Arrival: Chapter 9

  One week ago…

   

  Immediately upon arriving in orbit around Haven, the New Horizon launched five drone satellite platforms in rapid succession out of the same launch tube.   Once released, the drones spread out and assumed a formation in orbit which provided a relay network between the mother ship, and with any location on the planet.  Through successive orbits, the satellites would pass over every part of the planet over and over, building up comprehensive models of its features.  They generated data on important elements like ocean depth, atmospheric concentrations, weather mapping, and high resolution imaging of the entire planet’s surface.

  Another five identical such drone remained dormant in the same launch tube.  They served as back up spares in case any of the primary units irreparably malfunctioned or were somehow destroyed.  On a long enough timeline and if they were not needed as replacements, there was also the possibility of attaching liquid rockets and ion engines to them.  So equipped, they could be sent off to explore other parts of their new home star system.  This was a distant concern, but the mission by its very nature always thought and imagined very far into the distant future.

  As the sophisticated devices silently slid into their orbits, they began to unfurl like spring flowers.  The parts of the devices which started out as their exterior, wrapped in on themselves and became the interior spine of their new configuration.  Large multi-spectral solar panels, which generated tremendous amounts of energy since they captured a wide swath of the star’s light instead of a single narrow wavelength, unfurled into long spectacular arrays.  

  As the structures continued to unpack themselves, two telescopes telescopically emerged, and extended into eight meter wide low energy light observing dishes, and twelve meter long reflecting tubes which captured more rebellious high energy light.  Lengths, optics, and reflecting profiles of both could be changed and adjusted remotely, allowing them with equal effectiveness to observe the planet below in fine detail, as well as to turn their focus back further into the dark skies in which they lived.

  The probes also had omnidirectional gamma ray detectors which allowed a constant monitoring of the most dangerous high energy light in the environment.  This could be in the form of cosmic rays which proliferated through all of the cosmos, or the occasional radiation spikes violently burst from the star which they were orbiting along with the planet.  

   

***   ***    ***

   

  “This is when the fun part starts right?” Sadhika asked the other sims while they were waiting for all of the relevant humans to arrive in the conference room.   The room wasn’t that big, but it was large enough to house a long rectangular table identical to those in the dining hall, and set up lengthwise in front of a wall sized screen.

  The team was anxious to begin the work they’d travelled so far for.  They were here for the first descent mission briefing; it was now that they were to select a landing site and review the descent procedures.   After having to orient themselves to all of the petty grudges and posturing on the ship, they were keenly looking forward to getting on with what they considered to be the real business at hand.

  Neil chuckled at Sadhika’s remark, and then asked: “are we early or are they late?”

  As though his question had summoned it, the door opened and in walked a woman none of them had met before.  “Oh,” she exclaimed as she looked around the room and realized that she was the first human to arrive.  She’d had a confident air about her when she strolled through the door, but now she seemed decidedly self-conscious as she asked: “Oh, am I early?”

  “We were just asking the same thing,” Neil answered, deliberately keeping her off balance for his own amusement.

  “Oh.”   There was every reason for her to ask Neil to clarify what he’d meant but she declined to pursue it for fear that it wouldn’t lead anywhere terribly helpful.  She had large brown eyes and remarkably dark brown hair which had a natural loose curl to it.  The colour of her hair and eyes, in conjunction with her remarkably yet naturally red lips, accentuated the pale lightness of her skin and gave her a look of striking visual contrast.

  “Um, hello everyone,” she awkwardly offered, “I’m Blair Bentley.  I’m the… head of biology?  I’ll be part of your second descent team.”

  “Of course,” Sadhika offered kindly, “I’m Sadhika, this is Wiremu, Neil, and… In-Su.”

  Blair let out a little giggle despite herself.  “I… yeah, I know who you are,” she said with an admiring smile. 

  At that moment, as Blair headed for a seat, Armina Shostak entered as well, followed soon after by Halley, Soren, and Ishtar.  After Neil and Armina exchanged furtive and knowing smiles at each other, Neil said to the other sims: “guys this is Armina, the woman I was telling you about?”

  Sadhika eyed Neil suspiciously as all the new arrivals exchanged greetings and pleasantries with the sims and with each other.  She saw the way they’d looked at each other and she knew what Neil was like.   She was only thinking about the inappropriateness of their fraternizing with the crew in general; the interspecies element, if that was even the right word, didn’t even occur to her.

  A slender man with short black hair and dark brown skin and eyes walked in a minute or so later, and Halley introduced him as Huli Koroba, their head of atmospherics.   As he and the sims greeted each other, Asari and Aset finally arrived and they were all ready to get started.

  “Okay,” Asari stated with a characteristic lack of emotion in his voice, “Haven.”   With a thought he brought up a large high resolution image of the rotating planet on the wall screen.  It was spinning much faster than the actual planet, completing a full revolution once every five seconds or so.  Asari’s educational specialties focused on planetary sciences and he’d been studying Haven his whole life as they approached it.

  “Average diameter is twelve thousand, six hundred and ninety eight kilometers, mass is six point eight times ten to the power or twenty four kilograms, and… it had a density of a little greater than Earth’s but roughly equal to it, about five and a half grams per cubic centimeter.  It has a comparable magnetic field to Earth which itself can tell us a few things.  It makes it likely that the planet has a comparable internal structure to Earth but we’ll need to do a lot of seismological observations on the surface to know for sure.  We also have the thermal sensors on the satellites confirming that the planet is geologically active and that’s another line of evidence suggesting the same thing.

  “Um…” he uttered as he looked back down at his scroll, “the planet’s orbit is a little further out from the sun than the Earth’s was, and has an average distance from the sun of about a hundred and fifty million kilometers.  Its days are twenty five point seven earth hours long which we’ve already adjusted to on the ship, and its years are approximately three hundred and forty five Haven days long.  Spectrum of light which penetrates the atmosphere is again, similar to Earth… it only has two small captured asteroids for moons, and… it has an axis tilt only eight point two degrees off.  Any questions so far?”

  Wiremu raised his hand and asked: “have you been able to tell yet what impact the lesser tilt has on the climate?”

  “Huli?” Asari asked.

  “Two primary factors,” Huli answered.  “Compared to Earth, there is far more dramatic latitudinal gradation, and the seasonal variability at any given latitude is far reduced.  Basically the planet is more climactically consistent year round.  The sub-equatorial regions where we’ll probably want to put our colonies is temperate year round; it never reaches freezing in the winter and never gets hotter than oh… thirty five or so, but the polar regions basically stay in a year round winter deep freeze with total ice cover.”

  “And what is the current season on the planet?” Wiremu asked.

  “Well like I said the seasons are a lot less pronounced, but for all intents and purposes it’s basically late spring in what we’re calling the northern hemisphere… and obviously late fall in the south.”

  “Okay.” This seemed to satisfy the original captain for now.

  “I have what may be a more… esoteric question,” In-Su stated. “How are we to adjust our time keeping to the longer day?  I understand that the crew has already adjusted to it, but… are we just equating that twenty five point seven hour day to twenty four hours and adjusting the length of what we call hours and minutes, or…”

  “For now we’re planning on keeping our time units and just having the twenty sixth hour have only forty two minutes,” Asari answered.  “It may seem confusing, but it’s the least confusing solution we’ve been able to come up with so far.   That reminds me…”  He picked up his scroll off of the table and looked through the data for a specific piece of information using thought commands.   “Right… the year is actually three hundred and forty seven point eight two days long, so eventually we’ll have to figure out some sort of complicated leap year system to keep our calendars accurate.  I consider that a pretty distant concern at this point though.”

  “Quite reasonably,” In-Su agreed.  “Thank you Asari.”

  “As I said, the planet’s density is about the same as Earth’s and while it’s slightly smaller in diameter, the decreased gravity at the surface shouldn’t be detectable without sensitive instruments; we didn’t adjust the ship’s simulated gravity to prepare us for it or anything.”  He looked around at all of the faces and everyone seemed to be following without any questions.

  “So,” Asari said, now directly addressing Wiremu, “you’ve got your choice of quiet a few potential landing and colony sites which we’ve identified based on fundamental parameters and requirements.”  The rotating globe on the wall screen flattened out to reveal the entire surface of the planet at once with pie sections cut out of the top and bottom so as to reasonably preserve the map’s accuracy.

  On the left of the map was a large super continent which looked like several haggard and misshapen entities all haphazardly crushed together.  The bulk of this continent was roughly between about fifty degrees latitude both north and south.  It contained mountain ranges and high plateaus, inland seas, and many large islands off of the mainland.  It looked like someone had taken Asia, Australasia, Africa, and Europe, and chaotically smushed them all together in a hurry.  Various regions betrayed their local climates in their colours, desert yellow, lush green, barren brown, and snow-capped white.

  On the right side of the map was an irregular cigar shaped land mass.  Its bottom edge lay near the planet’s equator and at its fattest in the middle it stretched almost up to the tropic of cancer.  At this point, a large island appeared in the process of being slowly torn away from the main continental mass, revealing a wide sea strait between the massive island and the main continent.  A significant mountain range could be seen from the north north west of the flat continent diagonally down to its south south east.  

  This continent too displayed all of the colours of the other, but it was smaller, and the geography was less varied and complicated.  The large continent on the left had coastlines that appeared to be shattered with countless small and large islands.  It was littered with inland seas and large fingered lakes.

  “The satellites have been scanning since we arrived,” Asari reported, “and we’ve been able to tell a lot.  Look,” he directed as he zoomed in on what appeared to be vast grassland plains on the left jumble of a continent.  Clearly visible was a herd of tens of thousands of grazing animals.  Without a sense of scale though, it was hard to tell how big the animals were until Asari zoomed in further and now, only half a dozen animals were visible on the whole wall, and a scale ruler appeared in the top right hand side of the image.  It revealed that the greeny gold skinned animals were each several meters long from their multi horned head to the tip of their fat stubby tails.

  “Those are the only animals we’ve been able to see so far with our orbital telescopes,” Blair piped up.  “They appear to have two big primary back legs that they run or hop around on and two arms on the front that they use for grasping and just moving around.  At this distance we could be wrong of course, but the colour to their skin makes them look like they might be scaled.”

  “That’s amazing…” Sadhika softly exclaimed in wonderment. Like a giant kangaroo…”

  “Sure, if you crossed one with some kinda dinosaur!” Neil exclaimed. 

  “Show them the jungle,” Blair suggested.  Asari complied and the image zoomed out, crossed over half of the continent, zoomed back in, and began panning over the lush green canopy.  “That’s what I’m really excited to study,” she said.  “If they’re anything like the jungles that were left on Earth, and they probably are, they’ve gotta be just positively thick with interesting life.”  She was practically salivating at the prospect.

  “Spectroscopy of the atmosphere shows a perfectly appropriate atmospheric composition,” Huli reported.  “As for any potential diseases…”

  “We’ll need physical samples of the air from the environment you want to bring humans down to for the first time,” Blair informed, “but the shuttle’s air filters will probably give us the most information if they’re just left to filter the atmosphere and analyze what they trap.  We can study those results remotely from the ship.  In reality though, and don’t get me wrong, I know we have to take every precaution anyways… but on Earth it was hard enough for a bacteria or virus to jump between even similar species.  Even if life here has an identical DNA system, I think the odds of infections readily crossing species is quite slim.”

  “Understood.” Wiremu stated.  “What else can you tell me about the climate Huli?”

  “Well,” he said, sitting up straight, “Although it’s less variable, it’s a somewhat cooler planet overall.  It has, as Asari explained, roughly the same diameter, mass, and gravity, but it’s a little further out from the sun than Earth was.”

  “What about tectonic activity?” Neil asked.

  “Well active, obviously, as Asari said.” Ishtar answered.  “So far that’s all we can tell you.  We’re getting ready to launch the drone seismology landers this afternoon,” Ishtar added.  As the head of flight operations, her responsibilities included supervising the launch of their robotic landers.  “They’ll be strategically placed around the planet so we’ll be able to detect and triangulate seismic activity everywhere across the globe, but…”

  “But seismology is slow by nature,” Asari concluded for her.  “It will take centuries if not millennia to build up enough data to have an accurate model.”

  “Anyways Wiremu,” Ishtar spoke up again, “we can land just about anywhere you want to in the wide sub-equatorial regions wherever you can find a flat spot, we’ve outlined a couple dozen good choices for you, each has its own particular benefits and interesting things nearby.”  She had obviously accepted the sims as the new incarnations of the original mission founders.  “We just need to send down a runway drone once you pick a spot.”

  “Asari,” Wiremu asked, “can you zoom in on that… breakaway island at the top of the continent you had on the right there?”

  Issuing the commands with his thoughts, Asari zoomed the image out from the close up on the jungle canopy to reveal most of the whole planet, and then back down onto the spot Wiremu had described.

  “Zoom in on the um, uh… western entrance to those straits between the island and the mainland, please.”  Asari complied.  “How wide is that strait there?”

  “Oh… about a hundred kilometers on average,” he estimated.

  “Perfect,” a pleased Wiremu stated.  “Are there any good sites somewhat… interior to that strait’s entrance on the continent’s mainland?  I’d like our colony site to be near the water and that island is a good natural breakwater.”   The large island was narrow and wide, and had a thick mountain spine capped with snow.

  “Umm… yeah,” Ishtar confirmed as she approached the screen and pointed to a particular location.  After Asari zoomed in more on the specified area, she pointed to a more specific spot.   

  “Here,” she said, “there’s a sort of… boundary zone between the grasslands closer to the water, and the jungle further inland.  The whole region is several dozens of meters above sea level and runs up against high cliffs on the coast, so… flooding should never be a problem.   A couple dozen kilometers away where the ground’s lower there’s a river feeding into the ocean which would well suit our needs too…  It’s a good site,” she offered encouragingly.  “Actually one of the better ones I’d say,” she added.

  “Both shuttles are fully operational,” Ishtar continued, “you can take one and make your first descent whenever you’re ready,” she informed the ship’s original captain.  “We’ve been making preliminary plans based on you leaving tomorrow morning, but… nothing’s cast in stone yet.”

  “The heat shield is perfect after all this time?” Wiremu asked.  “I don’t want to have come all this way just to burn up on our very first re-entry.”

  “Entry.” Neil reflexively corrected.

  “What?” Wiremu asked, somewhat irritated.

  “Well it’ll… it’ll only be re-entry the second time we do it,” Neil explained.  “If it’s our first time ever going down to the planet, then… it’ll just be ‘entry.’”  Wiremu smiled and nodded his approval that yes, he was of course right.

  “Yes, the heat shield is perfect.” Halley answered, sounding a little insulted at the idea that he wasn’t adequately doing his job.  “As soon as we made orbit I had crews out there completely refurbishing it.”

  “Good.” Wiremu stated.  “And thank you.” he added somewhat apologetically.

  “Okay,” Ishtar said, “site Alpha… eleven it is then.  I’ll launch the paving drone for you right away.  The site looks like it’s on an ancient sea bed so it should be a nice hard surface for us.  The drones should have a pristine runway for you by morning.  That work for you?”

  Wiremu looked at his fellow sims and they all subtly nodded their approval.  They were all anxious to get on with what they had come all this way to do.