It didn’t seem to impress him much. Matty spent the entire trip to his room explaining to me the problem with his Sol study, and I think he believed I understood what he was saying, even though I did not try to fake it. He simply was so focused and so excited, he failed to notice my incomprehension, which would have been incomprehensible to him. All I gleaned was that his research was really frustrating to him, because for some reason he absolutely hated the data he was getting.
He had happened to catch a perfect solar eclipse by Terra as we were leaving the Solar System, a major stroke of luck—I understood that much. And something about the displacement of a few stars behind the sun was very very slightly wrong, and somehow that was very very bad. It indicated something about the “J2 component of angular momentum” was bollixed.
But when I tried to find out just what that meant, and why it bothered him so badly, he changed the subject back to the star he was supposed to be telling me about: the one at the other end of our trajectory, Immega 714, AKA Peekaboo.
“In all the catalogs, gamma Boötes or HR5435 is commonly listed simply as ‘gamma Boo,’” he explained cheerily. “So when Claire Immega of the 44 Boötes colony sent back word that gamma Boo was not a single star but a binary, with a G2 companion, the formal name of the G2 became Immega 714 in her honor—but it took about fifteen seconds for the System’s media to name it Peekaboo. And when she added that its second planet looked extremely promising in terms of habitability, naturally that became Peekaboo Two. The name was just annoying enough to stick in a lot of minds, and the da Costa consortium became interested right away.”
But of course, you don’t start outfitting a starship on the basis of promises, however extreme. It wasn’t until Immega’s robot probes confirmed the good news that da Costa formed its partnership with Kang and began seriously planning our expedition. That took a while. Long enough that Immega herself did not live to learn just how spectacular her find had been.
Picture the geometry. 44 Boo, a variable star (eclipsing binary), lies a little more than forty-one light-years from Sol System. From there it’s another forty-three and change to the newly discovered Immega 714. The first colonists to settle on 44 Boo’s fourth satellite were a bit too busy surviving to stargaze a whole lot, but eventually two of them combined to produce Claire Immega. She became an astronomer, and soon discovered Peekaboo and Peekaboo Two. She was twenty-five before she had amassed sufficient clout to browbeat her fellow colonists into letting her divert what must have been scarce resources for ultrahighspeed probes. Even though these very tiny but very intelligent robots managed a very high fraction of c on their journey, it naturally had to take them well over forty-three years to make the trip, and then another forty-three years for their reports to make it back to 44 Boo at lightspeed.
From there, of course, the colonists’ telepaths were able to pass the data back to their siblings back at Sol System in zero time. But Claire Immega was over thirty years dead by then. So she never knew, at least not for sure, that the new planet she had given mankind was one of the best it had yet found within its reach.
“G type stars like gamma Boo are damned scarce within eighty light-years or so of Sol,” Matty told me, “and G2s that happen to have planets of the right mass orbiting within the zone that will permit liquid water to exist are less common than buttons on a snake. By now nearly all the really promising ones already have colonies either in place, or on the way there. And so far, nobody else has drawn the kind of jackpot Immega did.”
“It’s really that good?”
“Well, if you had your heart set on skiing, or ice fishing, I’m afraid you’re screwed. If you like bone-breaker gravity, you’ll hate the place. If you adore hostile environments, harsh conditions, scarcity, and surly natives, you’ll be bored silly. But if you can steel yourself to a world where your feet never hurt, food and energy are cheap, and everybody goes naked most of the time…”
13
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete, and great.
—Willa Cather
As soon as we got back to his luxury digs, he started bringing up Brasil Novo stats for me. Normally I’d rather read figures in printout than onscreen… but what he used for a monitor was an entire wall, bigger than any two walls in my place. So I sank back into an armchair so comfortable I kept murmuring thanks to it, sipped Matty’s excellent Scotch, and learned.
Brasil Novo is roughly the same size as Mars, but thanks to a smaller iron core, it is twelve percent less dense, giving it a surface gravity of .33 gee rather than Mars’s .38 gee. It lies more than 1.1 AU from its star—but Immega 714 is slightly brighter than Sol, so it seems normally bright in the sky for a sun, despite being ten percent farther away.
Here is how the planet stacks up beside Terra:
And here, for perspective, is a set of similar comparisons between Terra and another reasonably well-known planet of comparable gravity:
Brasil Novo comes complete with two moons, quite similar to those of Mars. For that reason, and for emotional/political reasons less susceptible to analysis, it had been rather illogically decided to name them, too, Phobos and Deimos.
“What difference does it make?” Matty asked when I raised the issue. “Nobody’s likely to confuse them in conversation with the ones we left eighty-five light-years behind. And very soon after arrival, everyone is going to become sharply aware that those two moons will have radically different effects than their namesakes, at least.”
Always happy to play straightman to a speaker who truly enjoys his subject. “Why’s that?”
“Because of something Mars lacks that Bravo has in great plenty.”
It took me a second to recognize “Bravo” as an Anglicized contraction of Brasil Novo. It was the first time I’d heard the shorthand, but it would by no means be the last. Within a year, even the two dozen or so real Brazilianos aboard would be using it. “What’s that?” I repeated.
He blinked at me. “Water. Teratons of water. The original Phobos and Deimos have tidal effects, but there’s not enough surface water on Mars to make them visible. Bravo is going to have very complicated tides, and I suspect its version of a king tide will be an emperor tide.”
I thought about it. “So, moist air, then.”
“It better be.”
The only reason it didn’t get tedious saying “Why is that?” to this man was that he always answered, and the answer was usually interesting. So I said it again.
“We expect, or at least hope, to live there. So we’ll probably want to breathe a lot. You have probably noticed that we are not carrying along with us in this bucket five hundred and fifty Mars-type low-pressure masks, plus several thousands more for replacements and the next several generations of offspring, nor are we spending any time drilling in them or trying to become acclimatized to them. If not, you’ve surely noticed that you don’t wear one when you’re working on the Upper Ag Deck.”
He paused, and did not say, “Think it through.”
Let’s see. Atmosphere breathable without assistance. But even less gravity than Mars or home. So to get Terra-standard pressure, there are only two possibilities: the atmosphere must be thicker, or it must be much higher in oxygen.
Okay, take Terra. Its surface gets that much pressure from lying under a troposphere about twelve kilometers high. Brasil Novo’s lower atmosphere would need to stand an unreasonable thirty-six klicks tall to yield that much pressure. So…
“The place is a tinderbox!” I exclaimed.
He shrugged carelessly. “The drier parts of it, yes. The air is a little over thirty percent oxygen. Here, take a look at this.” He gestured shamanically with his hand, working some virtual remote control only he could see, and the wall display changed to:
Atmospheric Composition
“Clearly it’s going to be a warm, moist planet, by human standards. A jungle world, very much like the Amazon Basin of Old Brasil back on Terra, I imagine. Its fauna seem to be fantastically b
etter at photosynthesis than ours. But your guess is correct: that thirty percent oxygen is going to make for severe fire danger. I suspect that if an expedition to one of the drier regions were to be struck by lightning, the lucky ones would be those killed outright on the spot. I doubt the rest could outrun the flames.”
There are times when I’m happier to have a vivid imagination than I am other times.
“But there will be no shortage of damp places. Bravo has almost as much salt water cover as Terra—a bit more than half its total surface, compared to Terra’s seventy percent. What you get basically is three major continents, more or less evenly spaced around the globe, each supporting a large dense jungle, with a major river flowing out of each, as in the Terran Amazon or Congo. There are also several large continental islands analogous to Australia, and if you’ll pardon the technical terminology, umpty gazillion smaller islands, ranging in size from humungous to teeny-weeny.”
“Okay, got it. The farther from the seashore, the more fire danger… but there’s a lot of seashore.”
He nodded. “The planet’s axial tilt is only fifteen degrees, as compared to Terra’s twenty-three point four five degrees. So there will be distinct seasons… but less pronounced than on Earth. No freezing winters. No polar ice caps.”
That was good. I hate wearing stanfields—as long underwear is called in Canada, for reasons probably lost to history and certainly unknown to me. A world without snowdrifts was just fine with Joel. And no polar ice meant more of the total surface available to live on; more places to put usable seashore.
“And the day/night cycle—”
That one I could address. “—is nearly identical to Mars. Twenty-four hours, thirty-something minutes. Uh, thirty-seven.”
“Of course, that must be what the Zog has you using on the Upper Deck. Well, the farming is probably going to be even better on Bravo than it is in Zogland.”
“Really?”
He caused images to slideshow on his wall, some still, some moving—and all striking. “As you can see, the place is tectonically quite active. Volcanic mountain ranges. Good thing; it keeps the atmosphere replenished. So volcanic ash fertilizes the land—and the mountains present useful minerals and metals which we reach by blasting a little bit sideways instead of digging way down and hauling it back up. But from a peasant’s point of view, the best part is going to be the weather: probably the most stable climate humans have yet encountered.”
Well, I hadn’t said it in several minutes now. “Why is that, Matty?”
“Consider the geography.” He smiled. “Or bravography, if you will.”
“I won’t, but you go ahead.”
“Thank you. Look at those three major continents. All more or less equatorial. Roughly evenly spaced. Each of them will have a bravographically anchored transportation zone, where jungle trees pump a regular fountain of water into the atmosphere. Ergo, climate patterns will be anchored, too, with weather infinitely more stable and reliable than anyplace in the Solar System.”
I understood what he meant when I saw the planet in 3-D projection. Terra is continually plagued by nerve-racking El Niño events because the committee that designed it (it had to be a committee) inexplicably omitted to place a large jungle in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to anchor that evaporation zone. Bravo lacked this defect. “And that stable weather forecast will be… gray skies, lots of clouds? Rain in the morning giving way to rain in the afternoon, followed by a high probability of rain all night?”
“In general, yes, around the equator. With more temperate zones to north and south. But the three big continents themselves will be fairly temperate, and covered with boreal forest.”
“A lot of our oldest myths will still work.”
He nodded happily. “And some others will become for us historical curiosities, requiring footnotes. On Terra, there tend to be large deserts to the north and south of all the jungle areas, including the Sahara, Kalahari, Gobi, Patagonian, and Sonoran deserts. But Bravo does not seem to have real deserts, probably thanks to its more favorable climate distribution.”
“Okay by me,” I said. “I never met a desert I liked much.”
“Oh, I have!” he said emphatically. “I’ll miss them. Splendid places to do astronomy. But by surrendering them, I’ll get to see something unique in their place. I’ve seen a desert. I’ve lived in a few. But so far, as far as I know, nobody has yet seen a Hungry Ghost with his own personal eyeballs, much less spent time in one.” He sounded gleeful at the prospect.
“A Hungry Ghost?”
“A firestorm the size of a state or province.”
The name sort of explained itself to an extent. One-third gee, and a teeming stable biosphere—the land would be lush with life. The trees must grow to fantastic heights, and sprawl across the sky in the competition for sunlight. But the air they spread through was nearly a third oxygen, fifty percent more than a sensible planet needed… which they themselves were replenishing! Let things get dried out in the stable weather, let the ground cover vegetation and tree droppings crisp up nicely into tinder and kindling, let one of the inevitable sparks occur in a very bad place…
“Tesla’s eyebrows, Matty! It must be all the circles of Hell.”
“Worse, I think.” The bastard was still gleeful. “I’m not saying those were fun, but they all stayed put. Once you reported to your Circle and took your assigned spot in the lake of burning pitch, you pretty much knew your address and postal code for the next quadrillion eternities. But Bravo has more sunlight and higher temperatures than Earth, so—”
“—so it’s going to have serious winds.”
“Sometimes. And sometimes hurricanes. Primarily in tropical ocean regions. But also in high elevation land plateaus… where forests tend to dry out.”
“Oh, that’s not good!” Now I fully understood the aptness of the name he’d picked. I had all too vivid a mental picture of a firestorm, the size of Central British Columbia, say… that lurched and lunged randomly across the landscape at hurricane speeds, gulping biomass like a drunken sailor on a spree, spewing flames to altitudes previously reached in human experience only by mushroom clouds and weather balloons. Hungry Ghost indeed! Like the Hungry Ghosts I had encountered in my quick surface reading of Tibetan Buddhist mythology: spirits consumed with lust for things that never satisfied, hunger that could not be eased, thirst that nothing could quench. Damned souls condemned to yearn forever, and destroy all they touched, knowing it was pointless. I wondered if a Hungry Ghost typically had an eye, like a hurricane, and how long you’d have to live if you ever found yourself in one. Would it be even theoretically possible to move quickly and correctly enough to stay in such an eye, until the Ghost’s terrible Hunger burned itself out?
“But that’s only going to worry certifiably insane explorer types like me, who go looking for danger,” he said with a chuckle. “Farmers who pick their homestead site intelligently, on the other hand, are probably going to be very happy people in Saudade.”
Incongruous image of pigs on the Ag Deck. “Sow what?”
“That will be the name chosen for the first town we’ll settle. You heard it here first.”
“How can you be so sure, this far in advance?”
“Because that’s what I strongly feel it should be, and nobody aboard with a contrary opinion is a bigger bully than me.”
“It would be impolite to argue with my host. Say the name again, and tell me what it means.”
“Saudade. ‘Sow,’ like a female hog. ‘Da,’ like the Russian for ‘probably not.’ ‘Day,’ light come an’ me wan’ go home.”
“You can’t possibly know that song.”
“Neither can you, son. And if you do, you ought to know the word ‘saudade.’ It’s a Portuguese word, and the heart of the Portuguese music called fado. You could say it is as important a word to fado as ‘soul’ is to blues, or ‘cool’ is to jazz. And as difficult to define.”
It came back. “I know that word. I’ve se
en it written, anyway, I just had no idea it was pronounced like that. It means… well, sort of…”
“The best I’ve heard it rendered into Basic so far,” Matty said, “is ‘the presence of absence.’”
“The thing you know because it isn’t there.”
He nodded. “Which, when you think about it, is a pretty fair description of what powers this ship.”
“Do you understand the relativistic engine, Matt?”
He smiled. “You flatter me. That’s my point: there is some reason to believe there’s literally nothing there.”
I shrugged. “Big deal. Is nothing sacred?”
He winced politely. “I asked George R once, what do you guys actually do down there in the Hole? He looked around, leaned close, lowered his voice, and told me the secret. They strap toast onto a cat’s back and toss it in the air.”
And he waited. I knew there had to be a gag, and if I didn’t guess what it was, he would win the exchange I had begun by essaying a pun. Well, it served me right. “But how do dat make de ship go, Mr. Interlocutor,” I asked ritually, conceding defeat.
“They butter the toast, you see.”
Light belatedly dawned. “Ah. Of course. The toast must fall butter side down—”
“—but the cat must land on its feet.” He spread his hands: QED. “Hence the array spins forever, generating power.”
It was a good gag; I grinned in surrender. “It’s so simple once someone explains it.”
Variable Star Page 21
