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entire vessel was a no-frills, utility undertaking put together in minimal
time, with space and comfort sacrificed to hold the greatest number of
occupants consistent with carrying the essentials of materials and equipment
for establishing a bridgehead presence on Earth. Follow-up missions to expand
and build upon the pilot program were being fitted out back at Saturn.
A year and a half had gone by since Keene joined SOE at Foundation to head the
Agni part of the design program, working directly under Mylor Vorse. A year
and a half of grueling analysis and drafting sessions often lasting
round-the-clock; of working with the groups involved with structural
configuration, propulsion-power integration, communications and computation
systems, instrumentation and control systems, life support systems; of
supervising benchmarks, test rigs, scaling trials, attending team meetings,
management meetings . . . By the ways he had known back on Earth, it would
never have been possible. Static firings and full-system testing in orbit
around
Titan had followed; then, finally, a shakedown trip out to Phoebe, the
outermost sizable moon of
Saturn and back. . . .
And now, three months after the shakedown trials to Phoebe, Keene was once
again in orbit above Earth. He floated weightless in one of the outer-hull
observation bubbles-the Varuna s construction had been too hasty an affair for
elaborations involving gravity simulation-looking down at what until now he
had seen only as images that robot reconnaissance orbiters had sent back to
Saturn: the graveyard of everything he had once known.
The fires that had raged across huge areas had long ago been extinguished by
massive precipitations from an atmosphere saturated with evaporated ocean
water, but the pole-to-pole murk of cloud and airborne dust still concealed
almost all of the surface detail. Descending air currents over northern Alaska
and below Africa produced clearer patches that revealed occasional glimpses of
the shifted, newly forming polar regions, but they meant little, even with the
aid of radar-mapped coastal outlines superposed on the screen image showing on
a console to one side.
Images had also come back from probes sent down through the cloud cover and
landed at a number of places. They showed mountains of storm-driven ocean
crashing against the Appalachian chain, now a peninsula between the shrunken
Atlantic and the new arm of sea inundating the American
Midwest; the new upthrust mountain barrier named the Barbary range, following
roughly the line of what had been western North Africa and walling in the
lakes that remained of the Mediterranean basins; the confusion of continental
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fragments, islands, and waterways, where New Guinea, the eastern parts of
Australia, adjacent former archipelagos, and uplifted crustal blocks seemed to
be compressing together into a new land mass that had taken over the name
Oceania; still smoldering carpets of ash that had been Siberian forests. . . .
But contemplating it in solitude through his own eyes directly, without the
intermediary of electronic representation, reawakened a sense of
communion with the destroyed world that he had not known since the time,
almost five years ago, when he looked down from a similar vantage point in
orbit while awaiting rescue by the Osiris.
Charlie Hu, who had also been present then, had come back with the Varuna. As
a former
Terran planetary scientist, he was impatient to get down to the surface and
begin finding out more about the stupendous processes unfolding below. Gallian
was back again too, his prior experience in leading the Kronian delegation to
Earth having gained him the appointment as overall director of the Varuna s
mission. However, because of the difficulties and discomfort that the
Kronian-born had experienced even in the comparatively tranquil environments
that had existed before Athena, the personnel mix of the mission had been made
disproportionately Terran.
Among the Kronians, Shayle, who had gone with Keene from the Tesla Center to
SOE, was here as his fusion specialist. Vorse s deputy, Adreya Laelye,
represented SOE. And Sariena was back too, with a mixed group of Kronian
scientists aboard a relatively small, minimally configured conventional
fusion-drive vessel called the Surya-a minor deity mentioned along with Varuna
in
Vedic mythology-that had accompanied the Varuna. As well as affording extra
carrying capacity, the arrangement provided that in the event of an emergency
either ship could act as lifeboat for the other.
They had been in orbit for six days now, along with a gaggle of unmanned
freight haulers-little more than containment frames fitted with engines-sent
on ahead at intervals before the Varuna and the Surya s departure. Teams had
gone down to the surface several times to check candidate sites for the first
base, but none had been selected so far. When a site was picked and
preliminary constructions made ready, the Agni section of the ship would
detach, leaving the Varuna with just an auxiliary power system for orbital
corrections and essential services, and Keene would be shuttled down with his
crew to integrate it into the base. Expansion of the base proper using
materials delivered from orbit would then proceed.
Athena, after making another perihelion turn between the orbits of Mercury and
Venus, was currently on the far side of the Sun and climbing outward again
toward the Asteroid Belt. Since all of its potential interactions were highly
nonlinear, meaning that tiny initial differences could result in hugely
varying outcomes, there was no way of being sure of what the future might
hold. Hence, reconnoitering and preparing evacuation centers on Earth in case
Saturn had to be abandoned had taken on greater importance. Charlie had
commented that he understood well now why so many cultures of old had watched
Venus and Mars with such terror and built elaborate constructions to track
their movements.
From Vicki s most recent messages from Dione, it seemed she would be coming
out with the first follow-up mission from Saturn, aboard a new ship being
fitted out there, called the Aztec. Emil
Farzhin was sending a group to begin exploring Athena s biological
consequences, and again native-born Terrans were the preferred choice. Keene
was looking forward to seeing her again.
In any case, the change would be good for her, now that Robin had gone ahead
and joined the
Security Arm. He had completed basic training and space engineering school on
Titan, and would be leaving shortly on an exploratory mission to survey the
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primary Jovian moons more thoroughly than had been attempted so far. The
intention here was to prepare the ground for an alternative fallback location
to be developed-possibly on Ganymede-in the event of Saturn having to be
evacuated. The proposal had come from Valcroix s Pragmatist movement, who [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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