIRD MOON OF THE
SECOND PLANET OF EPSILON ERIDANI.
There then
followed a long section of gibberish.
In near
shock,
Jean looked
up, her perky nose wrinkled in puzzlement. "I thought the plan was for us
to stay down here for at least another week," she said.
"With
the cheela doing all the mapping and measurements for us, there is really no
need for us to stay any longer," he explained. "You should have read the
detailed description of both the exterior and interior of Dragon's Egg in that
last HoloMem crystal I brought down." He straightened out and swung down
to hold himself in the doorway to the lounge.
"I had
the computer reprogram the herder probes to move us into the path of the
deorbiter mass. In about half a day we will be in proper position to be kicked
out of this close orbit back up to St. George. Then we can be heading for home
instead of
looking at
it." He looked up at the clock readout on the lounge wall.
"Time
to change HoloMem crystals again," he said. He flexed his knees
preparatory to leaping up the passageway to the main deck. He flashed his smile
through his beard at them and said, "Come on, there is a lot of work to do
to get this ship ready. Amalita and I will finish off the last of the HoloMem
crystals, but the rest of you had better start buttoning up the ship; the
gravity fields from that deorbiter will turn anything loose into a deadly
missile." He jumped upward to the central deck and the others swam out the
lounge door and spread out through the ship.
"We
shortly will have filled up all your available HoloMem crystals," Sky-Teacher's
image said, its halo of robotic eyes doing a perfect imitation of the traveling
wave pattern in a real cheela. "I am afraid that you will find most of
this material is encrypted, since we are now the equivalent of many thousands
of years ahead of you in development.
"Yet,
if it had not been for you, we would still be savages, stagnating in an
illiterate haze for thousands or even millions of greats of turns. We owe you
much, but we must be careful how we pay you back, for you too have a right to grow
and develop on your own. For your own good, it is best that we cut off
communication after this last HoloMem crystal is full. We have given you enough
material to keep you busy learning for thousands of your years. Then we will
both be off on our separate ways, seeking truth and knowledge through space and
time. You in worlds where the electron is paramount, and we in worlds
where the neutron dominates.
"But
please don't despair. We may live much faster than you, but there are only a
finite number of fundamental truths to learn about the Universe, so eventually
you will catch up to us."
A tone
sounded and a small message appeared on the screen.
HOLOMEM
"You
are on your own now," Sky-Teacher said, hearing the tone. "But we
have one last present for you. You will need tens of thousands of years to
develop fully, and minor nuisances like ice ages on your planet would slow you
down. While we were exploring the interior of your Sun, we found five small
black holes. There were the four that you already know about and a much smaller
one. Since they were disturbing the fusion reactions in your Sun, we removed
them for you. Now the Sun will stay stable while you are learning from the
HoloMem crystals."
"We
thank you,"
"And we
thank you," Sky-Teacher said "But it is drawing near the time for you
to leave. Goodbye, my friends."
"Goodbye,"
He turned to
Amalita. "I'll put away the HoloMem crystal, and you start checking out
the acceleration tanks," he said. "It's time to go home!"
Technical Appendix
The
following sections are selected extracts from the 2064 Edition of Del Rey's Science
Encyclopedia, published by Random House Interplanetary,
DRAGONS EGG
Dragon's Egg is a nearby neutron
star. It has a mass of about one-half that of the Sun but a diameter of only 20
kilometers. It is spinning at 5.0183495 revolutions per second, has a gravitational
field at its surface of 67-billion gees, and a magnetic field of close to a
trillion gauss. As is shown in Figure 1, the star has four poles. In addition
to the normal north and south spin poles, it has "east" and
"west" magnetic poles that lie almost on the equator. The lines drawn
from the east magnetic pole in Figure 1 are the lines of magnetic longitude.
The actual magnetic field is three-dimensional, and extends for some distance
out into the region around the star.
The internal
structure of Dragon's Egg is shown in Figure 2. The center has a liquid core 7
km in radius containing superfluid neutrons, a small quantity of superfluid
protons, and enough normal fluid electrons to balance the charge on the
protons. At the very center of the star, where the densities and pressures are
highest, there are various exotic elementary particles mixed in with the
neutrons.
Over this core of liquid neutrons is
a 2 km thick mantle of crystalline neutrons and nuclei. The crystalline crust
varies from pure neutrons near the liquid core to nearly all nuclei near the
top of the mantle. The outer crust of the star consists of neutron-rich nuclei
(mostly iron) with a density near the surface of about 7 million grams per
cubic centimeter. The number of neutrons in the outer-crust nuclei increases
with depth, while the spacing between the nuclei decreases. The boundary
between the outer crust and the mantle is the "neutron drip" region,
where the neutrons can "drip" out of the highly neutron-rich nuclei
and wander over to close-by neighboring nuclei.
The crust
and mantle are solid structures over a liquid core. As the star cools and
shrinks, the crust cracks and thrusts up mountain ranges. The mountains vary in
height from a few millimeters to as much as 10 centimeters. The higher
mountain ranges poke up out of the predominantly iron-vapor atmosphere, which
becomes negligible at about 5 cm.
The large
Starquakes
involve the drop of a lava shield or mountain range by a few millimeters in the
67-billion-gee gravity field of the star. Starquakes in several pulsars have
been detected from the Earth by observing the slight decrease in the period of
the pulsar due to the decrease in inertia of the star from the lowering of the
mountain range.
Dragon's Egg
was the product of a supernova explosion that occurred about 500,000 years ago
at a distance of 50 light-years from the Solar System. In the process of
formation, the neutron star/pulsar acquired a significant proper velocity of 30
km/sec (one light-year in 10,000 years or 6 AU in one year). The star was first
discovered by space scientist V. Sawlinski in 2020 (see Reference 1). He
detected its radio pulsations using the CCCP-ESA (See Acronyms—Ancient National
Organizations) Out-of-the-Ecliptic probe, which was 200 AU up out of the
planetary ecliptic plane. (See Figure 3 showing the relative position of
Dragon's Egg, Sol, and the OE probe in 2020.)
At the time
of its discovery in 2020, Dragon's Egg was at a distance of 2300 AU from earth.
When the humans finally arrived at the star in the first interstellar
spacecraft, St. George (see St. George), the distance had narrowed to 2120 AU.
At the time of this edition (2064) the star is at a distance of about 2040 AU.
It will reach its point of closest approach of 250 AU in about 300 years, then recede again. Some perturbation of the outer planets is
expected, but there should be no significant effects on the orbit of Earth.
The position
of Dragon's Egg in the sky was determined by S-Y Wang (see Reference 2) to be
almost at the same declina-
tion (+70
degrees) and right ascension (11.5 hours) as Giansar, the bright star at the
end of the constellation Draco (The Dragon). Its position among the
constellations in the northern sky is shown in the simplified star chart of
Figure 4.
CHEELA PHYSIOLOGY
By the time the humans discovered
Dragon's Egg, life forms had evolved on the neutron star. (Amazingly enough, the
possibility of the existence of life on a neutron star was predicted almost a
century ago by the radio astronomer F. D. Drake in Reference 3. Dr. Drake was a
great-grandfather of Amalita Shakhashiri Drake, one of the crew on Dragon
Slayer.) The first forms of life on Dragon's Egg were plants, which lived by
running a heat cycle between the hot crust and the cold of the sky. These
plants later evolved into mobile animal forms.
The dominant
animal life forms on the star are called chee-
la. Since they
are intelligent, the cheela have roughly the same complexity as humans. That
implies that they have the same number of nuclei, so it is not surprising that
they weigh about the same as humans—70 kg. The cheela are flat, amoeba-type
creatures about 2.5 mm in radius (0.5 cm in diameter), and 0.5 mm high, with a
density of 7 million g/cc.
The atomic
nuclei that make up the cheela do not have captive electron clouds to keep them
isolated from each other, but instead share a "sea" of free
electrons. Because of the resulting close proximity of the nuclei, it is as
easy for cheela nuclei to exchange neutrons as it is for human atoms to
exchange electrons. The nuclei couple into "nuclear bonded molecules"
by neutron exchange. Since the cheela use nuclear coupling instead of molecular
coupling in their bodies, their rate of living is about one million times that
of humans.
Cheela can
form crystalline "bones" when needed, but normally keep a more
flexible structure and can flow around and into instruments to operate them.
Because of the high gravitational field, cheela do not have strength to extend
themselves more than a few mm above the crust. Their psychology with respect to
gravity, height, and things-over-your-head is identical to the ancient science
fiction stories by Hal Clement about the alien beings called Mesklinites.
The magnetic
field on Dragon's Egg dominates everything. The velocity of sound, the opacity
of the atmosphere, the force it takes to move, the flow of lava and landslides,
the pressure of the atmosphere, and many other things, vary by ratios of 10:1
from a direction along the magnetic field to a direction transverse to the
field. The structure of the crustal surface consists of close-packed, dense
"hairs" aligned along the magnetic field. These are horizontal along
the magnetic equator and vertical at the magnetic poles.
It is easier
for things to move along the magnetic field lines than transverse to them. But
this also means that energy can be extracted by loss mechanisms for motion
along the field lines, whereas transverse to the field lines, there is little
motion due to the rigidity, so there are few losses. Since the electromagnetic
fields in light are transverse to the direction of propagation, it is easier to
see along the magnetic field lines.
Even the
nuclei in the bodies of the cheela have their aspect ratio changed as much as
10:1 in the direction of the magnetic field, since it is easier for the protons
in the nuclei to move in the direction of the magnetic field than across it.
Thus, as is
shown in Figure
5, a cheela at the magnetic pole will be 10 times taller than one at the
equator, and one at the equator will be 10 times wider toward the magnetic
poles than transverse. Because of this variability, the concept of
"length" was slow to develop in the cheela sciences. Even the cheela
measuring sticks vary, and if the cheela make surveys, they will find that
according to the number of measuring sticks needed to count off a distance on
the star, their home is "flattened" 10:1 near the magnetic poles.
The actual
cheela body is, of course, much more complex than the stereotyped diagrams of
Figure 5. A more lifelike picture is shown in the sketch in Figure 6. This was
drawn from memory by the Leonardo da Vinci of Dragon's Egg (and first cheela
Keeper-of-the-Sender), Troop Commander/Astrologer Swift-Killer. The Trooper in
the drawing is Squad Leader North-Wind (identified by his two-button insignia
of rank). He is holding a short sword and a dragon tooth (although squad
leaders did not usually carry the long spear). The two puckered sections in his
side are either carrying pouches or eating orifices. The small seminal fluid ejection
holes under each eye-stub are the primary sex organs unique to a male cheela.
The cheela
communicate by strumming the crust with their lower surfaces (tread) to produce
directed vibrations in the neutron star crust. The strong magnetic fields polarize
the surface material and since the crust has a nuclei lattice and an electron
sea, the cheela have three modes of talking: long-talk—along the magnetic field
using Rayleigh-type compressional waves; short-talk—transverse (shear) waves
for communication across the magnetic fields lines; and fast-talk— using
electromagnetic fields generated by their bodies to excite the electron sea.
Since fast-talk travels at the speed of light, it is somewhat faster than the
two acoustic waves, but it is more highly attenuated and is used mostly for
whispering.
A cheela's
eyes are a remarkable example of parallel evolution. In structure and function
they are close parallels to the bright blue stalk-supported eyes of the scallop
shellfish on earth. The eyes of the cheela are about 0.1 mm = 100 microns in
diameter. To give the eyes adequate resolution, they must use wavelengths of
0.1 microns = 1000 angstroms or smaller. Thus, the normal range of cheela
vision is the UV region, 1000 angstroms to 200 angstroms, although they can see
down into the X-ray band if there is enough illumination. Some individ-
uals (Bright's
Afflicted) can see up into the violet end of the human visual range (4000
angstroms).
The
illumination for seeing comes primarily from the glowing surface of the star.
At a temperature of 8200 K the neutron star crust has adequate flux in the
long-wavelength part of the cheela vision band (700-1000 angstroms), but it
cuts off at 600 angstroms. Things that are hotter (cheela bodies at 8500-9000
K, and hot illumination sources from 10,000-50,000 K) not only have more
photons, but their "color" shifts toward "blue" and the
resolution goes up. Cooler things, (like the top of a cheela or a plant) have a
shift to longer, "redder" wavelengths. (See Figure
7.)
CHEELA HISTORY
The story of Dragon's Egg and its
inhabitants is covered in great detail by Nobel Laureate P. C. Niven in
Reference 4. To date, this is the only book to win the Nobel, Pulitzer, Hugo,
Nebula, and Moebius prizes in the same year (2053). Figure 8 is taken from the
second volume of this definitive three-volume study/story and illustrates the
major cultural migrations of the developing cheela.
According to
ancient myths of the cheela, they are descended from a "chosen clan"
that was driven from the northern hemisphere by a hateful Dragon God, who was
said to live inside what is now the
The cheela
use a combination of magnetic and Coriolis fields for directional homing. In
the "feeling lost" region, the lines of magnetic direction are
parallel to the lines of rotation, and the cheela lose their inherent sense of
direction and feel lost.
The smoke
just above the equator is due to an interaction
between the
east-west magnetic field and the rotation of the star. The smoke from the
volcano travels predominantly along the magnetic field lines until it reaches
the east and west poles, where the magnetic field lines dip into the surface.
The smoke then leaks out at the magnetic poles and moves again along the
magnetic field lines, but now along the equator, driven by the equatorial
"trade winds" in the atmosphere. The star thus has a crescent shaped
band of smoke in the magnetic longitude of the volcano, and a circular band
just above the spin equator.
The
"chosen clan," driven from their original home by the Dragon God,
finally moved southward across the spin equator to the southern hemisphere of
the star, leaving the purgatory region behind. They found a land of plenty, with
many edible plants and animals, but no other cheela. Their experience would be
similar to the first entry of humans into the North American continent. Like
the deep water barriers on earth, the "feeling lost" regions at the
spin equator had produced a psychological barrier to the cheela that had kept
the southern hemisphere isolated until then.
In this new
land, the "chosen clan" discovered a bright star sitting just over
the south pole. The very bright star was our sun, only
2120 AU (1/30 of a light year) away. A monotheistic religion developed based on
worship of the God-star Bright. The "chosen clan" grew, and split
into many clans, but all clans stayed under the loose rule of a Leader of All
Clans.
The
development of the cheela from a nomadic tribe into a great empire mat finally
established its rule over the entire star is well covered in Niven's book.
RELATIVE TIMES
The relative time scales between the
cheela and the human race is still a subject of debate among experts, since the
cheela physiology is so drastically different from human physiology.
The basic
unit of time on Dragon's Egg is the revolution rate of the star, which is
5.0183495 rps, or a period of approximately 0.1993 seconds. Some experts have
equated one turn of the star with one human day, giving a relative rate of 0.43
million to one. Others point out that since there is no night or day on the
neutron star and the cheela, who never sleep, are active the full turn, that the ratio should be closer to a million to one.
The cheela
use a base 12 number system (they have twelve
eyes) and their
next unit of time after the turn is a great of turns or 144 turns. They
occasionally use a dozen turns, but it has never had the same significance as
the week does to humans. A great of turns is 28.7 seconds, while a human year
is 31.6 million seconds. The ratio of a human year to a cheela great of turns
is 1.1 million to one.
From
studying the history of the cheela we have learned that a cheela spends about
12 greats (six minutes) as a hatchling; 12 greats as a young apprentice, 30
greats (15 minutes) as a worker, 12 greats as an Old One tending eggs and
hatchlings, then the rest of its life (maximum of 24 greats or 12 minutes) as
an Aged One. All of these indications lead to the conclusion that the effective
relative time scale between the cheela and humans is approximately one million
to one.
EQUIVALENT TIME SCALES
Human Cheela
(Equivalent human stages)
10 ky
10
Bg Primordial
manna
5 ky
5
Bg Beginning of
life
2 ky
2
Bg Multicelled
organisms
1 ky
1
Bg Large plants
500 y
500
Mg Invertebrates, amphibians
200 y
200
Mg Reptiles
50 y
50
Mg Mammals, monkeys
10 y
10
Mg Proto-cheela
5 y
5
Mg Cave dwellers
1 y
1
Mg Nomad hunters,
hand axes
1 mo
100
kg Neanderthal,
stone tools, cemeteries
15 d
40
kg Homo
sapiens, hunting and gathering, cave art
3d
14
kg Neolithic,
writing, farming, churches
2 d
5
kg Bronze,
cities, writing, mounds, war
1 d
2,500
g
12 h
1,400
g
Medieval
2 h
250
g
10
generations
30 m
60
g
Active
life span
15 m
30
g Professional
life span
1m
2
g
29 s
1
great =144 turns
200 ms
1
turn of Egg
INFORMATION STORAGE AND TRANSFER
Human transmission rate: The laser
communication link from Dragon Slayer (see Dragon Slayer) up to St. George (see
St. George) had a transmission rate of 400 MHz. This gave a bit rate of 200
megabits/sec., assuming good error correction practices.
Cheela
reception rate: Since the cheela effectively live a million times faster, the
human messages from the 400 MHz laser communication link were received at a
maximum of 200 bits/ cheela sec., which is about 5 words/cheela sec. This is a
slow facsimile rate (a little slower than you can read).
Total bits
transmitted: In 0.5 human day (43,200 seconds) the
humans transmitted 10 trillion bits from the 25 HoloMem crystals in their
ship's library down to the cheela.
HoloMem
Storage: Each HoloMem holds about 0.4 trillion bits. Since the HoloMem crystals
are cubes 5 cm on a side, their volume is 125 cc. This means that each bit has
the equivalent of a cube 7 microns on a side for
storage. In that 7 micron cube there are about a trillion atoms.
Total
HoloMem storage: A printed page holds roughly 350 words, 2100 characters or
15,000 bits. A book of 330 pages is about 5 million bits. The HoloMems could
hold about 2 million books. For comparison, in 2050, the United States Library
of Congress held about 50 million items (books, newspapers, trade publications,
copyright items, etc.)
ST. GEORGE
The spaceship that took the humans
to Dragon's Egg was a primitive monopole-catalyst fusion rocket. Its basic
structure was a cylinder 500 meters long and 20 meters in diameter, with large
spherical external tanks of liquid deuterium fuel. The mass ratio was about 10.
St. George accelerated at 0.035 gees, and reached a speed of 0.035 the speed of
light at its turnover point. The total trip time out to the neutron star was
1.94 years.
DRAGON SLAYER
The scientific spacecraft used for
the close approach to the neutron star was a seven-meter sphere with a spinning
tower 1.6 m in diameter and 2.5 m tall, containing the microwave sounder, infrared
telescope, laser radar, star image telescope mirror, and other star-oriented
instruments. When in synchronous orbit about the star, the science instrument
tower on the top of the ship was aligned in the direction of the north spin
pole of the neutron star. The bottom end of the science sphere had a viewing
point that looked southward toward the distant Solar System.
Around the
equator of the ship were six viewing ports that looked out at the neutron star
whirling about the ship. The ship was inertially stabilized, so that the
distant stars stayed fixed in the viewing ports. The ship, being in orbit
around the neutron star with a period of 0.1993 seconds (5.018 rps), rotated
with respect to the neutron star at 5 times a second. The science turret was
de-spun at the orbital rate so that the instruments pointed to the star at all
times. (The entire space ship could not be rotated at those speeds; had it
been, the crew would have been thrown against the outer wall with a force of
350 gees).
Figures 9
through 12 are diagrams of the three decks and a side view of the scientific
spacecraft, Dragon Slayer. The steady component of the
residual gravitational tidal fields around and inside the ship are shown
by arrows. In addition to the steady component, there is an alternating
acceleration component of about the same magnitude as the steady component,
which varies twenty times a second as the four-lobed gravity pattern of the
neutron star and tidal compensator masses rotates about the ship five times a
second.
DEORBITER AND COMPENSATOR MASSES
The human explorers of Dragon's Egg
used gravitational techniques to move into and survive in a synchronous orbit
around the neutron star. The prime mover for all of the gravitational maneuvers
near Dragon's Egg was the large deorbiter mass. Originally a small planetoid
about 1000 kilometers across, it had been picked up (along with other
asteroidal debris) by the neutron star in its wanderings. The planetoid was
condensed by
the humans into
an ultra-dense mass one kilometer in diameter by injection, of magnetic
monopoles.
There were
actually two large condensed asteroids made at the same time. One was used in a
close-encounter gravity whip to drop the deorbiter down from its original orbit
out in the "asteroid belt" of the neutron star into the desired
orbit. This orbit was a highly elliptical one with a perihelion at 406 km and
aphelion at 100,000 km, where the human interstellar ship, St. George, moved in
a 12.82-minute circular orbit.
The elliptical orbit of the
deorbiter mass (called Bright's Messenger by precontact cheela) had a period of
4.56 minutes
Figure 10. Dragon Slayer—Top Deck
or 9.53 greats
of turns of the neutron star. It thus took it only 2.28 minutes or 4.77 greats
of turns to drop from the safe circular orbit of St. George to the dangerous
synchronous orbit at 406 km above Dragon's Egg.
The gravity field of the neutron
star is 40 million gees at the 406 kilometer altitude of Dragon Slayer.
However, since the spacecraft was in orbit around the star, most of that 40 million gees was canceled by the fact that it was in
a "free-fall" orbit. However, an object is only in free fall at its
exact center of mass. When the middle of your body is in a free-fall orbit
around a neutron star at 406332 m distance it will feel nothing. But if you are
oriented with your feet toward the star, yourfeet, which are at 406331 m away
from the star, are pulled by a gravity force that is 202 gees more than your
middle, while your head, at 406333 m distance, is being pulled by a force that
is 202 gees less than your middle. If you body is
oriented in a
direction tangent to the neutron star, your head and feet will feel a 101-gee
compression instead of a 202-gee pull. A human cannot survive at a distance of
400 km from a neutron star without some kind of protection from these tidal
forces.
To protect the humans in Dragon
Slayer from these residual gravity tidal forces, six tidal compensator masses
were placed in a 200-meter radius ring about the science capsule and ar-ranged
so that the plane of the six masses was always at right angles to the direction
to the neutron star. The compensator masses were made from asteroids about 250
km in diameter that were condensed to 100 m in diameter.
In the center of that ring of
ultra-dense spheres, the masses are attempting to pull anything at the center
out toward them. At the exact center of the ring all the forces cancel.
However, if your head or feet are in the plane of the ring, since they are
about one meter away from the exact center of the ring,
they will be
pulled with a force of 101 gees. If you try to orient your body to point along
the axis of the ring, your head and feet will be compressed with a force of 202
gees. If made dense enough and placed at the right distances, the six
compensator masses will cancel the neutron star tidal forces over aseven-meter
diameter spherical region. (See Figure 9 which shows the residual tidal forces
around Dragon Slayer).
In operation,
the six compensators rotate about Dragon Slayer as it orbits the star at 5.018
rps. The individual orbits of the compensator masses are almost in a natural
gravitational orbit, but require that the masses change speed slightly each
half orbit to maintain the circular formation. This is accomplished by magnetic
interactions between the magnetically charged compensators, assisted by
trimming maneuvers carried out by robotic herder probes using
monopole-catalyzed fusion rockets.
VISIT
The only significant personal
contact between the cheela and the humans occurred for a period of 1.2 seconds
on
The cheela
had to go to great lengths to protect themselves and the humans from the
effects of gravity. The cheela would explode if their bodies were not kept
under sufficient gravity to keep their matter in a degenerate state, and the
gravitational fields that were comfortable to the cheela were destructive to
human flesh.
The main
cheela spacecraft was a crystal shell 4 cm in diameter. With its large number
of docking pits for the smaller instrumental shells and individual flyers, it
had the size and appearance of a golf ball. The main ship had a black hole of
11 billion tons mass at its center that kept the surface of the cheela ship at
a gravitational level of 0.2 million gees. Although nowhere near the
gravitational field strength on their neutron star home, the gravity was enough
to keep the cheela from exploding. The gravity field on the humans inside the
Dragon Slayer at a distance of 15 m away from the main cheela spacecraft was a
reasonable 1/3 gee.
Clear-Thinker
used a smaller individual flitter with a much smaller black hole of only 0.22
billion tons mass. This flitter was only 5 mm in diameter (just slightly larger
than a cheela body) and the surface gravity again was sufficient to keep
Clear-Thinker's body from exploding. This smaller personal flitter could come
within 70 cm of a human, so that the human
eyes could
actually see some detail of the glowing-hot cheela body. (For a well-written
description of this unique scene, see Reference 4.) Even at that, the
gravitational field on the nose of the human, P. C. Niven, was over three gees.
We do not
know the propulsion technique used by the cheela to lift their spacecraft off
the surface of the neutron star (the escape velocity of Dragon's Egg is 39% the
speed of light). We also do not know the propulsion technique that they use in
space. The human observers during the Visit, P. C. Niven and A. S. Drake, saw
no evidence of any rocket-type mechanism in the cheela spacecraft. From their
conversations with the cheela communicators, they suspect that the cheela used
some sort of antigravity catapult to get off the star, and some form of inertia
drive in space. Our only clues are some old speculative papers (see References
5 and 6) based on the now-suspect Einstein theory of gravity.
At the time
of this writing (2063), the knowledge of the antigravity and other space
drives, including a faster-than-light drive, remains locked in the encrypted
sections of the HoloMem crystals containing the knowledge of the cheela after
they surpassed the human race in development. Present estimates are that we
will be able to duplicate the cheela antigravity catapult (and decode that
section of the HoloMem) in another 10 years. We have only a few clues on the
inertia drive. Scientists estimate that it will take us at least two more
decades before we learn enough to find the code to that section.
RЂFЂRЂNCЂS
1. V. Sawlinski et al.,
"A nearby short period pulsar," Astro-physical Journal, 561, 268
(2020)
2. S-Y Wang, "The Egg of
the Dragon—Sol's Nearest Neighbor," Astro. Sinica, 83, 1789 (2020)
3. F. D. Drake, "Life on
a Neutron Star," Astronomy, Vol. 1, No. 5, 5 (Dec. 1973)
4. P. C.
Niven, My Visit with Our Nucleonic Friends, Ballantine Interplanetary,
5. R. L. Forward,
"Guidelines to antigravity," Am. J. Physics, 31, 166 (1963)
6. R. L. Forward, "Far
Out Physics," Analog Science Fiction/ Science Fact, Vol. XCV, No.
8, 147 (August 1975)
DRAGON’S EGG was a neutron star, an incredibly dense sphere only twenty kilometers
in diameter, with a surface gravity sixty-seven billion
times that of Earth. No human could ever land on such a star. Only by the
most advanced technology could science even study it.
Yet on that impossible world, researchers detect intelligent life:
the cheela, aliens who live so fast that one of our hours is the equivalent of
more than a hundred years to them. The cheela struggle from savagery to science
in a span of days—and the astronauts orbiting above Dragon's Egg are by turn
observers, then teachers, then friends...
Then a monstrous STARQUAKE rocks Dragon's Egg, decimating
the cheela. On the surface, the few survivors fight to stay alive. Meanwhile,
high above the neutron star, their human friends face a dreadful choice: return
to Earth and let this alien race risk extinction, or remain to help...and
certainly die in the attempt!
ISBN 0-345-38898-4
Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet
DRAGON’S EGG was a neutron star, an incredibly dense sphere only twenty kilometers
in diameter, with a surface gravity sixty-seven billion
times that of Earth. No human could ever land on such a star. Only by the
most advanced technology could science even study it.
Yet on that impossible world, researchers detect intelligent life:
the cheela, aliens who live so fast that one of our hours is the equivalent of
more than a hundred years to them. The cheela struggle from savagery to science
in a span of days—and the astronauts orbiting above Dragon's Egg are by turn
observers, then teachers, then friends...
Then a monstrous STARQUAKE rocks Dragon's Egg, decimating
the cheela. On the surface, the few survivors fight to stay alive. Meanwhile,
high above the neutron star, their human friends face a dreadful choice: return
to Earth and let this alien race risk extinction, or remain to help...and
certainly die in the attempt!
Critics acclaimed DRAGON'S EGG and
STARQUAKE:
"Forward has impeccable scientific credentials, and ... big,
original, speculative ideas."
—The
"Knockout ... One of a
handful of books that stretch the mind."
—Arthur C. Clarke
"Exemplary hard SF . . . There is no more dazzling
practitioner of the form."
—Locus
"A tour-de-force meticulous creation of an unbelievably alien
race ..."
—Isaac Asimov's Science
Fiction Magazine
"This is one for the real science-fiction fan." —Frank
Herbert, author of Dune
"Never in the history of science fiction, I
think, have so many of the most exciting contemporary scientific concepts
played a role in a book."
—Frank D. Drake, Director
National Astronomy and
"DRAGON'S EGG is superb. I couldn't have written it; it
required too much real physics."
—Larry Niven
"Forward's plot, both simple and grand, is the whole history
of an alien civilization and the effect contact with us has on it. Those who
crave real science along with their fiction will be mightily pleased with this
mind-expanding and engrossing example of SF in its purest form."
—Publishers Weekly
"Dazzling, beautifully worked-out scientific extrapolations
... An adventure that's sure to please fans of 'hard' SF."
—Kirkus Reviews
Also by Robert L. Forward
Published by Del Rey Books:
MARTIAN RAINBOW
DRAGON'S
EGG
Robert
L Forward
DEL REY
A Del Rey® Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS •
A Del Rey® Book Published by
Ballantine Books
Dragon's Egg Copyright ©
1980 by Dr. Robert L. Forward Starquake Copyright © 1985 by Robert L.
Forward
All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published
in the
ISBN 0-345-38898-4
Manufactured in the
First Edition: August 1994
10 987654321
CONTENTS
Dragon's Egg
1
Starquake
273
DRAGON'S
EGG
Thanks to:
Frank Drake—he invented them.
Mary Lois—she named them.
Larry Niven—he gave them something to do.
—and David K. Lynch, Mark Zimmermann, Carlton Caves, Hans Moravec,
David Swenson, Freeman Dyson, and Dan Alderson, who helped me in several
technical areas. My special thanks to Lester del Rey,
who took what was practically a pedantic scientific paper and helped me to turn
it into something interesting to read, and to George Smith and the Hughes
Aircraft Company for giving me the intellectual environment that made it
feasible.
Prologue
7
Pulsar
14
Volcano
45
God
87
Trek
138
Contact
176
Interaction
206
TIME: 500,000 B.C.
Buu lay in
his leafy arbor nest and looked up at the stars in the dark sky. The hairy
young humanoid should have been asleep, but his curiosity kept him awake. A
half-million years in the future that twinkling of curiosity would have led his
mind out into the universe to explore the mathematical mysteries of relativity.
Now ...
Buu
continued to stare at the bright stars above him. One speck suddenly flared
brighter. Frightened—but fascinated— Buu watched the growing point of intense
light until it went behind a dense tree branch. He would be able to see it
again if he went to the nearby clearing. He clambered down from his nest—into
the striped coils of Kaa.
Kaa did not
enjoy his kill for long. Things were difficult for him in a world with two
suns. The new sun was tiny and white, while the old one was big and yellow. The
new sun circled constantly overhead. It never set, and he could no longer catch
things at night. Kaa died—along with other hunters who could not change their
habits fast enough.
For a year
the new light shone from above, searing the sky. Then it slowly grew dimmer and
dimmer, and within a few years night returned to the northern hemisphere of
Earth.
Fifty
light-years away from the Solar System there was once a binary star system. One
star was in its normal yellow-white phase, but the other had bloated up until
it turned into a red giant, swallowing the planets around it. The nuclear fuel
for the red giant ran out just fifty years before Buu's curiosity got the
better of him. With its fusion-bomb center turned off, the energy the star
needed to hold itself up against its self-gravitation
was no longer
available, and the star collapsed. At the center, the in-falling matter became
denser under the terrific gravitational pressure until it turned almost
completely into neutrons. The neutrons pressed closer and closer until they
were packed radius to radius.
Under these
cramped conditions, the strong nuclear repulsion forces were finally able to
resist the gravitational pressure. The inward rush of matter was quickly
reversed, and the outward motion turned into an incandescent shock wave that
traveled upward through the outer shell of the red giant. At the surface, the
shock wave blew off the outer layers of the star in a supernova explosion that
released more energy in one hour than the star had released in the previous
million years.
Beneath the
expanding cloud of blazing plasma, the core of the red giant had changed. What
had once been a large, red, slowly rotating balloon 200 times bigger than the
Sun was now a tiny, white-hot twenty-kilometer ball of ultra-dense neutrons,
spinning at over 1000 revolutions a second.
The original
magnetic field of the star had stayed trapped in the highly conductive
collapsing cloud of star stuff. Like the sunspot pattern on the original star,
the magnetic field was not aligned with the spin axis of the neutron star, but
was sticking out at an odd angle. One magnetic pole was very concentrated and a
little above the equator. The other (really a group of poles) was on the
opposite side of the star. Part of its complex pattern was below the equator,
but most of it was in the northern hemisphere.
The almost solid
trillion-gauss magnetic fields reaching out from the two magnetic poles of the
rapidly spinning star tore into the glowing debris remaining from the supernova
explosion. Driven by the rapid rotation of the ultra-dense sphere, the magnetic
fields threw the massive clouds of ions away from the star in scintillating
gouts. Like a Fourth-of-July pinwheel on the loose, the neutron star
accelerated off to the south, directly toward its nearby neighbor Sol, the
magnetic propeller leaving a glowing wake streaming out behind. After a short
while, the plasma density became thinner and the rocket action stopped, but by
then the star had achieved a respectable proper motion of thirty kilometers per
second or one light-year every 10,000 years, a tiny wanderer jaywalking across
the star lanes of the Galaxy.
TIME: 495,000
B.C.
As the
neutron star spun its way through space, the debris it attracted by its
gravitational field fell inward. When the interstellar material approached to within
a few thousand kilometers of the twenty-kilometer-diameter ball, it was heated
and stripped of its electrons by the intense gravity and the whirling magnetic
fields. The ionized plasma then fell in elongated blobs toward the star, its
velocity reaching 39 percent of the speed of light as it struck the crust in
the east and west magnetic polar regions. The
bombarded crust responded with flares of charged particles that shot back out
into space, gaining speed and radiating pulses of radio energy as the spinning
magnetic field lines whipped them outward.
Inflated by
the pulsating radiation and streams of hot plasma from the spinning star, the
cloud of gas from the original supernova explosion continued to expand at a speed
of one percent that of light. After 5000 years, the front of the shock wave
passed through the Solar System. For a thousand years the shielding magnetic
fields of the Sun and Earth were buffeted by the invisible hurricane-force
interstellar winds. The wiggling magnetic field lines lost their ability to
keep the dangerous high-energy cosmic ray particles away from the fragile
Earth. The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere collapsed, and the life forms on
Earth were subjected to a harrowing barrage of mutating radiation.
When the
millennia-long storm finally waned, a new species of nearly hairless humanoids
had emerged on earth. The original band was small, but the individuals were
smart. They used their intelligence to control things around them, instead of
letting nature and the strong-muscled have their way. It wasn't too long before
their descendants were the only humanoids left on the planet.
TIME: 3000 B.C.
Traveling at
its leisurely pace of one light-year every 10,000 years, the neutron star began
to approach the Solar System. The intelligent beings who
had been born in its baptism of invisible fire a half-million years ago had
progressed to the point at which they began seriously to study the heavens. The
neu-
tron star glowed
with a white-hot heat, but it was too tiny to be seen by mere human eyes.
Although
many times hotter than the Sun, the neutron star was not a hot ball of gas.
Instead, the 67-billion-gee gravity field of the star had compressed its
blazing matter into a solid ball with a thick crust of close-packed,
neutron-rich nuclei arranged in a crystalline lattice over a dense core of
liquid neutrons. As time passed, the star cooled and shrank. The dense crust
fractured and mountains and faults were pushed up. Most crustal features were
only a few millimeters high, but the larger mountain ranges rose up almost ten
centimeters, poking their tops above the iron-vapor atmosphere. The mountains
were the highest at the east and west magnetic poles, for most of the meteoric
material that fell on the star was directed there by
the magnetic field lines.
The
temperature of the star had fallen since its birth. The neutron-rich nuclei on
the glowing crystalline crust could now form increasingly more complex nuclear
compounds. Since the compounds utilized the strong nuclear interaction forces
instead of the weak electronic molecular forces that were used on Earth, they
worked at nuclear speeds instead of molecular speeds. Millions of nuclear
chemical combinations were tried each micro second instead of a few per
microsecond, as on Earth. Finally, in one fateful trillionth of a second, a
nuclear compound was formed that had two very important properties: it was
stable, and it could make a copy of itself.
Life had
come to the crust of the neutron star.
TIME: 1000 B.C.
Still unseen
by human eyes, the white-hot neutron star continued to approach the Solar
System. As the surface of the star began to cool through that small temperature
range that was most conductive to nucleonic life, the original replicating
nuclear molecule diversified and became more complex. Competition for the
simpler nonliving molecules that served as food became more intense. Soon the
primordial manna that had covered the crust was gone, and in its place were
clumps of hungry cells. Some clumps of cells found that their topsides, which
faced outward toward the cold, dark sky, were constantly at a lower temperature
than their undersides, which were in contact with the glowing crust. They
raised a canopy
of skin up away from the crust and
soon were running an efficient food-synthesis cycle using the heat engine that
they had arranged between a stiff taproot penetrating deep into the hot crust
and the cool canopy above.
The canopy
was a marvel of engineering. It used stiff crystals embedded with superstrong
fibers to form a twelve-pointed cantilever beam structure that raised the thin
upper skin against the 67-billion-gee gravity field of the star. Of course, a
plant's beam-structure couldn't lift its topside very far. A plant might be as
much as five millimeters across, but it could only raise a canopy up a
millimeter.
The plants
paid a price for their canopies and supporting frame. They were rigid and had
to stay where they had rooted. For many, many turns of the star, nothing moved
except for an occasional spray of pollen from the tip of a cantilever beam on
one plant, followed by the contraction of a flap at the tip of a nearby plant.
Then, many turns later, that action would be followed by the dropping of a ripe
seed pod, which rolled away in the continual winds.
One turn, a
rolling seed pod broke against a chunk of crust. Its seeds scattered and
several of them started to grow. One was more vigorous than the others, and
soon its canopy began to rise above those of its slower siblings. Suffocated in
the heat radiated from the star below and the underside of the taller plant
above, most of the smaller seedlings died.
One,
however, underwent a strange transformation as its body functions started to
fail. It had a mutant enzyme whose normal function was the fabrication and
repair of the crystalline structure that held up the canopy. But under the
influence of the distorted nucleonic chemistry of an organism near death, the
enzyme went wild and dissolved the crystalline structure it was designed to
protect. The plant turned into a sac full of juice and fibers, and flowed down
the slight slope upon which it had been rooted to a new resting place. The
twelve pollen sprayers, slightly photosensitive in order to provide the optimum
orientation for the canopy of the plant, worked their way around to the top.
Now that the organism was out from under the blocking canopy of the larger
plant, the errant enzyme controlled itself again. The plant sent down roots,
rebuilt its canopy, and proceeded to give and receive many sprays of pollen.
The mobile plant had many seedlings, all of which had the ability to dissolve
their rigid structure and move if the conditions weren't right for optimum
growth.
Soon the
first animals roamed the surface of the neutron star, stealing seed pods from
their immobile cousins and learning that there were many good things to eat on
the star— especially each other.
Like the
plants they came from, the neutron star animals were only five millimeters
across, but, lacking stiff internal structures, they were flattened by the
gravitation. The twelve photosensitive pollen sprayers and flaps became eyes,
but they still retained their original reproduction function. The animals could
grow "bones" whenever they wished. Most of the time these were
degenerate forms of the cantilever beams that were used to hold their eyes up
on stalks so they could see further; but, with a little concentration, a bone
could be formed anywhere inside the skin sac. However, speed of bone forming
was paid for in quality: the bones were made solely of crystallized internal
juices; they did not contain the embedded fibers that made the plant structure
so strong. That procedure took too much time.
Unlike the
plants, the animals had to contend with the star's magnetic field. The plants
didn't move, so they didn't mind that they were stretched into a long ellipse
aligned along the magnetic field lines. The bodies of the animals were also
stretched into long ellipses, but since their eyes were stretched by the same
amount, they were not aware of the distortion. However, the animals found that
it was much harder to move across the magnetic field lines than along them.
Most gave up trying. To them the world was nearly one-dimensional. The only
easy directions in which to travel were "east" and
"west"—toward the magnetic poles.
After a long
time, plants and animals existed all over the surface of the neutron star. Some
of the smarter animals would look up at the dark sky and wonder at the points
of light they saw moving slowly across the blackness as the neutron star
turned. The animals in the southern hemisphere of the star were especially
bewildered by the very bright spot of light that stayed fixed over the south pole. It was Earth's Sun. The light was so bright and
close that it didn't twinkle like the other specks of light. But except for
using the star as a convenient navigation beacon to supplement their magnetic
directional sense, none of the animals bothered to think more about the strange
light. There was always plenty of food from the constantly growing plants and
the smaller animals. An animal
doesn t need to
develop curiosity and intelligence if it has no problems that need solving.
TIME: 2000
A.D.
The
blinking, radiating, spinning neutron star was now one-tenth of a light year
from the Sun. After a half-million years the star had cooled, and its spin
speed had slowed to only five revolutions per second. It still sent out pulses
of radio waves, but these were but a weak remembrance of its brilliant earlier
days.
In a few
hundred more years the neutron star would pass by the solar system at a
distance of 250 astronomical units. Its gravity would perturb the outer
planets, especially Pluto, way out at 40 AU from the sun. But Earth, snuggled
up to Sol in its orbit of one AU radius, would scarcely notice the passage. The
star would then leave the Solar System—never to return.
By now the
life forms on Earth had invented the telescope, but even this was inadequate to
see the tiny pinpoint of light in the vast heavens unless one knew exactly
where to look.
Would it
pass unseen?
Pulsar
TIME:
Jacqueline
Carnot strode over to a long table in the data processing lab in the CCCP-NASA-ESA
Deep Space Research Center at CalTech. A frown clouded her pretty face. The cut
of her shoulder-length brown hair and her careful choice of tailored clothing
stamped her at once as "European."
Her skirt,
blouse and clogs were her only items of clothing. It was not that she did not
own stockings—and purses—and makeup—and rings—and perfume—and other
"women's things;" it was just that she was in too much of a hurry in
the morning to bother with them, for she had work to
do. The French government had not given her a state fellowship to study at the
International Space Institute so she could spend all morning getting dressed.
The slender
woman swiftly cleared the table of its accumulated scraps of paper and tossed
down a long data record at one end. The cylinder of paper rolled obediently
across the table, then obstinately off the end and five meters across the floor
before it finally stopped. Jacqueline left the roll on the floor and started to
analyze the data. This menial task would normally have been handled by a
computer. Unfortunately, computers now insisted on a charge number for
everything, and when Jacqueline had logged on this morning she had found that
the meager balance that she had been saving out of Professor Sawlinski's
allocation for her thesis had been swallowed up by another retroactive
intercurrency account readjustment. She knew that Sawlinski had plenty of
rubles in his research budget; but, without his budget authorization and his
personal approval to the computer (by the crypto-password that
she knew, but
dared not use), she was reduced to waiting and hand-processing until he
returned.
Actually, it
was fun working with the numbers in this personal way. With the computer doing
the analysis, the numbers would be crammed into digital bins whether they were
real data or noise, and right now there was a lot of scruffy noise on the
graph.
The data
Jacqueline was analyzing came from the low frequency radio detectors on the old
CCCP-ESA Out-of-the-Ecliptic probe that was the first major cooperative effort
between the Soviets and Europeans. Back in the early days of the race to the
Moon, the Europeans had supplied the first Soviet lunar rover with laser
retroreflectors. Then, after a disastrous experience with the Americans in
which one of
As the
spacecraft climbed up out of the ecliptic plane, its sensors began to see a new
picture of the Sun. The magnetic fields that blossomed out from the sunspots at
the middle latitudes of the Sun were now attenuated, while new effects began to
dominate the scene.
The data
from the CCCP-ESA Out-of-the-Ecliptic probe had been thoroughly analyzed by
many well-funded scientific groups early in the mission. The information
gathered had shown that the Sun had a case of indigestion. It had eaten too
many black holes.
The
scientists found an extremely periodic fluctuation in the strength of the Sun's
polar magnetic field. The magnetosphere of the Sun had many variations, of
course. Each sunspot was a major source of variability. However, sunspots were
irregular in time and were so strong in the middle latitudes that they
dominated everything. It was not until the OE probe was above the Sun, sampling
data for long periods of time, that the finely detailed, highly periodic
variations in the radio flux were found and interpreted as periodic variations
in the Sun's magneto-
sphere. It was
finally concluded that the Sun had four dense masses, probably miniature
primordial black holes, orbiting around each other deep inside the sun. These
disturbed the Sun's normal fusion equilibrium by gnawing away at its bowels.
The effect of the black holes on the Sun would become serious in a few million
years, but all they did now was bring on an occasional ice age.
Although the
human race realized that the Sun was not a reliable source of energy for the
long term, there was little they could do about it. After a short flurry of
national and international concern over the "death of the Sun," the human
race settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way that they
knew—they ignored it and hoped it would go away.
It was now
two decades later. Miraculously, one of the two communication transmitters on
the satellite and three of the experiments were still running. One of them was
the low frequency radio experiment. Its output was sprawled across a table and
down a computation-lab floor, slowly being marked up by the swift, slender
fingers of a determined graduate student.
"Damn!
Here comes the scruff again," Jacqueline muttered
to herself as she slid the long sheet across the table and noticed that the
slowly varying trace with the complex sinusoidal pattern began to blur. Her job
for her thesis was to find another periodic variation in that complex pattern
that would indicate that there were five (or more) black holes. Failing that,
she needed to prove that there were only four. (At least she had been able to
get her peripatetic advisor to agree that a well-documented negative result would
be an adequate thesis.)
However, she
was worried. The scruff was blurring the data, ruining a good portion of it. It
wouldn't have made much difference if the good part had shown some new pattern
and she could have ferreted out a new black hole to add to the Sun's problems.
However, it was now pretty obvious that she would have to be content with a
negative thesis, and this noise was going to make it difficult to convince the
examining committee that there were only four black holes in the Sun. She stared
at the noisy portion as her arms rapidly slid the long sheet of paper across
the table.
"I
shouldn't complain about this antique spacecraft," she said. "But why
did it have to start stuttering now?"
She moved
along the trace. The scruff got worse, then slowly faded away. When she got to
the clear section, she
started to measure
the amplitude averages again. In a way it was good that the computer was not
blindly working on this data. She had enough sense to ignore the noisy parts,
and thus end up with a very clean spectrum. But if the computer had been
handling the data, it would have folded the scruff in with the good data and
the resulting spectrum would have had a lot of spurious spikes that would have
given the examination committee plenty of ammunition. Jacqueline finished her
data analysis late in the evening. She looked at the neat figures in the
notebook.
"That
is the hard way to analyze data," she said to herself. "Tomorrow it
gets worse, when I have to read it all into the computer. I hope old Saw-face
has loosened the purse strings by then." Jacqueline glanced wearily at the
long tumbled ribbon of paper on the floor and, swirling it around, finally
found a loose end and started to roll it up.
"Up and
down with a double hump, triple hump, bump— repeat twice more, then
scrurrrrTff, then up and down with a double hump, triple hump, bump—repeat
twice more, then scrufffffff ..." Jacqueline stopped her semiautomatic
mouthing of the pattern on the roll. She quickly gathered up the whole pile of
paper and carefully carried it to one end of the long room and stretched it out
on the floor. She then went to one end and strode rapidly along it, looking for
the noisy portions. "The scruff is periodic!" she exclaimed.
The noise
seemed to have a period of about a day, and, as she went from one end of the
roll to the other, it slowly drifted with respect to the more regular periodic
bumps that were the meat of her thesis. She had previously thought that the
noisy portions were due to random malfunctions of the spacecraft, but now the
periodic nature of the scruff made her look elsewhere for the cause.
"It
could be that the spacecraft develops an arc in the transmitter for a few hours
every day, but that doesn't sound very likely," she said. She finished
rolling up the paper and, carrying the roll with her, went into the
communications lab. The first thing she looked up was the spacecraft log.
Fortunately, that information was in the general library file and the computer
would let her look at that without charging her. She flashed the log backwards,
page by page. Most of the entries had her name entered:
J. CARNOT: ESA: ACCOUNT
SAW-2-J: LFR DATA DUMP ,
"I seem
to be the only one using this satellite," she said.
Finally she
came to an engineering note. Once every few days or so, during slack periods,
the spacecraft engineers at the CCCP-NASA-ESA Deep Space Network communications
center would take the spacecraft through its engineering check list.
POWER 22% NOMINAL
X-BAND DOWN-LINK 80% NOMINAL
K-BAND DOWN-LINK DEAD
ATTITUDE CONTROL DEAD
SPIN RATE 77
MICRORAD/SEC
FUNCTIONING EXPERIMENTS
LOW FREQUENCY RADIO
SOLAR IR MONITOR
X-RAY TELESCOPE (STANDBY)
"Only
two experiments on," she said. "The engineers must have turned off the
X-ray telescope since the last time I checked." She looked at the number
for the spin rate, flipped the computer terminal into compute mode, and made a
quick calculation.
"Seventy-seven
microradians per second comes out to be a little more than one revolution per
day—about the same period as the scruff. The scruff must be caused by the
effect of the solar heating on the transmitting antenna or some other solar
effect."
She logged off
the terminal, took the roll of paper, and headed back through the pre-dawn
hours to her room. The roll would join the many other rolls that lay stacked in
a pile on her bookshelf, while she joined the rest of
TIME;
In her
sleep, Jacqueline was flying. No, not flying, but drifting through empty space.
She looked down and finally realized where she was. Below her was the bright
globe of the Sun. Spread out before her was the whole Solar System as seen from
above. Her astronomically trained mind had placed the dream planets in their
proper positions and she could almost
imagine faint lines
tracing out the nearly circular orbits that gave the Solar System the
appearance of a bulls-eye target from this perspective. She found the tiny
double-planet system that was the Earth-Moon pair and was straining to try and
make out detail on the Earth when the slow, inexorable rotation of her body
dragged her eyes away from the scene. Unable to turn her head around any further,
she was forced to gaze upwards away from the Sun, her arms and legs
outstretched in the form of an X. "Just like the low frequency radio
antennas sticking out of the OE probe," she thought.
Soon the
rotation brought her body around again and she admired the view. She finally
concentrated on looking at the north pole of the Sun. She had no trouble
looking at the Sun despite its brightness, and she searched for any variations
on the nearly featureless surface. As she stared, she saw nothing with her
eyes, but she finally began to notice weak pulsations in her arms and legs. A
double pulse, triple pulse, pulse ...
"I'm
picking up the complex radio signal of the orbiting black holes!" she
thought, as her body continued to revolve. Soon she could no longer see the
Sun, but she could still feel the pulsations in her arms and legs. Then, while
staring out at right angles from the Sun, she felt a rapid tingling sensation
building up in her right arm. It became stronger and stronger, nearly blotting
out the slower, rhythmic pulsations. "The scruff!" she exclaimed, and
then began to laugh at herself ...
"Nothing
like getting yourself so wrapped up in your thesis work that you dream you have
become the spacecraft yourself," said Jacqueline as she sat up in her
room. She looked at the bustling noonday traffic out her window and rubbed the
prickles out of her right arm, restoring the circulation it had lost while
trapped under her exhausted body.
She was
halfway through her belated breakfast when the dream surfaced again in her
mind. Although she knew the spacecraft's operational characteristics almost as
well as she knew the operating characteristics of her own body, it did seem
strange to her that in the dream the scruff came when she was looking away from
the Sun, not toward it.
She thought
about it for a while, then went to her bookshelf and got down the roll she had
been working on the previous night and an older one from several months ago.
She unrolled a section from each of them on the floor, one above the other, and
slid the old one back and forth until the slowly varying complex pattern caused
by the orbital motion of the black
holes was matched
up on the two rolls. She then looked along both sheets and came to the noisy
portions. They were different. First of all, the scruff a few months ago was
significantly weaker (although that could be explained by a degrading piece of
equipment or insulation), but there also seemed to be a definite shift in the
position of the peak of the scruff activity with respect to the position of the
Sun. She got out an even older roll, and checked it. The scruff was very weak
now. In fact, she remembered that the computer had had no trouble obtaining a
nice, clean spectrum from this data since the spectral energy in the noise had
been so small. Again, however, there seemed to be a delay in the position of
the peak intensity of the scruff.
"Well,
this is one time when the number-crunching objectivity of the computer is
orders of magnitude better than the highly subjective human hand and eye. It is
back to the computer for you, Jacqueline," she said to herself. "But
first you have to get some more computer time from old Saw-face."
Jacqueline
walked across the CalTech campus to the Space Physics building. The huge
edifice, built in the days when space budgets were a significant fraction of a
nation's budget, was now the Space Physics building in name only. Only the
basement computer room and the first floor offices contained space research
activities. The remaining floors of the building had been taken over by
graduate students of the Social Sciences department. If the CalTech-Jet
Propulsion Laboratories combine had not been able to talk NASA, the Europeans,
and the Russians into combining their dwindling national space budgets into
supporting one international space research center with a single Deep Space
Network, then there would be no deep space research at all.
After the
Americans had given up sponsoring deep space probes and the European Space
Agency had broken into squabbling factions after the loss of SpaceLab, the
Russian planners, without visible competition, had lowered their priority for
deep space research to almost zero and concentrated their funding on manned and
unmanned Earth orbital ventures. The cold war was still on, but it had
degenerated into an almost automatic name-calling at the United Nations. The
Russian standard of living rose, and as it did, the party planners found that
they had to give more and more attention to a no-longer docile population and
could not justify a separate deep space program.
Jacqueline
walked down the almost deserted corridors of the
Space
Physics building to Professor Vladimir Sawlinski's office. Jacqueline
hesitated, then knocked.
"Da?"
said a gruff voice.
Jacqueline
opened the door and walked in. A thin, middle-aged gentleman swiveled away from
a computer screen filled with text in Cyrillic characters and turned to look at
her. Jacqueline's Russian was good enough that she could tell that he was
reading a science news article about the supposed discovery of a magnetic
monopole in some iron ore in
Sawlinksi's
clothing was unusual for a Russian. It was a tailored suit in the latest
European style. Its very presence on his spare frame advertised that the wearer
was a multi-cultured world traveler who was given significant freedom and even
more significant financial reimbursement by a worldly wise Russian government
that expected great things from him. The man's balding head bent forward as he
peered over his reading glasses at the young woman.
"Jacqueline!"
Sawlinski said, his face beaming with pleasure. "Do come in, young lady.
How is your thesis work coming? Have you found another collapsed substellar
object?"
Jacqueline
grinned inwardly at the Russian's refusal to call them miniature black holes.
Unfortunately, the Americans and Englishmen who had first popularized the
concept of black holes were not aware that the phrase "black hole"
had a context in the Russian language that was not used in polite company.
"I have
used up my account and the computer will not talk to me anymore," she
said. "I thought I had plenty of computer time left, at least for another
month of work, but a retroactive intercurrency adjustment canceled it
out."
Professor
Sawlinski flinched. He had been afraid of something like that. His budget from
the
"All
right," he sighed. "I will transfer more money from my
main account.
But my account will also be depleted by the same adjustment. I am afraid that
this means that I won't be able to go to the
He turned
after a minute and said, "The computer will now talk to you again.
However, please be prudent in what you ask it to do, for the rubles are getting
scarce."
"Thank
you, Professor Sawlinski," Jacqueline replied. "However, I still have
much work to do to finish my thesis. As of now, I cannot find any other
periodic signals in the data. Also, the records from the probe are getting
worse. The noise on the traces is growing in amplitude, and I have to throw out
a good portion of the data. The noise itself is interesting though. I went back
through some old traces and I find it is not only increasing in amplitude but
the peak seems to shift in time with respect to the radio signals from the
Sun."
"Da,
the 'scruff,' as you call it," he said. "It
is not going away, but getting worse? Well, we should not expect much from a
spacecraft that is so old."
"But
the shift with time is strong evidence that the scruff is not generated by the
Sun." Jacqueline protested. "I think we ought to look into it."
"I can
think of many mechanisms whereby the failing electronics on the spacecraft
could produce this static," he replied with a smile. "We want you to
get your thesis done without spending too many of my precious rubles, so I
think we ought to concentrate on the analysis of the radio data that is not bothered
by the noise."
"But it
would not take long for me to have the computer go back through the data and
get a good estimate of the drift," she said. Then remembering the tingling
in her right arm, she suddenly became sure of something else, although it was
against all logic that her position in bed in Pasadena had anything to do with
an inanimate spacecraft cruising through space two hundred astronomical units
away. Yet many a scientific idea had first surfaced in a dream of the
researcher. Perhaps her subconscious was trying to tell her something.
"I am
almost positive that the scruff is being picked up by just one of the four
antenna wires," she said eagerly. "If I could get the engineers to
switch the data collection mode to read each antenna separately ..."
"Nyet!"
boomed Professor Sawlinski. "Paying the Deep
Space Network to point their
antennas to a given spacecraft to collect a one hour prearranged data dump is
expensive enough. Do you realize how much it costs to send a command to a
spacecraft?"
She started
to speak, but Sawlinski cut her off as he dropped his recently acquired
"American Professor" image and reverted to his autocratic old school
Russian stance. "Nyet! Nyet!
Nyet!" he said as he turned his back on her and switched on his
computer console. "Do svidaniya, Mademoiselle Camot."
Jacqueline
started to speak, but realized that the interview was over. She seethed
inwardly, but finally decided to leave and take her frustrations out on the computer.
At least he had transferred the money to her account before he had turned her
off. Quietly closing the door behind her, she made her way downstairs to the
computer console room.
"I
wonder how much a command change really does cost?" she thought as she
made her way down the steps. "I will go out to Jet Propulsion
Laboratories, talk to the Deep Space Network engineers and find out if it is as
expensive as he thinks it is."
With the
computer glad to see her again, now that she had money in her account, she read
in the figures that she had laboriously extracted the previous evening. She
then ran an analysis of the collected data. The peaks in the power spectral
density curve were still in four families. The four lowest peaks were the
fundamental orbital frequencies of the four black holes, while the higher
harmonics were evidence of the slight ellipticity of the orbits. The basic
pattern had not changed for decades. Although the black holes were orbiting in
the interior of the Sun where the densities were hundreds and thousands of
times greater than water, as far as the ultra-dense black holes were concerned,
they were orbiting in a near vacuum.
She searched
carefully between the four lowest spikes, but could find no evidence of another
peak. She had the computer repeat her search, and it
came up with three two-sigma candidates, but they looked like noise to her and
a quick check with a random half-data set proved her right. She was through for
the time being, for a data dump was not scheduled for another week. But while
she was on the computer, she decided to have another look at the noise problem.
She first
wrote a program to extract the noisy portions from the data sets, then to find
the maximum of the amplitude of the scruff (which was a hard concept for the
computer to grasp),
then to plot the
phase of the scruff maximum with respect to the position of the Sun. In the
process, she learned that the spin rate of the satellite had increased slightly
in the past years, somehow gaining angular momentum from the solar wind and
light pressure.
Further
examination of the drift of the phase and some calculations of the orientation
of the spacecraft with respect to the Sun found that the peak in the scruff
stayed constant with respect to the distant stars.
"That means
that whatever the source of the noise, it is outside the Solar System!"
Jacqueline exclaimed.
Then she
realized that she had never asked herself what the "scruff' really looked
like. On the hardcopy printout of the reconstituted analog signal from the
spacecraft, the scruff just looked like random fuzz. She cleared the screen and
called up the latest data dump. The curve of the low frequency radio readout
wound its familiar way across the screen. She stopped it as she came to the
maximum of the scruff. The scruff was so strong in this section that it often
saturated the screen.
She called
on a section of the data analysis program that she had seldom used before, and
a small section of the data was expanded on the screen. The hours-long humps
that were the subject of her thesis were now stretched out so much that only a
portion of one of them could fit into the screen. The scruff now dominated the
screen and looked as noisy and nasty as ever. She called for another expansion,
and the computer activated an override warning circuit.
WARNING!
PLOT SCALE INCOMPATIBLE WITH
DATA DIGITALIZATION
RATE.
PLEASE CONFIRM COMMAND.
Jacqueline
hesitated slightly, then hit the confirm key. Immediately a set of almost
random dots filled the screen. The short-term variation from point to point was
strong, but the general amplitude level seemed to rise and fall slowly, with a
period of many minutes.
Again, she
called on the computer to carry out an operation on the data that she had never
used before. She had been interested solely in the variations of the data with
periods of weeks to days. Now she asked it to carry out a harmonic an-
alysis with periods of seconds. Again the computer
complained.
WARNING!
SPECTRAL ANALYSIS SCALE
INCOMPATIBLE WITH
DATA DIGITALIZATION
RATE.
PLEASE CONFIRM COMMAND.
There was no
hesitation this time: Jacqueline had hit the confirm
key long before the computer had printed its objections. The spectral analysis
plot flashed on the screen. There was a large spike around one Hertz that
represented the one per second data digitalization rate, but at 0.005 Hertz
there was a strong spike, indicating a periodic fluctuation with a 200-second
period. However, the 200-second variation could have been caused by a beating
between the one Hertz data sampling rate of the spacecraft and some high
frequency oscillation that was close to some harmonic of the sampling rate.
Jacqueline felt from the behavior of the data that a high frequency variation
was causing the scruff, but it would be hard to prove it with the spacecraft
sampling rate set at one sample per second.
Jacqueline,
her enthusiasm finally exhausted by confusion and sleepiness, dropped the
hardcopy printouts of the data into Professor Sawlinski's mailbox and went off
to bed. She again had a dream about flying above the Solar System, only this
time she was whirling around rapidly. She awoke feeling dizzy, then went back
to sleep to dream ordinary, quickly forgotten dreams.
After
awakening the next day, Jacqueline went by Professor Sawlinski's office. His
door was open, and her data sheets were spread out on his desk. He was talking
with Professor Cologne, the astrophysicist.
"This
high frequency scruff is definitely not random noise, for there is evidence of
a strong periodicity of 199-milliseconds, or a little over five cycles per
second. The beating between the 199-millisecond pulsations and the one-Hertz
data sampling rate gives it the 200-second beat pattern. However, it is not a
200-second fluctuation because the engineering interruptions in the science
data are not exactly an even number of seconds long, and the 200-second beat
starts with a new phase after each engineering readout.
If you take enough data, and do an analysis of it, you find the 199-millisecond
periodicity."
As he spoke,
Professor Sawlinski held up Jacqueline's printout. Professor Cologne studied it
briefly, then returned it with the comment, "It
has all the earmarks of a pulsar, but there just isn't any known pulsar of that
frequency. I would suspect the spacecraft somehow has found a way to become a
low frequency radio oscillator."
Professor
Sawlinski saw her standing in the door. "Ah, Jacqueline, come in. I was
just showing Professor Cologne our latest data. I have decided that we ought to
arrange to have the data digitalization rate increased to at least ten times
per second, so we can obtain a better idea of the time varying nature of these
pulsations."
"But
the cost ..." Jacqueline interjected.
"Yes,
it will cost some money, but by the time the computer billing gets to us, we
will be well into the new planning year," he replied. "Could you
visit the JPL people and arrange for the change?"
"Norn
de Dieu!" muttered Jacqueline under her breath. "First,
not enough money, and now plenty of money."
Aloud, she
replied, "Yes, Professor Sawlinski. Do you also want to try reading out
the antennas sequentially?"
"Nyet!"
he replied brusquely. "How many times must I remind you, only
change one parameter at a time in an experiment!"
"Yes,
Professor," she said, and practically bowed her way out of the office.
Once in the
hall, she found herself automatically heading down the stairs to the computer
room. She stopped and started to turn back to go to JPL, but then she decided
to spend a little more time learning how the spacecraft command system
operated. She felt that perhaps she could not only satisfy Professor Sawlinski,
but also her own curiosity.
After a few
hours spent browsing through the engineering handbooks, she smiled and headed
up the stairs, where she caught the CalTech jitney bus to JPL. Sawlinski's name
moved her swiftly through the administrative maze and she shortly was assigned
to Donald Niven, one of the JPL project managers.
When she walked
into the office she had been directed to, she saw a chunky young man with
neatly trimmed dark hair and the slacks, sports coat, and tie that seemed to be
the professional uniform of the engineers at JPL. She guessed that he was in
his late twenties. She had thought that a project man-
ager would be
someone older, but as their conversation proceeded, she could tell from his
cool, calm, methodical questions that, despite his age, he had acquired years
of experience in the Deep Space Network organization. Their discussion was half
technical, half financial.
"So the
length or complexity of the command has almost no bearing on the cost?"
she asked.
"That's
right," Donald said. "So that groups like yours could plan their expenditures,
we worked out a standard rate for each command cycle."
"Suppose
a command has a series of steps in it?" she asked.
"As
long as the steps are something for the spacecraft computer to go through and
do not involve us, then the charge is the same for one or ten steps," he
replied. "What do you have in mind?"
Jacqueline
got our her program sheets. Donald swung his computer
console around so they could both look at it. He typed in the code for the OE
spacecraft operations manual.
"The
first thing I want to do is to increase the low frequency radio data
digitalization rate to its maximum," she said. "Then, after a week of
high rate data collection, I want to have the data taken alternately with the
four antennas, each one taking data for one minute at a time. After that, I
want to have the X-ray telescope reactivated. It has a one-degree field of
view, and I want it to scan between these two angles at a rate of one degree
per day." Jacqueline handed over the sheet of paper and he took it.
"I see
these are in spacecraft coordinates," he said, his opinion of the young
woman increasing with every second. "Thanks for taking the trouble to
convert them for me."
"It was
no trouble," she replied calmly. "I have been living with that
spacecraft so long that I practically think like it."
Together
they worked out the command procedure, and Donald transferred it to the
programming section. The computer would actually do the programming, but the
programmers had to take the computer result through several tests to make sure
that some bugs had not crept into the computer simulation in the decades since
the spacecraft had been launched.
"I'll
give you a call when the command is ready," Donald said. "It'll be a
few days before the formal procedure is finished. Fortunately, I don't think we
will have any trouble getting permission from the sponsoring agency. Although
the experiment package was built by ESA, the spacecraft itself was
built by the
Russians, so the authority for command changes rests with the Soviet Academy of
Science, and Professor Sawlinski's name should be good enough for them. Do you
have a telephone number where I can reach you?"
TIME:
As the days
passed, Jacqueline and Donald spent many hours pouring over the command time
line. It was a long sequence, with even longer delays in it.
"Why
can't we have the low frequency radio on high digi-talization rate while the
X-ray telescope is scanning?" Jacqueline asked. "That way, if the
X-ray telescope picks up something unusual, we can check the low frequency
radio to see if the scruff is active."
Donald paged
the screen to the section describing the operational characteristics of the low
frequency radio digitalization block. "The X-ray telescope uses a lot of
power, especially when it is in the scanning mode," he said. "I'm
afraid that, because of the age of the radioisotope power generators, the
voltage on the power bus will drop so much that the low frequency radio
digitalization will blank out if we ask it to keep operating at its highest
rate."
"How
fast can it operate?" Jacqueline asked.
"Well,"
Donald said as he looked through the table, "it was minimum-voltage
designed for an upper rate of eight times a second, and we have it pushed all
the way to sixteen times per second. With the low voltage on the bus, we ought
to come back to either eight or four times per second."
"Leave
it sixteen times a second," said Jacqueline firmly. "No data is
preferable to poor data."
Donald
looked at her with a slightly bewildered expression as if he were seeing past
her pretty face for the first time. He started to protest, but decided against
it and made the short change in the command sequence as she wanted it.
Slowly the
command was assembled. Jacqueline and Donald worked on it periodically during
the day when Donald was charging to Sawlinski's account. They also talked about
it over lunch and in the evenings, when Sawlinski's budget received an extra
dividend of Donald's time.
TIME:
Donald lay
back on the grass of the recently mowed lawn of the Griffith Park Observatory.
It was Saturday and a pleasant evening lay before him. First,
a visit to the early show at the planetarium where he would see the highly
touted Holorama show. Then an evening under the stars
at the Greek Theater down the hill to listen to the Star Crushers, the latest
sensation in popular music. And, to go with it all, a
fascinating and beautiful, but perplexing, girl.
The Sun had
set and Donald's mind wandered up into the lightly star-sprinkled sky as it had
been doing ever since he was a little child and he and his father would go out
into the back yard in the evening to look at the stars. Occasionally they would
both be rewarded by the quick slash of a meteor or the slow progression of a
satellite. Donald knew that since those days, his life had been fixed. He
wanted to go to the stars!
Unfortunately,
mankind's reach for the stars had faltered as Donald came of age, but his
persistence had garnered him one of the few jobs left in the field. Although it
now looked as if he would never get off the Earth himself, he was out there in
proxy in the spacecraft that he tended.
Jacqueline
took another sip of wine and watched Donald's eyes as they peered into the darkening
skies. They were as vacant as the deep space they were contemplating.
"Next
time he will make the picnic supper and I will bring the wine," she said
to herself as she thoughtfully slid the sip of wine back over her tongue.
"These
Jacqueline
knew Donald well enough to realize where his mind was. "Which one are you
looking at?" she asked, knowing that he knew the position in the sky of
every one of the six deep-space spacecraft that he was responsible for
monitoring.
"Not
one of mine," he replied, "but the first one to leave the Solar
System—the Pioneer X. It went out between Taurus and Orion. It must be at
10,000 AU by now. I was imagining that I was out there, no longer able to
communicate with Earth, pushing on alone, buffeted by micrometeors and the
interstellar wind, getting more and more tired but pressing onward and outward
..."
Jacqueline's
tinkling laugh brought him back to Earth. He rolled over and glowered somewhat
shamefacedly at her.
"Don't
be mad," she said. "You and I must be more alike than we realize, for
I too sometimes dream that I am a spacecraft."
She told him
of her strange dream, and then they both talked about the well-known phenomenon
of graduate students living, eating, and even dreaming their thesis problems.
"Your
subconscious was probably trying to tell you something," he said.
"I
know," she replied, "and I take that dream almost as seriously as I
do the results of my calculations, or at least I will until we get something
out of the spacecraft that contradicts it. But I was thinking,
perhaps if we delayed the start of the X-ray telescope scan, and first stepped
through the various dig-italization rates on the low frequency radio, we might
pick up some additional information on the exact spectrum of the scruff."
As
Jacqueline shifted from being a companion for the evening to a colleague at
work, Donald realized that the drifting mood of the picnic had disappeared, and
they could talk shop standing in line just as easily.
"Maybe,"
he said as he started to pack the basket. "Let's put this in the car and
then get in the line for the show. We can talk about it more there."
TIME:
The Deep Space
Network spent five minutes (and many rubles) to launch the command into space.
The five light-minute long string of radio pulses traveled for over a day
before it reached the OE probe 200 AU away in its high arc over the Sun. The
command was stored, and the spacecraft computer rapidly computed the check sum.
It found no obvious errors, but the string of bits was treated like a
potentially dangerous cancer virus. It was not allowed to get into the command
mechanism just yet, for if there were something wrong
in that string of bits, it could kill the spacecraft just as surely as a meteor
strike. A copy of the bit stream stored in the holding memory was sent back to
Earth. There the copy of the copy was checked with the original. Finally,
another copy of the original command string, followed by a separate execute
com-
mand, was sent
out to reassure the OE probe that it could now change its operational state.
Jacqueline
was waiting when the next data dump came into the computer. It was nearly
midnight—a typical working hour for a graduate student—only now she was not as
lonely as she had been in previous months when she had sat at this console in
the early morning hours.
"Looks
like a good dump," said Donald as he watched the Deep Space Network report
build up on his screen.
Jacqueline
turned to smile at him, but was interrupted by another, less kindly voice.
"Clean
up the low frequency radio data and do a quick plot on the screen,"
Professor Sawlinski commanded.
Jacqueline's
practiced fingers flew over the keyboard, and soon the computer was rearranging
the data from spacecraft format to plotting format. There was a lot of data now
that the digitalization rate had been increased, and it took some time.
"Here
it comes," said Donald, as he watched the plot start to build up on
Jacqueline's screen. The complex, humped pattern of the low frequency radio
variations snaked their way across the display, crowding all their variations
into a few inches of screen. Jacqueline peered closely at the display and
slowly the greenish white line changed texture, as if it were going out of
focus.
"The
scruff is starting," she said.
They all
looked as the slow variations became almost submerged in a flurry of noise.
Jacqueline
noted the time of onset of the scruff and stopped the slowly moving plot with a
few strokes of the delete key. A few more commands, and soon a new plot
came on the screen. This time the sinusoidal variations were well spaced, and
the scruff was now a distinct pulsation.
"It is
definitely periodic!" Sawlinski said. "Expand it further!"
In the next
plot, the slow variations that were the basis of Jacqueline's thesis had been
reduced to a gradually increasing trend line. And on that line there marched a series
of noisy spikes, as equally separated as soldiers in a parade, but varying
greatly in their size.
"It
certainly looks just like a pulsar," exclaimed Sawlinski. "What is
the period?"
"I'll
run a spectral analysis of this section," Jacqueline said.
Soon the
spectral analysis was on the screen. There was a
lot of noise
and some sideband spikes, but there was no doubt that the data centered
predominantly at a frequency of 5.02 Hertz or a period of 199 milliseconds.
"Something
that regular can only be manmade—or a pulsar," said Sawlinski. "I
want you to find the other sections of scruff and see if the periods are the
same. If they are, see if one section of scruff keeps in step with the beat set
up by the preceding sections. I will check the library to get the latest data
on pulsars." He went across the room and activated another console.
Jacqueline
peered at the screen and said, "If you are going to look up pulsar
periods, I would say that the period is 199.2 milliseconds, although the last
number could be off by a few digits."
By the time
Sawlinski had put the console into library mode and had obtained a list of the
known pulsars with periods of less than one second, Jacqueline had determined
that the pulses indeed kept very exact time. Although they faded away and
reappeared a day later as the spacecraft slowly rotated, the new line of
marching pulses was still in step with the first batch. She followed the pulses
through the whole set of data. They kept accurate time during the whole week.
"The
period is now 0.1992687 seconds and seems to be good to at least six
places," Jacqueline said as Sawlinski glanced at her.
He looked
through the tables of pulsar periods on his screen. "There are no known
pulsars with that period," he said. "Yet it must be a pulsar. If we
only knew exactly where to look, maybe the radio telescopes here on Earth could
find it."
Jacqueline
finally decided to tell him of her decision to add an additional command to the
original one. "Professor Sawlinski," she said, "while Donald and
I were working out the details of the command to the spacecraft to have it
speed up its data digitalization rate, we realized that the length of the
command made no difference to the cost of sending the command. We also figured
that, after a week of high rate data, we would have obtained most of the
information on the nature of the high frequency scruff, and we could then have
the spacecraft do something else."
"What
did you do!" Sawlinski barked at her.
Jacqueline
faced him and patiently explained. "After a week of data collection at
high rate, we programmed the spacecraft to continue at a high data rate, but to
switch cyclically between
the four
antenna arms. I hoped that the scruff would show up more on one arm than
another, and we could at least tell from what quadrant of the sky the signal
was coming from."
Sawlinski's
face glowered while he thought over what she had told him. Finally he relaxed
and said, "Horosho!" He then turned to Donald and asked for
the time of the next data dump. "One week from now, minus about a
half-hour." "Horosho. I will
see you both then," he said. "Meanwhile, Jacqueline, you had better
get this information ready for publication in Astmphysical Letters. We
will want the period, the apparent strength, and anything else you can extract
out of the data. We will hold off sending it in for review until we have had a
chance to see next week's data. Dobri vecher."
He turned on his heel and left them.
TIME:
The
following week, the console room was crowded. Professor Sawlinski had brought a
few radio astronomers with him, and several of the faculty and graduate
students, having heard rumors in the halls, had also gathered to get in on the
excitement. Donald had brought along a spacecraft antenna design engineer; together
they had dredged up the exact configuration of the low frequency radio antennas
on the spacecraft and calculated the exact radiation pattern of each arm. The
antenna patterns were very complex because the response of an individual arm
depended strongly on the detailed shape of the spacecraft on the side where
that particular arm was attached.
Jacqueline
was also ready with a complex data reduction program that would produce five
plots on the screen, one showing the signal detected in each arm, and one showing
the combined response of all the arms.
Donald
turned from his console, where he had been monitoring the engineering data from
the Deep Space Network.
"The
dump is finished. You should find the data in the computer files now," he
said.
Jacqueline's
hands flew over the keyboard and soon five greenish white lines were snaking
their way across the screen.
"Here comes the scruff," she said. Then leaning forward she
looked at the four top traces and exclaimed, "The pulses are showing up in
only one of the antenna arms!"
It soon was
obvious that, as the spacecraft tumbled slowly
through space with
its four long antenna arms sweeping across different portions of the sky, one
of the antennas was doing a much better job of picking up the high frequency
pulses than were the others. They would now be able to do a better job of
pinpointing the source in the sky.
The
spacecraft antenna design engineer shook his head in puzzlement. "It
doesn't make sense that one of those antennas would be that much more sensitive
than the others. After all, they are only long hunks of wire, and their antenna
patterns should not look all that different. Which one is it?"
"Antenna
number two," Jacqueline said.
The engineer
turned to his console and soon a directivity pattern, fleshed out in
pseudo-three-dimensional shape by the computer, flashed on the screen.
"I
don't see any significant directivity here," he said.
Donald had
been watching, and had noticed a frequency number at the bottom of the screen.
"The
pulses could be high frequency bursts that are higher than the nominal design
frequency for the low frequency radio antennas," he said. "Can you
calculate the antenna pattern for a higher frequency?"
"I
already have that calculated and stored," said the engineer. He typed in a
command and soon the pattern was replaced by another one. Sticking up out of
the center of the pattern was a high-gain spike.
The engineer
looked at it for a second and then announced, "That spike is called an
'end fire' lobe and is a complex interaction of the antenna with the panel and
instruments on that side of the spacecraft. We often see such spikes showing up
at the high frequency end of the design range." He turned to Jacqueline
and said, "That makes it easy; your pulses are coming from the direction the
antenna is pointing."
The radio
astronomers began to get interested. They now knew in which direction relative
to the spacecraft the pulsating signals came from. However, it took a few hours
of work with the Deep Space Network and the spacecraft engineers before they
knew exactly how the spacecraft was oriented with respect to the stars when the
pulses were at their maximum.
Within two
days, several radio dishes were pointing their narrow beams out into space,
searching for the new pulsar. Even though they knew the exact period and even
to a fraction of a second when they should see a pulse, none was found. The
mystery grew deeper.
TIME:
"Little
green men begin to sound more and more plausible," Donald said as he lay
on the grass next to Jacqueline. He had taken her to a show and had been
pleased that she had taken the trouble to put on her "women's
things." Behind her prettied-up face, the intelligence that was Jacqueline
peered out and frowned disapprovingly.
"Don't
be silly," she said. "There has to be a perfectly simple explanation,
but we just have not thought of it yet. Perhaps the X-ray telescope will tell
us something. Fortunately, it scanned over the probable position in the sky in
the second day of this week's data collection, so we won't have to wait too
long."
"Does
Sawlinski know about that part of the command?" Donald asked.
"No,"
Jacqueline said, "I didn't get a chance to tell him. In fact, he has been
so busy giving seminars and visiting radio astronomy antenna sites that I
haven't seen him for a week."
Donald
looked at his watch and said, "Well, it is almost time for the next data
dump. Let's go in and monitor it on the consoles." They rose and walked
through the darkness to the Space Sciences building.
This time
the console room held only two people. Donald sat behind Jacqueline and leaned
on the back of her chair, smelling her perfume and watching her slender fingers
play over the keyboard.
"The
X-ray data is in a different format from the radio data since it is just a count
of the number of X-ray photons detected," she said. "First, I will
get the directional plot and see if there is any significant increase in counts
in the same direction as the low frequency radio experiment detects radio
pulses."
Soon a
histogram of pulses versus the direction in the sky flashed on the screen.
"Look
at that spike!" Donald said. "Is that the right direction?"
"Mais oui!" Jacqueline's
fingers stumbled in the excitement, and she had to erase a distorted plot
before she slowed down and finally got the computer to show the number of
counts versus time when the telescope was pointing in the right direction.
"There
they are, just like little soldiers, five times a second!" said Donald.
"5.0183495 times per
second," Jacqueline retorted. "That number is engraved in my memory.
What I really hope to get out of this X-ray data is some evidence of delay
between the X-ray pulses and the radio pulses. The X-ray pulses will travel at
the speed of light, but the radio pulses will be delayed slightly by the
interstellar plasma and will arrive later. The more they are delayed, the more
plasma they had to travel through. The combination of X-ray data and radio data
will give us a rough idea of the distance to the pulsating source."
As she
talked, she was working the keyboard, and soon, underneath the marching row of
X-ray spikes, there was a similar row of spikes from the radio antenna.
"It is
a good thing you decided to digitalize the radio data sixteen times a second so
we could see the individual pulses," Donald said. "If we had tried
four times a second as I recommended, we would have missed most of them."
"There
is no delay!" Jacqueline cried, bewildered.
"Hmmm,"
said Donald, "maybe the delay is almost exactly 200 milliseconds and they
are just shifted."
"No,"
Jacqueline said, pointing to the screen. "Look—there is a very weak X-ray
pulse followed by three strong ones and then two weak ones.
You can see the exact pattern in the radio pulses, right below them. The delay
is almost zero. That must mean that whatever the source of the pulses, it is
very close to the detectors."
"...
and the closest thing to the detectors is the spacecraft itself," Donald
said. "I am afraid that somehow the spacecraft is putting spikes into both
the low frequency radio antenna and the X-ray telescope."
Jacqueline
frowned, then quickly produced two more plots with
much larger scales. The pulses were now so close together that they were back
to being scruff again. But the scruffy region on the X-ray plot was much
shorter than on the radio plot.
"No, it
is not the spacecraft," she said. "Look here, the
pulses come and go with time much faster for the X-ray telescope than for the
radio antenna. The X-ray telescope has a field of view that is limited to one degree,
while the high sensitivity spike in the radio antenna has a beam width of
almost three degrees, and these plots are consistent with the width of those
patterns."
"Well,
if it isn't the spacecraft," said Donald, "then what is it?"
"Give
me a few minutes," she said, and went back to typing on the keyboard.
Donald got
up, walked down the hall to the coffee machine and bought them both a cup of
coffee. It looked like a long evening ahead. When he returned, she had the
X-ray and radio-pulse trains up on the screen again, but now they were blown up
so far that only three pulses appeared on the screen.
"There
is a very slight time delay," she said as he walked in. "I wish I
could remember the number density for the interstellar plasma near the sun. I
worked out the values for the latest solar wind cycle last month; I will have
to go upstairs and look it up."
She made a
hard-copy printout of the graph on the screen, then
ran quickly upstairs. Donald followed slowly behind, carrying the two cups of
coffee. By the time he made it up the stairs, she had found the number for the
interstellar plasma density. She was punching away on her hand calculator when
he walked into her office.
"2300
AU!" she exclaimed. "That pulsar is only one-thirtieth of a light
year away!"
"A star that close?" Donald
asked. "Surely we would have seen it moving across the sky long ago."
"No,"
she said, "a pulsar is a spinning neutron star, and a neutron star is only
about twenty kilometers in diameter. Even if the temperature were high, the
size of the light-emitting area is so small that we wouldn't be able to see it
unless we looked in just the right place with a very large telescope. But you
are right, it is strange that it has not been picked
up in one of the sky surveys."
"If the
pulsar is that close, then why didn't the radio
astronomers find the pulses too?" he asked.
"Neutron
stars give off their radiation in beams that shoot out from the magnetic poles,
and you have to be in the direction of the beam to see the pulses," she
replied. "That is why the spacecraft sees the pulses and we can't. The
spacecraft is up out of the ecliptic by 200 AU and has moved up into the path
of the beams." She walked over to the whiteboard in the office, picked up
a colored marker, and started to pace and scribble.
Donald kept
silent as slender feet clicked back and forth across the floor in their dress
shoes. He waited patiently while long fingers scrawled diagrams and
calculations on the board. He watched in admiration as the pretty face puzzled
out the
complexity of the
mathematical transformation from one set of astrophysical coordinates to
another. Five minutes later, he was still admiring Jacqueline from behind when
she finally turned and spoke.
"It's
up in the northern sky," she said. "But it is not where we thought it
was. Because the neutron star is so close, there is a difference of over five
degrees in the angle from the spacecraft to the star and from the earth to the
star. No wonder the radio astronomers could not find it. We told them the wrong
direction."
She went
over to a star chart on her wall and carefully made a tiny cross. She turned
and, with a wry grin on her face, remarked, "And the reason it was never
picked up in a sky survey is that it is right next to Giansar, the fourth
magnitude star right at the end of Draco, the Dragon constellation. It would
take a good telescope to see the neutron star image in that bright glare."
She drank
down the rest of her coffee.
"Let's
go wake up old Saw-face," she said. "We've got a paper to
publish."
TIME:
In two days
the paper was prepared and accepted into the As-trophysical Letters computer.
The next day it was on the astro-physical information net, along with a note
from the radio astronomers that very weak 199-millisecond pulsations had been
detected from a region in the northern skies right at the end of the
constellation of Draco. Shortly thereafter, the new ten-meter telescope in
TIME:
It was
Saturday evening. Donald and Jacqueline sat on the grass of the Griffith
Observatory and talked. They were much
more relaxed
than they had been for months. Jacqueline's thesis was completed, and her
formal oral defense the day before had been a mere formality, what with the
world-wide scientific acclaim and video-news publicity being made over the
discovery.
"I
still don't understand why Sawlinski is doing the video-news interviews,"
Donald said with a frown. "You were the one who discovered the neutron
star first, not he."
"That
is not the way science works," Jacqueline explained. "A Professor
starts a research project hoping to discover something new. The student
sometimes makes the discovery, but without the Professor's research project,
the discovery would not have been made. Since the Professor gets the blame if
the project is a failure, he should get the benefit from any successes.
Besides, it doesn't upset me—after all, my career is off to a great
start!"
Donald only
felt a greater admiration for the woman of whom he had become so fond. He kept
silent and continued to look upward at the stars.
After a long
time, Jacqueline spoke. "I wonder if we could ever go visit Dragon's Egg.
At the speed it is traveling, it will be gone from the Solar System in a few
hundred years. I wish I could go myself, but I guess maybe it will be my
grandchild or great-grandchild."
"We may
be going sooner than you think," Donald said. "The latest news on the
Nigerian magnetic monopole discovery is that they have used the first monopole
in a large magnetic accelerator to generate other monopoles, and some of those
have already been used as a catalyst for a deuterium fusion reaction. The JPL
engineers are excited about the fusion results. They are already starting to
design fusion-rocket concepts for interstellar spacecraft. I don't think a ship
will be ready soon enough so that you and I could go for a visit, but I wouldn't
be surprised if, in twenty or thirty years, one of our children will be looking
down at Dragon's Egg from a close orbit."
And
inevitably, the years passed ...
TIME:
Quick-Mover
was getting tired. He only hoped the Swift was tiring faster. The Swift was
much quicker than he, but its brain
was slow, and
it never seemed to learn from its repeated failures to catch him. This
particular beast had been harassing his clan for the last three turns of the
sky, and the clan had been forced to retreat to a cluster of boulders that
blocked the Swift's rush. There was nothing they could do until the huge beast
tired and went away, or else caught one of them out in the open—like
Quick-Mover—who was now beginning to regret his attempt to get a food-pod from
a nearby plant.
He watched
carefully with six of his eyes as the Swift laboriously moved in the hard
direction until it figured it was directly east or west of its intended prey. Once
there, it would start accelerating, swiftly slithering toward him as its long
narrow body twisted across the crust. As it neared, the great, glowing maw
would open, and out from under each of the five eyes ringing the gaping mouth
would spring a long, sharp fang of crystal.
Quick-Mover
knew how sharp those fangs were, since he had one stored in a tool pouch in his
body. He had retrieved the fang from the mangled carcass of a Swift that had
been the loser in a mating duel and had used it to cut up the drying carrion
that he and his clan had enjoyed as a supplement to their food-pod diet.
The Swift
launched its rush. Quick-Mover waited until the Swift had committed itself to
its attack; then, thinning his flexible, opalescent body down, he pushed into
the hard direction with all the speed that his muscles could command. The Swift
was now moving so rapidly that it could not change its course, but it was
close. One of Quick-Mover's trailing eyes winced when a fang nicked its thick
support stub.
As the Swift
slowed its rush and turned to attack again, Quick-Mover became desperate. Soon
one of those sharp fangs was going to slash a large hole in him, and the next
time the Swift made its rush, it would catch him.
Then
suddenly, Quick-Mover had a thought. He had a fang too! He watched the Swift
shift position off at a distance and begin its rush.
He quickly shaped a section of skin into a short tendril and, reaching into the
tool pouch orifice pulled out the fang. He enlarged the tendril into a strong
manipulator, backed up with a thick crystal bone core, and pushed the rest of
his body into the hard direction again. This time, he left a portion of his
body out in the path of the Swift. It was the thick manipulator holding the
fang. Quick-Mover felt a jar, then his eyes glowed as
he saw the Swift stumble to a halt, fangs snap-
ping at its
flank, where the glowing vital juices poured out onto the crust.
Quick-Mover
looked in awe at the fang held in his manipulator. Both were covered with
dripping gobs of glowing juice. He sucked them clean, enjoying the unaccustomed
taste of fresh juice and meat. He moved over to the still-thrashing Swift.
Carefully keeping well off in the hard direction, he watched the Swift as it
grew weaker. Finally, feeling bolder, he moved the manipulator with its fang
over the center of the long thin body and struck downward. The sharp point sank
deep into the body. The Swift, struck in its brain-knot, shivered and flowed
into a fleshy pile.
Quick-Mover
raised the fang and struck once more.
It felt
good.
He was
mightier than a Swift! Never again would one of these beasts terrorize his
people!
The fang
struck again and again and again ...
TIME:
Pierre
Carnot Niven floated in front of the console on the science deck of the
interstellar ark, St. George. The thin young man pulled thoughtfully at the
corner of his carefully trimmed dark brown beard as he monitored the activities
out in the asteroid belt surrounding the still-distant star, Dragon's Egg.
"It's
still 'Mother's Star' to me," Pierre thought as he recalled his childhood
years, lying in his father's arms out on the lawn to watch the first
interstellar probes go out to explore the neutron star his mother had found.
There had
been some whispers of "favoritism" when he had been picked to be
Chief Scientist of the Dragon's Egg exploration crew, but those who whispered
had not been as driven as he. He had felt his mother had received too little
scientific recognition for her discovery, and his whole life had been spent
rectifying that supposed wrong. He had not only made himself the world's expert
on neutron-star physics, but had also taught himself to be a popular science
writer so that everyone—not just a few scientists—would know of the
accomplishments of the son of Jacqueline Carnot.
talking and selling
and explaining were through, and the scientist in
The
expedition was still six months away from Dragon's Egg, but it was time to
start the activities of the automated probes that had been sent ahead by St.
George. There would be a lot of work to do in preparation for their close-up
view of the star. Now that they had found and identified the asteroidal bodies
around the neutron star that they would need, the work could be done as easily
by robot brains as human ones.
The largest of
the probes was really an automated factory, but its single output was very
unusual—monopoles. It had some monopoles on board already, both positive and
negative types. These were not for output, but the seed material needed to run
the monopole factory. The factory probe headed for the first of the large
nickel-iron planetoids that the strong magnetic fields of the neutron star had
slowed and captured during its travels. It started preparing the site while the
other probes proceeded with the job of building the power supply necessary to
operate the monopole factory, for the power that would be needed was so great
that there was no way the factory probe could have carried the fuel. In fact,
the power levels needed would exceed the total power-plant capability of the
human race on Earth, Colonies, Luna, Mars, asteroids, and scientific outposts
combined.
Although the
electrical power required was beyond the capability of those in the Solar
System, this was only because they didn't have the right energy source. The Sun
had been—and still was—very generous with its outpouring of energy; but so far
the best available ways to convert that radiant energy into electricity, either
with solar cells or by burning some fossilized sun energy and using it to
rotate a magnetic field past some wires in a generator, were still limited.
Here at
Dragon's Egg, there was no need for solar cells or heat engines, for the
rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron star was
at one time the energy source and the rotor of a dynamo. All that was needed
were some wires to convert the energy of that rotating magnetic field into
electrical current.
The job of
the smaller probes was to lay cable. They started at the factory and laid a
long thin cable in a big loop that passed completely around the star, but out
at a safe distance, where it would be stable for the few months that the power
would be needed. Since a billion kilometers of cable was needed to reach from
the positions of the asteroidal material
down around the
star and back out again, it had to be very unusual cable—and it was. The cables
being laid were bundles of superconducting polymer threads. Although it was hot
near the neutron star, there was no need of refrigeration to maintain the
superconductivity, for the polymers stayed superconducting almost to their
melting point—900 degrees.
The cables
became longer and longer and started to react to the magnetic field lines of
the star, which were whipping by them ten times a second—five sweeps of a
positive magnetic field emanating from the east pole of the neutron star,
interspersed with five sweeps of the negative magnetic field from the west
pole. Each time the field went by, the current would
surge through the cable and build up as excess charge on the probes. Before
they were through, the probes were pulsating with displays of blue and pink
corona discharge—positive, then negative. The last connection of the cable to
complete the circuit was tricky, since it had to be made at a time when the
current pulsating back and forth through the wire was passing through zero. But
for semi-intelligent probes with fractional-relativistic fusion-rocket drives,
one-hundredth of a second is plenty of time.
With the
power source hooked up to the factory, production started. Strong alternating
magnetic fields whipped the seed monopoles back and forth at high energies
through a chunk of dense matter. The collisions of the monopoles with the dense
nuclei took place at such high energies that elementary particle pairs were
formed in profusion, including magnetic monopole pairs. These were skimmed out
of the debris emanating from the target and piped outside the factory by
tailored electric and magnetic fields, where they were injected into the nearby
asteroid. The monopoles entered the asteroid and in their passage through the
atoms interacted with the nuclei, displacing the outer electrons. A monopole
didn't orbit the nucleus like an electron. Instead, it whirled in a ring,
making an electric field that held the charged nucleus, while the nucleus whirled
in a linked ring to make a magnetic field that held onto the magnetically
charged monopole.
With the
loss of the outer electrons that determined their size, the atoms became
smaller, and the rock they made up became denser. As more and more monopoles
were poured in the center of the asteroid, the material there changed from
normal matter, which is bloated with light electrons, into dense monopolium.
The original atomic nuclei were still there; but,
now with
monopoles in linked orbits around them, the density increased to nearly that of
a neutron star. As the total amount of converted matter in the asteroid
increased, the gravitational field from the condensed matter became higher and
soon began to assist in the process, crushing the electron orbits about the
atoms into nuclear dimensions after they had only been partially converted into
monopolium. After the month-long process was complete, the
250-kilometer-diameter asteroid had been converted into a 100-meter-diameter
sphere with a core of monopolium, a mantle of degenerate matter of white
dwarf density, and a glowing crust of partially collapsed normal matter.
After the
first asteroid had been transformed, the factory turned to the next, which had
been pushed into place by a herder probe that had started its task many months
ago. The process was repeated again and again until finally there was a
collection of eight dense asteroids circling the neutron star: two large ones
and six smaller ones, dancing slowly around each other as they moved along in
orbit. They were kept in a stable configuration with thrusts from the probes,
which used the magnetic fields from a collection of monopoles in their noses to
exert a push or pull from a distance on the hot, magnetically charged,
ultra-dense masses.
The probes,
herding their creations along, now waited patiently for St. George to arrive.
As the humans approached the neutron star, the herder probes became more
active. They pushed, pulled, and nudged the two larger asteroids until they
approached one another. As the ultra-strong gravitational fields of the two
asteroids interacted, they whirled about one another at blinding speed and then
took off in opposite directions on highly elliptical orbits that would meet
again many months later at a point much closer to the nearby neutron star.
Volcano
TIME:
Broken-Petal
flowed his elongated body down through the ragged rows
of petal plants, anxiously feeling the swellings of the ripening pods on the
underside of each plant with his tendrils. He subconsciously counted the pods
as he went along, but not in terms of numbers, since his total mathematical
knowledge consisted of: one, two, three—many.
Although
Broken-Petal could not count, he was very good at equating large numbers. He
knew that, sometimes, what seemed to be many pods was
still not enough to feed the clan—for there were many in the clan and all were
always hungry. As he moved and felt, the many pods in his mind grew and, as the
number grew, his anxiety for the many in the clan became less and less. He
found his undertread adding a youthful t'trum pattern to his smooth flowing
motion as he came to the end of the last row. He let his opalescent body resume
its normal flat, ellipsoidal shape and looked at the crop with pride. The petal
plants were tall. He would have liked to have seen them all, but he was content
to rest at one end and look with only three or four of his dozen dark red eyes
down between the rows that he had struggled so hard to get the clan to dig.
Broken-Petal
remembered the time, many turns of the stars ago, when he came across proud old
Dragon-Rower with a stub of a broken dragon crystal in her manipulator.
"What
are you doing, Aged One?" Broken-Petal asked.
"I'm
tired of having to wander in the wilderness to find a petal plant that has not
already been stripped of all of its pods," she said. "I'm going to
have my own plants, right here outside my wall." She left the dragon
crystal sticking in the
crust, and flowed
back to let him see what she had been doing. As she did so, the strong
crystalline bones in her manipulator dissolved, and the muscle and skin that
had covered the thick, articulated appendage shrank back into her body until
her surface was smooth again.
"Why
are you digging those holes, Aged One? How will that get you your own petal
plants?"
She replied,
"I may be old, but I still see well and remember well. The last time the
young ones came back from a hunt, they had traveled so far away they had found
some petal plants that had never been picked. They brought home as many pods as
they could carry. There were many delicious ripe ones and some that looked all
right, but, when opened, were runny and the seeds inside were hard. Naturally,
being an Aged One, I got the overripe pods. I ate all that I could—the taste is
not bad once you get used to it—but the seeds inside were too hard to crack, so
I rolled them outside."
"I
remember that hunt," Broken-Petal said. "We never did find a sign of
a Flow Slow or even a Slink, but that patch of untouched petal plants made up
for it all."
Dragon-Flower
continued, "One turn I noticed that one of the seeds had rolled into a
crack in my wall. It had a little petal growing from it. I watched it turn
after turn as it became larger and larger. It grew into a petal plant! I was happy, I would have my own petal plant right near my door. I
would dream of picking the pods whenever I wanted, without having to go far
distances. Maybe I could even wait and have a ripe pod to eat all by myself, as
I did in the old times when I was a young warrior and went on hunting
expeditions."
Her t'trums
became sadder as she went on, "But the stones in the wall kept the petal
plant tilted to one side—and it fell over and died."
She added,
"I watched the other seeds, but none of them grew into petal plants. They
just sat there under the sky and did nothing. Then many turns ago, having
nothing better to do, I cleaned out my stockade and pushed a pile of dirt, old
pod skins and Flow Slow nodes out the door. The pile covered one of the seeds.
Later I noticed it too had started to grow into a petal plant!
"That's
it over there," she said, rippling her eye-stubs.
Broken-Petal's
eyes followed the ripples and saw a small plant growing up from the corner of a
decomposing heap of trash. The plant was still small enough that he could look
down on its concave topside, cooled
to a dark red by the black sky above, while the lumpy underside of the
many-pointed leaf structure reflected the healthy yellow glow of the crust.
"It
should be big soon," Dragon-Flower said. "I can already see some pod
swellings on the underside."
Several
thoughts ran through Broken-Petal's mind as he looked at the plant, with its
promise of food. But there was one thought that made him feel in a funny way
that he had never felt before. He felt the spark of inspiration.
"Aged One! I have thought of a new thing! Let
us take all the hard seeds we can find and put them under piles of trash that
we take out of our stockades. The seeds will grow into petal plants and we will
have all the pods that we want!"
Dragon-Flower
paused a moment, reformed her manipulator, and grasped her broken shard of
dragon crystal. "You are wrong, Broken-Petal. The seeds do not need trash.
My first petal plant was not under trash, it was in a hole in my wall,"
she said. "It is obvious that the petal plants just want to see the sky.
As long as the seeds stay out on the crust where they can see the sky they are
happy and do not grow. But if you take away the sky, they get unhappy and break
out of their hard coats and grow until they can see the sky. That is what I am
doing with this broken crystal. I use the sharp point to make a little hole in
the crust. I put the seed in the hole and cover it up so that it cannot see the
sky. The seed will get unhappy and start to push up until it can see the sky
once more, only by then it will be a petal plant, instead of a seed."
Broken-Petal
knew better than to get into an argument with an Aged One, even if he was Leader
of the Clan. He watched as Dragon-Flower continued with the arduous task of
poking the sharp end of the broken crystal into the hard crust. She soon tired
and quit, but not before there were many holes around the perimeter of her
stockade, and in each hole was an unhappy seed, covered over with powdered
crust.
Dragon-Flower's
experiment was both a success and a failure. Most of the seeds grew into
plants, and soon Dragon-Flower was on friendly terms with many, as she had more
pods than she could eat. Broken-Petal had to put his weight on a few of the
more rash youngsters and give them a good drubbing before they stopped their
raids on her plants.
"You
lazy flats!" he would holler on their hides. "Go out and find your
own pods! And make sure you bring back the best one for Dragon-Flower to
replace the one you took!"
He couldn't let them get lazy and
weak; he would need their strength on the next raid or hunt.
Then, things
got worse. The plants grew and grew until they blocked the sky over most of
Dragon-Flower's stockade. Although no one really minded reaching a manipulator
under a plant to take a ripe pod to eat, it was really nerve-wracking to have
those heavy-looking petals hanging over one. Dragon-Flower had to tear down her
walls and build a new stockade away from the plants. It was good she did, for
as the plants aged, their support crystals grew weak; then one or more of the
petals would break off under the extreme gravity; and would instantly reappear
on the crust, its crushed mass sending out a shock of vibration that went
rippling through the clan compound, making everyone nervous.
Broken-Petal
knew a good thing when he saw it, and the most important trophy from the next
hunt was not the torn-up carcass of a Swift, but many overripe pods, bursting
with hard little seeds. Then his problems began, for the cheela in his clan
were hunters.
Hunting was
not hard work. It consisted of a leisurely stroll in the country with a bunch
of friends, followed by a short period of exhilarating terror and a chance to
demonstrate how brave and strong one was, climaxed by an orgy of eating and
lovemaking that compensated for the long trek home carrying hunks of flesh.
Farming,
however, even poke-and-cover farming, was hard work, especially in the tough
crust of Egg, and there was no heroism or fun involved to make up for it. And
worst of all, after all that hard work, it took many,
many turns before there was any food to show for the effort. Broken-Petal had
to tread on the edges of quite a few before he finally saw all the hard little
seeds safely tucked into holes in the crust, unhappy at the loss of the sky.
Broken-Petal
moved to the next row and the next, feeling proud. This had been their third
crop of petal plants. The first crop had gone well, but there had not been
enough plants for the whole clan, and they still had to forage to feed
everyone. Broken-Petal had made sure that there were enough holes the next
time, and his care was made easier by the cooperation of the digging crew, who
now appreciated the long-term consequences of their labor.
As
Broken-Petal moved between the rows, he saw a white patch in the crust. As he
passed over that section of the crust,
it seemed
strangely hot. He moved back and forth, feeling the crust with his underside.
He was bewildered. This had never happened before. As he went between the
plants to check in the next row, the crust trembled underneath him. The
automatic sonar sensors that he used to track his prey sprang into action and
his bewilderment changed into shock. The source of the trembling was directly
below him! He was scared.
"Is it
a dragon?”
"No.
No. There is no such thing as a dragon," he reassured himself. The old
hunters used to tell tales of a tall, fire-shooting monster that came up out of
the crust and stopped a cheela in his tracks by searing his outer edges with
its violet-colored fire. The dragon would then fall on him from its tremendous
height, smashing him like an egg sac and then absorbing him for dinner. No one
had ever seen a dragon, but the large, very strong crystal bones that were
found scattered in profusion over and underneath the crust certainly gave a
taint of credibility to the tales, for no one knew where the dragon crystal
came from.
Broken-Petal
moved away from the area as the crust got hotter and hotter and the trembling
from underneath continued. He was halfway back to the clan stockades when some
of his rear eyes saw a spurt of bluish-white gas shoot from a crack in the
crust, searing a petal of the plant overhead.
A group from
the stockades met him as he approached. "It feels like a crustquake,"
one said, "but it keeps on repeating in the same place."
"It is
not far," said Many-Pods, one of the clan's best trackers.
"You
are right, Many-Pods," Broken-Petal said. "Whatever it is, it is
right in the middle of our field."
The clan
flowed carefully to the edge of the field and took turns looking down the
affected row as the hot smoke and gas continued to pour from the crack. More
plants were burned now.
Broken-Petal
had been thinking, and when the clan had finished looking and formed to the
east and west of him, he knew what he had to do.
"The
smoke and hot gas are going to kill our plants," he said.
"Pretty-Egg, get back to the stockades and get everyone here fast. Even
the littlest hatchling can carry a few pods. The rest of you, start picking as
fast as you can. Start by going as near the smoke as your treads can take, then pick everything
off those
plants. Even the unripe pods will taste good after the ripe ones are
gone." Broken-Petal led the way down the row as his instructions radiated
away through the crust.
"Just
when things were getting better," he thought. "The gods shall tread
the edges of the proud," the old storytellers had always said. Well, he
had let himself get complacent, and the Old Ones were right.
He moved as
close as he dared to the vent. The smoke was reaching high up into the
atmosphere now. The heat radiating down on his dark red topside from the
billowing bluish-white column was uncomfortable. Although the crust was hot, he
could still get to within three plants of the vent. He paused for a moment,
formed three manipulators, and started picking pods, ripping most of them away
from the flesh of the plant, although some of them were near-ripe and came away
easily. He stored the pods in a carrying pouch he formed in the upper part of
his body. He moved back and forth, picking pods as he went, approaching the
crevasse at a distance that was mediated by the desire for food overcoming the
unwillingness of his tread to move to hotter crust.
The first
section of plants nearest the crevasse went quickly. Broken-Petal organized
things so that the pods were dropped by the pickers at the edge of the
planting, to be taken back to the stockade by the younger ones and stored away
by the Old Ones. Although they moved as fast as they could, they lost many pods
from the plants that were too close to the crevasse. The tedious work
continued, with the laborers constantly harassed by shocks and crust dust
falling on their topsides.
Soon, all
were back from the field, their eating pouches sucking quietly on pods as they
rested at the outskirts of the clan compound. Some of their eyes scanned the
small, blue-hot hill that now grew in the middle of the devastated petal plant
field, while other eyes followed the pillar of smoke that went far up into the
sky until it seemed to touch the stars. The smoke went from an intensely
glaring blue-white column at the base, to deep, deep red clouds far up in the
cool black sky, the bottoms of the billowing red clouds tinged with a yellow
glow from the crust below.
The times
grew difficult. The food they had harvested lasted a long time, but the diet of
immature pods was a great deal less tasty and nourishing than the steady turn
after turn of feasting that they had enjoyed after they had learned about
farming.
Broken-Petal
tried to salvage things. There were no overripe seed pods from the recent crop,
so he sent out a team to forage in the far regions for more, while he had the rest
gouge holes in the crust away from the towering column of smoke. After much
labor, the holes were ready, but the hunting party returned empty-handed.
Broken-Petal
knew better than to berate them. In times like these, a successful hunting
party had its pick of love partners, while these would only have each other for
many, many turns.
"What
was the problem?" he asked.
See-High spoke for them. "We saw many hunting parties
that were doing what we were doing, out gathering every pod and hunting every
animal they could find, even the almost worthless Tiny Shell."
He went on.
"We went as far as we could before our own food ran out. It was the same
everywhere. Everyone was so busy hunting that there was no fighting. We thought
about attacking one of the other groups, but it was obvious from their thinness
that they were carrying very little in their pouches in the way of catch, and
were as bad off as we were. We even attempted to talk with some of them using
long-talk. Although they don't speak just the way we do, it was obvious from
what we could make out that all the clans are afraid of the tower of smoke and
the constant trembling of the crust."
Flow-Hunter,
the clan's bravest hunter, who had been allowed to change her egg-name after
her third kill of a Flow Slow, interrupted with a laugh. "Some of them
think that the tower of smoke is from the fire of a dragon, and the trembling
is the dragon moving over the crust to get them! All of them are talking about
leaving, saying the place has become taboo."
Then Broken-Petal
had a flash of inspiration born out of the natural instincts that had made him
Leader of the Clan. "If every clan is out hunting and stripping the crust
bare of food," he said, "we will go where they don't go."
He spoke to
the hunting party. "Go eat and load up with food. With the next turn you
are going out hunting again, only this time you are to go southward—in the hard
direction."
There was a
shuffle of discontent from the group. They had been expecting to be sent out
again in an attempt to redeem themselves, but to be sent in one of the hard
directions sounded like punishment. No one ever went in the hard direction
unless he had to—not even the powerful Flow Slow. See-High started to object,
but Broken-Petal tapped him to silence
with a sharp ripple
from his tread. His tread started again, softer this time, and the encouraging
words rippled through the crust to vibrate against the treads of the hunting
party.
"I'm
not angry with you, and I know that to travel in the hard direction means that
you will move so slowly that you will still be within sight after three
turns," he said. "Think— every clan we know is east and west of us,
and we all go back and forth over the same territory, stripping it bare. If you go in the hard direction far enough, you may
find land where there are fewer clans and more food. Now, eat and go!"
Long before
the turn was complete, the hunting party was ready to leave. Broken-Petal gave
them last instructions. "Go neither east nor west until you can see mature
petal plants; then you can go off to examine them to see if there are any seed
pods. If not—continue south until you do. But don't go beyond your food
supplies. I want you back." His tread rippled with wry humor. "After
all, there are two directions that are hard going, and if you don't find
anything in one direction, you could always try the other one."
With a
rumble of bitter humor, the hunting party pushed off toward the south. After a
half a turn, they were out of reach of short-talk, but still were visible as
figures halfway to the horizon. After three turns they disappeared over the
horizon and the rest turned to their chores—and waiting.
See-High
pushed slowly into the springy air. The most difficult part about traveling in
the hard direction was that his body kept trying to slip to one side or the
other. If he didn't hurry, but kept sliding a thin edge into the hard
direction, then expanding it to make a crack that he could flow into, the going
was steady. It was like going into a wind, but different The wind kept pushing
on him even when he was still, but the only force he felt from moving in the
hard direction was the force he himself made when he attempted to move in that
direction. If he stood still, for a while he could still feel the pressure, but
then it slowly penetrated his body until he finally felt nothing—until he tried
to move again.
See-High
looked around and saw the rest of the party slowly struggling their way along.
Ahead of him was Flow-Hunter, one of his favorite fun partners. Although he was
leader of the hunting party and shouldn't be doing such things while they were
on a hunt, the slow grind of pushing into the slippery air had made him bored.
He pushed even harder and in a little
while was right
behind Flow-Hunter. He tickled her trailing edge. "What are you planning
at break period?" he whispered, the electronic waves of his whisper
tingling her multi-hued skin.
"Stop
that!" Flow-Hunter protested. "It is hard enough pushing through this
slippery stuff without being tickled from behind. Get back or I won't be doing
anything with you for many turns, much less during break period."
See-High
persisted. He flowed forward, both above and below the trailing edge of
Flow-Hunter, giving her friendly squeezes as she tried to ripple him off. She
pushed forward harder to get away from him. Although normally she could
out-distance him, See-High found that he kept right up to Flow-Hunter with
almost no effort. Suddenly he stopped playing around and tapped her to a stop.
"I had no trouble at all keeping up with you," he said in amazement.
"There you were, pushing away in the hard direction and I felt as if I
were going east or west! Why?"
After a
little bit of experimentation (and many giggles and slaps) they found that,
once a gap was opened by a path-breaker, the gap would remain open as long as
she kept moving. Then if someone else stayed right on her trailing edge, very
little extra effort was needed for him to move forward. As See-High had found,
it was like moving in the easy direction (except for the pathbreaker, of
course).
Before long,
the hunting party was rearranged in a line. The head of the line worked at top
effort as long as possible, then dropped to the side to let a fresh pathbreaker
move ahead, while the tired one dropped into the end of the line and strolled
along, cuddled up to the friendly trailing edge of someone of the opposite sex.
The hunting party pushed forward at rapidly increased speed, with no breaks
needed except when the two mismatched males got tired of being in on only half
the fun and insisted upon being between two females.
They soon
reached lands where there were fewer and fewer hunting parties and, after many
turns, came to a region where mature petal plants could be found with pods
still on them. It was not long before they had not only plenty of ripe pods for
food, but also more than enough seed pods, bursting with little hard seeds.
They stuffed pods and seeds into carrying pouches until the pouch orifices in
their skins bulged out painfully.
The way back
was rougher, for their bulky thickness caused by the load of pods and seeds
made it necessary to open a
wider gap in the
hard direction before they could move through it. Their thickness also made
them obvious targets for attack. Their new technique for moving in the hard direction
saved them from being overcome by a large war party from a neighboring clan,
but it cost them See-High, who was at the end of the column when the war party
rushed at them from ambush out of the east as they went by. They were going to
turn and attack, but See-High ordered them to continue while he kept the
attackers at bay long enough for them to escape.
Broken-Petal
eventually saw a thicker but shorter column of hunters show up over the
horizon. At first he was bewildered by the shape and speed of the moving
cluster of cheela. From a distance, they looked like a strange new type of Flow
Slow, except that a Flow Slow was too lazy to move in the hard direction. He
started to call an alarm, but it soon was obvious that the unusual motion of
the head of the monster was the peculiar heave of Flow-Hunter as she pushed her
way along.
Soon the
whole clan gathered at the edge of the settlement and watched as the happy,
giggling hunting party returned and dumped their booty. The seeds were
distributed and quickly planted in the waiting holes by a large crew, all
munching on ripe pods.
Flow-Hunter
spent the next turn giving a detailed account of the trip to Broken-Petal. The
report of the loss of See-High caused a moment of sadness in them both, but
they turned their minds back to the present and continued on.
The nearby
volcano dominated their lives. Fortunately, it became dormant for a while, with
just a thin wisp of yellow-white smoke spiraling up into the air, but the rumbling
in the crust grew worse every turn. The crop grew well, but when the volcano
became more active again, Broken-Petal decided that they had better move
further away. The crop was harvested and the clan took the food and their few
belongings, especially the precious broken shards of ultra-hard dragon crystal,
and moved off toward the south.
There were
many in the clan, and they were not in a hurry, so a modification of the
hunting party pathbreaker technique was used. The stronger young ones formed a broad
front and pushed ahead in the hard direction. They kept up a steady pace and
the rest of the clan, packed close together, followed along behind.
TIME:
The interstellar
ark, St. George, settled into its orbit around the spinning neutron star at a
radius of 100,000 kilometers and with a period of thirteen minutes. The science
crew began their scientific surveys. Although they would get much better data
when they could go down in Dragon Slayer to look at the neutron star from only
400 kilometers away, they still could do a preliminary survey with the
long-range telescopes.
Jean Kelly
Thomas was belted into the seat in front of the imaging science console on St. George.
The belt was adjusted to accommodate the fact that she was sitting on her
crossed legs. With her cap of short red hair and her upturned nose, she looked
like a pixie seated on a toadstool (with seat belt). Her bright blue eyes
flicked over the features of the latest scan of the hydrogen-alpha ultraviolet
imager. The computer had noticed something unusual in the last scan and had
alerted her.
A blinking
square drew her attention to a small oval bull's-eye pattern that had appeared
on the image of the star. In the upper corner of the screen, the computer had
printed:
LYMAN-ALPHA SCAN TAKEN
Jean leaned
forward. "Identification?" The image
remained, but the words were replaced with:
TENTATIVE IDENTIFICATION—ACTIVE
VOLCANO. CENTER
TEMPERATURE 15,000 DEGREES.
Jean spoke
again, "Switch Lyman-alpha scanner to high resolution scan of target
region!"
She watched
as the image was replaced on the screen with a close-up of the volcano. The
image blinked five times a second as the imager took a scan at each rotation of
the star. As she watched, she could see a flare-up in the central region,
followed by a streak of brightness that flowed away from the center, the lava
flow getting dimmer and dimmer as it moved.
A detailed
history of the birth and death of a volcano was certainly worth keeping a
careful watch on. Perhaps if they were lucky, the amount of matter that built
up in the shield would become so great that it would initiate a starquake
during their visit. That should set the whole star to vibrating and they
might be able to
determine the internal resonant modes of the star and get a better computer
model for the thickness and density of the inner layers. The new volcano was
certainly a high priority item, but it would have to take its turn. She
couldn't tie up the scanner to take pictures of only one thing.
She leaned
forward again and spoke, "Assign Priority One to this target!
"Inform
if any major change or if activity stops!"
She leaned
back and pushed the print button.
"A
volcano," she thought. "
TIME:
The clan
moved very slowly southward. Travel in the hard direction against the magnetic
field lines was not easy, even for the young hunters, and was still more
difficult for the old and the hatchlings, although they were flowing into the
gaps created by the moving van of pathbreakers. The hardest thing for them all
to learn was to keep close together and keep moving. If a gap developed or if
anyone paused for a moment, the east-west magnetic field lines would reassert
their position, pinning their bodies on the lines like beads on a wire. Unless
they had the strength to begin moving south again, their only choice was to
move east or west and join the tail of a portion of the group that was still
moving.
The clan got
better at it, and by trial and error soon developed a flying-wedge technique,
with one strong hunter out front taking the full brunt of the fields, and the
rest of the stronger ones in a chevron behind, opening up the gap that was
created. The other adults soon learned to form secondary chevrons behind, with
the hatchlings and Old Ones in between. Then if a gap developed, it was soon
closed by the adults in the following chevron, and the trailing edge of the
moving clan now no longer looked like a wounded Flow Slow leaving a trail of
vital fluid behind.
They had
progressed a good distance when Broken-Petal called a halt. He knew that they
were probably still on some clan's territory, but he decided that, because so
few hunting
parties were on the
horizon, they were probably in a region between two other clans. Normally, this
would have been a poor place to stop; if they had had to depend on foraging to
the east and west, there would have been less and less food to find the further
away the hunters went. But with the ripe seeds and the knowledge of how to take
the sky away from them to make them grow, the clan could stay in one place,
always in full strength with all of its warriors home
tending the growing plants, and going out only for game to vary their diet and
to show off their prowess.
The clan
settled in with relief, and a crew was sent off to a nearby cliff to get
building stones for the stockades, pod bins, and the all important egg-pens.
As Speckled-Egg
approached the cliff with the quarry crew, the youngster grew frightened. Never before had he been so close to anything so tall. It
seemed that it was going to fall directly down on him, but he certainly was not
going to let his fright show on his first time with a hunting party.
"It
sure is tall," he remarked calmly.
"Sure
is," said Flow-Hunter. Her tread rumbled teasingly. "Looks as if it
is going to fall right on top of you, doesn't it?"
"Yes,
but it has not fallen before, so I guess it won't now," Speckled-Egg said
confidently.
"But it
will when we get through with it," said Flow-Hunter. Then turning serious
she said, "Which end looks closer?"
The top of
the cliff sloped downward toward the east. The party took off in that
direction, carrying their broken shards of dragon crystal and one unbroken,
round-tipped whole dragon crystal that they had found when digging holes for
the seeds. They soon came to the end of the vertical fault plane and began the
long, slow, arduous climb up the slope.
"It's
like traveling in the hard direction, but worse," complained Speckled-Egg.
"When you stop moving in the hard direction, you can rest. But when you
are climbing up, you might as well not stop to rest. When you do, you still
have to hold on to keep from flowing back down."
Flow-Hunter
showed him her trick of waiting until she came across a small stone before
stopping to rest, and then stretching her body out upwards from the stone. With
the stone preventing her from flowing downward, and the hard directions holding
her in from the side, she could almost relax and enjoy her food-pod in comfort.
It was a tricky technique, and Speckled-Egg found his edges flowing around the
stone more
than once, but
soon he was as accomplished a climber as any of them.
Although
they had gone east for only one turn before reaching the end of the fault, it
took them many turns and much food to struggle up the sloping hill in the
intense gravity and make it back to the top of the cliff. Row-Hunter formed a
strong crystallium core in one of her eye-stubs, held the eye up as high as she
could, then moved slowly toward the edge.
"I can
see the clan camp off in the distance. This is the right place," she said.
She stood still and looked for a long time.
"What
is the matter?" asked Speckled-Egg.
"Just
looking," she said. "Everything looks very funny when you can look
down on it. Come and see."
The last
thing Speckled-Egg wanted to do was go near the edge, but he did, one of his
eyes held in imitation of Flow-Hunter. Together they moved forward until they
could see the members of the hunting party they had left at the bottom of the
cliff.
"They
are so big around!" exclaimed Speckled-Egg, "And so funny looking.
You can see all the lumps on their topsides."
"You
would look just as big and lumpy yourself if you could see yourself from the
top instead of only from the side," said Flow-Hunter. "You are right
about the lumps though; they are funny looking. I bet that big reddish yellow
lump in the middle of Double-Seed is an egg that is about ready to be
dropped."
She pushed
her way back from the edge. "Come on, we have a lot of hard work to
do."
The climbers
started to work. The first thing they did was to push the large, whole dragon
crystal to the edge and let it fall off. The nearly unbreakable, super-hard
crystal became invisible and reappeared at the bottom, splintered into a dozen
sharp shards. The waiting group at the bottom rode out the shock and then moved
quickly forward to retrieve the now valuable hunting knives and digging tools.
When the
dragon crystal shards had been removed, the climbers at the top moved forward
to the edge and used their digging tools to gouge a long line in the top of the
cliff. The gouge line was back from the edge a distance equal to the height of
the stones that they could easily carry. They spread apart the fibers in the
crust until there was a long, deep crack, held in place by the connections at
either end of the long strip. They then went to the west end of the strip,
where the nap of
the crust would
give them a better grip, and formed a chain with their bodies. Flow-Hunter
stretched out as far as she could with the sharpest crystal shard held in front
of her in a long manipulator. She concentrated for a moment and soon several
short manipulators were arrayed at her back edge. Speckled-Egg
and Dusty-Crust flowed above and below her and also formed manipulators to
grasp hers. The rest grasped them and spread themselves
out as flat as possible to form an anchor.
"Everyone
ready?" asked Flow-Hunter. She then started sawing away at the end of the
slit, only this time cutting across the fibers in the crust. It was slow hard
work, for the fibers were the source of the real strength of the crustal
material. They switched places; to Speckled-Egg's horror, it was his turn to be
sawing away when the weight of the long section of crust overcame the strength
of the remaining fibers and the face of the cliff came away in a long curling
rip that extended the slit in the top surface down to the base.
The top
surface of the cliff, relieved of some of its stress, rebounded with a shock
wave. For the first (and he hoped only) time in his life, Speckled-Egg's tread
was not solidly in contact with the crust. He had no time to be afraid before
the crust came up to meet him with a bruising smash. They all lay quietly for a
moment and then pounded each other with triumph as they backed away from the
crumbling edge.
They hurried
back down the way they had come, pausing only now and then for a little food.
They all felt like having a little fun, too, but that had to wait (except for
friendly pats and treadings) until they got to the end of the cliff, where the
crust was flat. By the time they had returned to the bottom of the cliff with
the jumble of stones at its base, Speckled-Egg was a full-fledged hunter,
having not only been a hero by being at the point when the danger was greatest,
but having been given a hero's reward and his initiation into manhood by
Flow-Hunter herself.
Having felt
the successful conclusion of the quarrying expedition come rumbling in through
the crust, Broken-Petal had sent out an additional work crew to help drag the
stones back to camp. Soon the place began to look like home again. A pod bin
was the first task, so that everyone could drop his load of pods without having
to worry that the constant winds would roll them away. The Old Ones were most
grateful for the pod bin, for they had been tied down holding onto most of the
food store while the younger ones had been working. Now they
could move around
and get to the more important (and pleasurable) task of turning eggs and
raising hatchlings.
Next came
the egg-pen, and again another great load was taken off the clan as all the
females could drop the eggs they had been hauling around since they had left
the old home and started on their exodus.
For many,
many turns the clan grew and prospered in their new home.
TIME:
Pierre
Carnot Niven, his long, straight hair in a halo about his head, worked away at
the console keyboard, overlaying one multicolored computer display on another.
His soft brown eyes peered at a complicated pattern of lava flows that would
have hopelessly confused anyone but him.
Jean was
checking the plots showing the drift of the smoke from the volcano through the
atmosphere, and correlating it with the magnetic field measurements and the
Coriolis forces caused by the high spin speed of the rotating star. She was
developing a computer model for the magnetic field structure so she could
produce a detailed theory for the iron-vapor atmosphere and how it interacted
with the conflicting forces of gravity, magnetism, and spin of the star.
"It
looks like the weather patterns on the Earth,"
"Yes,"
Jean said. "The smoke travels mostly east-west from the volcano because it
is easier for it to travel along the magnetic field lines than across them. But
when the smoke reaches the magnetic poles, the easy direction is into the
ground, so the smoke piles up into a big crescent with the volcano in the
middle. There is some leakage at the poles though."
"Why is
the leakage staying in a belt north of the equator?"
asked Pierre, "I can understand
that the smoke leakage from the east pole would stay in the north spin
hemisphere since it is above the spin equator, but why doesn't the smoke
leaking from the west pole contaminate the atmosphere in the southern
hemisphere?"
Jean spoke
toward the console, "West pole view!" They watched as the image
rotated to the view over the west pole and stopped. Jean pointed to the screen,
"It happens that one of the strong sub-poles of the chaotic west polar
region happens to lie along the same magnetic longitude as the volcano, and it
also happens to be above the spin equator. That sub-pole has blocked off that
longitude, keeping all the smoke trapped in the northern hemisphere. The
leakage from the west pole, combined with the leakage from the east pole, forms
the intense smoke belt just north of the spin equator."
TIME:
Smoky-Sky
looked up and worried. The sky was now nearly always full of smoke. When it was
time to name him shortly after he had left the egg, the Old Ones in charge of
the hatching pens had thought a smoky sky so unusual that they had given him
that name. Now—many, many turns later—here he was, Leader of the Clan, and
haunted by his own name.
The crops
from the petal plants had been getting worse and worse. The nearly constant
cloud cover overhead seemed to suffocate the plants. It was time to move. But
could they go far enough to escape the ever-present smoke?
"I had
better move slowly," Smoky-Sky said to himself. "No use running from
a Flow Slow right into the maw of a Swift."
He moved to
the clear place between the stockades and the field of plants and t'trumed a
call for the clan to gather. Soon all but the guards and the hatchlings were
arranged in arcs to the east and west of him.
Smoky-Sky
spoke. "The times are not good. We will have to move where the sky is not
so smoky and the petal plants can grow. It will be a long journey, so we must
have much food to carry. Blue-Flow, you are to take a hunting party and look
for a better place for us. I think it will be far from here, so take as many
pods as you can carry, for you will not be
back for many
turns. Remember the words of our ancient Aged Ones—'Go in a direction others do
not go.' "
Blue-Flow
moved off to one side, followed by a crowd of younger warriors eager for adventure.
He picked a small group and led them off to the pod bin to load up on food.
Smoky-Sky watched, musing, "He will be a good leader. He has picked the
ones with stamina, even if they are not the best hunters. More importantly,
since it will be a long journey, he has an equal number of both sexes."
Smoky-Sky
turned to the crowd and said, "I don't know how many turns it will be
before the hunting party comes back, but when they do, I want the pod bin
filled to the walls. The petal plants are not growing many pods, so we will
just have to plant more of them." Amid a shuffle of groans, Smoky-Sky
pushed his way to the tool bin, picked up a sharp shard of dragon crystal, and
set off to the field to start poking holes in the hard crust, knowing that the
best way to get people working on a long hard task was for the leader to start
in first.
Blue-Flow
looked over his group. They were all well bulked out with pods tucked away in
their storage pouches. "Let's go," he said, and started to push his
way southward in the hard direction, the others snuggled up to him in single
file. After a turn of hard travel, they finally passed over the horizon and
were on their own.
For many,
many turns the hunting party moved along, the sky overhead still smoky.
Finally, Shaking-Crust remarked during a pod break, "I think that the
smoke is even worse here than back at home."
They could
not all agree then, but after a few more turns of travel it was very obvious to
all of them that conditions were worse here. The smoke filled the sky, and the
crust was covered with sickly red-yellow ash that chilled their treads as they
flowed over it. There was some talk of going back, but Blue-Flow would have
none of that. This was his first trial as a leader of a hunting party and he
would not come back with pods still pouched in his body.
Blue-Flow
drove them on, always moving in the hard direction. The difficult grind of
pushing ahead, with the poor grip that the ashes gave to their treads, took all
the fun out of the expedition. But something else was happening that added to
their discomfort—they were becoming lost!
It was not
for many turns that one of them mentioned what
they had all
been feeling. "This land bothers me," said Final-Pod. "I feel
that I am lost all the time. Yet I know right where I am. I can see the cliff
over there that we passed a few turns ago, so logically I know that I could
make my way right back to the clan with no problem, just by going in the hard
direction in the opposite way we have been going—but I still feel lost."
They all
agreed. Logically they knew they were not lost— but they definitely felt as if
they were.
"Let us
move on," Blue-How said, pushing off again. But the further they went, the
worse they felt and the darker the sky became. Then the pods began to run low.
At the next
break Shaking-Crust spoke up for all of them, "I think we should turn
back, Blue-Flow. The land and the sky just get worse and worse the further we
go. Perhaps the instructions of the ancient Aged Ones are no longer
correct."
Blue-Flow
countered, "If we tell the clan to go back in the direction that we came
from, they will just get closer to the volcano. If we have them go east or
west, we know they will run into the other clans that are fleeing the volcano.
If they stay where they are, the smoke will kill the petal plants and we will
all starve. Our only hope is in this direction. We must keep going as long as
we can."
Shaking-Crust
said, "You may go on if you like. I'm going back."
Blue-Flow
had been expecting something like this for a long time and was ready for it,
but he had never expected rebellion from his favorite playmate. Without
warning, he was on top of her, drubbing her brain-knot soundly with his tread
and knocking her out before she had a chance to move. Still on top of the
unconscious body, he whispered, "Does anyone else want to challenge
me?"
No one moved
as he flowed off Shaking-Crust, who was starting to recover from the sonically
induced shock. As her senses cleared, she heard Blue-Flow talking.
"I
don't think you realize how serious things are. The volcano is poisoning all
the Crust that it can reach. The only hope for the clan is for us to find a
place where we can survive. If we do not, the clan will die,
the hatchlings first." This last was a telling blow. For although the
cheela were not attached to a specific hatchling, and no female could even
remember which egg she had put into the hatchery unless it had some distinctive
marking, they were all very attached to the little hatchlings, who lived a
spoiled life until they were old enough to go to
work. The
thought of hatchlings dying was enough to eliminate any thought of quitting.
Many turns
later Blue-Flow was really worried. They were way past their food supply limit.
It would be a weak and thin party of cheela that came back to the clan—if they
made it back. The feeling of being lost had become worse. At the next break he
was almost ready to quit. But first he decided to have a better look ahead. He
took the longest dragon crystal spear that they had and poked its sharp end
down into the crust. It stood far up into the sky, many times higher than he
could ever lift an eye on one of his own flimsy eye-stubs. When the others saw
what he was doing, they gathered in a circle around him and applied pressure on
his edges. He formed a thick pseudopod with one of his eye-stubs at the end and
flowed it up along the shaft of the dragon crystal
spear until his eye was perched on top of the spear. The sky looked smoky right
to the horizon ...
"I see a star!" he shouted, and his pseudopod flowed
back down so quickly that they were all rippled by the energy regained from its
fall. "The sky is still smoky, but it must be thinner because I can see a
star through it. The star was right on the horizon."
Shaking-Crust
insisted on seeing it, too; after much effort, she soon had one eye perched on
top of the spear. The star was almost exactly in the hard direction, and right
on the horizon. Shaking-Crust was almost positive that it was brighter than any
star she had ever seen, but without any other stars visible to compare it with,
she was not sure.
Great-Crack
and some of the others wanted a look too, but Blue-Flow stopped the
sight-seeing. "It takes as much energy to put an eye on top of the spear
as it does to travel a few turns where we can all see it from eye level. Let's
get moving!"
With
something to aim for, spirit returned to the column, for the first time in many
turns, they made good time over the ashen land. Soon the star appeared above
the horizon, and as it did, the feeling of being lost began to decrease. By
silent agreement, the rest breaks were short and they pushed on.
Soon
Blue-Flow noticed that there were short breaks in the intense cover of smoke.
After a few more turns of travel, the ashes on the crust stopped being a
hindrance to travel. Soon other stars were visible, strange ones that they had
never seen before. But the strangest one of all was the intensely bright
reddish yellow one that hung
motionless in the southern sky from turn to turn, while all the others whirled
about it like a cloud of minor deities paying homage to a god.
It was an
awe-inspiring experience for them all as they moved forward out of the smoky
hell in back of them into a new land, free from smoke and ash, and with
untouched petal plants growing in delicious profusion all about them. There
were plenty of game signs, and soon they were all enjoying the meat of a Slink,
interspersed with delicious, perfectly ripe pods.
"There
are plenty of game signs, but no sign of a single other cheela," said
Shaking-Crust. 'The game was not particularly afraid of us. It is as if they
had never been hunted before."
"This
place sounds like an Old One's stories of heaven," Great-Crack said.
"I
guess we should call it Heaven," Blue-Flow agreed. "Bright's
Heaven. For Bright, the God Star, rules over it all, and its bright
glare keeps the smoke from coming over the horizon. Let us load up with food
and head back over the 'lost' region to tell the clan the good news. We have
been gone so long, they probably think we are
dead."
TIME:
"No,"
Jean said. "The Earth's magnetic field is too weak to affect the
atmosphere on Earth as it does here."
when the pigeon
is released in the southern hemisphere after being trained in the northern
hemisphere."
"Store
that sequence!
"Continue
monitoring volcanic lava flow pattern on Priority Two basis!"
He turned to
Jean, "Well, the main console is all yours. I'm going to get some food,
write a little, then head for bed. See you next shift."
Jean pulled
herself into the main console seat, quickly checked all the settings, and carefully
buckled herself in. "What are you writing now?"
"Well,
none of us are jealous—much!" Jean said. "We all realize that every
kid you make enthusiastic about space science is going to be a voting taxpayer
after we return, and we should come back to Dragon's Egg with a follow-up
expedition before it leaves the Solar System."
"I'm
sure the World Space Administration agrees with you. They even gave my
publisher a special rate on the cost of transmitting my manuscripts back."
He turned and pushed himself down the passageway.
TIME:
Great-Crack
was a pack rat. Although one of the better hunters in the clan, with two Flow
Slow kills to her credit, she was the constant butt of jokes from her hunting
mates because of her habit of picking up and carrying anything she found that
looked interesting—and because of her highly developed sense of curiosity,
practically everything looked interesting to her.
When it came
time for the hunting party to load up with ripe pods for the long journey back
to the clan, Great-Crack had to unpouch her trinkets so she could load up her
pouches with
pods. She went
over to a shallow depression in the crust; amid ribald calls of "What are
you doing? Laying three eggs at once?", followed by "No, just one,
but it's the size of a Flow Slow!", she dumped her precious pile of odds
and ends, with the heavier ones around the pile in a low wall that she hoped
would protect them from the constant winds. With luck, she would be able to pick
them up again when they returned with the clan.
With her
bulk reduced to fighting trim, Great-Crack flowed off the pile. Paying no
attention to the jokes, she went off with the others as they moved through the
petal plants, carefully picking off the best of the pods and storing them
inside their body pouches until the whole hunting party was loaded to capacity.
"Are
you sure that bulk is all pods, Great-Crack?" chided Shaking-Crust.
"You didn't go back for a few trinkets, did you?"
Great-Crack
was in the midst of rippling out a vicious whisper about being a better fighter
when loaded with pods than Shaking-Crust was in fighting trim, and would she
like to have her prove it... when Blue-Flow interrupted with a loud t'trum on
the crust.
"You
two stop that!" he said. Then his eyes looked around to all of them and he
called, "It's time to go back!" Blue-Flow pushed his bulk in the hard
direction, while the rest of them rapidly formed a single file and pushed off
behind him.
Suddenly
Blue-Flow stopped. "Wait!" he said in amazement. "We're going in
the wrong direction!"
They all
looked up from their crouched, streamlined positions in back of him and looked
ahead. There was the benevolent beam of Bright, directly ahead. They stopped,
confused. They had come into Bright's Heaven far enough that they had stopped
having the lost feeling that they had experienced earlier under the smoke.
Being good hunters, they knew instinctively where they were and in which
direction to go. But their instincts were leading them directly toward Bright,
while they knew from logic that the way back to the clan was in the opposite
direction.
"I
guess we will have to forget our where-sense when it comes to traveling in this
land," Blue-Flow said. He flowed to the back of the column and pushed off
again, this time directly away from Bright.
The group
soon reached the edge of Bright's Heaven. They
all cast
longing looks behind with a few of their eyes as Bright dipped below the
horizon and their sense of being lost returned. Blue-Flow kept the break
periods short since they were all in good shape and well fed, and they made it
quickly back across the "feeling lost" territory with its intense
smoky sky flowing to the west.
Their sense
of direction slowly returned, and Blue-Flow felt much better now that his
instincts finally agreed with his logic. They were following their previous
track very closely, and Blue-Flow was disturbed that he could read their spoor.
They must have been extremely discouraged to have been so careless. Well—they
were on their way back now, and that spoor of many turns ago would just lead
any trackers astray if they kept their present track clean. When it came his
turn at the rear of the column, he looked back and was pleased with the fact, that
except for a quickly fading whitish track from the heat of their bodies warming
the crust, he could see almost no evidence of their passage.
At the next
break, most of them had another pod to eat. As was her usual custom,
Great-Crack kept all the seeds from the pod in case the clan needed more.
Blue-Flow noticed that she had only added a pod skin to the burial pit and came
over to talk to her.
"You
are a good hunter and a hard fighter, Great-Crack, so I have never complained
about your bulk. But we are now on a very serious mission and everything that
slows us down hurts the chances for the survival of the whole clan. I want you
to put all the seeds and anything else you have picked up into the burial pit
and stop collecting things until we have the whole clan back to Bright's
Heaven."
"But
the seeds are valuable!" she protested.
"The
clan will have no need for seeds to plant when they are on the move to Bright's
Heaven, and there will be plenty of pods and seeds when we bring them
there," he replied.
She could
only agree with him, and he stood by watching, first with amusement, then with
amazement, as a steady flow of seeds, pebbles, worthless dragon crystal shards,
and Flow Slow nodes filled the burial pit. He did not know that Great-Crack
held back something. In each one of the food pods from Bright's Heaven, the
bottom seed in the clump had an unusual twelve-pointed cluster shape, instead
of the normal oval shape. Great-Crack's curiosity had been aroused by the
unusual shape and she had looked carefully at each pod she had opened. Ev-
ery pod had a
cluster-shaped seed, and she was especially careful to keep each one. She
wanted to plant them to see if the petal plant that grew from them would be
different in shape than the ones that grew from the oval seeds. When she dumped
her store of treasures, she withheld the cluster seeds.
"They
are so small, they won't slow me down," she said smugly to herself.
"Besides he will never notice, now that I have an egg growing."
Covering up the burial pit carefully to leave no trace of its presence, she
returned to join the others.
After many,
many turns the hunting party began to enter familiar territory. They took no
breaks now, but pushed steadily onward. As they approached the home of the
clan, they felt disturbing tremors under their treads. There were loud voices
booming through the crust and much rapid movement of treads. Some of the voices
were in a strange accent.
The clan was
under attack! Blue-Row moved ahead more rapidly. Thinning way down, he stopped
just over the horizon from the camp. He quickly reinforced an eye-stub and
raised one eye up to evaluate the situation.
A large war
party from another clan was attacking the petal plant field. He could see
movement between the rows as the war party drove the guards down the rows, so
that others could strip the pods from the plants at the ends of the rows. There
was another group that kept up feinting attacks on the pod bins and stockades
on the other side of the camp, spreading the clan guard warriors thin. There seemed
to be too few guards, and Blue-Flow could not see Smoky-Sky anywhere. There
were no enemy warriors on their side of the field, so the plan of attack was
obvious. Blue-Flow dropped his eye and whispered the situation to his group.
"The
petal plant fields are under attack by a large war party that has control over
the eastern half. We will go east from here, staying below the horizon, cross
over in the hard direction until we are in back of them, then come down at them
from the east and trap them in between." As he spoke, pods and digging
tools dropped out of pouches into a disorganized pile on the crust. Rugged
fighting manipulators sprang from their bodies and pulled sharp shards of
dragon crystal from their weapons pouches. Although Great-Crack tried to hide
them, Blue-Flow saw with disgust the small pile of funny pod seeds. He resolved
to give her a drubbing once the battle was over.
With their
killing spears of shattered dragon crystal at the
ready, the
hunting party moved east, going many times faster than their-previous rate of
movement in the hard direction. Once they had moved far enough east to be over the horizon in that direction, Blue-Flow led
them across in the hard direction until they were in back of the attacking
party.
Putting his
warriors in a line, each with one or more sharp spikes sticking out from strong
manipulators firmly imbedded in their thickened front ends, he whispered to
them all. 'They do not know we are attacking, so move as quietly as you can. If
we can surprise them, we will catch them with their brain-knots in our
direction."
They moved
ahead smoothly, keeping a low profile as they came over the horizon. They
flowed around a pile of pods that had been stacked for pickup.
Blue-Flow
whispered, "We're in luck. The pickers have gone down to fight and push
the guards further back."
They each
chose a row and with their quarry busily engaged in a battle midway down the
row, they were able to attack almost without warning.
It was hard
to kill a cheela. If hit with something hard, the fluid body
just retreated from the blow with the flexible skin absorbing the impact.
If the something hard was very sharp, like the shattered end of a dragon
crystal, it could poke a hole through the skin, and if that was big enough a
hole, some of the glowing fluid inside would leak out before the automatic
protection systems could close the wound. If an eye that was so rash as to be
out on a stub could be caught, a sharp-edged shard might slice off the eye-stub
with an accompanying shock of pain but only a partial loss of sight. After all,
if one or two of the normal complement of twelve eyes were lost, the cheela
could easily adjust the position of the remainder to have nearly complete
vision.
The only
really vulnerable part of a cheela was the brain-knot. It could be anywhere
inside the skin, but it was a good bet that, if the cheela was fighting someone
on one side, the brain-knot would be well over on the other side, far away from
any sharp spears of dragon crystal. Blue-Flow was counting on this instinctive
behavior as he rushed his enemy target from behind and flowed up onto her
topside. He felt the telltale knot under his tread and shocked it into
unconsciousness with a focused ripple from his underside, then neatly speared
it three times as his momentum carried him up and over his now-dead foe.
"Blue-Flow!"
shouted Weary-Tread, lowering the point of her spear. "Where did you come
from?"
Blue-Flow
surveyed the oozing hide of his old friend and replied, "We just got back
and we have found a new home for the clan. But come, follow me, we have
fighting to do."
Blue-Flow
moved down the row of plants until he could see a sparring trio of warriors
between the plants. Warm-Wind and Great-Crack had an enemy warrior between
them. The warrior had parried Great-Crack's initial rush and was now fending
them both off as he attempted to escape between the rows. In a rumble of
despair he saw the long shard in Blue-Flow's grasp as Blue-Flow blocked the
way, sending his spear directly into the center of the enemy.
"Another
brain kill!" Blue-Flow gloated as the foe
collapsed into a spreading disk that filled the space between the plants.
He quickly
whispered to Great-Crack and Warm-Wind, pointing with a ripple of his
eye-stubs, "You two go that way and we will go this way." Blue-Flow
turned and, with Weary-Tread covering his trail, went down the row to find more
of the foe.
With the
return of the hunting party, the tide of battle turned, and soon the enemy war
party had retreated, without their stolen pods, and with many of their number
gone.
The clean-up
work began. The stolen pods were stored in the pod bin along with the ripe pods
that the hunting party had brought back with them. The many dead, among them
Fuzzy-Crust and Star-Rise of the clan, were sliced open to let the fluid seep
into the crust, and then the meat was dried and stored.
The news
that the clan had for the hunting party was not good. They had been under
almost constant attack by hungry war parties ever since the group had left.
Smoky-Sky had died long ago in a battle to protect the fields and Weary-Tread
was now Leader of the Clan. When Blue-Flow heard this news, he turned and
looked at Weary-Tread, whose scarred hide was still oozing glowing,
yellow-white fluid from some serious spear wounds.
"Now is
the best time to do this," Blue-Flow thought. "The clan needs a
strong Leader for the journey to Bright's Heaven." He turned, raised his
spear and issued the formal challenge to Weary-Tread.
"Who is
Leader of the Clan, Old One?"
There was a
long pause as Weary-Tread evaluated her
chances. She could
still be a good Leader and did not want to be relegated to the status of an Old
One, but never had she felt so like the dreary name she had been stuck with as
a hatchling.
"You
are, Blue-Flow," she replied, and winced as the ceremonial slash from
Blue-Flow's spear added another small wound to her punctured hide.
Blue-Flow
turned and said to them all, "I am Leader of the Clan. Does anyone
challenge me?" There was no reply, and the formal ceremony over, his tone
changed as he took command.
"I have
good news. I have found a new land for us. A clean land with
no smoke. A good land with no enemies, with much game
and with many, many petal plants that have never been picked. It is a long
distance away in the hard direction and the trail will be harsh and difficult.
But we will go, for a new God Star and His Heaven—Bright's Heaven—waits for
us!"
For the next
few turns, Blue-Flow had everyone who was not out hunting meat busy in the fields
picking the edible pods and storing them in the pod bin. He was outside the bin
with Great-Crack, looking with satisfaction at the pods spilling out of the
opening.
"It is
enough," he said. "We will leave when the hunters return."
"But is
it enough?" Great-Crack wondered. "We needed to eat many, many
pods to get from Bright's Heaven back to the clan. There are many in the clan
and they will travel much more slowly than a hunting party."
"There are
many, many pods, Great-Crack. There must be enough there to feed all the clan,
for I have never seen so many pods before." Blue-Flow went off to greet a
returning hunting party.
Great-Crack
stared at the flowing pile of pods. "There are many pods," she
thought. "But are there enough?"
She played
internally with her pouch full of cluster-shaped seeds, which she had retrieved
after the battle, and thought back over the many pods she herself had eaten
while crossing the barren land between here and Bright's Heaven. Many pods
would be needed, for she had taken the cluster-shaped seed from each one as she
had eaten it, and there were many, many of those seeds in her storage pouch.
Then, in a
flash of inspiration, one of the greatest mathematical minds ever hatched in
the past or future history of the cheela made a great leap of abstract thought.
"I took
one seed from each pod that I ate," Great-Crack said to herself.
"So I have as many seeds as pods."
Her mind
faltered for a moment. "But seeds are not pods!"
It
recovered, "But there are as many seeds as there were pods, so the number
is the same."
She laid the
seeds out in a row that stretched all along the wall of the pod bin. There were
many of them. She then took out pods and put one next to each seed until she
had a row of pods.
"There,"
she said. "I will need that many pods to get to Bright's Heaven." She
put the pods to one side in a pile. She took out more pods and laid them next
to the seeds until she had another row of pods.
"Blue-Flow
will need these pods to travel to Bright's Heaven," she said as she
gathered the pods up again and put them in another pile.
Great-Crack
soon had pile after pile of pods stacked inside and outside the pod bin as she
set aside rations for each of the clan members. She was only halfway through
the names of the clan members when she ran out of pods. There was not enough
food!
Great-Crack
hurried off and brought Blue-Flow back to the pod bin to explain what she had
done. She got nowhere.
"Yes, I
see the piles of pods, but how do you know that each person will need that
many?"
"Yes, I
see that when you line up the pods next to the seeds that the line of pods is
as long as the line of seeds, but what do seeds have to do with pods?"
"Yes, I
understand that you saved one seed from each pod as you ate it on the way back
from Bright's Heaven, but what dqes that have to do
with feeding the clan? You ate all those pods and there is nothing left but
those deformed seeds."
"No, I
don't understand what you mean when you say that the seeds tell you how many
pods each one of us will need. Seeds are not pods."
Great-Crack
tried in many ways to get Blue-Flow to make the jump in abstract thought that
now came so naturally to her, but he could not do it. Finally, in frustration,
he lost his temper and stamped, "There are plenty of pods. Look at them
all. We will go now, for Bright's Heaven is waiting."
Great-Crack
flowed to block his way. "We cannot go!" she said, "We will
starve before we get there! The seeds tell the truth!"
"Seeds
are not pods," he retorted, "and I have been meaning to tromp you for
keeping those seeds after I told you to leave them on the trail."
Her reply
brought him up short. "Who is Leader of the Clan, Old One?"
She moved
toward him while he backed out of the pod bin. "No use endangering the
pods," he thought. "We are both in good shape and this is going to be
a long fight. I wonder why she is challenging me now?"
The clan
gathered around them as they moved together into a clear place between the
stockades. Blue-How watched with a combination of fear and amusement as his
opponent emptied her pouches of tools and trinkets, formed a dueling
manipulator, and raised her spear.
"Blue-Row
is in good shape," Great-Crack thought as she made a neat pile of her
precious "unusual things." "I will need every advantage I can
get to beat him. However, he must not be allowed to win—for he will lead the
clan into sure starvation!"
She finally
turned, raised her spear and repeated her challenge, "Who is Leader of the
Clan, Old One?" She paused—then punctuated the challenge by ejecting her
half-formed egg sac from the protection of her body onto the crust between
them. The clan looked in shock at the precious, tiny eggling wriggling out the
last of its life among the glowing remains of its ruptured egg-sac.
Blue-Flow
alternated his horrified eyes between the cooling eggling and the stern visage
of Great-Crack. "She is determined to win. Could it be that she is right,
and there are not enough pods?" He shifted his spear. "No
matter—things have gone too far to stop now."
Blue-Flow
returned the formal reply, "I am—Hatchling!" He lunged at her.
It was not a
pretty fight. Both were encumbered by the rule that they had to maintain
control of their spears to keep from automatically losing, but were not allowed
to use the points for cutting until the final ceremonial slash of the loser by
the winner. They wallowed, struck at each other's eye-stubs with the sides of
their spears, trod one another's edges, tried to wrest the spear from the
other's grasp, and slapped each other with muscular pseudopods in an attempt to
deliver a knockout shock to the brain-knot.
The usually
fluidless battle for Leadership ended in a shock-
ing way when
Great-Crack found Blue-Flow's spear pointing in an opportune direction and
deliberately impaled herself on it, taking it into her body. No longer in
control of his spear, Blue-Flow had lost. He shook the glowing gout of
Great-Crack's fluid off his dueling manipulator onto the crust as she repeated her
challenge. "Who is Leader of the Clan, Old One?"
"You
are, Great-Crack," Blue-Flow replied.
Great-Crack
maneuvered her body and Blue-Flow watched, horrified, as his sharp spear broke
out of the rapidly healing wound in Great-Crack's side. The spear reached over
to his surface and gave him the ceremonial cut, the fluids from the two bodies
mixing together as they dripped off the spear point onto the crust.
Although she
had suffered a significant wound, the injury would only slow an excellent
fighter like Great-Crack, and when she repeated the challenge, no one had the
courage to reply.
Great-Crack
then told the gathered clan, "We will go to Bright's Heaven, but not now.
We do not have enough food to survive the trek across the bad
lands between here and Bright's Heaven. We must grow more pods. Go back
to the fields and plant many more seeds. We will go after the next
harvest."
The clan
turned to their work, their disappointment at the delay in reaching Bright's
Heaven countered by their natural reluctance to leave their home. Within a few
turns, Great-Crack had mended, and she spent the time making sure not only that
the clan planted enough seeds, but that she wouldn't lose the services of
Blue-Flow, one of the best warriors of the clan. At every opportunity she
patted and teased him. In a few turns, he got over his sulk at losing, gave in
to the teasing, and they enjoyed a romp together. Soon she felt a new egg
growing inside her to replace the one she had sacrificed.
Great-Crack
planted a few of the funny cluster seeds in one spot and watched the plants
with interest, but to her great disappointment the plants, pods, and seeds
inside were just like the plants grown from the oval seeds from Bright's
Heaven. She could never figure out why.
While the
crops grew, Great-Crack played with mathematics. In the same manner as she had
learned to identify pods with seeds, she now had a collection of pebbles, one
for each member of the clan.
With the new
crop coming in, a new pod bin had to be con-
structed.
Great-Crack decided that it was about time to check to see if there were enough
pods for the clan. She did not look forward to hauling all those pods out of
the bins, lining them up against the collection of seeds that she had
accumulated on her trek back from Bright's Heaven, then putting them in stacks,
and back into the bins again.
Then she
made another conceptual breakthrough.
"Why do
I have to move pods around?" she thought. "I can make a collection of
seeds, one for each pod in the bin. Once that is done, then it is much easier
to move seeds than pods."
Soon the pod
bin had a smaller bin outside the opening containing a pile of seeds, one for
each pod in the bin. Monitoring the bin was the cheela's first accountant, an
Old One assigned to the task of adding a seed to the seed bin for each pod put
into the pod bin, and taking one seed out for every pod eaten.
As the
harvest proceeded, even the number of seeds grew to overflow their bin.
Great-Crack looked at the seed bin and was both pleased and appalled at the
number. Now that she had learned to use her mathematics to make her job easy,
she kept trying to think of other ways to make it even easier. She mused as she
pushed the seeds around in stacks. She then noticed that since the seeds were
long ovals, they had a tendency to form into clumps. She found that if she
arranged them so that their sides just touched, they formed a pretty cluster.
Although there were too many to count, there was always the same number if they
were all pushed together so that all the sides just touched. It was a pretty
pattern, just like the cluster pattern of the bottom seed of the pods from
Bright's Heaven. She put one of the cluster seeds next to the collection of
seeds. They looked identical. Then the now familiar habit of isomorphic
identification struck again.
"If a
cluster seed looks like this small clump of seeds," she wondered,
"why don't I just save a stack of cluster seeds, each one representing a
whole clump of oval seeds?"
Soon she had
the seed bin replaced with a smaller one containing a large number of cluster
seeds and a few odd oval seeds left over. That bothered her a little, having
some pods represented by cluster seeds and some by oval seeds, but it helped that
the cluster seeds were a little bigger than the oval ones. Her real problem
came with her accountant, who didn't understand at all.
'The old way
was very simple, Great-Crack," the Old One said. "One seed in the
seed bin for one pod in the pod bin. But
this does not
make sense. How can one seed, even a cluster seed, mean many pods?"
Great-Crack
tried hard to explain, and ran into the phenomenon that is often encountered by
one trying to teach someone something—the teacher often learns something new
herself. Great-Crack learned to count past three.
"Now
look, Old One, I will go through it carefully. Here is one pod, and one oval
seed. Here is another pod next to the first pod, and another oval seed next to
the first seed. That's two—and now three." Great-Crack moved the third pod
and seed into place, then reached for another set.
"Now
this many is ..." Great-Crack fumbled for the nonexistent word. "... the same number of ways that you can travel: east, west,
and the two hard directions." She continued adding sets. "And
this many is the same as the number of fangs on a Swift. And this many is the
number of petals in a petal plant ..."
She went on.
"And this ..." she said as she completed the pattern, "is the
number of bumps on the cluster seeds. It is as many as your eyes."
The
accountant dipped each of his dozen eyes, one after the other, as he carefully
touched each of the seeds in turn with a delicate tendril. "So it
is," he said, "That will make it easy to count them."
The lesson
really didn't sink in the first time, but after many repetitions even the
accountant was using one, two, three, travel, swift, petal ... all the way up
to a dozen, as if he had learned it as a hatchling. But soon even that did not
suffice, for there were so many pods from the harvest that Great-Crack had to
invent the name "great" for a dozen dozen of pods. The accountant was
very satisfied with her choice of word, for it obviously represented a
"great" number of objects.
With the
accountant's help, Great-Crack checked the results of the harvest. First the
pebbles, one for each member of the clan, were placed in a column, then across
the bottom were placed cluster seeds, only now the unique collection of cluster
seeds that Great-Crack had accumulated during her trip back (and which measured
the distance to Bright's Heaven in terms of pods) had been replaced by a
concept—a number—a petal worth of cluster seeds plus a swift of oval ones.
The forecast
was not good. As the cluster seeds grew out from each pebble, Great-Crack came
to the end of the seeds before she came to the last of the pebbles. Great-Crack
felt
once again the
frustration of being Leader of the Clan. The volcano had become more active and
the sky grew steadily worse. With their vision of the sky clouded, the crops
grew poorly and the harvests were meager. Their neighbors to the east and west
were hungry and restless and there had been many more attacks on the fields of
the clan. They must go. But there were not enough pods.
Great-Crack
stared at the diagram in front of her. Although the pebbles and seeds were far
removed from hungry bodies and nourishing pods, they still foretold of great
anguish for all.
"I can
strip the unripe pods from the plants before we leave, and they will get ripe
enough to eat after a few turns," she thought. "There are usually
about two nearly ripe pods per plant." She flowed over to her stockade,
where she kept a pile of seeds that represented the number of plants in the
field. She soon returned with a collection of seeds that represented the unripe
pods in the fields, but even when these were added to the diagram, there were
not enough.
"Dragon's
Fire!" she swore to herself. She shrank from making the obvious decision,
arguing with herself, "But there are so many pods, surely there are enough
for all to go." But the diagram, empty at the top and end, stared at her
with its cold logic.
"A
dozen plus two of the Aged Ones will have to stay," she decided, and
winced as the numbers changed to names in her rnind.
She called
the clan together. To solidify her control as well as to signify her
seriousness, she started with a formal challenge.
"Who is
Leader of the Clan?" she asked, and her tread
felt and marked the chorus of replies.
"You
are, Great-Crack!"
Her eyes
singled out and stared at a few warriors who were slow in responding, but soon
all had replied. She then said, "We leave for Bright's Heaven at the next
turn, but there are not enough pods to feed us all on the long journey, so some
can not go." She reeled off the names of the Aged Ones who were either too
injured or too old to be of much value anymore, and they stoically accepted
their fate, having grown weary of life after so many turns. It did not take
long for the clan to strip the unripe pods from the plants and load up the
eggs, hatchlings, pods, and their few tools and weapons into skin pouches
tucked inside their bodies. The clan left their
home, moving as
always according to the rule of the ancient Old Aged Ones: "Go in a
direction others do not go."
The massive group
of burdened cheela pushed slowly south. It was almost two turns before they
could no longer see the stockades and fields that had once been their home.
Shortly after they had gone over the horizon, one of the guards at the rear
broke ranks, pushed his way ahead and came up to Great-Crack, who was part of
the pathbreaker chevron at the front.
"One of
the Aged Ones that we had left behind is following us," the guard
whispered to her.
Great-Crack
left her place in the chevron, doing it carefully so that her replacement just
in back of her could close the gap smoothly, thus preventing any loss in the
progress she had made. She and the guard flowed quickly east and waited as the
clan moved slowly by.
Great-Crack
looked at the approaching Aged One. "It is West-Light, one of the most
able of those who were left. Why is he coming?" They waited for almost a
turn until the exhausted West-Light approached them.
"You
heard my command, Aged One!" she stamped at him. "You cannot come
with us. There is not enough food! Go back now or I will kill you
instantly!"
West-Light
stopped and emptied out his pouches. He had been carrying some half-ripe pods
from the fields that must have become edible since the trek had started, along
with some nearly ripe wild pods.
"We
were worried perhaps there might not be enough food to keep the hatchlings
healthy," West-Light said. "So we gathered what we could these past
few turns before you got too far away for me to reach. Here—take good care of
the hatchlings."
Great-Crack
whispered, "Thank you, West-Light." She moved forward to pick up his
meager offering. She then stared as the thinnest cheela she had ever seen
slowly pushed his way back to their now abandoned camp.
"He has
not eaten a thing since we left," she thought to herself. She turned and
went back to join the rest of the clan, still moving slowly southward towards
Bright's Heaven.
The trek was
dreary. The progress was much slower than Great-Crack had counted on, and she
felt the pouch of seeds that represented the remaining food get smaller and
smaller after every break. The quality of the food became worse as they ate all
the ripe pods and started on the ones that had only partially ripened in their
pouches. The littlest hatchlings didn't
want to eat
these and were constantly sick. Great-Crack sent out hunting parties both east
and west, but often they came back with neither pods nor meat. Great-Crack grew
desperate. They were losing a hatchling every few turns; for the first time in
ages, some of the clan's eggs refused to hatch and had to be left after it
became evident that the eggling inside was dead.
"All
the clan is in poor shape," Great-Crack said to herself as she worked in
the rear, constantly closing gaps that a youngster or an Old One had let fall
into the body of the traveling group. She looked backward. There was a long,
straggling column that had become separated from the rest of the group when one
of the members faltered and allowed the hard direction to close in on him. She
watched as he attempted to move forward again, but it was obvious that the
speed he was able to make in the hard direction would not be fast enough to let
him and his followers catch up with the rest of the clan. She then saw a
movement off in the smoky east that sent her into action.
"Attack
from east!" she stamped as she pushed her way through the crowded clan
members. When she got to the eastern edge she saw it was serious. It was a
large, hungry war party and they had already cut off the straggling string from
the rest of the clan. She soon had a group of warriors on either side of her
and noticed with satisfaction that the clan had stopped moving and were now in
a coherent group, with the stronger ones facing outward, spears and shards
bristling. She started forward to rescue the captives, when her trained senses
detected something from the west. It was another war party waiting for them to
attack the first group, when they could rush on them from the rear.
"Stop!"
she commanded. She led the war party back to protect the rest of the clan, then
watched in agony as the captives were killed and the precious pods wrenched
from their flowing bodies and devoured by the hungry band of marauders. The war
party stayed for a few turns, trying to figure out a way to attack the rest of
the clan. They made a few abortive attacks, one of which gave Great-Crack deep
satisfaction as she dispatched two of the enemy, partially to avenge the clan
members she had lost. Finally, the war party gave up the siege and went off
toward the west, hauling the meat from their victims with them. Great-Crack
immediately took the clan off again toward Bright's Heaven.
With their
enforced rest, the clan was in better shape, and
with the example
of what happened to stragglers still etched in their minds, there were very few
times that the gap opened by the pathbreakers was allowed to fail, and the clan
made good time for a few turns. But it soon became obvious to Great-Crack that
they were in serious trouble. At the next break she got out the pebbles that
represented the number of the clan, and after discarding the ones that had been
killed in the interchange with the attackers, she laid them out in a column.
She knew
that they were still far from Bright's Heaven, for they had just started to get
to the "lost feeling" region. She made an estimate of how many turns
it would take them to reach Bright's Heaven and laid those cluster seeds out in
a row. She then started to fill in the diagram with seeds representing the pods
left. There was no question about it—they were short by many, many pods.
She stared
at the larger empty space in the diagram, and her imaginative brain turned the
empty space into empty cheela. It was now time—she would have to risk the
chance of another attack and split her forces.
The clan
grew restless as the break grew longer while Great-Crack calculated. She
finally called her warriors together and explained the situation to them.
Blue-Row had never really learned why the seeds and pebbles told things to
Great-Crack that he could not see, but he now was very glad that Great-Crack
had prevented him from leading the clan off many turns ago. With far fewer
pods, he would have had them all dead by now. But he didn't need pebbles and
seeds to tell him that there were not enough pods for them to make it to
Bright's Heaven.
"Blue-Flow,"
she said, "I want you to lead a hunting party to Bright's Heaven and bring
back pods for us." She looked down at the diagram and said, "You will
only need a Slink's worth of pods to keep you going. You are going to arrive
very hungry—but the ripe pods at the end of the journey will make it
worthwhile."
Blue-Flow
and the others in the hunting party emptied out most of their pouches. Some of
them attempted to leave without taking any pods, preferring to leave them for
the hatchlings while making do with bravado, but Great-Crack, trusting in her
calculations, made them take their ration of pods. The hunting party took off
and was rapidly out of sight of the slowly moving clan.
With her
warrior forces depleted, Great-Crack took no
chances and moved
the clan along carefully so that no gaps developed and the perimeter always had
warriors on the lookout both east and west.
The hunting
party quickly traveled over the "lost feeling" region and soon saw
the welcome sight of Bright peeking over the horizon. As they came into the
region where the skies became clear and the petal plants flourished, they ate
their fill and then started loading up their pouches in preparation for the
long trek back to the hungry clan.
Suddenly
Bad-Turn whispered, "I see a Flow Slow moving just over the horizon."
Blue-Flow and the others soon confirmed the sighting and they thinned their
bodies to keep out of its sight.
"It is
to the east and we could get to it easily," Blue-Flow whispered. "The
hatchlings have been without meat since we left home. Let's kill it!"
The Flow
Slow depended on its armored plates for protection. This one had never seen a
cheela before, and ignored them as it ignored all small, scurrying creatures.
The Flow Slow moved ponderously from plant to plant, its armored tread plates
moving over its top surface to fall directly on the plant, crushing it to pulp, to be ingested in the gaps between the plates as the
huge body slowly flowed onward. The Flow Slow sought out plants, but, as many
an unfortunate cheela had found out, it would eat anything that happened to
fall before its onslaught.
The kill was
easy, since the Flow Slow had never tasted a dragon crystal spear before. The
cheela slipped in ahead of it, timing their moves carefully, and planted spears
in the crust in just the correct position so that the sharp points entered the
gaps between the plates as they came down to the surface.
As they
started to move away from the carcass, Bad-Turn looked back at it and said,
"Too bad we can't carry that whole carcass back to the clan. If they had
all that meat to eat, there would be no worry about food for the rest of the
trip."
Blue-Flow
replied, "I thought about that too. We could try to push a large chunk of
meat ahead of us, but we can carry in our pouches more than we can
push—especially when we have to go in the hard direction. Besides, pushing the
meat through the ashes over that whole distance will ruin it."
"If we
only had some way to keep it out of the ashes," murmured Bad-Turn, and he
went over to one of the large Flow Slow plates and looked at it. It was large,
half as big as he
was. It was a
flat square plate of material almost as hard as dragon crystal. At the front
and back edges were curved lips that had been attached to the skin of the Flow
Slow. Bad-Turn flowed onto the plate, thinking. "This could hold a lot of
meat and pods, much more than I could carry in my pouches." He flowed to
the front lip and stayed there for a moment, his back edge hanging back on the
front lip of the plate.
"What
are you doing?" Blue-Flow asked. "We should be going."
"Watch!"
said Bad-Turn, and Blue-Flow and the others saw his back edge stiffen as he
grew a long internal manipulator crystal that ran from one end of the Flow Slow
plate to the other. Since the crystal was horizontal and did not have to fight
the pull of Egg, he could make it very thin, thin enough just to fit under the
lip of the plate.
"I
never heard of growing a manipulator bone that way," one of the party said
to Blue-Flow. Then they both watched as Bad-Turn moved away, the front of his
body digging into the crust and the back edge dragging the plate along behind,
firmly attached by the strong crystal bar just under the skin and stretching
from one eye to another.
"It
feels funny, but it works," Bad-Turn said. "Once I get it moving, it
is easy to keep it moving despite its weight. With someone behind pushing, I
think we could pull much more than we could carry."
The others
tried it and they were all quick converts, especially when they tried it with a
huge pile of bulky chunks of meat that could never be crammed into pouches.
Within less than a turn, the Flow Slow had been converted into meat piled on
top of its own armored plates.
The hunting
party then moved off in single file, a pathbreaker leading the way, pushing
into the hard direction, followed by a plate-puller crouched up behind him,
hauling a plate of meat and helped along by a pusher and followed by three
other teams. The meat on the plates seemed to work as well as their bodies at
keeping the gap open in the hard direction, so they made good time. Their rest
breaks were few and short and only for downing another chunk of nourishing
meat.
When
Great-Crack observed them coming over the horizon, she saw them at a great
distance. Many turns ago she had stopped the trek to conserve food, while she
kept watch with an eye perched up on a long eye-stub. There were no longer any
pods for anyone except the hatchlings, and they were
doing poorly on
those. The whole clan was gathered in a circle, too weak to move much, and
Great-Crack herself was forced to lower her eye-stub often.
"Fine
Leader you turned out to be," she berated herself. "Leading your clan
off to die beneath smoky skies in a place where they always feel lost."
Still, she
had faith that Blue-Flow would return shortly with pods and that then they
could move again while Blue-Flow returned for more. She was relieved when she
saw the returning column, but was amazed by the bulk and length of it. Only the
obvious shape of Blue-Flow breaking path at the front of the column relieved
her worry that it was another attacking war party.
The clan
watched in awe as the procession pulled their wonderful-looking cargo into
camp. Within two turns everyone was back to a good comfortable bulk. The
hatchlings were soon feeling good enough to make pests of themselves while the
adults were more interested in pairing off and having a little fun alone.
Great-Crack listened in admiration as Blue-Flow recounted their journey, the kill
of the Flow Slow, and the results of Bad-Turn's invention.
"Bad-Turn,"
Great-Crack said, "for too long you have been stuck with that dreary
hatchling name. From now on you shall be Plate-Puller.
"Come
with me," she commanded, and some of her eyes turned to look back at
Blue-Flow as they left. "I will see you later. This new name calls for a
reward." Blue-Flow watched the couple go off, a little jealous, but he
would have his chance later this turn.
With their
strength renewed by the meat and ripe pods, the clan moved off at good speed.
It was not long before they began to feel less lost. The sky cleared and
finally Great-Crack called a halt and arranged the clan so that all, even the
smallest hatchling, could see the intense reddish yellow glow of Bright on the
horizon.
"O
Great Bright One. Brightest of all in the sky," Great-Crack intoned, all
of her dozen eyes staring at the bright star while her undertread rhythmically pulsed the crust. "We thank You
for saving us from the rolling walls of blue-white fire. We thank You for
saving us from the choking clouds of poisonous red smoke that kill the plants
and still the eggs. We thank You for leading us out of
the land of starvation and lostness to Your Heaven."
Her eyes
turned from the star and looked around at the clan. "Let us go now to
claim our reward—a Heaven where there are no enemies and plenty of food and
game. Come—all of you—into Bright's Heaven."
TIME:
The strong
limbs of Commander Carole Swenson pulled her compact body slowly along the
central shaft of St. George, her long yellow braid flipping from side to side
with the motion. Carole's eyes automatically monitored the traffic in the side
corridors, watching the to and fro motion of the humanity on her tiny planet.
Although many of the crew were still busy with their
normal tasks, there was a general flow toward the viewing ports near the
bridge. However, Carole was headed in another direction, toward the port
science blister. The view of the upcoming action would not be as good there,
but she wanted to see the closeups from the cameras on the probe spacecraft.
She swung into a corridor and with a dexterity born of many years in free fall,
launched her body unerringly toward the hatch at the far end. Bouncing to a
halt on the wall next to the hatch, she palmed the lock and floated in. No one
saw her enter, for
"How
much longer?" she asked the group gathered in front of consoles at the
other end of the room.
Carole
looked at a display across the room. The field of view of the monitor camera
contained the glowing sphere of one of the larger condensed asteroids in the
lower corner, and a small white speck representing the other large asteroid in
the upper corner. As she watched, the smaller speck moved slowly across the
screen, getting brighter as it came. Carole looked at another console, the
picture there was almost the same, but reversed. The geometry of the elastic
collision of the two large ultra-dense asteroids was almost exactly symmetric.
Jean spoke
from another console. "Video monitors operating."
"Computer
control well within margins," another voice said.
"Herder
probe propulsion units all operational," said another.
"I'll
let it go, then,"
Carole
watched one of the screens as the smaller blob grew larger and larger. Angry
tongues of fire burst rapidly in seemingly random directions from positions
near the two spheres as the computer directed the herder probes to keep the
asteroids on their correct paths. Then suddenly, in a sequence that was too
fast to follow, an ultra-dense asteroid flashed around between its twin and the
camera probe, and the screen was empty.
They all
turned to
Their
elevator was in place.
God
TIME:
God came to the cheela slowly. For
many, many, many generations, the cheela had no God. The sky was empty except
for a few tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the cold, black dome. Then God
had become lonely and made the great volcano grow, driving the cheela from
their home in the north to a new home in the south. There the god Bright had
welcomed his chosen people into the Heaven he had prepared for them.
Bright had been good to the cheela. Bright
never rose or set like the other spots of light, but stayed up in the sky,
keeping watch over all the cheela. Life was good, and the cheela let Bright
know that they were happy by their prayers that they faithfully gave every turn
of Bright's throne.
Then one
turn, when the eyes of the cheela were lifted to the skies in prayer, one of
the supplicants saw a new speck rise over the horizon. As soon as the prayers
were finished, he brought it to the attention of the Holy Ones that interpreted
Bright's wishes.
The Holy
Ones were puzzled, but did not let it show. As masters of their profession,
they had learned to say little and do even less until they were sure of
themselves.
"Yes—we
expected something like that, but let us wait and we will study it
further," they reassured the excited discoverer.
They did
study it. It was still a speck in the sky, not much different from all the
other specks, but it soon became brighter than any of the others. Fortunately,
it was not nearly as brilliant as the god Bright, as it would have been
difficult to explain two gods to a people that had been brought up to believe
in the omnipotence and uniqueness of the One God—Bright.
The new
speck grew and grew in brilliance with each passing turn, and although the
common cheela noticed the increase in brightness, it was only the Holy Ones who
noticed that the speck was also slowly moving with respect to the other stars
in the sky. A moving star! This was unheard of in cheela astrology, where the
pattern of lights, dominated by the glaring red-yellow presence of Bright, had
always remained fixed in relative position while rotating slowly about Bright's
throne in the sky.
"If the
stars are not fixed, but move around, how can one make any kind of predictions
from them? The future would be constantly changing," complained
Bright's-Second, the Chief Astrologer and the next in line for the position of
High Priest.
"I am
sure Bright has a reason for this change in the sky," Bright's-First said.
"It is up to us to use our intelligence in the service of Bright and
interpret its meaning."
The High
Priest turned her eyes toward the young novice.
"Are
you sure of the motion?" she asked.
"Yes, O
Bright's-First," said Sky-Seeker. "In my training in astrology I have
been learning how to estimate the angles between the star specks with the
astrologer sticks and have memorized almost all my number tables. I had tried
to add the new star to my memory but, still being a novice, I had failed to get
all the numbers correctly. I realized my mistake many turns later when I was
trying to cast a fortune. I then went back to the astrologer sticks to get the
numbers correctly and I found that some of the old numbers that I had memorized
did not agree with the new ones for that star."
"Unfortunately,
he is correct," the Chief Astrologer said. "At first I thought his
memory was faulty or that someone had disturbed the astrologer sticks. However,
when I checked the numbers against the ones that I had committed to memory on
the fateful turn when that star blossomed in the sky, I found out that my old
numbers were even further off than the novice's, yet none of the other stars in
the sky have changed their numbers at all."
"A
moving star ..." The High Priest murmured. "One
that moves. It must be that Bright has sent us a messenger! Perhaps
Bright will speak directly to us now."
Soon the
religion of the cheela was broadened to include the new phenomenon, a star that
not only grew brighter and brighter until it rivaled Bright in its brilliance,
but which swept majestically across the skies. There was some consternation
when Bright's
Messenger reached perihelion and its brilliance started to fade, but all the
cheela were relieved when after a few greats of turns, it retraced its path in
the sky.
The new star
set the small cadre of novices talking among themselves. Having been picked
primarily because of their interest in numbers and their eidetic memory, so
necessary for the position of an astrologer in a civilization without writing,
they soon began to puzzle over the strange behavior of the motion of Bright's
Messenger.
"If it
were a circle, then it would make more sense," said one of the novices.
"We could say that Bright and the other stars are perched on a large
crystal egg that rotates once a turn, and Bright's
Messenger would then be on a smaller crystal egg, turning at a slightly faster
rate."
"But
not only is it not a circle," another said, "it
does not even move evenly along its path."
"Another
way of looking at it is that Bright and the stars do not move in the sky,"
said a third, "but that Egg turns once on its axis every turn, and that
Bright's Messenger rotates about Egg in an elongated path."
The others
looked at her as if she had spoken heresy (which she had come close to doing),
and one quickly put her down with one of the first lessons in
"All
stars rotate about the unique brilliance of Bright, worshiping the God of the
Universe as all cheela do," one of them said. "Your picture would
have the stars standing still, when we all know that only Bright, the center of
the universe, stands still, while all else must revolve."
Knowing she
was treading on unstable crust, Sky-Seeker did not bother to reply, although
she knew as well as the others, that Bright did not really stand still but
moved in a tiny circle about an invisible point in the sky. This lack of
perfection of Bright had been a nagging splinter in the tread of the
philosophers of theology since it was first discovered by the use of the
astrologer sticks. The High Priest had assured them that they would understand
this in time, but it had been a long time and a dozen High Priests had come and
gone and Bright still carried out the tiny motion, without bothering to
explain.
TIME:
The Chief Astrologer had been wrong.
The variable motion of Bright's Messenger across the sky did not doom the
science of astrology. Indeed, by adding some complexity to the sky it gave the
astrologers much more to work with than a single set of memorized numbers that
gave the relative position of the stars in the sky. Soon, the old technique of
casting horoscopes by the star that was appearing over the horizon at the
propitious time became obsolete. The position of Bright's Messenger among the
fixed positions of the rest of the stars became the dominant factor in
predicting the future.
It soon
became evident that the technique of memorizing the numbers taken with the
astrologer sticks was not going to work. Even the best memories of the novices
could not cope with the flood of numbers that Bright's Messenger produced every
turn. The ancient accounting technique of the business merchants, who monitored
their inventory with pod seeds in bins, was adapted by the astrologers. After
an awkward time of trying to work directly with seeds, one of the novices
discovered the device of scratching pictures of seeds on flat plates of rock,
then shortly after that, because of the hardness of the rock and the laziness
of the novices, a shorthand written number system was invented. Not only astrology,
but business and science were soon revolutionized by the discovery of written
numbers. Then, shortly after having gotten used to writing numbers on a tablet,
the merchant scribes (as lazy as the astrologer scribes) found that they didn't
have to draw a complete picture of the object that was being counted for an
inventory or delivery record, but only enough so that another scribe
(presumably equally loath to make complete drawings) would be able to recognize
what it was.
Thus,
although none of the High Priests ever realized it, the cheela were soon using
the gift that Bright had sent by its Messenger—the gift of writing.
TIME:
For greats of greats of turns, the life
of the cheela was smooth. Bright kept watch over Heaven and blessed the cheela
in their growth and in their conquests of the north and east. Small, savage
bands of leathery-skinned barbarians would often leave
their smoky lands
to the north and attempt raids on the croplands in the northern part of Heaven,
but the cheela farmers in the north were well protected by roving squads of
needle troopers.
The needle
troopers carried the dreaded weapon, the dragon tooth. A very long needle of
melted dragon crystal, it was made by the forgers, who used fires of dried pod
seeds blown to a blue white heat with bellows from Flow Slow skin to melt
otherwise useless pieces of dragon crystal until they had a liquid melt. The
glowing melt was poured into a groove cut into the crust along the easy
direction. The long fibrous strings in the liquid became aligned by the strong
magnetic field of the star. The liquid then recrystallized about the fibers,
forming a two-component matrix material that was as strong as the original
dragon crystal, except that now it was longer than any dragon crystal had ever
been. A cheela trooper could envelop the blunt end of the needle and get enough
leverage so he or she could extend the light, strong needle of crystal out a
full body diameter without letting the point either touch the crust or rise too
high in the air.
The
barbarians, not having the secrets of the forge, were limited to broken shards
of dragon crystal for their weapons and were no match for a well-trained squad
of needle troopers, who moved in disciplined circles, their dragon tooth
needles bristling across the tops of their interlocked Flow Slow plate shields.
TIME:
Commander Carole Swenson was
floating above the console, watching over
One after another,
the six glowing compensator masses were dropped from their far-flung orbits to
a spot near St. George, where they were met by the deorbiter mass, which
stopped
them in their
tracks and left them dancing randomly about each other in a 100,000-kilometer
circular orbit not too far from St. George. Their huge bulk dwarfed the long,
thin mother ship, and the heat generated during their formation made them glow
like new stars in the black sky.
TIME:
One after the other, new stars began
to blossom in the sky. The cheela in Bright's Heaven continued to multiply and
prosper, but their very numbers began to strain the ability of the crust to
support them. Decadence set in and soon the needle trooper commanders despaired
of ever adequately defending the expanding frontier with the flabby, ill-fed
recruits they were sent to use.
A fifth new
light grew in the sky during the time the barbarians made inroads from the
east. Alarmed, by both the losses and the new stars, the cheela rose under the
leadership of a self-proclaimed General of the Clans and drove the barbarians
back. The spasm of energy subsided—the General abandoned his post and went off
to hatch eggs—and the cheela slipped back into their slow decline.
Yet another
star blazed in the heavens, and this time the flurry of worry and religious
concern was brief. Bright's-First still worshiped daily in Bright's
TIME:
Most of the crew of the interstellar
ark were floating in front of the viewports on the
bridge as St. George approached the site of the compressed asteroid collection.
The rest were at various observation posts where the telescopes and scanners
gave them a better view.
"I know
it's safe, but I still don't like it, Carole," he said. "Those
red-hot asteroids are not only too hot to touch, but they would crush us with
their gravity tides if we ever got too close. And we are going to live within
200 meters of six of them for over a week!"
Carole
smiled reassuringly and replied, "You know perfectly well that, if it were
not for the toasty embrace of those friendly asteroids, the gravity tides of
Dragon's Egg would crush you instead! Let's get them down there where they will
do you some good."
TIME:
Bright's-Second had been keeping a careful
watch on the collection of six lights ever since he had been a novice. Having
entered the priesthood because he was withdrawn and unpopular, he had submerged
himself in the astrologer sticks and had invented new tools to measure more
accurately the minute motions of the many lights piercing the darkness. He was
the first to notice that the tiny circle that Bright made in the sky had become
measurably smaller. He took the news to Bright's-First, who was delighted.
"That
must mean that the imperfection in Bright, minuscule as it has been, is
becoming smaller," she said. "When will be the time that Bright is
perfect? Oh that I might live to see the turn!"
"I am
afraid that when that turn comes, we will both be meat, O High Priest of
Bright," the Chief Astrologer said. "Entire clans will have come and
gone before Bright reaches its perfection."
The High
Priest was disappointed, but she didn't let it show. "Well, we must
maintain our stewardship and keep Bright's
The Chief
Astrologer listened politely, but was bursting to tell the High Priest the
other news that he had.
"My new
sticks have also informed me that something else is happening," he said.
"The Six ... I mean, the six newer lights are slightly shifting in
position and are drawing closer and closer to the point where Bright's
Messenger reaches its farthest distance from Egg. Also, if you watch The Six
and Bright's Messenger as often as I do, you will see that they do
not stay at the
same brightness from turn to turn, but occasionally flare up slightly, then
return to their original level."
"What
can that mean?" Bright's-First asked.
"I
don't know, but in about a great of turns, Bright's Messenger will reach its
maximum distance from Egg, and it seems as if all six of the other lights will
be there at the same time. If so, something interesting may happen."
TIME:
When the deorbiter came up this
time, there was going to be a spectacular show. Commander Swenson was again in
the port science blister, watching the action on the console screens.
"Check
position of compensator masses!"
Six
confirmations flashed instantly on his screen and were echoed by voices floating
through the air from six nearby consoles, where each compensator mass was being
monitored by a crew member.
"Still,"
Carole said, "it lets us get in on the fun." She watched as a tiny
speck in one corner of the screen slowly grew bigger and approached the six
glowing spheres in the center of the screen. Then, in a complex wiggle and
flash, the deorbiter mass pulled its disappearing act. The six glowing
compensator masses were gone, and the screen was empty.
TIME:
Bright's-Second had his suspicions
verified. For when Bright's Messenger reached its point of maximum distance
from Egg, it did not just pass in front of the Six, but instead grabbed East,
Sex, Crust, West, Food, then finally Sky, and flung them down at Egg.
The dozen
turns in which the sky was torn asunder by Bright's Messenger throwing down the
false gods from the sky was a busy time for Bright's
wicked cheela that
had abandoned Bright and had turned to false gods. For a while, even
Bright's-Second was worried about that possibility. But a few dozen turns
staring through the astrologer sticks assured him that although the falling
stars would come close to Egg, they would only come as close as Bright's
Messenger did. When the High Priest passed Bright's-Second's assurance of
salvation on to the cheela, the crowds flocked to Bright's
Near the end
of the fourth great of turns after their fall, the six star-specks and Bright's
Messenger drew closer, and moved more rapidly through the black heavens.
Bright's-Second spent almost his entire time out at the astrologer sticks,
writing down the numbers as fast as he could determine them. After he was
certain of the orbits, he could spend some time carefully drawing them out and
trying to understand them, but right now his full time was spent collecting the
numbers as the seven bright objects moved through the heavens. He determined
that Bright's Messenger had been affected by the interaction—not much, but an
easily measurable change had been made in its highly elliptical orbit. He hated
to do it, but he put a novice in charge of taking the numbers, and went off to
draw up the new orbits of the fallen Six.
"Strange,"
thought Bright's-Second, "they all seem to be heading for the same place
above Egg. Perhaps they will hit each other and destroy themselves, as an
example to the cheela not to worship false gods."
Suddenly he
had another thought, and shortly he was staring at still another egg-shaped
orbit—that of Bright's Messenger with its new numbers used.
"Bright's
Messenger is going to be at the same point at the same time," he said to
himself. "What is going to happen? It would be to Bright's glory if I
could predict the outcome for the people, so they could be properly
prepared."
Bright's-Second
tried as hard as he could to extract the most from the inadequate numbers that
came from the crude astrologer sticks, but all he could tell was that Bright's
Messenger and six fallen ones were going to be near the same place at the same
time.
"They
look as if they will all collide and be destroyed," Bright's-Second
reported to the High Priest. "But it could be that Bright's Messenger will
toss the other six off into different directions again, perhaps back up to
where they were. I simply don't know what to predict."
"It
would be so much better if we knew," she replied, "but perhaps
.Bright is testing us again."
Bright's-First
was wise in the ways of religious leaders and only told her people that they
were all to be praying, with their eyes to the eastern skies, when the time
came for the stars to meet.
Inexorably
the seven spots in the sky drew closer together, and now everyone could see the
irregular flaring in intensity as if they were glaring at each other.
Bright's-Second was busy at the astrologer sticks. He had the novices working
in teams, one for each of the seven lights. They often got in each other's way
and a number or two was lost or misread, but he could take care of those later.
He himself, with his practiced eyes, was estimating the relative distance
between the points of light, while the novices were measuring with respect to the
background stars. It was now obvious that they were not all going to meet at
exactly the same place. Then, as the cheela watched, they saw Bright's
Messenger swing by Sex, West, Food, East, Crust, and finally Sky, then continue
on its accustomed path back into the blackness, leaving the six standing still
in the sky!
A keening
vibration shook the crust as a great of greats of cheela treads chattered in
fear and awe at the amazing sight. Where before, the six stars had risen and
set in the skies each turn as the other stars and Bright's Messenger had done,
they now were stationary. They neither rose nor set, but slowly rotated once a
turn around a point above the east magnetic pole.
The High
Priest took full advantage of the extraordinary sight, and at the next turn
proclaimed that the new formation was composed of six of Bright's eyes, brought
down to Egg by Bright's Messenger to vigilantly watch over the cheela to see if
they were daring to worship false gods again. The proclamation was accepted by
the cheela, and the pantheistic temples were reduced to rubble by frightened
mobs cowering under the constant glare of the Six Eyes of Bright.
The new
formation in the sky bothered Bright's-Second. It was counter to everything he
had ever known about the behavior of the many lights in the sky. Having been a
trooper chaplain during the last northern campaign against the barbarians, he
had marched with the troopers across the equator to destroy a barbarian town.
There, through breaks in the smoke cover, he had seen some tiny stars that
rotated in small circles over the north pole, as
Bright did over the south pole. He could under-
stand a star
being motionless in die sky if it were near a pole in the sky, but this was the
first time an east or west magnetic pole had acted like the north and south
poles.
TIME:
"The compensator masses are
down," Carole said, turning to
The console
blinked.
PAGING CESAR RAMIREZ WONG
PAGING JEAN KELLY THOMAS
PAGING AMALITA SHAKHASHIRI DRAKE
PAGING SEIKO KAUFFMANN TAKAHASHI
PAGING ABDUL NKOMI FAROUK
Kicking off
from the console,
TIME:
It was twenty minutes to separation and
the crew of Dragon Slayer gathered in the small lounge at the base of the ship.
(the only
"real" doctor on Dragon Slayer) had the unusual combination of an
M.D. in aerospace medicine and a Ph.D. in supermagnetics. Pierre himself had a
Ph.D. in high-density nu-cleonic theory, and doctorates in gravitational
engineering and journalism. Seiko, at 32, had them all beat At
last count she had four doctorates and expected to earn another as the result
of their trip. Although each was a specialist in one aspect or another of
neutron star physics, they had cross-trained so that each one of them could
carry out any portion of the detailed science schedule that Dragon Slayer's
crew was on.
"After
separation we will be on ten-hour interlocking duty shifts. There will be a
two-hour overlap so the new person coming on duty can be debriefed on the
status of the experiments before taking over. It is now 0912 so Abdul, Seiko
and Doc are on duty, with Doc on his mid-shift meal break and Seiko to go off
duty at 1000. We had better get into the routine, so the rest of us should
relax now. I know we aren't going to quarters during breakaway, but our shift
will be coming up soon, so make sure that you get some sleep, and don't spend
your off hours just watching the others work."
The time for
separation approached, and they all went up to the main deck where each would
have a viewport. The breakaway was quiet and uneventful. The procedure
consisted of opening the hatch doors of the huge mother ship, unlocking the
attachment fittings, and slowly backing the larger ship away from the freely
falling sphere.
Cesar spoke.
"It is always awe-inspiring to be outside, and up this close. The last
time for me was when I came on board two years ago."
"I've
been out a dozen times on antenna maintenance," Amalita said. "But
you're right—no matter how often you see it, it is still impressive."
"Good
hunting, Dragon Slayer," came Carole's throaty
reply.
They drifted
away from the ark. As it grew smaller and smaller in the distance, the crew
members gathered around the port facing the retreating mother ship. Finally
faced the neutron
star that they would soon be orbiting at close quarters.
"The
deorbiter will arrive in six hours,"
The crew
went to suit lockers, where they stripped down to briefs and put on
tight-fitting wet suits with a complex array of hydraulic tubing, pressure bladders,
and a full underwater breathing apparatus. They then climbed, one by one, into
the spherical tanks. Abdul was ready first and climbed into the tank with the
hatch that opened downward into the lounge.
Once he had
Abdul safely in the tank, he turned and visited the rest of the crew. Amalita
had checked out her equipment and was climbing into her tank, while Seiko
Kauffmann Takahashi, with her typical Germanic thoroughness, was still checking
out her air system. Jean was already in her tank and Doc had carried out the final
checkout with her.
"We
would have to bottle her and pour her into the crematorium when we got back to
St. George," he thought to himself.
her methodical
check of each one of her pressure bladders, closed her hatch cover, purged her
remaining air, then turned to face her console pickup.
"Seiko
Kauffmann Takahashi secured," intoned the stolid image, the short
efficient oriental bob outlining the determined round face.
Through the
long wait they could feel vibrations and slight accelerations that leaked
through their water shields and pressure suits. These were vibrations from the
ship's rockets, as the computer brought the spacecraft and the ultra-dense
asteroid closer together.
"Down
we go!"
The drop
down into the fierce gravity well of Dragon's Egg only took two and a quarter
minutes. All was quiet for most of the fall, but in the last few seconds—as
they began to approach the neutron star—
His eyes failed
to see the glow of the deorbiter mass as it flashed again across his screen,
leaving Dragon Slayer motionless in the center of the six compensator masses
that were whirling about the neutron star and the spacecraft five times a
second. "What a ride!" a female voice said over the intercom, masked
by the excitement and the breathing mask.
"Time to get out of your swimming pools and get to
work!"
TIME:
Not many saw the faint star as
Bright's Messenger left it at the center of Six Eyes. It had been too faint to
see when it was in its high orbit above the star, since it did not have a glow
of its own like the other stars in the sky. But once it was basking in the glow
of Six Eyes, the speck reflected their radiance and could be seen by those
worshipers of Bright with the best eyesight or the most faith.
"The
new star in the center of Six Eyes does not move," the Chief Astrologer
reported to Bright's-First, the High Priest. "The Six Eyes are almost
motionless—however, they do rotate once every turn about the east pole. The new
inner star is at the exact center of Six Eyes and does not move at all."
The High
Priest was pleased with the news. Finally something logical was happening in
the skies above Bright's Heaven.
"If the
new star does not move in the sky, then it is like Bright—who also does not
move. Many generations ago Bright sent down six of his eyes to keep careful
watch on the unfaithful cheela of that time. It seems that Bright has approved
of what he has been seeing, and he has sent down his inner eye of faith to look
upon those who have been worshiping him for so long. This new eye is the Inner
Eye of Bright."
TIME:
After exiting the tanks, the crew of
Dragon Slayer gathered on the main console deck. The outside metallic
micrometeorite shields had been pulled back from the six darkened viewing ports
and they stared out. It was a dizzying sight, although they could feel no
motion.
They were in
a synchronous orbit 400 km out from the neutron star. To counteract the
41-million-gee gravitational pull from the nearby star, their spacecraft had to
orbit about the star at five revolutions per second. Yet despite the rapid
rotation they felt nothing because Dragon Slayer was stabilized to inertial
space and did not try to keep a port facing the neutron star. It was good that
it did not, for the centrifugal force in a spacecraft spinning around at five
revolutions per second would
have been enough
to crush their bodies to a pulp against the outer bulkhead.
Since the
spacecraft was orbiting but not spinning, this meant that the large, brilliant image
of the neutron star flashed by each of the viewing ports five times a second,
shining a flickering white glow on the walls of the central deck. Also visible
through the ports was a ring of six, large, red ultra-dense asteroids only 200
meters away. They too whirled about the spacecraft five times a second, their
glow alternating with the flashes from the distant neutron star.
Seiko took
in the scene at one view port with a quick professional glance. She then shut
her eyes and went limp in the air. Her arms and legs were stretched out in all
directions.
"What's
the matter!" Cesar exclaimed, looking over at her
with concern.
Seiko slowly
opened one eye. "Don't be concerned, Doctor Wong, I was merely checking
the tidal compensation," she said, slightly annoyed at being interrupted.
"At 406 kilometers from the neutron star, the tidal gravity gradient
should be 101 gees per meter. Even though my middle is in free-fall, my arms,
legs and head try to go in different orbits. My feet are one meter closer to
the star and should feel a pull of 202 gees. My head is one meter further than
my middle and should also feel a pull of 202 gees, while my arms should feel a
push of 101 gees.
"The
six compensator masses also make tidal forces of the same magnitude, only they make
tides of the opposite sign. I was just trying to see how accurately the two
tides were compensating by using my hands and feet as crude accelerometers. I
am surprised at how small the residual tide is. Only very near the hull can I
sense any forces on my arms as the ship rotates." She closed her eyes
again and continued to feel the play of the minute gravitational tugs coming
twenty times a second on her hands and feet as the compensator masses and the
neutron star whirled about the ship five times a second, rotating their
four-lobed gravity pattern about the nonspinning ship.
After
watching for some minutes, the crew began to be bothered by the flickering of
the lights. By common consent, the metal shields were activated and slid back
over the viewing ports, returning the main console room to its steady internal
illumination. The crew then turned to their job, which was to examine the
neutron star with instruments a lot more sophisticated than a naked human eye.
TIME:
The Old One watched attentively as
Sharp-Slicer carefully opened her laying orifice and deposited her egg at the
entrance to the egg-pen. "That egg does not look right," the Old One
said with a combination of concern and disapproval.
Sharp-Slicer
looked at the egg-sac with her dozen dark red eyes. The egg was much smaller
than normal, and very pale. "It didn't feel right while it was growing,
either," she replied. "I hope it will be all right after it
hatches."
"Don't
worry, I and the other Old Ones will take good care of it," Loud-Talker
said. "Perhaps it will grow bigger after it hatches and can get more
food."
Relieved of
her burden, Sharp-Slicer left the egg-pen and returned to her duties as Leader
of the Clan. The egg would be well taken care of by the devoted Old Ones.
Within a few turns, she had forgotten all about the incident. After all, when
one was as old as she was, with a half-dozen eggs contributed to the egg-pen,
they all seemed to blend into one another.
The pale egg
got lots of attention, for all the Old Ones were very concerned about every one
of the eggs entrusted to them. Loud-Talker took extra care to keep the pale
little egg-sac sheltered at all times under the flared edge of skin that he
used as a hatching mantle. He never forgot to roll the flattened oval sac over
a full dozen times each turn, to keep the eggling inside properly exercised.
Loud-Talker
was at first concerned when the time for hatching came and went, but soon
thereafter he could feel the eggling stir inside the sac. It was with relief
that he finally felt the warm flush of fluid under his mantle as the egg sac
burst and the eggling squirmed out.
Loud-Talker
carefully rolled the other egg-sacs away from the new hatchling while still
keeping them all under his hatching mantle. He maneuvered the hatchling to the
edge of his mantle and let it come out.
"Pink eyes!" Loud-Talker exclaimed in amazement,
his cool dark red eyes staring down at the small pale cheela. The dozen tiny
pink eyes surrounding the white body of the new hatchling waved unsteadily as
they stared up at the cold, dark sky.
His t'trum
of amazement brought another Old One, who had been helping in the hatchling
pen. The two Old Ones looked the new hatchling over with great concern. There
was obvi-
ously something
wrong with it, with its small size, pink eyes, and feverishly hot pale body.
"I have
never seen a little one like this before," said the other Old One.
"I have
not either," Loud-Talker said. "But when I was Leader of the Combined
Clans, I heard from my advisors about hatchlings similar to this one. They are
called Bright's Afflicted."
Loud-Talker
flared another section of his skin and slowly passed it up and over the little
one. "Why don't you take over the eggs for a while," he asked the
other, "while I take this little hatchling out to the hatchling pen and
give him something to eat?" Carefully prodding the little one along, he
went out the entrance of the egg-pen to the feeding trough of the hatch-ling
pen. There, Loud-Talker helped the hatchling put a tiny piece of pod into an
intake orifice. Soon the little one was successfully finding and stuffing
himself with more food, with almost no help from the Old One.
Loud-Talker
watched the hatchling eat. He was clumsy, but then most hatchlings were clumsy
until they had practiced eating for a few turns. However, this one seemed worse
than the others. Loud-Talker formed a slender tendril and moved it close to one
of the hot tiny pink eyes, but the eye did not withdraw into its protective fold
until the tendril was almost upon it.
"Poor
hatchling," Loud-Talker said. "I am afraid those pink eyes of yours
do not serve you well." His protective instincts swelled, and from then
on, the little hatchling became the special project of Loud-Talker.
Pink-Eyes
ate and grew, but always stayed much smaller than the other hatchlings his age.
He had courage, and tried to play in the rough-and-tumble games that hatchlings
play, but his poor eyesight put him at a considerable disadvantage. The part of
life in the hatchling pen that he liked best was listening to the stories of
the clan storyteller.
Loud-Talker
was the storyteller, for he had had many more experiences than the other Old
Ones. After each storytelling session, the other hatchlings would rumble noisily
away, pushing and shoving each other, while Pink-Eyes would stay and ask
questions about life outside the hatchling pen. He questioned Loud-Talker about
what it was like to be Leader of the Combined Clans and talk to a dozen greats
of cheela at one time, and have them all listen quietly to the words.
"It
must have been wonderful to have been so important, Old One Loud-Talker,"
Pink-Eyes said. "Why did you stop being Leader?"
"Well,"
Loud-Talker rumbled in wry humor, "I didn't really stop. It was just that
someone bigger and stronger wanted to be Leader, and after discussing it with
him for a while, I decided that I didn't want to be Leader of the Combined
Clans any longer." He unconsciously formed a tendril and brushed it over a
scar on his hide as he went on. "Besides, I was getting tired of being
Leader. More and more I wanted to come and tend eggs and play with you
hatchlings and tell you stories and do nothing else until I flow."
Loud-Talker flared his protective mantle and brushed it over the feverish body
of the eager little pale one while Pink-Eyes reflexively shrank to minimum area
and reveled in the cool caress.
TIME:
Abdul Nkomi Farouk's nimble brain
woke up softly, ready for anything. He slowly opened his eyes and grinned
inwardly at the sight of his brown arms floating aimlessly in front of him. He
was awake, but they were still asleep.
"Get
busy arms!" he thought to them. "You have a lot of button pushing to
do today if we are ever going to get that neutron star mapped."
However, the
first thing that the arms did was their now automatic twist and curl of the
tips of Abdul's fierce black mustache. Abdul's eyes watched the arms in
amusement. He then gave them his first direct command. Instantly his body dropped
from its dreamlike trance and became one with his mind. He unsealed the
sleeping cocoon and pushed off to the head.
TIME:
It was nearly time for Pink-Eyes to
leave the hatchling pen when Loud-Talker died. Loud-Talker was in the midst of
his favorite activity; telling stories to the hatchlings. He was recounting the
tale of the time he had led the forces of the Combined Clans in a punitive raid
to drive back the barbarians in the north. He was just getting to the good
part, where he personally hacked up a dozen barbarians at one time (the number
of barbarians
seemed to increase with each telling), when a fluid pump to his brain-knot
failed. The constant muscular tension in his skin relaxed, and his body spread
into a large, limp circle that flowed out and in between the hatchlings.
Pink-Eyes was shocked. This was not the first Old One that he had seen
die, but the loss of his special friend and mentor was a great blow. He stayed
rooted to the spot, not even moving when the butchering crew came to get the
body. He was still there when the hatchlings returned from watching Loud-Talker
converted into meat for the food bins.
While the
others were busy eating, Pink-Eyes wandered out the opening of the hatchling
pen and went slowly off to climb a small mound just outside the clan camp.
As a leader
of a clan that inhabited the eastern border of Bright's Empire, Sharp-Slicer
always kept half her tread listening to the constant murmurs in the crust. Her
clan was subject to many attacks by the barbarians, and although she had good
warriors out on watch duty, she never relaxed. She paused now as something
unusual rippled through the crust under her tread. It was very faint, and very
high-pitched. It was not a sentry alarm, but it definitely didn't sound like
the usual busy noises of the clan camp.
The strange
ripple sounded like a voice from a hatchling pen, but her trained directional
sense placed it well outside the camp boundaries. She moved to the edge of the camp
where the high-pitched ripple now came more clearly. She then saw the source, a
faint pale spot on top of a nearby rise. Sharp-Slicer moved toward it; as she
got closer, she realized that the pale spot was the Bright's Afflicted
hatchling, Pink-Something-or-Other.
She was
annoyed that the hatchling had been allowed to wander off this far from the
camp, but then again, there had been some confusion at the hatchling pen when
Loud-Talker had flowed. Besides, the hatchling was probably old enough by now to
be given some work, although Sharp-Slicer had a hard time thinking of what such
a small, poorly-sighted one could do.
As
Sharp-Slicer approached the base of the rise, she could hear the high-pitched
voice through the crust. She was surprised at how well the tiny ripples seemed
to travel. She stopped to listen.
"O
Bright One in the sky. Why do you punish me so, for I
have done
nothing wrong. I have always worshiped you as I should," Pink-Eyes said.
"You have inflicted this miserable pale body upon me—and now you have
taken my only friend. Why? Oh Why?"
Sharp-Slicer
was a little bewildered that the youngster seemed so attached to the Old One.
She had respected Loud-Talker herself. After all, anyone would respect an
ex-Leader of the Combined Clans. But he was meat now—there was nothing left to
respect. She supposed that this unseemly sorrow over a hunk of meat was just
one of the many strange things that was wrong with the
poor youngster. She rumbled a call in his direction.
"You—come
down at once, and return to the compound!" she said. "You know there
are barbarians not far away."
Pink-Eyes
was startled at the voice booming through the crust, for his eyes had been busy
trying to make out the blur that was all he could see of Bright, and he had not
noticed the Clan Leader's approach. He was awed at being addressed personally
by the Leader of the Clan, and quickly flowed down the hill and started back to
the camp, but a command from Sharp-Slicer brought him to a stop.
"Wait!"
Sharp-Slicer said. "Since you now feel that you can just wander out of the
hatchling pen whenever you want to, perhaps you are too big for the hatchery.
What is your name and age, youngster?"
"My
name is Pink-Eyes and I have aged a dozen greats of turns, O Leader of the
Clan," Pink-Eyes responded respectfully.
Sharp-Slicer
flowed over and looked at him closely. He was small, much too small for
training as a warrior or hunter, and even too small for tending crops. She was
going to have a hard time finding something useful for this one to do. She
finally had an idea.
"You
are to go to the clan astrologer and tell him that the Leader of the Clan said
that you are to train to be an apprentice astrologer," she ordered.
Pink-Eyes was delighted that he had finally been given something
useful to do, and immediately flowed off toward the astrologers' compound.
Sharp-Slicer
watched the eager youngster flow off, and then returned to more important
business, having never connected the pale youngster with the pale egg that she
had left at the egg-pen so long ago.
TIME:
Cesar was busy at the science
experiments console. Now that they had settled in over the east magnetic pole,
it was time to start the survey instruments. The IR and UV scanners were busy,
and the high resolution visible camera was taking shot after shot of small
regions in the mountainous territory in the east pole region. Even the neutrino
and gravitational radiation detectors were operational on the possibility that
a crustquake might occur, although the chances of that happening were not high.
Cesar now
readied the laser radar mapper. He first set it in the short pulse mode to get
the best resolution on the mountains directly below Dragon Slayer. He checked
over the laser parameters as they appeared on the screen.
LASER RADAR MAPPER:
WAVELENGTH 0.3 MICROMETERS
PULSE WIDTH 1.0 PICOSEC (0.6 MM
RESOLUTION)
PEAK PULSE POWER 1 GW
PULSE REP RATE 1,000,000 PULSES/SEC
SPOT SIZE 60 CM DIAMETER.
Satisfied
with the setup, Cesar leaned forward. "Proceed with laser radar mapper
scan!" he said. "Circular scan from sub-surface
point out to five kilometers radius!"
Cesar
watched as the screen blanked and the image of Dragon's Egg appeared on the
screen. He then saw a track of tiny little circles, each one representing a
spot where the laser radar had reflected its beam off the crust of the neutron
star, slowly winding its way outward in an ever expanding spiral.
'The spiral
scan will take about eight minutes," he murmured to himself. He watched
for a few seconds and then his fingers flicked over the keyboard as he moved on
to set up the next experiment.
TIME:
"I don't want to complain, but
I don't want him around," the clan astrologer complained to Sharp-Slicer.
"When you first sent Pink-Eyes to apprentice with me, I was willing to
give him a try, even if he does look strange. He was eager, and tried
very hard, but when we found out
that his eyes are so poor that Bright and the Eyes are only blurs, and that he
cannot even see most of the other stars in the sky, it was obvious that he
could never be an astrologer. If you cannot see the stars, then how can you
make astrological predictions?
"Despite
that," the clan astrologer went on, "I did find him useful in helping
me with the worship services. His voice is high, but the ripples carry well. I
use him for all the chants, and have him take care of the worship symbols. But
now, I am afraid that I will have to get rid of him. He's blasphemous."
"What!"
exclaimed Sharp-Slicer.
"Yes,"
the clan astrologer said. "For a long time, as an apprentice, he kept
saying that the Inner Eye of Bright was flashing on and off. We finally
convinced him that it was just his poor eyesight tricking him, but recently he
has been saying that every dozen turns or so, the flashes get brighter and
brighter, and then fade away again. The last time occurred a few turns ago. He
even dragged me up to the top of his silly hill and kept saying to me, "Look,
at them! Look at those brilliant flashes! Are you blind, Old One!'
"I
don't mind being called an Old One, for it is not long before I will get to
play with the hatchlings," the clan astrologer went on. "But to be
called blind by that nearly sightless freak is more than I can stand. Besides,
he is going around telling everyone that Bright's Inner Eye is signaling to
him—him alone!"
Sharp-Slicer
looked at the seven points of light hanging nearly motionless over the east
pole. She did not often look at the sky, as she was too preoccupied with
running the clan here on the crust. However, if there had been bright flashes
from the Inner Eye, she certainly would have noticed them. She normally did not
pay much attention to religion, but, as Leader of the Clan, she was
automatically Chief Worshiper of Bright at holy times, and it wouldn't do to
let things be disrupted by an obviously deranged individual.
"I
guess the Bright's Afflicted has other problems besides paleness and poor
eyesight," she said. "However, times are good, so we will just let
him get by without having to do any work."
Pink-Eyes was not happy with his new status. He felt worthless, and
spent most of his time off away from the clan camp, gazing at the blurry shapes
of Bright and the Eyes, talking to the spots of light and himself, and dreaming
that he was
Leader of
the Combined Clans, speaking to the multitudes that gathered around him to hear
his words of wisdom.
TIME:
The console screen flashed, and
Cesar looked up. Across the top of the screen appeared the words:
LASER RADAR MAPPER SCAN
COMPLETE.
Cesar struck
a few keys and the IR image mat he had been examining disappeared and was
replaced with the command setup for the laser radar mapping experiment.
For the next
segment of the scan, the laser beam would be shooting obliquely across the
curved surface of Dragon's Egg, and the equipment could now obtain both high
resolution height and surface position information if it were set up to use a
chirped pulse. Soon the laser was chirping in frequency from the visible up to
the ultraviolet region, while the pulse repetition rate was lowered to 100,000
pulses per second.
Cesar set up
the laser mapper to scan a one radian sector, starting from the edge of the
five-kilometer circle that he had already mapped and extending out for another
five kilometers—-well over the curve of Dragon's Egg. He then watched as the
sector scan started, the narrow fan beam taking about one second per sweep as
it slowly crept outward toward the west.
TIME:
Pink-Eyes made his way up the slight
rise just outside the clan camp. He had been so sure that Bright had been
talking to him through Bright's Inner Eye, but no one would believe him.
"Yet—it
was so bright!" Pink-Eyes said to himself. "Such dazzling, brilliant flashes of pure light. It was
Bright incarnate! Yet Bright would not let them see! Why? Why?? Why???"
Pink-Eyes
rested once again on the low rise. Using the prayers and chants that he had so
faithfully rippled into the crust every worship time, he again sought comfort
from one who seemed to have inflicted nearly every indignity upon him—except
death.
Pink-Eyes
felt his small sharp knife in his personal weapons pouch, and drew it out. He
looked at it for a long while, considering ... He dropped the knife to the
crust, where it lay, its tiny point shattered by the
fall.
Pink-Eyes
knew that his clan would not allow him to starve, even though they refused to
let him share in the work, but he resolved never to return. Without looking
back, he set forth toward the east, directly into the wilderness—the territory
of the barbarians. The sentry guards, used to the wanderings of this strange
pale one of the clan, let him pass outward without challenge.
Pink-Eyes
had no plan. Having been rejected by the clan, his only thought was to leave.
He knew he was in danger from the barbarians, but the thought of meeting death
at the points of their spears held no terror for him. He traveled onward, drawn
toward the pattern of lights over the east pole that slowly rotated, once a
turn.
Pink-Eyes
found some partially ripe pods on an isolated wild plant, and was slowly savoring the first food he had had in many turns
when he stopped, struck with awe. The Inner Eye had sent out a brilliant,
long-lasting, multicolored beam of light down ahead of him. The beam was unlike
the others that he had seen previously. Those had been short flashes of light,
so fast and so intense that there was no color to them. These were like silent
words of rolling crustquakes. They started in the deep red and slowly—taking
their time—swept through strange colors into a radiating brilliance. Pink-Eyes
waited, and shortly was rewarded by another dazzling
display. As if in a trance, he put the pods into a storage pouch and moved off
toward the beam of light. It came again and again, and soon he began to depend
upon its regularity.
As Pink-Eyes
moved forward to intercept the beam, he noticed that it was slowly moving off
to the north. A short while later, he saw that it had stopped its northward
movement. It now seemed to be coming closer and closer with every lengthy
blink. He moved to intercept its southward path, and finally stopped and waited
for it to come to him. As the turn passed he watched the brilliant, multicolored
display get brighter and brighter.
Then
suddenly it was on him. His eyes ducked reflexively under their flaps while the
crust around him sparkled with multicolored glints, but the strangest feeling
of all was the warmth on his topside. It tingled and felt good, so good it was
like
having sex with a
god. Pink-Eyes writhed in pleasure under the beaming ray, his pale body
automatically thinning out to absorb the delightful feeling. Then almost as
suddenly as it had come, the feeling stopped.
Bewildered,
Pink-Eyes drew himself into shape and waited. A short while later the beam came
down again, this time off to the south. His eyes could now stand the glare,
while his topside only felt a slight tingle of the intense feeling that it had
experienced just a few moments ago. Pink-Eyes tried to keep up, but the
blinking light moved too rapidly for him, and left him behind in its progress
across the crust.
Pink-Eyes
waited, his eyes gazing upward, as the beautiful beam slowly blinked its way
southward. He was sure it would return, so he waited, only moving to find some
food to sustain him, until he saw the beam come closer again. When it finally
arrived, he was ready, his small, pale body thinned out to its maximum to
receive the warm caress of the light. The beam struck him, and he reveled in
sexual pleasure, his tread kneading the crust in a paroxysm of prayer.
"Bright! O Bright! Pour down your blessing of love on me. Thank you! O
thank you for rewarding your faithful servant!"
For dozens
of turns, Pink-Eyes existed in the wilderness, communing with the Inner Eye of
Bright as its beam of love and pleasure swept by every half-dozen turns. His
slow wandering path took him steadily back toward his old clan camp as his pace
over the crust matched the steady motion of the scanning beam. As Pink-Eyes
moved along, he became more and more convinced that he—and he alone—had been
called to bring the Word of Bright to the cheela.
Fortified
spiritually, Pink-Eyes finally broke away from his addiction to the intense
sexual pleasure of the beam. He now moved more swiftly, and left the beam
behind him. The beam was still making its north and south movement over the
crust while slowly creeping westward. Pink-Eyes went directly toward the clan
camp. He made his way slowly up to the top of the mound near the camp where he
had previously communed with Bright. He began to preach, his high-pitched
voice, now strong with undoubting assurance, rippling through the crust.
"Prepare!
Prepare, all people! For the Blessing of Bright will
soon be on you!" sounded Pink-Eyes' voice.
At first,
only the perimeter guards came to investigate the source of the voice. When
they saw who it was and heard his strange speech, they jeered and moved back to
their posts. Af-
ter a few guard
shifts, most of the clan knew of the strange rantings of the Bright's
Afflicted. The news finally reached the clan astrologer, who went immediately
to Sharp-Slicer.
"We
must do something," the clan astrologer said.
Sharp-Slicer
agreed. "You are right. Let us go and try to get him to be sensible and
stop."
Sharp-Slicer,
the clan astrologer, and a group of warriors went out to the mound. As they
approached, they could hear Pink-Eyes preaching to a small group of heckling
warriors and older hatchlings.
"Repent
and pray!" Pink-Eyes was saying. "Repent!
For soon the Blessing of Bright will be upon you!"
Sharp-Slicer
thudded her tread against the crust, "Pink-Eyes! Stop that nonsense and
come down here!"
"No!"
Pink-Eyes said. "I now obey a higher leader than you!" Pink-Eyes reached
a tendril into a pouch that had been closed since he left the hatchling pens,
and pulled out his clan totem.
"I am
no longer of this clan," Pink-Eyes said, holding the clan totem up so that
all could see. He dropped the totem and it shattered on the crust, sending a
little shock wave through the disturbed treads of all around.
"I have
been called by Bright," Pink-Eyes said, "to lead all the people of
all the clans to greater worship of him.
"This
is enough," the clan astrologer whispered to Sharp-Slicer, "Stop his
ranting!"
Sharp-Slicer
took command of the situation, although unwillingly. It was a distasteful duty
to punish someone who was obviously mentally sick, but by destroying his clan
totem, Pink-Eyes had lost the protection of the clan.
"Since you
have destroyed your totem," Sharp-Slicer said in a loud voice, "you
yourself have left the clan. Therefore, I command you to leave clan
territory."
Her dozen
eyes shifted to pick out three warriors who were nearby. "I want you three
to escort this self-proclaimed barbarian to the border. Do not let him return.
If he does not leave, turn him into meat!"
The three
warriors moved slowly up the hill, none of them even bothering to pull a slicer
or pricker from a weapons pouch, for any one of them was more than a match for
the frail body of Pink-Eyes.
"Halt!"
Pink-Eyes said to the warriors, and they hesitated, slightly bewildered at the
strange behavior. Looking north,
Pink-Eyes saw the beam approaching
the mound. He turned all of his eyes upward toward the Eyes and started to
pray, ignoring the warriors.
"O
Great Bright! Show these wicked unbelievers the love that you can give to them
if they become your true followers." The warriors continued to hesitate,
uneasy over interrupting a prayer—yet their treads were rippling lightly with
suppressed humor.
Sharp-Slicer
was in the midst of stamping a sharp command to the hesitating warriors when
suddenly she felt herself flattening in a frenzy of glowing sexual pleasure.
Her eyes, writhing on extended eye-stubs, could see others also flowing and
thinning out around her. She felt the edge of the nearby clan astrologer
flowing over one side of her, partially blocking the intense warmth. A male
tread on her topside—normally a pleasurable feeling—did not feel good enough,
and she contracted and withdrew herself to bask her entire topside in the more
sublime pleasure that poured down from the sky.
As she
wiggled in enjoyment, she could hear Pink-Eyes' high pitched voice coming
through the crust. "Come—all of you—receive the Blessing of Bright that I
bring to you."
The pleasure
grew more and more intense, then it stopped. Slowly
Sharp-Slicer, the clan astrologer and the others regained their normal shape.
Exhausted, they waited motionless while Pink-Eye spoke.
"I have
brought you the Blessing of Bright," he said. "It will be yours again
if you will believe in Bright and will worship him."
"I
believe!" one of the warriors cried. "Bring down the Blessing of
Bright on me again!"
"First
we must worship Bright properly," Pink-Eyes said. "To do that, we
must all go into the clan camp and pray. In a half-dozen turns I want all the
clan to be gathered and worshiping Bright in the temple area."
Sharp-Slicer
said nothing as the others hastened off to tell the rest of the clan about the
miracle and the commands of Pink-Eyes. She did not like losing authority to
this pale excuse for a cheela, but with Bright seeming to back him, she had
little choice.
Six turns
later, the whole clan was gathered in the temple area and listening to
Pink-Eyes as he preached. Their bodies filled the temple to overflowing.
Pink-Eyes had allowed the
clan astrologer
to start the worship service, but he soon took over with a lengthy, hypnotic
sermon.
Sharp-Slicer
listened to the worship service from the fringes of the crowd. She had not
neglected her duties as Leader of the Clan, despite the interruption caused by
Pink-Eyes. Since Pink-Eyes had insisted that even the perimeter guards attend
the worship services, she made sure that she and the other warriors were on the
periphery of the crowd, in case of a barbarian attack. Also, despite their
protests, she made the Old Ones stay outside the egg and hatchling pens.
"When
the Blessing of Bright comes on you, it will be just as if you were having
sex," she tried to explain to Hard-Rock, the Old One in charge of the
eggs. "You will lose control of your body, and may damage an egg while you
are thrashing around."
"What
do you mean!" Hard-Rock protested. "I am too
old for sex. All I want to do is tend my eggs."
However, when
Pink-Eyes brought down the Blessing of Bright on the worshiping clan, Hard-Rock
felt a sexual surge that was more intense than the best experience of his
youth. His body thinned and his eyes stared out from extended stems as his
topside was bathed in the warming beam. Then—just at the end of the
Blessing—Hard-Rock, his eyes gazing upward at the Eyes in pleasure, saw a faint
glimmering beam of deep-colored light pouring down upon him.
"I see
it! I see it!" Hard-Rock shouted. "I believe! I believe!!"
Hard-Rock,
instantly converted, left his precious eggs without another glance and moved
through the recovering crowd. As he made his way he kept repeating, "I
saw! I believe! I want to follow you, bringer of the Word of Bright!"
Pink-Eyes
questioned Hard-Rock carefully, and finally was
convinced that Hard-Rock had seen a dim version of the dazzling, multicolored
display that was so obvious to him. When the next beam came down to the north
of them, Pink-Eyes had Hard-Rock look up at the Eyes, but the beam, not being
directly on him, was just barely visible to Hard-Rock.
Any
remaining thought that he had been imagining things left Pink-Eyes completely,
now that his visions of light from the Eyes had been confirmed. He again turned
his eyes to the crowd and spoke. "I am Bright's chosen one," he
announced. "I give you the glowing love of Bright, and I bring to you his
Word."
"Yes!"
Hard-Rock broke in, "Listen to the Chosen of God, and obey!"
Pink-Eyes
turned his eyes toward Hard-Rock. He formed a pale tendril and curled it around
one of Hard-Rock's eye-stubs. "You are one of Bright's chosen ones too,
Hard-Rock," he said. "I want you to come with me on my mission."
"I
obey, God's-Chosen," Hard-Rock said; and without hesitation, the hardened
veteran reached into a pouch that had not been opened for five dozen greats of
turns. He removed his clan totem, raised it high, and let it crash to the
crust.
Pink-Eyes
called Sharp-Slicer to him and announced, "I will travel to the west to
bring the Word of Bright to the rest of the clans. I will need food, and
warriors for protection."
"Yes, O
God's-Chosen," Sharp-Slicer said, relieved that this perplexing individual
would soon leave and allow the life of the clan to resume its normal pattern.
"We will obey."
At the next
turn Pink-Eyes, now reverently addressed as God's-Chosen, moved off to the west
with a large party of followers, Hard-Rock the foremost among them, and
surrounded by a small contingent of worshipful warriors. Sharp-Slicer had a
hard time keeping more of her people from leaving. Fortunately, God's-Chosen
had helped by preaching that Bright wanted them to stay to take care of the
eggs and hatchlings, and protect Bright's Empire from the barbarians.
The
procession moved slowly across the crust toward the next clan. A small group
led by Hard-Rock was sent ahead with the message that God's-Chosen was coming
to bring down the Blessing of Bright upon them all. Although Hard-Rock was well
known in the next clan, it was an incredulous group that gathered around
God's-Chosen as he stopped at the edge of the Clan compound to meet with
No-Fear, the Leader of the Clan, and his clan astrologer.
"Why
are you bothering our people, clanless one?" spoke No-Fear sharply.
"I only
wish to bring them the Word and Blessing of Bright, O Leader of the Clan,"
God's-Chosen said politely. "I know that you have a hard time believing
me, but I tell you that I am Bright's chosen one. Believe in me and you shall
receive his Blessing."
"I
don't like him," the clan astrologer whispered to No-Fear.
"I am
suspicious myself," No-Fear said. "But Hard-Rock has fought beside me
in many battles with the barbarians, and
he is not only
convinced that this funny pale one tells the truth, but he insists that he can
see the Blessing beam himself."
"I
still don't like it," the clan astrologer complained again.
"All he
asks is to be allowed to use the temple to pray to Bright," No-Fear said.
"That is what the temple is for, so what harm can there be in that?"
"Yet
..." complained the clan astrologer, perturbed over possibly losing some
of his authority in the clan, "it is the words that he will preach that
bother me. He insists that he is the chosen one of Bright. That cannot be. If
Bright were to choose a cheela to send his word by, it would be a strong, heroic
person, not that insignificant caricature of a cheela."
"Still,"
No-Fear protested, "he may be right, and I would not want to risk a curse
from Bright for ignoring the bringer of his Word." No-Fear turned his eyes
toward the pale one.
"We
will let you use the clan temple, God's-Chosen," said No-Fear, "if you will be sure to bring down the Blessing of Bright
upon us."
Pink-Eyes
turned a few of his eyes to the south, where he saw the multicolored beam off
in the distance.
"We
will rest this turn," he replied. "But on the next turn I want the
entire clan in the temple, and I shall bring the Blessing of Bright upon you
all, for I feel that you believe."
"Well!
I don't believe," whispered the clan astrologer to No-Fear. "No one
can order the God Bright around. If he fails in the coming turn, I want you to
order the clanless one turned into meat for speaking such outrageous
blasphemy."
"I had
already made that decision," No-Fear said quietly. "He may be able to
fool his own clan, but he will not fool us."
The bringer
of Bright's Word was not fooling. With the next turn, the following of
God's-Chosen grew. On the succeeding turn God's-Chosen left the newly converted
clan and a puzzled but convinced clan astrologer. The astrologer had asked for
and received a special prayer that he could use, for he was going to change his
temple worship services to thank Bright for having sent the Bringer of the Word
during his lifetime.
As the
caravan of the followers of God's-Chosen moved slowly west, bringing the Blessing
of Bright down upon clan after clan, the word of the strange happenings on the
eastern border reached Hungry-Swift, the Leader of the Combined Clans. It
sounded serious enough to cause him to investigate personally. Taking a squad
of needle troopers with him, he moved quickly along the pathways of Bright's
Empire, his
troopers clearing
the often-crowded way for him. Finally, Hungry-Swift cautiously arranged a
meeting with God's-Chosen and his followers.
Hungry-Swift
was too much of a politician to use his power ostentatiously. He left his
troopers and came alone to visit wilh the holy one. He had heard descriptions
of the miracle worker, but still was not prepared for the tiny pale body, and
especially the pink eyes. Feeling no fear from the little one, he went forward
to meet him.
"Greeting,
God's-Chosen," he said. "I hear strange tales about your work."
"They
are not tales, Hungry-Swift," God's-Chosen said. 'They are the true Word
of Bright."
"Tell
me more," Hungry-Swift asked. "For what I have heard has come through
many treads and has been distorted in the telling."
God's-Chosen
had been keeping his traveling band well ahead of the sweeping beam. He found
it better to keep the number of blessings to his followers down, so they would
not get too used to it. Besides, if any of them ever figured out that the
Blessing of Bright came every half-dozen turns, whether he called for it or
not, they would soon be able to receive the Blessing without having the Word of
Bright preached to them. His practised eyes found the beam in the north, and he
gauged its motion.
"I
could tell you much, Hungry-Swift, but you still would find it hard to
believe," God's-Chosen said. "Come with me for a journey alone into
the wilderness. Together we will pray and you shall have the Blessing of Bright
come upon you alone. Gather food for three turns and come with me."
"Why
wait three turns?" Hungry-Swift complained. "Why
not now?"
God's-Chosen
looked at him severely. "Because you do not believe," he said.
"And it will take three turns before I can get you to believe enough to
receive the Blessing of Bright."
Hungry-Swift
could only agree that God's-Chosen had judged the level of his disbelief
correctly. He did not believe in this charlatan at all, and he doubted that
three turns of preaching would change him a bit. However, the stories that he
had heard of this strange one were not distorted, but often came from some of
his best trooper commanders, who naturally had investigated anything that could
perturb the security of the far-flung borders of Bright's Empire.
Hungry-Swift
hated to waste three turns, but if that was what it would take to clear up this
mystery, he was willing to do it. If it turned out that there was no mystery,
he personally would make sure that there would not be enough left of the pale
body to bother collecting for the meat bins. Still, the miracle worker did seem
to be very confident and unafraid.
"I will
go with you, God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "Lead the way."
The two
loaded their pouches with a small amount of food and then God's-Chosen took
them to the northeast to meet the beam sweeping down from the north. The
trooper squad leader had protested the idea of Hungry-Swift traveling without
protection in the wilderness between clan camps, but Hungry-Swift brushed off
his protests.
"We are
well within the outer borders and there are no barbarians in this region,"
he said. "And I hope you don't think that I can't handle that pale priest
by myself. If I were just to tread on him lightly I would burst him like an
egg-sac."
As they
journeyed into the wilderness, God's-Chosen tried to preach continuously, but
Hungry-Swift would take the opportunity during pauses to ask personal questions
about the earlier times when God's-Chosen had been called Pink-Eyes. After hearing
of what Pink-Eyes had gone through as a hatchling and youngster, and about his
conversion in the wilderness, Hungry-Swift gained a grudging admiration for the
courage that seemed to fill the tiny body. Soon, Hungry-Swift stopped noticing
that the personality that was God's-Chosen/Pink-Eyes inhabited anything less
than a normal body. He was continually being surprised that Pink-Eyes was not
of normal size, as, for example, when he had to ask for help to pick a pod high
up on the side of a petal plant.
As their
line of travel came closer and closer to intersecting the path of the beam from
the Inner Eye, the preaching of God's-Chosen became more and more intense.
Hungry-Swift listened intently, for he now respected God's-Chosen, but he had
to admit that despite all the preaching, he still did not believe that his
companion was Bright's chosen one, and that he could bring the Blessing of
Bright down upon him.
"I
listen, God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "But I still have trouble
with my belief."
"Even
the act of confessing your disbelief is a motion in the right direction,"
God's
upward, and slowly
counting off the moments since the previous flash of the beam just to the north
of him, he chanted.
"Help,
O Bright! Help this unbeliever find faith! Bring down the Blessing of Bright
upon Hungry-Swift."
Hungry-Swift's
eyes followed those of God's-Chosen up to the strange formation of seven lights
that hung overhead in the sky. He was calmly wondering how they managed to stay
in one place while the rest of the stars in the sky moved from east to
west—when suddenly his body seemed to explode with pleasure.
For what
seemed like an eternity, Hungry-Swift reveled in the heaven-sent pleasure of
Bright's love. His eye-stubs reached out toward the Eyes in an attempt to
copulate with the stars. They writhed back and forth, stretching to their
limit— then suddenly they froze as they saw the beam coming down from the Inner
Eye of Bright.
"I see!
I see!!" he shouted. Then as quickly as it had come, the warmth stopped.
Hungry-Swift
composed himself and self-consciously wiped the dribbles of yellow-white mating
fluid from the orifice under each eye-stub. As he gathered his senses, he could
hear God's-Chosen praying.
"Thank
you, O Bright, for bringing the Vision as well as the Blessing to the Leader of
the Combined Clans. I pray that you will guide him to lead all the clans into
greater worship of you."
Completely convinced,
Hungry-Swift also prayed. As Leader of the Combined Clans, he was automatically
the head worshiper of Bright. However, the ritual chants that he had learned to
use in the worship services now seemed completely inadequate, and he clumsily
made up his own prayers.
"Lead
me, O Bright," he said. "Give me your Word, and I will follow it with
all that I command."
"I will
give you Bright's Word," God's-Chosen said. "For too long Bright has
been neglected. Bright has been good to his people. They have grown in numbers
and have prospered. What used to be a small clan gathered in the city of
"We
worship him often," Hungry-Swift protested.
"Yes,
but where?" God's-Chosen asked. "In tiny temple
areas. What
Bright deserves is a temple appropriate to his greatness."
'Tell me
what is needed," pleaded Hungry-Swift.
"You shall
build a
Hungry-Swift
was appalled. "That will be almost as big as the city of
"Yes,"
God's-Chosen went on, unperturbed. "For it must hold all who live in
Bright's Heaven, plus many others. At one dozen places about the circle there
shall be placed walls representing the eye-stubs of a cheela at full alert. At
the ends of each eye-stub shall be a round mound representing the eyes. Between
each pair of eye-stubs there shall be an opening in the
"I will
obey, God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "The
Still dazed,
Hungry-Swift followed God's-Chosen back to the two encampments. When the squad
leader came out to greet them, it was obvious from Hungry-Swift's demeanor that
the Leader of the Combined Clans had felt the Blessing of Bright. He was even
more awed when he learned that the Leader had also seen the Blessing, since
very few had been allowed by Bright to receive this indication of being one of
his chosen ones. The journey into the wilderness over, Hungry-Swift
automatically resumed command.
"Call
the troopers to alert," he ordered. "We return to Bright's Heaven at
once, for there is much to do."
Before he
left, Hungry-Swift returned for one last visit to his friend and teacher.
"Are
you God?" he asked.
"No,"
God's-Chosen said. "Bright is God. I am merely Bright's vehicle by which
he sends his Word and his Blessing. You have received the Word. Go and carry it
out. Yours will not be an easy task, for it will take a dozen greats of turns
to create a temple of that size. But do not worry about the time, for Bright is
patient. I will stay here and bring the Blessing of Bright to all the clans.
That too will take time, but by the time
you have the
"Bright
give me strength that I might live to see the
time," said Hungry-Swift.
"Your
work will keep you strong," God's-Chosen said. "Now go!"
At first
Hungry-Swift experienced resistance to the project of building the
Hungry-Swift
quickly eliminated all objections to the building of the
Fortunately
the barbarians were quiet during these times, and the crops grew well without
excessive tending, for soon nearly one-third of the population of Bright's
Heaven and surrounding areas was engaged in hauling rocks and loose crustal
material to form the outline of a cheela at perfect alert, with twelve round
eyes perched out on extended eye-stubs. The first thing built was a round mound
at the center that represented the Inner Eye of Bright. Then as the outline of
the
As the
greats of turns passed, God's-Chosen moved slowly west, pausing to make sure
that each clan camp was given the Blessing of Bright. As they moved nearer and
nearer to Bright's Heaven, the clan camps became closer and closer together.
They also began to spread more widely to the north and south, because the
population pressure had overcome the natural reluctance to engage in travel in
the hard direction. It soon became impossible for God's-Chosen to bring the
Blessing to each camp himself. There also came rumors of small groups of cheela
who had received the Blessing out in the wilderness without God's-Chosen being
anywhere near. God's-Chosen then decided that the time had come to give to
others the power to bring the Blessing. Since some could see the beam if it
were near, he made them his disciples. He sent them off in the hard directions,
north and south, with instructions to take
the Word to the
clans there. They were to watch the Inner Eye carefully and, as the beam
approached, time their worship services with the receiving of the Blessing of
Bright. The results were not as satisfactory as the well-preached services that
God's-Chosen conducted, but more and more of the cheela in the great Empire
felt the miracle of the Blessing of Bright.
As the
greats of turns passed, the
When
Hungry-Swift heard of the approach of God's-Chosen to the city, he came out
with an honor guard of troopers to greet him. As they moved along the pathway
to the city, the troopers would move ahead, lining the pathway and keeping the
curious multitudes from bothering God's-Chosen and the Leader of the Combined
Clans as they moved leisurely along, their pace limited by the small tread of
God's-Chosen.
The crowds that
gathered along the pathway were well behaved. The troopers would suffer
hatchlings to ooze between them, or allow an eye-stub to be rested on their
topsides (especially if the eye-stub belonged to a nubile one of the opposite
sex). The onlookers were treated to an unusual sight: a huge battle-scarred
warrior with an obvious air of command, who carried the highest rank in
Bright's Empire, maintaining pace and speaking deferentially to a tiny, pale,
pink-eyed, clanless one. Yet the pale one had an air of assurance about him
that caused the crowd to murmur as he passed. Occasional cheers radiated
outward from small groups as the two made their way into the city.
"How is
the
"The
basic foundation is done, O God's-Chosen," Hungry-Swift said. "And
the finishing work is well under way. We should have it completed well before
the Blessing of Bright is due to come down upon the
"Good,"
God's-Chosen said. "I would like to see it."
As the two
took the path to the south to visit the
came closer to
the
"It is
a fitting monument to the honor of Bright," he said with obvious
satisfaction.
"Yes,"
Hungry-Swift said. "All of us who worked on it are extremely proud that we
were allowed to contribute to such an impressive edifice. As you commanded, a
dozen greats of cheela can fit between the outer walls. One of the astrologers
calculated that the
"May we
bring down the Blessing of Bright upon them all," said God's-Chosen.
The two,
together with their honor guard, approached the walls of the
As they
passed through the
As they
entered the
"We
have come just at the end of a worship service," Hungry-Swift said.
"Bright's-First, the High Priest, is on the Inner Eye mound now. Let us go
to meet him."
They made
their way to the rear of the crowd around the mound as the service ended.
God's-Chosen was then bewildered to see a line of cheela, each dragging a sled
piled with food, slowly making its way up the mound. At the top, the
supplicants left their sleds, where they were taken by apprentice astrologers,
while the supplicant went up to the High Priest and slowly rotated around once,
while the High Priest touched each eye, one after the other, murmuring as he
did so.
"What
is going on?" God's-Chosen asked of one of the cheela slowly pulling his
heavy burden up the slope of the mound.
"I am
bringing my dozeth, and have come to get my
blessing," the cheela said.
The tread of
God's-Chosen rippled sharply on the crust, "What dozeth, and what
blessing?"
The cheela's
eye-stubs wavered randomly in bewilderment, and Hungry-Swift's voice broke in
from the side.
"The
High Priest has said that those who would divide up their harvest and kill into
twelve parts, and give one-twelfth to the Keepers of the
God's-Chosen
was shocked. His tread exploded in a furious shout.
"No!"
he shouted, and scurried up the mound as all eyes turned toward him. "The
Blessing of Bright belongs to all, and is freely given. You cannot bribe Bright
with gifts!" He moved across the top of the mound to where the apprentice
astrologers were taking the sleds of food. With a strength borne of fury, he
pushed a load of pods and meat off a sled down the slope. The pods rolled
downward, gathering speed and disappearing, to reappear as they came to a stop
against the shocked edges of the cheela at the bottom of the mound.
God's-Chosen
moved back to the center of the mound and repeated in his high-pitched voice,
"I will bring you the Blessing of Bright. You do not have to give a dozeth to receive it, but only what you wish to
give!"
God's-Chosen
turned his small pink eyes from the crowd, stared hard at the motionless High
Priest, and said, "I do not want my people coerced into worshiping Bright.
If the astrologers cannot live on free will offerings, let them work in the
fields!"
A murmur of
approval started in the crowd of supplicants, and then grew to a continuous
cheer as the crowd began to realize who the pale figure was—and what he had
been saying. As the crowd started up the mound to gather around God's-Chosen,
the High Priest moved away down the other side, his apprentices abandoning the
sleds and following after him.
Later in the
astrologers' compound, the High Priest was conferring with Bright's-Second, the
Chief Astrologer.
"He has
no idea what he is doing," Bright's-First said.
'The people
are behind him," Bright's-Second warned. "Not
to mention the
Leader of the Combined Clans and all of his
underleaders."
"But he
does not understand the importance of our work," the High Priest said.
"You cannot have apprentice astrologers out tending crops in the fields
like common laborers. They will never learn their numbers or how to cast
horoscopes with the astrologer sticks."
"You
are right," Bright's-Second said. "He ought to be dealt with in some
way. He is disrupting the important duties of the people that work in God's
service."
"Unfortunately,"
Bright's-First said, "only Hungry-Swift, the Leader of the Combined Clans,
has the authority to do anything about this rabble-rouser, and he is under his
spell."
The Chief
Astrologer hesitated, then said, "His Blessing is
a powerful one. You should have come with us when we went east to experience
it."
The High
Priest answered with a sharp ripple, "I have no need of any blessing from
the pale one."
The turns
passed; it was now less than half a great of turns until the Blessing would be
on the
Finally,
God's-Chosen held a gathering outside the eastern orifice of the now completed
TIME:
The science
experiments console screen blinked.
EAST SECTOR LASER RADAR SCAN COMPLETED.
NORTH SECTOR SCAN STARTED.
Cesar looked
up at the words at the top of the screen, and went on with his analysis of the
IR scanner data.
TIME:
Three turns before the dedication of
the
"Bright
is testing my faith," he said to himself. "For many greats of turns
the people have had to accept my word that the Blessing of Bright was coming.
Now I am as blind as they are. I must have faith."
God's-Chosen
asked that the
God's-Chosen
looked out from the central mound across the empty inner court toward the outer
walls in the distance. There was no doubt in his mind. This was what Bright had
wanted. He turned his eyes to the sky, and looking south toward Bright, began
to pray.
"O
Bright. Give me the faith that the others have, and if my belief falters, help
me to overcome my weakness so that I may believe in you and your
Blessing."
God's-Chosen
slowly moved down the inner mound and went out the western orifice toward the
astrologers' compound. As he left, the troopers, who had been keeping the
people out, finally let the crowds pour in, for the dedication was only a turn
away. For fully half a turn cheela poured through the orifices and gathered
around the inner mound. Soon the inner courtyard of the
As the time
grew near, the High Priest went to fetch God's-Chosen, who had isolated himself
in the old temple. As Bright's-First approached the old temple area, he could
hear God's-Chosen in a whispered prayer to Bright, and
even he was stirred by the genuineness of the supplication.
"Bright.
Give me the strength to do as you will have me do."
The prayer
stopped, for God's-Chosen had felt the tread of the High Priest through the
crust. As Bright's-First came nearer, God's-Chosen appeared at the entrance.
"Let us
go and receive the Blessing of Bright," he said, leading the way to the
Together the
High Priest and God's-Chosen moved through the throngs gathered in front of the
western orifice. They were followed by a large group of astrologers, all
experienced in speaking to crowds. Slowly the procession made its way through
the packed inner courtyard and up the slopes of the Inner Eye mound.
At the top,
God's-Chosen and the High Priest took up a position at the center of the mound
while the other astrologers formed a circle around them. God's-Chosen looked
out at the multitude, whose every eye seemed to be upon him. He would have
liked to have talked to them all directly, but there was no way that even his
far-carrying, high-pitched voice could reach them all. Fortunately, most of the
throng had been to one of the previous services where he had called down the
Blessing of Bright, so they knew the ritual.
God's-Chosen
scanned the Eyes. It had been many turns since he had last seen the beam from
the Inner Eye, and he was now unsure exactly when to expect the Blessing to
come.
God's-Chosen
began the service as they had planned it. He would chant the prayers, which
would carry out and down the mound to the nearest ranks of cheela. The chant
would then be repeated by the High Priest and the rest of the astrologers, the
combined treading of the chorus carrying through the crust even to those at the
farthest walls. The prayers would then be echoed by the rumbling treads of the
multitude.
"Bright the glorious!
"We
believe!
"Bring
your Blessing!"
God's-Chosen
paused, but nothing happened. He went on.
"Bring
your Blessing!
"Down
upon us!"
He paused
again, waiting in vain for the Blessing to come down upon them all. In
desperation he continued.
"We are
waiting.
"In your
"Bring
Your Blessing!"
For the
first time in many greats of turns, God's-Chosen felt his faith falter. There
was a subdued murmur from the crowd. There was nothing hostile, just
bewilderment, for God's-Chosen had never failed before.
God's-Chosen
gazed upward at the Eyes, longing for the sight of the Blessing. None came.
Without
further word, God's-Chosen moved his pale body through the ring of astrologers,
down the mound and out into the multitude, heading for the eastern orifice.
Some of the
crowd whispered as he passed, others reached out to touch his hot pale body
with a slender tendril. The High Priest, still up on the mound, tried to
salvage things by proceeding with the regular worship chants, but no one paid
him heed—not even the chorus.
As
God's-Chosen left the
By the next
turn, food had run short and the crowds became nasty. Some recalled the
original clan name of God's-Chosen, and from then on, whenever he was
mentioned, it was by his old name of Pink-Eyes.
The High
Priest went to discuss the previous turn's events with Hungry-Swift, the Leader
of the Combined Clans. Hungry-Swift was completely demoralized by the
experience.
"I am
sorry that you too were taken in by this charlatan," Bright's-First said.
"But I
saw! I saw the Blessing coming down!" protested Hungry-Swift.
"Yes—you
may have seen the Blessing of Bright, but this Pink-Eyes person was using the
Blessing of Bright to his own advantage," the High Priest replied.
"He said that he gave the Word of Bright, and that he was God's-Chosen.
But was he? No! Bright chose this way to say that he was a false prophet, for Bright withheld his Blessing before all the multitude."
"You
seem to be right," Hungry-Swift agreed.
"I am
right," the High Priest said. "I have served Bright longer than this
pink-eyed hatchling. You must do something about this fraudulent
imposter."
Hungry-Swift
was too dejected to do anything. Bright's-First took advantage of his hesitancy
and gave a command to a squad of troopers nearby.
"Bring
Pink-Eyes to the
The troopers
hesitated, looking at Hungry-Swift, who remained silent. Finally the troopers
moved off to carry out the High Priest's command. They found Pink-Eyes in the
wilderness to the east of Bright's Heaven. He had been going back
toward the Eyes,
constantly looking upward for the missing beams of light.
The troopers
had no problem with Pink-Eyes, and they treated him gently. Most of them had
experienced the Blessing of Bright and were still in awe of the personality in
the tiny pale body.
"You
are to come with us," the squad leader stated. Without a word, Pink-Eyes
reversed his direction of travel and went back along the pathway, with the
troopers surrounding him.
As they
slowly made their way back west, paced by the small tread of Pink-Eyes, the
crowds gathered again. As they passed, most of them stared, their treads
silent. Other groups, hungry and angry, muttered into the crust, and a few
rolled sharp fragments of crust into the pathway in front of Pink-Eyes. He did
not swerve but moved steadily onward, often leaving a sharp fragment wet with
his warm white juices after his tread had passed over it. The squad leader saw
what was happening, and put two troopers on either side to keep the pathway
clear.
As they
passed through the outskirts of Bright's Heaven and headed for the
The troopers
led Pink-Eyes up the inner mound where the High Priest and the Leader of the
Combined Clans waited. Bright's-First led the interrogation.
"Are
you God's-Chosen?" the High Priest asked.
"If you
believe it, then I am," was the reply.
"Well,
I don't believe it," the High Priest said angrily. "Admit you are a
fraud!"
Pink-Eyes
made no reply.
Bright's-First
turned his eyes to Hungry-Swift and said firmly, "I say we should turn him
into meat!"
Hungry-Swift
hesitated. "He did bring us the Blessing," he said.
"Maybe,"
countered the High Priest. "But where is it now? He has caused us to lose
it."
As the two
leaders talked, Pink-Eyes had been gazing alternately at Bright and the Eyes
for guidance. Suddenly he saw a beam from the Inner Eye!
"I can
see it again!" he called out.
"What?"
the startled Hungry-Swift asked. The High Priest was worried. Could it be that
this creature had arranged all this
in order to
bring down Bright's curse upon him, to destroy him, and take over as High
Priest?
"I can
see the Blessing of Bright," Pink-eyes said, but then in despair he saw
that the beam was no longer coming toward them, but instead was pointing toward
the north.
Hungry-Swift
looked up at the Inner Eye, searching in vain for the faint flicker that he had
longed to see these many turns. "I don't see anything," he said.
"I am
afraid that you cannot," Pink-Eyes said. "The beam is now going off
to the north."
"The
north!" the High Priest exclaimed in relief. "That is the territory of
the barbarians! By your own admission you have caused Bright to avert his
Blessing from us and give it to the barbarians."
There were
angry murmurs from the crowd at the base of the mound.
"Away with him!" the High Priest shouted, and
Hungry-Swift and his troopers stood by helplessly while an angry crowd flowed
up the mound and pushed and rolled the helpless pale body down the slope.
Sharp
prickers were pulled from weapons pouches; they prodded at Pink-Eyes' edges,
forcing him out the eastern orifice of the
The crust in
the field had recently been plowed and seeded, but it would be a long time
before the petal plants would grow. Now, however, a more vicious crop was
springing up, as warrior after warrior planted a slicer or pricker in the
crumbled crust, point upwards.
Pink-Eyes'
tread trembled in pain as his body was lowered down over the points. He tried
to support his body on the narrow shafts of the spears, while lifting the rest
of his tread away from the tormenting pricks. Then the spear shafts were pulled
out from underneath his trembling tread. His tortured body fell helplessly onto
the crust, the slicers and prickers glinting up through his topside, wet points
glowing white with his juices.
In agony,
Pink-Eyes attempted to lift his pale body off the agonizing shards of dragon
crystal, but with each heave he
only sliced his
body further. He gave up trying, and slowly spread out as his juices flowed
into the crust.
"O
Bright," his tortured tread cried in muffled agony, "Bring down your
Blessing—even on these—for they want you too much."
It was half
a turn before the butchering crew was called. There was not much meat on that
tiny carcass, and the meat had the same sickly paleness that the skin had. One
of the butcher crew sucked at a hunk of meat. "It does not even taste
right," she said. "I wouldn't eat this stuff."
"You are right," another
said after taking a small taste. So by common consent, the body was left in the
field to dry on the glowing crust, the shrinking skin pricked through with
sharp shards of dragon crystal abandoned by their former owners.
TIME:
Seiko Kauffmann Takahashi looked up
as her shift relief drifted in from his breakfast—early as usual. Abdul, still
sipping a squeezer full of sweet mint tea, pulled himself to the vacant
communications console. With a few practiced flips of his left hand, he soon
had a copy of Seiko's screen on his console.
"Anything
exciting?" he said as his unbuckled body floated slowly up out of the
console seat. He was surprised at the reply—for nothing ever excited Seiko.
"Yes,"
she replied firmly, reaching out to finger a panel. A picture from the star
image telescope flashed on both their screens. She did not say another word—she
did not have to.
TIME:
Pierre Carnot Niven, having finished
his ten-hour shift and a leisurely dinner, was relaxing. He sat buckled into a
seat in front of a console down in the library, his finger flicking over the
screen.
"Fatter!
"More!
"Fine!"
His finger
traced another line. "Now—the other arm—same as the first!
"Good!"
He stretched
back and surveyed his handiwork on the screen with pride. The image of the
child on the screen now looked the way it should, although the baby-fat
pudginess made it an unlikely candidate for what he would make it do next.
However, that image was just what he had been striving for. The audience for
his scan-book needed to identify—even if they couldn't copy. He leaned over to
the screen and touched the right hand of the image.
"Put a
ball in this hand!" A ball was instantly there, with the fingers of the
hand opened to grasp it.
"Now
comes the difficult part," he thought. "We'll see how good the body
action subroutine is."
He spoke
again. "Throw ball from here—along here—to here. Use
Earth gravity!" While he spoke, his finger scribed a curve leading
from the hand along a high arc down into the background area of the picture.
He watched
as the body in the image leaned back in a slightly jerky movement and launched
the ball into the air. The ball rose and then fell back to the ground—stopping
abruptly without a bounce. The computer handled the perspective very nicely;
the ball grew smaller and smaller as it sailed into the distance.
"Good—repeat
with Lunar gravity!"
The scene
was repeated with the words lunar
gravity in the upper corner of the screen. The ball now rose much more
slowly, with a significantly flatter trajectory.
The two
scenes repeated their actions. First earth gravity, then lunar
gravity.
"Display
action!"
He watched
as the action repeated, this time as seen from the side. The ball rose in a
nice parabolic trajectory. He smiled and thought, "The kids have had their
fun imagining that their bodies are strong enough to throw a ball fifty meters.
Now they will have to get to work and learn some science, which—
after all—is why
they are scanning the book." He spoke aloud: "Shrink ball by two!
"Shrink
child by five!
"Put in
graph axes—vertical here!" His hand reached out and scribed a line from
the top of the screen down to the miniature figure now tossing a baseball as
big as its head.
LINK FROM BRIDGE CONSOLE
HI
COULD YOU COME UP TO THE MAIN DECK?
THERE IS SOMETHING HAPPENING ON DRAGON'S
EGG.
WE WANT YOU TO CONFIRM OUR SUSPICIONS.
# # # # CESAR
"Sure
Doc,"
"Break
link!
"Store
under Trajectory Graph!
"Detach
job!"
He unbuckled
from the console chair and pushed himself quickly up the passageway leading to
the main deck as the computer obediently flashed confirmation after
confirmation toward his disappearing feet.
LINK BROKEN
SAVED TRAJECTORY GRAPH: EARTH GRAVITY
DETACH JOB 3;
PRESS
TIME
Cesar spoke
up as he approached. "Sorry to drag you up on your break,
Seiko handed
him a sheet. "I took these off the star image telescope this shift. This
one was taken at 0645 hours. Notice the pattern here near the west limb."
"So
far, we have all come to the same conclusion," Seiko said. 'This pattern
is not a wrinkle ridge from a collapse of the surface. Besides, we have been
monitoring the spin speed of the star, and if there had been a slump of that
magnitude in the past day, it would have shown up as a glitch in the rotation
period, and there has been none."
"Now,"
Abdul said, "show him the kicker."
Seiko pulled
out another sheet from beneath the first.
'This was
taken at 0648 hours, just before Dr. Wong finished a laser scan of that
region."
She passed
it over without further comment.
"The
direction of the oval looks generally east-west," he said.
"It
is," Seiko stated, with the calm assurance of someone who had taken the
trouble to check. "The semimajor axis is within less than a milliradian of
magnetic east, so the pattern is dominated by magnetic effects and not
rotational effects. But
the lines that
make up the oval are not straight magnetic east-west as are all the other
cliffs and wrinkle ridges in that area."
"It
looks like something that is stretched,"
He looked up
and the others watched his expression change from initial surprise to
suspicion.
"You're
kidding me," he said.
"No,"
Cesar said. "We are deadly serious. I knew you would have a tough time
accepting this without better proof, so I had Seiko fix up the star image
telescope with the filters for direct viewing."
Pierre knew
from the tone that Cesar was serious and that the image print was real—but he
still found himself diving up the passageway toward the star image telescope
control post. He floated in, quickly checked the filter settings, then flicked the switch that opened the direct view port.
The light beamed in from overhead and down onto the white frosted table top in
the center of the room. He drifted over and hung above the glaring image and
adjusted the strobe controls until the spinning image in the center of the
table slowed down and finally stopped rotating. He found the symmetric
flowerlike diagram.
They
gathered around the table and looked down at the image as
"Intelligent beings!" Seiko
exclaimed. "That is impossible! The surface gravity of that star is 67
billion gees and the temperature is 8200 degrees! Any being that existed on
that star would be a flat glowing pancake of solid neutrons."
"They
wouldn't be made of neutrons,"
Egg. The mission
was to get as much scientific data as possible from their vantage point only
400 km from the neutron star. His problem was that the magic gravitational
elevator that had put them down into this orbit a few days ago would soon
finish its complicated interlaced orbital pattern and would be returning to
take them away again. They had only a limited amount of time—what should they
do?
Abdul spoke.
"I don't really come onto shift for over an hour. Why don't I try to
generate some kind of signal to send down in case there really is some form of
intelligent life there, while the rest of you keep up with the science time line."
"Fine,"
Abdul pushed
his way to the communications console. Soon a simple one-two-three ... dot-dash
number series was beaming down to the surface, followed by a crude diagram of
Dragon Slayer inside the six tidal compensator masses over the sphere that was
Dragon's Egg. It was a dot-dash pattern, 53 by 71 dots on a side.
Trek
TIME:
Commander Swift-Killer fixed her
attention out toward the horizon. Each of her eight watch eyes reported back
that the shallow arc of a needlelike dragon tooth could still be seen, held at
guard position by one of the perimeter guards. She left the watch eyes at their
automatic duty and scanned her other eyes around the camp where the rest of her
troopers were relaxing. Most were still eating, but a few had paired off and
were now enjoying each other over in one corner of the camp. She looked at them
enviously and was tempted to pass over the watch to her second-in-command, go
get her favorite fun-partner and join them, but the last contact with the barbarians
had only been a turn ago, and they must stay at full alert.
Frustrated
in bodily pleasures, Swift-Killer turned to her other personal form of
recreation—trying to figure out why things work. She paused, concentrated for a
moment, and her body pushed out some pseudopods. She then grew some articulated
crystallium bones under the protrusions of tough, muscular skin to form
manipulators. The bones in the manipulators were small, not like the ones that
she grew to hold her shield and sword in battle. Still keeping her watch eyes
on the horizon, Swift-Killer glanced with the remaining eyes at the four
extremities, made a minor change to one of them, then reached through the
sphincter of a carrying pouch in her body and pulled out her "experiments."
One experiment
was an old one that she had come upon in the last campaign. Their pursuit of
the barbarians had taken them into strange territory where the crust was not
smooth, but had suffered a recent shaking. In that region, the crust did not
have its usual
fibrous plasticity, but was almost as hard as dragon crystal. The quake had
shattered the crust into many flat plates, their cleaved surfaces glinting with
the reflected image of the God Bright that hung motionless over the south pole. Her mind always active, Swift-Killer had
collected several plates and had played with them, turning them first one way,
then the other, to bring the image of Bright to each of her eyes in turn. She
had even held one well up above normal eye level (it had taken most of her bone-forming
crystallium to support the plate against Egg's tremendous gravity pull) and had
actually looked at her own topside. It looked weird to her, what with the deep
red color, the reddish-yellow lump of her brain nodule near the middle, and the
smaller lump of a forming egg next to it. She had hastily withdrawn the plate
and had glanced around quickly to reassure herself that no one had seen her
examining her own topside. Unless it was your lover trying to get you in the
mood, no one ever talked about one's topside, much less looked at it.
As a troop
commander, she had found an excellent use for the mirror plates. A
"glancer" was now standard battle equipment on the eastern front.
With careful aim of the mirror to reflect the image of Bright in the right
direction, messages and commands could be sent over great distances to other
squads without alerting the barbarians. They still used the old code patterns
for the commands, since the limitations of the glancer communication system
were similar to the old technique that used synchronized thumps of the treads
of a trooper squad on the crust. With this new communication technique, the
element of surprise that they had gained over the barbarians had decreased
their losses by significant factors.
Swift-Killer
placed her collection of equipment on the crust. Along with the glancers, there
was another of her discoveries, the flares. The fact that certain types of
crust would glow when pod juice dropped on them had been known since ancient
history. Swift-Killer had been intrigued by this effect, and everywhere she
went in her service to the Leader of the Combined Clans, she had always
sacrificed a few drops of her daily ration of pods to the crust to see how
brightly it would glow. She had recently come across a very reactive portion of
crust. A drop of pod juice would make a blue-white flare of light almost too
bright to look at. She had carefully used a slicer to extract some long,
fibrous rods out of the crust; these were her flares. She had visited a chemist
at the base hospital, and soon
her enthusiasm
persuaded him to use his ancient arts to separate the various components of a
large batch of pod juice, until she had a small vial of cast dragon crystal
with the concentrated essence of the factor in the pod juice that made the
flares glow.
Swift-Killer
tested out the flare by holding the vial above the end of the stick and letting
a few drops of fluid fall on the end. The eyes on that side of her body popped
reflexively into their skin pouches as the brilliant blue-white glare of light
burst forth. Swift-Killer noticed with pleasure the murmur of startled treads
vibrating through the crust to her.
"The
Commander is at it again ... now what is she up to?"
Remembering
her prime duty, she turned her attention to her watch eyes, and again assured
herself that each one still had a distant dragon tooth firmly fixed in its
vision. She noticed that one or two of them also had a fuzzy spot off to one
side, where they had picked up the momentary glare of the flashing flare. However,
true to their assigned duties, they had not ducked into their skin pouch at the
bright glare.
With the
flare ready, she then turned her attention to her latest discovery, the
"expander." She had come upon it not long ago when she had been out
visiting the perimeter guards. Normally that task was the duty of one of the
squad leaders, but since her favorite at that time had been one of the guards,
she took the opportunity of an inspection tour to get a few moments alone with
him. Of course, being on guard, he had to remain at alert with his eyes on the
horizon, while giving stiffly formal responses to her queries. Although her
questions followed the usual routine of an inspection of the guard, her actions
took advantage of the fact that he was not allowed to break his at-alert
condition.
"Who
approaches?" boomed the crust as his tread rippled at her approach.
"Troop
Commander Swift-Killer," she replied.
"You
may approach," he said. So she did ... and got closer and closer and
closer until her body was pressed up right next to his and had flowed around in
a crescent that nearly enveloped his periphery. Her cool dark-red eyes stared
right into his, while he dutifully kept his gaze fixed on the horizon.
"Report!"
she commanded, but instead of using solid talk, she whispered it with an
electronic tingle that sent thrills through his frustrated body.
"Guard
to the east under observation and secure. Guard to
the west under
observation and secure. No unknown objects on the horizon. All secure,
Commander Swift-Killer," boomed his muffled report in formal solid talk.
She then felt a soft electronic whisper as he added, "But I seem to be
under attack from Bright-side."
"At
Alert!" she barked, and felt his body stiffen.
"What
is this I see," she said, as her eyes went up on stubs to look at his
topside.
"Dirt!"
she said severely; and reaching out a soft muscular pseudopod, she proceeded to
brush imaginary specks of dirt off his topside, making sure that she had
touched all of his sensitive spots in the process.
"Just
for that, Squad-Leader North-Wind, after you have been relieved of your post,
you shall report to me for extra duty," she said, with a mixture of solid
talk and electronic whisper that trailed off into a pure whisper at the words
"extra duty" that left no doubt in his mind what that duty would
consist of.
Commander
Swift-Killer slowly slid her body along North-Wind, who kept his outer
perimeter in the prescribed circle and his eyes on the horizon. Then drawing
herself back into proper traveling form, she went off to visit the next guard
on the perimeter, leaving an emotionally frustrated North-Wind at his post, his
eyes and body at attention, but his mind full of things other than non-existent
barbarians.
"He
does not have too much longer before the change of the guard," she thought
as she moved off to inspect the next guard. "But by that time, will he be
ready!"
The next
guard had always been one of her problem troopers. She had never really learned
discipline. Although Easy-Mover had never given any trouble when under direct
supervision, she did not have the proper spirit of a real needle
trooper, and would not discipline herself to act always in the manner of a
trooper even when there was no superior officer nearby. Unfortunately, the lonely
duty of perimeter guard gave her plenty of opportunity to become lax, and she
had been caught so many times that she had never been able to keep any of her
promotions for very long.
"She is
at it again," Swift-Killer said to herself as she approached the guard and
felt a telltale grinding noise in the crust beneath her tread. Her eyes
carefully surveyed the guard, but there was not one sign of motion in the body
of the guard or the arc of dragon tooth that jutted out towards the horizon. A
challenge replaced
the grinding noise as the guard noticed her approach.
"Who
approaches?" boomed the guard.
'Troop
Commander Swift-Killer," she replied.
"You
may approach," came the formal reply.
Swift-Killer
flowed to one side of the rigid trooper and barked, "Move here in front of
me!"
There was a
moment's hesitation, bad enough in itself, and then the trooper swiftly flowed
over and resumed the formal guard position. Swift-Killer went to the spot that
the guard had vacated, formed a manipulator and picked up the two plates of
broken crust that lay there. The plates were placed one on top of the other; as
Swift-Killer took them apart, a dusty powder of ground-up crust fell to the
surface. Bored with guard duty, Easy-Mover had been holding her outside surface
at alert, but had been absent-mindedly rubbing one plate against another under
her tread. This was not the first time she had been caught doing something like
that, so it didn't surprise Swift-Killer.
"You
are already down to trooper, so I can't demote you any further,"
Swift-Killer barked at the now rigid form of Easy-Mover. "But until you
learn that troopers on guard duty are to remain at full alert at all times, you
will have to make do without recreation periods. Since this is not your first
offense, it will be a dozen turns this time!"
Swift-Killer
thought she detected a quiver of protest, but fortunately for Easy-Mover, she
recovered rapidly with her reply.
"Yes,
Commander," she said.
Swift-Killer
then took the guard through the remainder of her formal report and left to
inspect the rest of the perimeter, taking the two plates with her to remove
temptation from the scene.
"A
dozen turns with no recreation is not only going to be hard on her, but also on
about three males that I know of," Swift-Killer thought as she flowed off.
"I don't know how she keeps them all happy. One lover at a time is enough
for me."
The
offending plates had been tucked away in one of Swift-Killer's carrying pouches
and she had forgotten about them until their shape got in the way during her
fun and games with the eager North-Wind. She had put them to one side and had
attended to more important business, such as thinning herself down and
slithering under the hot kneading tread of North-Wind as their eye-stubs
entwined softly about one another.
They took
turns kneading each other's topside with their treads, concentrating on their
favorite spots. Then with their eye-stubs firmly intertwined to pull their very
edges together, their mutual vibrations raised in pitch with an electronic tingle
adding an overtone of spice to the massage. Finally, in a multiple spasm of
their bodies, a dozen tiny perimeter orifices just under North-Wind's eye-stubs
opened—to emit a small portion of his inner juices into the waiting folds
around Swift-Killer's eye-stubs.
Swift-Killer
felt the tiny globules of North-Wind as they were carried by her automatic
reflexes to the egg case. She slowly gathered herself into her more normal
shape and slid from beneath the still thinned and exhausted North-Wind. She
left him lying there and began to pick up the various things she had laid aside
from her carrying pouches. As each item was tucked away, she became less and
less Swift-Killer the lover. Finally, as she placed the four-button symbol of
her rank into a holding sphincter on her side, she turned back into Troop
Commander Swift-Killer.
As she came
to the last few items, she picked up the crustal plates that she had taken from
Easy-Mover. The plates no longer had flat surfaces; instead one was slightly
hollow and the other was slightly rounded. Some of the shiny aspect of a
freshly cleaved surface was gone, but it was still possible to see a reflection
in them. Always inquisitive, Swift-Killer looked at the two curved plates and
was amazed to see that in one of them her eye looked smaller than normal, while
in the other, it was larger.
She reached
out a soft pseudopod and wiped the dust off the surfaces. This improved the
image some. Now completely absorbed in trying to understand the strange
behavior of the curved plates, Swift-Killer the inventor forgot her lover and
her command duties while her mind wandered off into thought.
For many
turns Swift-Killer spent her spare time with the curved plates. She talked to
Easy-Mover and found that she had been carrying those plates for many turns and
had used them to relieve her boredom on many tours of perimeter guard duty.
Swift-Killer duplicated her grinding process and soon had several expander and
shrinker mirrors. She found that if she did not apply much pressure in the later
parts of the rubbing, the mirrors could be made very shiny, almost as good as
the cleaved surfaces of the original plates.
She spent a
long time on one set of plates to see how curved
she could make
them, for she had found that the more the mirrors were curved, the more they
would expand or shrink the image. Finally she obtained one pair where something
amazing happened; not only was the image of her eye expanded, it was also
turned upside down! She found that if she put her eye very close to the mirror it
would appear right side up and expanded, but as she moved back it would get
bigger and bigger, finally filling the whole mirror
with a distorted image, then would finally appear again upside down.
Swift-Killer
now held one of those expander mirrors. She knew that a flat mirror would
reflect the light from her flare, and she wanted to see what the expander would
do. Perhaps it would expand the light and make it brighter.
Swift-Killer
formed her body around in a crescent, with her four free eyes moved around so
that they were concentrated on the inner part of the crescent where they could
observe the experiment. Aware that the light would be quite bright, she had
them tucked under their protective folds of skin and had closed the fold until
each was only watching through a narrow slit. Carefully she held the vial of
pod juice extract above the flare and adjusted the little crystal valve until a
thin stream of liquid fell down on the end of the flare. Soon she had a
continuous bright arc going. Light flared over her body and up into the sky.
Using her manipulators she brought the expander mirror up near the arc. Instead
of reflecting the light off in all directions like a flat mirror, it seemed to
collect it and make it smaller. She moved the mirror back and forth. She first
found a point where the light seemed to go off in a straight beam from the
expander. She then found that there was a position in which the light was
focused into a spot on the crust. She reached out with a pseudopod to touch the
bright spot.
"OW!!!"
The whole
camp came to alert as they heard the agonized t'trum of their Troop Commander
on the crust. Swift-Killer, her burned spot sucked into the interior of her
body where it was quickly enveloped in soothing liquid, stopped the flow of
pod-juice from the vial, waited until the flare stopped glowing, and then put
her experiments back into her carrying pouches as her eyes glared around the
camp. In short order, all the troopers were very busy.
After many
turns of experimentation, Swift-Killer understood how the expander worked.
Halfway between the mirror
and the point
where her eye flipped from right side up to upside down was the point where the
flare would give off a straight beam. If it were in front or in back of that
point, the light would be focused to a point, later to spread out again. For a
while, Swift-Killer thought that she had a new weapon, a thing that would burn
at a distance, but a little experimentation showed her that it was far easier
and faster to poke a hole in a barbarian with a dragon tooth than to burn one
with an expander (assuming that the barbarian would hold still long enough).
However, the
more she thought about the long-reaching beam of light that she could make, and
the old stories about the narrow beams of invisible light that the ancient
prophet Pink-Eyes had seen, the more she thought that she ought to talk to some
of the scientists back in Bright's Heaven who were trying to make sense of the
still pulsating beams.
It took some
discussion with the Commander of the Eastern Front, but after seeing her
experiment, he decided to relieve her temporarily of her command and let her
make a journey back to Bright's Heaven.
TIME:
The road to Bright's Heaven was long
but fast. It stretched out in a straight line along the easy direction from the
eastern outpost trooper camp. The way had been smoothed by generations of
treads and baggage sleds. Swift-Killer moved along the road at her rapid
trooper's glide, her four button troop commander's insignia automatically
clearing the path ahead of her and giving her preferential treatment at the
food stations along the way.
One of the
food station keepers was well known for his interesting and nearly
inexhaustible repertoire of love kneadings, and she had enjoyed a couple of
dalliances in previous trips, but her mind was elsewhere when she passed
through this time, so she didn't wait for him to return from one of his
periodic trips to restock his pod bins. She just took the pods that she needed
and continued on her way, crushing the pod with the powerful muscles in her
food intake pouch and sucking the tingly juices in through the thin skin at one
end of the pouch.
Swift-Killer
finally arrived at Bright's Heaven, and after a short formal meeting with the
Commander of the
fense Command,
she took off to visit the Inner Eye Institute, part of the large
'Troop
Commander Swift-Killer!" the Institute astrologer greeted her. "We
are honored by your visit. The fact that you are here gives us reassurance that
the eastern border is safe."
Swift-Killer's
eye-stubs twisted with embarrassment as the Institute astrologer continued.
"That invention of the glancer has given you a reputation among the
astrologers here at the Institute. Have you ever thought about leaving the
Troopers and becoming one of us?"
Swift-Killer
knew what she was best at. Her extraordinary size, strong muscles, and quick
intelligence had led her to her natural position as a front line troop commander.
They had also given her a new name, when as a youngster just barely out of the
hatchling pens, she had killed a Swift unaided, with
only a slicer for a weapon. She enjoyed her hobby of trying to figure out how
things worked, but she had no intention of making it her life's work, not as
long as there were barbarians trying to destroy Bright's Heaven. She brushed
off the Institute astrologer's question with one of her own.
"What
is the latest news on the strange pulsating beams from Bright's Inner Eye?"
Swift-Killer asked.
The
Institute astrologer hesitated. He and the others in the Inner eye Institute
had been undergoing a difficult conversion. Fortunately it had happened so
slowly that they had had time to overcome the shock. However, they were not
sure yet, so neither the populace nor the rest of the temple priests had been
informed of their suspicions. The eyes of the Institute astrologer swayed back
and forth rhythmically as he evaluated Swift-Killer. He equivocated.
"The beams
from Bright's Inner Eye continue to bring down a message from the mind of
Bright," he replied. "The beams are invisible except to certain ones
who have what is known as Bright's Blessing, although Bright's Affliction would
probably be a better term for it, as the unfortunate individuals rarely live to
breeding age. Fortunately, the alchemists have found a liquid that is sensitive
to the invisible beams, and turns color temporarily if a vial of it is exposed
to the beam, so now we do not have to search the Empire for those unfortunate
ones and drag them away from their clans to interpret Bright's message to
us."
"The
pulsations continue?" Swift-Killer asked.
"Yes,"
the Institute astrologer replied. "And there seems to
be some
pattern to them. We are still trying to analyze what they mean. They come so
slowly, one pulse every few turns."
The fact
that the pulsations seemed to have a pattern intrigued Swift-Killer's
inquisitive mind.
"May I
see what you have collected?" she asked eagerly.
The
Institute astrologer formed a manipulator, extracted a tally string from a
storage pouch and gave it to Swift-Killer, who quickly ran a tendril down its
length.
"It is
a string of numbers!" she exclaimed. "Only it stops at ten and then
repeats twice more." She continued her examination of the tally string.
'This seems
to be a number system that only goes to ten, then goes into two symbols to
represent things larger than ten," she said.
"Yes,"
he replied, "and if you go on, you will find that after counting to ten
times ten, new symbols appear, interspersed with the number symbols."
Swift-Killer
moved quickly over the repetitious section and found the new symbols. First a one, then a strange symbol, then another one, then a
different strange symbol, then a two. The Institute astrologer kept his
tread still, while his eye-stubs watched the tense body of Swift-Killer.
Finally her eye-stubs resumed their normal wavelike motion and she started
murmuring.
"One
plus one equals two, one plus two equals three, two plus two equals four
..." she said. She then turned her attention to the Institute astrologer
and her eyes stared at him, twitching nervously. The Institute astrologer
clenched his tread muscles and waited for Swift-Killer's brain to realize what
he and the others in the Institute had finally had to face.
'This is
nothing but a primer in arithmetic, but in a number system that goes only to
ten. Surely Bright would not waste time to send such a trivial message, and
take so long to do it. This is more like an interpreter trying to learn one of
the barbarian tongues."
Swift-Killer
hesitated, for what she was about to say next went against all her early
religious training. "It is almost as if there were a
strange clan of barbarians living on the Inner Eye, and trying to set up
communication with us," she said. "But that cannot be!"
The
Institute astrologer kept his tread quiet and passed over another tally string.
This one was a fringe string, with many strings knotted to a main string, and
with each side string con-
taining many knots.
At first Swift-Killer could make no sense of it, for there were no symbol
groups, only large and small knots. She felt through the fringes, puzzled by
the large blank sections.
"It
took us a long time to figure that one out," the Institute astrologer
admitted. "In fact it was a novice who literally stumbled onto it, when he
happened to glide across the tally fringe as it lay on the crust. Here, let me
arrange it."
The
Institute astrologer took the tally fringe and laid it out as a rectangle on
the crust.
"Now
glide onto it carefully and see what your tread tells you." he said.
Following
his instructions, Swift-Killer moved her body onto the large rectangle, and
suddenly it all became clear. Whereas her eyes could only see the tally string
at such a low angle that everything was distorted beyond recognition, her touch
sensitive bottom tread could absorb the picture all at once.
"It is
like a map," said Swift-Killer, who utilized the devices when planning
large scale campaigns. "But it is not any place that I know ..."
She
hesitated, and then said, "Wait ... In this large circle, this tiny
feature here must be the
"We
don't know," said the Institute astrologer. "We are still trying to
figure that out. We have since received another picture map, and the present
signals are in the process of beaming down a third one."
"May I
feel them?" Swift-Killer asked.
The
Institute astrologer pulled out two more tally strings from carrying pouches
and laid them out on the crust without comment. They were close enough together
so that Swift-Killer could spread herself out to cover both of them at the same
time.
'This shows
the Eyes of Bright," Swift-Killer said. "But the smaller Inner Eye is
not just a featureless circle like the others. It has strange markings and
circles on it and there is a cylinder sticking out of one side. And this other
is an enlargement of
the Inner Eye,
and you can see forms inside the circle, as if you were peering though holes in
the Inner Eye."
Swift-Killer
paused. "What does all this mean?" she asked.
"We are
not positive," said the Institute astrologer, "but we think that
those things we can see inside the orifices are strange beings."
"But
they are so sticklike and angular, they would be broken in a moment," she
exclaimed.
"They
are floating in the sky above the east pole, so they seem to be immune to the
gravity pull of Egg, although why they want such long manipulator bones is
unknown." While the Institute astrologer had been talking, Swift-Killer
had been reexamining the pictures.
"The
Inner Eye looks like a giant machine," she said. "This thing at the
top of the cylinder looks like a glancer in a holder, and these other things
look like my expander."
"What
is an expander?" asked the astrologer.
Swift-Killer
finally remembered that she had not yet told him of her discovery. She had come
to give him some new knowledge, but instead had been bedazzled with one new
concept after another.
Swift-Killer
formed a manipulator, reached into a carrying pouch and pulled out the expander
and the shrinker. Then she explained their odd behavior to the Institute
astrologer as he moved them back and forth in front of one of his eyes.
'This curved
shape for a glancer means that it can send a beam of light a long way,"
she told him. "And that is probably why they exist on the Inner Eye thing,
to send the beams down to us on Egg."
The
Institute astrologer moved onto the tally pictures on the crust, and compared
the shapes of the things protruding from the Inner Eye with the object that he
held.
"The
shapes are very similar," he said. "You are probably right. But what
is this about sending beams?"
"I came
to give you a demonstration," Swift-Killer said.
"Wait,"
the Institute Astrologer suggested. "I will gather the rest of the members
of the Institute."
Soon
Swift-Killer was the center of attention as she demonstrated her bright light
source and the way the expander could bring the light into a hot spot, or send it off in a straight beam.
After
several demonstrations, Swift-Killer let some of the more eager novices play
with the new toy. As she flowed back
to talk to the
Institute astrologer, she could hear others starting to grind away at two
plates to make their own expanders.
It was soon
obvious to all in the Institute that Swift-Killer's new invention provided a
means to signal back to whatever it was in the Inner Eye that was beaming down messages
to them. After several turns, the set up a bright light source and started
sending off a coded message aimed at the Eyes of Bright. They kept it up for
many turns, but nothing happened; the pulsed beam from the Inner Eye continued
its methodical blinking, slowly finishing off the last picture. After many,
many turns, Swift-Killer had a thought. Far to the east of Bright's Heaven was
a fracture ridge that stuck up just over the horizon. Its side was the quarry
for the blocks that were used to build the housing and storage compounds for
Bright's Heaven. Swift-Killer decided to go out to the quarry, and make the
arduous climb up the slope to the top; then she would look for the beam of
light that the astrologers would send periodically in that direction.
After a
dozen turns, a dejected Swift-Killer returned to the Institute.
"It is
no wonder that Inner Eye is not responding to our signals," she said.
"I can just barely see them from the top of the quarry."
"I was
afraid of that," the Institute Astrologer said. "The Eyes are so low
on the horizon that our light beam has to travel a long way through the
absorbing atmosphere. It is too bad that the Eyes of Bright are hovering over
the east pole, if it were hovering above us, we could
not only detect their beam easier, but they could see our pitifully weak
attempt at a response."
Swift-Killer
shivered at the thought of something hanging over her in the sky, but agreed
that Bright had certainly sent his seven Eyes to the poorest spot in the sky
for seeing.
Then
suddenly, Swift-Killer had an idea.
"If we
went to the east pole, we could send our light beam straight up to the Inner
Eye. The distance through the atmosphere would be a lot shorter, and the beam
would be going in the easy direction and would not fade so much."
"But
nobody goes to the east pole," the Institute astrologer protested.
"The land is full of barbarians, every direction that you move is in the
hard direction, the sky is hot and full of volcano smoke, the crust is too
bristly to move on ... No cheela could survive there."
"I know
it is not as nice as Bright's Heaven," Swift-Killer said. "But cheela
can survive there. After all, as you said, the place is infested with
barbarians."
"Actually,"
Swift-Killer went on, "the troopers on the eastern border have penetrated
a good way toward the east pole in punitive raids on barbarian settlements. We
have them cowed enough that they would not bother a good-sized
expedition."
A discussion
of the pros and cons of Swift-Killer's suggestion continued for many turns. The
cost would be high, especially in terms of the number of troopers that would be
needed to guard an expedition deep into barbarian territory. It was beyond the
resources and authority of the Inner Eye Institute, and the idea might have
been dropped if the last section of the third picture had not been so dramatic.
The picture of the machine with the strange beings was remarkable enough (for
there was no doubt that the sticklike things seen
vaguely through the holes in the Inner Eye were beings). But up in one corner
of the picture was a similar figure placed next to the familiar (although
stretched) outlines of the
Initially,
the High Priest and the Chief Astrologer were perturbed about the Institute
astrologer's interpretation of the pictures, but finally accepted his version
as no threat to their religion by assuming that Bright worked in a mysterious
way, and that some time in the distant future, it would all become clear to
them.
The Leader
of the Combined Clans, although nominally a devout worshiper of the God Bright,
was willing to compartmentalize her mind and look at the pictures without being
bothered by the religious overtones.
"Weird
looking creatures," the Leader said. "And giants at that. Yet if they
have learned to hover in the sky without falling down, we could learn much from
them, and they seem to be willing to talk to us. It can't hurt to learn more.
Proceed with the expedition."
There was no
doubt in anyone's mind who would be the leader of the expedition. As a combined
astrologer-thinker and battle commander, Swift-Killer was the obvious choice.
With the authority of the Leader of the Combined Clans behind her,
Swift-Killer organized the
expedition. They would be gone for many, many turns, and meanwhile the work of
the Institute had to go on, so she only took a few of the younger astrologers
and novices. A good supply of flares and concentrated pod juice were obtained
under her direction, and during that time a few excellent large-diameter
expanders had been manufactured by the careful grinding of newly trained
artisans. One of the expanders was so large in diameter that only a few of the
novices could get a carrying pouch around it; once it was pouched, they could
carry little else.
For the trip
out to the eastern border, no troopers were needed for protection, and the food
stops sufficed for supplies. However, messengers were sent ahead to gather the
supplies that the expedition would need in the turns ahead. Soon, Swift-Killer
returned to take over command of her troop of needle troopers, for naturally
she had requested that they supply the guard for the expedition. Soon the
entire party was assembled. Rations were distributed, and civilians were taught
the elementary thrusts of the short sword in case a barbarian ever penetrated
to the center of the circle formation. Finally they left, gliding easily over
the crust toward the east magnetic pole.
TIME:
Dead-Troopers pulled her eye down
from its crystallium-cored stub and pushed her way off in the hard direction,
keeping her body as thin as sex until she was well over the horizon. She could
not figure out why this circle of troopers were
penetrating so far into her territory. The scouts had reported that they were
on the move, and she had acted to defend the nearest village that would have
been an obvious target for a punitive attack, but the circle of troopers had
carefully worked its way around it. Such behavior of Empire troopers was new,
and Dead-Troopers hated anything new. They were up to something, and she would
stop it—but what?
As she
slithered into the compound, she noticed with glum satisfaction that the scrape
of her tread on the crust had warned the camp. Those who were presently in her
good graces were merely very busy taking care of important matters, while those
who weren't had rapidly absented themselves when they felt the first murmurs of
her approach.
Her
second-in-command, and one of her lovers, was busy
rubbing his
unusually brilliant short sword against a chunk of crust. Although the cast
dragon crystal would usually stay sharp until the edge was notched by a hard
blow, it did help a little to keep the edge in fine hone by monotonous rubbing
against the crustal material. Dead-Troopers knew that Pink-Sky had never let
the short sword get dull since the time he had wrested it from the dead body of
a trooper whom they had killed jointly. She glided up next to Pink-Sky until
their edges were touching along almost half their length. Pink-Sky continued to
hone his sword as Dead-Troopers watched.
"They
are in full force," she said. "But they do not attack! I don't like
it!"
"There
are very few things about troopers that you do like," he replied calmly.
Dead-Troopers
paused for a moment, then said, "Well, I like this even less."
"Where
are they going?" Pink-Sky asked.
Dead-Troopers
shifted, several eyes staring at Pink-Sky while the rest wriggled in
irritation. "It looks as if they are headed for the east pole," she
said. "But that makes no sense at all. No one goes to the east pole. It is
too hot and bristly."
Pink-Sky
remarked sagely, "They seem to be getting very far from their home base,
and the mountainous territory near the east pole makes the horizons
undependable."
Dead-Troopers
paused a moment, and then realized what her second-in-command was referring to.
It was a good thing he was a lot smaller than she was, or he would have been
leader of the clan.
"You
are right, as usual," she said. "Let us gather the warriors and go
east to the first range of ridges, to the one that has a cliff different than
the rest, the one that looks as if it is a horizon until you are almost on
it."
Pink-Sky
shortly had a signaling crew together and was sending out phased messages to
the nearby barbarian clan settlements. The message took a long time to send,
since the signaling crew had to adjust their treading to emphasize the natural
resonant frequencies of the crust.
"What
is that strange rumbling sound in the crust?" one of the novices inside
the circle of marching troopers asked. "Is it a crust-quake?"
"No,"
another said. "This is the wrong part of Egg for quakes."
Swift-Killer
had felt the rumble long before the novices. De-
spite what one of
them had said, the east pole was crustquake country, but this was not a quake.
What they
felt was only a long distance signal from one barbarian clan to another. From
its similarities to others she had heard, it was
probably the call to assemble. No doubt her expedition this deep in barbarian
territory had caused some concern. Since it was a long distance message, and
not a localized call for attack, she had no need to put the troopers on alert,
but she noticed with pride that most of them had felt the presence of the
barbarians, and that the dragon teeth, which had been in typical marching
disarray, now gleamed as a single, coordinated, double row of interleaved
needles.
At the next
rest break, Swift-Killer ordered out the feeding-time perimeter guard, and
gathered the civilians to the center.
"The
barbarians have called for an assembly to decide what to do about us," she
said. "Hopefully, they will realize that we are not bothering their
settlements, and are too large to attack, and will leave us alone. However,
this is the
Moving in
one direction while looking and fighting in another direction came easily to
the multieyed, non-oriented cheela. Although each had a preferred set of eyes,
all dozen worked well and gave the cheela a complete, if two-dimensional, view
of the region around them.
Each cheela
also had one or two preferred eating pouches and elimination orifices, but with
a little concentration to break many turns of habit, the two could actually be
reversed in function if necessary. The same went for carrying pouches, which
were just immature feeding pouches. However, it was only the very young or very
old who slobbered on their collection of trinkets.
On the body
of a typical cheela there were certain sections of skin that had developed good
muscle tone and a high level of tactile sensory endings that made the best
pseudopods, and there were other chunky muscular sections that were the best to
drape about a crystallium manipulator skeleton for maximum leverage. All
troopers learned in basic training camp to form deep pockets in their skin,
backed up with crystallium sockets imbedded in their tread muscles to handle
the long, heavy dragon teeth. A well-trained trooper could perform that
function at any
point around the circle while maintaining the measured tread of the advance
ripple, and simultaneously eating, eliminating, and switching trinkets from one
pouch to the next. It was the brag of Swift-Killer's troopers that they could
engage in sex on top of all of that. But as had been proved during a few
after-battle orgies, that was more talk than
performance.
The
commander of a circle of troopers had two choices. One was to put all the
troopers of one sex in one ring, with the next ring of the opposite sex
constantly riding partially on the topside of the first rank. This kept the
troopers happy, with a constant reminder of fun either under tread or topside.
However, there was always the problem of the one or two who didn't quite fit
into the geometry of the circle. A second choice was to alternate male and
female side-by-side in each rank, with purely (nearly) platonic interaction
between ranks, although they were overlapping on topsides. Swift-Killer
preferred the second ordering since it made for tighter rank spacing, despite
the other problems it caused.
At one time,
early in her career as an officer, she had considered the possibility of a
trooper circle made up of only one sex. She could see herself, leading the
Ferocious Females to triumph in battle. But her trooper background vetoed that
bleak, joyless scene quickly. In their battles against the barbarians, the real
enemy was boredom, and a single-sex battle circle would not survive long.
Dead-Troopers
led her clan, and the out-family warriors who had
joined them, off to the east, then back again to the west.
"A long
crawl for no progress," Sinking-Cliff, one of the out-family fighters,
complained. But even he had to admit that their route had taken them safely
around the trooper scouts who would slither quickly over the horizon and back
again.
Sinking-Cliff
had been the leader of his small clan before he had decided to join forces with
Dead-Troopers' larger clan that contained many of his out-family. The
penetration of the large force of well-armed troopers into his clan territory
was of great concern, and he readily joined himself and his three best warriors
to the cause. However, he did not really like taking commands from someone
else.
Dead-Troopers
knew that she was treading on prickly crust when she heard the complaint and
made her move, but she
could tolerate no
insubordination if she were going to keep control of this halt-wild band.
"Silence!"
came Dead-Troopers' harsh whisper, and Sinking-Cliff half raised his club as a
dozen eyes on a huge form blazed down at him.
Dead-Troopers
dropped into lingua inter-familia, and applied her most diplomatic
accent—Pink-Sky would have been proud of her. "Even hatchlings are quiet
when the Swift is around," she admonished in a soft whisper. 'This
dark-side cliff we have come to is along the path of the marauding
troopers," Dead-Troopers continued. 'There is none other like it, since
all other cliffs in this region show their faces to the bright light."
The tension
relaxed, and Dead-Troopers slid a pseudopod on the topside of Sinking-Cliff as
she continued, "The path of the troopers takes them to the bright-light
side of this cliff. They will never see us behind it, and we can rush out and
take them unaware."
She removed
her pseudopod with a promising pat and glided off to arrange the attack.
TIME:
The
expedition to the east pole moved slowly on in its quiet but determined way.
Scouts moved ahead to look over the horizon, but the crust was getting prickly,
especially on the way back, so they did not range out as far as they had done
in the past. None of them realized that the horizon off to one side was not the
real horizon, but instead was the top of a precipitous cliff that sheltered a
horde of barbarians behind its sharp edge.
It was to
Dead-Troopers' credit that she held her mixed pseudo-clan of warriors until the
circle glided past. She released them with a terrible thump that shook the very
crust under Swift-Killer's tread and they attacked with a fury born of turn
upon turn of punitive raids on their loved ones and hatchlings.
"At
Alert!" t'trumed Swift-Killer, and narrowed herself down to pass through
the dazed civilians to the rear of the circle.
Her
automatic judgment of the tactical situation was verified when she saw the
stream of barbarians seem to pour endlessly out of a notch in the horizon. Her
dozen eyes lifted slightly on
stubs as they
once again evaluated the near perfect boundary between dark sky and glowing
crust, and she saw her mistake. A slight rise of the glowing crust indicated a
low cliff. Too low to see, but high enough to hide a war party of barbarians.
"East! West! North! Bright!—East! West! North! Bright!— East! ..." chanted Swift-Killer as her eyes took in
the battle situation. Her troopers moved obediently in a rigid march that took
them nowhere, as their bodies became attuned to the cooperative movement and
the deadly needles of the dragon teeth formed their impenetrable barrier about
the circle of close-coupled troopers.
The
civilians peered over the flattened ranks of troopers and some of them were
beginning to panic. Swift-Killer lowered the intensity of her rhythmic thump on
the crust as her squad leaders took up the chant to make up for the loss of her
volume.
Swift-Killer
circled around the inner rank of her troopers, sliding encouraging pseudopods
on male and female alike, as her whisper sped through the crust, its electronic
tingle emphasizing the solid thump of the squad leaders.
"...
North! Bright!—East! West! North! ..."
At the same
time, she thinned out the inner third of her body and spread a thin hatching
mantle over the bewildered non-combatants at the center. In almost automatic
reflex action, their bodies reverted to minimum area, and they huddled together
under the protective cloak. As the pressure in the center was released, the
ranks of troopers compacted, and the needle points at the outer ring grew
imperceptibly closer together.
Swift-Killer
watched the charge of the barbarians with cool detachment. Although they came
in a group, they were still individuals, and the first of those individuals
actually to make contact with the deadly circle of dragon teeth would die, and
both she and the barbarians knew that horrible fact.
"...
West! North! Bright!—East! West! North! ..." Swift-Killer added the thump
of her tread to the clamor as the barbarians approached. With a roar that shook
the very crust, they came straight along the easy direction from the west, then broke into two peeling waves that plowed their way off
into the hard directions toward the north and Bright sides.
Swift-Killer
had expected the attack to break off in the face of a well-tended circle. What
she had not expected was the rattle of pod seeds and smooth rocks rolling and
sliding across the crust toward her circle of troopers. That was all that they
were, rocks and
garbage from an ordinary pod meal, but the unexpected did to her troopers what
anything unexpected would do to any group—it confused them. In their effort to
avoid what was harmless, the troopers slid to one side or the other. Their
careful cadence was lost and the impenetrable barrier of needlelike dragon
teeth wavered.
From the middle of the still flowing barbarian horde burst
Dead-Troopers and five of her warriors. They were nearly hidden by
their load of undried cheela skin. Swift-Killer's eyes shrank at the sight, but
she had to admire the tactical effectiveness of the result. As the raw cheela
skin contacted the pricks of the dragon teeth, the natural death reflexes in
the muscular skin pouched up and grasped the points of the dragon teeth in viselike
sphincters.
Backing off
for a moment, the barbarians let the skin drag the ends of the deadly needles
to the crust, and then flowed over their grisly weapon and pinned the circle
defenses under their treads as they encountered the outer perimeter, their
clubs and stolen short swords shattering crystal and slashing skin.
"West! West! West! West! ..."
t'trumed Swift-Killer as she changed the cadence and moved the circle into the
direction of the attack. The small knot of fighting troopers and barbarians
stayed fixed, each slashing where they could at the small amount of skin
exposed behind their shields of dried skin or Flow Slow plates. Meanwhile, the
steady cadence moved the circle of troopers around the point of attack, like a
cell enveloping its struggling prey. The surprise was gone, and the next rapid
attack of the barbarians from the east did not produce the desired confusion
when a rattle of crustal pebbles and pod seeds came sliding across the crust.
The needle points of the dragon teeth did not waver, and the holders of the
remainder of the poor unfortunate cheela who had unwillingly donated his very
skin to the cause of the barbarian attack left their glowing white juices
dripping off the ends of the dragon teeth.
"Out! Out! Out! Out!"
Swift-Killer commanded. She expanded the circle in all directions, but most
importantly in the direction towards the clump of barbarian warriors. The
pincher closed and the needle points of the dragon teeth began to have their
effect.
With the
trap shut, Swift-Killer pulled back her mantle from over the civilians. Making
herself into an avenging needle, she slipped her huge bulk between two of her
troopers in the rear ranks. Three knives held in front of her and her short
sword
trailing behind, she
screeched a high pitched whisper that threw the knot of combatants into
confusion, and dove in under their bodies, knives slashing.
Swift-Killer
climbed out of the hole she had carved out of the middle of Dead-Troopers'
body, glowing juices running down her eye-stubs. She then attacked the rest of
the beleaguered barbarians from behind. Their initiative was lost, and it took
little time for the troopers to finish them all with thrusts of their short
swords.
Swift-Killer
looked across the topsides of the still quivering bags of juice and surveyed
her command. True to the tradition of trooper discipline, even if the commander
seemed to ignore it, the squad leaders had disengaged the little knot of dead
and wounded to the inside, and a nearly perfect circle of regrouped troopers
were now arrayed in rank after rank, their needle points in perfect array as
the cadence continued. "East! West! North!
Bright—East! West! North! ..." The remainder of the barbarian horde sent
taunts and curses through the crust, made weaker and weaker feinting attacks,
and finally faded off over the horizon.
Swift-Killer
shivered her skin, sending yellow-white globs of cooling juice showering down
on the bare topsides of the motionless layers of skin beneath her tread. She
slowly flowed down off the sagging mound of flesh, checking each one of her
short slashing blades before inserting them back into her lined weapons pouch.
As she descended, her tread automatically kneaded the flaccid skin beneath her
and worked out the lumps that were hidden away in the enemy skin pouches.
One cache
yielded buttons. Swift-Killer paused in shock. There were three single buttons
that signaled that each had come from trooper; a doublet button that used to
grace the skin of a squad leader; and another with four buttons that matched
the one that now glistened wetly on her supple skin.
"The
Trooper-Killer!" she said, and fury sent her short sword again and again
through the already damaged brain-knot. Her exhaustion forgotten in the
discovery, she moved the dead hunks of meat off the sworn enemy of every troop
commander of the east border, and proceeded to strip the tiniest pouch of that
dead hulking body.
To her
dismay, she found four more trooper buttons—well tarnished—in an almost
sealed-off pouch, but nothing else.
"Kill!
Kill! Kill!" she murmured. "Nothing to live for but
to kill troopers."
She went on
to the other bodies, glancing around as she did so to notice that the battle
was over and the circle was back in its proper form. One body yielded a trooper
button, but this one came from the holding sphincter of a trooper, who had died
defending its honor. She searched the periphery until she found the trooper's
heritage pouch, and she slowly kneaded it until she extracted the mementos
given to the trooper as he left his clan to join the eastern border guard. She
separated the personal ones from the clan ones, tossing most of the personal
ones to the crust but taking those that might be of value to her some turn. She
put the clan totem into a special pouch that she sealed until she might, at
some future time, deliver it to the clan chief, while giving thanks for the
assistance of that segment of the clan in the protection of the far-flung
borders of Bright's Empire.
"It is
a good thing that we lose so few troopers in these skirmishes with the
barbarians," she thought to herself, "or else the troop commanders
would be so laden down with clan totems that they would not be able to
move."
At the
thought, she self-consciously twitched the little pouch in a forgotten segment
of her body that had not been opened for over three dozen greats of turns, and
would not—until death relaxed the sphincter that kept her little piece of
homeland and kin within her.
Swift-Killer
continued her search. Two of her troopers and six barbarians.
A poor trade. And it was her fault for not having trained her troopers against
the "rolling garbage" attack. It was an old and seldom used tactic,
but in this time and in this environment it had come close to equaling the odds
for the barbarians.
Kneading a
recalcitrant pouch on one of the last barbarian skin sacks, she almost cut her
tread. Moving off and sliding a pseudopod under the edge of the folded skin,
she extracted a short sword. The fact that a barbarian had succeeded in
wresting a short sword from a trooper was not unusual, but the condition of the
short sword was. She examined its shining sides and keenly honed edge with
wonder. If only her troopers could be encouraged to keep their weapons in such
good condition! She pouched the shining sword in her weapons pouch and finished
the inspection, then finally turned to cleaning herself.
The troop
was still on full circle march alert, when she finally
finished and resumed command.
"Rest!"
rolled the command through the crust, and the
gleaming needles of
the dragon teeth stopped in space, paused, then relaxed into a disarrayed, but
still outward-facing circle.
"Make
camp!
"Post Guards!
"Squad Leaders Report!"
The commands
rippled out through the crust and the troop camp took on its normal life style
as the subordinates interpreted the Commander's orders, added a few of their
own for local order and discipline, and then gathered near the mound of cooling
bodies for a conference with their Troop Commander.
"We are
in no real hurry," Swift-Killer announced to them. "And we have a
long way to go in hostile territory without food storage depots. We will stop
here long enough to dry the meat, then we will move on
to the east."
The squad
leaders were pleased with the Commander's decision. The troopers had been on
constant march for a dozen turns, and this break would not only give the more
restless ones a few moments to relieve the pressure of their juices, but would
also give the whole command a chance to revert to a seminormal life style, not
to mention a welcome change in diet from the ever-present food pods.
The squad
leaders had no trouble in getting volunteers for butcher duty, and soon the
whole pile of eight bodies was neatly drained, the muscular meat carefully
sliced from the skin and the leathery skin stretched out as far as it would go
in the easy direction. The ends were held down with the ample weight of a
couple of otherwise useless novice astrologers, and left to dry for a turn on
the glowing crust, until they were ready to rewrap the meat hunks that they had
so recently enveloped.
When the
butchering crew came to the eggs, there was a lengthy pause. One of the
troopers and the Trooper-Killer barbarian were found to have eggs in their egg
cases. Unfortunately for the sensibilities of the butchering crew, the precious
egglings were still alive in their leathery sacs.
The news of
the living egglings brought Swift-Killer to the scene at once. As much as she
hated it, it was her duty to pass judgment. She looked carefully at the
leathery egg-sacs, sliding each one in turn under the protection of a hatching
mantle to feel the pulsating life form within.
Unfortunately,
the pulsations from the wee ones only confirmed what they all knew. Egg-sacs
with that color had no
chance of
surviving without many more turns of protection and nourishment within their
mother.
Swift-Killer
felt the terrible urge to lift the little eggling into her egg case—to give it
the protection and nourishment that it needed. But she knew full well that
within one turn, her normally protective egg case would have swollen into a
bloated anger, and the vile juices that it would have exuded would have
literally dissolved the egg sac and its precious cargo. As much as they all
would have liked to have saved them, the egglings were doomed.
Swift-Killer
softly took the two quivering egg-sacs into a holding pouch and moved off. The
butchering crew continued their work, while the rest of the expedition followed
Swift-Killer to the other side of the camp.
"Another
nasty duty," Swift-Killer complained. She drew out the flashing sword that
she had so recently acquired.
"If it
has to be done, let it be done quickly," she said. With two swift slices,
she sacrificed the juices of the egglings to the all-absorbing crust of Egg,
which glowed momentarily in response.
The others
returned to the camp, but Swift-Killer, who had had the duty, stayed on to
punish herself. As she looked at the dead egglings,
she was horrified at her inner thoughts.
"That
is a tender looking slice of meat," her appetite said.
"Not
even a barbarian would eat an eggling!" she remonstrated. Shifting her
attention from the immature egglings baking on the glowing crust, she flowed
back into the camp to supervise the wrapping of the meat, for that would be the
troop's main source of food for many turns to come.
TIME:
After two dozen turns, the
expedition began to approach the east pole. Every direction was now a hard
direction for travel, and if it weren't for the disciplined nature of the
troopers, who were used to marching in close formation, the going would have
been difficult. Fortunately, since there was no easy direction of travel, there
was also no danger of rapid attack, and their guard could be relaxed. Swift-Killer
changed the usual loose marching circle into a modified wedge. The troopers
were placed in a sharp pointed chevron formation, with the front of the chevron
thrusting steadily through the resistant at-
mosphere to force an
opening. The remainder of the troopers kept the gap open, and the small group
of scientist astrologers moved swiftly along at the trailing edge, moving
easily into the gap created by the troopers.
To break the
monotony, the squads in the troop had been having a contest. Each squad would
take a turn as path breaker and see how many treads they could keep up the pace
before having to fall back and let the following squad have their turn. Each
squad, of course, had to break the previous squad's record, and when
Swift-Killer began to notice that several troopers on the front line were
beginning to surreptitiously drop equipment and food parcels from their pouches
in order to keep up the pace, she decided to call a break before things got
beyond control.
"Cease March!" Swift-Killer's voice rolled through
the crust.
An exhausted
group of troopers halted their steady push and felt the hardness close in
around them. Since all directions were hard going, no one wanted to move from
his position, but Swift-Killer was pleased to see that the squad leaders kept
after their troopers until they were dispersed in a rough circle, with a few
individuals designated to keep one or two eyes on the horizon while they were
eating.
"They
really must be tired," Swift-Killer thought as she looked around. "No
one has the energy to pair off for a little fun."
Having
stayed at her normal position near the center of the troop, Swift-Killer had
not had to participate in the exhausting procedure of breaking path, and so had
not even begun to tax her great strength. So she was feeling fine and would
have liked to have a little relaxation after eating; but a quick survey of her
many lovers among the troop convinced her that she should let them rest.
Swift-Killer
wandered over to the clump of astrologers and approached Cliff-Watcher, who was
busy tying knots in a tally string. On the crust beside him were three tread
sticks.
"Amazing,
simply amazing," Cliff-Watcher was murmuring to himself as he added knot
after knot to the tally string.
"What's
amazing?" Swift-Killer asked, curious as always, and confident enough in
her position to ask questions of someone many turns her junior.
"Egg is
really shaped like an egg!" exclaimed Cliff-Watcher as a few of his eyes
glanced away from the tally string and no-
ticed her approach.
He then saw the bewilderment in the jerky overtones of Swift-Killer's normal
eye-wave pattern and continued, "I have been keeping a count of the number
of standard treads on our march with the tread sticks. The east pole is on a
very flat place on Egg. It takes many, many treads of travel before there is a
noticeable change in the horizon," he said.
Swift-Killer
looked ahead along their direction of travel. She could see the east pole mountains just raising their tops over the horizon. It
was true, the horizon had hardly changed for the last
three turns.
"Like
an egg?" she asked.
"Yes,"
the young astrologer said. "An egg-sac is flattened on the top and bottom
because of the pull of gravity, and spreads out in the other directions. Our
home, Egg, seems to be constructed the same way. Near the east and west poles
it is very flat and you have to go a long way to see a change in the horizon.
Halfway between the east and west pole, where Bright's Heaven is, the horizon
is very close in the east and west direction but many treads away in the hard
direction."
Swift-Killer
knew this elementary fact of the topography near Bright's Heaven, but she had
never connected it with the shape of Egg. However, neither she nor Cliff-Watcher
realized that Cliff-Watcher's calculations had misled him. The star was
spherical, not egg-shaped. It was his tread sticks that were distorted, giving
him a false impression. Everything on the star— the tread sticks, the dragon
crystal weapons and even the nuclei in their bodies—was distorted by the
trillion-gauss magnetic field of the star so that they were many times longer
along the magnetic field lines than across them. Since even their eyes
participated in the general stretching, they couldn't see the distortion;
everything looked normal to them.
Swift-Killer
turned professional. "How many treads until we reach the east pole mountains?" she asked.
Cliff-Watcher,
who was proud of his advanced education in conceptual geometry, immediately went
into a calculation trance, his practiced counting tendrils shooting forth from
his body. The tendrils began to wave and interlace with each other at blinding
speed. Finally he broke from the trance.
"Two
dozen standard marches," he announced.
Swift-Killer
looked at the east pole mountains that loomed over the
deceptively near horizon and announced, "Then I guess we had better get
the troop moving."
Without
shifting, she roared, "At Alert!" The troop smoothly
reformed and
continued their push to the east, the disruptive contest between squads
forgotten.
Cliff-Watcher
had been right, it really was about two dozen standard marches to the east pole mountains, but since a standard march between breaks
was impossible in this terrain, it really took much longer.
"It is
like constantly climbing a hill in the hard direction," Swift-Killer
complained to herself as she took a turn at the point of the chevron forcing
its way into the hard direction.
"I
know," said the trooper at her right. "Except you
never end up on top."
Swift-Killer
breasted another furry hillock in front of her. Each tiny little thread of
crust was sticking up toward the sky in the easy direction. It looked
impossible—the threads seemed to be laughing at the powerful gravity pull of
Egg. But when Swift-Killer had to push over that tiny little thread, along with
the myriad others that made up the fuzzy surface, she found they were
powerfully strong. It took a great deal of strength just to move through the
fuzz, knocking it down and pushing on over it. Then on top of it all, if the
fuzz slowed her down too much, the hard direction closed in on her and made the
going even worse.
The troop
finally reached the foothills of the east pole mountains
without further incident. Swift-Killer looked with awe at the height of the
mountains, then upwards at the Eyes of Bright, still hanging in the sky far
above the mountains, defying the mighty pull of Egg.
Swift-Killer
put the camp on bivouac status. First, long-range sentries were put out at a
good distance from the camp; then she allowed the troopers to put down their
weapons. A file of troopers went into a virgin stand of crust-fuzz and stamped
out a circular depressed region where the dragon teeth and the short swords
were stacked to block out the constant winds. In the center, the remainder of
the pods and dried meat was stored, while those who had been burdened with
their weight during the long march became free again to frolic without care.
Hunting parties were formed, with old and new couples taking off in small
carefree groups to see what was off on the horizon. Now was an important time
for Swift-Killer. She gathered the astrologers and began to set up her
experiment. She first took the flat glancer mirror and set it on a mound of
rubble at an angle until she could go off at a distance and see the Eyes of
Bright reflected off the center of the mirror.
"The
Eyes of Bright are larger and closer, and they look a little brighter,"
Cliff-Watcher remarked, as a few of his eyes scanned the cluster of seven
lights in the sky.
"I
should hope so, after all the work we did to get here," Swift-Killer said
crankily as she struggled to scrape a notch for the curved expander in the
fuzzy crust some distance away from the glancer.
"I
could never figure out why Bright chose to send his Eyes to the east pole, when
we were in Bright's Heaven," Cliff-Watcher mused.
"Perhaps
Bright did not want to see us too well, because we are so wicked,"
Swift-Killer said in annoyance. "Here, hold this while I sight through the
pointing hole."
Swift-Killer
had the large, curved expander standing vertically on the crust. It came up
almost to the top of Cliff-Watcher as he moved over to surround it and hold it
vertical. He was glad it had not been his job to keep that thing pouched during
their travels.
Cliff-Watcher
flowed his body away from the center of the expander
as Swift-Killer backed off and stared through the small hole in the plate.
Swift-Killer moved her eye until she could see the center of the glancer
through the hole. There, shining in the center of the flat mirror were the Eyes
of Bright. Now she had to tilt the expander until the image of her eye off the
flat backside of the expander was swallowed up in the hole that she was looking
through; in that way she knew that the expander was pointing at the glancer,
which in turn was pointing up at the Eyes of Bright.
"Up a
little," she said. "Hold it!" She moved quickly and soon
Cliff-Watcher's place was taken by a cluster of pieces of crust.
The message
to the strange sticklike beings in the Inner Eye had been decided long ago.
Since they had used a rectangular format with a prime number of rows and
columns to send crude pictures, they would certainly recognize that format if
it were beamed back to them—only the picture inside the rectangle would be new.
First it would show a picture of the Eyes of Bright over the east pole with a
dragon tooth pointing the way to Bright's Heaven. Then later pictures would
show the Eyes of Bright hovering over Bright's Heaven, with the distinctive profile
of the east pole mountains poking up over the horizon
of Egg. Each picture had been converted into a complex tally string, ready to
read off. Swift-Killer gathered her crew of as-
trologers and they
proceeded to retransmit the message that they had sent in vain from the
compound back at the Inner Eye Institute.
"Long
burn, flick, flick, flick, dash, flick ..." Swift-Killer intoned as she
ran the tally string through a set of tendrils. The crew of flare holders and
pod-juice controllers kept up their steady work, and flash after flash of light
glared from the end of the flare, reflected from the curved surface of the
expander into a straight beam that flashed across the crust to the glancer, then went beaming upwards toward the cluster of lights in
the sky. After several lines, Swift-Killer would take another look through the
sighting holes to make sure that the beam was being sent off in the right
direction, while the flare crew replaced their flares with fresh ones.
After the
first picture had been sent, Swift-Killer went over to the astrologer whom she
had put in charge of the dark detector. She was slightly disappointed that
there had been no darkening of the detector, but she resolved to keep on with
the rest of the series.
A dozen
turns and more than twice as many messages later, Swift-Killer finally had to
admit that perhaps the messages were still not getting through.
'The Eyes
still look dim to us, so you can imagine that our weak little light is going to
be very dim by the time it gets up through the murky atmosphere,"
Cliff-Watcher said as his thinned out body tried to knead the worries out of
the flattened Swift-Killer.
Swift-Killer
lay relaxed under the tender ministrations of Cliff-Watcher and felt the small globules
that used to be a piece of Cliff-Watcher moving slowly through her body on
their way to her egg case. Her body was at rest, but her mind was a turmoil of emotion.
"If
they cannot see us yet, then we must get closer," she said, "I am
going to climb the mountains to where the atmosphere is clearer."
Cliff-Watcher's
kneading stopped. "But that will take forever!" he remonstrated.
"So it
may," said Swift-Killer, who had slipped out from under Cliff-Watcher and
had rapidly resumed her more normal shape. She was now putting on her office of
command as she gathered and pouched the tools, weapons and trinkets that she
had cast aside earlier. "But we are going anyway."
TIME:
The climbing of the east pole mountains was like a siege. The mountains were many
times higher than any that had ever been attempted. Swift-Killer took her time
to organize her support, for once she had started up the mountain the
organization would have to run itself. The formal command structure of the
troop was dismantled, and a new arrangement organized more along the lines of a
permanent border fort replaced it. A quarry crew was sent out and soon a
fortified compound replaced the campground. Regular hunting parties were
organized, and the short swords and dragon teeth soon were sinking their sharp
fangs into wandering animals instead of their natural prey. With much
grumbling, long rows of petal plants were placed in the crust, and the business
of tending them rotated among the troopers—who in many cases had only joined up
to get away from the clan farm.
With her
supply lines secure, Swift-Killer organized the assault on the east pole mountains. Swift-Killer, Cliff-Watcher and North-Wind
would lead the climb, but backing them would be over half the troop.
Swift-Killer worked carefully, orchestrating the climb like a major battle.
Twice she backed down from a hard-won valley because the climb—although not
difficult for an unburdened cheela—would have been impossible for one loaded
with food parcels. Slowly the expedition worked its way into the foothills.
Chunks of crust were stationed on the steeper slopes for rest stations, and
soon two lanes of porters were moving back and forth from the fort on the
lowlands to the point of the climb that slowly thrust its way inward and
upward.
"That
was a terrible stretch," Cliff-Watcher complained as he lay exhausted on
the crust in one of the rare flat spots in the mountain pass. "The glancer
almost wouldn't fit through that narrow crevasse."
Swift-Killer,
her body bulging with the curved shape of the expander, ignored the complaint
and announced, "This will be an ideal place for our next base camp. I will
go ahead and rec-onnoiter, while you two work your way down to the lead parcel
crew. Take your time and make sure that you secure the path for them."
Swift-Killer
carefully emptied her pouch of the expander, and moved swiftly off as
North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher wearily dropped their loads and moved back down
the mountain.
Swift-Killer
was pleased. The way ahead was steep, but broad. They would make good progress
with their loads over this stretch. In her hurry to explore well ahead, she
thinned her body down and pushed only a narrow path through the prickly crust.
She would broaden it on her way back down, when the tremendous pull of Egg
would help instead of hinder her motion. She came around a low ledge and then
stared at the barrier ahead.
"Bright's
Curse!" she exploded. Her eyes scanned the area, but there was no escape
from the fact that the canyon they had been traveling had come to an abrupt
end. There was a tall cliff blocking the way. She moved closer to it and began
to examine the vertical cracks that rent the face in the easy direction.
There were a
lot of the cracks, for the crust had very little strength in the easy
direction, and the pull of Egg was constantly attempting to draw the soaring
cliffs to its bosom. This particular cliff must have been formed recently, for
it had not been worn much by the ever-present winds. Swift-Killer searched
along the base and then found a fairly large rent that went back a good way
into the cliff. Conquering her fear of the cliff face
towering over her, she moved up to the rent. Without looking up at the
terrifying sight of that mass of rock ready to fall on her topside, she
narrowed down and pushed her body into the crack. She soon filled the bottom of
it completely. Then, still pushing with her tread and
muscles on the outside, she forced her body fluids into the narrow crack;
slowly her body became tall and narrow instead of its usual flattened
ellipsoidal shape. Although the pull of Egg tried to drag her down, the narrow
crevasse kept her from being flattened, and since the easy direction was
upwards, it was not hard to move in that dkection, while the hardness in the horizontal
dkection actually helped her to maintain her body in the crevasse. She pushed
and pushed and felt the pressure build up in her lower body. When she felt she
could stand the pressure no longer, she took a quick, terrified glance up the
remainder of the crack and was disappointed to find that she had climbed only a
small portion of the way to the top.
Dismay and
terror weakened her hold, and she felt herself falling down and out the bottom
of the crevasse. The force of her fall caused her internal juices to form a
small wave that actually rolled her outside sack of skin over and over. For the
first time since
she was a tiny hatchling blown about by the wind, she found herself tread
upwards.
Swift-Killer
slowly righted her bruised body and moved away from the front of the cliff
while she thought. She went over to a mound of rubble and thoughtfully picked
her way through the chunks of crust that lay tumbled there. She picked up
several good-sized slabs that were thick plates. She went back to the crevasse
with her burden and, turning one of the chunks endways, pushed it ahead of her
into the crevasse. She again pushed her body into the crack, and lifted the
plate up as high as she could. She then turned the slab sideways and slowly let
it come down, where the flat edges jammed against the narrowing sides of the
crack as the pull of Egg sat it firmly into place. Swift-Killer slowly
relinquished her hold, and she watched in pleasure as the heavy chunk of crust
stayed suspended between the walls of the crevasse, just over her normal eye
height. She took another slab, a longer one this time,
and soon it too was suspended against the pull of Egg at the same height, but
further out from the back of the notch. Swift-Killer looked her creation over
with care and then flowed back out of the crevasse and shortly returned from
the rubble pile with another thick slab of crust, longer than the others. With
a great effort she lifted the slab and soon it was in place, resting on the top
of the other two. Swift-Killer hesitated, then slowly
induced herself to glide under the improvised platform to the back of the
crevasse. She again forced her body into the narrow crack, and stretching out a
narrow pseudopod that snaked up to rest on top of the wedged slabs, she slowly
pumped her juices up against the pull of Egg so that they inflated that portion
of her skin on the platform. She halted after she had several eyes transferred
to the upper level, then formed some strong
manipulators that grasped the top slab tightly. Then, firmly anchored, she
finally pushed and pulled the rest of her body up onto the platform.
All during
this long procedure, Swift-Killer had been careful to keep all of her dozen
eyes carefully concerned with watching the wall, the manipulators, the slabs,
anything but the outside environment. Only when she was safely on top of the
slab, her manipulators keeping her from flowing off the front or the back, and
the firm walls of the crevasse holding her in from the sides, did she finally
allow herself to observe the predicament she had put herself into. She looked
out of the crevasse at the horizon, then at the pile of rubble in the distance,
then at the
crust just at the entrance to the crevasse, then just inside the entrance, and
then her eyes refused to look any further. Try as she might, she just couldn't
seem to make them look down from the platform where she hunched, perched at a height above the crust that would have burst
her skin like a ripe pod if she had fallen.
"It
needs to be wider," Swift-Killer said to herself, "if we are going to
use this as a platform to make another one further up. And perhaps they should
be closer together so it isn't as hard to flow up onto them. But it will work.
We will just make floating platforms up the crevasse to the top of the
cliff."
Swift-Killer
slowly let herself down, forming a few more massive manipulators to hold onto
small ledges in the cliff walls to slow her descent. She quickly flowed out
from beneath the platform and returned to the base camp, happily breasting her
way down through the fuzzy crust.
Conquering
the cliff took many turns. Although some of the troopers soon became expert
scalers, and even found a technique to get the awkward expander and glancer up
the notch, almost one-third of the troopers were incapable of forcing
themselves to climb up on the overhanging platforms. Despite the thinning out
of her supply line, Swift-Killer pressed on, and as the double line of the
expedition wound its way through the east pole mountains,
it slowly became obvious to all that the atmosphere was getting thinner and the
visibility was getting better. Far to the north, they could see a swirling
cloud of smoke that came southward from the large volcano in the northern
hemisphere and, turning at the east pole, made its way out to the west along
the equator. However, the dense clouds didn't penetrate into the mountains.
During a
rest period, Cliff-Watcher gazed up at the seven bright points of light.
"Perhaps we could try sending a message again," he said.
Swift-Killer
had made up her own mind about that long ago.
"It is
clearer," she said. "But we could still have a better chance of being
seen if we were to go higher still, for the atmosphere is getting thinner
rapidly as we go higher. We could attempt a message now, but we have only a
limited supply of flares and pod juice, and I would rather wait to use them
when we are as high as we can get."
The climb
had taken over two greats of turns. Even Swift-Killer was surprised when she
realized that she would soon have a second egg mature inside her to be sent
back down with
one of the
plodding porters that moved back and forth between base camps, shuttling food
up the living chain. Finally, the supply line had been stretched to its limit.
There was no limit to the food supply at the base of the mountains, for the
fort had turned into a prosperous town, complete with egg-pens, hatchling
schools, farms and small businesses set up on the side by enterprising
troopers. The hunting parties and harvesters kept a steady stream of food
pouring into the base of the pyramid, but most of it went into supplying the
daily needs of the porters who used the energy to haul supplies up the mountain
against the great pull of Egg. Swift-Killer finally called a halt at a flat
place in the mountains.
"We
will stop here," she said to Cliff-Watcher and North-Wind. "I want
you both to rest and eat well to build up your reserves while the porter crews
build up our supplies. I will scout ahead and see if there is another place
equally as good ahead of us. If there is, we will move on to it to send our
message, otherwise, we will attempt it from here."
Swift-Killer
emptied out her pouches, especially the bulky glancer she had been carrying,
and moved steadily on up the canyon. She was gone for so many turns that
Cliff-Watcher and North-Wind began to get worried, but finally she returned
with good news.
"There
is another wide, level place further up the mountain," she said. "It
will be a long climb carrying the equipment, but there are no tricky traverses
or steep cliffs, just a long, upward trip."
She glanced
at the nervously twitching eye-stubs of her two compatriots. She could tell
that they were thinking about objecting to a continuation of the climb, since
the messages could be sent almost as well from their present spot. She decided
to reassert her authority.
"At
Alert!" boomed the tread of Troop Commander Swift-Killer, only slightly
muffled by the fuzzy crust.
Although
Cliff-Watcher was not a trooper, he had been living with the troop for so long
that he found his body imitating the instant response of North-Wind as the
Commander's rigid eyes glared at them.
"The
sole purpose of this entire expedition is to send a message to the beings in
the Inner Eye," Swift-Killer began. "And I intend to do that to the
best of my ability—and yours! This camp is not the best place to send that
message, so we will go on—do you understand?"
"Yes,
Commander," boomed North-Wind's formal reply, echoed by Cliff-Watcher's
awed response.
"Good!"
she said. "From now on, I want you two to obey my orders." Her body
relaxed slightly and she continued. "We three will push on in a dozen
turns, after we all have had time to rest, build up our internal food reserves,
and have a good supply of food parcels. Now for my orders.
My first order is to rest. My second order is to eat well, and my third order
is to thin out, because I have just returned from a long lonely journey, and I
am going to take you both on at once." With that she moved in between them
and shortly was enjoying being the middle layer of a triple layer orgy.
After twelve
turns of rest and recreation, Swift-Killer was anxious to be on her way. Since
they had to have other things to occupy their time besides eating and sex, she
had Cliff-Watcher learn the finer points of short-sword infighting from
North-Wind while she refereed. Then both she and North-Wind learned to make
counter tendrils and soon both could compute almost as fast as Cliff-Watcher.
They were
now ready to go. She had convinced North-Wind that there was very little
likelihood of meeting barbarians in the mountains at these heights, so they
left their weapons. They loaded up with the all-important message equipment and
as much food as they could carry, and the three set off up the mountain. The
rest of the troop was left with orders to set up food caches at the various
base camps down the mountain and to withdraw to the fort.
The climb
was difficult, but as Swift-Killer had assured them, there was nothing
particularly tricky about it. Because of their bulky burdens, however, it took
them much longer to make the climb than it had taken Swift-Killer in her
exploration climb. They ate their food rapidly as their bodies labored under
the pull of Egg.
"I
always felt that I would rather carry the food in my juices than in my
pouches," North-Wind said as he ate a pod. "It may all weigh the
same, but somehow when it is inside me, I feel it is at least carrying its
share of the load."
"I will
be glad to relieve you of any food you don't want to carry any longer,"
Cliff-Watcher said.
"Sorry,"
North-Wind said, carefully sucking the last drop of juice from a pod skin as he
pulled it from his eating pouch. "Last one."
"Oh
well," Cliff-Watcher said as North-Wind cracked open
each pod seed
with a tiny, hard manipulator and carefully ate the little kernel inside.
"Guess we might as well be on our way." He turned his attention to
Swift-Killer, who was busy calculating something.
'That will work
out just about right," she said. "We are about two turns from our
destination. We will be out of food by then, but our body reserves will last
long enough for us to send up the messages and get back to the base camp with
plenty to spare, although we will be hungry most of the way back down."
"I'm
hungry right now," Cliff-Watcher said, "and I finished all my food
last turn."
'That is
what the troopers call fat hunger," North-Wind said. "When you think
you are hungry just because you are used to eating every turn. You can't eat
every turn when you are a trooper pursuing barbarians. Wait a dozen turns, then you will know what being hungry really means."
"I'm
not looking forward to it," Cliff-Watcher said as he led the way up the
canyon.
At last they
came over a rise and entered the wide, level region that Swift-Killer had
found. With a sigh of relief, they unloaded the message equipment and spread
out on the fuzzy crust for a rest.
"I sure
could use some food right now," Cliff-Watcher said. "Even an unripe pod
would taste good."
"You
would never make a trooper," North-Wind retorted. "I haven't been
hungry since we left the last base camp. It is all just a matter of proper
attitude. Look at me, I am not even hungry for a pod,
much less an unripe one."
"Well,
that's too bad," Swift-Killer remarked. "I just happened to have
saved out three ripe pods, but since North-Wind isn't hungry and Cliff-Watcher
seems to pine for unripe pods, I guess I will just have to eat them
myself."
At these words
the two males swarmed over her, prodding her all over until they found the
pouch that held the three pods. Despite her protests that this was no way to
treat a troop commander, North-Wind held her down while Cliff-Watcher carefully
kneaded the pouch open and extracted three slightly bruised pods. They all then
relaxed, eating their last meal for some time, as they stared up at the tiny
light hanging in the sky, with its ring of six bright lights slowly circling
about it.
Soon the
three were busy setting up the beaming apparatus. The flat glancer mirror was
propped up at an angle against a
nearby cliff, and
the curved expander was placed a slight distance away. Swift-Killer organized
them into a smoothly working team. North-Wind held up the flares, and kept them
placed as close as possible to the point in space that Swift-Killer and
Cliff-Watcher had decided upon. Cliff-Watcher used his finest tendrils to
manipulate the flow valve on the holder for the pod juice, while Swift-Killer
constantly checked the alignments of the various portions of the apparatus and
at the same time rhythmically read off the calls from the tally string that she
held at her side.
"Long
burn, flick, flick, flick, dash, flick ..." Swift-Killer droned slowly as
Cliff-Watcher concentrated on turning the valve of the vial of pod juice and
North-Wind held the flare carefully at the correct position.
The message
was very boring, since it was just a picture with a lot of blank space, but
both North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher had participated in previous attempts to beam
a message up to Inner Eye and knew what they were getting into. The many short
flashes representing spaces were just as important as the dashes representing
points or the long burns that signified the beginning of a line. A few omitted
flashes could badly distort the picture and the message they were trying to
send.
Swift-Killer
had decided long ago that accuracy was more important than speed, even constant
speed. After all, the strange beings in the Inner Eye certainly took their time
in sending down their pictures—almost as if they were too slow-witted to cope
with anything faster.
They slowly
ground through the first picture message. Swift-Killer called a halt to see if
there was any darkening of the dark detector, indicating that there was a
message coming back to them in return.
"Nothing,"
Swift-Killer said, as she lifted the small vial of fluid and peered through it.
Contact
TIME: 07:58:24.2 GMT
The wide angle X-ray/ultraviolet
scanner on Dragon Slayer detected a moderately strong pulsed emission in the
east pole mountains. It had not been there when that
same area had been scanned a few seconds ago. Automatic feature extractors
singled out the region and a search-and-identify priority was assigned to the
narrow angle scanner, which locked onto the blinking light
source in a millisecond and began to record and analyze the pulses in
detail.
An
occasional pulse of high temperature thermal radiation at the east pole was not
unexpected. Fairly often, a chunk of meteoric material would be pulled in by
the star's gravity, and as it would approach the star, the extreme
gravitational and magnetic fields of the star would rip the rock apart and
transform it into a blob of ionized plasma. The hot gas would fall at near
relativistic speeds down along the magnetic field lines to impact on the
surface in a brilliant explosion of heat and light.
However,
these pulses coming from the star were not the fiery blasts from infalling
meteors. The regularity of the pulsations triggered a higher priority circuit
that kept the narrow angle scanner on the pulsations until they quit several
milliseconds later. Low-level judgment circuits evaluated the significance of
the periodicity and assigned it a moderately high priority. The narrow angle
scanner would return to that site often in its constantly varying scanning
routine, but there was nothing there of interest to the humans.
TIME: 07:58:24.3 GMT
"Let's try again,"
Swift-Killer said. Keeping the dark detector in front of one of her eyes, she
went back to the apparatus. This time she held the valve herself with a set of
manipulators, while a set of tendrils felt off the knots in the tally string.
Much later
Swift-Killer called a halt. The second message had been beamed up to the Inner
Eye, and still there was no response.
"If
only we could be sure that our weak light could be seen at that distance,"
Swift-Killer complained bitterly.
"You
could climb to the top of that peak over there," North-Wind said with mild
sarcasm. "Cliff-Watcher and I will be glad to beam a message up to you and
you could check on the reception."
For once, Swift-Killer
was silent. She could think of nothing else to do but to try again.
They were
nearing the end of the third message when a loud crash came vibrating through
the crust. Swift-Killer didn't move. The highly developed sonic
direction-finding apparatus in her tread had told her exactly what had
happened.
"The
glancer has fallen," she said. Her eyes, which had been concentrating on
the work of monitoring the fall of the drops of pod juice onto the end of the
flare, continued their gaze while Swift-Killer slowly turned the valve off,
closing it tightly to prevent leaks. She pouched the vial, and then finally
turned her attention to the base of the nearby cliff where the glittering
shards of the broken glancer lay in a shattered heap.
Swift-Killer
flowed over to the base of the cliff, forming a manipulator as she went. She
felt through the sparkling pieces, but found none that were anywhere near the
size of the original mirror.
"At
least we got some of the messages off," Cliff-Watcher said consolingly.
"Yes,
but there are still more, and we ought to repeat them as often as we can to
make sure they are received," Swift-Killer said. "We must find a way
to keep sending without using the glancer."
"Perhaps
we can find a suitable chunk of crust around here," North-Wind suggested.
"I'm
afraid not," Swift-Killer said. "I have been looking at the various
types of crust as we passed by different formations,
and all the material in these mountains seems to consist of
fuzzy crust. I
have not seen anything around here that had anywhere near as shiny a cleavage
surface as a glancer. We will have to think of something else."
Swift-Killer
tried many things. However, there was no way that she could get a beam formed
and directed upwards to the Inner Eye. She had even tried leaning the expander
up against the cliff at an angle (being careful this time to back it up with
chunks of crust), but the light from the flare came in at such an angle that
the light reflected from the expander was sprayed out in a distorted beam that
rapidly dissipated into the sky. She knew where the focus spot of the expander
was, but it was an unreachable point way up in the sky, at least a dozen times
higher than she could reach, and almost as high as the cliff itself. Then she
had an idea.
"If we
put the expander flat on the crust, pointing up at the Eyes," she said,
"then the focus spot will be up around the top of this cliff. If we
climbed up there with the flares we could make the light near the focus and the
beam from the expander would go straight up to the Eyes."
Being a
trooper, North-Wind said nothing, but Cliff-Watcher exploded. "You can't
be serious. That cliff must be twice as high as you are wide. It will take you
a dozen turns to climb that high, even if you can find a route, and we are out
of food! We will be nothing but bags of skin if we ever make it!"
"You
are not going," Swift-Killer said. "You will stay here. I will need
to have you move the expander to different positions along the face of the
cliff until we get the focus spot so it is just above the edge of the cliff
where we can reach it."
Swift-Killer
went to the broken glancer, picked up one of the larger shards and pouched it.
"Let's
go, North-Wind," she said, and took off toward the far end of the cliff,
with the obedient trooper close on the tread of his Commander.
TIME: 07:58:24.4 GMT
A fraction of a second later, the
pulsed emission started again, and this time the narrow-angle scanner caught it
early in its emission period. The semi-automatic search-and-identify circuits
kept the scanner focused on the pulsations, while the feature extractor in the
frequency analysis circuits activated a correlation program. A strong match was
then found between
the pulsation
pattern of the emissions and the rectangular picture pattern that Abdul had
chosen in his attempts at communication with Dragon's Egg. If the computer had
been a human, its eyebrows would have raised.
The new
correlation was enough to trigger an action circuit. As a result—a millisecond
later—humans were called into the loop.
PERIODIC X-UV EMISSION—EAST POLE
Seiko
glanced up at the computer message across the top of her screen. She was
floating too far away from the console to reach any of the keys, so she used
audibles, even if they were slower.
"Display!"
she commanded, and instantly a replay of the narrow-angle X-ray/ultraviolet
scanner was on her screen. She watched the regular blinking of the spot in the
middle of the east pole mountains, then glanced up to
see that the computer had slowed it down considerably for her.
1/100,000 REAL TIME
Seiko
watched it for a few seconds. The pulsations stopped abruptly. There seemed to
be no sense to them.
"Analysis!"
she commanded.
The picture on
the screen stayed, while the computer overprinted result after result of its
analysis.
POSITION 0.1 DEC
W LONG, 2.0 DEC
SPECTRUM MODIFIED THERMAL, 15,000 K
MODULATION SIMILAR TO DRAGON'S EGG COMM
PICTURE
NO IDENTIFIABLE NATURAL SOURCE
Seiko
scanned down the list and stiffened in shock. She expertly twisted her body in
a midair position-reversal maneuver, caught hold of the edge of the console and
pulled herself up to it. Her fingers flew over the keys. Within a few seconds,
Swift-Killer's second message was building up on her screen.
"Abdul!"
she called to the next console, where Abdul Nkomi Farouk was laboriously
working out a new message. "They are answering!"
TIME:
Cliff-Watcher had been right. The
path that finally took them to the top of the cliff was tortuous and hard. Both
Swift-Killer and North-Wind were hungry long before they reached the top, and
this time it was the real hunger of someone who had been working at hard labor
for a dozen turns. Swift-Killer still had plenty of reserves, but she was
beginning to worry about North-Wind, for he was not as robust as she was.
However, being a trooper, he never complained.
As
Swift-Killer approached the edge of the cliff, she pulled the glancer shard
from a pouch. "I'm sure I could never get one of my eyes to look down over
the edge to see where Cliff-Watcher is, but as long as it thinks it is looking
out at the horizon, I shouldn't have any trouble," she explained to
North-Wind. Forming a strong manipulator with a deep root embedded in her tread
muscles, she extended the shard out over the edge of the cliff.
She
clustered her eyes in a line; with a little adjustment, she could see the deep
red top of Cliff-Watcher waiting patiently next to the expander.
"I must
really be getting hungry," Swift-Killer thought. "Here I am gazing
full on the topside of a handsome young male and I am not even
interested."
Swift-Killer
turned to North-Wind and said, "We will have to move down this way."
She led the way down the cliff until they were at the point above the waiting
Cliff-Watcher. Cliff-Watcher had never thought that his hatchling name had
amounted to much, and now here he was spending what seemed to be his last dozen
turns on Egg, doing nothing but watching a cliff.
Swift-Killer
tried both long-talk and short-talk, and soon found that there was no trouble
in communicating with Cliff-Watcher if he just kept a portion of his tread
leaning up against the face of the cliff.
Cliff-Watcher
had already arranged the expander; it was as close to the base of the cliff as
he could get it. North-Wind formed a heavy manipulator like that of
Swift-Killer and slowly stretched it out over the edge, a small flare held at
the end.
Swift-Killer
removed one of the vials of pod juice from a pouch, and gripping it carefully,
extended that, too. She constantly reminded herself to hold tightly to the
vial; if it fell, the
expander would be
shattered in as many shreds as the glancer. Slowly she formed a muscular
pseudopod that slithered out on top of the hefty manipulator. The fine tip of
the pseudopod curled its way around the valve. The valve slowly turned and a
tiny stream of liquid hit the end of the flare. They both flinched from the
unaccustomed blue-white light, but soon a steady beam shot forth into the sky.
Swift-Killer evaluated it carefully. Fortunately the winds were high that turn,
and there were many dust particles in the air. Swift-Killer could see the
strong beam as it went upwards, only to come to a bright point at some unimaginable
distance overhead. Swift-Killer turned off the valve and they both slowly
withdrew their manipulators back over the edge and relaxed.
"We are
too far away from the focus spot," Swift-Killer said. "We will have
to move down the cliff."
North-Wind had
never been able to figure out exactly what Swift-Killer and Cliff-Watcher were
talking about when they mentioned things like focus spots, but he decided to
let Swift-Killer do the thinking. After all, she was the commander. He silently
followed her along the edge of the cliff until they came to another convenient
portion of the ledge where they could both get a good tread grip. Swift-Killer
again stuck her little glancer over the edge and watched as Cliff-Watcher
pouched the expander, hauled it to the new position underneath Swift-Killer's
waving manipulator, then repositioned it carefully on the crust and moved back.
This time,
when the light blazed from the top of the cliff, the beam that came out from
the expander did not refocus. Swift-Killer thought that it was still slightly
converging as she lost sight of it high in the sky, but it was good enough.
"We
will continue our message," she said as she pulled the tally strings from
a pouch. North-Wind shuffled the crust in resignation, retracted the short
flare they had been using for testing purposes and replaced it with a longer
one.
"At
least I won't have to climb for a while," he said tiredly to himself, and
settled down to hold the heavy manipulator as still as he possibly could.
Soon a
disciplined pulsation of light was beaming its way up to the Eyes, continuing
the message that had been interrupted a dozen turns ago when the glancer had
fallen from the face of the cliff. Swift-Killer did not pause long when she
came to the end. Since they were on their body reserves, it didn't help
much to rest
anymore; except for an occasional change of flare or pod juice vial, the two
troopers doggedly kept at their task.
Their job
finally finished, Swift-Killer and North-Wind started their way back down the
path to the base of the cliff. By mutual consent, they left everything but
their clan totems in a pile at the top of the cliff.
A dozen
turns later, a weary Cliff-Watcher saw two very thin cheela slowly making their
way around the end of the cliff. Swift-Killer was in front, breaking a path for
the exhausted trooper.
"Another
tread length," she would urge, and gently nudge the sides of his treads
with her trailing edge to keep him rippling. Slowly the two came up to
Cliff-Watcher.
"I
cannot go any further," North-Wind said. "Leave me here."
"No,"
said Swift-Killer. "We are all going together." She turned her
attention to Cliff-Watcher. "I know you are tired too, but we must get to
the base camp where there is a cache of food waiting. You get behind North-Wind
and keep him moving while I break path." Cliff-Watcher was too tired to
argue, and moved in behind his friend North-Wind. Together the three began to
move off and down the sloping valley.
Cliff-Watcher,
who had been checking the dark detector periodically, had just repouched it
after looking to see if there had been any reply to their hard sent messages.
There was nothing. He turned some of his eyes up to the specks of light above
him and wondered at their silence. As he looked, a rapidly falling streak of
bright light appeared to the side of the Eyes, high in the sky. The falling
meteor became elongated and grew brighter and brighter. Cliff-Watcher stirred,
and the other two raised their eyes, then tried to
draw them under their protective flaps. There was no time. In an instant the
whole sky was aflame with an explosion of light and heat that seared their
topsides and left three skinny blobs of scorched, blinded flesh that wriggled
away from each other in their attempts to escape the pain.
Swift-Killer
had never hurt so. Her last thought was that Bright had decided to punish her
for having the temerity to attempt to talk to God. The automatic protective
mechanisms in her body, activated by the lack of body reserves and the shock
from the topside bums, suddenly took over. The animal reflexes were turned off,
and for the first time in untold generations, a cheela went to sleep.
TIME:
Abdul came
flying over to Seiko's console. He halted his headlong dive with a practiced
swing around one of the support stanchions and hung motionless just over
Seiko's head.
"What
reply?" he said.
"There
is someone down there who is sending back pictures with the same format that
you used," Seiko replied, "but they are coming from the east pole,
they use thermal ultraviolet radiation instead of laser light, and they are
coming very fast. Look—here is the first picture."
"It is
a picture of Dragon Slayer and the six Tidal Compensators above Dragon's
Egg," Abdul said. "But the star seems to be badly distorted into the
shape of a pancake. It must be their star, however, because they have drawn in
the mound formation. But what is that long narrow wedge with its base near us
and its point over the formation?"
"It is
a pointer," Seiko said. "If you look at the second and third
pictures, you will see that they are almost identical, except that the position
of our ship slowly shifts toward the west, while the wedge symbol gets
shorter."
Seiko's
fingers flew over the keyboard, and soon the first picture was joined by a
second and a portion of a third.
"You
are right," Abdul said. "It looks as if they want us to move to a
position over their formation. I know why, too. The visibility through the
atmosphere is poor in that direction. It would be much better if we were
directly overhead."
Abdul
suddenly realized something else that Seiko had said. "How fast was the
message being sent?" he asked.
"The
computer had to slow it down," Seiko said. "I estimate a pulse every
four microseconds."
Abdul went
back to his console and soon had a trace of the pulses from the first picture
lined up on the screen. He leaned forward and looked more closely at the
interval between the pulses.
"They
are very irregular in spacing and amplitude," he said. "Almost
as if they were handmade. You would think that a being that could make
an ultraviolet laser could make a decent modulator."
"The
radiation is from a thermal source," Seiko retorted.
Abdul paused
as her reply sank in. "They are signaling to us with the neutron star equivalent
of American Indian smoke signals!" he said. "And each one of those
crude pulses is made in
four
microseconds—Great Allah! That means that those beings must live something like
a million times faster than we do! And I have been sending the laser pulses at
a rate of about once per second. To them that is like a
million seconds between pulses."
Seiko
quickly did the calculation for him. "As if it were
about a week between pulses."
Abdul had
another horrible thought. "How long has it been since they started to
reply?" he asked.
Seiko's
hands flicked on the keyboard, and the first picture reappeared with the time
of reception in the upper corner. "The first picture arrived almost a
minute ago," she replied, "and if the ratio is a million to one, that
is like two years ago."
"They
have probably gotten tired of waiting for an answer and have gone home,"
Abdul said. "We had better get busy— and fast!" He hesitated a
second, then lifted the cover on a panel on the side of the console and flicked
the emergency alarm switch.
"You
explain the situation to
Seiko fixed
up her screen with all the pictures displayed so she would be ready when the
rest of the crew came boiling into the main deck to see what the emergency was.
Within a few seconds Abdul had swiveled the laser radar to illuminate the east
pole directly below them, while its operational frequency had been pushed up to
the short ultraviolet. Because he had nothing better
immediately at hand, Abdul had the computer play back the pictures that had
been sent up from the surface. While they were pulsing down at a
megahertz rate, he quickly pulled in the first picture that he had beamed down,
showing the Dragon Slayer and the six tidal compensators above Dragon's Egg. He
added an arrow that curved over to a position above the mound formations, and
had the computer send that down to the east pole. He then swiveled the laser
back toward the strange starlike formation, and had it repeat the message
twice, alternating between ultraviolet and light output. Since they had seen
his first messages they should be able to detect it one way or the other. This
time Abdul hoped that nobody would die of boredom waiting for the next pulse.
TIME:
The nearly empty seared sacks lay on
the crust, quietly sleeping. Ancient plant genes, activated by the almost
complete lack of food reserves, began their strange work. The animal enzymes
were neutralized, and new enzymes were generated that attacked the very muscles
that supported the skin, turning the striated flesh into a floating cloud of
long fibers. The skin itself was thinned until it was almost transparent. Other
plant enzymes took over and used the liquid material and long fibers to fashion
large super-strength crystals. This was not the brittle crystallium that the
animal body had previously used for manipulators—this was dragon crystal. At
the center of the now flaccid tread, a tendril forced its way into the crust.
In its core was a sharp cone of crystal. Exuding acids that ate their way into
the crust, the spike slowly penetrated deeper and deeper into the hot,
neutron-rich crust. Hairlike threads spread out between the crustal fibers and
nutrients began to flow in from the threads and up the tap root. Meanwhile,
smaller spikes of crystal, thick at the base and finely rounded at the tip, began
to form in a starlike pattern at the head of the tap root. The strong dragon
crystal structure overcame the frightful pull of Egg, and jutted out at a low
angle to the surface. The dozen spikes spread out like a thorny crown. They
grew longer and longer, and the flaccid skin, long since cured of its burns,
was lifted up into the air. As the spikes grew longer, even their great
crystalline strength was no longer adequate to resist Egg's pull, so strong
tension fibers formed that went from attachment knobs just below the growing
tip of each spike to a stubby post that stuck up from the base of the spikes.
Slowly the twelve-spiked cantilever canopy raised itself off the crust until
the skin was drawn tightly to it.
The topside
portion of the skin, hanging in a smooth dark red concave arc between the ends
of the spikes, found that its shape shielded it from the glowing yellow surface
crust, and it stared straight up into the cold sky. With its spike buried deep
in the hot, neutron-rich crust, and its thinned upper surface area well coupled
to a cold heat-sink, the heat-engine-plant that used to be Swift-Killer began
to make food. It was oblivious to the fact that nearby were two other dragon
plants, the first crop since before recorded cheela history. For many, many
turns the dragon plants grew and prospered. They were mas-
sive, and
slow-growing, and had to replace a lot of food reserves, so they took their
time.
After
waiting in vain for the three climbers to return, the troop was finally taken
over by the senior squad leader, who mustered out those who wanted to stay in
this Bright-forsaken region, and moved the remainder of the troop back to the
borders of Bright's Empire, where he then had the unpleasant duty of reporting
the deaths of Swift-Killer, North-Wind, and Cliff-Watcher to their clans.
Time went on
and Bright's Empire grew and expanded its borders. Since the fort of Swift's
Climb existed, it was easy for the border to expand all the way to the
foothills of the east pole mountains. However, no one
really liked to climb unless they had to, especially in the hard direction, so
there were no visitors in the mountain paths, and the dragon plants grew
undisturbed.
One turn
there was a sharp quake as the massive overburden that the east pole mountains put upon Egg readjusted itself. A poorly
formed joint in one of the three dragon plants failed. The spike fell instantly
in the strong pull of Egg, tearing the skin and dumping the vital fluids onto
the surface. For a while the dragon plant struggled to survive, but finally it
gave up. After a dozen, dozen turns, there was nothing left
but shiny spikes of dragon crystal, a few shreds of dried skin, a clan
totem, and the double button of a squad leader.
For a long
while nothing happened. Then the dragon crystal spikes sparkled as a slowly
pulsating beam of pure blue light shone down from the tiny center speck of the
seven points of light in the sky. The pulsations went on for some time, bathing
the mountains in a blue glow, but there were no eyes to see them. They finally
stopped.
Time
continued on. The barbarians were driven further and further from Bright's
Empire, and grew smaller in number. The large volcano in the north became more
active, and billows of smoke crowded against the east pole. The unbalance in
the heat radiated from the star into the dark skies became so great that huge
wind storms grew, and were strong enough occasionally to push smoke into the
east pole region. The sky grew cloudy, the bottoms of the smoky clouds turned
yellow with the heat reflected from the glowing surface. The heat engine that
ran between the taproot in the crust and the skyward fac-
ing concave
dish of skin in the dragon plants began to fail. With food reserves high, and
growing efficiencies low, the plant forming genes began to lose their potency,
and other enzyme mechanisms were triggered. Slowly the dragon crystal was
dissolved, to reappear as firm muscle under a thick skin. The little
photosensitive bud cups at the tips of the crystal spikes reformed their flaps,
and new little eyes, still dormant, grew under those flaps.
Swift-Killer
woke up.
She felt
very strange, as if she had not moved a muscle in a long time. Fortunately, she
was feeling no pain from her burned topside and eyes.
"My eyes! I cannot see! How will I ever get
down out of these mountains without eyes?"
She then
realized that she had all of her eyes tucked tightly underneath their flaps.
She cautiously pushed out one after the other.
"I can
see light," she said, "but everything is all blurry."
She tried to
form a pseudopod to wipe off her eyes, and found that she was as weak and
clumsy as a hatchling. She soon had the fluid wiped off her eyes, but it was a
full turn before she could really see clearly.
She knew
that she must have been badly hurt by the blast of fire from the sky, but now
she felt perfectly fine, except for her muscular weakness, her clumsy
coordination and blurred vision. What amazed her was that she was no longer
hungry.
Being a good
troop commander, her first thought had been for her troopers, and she had
looked around for North-Wind and Cliff-Watcher, but could not see them. She was
too weak to travel, so she concentrated on exercises until she felt ready to
cope with the hazards of downhill travel in the vicious pull of Egg.
After a turn
she felt much better and started to examine her surroundings. As far as she
could remember, she was still in the same valley where they had been when the
flame struck, but she had not remembered the giant plant to one side, or the
fabulous collection of dragon crystal lying on the crust on the other side. She
might have ignored a plant, even if it were as big
around as herself, but she would never have ignored a veritable treasure of
shining dragon crystal. At the very least, she would have marked the spot and
arranged to have a crew climb back up to retrieve it. She went over to the
glittering spikes and picked them up, one after the other.
"Strange,"
she thought to herself, "these are amazingly shiny, as if they were brand new, or fresh cast. All the natural dragon crystals are
weathered by the constant scrubbing of wind-blown dust."
She picked
up another spike that had a shred of something sticking to it. She pulled the
shred off the spike and suddenly dropped it in a horrified reflex action.
"North-Wind!"
she whispered in horror, her eyes tracing out the faded but unmistakable
three-pointed scar pattern that had been North-Wind's memento from their last
fight with the barbarians.
Any doubts that
North-Wind had died and that his body had decayed away were gone when she found
his squad leader button and clan totem half buried in the fuzzy crust. She
pouched them and looked around in bewilderment. But what were North-Wind's
remains doing mixed up with fresh dragon crystal?
She looked
over at the huge plant nearby. She then began to get the connection between the
twelve spikes arching into the sky and the twelve spikes of dragon crystal
spread out on the crust. She wandered over to the plant and circled all around
it, looking at it closely. It looked somehow familiar, yet it was just a giant
version of many types of plants all over Egg. On one side she saw a little lump
in the thin skin. Just over it was a tiny pucker.
"A
plant with a carrying pouch?" she said to herself. Carefully—for she did
not want to meet the same fate that had apparently met North-Wind when the
heavy plant had fallen on him—she reached a slender tendril under the plant and
forced the tip into the pucker.
"It's a
pouch!" she exclaimed in wonder. Reaching further in, she grasped an
object, and slowly withdrew it through the constricting orifice. It was the
totem of Cliff-Watcher's clan!
Swift-Killer
could not believe what her eyes were seeing. But soon she had identified other
pouches and had removed a short knife and a dark detector from them. She was
finally convinced that somehow, in some way, this giant plant in front of her
was really Cliff-Watcher.
"And if
Cliff-Watcher is a living plant, then perhaps those slivers of dragon crystal
over there used to be North-Wind," she said to herself, "and
..." She continued as the logic drove her on to the inescapable conclusion, " ... I must have been
one of these
giant plants too! With large dragon crystal spikes in
me!"
At this
thought, she remembered that she had been annoyed by a hard lump tumbling
around in her body. She had paid it no attention, since it did not hurt and she
had plenty of other things to worry about at the time, but now she
concentrated, and soon the lump was ejected from an elimination orifice.
Overcoming her natural distaste, Swift-Killer wiped it off. It was a shiny knob
of dragon crystal.
Swift-Killer
looked at it with awe, and pouched it to use as evidence when the time came to
make someone believe her fantastic story.
Meanwhile,
she had a problem. Although North-Wind was dead, and
she had his totem to take back to his clan, Cliff-Watcher was very much alive,
and she didn't feel she should leave him.
Swift-Killer
finally decided to wait. She had plenty of reserve energy (she must have built
that up when she was a plant), and it would be important for her sanity to have
someone else to corroborate her story.
The skies
stayed cloudy, and soon the trigger that had revived Swift-Killer was activated
in Cliff-Watcher. Swift-Killer watched in amazement as, turn after turn, the
slender spikes grew shorter and shorter, and the thin skin began to thicken and
become muscular once again.
She was
stroking Cliff-Watcher on the topside when he woke up. She treated him gently,
and slowly coaxed his eyes out as she reassured him that he was going to be
fine despite his blurry vision, and weak and clumsy state. After a few turns,
they both felt well enough to travel and started down the mountain, carrying
the crystallized remains of North-Wind with them.
When they
came to the highest base camp, Swift-Killer sought out the food cache. It was
there and had not been disturbed by mountain animals, but the meat and pods
were hard as crust. This puzzled Swift-Killer, since a well-wrapped piece of
dried meat should be expected to be hard, but not rock hard, even after a great
of turns.
It was the
same at each cache, although some had been broken into by animals long ago.
Finally they reached the pass on the upper foothills where they could look down
into the distance and see the trooper fort. As they came over the rise, both
Swift-Killer and Cliff-Watcher
stopped in shock. The fort was gone.
"Bright's
Heaven!" exclaimed Cliff-Watcher.
"No,"
Swift-Killer said a moment later, "that is not Bright's Heaven. It looks
almost as big, but the arrangement is all wrong."
"You
are right," Cliff-Watcher said. "But where did it come from?"
"I
think that you and I were plants for longer than we thought," Swift-Killer
said. "There are going to be some very surprised people when we glide into
that town."
"Provided
they even remember us," Cliff-Watcher said pessimistically as he followed
Swift-Killer down the hill.
Commander
Swift-Killer led the way into town. When they passed the fields of crops, they both
looked over the harvesters loaded down with pods, but didn't see anyone either
one of them knew.
As they
approached the town, the four-button insignia jutting out of Swift-Killer's
breast got them the proper respect from the passers-by; but at the same time,
the obvious youthful appearance of the troop commander resulted in strange
whispers as they passed. For the first time, Swift-Killer was beginning to feel
unsure of herself.
She paused
on the outskirts of the town and said quietly to Cliff-Watcher, "I think
we are going to have a difficult enough time convincing people that we are who
we are, without antagonizing them. I think we had better just survey the whole
town before I go and announce who I am." Cliff-Watcher could only agree,
and kept looking for a familiar profile, but found none.
They stopped
at a military food station at the outskirts of town, and quietly relaxed and
ate their fill. They took their time and listened to the conversations between
the couriers as they came and went on Combined Clan business. They had expected
to hear that there was a new Leader of the Combined Clans, but were surprised
to learn that the name of the town they were in was Swift's Climb.
Cliff-Watcher
inquired of the keeper of the food station about the name. After the keeper got
over the oddness of his slang, he told them a capsule history of the naming of
the town.
"Almost
three dozen greats of turns ago, this place was a barren plain," the
station keeper said, "when an expedition came to the east pole to try to
talk to the Eyes of Bright. The
expedition was led by
a troop commander named Swift-Masher, or something like that, and he climbed up
into those hills to talk to God's Eyes and never came back. His troop stayed
around for a few great of turns, then finally they
gave up. By that time some of them were old enough to muster out and they
stayed here, while the rest of the troop went back to the border. Since then
the border has come here to Swift's Climb, and it is really a booming place, I
tell you."
"Where
can we find some of the old troopers?" asked Cliff-Watcher.
"Where
else?" the station keeper asked. "In the meat bins.
Or if they kept healthy and were lucky, they are having the time of their lives
tending hatchlings in the hatching pens."
Swift-Killer
was initially pleased to hear that the town had been named after her exploit,
but if the average cheela in the town knew as much about her as the station
keeper, she was glad that she had kept her mouth shut and had let the four
buttons of a Troop Commander speak for her. They asked the way to the hatching
pens and headed off in that direction, hoping to see somebody—anybody—who might
know them.
The road to
the hatching pens went past the face of a low cliff. As they approached the
cliff, Swift-Killer noticed a bright blinking light coming from the top. A
cheela was up there in front of some apparatus, and a bright blue-white beam
was blinking its way across the crust to the distant horizon.
Ever
curious, Swift-Killer said, "Let's go by way of the top of that rise. I
want to see what is making that beam of light."
Cliff-Watcher
shuffled his tread in annoyance, saying that he had had enough climbing for a
whole lifetime, but his curiosity got the better of him too, and they slowly
worked their way up to the top of the cliff, where they approached a soldier.
Swift-Killer
was bewildered to see the insignia of rank on the soldier operating the
apparatus. Instead of a Trooper's button, she had a horizontal bar.
Swift-Killer couldn't say anything without getting herself in trouble, since a
troop commander should address a trooper by her proper rank, so she again
decided to let her four buttons speak for her. Looking vaguely interested, she
wandered up to the trooper as if she were a visiting inspector.
The trooper
heard the military tread as Swift-Killer approached; when Swift-Killer came
within hailing distance, she quickly signed off her message and came to alert.
'Troop Signaler Yellow-Crust,
Commander," she said, "Do you have a message to send?"
"No,
no," Swift-Killer assured her. "But after you have finished, could
you please show us your apparatus?"
Yellow-Crust
thought it strange that a troop commander would be interested in such a thing
as a swift-sender, but perhaps she was an inspector out looking for trouble. If
so, she would find nothing wrong with her equipment!
In a short
while Yellow-Crust was through with her messages and showed the two visitors
how the swift-sender worked. Yellow-Crust decided that she would give them the
full drill.
Parroting
her training officer, Yellow-Crust began: 'The swift-sender is the troop's
method of maintaining contact with Headquarters and other troops. The most
important element in the swift-sender is the expander, which must always be
kept clean." Yellow-Crust opened the side of the box to reveal a very
shiny and very clean expander. Both Cliff-Watcher and Swift-Killer were awed by
the size and surface finish on the strongly curved reflector.
"We
sure could have used one of those up in the mountains," Cliff-Watcher
whispered.
"We
never could have carried it up those hills," retorted Swift-Killer.
Yellow-Crust,
ignoring the whispers, continued: "The light-juice vial is to be filled
and pressurized before each message, and the signaling valve is to be checked
for rapid action under pressure."
Yellow-Crust
closed the door, filled the container on the outside with fluid, then placed a
close-fitting plunger on top and added a weight. She then reached to the other
side, and rapidly flicked a small lever. Short bursts of light flickered out
over the crust.
Yellow-Crust
went on, "The flare should be renewed every shift, and the holder for it
should be adjusted to give maximum beam brightness without focusing in the far
field." With these words, Yellow-Crust extended a tendril and moved a small
lever back and forth and Swift-Killer could see the beam diverge and focus in
the distance. Yellow-Crust, with a trained twist of her tendril, left the beam
with parallel sides shooting off to the distance.
Yellow-Crust's
t'trum dropped the training officer twang as
she said,
"There is more about message protocol, Commander. Would you like to have
me recite that?"
"No!
No, thank you," Swift-Killer said. "Very clean and well working
machine you have there trooper." She started to move away.
"At
Alert!" boomed a commanding tread through the crust.
Yellow-Crust
froze at alert, and Swift-Killer almost followed, but instead slowly returned
to the swift-sender to await the arrival of a squad of well-armed troopers, led
by none other than the local troop commander.
It was
obvious that the troop commander was flustered with Swift-Killer's four
buttons. Having expected to take action against meddling visitors that bothered
his communication link, he found himself eye-to-eye with a stranger of equal
rank.
Equal rank
or not, he was the troop commander of this town and still in command. "Who
are you, Commander?" he asked. "I was not informed of any
visitors."
"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 pseu-dopod, 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:
Seiko's
announcement came as no real surprise to
"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."
"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,"
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.
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,"
"Amalita,"
he said, "put on your suit and get one of those laser communicator 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 communicator 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."
"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,"
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
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:
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
"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
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, stick-like 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. Jn 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:
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 re-positioned, 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 fouettйs
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."
Amalita
looked around the equator of Dragon Slayer until she could see one of the laser
communication dishes. She fixed her eyes on it, then
stabilized her personal up and down. She told her eyes to ignore the bright
objects whirling through her peripheral vision; activating her magni-stiction
boots, she stepped out onto the hull.
As Amalita
stood up, she could feel the play of pulsating residual gravitational forces
through her body, to addition to the pulsating fields, there were slight
variations in the overall compensation, since the spacecraft was slowly
shifting its orbital position from the east pole to a position over the mound
formation on the star's surface. Sometimes she was pulled outward with a
fraction of a gee, and sometimes pushed inwards.
Amalita made
her way carefully to the nearest laser communication dish. She detached the
coaxial cable that brought the modulating voltages from inside Dragon Slayer,
then the power line to the laser, and finally she started working on the
mounting bolts. It was a well-designed system, with the bolts staying captive
in the frame, so there was no chance of having them float away in free-fall.
She held onto one strut of the bulky piece of apparatus and plodded her way
carefully back over the curve of Dragon Slayer's hull.
"Start
de-spinning the science turret, Doc," she called through her suit radio.
"I'm clear of the control jets."
As she moved
over the curving hull, she could see the spin-
ning turret
slowly come to a stop while the control jets flashed on Dragon Slayer's hull to
throw off the excess momentum.
As she
approached the stationary turret she glanced upwards along the three-meter
length and found the laser radar. The radar dish was tucked under the huge
mirror that brought a one-meter diameter image of Dragon's Egg directly into
the star image table.
She was
getting far from the air-lock, so she fastened a secondary safety line to a
ring at the base of the turret. She then stepped carefully off the spherical
hull of Dragon Slayer onto the cylindrical turret. She allowed herself a few
seconds to readjust her personal up and down; then, still holding the bulky
laser communication dish, she ascended. As she climbed further and further from
the center of Dragon Slayer, the accuracy of the tidal compensation fields
became poorer. Halfway up the turret she found that the play of gravitational
fields over her body became too strong to ignore. She felt as if her suit were
haunted by tiny elves that pushed and pulled at various sections of her
anatomy. The overall tidal compensation was also off, and the laser
communication dish began to pull ahead as it gained weight while they made
their way up the column.
The
increased weight was not much, but it was significant enough so that Amalita
stopped at each step to move her safety lines from ring to ring behind her. She
finally reached the laser radar and looped the lanyard attached to the
communication dish to a nearby ring and let the ring support the burden. She
fastened another lanyard from her belt to the laser radar.
Firmly
anchored to the column with magni-stiction boots and a pair of short safety
lines, she started to remove the laser radar. Fortunately the laser power
supply line and the modulator coaxial cable connectors were the same for the
two laser systems. All they had to do was switch the cable on the inside from
the pulsed modulator used in the laser radar to the video modulator in the
laser communication console. Unfortunately, the bolt patterns for the two laser
systems were incompatible and she could tighten only one bolt. However, she had
been prepared for that problem and had brought some quick-setting vacuum epoxy
to fasten the laser communication dish onto the laser radar mount.
"What I
need is four hands," Amalita said as she reached into a pouch for the
epoxy. The twin tube had been designed for use with her clumsy gloves and even
had a tear-off top. But in her hurry to get the job over, Amalita made a
mistake.
The mistake was a very innocent one
for someone who had been living in free fall for many years. All she did was to
park the laser radar in space alongside her while she opened the epoxy. While
she was busy with the glue, the laser radar slowly floated outward, gaining
speed. When it reached the end of its lanyard, it jerked cruelly at Amalita's
middle. She found herself pulled off the turret. There was a quick second of
panic, then Amalita came to the end of her two safety
lines and rebounded. She felt a rip as the weaker joint in the equipment ring
holding the laser radar came out of her safety belt, while the two stronger
personal safety loops held. She looked down to see the laser radar module head
outward away from the ship. It gathered speed rapidly in the strong attractive
gravitational fields from the dense masses in the tidal compensator. She lost
sight of the module as it whipped out to join the whirling ring of ultra-dense asteroids.
"We
have trouble, Dragon Slayer," she said into her suit microphone. "I
lost the laser radar module to tidal forces."
Amalita
pulled herself hand-over-hand back up the safety lines to the turret and
proceeded to bolt and glue the communications dish to the empty mount and then
hook up the power and modulation cables.
She quickly
climbed down off the turret and signaled to Cesar to start up the turret again.
She watched, staying out of the way of the control jets, until the huge
cylinder was again spinning around at five revolutions per second. She then
glanced up to see an elongated glob of crushed and extruded glass and metal
come whirling back toward the hull of Dragon Slayer. The sharp points of metal
on the glob were emitting a blue corona of electric discharge built up from the
rapid motion through the strong magnetic fields of the star.
Amalita was
appalled. If that ever hit the hull of Dragon Slayer they would be dead.
Cursing herself for having been so careless, Amalita knew that this was no time
to play it safe.
"Emergency! Emergency!" she called.
Without waiting for a reply, she began a move-by-move description of the
problem and her efforts to solve it.
"Laser radar module loose and moving at high velocity in
vicinity of ship. I am jettisoning safety line and will use jet-pack to try to
catch it."
Amalita
unhooked her safety line, moved her left hand to the jet-pack controls on her
chest, and took off to capture the deadly missile.
As she
swooped around the curve of the hull, she spotted the module above the turret.
It had slowed down as the tidal forces had pulled on it. The module had looped
slowly in a large arc and was now headed back again toward Dragon Slayer. She
would have to catch it while it was moving slowly if she were going to hold
onto it, so she jetted straight up to meet it.
As she flew
past the spinning turret, her body began to feel the tidal pressures. She tried
to hunch in her head and draw up her feet to cut down her length and relieve
the forces, but it was hard work holding them in against the strong outward
pull. It was worst on her head. Her ears and nose felt as if they were being
pounded twenty times a second, while the top of her head felt as if she were
being scalped by a savage with a dull knife.
Despite the
pain, she continued upward to meet the module that was slowly gaining speed as
it fell again toward Dragon Slayer. This is where her two seasons as captain of
a free-ball team on L-5 would pay off. Her left hand played quickly over the
jet control keys on her chest. She slowed, whirled about, and then accelerated
again to match speed with the now rapidly falling chunk of metal. As her head
changed orientation, the tidal pressures changed also. Her nose, now jerked
viciously outwards, began to gush ellipsoidal globules
of blood. Peering anxiously through her red-stained visor, Amalita found a
short section of lanyard in front of her and grabbed it with her right hand while her left flicked over the jet controls. The laser
radar module continued on its hyperbolic path downward past the hull of Dragon
Slayer and then outward along the belt line. Slowly Amalita got it under
control and dragged it down to the hull. Within seconds after her boots had
clicked onto the plates, she had both herself and the distorted hunk of metal
attached by shortened lines to safety rings on the hull.
Her voice
was hoarse from the running commentary she had kept up during the chase.
"All secure," she croaked. "I will need some help getting this
inside."
"Are
you hurt?" came a concerned voice over her suit
speaker.
"I'm
sore all over, Doc, but the only real damage is a bloody nose," she
replied.
Amalita was
making her way back to the air-lock, moving her bruised body slowly from one
safety ring to another when she saw a suited figure rising from the air-lock to
help. She
was only too
glad to hand over her problems to the welcome crew mate.
"I am
sure glad to see you," Amalita said. "Even if only
through a red haze. Here—you take what's left of the laser radar module.
Watch out for it—when it got mashed in the tidal forces of those asteroids
several sharp spikes got extruded— they could nick your suit."
"I've
got it," Jean said. "Now you get in that air-lock and cycle through.
Doc is waiting on the other side with a warm wet compress for that nose. And in
case you were wondering, the laser communication link is working fine. The
first messages have gone down, and we have already received a reply back
through the ultraviolet scanner."
Interaction
TIME:
Swift-Killer moved slowly through
the compound of the Inner Eye Institute in Bright's Heaven. She was getting old
and did not bluster her way directly into the hard direction as she used to. Instead,
she slid obliquely along, letting the bulk of her still huge body do the work
against the "lines of magnetic force" that one of
The
taste-plates had also been one of Swift-Killer's many inventions. She had begun
to despair over accurately recording all the subtle nuances of the human
television signal in the form of knots of various shapes and sizes. She had
happened upon the new technique when she had been on inspection after they had broken
camp and were moving on to a new station under the westward-drifting human
spacecraft. She had flowed through the remains of the kitchen for the camp and
her tread moved across an abandoned mixing plate, stained with meat juices and
spices. Her ancient hunting senses had sprung into action, attempting to
extract every item of information from the complex chemical spoor that it found
under her tread. Swift-Killer had experimented and found that her tread could
"taste"
with higher resolution and comprehension using her ancient spoor tracking
senses than it could feel with her high sensitivity tactile senses. After a
little experimentation to find the most pungent and long-lasting spices, the
knowledge of the humans was soon being stored on long-lasting, apparently
featureless plates, that burst into a detailed, "full-colored" image
as a trained tread flowed onto it.
Swift-Killer
approached Sky-Beams, one of her apprentices, who was
busily staring upwards at the rapidly blinking Inner Eye, a set of trained tendrils
in front of him, shooting drop after drop of spice onto a fresh plate.
Leaving half
of his eyes devoted to the recording task, Sky-Beams turned the others toward
his mentor. "What are you doing here, O Keeper of the Sender?" Sky
Beams said, his correctly formal address scarcely concealing his annoyance that
the Old One was interrupting him.
Swift-Killer
knew exactly what was wrong with the youngster. He was ready to become the new Keeper
of the Sender, and she was still around. However, it didn't bother her any
longer. As she grew older, she grew more mellow and
now was actually looking forward to tending eggs and hatchlings. What stories
she would tell them!
"I came
to bring you good news, Sky-Beams," she said. 'The advisory council of the
Inner Eye Institute has agreed with my recommendation, and you are now the new
Keeper of the Sender."
Swift-Killer
flowed over toward him as the tendrils on the younger one hesitated. She
started to form a pseudopod to stroke his topside as she had done many times in
the past. He seemed perfectly willing, but she found that she was just not
interested in sex anymore. She wanted to get to the eggs that were waiting for
her. She gave him a friendly brush anyway, then said,
"Stay vigilant, Sky-Beams. The work may be tedious at times, but one never
knows but what the next page will bring a new truth to our people."
"I
will, my teacher," Sky-Beams said, and turned all his eyes back to the sky
as Swift-Killer flowed away in the easy direction, heading for the egg-pens on
the east side of Bright's Heaven.
LINK FROM
JEAN—LIBRARY
"Accept
link!" he said.
PULLED SECTION ON MATH
AND PHYSICS.
IT IS NOW CUED IN COMPUTER
AFTER YOUR
BOOKS.
CONCENTRATED ON PHYSICS
OF NEUTRON STARS.
SLOW GOING, HOWEVER.
WHAT NEXT?
# # # # JEAN
"Amalita!"
he bellowed, and soon a bloody handkerchief with two eager eyes above it was
peering down through the passageway. "Can we hook up the library HoloMem
reader directly into the communications console?"
There was a
slight pause as Amalita flicked circuit diagrams through her nearly eidetic
memory.
"Sorry,
"It
does?"
Amalita
floated over to the communications console where Abdul was monitoring the
latest transmission and flipped open a small door in one side. She reached in
and carefully removed a three-sided object. When she pulled it out,
"This
is one-half the scanner cavity," Amalita said, "and here is the
HoloMem crystal itself." She pushed a button and a clear crystal cube
about five centimeters across sprang out of the door, twirling slowly as it
floated into the room. The corners and edges of the cube were jet black, but
through the clear faces
"This
has been storing everything that has gone through the console since we
started," she said. "It is exactly the same size as one of the
encyclopedia HoloMems and we can put one of them in place of this one and read
the encyclopedia down one crystal at a time. It will take about a minute to
switch crystals and check the scanner adjustments, and about half an hour to
read out each one of the 25 encyclopedia crystals, but that should still be
faster than shoving all those bits from the library computer through the
communications computer to the console."
"Good!"
"A to
AME, AME to AUS, AUS to BLO, BLO to ..." muttered Amalita as she twirled
down through the passageway to the library, her trained legs and feet
propelling her as efficiently as her hands, which were still busy holding the
HoloMem crystal and the corner of the laser scanner cavity.
"A
complete education, from Astronomy to Zoology,"
TIME:
Suck-the-Crystal
pressed the pores of his tread to the page— absorbing again the revelation that
had come dripping across from the neutron-depleted
plates. His thrums of joy and surprise pounded the page. From the page they
were transmitted to the floor and thence to the entire courtyard of the
Sky-Talk Library—raising admonishing taps from the librarians and scholars. The
taps were soon followed by slower waves emanating from the methodical approach
of his friend, mentor and (unfortunately at this time) Chief
Librarian—Seek-the-Sky, who arrived saying, "Have you lost your senses or
is it only that you've drained your nuclei dry trying to read those depleted
plates of crystal and have gone into convulsions?"
"I am
sorry, Seek-the-Sky. It is just that I absorbed a piece of knowledge that made
my previous studies come together into one coherent piece. Here—try it."
Seek-the-Sky
flowed onto the dusty, well-tasted crystal plate as Suck-the-Crystal flowed
off. From the heading on the plate the librarian noted that it was an early
plate from the human
encyclopedia, HoloMem
2—AME to AUS. It was a table in the section on Astronomy.
"So?"
Seek-the-Sky said. 'This plate has been tasted so often that there is hardly a
neutron left on it, much less any information that has not been correlated and
cross-correlated and cross-cross-correlated by the Old Ones many turns ago.
What do you find here that I don't? This seems to be a brittle, tasteless table
of stellar nebula."
As he flowed
off the plate he stamped, "What is so important about this that you should
disturb the scholarly researches of the entire library staff?"
"But,
please," Suck-the-Crystal said quickly, "it was an entry in the table
that suddenly cross-correlated with some new plates that I helped prepare and
catalog just this turn. A few milliseconds ago, over at the Comm Input, I had
prepared the crystal plates from the turn's batch of data transmitted by the
humans, and had proof-tasted them carefully with the vibrations from the
acoustic delay line as any apprentice should. Now—most of the apprentices don't
really care what is on the plates, just as long as they agree with the delay
line vibrations—but I like to taste them and do preliminary correlations and
pretend that I am the Keeper of the Comm."
"You?" Seek-the-Sky shuffled. "Keeper of the Comm?"
"Well
..." said Suck-the-Crystal. "Yes!" He hastened to explain
himself. "Heaven's-Bounty has been Keeper of the Comm for more than fifteen
human minutes. There may be other apprentices who are older than I, but I'm the
only one who really cares about the information we are collecting. I bet when
the Council meets to replace Heaven's-Bounty, they will choose me. Am I right?—You're on the Council."
"Hmm,"
Seek-the-Sky said. "Maybe you are right—but don't let it make you spread.
Now—what is this correlation that has your edges flapping?"
"The
large veil-like nebula that is fifth on the list can be extrapolated back to a
point of origin at a certain time about 500,000 human years ago. That point is
very close to here, about 50 light-years away. That point in space and time is
also almost exactly on the path that Egg is on, if you extrapolate back along
its track."
"Very
interesting," the Chief-Librarian said. "You have probably identified
the time and place of the supernova explosion that formed Egg."
"But
what is more interesting," continued Suck-the-Crystal,
"is that the climatological
records that are coming down right now indicate a very drastic change of
climate on the human's Earth at about that time. Also, that time corresponds
with the human anthropologist's estimate for the genesis of the homo sapiens species. I believe that the laying of Egg by a
supernova explosion so very near the Solar System was the direct cause of the
emergence of intelligence in the creatures that now float above us, teaching us
all they know."
"I am
sure the humans will be amused when they hear that," Seek-the-Sky said.
"Let us go see Heaven's-Bounty and have her put that in her next
message."
TIME:
Jean was busy setting up an
alternate communication link with the infrared scanner when she heard a loud
snorting bark. It sounded like an angry seal. She quickly turned, looking for
the source of the noise.
"I fell
asleep and snored," said an abashed Pierre, who had been handing her tools
while she was head downwards inside the infrared scanner bay.
"No
wonder," she replied, pulling herself out of the bay and taking the tool
kit from him. "You missed your sleep shift when this ruckus started. You
head off to your rack and get some sleep. You are no good to us in this
condition."
"But if
I go to sleep for eight hours, there will be a thousand years of cheela
development before I wake up. That is like sleeping through the rise and fall
of the
"Set
your alarm for six hours," she replied, pushing him down the passageway,
"That will give you enough sleep to keep you going and maybe you will be
awake again before they develop spaceflight."
TIME:
Soother's-Worry paused in the middle
of his message to the human. He formed a manipulator, grew a crystalline bone
to strengthen it, and pressed the panels that turned off the image that was beaming
400 kilometers down from the human spaceship in its synchronous orbit about
Egg. The face that lay
under him on the
tasting screen flickered off, and was replaced with his own image.
"I
simply must see how gorgeous I look," Soother's-Worry thought. "Those
humans can just wait a while. Besides, with the computer slowing everything
down by a million to one so the Slow Ones can follow things, I bet they never
even notice that I stopped talking."
Soother's-Worry
absorbed his image through his tread and glowed inwardly at the sight. His
dozen eyes glistened in a deep red halo about the baroque pattern that he had
recently painted on the topside of his flattened ellipsoidal body. He turned
slowly, watching the pattern shift on the screen. The dozen shiny reflective
circles near the base of each eye-stub mirrored the black sky and stars, so
that it looked as if he had holes through his body looking out on another
universe. Winding between the circles was a stripe of highly emissive paint
that glowed a hot yellow against his deep red topside
surface.
"Beautiful, simply beautiful. Mother will
simply love it," he gloated.
He wanted
his mother to like him. She almost never visited him anymore, and seemed to
spend all her time with Soother's-First and Soother's-Pride.
"You
must remember," Soother's-Worry said to himself in an imitation of the Old
One who had had the job of raising him, "your mother is
Soother-of-All-Clans and has more important things to do than to take care of
her children.
"If
only," thought Soother's-Worry, "she had not commanded that her eggs
be kept separate from all the others. Then I would be just another cheela from
the central nursery and not have to worry whether my mother was neglecting me
or not.
"But,"
he reminded himself, "if it not been for mother, I certainly would not
have the enviable position of Keeper of the Comm. As boring as the job is, it
is certainly one of the most prestigious in Soother's-Empire."
Soother-of-All-Clans
paused at the entrance to the egg-pen. The Old One in charge of the pen, having
no eggs to keep him busy, had felt her tread and was waiting for her. He
watched with a combination of anxiety and eagerness as the egg-sac was extruded
onto the crust from Soother's laying orifice. As soon as the sac was safely on
the crust, flattened into a nice ellipsoidal shape, the Old One spread out one
of his edges into
a hatching
mantle and covered the egg gently with the thin membrane. He then slowly rolled
the egg toward him and placed it under the protection of his body.
'This one
shall be named Soother's-Rock," Soother said. "Its father is
Yellow-Rock, Leader of the Clan in the northwest. As soon as the eggling is
ready to leave the hatchling pen, it is to be sent to Yellow-Rock for rearing
as a youth of its father's clan, for it will become Leader when its father
flows."
"It
will be done, Soother-of-All-Clans," the Old One said.
Soother
turned and rejoined her chief advisors, Soother's-First and Soother's-Pride,
her first two children. She was getting a little tired of the constant egg laying, but it was one of her most important duties as
Soother-of-All-Clans.
"Who is
the next one?" she asked Soother's-First.
"There
are many choices, Mother," he said. "However, our merchant informers
in the clans to the north have told us that the clan leader Deadly-Sting has
been talking about a formal challenge to your leadership, despite the fact that
you have forbidden leadership duels. Perhaps a command to him to visit here for
a formal mating with you would awe him enough that we could get him to hold
off."
"Then
again," Soother's-Pride said, "if he gets too difficult while he is
here, we could arrange for him to flow."
"No,"
Soother remonstrated, "I don't think that will be necessary. After all,
the whole object of my reign is to soothe away these barbaric instincts in my
people, so that in future generations they will act in a civilized manner—as
the humans do."
"Shall
it be Deadly-Sting then?" Soother's-First asked.
"Yes,"
Soother said, "we will give that near-barbarian from the north a royal
welcome that will make him feel much more important than he really is. Then
after the formal mating, we will send him home with so many gifts that he will
forget all about trying to challenge my rule."
"I will
arrange it immediately, Mother," Soother's-First said, moving off toward
the Royal compound.
"I am
going to Sky-Talk library," Soother told Soother's-Pride. "I
understand that a new book about one of the early human rulers has been sent
down by the humans on one of the alternate communication channels. I want to
study it carefully for new ideas. I hope that the ideas on government by the
hu-
man Napoleon
will prove to be as interesting as those of Machiavelli were."
Soother's-Pride
watched his mother flow off toward the Sky-Talk compound, a squad of troopers
automatically shaping a chevron formation about her, their burly bodies acting
as pathbreakers for her in both the hard and the soft directions. As she moved
off, Soother's-Pride heard her tread muttering as she moved.
"What
shall I name it? Soother's-Sting? Who ever heard of a
soothing sting? Soother's-Deadly? No—that's worse ..."
As Soother
approached the Sky-Talk compound, she headed directly for the library and was
careful to avoid the Comm complex. The last thing she wanted to be bothered
with was the fawning presence of Soother's-Worry.
She was very
sorry that she had studied only the government
sections of the human encyclopedia in her youth. She had applied her new
knowledge of government to the naive ruling system of the semibarbaric cheela
of her time, and had shortly taken over the Leadership of the Combined Clans.
She had forged a mighty state that had conquered the remainder of the barbarian
tribes on Egg and had finally brought peace to the entire star. As
Soother-of-All-Clans she was now powerful enough to subjugate any unruly band
or clan, but her job now was to consolidate her rule by less violent means, and
form a hereditary dynasty that would eliminate forever the problem of deciding
who the next ruler would be, for that would be foreordained from birth.
Her first
(and she hoped her only) mistake, was trying to form the line of descendants
completely from her own flesh. Soother's-First was a beautiful example of a cheela,
and she would be proud to have him carry on her name after she flowed. She had
thought that, since he was such a handsome specimen, she could combine her
excellent qualities with his by mating with him as soon as he left the hatching
pens. Unfortunately, the result was not what she had expected. The Old Ones at
the hatchery tried to give the little one extra attention, but it was soon
obvious to all that the hatchling was barely smart enough to feed itself.
Soother had found the sinecure of Keeper of the Comm for Soother's-Worry, but
the last thing she wanted was to be reminded of her own weaknesses. For
according to the human encyclopedia section on genetics, the weaknesses that were so obvious in
Soother's-Worry were ly-
ing dormant in
her, only they were masked by other, better genes from her mates.
"If
only I had at least scanned the other sections, instead of concentrating solely
on the government section,"
she said to herself for what seemed to be the dozenth time, knowing full well
that if she had done that, she would still be in the library, and would not now
be Soother-of-All-Clans.
Actually,
Soother had almost gotten away with her scheme. The cheela biophysicists would
not determine the genetic coding mechanism for the cheela for dozens of generations,
but when they did, both they and the humans would be surprised at how different
it was. Because of the high temperatures on the neutron star that attempted to
disrupt everything into random chaos, and the all-pervasive magnetic field that
lined everything up along the magnetic field lines, the cheela genetic
structure was a triply-redundant linear strand of complex nuclear molecules. As
the duplicating enzymes would copy the genetic molecule, the check at each
triply redundant site provided an automatically correcting copying mechanism;
if one of the three linear strands had mutated, the copying enzyme would be
governed by majority rule, and the new triple strand would have the mutation
corrected. If two mutations had occurred and all three sites were different,
the enzyme would self-destruct, taking the faulty gene with it. It was only
when the two mutations were the same that an error was able to creep through.
Unfortunately, there had been too many repeated errors in those genes that had
formed the nervous system in her son, Soother's-Worry. He was mentally
retarded.
Many, many
eggs later, Soother was getting tired, yet her ambition drove her on. Her aging
body was now pouring nu-cleonic hormones into her juices that were designed to
make her slow down her aggressive drive and retire to the essential job of
being an Old One.
The Old Ones
were designed by the cheela genes to carefully tend the clan eggs that the
younger females would lay and forget, while they returned to their jobs as
warriors protecting the clan from enemies. There were no real enemies anymore,
and Soother did not want to be an Old One tending eggs, so she transferred her
developing parental instinct to the cheela as a whole and drove herself on,
consolidating her rule by using the governmental techniques developed by
generations of humans.
Finally
Soother began to realize that she could not go on forever. Eventually she would
have to flow, and the Soother-of-All-Clans would not be there to keep the
quarrelsome clans soothed. Of course, Soother's-First was quite capable and
willing to take her place and assume his duties as Soother-of-All-Clans,
however, her personal ambition kept her from relinquishing her control over her
people.
Soother then
remembered an old story about the ancient one named Swift-Killer who had first
made contact with the humans. The Leonardo da Vinci of the cheela, Swift-Killer
had invented the first communication system and was the first Keeper of the
Comm. That was long ago when the Keeper of the Comm had to know how to keep the
communication and data storage systems operating, and didn't have a team of
communication engineers and library assistants to run things.
Soother went
to visit the scientists at Sky-Talk compound. "I understand that
Swift-Killer, the first Keeper of the Comm, experienced a strange
transformation that rejuvenated her," she said.
"Yes,"
the scientist replied. "Under extreme trauma, her body reverted to that of
a dragon plant. She stayed that way for some dozens of greats of turns, and
then for some reason the dragon plant reverted back to that of a cheela.
However, the new body, having been almost completely rebuilt, was that of a
youth, while the scarred outer skin and brain was that of an older one."
"I want
to go through that transformation," Soother said, "so that I may
continue to lead my people."
"That
would be very dangerous, O Soother-of-All-Clans," the scientist said in
alarm. "Shortly after Swift-Killer's experience, the experiment was tried
by many cheela. With most of them, nothing happened, and they finally gave up
and went off to tend eggs. With others, they had starved themselves so much
that they just stopped living and flowed. There was not enough meat left on
them even to bother calling the butchers. A few tried both starvation and a
severe heating of the topside. Most of these died from the serious burns, and
only one started the transformation. However, even that one died before he was
well started. You may not have learned it in the stories that you read about
Swift-Killer, but she was not alone; there were two others with her, and one of
those died."
"Then
if it is done properly, the odds are two out of three," Soother said
firmly.
"But
Soother," protested the scientist, "we don't really know how to do it
properly. No one was there to witness the transformation."
"Still,"
Soother continued, "if I do not go through the transformation, I am surely
going to flow soon. I want to be transformed, and within the next great of
turns. You and the others are to read all that you can and make preparations. I
will return when you are ready."
"It
shall be done," the scientist said with resignation. Soother flowed away
from him without further word, her squad of troopers forming automatically
around her as she moved off.
There was
really little more to learn about the ancient transformation of Swift-Killer.
What records the scientists had were mostly old storyteller tales that had been
distorted by many tellings before they had been written down.
It was well less than a great of turns before the scientists let Soother know
that they were as ready as they could be.
Soother came
at once. She left Soother's-Pride in charge of the routine business of running
the Empire, while Soother's-First and a full troop of needle troopers came to
Sky-Talk compound to make sure that the experiment was carried out safely. When
Soother's-First and the troop commander heard what Soother would be subjected
to, they protested strongly.
"They
are going to kill you with that treatment!" Soother's-First warned.
"First
they are going to starve you until you are an empty sac, and then they are
going to sear your topside with a bank of X-ray arcs!" the troop commander
shouted.
"Yet,
that is what Swift-Killer went through, and so can I," Soother said
bravely. "I want you two to see that they do it properly."
"I
can't see how we can protect you from them," the Troop Commander said.
"What they propose to do to you does not sound like a treatment, but a
fiendish torture for a particularly nasty barbarian!"
"But
you can protect me," she replied. "For if I die,
you can see that they do also!"
The troop
commander hesitated, for to kill unarmed thinkers who had only done their best,
and under protest, did not seem like the kind of thing a decent warrior should
do, but his sense of duty overcame his principles; after all, the one giving
the order was the Soother-of-All-Clans.
"It
will be as you say, Soother-of-All-Clans," said the troop commander
obediently.
"And if
I do flow," Soother said to Soother's-First, "you shall be the next
Soother-of-All-Clans. Rule well, my son." She formed a small tendril and
stroked him lightly on the topside.
"I
will, Mother," he said.
"But
don't count on it," she cut in abruptly. "For I
intend to come back—younger than you." Her tendril whipped off his
topside and shrank back into her surface. She moved off toward the waiting
scientists.
"You
may proceed," she said.
Although
Soother had not eaten for three dozen turns in preparation for the ordeal, it
took two dozen more turns before the scientists and doctors felt that she had
been weakened enough that her body functions were disrupted to the point where
the plant transformation enzymes could begin to dominate the animal enzymes.
They could now start the next phase of the transformation.
According to
the legends of the storytellers, Swift-Killer had a blotchy
topside after her transformation. Some painful experiments with volunteers who
had suffered a small section of their topsides to be seared with lengthening
sessions under an X-ray arc had shown that the blotches were caused by blisters
that formed on the skin after a certain amount of exposure to X-rays. The
timing was critical, however, for too long an exposure caused the blistered
surface to char, and then the burn was too severe. The volunteer who had
suffered that much radiation still had a nasty scar in the small test spot. He
would not have survived if the burn had been over a much larger area.
Soother was
barely conscious when the banks of X-ray arcs were struck. The violet-white
radiation beamed unmercifully down upon her weakened body. The pain and shock
knocked her out and she flowed. The doctors were watching closely, and the arcs
were extinguished just as the blisters started.
The troop
commander and Soother's-First stood by, looking with distaste and horror on the
flattened sac of blistered skin that lay in front of them. The scientists and
doctors hovered around, their tendrils constantly touching the now sleeping
body.
"She
still lives," one of the doctors said. "But her body functions are
very unusual. Her fluid pumps are not beating as
they do when a
cheela is struck in the brain-knot and knocked unconscious; instead they are
moving very slowly. It is a state that the humans call sleep."
Soother's-First
moved toward the body and confirmed their diagnosis. "It is indeed
fortunate for you that she is still alive," he said. "Continue your
work."
"There
is nothing left for us to do," one of the scientists said. "It is now
up to her body. All we can do is make sure that she is not disturbed. We can
only wait and watch."
For two
dozen turns, nothing much happened, except that the blistered topside started
slowly to heal itself. As the healing progressed, Soother's-First noticed that
the muscle tone of the skin, which had been poor at the end of the starvation
period, now became almost nonexistent. The skin under the healing blisters
seemed to be almost transparent. Then after another dozen turns, a small,
twelve-pointed crown started to lift up under the center of the sac of skin.
"It
looks as if the transformation is working," one of the scientists
reported. "The root spike must now be complete, and that is the start of
the cantilever structure that will hold the skin up to the sky."
Inside
Soother, the hormones and enzymes were busy. The animal muscle was attacked and
dissolved, but the enzymes were careful to take their dissolution process just
so far. The stringlike molecules in the muscle tissue were carefully teased
apart into separate strands, but the strands were carefully maintained as long
fibers. The longer they were, the stronger would be
the resulting dragon crystal. The fibers floated through the juices where they
were picked up by the enzymes building the engineering marvel that would lift
the huge body up off the surface of Egg against the fierce gravity, the stiff
structures of the plant body being capable of doing something that the more
flexible tissues of the animal body could never do. Carefully the enzymes
worked the long fibers into the crystal, embedding them firmly into the clear
crystallium, to make a composite material that was many times stronger than the
crystallium itself. Things went well for a while, and the cantilever structure
grew, slowly lifting the thinned sack of skin off the ground. However, long
before the twelve-pointed structure was really finished, the muscle tissue ran
low. The growth slowed, and every strand that floated nearby was eagerly
salvaged by the enzymes that struggled to make do with inadequate building
materials. Finally
the last portions of the spikes were being made almost entirely of inadequate
clear crystallium.
Soother had
waited too long for her transformation. The ancient Swift-Killer had been a
well-exercised troop commander, and even in her starved state she had had
plenty of muscle tissue; but Soother had been an administrator too long, and
had not gone into her ordeal with sufficient reserves.
Soother's-First
was awed by the huge plant that began to tower over him. Even the scientists
were greatly pleased with the result. As the turns passed, the skin folds
lifted off the crust, and the doctors could already tell from the wastes
emitted from the still partially functioning animal orifices that new
nourishment was being generated by the plant portion of the body. Everything
looked good. Soother's-First even began to think about leaving the Sky-Talk
compound to visit with Soother's-Pride to work out the details of their
temporary joint rule for the next dozen greats of turns until his mother was
rejuvenated.
Then it
happened. The tip of one of the weakened spikes broke as it attempted to
tighten the skin. Soother's-First was horrified to see a jagged point of dragon
crystal sticking up out of the torn fold of skin. The skin held for a while,
and the scientists attempted to build a mound up against the side of the body
to support the damaged section. But before the support could be arranged, an
adjoining spike gave way under the unequal tension, and in a rapid series of
sharp cracks and loud crashes, the remainder of the twelve-pointed skeleton
broke and fell to the crust.
For a few
minutes, they all stood in horror as the thin skin oozed the last of its juices
out of jagged holes onto the crust. Then Soother's-First turned to the troop commander.
"I am
Soother-of-All-Clans," he said. His eyes took in the horrified group of
scientists and doctors.
"They
failed," he said. "Do as my mother commanded!"
The troop
commander hesitated. "But they did their best!" he protested. "There
must have been something wrong with Soother's body for the failure to have
occurred like that. It is not proper for you to punish them."
"Do not
lecture to me about what is proper, for I am Soother-of-All-Clans," he
replied angrily. "Obey me at once, or you will no longer be troop
commander."
The troop
commander felt an angry muttering among his warriors. Although they were
well-trained troopers and obedi-
ent to duty, it
would take all of his prestige to get them to carry out the order. Then
suddenly the troop commander realized the strength of his position. His
troopers were more loyal to him personally than to Soother's-First. They would
not have backed him against the legendary Soother herself, but he had no
question as to their choice now.
"Who is
Leader of All Clans, Old One?" he said quietly, and not a tread moved in
the complex as the ancient challenge rang out through the crust.
"What
is this nonsense!" Soother's-First demanded
angrily. "The leadership challenge was outlawed by Soother long ago."
His eyes swept over the large body of troopers and found a burly squad leader.
"You,"
he ordered. "You are now commander of this troop. Take command and take
this traitor into custody!"
The squad
leader hesitated. Then with the repressed violence of someone who has seen her
whole clan-oriented life disrupted by Soother, who kept track of her eggs like
a perverted Old One, she vibrated a harsh reply back through the crust, "I
take orders from my commander, not from you—you clanless mother-lover!"
The vehemence
of the reply startled Soother's-First. He looked through the mass of trooper
eyes, looking for support, but found none.
The troop
commander, now confident of his backing, repeated the challenge. "Who is
Leader of All Clans, Old One?"
Soother's-First
did not reply, knowing that he had no chance against this battle-hardened
warrior. He attempted to flow off to the west. The troop commander watched for
a moment, then accepted a dragon tooth from the
nearest trooper. After a very short chase, a well-aimed thrust to the
brain-knot ended the short rule of Soother's-First.
The troop
commander found a very strong popular support for his actions, and soon the
much larger group of "Clannists" had overcome the numerically smaller
group of "Mothers" and by popular acclaim, the troop commander became
the new Leader of All Clans.
TIME:
Seiko was watching the image of the
decorated cheela on the screen. Soother's-Worry was in the midst of one of his
con-
fused sentences
when suddenly there was a large crowd of cheela surrounding him. She caught a
glimpse of glittering knives of dragon crystal as the computer-fed display
stopped. Almost instantly the screen flashed on again. There was no trace of
Soother's-Worry, and the very plain topside of a cheela again was centered on
her screen, the dozen eye-stubs waving smoothly as the intelligent-looking eyes
stared intently at the optical pickup.
"I am
Leonardo, the Chief Scientist of the Sky-Talk science complex," the image
said. "I have been appointed the new Keeper of the Comm by the Leader of
All Clans."
Not a
flicker of surprise crossed Seiko's stolid face. One second ago, the ruler of
this world had been called Soother-of-All-Clans. Now they were back to the old
title of Leader. Well, they were probably going through their equivalent of the
consolidation of China by Ch'in or of Europe by Napoleon, and one would have to
expect rapid changes for a while until they had left their semibarbaric state
and had settled down to a method for transition of rule by peaceful
"means.
"Welcome,
Leonardo," Seiko said, slightly amused. The name was probably inherited
with the job as Chief Scientist. Right now the cheela were in awe of the
accomplishments of the humans and often took names from the encyclopedia the
humans were sending down. Within half a day, they would have surpassed the
humans in knowledge and technology. She doubted that she would meet any
Leonardos or Einsteins on her next shift.
"We are
about through with the HoloMen crystal GAM to
"Good,"
said the computer-slowed image of Leonardo. "That will give us a chance to
install the new radiation to taste converters."
TIME:
Super-Fluid was dejected. This turn
was to have been one of the greatest moments of his career, and it had been
blasted by his meeting with the Council for the Programmed Education of the
Slow Ones. The Council had decided that the humans would not be told about
Super-Fluid's new theory of gravity.
Instead, the humans would have to
rediscover it for themselves.
Super-Fluid
had wanted to have his new theory appreciated and used by the humans. After all,
they had given so much to the cheela. Yet he recognized that the only reason
that the cheela were still developing on their own was that the extensive
knowledge of the humans had been transmitted down to them so slowly that the
faster-thinking cheela had usually figured out things by themselves, long
before the detailed human explanation had finally trickled in.
The Council
had decreed that his new discoveries on antigravity would have to be sent up to
the humans in a coded form. The detailed information on his theory would be in
the hands of the humans, but they would not be able to read it until they knew
the crypto-keyword that would decipher the gibberish that they had received.
The crypto-keyword for the antigravity section was the complete nonlinear
formula that Super-Fluid had laboriously developed only after many turns of
deep thought.
"It
isn't fair," Super-Fluid thought. "Before they can find out what I
did, one of the humans will have had to think the same thoughts that I did, and
that person will get the credit!"
Yet he knew
that, although the human might receive some limited notoriety for breaking the
crypto-code to the antigravity section, it would give no real consolation to
the person who, after all, had come in second best.
"They
are so brave—so noble—those Slow Ones," thought Super-Fluid, as he
approached the construction site for the antigravity machine.
Helium-Two,
Project Manager of the Negative Gravity Test Project, watched the wrinkled
figure of the elderly scientist approach. According to reports, the Aged One
still had enough juice left in him to take an interest in his earlier
scientific exploits, even though he had served a full stint at the hatching
pens. He had been expecting a wrinkled, but still perky Aged One; but what was coming
toward him was the sorriest, most dejected cheela he had ever seen since he had
been hatched. There must be something wrong.
Then, as
Helium-Two watched, the cheela in the distance noticed his presence. Shivering
himself all over, Super-Fluid suddenly changed character and moved surely
toward him, even though he was partially off in the hard direction.
"I
presume you are Helium-Two," the Aged One said with
a firm tread.
'Thank you for arranging to have me present during the demonstration."
"I knew
that you would want to see it," Helium-Two said. "Please follow
me."
The two
cheela moved in single file across the dense crystal crust of the neutron star.
Helium-Two pushed hard, as if he were leaning into a heavy wind. His
opalescent, ellipsoidal body flattened out to force an opening between the
trillion gauss magnetic field lines. He deferentially held the gap open with a
trailing cluster of reinforced manipulator arms that allowed the elder
scientist to flow after him with minimum effort. They paused to look around; as
they did so, they felt the magnetic field close in on them again,
their bodies pinned onto the field lines like beads on a wire.
"How do
you like it, Super-Fluid?" Helium-Two asked. "Big, isn't it?"
"I
don't see much of anything except those large pumps over there and some ridges
in the crust."
"We had
to put most of the antigravity machine underground because of the high
pressures. Underneath those ridges are the largest high pressure vessels ever
made by cheela. They are formed of strong pipes wrapped around and around in
the shape of a ring wrapped with wire. You can see one ring under that ridge
and the top of the other ring over there. They are set up at an angle to each
other so that the place of maximum interaction is just above the surface in the
middle."
"I
didn't visualize anything like this when I was working on the theory,"
Super-Fluid said, as his dozen eyes took in the vista.
"You
are lucky. Very few theoretical scientists ever see their mathematical
equations turned into working hardware in their lifetime, especially when the
theoretical work involves such a fundamental change in our understanding of
nature such as does the Super-Fluid-Einstein theory of gravitation. Einstein
himself was one of the few. He lived to see his E=mc2 prediction bring about control of nuclear energy. Einstein
was lucky because it turned out to be easy for the humans to get a nuclear
chain reaction going—they just have to bring two pieces of uranium or plutonium
near each other. You are fortunate in that it is easy for us to get the very
high mass-densities and velocities that are needed to make the Super-Fluid
effect work."
"I wish
you wouldn't use that term," Super-Fluid said. "The correct term is
the gravimotive effect. People keep referring to
the effect by
my name—and I appreciate the honor, but I am thinking of the poor students in
the future. They are going to have a hard time remembering that the Super-Fluid
effect is the gravimotive effect and does not have anything to do with
superconductivity."
The two
started back toward the bunker as Super-Fluid went on, "I have always been
proud of the unusual name that the Old Ones chose for me when I was a
hatchling. Like you, I was hatched during the generation when the humans were
beaming down the superconductivity section
of their encyclopedia. The theories of superconductivity revolutionized our
understanding of the interior of our home star. It made quite an impression on
everyone to learn that we are floating on a crystalline crust over a liquid
core of superfluid neutrons."
"All
right—the gravimotive effect," Helium-Two said. "Anyway, the
gravitational engineers did a good job on the design. The antigravity machine
is a lot more efficient and compact than I thought it would be when I took on
the job of managing the design and construction contract."
Helium-Two
went around the bunker to the entrance in the rear. "Come inside, then we will give the machine its first try. We will only
take it to half-power in this first trial. We won't try to make the gravity
force go negative, but there should be plenty of interesting effects when we
get to zero gravity."
The project
manager and the scientist went into the low bunker. They raised some of their
eyes up on short conical stubs and looked out over the top. Helium-Two spent
the next few moments going over the checklist with the gravitational engineers.
"It is
a big moment for them, too," Helium-Two thought. "They have been
studying and training for many turns, and this is the first time they will be
able to see the theories they studied work."
Everything
was soon ready and Helium-Two signaled for the power to be applied. Super-Fluid
could feel the vibrations from the great pumps as they started to move their
massive loads of ultra-dense liquid. The fluid moved around in the pipes at a
constantly increasing velocity. The acceleration supplied by the pumps was so
great that the velocity of the dense fluid would begin to approach the speed of
light in a millisecond. However, that would be more than time enough for the
fast-living cheela to carry out a leisurely experiment.
Super-Fluid
could almost visualize the Einstein gravity
fields generated
by the motion of the liquid and was not surprised to see the crust in the
center of the machine lift up and flow out from the center. Soon there was a
great cavity almost a centimeter deep, as the Einstein fields took hold and
started to nullify the neutron star's 67-billion-gee gravitational field.
"So far
it has all been Einstein antigravity fields," Helium-Two whispered to him.
"Very shortly the hyper-nonlinear portion of your theory should take over
and we should get the contraction of the Einstein fields into a region at the
center."
They watched
tensely as the crust started to flow back to fill in the depression—more slowly
this time—while the whine of the pumps moved to higher and higher pitch. Soon
the crust was nearly what it had been before, but now above the crust at the
center of the machine was a distortion in the atmosphere.
"Why
can we see the region?" Helium-Two asked. "It can't be a distortion
in space-time caused by strong gravity fields. The gravity is less there than
it is here."
"No,"
Super-Fluid said, awed in spite of himself. "The
explanation is much more pragmatic than that. The low-gravity region is visible
because it doesn't have any atmosphere. The atmosphere has all flowed to the
outside edges. That is an oval-shaped chunk of outer space hanging in front of
you, and what you are seeing is the difference in the index of refraction of
vacuum and the atmosphere."
"Now
for the fun part," Helium-Two said. "We are going to inject a small
chunk of pure carbon into the zero gravity region and
see what happens."
Helium-Two
turned to the crew and initiated the sequence of events. Super-Fluid watched as
a short stubby cylinder started to rise up out of the crust right under the
distortion. He could feel powerful hydraulic pumps complaining as the top of
the cylinder started to approach the edge of the oval-shaped region.
"The
last little bit of distance is going to take some time," Helium-Two said,
as the hydraulic pumps labored under the strain. "Moving those few microns
from our normal gravity to the zero gravity in the gravimotive-effect region is
equivalent to going straight up off our neutron star into outer space. Not much
distance to travel, but it takes a lot of energy. We are going to stop the
cylinder just as it gets to the inner edge, and fire the carbon pellet from a
gun built into the piston."
The
vibration of the hydraulic pumps finally stabilized and began to beat with the
rising whine of the antigravity generator
pumps that kept
the distortion activated. Helium-Two turned a few of his eyes toward his
engineers and his undertread rumbled an order through the crust:
"Inject!"
Super-Fluid
watched as a tiny speck rose from the center of the piston and floated to the
center of the distortion, brightly illuminated by lights that flooded the
central region with X-rays. As he watched, the speck grew, and by the time it
had reached the center and hung there, it had grown to be almost as round as he
was wide.
"Why
doesn't it fall out of the zero gravity region as the
atmosphere did?" Super-Fluid asked.
Helium-Two
replied, "Those X-ray lights are not just for illumination, they are also
coupled to a servo control system. We use X-ray pressure to keep the carbon
speck centered in the zero gravity region."
"As it
gets bigger, it gets harder to see," Super-Fluid said, watching in awe and
amazement as the tiny speck of degenerate crystalline carbon slowly came apart.
Once the material had been released from the tremendous gravitational pressures
exerted by the neutron star, the nuclear repulsive forces took over and the
nuclei moved further and further apart. Now that there was space between the
nuclei, the electrons, which had been packed into a superconductive fluid
coursing through the close-packed array of carbon nuclei, began to evaporate
from the fluid to take up orbits around the nuclei, further isolating the
nuclei from each other. Soon the tiny speck had grown a hundred times larger in
each direction while its density dropped by a million.
"I
can't see it anymore," Super-Fluid said.
"I can,
and it's beautiful," Helium-Two said, waving one of his eyes after
another. "At least with some of my eyes. I think
I can fix things so we can both see it without having to move around." He
went to the servo control console and talked to the engineer there.
He returned.
"I had the engineer set the servo control so that the crystal would rotate
while staying in place."
They both
watched as the seemingly empty space suddenly sparkled into a brilliant flash
of light—then winked off again.
"You
wouldn't think that something with a density of only a few grams per cubic
centimeter would be visible at all— much less be so brilliant," Helium-Two
said.
"It is
because the crystal structure reflects the X-rays when the atomic planes of the
crystal are at just the right angle be-
tween one of the
lights and one of our eyes," Super-Fluid explained. "I have been
watching the pattern carefully as it rotates. If I am not mistaken, that is a
crystal with a cubic lattice structure. What did you say the seed material
was?"
"Carbon,"
Helium-Two said.
"I
think that is what the humans call a diamond," Super-Fluid said. "They
were right—it is pretty."
TIME:
The chimes rang again and again,
insistently.
2030, the
numbers indicated.
"I
missed my shift!"
"Six
hours," he groaned as he rubbed his face. "Six
hours— and three-fourths of a millennium. I wonder what is going on?" He quickly bathed, and, still holding a
food-stick, swung up the passageway to the back of the
communications console.
Abdul looked
up as he came in. "Glad to see you, Pierre," he said in a concerned
voice. "Did you get some sleep?"
"Yes,"
"No
problem," Abdul said. "It has been interesting watching the cheela
civilization develop almost right in front of my eyes."
"At
what stage are the cheela now?'
"They
are beginning to pass us in all areas except molecular chemistry. But since
they don't even have molecules to experiment on, you can't blame them for that.
They tell us that they can almost predict the contents of the rest of the
encyclopedia, but they insist that we send the entire text down for the sake of
their historians and humanologists. We should be changing to the last
encyclopedia crystal WAT to ZYZ shortly. Then you should erase the encyclopedia
crystals and the cheela will start filling them up with information that they
have learned on their own in the past day."
"Good,"
"I
won't take long," Abdul said as he floated out the door. 'This is too
interesting to miss."
TIME:
Floating-Crystal returned from her
vacation with mixed emotions. It had been a delightful vacation, eight long
turns in the foothills at Swift's Climb mountain resort. She had enjoyed every
millisecond of it, even though she would never get used to the idea of looking
down on things. She was reluctant to return to what everyone would admit was
often the most boring job on the star, yet at the same time she felt eager to
be back at work; while the job of Keeper of the Comm was boring at times, it
was the most important position a cheela could aspire to (with the possible
exception of the President of the United Clans).
Floating-Crystal
was feeling good as she entered Sky-Talk complex. She decided to take a
shortcut. Rather than moving along the paths in the easy direction, and then
crossing over at the superconducting tunnels, she flattened herself out and pushed
her way in the hard direction across the park that separated the compounds in
the complex. She could almost feel the magnetic field lines rippling across her
top side as she pushed herself along, her tread gripping the textured surface.
She flowed by the crumbling ruins of the gigabit receiving antenna that had
been the pride and joy of her predecessors many generations ago, and went into
the compound surrounding the huge transmitter array.
Her first
thought was to check on the Comm display. As she flowed onto its large flat
surface she could tell that the human—Amalita Shakhashiri Drake—was still in
the middle of her sentence. At the bottom of the screen the computer had
superimposed the words of the sentence. Those that Amalita had already spoken were
in one taste and the computer prediction for the words in the
rest of the sentence were in another taste. It was a long sentence, and
full of the many redundancies that humans found necessary to insert into their
speech. It was the very predictability of the redundancies that made the job of
Keeper of the Comm so boring.
Before
Floating-Crystal had left on her vacation Amalita had spoken the words:
"
Floating-Crystal
did not need a computer to figure out that the next few phonemes were "...
loMem crystal..." and that the rest of the sentence was probably something
about the holographic memory data storage crystal being full and that they
should stop transmitting data up for a minute while Pierre put in a blank
crystal.
When Amalita
had gotten to "Holo ...", Floating-Crystal
had decided it would be a good time for a long vacation and had taken off. On
her return to the display, she was surprised to find that both she and the
computer had misjudged the human. Amalita had progressed much further in her
sentence than she had expected, although the general content was the same. The
computer display of the spoken part now read:
"
"Good,"
Floating-Crystal thought to herself. "The old array has been transmitting
data up to the humans for generations. That minute will give us time to tear
down the obsolete hunk of junk and build a decent one with computer-controlled
phased-array beam steering."
Floating-Crystal
flowed off the display and went to the translation compound. Her three
apprentices were busily scanning the human-language output of a computer
generated translation of a text on cheela physiology. Although the computer did
an excellent job of translation, there were many times that a straight human
translation of a cheela sentence ended up distorted (or even bawdy) and it
required an experienced student of human culture to figure out how to
restructure the human sentence to retain the original cheela intent. Clear-Thinker,
the eldest apprentice, felt the vibrations from Floating-Crystal's tread as she
approached. He turned a few of his eyes toward her.
"Remind
me in three or four dozen turns to find a good stopping point in the data
stream," Floating-Crystal instructed him. "It is time for the humans
to change crystals."
"This
book on physiology that we are translating now is scheduled for transmission in
about three dozen turns," the apprentice replied. "It has a lot of
pictures, so the number of bits is quite high, but it shouldn't take too many
turns to transmit-even at the slow bit rates that the human receivers can
handle."
"Good,"
Floating-Crystal said. "Make the break at the end of the text."
She then returned
to the Comm display room and prepared her reply in front of the cameras. The
computer stored her performance and then played it back for her review—first on
the long, thin visual display that just showed her front edge and eyes, and
then on the human-oriented rectangular taste display. The camera for that
display looked down at her from an angle and showed her whole flat body with
the ring of eyes around its periphery. She could see the bulge that was an egg
near her middle and wondered idly whether it had been Clear-Thinker or
Bit-Cruncher who had put it there. "Not that it really matters," she
thought to herself. "It looks as if it will be ready to leave with the Old
Ones at the hatching pens pretty soon."
"I
still think the whole thing is slightly obscene," she murmured as she
examined her image in the human display. "Nobody but lovers, computers,
and humans ever see the top side of me."
She didn't
like her first performance and redid it a couple of times until the message was
short, yet clear. She then keyed the computer to transmit the message at human
rates as soon as Amalita finished her sentence.
With a long
break coming up, there was a lot to do. She contacted Comm Engineering and told
them that they would soon be able to replace the aging antenna. They were
delighted to be able to switch from maintenance to design and building. She
could almost taste the eagerness in the Chief Engineer's image as he flowed
away to tell his crew.
She then
called a meeting of the Comm Advisory Board. There had been some talk of a
possible expedition to visit the humans, but because it would involve a good
deal of direct communication, it had been put off until the next break in the
data stream.
A dozen
turns later the Advisory Board gathered. They listened to the gravitational
engineers as they explained the latest test results on their gravity-control
and inertia-drive experiments. The inertia drive was the propulsion mechanism
that would allow them to leave their neutron star home, where the escape
velocity was 39 percent the speed of light. However, the most dangerous part of
travel off the surface of a neutron star was the explosive decompression of
neutronic matter (including the neutronic matter of the space traveler!) when
it was no longer kept compressed by the gravitational pressure sup-
plied by the
star. Now the engineers were sure that both problems had been solved.
Most of the
Advisory Board had a difficult time accepting the fact that solid substances
like the hard crystalline crust of their neutron star home or their equally
tough yet supple bodies were not stable. Yet, without gravity to hold them
together, they would decompose and reform into a tenuous molecular structure
with the nuclei spaced a hundred times further apart than normally. However, these
facts were well known to Floating-Crystal. One of the Old Ones tending her
hatchling pen had worked on the original antigravity machine. He, himself, had
seen a small speck of neutronic material expand when placed in the zero gravity
region formed by the machine, and he had watched it turn into a transparent,
twinkling molecular crystal floating in space. He had given her name to her
when she hatched, and later told her about the beautiful floating crystal that
had been her namesake.
After many meetings
of the Comm Advisory Board and the engineers, it was finally decided that a
visit to the humans was technically feasible. However, the effort required was
substantial, so a commitment by the President and the Council of the United
Clans was needed.
After much
public debate, the program outlined by the engineers was approved, the finances
were allocated, and the generation long project was started. Although the focus
of the effort—"A Visit to the Humans"—was quixotic in nature, since
there was almost nothing that could be communicated during the visit, they all
knew that the real reason for the project was to crack the invisible egg-sac of
gravity that had kept the cheela bound in the hatchery of their laying. For
they all knew the cheela species could not stay on their home star forever.
The decision
for the Visit came soon after the data stream was turned off. During the period
while the cheela engineers were rebuilding the data transmitter and Pierre was
replacing the full HoloMem crystal with an empty one, Floating-Crystal took
over the Comm link to Amalita and with the help of the Visit program engineers,
told her what to expect and what to do.
"We are
coming out to visit," was her message. As the turns passed and she saw in
the display the look of astonishment and concern build on Amalita's face, she
quickly brushed aside the
protest that was
forming on Amalita's lips. "We will not explode. We will provide our own
gravity."
For the next
minute Amalita listened attentively while Floating-Crystal explained the
general outline of the planned visit. Amalita was a little concerned when she
heard about the X-ray generator they were going to use to illuminate the inside
of the spacecraft, then blushed a little when she began to realize how much
someone could see who used soft X-rays for part of his vision range. However,
the cheela already knew a great deal about human physiology. They had had
plenty of time to study the human encyclopedia and the textbooks that had been
beamed down by the humans many generations ago, so they knew that the total
X-ray dose they would be using on their human friends during their short visit
would be minimal.
At the end
of the first minute,
"We
have started the data again. First is a schedule for you to follow during the
visit. The expedition will start in about fifteen minutes. Read the
instructions carefully, for the whole visit will only last ten seconds."
Floating-Crystal
saw
"I'm
glad to see you again,
"These
fifteen-minute lifetime friendships are hard on the emotions," Amalita
said to herself as she brushed her eyes, then flicked the communications screen
to the computer and started reading the words that appeared there.
The cheela
plan was very detailed and concise, for the cheela had long since had a
complete description of the ship Dragon Slayer.
Amalita
punched for a hardcopy of the screen full of words for
closeup view showed that less than a
meter from his nose was a tiny speck a few millimeters across, and on that
speck sat a cheela—no spacesuit—no pressure container—nothing to keep it from
exploding.
They read
further and then began to realize why they had been so clumsy in the animation.
To survive in space, the cheela explorers had to bring gravity with them. Their
main spacecraft was a hard crystalline spherical shell about four centimeters
across with a rather "large" miniature black hole at the center. At
11-billion tons mass, the black hole provided 180 thousand gees at the surface
of the crystal sphere. Although far from the 67-billion gees that the cheela
lived in at the surface of the neutron star, it was enough to keep their
electron structure in its degenerate form. Individual cheela and equipment
modules had their own smaller version of the main spacecraft. The radii of the
individual flitters and equipment tugs were much smaller, so that only a tiny
black hole was needed for each one. The smaller spacecraft had separate power
and inertia propulsion subsystems, and the whole swarm fitted neatly into
hemispherical depressions that pocked the surface of the main spacecraft.
"Inertia propulsion!"
"They
probably will be able to control space and time and won't have to bother with such
clumsy things as black hole gravity generators and inertia drives,"
Amalita replied. "But now I see why we were so awkward. Their main
spacecraft will stay fifteen meters away from our spacecraft, but it is so
massive that we will experience about one-third of a gee from it, pulling me
out of the console chair and over to the viewing port. I guess I could manage
to twirl once as I fall so they can see the human joints in action, but I bet I
am going to be clumsier in one-third gee than that animation." She turned
from the screen and looked at him, "I wish you were doing my part, so I
could get to see the cheela."
"I
don't know whether you would like it,"
cording to this contour plot of the
gravity field from the individual craft, although the size and mass of the
flitters are much smaller than the main spacecraft, this one is going to come
up to less than one meter from my viewing port and my nose is going to be
pulling three gees!" He looked down at her body and grinned, "I guess
the reason they didn't choose you is they must know you don't wear a bra in
free-fall and they didn't want to give you reverse Cooper's droop."
Amalita
turned back to the display, jabbing him with her elbow as she did so, and
brought up the next screen full of instructions. "You know perfectly well
that since this is the one time that our two civilizations will be close enough
culturally to make a physical visit meaningful, they chose the earth's best known science writer and interpreter for the
interview," she said. "How long do you get?"
"It
seems ridiculous for them to go through this visit," said Amalita.
"We both have complete descriptions of each other's physiology and plenty
of pictures, both still and motion."
"However,"
she went on, "If I were offered the opportunity to visit the surface of a
neutron star and spend fifteen seconds watching a half year of cheela
civilization whirling about me, I would jump at the chance."
The console
beeped and the computer switched off the information display. A cheela's visage
appeared on the screen.
"I am
Bit-Cruncher, the new Keeper of the Comm."
Bit-Cruncher
waited out the polite response from the humans by interviewing some new
apprentices. One of them would take his place one of these turns, but all of
them would meanwhile become so thoroughly soaked in human culture that they
would almost think like humans. He was kind to the youngsters, remembering his
terror when old Floating-Crystal had interviewed him. Still, they had a rough
time ahead, for only one of them could become Keeper of the Comm.
As one of
Floating-Crystal's apprentices, he had worked hard and had not only kept up
with his apprentice work, but had developed a complex new computer program to
cross-
correlate the immense
amount of human knowledge that was still stored in the Sky-Talk Library. His
new program was now finding out more about humans than the humans knew about
themselves. For this prodigious feat he was awarded the rare opportunity to
choose a new name for himself, and it eventually had led to his being made the
new Keeper of the Comm when Floating-Crystal became an Old One and went off to
tend eggs.
"It was
the opportunity for a new name that really drove me," he rippled to
himself. "I'll never forgive that romantic-minded Old One that named me
Moby-Dick, after reading one of those old human adventure novels."
Bit-Cruncher
continued to think about prior times as he flowed back to the Comm compound. After he had been awarded the job as the new Keeper of the Comm,
his comrades and competitors in apprenticeship had had to seek other
occupations. Crystal-Blossom was now a Professor of Humanology at
"Even
though he lost out to me for Keeper of the Comm, I think maybe Clear-Thinker
might be better off," he mused. "There will be many Keepers of the
Comm, but only one Visit. In addition, although I see humans on the display
every turn, I do it through their cameras, which are made for their eyes. He
will get to see a human in the flesh, bones and all!" Bit-Cruncher
returned to the display just as Amalita was finishing.
"... meet you, Bit-Cruncher. When will the visit b ..."
Bit-Cruncher
contacted Clear-Thinker through the links and got the latest schedule. Things
were going well. The main spacecraft had made it out to space and back on
automatic control. Everything, even the unwilling Slinks that had been sent
along in cages to test the life support system, had survived without damage.
Another few hundred turns and they would be ready.
"Set a
definite time," said Bit-Cruncher, "so the humans can get everything
ready."
"All
right," Clear-Thinker said. 'Two greats of turns from
now."
"That
long? Everyone is going to be tired of waiting for the liftoff,"
Bit-Cruncher said. "But I guess it is better to be on the safe side."
Bit-Cruncher returned to the communications display as Amalita finished and
informed her that the visit would take place in exactly 57 seconds.
Amalita and
Pierre turned away from the console and got busy. Amalita opened the shields
over the viewing ports, set the automatic cameras for the focal distances and
exposures the cheela had recommended, and turned them on. She then returned to
her chair at the console, found her acceleration belt and adjusted it so she
would stay in her seat until the time came for her to twirl across to the port.
"The
last thing we want is a pile of loose junk cluttering up the ports," he
said.
The seconds
ticked away.
As they
waited, the light in the room flickered eerily as the white radiance from the
neutron star flashed into the ports five times a second, alternating with the
red glow of the ultra-dense asteroids that circled around their spacecraft,
their strong gravitational fields blocking the crushing, tearing tides of the
neutron star.
Suddenly
there was a flash of multihued light and they both glimpsed a small brilliant
white object the size of a golf ball holding a steady position fifteen meters
away. There was a moment's pause and then the golf ball seemed to explode into
a cloud of colored snowflakes that swarmed across the intervening distance. The
larger snowflakes stayed well away from the ports while the smaller ones came
in closer.
TIME: 22:30:10:0 GMT
"Holy Egg!" murmured one of
the cheela crew as they slowly drifted in between the large glowing condensed
asteroids and settled down in a synchronous orbit fifteen meters out from one
of the viewing ports. "I expected the thing to be big, but I never
imagined it would be this big!"
Clear-Thinker
mentally agreed with the crew member. He couldn't see who said it, since she
was out of sight around the horizon on their little home away from home. What
really bothered him was not that the human spacecraft was big, but
that it was
"overhead." Although all the crew had been in space and had learned
to conquer the fear that the home star they were orbiting was going to fall on
them, this object was much too close for comfort. He quickly called an
unscheduled hold in their carefully timed schedule. The humans would hardly
notice a one-fifth of a second pause and he felt a full turn of rest and
recreation while the crew got used to the sight of the human spacecraft
overhead would be worth the delay.
He ordered
everyone to stay in his assigned station on the spacecraft while he rotated the
shell slowly around. The gigantic human spacecraft passed above every crew
member several times while they all gazed at the metal skin and stared into the
viewing ports, where they could vaguely glimpse some huge shadowy shapes behind
the heavily tinted fuzzy glass. After a short while Clear-Thinker stopped the
rotation, ordered a minimum crew to stay at the controls and let the rest of
the two dozen crew members have a vacation break for a full turn. A few paired
off and wandered around to the back side to find a quiet place behind some
piece of equipment, but most gathered at the front and continued to stare at
the unbelievable sight as the slow turning of the human spacecraft around their
home star changed the lighting. At last the neutron star set behind the
spacecraft and the show was over. The darkness was also strange, but the cheela
psychologists had anticipated that problem and had made sure that the crystal
shell underneath them had all the old familiar heat and radiation
characteristics that they were used to on Egg, even though the gravitational
pull was nowhere near that of home.
With half a
turn gone, Egg rose from behind the opposite side of the spacecraft, and the
spectator crowd grew once again. It was obvious to Clear-Thinker that the
initial problem of having the spacecraft overhead had now dissipated, but he
decided to wait for one full turn before putting the crew back onto the
schedule so that their timing for the photographs and spectral analyses would
be correctly oriented with respect to the illumination from Egg.
Precisely
one turn later the crew members were back at their posts and the Visit began. A
cloud of individual fliers and many small instrument packages took off. Each
one was a tiny sphere with a sub-miniature black hole at the center to keep it
under enough gravity so that it would not explode. The first instrument
packages to get to the human spacecraft were several X-ray generators. Some
larger ones were positioned at a dis-
tance to
illuminate the general scene, their radiation varying in opposition to the
illumination from the neutron star that rose and set as the work proceeded.
Others were placed in a ring around the viewing ports and sent their
violet-white beams through the heavily tinted glass into the interior of the
spacecraft. Soon the shadows in the room became clearer. Using the pictures and
a map of the console room, the crew could identify the communications console
and the chair in front of it. In the chair was a collection of strangely-shaped
violet objects surrounded by a multicolored cloud. They increased the
illumination and then could finally make out the outlines of the yellow-white
clothing and blue-white human flesh covering Amalita's violet bones. Cameras were
set up and adjusted, and data started pouring back to the mother spacecraft
where other crew members monitored displays and tended the computers and the
communication links back down to Egg.
TIME: 22:30:11.2 GMT
"One-thousand-one,
one-thousand-two ..." counted Amalita as she felt the gravitational tug
from the insignificant golf ball fifteen meters away.
"...
one-thousand-three and twirl," she chanted as she pressed the belt
release, did one pirouette through the air and landed on all fours on the thick
glass of the viewing port.
"Rather
prettily done, if I do say so myself," she thought.
TIME: 22:30:12.9 GMT
"She is right on the time
line," Clear-Thinker mused to himself as he observed the
computer-generated image of Amalita taken the previous turn and compared it
with those taken a few turns previously. The enlarged image of the seat belt
showed it was coming apart. Now if she could turn around once while she fell to
the window, they could get some high resolution, three-dimensional X-ray images
that made so much more sense to their computers than the book-oriented, flat
diagrams they had obtained from the human physiology textbooks.
In the
following turns the crew members watched as Amalita's body ponderously fell
through the air toward the viewing port, turning slowly as it came.
Clear-Thinker kept the
X-ray illuminators off most of the
time, to keep the radiation dose on his human friend down to a minimum. At
times calculated by the computer, the X-ray illuminators would flash on, and
another snapshot of the human body in motion was taken. By the time Amalita's
body was approaching the port, the computer had built up a detailed
three-dimensional model of her body. Now the illuminators were brought in to focus
on certain portions of her body as the scientists called for more detailed data
on the glands and the corrugation patterns in the brain. The data they were
collecting would keep generations of students busy.
As Amalita's
hands and feet were contacting the viewing port glass and her body started to
bounce back, one of the human-medicine specialists on the crew came up to
Clear-Thinker and put down a computer-generated picture for him to scan. As
Clear-Thinker flowed onto the pad and tasted the picture, the specialist said,
"That is a closeup of Amalita's left breast. Fortunately she was not
wearing a brassiere so that when she landed on the window, her breasts came
forward and we were able to get a highly detailed image of the entire mammary
gland complex. The thing that concerns us is the anomalous region right at the
center of that diagram. We are sure that it is a small group of cancer cells.
They are still too small to be seen by human X-ray machines, but it is our
professional judgment that they are definitely malignant."
"Well,
it looks as if we will be able to repay Amalita for her performance,"
Clear-Thinker said. "Prepare a picture that the human doctors can
understand and we will send it to Amalita along with a warning of what we
found."
The specialist
replied, "We had already planned to do that, but we are all concerned
about the time it will take. It will be a week before the Dragon Slayer leaves
this orbit and takes Amalita and the rest of the crew back up to the mother
ship, St. George. In that week, the cancer could grow and start sending out
seeds to contaminate the rest of her body. We had another idea that we wanted
to talk to you about."
Clear-Thinker
flowed off the pad, "What is your proposal?"
"Now—you
must realize that what we are about to suggest is against all normal human and
cheela standards of ethics. All the human-physiology specialists here, along
with many experts on human psychology, medicine and law back on Egg have argued
back and forth for the last two turns. There has been a general consensus,
although not unanimous by any
means, and it was
decided to bring it to you for your approval."
Clear-Thinker
waited patiently while the specialist worked her way through the
circumlocutious argument.
"The
consensus is that because of the high malignancy potential of this growth, and
the time it will take Amalita to get to a human doctor, we should treat the
cancer now, even though we do not have time to get her permission first."
Finally it
was out, and Clear-Thinker could understand why it had taken the specialist so
much time to come to the point. She was right. By the time the slow-thinking
Amalita had been informed of her problem, and had made the decision whether or
not to let them try to treat her, the expedition would have had to return to
Egg. He also realized that the specialists would not have made their
recommendation unless they were sure that Amalita had a serious problem that
needed immediate treatment.
"Go
ahead," Clear-Thinker quickly replied. "What do you need?"
"We
will want to modify one of the X-ray illuminators to increase its frequency and
power output," she said. "Running it at a high power level will burn
it out quickly, so it will no longer be available for general illumination, but
if we do a careful scan, the focused beam of X-rays should kill the cancer
cells with only minimal damage to the rest of the breast."
"We
have plenty of illuminators," Clear-Thinker said. "Check with the
camera crew to find out which one they can spare, and proceed whenever you are
ready."
The
specialist gathered a crew and soon a modified X-ray illuminator with a large
focusing mirror and a high-intensity power source moved up to the window of the
viewing port. The computer first aligned the coordinates of the focal point of
the illuminator with the calculated position of the cancer deep within the
slowly moving breast. Then burst after burst of high intensity X-rays shot out
from the illuminator as it was slowly moved back and forth in wide arcs about the
focal point buried deep within Amalita. The cancer shriveled and died, while
the skin at the surface of the breast started to turn pink—as if it had gotten
too much sun at the beach.
TIME: 22:30:16.3 GMT
"Ouch!" Amalita cried as
she rebounded from the window. Her hand went to her breast, but the sharp hurt
was gone. "Reverse Cooper's droop?" she thought to herself. She then
turned to watch
TIME: 22:30:17.1 GMT
"It is time for the
Visit," announced Clear-Thinker at one of the planning sessions. "Get
out the skimmer and check the mush tube and waste disposal systems."
The skimmer
was a small vehicle especially designed for the Visit. It was not much larger
than an instrument shell and had only rudimentary propulsion and control
subsystems. A standard individual shell was much larger, and needed a larger
mini-black hole to keep it from exploding. Such shells had to stay over a meter
away from the viewing ports since their gravity fields were so high. The
skimmer was much less massive, so it could approach much closer to the ports.
The skimmer had two things that an individual shell did not normally carry,
however: a half-dozen turns worth of food, most of it in the form of a liquid
mush, and a disposal grate connected to a holding tank.
Most of the
crew had the decency to busy themselves elsewhere as the commander of the Visit
expedition settled himself onto the skimmer. The spherical shell of the skimmer
was only slightly larger than his body, so there was only one way that he could
fit on it. With the controls at his front, his food intake orifice was situated
near the tube from the mush tanks, while his elimination orifice was over the
disposal grid.
Clear-Thinker
formed some crystalline bones within his body, conformed
them into manipulators, took hold of the controls and raised power.
"Never
has a nickname for a spacecraft fit so well," thought Clear-Thinker, as
the "Flying Toilet" rose from the main expedition spacecraft and
moved over to the left viewing port where it stopped—just a bit less than a
meter from the tip of
TIME: 22:30:17.2 GMT
Clear-Thinker
stared up at the ghostly human face hanging in the air above him. The face was
a half-dozen times larger than the highest mountain on Egg. The only thing he
could see easily was the huge skull illuminated by the deep violet color of the
soft X-rays emitted from the X-ray arc. There were the gaping holes for the
eyes, each as large as the caldera of the
"Well—there
is no time for a long speech," Clear-Thinker said to himself. He activated
the communication link control and spoke to the human.
"Hello,
He first
formed a crystallium stiffener inside each eye-stub to keep his eyes steady.
"No need to make it thick under this reduced gravity," he reminded
himself. "I will need the crystallium for the rest of the structure."
He
concentrated and soon the eye-stubs were braced with an interlocking network of
crystalline bones that would keep him from moving too much. This last technique
was a new one to him, since like most cheela he had always limited his internal
bone-growing repertoire
of manipulators, eye-stubs and pulling bars. However, the medical scientists,
having learned much about the capability of the cheela organism from a
religious sect that had developed extraordinary control over their body
functions, had taught him the interlocking technique.
With his
preparations ready, he set the skimmer on automatic control, sipped a little
mush, and settled down for the Visit with his gargantuan friend.
"Well—so
you are Pierre Carnot Niven—are you?" he murmured up at the motionless
skull. "All right,
TIME: 22:30:18.2 GMT
"Like a
flattened miniature scallop on the half-shell,"
As his eyes
and the humming automatic cameras took in the sight of Clear-Thinker patiently
enduring his vigil outside the viewport, the speaker on the communication
console spoke Clear-Thinker's greeting.
"Hello,
As the echo
of the last syllable floated across the console room, there was a flash of
light and the incandescent speck was gone, leaving only a yellow-green
afterimage on
TIME: 22:30:19.3 GMT
The mush was gone, the holding tank
stank, and it was time to say goodbye.
"You
win—my friend," Clear-Thinker spoke up to the ghostly apparition that had
not moved during his long vigil. At that, Clear-Thinker had done better than he
had thought he would—six whole turns without moving more than a ripple.
Isomorphic exercises had helped to keep his innards from clogging up, but his
skin felt as if it would crack if he moved it. He moved—and it didn't crack—so
he moved some more; then, with a delighted dance that almost lifted him off the
skimmer with its nearly negligible gravity field, he dissolved the crystalline
bones that had kept him stationary, grabbed the controls, and flew the
"Hying Toilet" back to the main spacecraft.
After a
decent meal and some clean-up, Clear-Thinker was back in command of the
expedition. It was time to pack up and go. The specialists were still busy
taking long-distance pictures of
Actually, of
course, it was the shipboard computer that handled the motion of the instrument
spheres while it monitored the flight paths of the individual fliers. The
gravitational self-attraction of the spheres made navigation quite tricky, even
when the pilots had reflex velocities that approached the speed of light.
Unfortunately,
no one had bothered to inform the computer that the modified X-ray illuminator
that had been used to treat Amalita's cancer had been firmly connected to the
very large power source that had been used to drive it. Therefore the computer
saw nothing wrong with choosing a return path for the illuminator that took it
close to the viewport window. As the illuminator, dragging the power supply,
passed by the window, the intense gravitational tidal forces from the massive
power supply ripped a large jagged canyon out of the three centimeter thick
laminated window. Huge chunks of glass as large as mountains fell toward the power
supply. They were crushed into powder as they fell, and then disappeared in a
flash of light as they impacted the surface of the shell.
TIME: 22:30:20.0 GMT
The acoustic micrometeoroid
detectors in the frame of the viewing ports sensed something wrong and slammed
the outside metallic shields across the windows. Amalita blinked, then stared at a tiny scratch in the glass.
"...
One-thousand-ten," she said.
The Visit
was over.
TIME:
Leaving Amalita talking to
Sky-Teacher at the communications console on the main deck,
According to
their conversations with the robot cheela communicator, this latest HoloMem
crystal had a large section on the internal structure of neutron stars.
HoloMem
crystal for more information on the Elysium particle. In a
fraction of a second, his screen flashed:
PROPERTIES AND USES OF ELYSIUM PARTICLE-FURTHER
INFORMATION ON THIS PARTICLE IS ENCRYPTED. THE KEY IS THE MASS AND LIFETIME OF
THE FIRST EIGHT ELEMENTARY PARTICLES (INCLUDING THE ELYSIUM PARTICLE) TO FIVE
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES.
The rest of
the section was gibberish.
Of course,
if the humans did their research correctly, they would know practically
everything that was now hidden behind the gibberish, but if they had gotten off
on the wrong track, then the knowledge the cheela had left would correct them
before they went on to learn more about the universe that they lived in.
"Just
like a good teacher,"
As he
flipped back to the section on neutron star interiors, he mused that a
cryptogram with only sixteen five-digit numbers could probably be broken by a
large computer in an exhaustive search, but he figured that the human race
would be too proud to peek.
His console
screen returned to the original diagram of the interior of Dragon's Egg.
others, like the
Vela pulsar and the Crab Nebula pulsar, were neutron stars known to the humans.
"But
the Crab Nebula pulsar is over 3000 light-years away!"
A quick
search through the index found the answer.
FASTER-THAN-LIGHT PROPULSION—THE
CRYPTO-KEY TO THIS SECTION IS ENGRAVED ON A PYRAMID ON THE THIRD MOON OF THE
SECOND PLANET OF EPSILON ERIDANI.
There then
followed a long section of gibberish.
In near
shock,
Jean looked
up, her perky nose wrinkled in puzzlement. "I thought the plan was for us
to stay down here for at least another week," she said.
"With
the cheela doing all the mapping and measurements for us, there is really no
need for us to stay any longer," he explained. "You should have read the
detailed description of both the exterior and interior of Dragon's Egg in that
last HoloMem crystal I brought down." He straightened out and swung down
to hold himself in the doorway to the lounge.
"I had
the computer reprogram the herder probes to move us into the path of the
deorbiter mass. In about half a day we will be in proper position to be kicked
out of this close orbit back up to St. George. Then we can be heading for home
instead of
looking at
it." He looked up at the clock readout on the lounge wall.
"Time
to change HoloMem crystals again," he said. He flexed his knees
preparatory to leaping up the passageway to the main deck. He flashed his smile
through his beard at them and said, "Come on, there is a lot of work to do
to get this ship ready. Amalita and I will finish off the last of the HoloMem
crystals, but the rest of you had better start buttoning up the ship; the
gravity fields from that deorbiter will turn anything loose into a deadly
missile." He jumped upward to the central deck and the others swam out the
lounge door and spread out through the ship.
"We
shortly will have filled up all your available HoloMem crystals," Sky-Teacher's
image said, its halo of robotic eyes doing a perfect imitation of the traveling
wave pattern in a real cheela. "I am afraid that you will find most of
this material is encrypted, since we are now the equivalent of many thousands
of years ahead of you in development.
"Yet,
if it had not been for you, we would still be savages, stagnating in an
illiterate haze for thousands or even millions of greats of turns. We owe you
much, but we must be careful how we pay you back, for you too have a right to grow
and develop on your own. For your own good, it is best that we cut off
communication after this last HoloMem crystal is full. We have given you enough
material to keep you busy learning for thousands of your years. Then we will
both be off on our separate ways, seeking truth and knowledge through space and
time. You in worlds where the electron is paramount, and we in worlds
where the neutron dominates.
"But
please don't despair. We may live much faster than you, but there are only a
finite number of fundamental truths to learn about the Universe, so eventually
you will catch up to us."
A tone
sounded and a small message appeared on the screen.
HOLOMEM
"You
are on your own now," Sky-Teacher said, hearing the tone. "But we
have one last present for you. You will need tens of thousands of years to
develop fully, and minor nuisances like ice ages on your planet would slow you
down. While we were exploring the interior of your Sun, we found five small
black holes. There were the four that you already know about and a much smaller
one. Since they were disturbing the fusion reactions in your Sun, we removed
them for you. Now the Sun will stay stable while you are learning from the
HoloMem crystals."
"We
thank you,"
"And we
thank you," Sky-Teacher said "But it is drawing near the time for you
to leave. Goodbye, my friends."
"Goodbye,"
He turned to
Amalita. "I'll put away the HoloMem crystal, and you start checking out
the acceleration tanks," he said. "It's time to go home!"
Technical Appendix
The
following sections are selected extracts from the 2064 Edition of Del Rey's Science
Encyclopedia, published by Random House Interplanetary,
DRAGONS EGG
Dragon's Egg is a nearby neutron
star. It has a mass of about one-half that of the Sun but a diameter of only 20
kilometers. It is spinning at 5.0183495 revolutions per second, has a gravitational
field at its surface of 67-billion gees, and a magnetic field of close to a
trillion gauss. As is shown in Figure 1, the star has four poles. In addition
to the normal north and south spin poles, it has "east" and
"west" magnetic poles that lie almost on the equator. The lines drawn
from the east magnetic pole in Figure 1 are the lines of magnetic longitude.
The actual magnetic field is three-dimensional, and extends for some distance
out into the region around the star.
The internal
structure of Dragon's Egg is shown in Figure 2. The center has a liquid core 7
km in radius containing superfluid neutrons, a small quantity of superfluid
protons, and enough normal fluid electrons to balance the charge on the
protons. At the very center of the star, where the densities and pressures are
highest, there are various exotic elementary particles mixed in with the
neutrons.
Over this core of liquid neutrons is
a 2 km thick mantle of crystalline neutrons and nuclei. The crystalline crust
varies from pure neutrons near the liquid core to nearly all nuclei near the
top of the mantle. The outer crust of the star consists of neutron-rich nuclei
(mostly iron) with a density near the surface of about 7 million grams per
cubic centimeter. The number of neutrons in the outer-crust nuclei increases
with depth, while the spacing between the nuclei decreases. The boundary
between the outer crust and the mantle is the "neutron drip" region,
where the neutrons can "drip" out of the highly neutron-rich nuclei
and wander over to close-by neighboring nuclei.
The crust
and mantle are solid structures over a liquid core. As the star cools and
shrinks, the crust cracks and thrusts up mountain ranges. The mountains vary in
height from a few millimeters to as much as 10 centimeters. The higher
mountain ranges poke up out of the predominantly iron-vapor atmosphere, which
becomes negligible at about 5 cm.
The large
Starquakes
involve the drop of a lava shield or mountain range by a few millimeters in the
67-billion-gee gravity field of the star. Starquakes in several pulsars have
been detected from the Earth by observing the slight decrease in the period of
the pulsar due to the decrease in inertia of the star from the lowering of the
mountain range.
Dragon's Egg
was the product of a supernova explosion that occurred about 500,000 years ago
at a distance of 50 light-years from the Solar System. In the process of
formation, the neutron star/pulsar acquired a significant proper velocity of 30
km/sec (one light-year in 10,000 years or 6 AU in one year). The star was first
discovered by space scientist V. Sawlinski in 2020 (see Reference 1). He
detected its radio pulsations using the CCCP-ESA (See Acronyms—Ancient National
Organizations) Out-of-the-Ecliptic probe, which was 200 AU up out of the
planetary ecliptic plane. (See Figure 3 showing the relative position of
Dragon's Egg, Sol, and the OE probe in 2020.)
At the time
of its discovery in 2020, Dragon's Egg was at a distance of 2300 AU from earth.
When the humans finally arrived at the star in the first interstellar
spacecraft, St. George (see St. George), the distance had narrowed to 2120 AU.
At the time of this edition (2064) the star is at a distance of about 2040 AU.
It will reach its point of closest approach of 250 AU in about 300 years, then recede again. Some perturbation of the outer planets is
expected, but there should be no significant effects on the orbit of Earth.
The position
of Dragon's Egg in the sky was determined by S-Y Wang (see Reference 2) to be
almost at the same declina-
tion (+70
degrees) and right ascension (11.5 hours) as Giansar, the bright star at the
end of the constellation Draco (The Dragon). Its position among the
constellations in the northern sky is shown in the simplified star chart of
Figure 4.
CHEELA PHYSIOLOGY
By the time the humans discovered
Dragon's Egg, life forms had evolved on the neutron star. (Amazingly enough, the
possibility of the existence of life on a neutron star was predicted almost a
century ago by the radio astronomer F. D. Drake in Reference 3. Dr. Drake was a
great-grandfather of Amalita Shakhashiri Drake, one of the crew on Dragon
Slayer.) The first forms of life on Dragon's Egg were plants, which lived by
running a heat cycle between the hot crust and the cold of the sky. These
plants later evolved into mobile animal forms.
The dominant
animal life forms on the star are called chee-
la. Since they
are intelligent, the cheela have roughly the same complexity as humans. That
implies that they have the same number of nuclei, so it is not surprising that
they weigh about the same as humans—70 kg. The cheela are flat, amoeba-type
creatures about 2.5 mm in radius (0.5 cm in diameter), and 0.5 mm high, with a
density of 7 million g/cc.
The atomic
nuclei that make up the cheela do not have captive electron clouds to keep them
isolated from each other, but instead share a "sea" of free
electrons. Because of the resulting close proximity of the nuclei, it is as
easy for cheela nuclei to exchange neutrons as it is for human atoms to
exchange electrons. The nuclei couple into "nuclear bonded molecules"
by neutron exchange. Since the cheela use nuclear coupling instead of molecular
coupling in their bodies, their rate of living is about one million times that
of humans.
Cheela can
form crystalline "bones" when needed, but normally keep a more
flexible structure and can flow around and into instruments to operate them.
Because of the high gravitational field, cheela do not have strength to extend
themselves more than a few mm above the crust. Their psychology with respect to
gravity, height, and things-over-your-head is identical to the ancient science
fiction stories by Hal Clement about the alien beings called Mesklinites.
The magnetic
field on Dragon's Egg dominates everything. The velocity of sound, the opacity
of the atmosphere, the force it takes to move, the flow of lava and landslides,
the pressure of the atmosphere, and many other things, vary by ratios of 10:1
from a direction along the magnetic field to a direction transverse to the
field. The structure of the crustal surface consists of close-packed, dense
"hairs" aligned along the magnetic field. These are horizontal along
the magnetic equator and vertical at the magnetic poles.
It is easier
for things to move along the magnetic field lines than transverse to them. But
this also means that energy can be extracted by loss mechanisms for motion
along the field lines, whereas transverse to the field lines, there is little
motion due to the rigidity, so there are few losses. Since the electromagnetic
fields in light are transverse to the direction of propagation, it is easier to
see along the magnetic field lines.
Even the
nuclei in the bodies of the cheela have their aspect ratio changed as much as
10:1 in the direction of the magnetic field, since it is easier for the protons
in the nuclei to move in the direction of the magnetic field than across it.
Thus, as is
shown in Figure
5, a cheela at the magnetic pole will be 10 times taller than one at the
equator, and one at the equator will be 10 times wider toward the magnetic
poles than transverse. Because of this variability, the concept of
"length" was slow to develop in the cheela sciences. Even the cheela
measuring sticks vary, and if the cheela make surveys, they will find that
according to the number of measuring sticks needed to count off a distance on
the star, their home is "flattened" 10:1 near the magnetic poles.
The actual
cheela body is, of course, much more complex than the stereotyped diagrams of
Figure 5. A more lifelike picture is shown in the sketch in Figure 6. This was
drawn from memory by the Leonardo da Vinci of Dragon's Egg (and first cheela
Keeper-of-the-Sender), Troop Commander/Astrologer Swift-Killer. The Trooper in
the drawing is Squad Leader North-Wind (identified by his two-button insignia
of rank). He is holding a short sword and a dragon tooth (although squad
leaders did not usually carry the long spear). The two puckered sections in his
side are either carrying pouches or eating orifices. The small seminal fluid ejection
holes under each eye-stub are the primary sex organs unique to a male cheela.
The cheela
communicate by strumming the crust with their lower surfaces (tread) to produce
directed vibrations in the neutron star crust. The strong magnetic fields polarize
the surface material and since the crust has a nuclei lattice and an electron
sea, the cheela have three modes of talking: long-talk—along the magnetic field
using Rayleigh-type compressional waves; short-talk—transverse (shear) waves
for communication across the magnetic fields lines; and fast-talk— using
electromagnetic fields generated by their bodies to excite the electron sea.
Since fast-talk travels at the speed of light, it is somewhat faster than the
two acoustic waves, but it is more highly attenuated and is used mostly for
whispering.
A cheela's
eyes are a remarkable example of parallel evolution. In structure and function
they are close parallels to the bright blue stalk-supported eyes of the scallop
shellfish on earth. The eyes of the cheela are about 0.1 mm = 100 microns in
diameter. To give the eyes adequate resolution, they must use wavelengths of
0.1 microns = 1000 angstroms or smaller. Thus, the normal range of cheela
vision is the UV region, 1000 angstroms to 200 angstroms, although they can see
down into the X-ray band if there is enough illumination. Some individ-
uals (Bright's
Afflicted) can see up into the violet end of the human visual range (4000
angstroms).
The
illumination for seeing comes primarily from the glowing surface of the star.
At a temperature of 8200 K the neutron star crust has adequate flux in the
long-wavelength part of the cheela vision band (700-1000 angstroms), but it
cuts off at 600 angstroms. Things that are hotter (cheela bodies at 8500-9000
K, and hot illumination sources from 10,000-50,000 K) not only have more
photons, but their "color" shifts toward "blue" and the
resolution goes up. Cooler things, (like the top of a cheela or a plant) have a
shift to longer, "redder" wavelengths. (See Figure
7.)
CHEELA HISTORY
The story of Dragon's Egg and its
inhabitants is covered in great detail by Nobel Laureate P. C. Niven in
Reference 4. To date, this is the only book to win the Nobel, Pulitzer, Hugo,
Nebula, and Moebius prizes in the same year (2053). Figure 8 is taken from the
second volume of this definitive three-volume study/story and illustrates the
major cultural migrations of the developing cheela.
According to
ancient myths of the cheela, they are descended from a "chosen clan"
that was driven from the northern hemisphere by a hateful Dragon God, who was
said to live inside what is now the
The cheela
use a combination of magnetic and Coriolis fields for directional homing. In
the "feeling lost" region, the lines of magnetic direction are
parallel to the lines of rotation, and the cheela lose their inherent sense of
direction and feel lost.
The smoke
just above the equator is due to an interaction
between the
east-west magnetic field and the rotation of the star. The smoke from the
volcano travels predominantly along the magnetic field lines until it reaches
the east and west poles, where the magnetic field lines dip into the surface.
The smoke then leaks out at the magnetic poles and moves again along the
magnetic field lines, but now along the equator, driven by the equatorial
"trade winds" in the atmosphere. The star thus has a crescent shaped
band of smoke in the magnetic longitude of the volcano, and a circular band
just above the spin equator.
The
"chosen clan," driven from their original home by the Dragon God,
finally moved southward across the spin equator to the southern hemisphere of
the star, leaving the purgatory region behind. They found a land of plenty, with
many edible plants and animals, but no other cheela. Their experience would be
similar to the first entry of humans into the North American continent. Like
the deep water barriers on earth, the "feeling lost" regions at the
spin equator had produced a psychological barrier to the cheela that had kept
the southern hemisphere isolated until then.
In this new
land, the "chosen clan" discovered a bright star sitting just over
the south pole. The very bright star was our sun, only
2120 AU (1/30 of a light year) away. A monotheistic religion developed based on
worship of the God-star Bright. The "chosen clan" grew, and split
into many clans, but all clans stayed under the loose rule of a Leader of All
Clans.
The
development of the cheela from a nomadic tribe into a great empire mat finally
established its rule over the entire star is well covered in Niven's book.
RELATIVE TIMES
The relative time scales between the
cheela and the human race is still a subject of debate among experts, since the
cheela physiology is so drastically different from human physiology.
The basic
unit of time on Dragon's Egg is the revolution rate of the star, which is
5.0183495 rps, or a period of approximately 0.1993 seconds. Some experts have
equated one turn of the star with one human day, giving a relative rate of 0.43
million to one. Others point out that since there is no night or day on the
neutron star and the cheela, who never sleep, are active the full turn, that the ratio should be closer to a million to one.
The cheela
use a base 12 number system (they have twelve
eyes) and their
next unit of time after the turn is a great of turns or 144 turns. They
occasionally use a dozen turns, but it has never had the same significance as
the week does to humans. A great of turns is 28.7 seconds, while a human year
is 31.6 million seconds. The ratio of a human year to a cheela great of turns
is 1.1 million to one.
From
studying the history of the cheela we have learned that a cheela spends about
12 greats (six minutes) as a hatchling; 12 greats as a young apprentice, 30
greats (15 minutes) as a worker, 12 greats as an Old One tending eggs and
hatchlings, then the rest of its life (maximum of 24 greats or 12 minutes) as
an Aged One. All of these indications lead to the conclusion that the effective
relative time scale between the cheela and humans is approximately one million
to one.
EQUIVALENT TIME SCALES
Human Cheela
(Equivalent human stages)
10 ky
10
Bg Primordial
manna
5 ky
5
Bg Beginning of
life
2 ky
2
Bg Multicelled
organisms
1 ky
1
Bg Large plants
500 y
500
Mg Invertebrates, amphibians
200 y
200
Mg Reptiles
50 y
50
Mg Mammals, monkeys
10 y
10
Mg Proto-cheela
5 y
5
Mg Cave dwellers
1 y
1
Mg Nomad hunters,
hand axes
1 mo
100
kg Neanderthal,
stone tools, cemeteries
15 d
40
kg Homo
sapiens, hunting and gathering, cave art
3d
14
kg Neolithic,
writing, farming, churches
2 d
5
kg Bronze,
cities, writing, mounds, war
1 d
2,500
g
12 h
1,400
g
Medieval
2 h
250
g
10
generations
30 m
60
g
Active
life span
15 m
30
g Professional
life span
1m
2
g
29 s
1
great =144 turns
200 ms
1
turn of Egg
INFORMATION STORAGE AND TRANSFER
Human transmission rate: The laser
communication link from Dragon Slayer (see Dragon Slayer) up to St. George (see
St. George) had a transmission rate of 400 MHz. This gave a bit rate of 200
megabits/sec., assuming good error correction practices.
Cheela
reception rate: Since the cheela effectively live a million times faster, the
human messages from the 400 MHz laser communication link were received at a
maximum of 200 bits/ cheela sec., which is about 5 words/cheela sec. This is a
slow facsimile rate (a little slower than you can read).
Total bits
transmitted: In 0.5 human day (43,200 seconds) the
humans transmitted 10 trillion bits from the 25 HoloMem crystals in their
ship's library down to the cheela.
HoloMem
Storage: Each HoloMem holds about 0.4 trillion bits. Since the HoloMem crystals
are cubes 5 cm on a side, their volume is 125 cc. This means that each bit has
the equivalent of a cube 7 microns on a side for
storage. In that 7 micron cube there are about a trillion atoms.
Total
HoloMem storage: A printed page holds roughly 350 words, 2100 characters or
15,000 bits. A book of 330 pages is about 5 million bits. The HoloMems could
hold about 2 million books. For comparison, in 2050, the United States Library
of Congress held about 50 million items (books, newspapers, trade publications,
copyright items, etc.)
ST. GEORGE
The spaceship that took the humans
to Dragon's Egg was a primitive monopole-catalyst fusion rocket. Its basic
structure was a cylinder 500 meters long and 20 meters in diameter, with large
spherical external tanks of liquid deuterium fuel. The mass ratio was about 10.
St. George accelerated at 0.035 gees, and reached a speed of 0.035 the speed of
light at its turnover point. The total trip time out to the neutron star was
1.94 years.
DRAGON SLAYER
The scientific spacecraft used for
the close approach to the neutron star was a seven-meter sphere with a spinning
tower 1.6 m in diameter and 2.5 m tall, containing the microwave sounder, infrared
telescope, laser radar, star image telescope mirror, and other star-oriented
instruments. When in synchronous orbit about the star, the science instrument
tower on the top of the ship was aligned in the direction of the north spin
pole of the neutron star. The bottom end of the science sphere had a viewing
point that looked southward toward the distant Solar System.
Around the
equator of the ship were six viewing ports that looked out at the neutron star
whirling about the ship. The ship was inertially stabilized, so that the
distant stars stayed fixed in the viewing ports. The ship, being in orbit
around the neutron star with a period of 0.1993 seconds (5.018 rps), rotated
with respect to the neutron star at 5 times a second. The science turret was
de-spun at the orbital rate so that the instruments pointed to the star at all
times. (The entire space ship could not be rotated at those speeds; had it
been, the crew would have been thrown against the outer wall with a force of
350 gees).
Figures 9
through 12 are diagrams of the three decks and a side view of the scientific
spacecraft, Dragon Slayer. The steady component of the
residual gravitational tidal fields around and inside the ship are shown
by arrows. In addition to the steady component, there is an alternating
acceleration component of about the same magnitude as the steady component,
which varies twenty times a second as the four-lobed gravity pattern of the
neutron star and tidal compensator masses rotates about the ship five times a
second.
DEORBITER AND COMPENSATOR MASSES
The human explorers of Dragon's Egg
used gravitational techniques to move into and survive in a synchronous orbit
around the neutron star. The prime mover for all of the gravitational maneuvers
near Dragon's Egg was the large deorbiter mass. Originally a small planetoid
about 1000 kilometers across, it had been picked up (along with other
asteroidal debris) by the neutron star in its wanderings. The planetoid was
condensed by
the humans into
an ultra-dense mass one kilometer in diameter by injection, of magnetic
monopoles.
There were
actually two large condensed asteroids made at the same time. One was used in a
close-encounter gravity whip to drop the deorbiter down from its original orbit
out in the "asteroid belt" of the neutron star into the desired
orbit. This orbit was a highly elliptical one with a perihelion at 406 km and
aphelion at 100,000 km, where the human interstellar ship, St. George, moved in
a 12.82-minute circular orbit.
The elliptical orbit of the
deorbiter mass (called Bright's Messenger by precontact cheela) had a period of
4.56 minutes
Figure 10. Dragon Slayer—Top Deck
or 9.53 greats
of turns of the neutron star. It thus took it only 2.28 minutes or 4.77 greats
of turns to drop from the safe circular orbit of St. George to the dangerous
synchronous orbit at 406 km above Dragon's Egg.
The gravity field of the neutron
star is 40 million gees at the 406 kilometer altitude of Dragon Slayer.
However, since the spacecraft was in orbit around the star, most of that 40 million gees was canceled by the fact that it was in
a "free-fall" orbit. However, an object is only in free fall at its
exact center of mass. When the middle of your body is in a free-fall orbit
around a neutron star at 406332 m distance it will feel nothing. But if you are
oriented with your feet toward the star, yourfeet, which are at 406331 m away
from the star, are pulled by a gravity force that is 202 gees more than your
middle, while your head, at 406333 m distance, is being pulled by a force that
is 202 gees less than your middle. If you body is
oriented in a
direction tangent to the neutron star, your head and feet will feel a 101-gee
compression instead of a 202-gee pull. A human cannot survive at a distance of
400 km from a neutron star without some kind of protection from these tidal
forces.
To protect the humans in Dragon
Slayer from these residual gravity tidal forces, six tidal compensator masses
were placed in a 200-meter radius ring about the science capsule and ar-ranged
so that the plane of the six masses was always at right angles to the direction
to the neutron star. The compensator masses were made from asteroids about 250
km in diameter that were condensed to 100 m in diameter.
In the center of that ring of
ultra-dense spheres, the masses are attempting to pull anything at the center
out toward them. At the exact center of the ring all the forces cancel.
However, if your head or feet are in the plane of the ring, since they are
about one meter away from the exact center of the ring,
they will be
pulled with a force of 101 gees. If you try to orient your body to point along
the axis of the ring, your head and feet will be compressed with a force of 202
gees. If made dense enough and placed at the right distances, the six
compensator masses will cancel the neutron star tidal forces over aseven-meter
diameter spherical region. (See Figure 9 which shows the residual tidal forces
around Dragon Slayer).
In operation,
the six compensators rotate about Dragon Slayer as it orbits the star at 5.018
rps. The individual orbits of the compensator masses are almost in a natural
gravitational orbit, but require that the masses change speed slightly each
half orbit to maintain the circular formation. This is accomplished by magnetic
interactions between the magnetically charged compensators, assisted by
trimming maneuvers carried out by robotic herder probes using
monopole-catalyzed fusion rockets.
VISIT
The only significant personal
contact between the cheela and the humans occurred for a period of 1.2 seconds
on
The cheela
had to go to great lengths to protect themselves and the humans from the
effects of gravity. The cheela would explode if their bodies were not kept
under sufficient gravity to keep their matter in a degenerate state, and the
gravitational fields that were comfortable to the cheela were destructive to
human flesh.
The main
cheela spacecraft was a crystal shell 4 cm in diameter. With its large number
of docking pits for the smaller instrumental shells and individual flyers, it
had the size and appearance of a golf ball. The main ship had a black hole of
11 billion tons mass at its center that kept the surface of the cheela ship at
a gravitational level of 0.2 million gees. Although nowhere near the
gravitational field strength on their neutron star home, the gravity was enough
to keep the cheela from exploding. The gravity field on the humans inside the
Dragon Slayer at a distance of 15 m away from the main cheela spacecraft was a
reasonable 1/3 gee.
Clear-Thinker
used a smaller individual flitter with a much smaller black hole of only 0.22
billion tons mass. This flitter was only 5 mm in diameter (just slightly larger
than a cheela body) and the surface gravity again was sufficient to keep
Clear-Thinker's body from exploding. This smaller personal flitter could come
within 70 cm of a human, so that the human
eyes could
actually see some detail of the glowing-hot cheela body. (For a well-written
description of this unique scene, see Reference 4.) Even at that, the
gravitational field on the nose of the human, P. C. Niven, was over three gees.
We do not
know the propulsion technique used by the cheela to lift their spacecraft off
the surface of the neutron star (the escape velocity of Dragon's Egg is 39% the
speed of light). We also do not know the propulsion technique that they use in
space. The human observers during the Visit, P. C. Niven and A. S. Drake, saw
no evidence of any rocket-type mechanism in the cheela spacecraft. From their
conversations with the cheela communicators, they suspect that the cheela used
some sort of antigravity catapult to get off the star, and some form of inertia
drive in space. Our only clues are some old speculative papers (see References
5 and 6) based on the now-suspect Einstein theory of gravity.
At the time
of this writing (2063), the knowledge of the antigravity and other space
drives, including a faster-than-light drive, remains locked in the encrypted
sections of the HoloMem crystals containing the knowledge of the cheela after
they surpassed the human race in development. Present estimates are that we
will be able to duplicate the cheela antigravity catapult (and decode that
section of the HoloMem) in another 10 years. We have only a few clues on the
inertia drive. Scientists estimate that it will take us at least two more
decades before we learn enough to find the code to that section.
RЂFЂRЂNCЂS
1. V. Sawlinski et al.,
"A nearby short period pulsar," Astro-physical Journal, 561, 268
(2020)
2. S-Y Wang, "The Egg of
the Dragon—Sol's Nearest Neighbor," Astro. Sinica, 83, 1789 (2020)
3. F. D. Drake, "Life on
a Neutron Star," Astronomy, Vol. 1, No. 5, 5 (Dec. 1973)
4. P. C.
Niven, My Visit with Our Nucleonic Friends, Ballantine Interplanetary,
5. R. L. Forward,
"Guidelines to antigravity," Am. J. Physics, 31, 166 (1963)
6. R. L. Forward, "Far
Out Physics," Analog Science Fiction/ Science Fact, Vol. XCV, No.
8, 147 (August 1975)
DRAGON’S EGG was a neutron star, an incredibly dense sphere only twenty kilometers
in diameter, with a surface gravity sixty-seven billion
times that of Earth. No human could ever land on such a star. Only by the
most advanced technology could science even study it.
Yet on that impossible world, researchers detect intelligent life:
the cheela, aliens who live so fast that one of our hours is the equivalent of
more than a hundred years to them. The cheela struggle from savagery to science
in a span of days—and the astronauts orbiting above Dragon's Egg are by turn
observers, then teachers, then friends...
Then a monstrous STARQUAKE rocks Dragon's Egg, decimating
the cheela. On the surface, the few survivors fight to stay alive. Meanwhile,
high above the neutron star, their human friends face a dreadful choice: return
to Earth and let this alien race risk extinction, or remain to help...and
certainly die in the attempt!
ISBN 0-345-38898-4
Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet
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