"Release your dome, Charles," said Linda. The computer imp that resided inside the spacecraft eased out of an aperture and moved around the spacecraft, releasing the latches holding the ceramic aeroshell on. Unlike the Christmas Bush and its submotiles, which were remotely powered and directed by laser beams, this motile was connected to Charles's central computer by an umbilical, which also served as a safety line.
Linda and Caroline each used one hand to lower the dome to the floor of the platform in front of the crawler, while continuing to hold the spacecraft overhead with their other hand.
"Do you see your attachment points, Spritz?" Caroline asked.
"All identified," replied Spritz, its video cameras active.
"Climb in," said Caroline. The two arms of the crawler grasped the rim on opposite sides of the dome, and while the humans held the dome steady, Spritz lifted itself into the dome like someone stepping into a small boat. There were some clanks from underneath as latches were secured, then Spritz folded its arms, lowered its video sensors, and pulled in its antenna.
"Ready," came Spritz's voice through their imps. The humans then guided the spacecraft down onto the dome and held it in position while the spacecraft imp secured the latches.
"Bottom floor, James," said Caroline, and the elevator started down, James letting it free-fall for a few minutes until it built up a reasonable velocity, then switching to constant speed.
When they got to the control deck at the bottom, they were met by George, Thomas, and Katrina. On the other side of the control deck, Elizabeth, at the navigation console, adjusted the lightsail trajectory for optimum orbital injection of the spacecraft. George and Thomas were in their spacesuits and Katrina checked George out by punching one code after another on his chestpack and comparing the suit response with a checklist. Katrina's punches, while solid, were far gender than Shirley's had been, and George looked down at the head of straight brown hair, now streaked with gray.
"They've arrived," announced George as he saw the elevator coming down out of the central shaft hole in the ceiling. "Aren't you done yet?"
"Still got another page to go," said Katrina, deliberately punching in the next code. "And I'm not going to rush it or skip it. Shirley would never forgive me if we lost you due to a bad suit." Thomas went over to the elevator and helped Linda and Caroline with the massive spacecraft, which now massed almost two tons with its payload. The checklist was soon completed and Katrina floated over to the airlock control console as George joined Thomas and Charles in the airlock. Katrina activated the airlock control console and cycled them through.
Thomas and George looked out the open airlock door, Charles held between them. Off to one side was the small red ball that was Barnard, half as big as the Sun in the sky, looking like an aging charcoal briquette with all the ash blown off it. With the lightsail illuminated at that angle, it was possible to see almost all the way to its edge, a hundred and fifty kilometers away, rippling like an aluminum sea under the setting Sun as the slow rotation of the gigantic sail moved different portions of its stays and battens around.
George and Thomas, muscles straining, heaved the massive spacecraft with its precious cargo out the airlock door. It seemed to hang there, slowly rotating from the push they had given it, but the constant acceleration of Prometheus under the light pressure from Barnard soon flew them away from the spacecraft at ever-increasing velocity. Once it had reached a few hundred meters distance, George gave it a command.
"You may activate attitude control jets, Charles. Go into a low equatorial orbit around Eden and watch the weather patterns. At the first wide break in the storm fronts, drop Spritz as close as you can to St. Vincent Island. After dropping Spritz, join the rest of the commsat constellation we have there."
"Attitude jets activated," replied Charles, rotating itself into proper orientation. The main rocket fired and the semi-intelligent spacecraft set off on its assignment.
DELIVERY
A FEW hours later, Charles made one last burn and adjusted its elliptical orbit so the spacecraft would pass low over St. Vincent Island once each thirty-hour day—during the morning daylight period just before Barnard set behind Gargantua for the daily two-hour noonday eclipse. The weather on Eden was remarkably clear for once, so instead of having to wait days and days for a break in the rolling storm fronts, there was no need to wait at all.
"James?" Caroline murmured into her imp-mikes. "Is Carmen available?"
"She's sleeping in her tent shelter near the penetrator," replied James. "Shall I wake her?"
"I hate to do it, but we might not get this good a chance again for weeks if we don't take it now. What time is it there?"
"Four hours before dawn," replied James.
Caroline hesitated. "I don't know. Maybe we'd better wait. She's pregnant and needs her sleep. After all, the lander doesn't touch down until almost noon."
"Don't forget that the days are thirty point two hours long on Eden," James reminded her. "The nights there last fifteen hours, and there is little to do on the island after dark. From the snoring noises I have been picking up from the acoustic sensors on the penetrator, I would estimate that she has been asleep for nine hours or—"
"Nine hours!" exploded Caroline—who like all the others on the crew had been pulling continuous round-the-clock shifts on the shorthanded ship. "The most I ever manage to get on my eight-hour sleep period is seven! Wake her up!"
BY MIDDAY, Jinjur had her troops deployed. Just in case the lander came down outside of the planned drop zone, two of the men had been sent east along the coast and the other two west, until all parts of the sky could be seen by one human or another, despite the nearby tall trees and the large volcano in the center of the island The three flouwen were also watching, one near the island, and the other two east and west along the expected ground track.
Leaving Cinnamon to tend the fire, the other five women, not up to much hiking, went down to stand near the penetrator Crash, on the beach of Crater Lagoon, where they could easily look due west where they expected to see the reentry take place, while listening to Linda report the status of the deployment procedure through the communicator. High above them, over the northern hemisphere, hung the large circular sail of Prometheus in a position where it could see and communicate with the spacecraft and its deployed aeroshell at all points along their equatorial orbits around Eden.
"The aeroshell carrying Spritz was deployed earlier in the orbit by Charles," Linda reported to the group. "It's now encountering a significant amount of drag. The trajectory is nominal—should drop right on you. The weather also looks good from here. How does it look from where you are?"
"Clouds building up in the west," reported Jinjur. "But they're still many kilometers away."
The light dimmed as Barnard started to pass behind the gigantic black circle overhead that was Gargantua.
"The midday eclipse has started," Jinjur reported. A few minutes later, the last bright spot of the tiny red sun dipped beneath the clouds of the gas giant and it became pitch-black. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they could see more and more stars, but they all were ignoring the constellations and looking west for a falling star.
"The aeroshell is experiencing significant heating," reported Linda. "We have a signal drop due to plasma buildup. You should start seeing it soon."
"It there!" cried the sharp-eyed pilot, Arielle, pointing. No one could see her arm in the darkness, but they didn't need to, for the streak rapidly grew brighter than any star.
"Seems to be right on target," Jinjur reported to Linda. "It's coming right out of the constellation Vela."
The bright streak ended almost overhead. Minutes later came a loud crack as the sonic boom hit them.
"Deceleration parachute deployed," came Linda's voice out of Crash. There was a long pause of many minutes. "Deceleration phase completed successfully. Main 'chute being deployed."
There was a cheer from the group as the skies above them were illuminated by
a flare, swinging from side to side as it was slowly lowered down through the sky on its parachute.
"Good shot," said Jinjur to Linda. "Time for a celebration. Why don't you open a few bottles of James's Cabernet Sauvignon '66 for dinner tonight. We'll be joining you down here with a batch of vitamin-pill-enriched boobaa fruit brew."
By the time the parachute floated down from its initial deployment many kilometers high in the sky, Barnard had come out from behind Gargantua and the two-hour eclipse was over. The swift-swimming flouwen had seen the flare coming down and had swum to the spot where the aeroshell would be landing. There was a loud splash, and Little Red rushed to the spot.
☼Here it is! I've found it!☼
Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion surged over the foaming crests and dove to surround the object sinking slowly down through the water. ☼Yeow! Hot!☼
◊Of course it is hot, subset of Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion,◊ chided Clear◊White◊Whistle. ◊That is the aeroshell that protected the crawler as it swam rapidly through the air high above the ocean. The rapid motion through the air caused the production of heat by friction. That is why it made a bright streak in the sky. The heat made it so hot, that you could not only feel the heat, you could look the ...◊
□Yes, yes, subset of Clear◊White◊Whistle. We know all about the heat built up by friction during rapid travel.□
Strong□Lavender□Crackle enjoyed hearing his own lectures, but not those of others. Especially not lectures by the subset of the much younger Clear◊White◊Whistle, only a few centuries old. The milky-colored flouwen might have embraced human technology and terminology more quickly than the rest of the flouwen, but this subset of Strong□Lavender□Crackle had also chosen to accompany the humans on this exploration trip and, as befitted an elder, had learned much about human technology himself. All of the human technology they had seen so far, could have easily been deduced by the pure mathematics and logic that the flouwen elders explored in the comfort of the shallow shorelines of the Islands of Thought at the Outer Pole of their homeworld Water—if they had desired to engage in such a trivial exercise. The large purple flouwen often wished he were back on Water. The major portion of himself was still there, living another life, discussing mathematical concepts with all the others in the pod, rocking up to think in the protected bays of the Islands of Thought, but he was trapped in this strange-tasting, too-warm sea.
The aeroshell finally cooled off enough so that Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion could hold onto it. He engulfed it with his body, like a white blood cell surrounding a piece of soot, and brought it to the surface, where they all scanned it with their sonar.
☼Empty!☼
□Like a peekoo shell after you have eaten the delicious part inside.□
◊This is what humans call an aeroshell,◊ explained Clear◊White◊Whistle. ◊It protects the machine inside that carries the supplies. The machine—humans call lander—is still up in the air floating on large floppy thing like seaweed leaf—humans call parachute. Machine and parachute will be landing in water later. We are to take machine, parachute, and aeroshell to humans.◊
☼I will not wait!☼ said Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion impatiently. ☼I will take aeroshell now!☼ The bulky aeroshell encased in his amorphous flame-colored body, Roaring☼Hot☼Vermillion formed into a manta-shaped wedge that was one of the shapes that allowed the flouwen to move quickly through the water, and headed off to the humans waiting on the shores of Crater Lagoon.
With Barnard now out from behind Gargantua, Clear◊White◊Whistle and Strong□Lavender□Crackle sensed the warmth and light coming down on top of their bodies as they floated on the surface of the water, their sonar sense seeing all around them, waiting for the return of one of the pings emitted by their bodies, or the splash of the machine hitting the water.
◊We should be able to look the machine now,◊ said Clear◊White◊Whistle. Each of them raised a pseudopod into the air. The end of each pseudopod developed a spherical lens shape, while at the same time, the colored liquid crystal nerve material that surrounded the cells in their amorphous bodies withdrew from the lens portion, leaving it clear. The light from above was focused by the lens onto their light-sensitive body, where it formed images. A few adjustments in the shapes of the lens and Barnard came into focus.
□I look a white circle, and hanging below it, held by long strands, is a silvery-colored rhomboid with appendages,□ said Strong□Lavender□Crackle.
◊The white circle and its strands are the parachute,◊ said Clear◊White◊Whistle. ◊While the silver rhomboid is the machine.◊
□Machine hit waves,□ reported Strong□Lavender□Crackle. Shortly they both heard the splash, followed by echo after echo as the sonar pulses their bodies had sent out reflected from the hard object. The returning echoes had complex side tones, as if parts of the machine were moving toward them while other parts were moving away, yet the main echo was definitely moving in their direction. They could also sense chirping pings being sent in their direction.
□The machine is seeing us.□
"Hello there!" called a familiar voice mixed with the pings.
◊It is James!◊ said Clear◊White◊Whistle. ◊It is talking to us through the machine. You get the parachute and take it to the humans in Crater Lagoon. I will go meet the machine and lead it there.◊
LATE THAT afternoon, the happy group gathered for their evening meal. Nels had netted some fish from a lake nearby, while Reiki had gone to her favorite peekoo bed and brought home a large basket of the six-legged shellfish. As they gathered in a circle to eat, Spritz was there with them, its video eyes taking in the group and transmitting the image to a view-wall in the dining room of Prometheus, while perched in front of it, and connected by an infrared I/O link, the screen of Reiki's recorder presented a tiny video scene of the nine crew members up on Prometheus, who had also gathered together to share a meal with those stranded down below.
When the time came for the daily mealtime ritual of holding hands before dinner, Arielle, sitting next to Spritz, reached out her hand to the robotic crawler. James, understanding the gesture, had Spritz unstow its manipulators, and soon the circle was complete, the humans above included by mechanical proxy in the circle of friendship down below.
John started the meal by ceremoniously handing out the first of the vitamin and mineral supplement pills that Spritz had brought down, and watched as each person washed it down with a sip of boobaa fruit beer. Then dinner started, with the ten down below eating broiled fish and mashed vegetables from feebook leaf serving plates with their fingers, and the nine up above taking bites out of the compartments in their flip-top trays using civilized metal utensils.
The dinner ended with a dessert of the strawberrylike jookeejook fruits on the ground and real strawberries up above, followed by celebratory toasts and animated conversation.
"This crawler is going to be really useful as a communications link," exclaimed Carmen with obvious glee as she took another sip of beer. "With Reiki's recorder as a console, we can work with James just like we did in the good old days up on Prometheus. The recorder isn't a touch-screen, so we'll have to voice or key in all the commands, and the crawler isn't as versatile as an imp, but it will sure be better than having to work audio-only through Crash, stuck as it is down by the beach instead of up here in camp."
There was a general chorus of approval at the idea, but Jinjur remained silent, almost grim.
"I can check up on the status of all my hydroponics projects," agreed Nels. "And perhaps start some new ones."
"We can talk back and forth to our friends all we want," said Arielle. "And see them at the same time."
"And have more joint meals like this," suggested Tony from the tiny screen.
"And we can meet and see the Jollys," added George.
"I may even be able to get documented this sono-video composition that has been running around in my head since our first sunset here," added David.
"We'd love to be able to
see and hear it," chirped Katrina, pleased at the thought.
"You're all forgetting something," growled Jinjur in a loud, slow, level tone. The conversation came to a halt, both on the ground and in the sky. Jinjur switched to her commander's voice and continued. "We are on a mission—to gather scientific data about the Barnard system and report it back to Earth—and we are going to continue that mission despite the recent setback we encountered on landing. Now that we have taken care of our primary concern—ensuring the future health of the portion of the crew down here—the mission will continue. With Prometheus many light-minutes away off on its mission of surveying the other moons, a video comm link through Spritz will be as useful as pity in a drill sergeant's heart."
She paused and laboriously got to her feet. Although she was rotund with pregnancy and clad only in a brightly decorated sarong, she still oozed the aura of command. You could almost see two stars glinting on each of her bare black shoulders as she squared them up. When Major General Virginia Jones continued speaking, she was giving orders.
"Shirley, Carmen, and David. I want you to check out Spritz. Make sure its navigation system is loaded with a map of Eden. Send it out to explore the neighboring islands and report back what it finds there."
"George. You and your crew will resume the planned detailed survey of the Gargantuan moon system. The first of the return sample rockets on the moons Zouave and Zapotec should be full before the year is out, so arrange for Prometheus to be there for pickup.
Rescued From Paradise Page 4
