Dragon's Egg (15 page)

One after the other, new stars began to blossom in the sky. The cheela in Bright’s Heaven continued to multiply and prosper, but their very numbers began to strain the ability of the crust to support them. Decadence set in and soon the needle trooper commanders despaired of ever adequately defending the expanding frontier with the flabby, ill-fed recruits they were sent to use.

A fifth new light grew in the sky during the time the barbarians made inroads from the east. Alarmed, by
both the losses and the new stars, the cheela rose under the leadership of a self-proclaimed General of the Clans and drove the barbarians back. The spasm of energy subsided—the General abandoned his post and went off to hatch eggs—and the cheela slipped back into their slow decline.

Yet another star blazed in the heavens, and this time the flurry of worry and religious concern was brief. Bright’s-First still worshiped daily in Bright’s Temple, but few came to worship with him. Those who were still in need of a god had found six of them in a new religion—a popular pantheistic religion that had a little bit of everything for everybody, including religiously inspired orgies that took place every time Bright’s Messenger passed near “The Six”—which represented East, West, Sky, Crust, Food, and Sex.

Most of the crew of the interstellar ark were floating in front of the viewports on the bridge as St. George approached the site of the compressed asteroid collection. The rest were at various observation posts where the telescopes and scanners gave them a better view.

Pierre looked up from the screen and rotated to face the Commander of the expedition.

“I know it’s safe, but I still don’t like it, Carole,” he said. “Those red-hot asteroids are not only too hot to touch, but they would crush us with their gravity tides if we ever got too close. And we are going to live within 200 meters of six of them for over a week!”

Carole smiled reassuringly and replied, “You know perfectly well that, if it were not for the toasty embrace of those friendly asteroids, the gravity tides of Dragon’s Egg would crush you instead! Let’s get them down there where they will do you some good.”

Bright’s-Second had been keeping a careful watch on the collection of six lights ever since he had been a novice. Having entered the priesthood because he was withdrawn and unpopular, he had submerged himself in the astrologer sticks and had invented new tools to measure more accurately the minute motions of the many lights piercing the darkness. He was the first to notice that the tiny circle that Bright made in the sky had become measurably smaller. He took the news to Bright’s-First, who was delighted.

“That must mean that the imperfection in Bright, miniscule as it has been, is becoming smaller,” she said. “When will be the time that Bright is perfect? Oh that I might live to see the turn!”

“I am afraid that when that turn comes, we will both be meat, O High Priest of Bright,” the Chief Astrologer said. “Entire clans will have come and gone before Bright reaches its perfection.”

The High Priest was disappointed, but she didn’t let it show. “Well, we must maintain our stewardship and keep Bright’s Temple going until that turn comes and the people once again return to their One True God.”

The Chief Astrologer listened politely, but was bursting to tell the High Priest the other news that he had.

“My new sticks have also informed me that something else is happening,” he said. “The Six … I mean, the six newer lights are slightly shifting in position and are drawing closer and closer to the point where Bright’s Messenger reaches its farthest distance from Egg. Also, if you watch The Six and Bright’s Messenger as often as I do, you will see that they do not stay at the same brightness from turn to turn, but occasionally flare up slightly, then return to their original level.”

“What can that mean?” Bright’s-First asked.

“I don’t know, but in about a great of turns, Bright’s Messenger will reach its maximum distance from Egg, and it seems as if all six of the other lights will be there at the same time. If so, something interesting may happen.”

When the deorbiter came up this time, there was going to be a spectacular show. Commander Swenson was again in the port science blister, watching the action on the console screens.

“Check position of compensator masses!” Pierre called out.

Six confirmations flashed instantly on his screen and were echoed by voices floating through the air from six nearby consoles, where each compensator mass was being monitored by a crew member.

Pierre looked up at Carole as he shrugged and lifted his finger from the abort toggle. “I really don’t know why we insist on monitoring the computer on these close encounters. Things are going so fast I doubt we could do anything about it even if something did go wrong with the computer.”

“Still,” Carole said, “it lets us get in on the fun.” She watched as a tiny speck in one corner of the screen slowly grew bigger and approached the six glowing spheres in the center of the screen. Then, in a complex wiggle and flash, the deorbiter mass pulled its disappearing act. The six glowing compensator masses were gone, and the screen was empty.

Bright’s-Second had his suspicions verified. For when Bright’s Messenger reached its point of maximum distance
from Egg, it did not just pass in front of the Six, but instead grabbed East, Sex, Crust, West, Food, then finally Sky, and flung them down at Egg.

The dozen turns in which the sky was torn asunder by Bright’s Messenger throwing down the false gods from the sky was a busy time for Bright’s Temple. At first, the cheela were sure that the Six were going to fall and hit Egg, destroying the wicked cheela that had abandoned Bright and had turned to false gods. For a while, even Bright’s-Second was worried about that possibility. But a few dozen turns staring through the astrologer sticks assured him that although the falling stars would come close to Egg, they would only come as close as Bright’s Messenger did. When the High Priest passed Bright’s-Second’s assurance of salvation on to the cheela, the crowds flocked to Bright’s Temple.

Near the end of the fourth great of turns after their fall, the six star-specks and Bright’s Messenger drew closer, and moved more rapidly through the black heavens. Bright’s-Second spent almost his entire time out at the astrologer sticks, writing down the numbers as fast as he could determine them. After he was certain of the orbits, he could spend some time carefully drawing them out and trying to understand them, but right now his full time was spent collecting the numbers as the seven bright objects moved through the heavens. He determined that Bright’s Messenger had been affected by the interaction—not much, but an easily measurable change had been made in its highly elliptical orbit. He hated to do it, but he put a novice in charge of taking the numbers, and went off to draw up the new orbits of the fallen Six.

“Strange,” thought Bright’s-Second, “they all seem to be heading for the same place above Egg. Perhaps they will hit each other and destroy themselves, as an example to the cheela not to worship false gods.”

Suddenly he had another thought, and shortly he was
staring at still another egg-shaped orbit—that of Bright’s Messenger with its new numbers used.

“Bright’s Messenger is going to be at the same point at the same time,” he said to himself. “What is going to happen? It would be to Bright’s glory if I could predict the outcome for the people, so they could be properly prepared.”

Bright’s-Second tried as hard as he could to extract the most from the inadequate numbers that came from the crude astrologer sticks, but all he could tell was that Bright’s Messenger and the six fallen ones were going to be near the same place at the same time.

“They look as if they will all collide and be destroyed,” Bright’s-Second reported to the High Priest. “But it could be that Bright’s Messenger will toss the other six off into different directions again, perhaps back up to where they were. I simply don’t know what to predict.”

“It would be so much better if we knew,” she replied, “but perhaps Bright is testing us again.”

Bright’s-First was wise in the ways of religious leaders and only told her people that they were all to be praying, with their eyes to the eastern skies, when the time came for the stars to meet.

Inexorably the seven spots in the sky drew closer together, and now everyone could see the irregular flaring in intensity as if they were glaring at each other. Bright’s-Second was busy at the astrologer sticks. He had the novices working in teams, one for each of the seven lights. They often got in each other’s way and a number or two was lost or misread, but he could take care of those later. He himself, with his practiced eyes, was estimating the relative distance between the points of light, while the novices were measuring with respect to the background stars. It was now obvious that they were not all going to meet at exactly the same place. Then, as the cheela watched, they saw Bright’s Messenger
swing by Sex, West, Food, East, Crust, and finally Sky, then continue on its accustomed path back into the blackness, leaving the six standing still in the sky!

A keening vibration shook the crust as a great of greats of cheela treads chattered in fear and awe at the amazing sight. Where before, the six stars had risen and set in the skies each turn as the other stars and Bright’s Messenger had done, they now were stationary. They neither rose nor set, but slowly rotated once a turn around a point above the east magnetic pole.

The High Priest took full advantage of the extraordinary sight, and at the next turn proclaimed that the new formation was composed of six of Bright’s eyes, brought down to Egg by Bright’s Messenger to vigilantly watch over the cheela to see if they were daring to worship false gods again. The proclamation was accepted by the cheela, and the pantheistic temples were reduced to rubble by frightened mobs cowering under the constant glare of the Six Eyes of Bright.

The new formation in the sky bothered Bright’s-Second. It was counter to everything he had ever known about the behavior of the many lights in the sky. Having been a trooper chaplain during the last northern campaign against the barbarians, he had marched with the troopers across the equator to destroy a barbarian town. There, through breaks in the smoke cover, he had seen some tiny stars that rotated in small circles over the north pole, as Bright did over the south pole. He could understand a star being motionless in the sky if it were near a pole in the sky, but this was the first time an east or west magnetic pole had acted like the north and south poles.

“The compensator masses are down,” Carole said, turning to Pierre. “Now it is Dragon Slayer’s turn.”

Pierre, ignoring the small screen pager on his wrist, reached over to a nearby console. “Page crew of Dragon Slayer!”

The console blinked.

Pierre watched as the “Page acknowledged” mark appeared in front of each name. The computer had found them all busy at one task or another onboard the Dragon Slayer. He leaned forward and asked, “Does everything look good for a departure at 0930?” He reached down and flicked the audio output panel to avoid the screen clutter from a multiple response. The computer fed him the positive confirmations one at a time. Dragon Slayer was ready to go.

Kicking off from the console, Pierre floated across the bridge of St. George, then pulled his way down the tunnels to the launching hangar that contained the seven meter sphere that would be his home for the next eight days.

It was twenty minutes to separation and the crew of Dragon Slayer gathered in the small lounge at the base of the ship. Pierre looked over the crew who were to share the next eight days of danger, drudgery, and excitement with him. He couldn’t have picked a better group. All had at least double-doctorates despite their youthful ages. Jean, Amalita, and Abdul each had a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a doctorate in one aspect or another of electrical engineering. “Doc” Cesar Wong (the only “real” doctor on Dragon Slayer) had the unusual
combination of an M.D. in aerospace medicine and a Ph.D. in supermagnetics. Pierre himself had a Ph.D. in high-density nucleonic theory, and doctorates in gravitational engineering and journalism. Seiko, at 32, had them all beat. At last count she had four doctorates and expected to earn another as the result of their trip. Although each was a specialist in one aspect or another of neutron star physics, they had cross-trained so that each one of them could carry out any portion of the detailed science schedule that Dragon Slayer’s crew was on. Pierre spoke.

“After separation we will be on ten-hour interlocking duty shifts. There will be a two-hour overlap so the new person coming on duty can be debriefed on the status of the experiments before taking over. It is now 0912 so Abdul, Seiko and Doc are on duty, with Doc on his mid-shift meal break and Seiko to go off duty at 1000. We had better get into the routine, so the rest of us should relax now. I know we aren’t going to quarters during breakaway, but our shift will be coming up soon, so make sure that you get some sleep, and don’t spend your off hours just watching the others work.”

The time for separation approached, and they all went up to the main deck where each would have a viewport. The breakaway was quiet and uneventful. The procedure consisted of opening the hatch doors of the huge mother ship, unlocking the attachment fittings, and slowly backing the larger ship away from the freely falling sphere. Pierre had been right—no one went to quarters as the small sphere floated away from the immense side of the interstellar ark.

Cesar spoke. “It is always awe-inspiring to be outside, and up this close. The last time for me was when I came on board two years ago.”