Hal Clement: Star Light

“That would be wasting a tremendous amount of work, and ruining what still seems a promising operation,” Bendivence replied thoughtfully. “You don’t want to do that any more than I do; but of course we can’t abandon those two helmsmen.”

“We can’t,” Barlennan agreed slowly, “but I just wonder whether we’d be taking too much of a chance on them if we waited out one other possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“If the human beings were convinced that we could not possibly carry out the rescue, it’s just possible, especially with two Hoffmans to do the arguing, that they’d decide to do something about it themselves.”

“But what could they do? The ship they call the ‘barge’ will only land here at the Settlement by its automatic controls, as I understand Rescue Plan One. They certainly can’t fly it around on this world from out at the orbiting station; if it took them a whole minute to correct any mistake, they’d crash it right away. They certainly can’t fly it down personally. It’s set up to rescue us, with our air and temperature control, and besides Dhrawn’s gravity would paint a human being over the deck.”

“Don’t underestimate those aliens, Ben. They may not be exactly ingenious, but there’s been time for their ancestors to think up a lot of ready-made ideas we don’t know about yet. I wouldn’t do it if I felt there was a real chance of our getting there ourselves, but this way we’re not putting the helmsmen in any worse danger than they are already; I think that we’ll let the human beings get the idea of making the rescue themselves. It would be much better than giving up the plan.”

“What it boils down to,” said Beetchermarlf to Takoorch, “is that we somehow have to find time between plugging leaks and cleaning poison out of the air units to convince people that the Kwembly is worth salvaging.

“The best way would be to get her going ourselves, though I doubt very much that we can do it. It’s the cruiser that’s going to set the policy. Your life and mine don’t mean very much to the humans, except maybe to Benj, who isn’t running things up there. If the ship stays alive, if we can keep these tanks going to supply us with food and air, and incidentally keep from being poisoned by oxygen ourselves, and make real, reportable progress in repairing and freeing the cruiser, then maybe they’ll be convinced that a rescue trip is worth while. Even if they don’t, we’ll have to do all those things for our own sakes anyway; but if we can have the humans tell Barlennan that we have the Kwembly out and running, and will get her back to Dondragmer by ourselves, it should make quite a few people happy, especially the commander.”

“Do you think we can do it?” asked Takoorch.

“You and I are the first ones to convince,” replied the younger helmsman. “The rest of the world will be easier after that.”

“What it boils down to,” said Benj to his father, “is that we won’t risk the barge for two lives, even though that’s what it’s here for.”

“Not quite right on either count,” Ib Hoffman answered. “It’s a piece of emergency equipment, but it was planned for use if the whole project collapsed and we had to evacuate the Settlement. This was always a possibility; there was a lot that just couldn’t be properly tested in advance. For example, the trick of matching outside pressure in the cruisers and air-suits by using extra argon was perfectly reasonable, but we could not be sure there would be no side effects on the Mesklinites themselves; argon is inert by the usual standards, but so is xenon, which is an effective anaesthetic for human beings. Living systems are just too complicated for extrapolation ever to be safe, though the Mesklinites seem a lot simpler physiologically than we are. That may be one reason they can stand such a broad temperature range.

“But the point is, the barge is preset to home in on a beam transmitter near the Settlement; it won’t land itself anywhere else on Dhrawn. It can be handled by remote control, of course, but not at this range.

“We could, I suppose, alter its on-board computer program to make it set itself down in other places, at least, on any reasonably flat surface; but would you want to set it down anywhere near your friend either by a built-in, unchangeable program or by long-delayed remote control? Remember the barge uses proton jets, has a mass of twenty-seven thousand pounds, and must put up quite a splash soft-landing in forty gravities, especially since its jets are splayed to reduce cratering.” Benj frowned thoughtfully.

“But why can’t we get closer to Dhrawn, and cut down the remote-control lag?” he asked, after some moments’ thought. Ib looked at his son in surprise.

“You know why, or should. Dhrawn has a mass of 3,471 Earths, and a rotation period of just over fifteen hundred hours. A synchronous orbit to hold us above a constant longitude at the equator is therefore just over six million miles out. If you use an orbit a hundred miles above the surface you’d be traveling at better than ninety miles a second, and go around Dhrawn in something like forty minutes. You’d remain in sight of one spot on the surface for two or three minutes out of the forty. Since the planet has about eighty-seven times Earth’s surface area, how many control stations do you think would be needed to manage one landing or lift-off?”

Benj made a gesture of impatience.

“I know all that, but there is already a swarm of stations down there, the shadow satellites. Even I know that they all have relay equipment, since they’re all reporting constantly to the computers up here and at any given moment nearly half of them must be behind Dhrawn. Why can’t a controller riding one of these, or a ship at about the same height, tie into their relays and handle landing and lift-off from there? Delay shouldn’t be more than a second or so even from the opposite side of the world.”

“Because,” Ib started to answer, and then fell silent. He remained so for a full two minutes. Benj did not interrupt his thinking; the boy usually had a good idea of when he was ahead.

“There would have to be several minutes of interruption of neutrino data while the relays were being preempted,” Ib said finally.

“Out of the how many years that they’ve been integrating that material?” Benj was not usually sarcastic with either of his parents, but his feelings were once more growing warm. His father nodded silently, conceding the point, and continued to think.

It must have been five minutes later, though Benj would have sworn to a greater number, that the senior Hoffman got suddenly to his feet.

“Come on, son. You’re perfectly right. It will work for an initial space-to-surface landing, and for a surface-to-orbit lift-off, and that’s enough. For surface-to-surface flight even one second is too much control delay, but we can do without that.”

“Sure!” enthused Benj. “Lift off into orbit, get your breath, change the orbit to suit your landing spot. and go back down.”

“That would work, but don’t mention it. For one thing, if we made a habit of it there would be a significant interruption of neutrino data transmission. Besides, I’ve wanted an excuse for this almost ever since I joined this project. Now I have one, and I’m going to use it.”

“An excuse for what?”

“For doing exactly what I think Barlennan has been trying to maneuver us into doing all along: put Mesklinite pilots on the barge. I suppose he wants his own interstellar ship, some time, so that he can start leading the same life among the stars that he used to do on Mesklin’s oceans, but he’ll have to make do with one quantum jump at a time.”