"Yes. They're primarily for directing planet-wide reconnaissance. Why?"
"Do you have one of them in this area right now?"
"There's one about fifty miles southeast of the base." There was usually a probe on-station in the general vicinity of Serengeti, monitoring weather and geological developments. "It's recently deployed, still with three probes on board."
"Can you move it closer this way?" Keene asked. "As a precaution. Having some high-level eyes up there might be useful."
"Will do." Heeland composed a command to move the center of the airmobile's flight pattern to a new location and sent it off. Then he called up the register of ground vehicles at Serengeti. Site Runabout SU27 was listed as out of service. It responded when he interrogated its ID code.
* * *
Sariena was in the labs, reading a report on the plots of meteorites and debris orbiting Earth, when the call from Keene came through on her compad. At least, that was her official task. More surreptitiously, she had become something of a clearing house for information fed back from many eyes and ears around the base. A spirit of resistance was establishing itself that would be ready to erupt when the opportunity presented itself.
She had learned from past experience never to be too surprised at anything that developed once Keene was involved. "You made it? You're at Joburg?" she said without preliminaries.
"Just—last night."
"Why so long?"
"Predictably, we had problems."
"Yes, you look like it. Be careful, Lan. If you don't already know, Jorff is there. He's equipping Rakki's Tribesmen with firearms and training them."
Surprise showed on Keene's face. "How did you know?"
"Shayle has an inside source," Sariena said simply.
Although obviously curious to know more, Keene merely nodded. The details could wait until later. "They left here this morning—Jorff, two of Zeigler's troops, Leisha, Rakki, and the whole squad," he said. "One thought is that they might be coming to Serengeti."
Sariena thought for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't think so, Lan. Kelm also left here earlier with a party of guards. And it seems that Zeigler is getting ready to go somewhere. Something seems to be happening. But whatever it is, it's not here." Keene stared hard from the tiny screen. Behind him, apparently some distance back, Sariena caught a glimpse of a figure holding a spear. "Do you know you have company, Lan?" she asked.
"Yes, don't worry about it. They're my escort. . . . Look, can this source that Shayle has find out more? This is urgent. We need to know now. I think they might be going after Naarmegen and the others in that Scout."
Sariena felt her mouth go dry at the thought. "But why? For what purpose?" she whispered.
"Who knows? To teach everyone else a lesson? To give Rakki's soldiers an easy first-blood lesson and show them that the Sky People aren't invincible? Whatever goes through the minds of people who want things like this."
"I'll go and find Shayle now," Sariena said. "You'll be there?"
"There's not much else in the way of places to go," Keene answered.
* * *
The rendezvous point chosen for Jorff's two flyers to meet up with the one bringing Kelm and the backup force from Serengeti was a desolate valley on the west side of the central mountain chain known as the Spine, about halfway between Serengeti and Carlsbad, where operation Usurper was to be carried out. The plan was for Rakki's newly trained force to bear the brunt of the action, both as a morale booster for them and to suitably impress the Cave Tribe of how much they stood to gain from coming over as allies once Jemmo was gone. The method to be employed was modeled on former Terran riot and crowd control tactics. Reconnaissance probes were already deployed in the area and would be moved in close to locate Jemmo before the attack went in. When it did, the assault force would be able to go straight for the target, relying on speed and shock to numb any potential resistance into inaction until it was too late. And if something did go wrong that warranted calling in the support, it would be good experience for Kelm's troops too.
Kelm, Jorff, and Leisha stood together on the ground, watching as the three craft that had taken off minutes previously completed their circuit and came down in the same positions they had been in for the three static rehearsals. Sims was the first out of the leading bus, shouting orders and waving Rakki's warriors on as they emerged past him at a run, fanning out to secure the flanks. The smaller personnel flyer that had landed beside it disgorged the snatch squad led by Enka, while the backup team from the second bus slightly farther back advanced to take up covering positions. Considering the insanely short time he'd had to pull anything together, Jorff had done amazingly well, Kelm conceded inwardly. But it wouldn't do to let himself be seen with too soft a public image.
"Too ragged and slow forming up on the left flank," he said. "And the third man along there is going to kill himself or somebody else, holding his weapon like that. Get them back inside, and let's run through it again on the ground."
"Sir," Jorff acknowledged, and began shouting orders.
Kelm turned to Leisha. "How much longer before Zeigler and the others get here?" he asked her.
"Due in just about forty-five minutes," she told him.
Considering the haste, the demonstration they had just seen would no doubt be satisfactory. But Kelm thought they could do even better. "Let's make this a good, snappy one. Then two more drops from circuits," he called to Jorff. "You think we can impress the boss?"
"You bet."
There was some jostling and milling about going on around the doors, Kelm saw. But that wasn't too important. The practice hadn't been to get them back in.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Kronian Interplanetary vessels like the Osiris and Trojan simulated gravity by the rotation of a wheel-like system of modules carried on spokes that could be trailed at an angle like a partly-open umbrella to produce a normal resultant of centrifugal and linear forces at the Rim. While ingenious, this yielded a large and somewhat ungainly structure whose distortion under thrust set a limit on the acceleration that could be sustained. This meant that they were unable to take full advantage of the performance theoretically attainable from their fusion drives. Aztec, by contrast, with its underdeck Yarbat generators, did away with large, deformable geometries, and was trim and compact. When the ship was under thrust, the AG fields were simply generated at a slant to produce the same effect as had previously required enormous works of structural engineering. Hence, though its drives were similar to those used on the earlier craft, Aztec could run them to higher power. In addition, even with its greater carrying capacity, Aztec was burdened with smaller mass. For both these reasons, it could attain accelerations that were considerably higher. To withstand the resulting forces, the vessel's construction was correspondingly more robust.
If he hadn't known otherwise, he might have thought he was inside an old Terran ocean liner rather than a spacecraft, Jansinick Wernstecki thought to himself as he looked around the aft cargo hold. He had come back to inspect the securing of the "rafts" of massive lithofracture exciters that the ship was carrying. Commander Reese had advised that new orders changing their flight plan were expected from Saturn. With the prospect of course changes and maneuvering, such a check on the heavy cargo was routine. What wasn't routine, of course, was to be anticipating orders to slow down or stand off after all the hurry to get Aztec and its payload to Earth as soon as possible.
A call tone sounded from his compad. It was Merlin Friet, Wernstecki's colleague who had come with him from the Tesla Center on Titan. "Jan, how's it going there?" he queried.
"I'm just about done. Nothing amiss. What's up?"
"I'm with Vicki and Luthis in the dining mess. Vicki's been talking about how their planetary theory has been coming together. It's fascinating. I thought you might like to join us."
"Sure. I'm on my way." Wernstecki cut the connection and began making his way forward out of the hold and through the ship.
&nb
sp; It was obvious to all by now that something ominous was happening on Earth. Communications were still spasmodic, and then always with the same people. Wernstecki had sent several messages for Keene, but no replies had been forthcoming. The responses to his questions were evasive or nonsensical. The claim of interference from electrical disturbances in Earth's vicinity was wearing thin.
Few now doubted that there had to be some connection with the disappearance at the same time of Valcroix and the Pragmatist leaders at Saturn, and the prevalent guess was that some kind of attempt was being made to seize the Terran base as the beginnings of an independent political system. Many thought that the Trojan had to be involved also, although the mechanics of how the different units scattered over such vast distances were to be brought together was unclear.
Wernstecki was unable to relate to the motives or psychology that would drive men to act in such ways. Born on Enceladus, a Kronian, he had grown up in tune with the internal pulse and rhythm of the new cultural organism that was coming into being, expressing its inner imperative to expand both through space, by encompassing and eventually leaving the Solar System, and through time by becoming the Future of the human species. Just as the previous high cultures that had been born, flourished, and then when their span was over, like any other organism, died—Babylonian, Chinese, Hindu, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Arabian, Central American, European, North American—had been driven to their highest achievements in thought, art, technical mastery, and social organization by their religion, so Kronia was an expression of a religion, though not expressed in the same terms as the earlier ones. Wernstecki was very conscious of the life-force emanating from the collective Kronian soul that was in the process of awakening, that united him and all others who shared it.
It wasn't a geographical or territorial thing that had to do with any place of origin. The pioneers who founded Kronia had come from every place. What they shared was a world view that rejected the soulless battlefield of economics that Earth had become, with life itself reduced to a pointless mechanical process with no other purpose that the accumulation of money, carrying in them instead the vision of what could be.
But the forces that had been brought to Kronia when Earth died, and which were now revealing themselves, had no place in such an organism. Products of an age that had already been dead, they would reduce all of life to the level of animal subsistence and the mechanical caricature that their sciences had created. Because they comprehended nothing beyond, the aliens wanted to raise once more to eminence the accumulation of material wealth as sole object of existence, and if that were resisted, to impose it by force, because that was the only way they knew how. And, indeed, that was the only term to describe the phenomenon, Wernstecki reflected: Alien. A foreign invader in the Kronian organism, living to a different imperative that was in conflict with the host. He worried that the host might have recognized the threat and reacted to it too late.
The mess wasn't crowded when Wernstecki arrived. Merlin and Vicki were at a corner table. Tanya, Vicki's cabin mate was with them. He helped himself to a Mimas tea from the self-serve counter by the door and made his way over. A few heads nodded at him perfunctorily. "So what's going on?" he asked, easing himself down onto the bench seat next to Tanya.
"Vicki's latest exchanges with Farzhin at Dione," Merlin replied. "It sounds as if they've got something coming together that could tie it all up. We thought you'd want to hear it."
"Me too. I've only just arrived here," Tanya put in.
Wernstecki sipped his tea. "Well?" He looked around invitingly. "I'm all ears, and panting with suspense." Merlin waved for Vicki to take it. Wernstecki had heard a lot about Vicki as a result of working with Keene on Titan, and gotten to know her himself more during the voyage. She possessed the instincts that made her a natural Kronian too.
"Emil's working with Sariena's people now," Vicki said. "They've been modeling large-scale impacts on internally hot, planet-size bodies. What comes out is consistent with a lot of what we believe happened."
"What are we talking about—the breakup of the Saturnian configuration?" Wernstecki asked.
Vicki shook her head. "Before that. The earlier event. If they're right about Earth being part of a family accompanying a proto-star Saturn, it could have been during the disruption when they encountered whatever the original solar group was."
"They think this is the event that ended the dinosaurs," Tanya said.
"So that didn't happen with the breakup?" Wernstecki checked.
"Not if this latest theory is right."
It was generally accepted that Earth's gravity had undergone a significant increase at some point—things the scale of dinosaurs couldn't have functioned under modern conditions. Many attempts had been made to fit this with the time of Earth's separation from Saturn; the hemisphere phase-locked to face the primary would have experienced a gravity reduction, reverting to full value when Earth became detached. The two problems that this approach had run into, however, were first, no amount of tweaking with the model gave a gravity increase sufficient to account for the effects that had been inferred; and second, it was known that humans had lived at the time of the Saturnian breakup, which was difficult to reconcile with the presence of dinosaurs.
Vicki explained. "It seems there might have been two distinct events. To begin with, Earth was a close-orbiting satellite with reduced gravity on its Saturn-facing side. This produced gigantic life-forms. They lived on a crustal bulge, also a result of the distorted gravity, that stood out from the ocean covering the rest of the planet. A super-continent."
"Pangea," Wernstecki supplied.
"Now, a planet like Earth isn't brittle all through," Vicki said. "It's a crust covering a fluid and sticky interior. An impact by something large isn't going to shatter it into pieces. It'll penetrate and be absorbed to produce a deformed composite body. Imagine Pangea on the far side, fractured by expansion of the opposite surface as the impact shock propagates through."
"How big an object are we talking about?" Wernstecki asked.
"We put it at around twenty percent the volume of the previously existing Earth, and high density—about halfway between that of the crust and the core."
"So you'd get a what? A kind of pear-shaped object?"
"Which over time collapses back to spherical. The increase in radius is small compared to the gain in mass, so surface gravity goes up appreciably. With the figures they used, new animals repopulating the changed environment would have to reduce their body dimensions by around forty percent to retain the same power-weight ratio."
"Is that enough?" Wernstecki looked around questioningly.
"About what you'd need to produce the titanotheres," Vicki answered, referring to the giant mammals of the Pleistocene. Wernstecki nodded. He seemed impressed that it was that large.
"But it gets neater, Jan," Merlin Friet said. "A really economic theory. One cause ties together a whole bunch of things that didn't seem related before."
"Well, so far we've wiped out the dinosaurs and broken up Pangea," Wernstecki agreed. "What else is there?"
"Just about all of plate tectonics," Vicki said. "We know that the movements measured before Athena were just the final, cooling-down phases of processes that once happened a lot faster, and the old time scales of millions of years based on them were wrong. But that also means that shifting whole continents around the globe in a reduced time took something more than the tugs from a passing body that caused the sideways rifting Earth is seeing now." She gestured toward Wernstecki. "You said it yourself a moment ago, Jan. Pear-shaped. The whole hemisphere that the pieces of Pangea are adrift on is elevated way above the surface mean. They slide down the gravitational gradient on layers of molten magma produced by dissipating all the heat." Vicki tossed out a hand casually, as if the rest shouldn't need adding. "And as the shape recovers back toward spherical, surface area shrinks with respect to volume, and crumples. That could give you mountain-chain building and ocean trenches."
>
"Like I said, neat," Merlin repeated. "One theory does it all."
Wernstecki was intrigued. It fitted with the criticisms he'd heard Vicki express on previous occasions about the reliability of the dating systems once thought to be unquestionable. "Do you have a time for this yet?" he asked her.
"Not really. The whole question of chronology is under revision right now."
"But you're saying it was a different event from the Saturn separation? This is something that happened earlier?"
"Right. The Saturn breakup, we put at about 10,000 b.p. Experienced by people. Described in myths. What caused that is still a good question. We think probably a gravitational interaction with something. It was a less violent event."
"Could it have been a Venus encounter—one of them, or two of them; whichever turns out to be correct?"
"Some people argue that," Vicki said. "Personally, I don't think so. Neither does Emil. He sticks by the Vedas, which put that around five thousand years later. Earth was solidly a planet of the Sun by then."
"There's still lots to do, then," Wernstecki observed, sitting back and raising his cup.
"If we're allowed to get on with it," Vicki sighed.
A short silence signaled the change of mood. "What do you think's going on at Earth, Jan?" Tanya asked finally.
Wernstecki shook his head. "I can only guess. And my guesses are as good as anybody else's."
* * *
On the Bridge Deck of the Aztec, the Communications Officer reported to Commander Reese that the object detected astern, which had been gaining on them for several hours, had announced itself as the Trojan. By the authority of the newly constituted Terran Planetary Government, it declared its intention to put a party aboard the Aztec and requested acknowledgment accordingly. It reminded Aztec's commander that it was equipped as a vessel of war with long-range offensive capability, and suggested strongly that a cooperative response would be in the best interests of all.
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