Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (7 page)

"Sir, did you see? The
rings
on that tentacle!" Jon Burris their com tech said. He looked shocked.

"Yeah I noticed those too," Gordon said. "They looked like gold. So they have metal working." He frowned and thought about it a bit. "I saw double rows of suckers, I guess they fit between and the suckers keep the ring from slipping off."

"I'm
really,
really
glad we don't have an ocean capable lander," Lee said. "I'd have pestered you to be on it. That thing is big. It might decide to snatch a lander and take it home to investigate too."

"Yep, I'm looking at the shapes in the water just before it landed," Brownie said. "Some of those long shapes with a fan behind then must be what we just saw. They're longer than our landing shuttles."

"You're wrong, Gordon. This is going to be a classic video for the ages," Thor informed him.

"Did we get any data for the salts?" Gordon asked. "It didn't have time to boil off, did it?"

"No, but Lee's hydrophone got almost a minute of data before it was pulled under," Burris said.

"Let's hear it," Gordon asked.

It was chaos. The hiss of bubbles dissipating from the splashdown and then a cacophony of clicks, whistles, moans and almost musical tones all overlapping and out of time with each other.

"Well that's an unholy racket," Thor said.

"I'm a city boy," Ames in engineering said on the command circuit. "If you are walking down the street in Chicago you can hear the traffic going by, the distant sounds of a helicopter and maybe music from a store. There may be a police siren in the distance or the rattle of the commuter train going along. You get noise from construction work and airplanes. But if you live there it all filters out. If you ask a native what he heard on the walk over he won't remember hearing anything."

"What are we going to do?" Thor asked, looking at Gordon.

"We could waste months here and accomplish nothing significant," Gordon said. "We'll send a team back equipped to deal with this environment. They will be sure to have some sort of lander that is big enough to be safe, and the right sort of equipment, like some underwater drones."

"Maybe some dolphins," Jon Burris speculated. "It would be a real project to haul them, but it's their sort of environment. If it isn't toxic to them," he added on reflection.

"Our Caterpillar friends have finally joined us, although they're keeping their distance," Brownie said. "I wonder what they make of us stopping? We have no idea if they value water worlds."

"Send them the video off the probe," Gordon ordered. "If they haven't decoded it they will eventually, and we know they can extract some still shots. They may find the natives interesting. They are as different from them as we are."

"Perhaps I can make a tutorial," Jon Burris said. "We might show them a very simple screen. Say four pixels, and an object beside it. Then keep increasing the definition until it is obvious how the pixels build an image."

"You'd send an actual screen over to them?" Gordon asked.

"Yeah. They've had a ship inside," Jon reminded them. "I doubt a slow approach would upset them. I can't believe their brains are so different at processing images they can't view a screen. They don't have faceted eyes like a bug or anything that weird. I don't know what the problem is."

"Work it up," Gordon decided. "We may not be able to take it across in this system. Once the
Sharp Claws
and
Dart
get done with their survey we're going to set out for the next system. If they keep tagging along we'll send it over when you have it working."

After that, the rest of their shift was anticlimactic. Nothing interesting happened. A few people watched the landing again on their screens. Since nothing got neglected Gordon ignored it.

Chapter 6

"The
Sharp Claws
and
Dart
report they have sufficient reserves and don't need to refuel," Brownie told Gordon. "Einstein on the
Sharp Claws
reported a star on our general vector which is unusually dim, but it is well within jump range. Ernie Goddard, our amateur astrophysicist, got excited about it too because it has an odd spectrum. Is that suitable as a jump target?"

"Sure, anything different might be valuable. Work the numbers up and get everybody coordinated. Time jump so we're back in the seat after the next shift," Gordon ordered.

"Oh, and Mr. Hadak decided on a name for the world," Brownie informed him. "He wishes it to be known as Ocean."

Gordon shrugged. "Seems sort of trite, but it's accurate. At least it will tell future travelers what to expect. Log it and inform him, please."

"Whatever it is on the registry the inhabitants probably have a name for it that can be used too," Thor predicted. "Unless they just call it the World. At least he didn't pick Hadak's World."

* * *

Pretty Purple held on to the strange hard device and called to his assistants. "Something else smaller fell from above after this," he told One Dot Red. "Go straight down and look for something hard about a tenth of a standard across. It may be embedded in the muck but not so deep you can't get an echo off it." It was the vent valve but he didn't know that. The device was warmer now and the light on the bottom went out quickly when he pulled it under.

"Deep Yellow, the old work cell built on top of the floating collar can have the floor removed with a little work. Get it emptied out and the equipment in it moved to the cell I was using today. Use whoever you need to help. Keep the floor handy though. This thing will fit up through the collar and we can replace the floor under it. If we allow a little water inside it floats and won't weigh the floor down and rip it."

"It floats?" Deep Yellow asked. Pretty Purple was holding it about a standard length under the heavens. Close to a meter oddly enough.

"If I let go of it. It's hard enough to hold down now. I don't want to take it deeper. I suspect if it was made to float it may be damaged at any real depth."

"
Made
... " Deep Yellow said in wonder, staring at it. He was pretty bright. Pretty Purple was sure his mind was racing with all the implications of such a complex made thing.

"I found it. I claim ownership by right of finding," Pretty Purple said formally. "I do not abandon ownership if I leave it behind in my work cell. I shall inform everyone I meet of this for the customary full three days. Unless One Dot Red contests it, I claim the piece he is hunting. I directed him to it, so I have at least shares by the Law of the Hunt."

"I witness that," Deep Yellow agreed.

"Go ahead," Pretty Purple ordered. "I'll follow as fast as I can holding this. Then we'll examine it a bit when it is safely housed."

Lunch was forgotten.

* * *

The star did have an odd spectrum. Gordon had seen the report, but it wasn't obvious to the eye. It was whiter than Earth or Derfhome's stars, but not so hot it was into the blue. It did however have interesting spectral lines. It showed metals when they should not be so prominent.

If you had to describe the system the best word might be cluttered. There were three huge gas giants well spaced from each other and nothing visible near the star where they were used to finding at least one or two rocky planets. The main bridge crew lingered an extra half hour before yielding the comm to the beta crew, fascinated by the system. The bridge was double crewed for a bit with two waiting in the mess because there wasn't room to even stand.

One gas giant had at least forty-seven moons they could see with their small telescope and a couple of those had their own satellites. There did not appear to be anything you would call an asteroid belt anywhere in the system. It was all swept clean and concentrated around the three giants.

"How can so many objects be
stable
?" Brownie objected.

"I suspect if you looked back a couple billion years it wasn't stable," Ernie Goddard said. "I'd bet anything there were a
lot
more objects, and they took that long to sort out, combine and stabilize. It may not be as stable as you think. In another billion years I bet you'll see further consolidation."

"I'm shocked it's stable on a much shorter time frame," Brownie admitted.

"Count me suspicious," Jon Burris said. "But I bet these three gas giants would add up to the mass of a brown dwarf if they had formed a little differently as one object. I'd like to know if this system is on a line or arc with the previous brown dwarfs we found."

Ernie fixed Jon with a piercing gaze. "If you say it's
obvious
I'm going to flush myself out the airlock as a waste of space, damn it. Why didn't you become an astrophysicist?"

"I'd never fit in the academic life," Jon said, apparently serious. "You notice we have no real trained astrophysicists along? They are too busy writing for grants and publishing their fantasies to come along and see the real stuff. We'd have asked them to wash dishes or change filters between observations. You know – get their dainty hands dirty. When we go back they will all contradict any observations we have made and call us uneducated dilettantes. But they'll offer to go set things right if only the government will drop two or three trillion on a proper expedition that includes conveying them in comfort. Besides, I look silly in tweeds and a bow tie."

Gordon wondered what had turned him against the ivory tower crowd so strongly, but right now was probably not the right time to try to coax it out.

"As interesting as this is, it will all still be here when we are rested and switch bridge crews again. Meanwhile, enjoy the survey," Gordon said. "I'd like
The Champion William
sent to the far gas giant, and the
Sharp Claws
to the other. We'll examine the closer one. Send the
Dart
for a sweep through the far end of the system.” The
Dart
was a fast courier but flew along with them and jumped independently. The Badgers built fast couriers bigger than humans so it wasn't carried grappled.

* * *

The huge alien ship shadowing them returned not long after the main bridge crew went to bed. It was on a course to rendezvous with the fleet, but when the
Dart
took off to do a far loop of the system it changed course and was obviously going to accompany it. Captain Fussy decided to test the alien; they knew it could out-accelerate them, but they'd never shown it a fleet acceleration over two G. He took off for a loop around the star at five G.

It burned a little extra fuel and seemed to not surprise the alien at all. They didn't lag or send out another of their incomprehensible transmissions. It kept up with no problem. It was bizarre that it has to out-mass their entire fleet and was faster than the fast courier. After three hours Fussy decided the stress on the crew was enough and cut back to a G. The alien adjusted to that too.

* * *

"The Caterpillars are following the
Dart
around the star," Vigilant Botrel, the alter-shift commander, informed Gordon at shift change. "We have a lot of satellites confirmed, but probably won't be here long enough to get very good numbers for orbital periods. Whoever comes in after us will just have an approximation. I wasn't sure if the survey data was general release?"

"Yeah, why not?" Gordon allowed. "The power is still on and somebody made breakfast even though the video of the water lander must have had a thousand replays. If anybody is interested enough to sit and read all the astronomical observations let them. Nobody seems to be neglecting duty to browse the stuff. Who knows, maybe somebody will see something useful. Thank you, Mr. Botrel. I have the conn," Gordon said, which dismissed him.

Lee didn't say anything, but was pleased. She didn't see any point in being secretive. She'd have said that, if she could figure out how to say it without implying she was unhappy before the change. She didn't really remember being unhappy. It just felt right when Gordon loosened up.

"Burris, do you have that screen tutorial ready to present? Not that we have any Caterpillars to send it over to. But one assumes they're coming back," Gordon said.

"I do. I'd like to show it to you, to the bridge crew really," Jon said, "and see what you think."

"Put it on the full command channel, but give us a few minutes. I can tell Brownie and Thor are still sorting things out," Gordon said, "probably others too."

It was almost a half hour before those two finished business. Lee assumed they sent a private message to Gordon's board since neither spoke up. Gordon told Jon to proceed. He stood and faced them from his work station rather than just send it to their screens.

"Just making this up made me think a little more about how we see images. I want to show you an image without revealing its nature first. I'll send it to your screen at increasingly fine resolutions. I want you to signal me any time you know what it is. Wait to actually name it though, until others have had a chance to recognize it.

"Keep in mind most of our board displays here show eight thousand by four thousand, five hundred pixels. Which is thirty-six million total. None of us have the visual acuity to find the images grainy on so small a screen. There is no reason to make them run at a higher resolution until we get to a much bigger display. Some bigger displays will be bumped up to quadruple that pixel count, but other smaller things like phones use less.

"But how many pixels does your
brain
need to recognize something? And how fast should they be displayed to make video look smooth and believable? You may be surprised to know that most video software was updated to refresh at a hundred twenty times a second from a standard eighty when we started selling gear to the Hinth, like Ha-bob-bob-brie here. Their visual perception is much different.

"It was hard to pick an image for an example with which I thought all of you would be familiar. But I think this is well known, not just to humans. I'll start at ten by ten pixels. Tell me when you recognize it, please." The image was in black and white, grey-scale. Jon waited a few seconds and let them look at it before he moved on.