Their preliminary survey of the Gargantuan Z-system completed, Jinjur started the long trip back into the inner Barnard system to map Rocheworld, the most interesting feature of this strange stellar system. She had just accepted James's spiral course recommendation when Red, who had been watching with interest over her shoulder said, "Why are you doing it that way? It'll take forever."
Jinjur smiled as she patiently explained. "I sure wish this tub had the instantaneous rocket power that the ion ships do. You're spoiled, Red. Those laser-beam-powered ion rockets that you used in the asteroid belt got you used to 'driving' from one place to another. These lightsails have to 'sail'. It may take longer, but we never run out of fuel."
"Yeah..." said Red, still not convinced. "But you light-jammers never had to give up half your claim on a billion tons of nickel-iron just to get a fuel stake for your next trip. Out on the belt we learned a lot of tricks that would cut down on the light bill." She turned and looked around the control deck.
"Where's a console? I want to do a few orbit calculations." She spotted an empty console, padded over, and fixed herself down.
A half-hour later, James whispered to Jinjur through her imp. "I think Elizabeth has something," it said. "I have a copy of my answer to her latest query on your screen."
Jinjur glanced down. She had been relaxing and looking around her control deck while James slowly carried out the orbit raising routine. It took her a few seconds to readjust her orientation since the orbit Red had calculated for Prometheus was nearly at right angles to the one that James was using.
It took Jinjur a while to appreciate what she saw, since her past experience in space had been on lightsails in Earth orbit. She blanked the screen as she heard a rip from a coverall detaching itself from a console seat, the soft pad-pad of low-gee feet making their way across the room, then Red's semi-apologetic voice.
"General Jones?"
"Its Jinjur, or Virginia if you insist on being formal, Red. I have the feeling that you have something important to tell me."
Red, nonplussed, hesitated, then began. "We're presently in a low polar orbit about Gargantua and are planning to stay in that orbit while we spiral out..."
"Right," said Jinjur. "We'll stay in polar orbit, making sure it stays sun-synchronous so we don't waste any time in Gargantua's shadow. Then we'll tip over and spiral into an orbit in Barnard's ecliptic plane to match orbits with Rocheworld."
"If instead," persisted Red, "we switched to an equatorial orbit as rapidly as we could, we could get out faster and catch Rocheworld earlier."
"Really?" asked Jinjur. "We'd spend half of our time in shadow." She was practically convinced because of what James had shown her, but she still didn't really understand.
"As I said before," continued Red. "When you have to dig into your own pockets for fuel, you quickly pick up all the ways you can to get free propulsion. Even the smallest asteroid can be of some help.
"If we switch to an equatorial orbit now, and time things accurately, we can be crossing Zulu's orbit just in back of it, and it will toss us out to Zouave. We will actually want to decelerate a little before we hit that orbit, but if we do that right, I figure we can gravity-whip this parasol out past six of the moons and arrive at Rocheworld seven weeks early."
Jinjur pulled up a copy of Red's screen, looked at it for a moment, and then in a semi-serious tone spoke at the imp above her right ear. "You hear that, James? You should've spent more time riding ion ships instead of dandelion-seeds."
"Yes, General Jones," said James contritely.
"Do you think you can improve on Red's trajectory?" she said severely.
"With difficulty, General Jones."
"Do it."
"Yes, General Jones."
There was a three second pause. Even Red knew that most of it was for her benefit. The screen blinked, and there in purple was an alternate trajectory. It followed Red's almost exactly for the first four moons, then drifted off. After the fifth moon it added another before it took off for the last moon and Rocheworld. Jinjur saw Red nod in approval.
"We can save three more hours this way," said James.
Jinjur bent down to examine her screen, then asked, "Is the hook in the trajectory 'cause we're meeting Rocheworld on the outbound leg?"
"Yes. By using Red's suggested orbit, we not only make up the time we lost studying Gargantua's atmospheric volcano, we will arrive at Rocheworld some ten days or forty rotations from when it makes its closest approach to Gargantua."
"Good," said Jinjur. "I wasn't looking forward to spending all that time chasing the egghead twins all over the system."
When Prometheus had first arrived at Gargantua, Rocheworld was on the inbound leg of its highly elliptical trajectory. While they were taking pictures of the giant planet and its moons, the tiny double-planet went through its close periapsis passage about Barnard. The point of closest approach was on the same side of the star that they were, and they tried to follow it across the distant red disk with telescopes, but most of the detail was hidden by the deep red glare of the fuzzy globe of light. Rocheworld was now coming out again to meet them, slowing rapidly as it climbed up out of the deep gravity well. They dropped inward, then applied full braking power to turn around and match orbits with the twin planets.
Like a pirouetting pair of gumdrops, the two planetoids that made up Rocheworld whirled along their orbit. The two lobes were distorted into egg shapes that looked like an infinity symbol when seen through Thomas's low power electrocamera lens. Six years later, the scientifically blurred, but artistically fascinating image was "the" Christmas card of 2076.
Jinjur approached the double planet with caution.
"Don't get too close," said Jinjur. "I want you to spiral in slowly and monitor the shape of the sail as you do. The rotating double-lobed gravity pattern of that eggbeater is something that neither you, nor I, nor the designers of the sail ever had any experience with."
"I am already noticing some tilt-brim flutter of the sail," said James. "It is easily damped out by the actuators."
"Just don't get careless," warned Jinjur. "The last thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life under an umbrella with a tear in it."
Jinjur padded to the science consoles and looked over the shoulders of Sam and Richard as they busily ordered the various image sensors into operation. There were mechanical sounds from the center of the Control deck as different sensors emerged from their storage places, took their turn looking out the Barnardside science dome at the nearby planets, then retracting back again into their niches.
"How does it look?" she asked.
"The visible and infra-red images are excellent," said Sam. "But the X-ray and gamma-ray images are blurred by the atmosphere. Also, the radio images show nothing but modest temperature variations. There doesn't seem to be any radiation belts, which means a low magnetic field."
"Does that mean there is no shielding from cosmic rays?" asked Jinjur, slightly concerned.
"Nothing to worry about," said Sam. "Although the atmospheric pressure is only twenty percent of Earth's, the gravity is lower so the scale height is much higher. There is a deep blanket of air to stop the cosmic rays. In fact, it's so thick that the two planets share a common atmosphere."
"I think we'll be able to fly from one lobe to another in the Dragonfly without having to switch to rocket propulsion," said Richard.
"That doesn't sound right to me," said Jinjur. "Aren't they a couple of hundred kilometers apart? Increased scale height or no, there isn't going to be much atmosphere left at those altitudes."
"The gap is only eighty kilometers," replied Richard. "And don't forget that the gravity drops to zero between the two planets, so the 'gravitational' altitude there is different than the physical altitude."
"What a weird planet," said Jinjur. "What else have you learned?"
"Why don't you show her some of the pictures," said Sam. "While I keep the science sensors going."
Richard flashed some images across his screen in rapid succession and then stopped at a picture that showed the two lobes fully illuminated, with Barnard in back of the camera.
"This is the best shot that we have that shows the egg-shaped tidal distortion of the two lobes," said Richard. "That particular shape was first calculated by Roche in the 1880s. He was primarily interested in calculating the shapes of two closely spaced binary stars. I'm sure he never thought there'd be a binary planet system named after him."
He switched to a close-up picture of one of the lobes. It showed a mountainous region with deep valleys.
"Sure looks rocky," said Jinjur.
"That's why this lobe of Rocheworld is called the Roche lobe," said Richard. "It just happens that the word "roche" means "rock" in French."
"How come the valleys are all going the same way?" asked Jinjur.
"That's the rift valley region," said Richard. "Let me get another version."
The screen flickered some more and finally stopped with a closeup picture of a large conical mountain peak with a rounded top and sixty degree slopes.
"That's the pointy part of the Roche egg," said Richard. "The mountain peak is a part of the original Roche sphere that was pulled up into this shape as the two planets slowly came toward each other due to tidal friction. Sam and I expect that the rift valleys were formed at that time, with the 'stretch marks' in rings where the material was pulled up. What we don't understand are the deep valleys going 'downhill'. They look almost like river valleys, but are completely dry. It'll be one of the first things we want to look at when we land there."
"What's that fuzzy thing there on the side of the mountain?" she asked.
"That's a volcano," said Richard. "You would expect a lot of tectonic activity in a region under as much stress as that one. Here, let me get some action in the picture." He punched a few keys, then the picture was replaced by a twelve-image stop-motion replay of the eruption of two volcanos on each side of the conical mountain. The plumes blossomed straight out from the sides.
"How come the plumes don't fall downhill?" said Jinjur.
"That's one of the strangest things about the shapes that the Roche mathematics predicts," said Richard. "The surface of that conical mountain with its sixty degree slopes is all at the same gravitational potential, even though the shape is not a sphere. The same goes for the other lobe, where the mountain is made of water."
Richard switched to another image. There was the same conical shape, but Jinjur could tell from the color and smoothness that it was the surface of an ocean.
"This is the wet lobe," said Richard. "Its named the Eau lobe since 'eau' means 'water' in French. Its shape is almost identical to that of the Roche lobe, except that its surface is almost completely covered with a water-ammonia ocean. The ocean is shallow on the outer portion of the lobe, because we can see some crater rims and mountain peaks showing through, while on the inner portion the ocean gets much deeper because it is pulled up into a mountain by the gravitational attraction of its twin."
"It still looks like it ought to fall down," said Jinjur.
"It's even more remarkable since the gravity at the top of the mountain is only a half-percent of an Earth gravity, while at the base of the mountain the gravity rises to ten percent of Earth gravity. This is one time you have to forget your long-taught prejudices about the behavior of water under gravity and believe the mathematics. The surface of that water mountain is all at the same gravitational potential and the water is just seeking its natural level. The mountain doesn't just stand there looking impossible, though. There's plenty of action. Let me show you the movie that Sam and I pieced together. Roll it, James."
As the double-planets rotated about each other each six hours, the tides and heat generated by Barnard pushed the ocean and atmosphere around. Each half-rotation, the water mountain would drop twenty kilometers, then rise again, driven by the tides, while the atmosphere, driven by a combination of tides and heat, sloshed back and forth once per revolution. When the water mountain was rising and the atmosphere was going from Roche to Eau, the peak would be strangely calm, with only small breakers showing at its base, for the air was rushing down the slopes. Three hours later, the wind would be blowing up along the rising slopes of water. As the wind moved upwards, it drove the water ahead of it. The wind-driven swells moved upwards toward the peak where the gravitation was weaker and the surface area was smaller. The energy in the wave motion was concentrated into a smaller area and there was less gravity to keep the wave amplitude down, so the swells grew into waves that reached hundreds of meters in height as the gravitation and the available surface area dropped to nearly zero at the same time. The ring-waves climbing up the mountain became larger and larger and finally met in a ring-geyser that shot a fountain of foamy water up toward the zero gravity point between the planets. There the geyser dissolved into a spray of water vapor, some of which drifted across the zero gravity point to spawn tornadoes and thunderheads that dropped rain that dried to salt-specks before it reached the rocky surface below.
"A lovely place," remarked Jinjur. "Shall we drop in for a visit?"
"Yes!" said Richard. "Drop us down right on the equator of the rocky one. That's far enough from the tornado belt that the lander won't be disturbed, and Sam can poke around in the rocks while I go fishing on the other lobe."
"This planet is the dream of an astrodynamicist," said Thomas. "I'd like to 'bug' it all over before we go down for a close look, especially the Lagrange points. They're very sensitive to orbital perturbations."
"I thought you only had Lagrange minima when one mass is bigger than the other, like the Sun and Jupiter," said Jinjur.
"They're much more stable then," said Thomas. "Especially the co-orbit points. But you get almost the same thing when the two masses are the same size. There is the obvious minimum where the gravity drops to zero between the two planets, then there are the famous L-4 and L-5 points, the only truly stable ones."
"Those I know about," said Jinjur. "They're always sixty degrees ahead or behind the planet in its orbit around the sun."
"In this system it's different," said Thomas. "Since the two planetoids are the same size, the Lagrange points are not at sixty degrees, but ninety degrees. That's where I want to put the communication satellites. The gravity minimum will keep them there with minimum fuel, and any perturbations will give my Rocheworld computer model some exercise. Perhaps we'll learn something."
"Will the commsats be able to communicate well from there?" asked Jinjur.
"Two commsats at the L-4 and L-5 points will cover most of the two worlds except for the outer poles," said Thomas. "I propose to put another commsat in counter orbit to their rotation so that we are never more than three hours from contact with any point on the two lobes."
"Fine," said Jinjur. "You and Shirley go up the shaft and break them out and transfer them to the lander."
Thomas headed for the lift shaft. James had informed Shirley, and just as the lift was rising through the ceiling of the control deck, there was a jerk of the lift as James jammed it to a halt, just in time to prevent the edge of the lift from cutting the flying body of Shirley in two as she streaked to join Thomas on the doughnut shaped platform of the lift.
"Shirley," said James in a dry voice.
"Don't try that 'tired Butler' voice on me, James," said Shirley. "I designed you with plenty of safety margin in the lift elevator. I merely used a little of that margin for my last dive. Up we go!"
The lift started again and went up through the ceiling to level twenty. There, three commsats, Clete, Walter, and Barbara were activated and carried to the hydroponics deck. Nels Larson met them there, and with his massive muscular arms, helped push the three high-inertia loads down the humid green world of water-filled walls—the fact that Nels had no legs making no difference in this low-gee world. They stopped at a porthole in the ceiling. It was open, and Thomas looked up to see the innards of Eagle and the flashing green limbs and short red hair of a busy heavy-lift pilot strapped into a blue acceleration harness, checking out a long dormant, sleeping-giant of a rocket. Crouching low, he launched himself through the porthole overhead, then reached down to take one of the commsats from Nels.
As Shirley stored the commsats away, Thomas went over to talk to Red, hanging upside down in her harness. She looked up from the console.
"I've found one malfunction and three 'out of spec' indicators in the countdown list, and they're all on outside sensors," she said. "I was going to send a branch out to investigate, but why don't you do it." Red busied herself at the console while Thomas made his way upwards from the bridge deck of Eagle, through the pristine but cramped crew quarters deck to the 'bottom' deck. Everything was upside down from what it would be once Eagle were under acceleration or sitting on one of the planetoids of the Barnard system. He put on a suit, then went to the side air lock and punched some keys built into the wall next to the door. A strange, yet familiar, computer voice spoke to him. It was Jack, James's alter ego for the computer in the Surface Lander and Ascent Module.
"I can have the Christmas Branch make the inspection," said Jack.
"They taught me in flight school to always check out my plane before I fly," said Thomas. The door hissed open and Thomas stepped in onto the ceiling of the air lock. After some pumping noises, his suit ballooned out and the outer door swung open. The strange accent of Jack spoke through his suit imp.
"Don't forget James has Prometheus under acceleration. Please use your safety lines," said Jack.
"Right," said Thomas, fastening a hook into a nearby ring and stepping out. He activated his 'stiction boots and moved along the curved hull of the massive rocket. He worried a little about the stability of the forty-year-old fuel under his feet, but there was little he could do about it now, for the nearest fuel depot was six lightyears away. He marched down the hull in the low acceleration to the 'top' of the lander to check out the errant sensor modules.
"Three tired solid-state detectors and one micro-meteorite strike," said Thomas to Red as he took off his helmet and handed it to Shirley. "I upped the voltage on the detectors and they're back in spec, and the Christmas Bush sent out a branch with a replacement for the punctured unit."
The lander soon filled up with its crew, who were busy shifting their personal belongings from their luxurious apartments on Prometheus to the crowded vertical beds they would be using during the short periods in space while the Eagle was in free fall. A day passed, the checkout was completed, and it was time to go. Jinjur escorted George to the lock between the Eagle and Prometheus.
"I wish I were going down," said Jinjur.
"I thought you never wanted to see dirt again," said George. "Especially if it had gees holding it down."
"It's only a tenth gee," said Jinjur. "Besides," she said wistfully, "It's been forty-four years."
"Doesn't time fly when you're mentally incompetent," said George. "OK. Next planet you get to go down with the exploration crew and I stay at home minding the ship. See you in a few months."
"Take your time and do it right," said Jinjur. "We have all the rest of our lives to spend exploring, but only four landers."
"I will," said George. He reached for Jinjur's shirtfront and half unfastened the button under the most tension, then fastened it again.
"See you soon, he said, pulling her forward for a long goodbye kiss. He turned and went through the airlock door, making sure it was space-sealed.
Now that he was on board Eagle, George's personal imp was no longer controlled by James.
"Eagle ready for departure, sir," said Jack.
"Let's go," George replied. He heard pumps working and the outer lock door creaked slightly as the air in the small volume between the Eagle and Prometheus was pumped out. His imp jumped to the door and searched the seams for any sign of leakage. Finding none, it jumped back to his shoulder. For a few seconds George felt both naked and bereft. James could afford the luxury of a lock-imp on Prometheus. Life would be more spartan for Jack's landing crew, since only a Christmas "Branch", a one-sixth portion of a Christmas Bush, was assigned to the Eagle's computer.
George cycled through. Shirley was waiting for him, standing on the ceiling. She and Jack's Christmas Branch double-checked the docking airlock, then Shirley returned to help Sam check out the many instruments on the science consoles. Both were apparently able to read the labels and indicators as easily upside-down as rightside-up. George paused at the wedge-shaped passway through to the next deck, and holding onto the ladder rungs welded into the consumables column that ran through the center of the ship he looked up to see Arielle, Richard, and Katrina busy stuffing equipment and supplies into the storage bins next to the galley.
"Breakaway in five minutes," he warned.
"We'll be ready," answered Katrina.
George continued around the central column, walking on the ceiling of the bridge. Carefully avoiding the large glass docking window at his feet, he nodded at Thomas and Red, who were buckled into the blue pilot and red copilot harnesses in front of their consoles, then continued on to the computer and communication consoles.
"Jack is ready," said David Greystoke up at George. Like the two pilots, David was hanging from the floor in a zero-gee harness.
"Prometheus has given us clearance for breakaway," said Carmen from the console next to David's.
"Take her away, Captain St. Thomas," said George.
Thomas grasped the controls and nodded at Red. She flicked a red switch cover and threw the switch underneath. There was a loud clunk from the docking port, followed by a series of clattering ripples as the clamps that had held Eagle to the outside of the lift shaft on Prometheus were retracted. Nothing happened, for they were still held to the sailship by its acceleration.
Thomas pushed a control forward, and the bridge crew hanging from the ceiling sagged a little further in their harnesses as the acceleration increased. Thomas and Red looked out their docking port window as the huge cylinder tilted and swung out from its cradle on the light ship. As soon as the edge of the hydroponics deck on Prometheus had been cleared, Thomas switched to other control jets and slowly flew the ponderous cylinder out through the shrouds and away from the sail.
"The Eagle has left its nest," said George sideways to his imp.
"Good hunting, Eagle," said Jinjur's voice.
Once Thomas had pulled them away from their berth and out from between the shrouds, he turned off the maneuvering jets and they were in free fall. Suddenly George felt upside-down, and quickly floated around to point the same way as the rest of the crew. He left Thomas and Red to the task of moving them safely away from the sail so they could turn on their main motors, and dived through the passway to see what there was to eat in the galley.
"This sure is easier than trying to leave a tumbling asteroid," said Red, as she watched out the docking port at the slowly twirling lightsail and its cylindrical payload with the wedge-shaped gap in one side.
"All we have to do is stay cool and float, while the sunlight pushes it out of our way," said Thomas.
After about an hour Prometheus was twenty kilometers away. Using low thrust from the main rockets, Thomas steered the Eagle away from the sail and into a rendezvous orbit with Rocheworld.
For two days they spiraled in from orbit, letting Jack get used to the strange double-lobed rotating gravitational field, and taking detailed closeup pictures of their planned landing place.
"Looks just like Mars," said Sam to Richard.
"With fewer boulders," said Richard as he blew up the picture on the screen until he could see the pixels. "Looks like it's been swept clean. We could land just about anywhere with no trouble."
"Why don't we make it by this mesa," said Sam. That ten meter scarp should give us a good cross section of the crust for a first look."
"Looks like the edge of a stream-bed," said Richard.
"So do a lot of features on Mars," said Sam. "But all those streams flowed millions of years ago, and the waters that flowed are dried up and gone away. On Mars the water that wasn't lost to space was turned into rust or frozen in the polar caps. Here the erosion probably occurred when the Gargantuan moon and the interloper first interacted, but since Eau is some twenty kilometers smaller than Roche, the rain clouds formed over the lowlands on Eau rather than up in the Roche mountain plateau, and all the water ended up on Eau. I bet those stream beds are as old, if not older, than the ones on Mars."
"The only way to find out is to go down and count craters," said Richard. "But don't you want to land on the mesa, just in case?"
"Then my excursions on the dirt-buggy will be limited to the mesa," said Sam. "And I plan to take longer trips than that. The stream-bed near the cliff, Jack."
"I will inform Captain St. Thomas," said Jack.
Eagle approached Rocheworld in the ecliptic plane, but going in the opposite direction to the spin of the planetoids. As they moved closer and closer, the orbital track on Red's pilot console took on a wavy appearance as the two lobes pulled the track this way and that.
"Having any navigation problems, Jack?" she asked her imp.
"Newton's laws are still valid, Red, even though it may not look like it on the track replay. I do have to carry the calculations a little further than normal before I truncate the series, though."
"I'm glad you're doing this and not me," said Red. "Intuition can get you in trouble this close to those whirling dervishes."
"Intuition has served humans well," said Jack. "It's their strongest point as a computational system. However, like most strengths, it is also one of their weakest points."
Thomas overheard the exchange.
"Don't feel bad, Red," he said. "I think you're the best looking computational system I've ever seen."
Red smiled and somehow felt a lot better.
"It's time to release Barbara," said Jack.
"I'll get her," said Shirley, who had been floating around the deck with little to do. She pulled herself over to one side of the bridge and opened a storage locker.
"I'd appreciate a hand out of here," said a contralto voice through Shirley's imp.
Shirley grasped the communications satellite carefully at the base of its antenna and pulled it free from its fasteners. She nudged the heavy spacecraft around the bend to the docking port entrance. Carefully she inserted the commsat in the exact center of the lock, making sure that its folded antennas would clear the outer door.
"Keep in touch, Barbara," she said.
"That's my job," said Barbara.
Shirley closed the door to the docking lock, then went around the central column and nodded at Red, who had moved to the pilot position. Red had fastened herself into the safety harness even though the planned acceleration would be negligible.
Red watched the orbital track until the wavy track had neared its minimum, then her finger gave a slight nudge to a button on her control stick. Shirley felt a slight tug on the sticky patches of her corridor boots.
"Nicely done," thought Shirley. "It's those years in the asteroid belt."
The velocity difference imparted by the tiny flare of control jet was small, but a minute later Shirley could see Barbara slowly rise up out of the docking port without a single trace of spin or tumble. When the commsat was about ten meters away Shirley sent it a message.
"You may fire control jets when ready, Barbara."
There was a burst of tiny jets as the spacecraft rotated its orientation, then a larger burst as the commsat took off to take up its station in an orbit that rotated in an opposite direction to the rotation of the two planetoids. That way, those areas at the outer poles that could not see the commsats at the L-4 and L-5 points would have access to Barbara once every three hours.
"This is Barbara, signing off," said the commsat as it flew out of sight.
With the commsat launched in its counter-rotating orbit, Red expertly rotated the huge cylinder end over end. As the spacecraft rotated to a halt, Red talked to her imp.
"Announce imminent gees to all hands, Jack," she said.
"Thrust will commence in one minute," boomed Jack's voice throughout the ship.
"Just a second," shouted Richard up through the passway. "Let me get my soap! I haven't had a real shower since we decelerated at Barnard.
There was a slam of some doors, and Shirley, monitoring the engineering board, noticed a light go on under the hygiene water expenditure sign. She shook her head. Red, serious as ever, checked over the main engine controls and glanced at Thomas, who nodded back. She pushed at the four-levered throttle bar. They went from free-fall to a tenth gee and stayed there, Red playing with the relative adjustments on the throttles as she looked at her track and the motion of the two lobes on her screen.
For a while Shirley could look out of the corner of the docking window in the ceiling of the bridge and see the outer poles of the two lobes moving majestically across her view, slowing perceptibly as Red decreased their counter-rotating orbital speed. As the thrust continued, the rocket tilted upward until the lobes could no longer be seen. Shirley climbed heavily down the passway on the ladder and clumped her way around to the viewport lounge. It was full, including a dripping Richard wrapped in a towel, ignoring the exasperated mosquito-imps that were attempting to cope with the drops of water in the accelerated environment.
The period of thrust lasted for fifteen minutes. The tilt of the spacecraft came back to horizontal, as the rotation of the lobes slowed and stopped until they were stationary in the sky. Barnard was in the sky and the two lobes were brilliantly lit with a flat red glow.
"We're at L-4, Shirley," said Red's voice through her imp. "Time to dump Clete off."
Shirley left her perch on the video room partition and floated her way back through the galley and up the passway to the storage locker.
"L-4, Clete," said Shirley.
"Jack so informed me, Miss Everett," said Clete through her imp. "If I might trouble you?"
"No trouble at all," said Shirley, taking the heavy satellite out of the locker and pushing it through the free-fall air to the docking port. "Just part of the taxi service."
She cycled the lock and went back to watch Red do another of her minimal bursts.
"You're on the up cycle, Clete," said Shirley. "Keep bouncing so we can see you at the cold poles."
"This is Clete, signing off," replied the commsat.
"Let's take a break before we insert the other one," said Thomas to Red.
"Let me move Eagle to the inside first," said Red. "With Clete bouncing up and down through the L-4 point, we don't want to be in its way when it comes back down through." She fired a burst from the attitude jets and then turned the controls over to Jack.
"Give Thomas and me a call in eight hours, Jack. We're going to rack up a few winks." Eagle's two pilots snaked their way down through the passway and George's grey thatch appeared in the wedge as soon as they left.
"Since it's going to be quiet for a while, Shirley, I thought you, Arielle, and I could check out Dragonfly."
"I'd like David along too," said Shirley, as she swam to the passway and ottered through.
"Are you sure the seals are OK, Jack?" said Shirley. "Shouldn't I wear a suit for the first time?"
"I have an imp inside both the lock and the boarding port," said Jack through her imp.
"I'll still suit up and go first," said Shirley. She gruffly pulled open the suit locker and got out her suit. "Here, George," she said, handing him her helmet. "Check me out."
"Sure, Shirley, sure," said George, helping her with a sleeve. For someone who could put a suit on with her eyes closed, she was suddenly awkward and clumsy.
David looked at George and then Arielle, who was trying to pretend she wasn't there. He finally put in his oar.
"Shirley," he said. "Stop being mad at yourself just because you're cautious. You're not being too fussy about safety. We're in no hurry. Just do your job, and do it right. The last thing we want to lose is you."
Shirley stopped in mid-jerk on a zipper. She took control of herself and the rest of the suiting took place in record time. In her full space-suit, she went through the first door of the airlock that would take them to the cockpit entrance of Dragonfly. The door closed and George listened to her through his imp.
"Boarding port pressurized?" Shirley asked Jack.
"My imp there reports so," replied Jack.
"Open the door," said Shirley. George could hear some mechanical noises through the wall, but there was no sound of air escape. He peered through the porthole in the door and saw Shirley pull a cloth wiper from her thigh-pocket and wave it in front of the seal surrounding the fuselage of the aerospace plane. After a while he saw her crack her helmet, then take it off. She listened carefully, then put the helmet back on and sealed it again. She then went to the door built into the copilot side of the Dragonfly and lifting panels, she pushed the door inward. She cracked her helmet once again and stuck her head in to look down the long corridor. She floated back out, put her helmet back on and sealed it, then carefully closing and sealing each door she had opened, she made her way back into the Eagle through the air lock.
"It's safe to go in without suits," she said in a sure tone, now that she had checked personally. She made her way to the suit-locker, shaking off George's offer of help, while one-by-one Arielle, David, and George cycled through and floated through the narrow copilot hatch into the magical realm of the aerospace plane—Dragonfly. Arielle was the first through the hatch and was greeted by Jill, the semi-intelligent program in Dragonfly's computer.
"Hello, Arielle," said Jill's soprano voice. "I'm glad to see you again. Is Rocheworld as interesting to fly in as Titan?"
"Ho!" said Arielle. "It is much interesting. We can go very high there. There are lots of thermals and we can fly from Roche to L'eau."
"Jack says that we won't even need rocket assist," said Jill. "That's good. I'd much prefer to always keep that for emergencies. I do so hate to use up my consumables."
David swam in through the lock, all business.
"Self-check routine zero," he commanded.
Through his imp a mechanical voice said, "7613FF."
"Check," said Jack.
David consulted a printed checklist and nodded agreement.
"Self-check routine one."
"Surface Excursion Module One going through systems check," reported Jill's voice. There was a long pause. During the wait, Arielle and David were joined by George and Shirley.
"Five sensors out of spec, two tanks with measurable level of degradation contaminants, and a missing flask in the galley," Jill finally reported.
"This one?" said Arielle from down in the galley. "I was going to fix me a shake."
"Wait till after checkout!" exploded Shirley. "Right now Jill is busy."
"Oh. That's why we no have algae shakes." Arielle put the flask back and swam up the length of the corridor to join George on the flight deck. They took Jill through a few simulated landings, while Shirley, back on the engineering console, inserted a few "emergencies" to keep them all in practice.
"That's enough," said George, after he had botched an engine-out landing and Arielle had intervened at the last second with an imaginary blast from the space thrusters to float them to a stop. "Jill looks in good shape, and its time for Thomas and Red to pull gees to arc over to L-5 and dump Walter. Let's seal up Dragonfly and get some dinner."
"I'll be there later," said Shirley. "Have to check out those low sensor readings and the impurity reports."
"I'll be glad to eat your dinner for you," said Arielle as she unbuckled and swam out the hatch.
"You just leave my dinner alone!" shouted Shirley after her. "You skinny bottomless pit!!"
After dinner Thomas and Red went upstairs to the bridge, with Shirley following to monitor the systems on the engineering console. The rest of the crew gathered in the lounge to watch the scene out the viewport and to settle their meals in the acceleration.
"Shall I take the copilot harness?" asked Red, as they made their way up the passway.
"Nope," said Thomas. "I may be good at the ups and downs, but for the roundy-rounds, you're the pro. You get the blue harness and I'll watch and see how you do it."
Eagle was in a synchronous orbit about Rocheworld. To move from the L-4 point to the L-5 point, Red decided to bounce up out of the plane of rotation enough so that when they came back down, Rocheworld had slipped in an extra half-rotation on them. She tilted the Eagle and initiated thrust in the main rockets. The viewers in the lounge sank into their seats as the tilted scene slowly rotated in the viewport. Darkness set on Eau as Roche blocked the sun. They looked down at the northern cold poles as the sun rose again on Eau. Great storms could be seen on the cold crescent as a snow of water and ammonia rained down on the mountain of water. They came back down three hours later to a halt at L-5, where Walter was dispatched in a bouncing orbit that alternated with that of Clete. Now like the outer poles, neither cold pole was more than three hours away from contact with a commsat. As they were dumping Walter, Barbara came zipping past in its counter-rotating orbit.
"This is Barbara checking, one... two... three..."
"We hear you fine, Barbara," replied Shirley.
"This is Barbara, saying goodnight," said the commsat as it dipped into the darkness behind Roche.
Thomas and Red went down to confer with George.
"We've only been up four hours," said Thomas. "And Red did all the work on that last one while I just dozed away in the red harness. We can take it down if you want us to."
"What's your recommendation, Jack?" said George. He noticed that the imps on both Thomas and Red spread their fingers on the necks and jugular veins of their charges, scanning their vital signs.
"I have no objection," said Jack.
George's imp vibrated with a voice that he had not heard in some while. "James sees no problem either," said Jinjur.
"Take her down," said George. Thomas and Red turned and snaked their way back up the passway. George followed, and the other crew members went either to their racks or their stations as they prepared for a landing on Rocheworld.
"Stand by for deorbit burn," said Thomas. "This'll be the most gees you'll have felt for decades, so make sure you're fastened down."
Slowly Thomas pushed forward the throttle on the main rockets. He and the rest of the bridge crew sank in their harnesses while uncomfortable groans were heard from below decks.
"That's only a half-gee," said Thomas with a grin. "We go to three gees just before reentry."
The rocket engines blasted a powerful glare over the darkened planetscape below, then throttled down to a more controlled trust as the huge cylinder floated down through the miles of atmosphere, letting the friction of the cold thin air do its work in dissipating the energy of the falling eighty tons of matter.
A quiescent blob of milky white jelly rested in the dark ocean of Eau. Clear«»White«»Whistle was an expert surfer and had ridden the last ring wave all the way up the water mountain. It had stayed poised on the face of the wave, half-way between a forced dive and a forced tumble for nearly an eighth of a rotation, while the others of the pod had fallen off along the way. Roaring*Hot*Vermillion, usually the best surfer of the pod, went too far up a wave in an attempt to outdistance the rest at the beginning of the run, but had been broken into three parts and foamed out right at the start. Warm§Amber§Resonance and Sweet•Green•Fizz had been with them, but they too finally had to take a forced dive, leaving Clear«»White«»Whistle to navigate the last half of the mountain alone, on the side of a wave that was bigger than many of the rocky ridges on the bottom of the ocean.
It had been thrilling to be surfing along at speeds that were so high the sonic pings returning from the lower scattering layers had shrieked into the upper register, but the fun was over and it was time to think. Time to think deeply and clearly. Clear«»White«»Whistle wondered about the kind of thinking it did. Most of the others in the pod, and indeed most of the others in the ocean were all the same in their thinking. Numbers, mostly. Some about arrays of numbers. Some about all the numbers between Oh and One. Some about the numbers that were not numbers but still existed.
Clear«»White«»Whistle felt alone. It knew all about numbers—enough to do that kind of research itself. But it wasn't content with that. The numbers had to mean something. It felt exultant, yet perverted, as it tried to impale the pure numbers on the impure lights in the sky.
Clear«»White«»Whistle searched the water around it. It could see nothing except the rocky bottom far, far below. Secure in the knowledge that it could not be seen, yet still secretive, it raised an appendage of thick milky-white jelly. The end floated in the water above the central part of its body. By concentrating, the end of the appendage became thicker and disk-shaped, but it was still milky white like the rest of the appendage. Then, fighting the sexual joy, yet exulting in the perverted self-gratification, Clear«»White«»Whistle seductively extracted its white from the clear gelatin lens floating on the smooth surface of the calm ocean mountain. The milky body below the surface adjusted its shape until the spots of light focused by the lens on its surface were of minimum size. Like Galileo, gazing on the proscribed heavenly spheres, Clear«»White«»Whistle returned to its solitary study of the stars.
Clear«»White«»Whistle had given the bright red glare of Hot the number-name Oh. The red light seemingly burned into its white flesh. Oh was flanked this rising by a pattern of smaller dots, numbered 6, 32 and 47. Warm—number One— was still hidden in back of the ocean. Warm would make an appearance soon, and Clear«»White«»Whistle resolved to wait for it. Meanwhile, the positions of all the rest of the numbers in the sky were measured and compared against its memory. None had changed over the many seasons since it had first looked at the sky except perhaps for a slight shift in the yellow point of light at the end of the straight string of low-numbered lights.
Clear«»White«»Whistle had been studying the points of light whenever it had some time off to itself. In this darkness it again puzzled over the behavior of the light numbers. Most of them were simple. They could be handled by a simple coordinate transformation, since they never changed their relative position. The mathematics of One and its higher number lights was nearly impossible. For a long while, One wandered about in the sky like a broken flitter. Then every four hundred eighty rotations of the sky, it got brighter and brighter until it looked like it was going to rival Oh in the sky.
Clear«»White«»Whistle thought that it knew all the light numbers. This time, however, there was a new light in the sky. It varied rapidly in brightness and moved downward toward Sky¤Rock until it disappeared on the Hot-limned side of the rock floating in the sky. It moved much more slowly than the other specks of transient light that Clear«»White«»Whistle had occasionally seen at other dark times. Perhaps the brighter the falling specks were, the slower they fell. Yet, that thought didn't really satisfy Clear«»White«»Whistle. It very much wanted to know the logic by which the specks of light in the sky moved, especially the motions of One and its smaller lights, but the form of the mathematical rule eluded its most concentrated thought.
The ponderous, top-heavy bulk of the lander Eagle slowly drifted downward on a rippling flame of rocket exhaust. The crew-members left back on distant Prometheus were gathered at videos and consoles, monitoring the landing on Roche through the quartet of video cameras looking down from the four sides of the lander. Eagle was drifting inward as Thomas looked for a good landing site. He peered down at the ground in front of him as he maneuvered the controls, while Red watched all four video scenes on her split-screen display and Jack kept up a running commentary through their imps.
"Two hundred meters..., four-and-a-half down... kicking up some dust... four forward... drifting to the right a little... contact light... engine stop....."
There was a pause, then the lightsail crew burst into cheers as Thomas's exultant voice broke through strong and loud.
"Prometheus! Rocheworld Base here. The Eagle has landed!"