Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (34 page)

"Why would anyone come this far, actually mine, and not leave a claims satellite?" Brownie asked.

"They didn't think anybody would get here for years?" Lee guessed.

"Or they went really, really deep years ago and are living outside the claims system," Gordon said.

"You mean they are independent and don't have any commerce or contact with Earth or our associated worlds anymore?" Brownie asked.

"It seems possible," Gordon said.

"Are you going to leave a claims marker then?" Lee asked.

"Yes," Gordon said, with little hesitation. "This isn't an alien species who know nothing about our law and system. All they would have to do is post a sign at the pit that it is owned and I'd refrain from trying to claim anything. Even aside from the Claims Commission and their rules and limits. But they show no interest in ownership at all. We have no indication they simply didn't take what they want and have moved on. Maybe they did this along the way and have gone so deep we'll never see or hear of them again."

"That would be seriously anti-social," Jon Burris said. He finally was getting a turn to look at the marker. He scrunched up his face at a sudden thought and looked up at them. "This is an accident," he declared waving the marker. "Somebody dropped it and had no idea. Otherwise the site is cleaned up to remove any indication that Humans were here. That's not normal. Humans litter everywhere they go. That shouts to me that they aren't coming back. I agree with Gordon they have no interest in ownership. Even less than the Centaurs or whoever built the radar reflectors and then never returned. They at least thought they
might
want to find those rocks again, but I have formed the firm opinion that they will date out
much
older than we suspect."

"We don't know the thought processes of the reflector builders. But these are your fellow humans," Ha-bob-bob-brie told Jon. “If you think they deliberately hid their presence and have no claim I accept your assessment and understanding of your own kind."

"We're agreed then," Lee said. "Let them show up and argue the point if they want the system after failing to claim it. If they can show they have a different legal system, with a valid ownership rule different than ours, I'll talk with them about it."

"Sounds reasonable to me. I'll tell Thor privately about this," Gordon said, putting the marker in his belt pouch. "We'll keep this verbal, and strictly between the members of the bridge crew," he ordered, and that closed the subject. That made two secrets the bridge crew shared.

* * *

The Caterpillar ship returned alone at the end of the week. Nobody got too worried about that since they were so much faster. The
Dart
and
Sharp Claws
returned a day and a half late, but with news they had a brown dwarf system located due to help from the Caterpillars.

"We jumped through five systems," Captain Frost related, "hurrying a bit, and fueled up at the last meaning to come back. The Caterpillars however did a slow motion run to jump while we were fueling and then aborted it and returned to us. There was only one star along that heading clearly in jump range, so it was obvious they were leading us.

"We followed to a unremarkable system, but the Caterpillars took a new heading and went on, throttled back to a pace we could follow. We were already into their lead for one jump, so I decided to follow for at least one more. The next system was a close binary, not at all like this, it had two small stars very close to each other and a brown dwarf orbiting the pair. It's just like all of them though with a complex of satellites around the dwarf. We didn't land on anything but I'd assume the makeup of the system is similar to the others. The Badgers and Bills are thrilled.

"The Caterpillars led us back by an alternate route or we'd have been another day late. As it was we did most of our runs at a G and a six tenths, with a couple hours lower acceleration to let the cooks make sandwiches and distribute box meals so they didn't have to risk working heavy."

"As you can see,
The Champion William
isn't back yet, so we haven't been waiting for you to move on," Gordon said.

"Is there any concern about that?" Frost asked. "Do you want someone to check on her?"

Gordon considered it briefly. "I don't think so. We have yet to find anything from which even the DSE couldn't protect itself."

When they returned in another day they were excited. They'd reached a turn-around point like the others, but less than a light year beyond they could detect a system of three brown dwarfs all loosely coupled to each other. So close to the star they ended their trip with, that they might very well be attached to it if they were not moving too fast. That would have to be studied in the future. It was too difficult to jump to three minor masses so far apart. It would have required study for the optimum aim point, refueling and then again when they exited, but it was possible to do so with a manned ship instead of a drone.

The Deep Space Explorer had good enough instrumentation to see a couple large bodies around two of the dwarfs, so it was likely a rich system like the others they'd found.

"Well, it looks like whatever other challenges our civilizations face, lack of metals won't be one in our future," Thor said.

"Yes, but what we are going to need now is a drone that can survive scooping fuel from a hot brown dwarf instead of a cold gas giant," Lee decided. They just all looked at her amazed at the casualness of her audacity. Their engineering wasn't anywhere
near
ready to tackle that task.

"Right... you can start throwing money at it when we get back," Thor said, tongue in cheek, but Lee just nodded agreement and refused to take it sarcastically. Ha-bob-bob-brie look at the exchange bright eyed and interested, but didn't defend his mistress. In his estimation she didn't need it.

* * *

"We're past the halfway point back and will angle back into the cone of ceded territory now," Gordon explained to the entire fleet. "We may deviate for something of interest, but we will keep correcting towards a line aimed at home now.

"Since we have filled in a few more data points it seems unlikely we will find any more brown dwarf systems. Of course we are always interested in living worlds, water worlds or systems with potential for fuel depots. Having accomplished so much we intend to try to make time more than before. I'm leaving our run to jump acceleration at seven tenths of a G. That has proved easy on personnel and equipment.

"However we will not brake and examine some systems we would have on our outbound leg. We'll pass on through retaining velocity as much as practical when we vector around a star and choose a new target. If any of the captains feel we are missing an opportunity rushing through any system present your case early on when we've emerged, so we can consider it.

"Any questions?" Gordon asked, and waited a just a couple seconds for any response. "Then Brownie will be setting a new target and sharing the movement data."

* * *

Two shifts later they were on the jump shift and running smoothly. Nobody had any problems and the star ahead was big enough and close enough to be an easy jump even without any information on its velocity or companions.

"I hear you chatting with Talker about the Caterpillars," Gordon mentioned to Lee when his duties didn't require his close attention. "Are you making any progress?"

"We have the numbers, yes, no and are working on maybe," Lee said. They have the audio files for the name of each species. They may hate me for it later, but they have the Human usage instead of what each of them calls themselves. We're having enough trouble teaching them English, and I have no desire to try to simultaneously teach them Hin, Derf or Badger. Eventually we will need to teach them Trade. But by the time that happens I hope somebody else has taken over."

"Any progress on understanding Caterpillar?" Thor asked.

"No. Caterpillar is much more complicated than any of our languages. We have recordings of their audio response that is yes and no. It isn't just HOOT! –ess and HOOT! –noo. The hoot is subtly different depending on the context in which it is used," Lee said, a bit of despair in her voice.

"The more I try to talk to the Caterpillars the more I am amazed how much Lee and I think alike," Talker said. "It's easier for me to talk to Humans and Derf in English than to talk to Bills I've been dealing with my entire life. It's to the point now I can usually guess what a new word means from context before I look it up. I have no idea if that is true of Hin, since I only have Ha-bob-bob-brie for a sample and he isn't very chatty even with English."

"Better to be stingy with your words," Ha-bob-bob-brie told him. "Once you say them, they fly away beyond recall, and you must live with the results forever, for good or bad," he counseled.

"That all makes perfect sense to me," Talker agreed. "But it doesn't move things along. Ha-bob-bob-brie, was English difficult for you? Is it more or less complicated than Hin?"

"English is easy for simple things," Ha-bob-bob-brie said. "It is a good language for unambiguous instruction or engineering formula. It is however an extremely difficult language in which to be eloquent. I would despair of every composing poetry with it. I know Humans have what they regard as poetry, but it isn't subtle. It is least subtle when it has to rhyme to even be recognized as poetry. Now free verse or a haiku, those can display some beauty."

"Perhaps you would like another Human language better," Lee guessed.

"Perhaps," Ha-bob-bob-brie agreed. "But why did English dominate if others have merit?"

"Maybe because it
isn't
subtle," Jon Burris surprised them by speaking up. "If an Englishman damns you to hell you don't have to wonder if that's what he really meant. You can feel the flames licking your toes."

"And Mr. Burris destroys my point with a marvelous illustration," Ha-bob-bob-brie said, laughing again. "I admit I could never have composed that statement."

"Your graphic explanation of our returning on an alternative route was wonderful," Talker allowed. "If you have other suggestions please don't be stingy with them. You may get the sense of how the Caterpillars
think
better than we do."

"It's a bit late to be asking that," Lee told him sharply.

"Why is that" Talker asked, surprised.

"It's the
early
bird that
gets
the worm," Lee said smiling.

The groans could be heard all the way back to engineering.

* * *

The fleet proceeded through five star systems in rapid succession. There wasn't anything worth slowing down for. They stopped in a system with a gas giant on the opposite side of the star which could be reached with a moderate course change. A few people asked about a rest day, but Gordon felt it was too soon. The Caterpillars took a dip into the atmosphere, they assumed to refuel.

Talker and Lee established the word ‘hand’ with the Caterpillars. ‘Tentacles’ proved more difficult than they anticipated. The Caterpillars seemed to have trouble with a general term for the variety of tentacles they possessed. They returned a flood of information that made clear they couldn't think of their larger manipulating tentacles and the abundance of smaller ones as one general
thing
.

When Thor was his usual grumpy self about that Lee pointed out they would all have a hard time agreeing that thumbs should be included under the umbrella term of fingers.

They also established the word and usage for star. Lee hoped when they got to planet and moon there wouldn't be any problem with that division.

The system after their fueling stop they simply had to investigate, despite Gordon's increasing desire to press on and get back home. The star had a world on the near side that displayed evidence not only of water but organics – life. They were heavy on fuel so they braked hard to intercept its orbit instead of doing a leisurely braking loop around the star.

The world had water, but not in any abundance. It had an extreme climate, not because of an exaggerated orbit or heavy tilt to its axis. Just the opposite. It had a relatively circular orbit and somewhat less than a six degree tilt to its axis. There were no extremes of season and it was hot. The poles stayed at 45°C to 50°C and it got hotter as you went toward the equator. There was plant life as far as 30 degrees from the pole a few places, but spotty. And the two polar regions were visibly different.

The one end had a purple pigment dominating in the vegetation and the other pole had a burgundy color. If there was any exchange of living things across the vast desert covering most of the planet it was rare or long ago. There wasn't any evidence of civilization. They hadn't expected any. There were a few small bodies of open water near the poles, but not the salt lakes you might expect from the climate.

The planet was full of active storms racing around the middle, some of them a sickly yellow of dust. They carried water to the poles and the few river beds carried the periodic downpours away from the poles. If there had been any intelligence those rivers would likely have been dammed. Gordon intended to claim the system and sent the
Sharp Claws
to do a superficial system survey while the rest of them investigated the world.

Gordon asked if anybody wished to name the world, and there was no rush of suggestions. Jon Burris cautiously asked if anybody would object to Janus. That's how it was cataloged.

"Wouldn't it be cool if a world like this a sentient species at each end and they didn't know about each other until they invented radio or got to where they could make a vehicle that could cross to the other pole?" Lee imagined.

"That would probably have to be an airplane of some sort," Jon Burris decided. "I can't imagine anything like a treaded tank that could cross that much land. Maybe if it was nuclear powered and pulling a supply train. But an airplane would be above the heat at high enough altitude. Above the weather too with sufficient altitude."