Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (6 page)

Jeremiah looked a little embarrassed. "Well, we did have a request for a cam looking down in the water for fish or whatever. It'll have a light too, for a little more range. Then we have the data channel for the salt vaporizer and spectrograph. There will also be the usual meteorological instruments. I didn't think it would be of any interest to look at the top of the water. We already see that."

"OK, small change of plans with that," Gordon informed him. "We want three wide angle cameras on the outer edge of the lander looking
in
, so they observe both the top of the lander from each side and the water behind the other camera. We want enough angle in the view we have full coverage all the way around the horizon. If that's too hard to do with what you have, bump it up to four cameras. Any problem with that?"

"No sir. We'll have cameras on the perimeter looking in and across each other. I'm sending the design changes to the team as we speak," Jeremiah promised.

"Has anybody asked for a microphone?" Lee asked.

Jeremiah Ellis looked stricken. Or perhaps unbelieving. "What would you want it to pick up? The sound of the wind or if there are birds too small for us to see?"

"No. I'd be surprised if there are birds. Where would they land? How would they raise young until they were old enough to fly? I suppose they could carry their young, but how would they have gotten a start, unless perhaps there used to be land? I was interested in a microphone for the water. On Earth and Derfhome all sorts of animals in the ocean make noises. Water carries sound better than air."

"Oh, you want a
hydrophone
," Jeremiah said. “Sure we can do that. If we don't have one I'm sure we have a design for one or can convert a regular microphone.”

"Good. That way if there's nothing where the thing lands we may at least
hear
it," Lee said.

"Any other requests?" Jeremiah asked. He looked like he might be afraid of the answer.

"Not from me," Gordon said. "Just in case nobody has told the team, we'll want it to splash down near the three odd bumps in the water."

"Of course," Jeremiah said.

* * *

The scientist whose name was a long genealogy to put Gordon's true name to shame for length was setting up another 'burn'. His associates called him Pretty Purple for short. As often happens the nickname embarrassed him, but stuck. His co-workers and friends understood it meant the bioluminescent spots on his hide had a particularly pleasant hue in the purple phase. It also was very appealing to the females of his species. They often gave a little involuntary pink flash of appreciation, which in turn made him flash a little yellow pulse that was the equivalent of a human blush.

It was an honor and the peak of his career to work in the world's premier materials lab, the only one running three gas chambers protruding through the top of the sky into the heavens. It could be dangerous. Early workers had received some nasty burns trying to observe the electric arc directly. Some got careless about staying wet. Protocol now was for an assistant to count off time and douse the researcher with water at regular intervals. If left to their own devices the researchers tended to be absorbed in their work and lose all track of time. To the point it was a stereotype now.

The chambers were a vast improvement on the previous platforms that were simply a floating collar defining a port on the heavens. For reasons nobody had yet explained, sometimes the light from the sun diminished and actual water descended from the heavens. But nasty pure water lacking all the elements of life. Indeed if one stayed in contact too long it irritated the skin. Just one more hazard.

Obviously, if one was running an electric arc to test and alter materials, water falling on the experiment at random from above was disruptive if not catastrophic. The sealed environment had its own challenges. Workers found that the thin substance of the heavens expanded when heated by their experiments. After the first isolation cell burst they invented the pressure relief valve. To avoid a long dangling tube filled with heaven stuff keeping the cell inflated they had invented the water lock. Life-sustaining water was pumped in between sealing doors that could be opened in sequence to pass traffic while keeping the cell inflated with heavenly gases.

To stay wet, workers and assistants worked in a pool lowered from the entry door. Even then water slowly lost the ability to sustain life. So time in the bubble was limited. The newest bubble had pumps not only for the water lock, but to exchange water in the bubble for fresh from below. It was exciting to work with the cutting edge high tech gear every day.

The intense heat of the furnace reduced almost all organisms to the black element of life. That it was also conductive amazed and delighted them. Some substances, such as the silty bottom from various sites, altered to a hard but brittle substance when heated. Those were not conductors. Other minerals when heated with the black element of life yielded malleable materials. They tended to corrode, but both kinds showed great promise for making things.

Some were quite strong if only they could be made not to corrode away like the prized bright yellow nuggets or the silvery grey ones found naturally. Pretty Purple had rings of both displayed on his longer tentacles. He was paid pretty well. Other materials showed less promise for now. Some of the yellow deposits from around the deep vents stank so bad when heated that the cell in use had to be abandoned for some days. The researchers doing that burn had to flee and the arc was disconnected remotely at the generators.

Pretty Purple's older brother held his work in derision. Rippling Dots was his unfortunate childhood name. He no longer had problems controlling his enthusiasm. Indeed he had turned absolutely solemn after being selected to the priesthood as the eldest child. He reveled in the privilege of the religious vocation. Pretty Purple was relieved beyond measure that he had escaped it by being younger.

Rippling Dots was currently babbling at him every time they met about strange new lights in the heavens. That they didn't follow the rules any previous lights did, failed to impress Pretty Purple. They were still just lights above the sky. The idea that they had any influence on his life was something he rejected, although he didn't make too big a point of saying so. The priesthood had many followers and much influence.

When his brother went on a long complicated rant about how his success or failure followed the small moon twenty day cycle or the four hundred day solar cycle, or some multiple or division of them, he just flickered a faint mauve show of interest. Believers saw patterns everywhere whether there really were any or not. There was never any shortage of numbers to apply, after all.

The crucible was packed with an interesting green mineral and life stuff. He'd recently been experimenting with adding the salt extracted from the water of life. It would be a tenth-day before his assistants got the generators all hooked up and up to temperature. So he left the electrodes unhooked and went off for a midday meal before the day's burn. There had been some red stripe swimmers in the lunch pen yesterday. He hoped maybe a few were left.

* * *

"Gordon
everybody
wants to see this thing splash down. I suggest you put it on the fleet net and allow anybody to watch who won't compromise safety by doing so," Lee said.

"I don't get it," Gordon said, "but if that's how they feel, fine. Put it up live."

"You didn't want it dropped while you were off shift sleeping," Thor pointed out.

"Yeah, but we helped plan and design it," Gordon said. " I understand Engineering wanting to see it. They built it. I guess I should be happy everybody is taking such an interest. Chances are it will go – splash – sit for a few minutes and radio us some data. It's hardly going to be a classic like the moon landing. Then everybody can go back to work or their poker game. How long until the shuttle drops it and then it gets to the water?"

"We're eleven minutes out from the drop," Brownie said. "You told the shuttle crew absolutely no going under twenty thousand meters. That means the package will free fall for quite a ways. They are planning on a drogue chute at five thousand meters and the balloon joining it at two thousand meters. The chute will be manually cut loose when the balloon shows some lift. We'll be controlling the inflation and sink rate to try to drop it near those three bumps. Call it a ten minute descent."

"Fine, put it on net-wide broadcast, but I don't want to hear of environmental dropping out of specs or the biscuits being burned again, because somebody was staring at the screen," Gordon snipped.

"The biscuits were, uh, interesting, but edible," Captain Fenton responded. "For some reason the ship's company likes to harass the cook. Damned if I know why, it seems dangerous to me to mess with the fellow who makes your meals. The firm biscuits made us appreciate what long sea voyages with hard bread out of a barrel must have been like."

"OK, the lander is streaming to general net access. It will be a black screen until the cover blows off," Brownie told them. "We have three wide angle cams looking across the top of the lander. The rectangular boxes sticking up near the very edge of the view in each channel are the other cams. We also have a cam looking straight up and one looking straight down. That will be illuminated."

There wasn't any conversation after that, just quiet anticipation.

"Shuttle has braked subsonic at twenty one thousand meters. Engines at minimum idle. On a clean glide to release point upwind of the triangle," Brownie reported. "Clean separation. Engines coming off idle fine. Shuttle climbing back out. They expect to be back docking in about two hours."

After a few minutes the view suddenly was bright, with the sections of the hard cover blown off fluttering off above the lander, quickly left behind. There was a few lines of high altitude ice clouds above. The view rocked a little and then stabilized. It was just starting to get boring when the drogue chute was explosively ejected. It filled perfectly and jerked the lander around. You could see sky through the open form of it. It was a web more than a canopy. Then the balloon popped up behind it pretty quickly and the chute drooped around the line running up to the balloon. The balloon wasn't very full. It looked more like a ball in a sock than a child's party balloon.

"We're going to get quite close to those domes or bumps," Brownie said. "We had good Doppler data on the wind and we should hit within a kilometer."

The lander swung back and forth a little under the balloon. You could see the hydrogen tube running up to it on one of the support lines. There was a dark shape at the end of the hose that was a vent valve. The cameras looking across the top of the lander showed the support lines and hose in the middle of each view. The lander tipped far enough they caught a glimpse of the horizon a few times. The three domes were in the view of the bottom cam coming closer swiftly. You could see a bit of texture to the water now, but it really wasn't rough.

"Crud... we wanted to get close," Brownie said. "But I'm afraid we might
hit
that nearest dome. I'm giving it a bit more gas. Better to come down between them than to land on one."

The rush to the surface slowed a little. The dome they were in danger of hitting slid off the edge of the camera view first, then the other two also. There were dark shapes in the water which provoked a murmur of interest on the bridge. With the zooming action it was hard to focus on the details. When the lander was a mere two meters from the water, the connector parted and dropped it.

The top camera showed the balloon, suddenly unburdened, race away, pretty much straight up. The view also had a halo of droplets from the splash of the lander hitting. When it was fifty or so meters overhead there was a bright spark of an igniter, and the balloon disappeared in a ball of flame. The hydrogen burned almost invisibly, but the film of the balloon had accelerants added and gave an orange flash as it burned. It was gone and a few sooty wisps were all that remained almost before the splash had finished falling.

The three cams looking across the top were splashed with water. The lander went below the surface briefly, foam racing in from the edges, but bobbed back. The lenses repelled water so they cleared quickly of all but a few pinpoints of water. The one dome was prominent in one cam view, the other two more distant in the other direction. A mixed cheer of hoots and laughter erupted on com. Gordon didn't reprove them.

* * *

Pretty Purple was thinking about lunch and what the new mineral might yield when there was an ungodly splash and something bizarre crashed through the sky into his world in a shower of bubbles. It bobbed back up to the surface quickly, as buoyant as his work cells. His world had dangers. Credit had to be given that he rushed forward into the unknown instead of fleeing. The bottom of this surprise had cylindrical shapes that shouted intelligent fabrication. There was a light shining down with a greenish cast to it and the curved circle of clear material next to it that had to be an eye of some sort. It was as rigid and as round as any shelled mud dweller. But bigger than any he'd ever seen. It was still much smaller than his own width and not streamlined at all. He instantly rejected it as a living creature. Now that it was in the water it didn't try to move at all. He reached it and started an examination.

* * *

The cheer cut off abruptly to shocked silence. There was a huge eye looking straight in the camera and it moved in until it filled the whole view, with barely the edges showing. Then a delicate tentacle tip explored the surface of the lens, too close to be in focus so it was blurred.

Another tentacle slid over the edge of the lander above the water and felt tentatively around one of the cameras. It wrapped around it, a good solid double-wrap grip, and tested the lander for stability, rocking it back and forth. It was strong. Another tentacle threaded across the center of the lander and kept playing out, thicker as it kept coming wrapping around the entire lander. When the section across the middle was near a half meter thick it tightened and the cameras showed the water closing over the topside. When the water closed over the antenna it cut off the data transfer.