Ell Donsaii 12: Impact! (8 page)

Later that day, he stopped into the Pro shop to see if she’d turned in a scorecard toward a handicap. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find a bunch of people gathered around the card she’d turned in, gaping at the numbers written on it.

This time she’d shot a sixty-three!

***

Ell was working in the new underground lab she’d cut into the bedrock beneath and to the side of the house just south of her old Chapel Hill farm. She’d recently become interested in exactly how small the fifth dimension was in comparison to the dimensions we are used to. Unfortunately, measuring something so incredibly small had proven to be extremely difficult.

Allan spoke in her ear. “We are touch down -20 minutes for the rocket descending on to the fourth planet of Beta Canum Venaticorum.”

Glad to give up her frustrating attempts to measure the fifth dimension, Ell stood, stretched and said, “Okay put it up on the big screen in the living room. I’ll be right up.” She powered down the micro port she’d been using and headed for the stairs.

Beta Canum Venaticorum was a Sol analog star about 27 light years away. It was 15% brighter than Sol, so it didn’t seem too surprising that the fourth planet lay in the liquid water zone. The one ended port she’d used to send a rocket there had been pretty far away so it had taken more than a year for the rocket to reach the inner solar system. By spectroscopy she’d known for many months now that there was oxygen in the atmosphere of the fourth planet, so she’d parked the interstellar rocket pretty far away and sent another rocket through its port to do the actual landing.

BC4, as Ell had taken to calling the planet, was about two thirds covered with water and considerably larger than the other worlds where they had found life. Ell was thinking of it as kind of an “Earth analog” and felt pretty excited to find out what it was going to be like down on the surface.

As she reached the living room she saw the green expanse of the landmass she had told Allan to direct the rocket towards. The huge island was north of the equator, but relatively small compared to some of the gigantic continents elsewhere on the planet. Ell had been focused on the biggest section of the screen which showed the view from the downward facing camera. For a moment she glanced at one of the screens showing a side view out of the rocket to look at the atmosphere. It looked very thick compared to Earth’s atmosphere. Really thick!

Ell’s spirits fell. Her hope of an Earth analog looked like it was going to be dashed again. No matter how much like Earth this planet might turn out to be, if it had an extremely dense atmosphere, people wouldn’t be able to breathe there without some special apparatus. People
could
theoretically live on TC3, but with a density of seven atmospheres, it would require that they breathe a heliox mixture like deepsea divers did to prevent nitrogen narcosis. This atmosphere though, looked much thicker than TC3’s. Even breathing heliox wouldn’t safely get you beyond 10 to 12 atmospheres of pressure.

Because of the thick air, as the rocket descended, it got harder and harder to see very far towards the horizon. Looking straight down, she could still see pretty well. The world she saw looked lush and green like TC3. She had Allan throw up the atmospheric pressure on the screen to see if she was right about it being high.

Even at her present high altitude, the readout said 80 atmospheres and it was still rapidly rolling upwards!

Ell sighed, there would be no way humans could live unencumbered on this planet either.

The rocket continued to descend and Ell had Allan guide it towards what appeared to be an opening in treelike vegetation. When she got down far enough she developed the impression that the surface it was landing on was swampy mud. She lifted back up and flew to a different opening in the tree analogues. This time there was a large boulder in the clearing so she aimed the rocket to land on it.

Right before the rocket touched down, the boulder moved. Rather vigorously in fact! It appeared that her “boulder” in fact was some kind of
enormous
animal. After it had moved off, Ell dropped the rocket down and landed on the area where the immense creature had been standing, and where it had cropped the vegetation short.

Ell’s eyes went to the corner of the screen where the planet’s vital statistics were displayed. The gravity was 0.78G. Oxygen was 16%, nitrogen 75%, Argon 5% and carbon dioxide 4%.

Atmospheric pressure was 188 times that on earth! A little more than double the air pressure on Venus!

Ell snorted, calculating that the air pressure on BC4 was about the same as if you were 6200 feet underwater here on earth!

She looked at the large herbivore that had moved out from under her rocket. Greenish gray in color with some faint vertical stripes, it looked something like a six legged, headless hippo. Allan put up some dimensions. It appeared that it would be a Triceratops-sized headless hippo!

The trees had tall straight trunks with enormous leaves that appeared to be tilted towards the sun. A riotous tangle of vegetation immediately surrounded the rocket. Ell could see fern analogues, vine analogues, and an abundance of small bushes and grass analogues.

Small flyers flitted through the air though “flitted” wasn’t quite right. Their motions seemed a little bit more like swimming, presumably related to the dense medium they were traversing.

Harald Wheat was going to
love
this place!

Ell looked at her watch. It was time to go to bed. “Allan, make sure that behemoth doesn’t step on the rocket. If you’re able to recognize that there’s anything especially unusual about any of the animals, save me video clips. Screen off”

As Ell went up the stairs, she wondered how long she should study this new planet before she brought the rest of the TC3 team in on it. Allan hadn’t detected any regular structures from space to suggest an advanced civilization and it was hard for her to imagine a truly advanced civilization without some kind of buildings or roads.

She decided that over the next few days she’d have Allan fly the rocket from place to place in order to get an idea whether there was
anything
present on BC4 that she didn’t want her own world to know about…

***

Allan said, “It appears that a large comet has just struck TC3.”

Ell dropped her spoon into her breakfast cereal and stood so violently that her chair skittered across the kitchen floor to bang into the cabinets. “How big? Give me a video feed! How far from Goldie’s cave? What time is it there?”

As Ell strode into the living room, Allan projected the view from the rocket they called “Goldy’s meteorite” on her left contact. By the time she’d seated herself on the couch the image was also up on the big screen in the living room. The rocket appeared to be sitting where it frequently did on the ledge out in front of the teecee’s cave. The camera Allan had activated was facing west. It had to be early morning there because the mountain the teecee’s lived on was casting an enormous shadow out in front of her. However, Ell’s attention was riveted by the enormous glowing fireball a few degrees south of directly west.

Allan said, “I can accurately estimate the distance at 307 km from the teecee’s cave. It is early morning there.”

“Have the rocket begin emitting a loud siren alternating with shouted instructions to get outside the cave and up into the air off the ledge. How long ‘til seismic impact?”

“Seismic effects should begin in another twenty-five seconds. The impact should register approximately 8 on the Richter scale. At the cave it should produce effects at about 6 to 7 on the Mercalli scale, which would cause significant damage to housing here on earth. These estimates are necessarily inaccurate as they are based on…”

“Fly the rocket up about five meters into the air and have it shout for the teecees to do the same. Give me your estimates of the size and nature of the object as well as its immediate effects in the region of the cave.”

“I estimate the object was approximately 0.7 to 1.5 kilometers in diameter, most likely composed of cometary ice, but with some denser material intermixed. It appears to have released energy in the range of 150,000 to 250,000 megatons of TNT. The thermal radiation from this blast would give humans first to second-degree burns. Ejecta from the impact will arrive in four minutes and should consist of a rain of sand to pebble-sized particles. Huge volumes of dust will follow, but fall more slowly. An air blast of 100 to 150 miles per hour will arrive in approximately fourteen minutes. On earth it would blow down about 30 percent of trees, however TC3’s air is denser and its trees are more gracile.…”

***

Author’s note, for those of you who have not read Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6), hie, hies etc. are not misspellings. The teecees are hermaphrodites and therefore are neither “he” nor “her.” These terms are my attempt to convey that status.

Syrdian was out on the ledge in front of the cave when the sun suddenly rose in the west! It looked like it was
below
rather than shining through the ever present clouds! To hies astonishment, not only did it rise in the west, but it was many times brighter than the sun normally appeared. Syrdian had to look away and close hies eyes because the light was so bright. Even looking away hie could feel heat on hies fur and skin.

An extremely loud shrieking sound came from Dex’s meteorite, then it began speaking loudly! It spoke much better now than it had when it had originally begun talking to them. Then it sounded like Dex on some words and Syrdian on others. Still, its tone was weird. It didn’t sound excited at all, despite what had just happened. It did however speak at a surprisingly loud volume even though its tone didn’t sound like it was shouting. It said, “Get out of the cave and off the ledge. Rocks may fall.” The shrieking sound resumed, then it repeated its words from before. This kept happening.

Dex came out onto the ledge with all four of their children just as the meteorite shot up into the air with its loud hissing noise and began shouting, “Fly up into the air like this. Leave the cave and fly up into the air like this.”

The meteorite kept repeating itself. Dex grabbed little Galen and Mata, lifting off with a few beats of hies wings. Apparently, hie trusted the meteorite, because hie began shouting to the other dalins to lift off as well. Syrdian flew up with Dex as did the two older children. Many of the other dalins had lifted into the air as well but Syrdian saw hies parents standing just outside the cave mouth. Hie could tell from their expressions that they thought that this was much ado about nothing.

A rumble violently shook the ground.

Rocks broke free from the cliff over the cave and poured down onto the ledge. Syrdian watched in horror as one large rock crushed her parent Ercole and knocked her other parent, Tanif, aside. Syrdian stooped towards Ercole, but banked violently aside when another rock tumbled towards himr.

With a quiver, the ground seemed to stop shaking. A few rocks continued to fall, but no more seemed to come loose. Dex’s meteorite dropped down and landed to one side of the mouth of the cave. It had stopped shouting for people to fly into the air, now it began telling them to go back inside the cave. “In one eighth of a dek dirt and rocks will begin to fall like rain! In three eighths of a dek, a great wind will come and blow down trees. It will not be safe to be outside! In one eighth of a dek dirt will begin…” The meteorite continued on to repeat itself over and over as it had before.

Syrdian had landed beside Ercole’s body and now began trying to roll the boulder off of himr. Tanif was also helping and a couple of other dalins grabbed hold as well. Dex sent the children into the cave, the older ones guiding Galen and Mata, then Dex turned and also pushed on the boulder. It finally rolled aside, showing them an Ercole who had been crushed beyond recognition.

Dex said, “We’ve
got
to get inside!”

Syrdian stared at hies parent, “No, we must take Ercole.”

With a tone of exasperation, Dex said, “I love Ercole too, but hies spirit is gone! We must save ourselves!”

Syrdian now stared at Dex. “You can sew himr up like you do everyone else! We’ve
got
to take himr into the cave and safety!”

Dex’s head went up and back and hies wings rose involuntarily. Hie turned hies head so that hies good eyes could glance at the baleful hot new sun on the horizon. Suddenly hie turned, bent, and scooped Ercole’s crushed body up in hies arms. At a run hie headed back into the cave.

They were almost the last ones into the cave. With the squealing sound it made while flying, Dex’s meteorite lifted into the air a few inches and scooted along behind them. It kept shouting, “Go deep in the cave. Go deep in the cave.”

The farther back they went into the cave the darker it became. A few dalins had taken burning torches from the fires, but there were too few torches to easily see where they were going. This was causing a problem because a number of stalactites had fallen from the roof of the cavern and littered the floor. Dalins were stubbing their feet and tripping over them in the poor lighting.

Suddenly the watery clear spots on the meteorite began emitting a brilliant white light. The dalins around it involuntarily lifted their wings and moved away, but then realized it was just trying to help. Although in the past the meteorite’s help had seemed to be limited mostly to giving advice, it didn’t seem an impossible leap to its providing light.