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CHAPTER NINE - WATCHING

With the emergency over, activities on the surface of Eau settled back into their previous routine with hardly a ripple. The Dragonfly had returned to base while the crew continued their task of surveying and taking samples of the wildlife in the vent fields on Eau. Nels took over Cinnamon's collecting duties, leaving her with more time around the Dragonfly pulling alternate pilot shifts with Shirley and Tony. David took over Carmen's shift at the communication console, and since there was not that much to do, he soon had his sonovideo board plugged into the console and continued with his composition about the birth of the flouwen twins.

"That's Sunshine, isn't it," said Cinnamon, quietly watching over David's shoulder as he played and replayed an animated scene, trying out different background colors and musical arrangements. "Y'know, he really doesn't always look that yellow. Depends upon the color of the ocean. Sometimes he is almost clear."

"Really?" said David, his interest piqued. "In all the video shots I saw, he was a definite yellow. It would be a real challenge to properly animate a being that was transparent."

"I've been talking with him through the comm link to Agua Dulce bay, and he wants to see me. I was planning on going out to visit him as soon as my shift is over. Want to come along?"

"Wouldn't miss it for anything," said David. He turned to look down the aisle of the aeroplane to the galley, where Shirley and Caroline were having breakfast. "Aren't you two done yet?" he complained.

"Our shift doesn't start for ten minutes," replied Shirley. "And I'm not going to hurry. This is my real-meat special breakfast for the week—pancakes made with buckwheat algaeflour, maple syrup, scrambled pseudoeggs, broiled cherry tomato halves, and two thin slices of grilled Canadian bacon from Hamlet."

Cinnamon's saliva glands went into high gear as the smell of the delicious smoked ham drifted up the aisle. When she was growing up along the cold shores of Cook Inlet in Alaska, every breakfast had been a real-meat breakfast.

Caroline slurped down the last of her orange colored algaeshake and handed the tall metal cup back to the galley imp to wash and put away. "I'm done with my breakfast," she said. "You two can take off early and go out to play with the neighbor's kid."

 

"Hey little guy! How's it going?" David called as they waded into the water. They hadn't needed the Dragonfly for such a short distance.

=Hello, hello!= sang the almost colorless flouwen. =Will you sing to me?=

David laughed. "What shall we sing?" he asked.

=Eleanor Rigby!= Sunshine trilled, working the opening bars into its pronunciation of the song's title.

"Eleanor Rigby?" echoed David, slightly taken aback. In most of his dealings with Sunshine, David had stressed the more classical works.

"That's my fault, I'm afraid," Cinnamon confessed. "I figured good music is good music, now matter who wrote it. Besides," she said, voice becoming defensive, "The Beatles are classic."

"You'll get no argument from me on that," the sonovideo composer laughed.

Together they sang the song, Cinnamon singing the melody and David singing counterpoint. Sunshine managed to produce a whole range of harmonics at once that rivaled Jupiter's recording of the original hit. It took the little flouwen several hearings of a song to memorize it accurately, because he was always trying add flourishes of its own.

=I like the music but I do not understand all the words,= Sunshine complained as the last notes died in the water. =Even without understanding, it makes me feel sad. I feel like I have lost something.=

"Well, I think that was the point. It's about the way that people miss opportunities to love others all around them," David explained.

"It's rather a grown-up song, even for a flouwen child," agreed Cinnamon.

=It fits me anyway,= said the youngster. =I miss not having time enough to sing. The elders are always making me learn things instead. Who cares about the shape of conic sections anyway?=

"You need to learn all kinds of things to be a well-rounded person." David tried to reach into his own childhood. "If I hadn't learned all the things I needed to be a computer programmer, then I would not have been able to program James to remember all this music we play for you."

"Yes," argued Cinnamon, "But don't let them make you grow up too fast. Sometimes there is as much beauty in the things you don't understand as the things you do understand."

"I doubt there can be such a thing as a flouwen romantic," David chided her, ignoring Sunshine. "They don't have a sex drive to sublimate or heros to idealize. I've analyzed Green Fizzer's poetry, and it's nothing but mathematical equations that in the flouwen language also make pleasing harmonics. I'm convinced that the poetry is really an early form of music, and that even without our intervention they would have discovered music on their own. The major difference is that Green Fizzer would never recite a poem, no matter how musical, if it were not logically correct."

"All the flouwen may seem emotionally innocent compared to humans, but they force their own ideals on their young just like we do," Cinnamon insisted. "I'm not saying it's wrong, I just want Sunshine to enjoy his childhood. Puts me in mind of a song ."

"What doesn't?", David complained.

=Sing it, sing it!=

"You don't get the full effect a cappella," said Cinnamon. "Jupiter? Can you broadcast my copy of Loggen and Messina's "Pooh Corner"?"

The song came clearly out through Cinnamon's imp and she sang along softly with it.

"— . Back to the ways of Christopher Robin . Back to the days of Pooh ." Finally the last descending run of the music came to an end.

"It's about going back to your childhood, when enjoying things was more important than controlling them," Cinnamon sighed. "That song always carries me right back into memories of my own childish imagination."

=Imagination? Do you mean like in the square root of minus one?=

The humans laughed.

"No, 'imagination' like in pretend. I mean wishing so much for impossible things, that, just for a moment, they seem possible."

=What is that you carry? Do you have a flouwen drysuit with you?=

Cinnamon was not thrown by the sudden change of subject. She had grown used to the abrupt, almost impolite, nature of flouwen conversation. "Yes, I was going to ask White Whistler if it wanted to come back on board and talk to Nels about the flouwen traveling on the Dragonfly. Both Deep Purple and Loud Red want to go up in the Dragonfly to see the waterfall from Eau to Roche, but neither seems too anxious to get back into their suits unless it's really necessary. Unfortunately, White Whistler is talking through Agua Dulce Station to George on the Prometheus. Those two are like two halves of the same mind. They talk for hours!"

=I want to try on the suit!=

"Shouldn't you wait until you are bigger?" objected David. If you put part of yourself in the suit, what was left would be so small that it might be eaten."

Cinnamon held up the suit "Just look. You're twice as big as it is."

=I just want to pretend!=

"Okay, but once you see that you can't all fit and that you don't like separating yourself, I want you to go back to Yellow Hummer and promise that you'll try extra hard with your studies."

=Okay!=

"You know," said David as he helped Cinnamon stretch out the silvery-colored glassy-foil suit and open the zipper so Sunshine could start flowing inside. "Maybe if I talk to Yellow Hummer I can see about changing some of Sunshine's lesson plans. There is plenty of math in music ."

"Look at Sunshine!" squealed Cinnamon excitedly.

The young yellow flouwen was filling the suit. As Sunshine entered, its color had gotten darker and more intense, but it didn't rock up. Finally all of the large flouwen fit inside the suit that was originally too small for it. It was as if Sunshine had somehow poured two gallons of water into a one gallon bottle.

"How did you do it?" David was amazed.

"All the other flouwen who tried to do that couldn't adjust their water retention properly!" said Cinnamon. "They were either full-sized or rocks!"

=I just pretended I could do it,= chirped Sunshine smugly from inside the suit.

"Jupiter! Interrupt White Whistler and George and have them check this out."

A moment later the water surrounding them was filled with the milky body of Clear«»White«»Whistle. «What have you done wrong now?» Then the adult flouwen carefully examined the suited youngling. «Give me a taste! I want to be able to do that!»

Hesitantly the yellow youngling opened the sipper near the neckring on the suit and extended a thin tendril of color. Clear«»White«»Whistle tasted it for several moments. «This make no sense. You weren't thinking about what you were doing at all. Undo it and see it you can do it again. This time, think about it!"«

There was a long pause.

=Shan't.=

«What do you mean, =shan't=?»

=What if I can not do it again? I like this feeling. I can think faster, but still move around. I can go with the humans and not wonder what the other half of me is doing. I will not undo it.=

«But if you can redo it and teach the rest of us, then we can all do it.»

=Are you sure? None of you could do it before. Maybe you will teach me that it is not possible for me to do it either.=

"You know . Sunshine may be right. Your all or nothing condensation process may be just learned behavior, but even so, it might not be possible to unlearn it. Humans who have had the physical defects in their eyes fixed after childhood still can't see because their brains can't learn how to process the information their new eyes give them." David was curious to see what White Whistler would do to this recalcitrant youngster. How do you spank a half-ton child in a space suit?

«How can we know unless we try?»

=I will not do it. I want to go with the humans. Now that you know it is possible, you can figure it out for yourselves.=

«If you will not share your tastes with us, we will not share our tastes with you.»

Ah, though David, that is the punishment. You threaten to isolate the youngling from the most basic form of communication of the pod.

=I don't care. You always make me work the problems out for myself before giving me the taste of the solution anyway. I will go live with the humans. They can take care of me. They can teach me all about music. I do not want to be flouwen. I want to be human. I want a human name. From now on you can just call me Pooh.=

"Look Sunshine ." David began.

=Pooh!=

"Pooh?" Cinnamon cut in. "I know that you'd like to come with us, but the fact is—we are all grown-ups too. We have a lot of work to do, and don't have much time to play with you or to take care of you. You need to stay here and learn how to be a good flouwen so that you can help us humans on our other missions."

The suit's arms remained crossed.

"Still," she continued, "It was very smart of you to figure out a way to fit in the suit. It proves that you are going to grow up to be a great flouwen. Maybe the smartest flouwen of all. But we humans—we aren't as smart as White Whistler and Yellow Hummer. You have to learn from them first."

=If you are so dumb, how come you have the Flying¤Rocks and we do not? You get to fly through the nothing to SkyRock. But Warm§Amber§Resonance says that I am too little and will have to stay here when you go to Sky¤Rock.=

"Well . I think that if you would be willing to show how grown-up you can be, by trying to help the pod, maybe the pod will say that it's all right for you come on the Dragonfly when we go to Roche. If I promise to ask them, will you try and show them how smart you were to figure out how to concentrate?" Cinnamon cajoled.

=Well .=

"You can still be Pooh ."

=Okay!=

Pooh poured out of the suit. He absorbed water and expanded until once again he was almost invisible in the dark blue water. Then he flowed slowly back into the suit, filling it with thick yellow jelly.

=It is easy.=

Again Clear=Yellow=Chirp shared tastes with Clear«»White«»Whistle, but the elder could not make any sense out of the taste. Finally, the humans agreed to let the flouwen take the drysuit with them to see if any of the other pod members could duplicate Pooh's feat.

«Maybe Dainty~Blue~Warble .» was White Whistler's last comment as it headed back for home with the youngling in tow.

"You handled that well," commented David.

"I had four younger brothers and sisters," said Cinnamon. "Besides, if Pooh can do something original that the elders can't do, they will give him more respect. Maybe then they'll respect music more."

"But we'll be stuck baby-sitting!"

"Blue Boy grew up a lot in only forty days. I think it will be quite an education watching Pooh get educated," said Cinnamon thoughtfully.

 

Over the next few rotations, the humans continued gathering all the information they could from the planet's surface. Rocheworld was on the inner leg of its highly elliptical orbit and Barnard was larger in the sky every time it rose. The tides were getting larger and the strains in the crust increased the activity of the volcanic vents that fed life on Eau. The number of new plants and animals the flouwen collected for the humans grew with each passing rotation.

"I'll be working on this for years," gloated Nels. In truth it would take years to analyze and understand the workings of this alien biology. While at first, many of the plants and animals seemed similar, there were many curious discrepancies that would have to be unravelled.

One animal seemed to like only ammonia in its system and would seek out colder regions in order to freeze the water in its body so that the crystals would settle out. One plant needed several others in order to reproduce, rather like the flouwen, while others needed only one partner. Some needed none at all and simply divided in half when they had enough bulk to make a new one.

Nels was now itching to get back to his analyzers and synthesizers on the Prometheus as badly as he had itched to get to the surface in the first place. In the meantime, he had the added help of Green Fizzer and Curious Green, and together they worked on the samples they had picked up from the oceans. The flouwen were fascinated with the capabilities of the tunneling array microscope in the Dragonfly lab. Although they had remarkable sensors that could discriminate between the different tastes of different molecules, they had never actually seen the molecules and they were enraptured.

The idea of atoms and molecules made perfect sense to these mathematical creatures, who had long known that certain elements and compounds had distinctive tastes, colors, and densities, that molecular compounds contained integer ratios of the elements, and that only certain types of elements would combine with certain other types of elements to form molecules. As a result, they had long ago logically figured out the periodic chart of the elements. To actually see the shapes and interrelationships of the complex organic molecules that made up their own bodies opened a whole new world of possibilities, and for a while Nels had to work around two suits filled mostly with water, each holding only a colored rock on its rounded bottom.

The flouwen had long known they were made of millions of small, nearly identical gel-like unit cells in the shape of a rounded dumbbell. Between the cells was a colored liquid "essence" that somehow contained their personality, since they could withdraw it during mating and form a new flouwen from the bare unit cells. The colored liquid also contained their memory, since they could pass on ideas to another flouwen by letting them have a "taste" of the liquid.

Using the tunneling array microscope, they were now able to see details of the molecules in the cells and the liquid. The liquid was found to consist of a thin film of interlocked carbohydrate ring molecules that were kept in sheet form by outer layers of liquid crystal material. There were twelve different types of ring molecules in the inner layer that repeated in semi-random patterns. The flouwen soon determined that there were fixed patterns in this layer that contained the genetic code. Whereas human DNA uses only four different molecules to write the genetic code, the flouwen genetic alphabet had twelve "letters" in it. The ring molecule layer also contained variable patterns that constituted the long term memory. The flouwen next determined that the liquid crystal layers, besides holding the ring molecules in sheets, and giving their bodies their distinctive bright colors, were conductive and acted as their "nerve" tissue.

The flouwen then used the tunnelling array microscope to determine that the outer surface of the dumbbell-shaped cellular units were found to have ring-shaped patterns impressed in them. These patterns matched the twelve basic ring-compound patterns in the liquid layer. The impressed patterns on the units acted as the template for the formation of the various enzymes needed for operation and maintenance of the interior of the unit cells and the whole flouwen body, and to make copies of the genetic code for the ring-molecule layer. During mating, the patterns on the cells are passed on to the offspring by the parents, providing the offspring with the desired multiple genetic heritage as well as a broad, but diffuse, "racial" memory. Once the flouwen had figured out their own genetics, Nels gave them samples of the DNA of the various crew members for them to examine and compare. He was hoping to keep them busy and out of the way while he worked on their food supply.

Nels was trying to find the right breeding conditions for the small simple light-brown blob of an animal that he called a "gingersnap", which was a flouwen food staple. The gingersnap fed directly on the chemicals leaching up from the volcanic vents, reproduced rapidly, and unlike the similar shaped and colored predator, hadn't any sharp teeth. As the time came for the Dragonfly to take off on its aerial survey of Eau, the waterfall, and Roche, Nels had managed to grow dozens of the almost inactive light-brown blobs and he was able to assure the others that they would be able to feed as many of the flouwen as would like to accompany them on their trip to the rocky lobe of the double planet.

One hundred and sixty dark-light cycles, or forty Earth days had passed since they had last left the surface of this strange double planet. Once again it was that time of the season for the oddest phenomena yet recorded. The two planets shared more that an atmosphere. They also shared an ocean, although only for a short while. On their last trip, the humans had had rather too close a view of the growing wave that leapt from one planet to the other across the zero-gee saddle where the Dragonfly and the Eagle had rendezvoused a few days before.

This time the Dragonfly would be in a better position to record the fickle ocean. Thomas, Nels, Tony, and Caroline would pull shifts in the Falcon perched on the outer islands of Eau, while Jinjur, David, Cinnamon, Shirley, Richard, and Sam would take the Dragonfly into the upper atmosphere between the inner poles in order to get a good view of the waterfall that occurred during periapsis. The flouwen had done their equivalent of drawing straws, and White Whistler, Loud Red, and Deep Purple would be sending portions of themselves with the humans to Roche. Pooh would also be coming along, although the youngster had promised to stay out of the way.

As darkness fell, the humans on the surface readied themselves for the short jaunt, and goodbyes were exchanged. On their last night together behind the Sound-Bar door of Tony's bunk on the Falcon, Cinnamon lay in Tony's arms and looked down at his sleeping face. How was it that each time they lay together she was left with this ache? This feeling that somehow she hadn't done quite enough? This insistent need that next time she would do better?

It wasn't love. That was the main thing that she had to face. It wasn't a case of always leave them wanting more. Cinnamon had to accept, that whatever it was she was getting from Tony, it wasn't enough. Whatever it was that she was giving Tony, it wasn't enough for him either, and Cinnamon could tell that she wasn't truly helping Tony any more.

There was more going on here than she could fix. Cinnamon's extra input had always expressed itself to her in music, and there simply wasn't any music that would tell her what was going on in Tony's mind. Cinnamon didn't know how she was going to tell him—or even if she would need to tell him. After all, he hadn't talked to her before taking her into his bed. But she knew that this was the last time she would ever share it. She couldn't help, she was only in the way—and she was in danger of being run over.

Just then Tony opened his eyes and looked back at her. Cinnamon couldn't meet his gaze.

"Tony ." she began hesitantly. "I don't think I will be spending as much time with you as I have been lately."

"Why?" he asked and he propped himself up on to one elbow so he could look at her directly. He had entered this relationship with no expectation of having it last any more than one night. But Cinnamon's body pleased him more than any woman's ever had. Tony knew he would never love her, even though working with Cinnamon on the surface had shown Tony that she was more than just a body. In fact, Cinnamon had gone from being just a student pilot to being a real person. Sure, it made it harder to think of her sexually, but when they were in bed she didn't force her individuality on him. Cinnamon spent their time in the bunk hardly speaking and that was just the way he liked it. And at least she didn't sing! That would have driven him mad! Cinnamon was a good scientist and medic and her dealing with John's accident had impressed all of them, but in bed, what Tony wanted was a partner, not a lover. Don't let her spoil it now! he prayed silently.

"Is there someone else?" he asked. He wasn't worried about sharing her, he just didn't want to go back to celibacy.

"The point is that there isn't even 'us'. Maybe I could love you, but I don't. And you don't love me."

"But we are so good together. I need you," he said running his hands gently over her body.

"You have been very good to me. You are a gentle and considerate lover." Not to mention instructive, Cinnamon added mentally. "But I have to believe there is more to sex than what we have. Even the flouwen need a kind of love to mate."

"I want you to make love to me, Cinnamon Byrd. I want you to make love to my soul."

Tony began his usual gentle foreplay but as he looked into Cinnamon's eyes, Tony could no longer pretend. He was with a real person, one that needed to be loved, and deserved to be loved for herself. He faltered, and stopped. Cinnamon gave him a kiss, and slipped out of the bunk. Tony knew that while he had just lost a lover, he had not lost a friend. Tony heard Cinnamon sing from the shower room as she dressed to go back to the Dragonfly.

"I read her diary underneath the tree ."

 

"About time you got here," said Jinjur as Cinnamon cycled through the airlock into the Dragonfly. "Where have you been? We lift off in fifteen minutes."

"I'll be ready, Ma'am," replied Cinnamon contritely, eyes avoiding Jinjur's as she took off her exploration suit and stored it away in the rack. Jinjur instantly regretted her brusk greeting. The young biologist had never given Jinjur any trouble and there was no need for Jinjur to say what she did. She may be Cinnamon's boss, but she wasn't her mother. It was none of Jinjur's business where Cinnamon had been—although Jinjur had a pretty good idea.

Why do I always get so worried before a mission? Jinjur asked herself, knowing full well that lots of worrying by the commander before a mission insured that the mission was successful and there was less to worry about after the mission.

When Cinnamon came forward and sat down in the copilot seat, she noticed that despite the late hour, everyone was there. Shirley was in the pilot's seat, David was at the computer console, Jinjur and Sam were seated in front of the two science consoles, and Richard was perched on one of the swing-out seats in the galley, munching away on a bean burrito midnight snack and washing down each peppery bite with a big gulp of Coke.

Someone had swung the science instrument scan platforms back from the two bulbous viewing ports on either side of the aeroplane, and their space had been taken by four silver blobs, two flouwen squashed closely together in each area, each trying to look out the window with the lenses built into their helmets. The two large silver-suited blobs, one with a helmet filled with red jelly and the other with a lavender helmet, pushed and squirmed in one window. They were having trouble adjusting to looking out though a window with their helmet lenses. They kept focusing on the surface of the glass and the reflected images of themselves rather than on the view far below.

*Move aside! Let me look!*

‡Move aside yourself!‡

In the other window, the helmets in the silver-suited aliens were milky and a clear yellow.

«Are you able to look satisfactorily, Clear=Yellow=Chirp?»

=I am not used to these lens things—and don't call me that name. My name is Pooh!=

It was dark outside, but the sandy beach in front of them was illuminated with the wing lights from Dragonfly. Ahead, just at the edge of the blazing white beam, were the three landing legs of the Falcon. High above were two patches of light, the lower one oval and the upper one made of two triangles. They were the viewport window to the lounge area on Falcon and the landing windows for the cockpit area on the deck above. There were three people and a silver blob visible in the large oval viewport window. Cinnamon recognized the people as Thomas, Caroline, and Tony. The blob was either Little Fizzer or Little Curiosity—at this distance Cinnamon could not tell the two green-colored flouwen apart. Nels must be busy down on the engineering deck with the other flouwen, looking at specimens with the tunnelling array microscope.

"Take her away, Everett," commanded Jinjur.

Shirley smoothly started the electrically powered VTOL fans in the wing roots of the Dragonfly, and the massive aeroplane slowly lifted from the beach.

=We are flying!=

«I only wish there were more light, so I could see better.»

Once she was at altitude, Shirley pivoted the plane and changed the thrust on the VTOL fans until they were moving across the dark ocean toward the inner pole of Eau. After a few hours of travel a dark patch of sky rose above the horizon, visible only because it blotted out the stars one by one as it grew larger. The edge of the dark patch developed a bright red rim as sunrise approached. Finally, Barnard rose from behind the Roche lobe, and the waves became visible in the ocean below them.

Rocheworld was now traversing the inner portion of its highly elliptical orbit, where it was moving along much more rapidly and getting very close to the star. Because of its close proximity, Barnard was now very large in the sky, much bigger than the Sun in the sky of Earth.

"The ocean is getting pretty active," said Sam. "Look at those large waves scudding ahead of us."

*I wish I were down there surfing on them!*

«I don't think even you would want to surf these waves. Look up ahead through the cockpit window. See how high they get as they go to the point underneath SkyRock.»

One of the larger waves had reached the top of the water mountain, where it crashed into another large wave coming up the other side. Now, rising from the collision of the two waves was a huge fountain of water. Slowly it rose high into the air, and continued to rise, its frothy white-capped peak glowing redly in the sunrise light from Barnard.

‡If you had surfed that wave, we would be picking up pieces of you for the next sixty-four cycles.‡

*I would have dived under to calmer water before it could catch me. There is no wave I can't surf!*

=Could you even surf the Big¤Bloop, old one Roaring*Hot*Vermillion?=

*Certainly! I can surf anything! I could not only ride the Big¤Bloop from here to Sky¤Rock, but all the way around Sky¤Rock to the other side.* There was a long pause. *Of course, there is the problem of getting back from Sky¤Rock .*

«It is certainly amazing to see the ocean activity from this perspective. It looks much different using light rather than sound. You see all the parts of the waves at one time instead of having to wait for the echoes to return from the distant portions."«

"The top of that fountain must be fifteen kilometers high," guessed Shirley, raising the altitude of Dragonfly as they got closer to the center.

"It is ten kilometers and falling," replied Juno. "Its peak excursion from the nominal ocean surface was only twelve and one-half kilometers."

"It sure takes its time to fall," observed Cinnamon.

"When something that big moves, it always takes time," said David, who was watching the images coming from the forward videocamera on the screen of his console. "Some time ago I wanted to use the image of an elephant in one of my sonovideo compositions. I had to give it up—the music got too draggy."

"Look," said Shirley. "The cloud of spray it threw upward into the zero-gee region is developing into a moustache. Two whorls going north and south."

"That's the coriolis force acting," said Richard. "On Earth, the coriolis force is strongest at the north and south poles, but there isn't much wind there, so Earth storms form in the mid-latitudes where there is plenty of wind and still an appreciable coriolis force. Here, the winds and the coriolis force peak at the same place. Those whorls may look small from here, but they're Oz-sized tornados."

"Look," said Cinnamon. "The wind blowing through the gap from Eau to Roche is peeling off a series of small tornadoes heading toward Roche."

"I've been close to those before," said Shirley with a shudder. "Too close. Arielle took us up the inside of one of them."

"The first of the three interplanetary waterfalls is coming in two Rocheworld days or twelve hours. After that, we will be busy observing for at least twenty-four straight hours," said Jinjur. "Shirley. Take Dragonfly to our planned first observation point and put it on automatic hover. Then everyone hit the sack for a solid eight hours of Zs. I want you all fresh when the action starts."

«We don't need to sleep, so we will observe for you until then.»

"Just don't fiddle with the controls," said Jinjur, still not quite trusting the impetuous aliens.

 

Twelve hours later, the Dragonfly was perched high in the air over Eau where it could get a good look at the side of the mountain of water that made up the pointed part of the watery lobe of the double planet. It was dark, for Barnard was behind Eau, high over the islands on the outer pole where the rocket lander Falcon was waiting. Since the flouwen couldn't see anything out the portholes, the scan platforms had been swung back into place so the multispectral infrared scanners could provide an alternate view. The flouwen now clustered around the two science consoles, listening as Richard controlled the infrared scanner and explained the pseudocolor image they were seeing. On the screen could be seen a rounded cone, blue to indicate cold. Moving rapidly up the blue cone were a series of green lines with yellow tops. Where the streaks met at the top, there were spurts of yellow-orange and angry red. Over all were sparse ribbons of long white clouds that streaked up the mountain and through the narrow atmospheric neck between the two planets and disappeared out of view over Roche.

"Barnard has been heating up the atmosphere on Eau, and the winds in this region are blowing from Eau to Roche, which means they are blowing up the mountain of water. We're now so close to Barnard the heating effect is quite intense. As a result, the winds are quite strong, greater than hurricane velocities, and make large, fast waves. Because of the low gravity in this region, the waves are one hundred meters high, have a wavelength of fifty kilometers and are moving at two hundred kilometers an hour."

Richard now pointed to a barely perceptible green line that stretched from one end of the image to the other at the base of the blue cone. It was only noticeable because Juno had inserted two flashing red arrows that pointed at the two ends of the arc.

"Here comes the tidal bore. If you thought those wind waves were fierce, wait until you see this wave. As the tide from Barnard decreases the spacing between the two planets, the gravity pull of Roche on the water mountain increases. When the gravity pull becomes stronger, the water coming in from the other parts of the ocean starts out as low ring wave that runs completely all the way around the base of the mountain. The ring of water starts moving up the conical mountain of ocean and soon turns into a single high-speed wave with a steep front that covers the six hundred kilometers up the side of the mountain in the hour and a half between low and high tide. It gets bigger and meaner as it's compressed into the smaller and smaller area around the peak. The wave is over two kilometers high when it reaches the peak."

*Two kilometers!* For once in his life, Loud Red was awed.

‡The humans surfed it.‡

*Then I could too!*

«It is too bad all this activity has to happen when it is dark. If the ring wave is this impressive in the false-colored images from the infrared scanner, it would be even more spectacular in the visible.»

Just then, a strange voice came out from the speakers on Dragonfly and the imps riding on the humans. The voice was that of George, relayed down from Prometheus.

"Time to put a little light on the subject," said George. As he spoke, a gigantic searchlight beam three hundred kilometers across swept across the plains of Roche and came to a halt at the top of the mountain, just in time to catch the ring wave as it converged on the peak. "James won't be able to hold Prometheus's sail at this angle for too long without knocking us out of position, but we should be able to illuminate the activity until Barnard comes around from behind Eau and provides some sunlight."

As they watched, the illuminated ring wave turned into a geyser that spouted a long blob of water up and through the zero-gee region to fall slowly down onto the dry rocky point of Roche. The searchlight beam now moved from the mountain of water on the pointed part of Eau to the mountain of land on the pointed part of Roche.

"Look at those volcanoes!" exclaimed Jinjur. "Every single one of them is spouting its head off!"

"While the gravity of Roche is pulling on the water mountain of Eau, the gravity of Eau is pulling on the pointy end of Roche," explained Richard. "The crust must be under terrific strain there, no wonder the volcanoes are acting up."

"They're about to be drowned though," said David, who had been watching everything from his computer console. "Here comes the blob of ocean water from Eau. It must be ten kilometers thick."

They watched as the elongated blob of frothy water squeezed its way through the narrow gravitational neck between the two planets, then started its long slow fall toward the rocky lobe below. On the Eau side of the blob, the geyser column thinned out as the base fell back under Eau's gravitational pull, while the top portion continued to coast through the zero-gravity region.

"The leading edge of the drop is just now contacting the surface," said David.

At the base of the column of water there exploded a boiling hot cloud of steam as the icy water poured down on the red-hot lava. For twenty minutes, the torrent continued to fall, and soon the base of the waterfall was hidden in an expanding cloud of steam. From the base of the cloud streaked rivers of water, streaming down the channels gouged between the volcanoes by previous floods, and riding a layer of steam over the tongues of lava that had preceded them down those channels. Fingers of steam rose into the air, twirled by the strong Coriolis forces near the center of the rapidly spinning double-planet system. Large, lazy tornadoes were spawned and moved ahead of the flood fronts across the planet, now illuminated by the red rays of sunrise.

"Here comes Barnard," came George's voice. "We'll tack Prometheus back so we will be in position to illuminate the next waterfall, three hours from now. See you around on the other side."

 

They were approaching periapsis, when Rocheworld was at its closest point to Barnard, and the star was growing visibly with time. Its dull red globe was now nearly five times bigger than the Sun in the sky of Earth. Jinjur looked out the cockpit window and raised her chin to let the warm sunlight fall on her neck.

"It's not like a Florida beach at noon, but it's definitely warm. Nice for a change." She looked at Cinnamon. "Fly us over to the other side, and while you're at it, put us at altitude over Roche instead of Eau, so we can observe from that angle."

Cinnamon tilted the VTOL fans and increased their speed until the large aeroplane was moving rapidly forward instead of hovering in place. As soon as she had built up enough forward speed, she pushed forward on the throttle for the nuclear jet at the same time she shut down the VTOL fans. Soon they were cruising through the air at six hundred kilometers an hour.

Three hours later they watched the second transfer of water from Eau to Roche, again illuminated by the reflected sunlight from the sail on Prometheus.

"This one looks smaller," said Jinjur.

"It's supposed to be smaller," replied Richard, who was carefully monitoring the whole process on his science console. He had a flouwen watching over each shoulder, while the other two flouwen were at the other science console. They had now learned enough from watching Richard that they were able to use the touchscreen to do their own image analysis.

‡What is that you just asked the computer to do?‡

«I have instructed Juno to outline the blob of water when it separates and collect data on its shape changes. The volume should stay constant, so with a time history of the outline of one cross-section, and some minimal assumptions about symmetry, I should be able to calculate the three-dimensional shape at any point in time, and test my mathematical model for the gravitational fields of the two planets.»

=Richard says that a human named Roche calculated such a mathematical model many cycles ago.=

«I will soon find out if the human Roche was correct.»

 

"How come its supposed to be smaller?" said Jinjur, still puzzled. "We're at periapsis, closer to Barnard than we were for the last waterfall. The tides should be stronger and there should be more water transferred."

"You're forgetting the part that the atmosphere plays," said Richard. "At periapsis, Barnard is heating Roche while Eau is in shadow. The atmospheric winds are going from Roche to Eau and blowing down the mountain of water on Eau, in the opposite direction to the tidal bore wave. At the time of the high tides on either side of periapsis, Barnard is heating Eau, boiling off the ammonia in the oceans and adding wind waves to the tidal bore wave, which makes those waterfalls larger." He paused and looked carefully at his screen. "The bottom of the blob should be hitting the volcano fields now."

"Not as much steam this time," said Jinjur, as they watched the frothy blob drown the volcanoes once again in a torrent of icy water.

"The lava crust is not as hot," replied Richard. "There should be a lot more liquid water left this time— Here comes the first of the streams out from under the steam cloud." A silvery streak sped down a large channel and rapidly reached the edge of the circular spot of reflected light from Prometheus, then moved onward across Roche in the darkness. A short while later, it appeared again as it passed over the terminator shadow line and came out into the light from Barnard, just rising from behind Roche.

"See you in three hours," came George's voice from Prometheus as the gigantic sail tilted and the circle of light moved across the surface of Roche and off out into space.

Jinjur turned to Cinnamon. "For the next one, I want to be closer to the surface of Roche, so we can follow one of those rivers. That way we can document what it does to the channel as it moves along."

"You had better have your nuclear jet ready and warmed up, Cin," said Richard. "With the pressure head and velocity the water builds up dropping down the forty kilometers from the zero-gee region, you get air entrapment under the stream, just like an avalanche. The fronts of those channel streams must be moving at five hundred kilometers an hour."

"I'll be taking that shift, big boy," said Shirley from the galley where she was having lunch with Sam. She washed the last of her toasted pseudocheese sandwich down with the last of her algaeshake, handed the metal shaker back to the galley imp and came forward.

"My goodness," said Richard, looking up at the clock in the corner of his screen. "It's lunchtime already. Time sure passes when you're keeping busy. I sure am hungry . think I'll have one of my real-meat specials—a pizza with six different kinds of pseudocheese, sprinkled with mushrooms, green peppers, real-meat ground beef chunks from Ferdinand, and real-meat chips of Canadian bacon from Hamlet—all washed down with a superbulb of Coke."

"Oh!" said Sam from the galley, with a surprised look on his face. "Was that your special? I ate it yesterday."

"Juno!" yelled Richard, now annoyed. "How come you let him have my ." He paused as he realized that Juno never made a mistake. Then he glared down the corridor at Sam.

"Gotcha!" said Sam with a mischievous grin. He too slurped down the last of his algaeshake and came forward to relieve Richard at the science console.

 

Three hours later, they were waiting as the last of the interplanetary waterfalls started. Again the flouwen were crowded around the science consoles while Sam explained what they were seeing on the screens.

"According to the data we collected during the last periapsis passage, this should be a big one," said Sam. "In addition to the help of the wind flowing up the water mountain, there is a partial resonance in the ocean basins on Eau that give the tidal bore a head start."

George had one side of the water mountain illuminated with the reflected light from the sail and the entire crew watched in fascination as the ring wave rode up the mountain, contracted to the point, and generated a thick climbing spout of water. The underportions of the spout thinned while the top portion that had enough momentum to overcome the weakening gravity continued upward and squeezed its bulk through the zero-gravity neck, compressed to a ten-kilometer-wide throat by the strong gravity gradients. The blob grew into an ellipsoidal ball on the other side and started to stretch as the lower portions were pulled along faster than the upper regions. The image of the scene on Sam's science console screen had an overly that Juno had traced out around the elongating ball.

"It's thirty kilometers long by twenty in diameter," said Sam. "That's enough to cover Roche a half-meter deep in water. Of course, most of the water will form temporary lakes in the lower elevations, while most of Roche will stay fairly dry."

As the ball fell, it pushed air ahead of it and flattened out on the bottom. When it reached the surface, the trapped air built up in pressure and squeezed out at high speeds form the edges, only to find itself trapped by an enlarging blob of water that moved rapidly over the nearly frictionless trapped air, trading its gravitational head for speed. Streams of silver streaked down the channels between the drowned volcanoes. One of them was coming straight toward them, where Dragonfly waited, hovering on its VTOL fans, over the largest of the channels that led from the inner peak of Roche to the cratered plains of the outer hemisphere.

Sam used the icons on the touchscreen to track the onrushing wall of water with the doppler radar in the nose of the Dragonfly.

"The velocity of the front is five hundred and eighty kilometers an hour," said Sam.

"Then I'd better get a move on," said Shirley, swiveling the Dragonfly around on its VTOL fans, and smoothly transitioning to jet thrust. Soon they were flying over the front of the flood, matching its velocity. Zooming along at over five hundred kilometers an hour, it didn't take long for them to arrive at the first of the many lakes that had formed in the lowland areas in the outer hemisphere of the Roche lobe. This was a fairly large lake, with a large island in the middle.

 

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