Secrets in the Stars (Family Law)

by Mackey Chandler

  * * *

  "The Caterpillars are following the Dart around the star," Vigilant Botrel, the alter-shift commander, informed Gordon at shift change. "We have a lot of satellites confirmed, but probably won't be here long enough to get very good numbers for orbital periods. Whoever comes in after us will just have an approximation. I wasn't sure if the survey data was general release?"

  "Yeah, why not?" Gordon allowed. "The power is still on and somebody made breakfast even though the video of the water lander must have had a thousand replays. If anybody is interested enough to sit and read all the astronomical observations let them. Nobody seems to be neglecting duty to browse the stuff. Who knows, maybe somebody will see something useful. Thank you, Mr. Botrel. I have the conn," Gordon said, which dismissed him.

  Lee didn't say anything, but was pleased. She didn't see any point in being secretive. She'd have said that, if she could figure out how to say it without implying she was unhappy before the change. She didn't really remember being unhappy. It just felt right when Gordon loosened up.

  "Burris, do you have that screen tutorial ready to present? Not that we have any Caterpillars to send it over to. But one assumes they're coming back," Gordon said.

  "I do. I'd like to show it to you, to the bridge crew really," Jon said, "and see what you think."

  "Put it on the full command channel, but give us a few minutes. I can tell Brownie and Thor are still sorting things out," Gordon said, "probably others too."

  It was almost a half hour before those two finished business. Lee assumed they sent a private message to Gordon's board since neither spoke up. Gordon told Jon to proceed. He stood and faced them from his work station rather than just send it to their screens.

  "Just making this up made me think a little more about how we see images. I want to show you an image without revealing its nature first. I'll send it to your screen at increasingly fine resolutions. I want you to signal me any time you know what it is. Wait to actually name it though, until others have had a chance to recognize it.

  "Keep in mind most of our board displays here show eight thousand by four thousand, five hundred pixels. Which is thirty-six million total. None of us have the visual acuity to find the images grainy on so small a screen. There is no reason to make them run at a higher resolution until we get to a much bigger display. Some bigger displays will be bumped up to quadruple that pixel count, but other smaller things like phones use less.

  "But how many pixels does your brain need to recognize something? And how fast should they be displayed to make video look smooth and believable? You may be surprised to know that most video software was updated to refresh at a hundred twenty times a second from a standard eighty when we started selling gear to the Hinth, like Ha-bob-bob-brie here. Their visual perception is much different.

  "It was hard to pick an image for an example with which I thought all of you would be familiar. But I think this is well known, not just to humans. I'll start at ten by ten pixels. Tell me when you recognize it, please." The image was in black and white, grey-scale. Jon waited a few seconds and let them look at it before he moved on.

  "Here it is fifteen by fifteen," Jon said. There still wasn't any reaction.

  "This is twenty by twenty pixels.” Lee frowned at it and tentatively raised her hand.

  "I think I know what it is," Lee said, "but not the, uh, specific one."

  Jon smiled and offered her a note pad with a pen clipped to it. "Write it down please."

  "This is at twenty-five pixels square," Jon said.

  "Oh, yeah" Thor said, Luke and Alex Hillerman all chimed in they knew it. Lee said she had it too, and was adding it to the note.

  "Thirty pixels square," Jon said, changing it again.

  "I should have called it last time, but I was being cautious," Gordon said. "If anybody doesn't recognize it now they're probably not familiar with the image."

  A few more changes proved him right. Brownie said, "It's an old human having a really bad hair day. He looks kind of distracted. But I swear I've never seen him before."

  "The fellow is named Einstein, and most people know him because he turned physics in a new direction from simple mechanics," Jon supplied to those unaware. "Without him we would have never examined things that led to star travel. This is the image we were building toward," Jon said. He shared a full high definition photo that showed every hair of the man's wild mane.

  "I know the name, and his work, but if I ever saw the image I forgot it," Brownie claimed.

  "My original thought was to show the Caterpillars two images side by side, the high definition one and let them see it built up like I was showing you. But I'm not sure that gets around the problem if there is a basic difference in how we perceive images. Since we are physically delivering the screens to them it occurred to me I can show them a real object, and then build the image for them. Like this…”

  He showed a 3D printed bust of Gordon on a pedestal. It was so real it was creepy. They got the coloring just right too. The view panned back and he had two screens as before, but the bust rotated on the pedestal and the one image rotated in time. The second screen started at two pixels and then built in definition slowly as the bust turned until it matched the full definition screen.

  "What do you think?" Jon asked them. "Do you think that will help them understand our video formats?"

  "If they don't get it from that I'm not sure we can bridge the understanding gap," Thor said.

  "Yes, it's pretty clear to any of us, to any of the races we know. Go ahead, give it a try," Gordon agreed.

  "I have a suggestion," Lee told them. "This is all display. Send them a video camera too. I bet they can reverse engineer stuff better than we can too."

  Jon stood staring at Lee like he'd bitten something rotten.

  "What? Is that stupid somehow?" Lee demanded.

  "No, it's not stupid at all. It just changes how I'm going to have to do it completely. I'll send the physical bust, but with a camera pointed at it running to show on the first display instead of a recording. And a camera sitting to the side not running they can take apart. Plus the buildup of pixels too, so they understand that concept for sure. But this is much better. Thank you," Jon said.

  Lee almost said it was obvious, but then she remembered Ernie and Jon. She just nodded.

  * * *

  "Gordon, I'd like permission to make a few shuttle landings on the moons that display the higher density and have interesting surface features," Captain Fenton of The Champion William requested. He was some light hours out already, but word would still catch up to him before he was at the far gas giant.

  "As long as they're airless," Gordon granted. "If any of us want to land on one with an atmosphere I want us all to talk about it. Us and engineering. These shuttles aren't rated for exotic atmospheres." He sent the message off after him.

  "When the preliminary work is done surveying these gas giant groups everybody should take the opportunity to fuel up," Gordon ordered. "Issue a memo on that, Brownie."

  "Aye sir. A thought," Brownie volunteered. "Could a fuel scooping drone be used to sample one of these shallower atmospheres such as these moons hold?"

  "Ask the fellows who service them," Gordon told him.

  "You know, we have some small short range electric drones aboard. I'd have to check inventory to see where they are stashed, but I saw my dad use one when we discovered Providence," Lee told them. "But next time we go exploring I want some drones that will land on a surface where we don't want to risk crew, and something we can drop in the oceans, like we needed at the last world. Even on the water worlds with some land, like we expect, we could use those. When we turned in our claim on Providence we had almost no data on the oceans. Something like a miniature submarine."

  "If you check when we get back I bet they make them commercially for oceanographers and people like fish farmers. It always costs more to reinvent the wheel," Ames from engineering told her. "Maybe a floater like we tried and a submers
ible to release. The float could have an antennae to relay the data the submersible gathers."

  "How would it get from the mobile unit to the floating one?" Lee wondered.

  "I think the ones they use for inspection and such use an optic fiber trailing along behind," Ames said. "I know for a fact that torpedoes used to be wire controlled."

  "OK, thanks. One more thing to do when we get back," Lee said.

  * * *

  "The survey on all three gas giants is similar. I guess I should say the survey on their satellites," Brownie corrected himself. "We do see a little difference between these gas giants and the usual sort we find. They definitely tend to more elements of medium atomic number. The composition of the satellites is also skewed toward certain elements. They aren't lacking in metals, although not as rich as the brown dwarf systems we found. Ernie says they approximate the ratios you'd expect by boiling point more than atomic number. He's trying to compose an explanation of how they could have formed based on the idea Jon had of condensation from the wave front of a nova."

  "What does it mean in practical terms?" Thor asked.

  "There's a lot more rare earths than radioactives like we found around the brown dwarfs. A lot more aluminum. You'd think less indium and gallium, but apparently alloying with the aluminum keeps them high. So it's just a general rule with exceptions like that. Ernie says it's because the whole system started with different ratios of elements, but then the process of the system forming changed the mix in ways differently than how far it was from the Nova. Which would be true here or around the brown dwarfs we saw. That process could be pretty complex and we need to figure it out too.

  "There's noticeably more krypton than argon, way more xenon. More iodine but about the same bromine. Less silver but still quite a bit of other metals. Not near as much silicon as Earth, oddly. Lots of carbon, lots of oxygen. It will mean there'll be more things like sulfur and phosphorus, that are key to biologicals and chemical processing. But Ernie isn't sure if they'll be where we can get to them and extract them. It should be easier to build a space dwelling civilization here than around a brown dwarf. Maybe easier than most systems that have living planets.

  "Since some of the heavier elements tend to be toxic it is likely to be an easier environment to live in than on satellites around a brown dwarf. You aren't going to have to worry as much about nasty things leaching from tunnel walls or dust brought in on your suit."

  "But less money to be made in mining," Thor predicted.

  "Yes, but a better place to actually live as a self-sustaining community. The other systems are so rich in metals nobody is going to look to a system like this as a mining center. Not for centuries. There'll be local finds of high grade ore that are cheaper to exploit because they are local. Maybe even better than the Earth system or Derfhome. They won't have transport costs of bringing metals from a brown dwarf, even if they are closer to here than our home worlds. But we'd have been thrilled to find this system if we hadn't already found the brown dwarfs," Brownie pointed out.

  "Yeah, just like Amber," Thor allowed, naming a planet they'd visited in the war. "You can have all the sulfur you want to load up with a front loader. Big plains of it pretty pure and hundreds of meters deep in spots, but there are still too many cheaper sources of it, even on Earth. On Derfhome they used to go into volcano craters and scrape it off the rocks. Now they cap the vents and get it from the gas. Well it's always good to have a plan 'B'. We'll still file a claim on it, won't we?" he asked Gordon.

  "Absolutely," Gordon agreed. "It costs comparatively little to file and somebody may want to use the system for something within our lifetimes. A fueling station or just a small station to redistribute freight. There are a few here and there where routes between settled worlds cross."

  "Well this is interesting," Brownie said, "Captain Ochocinco sent a text message directly instead of on the common channel. He says the Caterpillar ship skimmed through the atmosphere of the gas giant. Apparently they refuel directly like that instead of sending a scoop drone."

  "Captain Ochocinco is very practical," Thor said. "Why send a voice transmission when he's so far away? We're not going to reply to it quickly with the lag we have now. I see no reason to reply to this at all. We haven't had a lot of chatting back and forth at a distance, but something that unusual I can see he'd want us to know, just in case he runs into something and doesn't make it back. It gets it on record and doesn't interrupt us if we're chatting on the channel locally."

  "Send a memo to everybody, Brownie," Gordon decided. "All ships operating separately should send in text instead of voice when they are more than a light minute out."

  "Aye, sir," Brownie agreed.

  They collected a lot of data. One of the airless satellites the High Hopes investigated had a odd surface feature they could see from orbit. When they sent a shuttle down to it they found a bizarre forest of crystals and needles of tellurium minerals. When Thor asked about mining it they were horrified.

  "That would be a crime," the shuttle pilot told them. "Look at the pix. It should be a park with severe penalties for disturbing any of it." The copilot just nodded agreement, looking upset.

  Chapter 7

  When the Dart returned, their alien companions the Caterpillars followed along and came to relative rest nearby. They beat The Champion William back although they'd traveled further. The Dart was much faster. After some consultation between commanders one of the shuttles from Retribution picked up Jon and his display. Lord Byron the XO was picked to fly the shuttle. He was overqualified, but they wanted some serious command experience dealing so intimately with the Caterpillars. Nobody was sure the Caterpillars would welcome them back aboard. The aliens had picked their guest last time and they might just ignore a shuttle. They'd simply go wait by the huge hatch where they'd been welcomed aboard before and hope the Caterpillars took the hint. The rest of them waited and watched while the shuttle took Jon and his equipment over.

  Thor seemed irritated with the aliens and complained, "What is so difficult about getting them to basically draw a picture? Every other race we've dealt with has been able to draw a display using dots. We've all drawn pictures whether it was doodling in the mud with a stick or rubbing a burn stick on the cave wall. If they can build a ship like that how can they be oblivious to something so simple? If they paint a picture with dots it can't be that hard to change the format. We managed to do that with the Bunnies even though they use analog video."

  Ernie Goddard made a rare comment from engineering. "Well in fairness, we used to use analog ourselves. We had both software and hardware designs in our archives from when the transition was made from one to the other. So it was easy to emulate their systems."

  "Maybe they really think differently," Lee said; "maybe it's considered rude for all I know."

  "Hah! A religious prohibition maybe? Any image might be an idol?" Vigilant asked on the com, although he was off shift. He must be staying up to see if they admitted the shuttle. "They did seem very interested in the pen that was demonstrated to them. Much more than the book in which it was used to write. Perhaps they have a different history of written language."

  "There were symbols inside the Caterpillar hanger," Gordon said. "I remember seeing them on the recordings The Champion William gave us of their trading. Brownie, would you run through those images and isolate those showing the hatch they used to enter the hanger and also check the machine they traded to us for markers?"

  "Aye sir, I have very high resolution stills of that machine too," Brownie volunteered.

  "Is this what you have in mind?" he asked after a bit. He sent a mosaic of a couple images to their screens. One image showed the Caterpillars entering their hold. Beside the open doorway was a grid of squares. Most were blank but two showed what might be symbols. They were arches and dots similar to kanji.

  "I noticed this though," Brownie said. He circled the same area in a picture showing them leaving the hold. The same area had symbols on the same s
quares. But different symbols.

  "Perhaps that is a status display instead of a keypad," Thor suggested.

  "Brownie, is there anything like that on the machine?" Lee wondered.

  "I'm looking," he said. It was a few minutes before he replied. "There is an area where there is a grid of squares, but they don't have any symbols on them at all. He shared a close-up with them.

  "Perhaps examine the squares other than visually?" Thor proposed. "They may show something in the ultraviolet or infrared outside out normal visual range. Without touching them of course. We're all agreed it shouldn't be probed until it is removed far from our primary ships. If anyone formulates a plan we can put it on a shuttle with a minimal crew and examine it a few thousand kilometers away. Assuming someone wishes to volunteer for hazardous duty. I'm not volunteering."

  "Even probing them without touching could be hazardous," Gordon warned, "they might have some sort of proximity sensor. They might just wave a tentacle over a pad. Perhaps they sense magnetism or changes in capacitance. For all we know maybe they smell Caterpillars."

  "Could you have somebody watch the entire recording and see if they ever reach toward the squares or point something at them?" Brownie asked.

  "Sure ask all the commanders who has somebody free," Gordon agreed.

  "They might have an electronic chip on the tentacles like the security or key cards some businesses use," Thor said. "It might be embedded or too small for us to see on video."

  Everybody looked at him funny.

  "Hey, after we saw gold rings on a tentacle nothing can surprise me!" Thor said.

  "I'd volunteer to go do it my way, but not anybody else's plan," Lee said.

  Gordon looked alarmed at that, but managed to ask in an almost normal voice, "And what plan would that be?"