Princess Rescue Inc (43 page)

The
Queen noted the Doc was finished with her husband. “Is he all right?” she asked.

The
doctor sighed. “His heart is in a lot of trouble. He's got some serious
blockage. If he was on Earth he'd need an immediate triple bypass and possibly
an entire heart transplant. We'll have to play it by ear and do what we can,”
she said. The Queen cocked her head to the ensign. Sue blinked in surprise. “Oh
the ensign? He's a fighter pilot. With care we can improve his life. If we can
get him home we can repair most of that damage.”

The
Queen stared in amazement. “So much?” She noted the missing fingers, amputated
foot, twisted limbs and scarred skin. Doc looked over then back and nodded.

“We
can make replacements for missing body parts now. We can do some for him now to
make him more comfortable and if we can get to the cache I can do more. Hell, if
we can get to that cache I might be able to do that triple bypass your husband
needs.”

“Really?”
the Queen asked hopefully. She sternly told herself to temper her emotions. She
settled herself, laying her hands across her lap.

“We
can do a lot for him,” Sue said. “Your husband as well. We've come a long way
in many things, especially our understanding of medicine. Most of this is
repairable in time. It'll be painful, the surgery, the rehab, but it's all do
able. His heart is clean, I checked. We'll need a full blood screen to check
for internal damage. The damn ultrasound is just good for different shades of
gray,” she grimaced and then sighed. “Without a baseline, that's useless to me.
If nothing else we can amputate what can't be saved and replace the limbs with
prosthetics.” The ensign shivered. Ryans patted his shoulder.

“Or
you could be a candidate for replacement ensign. We're doing wonders with
grafts and cloning now. We can grow entire ears, finger tips, and other pieces
of the body to order. Scientists were working on growing organs when we left.
Like the Doc said, we've come a long way,” Ryans said. The ensign's good eye
opened. He pointed to it with his gnarled hand.

“Oh,
no, not eyes.” Ryans sighed, “We can repair them but we can't quite replace
them though there's still hope there. Scientists back on Earth have a
prosthetic camera, but it's not very effective. It's improving though. The one
I saw ten years ago used a bank of photo cells to give a crude sense of sight.
They moved on to micro video cameras a couple of years ago. The tricky thing is
all the attachments to the optic nerve. Real headache there,” he said shaking
his head and then he shrugged. “They've broken the neural weave problem so now
they can transplant fingers, skin, organs, or limbs,” he said nodding to Sue.
Doc nodded.

Sue
patted the ensign's side. “Sure, and like I said, we do dandy prosthetics now.
If I had the gear here I'd clean out his heart and grow both of you new skin
and simple organs,” she sighed.

<==={}------------>

Ryans
nodded as he came into the main hall and noted the tablets once more on
display. “Interesting,” he murmured, noting a few people were near them,
reading them carefully. The room was now well lit, and a guard was standing
near, watching over those who wished to get close to the gilded lettering.

“In
truth a distraction, but a link to our past long overlooked,” Deidra replied,
nodding. “I'm glad Zara remembered it. Its' put a new perspective on things you
and the other gaijin have mentioned. I dare say its' put a
krath
amongst
the
saben
birds!”

He
chuckled at that as they made their way to their seats. The diners around them
were abuzz with talk of the army and the tablets. He nodded smiling and
thanking a servant as she put a platter down in front of them. Perhaps exposing
this will help in the long run after all. He made certain to take food only
after the chief food taster had given it his okay.

<==={}------------>

That
evening just before sundown he had an appointment with a local astronomer to
explain astronomy. Normally Sydney would take it but he'd volunteered since the
guy had been strung out with the kids.

The
couple were older rich merchants. The astronomer used what he learned to make
maps for night travel. One of their ongoing projects was to find Patria,
something that interested Ryans.

The
couple wore purple, dark almost black robes, thick ones since they were mostly
out in the night air. They had guards around them, not only to protect their
goods from bandits but also to protect the people from raiding predators who
stalked the night.

“You
started this at night you said? To avoid traffic?” Ryans asked. The merchant
nodded, rubbing his beard.

“Aye.
Traffic you see was terrible coming in and out of the city. Moving at night
allowed us to move freely.”

“Right,
traffic. I should have known,” Ryans said with a snort. Princess Zara blinked
at him. He shrugged it off. “Never mind, Earth thing,” he said.

Deidra
looked at him and away. “You are kind to allow us time to consult,” she said to
the couple, a subtle dig to Ryans to get on with things.

“It's
better to be on a mountain, away from the light pollution of the town,” Ryans
pointed out. “But your tools can be used for other things,” he said indicating
the leather wrapped scope. The astronomers had a small following, several like
minded students who did most of the grunt work.

“They
can?” the astronomer asked, dubious. Ryans nodded. He explained about
binoculars and scouting, and using signal mirrors. The astronomer and his
students excitedly agreed to the concepts once they understood them.

He
explained lens theory, concave and convex lenses and how they worked by
gathering or scattering light. “So you can use them to make distant things look
close, and small things look large,” he said. They nodded. “By using multiple
lenses and varying the length in between them you can focus the image and
improve it.”

“Correct,”
the wife said, smiling politely.

“Well,
one of the reasons we've come to you is that you are the local experts on such things.
So we need you and your glass smiths,” he bowed slightly to a pair of women and
an elderly Asian male in the back of the room. “To make lenses for the scouting
forces and the snipers.”

“These
scopes and binoculars you mentioned,” the wife said crossing her arms.

Ryans
nodded. “And the sniper rifle scopes. I'll get you the specs.”

“We
usually focus on the stars,” the husband rumbled.

“Well,
I can help with that too,” Ryans replied.

“Oh?”

“You
do know that the gas giant in the sky is a world right?” he finally asked. The
astronomer nodded.

“Long
have I suspected as much. It is strange to see it as a flat disk though.”

“It's
not. It's a ball,” Ryans looked around and then picked up a fruit from a nearby
bowl. It was purple with hints of red and yellow. He held it up with his
fingers extended. “See, when you look at it you see the circle.” He traced the
circle shape with his free hand.

Zara
and Deidra stared at the spheroid in his hand. He turned. The astronomers were
nodding. “But as it turned, or spins, you see different faces.” He rotated his
wrist to simulate the turning of the planet.

“Yes,
yes!” The woman said, practically bouncing in her excitement. “And the clouds
too! They're clouds right?” she asked. She was a plump woman, big bosomed,
dressed in a Roman style dress. It was plain, purple, with an outer robe.

“Yes,”
Ryans smiled, nodding.

“I
had never thought to have seen clouds from above,” the man murmured, hands
clenched across his belly. He turned to his wife after a moment. “You were
right.”

She
smiled beautifully. “You owe me dinner then.”

He
chuckled, nodding at her dig. “Indeed, indeed.” He held her hand. She smiled
again as his fingers stroked hers.

Zara
glanced at her sister. There was so much love between the couple, something
that surprised and pleased her. Deidra however looked away.

Ryans
cleared his throat after a moment. The couple and the audience looked to him.
“Right, so when the planet is facing the light, it is day, and the part facing
away is night.”

They
turned to him. “What was that?” the man asked, blinking. They dropped their
grip. “Night and day?”

“Yes,
when a planet turns, it is also orbiting the stars you see. The suns,” he
pointed out the window to the sky. His audience nodded. “Right well, when they
do they face the sun for a time, but as they spin....” He spun the fruit in his
hand slowly.

“Part
of it is in shadow. Look,” He walked over to the window. “See?” He oriented
himself so one face of the fruit was in sun, while the other was in shadow.

“Ah,”
Deidra nodded, blinking. She wasn't sure where he was going with this concept.

“Fascinating,”
the astronomer murmured. He took a fruit from the bowl and went over and tried
the experiment himself. “I had never thought of night and day as such.” He held
the fruit up and examined it.

“Right.”
Ryans nodded.

“Wouldn't
the night side be dark like when it is versus obscurus nox?” Zara asked
tentatively.

“True
dark night?” Ryans asked, puzzling that out.

Zara
nodded. “A time when the night is pitch black.”

“Oh.
That must be when there isn't anything reflecting light back to the night
side,” Ryans said. He nodded turning to Zara. “See other objects reflect light
to various degrees. Like your gas giant out there.” He waved to the window.

The
astronomer's wife nodded. “Indeed. And the other moons? Is that why we can see
them? They are reflecting light?”

“Exactly.
And some of that light reaches here for you to see.” He was a little amazed
that people of this culture were getting it so quickly. Of course this couple
had been thinking about it for years probably. She smiled indulgently at him in
the class.

“So
that explained it,” she grinned to her husband and held up two fingers. He
rolled his eyes. “That's two you owe me,” she said wickedly, eyes gleaming with
mischief. Zara giggled, hand over her mouth.

When
the others looked at her in surprise she stopped. “Sorry,” she said regaining
her composure.

“Right
well, ah...” Ryans took fruit from the bowl, then went over and took others
from a set of hanging wicker baskets. He laid them out on top of a desk covered
in scrolls and then frowned and laid them out on the floor.

“See,
here are your suns,”he pointed to each of the stars in turn. “This is a model
of your solar system as I know it. Things will change as we learn more.”

The
husband and wife team nodded. Deidra frowned, and then cocked her head. “These
are?” she asked, pointing to a large fruit.

“Right,
this is your gas giant, this is your world,” he said. He pointed to each in
turn. “Now remember, this isn't to scale. Things look small far away but are
really quite large.” He looked at them.

Deidra
and Zara frowned. The wife blinked. The husband was crouched over studying the
model.

“See
when you're close up things are the right size, but when you move away they
seem to shrink. It's called perspective,” Ryans explained.

The
women looked at him in confusion. He sighed. “Princess... er, princesses.” He
nodded to each. “When you are in the highest tower of the castle, when you look
down, don't the people look like ants?”

Deidra
nodded. “But in truth they aren't that way,” she said. She waved. “I see your
intent if not your full meaning. Continue,” she ordered regally, shaking her
hair out. She nodded her chin to the model on the floor.

“Right,
well, when your world spins, it has a cycle of night and day. But things are a
little more complex than that.”

He
moved the fruit representing their planet around the gas giant fruit. “See it
also moves around the gas giant.”

“Ah?
I thought it was the other way? That the suns and other worlds moved around
us?” The wife asked.

The
husband nodded. “Indeed we see it in the sky.”

“But
you see a reset right? Each night it moves across the sky, then back right?”
Ryans asked. The husband slowly nodded.

“That
is because the world you are on is moving just like they are.” He picked up the
second fruit and moved it around the suns.

“See
when your world moves around the gas giant and the suns it creates your
seasons. When they are close to the stars you have your summer for that is when
the suns are the brightest and therefore the air gets hotter.”

Zara
started to bounce. “So when they move closer to that point or away that's when
we get spring and fall! I get it! It is so simple now!” she grinned excitedly.

Ryans
nodded. “Right. You’re catching on nicely princess,” he said smiling
encouragingly to her. “See when the gas giant and your world move further and
further away from the stars you get winter.”