Lucifer Comet (2464 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  With all that thinking-solving behind her in a preliminary way, she surrendered to rapt contemplation of the ultimate goal itself. Such contemplation elated her as the conquest of Everest must have elated Hillary. The highest climax of last night paled before this body-soul-pervasive glow which had so much more meaning than copulation….

  Awakening. Narfar missed her, smelled, found her quickly. Standing behind her, he demanded, “What is?”

  Unsurprised Dorita had little need now to mindspeak with him. She had, during these weeks, learned his language well: this tongue was limited enough, except for the inflections which you had to master—for instance, the word for a stick being used for beating had a different ending from the word for a stick that you tripped over. She maintained some mind-contact with him, mainly to sample the tenor of his thoughts and feelings; but she gave him none of her own, and they conversed in words only.

  She answered: “I swim. I think.”

  “Thinking easy for you?”

  “Not easy, but I can do it”

  “Thinking hard for me. I just swim now.”

  From a standing start behind her, spreading wings but not beating them, he dove in a ten-meter arch, folded wings, and went under like a grebe. He surfaced after a bit, in surprise-company with a five-meter crocodilian whose presence now-unnerved Dorita hadn’t noticed. The two played for a while; then Narfar gave its snout a mock slap equivalent to a blow from its own death-dealing tail, and shouted, “Go!” and the croc gently tail-whipped Narfaris rump and went.

  Narfar came out of the water in a motion and stood before her, dripping. He demanded, as though there had been no hiatus: “What you think about,”

  “I think about wedding trip.”

  “What that?”

  “That trip for husband and wife alone after wedding.” “We do that last night.”

  “Last night we not go far enough.”

  “You want more schlurp? I think we did that pretty good—”

  “Not what I mean. I mean, we not go far enough away from city.”

  “Then I take you halfway around Dora. That as far as you can go. Go farther, you coming back ”

  “I told you, Narfar. I want to see the polar ice.”

  Frowning, he sat on the ground beside squatting Dorita; no insect would harm him. “That cold, up there. That cold cold. You nearly die when we fly up there.” He pointed aloft. “You give me furs and bring a lot of sugar. I not die.

  “Furs? What kind?”

  “What kind you got?”

  He wrinkled. “Shit, I got to think—” He brightened. “I know. Gadzyook furs.”

  “What gadyzook?”

  “Gadzyook big animal, bigger than me, live in polar ice, have thick white fur, eat anything, eat even people. I think one gadzyook pelt be enough for you, you get lost in it, but I go up and bring back two so you have a change.”

  “How you get pelt?”

  “Easy. I find two gadzyook, say to them, I Narfar, I need your coats. They say, Okay Narfar, please kill quick so we not hurt. I say. You good gadzyook, after I take your coats I do good thing for you. They say, Thank you, Narfar. So I kill quick and take two coats, then I do the good thing for them, I give what left of them to other gadzyook, they eat and get souls of gadzyook I kill. Then I bring back coats, tan with herbs to be soft. One day fly up, one day find and kill gadzyook, one day fly back, two days tanning: we tan real quick. That makes—what?” He counted fingers. “Five days. Next day we leave on wedding trip to polar ice.”

  It was one of the longest speeches he had ever emitted.

  26

  Day Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six

  At Sari’s direction, the Farragut warped into a close-in Saiph orbit: close enough in, that is, to circumnavigate the blazing blue-white star in a reasonably short period of time, yet not close enough to accelerate the ship.

  Sol, a 5,000° yellow star (photospheric temperature Kelvin, rather than coronal temperature, which is enormously higher), sheds upon Mercury, nearly fifty-eight million kilometers away, heat amounting only to less than one degree per point-instant; but this continuous heat, cumulatively retained, builds up to 446° mean temperature of the planet. Were the Farragut orbiting 25,000° Saiph at Mercury’s distance, the heat hitting the ship per point-instant would be as high as three degrees; but the reflecting surface of the ship would prevent much accumulation.

  Methuen felt fairly safe at an orbital distance of merely ten million kilometers where the star heat per point-instant was way up to eight degrees; it would have to rise within the ship to more than 300° Kelvin before passengers would begin to feel noticeably uncomfortable. On this orbit, the sixty-three million kilometer course around Saiph could occur once in a bit over six hours, coasting at the million kilometers per hour with occasional inward acceleration for course correction. This satisfied Astrophysicist Sari, who had all instruments wide open and wanted to circumnavigate the star at least four times, once on the belt where they happened to hit it and three more times at progressive 45° declinations, holographing and spectrograph in g and otherwise instrumenting all the way, before abandoning the star for its planet. Impatient, Methuen could make do with this; it would lose him only a day.

  By now all ten scientists were about: Sari most active, having been awakened earlier; the just-unfrozen six beginning to stretch limbs and work out cramps; and the hitherto lethargic unfrozen three attentive to the star and to what Sari was doing.

  They had not, however, found the planet Dora. And, assuming that she was Erthlike with a point-instant temperature of about 0.4° Kelvin off a 25,000° parent star, Dora could be anywhere at all, in any direction, on a theoretical sphere-shell whose surface was in the neighborhood of seventy-six octillion square kilometers: 76 followed by twenty-seven zeroes.

  Luckily there were shorter ways to go. While they revolved around Saiph, while Sari was going crazy with all her instruments trained on the star, Methuen and Zorbin and a couple of aides were using ship’s instruments for sky-sweeping, seeking planets as once they had been seeking comets. They could locate only two planets for sure, and these the innermost; but these two planets established the plane of the planetary system (if, as usual, it was planar) and reduced the possible locations of Dora to a circle-perimeter of about eighteen billion kilometers.

  At high acceleration, the Farragut took off on a broad outbound spiral which would pass near the second planet after one revolution of Saiph. Her instruments, beefed up by those of the astrophysicist, continually reconnoitered space.

  Halfway around Saiph for the second time since departing Saiph, they located Dora.

  Five hundred kilometers off Dora, the Farragut circumnavigated her ten times at eighteen-degree declinations, photographing and otherwise instrumenting; the photography was the usual reconnaissance-spread of cinematography, holographic and at three simultaneous focal lengths: wide-angle, telescopic and normal. After the tenth revolution, Methuen assembled the task force for a showing of samples. They reviewed each sixteenth exposure of the normal, then each thirty-second exposure of the wide-angle; at each of these projection-passes, one or another scientist would ask to review the corresponding telephotos, and the operator would oblige them instantly with a flick of the switch. The ten ship-orbits had required nine hours; the projections used up another two hours.

  At the end of it all, the lights came on, and the eleven task force members and their consultant Zorbin brooded.

  After a bit, Methuen said, “I assume that many or all of us will wish to see more later, but not right now. Then our immediate problem is a good place to set down. Before attacking that, I raise the question: Did any of you see any signs of creatures having advanced intelligence?”

  Zoologist Hoek contributed: ‘‘We saw a number of mammalian life-forms, and quite a few birds; but none of these animals was humanoid. Of course, a non-humanoid life form might develop a culture equivalent to that of advanced human intelligence. You might instead ask whether any of us saw si
gns of current advanced culture.”

  “All right,” Methuen agreed. “Well, did you?”

  “No,” replied Archaeologist Seal. And when Methuen looked at Anthropologist Chu, the Cathayan’s head negated.

  “Then,” asserted the captain, his hopes for Erth rising while his Dorita-heart was dying, “it appears that we have been orbiting a planet having broad ice caps at and far below its poles, and lush with vegetable and animal life in its broad equatorial belt, but devoid of humanoids and of any sort of advanced culture. None of you needs the caution that our experiences on the surface may turn out differently. Again: our immediate problem is, the best place to set down. I know that our Antarctic friend Dr. Green would want to be situated on a polar cap; but for obvious reasons this would be impractical, and our atmospheric vehicles can fly her there whenever she may choose. It seems to me, subject to your correction, that our first concern is to discover whether there has been life of humanoid intelligence here; and so I would think that our friends in archaeology and anthropology would call our first landing site, subject to my correction in terms of what is practical for the ship.”

  Chu, who had been whispering with Seal, spoke up immediately. “My colleague here spotted a large clear space in the jungle, located at approximately ten degrees thirty-two minutes north latitude, eighty-three degrees forty-one minutes longitude, using Dr. Sari’s arbitrary coordinates. Dr. Seal saw there a hummock which seemed unnatural in such a location, and she thinks a dig might be suitable.”

  It happened to be exactly the place where Dorita had touched down with Narfar. It was the site of what once had been Narfar City.

  Most obviously, Dora was not the planet which would launch attacks upon Erth next January, if Methuen’s dream-ings had been truly prevoyant.

  Unless….

  They landed at a just-past-dawn hour which Sari, after a bit of work with an ordinary sextant, identified as approximately 0600 Dora Central, subject to later correction. Methuen occupied an hour with the customary atmospheric tests; whereafter he announced that the atmosphere was breathable with ease, not much different from Erth’s; and he deployed outdoors all members of the task force, most of his officers and such other crew members as could be spared from a skeleton watch. He assigned one or two crew members to shepherd each scientist, carrying side arms or ray-muskets and watching out particularly for wild animals. He told all of them; “I suggest that you spread out in your own directions exploring this clearing for an hour or two; but I must enjoin all of you not to enter the jungle just yet.” That was all right; the great clearing was enough for now.

  Sari went a little distance away from the ship and squinted through dark glasses at the sun called Saiph; presently she was using a small instrument with a black disk in order to eclipse the body of the sun and eyeball the corona, incidentally picking up a screening analysis of spectrum and temperature. Geologist Peranza moved in a zigzag semi-pattern holding in front of her an instrument resembling a forked water-dowser but which was in fact a device for locating near-surface bedrock strata with an additional goodie of detecting radioactivity. And so on.

  Methuen and Zorbin stayed with the ship, checking her inside and out. Methuen ached, and Zorbin knew it, to be out there looking for traces of Dorita; but the captain believed her note-hint that she and Narfar had gone into the past, and he saw no way to trace that, he could only hope that his scientists would uncover something pertinent.

  As for his lost Dorita-love, intellectually Methuen had checked that off, however his passions might continue to quiver. It was perfectly clear that she had preferred Narfar; and from his comprehension of Dorita’s thrill-readiness, the captain could partially understand that. So far, so human: you won some, you lost some; and Methuen had reached the point of love-generosity where he blessed whatever would make his love happy. The trouble was, that he could not entirely understand her preference for Narfar, whose limitations beyond the physical were so evident And remembering how he had been used by her on the night of their first meeting, Methuen had a strong belief that Dorita was using Narfar for something. What something? He had no notion—but the difficulty for his intellect, as it defended him against his emotions, was that if Dorita was using Narfar for anything, then Dorita did not wholly love Narfar, which left the possibility. .. .

  Besides, Dorita might be in serious trouble, somewhen in the past. But since Methuen knew nothing about backtiming, he was helpless in that direction.

  Being helpless, he prayed a lot. Some of his praying had to do with a “potential threat to Erth” which, Quarfar had specified, “will depend on my interplay with a woman named Dorita.”

  Archaeologist Mabel Seal headed immediately for the curiously unnatural hummock, and Anthropologist Chu Huang followed her. When he came up with her, she was excitedly examining a small chair—or throne?:—which, from above, had been hidden by the dirt mounds around it

  As he approached, she glanced at him, uttered “Look!” and clambered down into the shallow hole where the throne was; and she began talking rapidly, running her hands over throne contours as she spoke, “It is stone, you see?—something like alabaster—and the marks indicate that it was carved with stone tools, probably something hard like obsidian. Tell me, Huang, what do the scalloped sides of the back remind you of?”

  Chu promptly responded, “The throne of Minos, Mabel.”

  “Precisely,” the Eskimo agreed. “I can’t wait to get at this chemically. Now let me show you something else, and this is weird.” She pointed to a dirt pile. “What do you notice about that?”

  With arousal, the Cathayan noticed it instantly. “That is dirt from a new digging!”

  “That it is!” Seal gazed triumphantly up at him from down in the hole. “Something or somebody has recently tossed up that dirt—in fact, here way underneath is some that is still damp!”

  Chu looked about him with apprehension. “It has to mean that there are humanoids hereabouts—or bear, or some other animal that can scoop-dig—”

  She clambered up and stood beside him. Now they were about of a size. She announced: “Huang, we are on to something big. If there was a throne as sophisticated as this, there was a civilization. Probably the house or palace was made of wood, so it would be long gone; but if we can work out a plan for careful digging, I can detect the remnants of post holes for uprights; and there are sure to be some remaining shards of something or other, broken tools or potsherds—”

  “I hate to keep mentioning this, Mabel, but we may also be on to something big now, not only then. What about the recent digger? First off, we have got to warn the captain.”

  But Seal poofed it. “Look around you, Huang! We two people have four armed guards watching in all directions! Simmer down, my boy; let’s go back to the ship and get a flock of my chemistry; and then we’ll warn the captain.”

  Even Ombasa was finding the humid heat operationally uncomfortable; Chu guessed that it hovered around thirty-five degrees Celsius or higher, and he imagined that Eskimo Seal along with Antarctic Green must find it intolerable. The heat did not, however, inhibit Seal’s bustling; and Chu, equally curious, went along. He followed her closely as she jogged the three hundred meters back to the ship; she entered, he followed (both of them blessing the air-conditioning); rummaging in her equipment, she produced two armloads of apparatus; he collected more than half of it, recognizing some of it; she clutched the remainder and they returned outdoors (cursing the air-conditioning for the contrast it created) and jogged back to the throne-hole.

  Methodically Seal applied her instrumentation, not only to the throne itself, but also to the dirt around it. Chu was able to help her a little; his anthropological discipline was necessarily allied with hers.

  When all was done, Seal, still in the hole, leaned back against dirt, closed her eyes and meditated. Above, Chu squatted at hole-rim, gazing down upon her.

  Said Seal, after a bit, “I’m sure you know that our latest radiocarbon techniques reduce probable time
-error to one percent and permit immediate read-out of the measurements.”

  “Of course. But do they take account of era-to-era differences in accumulations of radiocarbon?”

  “They do for Erth, but we have no data on Dora. However, making an assumption that on Dora the era variations will statistically come out like those on Erth—”

  “Well?”

  “My friend, the age of this throne is fifty-one thousand years, give or take five hundred or so.”

  “This I would have imagined.”

  “Further, of the dirt around the throne, the oldest layer of dirt, which had drifted up as high as the seat of the throne, is about forty-nine thousand years old.”

  “All right.”

  “But—”

  “Well, Mabel?”

  “Within no more than twenty-seven days of now, this throne has been sat upon by bare humanoid buttocks!”

  Nocturnally patrolling the campsite, Methuen and Zorbin spied the silhouette of a seated sky-watcher. Approaching, they found without surprise that it was Sari. Inviting them to sit with her, she remarked, “Well, gentlemen—there it is.” And she swept the sky with a wide-arm gesture.