Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel (35 page)

If at some point in the future, dear self, old Neil, you reread this journal in your cabin in the Santa Fe mountains, try to understand that these emotions were acute. As they occurred, I did not experience them as irrational.

Day 5
:

After breakfast, there came through every mode of social communication a grand announcement: A name is to be bestowed upon AC-A-7 at sunrise tomorrow. Like smashing a bottle on the bow of an ocean liner at its first launching, baptizing it with champagne.

I wonder what “they” will call it.

I had supper with my co-conspirators in the Asian restaurant. We enjoyed our chop suey and shrimp, then sat back over our rice wine to speculate.

Xue suggested Chinese names,
Meilì de xingqiú
(“Beautiful Planet”) or
Meilì de zhenzhu
(“Beautiful Pearl”).

I offered the Spanish version,
Planeta Hermoso
, but even as it left my lips it sounded dull.

Dariush contributed two provisional names, the first in modern Greek:
Éna Panémorfo
(“The Beautiful One”). His second was in unpronounceable Farsi, which he translated as “Paradise Child”. Very nice, poetic, but we kept hemming and hawing, not yet satisfied.

Pagnol had listened without saying anything, halfa mind away from the table conversation. He sat bolt upright and exclaimed: “
O Astre Splendide!
”

“Isn’t
astra
the Latin for ‘star’?” I asked.

“
Oui, oui
, it is. In the French, however, it means, simply, an orb.”

“Hmmm”, Xue frowned, “ ‘Splendid Orb’. Expressive, but I feel it lacks something.”

At that point, Paul Yusupov happened to walk by our table. I hesitated to catch his attention, fearing that our company might compromise him, but I was curious enough to detain him for a moment.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant Commander, can we ask your opinion about something?”

“Certainly, Dr. Hoyos. It is pleasant to see you. How is your swimming skill these days? Do you still go to pool now we are here in our destination?”

“I’ve been quite neglectful, I regret to say. Speaking of our destination, we’ve been discussing a name for AC-A-7. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Many”, he shrugged. “I have decided on one. You will understand that this has no significance for the decision that will be made. I correct myself: I mean to say the decision that
has
been made by authorities, and they will tell us when the sun rises.”

“Indeed. But what would you call it, if you had the authority?”

“Me, I would call it
Krasivyi Sad
, which is to say, ‘The Beautiful Garden’.”

“I like this”, declared Xue. “More textured than mine, warmer than a pearl yet retaining the concept of beauty.”

“A friend of mine has nice one too”, Paul replied. “She is doctor, smart person. She say, we should call it
Sundara graha
. Is Hindi language for ‘Beautiful Planet’. Now, excuse me, gentlemens. I must go. Thank you. Good bye to you all.”

He put two fingers to the temple of his forehead and left us.

I said, “I guess you guys have noticed a certain word that keeps popping up in the languages we’ve used so far.”

“Oui”, nodded Pagnol. “Clearly this is the result of a first impression that has struck us all—the planet’s extraordinary beauty.”

“An innocent world”, mused Dariush.

“Let us hope so”, I said.

Day 6

The blighters! They have delayed the announcement of AC-A-7’s name until tomorrow at sunrise, Day 7. Is this due to scientific considerations or biblical implications? On the seventh day, the Department of Social Infrastructure, having created the world, rested?

Day 7
:

The planet’s official name is
Mundus Novus
, “New World”. Why didn’t they just drop the mask and call it
Novus Ordo Seclorum
, “New Order of the Ages”? Or the variant, “New Secular Order”. I mean, that is what we now are as a race. It has a long tradition, since even poor old America exalted the phrase for centuries before it became the Earth’s slogan.

Day 8
:

Mundus Novus
strikes me as too
mundane
, too obvious an appellation. Is there no imagination in DSI, or whoever is above the department in the authority structure of mankind? I have no doubt that the name was decided upon more than nine years ago. They saved it for us as a surprise, and now we are supposed to jump up and down and squeal with birthday glee, popping balloons and blowing party trumpets. That is, when we are not breathless with reverence over having named an entire planet after ourselves.

I retch.

Day 12
:

How about “Novacain”? Or maybe “Supernova”? Not a correct term, astronomically speaking, but this planet is truly super. On a whim, I’ve decided to call it simply,
Nova
. This is merely my counterreaction to officialdom. It’s also a compromise of sorts, since if there are any intelligent life forms down there, they are doubtless looking up and scratching their heads, calling
us
new.

Day 16
:

The robot surveys are pouring information and imagery into the ship’s computers. The science departments apparently employ competent media professionals, because every few hours there is a “special” broadcast on the panorama screens.

Today, a presentation on the seas of Nova. Disposable pods were sent down to the ocean surface and began to transmit data—notably the good news that the liquid is indeed H
₂
O and is approximately 8% less saline than Earth’s. Mean temperature of the oceans at surface is 26°C. Unfortunately, the pods became inactive shortly after sending this initial data, either malfunctioning due to water damage or possibly gulped down as somebody’s lunch.

High-altitude scans give early indications that the seas are full of life forms. Two weeks from now, the shuttles will land, carrying aircraft and other vehicles that will begin exploration at ground level. Only later in the year will oceanography teams submerge after extensive closer scanning of underwater bioforms. Before plunging their manned mini-submarines beneath the waves, they want to be sure they won’t be eaten as a snack by something very, very big.

The new scans also confirm what our long-distance readings told us. The seas are deeper than Earth’s, on average about two kilometers deeper, though some trenches are four to nine kilometers deeper than our deepest. Tectonic plates are apparently more stable than ours back home. Nova’s sea / land ratio is significantly different from ours in terms of surface covered (more land than sea), yet the greater depth of water makes the ratio of total volume of water to land about the same as ours.

The circumference of the planet at the equator is approximately 47,300 kilometers, which is 18% greater than Earth’s. Its mass is 54.8% greater, with surface gravity at 11. 2% greater. Its heat emanation is slightly less than Earth’s, which probably means an older or otherwise less volatile core.

Day 17
:

Atmosphere programs were broadcast all day long. The air down there is eminently suitable for human respiration. There is 27% more oxygen at the surface than there is on Earth, with fewer aerosol toxins than we’re accustomed to. The troposphere is 22 kilometers deep, containing 78% of the planet’s oxygen and water vapor. Above the tropopause, the stratosphere is deeper than ours, from an altitude of 22 to 80 kilometers, with a mean of 41% more ozone (O
₃
) than Earth’s. The magnetosphere, to put it simply, is magnificent! Combined, all of this will give the landing parties a sense of enhanced vitality as well as greater protection from solar and cosmic rays. Nova’s surface gravity means that people who land on the planet are going to feel some weight gain. This will be hard on pudgy folk, great for skinny guys like me. At 170 Earth-pounds I would weigh 189 Nova-pounds. With Nova’s superior aerobics, however, this should work out just fine. I must, must break out of my confinement.

Day 19
:

The lands of Nova.

Wait! Before I begin recording information, may I remind you, old Neil of the future, that one can know an encyclopedic amount of things about a place (or a person) and not know it (him, her) at all.

So, remember this first meeting. Gaze at this orb, this three-dimensional sphere. See its immense mass slowly revolving on its axis. See it slowly circling its star. See its moons circling it. Notice its choreography in the dance of the eighteen planets.

A sphere pleases the eye, quiets the emotions, disposes every dimension of attention to contemplation. It exists. It is there, suspended in infinite space. It is majestic and dignified and very, very beautiful. Tears come to my eyes, and I do not know why.

It is a feeling of reverent awe. It is a feeling of love.

Down there on its surface, there may be hostile life forms that would end my existence with one bite. Nevertheless, this planet is splendid.

Day 20
:

Low-orbit scanners are still mapping the surface, filling in the meridians. So far, the topographical, photo, and heat scans have failed to discover any evidence of intelligent indigenous life forms. There are no ruins of cities or towns. Nothing. No lights on the night side. No roads, no trails, not even a hint that any such communication systems might once have been used, then fallen into forgetfulness as a civilization declined and became extinct. There is nothing that remotely resembles Mayan or Aztec terrain reclaimed by jungle. Rather, the planet seems to be what one might call Edenic.

I bumped into Maria Kempton in the cafeteria food line, and we ate lunch together. She was as friendly as ever, and we did not touch on the topic of my conspiracy theories or my supposed madness. I presume that she considers me sufficiently sane, because she guilelessly and enthusiastically chatted about the findings the biological scans are funneling upward to the ship. Her own role will come into play when the first exploration teams land.

In summation, she told me pretty much what the special programs are telling everyone. Nova is apparently teeming with animal and vegetable life, since satellite scanners and zoom cameras show us that there are countless heat-emitting creatures down there, though we can see only the backs of herding and solitary animals, some quite large. Drop robots have been sent down to selected ground sites, and transmitted multiple images of slowly moving animals, all distant and indistinct. Only rodent-like creatures (estimated to be the size of mice) have approached the pods out of curiosity. One sniff and they wander off in other directions. It is frustrating, this lack of more detailed views, since everything in me yearns to see more and more and more, to learn all that can be learned about the absolutely
new
.

As I mentioned previously, there are four main continents and five lesser ones. All of them are covered with forests, and only near the equator are there savanna regions. Now we know for certain that there are no real deserts, only drier zones where grasslands turn brown for part of the year. Orbiting around AC-A once every 412 days (its day is 31 hours by Greenwich measure), Nova’s axis is tilted. Thus, there are seasons. Equatorial seasons (rainy and dry) are not directly related to axis tilt, and have more to do with variations in precipitation according to weather patterns to the north and south.

Presently, it is the beginning of winter near the southern pole, and almost summer near the northern. Winter is mild by our standards. What there is of it can be seen in the dusting of snowfall in a narrow zone surrounding the small polar cap. This zone extends no more than a few hundred kilometers from the edge of the ice to the beginning of forest lands. It is tundra-like, though not fully arctic, and is covered with tens of thousands of lakes or ponds, crowded by shrub brush. The belt of land between the forests and the snowy regions is red, orange, and yellow, which is the result of leaf change on tundra shrubs—in other words, an autumn transition period. It is presumed that the colored lands will become green after the cold season turns back toward the warm, which it will do at the winter solstice five weeks from now.

We cannot thoroughly examine the character of the planet’s forests from their canopies alone. At this point, we do know that vast regions are mainly deciduous trees: jungle, rain forest, and temperate woodlands. Darker regions farther north and farther south are coniferous evergreens. Teams will soon be on the ground, but when you consider that only a few hundred scientists will have less than a year to investigate a massive planet, we will learn only a fraction of what can be learned.

Day 35
:

Today, the first of the shuttles descended to the surface of Nova. This was the primary advance party, containing the small contingent of armed military, about forty men and women, as well as high-tech war ordnance, and a number of aircraft and ground vehicles.

The shuttle landed on what has been named “Continent 1”, the largest of the nine continents. This land mass is enormous, if you consider that it extends from near the equator to the south pole. The distance between the poles, as the crow flies, is just under twenty-four thousand kilometers, making the continent nearly twelve thousand kilometers from its northernmost extremity to its southernmost point. The shuttle touched down on a mile-wide grassy plateau above a river in the forested regions, about fifty-five hundred kilometers south of the equator. Because it is technically winter in the south, this offered cooler weather.

With about six hundred other people crammed into the panorama rooms, I watched the first footstep onto the planet. The shuttle cameras gave us 3D images so crystal clear that I felt that I was right down there with the landing party. The man who first put his foot onto the soil of Nova was the Captain of the
Kosmos
. Pre-readings of atmosphere at ground level (sampled for both oxygen and bio content) indicated an air that is totally healthy for humans to breathe. Nevertheless, everyone kept their masks and suits on, in order not to bring our infections to this environment. The Captain was immediately followed by Skinner, the head of DSI, and then to my distaste, the Trillionaire, who was carried down the ramp by two soldiers. Fortunately, his little dog Feedo had not been brought along. Behind him, to my added distaste, came an energetic male figure in a mask, whom the media announcer identified as the nephew of the President of the World Federation—the rude spoiled brat whom I had encountered in a library years ago. He was carrying a camera and clicking it nonstop in every direction. Within seconds, a swarm of military guys buzzed down the ramp behind the dignitaries and made a perimeter around them, automatic weapons bristling outward in defense. As sensible as this may have been, it soon looked fairly pathetic—even paranoid.