Peggy Sue (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (21 page)

“We have covered a lot of material already,” said Elena. “Perhaps we should take a 15 minute break before continuing?” She had learned from attending conferences that one way of wining over an audience is to give them a short break. As she was suggesting a break, the comm pips of the ship’s three ranking officers chirped in unison.

“Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea, Dr. Piscopia,” the Captain replied, distracted. As his pip murmured his face went grim, a sign of impending action to those who knew him well. “Roger that, do not enter the enclosure,” he said to the comm.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a matter that requires my attention has come up. Please continue with the presentations following the break. I will return as soon as I can,” he announced to those in the meeting room.

Then, turning to the other officers, the Captain snapped out orders: “Commander Curtis, please collect a security squad and form a cordon around the polar bear habitat. Lt. Bear, you are with me.” The three officers were immediately in motion, exiting the meeting room and departing at a run.

Chapter 10

Polar Bear Quarters, Farside Base

The Captain and Lt. Bear hurried to the polar bear habitat, taking the same service tunnel that the earlier group of delivery men had taken. This was partially because the tunnel was the most direct route, but primary because they would be out of sight. This way base personnel would not be unsettled by the sight of the Captain running through the corridors, pursued by a large polar bear.

Pulling up at the service entrance, Jack and Bear found a pair of maintenance workers standing nervously at the door. Their eyes went wide at the sight of the Captain slowing to a halt, then even wider as Bear slid to a stop behind him. “Are you the people who reported the disturbance? What’s the situation,” Jack demanded.

The two workers, who had never talked to the Captain before, stood there tongue tied. As they sputtered, muffled roars could be heard coming from inside the polar bear habitat. Jack turned to the closest worker and said, “Spit it out, man! We don’t have all day.”

“Sir, Jeff and I were sent to clean the corridor and we found some strange organic material,” the maintenance worker stammered, indicating traces of foul smelling stuff scattered in front of the door. “Then we heard the horrible roaring and growling from inside and didn’t know what to do so we called for help,” his partner babbled.

“Fine, you did the right thing, now stand back,” Jack ordered. “Bear, let’s go in.”

“Aye,” Bear replied as Jack opened the door. Stepping inside they were greeted by a sight not for the faint of heart. Everywhere there were white bears smeared with bright red blood. The normally clean snow and ice were also painted crimson and the half stripped carcase of something large lay near the edge of the pool.

“Walrus,” said Bear, as if to explain the scene before them in a single word.

“Indeed, Lieutenant,” the Captain responded. “Perhaps you should close the door.” A pair of the smaller bears were playing tug-of-war with an unidentifiable body part, growling at each other excitedly. The adult bears all seemed in repose, evidently having completed their sanguine feast. As Bear turned to close the service door a couple of the blood soaked bears looked in their direction.

A female emerged from the pool, shook the water from her coat and then rolled in untainted snow to finish cleaning the blood from her fur. “Hello Captain, Bear,” she called, padding in their direction. “A lot of the blubber is gone but there still should be plenty left, the youngsters tend to eat more meat anyway. Tornassuk led the kill. I haven’t seen him this active since he was shot—I don’t know whose idea it was to bring us some fresh food but it really helped snap him out of his malaise.”

“That’s wonderful, Isbjørn,” Jack replied, recognizing Bear’s mate as she drew nearer. “Who made the actual delivery?” he asked innocently.

“Sorry, I don’t know their names, but I think I’ve seen them at practice in the gymnasium,” she replied. “They brought the tooth-walker in a big metal box and dumped him out right here. It was very exciting, particularly for the youngsters. Walrus is not usual polar bear fare.”

Bear’s stomach was rumbling. Jack looked at his friend and thought,
he’s come a long way—the Bear I knew a few years back would have charged right in and joined the feast.
“Lieutenant, would you like to avail yourself of some of the fresh food?”

“Yes, Sir,” Bear replied, eyes fixed on the partially consumed marine mammal. “If that would be all right with you?”

“Please go ahead, such opportunities don’t come frequently,” Jack said,
at least they’d better not.
His thoughts were interrupted by the chirping of his pip. “Captain, this is Lcdr. Curtis.” 

“Go.”

“I’m at the main entrance and I have Marines with stunners guarding all the access points to the polar bear quarters. What are your orders, Sir?”

“Things are under control in here. Have the Marines keep the inquisitive away from the area, while you come inside and join us,” he replied. “I’m at the east service entrance. You might want to keep to the periphery of the habitat after you enter.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

Jack watched in fascination as Bear approached Tornassuk and bowed down in front of the big male. His rump high and both forelegs stretched out on the ground in front of him, he looked like a dog begging a treat. Seeing the somewhat puzzled look on the Captain’s face, Isbjørn said, “since it was Tornassuk’s kill, other bears ask his permission before sharing the meal. It would be bad manners to just saunter up and start eating.”

“I see,” Jack said. “Isbjørn, I know that polar bears are very neat and fastidious about their appearance. Could you make sure that the younger bears fully clean the blood off their coats before venturing out?”

“Of course, Captain,” she said slightly offended. “These are all well raised young bears.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. It’s just that we have some new humans that recently arrived and the sight of you folks will be shocking enough to them,” the Captain responded, adding a closed lip smile. “They would probably not react well to the sight of a 250kg predator stained with blood.”

After making her way around the edges of the habitat, Lcdr. Curtis joined the Captain and Isbjørn. “So this was the ‘disturbance’?” she asked Jack.

“Yes, as it turns out the bears were just enjoying a little fresh food that some of the crew delivered earlier. It seems a couple of maintenance workers heard the festivities and were afraid that something bad might be happening.”

“I see,” Gretchen said, reading between the lines. “I shall have a word with the deliverymen, to ensure they post appropriate notification in the future.”

“Yes, Commander. I think that would help prevent future misunderstandings.” As Jack was speaking Bear looked up from the ruin of the walrus, his head and chest red with blood. He smiled a toothy grin and returned to his meal.

“Did we do something wrong?” asked Isbjørn in a troubled voice.

“No, Isbjørn, you did nothing wrong. Some humans are just more excitable than others. Please enjoy the rest of your party. Commander Curtis, please ensure that our ursine friends will not be disturbed and then rejoin the planning meeting.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Conference Room, Farside Base

As the Captain rejoined the planning session, Dr. Piscopia interrupted her presentation. Everyone in the room turned expectantly to him, their expressions clearly asking for an explanation for the officers’ sudden departure a quarter hour ago.

“Well Jack?” Said TK Parker, the only one present who could demand an accounting from the Captain. “Don’t keep us in suspense, are the bears alright?”

“Yes, TK. The bears are fine, in fact they were having a bit of a party,” Jack replied. “Some nervous maintenance workers heard the noise and thought something bad was happening. Just a false alarm, but better they be over zealous than fail to report things out of the ordinary.”

“Glad to hear it, Jack my boy,” the old man rumbled. “Please, Dr. Piscopia, continue.”

“Thank you Mr. Parker,” Elena said, favoring the billionaire with a brilliant smile. “Before the break and all the excitement with the bears, Dr. Saito was explaining the different types of stars—how they came into being and how their characteristics affect the chance of finding habitable planets orbiting them. To start with, we want to look at stars no more than half again as large as our Sun or smaller. Stars with high metallicity, neither too hot nor too cold. But those are just the broadest criteria.”

“Since we are looking for life similar to ourselves on this first survey mission, we have included the presence of liquid water in the list of selection criteria. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to detect small rocky planets like Earth at a distance of several light years, let alone establish the presence of water.”

“The presence of liquid water may be a necessary condition for the development of life,” said Olaf, “but it is not a sufficient one. Our own planet had an atmosphere that would have been toxic to us for billions of years. It was life that created Earth’s current oxygen rich atmosphere, and that was a slow process requiring both geological and biological evolution.”

“Of course, Dr. Gunderson. We will be looking for oxygen rich atmospheres once we get close enough to make spectral measurements. Another thing that the evolution of life requires is an active geology. Without plate tectonics and volcanism, the carbon cycle cannot be maintained, along with other processes that help regulate atmospheric gases.”

“It is also true that the geology of a planet will be dictated by the presence of water and life,” said Eric Fetzer, the former NASA geologist. “For instance, without water there will be no sedimentary rock, and without ocean diatoms there will be no limestone, dolostone, chert or chalk. And without forests or peat bogs there will be no coal deposits.”

“Ja, scientists believe there were initially around a dozen minerals in the interstellar medium when the Sun formed. According to studies, perhaps 60 more minerals formed 4.5 billion years ago, as clumps of matter coalesced to begin forming the Solar System,” Dieter added. “But it was plate tectonics and life that pushed Earth’s mineral count into the thousands. Metal oxides, calcites and clay minerals would all be rare on a lifeless planet, but abundant on a living one. If you are looking for life, look for the signatures of these minerals in the atmospheres of other planets.”

“Precisely,” said the previously quiet JT. “It was partially from geologic formations and trace minerals in the atmosphere that Dr. Tropsha and I were first convinced that the planet circling Beta Comae had been a living world.”

“Of course, when we drew nearer and could identify the ruins of cities we were even more convinced,” Ludmilla added grimly. Her comment brought an uneasy quiet to the room.

“Ludmilla has just reminded us of two things,” Jack said, breaking the silence. “We know other life does exist and that finding it is not just an academic exercise.”

The astronomer smiled and returned to her subject. “There are a few other things to note: some stars, particularly red dwarfs, have output that is highly variable, which could alternately freeze and fry any planets; a sizable number of stars exist in multi-star systems, whose gravitational fields can make planetary orbits very eccentric, with a proportional impact on climate variation; and other stars may be too close to areas of new star formation, so called stellar nurseries, where they are subject to nearby gamma ray sources and supernovae explosions every few million years.”

“I take it that all of these things have been factored into your selections,” Jack said, hoping to get to the bottom line sometime today. “So what is our search area and the odds of finding a habitable planet?”

“Estimates of the number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy run as high as 15 billion. To keep the search manageable and the voyage length reasonable we have only considered stars within a distance of 10 parsecs, about 32.6 light years from Earth. The volume of space lying within 10 parsecs of the Sun encompasses over 4,000 cubic parsecs, or about 150 thousand cubic light-years, with over 386 stars and brown dwarfs. Data indicate that 68% of those systems contain only one star.

“Most of the single stars in our neighborhood are red class M stars, while more than half of all nearby Sun-like stars—members of spectral classes F, G, and K—are found in binary or multiple systems. This means that, while there are 70 Sol like stars, only 28 are in single star systems.”

“And the final candidates, Dr. Piscopia?” the Captain asked.

Well here goes,
Elena thought,
the die is cast.
As she read the list of stars their know properties were shown on the wall sized display behind the podium. “The seven chosen systems, in order of nearest to farthest from Sol, are: Epsilon Eridani, Delta Pavonis, Gliese 581, Beta Hydri, Beta Canum Venaticorum, also known as Chara, 61 Virginis and Zeta Tucanae. Zeta Tuc, Chara and 61 Vir closely reproduce most of the Sun’s properties and are considered premier targets.” 

The meeting dissolved into multiple excited conversations. As the noise died down, Dr. Li asked, “Elena, the third star on your list is a red dwarf. I thought you said they were not good candidates?”

“In this case, Sally, there are other factors, specifically the presence of four observed planets, and at least two more possible sightings. That and the fact that it is on the way to the other star systems farther out. The thought is to take a look at this promising M type system to see if we should include more red dwarfs in later surveys.”

The Captain decided that this was enough information to be digested in a single day. He stepped up to the podium and called for order. “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.” The room settled into silence.

“I think we could all use some time to read up on the selected star systems. Information has been posted on the base network and Dr. Piscopia will send you all the URI. Let’s adjourn for today and meet again in two days for further discussion. Thank you for your time and Dr. Saito and Dr. Piscopia for their hard work and presentations.”