With the landing safely over, George let out his breath. For safety he and the crew members that weren't actively involved in the landing had strapped themselves into their bunks, while Thomas, Red, Carmen, and David had the safety harnesses at their consoles. He hung uncomfortably in his vertical sleeping rack in the ten percent gravity, his feet not quite touching the deck. As he unfastened the straps he could hear thuds from the cubicles around him as the rest of the crew left their sleeping racks and filed down the narrow corridor to the rest of the ship. Most made their way around to the miniature lounge and crowded around the viewport to look out at the alien scenery. George clumped his way up the ladder through the passway and went over to congratulate Thomas.
"A fine landing," he said, extending a hand, then helped Thomas with a recalcitrant fastener on his harness.
"Couldn't have done better myself," added Red, who was still busy powering down the landing systems and readying the Ascent module for lift-off in case they ran into any trouble.
"Why thanks, Red," said Thomas, a pleased smile on his face. "Those are high words of praise from an old ion pilot like you."
Red glanced at him with an annoyed expression. "I'd prefer the phrase 'experienced' rather than 'old', sonny boy," she said. Then she added eagerly, "But I'll forgive you if you let me land the next one."
"It's a deal!" agreed Thomas, glad to have gotten out of his gaffe so easily.
"How's the atmosphere, Jack?" asked Shirley. "Can we imitate Buck Rogers and throw off our helmets after a precautionary sniff and run through the meadows in bare feet with the wind blowing through our hair?"
"I'm afraid not," said Jack through her imp. "My analyzer only confirms what we measured from orbit. An atmosphere of methane, ammonia, water vapor, and hydrogen is definitely poisonous all by itself, not to mention the trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide and cyanide gas that my analyzer can pick up now that we are here."
"Hydrogen sulfide?" said Shirley. "That's going to make for a stinky air lock even after purging."
"You won't notice it," said Sam. "Your nostrils will be anesthetized by the traces of ammonia."
"My locks have been designed with minimal trapped volumes," said Jack. "After pumping down to vacuum, then flushing with air once before the final cycle, I should be able to keep the amount of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen cyanide released into the ship at low level. Unless you have a very sensitive nose, you won't notice it."
"I have a sensitive nose," said Shirley. "It's an engineer's best tool."
"I'm ready to go out," said Richard. "I want to get a look at this geology around here. Is it OK if I suit up?"
"If it's OK with Jack, then it's OK with me," said Shirley. "But aren't you forgetting protocol? The commander of the ship gets to be the first one to set foot on the new planet."
"You're right," said Richard. "If it hadn't been for George we wouldn't be here. He gets to go first, but I wish he'd hurry up."
"I'm coming," said George, making his way down the passway ladder.
He went over to the suit locker and started dressing, with Shirley and the Christmas Branch helping. Sam joined them.
"Why don't you and Richard get suited up too, Sam," said George. The lock will hold three of us and there is no need to make this a dramatic one-man production."
The three men, meticulously checked out by a clucking Shirley, cycled through the air lock and opened the outer door to look down from the thirty-six meter height of the lock door down to the surface and off to the horizon.
"Looks like the high desert regions in California," said Richard. "Dry, dusty, and windy."
"And bare," said George. "At least the high desert has a few cacti and scrub plants." Holding carefully onto the railing around the outer door, George stepped down on the top rung of the "Jacob's Ladder" that ran up the side of the ship, and started down the ninety rungs to the bottom. Sam waited until he had made his way down a few meters, then followed after, his long joints having an easier time with the widely spaced rungs. Richard unfastened a beam from the ceiling of the air lock and swung the beam out through the door so the end of it hung two meters away from the side of the lander. He rolled out a winch until it reached the end of the beam, then fastened the hook on the end of the winch cable to his suit belt. He grabbed the cable and using it to hold himself vertical, he stepped off into the air.
"Lower me down," said Richard to his imp, and the winch started to pay out the cable, Richard twirling slowly about at the end. He passed by Sam, who had paused at the ladder rung where the ladder left the side of the ship and turned into steps on one of the landing struts. Richard had Jack halt his descent when he was still two meters from the surface. He had brought along a video camera to record George's first step off the landing pad onto the soil of Roche.
As he made his historic step off the landing pad, George looked toward Richard and the camera, and started talking.
"This is but the first step on mankind's long journey..." his voice turned into a yell, "WATCH OUT!!!" he said as he rushed over to catch the toppling Richard, just as his helmet was about to strike a boulder.
Richard, both hands working the camera, had tried to hold himself upright on the cable by tucking it under his elbow. After getting George's first step, he had leaned back to get a picture of Sam up on the landing leg. Topheavy with the camera, he had lost his balance and swung upside-down.
"We almost lost you," said George in a soft voice, holding Richard's head firmly in his arms. "If your helmet had cracked, you wouldn't have lasted a minute in this poisonous atmosphere."
Jack lowered Richard the rest of the way to the ground and he got up, his suit dusty from the dry soil.
"I'm sorry I messed up your speech," said Richard.
"That's all right," said George. "I wasn't really sure what I was going to say next anyway. I was thinking of saying '...mankind's long journey into the galaxy.', but that sort of puts a limit on mankind's explorations. I could also have said '...universe.', but by the time mankind has explored just this galaxy it will have evolved into something else. To say that mankind will explore the universe is equivalent to saying that it was a crew of plankton that first landed on the moon."
"No plankton here, anyway," said Sam, taking a sample of the soil and chipping a chunk off the boulder that nearly got Richard.
"Weathered igneous rock with lots of vesicles," he said to Richard, handing him the rock sample.
Richard glanced with a practiced geologist's eye at the rock and looked up the long mountain toward the inner pole of Roche. "There's plenty of volcanos up there to make it," he said. "I wonder how it got here?"
"Could have been a large eruption," said Sam. "The volcanos probably become more active at periapsis."
"Perhaps," said Richard. "After we have identified the source volcano, I'd like to do a simulation of the ejection and get some idea of the size of the eruption needed to throw it this far."
"Don't forget that the volcano is at a much lower gravity than here and is erupting at an angle due to the sixty degree slope of the inner point. Intuition isn't much good on this planet. There's another rock over there, I think I'll get a sample from that one too."
As the two rock hounds took off, sniffing at rocks, cracks, and scarps, George looked up to see three other suited figures making their way down the side of the ship. One was efficiently making its way down the rungs of the Jacob's ladder. That was Katrina. The second one was helping a thin one attach itself to the winch cable. The thin suit poised delicately in midair, then rode down to the surface.
"Like gliding!" said Arielle with an excited voice.
George helped her to unfasten the cable and Jack rewound the winch for the next member of the crew.
"It's so desolate," said David as he landed. "Kilometers upon kilometers of nothing but rocks and sand. What a dreary place."
"Sam and Richard seem to find it interesting," said George, pointing out the two figures off in the distance. One had climbed halfway up the nearby scarp leading to the mesa and was obviously trying to chip a sample from a rock imbedded in a yellow-red layer there. The other one crawled into a small cave near the base and came back out, holding something in its gloved hand. It started walking back toward them.
"Look what I found," said Sam. He held out what looked like a piece of molten orange glass.
"What a strange looking rock," said Red. "I've never seen volcanic glass that color."
"It's not a normal glass," said Sam. "Watch!"
He put the end of the piece of orange glass on a boulder and hit it with his geologist pick. The tip of the rock shattered into tiny bits like a piece of tempered glass. All the bits were identical and very tiny. The bits had two faceted ends connected by a thin waist. They had the size and shape of the body of a tiny ant.
"Let me see," said Katrina, taking a few of them and holding them up to her faceplate. "They look like orange-colored models of Rocheworld." She took a bag from her tool pouch and placed the bits of glass into it.
"I think I'll take these up and have a look at them under a microscope while Jack does a chemical analysis. Perhaps that will give us a clue. We're too used to rocks that form either in vacuum or in earth air. It could be this strange chemistry can produce material that crystallizes in such a uniform way." She headed back for the winch and called for Jack to haul her up.
Later Shirley called the crew together. "It's time to lower the Dragonfly to the surface and put its wings on. I want to get through the lowering phase before Barnard sets behind Eau."
"Do be careful!" said Arielle.
"We won't hurt your pet," said Shirley. She walked around to the front of the lander and stood at the base of the landing strut that had been modified to act both as a leg for the lander and as a lowering rail for the aerospace plane. Shirley watched a point near the tail of the plane.
"Release hold-down lugs, Jack," she said, then nodded in satisfaction as the clawlike devices swung clear. The aerospace plane shivered slightly as the hold on it was loosened, but it was still hanging vertically from its nose hook. Shirley stepped quickly to one side and looked up the belly of the plane to the top.
"Lower top winch!" she called, and slowly the nose of the airplane tilted away from the lander, the tail staying in place at the top of the lowering rail. Shirley could now see the cockpit windows and the large triangular gap in the side of the lander as the plane pulled away from the side of the ship. The rotation continued until the airplane was leaning away from the lander at an angle of about thirty degrees.
"Now both winches!" said Shirley. Jack started the bottom winch, and letting out both the nose cable and the tail cable at the same speed, it lowered the aerospace plane slowly down the lowering rail, still at the thirty degree angle. As the plane moved down the rail, the rudder finally cleared the side of the lander. About two meters from the end of the rail, the tail winch stopped, while the upper nose winch continued to pay out cable. Slowly the huge plane rotated about the pivot point near the tail, and as it approached the horizontal orientation there was a noticeable tilt to the lander as it reacted to the weight of the plane.
"Lower landing skids!" said Shirley, and slots appeared in the belly of the aerospace plane and three skids came out. They reached to a half-meter of the surface.
"Lower her down!" said Shirley, bending down to watch underneath. Slowly the plane was lowered to the surface.
"Done!" she yelled, then raced to detach the lowering cables from the front and rear of the aerospace plane. The winches retrieved their cables, their job done.
"Just in time, too," said George, as the sky reddened a more deeper red than the normal illumination. "Looks like a beautiful sunset tonight. Let's everybody get back on board before it gets too dark. The ladder and winch are tricky at night."
"If you please?" said a small voice through his imp. "I'd like to sleep on Magic Dragonfly tonight."
"Oh," said George, "Sure, Arielle, if you want to. Won't you be lonely?"
"I'll stay too," said David. "We both have a lot to go over with Jill."
"I get to add their sleeping space to mine!" hollered Sam, heading at high speed up the Jacob's ladder.
"Just one," yelled Shirley after him. "I get the other one."
After rearranging the bunk partitions to give him a little more room, Sam went up the passway to see how Katrina was doing with her analysis of the orange glass.
"Hello, Sam," she said as his head appeared above the floor of the bridge and the rest of his long body continued its upward rise. "I've got one of the bits under a microscope. Want to take a look at it?" She moved aside and Sam bent way over to peer through the eyepiece.
"The central waist has four sides," said Sam.
"Yes, there is a central crystal that is four-sided, while the multi-faceted balls at the end seem to be of the same material, as if it decided to switch to a more complex crystal form. Jack is still working on the chemistry, but it is a very complex molecule similar to the silica gel crystals that are used to keep things dry. Like silica gel, it is highly hygroscopic. I put one in water and it puffed up to double its size and became soft and gel-like, then fell apart. The basic material seems to be clear. The orange color comes from a very thin surface layer that doesn't penetrate into the interior. It scrapes off quite easily."
"Could it be a life-form?" asked Sam.
"I doubt it," said Katrina. "It's not complicated enough for its size. Besides, what would it eat? So far, Jack has found no evidence for smaller life forms such as bacteria. I'm sure it's just a strange type of crystal."
"Hmmm," mused Sam, rising up from the microscope. "Tomorrow I'll keep an eye out for more samples, but now I think I'll go to bed. It's been a busy day."
It was their first night on the new planet. Being a Rocheworld night, it would only last three hours. Shirley, who had a lot of work to do at daybreak, had gone to bed with the "old folks", Sam, George, and Katrina. The activity on the ship slowed and the remainder of the crew gathered in the lounge, snuggled close together. They looked out from the forty-meter height advantage of the viewport window along the long slopes of the conical inner pole that stretched out toward the distant globe of Eau hanging above them in the sky. The shadow of Roche on Eau had nearly covered the whole watery globe and there was only a thin red arc of illumination at the top.
"The sunset's almost gone," complained Carmen.
"Good," said Red. "Now we'll be able to see the stars and Sol once more."
"Feeling homesick, Red?" said Thomas. His arms were around Carmen and Red and he gave Red a squeeze.
Red nestled her head on the young man's shoulder.
"Not really," she said. "Earth really doesn't have that many good memories for me. My father left us when Mom got too sick to work and I had to drop out of school to take care of her and raise my three little sisters. Once I got on my own I was so afraid that I might be poor again that I spent all my waking hours in a blind quest for money. I was never happy, even though eventually I became a billionaire."
"Don't you ever regret giving up all that money and becoming a space-nun, sworn to a vow of poverty?" said Richard. He was sitting on the floor with the back of his head resting on the lounge seat next to Red's knee.
"Never," said Red. "For the first time in my life I'm having fun." She squirmed again against Thomas and her left hand tousled Richard's hair.
"Funny kind of fun," said Richard. "A nerve-wracking job landing a eighty ton spacecraft on a wildly spinning double-planet, then tomorrow the real work starts when Shirley forms her slave-gang to put the wings on the Magic Dragonfly. It all sounds like work to me."
"Sure it's work," said Red down at the tousled head. "But it's fun kind of work. I'd do it even if I weren't getting paid."
"Which we aren't," said Carmen.
"See!" said Red. She turned to Thomas, whose dark face was almost invisible in the fading light.
"Where would Orion be now?" she asked.
"I'm not positive about anything anymore since I landed on this whirly-gig," but I think it's on the opposite side of the sky from Barnard and should rising over Eau shortly.
"I see four bright stars in a line just above the horizon," said Richard from the floor.
"That is Orion," whispered Jack through his imp. "And the yellow star at the right end is Sol." The ship was so quiet they could all hear the whisper.
The red rim about Eau faded away and the stars bloomed in the sky. Jack turned off all the lights and through the thin air they could see the black velvet of the sky sprinkled with multi-colored tiny gems.
Below them was the wingless Magic Dragonfly. Beams of light were streaming out the cockpit windows and the bulbous, eyelike scanner domes to spread patches of light on the dusty surface. The air was still and cold as the icy stars sucked warmth from the ground. One by one the lights on Dragonfly flickered off as David and Arielle closed down their checkout activities, and went to sit in front of the cockpit windows. Then, like the others above them, they spent the rest of the short Rocheworld evening gazing at the sky.
There was a weak red glow on the distant horizon. It was well below the black arc through the star-patterns that marked the edge of Eau, and was coming over the distant horizon of Roche. It grew brighter.
"What's that?" came David's voice through their imps.
"It's probably an eruption from one of the volcanos on the inner pole mountain of Roche," said Red. She jumped up from the lounge seat and quickly clambered up the passway ladder to the control deck and looked out the port there.
"It's a real Fourth-of-July spectacular," said Red through her imp. "You should see it any second now." She quickly turned and activated the science console. "Can you get it on the doppler radar, Jack?" she asked.
Jack's reply was a display on her screen. Red's trained fingers were soon sliding over the surface of the screen from the command choice listing on the side to various portions of the false-color doppler radar image. The geologist in Red took over and she worked steadily until dawn.
Down below, the others enjoyed the fireworks display seemingly put on for their benefit by Roche to celebrate their arrival. Orion and the four stars in his belt rose out of Eau's arc of darkness. A number of minutes later a dull rumbling came through the air.
"It's the noise from the volcano," said Thomas, impressed. "Shucks, I forgot to count."
"What's that?" said a sleepy voice through the "all hands" channel of their imps.
"A distant rumble from a volcano over a thousand kilometers away," replied Jack. "There is no danger, Shirley. Go back to sleep." They heard the start of a gentle snore before the channel turned itself off.
After an hour and a half, there was a false dawn as Barnard came out from behind Roche and started to illuminate the other sides of the two lobes. They were still in the shadow of Roche, though, so they didn't see the sun, but there was enough scattering from the atmosphere between the two lobes that faint cloud patterns could be seen on the Barnard side of the water globe just above the black horizon of Roche that arched up to block the lower portion of the lobe. The false dawn set and total darkness returned as Barnard continued its rotation and Roche fell into the shadow of Eau. The viewport lounge grew quiet as Carmen lay back, staring out at the limitless stars. When she heard the heavy breathing from the two men sitting beside her, she allowed herself the luxury of a few quiet tears of homesickness.
Dawn was breaking over the distant arc of Eau when Shirley awoke and assembled her press gang. Red was left on board the lander not only in case they had to leave in a hurry, but also so she could continue to monitor the seismic and radar signals still coming from the volcano hidden over the arched western horizon of the inner pole. Everyone else became common laborers as they assisted Shirley and the Christmas Branch to assemble the outer wing panels of the Magic Dragonfly.
The panels were hollow graphite fiber composite structures designed without internal bracing so that the wing panels nested inside each other. The nested wing sections then fit neatly inside the lower portion of the lander on either side of the rudder of the Dragonfly. Using the upper winch that had let the aerospace plane down to the surface, Shirley and Jack carefully pulled each segment out one at a time and lowered them down to a waiting team of spacesuited humans.
"Stand back," warned Shirley from her vantage point up in the wing storage hold. "Let Jack winch the panel all the way down to the surface before you get near. I have epoxy that will fix the dings in the wing section, but Katrina left her people-epoxy back home and we can't fix you if you get a ding."
Slowly each section was lowered to the ground, then George would unfasten the winch cable, and the crew of eight would lift the five by six meter section of wing and take it over and place it on the ground on either side of the stub-winged Magic Dragonfly.
After the wing panels were unloaded and arranged, Shirley and Jack lowered a bundle of small struts and two long telescoping poles. Before she came down, Shirley unfastened the lower winch and brought it with her over to the plane.
"OK, Jack," she puffed as she clambered up to the top of the aerospace plane with the heavy winch and attached it to a waiting fixture. "Have the Christmas Branch install the struts in the first section."
She motioned to the suited figures scattered about her below on the ground.
"This will be just like we practiced it on Titan," she said. She tossed down the end of the cable from the winch. "Set up the tripod over the section the Christmas Branch is working on, then when it's done installing the inner braces, hook it up to the central lifting lug and get out of the way." Shirley looked up at the sky. They had been working hard since daybreak, and Barnard was already overhead. They were behind schedule. Slightly exasperated, she allowed a note of irritation to creep into her voice.
"And hurry up! We've only got an hour and a half of daylight left. If we're not done by then, we'll have to work by floodlight to keep up with the mission schedule."
George picked up his pace as he went with Richard to pick up the tripod poles.
"Give a person a little authority and they turn into a Captain Queeg," griped Richard. Jack was a little slow on interpreting the proper routing of the message from Richard's suit imp, and it was only when Richard had gotten to the word "authority" that Jack realized that the comment was for George's ears only, and not the general channel. A chorus of chuckles and giggles rippled through the net.
"I heard that, Richard," said Shirley. "If you'd like to come up here and play steeple-jack I'll be glad to trade places with you."
"No thanks," said Richard. "Steeple-jacking is squaw work."
The tripod was assembled and the first section was raised into place, the Christmas Branch riding up on the inside.
"We're about ten centimeters off," said Shirley. The Christmas Branch extended its body between the hanging section and the wing stub. then contracted to draw the two sections closer together. Shirley straddled the narrowing gap and using a long pointed pry-bar between two aligning lugs, she pulled the wing section forward until the edges were lined up.
"Hold it!" said Jack as the two were about to meet. A large spider-imp scurried around the narrow gap, removing the thin plastic protective cover from the sealing material. Shirley could feel internal fasteners clicking into place beneath her feet, then the pressure on her pry-bar lessened as the fasteners were rotated to pull the two wing sections together. Shirley got up and glanced at the array of tell-tales below her chin in the neck of her suit.
"That took us fifteen minutes," she said. "We'll have to do better than that on the rest of the sections if we're going to finish before sunset."
Richard glanced again at George. He didn't talk through his imp this time, but instead made motions with his hands like he was playing nervously with some large steel marbles.
The outer wing sections, being much lighter, were on well before dark, and Jill was able to pump them down, check for leaks, then refill them with fuel from the main tanks of the Eagle while the tired construction crew reboarded the lander for a last dinner together. Tomorrow they would break up into two teams. Sam, Red, Thomas, and Carmen would stay with the lander, Thomas and Carmen trading shifts as Commander of Rocheworld Base, while Sam and Red went off on exploration jaunts in the crawler. The other six would take off on the Magic Dragonfly to visit the other side of Roche and the distant globe of Eau hanging in the sky on the eastern horizon.
"I won't say that I'm sorry to see you go," said Sam. He popped the last of Nels's cherry tomatoes into his mouth. It was good, but getting a little wrinkled from sitting in Jack's refrigerator this long. It was the last of the fresh food. It was basic mush and frozen foods from now on. "After I get your sleeping racks stored away I'll be able to stretch out at night."
"Enjoy it while you can, Sam," said George. "We'll be back in a few weeks. It's only twenty-two days or eighty-eight rotations until Rocheworld reaches periapsis about Barnard. The weather on Eau is likely to get a little rough with the extra heating and I want to have the Dragonfly tied down here for those few days."
Carmen's called from her seat at the viewport lounge. "I can see Zapotec at the top of the viewport window, Gargantua should be in view soon."
The ten crew-members crowded in a friendly pile on the floor and in the sofa of the viewport lounge and watched Gargantua with its retinue of multicolored marbles move smoothly through the sky. Rocheworld was now drawing close to the giant planet as it reached apoapsis and Gargantua was bigger than the Moon in the sky of Earth.
"Winter must be setting in on Gargantua," said George. "I can see the 'tit'."
"You men are all alike," said Carmen, getting up.
"I'd better pack," said Arielle, following her.
Soon the crew was scattered throughout the lander, making preparations for the coming dawn and saying goodbye to special friends. George and Red were left sitting on the floor in front of the viewport lounge.
"I'll miss you," said George quietly.
"I'll miss you," she replied. George turned and she put her face up toward him. They kissed softly, then both leaned back to stare out the viewport as Zapotec set over Eau.
"Take good care of Sam and Thomas," he said.
"I will. And you be nice to Katrina," she said. "I know she sometimes gets on your nerves, but she needs affection too."
"It's all just bluff from that German school system she went to," said George. "Underneath is a fluffy housefrau. She's like putty in my hands."
"You men are all alike," said Red. She rested her head on his shoulder. "And isn't it nice," she murmured.
The next morning the exploration crew suited up early and gathered outside the airlock of the aerospace plane.
"Now we'll see what this magic carpet can do," said George.
"Magic Dragonfly," reminded Arielle. "It can do everythings."
"Take me to a strange land, where I've never been before," said George.
"All right," said Arielle. "Hop on board."
Pilot and copilot-commander waited as David, Katrina, Richard and Shirley passed through the airlock of the Magic Dragonfly, then the two figures grinned at each other as they followed them inside. The slimmer figure hesitated and let the larger one enter the lock first. During the wait, tiny fingers hidden in sausage-finger gloves stroked softly over the duralloy hull. Then, the "magic" for the Magic Dragonfly stepped aboard.
Arielle made her way forward toward the flight deck through the busy humanity inside the plane, being politely careful not to interrupt. She had some trouble getting past the science console area, since David, Richard, and Katrina were occupying the three seats and were busy setting up the next day's schedule. She slid her thin body past this blockade only to confront a long torso stretching horizontally across the aisle from the port science blister to the starboard science blister. The head of the muscular body was buried deep into the port science electronics, and the rest of the body seemed to be ignoring the ten percent gravity of the planet below. It was either crawl over or crawl under. Arielle took a calculated look at the broad buttocks and muscular waist, then launched herself in a soaring low-gee dive over the human tollgate. She did a midair flip and straightened out so she was flying through the air feet first. George looked around just as the human bird fluttered to a landing on the raised platform between their seats on the flight deck.
"We are ready?" she asked sweetly, buckling herself into the pilot seat.
"Lift-off!" said George.
Arielle glanced over the console, finding it in perfect order, then smoothly increased reactor power and adjusted VTOL fan pitch and speed at the same time. The Magic Dragonfly slowly floated upward into the ammonia skies on its levitating fans.
Once they had reached adequate elevation, Arielle pushed the VTOL controls forward and they responded by tilting the huge electric fans in the wing of the plane until they were pushing the craft forward as hard as they were lifting it. Automatic servomechanisms took over and the power of the nuclear jet was increased to provide more heating to the streams of thin atmosphere that were captured by the forward facing scoops and channeled into the heated interiors of the plane's nuclear engines.
Arielle added a notch to the throttle, and the heat exchangers between the nuclear power source and the frigid air turned cherry red. The heated methane, ammonia, and water vapor began to stream out the rear at high velocity, impelling the Magic Dragonfly forward.
Richard sat at the science console, orchestrating the first portion of their mission.
"I'd like some altitude first, please, Arielle," he said. "And David, if you and Jill can look through the memory for ground scans taken during the descent of Eagle, I'd like one with a shadow angle similar to what we have now."
The aerospace plane banked as Arielle moved the Magic Dragonfly into a lazy spiraling climb above Rocheworld Base.
"Scanners are all active," said Shirley from the engineering console.
"I'd like the radar-mapper image," said Richard. His hands flew over the screen as he shrunk the radar image into half the screen, then placed the old image from the Eagle in the other half screen. It was the same region, but they were taken at different angles and distances.
"Rotate and rectify, Jill," he asked. The old image distorted as Jill rearranged the bits in the image. Richard's hands played over the command list and the old image faded into a deep red, while in the center a small white circle indicated the smaller region that was now being scanned by the radar sounder on their magic carpet.
"There's an interesting feature to the north, Arielle." He placed his finger on the fuzzy red blob. Arielle glanced at the small video to one side of her main display. It was a reproduction of Richard's science screen with a blinking green fingerprint sized blob overlayed on a red blob. Arielle continued a half-turn then straightened out the Dragonfly on a northerly climbing course. Soon the region of high resolution radar sounding data grew in size and moved northward until the red blob was revealed as a small crater that looked like it was perched on a teardrop shaped mesa, the blunt end of the teardrop facing due west.
"Looks like a Martian crater," said George. "I can see it coming up ahead. There are flow lines that look like the crater was made in the bed of a stream and it flowed around it for some time before it dried up."
"It's only a hundred kilometers from Rocheworld Base," said Richard. "I think I'll put that on the visit agenda for Sam and Red.
"I don't think they're going to like you for that," said David. "They'll only be able to travel in daylight. It'll probably mean fifteen hours in suits just for three hours of daylight on site."
"They're dedicated rock-hounds," said Richard. "Besides, the crawler will do most of the work."
Arielle took the Dragonfly in a slow circle about Rocheworld Base while Richard picked out a few more targets for the base-sticking crew to visit. She then applied more power and started a spiraling survey of the entire globe.
"Lots of craters on this side," said Richard to no-one in particular a few hours later.
"Like the moon, but with air," said George, scanning the horizon out the cockpit window. I don't see any more signs of erosion."
"We would expect most of the precipitation to take place in the cold crescent that runs from the north pole, down through the inner pole to the south pole," said Richard. "Those portions receive proportionately less sunlight than the warm crescent that reaches out from the outer pole along the equator until you get to the regions where there is significant shading of Barnard by the Eau lobe."
"I see some white stuff on the ground up ahead," said George. "Especially on the north side of crater rims."
"We're getting close to the north pole," said Arielle. "She is probably snow."
"Probably a mixture of ammonia and water ice," said Katrina from the galley. "The temperature there is probably minus one hundred Celsius."
"And I thought it was cold at Rocheworld Base," said Shirley.
"We'll soon find out," said Richard. He put his finger on his screen. "Arielle, could you bring us down here in the middle of this large crater? I want to get some snow for Katrina to look at and some bedrock chunks for my collection."
"We descend!" said Arielle, putting the Magic Dragonfly into a dive. Darkness came again as they approached the site. Using radar, Arielle and Jill carefully landed on a flat place not too far from the central peak of the crater, the ammonia snow blowing out from beneath the VTOL fans into the bright beams of the landing lights.
"Three winks, everybody," commanded George. Katrina and David had anticipated George and were already in their bunks. It didn't take long for the rest. Daybreak and a full schedule were only three hours nap away.
At daybreak George and Richard donned their heated exploration suits and were carefully checked out by a mother-henning Shirley. They clambered down from the Dragonfly's air lock and started their half-kilometer trek to the central crater.
George stepped in a small patch of ammonia snow. Snow particles flew everywhere as his heated boot vaporized the ammonia crystals into a gas.
"Please try to avoid the snow-drifts," said his suit imp. "I only have a fixed amount of energy for heating and when it is half gone, I must insist you turn back."
"How far can I go with the present charge?" asked George.
"Twenty kilometers," said the suit imp. George humphed and continued toward the peak a half-kilometer away. He did try to avoid the snow, however.
Richard looked carefully at a couple of large rocks on the way out, but didn't use his geologist's hammer until he reached the peak. He looked back to make sure that he was still within sight of the Magic Dragonfly so that Jill could have direct laser communication with his helmet receiver and the suit-imp.
"I'd like the suit-imp outside," he said. "I want it to take a rope up to that overhang."
"You aren't going to climb, are you?" asked Jill through his imp in a concerned tone.
"Yes, I am," said Richard. "I want to get some samples from the top."
"I could send the imp to get them," said Jill.
"As smart as you are, Jill," said Richard. "I still want to see what's there so we don't miss anything. Don't forget we are only under a tenth gee and I have an alpine guide license."
By the time he had finished arguing with Jill, the suit-imp had wiggled its way outside through the valves in the life-support pack. The imp took the end of Richard's rope and scampered up the cliff, its tiny cilia giving it a grip like a fly. The anchor was imbedded firmly in the ledge, and testing it first, Richard walked his way up the steep slope. The maneuver was repeated three times until Richard was at the top of the peak. He then disappeared from view. The suit-imp stayed on the crest in view of Dragonfly.
"It looks like a small volcanic crater," came the relayed voice.
Richard appeared again at the top of the peak and rappeled his way down. He went slowly, looking carefully at the surface passing beneath him. Occasionally he would stop and take off another small sample while George stood back to keep out of the way of falling bits of rock. Finally Richard was back on nearly level ground. He handed a small sack to George.
"Here, you carry this," he said. "I've got more to get. Let's backtrack, Jill."
Following the computer's directions, Richard zig-zagged back along the path they had come, ignoring some rocks and taking samples from others that he had thought interesting on the way out. As their load of rock samples grew, it finally dawned on George why Richard had never used his hammer on the way out.
At the very last snow-drift before they reached the plane, Richard took out some sample bottles and a long stainless steel wand with a claw at one end. He placed a bottle in the claw and locked it. Then he lay the tool and bottle in the snowdrift until the vaporization stopped. Taking the frigid instrument by the handle, he quickly dipped it deep down into the middle of the drift and scooped up a sample of snow. A quick flick of the lid with a gloved finger and the snow was trapped in the bottle before it had time to vaporize. The sample bottle was packed in an insulating case, along with a control sample of air. The case would only be opened by Jill's analytical imp after it had been put in the small freezer in Jill's shop wall, where the computer could recreate any combination of Rocheworld conditions from the hot outer pole of Roche to the frigid north pole of Eau.
Richard and George cycled through. It was dark again and it was time for another rest break before taking off again. George tried to convince Katrina that he was cold from walking out in the snow and needed to be warmed up, but she was too busy helping Jill analyze the snow samples. He went off to bed.
As Barnard set, Shirley made her way forward to the cockpit and sat down on the copilot seat. Arielle was there going through the pre-flight checkout.
"Are you going to fly at night?" Shirley asked.
"As soon as Gargantua rises up. Then we see where we are going."
"I think you'd better take a look at this," said David from the computer console. "Barbara took this weather picture just before sunset."
The screen in front of Arielle blinked off the standard artificial horizon display and replaced it with a colored weather map. There was a large storm front moving from the inner pole to the north pole, leaving behind a trail of white on the ground. Just at the leading edge of the storm was a blinking green dot that marked their position. Arielle glanced up from the display and looked out the cockpit window. The sharp shadow edge of Eau against the star background was gone. In its place was a fuzzier arc of darkness, lit from behind by the emerging bright ball of Gargantua, glowing redly with Barnard's charcoal fire light.
"It's moving fast," said Arielle. "I think we'd better stay on the ground until we see what kind of winds we have. Shirley, do you think we need tie-downs?"
"Better safe than sorry," said Shirley. "You may be a great pilot, Arielle, but I don't think even you could take off with the Dragonfly flipped on its back." She talked to her imp as she made her way to the rear of the plane and was joined in the airlock by a segment of the Christmas Branch carrying some screw-anchors and cables.
The screw-anchors were too large and the ground too hard for the Christmas Branch to be of much help, so it fell to the human to supply the muscle power.
"I sometimes wish they'd made you bigger," panted Shirley after setting one of the anchors. She fastened a cable to the anchor and tossed it up in the darkness to the twinkling Christmas Branch waiting on the wing-top. A long arm with a feathery tip shot out to grab the end of the cable and in a wink the cable was knotted through a tie-down point on the wing. Shirley looked it over from the ground with the beam from her permalight. Suddenly the beam was full of tiny white dancing dots. She was rocked in the low gravity by a gust of wind.
"It's started to snow," said Shirley. Her message was passed on to Arielle and David.
Arielle turned on the landing lights. The beams went out into the swirling whiteness, then were lost some meters ahead.
"It's a real blizzard!" said Arielle. "You'd better come back in Shirley, before you get blown away."
"One more anchor to go," replied Shirley. "But don't worry about me. The wind speed may be high, but at this low pressure the breezes don't have any push behind them." She still staggered a little in the low gravity as the gusts played over her body. By the time she had the last anchor in place, there was already a few centimeters of new water-ammonia snow on the ground. Her boots made hissing sounds as she walked. She took one last walk around her charge before going in. There was no snow on the tail section. Those surfaces were the waste heat radiators for the nuclear reactor in the rear. The reactor was running at very low power since all it had to do was generate the electricity to keep the Magic Dragonfly and its human crew alive and comfortable. The top of the fuselage was also free of snow, but the wings were a different matter. The tips of the wings already had a cover of snow, and as the night continued, the cold region would slowly creep inward toward the VTOL fans. Just as she was about to step into the lock Shirley looked down at her boots. Her long journey through the new snowdrifts around the plane had finally cooled off the outer surface of her boots. They were now covered with a clinging layer of wet ammonia-water snow. She stamped her feet on the ground to shake off the snow, stepped into the lock and cycled through.
The rapidly moving storm passed quickly overhead, leaving behind the full globe of Gargantua and its moons low in the sky.
"This is one of the times I wish that Barnard had a higher temperature," said Shirley as she looked out at the snow-covered hills around them. "Snow just doesn't look right when it's red."
"I fix that," said Arielle. She flipped on the landing lights and in the track of the brilliant white beams there glimmered a billion tiny blue-white crystals. Shirley admired the view for a while, then with a sigh she got up and went out to remove the screw-anchors. She was tempted to wake up Richard and have him help, but her pride wouldn't allow it.
I can do anything that big ape can do, and better! she said to herself as she stepped with a hiss into the calf-deep snow.
George and Richard were still asleep when dawn broke over Eau and Arielle lifted the Magic Dragonfly on a whirlwind of snow particles. She gained altitude, then headed south and inward as they resumed the long spiral survey path that would take them within sensor distance of every point on the egg-shaped surface.
"It sure gets dark in a hurry," said Shirley, looking out the cockpit window. Arielle was back in the galley getting something to eat and Shirley was flying the airplane from the copilot seat. Since Jill was an excellent auto-pilot, however, Shirley's work consisted of leaving her hands off the controls and looking out the window at the scenery.
"Now that we're entering the inner pole region," said David, we will have a lot more dark time than daylight time. When Barnard isn't hiding behind Roche, then it's hiding behind Eau. Right now we get about two hours of daylight, then four hours of night during the six hour rotation period. Its worst right at the inner pole, where its ninety minutes of daytime to four and a half hours of night."
Arielle made her way forward and returned to take her place in the pilot seat. "I and Jill find way to get more daytime," she said. "We plan our flight path around inner pole so we always be on the sunshine side." She nodded at Shirley, dismissing her, and her eyes turned to the pilot console and resumed their vigilant watch on the indicators and the view out the cockpit window.
Shirley got down and returned to the engineering console to monitor the performance of Jill's scanners. There was a noise in the back, and soon Richard pulled aside the privacy curtain to the crew quarters and came forward.
"We must be getting nearer the inner pole," he yawned. "I feel lighter already."
"We're down to six percent gravity," said David from his console. "That's half of the twelve percent gravity at the north pole where you went to sleep."
"Any sign of volcanos yet?" asked Richard, as he walked over behind Katrina sitting at the science console. "I'd like to visit a few of them."
"That could be dangerous," said Jill through his imp.
"Not if we're careful and pick one that isn't ripe for an explosion. Where's our history file of the inner pole region from the commsat cameras?"
"I have it right here," said Katrina. Her fingers flickered over the directory menu at the side of the screen, and soon they were looking at HISTORY, COMMSAT, VISUAL, INNER POLE, VOLCANO WATCH. Katrina got up and let Richard at the console.
"I think I'll get some sleep," she said. "We can't all be up at the same time." She went through the privacy curtain. George was still in his bunk. She didn't hear any snoring leaking through the Sound-Bar door, so he was probably awake and hadn't gotten up yet. She opened the door to her bunk and got undressed. Her coveralls were still clean, so she folded them up and put them away in the storage chest in the wall at the foot of her bed. She passed through the privacy curtain to the work area in the rear of the plane, took off her underwear, and gave them to the Christmas Branch to be put into the sonic clothes cleaner. Now completely naked except for the star-shaped imp in her hair, she moved lightly past the air-lock and reentered the closed off corridor of the sleeping quarters. She reached into her bunk space for her nightgown, then hesitated.
"Is George awake?" she asked her imp.
"He is," said Jill. "Would you like me to connect you with him?"
"Please," said Katrina. "George?" she called lightly.
She heard the sound of soft music being played by George's imp, then the Sound-Bar door below her bunk slowly rolled up to show George in his pajamas wearing a set of Christmas Branch stereo earphones. George's eyes opened wide when he saw Katrina's soft curvaceous nude body bending over him. He waved a hand at one ear. The music stopped and the earphones scurried away to rejoin the rest of the Christmas Branch in the workshop at the rear of the plane.
"Are you still cold?" she asked.
The sequence of pictures of the inner pole volcanic field region flashed rapidly by on Richard's screen. Day and night passed and volcanos erupted periodically.
"I can't really tell much with all those lighting changes, Jill," he said. "Please feature-extract the craters and the plumes, then run those by."
There was a second's pause as Jill rearranged bits, then a cartoon version of the inner pole region appeared on the screen and ran through the compressed time history.
"Again!" said Richard, and the sequence repeated.
"Do it again and watch these three here," his finger tapped at the screen where there were three volcanos in a line that pointed toward the inner pole. Jill expanded the view until the three filled the screen. First one volcano would throw up a plume of hot gas and dust, then the middle one would start, then finally the one nearest the inner pole would join them. They stopped in reverse order.
"Those three must be interconnected by an underground vent," said Richard.
"The periodicity is quite regular," said Jill. "The magnitude of the eruptions vary, but they always occur every three hours when Barnard is either behind Eau or Roche and the tides are strongest."
"If they are that predictable, then we can visit them between eruptions," said Richard. "Set your course so that we arrive just after an eruption."
"But just because we have records of twelve eruption cycles doesn't mean that they sometimes won't have an eruption between their normal cycle time," protested Jill.
"The first thing I'll do when we get there is put down a seismometer and hook you up to it," said Richard. "Then if the volcano starts to get rambunctious, you'll hear the rumbling in time to take us out of there."
"I hope so," said Jill with a worried tone.
"I hope you appreciate that 'concerned mother' tone," said David, who had been watching over Richard's shoulder and could hear the Richard's imp. "The psychologists thought it would be a good safety feature and asked me to develop it so people like you would go out of their way to avoid dangerous activities in order to keep Jill 'happy'. It turned out to be tough, took me almost three days playing with my synthesizer before I got the aggrieved tone just right."
"Pretty sneaky," said Richard, returning to the console.
They approached the triplet volcano during darkness. Arielle had taken the Magic Dragonfly to altitude and had flown high over the plumes of hot gas and ashes so that they could take pictures. The light from Gargantua gave Jill's electrocameras enough illumination so that excellent photographs of the plumes could be obtained.
"We seem to be awfully high," remarked George.
"Better safe than sorry," said Arielle. "Gravity here is only three percent of earth gravities. Is easy for those monsters to throw a rock at us."
George looked at the display in front of him. He had trouble reading the altimeter. The numbers were not what he was used to. Finally he comprehended. "That says eighty-three thousand meters!" he said. "We're eighty-three kilometers high! Are we on rocket power?"
"I just take her up on the nuclears jet until she won't any more climb," said Arielle. "Jill has good cameras, so we don't have to get close. Don't forget, when you lower the gravity, you higher the scale height. Good view, no?"
"I can see the curvature of the horizon," said George. "Especially at the inner pole."
The eruption subsided, and Gargantua set. Arielle spiraled down and they landed on the ashy plains just as Barnard rose from behind Eau.
"This is too far away," said Richard. "Those volcanos are at least ten kilometers off. I'll never be able to get there and back before dark."
"Jill thinks that the vent that supplies the volcanos comes under here," said Shirley. "We will put the seismometer here, then Arielle will take you over to the volcano. Inside if you want, provided there is a place to land."
Richard could hear the air-lock cycling at the rear of the ship as the Christmas Branch took out a seismometer and a communications package. He sat down at the science console and slaved the sensor platform in the left 'eye' of the Magic Dragonfly to follow the Christmas Branch as it left the airlock. The Branch had feathered out the subelements on its feet and easily "snowshoed" its way across the deep ashes. There was a flurry of ashes as the Christmas Branch dug down to bedrock and installed the seismometer.
"Looks like a good signal," said Richard to Jill. "I can see the vibrations when the Branch moves. Hold it still for a second."
The image of the distant Christmas Branch froze on the screen, and Richard increased the gain on the seismometer.
"Lots of trembling, but nothing big," said Richard. "It should be safe to go in closer."
The Christmas Branch set up a radio link to Walter at the L-5 point, where the commsat would relay the seismic signal back down to the Magic Dragonfly. The Christmas Branch reentered the air-lock, and while the lock was cycling, Arielle slowly lifted the Magic Dragonfly on its fans. The nuclear jet kicked in and they zoomed toward the first of the three craters.
"No lava," said George as they hovered over the cinder cone.
"This kind only shoots hot gas and dusty ashes," said Richard. "The big one over on the other side with Rocheworld Base is the type that throws out magma. Those are too hot and dangerous to visit, but I hope to get some samples from these vents. How's the temperature, Jill?"
"Quite hot inside the vents," said Jill, but you should be able to get fairly close without exceeding the insulation limits on your suit."
"Can you take her down closer, Arielle?" asked Richard. "I want you to check the consistency by blowing the fans at it."
Arielle slowly lowered the huge airplane on its VTOL fans, then slid it backwards to see if the blast from the fans blew a trough in the surface. At first the surface held, then large chunks broke loose and tumbled away.
"It looks like it has the strength and density of Styrofoam insulation," said George.
"I not land on it," said Arielle. "I hover for you, if you wish to go out. Gravity is so low I only need five percent of fan speed. You hardly will feel the breezes."
"OK," said Richard. "Take me over to that vent near the lip of the crater."
Expertly, Arielle slid the Magic Dragonfly along the rolling ash surface to a twenty meter wide vent with a slightly elevated lip.
"I take you to top? Or do you walk up the slope?"
"Just drop me off at the base. There may be some gas still coming from the vent and it might blow the Dragonfly around."
Richard left to get his suit. Shirley was there, waiting for him. She was already suited up and holding onto one end of a strong cable. The other end was fastened to a belt-loop on Richard's suit.
"What's that for? I'm not going to need ropes to climb that slope."
"This is for that first step out the lock," said a muffled voice. "If Arielle is afraid that the Magic Dragonfly could sink in that stuff, I'm going to worry about you. You may have size eleven feet, but there is so much muscle-bound mass sitting on top of them that you're likely to sink straight to bedrock. As much as I hate to admit it, I want you back."
"Just so you can pick on me," said Richard plaintively. Shirley took him carefully through the suit checkout, then as the inner door cycled, she circled around in back of him and picked him up bodily in the light gravity. Arms ineffectually waving in protest, Richard was carried into the airlock.
"At least I pick on somebody my own size," she replied, finally putting him down. He turned and glared at her grinning face through her helmet as the inner door closed, the lock cycled, and the outer door opened. The two looked out from the floating airplane at the dark ashen crust a few feet below.
"Looks pretty solid," said Shirley. "At least it isn't blowing away in the wind from the lift fans."
"The ash particles are red hot and bristly when they come out of the vent," said Richard. "They have a tendency to stick together."
"Shall I lower you down?"
"Nope. You might drop me. Only one way to find out. As my seven-greats-aunt on my mothers side used to say when she was looking for my seven-greats-uncle...'Geronimo!' "
Richard jumped from the door and floated down to the surface in the two percent gravity. His boots made a depression in the crusty surface, but he didn't sink in.
"Did I detect a note of disappointment before Jill cut our imp link?" he said, looking up at the suited figure in the lock above him.
"Who? Me?" said Shirley sweetly. She jumped and landed beside him.
"Lead the way," she said. "We've only got one hour left of this minimal day before it gets dark, and it will really be dark since Gargantua won't rise until three hours later."
The two climbed the ashen slope until they got near the lip of the vent.
"You dig in and hold the rope while I go up to the rim," said Richard. "I doubt that there is an overhang, but funny things can happen with sticky ashes like this stuff when it collects in a low gee field."
He took his geologist's pick and cut two deep heel-holes in the crust. Shirley sat down and put her feet into the holes. She took her pick and slammed its point into the ground behind her. With one hand controlling the line through her belt, and the other through the wrist-loop of the pick, and her feet in the heel-holes, she was ready. Richard walked to the edge of the vent, Shirley paying out the line as he went. He looked over the edge, then leaned forward to look down. The only thing keeping him from falling in was the rope in Shirley's frantic grip.
"Richard! Stop that!"
Ignoring the frantic cries, Richard leaned over still further in the low gravity and swayed from side to side as he slowly looked down into the crater, taking shot after shot with his chest camera. He finally returned to the vertical.
"No overhang," he said. "You can come up here if you want. I'd like to have you lower me down to a ledge about five meters down to get a sample from inside."
"Easy enough," said Shirley. "In this gravity you only weigh five kilos. I could lift you with my little finger."
"I'd prefer you use two hands," said Richard.
Shirley dug in again and Richard went over the side. As he did, the constant noises coming from inside Richard's suit stopped abruptly as the laser beams that linked their suits together were broken. Shirley felt bereft without Richard's constant presence through their suit link. There was a movement in the sky as Arielle flew the Magic Dragonfly overhead until it was perched above the vent. Line-of-sight communication was reestablished with the Dragonfly and Shirley could hear Richard's voice again.
"...its a lava tube. This crater hasn't always been just hot gas and dust. Looks fairly recent too." There was the sound of grunting as Richard's pick pounded the rock to obtain a sample.
"Hold tight! Coming up!" Shirley held tight to the throbbing rope and soon Richard's toes appeared over the edge and he lifted himself upright. He handed her a small clear stone.
"I won't be sure until Katrina and Jill analyze it, but I think it's a diamond."
Shirley rolled the rough stone between her fingers, then looked coyly at him.
"Oh, Richard! How sudden! Now we're engaged."
"You've got it all wrong, beautiful...," he said, starting back toward the Magic Dragonfly at a speed that made sure there was plenty of distance between them before he finished the sentence. "...it's payment for services rendered."
Rising slowly on its fans, the Magic Dragonfly first gained altitude, then speed as the nuclear jet cut in.
"Where to now?" said Arielle.
"Head for the inner pole," said Richard, but take us over the big lava volcano, I want to get some infrared pictures."
Arielle headed the Magic Dragonfly toward the inner pole in the deep Roche darkness. They hadn't far to go and the gravity dropped even more. They finally reached the inner pole. Using Jill's radar, they found a flat place and landed to wait for daylight.
Shirley came up from the back, bouncing as she came.
"This is ridiculous," she said. "All that dirt out there and it isn't keeping me on the floor."
"You keep forgetting that equally large ball of dirt overhead," said David. "Why don't you put on free-fall boots? The floor has loop carpeting."
"They're back at Rocheworld Base," said Shirley embarrassedly. "I was so busy checking everyone else's kits that I didn't check mine. Besides, you don't expect to run into free-fall in an airplane!"
"This is magic airplane!" said Arielle. "It can even abolish gravity. It almost sunrise, we shall go?"
"Yes," said George. "Up please—and don't stop until up is down."
Arielle started the lift fans at low speed and the Magic Dragonfly rocked and lifted rapidly in the half-percent gravity at the inner pole. She switched to the nuclear jet and started a tight spiral climb.
"Ten kilometers and climbing," she announced as the ball of Barnard rose behind Roche. A few minutes later Gargantua peeked from behind Eau and the sunlight from Barnard illuminated the water mountain above them while the ground below was still in darkness.
"Twenty kilometers and climbing," said Arielle. "Gravity now less than one-three hundredths gee." Forgotten items started to float around in the cabin in the currents of the air conditioning system. The room was soon full of busy mosquito-imps cleaning up the air.
"No ring waves," said George, looking up. Barnard now illuminated one-half of the conical ocean with its red glare, while the other half was more softly illuminated with the reflected light from Gargantua.
"Since it's been daytime on Roche, the air flow is from Roche to Eau, or down the water mountain," said David.
"So no big waves," said George. "And any that get formed spread out as they go down mountain."
The drone of the lift fan engines slowed.
"Forty kilometers altitude and stopped," said Arielle. "We at midpoint."