Robert Sawyer: Golden Fleece

It was soon discovered that the Titius-Bode law wasn’t just relevant to the Sol system. It also held true for nine of the eleven star systems UNSA had surveyed with crewless probes, the two exceptions being the o 2Eridani system, with its complex dynamics of triple suns, and the BD+36°2147 system, which showed strong evidence of having had the orbits of its planets deliberately manipulated, what with worlds one, three, and five orbiting prograde and two, four, and six orbiting retrograde.

So: the zero bits were a scale of planetary distances for a system of eight worlds.

And the number of one bits? Relative planetary masses? Unlikely, given the range was only from one to sixteen decimal. In Sol system, the mass ratio of the heaviest planet to the lightest (discounting escaped-moon Pluto) is 57800:1; in the Eta Cephei system, it is 64200:1.

Ah, but what about equatorial diameters? Yes, for both the Sol and Eta Cephei systems, if you allowed even very tiny values to register as an integer one instead of integer zero, the order and sizing of the numbers would be just about right.

And that explained the first set of figures, the ones I’d discarded as anomalous: a single zero digit, to separate this part of the diagram from the ascending-prime-numbers page header, and 171 ones, representing the diameter of the star around which these worlds orbited, just about ten times that of the largest planet. What we had here was a slice through the ecliptic of an alien solar system.

The round numbers for the sixth planet—one hundred hex units from the star and ten hex units in diameter—meant it was likely the home world of the Senders. Of course, the scale used for planetary diameters and for orbital radii couldn’t be the same—the planets were vastly oversized in this representation. Ah, but by showing the one set of figures as relative to a value of one hundred hex and the other relative to a value of ten hex, the Senders were making clear that they were measured in a different order of magnitude.

But planet six was huge, meaning it likely was a gas giant, similar in composition to Sol’s Jupiter or to Athamas, the largest of the eleven worlds orbiting Eta Cephei. It was difficult to conceive of a form of technological life arising on a planet made of little more than swirling methane.

Page three hadn’t finished giving up all its secrets, though. There was still the second row of the message: a long string of zeros and ones laid out like this:

and then, as in the first row, enough extra zeros to pad out the line length.

Of course! The sixteen consecutive one bits represented the equatorial diameter of the sixth world, just as the sixteen one bits had in the slice through the solar system’s ecliptic. Following the model of that slice, the remaining zero bits likely represented orbital radii for the moons of the sixth world, and the one bits the tiny equatorial diameters of the moons themselves. The fourth moon, the one whose distance from the planet was shown as the attention-getting round figure of one hundred hex units, must be the alien’s home.

Fascinating. But what manner of creatures would live on the fourth moon of a distant Jovian-type planet? That’s what the third page of the message apparently told us.

As mayor of Starcology Argo, Gennady Gorlov didn’t really have a whole lot to do. Terrestrial mayors always had to deal with garbage collection and zoning bylaws and municipal taxes and attracting business to their constituency and entertaining visiting VIPs.

Well, I took care of the garbage, we had no need for construction, there were no taxes to be paid—the members of the crew had left all their money back on Earth in 104-year guaranteed-investment certificates, and their salaries were supposed to be paid automatically into a trust fund—no commerce took place aboard ship, and I suspect everyone on board would be quite shocked if a visiting person showed up, regardless of whether or not he or she was deemed very important.

Mostly, Gorlov organized social events.

So it didn’t surprise me that Gorlov appeared to take a certain perverse pleasure in what had happened. We had no police to investigate the death of Diana Chandler, and, although there were trained mediators on board to settle domestic disputes, Gorlov considered himself to be the logical one to handle the inquest. And handling it he was, with typical aplomb.

“So what the fuck happened?” he demanded, his voice its usual stentorian bellow. The little man looked out over the group of people he had summoned to his office: Aaron Rossman, standing, hands in pockets; Kirsten Hoogenraad, seated in the chair in front of Aaron, long legs crossed; I-Shin Chang, triple Gorlov’s size, a four-armed mountain of flesh with a chair hidden beneath it. Three others: Donald Mugabe, who was Gorlov’s assistant; Par Lindeland, a psychiatrist; and Pamela Thorogood, who had been Diana’s closest friend.

“Medically, it’s pretty straightforward,” said Kirsten, after waiting to see if anyone else was going to speak first. “She entered the ramfield, which, of course, funnels hydrogen ions into our engines. The ions are moving at nearly the speed of light. She died, instantly I should think, of severe radiation exposure.”

Gorlov nodded. “I saw the report on that. What’s this about the radiation levels being too high?”

Kirsten shrugged. “I’m not sure. She seemed to be exposed to about two orders of magnitude more radioactivity than one might reasonably expect, given the circumstances. Of course, even the normal level of radioactivity would have been enough to kill her.”

“And the excess means?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“Great,” said Gorlov. “Anybody else?”

Chang spoke up. “We’re working on that now. I’m assuming it’s an anomaly—a temporary aberration in the fuel flow. JASON is helping my people model it.”

“Does it present a danger to the ship?”

“No. The habitat torus is completely shielded, regardless, and all the diagnostics JASON has run show the Bussard ramjet to be operating exactly to specifications.”

“Okay,” said Gorlov. “What else? I see here that Chandler had a nosebleed.”

“That’s right,” said Kirsten. “A little one.”

“Did she use cocaine? Slash? Any other stimulant that’s inhaled?”

“No. There was no evidence of anything like that in her body.”

“Then why the nosebleed?”

“I’m not sure,” said Kirsten. “There’s no sign of an abrasion or contusion on her face, so it’s not the result of an impact. It could have been induced by stress.”

“Or,” said Chang, “by a drop in pressure. The ionized hydrogen flow would have played havoc with Orpheus ’s internal systems. Cabin-pressure control might have been lost, resulting in a sudden shift in pressure.”

“Wouldn’t that have caused an oxygen mask to drop from the ceiling?”

Chang sighed. “It’s not an airplane, Your Honor. Normally, passengers and crew would be wearing their own environmental suits and would have put on their helmets and used tanked air in such a circumstance. A warning bell should have sounded, but the flight recorder was wiped clean— apparently the systems overload triggered a reformatting of the optical platter—so we can’t tell whether it actually did or not.”

“All right,” said Gorlov, “so we know how she died. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why.”

Par Lindeland had done his best to grow a Freud-like beard, but his follicles just weren’t up to the task. Instead, a blond wispiness ran along the angle of his jaw. Still, he stroked it in good psychiatrist fashion before he replied. “Obviously,” he said at last, “Dr. Chandler committed suicide.”