Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01]

by Edited By Martin Grrenburg

  But Vickers had no opportunity to note this fact. He watched the cumulus banner above the hill fade into the haze astern; and when it was out of sight, he gave his attention to the landscape unfolding below them. It seemed a sufficiently pleasant country, of forested hills and open plains; but a close inspection of the forests showed great tree-ferns and fungi rather than normal trees, and Vickers knew that in Hekla’s ten or twelve years of winter even this coastal strip was a howling, blizzard-racked desert of snow and ice; and just out of sight to the right as they followed the seacoast southward was the remnant of a giant ice cap where the heights were still snow-capped even at this season.

  Rodin was only moderately interested in the view, until the coast began to curve gently westward. Then he began to make careful checks, using one of the maps he had obtained at the weather station. Several times he lowered the ship to the water, checking its depth and temperature; frequently he cruised as low as was safe among the hills and above the trees, examining Vickers knew not what characteristic of the planet’s surface. The meteorologist’s pile of notes and computations grew in thickness, while Vickers did little save look on and enjoy himself.

  Southward they drove, breaking away from the coast and moving far out over a broad stretch of sea, until the geodet told them they were nearly above the equator; then westward, still dropping occasionally for Rodin’s perpetual measurements, over more water, interrupted at times by islands. Twice they saw what were evidently Heklan communities; each time they were small, but each boasted a landing strip similar to, but much longer than, the one on Observatory Hill. Several winged aircraft were parked in the open near each strip, and a single machine, similar in exterior design to the terrestrian lifeboat. Vickers was curious about its method of propulsion, since the Heklans were without atomic power, but he did not bother to descend to investigate.

  For ninety hours they chased the sun, veering far enough to right and left to examine the near shores of most of the continental masses.

  Each time they did so, Rodin expressed greater confidence in his plan; and as the geodet told them that they were again approaching the longitude of Observatory Hill, he swung the ship northward, prepared to argue its merits to the limit.

  Vickers took over the controls for a time, to let the meteorologist straighten out the last of his paper work. It was a token job, since the automatic controls were holding the craft on course and at a constant pressure altitude. They were cruising at a very moderate speed, since Rodin wanted time for his work; they were, Vickers calculated, about an hour and a half from the observatory. The usual layer of haze was overhead—thicker than normal, Vickers decided; the red sunlight pouring through the upper ports seemed less intense than usual.

  He did not see the clouds until they were less than twenty miles ahead. It was the first extensive cumulus development he had seen on Hekla, and he debated calling Rodin; but he decided such clouds could not be too unusual, and failed to do so. He simply sat and watched the wall of vapor grow more distinct as the little ship approached it. It extended as far as he could see on either side and—up. An airplane pilot of an earlier century would not have come within miles of that angry black barrier; Rodin might have decided to go over it, but Vickers let the automatic controls carry the tiny machine straight into its heart. Even then, if the altitude control had been connected to the radio altimeter, no harm might have been done; unfortunately, Vickers had tied it in to the atmospheric pressure gauge, in anticipation of reaching land.

  ~ * ~

  The initial turbulence made no impression on ship or occupants; but five seconds after the sun had faded from sight the ship stuck its nose into the low pressure of an updraft, and Vickers left his seat. For several seconds he was dazed by the force with which his head struck the ceiling. In those few seconds the ship lost six thousand feet of altitude as the automatic controls sought a level of pressure equal to that at which they had been set. Before they succeeded, and before Vickers could regain his feet and the manual controls, the updraft was passed; and he was pressed helplessly against the deck as the ship plunged upward again. As it slowed, he seized the back of his chair and tried to brace himself against the sickening motion. For a moment he was partially successful, and he dared to let go with one hand in order to reach once more for the controls. As he touched them, there was a violent sideward lurch; and his hand, instead of striking the toggle controlling the altitude mechanism, opened the bar switch handling the sensation currents from the attitude gyros on the automatic pilot.

  The ship could not have been out of control more than three or four minutes altogether; but those minutes were more than enough. Without the gyros, she no longer held an even keel, but pitched, yawed, rolled completely over again and again, still striving to follow the dictates of the altitude control. That barometer was sensitive enough for control in the upper stratosphere of planets like Earth and Thanno; and in the tremendous pressure changes accompanying turbulence in Hekla’s dense atmosphere the little device went mad. Vickers, dazed and bleeding, bouncing from floor to ceiling and wall to wall of the control room, finally managed to hold on to the board long enough and firmly enough to set the selector at zero pressure. Still bucking and rolling, the ship went shooting upwards, and at last broke out into the crimson sunlight-----more than thirty kilometers above the ocean, if the radio altimeter could be believed. The air was calmer here, and the ship quieted down enough for Vickers to level it by manual control, reset the toppled attitude gyros, and cut them in again.

  With a steady deck once more under his feet, he staggered back to the library where Rodin had been working. The meteorologist had taken a beating, but had suffered less damage than Vickers, owing chiefly to the fact that the library furniture was for the most part heavily upholstered. He made acrid inquiry into the cause of the disturbance, and was not particularly sympathetic with Vickers’ injuries. They went forward to the control room together, and Vickers gazed through the port at the innocent-looking, fluffy pink mass below them while Rodin applied antiseptic and dressings to his contusions. When he had finished this job, the meteorologist began to observe, too.

  ~ * ~

  Vickers had halted the ship when he had regained control, and they were hanging motionless above the wall of vapor. They were still in sight of the edge where they had entered it; and when Rodin set the ship in motion again, they ran within a few minutes into an almost equally sharp termination on the other side. The front was only thirty or forty miles wide; and this, together with the altitude of the cumulus barrier, indicated a frontal slope that made Rodin whistle. Then he stopped to think; and the more he thought the less he was able to understand how a mass of cold air of such size and, apparently, extreme low temperature could have wandered so far from the pole in midsummer. Then he remembered the violence which had resulted from a very slight temperature change, during the warm front he had watched at Observatory Hill; and he took the ship down on the cold side of the front to the altitude at which they had been flying when they ran into trouble, and compared temperatures. The difference was not great, but it was far greater than had been the case on the other occasion; and considering the density and other peculiarities of Hekla’s atmosphere, it could account for such a violent front. It remained to account for the air mass. Rodin began to think out loud, as he considered this problem.

  “This stuff appears to be of polar continental origin, judging by its temperature and dryness,” he said. “It’s not extremely cold, but in Hekla’s atmosphere it could still have formed over the polar ice cap, and probably did. On Earth, such a mass couldn’t come anything like this far south in summer. The normal surface circulation is too strong for it, and remains too strong as long as the ground is receiving much solar energy. However, it could be forced down like this if we supposed another, still colder, mass to the east of its source region, against which it was carried by the normal trade circulation and thence deflected southward. Also, a general cooling of the continental areas to the south o
f the source region might permit it to be carried down here around a normal cyclone.

  “Either supposition demands a decrease in ground surface temperature comparable to that experienced at the onset of winter. I can’t imagine any large area waiting until this late in the summer to become covered by snow; but I can’t see any other means of dropping the temperature of a large area to any great extent, unless the axis of the planet shifts enough to decrease insolation in this hemisphere.” He grinned wryly as he made that remark; he realized perfectly well that the application of sufficient force to shift the axis of a major planet would buckle its crust at the very least, and more probably disrupt the world.

  “How about night cooling?” asked Vickers. “This planet rotates more slowly than Earth.”

  “Not enough; in summer the nights are short anyway; and why would it wait until now, fully two Earth years after midsummer, to take effect?”

  “Then how about this mist that seems to have been cutting off some of the sunlight of the last day or two? You must have noticed it—it appears to be above any level at which we’ve flown, so it can’t be very dense; but it seems to be practically planet-wide, and cuts off enough light for me to notice without instruments.”

  “I hadn’t noticed it particularly,” said Rodin thoughtfully. “A high layer of water vapor or dust would have a blanketing effect, and would actually increase surface temperature, even though it cut off some visible light. However, there’s something to the idea; the stuff might just possibly have a high reflecting power, I suppose. It won’t hurt us to go up and find this layer, anyway.”

  ~ * ~

  Rodin went back to the controls, and started the ship climbing slowly. Then he started the recorder of the radiograph he had set up at one of the portholes when he had first arrived, and waited while they rose through the thinning atmosphere to a level at which the outside pressure was no longer detectable. There he stopped ship and recorder, and removed the graph from the latter. The haze layer, if it existed, should have betrayed its presence by a more or less sharp break in the curve—or rather, a change

  in its slope—at the proper level; but Rodin, to his disgust, was unable to find anything of the sort by visual inspection. He was beginning to check the instrument for flaws that would affect its sensitivity, when Vickers remarked that the sun seemed still to be rather weaker than usual—rather as Sol would appear from Earth during a partial eclipse, allowing for the difference in their intrinsic luminosities.

  “An eclipse?” queried Rodin. “Hekla has only two satellites big enough and near enough to produce a respectable eclipse; and even the partial phase would last only a few hours. You noticed this dimness a couple of days ago.”

  He went to the port and looked up at the sun. From Hekla’s surface the human eye could bear to look directly at R Coronae’s immense disk, but here above the atmosphere it was a little too bright for comfort. He rummaged in a drawer under the control panel, found a pair of shielded goggles; with these he approached the port again, and looked long and earnestly at the fuzzy crimson blot hanging in the blackness of space. At last he called Vickers, gave him the goggles, and asked him to look, describe, and if possible explain what he saw. Vickers obediently donned the eye shields and went to the port.

  He had seen red giant suns before—who hadn’t? He was familiar with the brilliant crimson or orange disks, with brightness fading rapidly toward the ill-defined edges, bordered by a faintly luminous rim of atmosphere that faded rapidly outward against the star-shot background of the Galaxy. R Coronae should have been the same.

  Perhaps it was, he thought at last. Perhaps it did have a normal disk; but he couldn’t see it—at least, not all of it. The lower quarter was visible, fading as it should and equipped with a normal atmosphere rim. A short distance up from this lower edge, however, a black line was etched across the crimson, projecting on each side. Where it appeared against the background of space, it glowed very faintly red. Above the line the stellar disk was hidden almost completely, as though by a cloud whose edge was represented by the border of black. The cloud, if it was a cloud, apparently grew thinner toward the top; for the upper side of the disk was faintly visible through it. Vickers slid the goggles up on his forehead and took a quick look at the sun without them. He could see the foggy disk, and was just able to make out the dark line. Evidently the “cloud” actually cut off less light than the view through the shields indicated; but if, as it appeared, the appendage were attached to the star rather than to Hekla itself, a drop in temperature was not very surprising. He turned away from the port and addressed Rodin, who was waiting impatiently.

  “If clouds are possible in a star’s atmosphere, I’d say you had something on R Coronae quite similar to this cold front of yours right below us,” he said. “If it happens very often, I suppose it’s the explanation of the star’s variability.” He made this statement, so staggering to the meteorologist, in such a matter-of-fact tone that it was several seconds before Rodin could find voice. Finally he half-spoke, half-choked:

  “You...you mean you have known all along that this star is a variable, and didn’t think it worth while to tell me? You mean—” he sputtered, and lost voice again; and Vickers realized that the color of his face was not entirely due to the sunlight.

  “Of course I knew it was a variable; didn’t you? Most of the red giants are, to a slight extent, but it doesn’t particularly bother the planets of Betelgeuse and Antares. I remembered that, and looked up this star in the type index before we arrived. It gave a C.I. and size about the same as the giants I mentioned, and was marked ‘V’ as they were, so I supposed it was the same sort of business here.”

  ~ * ~

  Rodin did not answer, but turned on his heel and strode back to the library, Vickers close behind. He found the index Vickers had used, checked its source of information, and located the indicated volume on the shelves. He thumbed through this for a moment, stopped, and read silently for a minute or two; then he handed the tome to Vickers and indicated the proper section. Vickers read, and slowly understood.

  “—a Coronae Borealis is the name-star of a group of suns characterized photometrically by a light-curve of the form shown, and spectroscopically by the presence of strong carbon indications. It was suggested long before interstellar travel was achieved that the light variations were caused by temporary condensations of carbon vapor in the stellar atmospheres; and the correctness of this assumption was shown in the excellent series of photographs made by the Galactic Survey ship Zenith, which follow the formation of masses of carbon clouds through a full cycle from the beginning of condensation to complete dispersal. The actual mechanism and processes involved have not been closely studied, but it has been suggested that such a study should be conducted by a composite board of astrophysicists and meteorologists, as the phenomena seem to bear strong resemblance to those of planetary weather.

  “ ‘The Zenith noted the presence of two planets in a cursory photographic sweep of the R Coronae system, but they were not closely examined, nor was the possibility of the presence of others eliminated.’ “

  Rodin nodded slowly as Vickers finished his reading.

  “You called the shot very nicely a few minutes ago,” he said, “when you called that black line a cold front. I should say that you were one hundred percent right. Blast it, to be a meteorologist in this system I’d have to know more astrophysics than a lot of Federation professors. You’ve certainly let me make an awful idiot of myself in front of those Heklans.”

  “Do you really think so?” asked Vickers seriously. “I don’t see how they could expect you to know any better. You’re a meteorologist, not an astronomer, as you said.”

  “On this planet, the distinction is probably narrow to the point of invisibility. Their weather men would have to be first-rate solar physicists. I must have seemed to them like a self-opinionated, bungling incompetent—insisting time after time on the feasibility of a plan whose greatest flaw would have been obvious to
a Heklan layman. I don’t want to go back to that station, Alf—I couldn’t face one of those people now.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to,” replied Vickers. “I sympathize with you, and am extremely sorry for your sake that it turned out this way; but from my point of view it’s the best thing that could have happened. I hoped for something good to eventuate from your visit, but I didn’t dare hope for this much.”

  ~ * ~

  Rodin’s interjection at this point was of an interrogative and profane nature. Vickers smiled slightly, set the ship in motion once again toward Observatory Hill, and began to explain.

  “I told you at the time of your arrival,” he said, “that I feared I had unwittingly aroused in our hosts a fear of the competitive aspects of our Federation culture. That was quite true and correct, so far as it went. There was a little more than that to the situation, however. The Heklans had appreciated a still more fundamental fact about us. With interplanetary and interstellar travel, an already existing and working form of interworld government, with our knowledge of space and time and matter which cropped up occasionally and inevitably in my conversations with Serrnak Deg, it was glaringly obvious to them that our civilization was materially far in advance of theirs; that their achievements, compared to ours, were childish. As that realization sank in, they began to react in a fashion too painfully human not to be recognized.