Saturn Rukh (35 page)

“I have emptied the second cooling loop, but the fill cone is not full,” he reported.

“Shut the valve and get the hell out of there!” exhorted Chastity.

“That will not result in a repair,” Seichi replied. “The fill cone must have liquid in it when the valve is closed, otherwise there will be an air bubble in the line and the pumps will not work. More alloy is needed.”

Seichi’s brain, sleeted through with a constant barrage of ionizing particles, tried to think its way past the random noise generated within itself to find a solution to the problem. It found one.

“Jeeves!” commanded Seichi. “Have Tabby follow me, saw claw at ready.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Chastity, frustrated that the golden bag prevented her from seeing what was going on.

“There is more alloy in the reactor,” replied Seichi.

“Don’t do it!” yelled Dan, now extremely concerned. “Every meter closer you get to that reactor means your chances of survival decrease.”

“I am aware of that,” said Seichi calmly. “I will move rapidly.” He needed a container to carry the liquid alloy. He thought of using his plastic water bottle, but that would not work. If he emptied it inside the bag, the humidity would rise and the sodium and potassium in the alloy would react with the water to produce a slag of sodium and potassium hydroxide that would clog the channels in the cooling fins. Also, if any drops of water clung to the walls of the bottle, when the alloy contacted the water drops there would be a burst of flame that would probably burn its way through the plastic. He took the metal plate off his helmet. It was a shallow bowl, but it would do. Sending Tabby ahead to start sawing, he clambered down the tubular frame that connected the reactor to the cooling tower, his gloved fingers and booted toes using the clawholds built into the frame for Tabby’s use. His stomach was starting to churn and his arms and legs were feeling weak as he reached the bottom of the reactor.

His eyes had trouble seeing through the ionization flashes from the high-energy particles traversing his retinas as he reached the bowl out under the pinched-off secondary cooling loop tube extending out from the reactor. It took Tabby a number of seconds to finish sawing away the tube and precious drops of alloy were lost, but Seichi did not want to risk having any stainless steel filings contaminating the cooling loop so he waited until the stream of silver ran clear before capturing a half-bowlful of the precious alloy.

He vomited as he rose and started his way back up the rungs in the enervating pull of Saturn’s gravity. His helmet stank with bile as he poured the bowl of liquid silver into the filling cone, filling it to overflowing. Dropping the bowl he turned the valve that shut off the filling cone.

“Filling complete.” He coughed and retched again.

“Get him out of there, Tabby,” commanded Dan, starting to climb down to his patient, while Chastity, safely anchored above him, tightened up on the line that led to Seichi. Under the control of Jeeves, Tabby ripped open the golden bag and added its claw power to the pull of Chastity and the weak efforts of Seichi as he tried to climb the slippery lines of the Hoytether.

“I’m coming, Seichi,” said Dan as he made his way down. “Just hold on!”

“What is the reading on my helmet dose meter, Jeeves?” replied Seichi. “I can’t read it. I’m blind.”

There was a long pause, and when the reply came, it came from Dan. “Eighty-three thousand rem. But you’re out of the danger zone. Keep climbing and I’ll meet you.”

“We both know what that reading means, Doctor,” said Seichi. “Do not injure yourself further by foolishly attempting to rescue me. I must go now.”

“No, Seichi!
No!”
screamed Chastity, pulling hard on the line, trying to drag Seichi bodily to safety.

“Tell my parents that I hope that I have brought honor to my family name, even though I failed to complete my mission successfully.”

Chastity burst into tears as the line went slack in her hands.

~ * ~

That evening the remainder of the crew were all waiting on the lower deck as Pete cycled back through the airlock from the meta factory.

“Everything is up and running, and optimized for maximum meta production. We’re now making about two tons a week,” he reported. Both Chastity and Rod did quick calculations in their heads.

“Fourteen weeks to make twenty-eight tons and we’re out of here with our clothing, beds, and both washrooms in full operation,” said Chastity, a tone of hope and optimism coloring her voice.

“That’ll only give us eighty tons of fuel, Chass,” replied Rod. “I think we ought to wait another two weeks to make sure we have enough margin.”

“You’re the commander,” replied Chastity. “Although you didn’t think we needed much fuel margin when we came down. Sixteen weeks it is.”

“In the meantime, what’ll we do to keep ourselves amused?” asked Pete.

“There’s a more somber job we need to do right now,” said Rod. “Although the Space Unlimited monitoring team are aware of Seichi’s death, I have asked them to hold off telling his parents until I can inform them myself, and I wanted you all here with me when 1 did so. Now is a good time, since it is early morning in Japan. They should get our video message well before noon.”

“Let me comb my hair,” said Sandra, patting her normally neat gray-streaked coif with both hands and finding a few stray hairs. “I wouldn’t want to distract things by looking out of place.” She ducked into one of the toilets. Chastity went into the other and soon returned with her eye makeup and lipstick now more subdued and her uniform zipper pulled all the way up to her neck.

The four remaining crewmembers arranged themselves in back of Rod on the bottom deck, while Puss, holding on to the airlock hinges, used a portable imager to record their message. Dan had retrieved Seichi’s keyboard and programmed it to play the “Saturn Suite” from Holst’s
The Planets
for background music.

“Mr. and Mrs. Takeo,” Rod started. “I would like to tell you about a very brave man ...”

~ * ~

The light on Puss’s imager went off and the solemn group broke up. Chastity blinked back some tears and forced a smile on her face.

“I don’t think Seichi would have liked seeing us this gloomy,” she said. “After all, he did save our lives. We ought to feel happy!”

“Chass is right!” said Pete. “Let’s have a wake! I’ll go get the laser juice.”

Chastity was going to object, but then decided to let Pete go ahead—a good stiff drink was what they all probably needed right now.

Dan programmed Seichi’s keyboard to play some polkas and they danced awhile, sometimes forgetting that it wasn’t Seichi playing for them as he had done so many times before. The closeness of his recent death clouded the atmosphere, however, so when Pete got drunk again, they called an early halt and went to bed—separately.

~ * ~

The next night Sandra resumed her language lessons with Uppereye Peregrine. As she exited the airlock, she noticed there was a rukh close overhead, flying in formation with Peregrine. It didn’t look familiar to Sandra, so it was probably a visitor from some other flock. Sandra suspected it was here for purposes of interflock mating.

“Where Seichi?” asked Uppereye, looking around as she glided into the clearing on her head canards, neck claws grabbing an anchor hold on the surrounding feather forest canopy. “Seichi talk to rukh name of’—instead of an English word at the end of the sentence, Uppereye had generated a chordal pattern. It sounded like a name chord to Sandra, but she wasn’t sure. Seichi would know instantly, and would have probably been able to extract the root chord that indicated the visiting rukh’s flock name. That was not to be. Their rate of learning about the language and culture of the rukhs was going to slow drastically without Seichi’s ability to understand and “feel” the rukh language.

“Seichi not here,” replied Sandra. “Seichi”—she paused, for she had not yet taught Uppereye the English word for “dead.” She would have to come up with an alternate phrase that would indicate the finality of Seichi’s nonappearance. “Seichi dive down. Seichi not fly up in future time.”

Uppereye emitted a chordal pattern and the giant bird above pulled in its eyes and lifted upward and away. Sandra and Uppereye then started their daily language lesson. Sandra was now teaching Uppereye about Earth geography. She activated the portable console and sat down on the edge of the lowered airlock door, her back to the giant eye. Uppereye moved up behind her until the one-meter contracted iris on the ten-meter eye was looking over Sandra’s shoulder. They could now both see the screen at the same time. Uppereye’s two lower foreclaws held on to the edge of the platform to steady the head, while the two giant upper foreclaws joined Sandra’s tiny gloved hands on the touchscreen as they activated the icon labeled “Planetary Geography.” Uppereye was fascinated with the idea that a planet could have a solid surface that stayed the same shape all the time, and that “flocks” of humans could set up “national borders” on those surfaces that could keep other humans out. The rukh flocks had their own “hunting territories,” but those fluctuated with the winds and the seasons. What really interested Uppereye, though, were the many “things” that the humans had. She kept getting distracted by new “things” showing up in the image, and Sandra would have to explain what they were and how they were used. A few nights ago Uppereye saw a brightly colored bow tie on a human neck and really coveted it. Sandra sacrificed the cloth in her dancing skirt, and soon Uppereye’s neck was sporting a bright red bow tie in addition to its string tie.

The planetary geography continued with a zoom from outer space toward Earth. The zoom took place over Cape Canaveral in Florida since pictures from above that point were readily available.

“What that big thing?” interrupted Uppereye as they came to a picture of a rocket ready to take off from the cape. Fortunately, since Peregrine itself was jet powered, it was easy for Sandra to explain how the rocket worked. She even got “bodyguard” Pete to stop watching blue movies on the inside of his holovisor and come out of the airlock with the meta torch to show how the flame “jetted” from the nozzle. During this demonstration, Uppereye had backed off, foreclaws carefully closed and tucked away.

“Meta made from wind,” Sandra explained, waving at the atmosphere in front of her. She then realized that she could use this most-recent topic to help explain why the humans had come to Saturn. “Much wind on Air. Humans come to Air to make meta. Find rukh here. Rukh need wind. Humans not take wind to make meta. Humans go back to Earth.”

“Humans not go back to Earth. Humans stay. Humans teach Uppereye. Humans teach other rukhs. Humans bring ‘things’ for all rukhs.”

Sandra didn’t want to get into the real reason why the Earth authorities had decided to cancel the Saturn meta project. Without the motivation of a commercial return from the production of meta, there would be no permanent base orbiting Saturn, and no realistic way to maintain communication with the rukhs. There would be the occasional robotic scientific orbiter or balloon probe, but nothing like the back-and-forth interactive communication that Sandra and Uppereye were engaged in. It looked like the budding friendship between the rukhs and the humans was coming to an abrupt end. She decided to tell Uppereye just part of the truth in order to keep it simple. She repeated what she had said before.

“Rukhs need wind,” she said. “Humans not use wind to make meta.”

“Much wind,” argued Uppereye. “Much wind for rukhs and humans. Humans stay. Humans use wind to make meta. Humans teach rukhs. Humans give rukhs things.”

“Sandra talk to humans on Earth,” she promised, then started in on the Earth geography lesson again.

~ * ~

After many weeks of discussion with Uppereye and other rukhs in the flock and nearby flocks, and much debate on Earth, a solution was found. Although the rukhs traveled from hemisphere to hemisphere, following the Sun back and forth over the equator during the thirty-Earth-year-long seasonal period, they never went anywhere near the poles.

“No light. No heat. No food. No go there,” Uppereye summarized succinctly. The Earth scientists agreed. Now that they knew what infrared bands to look in, it was easy for them to use the science satellites orbiting Saturn to detect the existence of the microscopic plankton-like lifeforms in Saturn’s atmosphere that formed the base of the food chain, with the rukhs at the top. There was plenty of plankton near the equator, but none at the poles. Without plankton to feed on, there would be no advanced lifeforms in the polar regions, so the plutonium-powered floating meta factories could be safely operated at the poles without either the reactors damaging the alien lifeforms or the alien lifeforms damaging the reactor, meta factory, or balloons. With the orbiting space stations paid for and maintained by the profits from the meta operation, the scientists could come along for the ride and maintain close contact with the rukhs below. It was Art Dooley who solved the last problem—the disposal of the nuclear reactors.

“We’ll just use a meta rocket to haul the reactors back out at the end of their useful lifetime and put them into a holding orbit around Saturn. That and the extra cost of landing the factories at the poles instead of the equator will up the price of meta a few percent, but Saturn meta in Earth orbit will still be fifteen times cheaper than Earth meta in Earth orbit. The only uncertainty is the cost of those ‘things’ the rukhs want in payment. They can’t be serious—pink silk underpants and giant bow ties?”