Captain Anthony "Tony" Roma—Lightsail and aerospace plane pilot. Height: 168 cm (5'6"). Weight: 70 kg (155 lb). Effective Age: 45 years. Tony is small and very handsome, with a dark complexion, dark eyes, dark wavy hair, and a neat mustache. He was a cadet in the first class at the Space Force Academy and went directly from aircraft pilot school into lightsail pilot training. When picked for the mission, he was on assignment as a pilot in General Virginia Jones's Space Marines Interceptor Fleet, where he invented a number of new lightsail maneuvers.
Elizabeth "Red" Vengeance—Asteroidologist and lander pilot. Height: 178 cm (5'10"). Weight: 70 kg (154 lbs). Effective Age: 53 years. Red is tall and thin, with an aristocratic nose, a short, straight cap of red hair, green eyes, and the typical redhead complexion with freckles resulting from an Irish heritage. She has over 150 hours of credits in mining and mineralogy from University of Arizona but no degree. Elizabeth was one of the first independent prospectors in the asteroid belt. She struck it rich, became a billionaire, and then realized that there were more interesting things to do than loafing for the rest of her life. Her extensive space experience as an asteroid prospector and heavy-lift asteroid-tug operator got her selected for the Barnard Star Expedition.
Sam Houston—Planetary geoscientist. Height: 200 cm (6'7"). Weight: 80 kg (176 lbs). Effective Age: 60 years. Sam is very tall and very thin, with pale face and skin, long bones with knobby joints, gray-blue eyes, and long graying hair. He does not have a doctorate, but instead has years of experience in the field. He started field exploration in 2003 on the Canadian shield with Exxon. By the next decade, he had worked on all the continents, both poles, and the continental shelves of five of the seven seas. One of the first full-time geologists on the Moon, he spent 2015 making a preliminary geological map of the backside, then spent two years on Mars with the first Mars colony. He was the lead geologist on the 2018 "Big-Four" asteroid mapping expedition, and his experiences on Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Juno, followed by two moons of Jupiter—Ganymede and Callisto—made him an obvious choice for the Barnard Star Expedition.
Linda Regan—Solar astrophysicist. Height: 155 cm (5'1"). Weight: 55 kg (121 lb). Effective Age: 46 years. Linda is a short, stocky, bouncy "cheerleader" type, with sparkling green eyes, curly brown hair, and lots of energy. She took physics at USC, went on to get a Ph.D. in astronomy at CalTech, and earned her way to a position at the Solar Observatory around Mercury, then onto the Barnard Star Expedition.
Deirdre O'Connor—Biologist and Levihusbandry specialist. Height: 168 cm (5'6"). Weight: 60 kg (132 lb). Effective Age: 43 years. Pale green eyes and long reddish-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her short ecstatically-happy marriage ended with the IRA murder of her husband, whom no one can replace. Her animal companion is a "woosel," a hitherto unknown weasel-like marsupial with a prehensile tail Deirdre found in the Amazon Basin. When the only known female died in an accident with six rice-grain-sized young hanging from teats in its pouch, Deirdre showed it was possible to deep freeze the young, transport them out of the jungle wilds, and construct an artificial teat that would nourish the embryos until they could cope on their own, saving the species. Now, one of their many great-grandchildren has joined her on this interstellar mission. It was kept as a frozen embryo for forty years while Deirdre and the others were "living" on No-Die, and brought to life to enjoy the care and attention of the savior of its species—and its friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Robert L. Forward writes science fiction novels and short stories, as well as science fact books and magazine articles. Through his scientific consulting company, Forward Unlimited, he also engages in contracted research on advanced space propulsion and exotic physical phenomena. Dr. Forward obtained his Ph.D. in Gravitational Physics from the University of Maryland. For his thesis he constructed and operated the world's first bar antenna for the detection of gravitational radiation. The antenna is now at the Smithsonian museum.
For 31 years, from 1956 until 1987, when he left in order to spend more time writing, Dr. Forward worked at the Hughes Aircraft Company Corporate Research Laboratories in Malibu, California in positions of increasing responsibility, culminating with the position of Senior Scientist on the staff to the Director of the Laboratories. During that time he constructed and operated the world's first laser gravitational radiation detector, invented the rotating gravitational mass sensor, published over 65 technical publications, and was awarded 18 patents.
From 1983 to the present, Dr. Forward has had a series of contracts from the U.S. Air Force and NASA to explore the forefront of physics and engineering in order to find breakthrough concepts in space power and propulsion. He has published journal papers and contract reports on antiproton annihilation propulsion, laser beam and microwave beam interstellar propulsion, negative matter propulsion, space tethers, space warps, and a method for extracting electrical energy from vacuum fluctuations, and was awarded a patent for a Statite: a sunlight-levitated direct-broadcast solar-sail spacecraft that does not orbit the earth, but "hovers" over the North Pole.
In addition to his professional publications, Dr. Forward has written over 80 popular science articles for publications such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook, Omni, New Scientist, Aerospace America, Science Digest, Science 80, Analog, and Galaxy. His most recent science fact books are Future Magic and Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics (with Joel Davis). His science fiction novels are Dragon's Egg and its sequel Starquake, Martian Rainbow, Timemaster, The Flight of the Dragonfly (published by Baen Books in a longer version as Rocheworld), and Camelot 30K. He is presently in the process of writing four sequels to Rocheworld with members of his family. The first sequel, Return To Rocheworld, was written with his daughter, Julie Forward Fuller, while this sequel, Marooned On Eden, was written with his wife, Martha Dodson Forward. The novels are of the "hard" science fiction category, where the science is as accurate as possible.
Dr. Forward is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and former Editor of the Interstellar Studies issues of its Journal, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, Sigma Pi Sigma, National Space Society, the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Author's Guild.
Martha Dodson Forward obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of South Carolina in 1956 and took graduate courses at UCLA. Her primary literary output consists of letters to a wide circle of family and friends, some of whom save them assiduously with the fond and foolish hope of becoming wealthy from their publication after her demise.
THE END
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