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BARNARD STAR EXPEDITION PHASE II REPORT

VOLUME I - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 

Submitted by: 
Virginia Jones, Major General, GUSSM 
Commander, Barnard Star Expedition

 

INTRODUCTION

This Volume I is the Executive Summary of the information collected to date by the Barnard Star Expedition, especially the more recent information gathered during Phase II of the expedition, which consisted of a second visit to the Barnard double-planet Rocheworld. This Executive Summary is a brief condensation of the extensive amounts of technical material to be found in the companion volume, Volume II - Technical Publications. Volume II, as well as a similar publication that followed Phase I, contains a series of technical papers and reports on various aspects of the mission, each of which runs to hundreds of pages, including tables. These papers are intended for publication either in archival videojournals or as scientific or technical monovids, and contain many specialized terms that would be understood only by experts in that particular field.

For the benefit of the reader of this volume, who is assumed to be interested only in a brief summary in non-technical language without extensive numerical detail, the more precise specialized words and phrases used in the technical reports and papers have been replaced in this summary with common words, and most of the numerical data have either been eliminated or rounded off to two or three places. In addition, to assist those readers of this Executive Summary who may not have read the previous Phase I summary report, pertinent background material from that report has been included here.

The three major topics discussed in this Executive Summary are covered in three sections:

Section 1. The performance of the technical equipment used to carry out the Barnard Star Expedition and the two recent missions to the surface of Rocheworld.

Section 2. The pertinent astronomical data concerning the Barnard star planetary system, with specific emphasis on the unique double-planet Rocheworld.

Section 3. The biology of the aliens discovered on Rocheworld.

 

SECTION 1
EQUIPMENT PERFORMANCE

 

Prepared by:

Shirley Everett - Chief Engineer

Anthony Roma, Captain, GUSSF - Chief Lightsail Pilot

Thomas St. Thomas, Captain, GUSAF - Chief Lander Pilot

Arielle Trudeau - Chief Aircraft Pilot

 

EQUIPMENT CONFIGURATION AT LAUNCH

The expedition sent to the Barnard star system consisted of a crew of twenty persons and their consumables, a habitat for their long journey, and four lander vehicles for visiting the various planets and moons of the Barnard system. This payload, weighing 3000 tons, was carried by a large reflective lightsail 300 kilometers in diameter. The lightsail was of very lightweight construction consisting of a thin film of finely perforated metal stretched over a sparse frame of wires held in tension by the slow rotation of the lightsail about its axis. Although the lightsail averaged only one-tenth of a gram per square meter of area, the total mass of the payload lightsail was over 7000 tons, for a total mass of payload and lightsail of 10,000 tons. Light pressure from photons reflected off the lightsail provided propulsion for the lightsail and its payload. The lightsail used retroreflected coherent laser photons from the solar system to decelerate the payload at the Barnard system, while, for propulsion within the Barnard system, it used incoherent photons from the star Barnard.

At the time of launch from the solar system, the 300payload lightsail was surrounded by a larger retroreflective ring lightsail, 1000in diameter, with a hole in the center where the payload lightsail was attached. The ring lightsail had a mass of 72,00, giving a total launch weight of lightsails and payload of over 82,000.

INTERSTELLAR LASER PROPULSION SYSTEM

The laser power needed to push the 82,000interstellar vehicle at an acceleration of one percent of earth gravity was just over 1300 terawatts. This was obtained from an array of 1000 laser generators orbiting around Mercury. Each laser generator used a thirty kilometer diameter lightweight reflector that collected 6.5 terawatts of sunlight. The reflector was designed to pass most of the solar spectrum and only reflect into its solar-pumped laser the 1.5 terawatts of sunlight that was at the right wavelength for the laser to use. The lasers were quite efficient, so each of the 1000 lasers generated 1.3 terawatts, to produce the total of 1300 terawatts needed to send the expedition on its way.

The transmitter lens for the laser propulsion system consisted of rings of thin plastic film stretched over a spider-web-like circular wire mesh held in tension by slow rotation about the mesh axis. The lens was designed with circular zones of decreasing width that were alternately empty and covered with plastic film whose thickness was chosen to produce a phase delay of one half a wavelength in the laser light. This huge Fresnel zone plate, 100 kilometers in diameter, collimated the laser beam coming from Mercury and sent it off to Barnard with essentially negligible divergence. The relative configuration of the lasers, lens, and lightsails during the launch and deceleration phases can be seen in Figure. 1

 

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Figure 1 - Interstellar laser propulsion system.

 

[J. Spacecraft, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 187-195 (1984)]

The accelerating lasers were left on for eighteen years while the spacecraft continued to gain speed. The lasers were turned off, back in the solar system, in 2044. The last of the light from the lasers traveled for two more years before it finally reached the interstellar spacecraft. Thrust at the spacecraft stopped in 2046, just short of twentyafter launch. The spacecraft was now at twodistance from the Sun and four lightyears from Barnard, and was traveling at twenty percent of the speed of light. The mission now entered the coast phase. For the next 20 years the spacecraft and its drugged crew coasted through interstellar space, covering a lightyear every five years, while back in the solar system, the transmitter lens was increased in diameter from 100 to 300 kilometers. Then, in 2060, the laser array was turned on again at a tripled frequency. The combined beams from the lasers filled the 300 kilometer diameter Fresnel lens and beamed out toward the distant star. After two years, the lasers were turned off, and used elsewhere. The two-light-year-long pulse of high energy laser light traveled across the six lightyears to the Barnard system, where it caught up with the spacecraft as it was 0.2away from its destination. Before the pulse of laser light reached the interstellar vehicle, the revived crew on the interstellar vehicle had separated the lightsail into two pieces. The inner 300 kilometer lightsail carrying the crew and payload was detached and turned around to face the ring-shaped lightsail. The ring lightsail had computer-controlled actuators to give it the proper optical curvature. When the laser beam arrived, most of the laser beam struck the larger 1000ring sail, bounced off the mirrored surface, and was focused back onto the smaller 300payload lightsail as shown in the lower portion of Figure. The laser light accelerated the massive 72,000 ton ring lightsail at one percent of Earth gravity and during the two year period the ring lightsail increased its velocity slightly. The same laser power focused back on the much lighter payload lightsail, however, decelerated the smaller lightsail at nearly ten percent of Earth gravity. In the two years that the laser beam was on, the payload lightsail and its cargo of humans and exploration vehicles slowed from its interstellar velocity of twenty percent of the speed of light to come to rest in the Barnard system. Meanwhile, the ring lightsail continued on into deep space, its function completed.

 

PROMETHEUS

The interstellar lightsail vehicle that took the exploration crew to the Barnard system was named Prometheus, the bringer of light. Its configuration is shown in Figure 2, and consists of a large lightsail supporting a payload containing the crew, their habitat, and their exploration vehicles. A major fraction of the payload volume was taken up by four exploration vehicle units. Each unit consisted of a planetary lander vehicle called the Surface Lander and Ascent Module (SLAM), holding within itself a winged Surface Excursion Module (SEM).

 

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Figure 2—Prometheus

 

The largest component of Prometheus is the lightsail, 1000in diameter at launch, and 300 kilometers in diameter during the deceleration and exploration phases of the mission. The frame of the lightsail consists of a hexagonal mesh trusswork made of wires held in tension by a slow rotation of the lightsail around its axis. Attached to the mesh wires are large ultrathin triangular sheets of perforated reflective aluminum film. The perforations in the film are made smaller than a wavelength of light, so they reduce the weight of the film without significantly affecting the reflective properties.

Running all the way through the center of Prometheus is a four-meter-diameter, sixty-meter-long shaft with an elevator platform that runs up and down the shaft to supply transportation between decks. Capping the top of Prometheus on the side toward the direction of travel is a huge double-decked compartmented area that holds the various consumables for use during the 50-year mission, the workshops for the spaceship's computer motile, and an airlock for access to the lightsail. At the very center of the starside deck is the starside science dome, a three-meter-diameter glass hemisphere that was used by the star-science instruments to investigate the Barnard star system as Prometheus was moving toward it.

At the base of Prometheus are five crew decks. Each deck is a flat cylinder twenty meters in diameter and three meters thick. The control deck at the bottom contains an airlock and the engineering, communication, science, and command consoles to operate the lightcraft and the science instruments. In the center of the control deck is the earthside science dome, a three-meter-diameter hemisphere in the floor, surrounded by a thick circular waist-high wall containing racks of scientific instruments that look out through the dome or directly into the vacuum through holes in the deck. Above the control deck is the living area deck containing the communal dining area, kitchen, exercise room, medical facilities, two small video theaters, and a lounge with a large sofa facing a three-by-four-meter oval view window. The next two decks are the crew quarters decks that are fitted out with individual suites for each of the twenty crew members. Each suite has a private bathroom, sitting area, work area, and a separate bedroom. The wall separating the bedroom from the sitting area is a floor-to-ceiling viewwall that can be seen from either side. There is another view screen in the ceiling above the bed.

Above the two crew quarters decks is the hydroponics deck. This contains the hydroponics gardens and the tissue cultures to supply fresh food to the crew. The water in the hydroponics tanks provide additional radiation shielding for the crew quarters below. In the ceilings of four of the corridors running between the hydroponics tanks are air locks that allow access to the four Surface Lander and Ascent Module (SLAM) spacecraft that are clustered around the central shaft, stacked upside down between the hydroponics deck and the storage deck. Each SLAM is forty-sixlong and six meters in diameter.

SURFACE LANDER AND ASCENT MODULE

The Surface Lander and Ascent Module (SLAM) is a brute-force chemical rocket that was designed to get the planetary exploration crew and the Surface Excursion Module (SEM) down to the surface of the various worlds in the Barnard system. The upper portion of the SLAM, the Ascent Propulsion Stage (APS), is designed to take the crew off the world and return them back to Prometheus at the end of the surface exploration mission. As is shown in Figure, the basic shape of the SLAM is a tall cylinder with four descent engines and two main tanks.

The Surface Lander and Ascent Module has a great deal of similarity to the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) used in the Apollo lunar landings, except that instead of being optimized for a specific airless body, the Surface Lander and Ascent Module had to be general purpose enough to land on planetoids that could be larger than the Moon, as well as have significant atmospheres. The three legs of the Surface Lander and Ascent Module are the minimum for stability, while the weight penalties for any more were felt to be prohibitive.

The Surface Lander and Ascent Module (SLAM) carries within itself the Surface Excursion Module (SEM), an aerospace plane that is almost as large as the lander. Embedded in the side of the SLAM is a long, slim crease that just fits the outer contours of the SEM. The seals on the upper portions were designed to have low gas leakage so that the SLAM crew could transfer to the SEM with minor loss of air.

 

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Figure 3—Surface Lander and Ascent Module (SLAM)

 

The upper portion of the SLAM consists of the crew living quarters plus the Ascent Propulsion Stage. The upper deck is a three-meter-high cylinder eight meters in diameter. On its top is a forest of electromagnetic antennas for everything from laser communication directly to Earth to omni-antennas that broadcast the position of the ship to the orbiting relay satellites.

The upper deck contains the main docking port at the center. Its exit is upward, into the hydroponics deck of Prometheus. Around the upper lock are the control consoles for the landing and docking maneuvers, and the electronics for the surface science that can be carried out at the SLAM landing site.

The middle deck contains the galley, lounge, and the personal quarters for the crew with individual zero-gee sleeping racks, a shower that works as well in zero gee as in gravity, and two zero-gee toilets. After the SEM crew has left the main lander, the partitions between the sleeping cubicles are rearranged to provide room for a sick bay and a more horizontal sleeping position for the four crew members assigned to the SLAM.

The galley and lounge are the relaxation facilities for the crew. The lounge has a video center facing inward where the crew can watch either videochips or six-year-old programs from the Earth, and a long sofa facing a large viewport window that looks out on the alien scenery from a height of about forty meters. The lower deck of the SLAM contains the engineering facilities. Most of the space is given to suit or equipment storage, and a complex air lock. One of the air-lock exits leads to the upper end of the Jacob's ladder. The other leads to the boarding port for the Surface Excursion Module.

Since the primary purpose of the SLAM is to put the Surface Excursion Module on the surface of the double-planet, some characteristics of the lander are not optimized for crew convenience. The best instance is the "Jacob's Ladder", a long, widely-spaced set of rungs that start on one landing leg of the SLAM and work their way up the side of the cylindrical structure to the lower exit lock door. The "Jacob's Ladder" was never meant to be used, since the crew expected to be able to use a powered hoist to reach the top of the ship. In the emergency that arose during the first expedition to Rocheworld, however, the Jacob's Ladder proved to be a good, though slow, route up into the ship. The air lock design, however, was found to be faulty. With the lock full of people, the outer door cannot be closed. Other than this flaw, the SLAM performed well on both expeditions to Rocheworld.

One leg of the SLAM is part of the "Jacob's Ladder", while another leg acts as the lowering rail for the Surface Excursion Module. The wings of the Surface Excursion Module are chopped off in mid-span just after the VTOL fans. The remainder of each wing is stacked as interleaved sections on either side of the tail section of the Surface Excursion Module. Once the Surface Excursion Module has its wings attached, it is a completely independent vehicle with its own propulsion and life support system.

SURFACE EXCURSION MODULE

The Surface Excursion Module (SEM) is a specially designed aerospace vehicle capable of flying as a plane in a planetary atmosphere or as a rocket for short hops through empty space. The crew has given the name Dragonfly to the SEM because of its long wings, eye-like scanner ports at the front, and its ability to hover. An exterior view of the SEM is shown in Figure.

For flying long distances in any type of planetary atmosphere, including those which do not have oxygen in them, propulsion for the SEM comes from the heating of the atmosphere with a nuclear reactor powering a jet-bypass turbine. For short hops outside the atmosphere, the engine draws upon a tank of monopropellant, which not only provides reaction mass for the nuclear reactor to work on, but also makes its own contribution to the rocket plenum pressure and temperature.

The SEM proved to be an ideal exploration vehicle for the conditions on Rocheworld. Rocheworld has two large lobes to explore that are equivalent in land area to the North American continent. Although there are excellent mapping and exploration instruments on-board, these have distance limitations, and two surface expeditions involving many long criss-cross journeys over both lobes were needed to fully determine the true nature of the double-planet. The general flexibility of the basic SEM design is attested to by the fact that the flouwen are able to operate the SEM by themselves without human assistance.

 

067172153404.jpg
Figure 4—Exterior view of Surface Excursion Module (SEM)

 

A nuclear reactor could be a significant radiation hazard, but the one in the aerospace plane is well designed. Its outer core is covered with a thick layer of thermoelectric generators that turn the heat coming through the casing into the electrical power needed to operate the computers and scientific instruments aboard the plane. A number of metric tons of shielding protect the crew quarters from nuclear radiation generated by the reactor, but the real protection is in the system design that has the entire power and propulsion complex at the rear of the plane, far from the crew quarters. Since the source of the plane's power (and heat) is in the aft end, it is logical to use the horizontal and vertical stabilizer surfaces in the tail section as heat exchangers. Because most of the weight (the reactor, shielding, and fuel) is at the rear of the plane, the center of mass and the placement of the wings on the SEM are back from the wing position on a normal airplane of its size.

Although the SEM can use its rockets to travel through space, and can fly through practically any atmosphere with its nuclear jet at nearly sonic speeds, the components that made it indispensable in the surface exploration work are the large electrically powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fans built into the wings. These fans take over at low speeds from the more efficient jet, and can safely lower the SEM to the surface. The details of the human-inhabited portion of the SEM are shown in Figure 5.

 

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Figure 5—Interior of Surface Excursion Module (SEM)

 

At the front of the aerospace plane is the cockpit with the radar dome in front of it. Just behind the cockpit is the science instrument section, including port and starboard automatic scanner platforms carrying a number of imaging sensors covering a wide portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Next are the operating consoles for the science instruments and the computer, where most of the work is done. Further back is the galley and food storage lockers. This constituted the working quarters where the crew spent most of their waking hours.

The corridor is blocked at this point by a privacy curtain which leads to the crew quarters. Since the crew would be together for long periods, the need for nearly private quarters were imperative, so the SEM was designed so each crew member has a private bunk with a large personal storage volume attached. Aft of the bunks are the shower and toilet, then another privacy curtain.

At the rear of the aerospace plane is the airlock, suit storage, air conditioning equipment, and a "work wall" that is the province of the Christmas "Branch", a major subtree of the Christmas Bush that went along with the aerospace plane on its excursions. Not designed for use by a human, the work wall is a compact, floor-to-ceiling rack containing a multitude of housekeeping, analyzing, and synthesizing equipment that the Christmas Branch uses to aid the crew in their research, and to keep the humans and the SEM functioning. Behind the work wall is the power conditioning equipment, the liquified air supply, and a large tank of monopropellant. All this mass helped the lead shadow shield in front of the nuclear reactor keep the radiation levels down in the inhabited portions of the aerospace plane.

 

CHRISTMAS BUSH

The hands and eyes of the near-human computers that ran the various vehicles on the expedition are embodied in a repair and maintenance motile used by the computer, popularly called the "Christmas Bush" because of the twinkling laser lights on the bushy multibranched structure. The bushlike design for the robot has a parallel in the development of life forms on Earth. The first form of life on Earth was a worm. The stick-like shape was poorly adapted for manipulation or even locomotion. These stick-like animals then grew smaller sticks, called legs, and the animals could walk, although they were still poor at manipulation. Then the smaller sticks grew yet smaller sticks, and hands with manipulating fingers evolved.

The Christmas Bush is a manifold extension of this concept. The motile has a six-"armed" main body that repeatedly hexfurcates into copies one-third the size of itself, finally ending up with millions of near-microscopic cilia. Each subsegment has a small amount of intelligence, but is mostly motor and communication system. The segments communicate with each other and transmit power down through the structure by means of light-emitting and light-collecting semiconductor diodes. Blue laser beams are used to closely monitor any human beings near the motile, while red and yellow beams are used monitor the rest of the room. The green beams are used to transmit power and information from one portion of the Christmas Bush to another, giving the metallic surface of the multibranched structure a deep green internal glow. It is the colored red, yellow, and blue lasers sparkling from the various branches of the greenly glowing Christmas Bush that give the motile the appearance of a Christmas tree. The central computer in the spacecraft is the primary controller of the motile, communicating with the various portions of the Christmas Bush through color-coded laser beams. It takes a great deal of computational power to operate the many limbs of the Christmas Bush, but the built-in "reflex" intelligence in the various levels of segmentation lessen the load on the main computer.

The Christmas Bush shown in Figure is in its "one gee" form. Three of the "trunks" form "legs", one the "head", and two the "arms." The head portions are "bushed" out to give the detector diodes in the subbranches a three-dimensional view of the space around it. One arm ends with six "hands", demonstrating the manipulating capability of the Christmas Bush and its subportions. The other arm is in its maximally collapsed form. The six "limbs", being one-third the diameter of the trunk, can fit into a circle with the same diameter as the trunk, while the thirty-six "branches," being one-ninth the diameter of the trunk, also fit into the same circle. This is true all the way down to the sixty million cilia at the lowest level.

 

067172153406.jpg
Figure—The Christmas Bush

 

The "hands" of the Christmas Bush have capabilities that go way beyond that of the human hand. The Christmas Bush can stick a "hand" inside a delicate piece of equipment, and using its lasers as a light source and its detectors as eyes, rearrange the parts inside for a near instantaneous repair. The Christmas Bush also has the ability to detach portions of itself to make smaller motiles. These can walk up the walls and along the ceilings using its tiny cilia holding onto microscopic cracks in the surface. The smaller twigs on the Christmas Bush are capable of very rapid motion. In free fall, these rapidly beating twigs allow the motile to propel itself through the air. The speed of motion of the smaller cilia is rapid enough that the motiles can generate sound and thus can talk directly with the humans.

Each member of the crew has a small subtree or "imp" that stays constantly with him or her. The imp usually rides on the shoulder of the human where it can "whisper" in the human's ear, although some of the women use the brightly colored laser-illuminated imp as a decorative hair ornament. In addition to the imp's primary purpose of providing a continuous personal communication link between the crew member and the central computer, it also acts as a health monitor and personal servant for the human. The imps go with the humans inside their spacesuit, and more than one human life was saved by an imp detecting and repairing a suit failure or patching a leak. The imps can also exit the spacesuit, if desired, by worming their way out through the air supply valves.

 

SECTION 2 
BARNARD SYSTEM ASTRONOMICAL DATA

 

Prepared by:

Linda Regan - Astrophysics

Thomas St. Thomas, Captain, GUSAF - Astrodynamics

 

BARNARD PLANETARY SYSTEM

As shown in Figure 7, the Barnard planetary system consists of the red dwarf star Barnard, the huge gas giant planet Gargantua and its large retinue of moons, and an unusual co-rotating double planet Rocheworld. Gargantua is in a standard near-circular planetary orbit around Barnard, while Rocheworld is in a highly elliptical orbit that takes it in very close to Barnard once every orbit, and very close to Gargantua once every three orbits. During its close passage, Rocheworld comes within six gigameters of Gargantua, just outside the orbit of Zeus, the outermost moon of Gargantua. It has been suggested that one lobe of Rocheworld was once an outer large moon of Gargantua, while the other lobe was stray planetoid that interacted with the outer Gargantuan moon to form Rocheworld in its present orbit. Further information about Barnard, Gargantua, and Rocheworld follows:

 

067172153407.jpg
Figure 7 - Barnard Planetary System

BARNARD

Barnard is a red dwarf star that is the second closest star to the solar system after the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Barnard was known only by the star catalog number of +4o 3561 until 1916, when the American astronomer Edward E. Barnard measured its proper motion and found it was moving at the high rate of 10.3 seconds of arc per year, or more than half the diameter of the Moon in a century. Parallax measurements soon revealed that the star was the second closest star system. Barnard's Star (or Barnard as it is called now) can be found in the southern skies of Earth, but it is so dim it requires a telescope to see it. The data concerning Barnard follows:

 

Distance from Earth = 5.6x1016 m (5.9 lightyears)

Type = M5 Dwarf

Mass = 3.0x1029 kg (15% solar mass)

Radius = 8.4 x 107 m = 84 Mm (12% solar radius)

Density = 121 g/cc (86 times solar density)

Effective Temperature = 3330 (58% solar temperature)

Luminosity = 0.05% solar (visual); 0.37% solar (thermal)

 

The illumination from Barnard is not only weak because of the small size of the star, but reddish because of the low temperature. The illumination from the star is not much different in intensity and color than that from a fireplace of glowing coals at midnight. Fortunately, the human eye adjusts to accommodate for both the intensity and color of the local illumination source, and unless there is artificial white-light illumination to provide contrast, most colors (except for dark blue—which looks black) look quite normal under the weak, red light from the star.

Note the high density of the star compared to our Sun. This is typical of a red dwarf star. Because of this high density, the star Barnard is actually slightly smaller in diameter than the gas giant planet Gargantua, even though the star is forty times more massive than the planet.

 

GARGANTUA

Gargantua is a huge gas giant like Jupiter, but four times more massive. If Gargantua had been slightly more massive, it would have turned into a star itself, and the Barnard system would have been a binary star system. The pertinent astronomical data about Gargantua follows:

 

Mass = 7.6x1027 kg (4 times Jupiter mass)

Radius = 9.8x107 m = 98 Mm

Density = 1.92 g/cc

Orbital Radius = 3.8x1010 m = 38

Orbital Period = 120.4 Earth days

= 3 times Rocheworld period

Rotation Period = 162 h

 

The radius of Gargantua's orbit is less than that of Mercury. This closeness to Barnard helps compensates for the low luminosity of the star, leading to moderate temperatures on Gargantua and its moons. Gargantua seems to have swept up most of the original stellar nebula that was not used in making the star, for there are no other large planets in the system.

 

ROCHEWORLD

Most of the planetary data gathered to date by the Barnard Star Expedition is on the unique co-rotating dumbbell-shaped double planet Rocheworld. As shown in Figure, Rocheworld consists of two moon-sized rocky bodies that whirl about each other with a rotation period of six. The data concerning Rocheworld follows:

 

Type: Co-rotating double planet

Masses: Eau Lobe: 4.8x1022 kg

Roche Lobe: 5.2x1022 kg

Diameters: Eau Lobe: 2900x3410 km

Roche Lobe: 3000x3560 km

Separation: Centers of Mass: 4000 km

Inner Surfaces: 80 km (nominal)

Co-rotation Period = 6.015 h

Eccentricity = 0.78

Orbital Semimajor Axis = 18 Gm

Periapsis = 4 Gm

Apoapsis = 32 Gm

Orbital Period = 962.4 h = 40.1 Earth days = 160 Rocheworld rotations (exactly)

 

067172153408.jpg
Figure 8 - Rocheworld

 

One of the unexpected findings of the mission was the resonance between the Rocheworld "day", the Rocheworld "year", and the Gargantuan "year". The period of the Rocheworld day is just a little over 6 hours, or 1/4th of an Earth day, while the period of the Rocheworld "year" is a little over 40 Earth days, and the orbital period of Gargantua is a little over 120 Earth days. Accurate measurements of the periods have shown that there are exactly 160 rotations of Rocheworld around its common center (a Rocheworld "day") to one rotation of Rocheworld in its elliptical orbit around Barnard (a Rocheworld "year"), while there are exactly 480 rotations of Rocheworld, or three orbits of Rocheworld around Barnard, to one rotation of Gargantua around Barnard. The 480:160:1 resonance between the periods of Gargantua's orbit, Rocheworld's orbit, and Rocheworld's rotation, is now known to be exact to 12 places.

Orbits such as that of Rocheworld are usually not stable. The three to one resonance condition between the Rocheworld orbit and the Gargantuan orbit usually results in an oscillation in the orbit of the smaller body that builds up in amplitude until the smaller body is thrown into a different orbit, or a collision occurs. Due to Rocheworld's close approach to Barnard, however, the tides from Barnard cause a significant amount of dissipation, which stabilizes the Rocheworld orbit. This close approach also supplies a great deal of tidal heating, which keeps Rocheworld warmer than it would normally be if the heat were due to radiation from the star alone.

This locking of Rocheworld's rotation period and orbital period to the orbital period of Gargantua also provides the mechanism for keeping the double planet rotating and moving in its highly elliptical orbit. The energy input needed to compensate for energy losses due to tidal dissipation comes from the gravitational tug of Gargantua on Rocheworld during their close passage every third orbit.

The two planetoids or lobes of Rocheworld are so close that they are almost touching, but their spin speed is high enough that they maintain a separation of about eighty kilometers. If each were not distorted by the other's gravity, the two planets would have been spheres about the size of our Moon. Since their gravitational tides act upon one another, the two bodies have been stretched out until they are elongated egg-shapes, roughly 3500in the long dimension and 3000 kilometers in cross section.

Although the two planets do not touch each other, they do share a common atmosphere. The resulting figure-eight configuration is called a Roche-lobe pattern after E.A. Roche, a French mathematician of the later 1880s, who calculated the effects of gravity tides on stars, planets, and moons. The word "roche" also means "rock" in French, so the rocky lobe of the pair of planetoids has been given the name Roche, while the water-covered lobe was named Eau after the French word for "water".

The average gravity at the surface of these planetoids is about ten percent of Earth gravity, slightly less than that of Earth's Moon because of their lower density. This average value varies considerably depending upon your position on the surface of the elongated lobes. The gravity at one of the outward facing poles is eight percent of Earth gravity, rising to eleven percent in a belt that includes the north and south spin poles of each lobe, increases slightly to a maximum of eleven and a half percent at a region some thirty degrees inward, then drops precipitously to a half percent at the inner-pole surface. (A detailed gravity map of both lobes may be found in the paper by S.in Volume II.) This lowest gravity point at the inner surfaces is some forty kilometers below the zero gravity point between the two planetoids, where the gravity from the mass of the two lobes cancels out.

On each side of the double planet are the Lagrange L-4 and L-5 points where there is a minimum in the combined gravitational and centrifugal forces of the system. A satellite placed at either of these two points will stay there, rotating synchronously with the two planets, without consumption of fuel. For the Earth-Moon system, where the Earth is much more massive than the Moon, those stable points are in the orbit of the Moon at plus and minus sixty degrees from the Moon. In the Rocheworld system, where the two bodies are the same mass, the stable points are at plus and minus ninety degrees. The exploration crew established communication satellites at these two points to give continuous coverage of each side of both lobes.

The Roche lobe is slightly less dense than the Eau lobe, thus is larger in diameter. It has a number of ancient craters upon its surface, especially in the outer-facing hemisphere. Although the Eau lobe masses almost as much as the Roche lobe, it has a core that is denser. Since its highest point is some twenty kilometers lower in the combined gravitational well, it is the "lowlands" while the Roche lobe is the "highlands." Eau gets most of the rain that falls from the common atmosphere and thus has captured nearly all of the liquids of the double planet to form one large ocean. The ocean is primarily ammonia water, with trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide and cyanide gas.

The Roche Lobe is dry and rocky, with traces of quiescent volcano vents near its pointed pole. The Eau lobe has a pointed section like the Roche lobe, but the point is not made of rock. The point is a mountain of ammonia water a hundred and fifty kilometers high with sixty degree slopes! One would think that the water would 'seek its own level' and flow out until the surface of the ocean became spherical, but because of the unusual configuration of the gravity fields of the double planet, the basic mountain shape is stable—except at periapsis.

 

Interplanetary Dynamics:

Because of the highly elliptical orbit of Rocheworld, that takes it close to both Gargantua and Barnard, the dynamics of the planetary system are quite complicated. When Rocheworld is at its furthest distance from Barnard, the two lobes whirl about each other with a constant separation, and the gravity from the star causes modest tides in the ocean on Eau. As Rocheworld moves around in its orbit, however, it experiences stronger tides as it approaches Gargantua and especially Barnard. During close approach, the variations in tides from one rotation to the next causes large surges in the ocean. The low gravity accentuates these surges into large waves that reach kilometers in height, breaking at the low gravity pole between the two planetoids.

As Rocheworld begins to approach Barnard in its elliptical orbit, the effect of the tides from the star start to become very large. The peak of the water mountain begins to rise and fall a number of kilometers, with the pattern repeated each half-rotation. Observations show that when Barnard is on one side of Rocheworld, the two lobes separate. This separation then causes the mountain of water on Eau to drop. This behavior is not what would be predicted by a naive model of the gravity forces. Normally, with Barnard off to the side, the gravity tidal forces from Barnard would be expected to draw the lobes closer together, not farther apart. A naive model would also predict that the change in the height of the mountain of water to be about the same as the change in the separation distance between the two lobes. Detailed computer studies that take into account the coupling of the angular rotation and the orbital motion with the planetary dynamics, however, predict a significantly different behavior, which is what is observed.

As is shown in Figure 9, during the first quarter-rotation, with the tide-inducing star Barnard off to one side, the planets separate by thirty kilometers and the water mountain drops one hundred kilometers. Then, just a quarter-rotation later, with the star Barnard now along the line joining the centers of the two planetoids, the tidal forces go the other way. Although the decrease in spacing of the two lobes is only seven kilometers, the effects are so nonlinear that, as shown in Figure 10, the mountain of water that has built up on the Eau lobe reaches up forty kilometers, all the way to the zero-gravity point midway between the two planetoids—and beyond.

The top portion of the water mountain from the Eau lobe passes through the zero gravity region as a large blob. It then drops down on the hot dry rocks of the Roche lobe some forty kilometers below, as a rapidly accelerating, multiply-fragmenting interplanetary waterfall. (A video of this spectacular event is available in the graphics supplement to Volume II.)

For the next two half-turns of the double planet, the showers of water repeat, and the torrent from the interplanetary waterfall pours onto the volcanos on the disturbed surface of the Roche lobe in a drenching torrent. Rapidly moving streams of water form on the slopes of drowned volcanos, to merge with other streams that soon become giant raging rivers, streaking out across the dry highlands of Roche to form temporary lakes.

 

067172153409.jpg
Figure 9—Periapsis tides during first quarter-rotation.

 

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Figure 10 - Periapsis tides during second quarter-rotation.

 

Eau Ocean:

The Eau lobe of Rocheworld is covered with an ocean. The liquid is a cold mixture of ammonia and water similar to what was found inside Jupiter's icy moon Europa. There are no land areas of any size on the Eau lobe, so the climate is determined by the heating patterns from Barnard as modified by the shadowing effects of the Roche lobe. There is a warm "crescent" that is centered on the outer pole and reaches around the equator. This crescent receives the most sunlight and the surface temperature reaches minus twentycentigrade. The cold crescent is centered about the inner pole and reaches out to include the north and south polar regions. The temperature of the ocean surface here is minus forty degrees or colder. The two crescent-shaped regions cover Eau in a pattern similar to the two halves of the cover of a baseball.

This unusual climate pattern produces equally unusual weather patterns. The ammonia boils from the surface in the hot crescents, leaving behind the heavier water, and falls on the cold crescent. This produces strong oceanic currents, with the warm heavy water flowing under the cold lighter ammonia-rich mixture. At the bottom of the ocean underneath these surface currents, it is very cold, reaching minus 100 degrees centigrade.

There are a number of mixtures of water and ammonia possible in the ocean. This is seen in Figure11, which is a phase diagram for ammonia and water at 0.2 atmospheres, the average atmospheric pressure at sea level on Eau.

 

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Figure 11—Phase diagram for ammonia-water mixture

At a pressure of 0.2 atmosphere, pure water boils at plus 64centigrade, while pure ammonia boils at minus 61 degrees. The ocean composition thus varies from twenty to eighty percent ammonia, so a good portion of the phase diagram is covered.

The phase diagram shows that four types of ice are possible in a mixture of water and ammonia, Ice-1 is pure water, Ice-4 is pure ammonia, Ice-2 consists of equal parts of water and ammonia, while Ice-3 has one water molecule to two ammonia molecules. Pure water ice floats on pure water, but sinks when the ammonia content of the ocean exceeds 23 percent. Since the cold inner poles are generally ammonia-rich from the ammonia rain falling on the cold crescent, the water ice that forms there drops to the bottom and accumulates into glaciers. Ice-2 floats and Ice-3 sinks, leading to situations where you can have underwater snowstorms with one type of snow falling down and the other type falling up.

 

SECTION 3 
ROCHEWORLD BIOLOGY

 

Prepared by:

Cinnamon Byrd - Zoology

Katrina Kauffmann - Biology

John Kennedy - Physiology

Nels Larson - Botany and Genetics

 

INTRODUCTION

Alien life forms have been found on both the Eau lobe and the Roche lobe of the double planet Rocheworld. The biology on each lobe will be described separately.

 

EAU LOBE BIOLOGY

The biology on the Eau lobe of Rocheworld is dominated by the fact that the Eau lobe is nearly completely covered with a deep, cold ocean made of a mixture of water and ammonia. Thus, nearly all the animals and plants are designed for life underwater.

Flouwen:

The dominant species on Eau have been given the common name of "flouwen" (singular "flouwen", taken from the Old High German root word for flow). The flouwen are formless, eyeless, flowing blobs of brightly colored jelly massing many tons. They normally stay in a formless, cloud-like shape, moving with and through the water. When they are in their mobile, cloud-like form, the clouds in the water range from ten to thirty meters in diameter and many meters thick. At times, the flouwen will extrude water from their bodies and concentrate the material in their cloud into a dense rock formation a few meters in diameter. They seem to do this when they are thinking, and it is supposed that the denser form allows for faster and more concentrated cogitation.

The flouwen are very intelligent—but non-technological—like the dolphins and whales on Earth. They have a highly developed system of philosophy, and extremely advanced abstract mathematical capability. There is no question that they are centuries ahead of us in mathematics, and further communication with them could lead to great strides in human capabilities in this area.

The flouwen use chemical senses for short-range information gathering, and sound ranging, or sonar, for long range information gathering. Since sonar penetrates to the interior of an object, especially living objects such as flouwen and their prey, sonar provides "three-dimensional sight" to the flouwen and is their preferred method of "seeing". The bodies of the flouwen are sensitive to light, but, lacking eyes, they normally cannot look at things using light like humans do. In general, sight is a secondary sense, about as important to them as taste is to humans. One of the flouwen learned, however, to deliberately form an imaging lens out of the gel-like material in its body, which it used to study the stars and planets in their stellar system. Called White Whistler by the humans, this individual was one of the more technologically knowledgeable of the flouwen. White Whistler has since taught the eye-making technique to the rest of the flouwen.

In genetic makeup, complexity level, and internal organization, the flouwen have a number of similarities to slime-mold amoebas here on Earth, as well as analogies to a colony of ants. The flouwen bodies are made up of tiny, nearly featureless, dumbbell-shaped units, something like large cells. Each is the size and shape of the body of the tiny red ants found on Earth. The units are arranged in loosely interlocking layers, with four bulbous ends around each necked-down waist portion, two going in one direction and two going in the other, so that the body of the flouwen is a three-dimensionally interlocked whole.

The interior of each unit is made of a living gel-like material with many of the bonds hydrated. The gel is practically crystalline in its order, although quite flexible because of the high water content. Between the gel-like units is a complex liquid containing two different compounds in three layers. The central layer is a thin film of molecules made up of twelve basic carbohydrate ring molecules that repeat in semi-random patterns. The ring molecules are arranged in large plates held between outer layers of a liquid crystal compound.

The gel material seems to be the equivalent of "bones" for the flouwen, in that they determine the basic structure, while the thin films covering the "skeleton" act as both the nerve tissue and the genetic coding mechanism. The primary functions of the liquid crystal compound are to provide communication between the units through the ionic conduction of nerve impulses, to generate and maintain a short term memory as circulating nerve impulses, and to keep the ring molecules ordered into sheets. A secondary function is to give the flouwen bodies their bright and differing colors. The medium term memory is carried in the two-dimensional ordering of the twelve ring molecules. The molecules containing this medium term memory can be transferred from one flouwen to another, allowing one flouwen to "taste" the "thoughts" of another—something like a form of "chemical telepathy".

The outer surface of the gel dumbbells have ring patterns impressed on them that match the twelve basic compounds. The patterns normally act as a template for ordering the ring molecules, but the patterns, in turn, can be modified by the patterns in the inner layer of ring molecules. The impressed patterns on the units thus provide for the long term storage of the genetic code and a long term memory that is nearly permanent, so the flouwen never forget. Since the production of offspring involves the wholesale transfer of a large number of units from the parents, the memories stored on the units can be transferred to the offspring, providing a "racial" memory that is separate from, but related to, the genetic code. The memories are obviously stored in a "holographic" sense and are constantly being refreshed, since the individual units have a finite lifetime and are constantly being replaced.

The units grow in size by absorbing water and simple organic materials through the walls of their body as does any typical single cell on Earth. The units replicate themselves by bifurcation. A unit, after reaching a large enough size, will reduce its waist portion to zero, producing two spheres. The resulting spheres then neck down to form two new dumbbell-shaped units. A damaged or slow-growing unit stops replicating and lyses. The organic material released is absorbed as food by the neighboring units. The average lifetime of a unit is only a few weeks. The units are replaced either by internal replication or by the absorption and "conversion" of units from the lower animals.

When a flouwen eats a plant, the enzymes in the inner liquid layer "digest" the plant by dissolving the plant cells into basic molecules. These basic molecules are then absorbed through the walls of the flouwen units and used by the living gel-like material inside to make more units. When a flouwen "eats" an lower animal, however, it does not break down the animal units into basic molecules by "digestion". The units in an animal are identical to the units in a flouwen, except the patterns on the surface of the animal units have the genetic code and memories of the animal. The flouwen enzymes do not attack the units, but instead attack and dissolve the inner and outer liquid layers surrounding the units. The enzymes then "convert" the animal units to flouwen units by replacing the animal genetic pattern with the flouwen genetic pattern.

Each of the dumbbell units can survive for a while on its own, but has minimal intelligence. A small collection of units can survive as a coherent cloud with enough intelligence to hunt smaller prey and look for plants to eat. These small "animals" are the major form of prey for the flouwen. Larger collections of units form into more complex "animals". When the collection of units finally becomes large enough, it becomes an intelligent being. Yet, if that being is torn into thousands of pieces, each piece can survive. If the pieces can get back together again, the individual is restored, only a little worse for its experience. As a result, a flouwen never dies, unless it is badly damaged in a natural accident (boiled by a volcanic eruption or stranded on dry land a long distance from water). Most of the flouwen known by the humans are many hundreds of years old. There are flouwen that are much older, most of them rocked up into their maximal thinking form. They can be found in the shallows along the beaches of the small chain of islands on the outer pole of Eau. The effects of the seasonal tides are minimal here so they don't have to move with the seasons. There are many other colored boulders there, each one some elder thinking through some complex problem in mathematics or logic. Some have not shifted since any flouwen can remember. They are probably still thinking, but they could be dead for all anyone could tell. They slowly waste away over time due to energy expenditure, surface losses, and nibblings of rogues and fauna. From a reproduction point of view, the evolution of the elder flouwen into this thinking form is equivalent to dying, so the flouwen species does conform to the Solem Senescence Pronouncement.

Reproduction for the flouwen is a multiple-individual experience. The flouwen to not seem to have sexes, and it seems that any number from two flouwen on up can produce a new individual. The usual grouping for reproduction is thought to be three or four. The creating of a new flouwen seems to be more of a lark or a creative exercise like music or theater than a physically driven emotional experience. The explorers on the first expedition to Rocheworld witnessed one such coupling put on for their benefit. In this case it involved four flouwen, Loud Red, White Whistler, Green Fizzer, and Yellow Hummer. They each extended a long tendril that contained a substantial portion of their mass, estimated to be one-tenth of the mass of each parent. These tendrils, each a different color, met at the middle and intertwined with a swirling motion like colored paints being stirred together. There was a long pause as each tendril began to lose its distinctive color, indicating that the liquid layers between the units were being withdrawn, leaving only the units.

Then finally the tendrils were snapped off from the adult flouwen bodies, leaving a colorless cloud of gel-like units floating by itself, about forty percent of the size of the adults that created it. After a few minutes, the mass of cells formed themselves into a new individual, who took on a color that was different than any of its progenitors. The adults then take it upon themselves to train the new youngster. The adults and youngsters stay together for hunting and protection, the group again being very much like a pod of whales or porpoises.

The flouwen have a complex art-form similar to acting, which involves carrying out simulations of real or imaginary happenings by forming a replica of the scene with their bodies. They also had developed a language art very similar to poetry. Amazingly enough, despite their inherent ability to make sounds for "seeing" and talking, the flouwen had no knowledge of the acoustic art form called music. Once introduced to music, however, they rapidly learned the new art form. Considering their genius level of mathematical ability, and the close correlation of musical and mathematical ability in humans, perhaps this is not surprising. After a short period of study and experimentation, the flouwen were soon producing complex music compositions that nearly all listeners judge to be superior to those generated by human composers.

Since a small portion of a flouwen can function like a full-sized flouwen, except for decreased physical and mental capabilities, it was found that a small portion of a flouwen, weighing only a fifth of a ton (200 kilograms or 440 pounds), can bud off from the multi-ton main flouwen body, get into a specially-built spacesuit, and ride in human space vehicles in order to take part in joint expeditions with the humans. These sub-flouwen are somewhat more intelligent than humans, and have already proved to be valuable participants in visits to the Roche lobe. In the future, it is planned to take them on expeditions to other worlds in the Barnard planetary and moon system, especially those worlds containing oceans.

 

Eau Fauna:

There are both flora and fauna on Rocheworld. The minor fauna are all in the ocean and similar in chemistry, genetics, and cellular structure to the intelligent flouwen.

The major prey of flouwen are small animals that are formless, eyeless, flowing blobs of brightly colored jelly that to the human eye are indistinguishable from flouwen except for a smaller size. Yet, even the largest of these animals are not very intelligent compared to a human, while the smallest flouwen child is much more intelligent than an adult human. These animals roam wild in the ocean, eating the plants growing around the underwater volcanic vents, and each other.

The flouwen hunt and "eat" the smaller of these wild animals whole by absorbing them into the interior of their bodies, using their enzymes to neutralize and digest the enzymes of the animal, then converting the resulting animal units into flouwen units. Larger animals are torn apart into smaller chunks before ingestion. The flouwen have made "pets" of some of these animals, and use them as "hunting dogs" to round up and drive the wild animals. The human equivalent of this situation would be if humans kept tame chimpanzees that were trained to help the humans hunt down and eat wild apes. There is no indication that the flouwen have attempted to domesticate these food animals in order to rise beyond the hunter-gatherer stage. Considering their dominance, there is probably no need for them to do so.

Another type of fauna are huge grey rocks that stay quiescent for long periods of time, only to suddenly explode, stunning all within a hundred meters and capturing them in their sticky thread nets. After absorbing their prey, they reform into multiple rocks that slowly convert the captured food into copies of itself.

Another type of fauna are bird-like creatures that seem to do little except float around, perfume the water, and make twittering sonic vibrations. The flouwen seem to tolerate them as pets, although they do eat them on occasion.

Another type of fauna are light-brown shapeless vegetarians that feed on the plants that grow around the underwater volcanic vets. These animals have proved to be fast growing and easy to breed in captivity as they simply subdivide to reproduce. Called "gingersnaps" by the humans, these little animals serve as the main stable for the flouwen that join the humans on the Prometheus. Also collected to live in the Eau tank aboard the Prometheus, is a vicious little predator that seems to be the same shapeless blob as many of the other fauna, but these "sharp soggies" also have six sharp triangular teeth that fit together in a circular sphincter. These teeth can be used to sever small pieces from larger animals, even those as large as flouwen, that the sharp soggy then carries off to absorb in safety.

 

Eau Flora:

The major flora on the Eau lobe of Rocheworld are grey and brown plants which look like sedentary rocks with controlled thick clouds about them. They send out streamers and form new bud rocks at the ends. The plants do not use photosynthesis, since the red light from Barnard is too weak. Instead the whole food chain is based on the energy and minerals emitted by volcanic vents. We have similar isolated colonies of plants and animals around underwater vents in our own ocean depths. All life on Eau is concentrated at these few oases and the rest of the ocean is barren, without significant numbers of bacteria or other microscopic life forms. Because of this, the exploration crew for the first landing on Rocheworld was unaware there was anything living on the planet until one of the flouwen made contact with them.

 

ROCHE LOBE BIOLOGY

The biology on the desert-like Roche lobe of Rocheworld is dominated by the fact that the Roche lobe is a desiccated desert during most of the Rocheworld "year". Since the surface of Roche is many kilometers higher than the surface of Eau, and the two lobes share a common atmosphere, all of the rain released by the atmosphere falls onto the lowlands of Eau. There is no rain at all on the Roche lobe "high desert". As a result, water only flows on the surface of the Roche lobe during the interplanetary waterfalls from the Eau lobe to the Roche lobe that happen during the close passage of Rocheworld to Barnard during periapsis. The waterfalls only occur during three out of the 160 cycles that make up the Rocheworld "year".

The amount of water transferred from Eau is not large and soaks quickly into the ground, so the rivers and lakes left by waterfalls dry up in less than 12 cycles (three Earth days), producing a very short "wet" season. As a result, the life forms, both flora and fauna, stay in a long underground hibernation state for most of the year, then revive for a short spurt of growth and reproduction during the short wet season.

 

Gummies:

The "gummies" are the dominant life-forms on the Eau lobe of Rocheworld. These are large, starfish-shaped creatures that have viscous, gum-like bodies with five thick appendages that can be used either as arms or legs. The gummies seem to be distant genetic relatives of the more liquid and formless flouwen, since the two species can eat each other's food without being poisoned. It is suspected that the gummies evolved from an early species of flouwen-like creatures who somehow survived being transported from Eau to Roche during one of the interplanetary waterfalls.

During the dry season, the gummies stay buried deep underground, their skin hardened to an impervious rock-like exterior. Reaching out from their body are long "roots" that search through the surrounding soil for whatever water can be found in the soil. Safe in a marsupial pouch of the gummie is a large child. During the long dry season, the gummie supplies the child with small amounts of water and nourishment, but both primarily live on nutrients stored in their bodies at the start of the hibernation. Instead of sleeping, the gummie spends the hibernation time educating the child, preparing it for the ordeal it faces during the short wet season. This knowledge is primarily transferred to the child by the means of memory juices, followed up by questions and discussions of hypothetical examples of problems the child will face.

At the time of the first of the three floods, water begins to seep down through the soil, softening the stone-like exterior of the gummie. The gummie pulls in its roots, and digs its way out of the damp soil with its five strong legs. Around it other gummies are arising from the soil. Their hibernation sites were picked so they would be along the shore of a temporary lake that forms during the first flood. The lake is already teeming with fast growing plant life and smaller animals that have been hibernating in the lake bottom. The gummies stomp to the shore, and eject the young gummies out of their pouches into the water.

The young gummies they immediately swim out like young five-legged squid after the multitudinous prey, which in turn is feeding as fast as it can on the rapidly growing plant life.

Smaller scavenger animals built like toothed snakes and badgers come out of hiding, and using their sense of smell, burrow down to gnaw on gummies that didn't make it through the drought. The living gummies prey in turn on these animals, enveloping them in their five arms like a starfish attacking a clam. The basic rule is that the larger animal wins the absorption battle, although the vermin have sharp crystalline teeth with which they can run up to a gummie from behind, rip off a piece of a leg, and run away to devour it.

After eating all the vermin visible, and digging up and devouring the dead gummies that are left, the gummies follow their offspring into the water, where they swell and form an efficient five-legged squid-like swimming shape and join in the frenzied feeding. Everyone eats as fast as they can, for within a few days, the lake will have dried up. Young gummies have to be careful not to get too close to a hungry older gummie.

Some time after the third flood has passed, the waters of the lake start soaking into the ground and evaporating away. The gummies, now much larger, come on shore, squeeze excess water from their bodies until the central portion and five stumpy, elephant-like legs have a gum-like consistency that is strong enough to allow the gummie to hold itself upright in the low gravity. The gummies then engage in primitive, animal-like dominance rituals preparatory to sex.

The starfish-like creatures lift up on three stumpy wide-footed gum-like rubbery legs and challenge each other with two elephant-trunk-like legs. The two largest gummies, after sizing everyone else up, finally find each other. Then, instead of fighting, they mate. As with the flouwen, each gummie contributes a portion of their body mass to form the child. In this case they each contribute one "arm". (The arm later regrows.) Again, as with the flouwen, the colored liquid in the arm is extracted back into the main body of the gummie before the arm of now-clear jelly pinches off. The two arms worth of material join into a single clear blob, held in the arms of its two parents. It then bifurcates into two equal-sized blobs—infant gummies. Each gummie takes one child, and the two separate and go their own ways. Each gummie holds its child lovingly until the child has developed its own color and starts talking. The gummies then put the child in a large marsupial pouch, where it will stay, and grow and be educated by the parent during the long, upcoming drought. This sexual act has been observed by both humans and flouwen many times. It is always completely symmetric, and does not have one partner playing a different role than the other. Like the flouwen, it seems that the gummies do not have different sexes, although they do practice the sexual act of cross-mixing genetic pools, so important to the survival of the species.

With the two largest gummies busy, the next largest gummies find each other and mate, then others follow their example. The objective is to make sure that you and your child have enough mass and water to make it through the long dry period. The youngest gummies often go through their first few mating seasons without producing young. They thus retain more mass than those that produce children, increasing their chances of survival through the dominance games and the dry season ahead.

The gummies, most now large with child, then stake out and defend territorial claims. The ideal piece of territory seems to be a shallow bowl-shaped depression, where water will drain down to nourish the gummie buried under the soil at the bottom. Each gummie tries to keep its neighboring gummies and its water-seeking roots at a distance. The bigger a gummie is, the better it is at dominance games. When the dominance tactic fails, there is a fight. Hampered by their massive child, the gummies are not good fighters. They are too equal in size to easily absorb the other, but sometimes one is able to rip a child from another's pouch and absorb that. That consequence is so drastic that fights are infrequent.

After a cycle or two of territorial fights, the territorial boundaries have been set, and marked off with stones. The gummies now take trips to the receding lake, eat what little left in the lake that they can find, and soak up as much water as possible into their bodies. They stomp back to their territory on watery legs, and expel the water at the center of their territory, where it soaks into the ground for them to gather later with their roots. Then, they go around the perimeter of their territories, bellowing at neighbors to keep their distance, and moving boundary stones back that had been moved during their absence. When they come to a territory boundary that is temporarily undefended, since the occupant is off soaking in the lake, they often move a string of boundary stones outward so as to claim more territory.

The young gummies are named by their parent during their stay in the birthing pouch over the dry season. The parents, knowing that the future life of their child will be nothing but a series of battles for water, territory, and food, give the child impressive sounding names that hopefully will intimidate future opponents.

 

Roche Flora:

At the time of the annual flooding of Roche, there is a rapid development of plant life around and in the temporary rivers and lakes formed by the flood waters. The plants do not seem to use photosynthesis, but instead obtain nourishment from the air full of volcanic gases from the Roche lobe volcanoes, and the water from Eau loaded with ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

The underwater flora are mostly sponge-like, with a large effective surface area to better extract the nourishing dissolved gases and particles out of the water. The land flora grow long strands or ribbons that stream out in the strong winds accompanying the floods.

 

Roche Fauna:

Most of the smaller animals on Roche are formless, eyeless, blobs of colored jelly that live in the temporary lakes during the wet season, and burrow under the ground at the lake bottom in order to survive the dry season. These animals are not much different than the smaller animals the flouwen hunt on Eau. The flouwen have eaten them and report they taste much like the animals at home, but have a distinctly different "flavor". This would seem to indicate that these animals are genetically related to those on Eau through common ancestors that were transferred from the Eau lobe to the Roche lobe during some long-ago interplanetary waterfall. Since the flouwen have the ability to form a rock-like exterior, it is not surprising that the Roche animals and gummies use the same technique in order to hibernate through the dry season.

Out on the shores of the temporary rivers and lakes can be found not only the gummies, but a spectrum of smaller animals designed to prey on the gummies and each other. One species, built like a toothed snake, is legless. Another species, which has the size, ferocity, digging ability, and protection of an armor-plated badger, has four legs. A third species, is a very fast poisonous razor-toothed giant centipede with 1028 legs and a scorpion-like stinger in its tail. The snakes and badgers primarily prey on dead or weak gummies that have not survived the dry season in good shape. The centipede will attack a gummie from behind, usually while the gummie is distracted by the challenge of another gummie, rip off a piece of a leg, and run away to devour it, counting on its speed and poisonous stinger to discourage pursuit. All of the animals hibernate underground in the lake beds or along the boundaries between gummie territories.

 

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