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CHAPTER FOUR - MEETING

As Barnard's light first shone on the only artifacts on the planet surface, Carmen woke from her light sleep in her berth aboard the Dragonfly. She had only gotten three hours rest, but she was eager to get started on the next day; it would only be six hours long and only three of those hours would be in daylight. As she started to rise, a wave of dizziness hit her and she slumped back onto her berth. The imp in her hair stretched out a miniature arm to grasp her earlobe. Pulses of multicolored laser light flashed from the tips of the imp's wire-like fingers, passed through the thin blood vessels in the earlobe, and were picked up by photodetectors in the fingers on the other side. In a fraction of a second, the imp had collected the multispectral data needed for a complete blood assay.

"Carmen," said Juno through the imp. "Your blood sugar is very low. You have hardly eaten at all for three days. I am aware that you are trying to cut down your calorie intake, and as long as you were not overdoing it I said nothing. But after the last four weeks of dieting, you cannot simply fast."

Dieting? Carmen hadn't been dieting really, she simply didn't feel much like eating. Maybe it had been a couple weeks since she had much appetite, but big as she was, she was certainly in no danger. She had enough excess fat to last for years! Carmen stood more slowly and with better success.

"I am afraid I must insist that you eat something," Juno's voice gently chided.

"Leave off, Juno. I'm just not hungry. Even the thought of eating makes me feel nauseated."

"Perhaps John should check you out. Shall I inform General Jones that you are too ill to function properly?"

Carmen grimaced at the thought of Jinjur insisting that they scrub the mission just because she didn't want to eat. "Okay, okay, what do I have to do to get you off my back?" She went into the compact toilet down the aisle and made a face at her reflection in the mirror. If she had lost any weight, it certainly wasn't enough. Carmen began applying the make-up that went everywhere with her.

"I will make an algae shake that contains all the vitamins and minerals you need for the day. It will also contain the glucose necessary to keep you from forming ketone. Make sure that you drink it all."

"Like I'd be able to hide it from you the way I used to hide the brussels sprouts from mia madre," she muttered. Sometimes living with a permanent nanny could be a real pain.

By the time Carmen had fixed her hair and face and had slipped out through the privacy curtain between the sleeping quarters and the galley section, Caroline was halfway through a breakfast pseudo-omelette made with egg-flavored algae powder. Carmen got her shake, pulled out one of the swing-out seats from under the galley counter and joined the engineer. "You sure got up fast," Carmen said, trying to put off drinking the blue frothy mixture.

Caroline laughed. "I don't do more than make sure my hair's out of the way. I don't know why you bother with all that warpaint out here in the boondocks."

"I wouldn't go anywhere with out my natural beauty."

Caroline speared the last of her omelette. "Do you think we should start out on our own?"

"I'd rather wait until Jinjur gets up. We don't want her to miss a chance to order us to do exactly what we want."

Caroline paused. She sensed some hostility in Carmen's voice and didn't know how to react to it. Usually Carmen would not have made disparaging remarks about the General. Maybe it had something to do with the algae shake Carmen was sipping. Caroline wondered what delicacy she was paying for now. James often made them trade off overindulgence in the fruits of Nels's tanks and tissue cultures with the healthy but unappetizing shakes. She tried to laugh it off. "Our fearless leader will be out soon." The privacy curtain between the galley and the sleeping quarters slammed open.

"Speak of the devil ." Jinjur's voice rung out. "You two raring to go?"

"I figured we'd get the power supply set up first,"said Caroline. "Then we'll work out the best place for the laser transmitter and the touchscreen for the flouwen."

"Richard can take a look at the local geology while you're setting up the power supply," said Jinjur. "He'll be able to predict any problems you might have with erosion and water table levels. Also, I doubt I'll be able to keep him here with me without tying him down."

"I wouldn't mind tying him down," said Carmen, batting her long eyelashes at Sam and Richard as they came through the privacy curtain. Carmen slipped out as they came in, making sure that she squeezed against them, lingering to maximize the contact despite the fact that there was plenty of room.

The two geologists grinned at her good naturedly, and sat down with Jinjur. Richard pushed away Carmen's half-empty glass, and grimaced. "None of this slop for me," he called out. "I want steak and hash browns and biscuits with plenty of good country-sausage gravy."

"You're scheduled for an herb algae-omelette and your usual morning Coke," said Juno quietly as the galley imp pushed the plate and metal tumbler forward.

"Well, it was worth a try," Richard grinned, downing a big gulp of caffine and phosphoric acid, and reaching for his fork. "So, how far have you planned for us to go on today's expedition?"

"That will depend upon what you find," replied Juno. "But I don't think there will be any surprises. This island was mapped thoroughly from the air during the previous visit to Eau by the members of the crew in Surface Excursion Module One. Since then, it has been periodically monitored by the commsat Barbara during its overflights. It is highly unlikely you will discover anything new or unusual, like alien life-forms or strange artifacts. There does appear to be a small land-locked lake toward the middle of this island that Sam should check out."

Richard shoveled down his herb omelette, and holding his cup of pseudo-coffee, went forward to the science console and brought up an image of the island. It showed the beach that they now occupied. Several kilometers inland, a high ring of hills surrounded a small spot of shining blue.

"The geology exploration plan for the next three hour daylight period is for Richard to assist the laser communications installation crew in finding the most suitable spot for burying the power supply, while Sam checks out the geology around the lake."

"First I want to meet the flouwen," Sam objected.

"I thought you were a geologist, not an xenobiologist!" Jinjur objected.

"I've been on the surface of Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Juno, on Ganymede and Callisto, and have never seen so much as a fossil. Then on the first mission to Rocheworld I got stuck with exploring Roche, while Richard got to go to Eau and meet the flouwen. I want to talk to the first 'little green men'."

 

Clear«»White«»Whistle was just as eager to talk to the humans. As they had eaten their fill of the wild life in the deep ocean of Eau, many of the newly awakened flouwen came back to the waters off the beach. Most stayed only a moment to see if there had been any new developments, but Dainty~Blue~Warble, Roaring*Hot*Vermillion, and Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle joined Clear«»White«»Whistle's vigil. With the rise of Hot, movement became apparent in the landing craft and the aeroplane. In order to see up the slope of the beach, the flouwen had to ride the waves to their zenith. Even then, since sound waves were slower and less effective in the air, they got back only a weak, far away picture full of confusing echoes. Looking with their newly-made eyes gave a clearer picture, but it was only two dimensional, and they could not tell what was happening within the hard, shiny walls of the vehicles. Roaring*Hot*Vermillion was bored, but the challenge of trying to see while riding on the surf intrigued it, and so it was the first one to see the lock door reopen at the top of the towering lander.

The spacesuited forms of Tony, John, and Shirley appeared in the Falcon airlock. Shirley extended out a long metal beam from the ceiling of the lock with the winch on the end, while John and Thomas attached the first of a number of packages to the end of the cable. Then the airlock on the Dragonfly opened and Cinnamon, Sam, Richard, Carmen, and Caroline came out to stand at the bottom of the lander to await the arrival of the packages. Jinjur and Thomas remained inside Dragonfly and Falcon where they could monitor the progress of the others after they split into groups.

The first package lowered down was a compact metal cylinder, the nuclear minireactor-photoelectric generator that would be the power supply for the flouwen laser communication link. Although not large, it was dense because of its load of plutonium fuel, photoelectric cells, and folded heat-pipe radiator vanes. Even in the twelfth-gee gravity field at the outer pole of Eau, it was a load even for Richard. Next came a geological coring tool and bit, a bundle of core tubes, reels of high temperature superconductor cable, the laser transmitter module, the autotracking telescope for sending the laser beam either up to Prometheus or directly to Earth, and the underwater touchscreen designed for use by the flouwen. The last package lowered was a large bag with three lumps in it. John rode down with the bag, while, after securing the winch, Shirley scrambled after him down the rungs of the Jacob's Ladder that ran from the airlock to the surface.

Richard checked the safety latches on the minireactor, hoisted the compact heavy package to his left shoulder, picked up the coring tool with his right hand, and started trudging off up the beach. He looked carefully at the geology of the terrain in the distance, trying to identify the best location to emplace the reactor-generator. Trotting along after him came Shirley with the telescope and core tubes, Carmen with the laser transmitter, John with the reels of cable, and Caroline with the touchscreen.

Sam and Cinnamon picked up the large bag between them, and they and Tony walked down to the edge of the surf to greet the waiting flouwen.

*Hello! Hello! Hello!* cried Roaring*Hot*Vermillion as it literally beached in front them. Feeling the sand imbedded in its flesh, Roaring*Hot*Vermillion knew that it would later regret the hasty charge. *Arrgh! I hate the sand!*

"We can bring you out of the surf and protect you from the sand," said a voice coming from the brightly glowing Sound¤Maker that sat on the shoulder of the human.

*Anything that will get me away from this thought-clouding sand!* Roaring*Hot*Vermillion pulled back from the beach on the receding wave. Following closely, the humans decreased the buoyancy of their suits and carefully waded into and under the surf. The sand that so interfered with internal communication slowly sifted out of Roaring*Hot*Vermillion as they reached clearer waters. Soon the three humans were completely submerged in the relative calm just below the tossing waves. One of their suit imps swam up to the surface where it acted as a relay for the blue-green laser optical link between the suit computers and the central computers on the vehicles.

"We'll never be able to fit them into one of these suits," said Cinnamon, looking with awe at the gigantic blob of reddish jelly that stretched for meters in each direction. "Can they only partially solidify in order to fit?"

"James thought that for the chance to come exploring with us, they would be willing to separate part of themselves off from the rest," said Tony. Jupiter, operating the outside suit imps at long distance through the optical relay link, translated Tony's words for the flouwen, while adding some words of explanation of its own.

*Separate!?!* Roaring*Hot*Vermillion roared.

"Were you translating?" Cinnamon asked.

"I am translating everything," said Jupiter.

*I will not tear off pieces of myself .*

«Wait a moment.» Clear«»White«»Whistle surrounded the humans. «How big a subset do you need this time? Part of me remembers being studied by you before and you did me no harm.»

"Actually," said Sam as he spread out the giant-sized baggy that they had developed to hold the flouwen, "This is as much of each of you as our ship is capable of holding."

Clear«»White«»Whistle took the limp bag of glassy-foil from Sam's hand and studied it carefully with a series of sonar pulses. Sam showed him how to work the zipper and the white flouwen opened the suit and allowed himself to flow inside, squeezing excess water from its body as it did so. By the time the bag was filled, a good portion of the giant flouwen was surrounded by silvery glassy-foil. It was easy for Clear«»White«»Whistle to see the way the zipper would seal the flouwen into the bag, protecting that portion of his body from the sand and the drying effects of the air—and from the rest of himself outside. Clear«»White«»Whistle hesitated, hating the idea of separating into two beings. «If I do this, you will take me with you to explore the land above?»

"Yes," said Sam. "That's why we brought the suits. This is the only way you can leave the ocean and go exploring with us." He produced two others.

Dainty~Blue~Warble, Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle and Roaring*Hot*Vermillion waited. Slowly, Clear«»White«»Whistle closed the zipper. Almost immediately he opened it again, testing the device. Then the zipper closed again and the free portion of Clear«»White«»Whistle moved away, leaving the suited flouwen standing alone.

*How does it feel?* asked Roaring*Hot*Vermillion.

«It's odd!» said the free Clear«»White«»Whistle.

«It's odd!» said the suited Clear«»White«»Whistle at the same time.

~ Being small will make you stupid, ~ warned Dainty~Blue~Warble, who had just had the experience of watching after a small stupid flouwen.

«Smart enough to hunt and feed and grow!» insisted the free Clear«»White«»Whistle.

«Smart enough to learn and explore and look!» said the suited Clear«»White«»Whistle.

«Think how large and smart and experienced I'll be when I get back together!» they finished simultaneously.

Roaring*Hot*Vermillion knew when a challenge was issued. Taking another one of the bags, he poured inside it, hesitating only slightly as the zipper sealed up the suit.

Separating felt odd, and odder still was the thought that he was now only half as smart as he had been. For a moment he was reassured by the fact that he felt no dumber, but then he was crushed to realize that he was too stupid to tell the difference, and had proved his own idiocy by his momentary reassurance.

Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle took the last suit. Older and bigger than the others, the free portion was still rather large. Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle looked at the small suited subset and wished him luck. He felt as if he had made a new youngling, except this time he was the only parent.

‡Take good care of yourself, Little Me.‡

Little Purple was slightly annoyed at the proprietary attitude of his progenitor and silently resolved to show his other self a thing or two when they reconnected.

Dainty~Blue~Warble had no desire to return to infancy so soon after earning the respect of the rest of the pod. Agreeing to take the "free" halves out to feed while the suited flouwen explored the island, Dainty~Blue~Warble silently resolved never to make a youngling; for he had had more than enough of babysitting. He was tempted to ask them hard questions the way tutors had done to him, just so they would rock up and stay out of the way.

The newly shaped flouwen looked like over-sized bowling pins, rounded on the bottom like a child's punch toy. Two semi-globular lenses of plastic molded into their helmets held the same relative position as the eyes of a human. From ports in the neckring there extended three short "arm" sleeves ending in three-fingered "gloves". The glassy-foil in the sleeves and fingers had spring-loaded pleats so the reach and grasp could be augmented if necessary.

The suited flouwen soon learned to form pseudopods in the arms and gloves of the suit and practiced using them. They picked up rocks from the ocean floor, punched icons on the touchscreen, and unsealed and resealed their suits until the motions became sure and smooth. They found it was easy for them to swim through the ocean in their suits using their usual undulating body motion.

"Well, they have pretty much got the feel for operating the suits in ocean environments, so they definitely could be useful in exploring the ocean parts of some of the moons of Gargantua," said Sam, looking on critically. "Now let's see if they can move around on land without legs. Otherwise, we are going to have to roll them out the airlock and down the beach to the water on each visit."

Cinnamon called out to the three flouwen. "Okay, Little White, Little Red, and Little Purple, let's see if you can make your way up the beach and out of the surf. As soon as you feel sand underneath, try rolling along on your side while the waves are pushing you."

Sam and Tony moved behind Little White and slowly pushed the two hundred kilo flouwen onto its side. Because they were underwater and the gravity was only a twelfth of a gee, they had some trouble. They didn't have enough weight for leverage. Little White understood their objective and shifted his body within the suit so that he tipped over, leaving his "head" off to the side. The other two followed suit, and awkwardly they rolled up the gentle slope of the beach. They had a bit of trouble fighting past the retreating waves, but once they were beyond the surge of the surf, they climbed out of the water. Through the twin lenses in their helmets, they could see the surface of the water that had always been their home. They all stopped and turned upright, gazing back on this new view of the sea.

Little White was pivoting this way and that, using the plastic lenses to look around. Two lenses allowed him to triangulate and accurately judge his relative position to other objects. He resolved to teach his other self to form two lenses next time it wanted to look at something. If only the other self didn't figure that out in the meantime. Certainly it was a simple enough concept; he would have discovered it on his own had he given it more thought.

‡Seems like we should say something special . that we should commemorate the first time our people have come out from the sea.‡

*Leave that sort of thing to people like Warm§Amber§Resonance, I always say.* Little Red grumbled, afraid that he could have thought of something good to mark the occasion back when he was larger.

"On this day, the flouwen left the cradle of the sea," said Cinnamon in her best orator voice.

The flouwen were silent, considering the phrase.

‡Sounds impressive .‡ Little Purple conceded.

*What the Grey¤Boom is a cradle?* Little Red muttered quietly to himself.

 

Following Richard's lead, Shirley, Carmen, Caroline, and John strode off up the sandy beach and started climbing the gentle rise. The ground underfoot became rough and rocky as the sound of the surf retreated. Among the boulders, there were still signs of colored flouwen "rocks" from past generations. John made a mental note to gather samples of them from various levels to see if there were signs of changing flouwen development. For now though, it was more important to find a good place to sink a well that would safeguard the nuclear power source for the flouwen laser communication center.

This ridge was all that separated the lander from the sheltered cove that the flouwen had picked as the best place for installing the underwater touchscreen. They climbed slowly up the increasingly steep slope, and just as they topped the rise, the panorama of the cove was spread out before them.

The cove had a narrow beach; too thin to have allowed the Falcon to land. Between them and the water's edge, the ground dropped off sharply, but slides indicated possible routes to the shore. Unfortunately they also indicated instability in the cliff that precluded drilling at the base. Still, the cove itself was perfect. Tiny waves lapped gently against the icy shore; the dark line a few feet out indicated the deeper waters that would remain deep even during the lowest tides that came during Rocheworld's close passage to Barnard every forty Earth days. Here the flouwen could use John's wonderful touchscreen in quiet safety.

John had spent many days working with James and Caroline on perfecting the touchscreen. Because the flouwen only used light for a secondary information input, John had augmented the video screen with a sonic pattern output. It encompassed the wide range of frequencies the flouwen had demonstrated during their various conversations during the previous visit to Rocheworld. The flouwen could also use touch to draw any figures that were necessary to explain their theories, and the internal computer in the touchscreen would be capable of interpreting models in either two, three or n dimensions. The touchscreen was even designed to sense chemical compounds and could transmit electric impulses that would partially simulate the chemical tastes that the flouwen use to trade information.

Richard looked around the cove with a practiced eye. "There's a small pond in a sandy depression over there. It should be suitable for burying the reactor. It's far enough from the ocean shore that even the highest storm waves won't uncover the reactor, and far enough from the cliffs that falling rocks won't cut the power cable. The only question is how deep the sand goes. We'll have to drill a core hole."

"Well, let's get to it, big boy. The days are short on this planet," Shirley said as she put down the heavy telescope and started down the slope with her load of perforated core tubes.

Caroline had been looking around too. She pointed to the high point in the ridge they were crossing. "That knob up there would be a good place for the laser transmitter and the autotracking telescope. The view from there would be nearly unobstructed and would allow good coverage of the sky. We can fire some explosive bolts into the rock to provide solid anchors for the telescope in case of high winds."

"You sure can pick them," Carmen groaned. She shifted her grip on the laser transmitter.

"I'll go ahead and anchor the telescope. Take a break and then start up after me," Caroline suggested.

John gave Carmen one of the reels of cable. "While you're resting, why don't I take the touchscreen down into the water while you unroll the cable." John moved down the slope to the still waters of the cove. When he reached the edge of the water he started to wade in.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Carmen called. She eyed the water apprehensively. Ever since most of her family died in the tidal wave that followed the 2018 earthquake, drowning had haunted her dreams.

"Don't bother," John said. "Save the heaters in your suit. The water here is plenty calm and I can see the antenna sticking up from the crawler. Run that wire up the hill to Caroline."

John strode confidently out into the water. The tiny wavelets lapped around his ankles. The cold bit at his toes before the suit heater kicked in. The walking was awkward until he let most of the extra air out of his suit. As the crinkly glassy-foil material pressed against his skin, John lost the buoyancy that had him trying to walk on the surface. Gradually the cold water rose, tightening the suit against his flesh.

The smooth surface of the water crept up the face of his helmet and for a moment John had a beautiful view half above and half below the surface of the water. He remembered Carmen telling him of her fear of drowning, and hoped that she would not pass up the chance to see the world bisected this way. He himself had no fear of the water; his mother had told him that he was born with a caul. As the waters met over the top of his helmet, his view of the ocean was imbued with two shades of green. They swirled about him, twisting and marbling, yet never intermingling.

?Is this a Stiff¤Mover? What is it doing?¿

•Ask it yourself.•

?Stiff¤Mover? Is that another Sky¤Talker you carry? Is it like the one that the Crawling¤Rock brought?¿

"I have come to replace the old one with this new one and take the old one back," John explained though his suit imp. "This one will last longer and is better made."

?If this one is better, why do you want to take the other one?¿

•Maybe he wants to eat the animal.• Sweet•Green•Fizz had been appalled to learn that this was what Shining?¿Chartreuse?¿Query had done to those early PrettySmells that had not lived up to its expectations. Shining?¿Chartreuse?¿Query said that this was so they would not reproduce and make more failures, but eating a pet seemed indecent to Sweet•Green•Fizz. It would be like Roaring*Hot*Vermillion eating one of his Orange¤Hunter pets.

"No. I don't want to eat it," John laughed. It was odd for the flouwen to hear the sounds of strange alien laughter coming from inside the spacesuit. "It isn't alive, but we do need to use its parts."

Sweet•Green•Fizz protested. •But it talked to us. If it talks, it must be intelligent. How can it be intelligent and not be alive?•

"It thinks using electricity moving through pieces of stone called silicon chips. As long as we are here, we might as well pick it up and take it back so we can use the silicon chips again."

?It is a made thing that thinks with electricity and pieces of stone and is intelligent but not alive and you can use its pieces?¿ Shining?¿Chartreuse?¿Query started to rock up to think about these strange new concepts, then swelled back up again, knowing for certain that he wasn't massive enough to understand those concepts without a long period of concentrated thought. He would save them to work on later, maybe after a few turns of heavy meals to build up bulk.

The new underwater touchscreen was larger and more versatile than the first. Also, the surface of the touchscreen was smoother and better sealed since the Christmas Bush had had more time to work on the casing. The only protrusion was the thick power and communication cable coming out the back and running up onto the shore.

John was reluctant to leave the water and end this, his first contact with the flouwen. He waited patiently just under the water, admiring the flickering play of light against the gaudy rocks of those flouwen that even the landing of the Falcon hadn't aroused. This close to the equator and on the outer pole, where the sun shone three hours out of every six hour day, the ocean was relatively warm and ammonia poor, but the high cliff on this side of the bay shaded the shallow water in the cove, allowing a thin film of crystalline water ice to form on the still surface near the middle. As the feeble sunlight refracted through the patterned ice to glint on the rocky bottom, John felt as if he was imprisoned in a crystal.

Shining?¿Chartreuse?¿Query and Sweet•Green•Fizz had placed the new touchscreen on a flat place in the sandy bottom, but they were more interested in John than the odd box. Clear«»White«»Whistle had found the first touchscreen fascinating, and had spent much time conversing with it, but that kind of research simply wasn't in the field of interest of these two flouwen. They were experimental geneticists.

•Why do you make a pet that isn't alive? Wouldn't it be better to start with smart things that are alive and breed them so that the offspring are smarter?•

"We also breed 'pets' to be smarter, or bigger, or better looking." John's face took on a superior look as he answered. His own family had always privately considered themselves the end and best result of good breeding. "There are members of our crew who specialize in breeding new animals and plants who could explain this better than I, but I know that they can actually manipulate the patterns in the genetic chemicals of living cells in order to change them to produce more desirable traits in the offspring."

•We know from mathematical analysis of the results of our breeding efforts, that such patterns must exist in the units of our animals. With a great effort, some of us have used extremely high frequency chirps and lengthy analysis of the scattering pattern to actually see these patterns. But we have no way of changing them. How do you detect the patterns, and how do you change them?•

"We use a device called a scanning tunnelling array imager and manipulator. When you use it, it is like feeling and manipulating something with a hand, or pseudopod, that has a million miniature fingers," John waited patiently as Jupiter's translator struggled to explain the concept of the complicated machine with the limited joint vocabulary that had been developed by the translation program. As the last of Jupiter's careful explanation echoed out into the water, Sweet•Green•Fizz rocked up and joined the other colorful rocks scattered over the ocean floor.

?I guess I should presume that Sweet•Green•Fizz will take some time to figure out a way for us to see and manipulate those patterns on our units? Perhaps I should go get more to eat so I will be able to understand the taste of the solution when it is ready to be shared? Will we be able to talk to those crew members you mentioned? The ones that manipulate genetic patterns?¿

"Yes," said John, although he knew that only Cinnamon was on the surface now. Still, they could talk to the gimp through the new touchscreen. That would make these green aliens really appreciate the hard work John had put into making the custom touchscreen for their use.

"Once we get the power supply installed, and the transmitter set up on the top of the ridge, you can talk to our geneticist on the Prometheus. Ask James to let you speak to Nels." John smiled to think of the shy man's discomfiture at being summoned to the communication center to teach Genetics 101 to green amoebas. John didn't much care for Nels, although he always polite. He could never think of anything to say when he ran into the gimp and his normal glib charm would fail him. People with deformities made him feel uncomfortable.

John watched as Shining?¿Chartreuse?¿Query swam off and vanished in the darkening water. Stepping carefully around the hard slick bright green blob of Sweet•Green•Fizz, he waded awkwardly out of the water. The trickles of water that ran down the heated suit boiled off almost instantly, now that John was free of the ocean's chill, momentarily blinding him with his own steam. To Carmen and Caroline, he looked like a god of mists rising from the waves and walking towards them. By the time he reached them he was completely dry.

Caroline and Carmen had had no trouble placing both the laser transmitter and the autotracking telescope to Caroline's satisfaction. Caroline had done most of the work; the climb had taken the last of Carmen's strength. As Carmen sat on a rock and recovered, she watched Caroline and looked out over the cove. The setting was so much like the seaside town she had been born in, that Carmen allowed herself a moment's homesickness.

"Caroline, do you ever regret leaving so many things at home?"

"Of course I miss the Earth," Caroline answered. "This is the adventure of a lifetime, but it did mean giving up a lifetime on Earth to have it. I wonder about what my life would have been like, if I hadn't been chosen. I miss my father, my sister and her children, and of course, my son, but all in all ."

"Your son?" Carmen was amazed. They had worked together on many projects, but Caroline had never mentioned a son before.

"Yes, I have a son. His name is Tomjon. He was seventeen when I left."

"But you were only thirty-three then ."

"Yes, I was sixteen when he was born. Like many foolish girls in those days, I got myself into the kind of trouble that was illegal to get out of. My family took me out of town for six months and then my stepmother told everyone the baby was hers. Since she was thirty-five and had no other children, no one really believed her, but such "Autumn Babies" where the only way to save face back then."

Caroline stretched. Blasting the hold down bolts in the rock and tightening the support cables for the telescope had been hard work. She sat down next to Carmen to rest for a moment. "I worked hard to finish high school early and then buried myself in my college work, carrying extra units and taking no vacations so that I might be able to reclaim my son and give him a good life. But when I landed my first job at MIT and went back for him, I didn't find the tiny baby I had given up. I found a five-year-old person who cried when I tried to hold him. He already had a mother, one who loved him and had willingly faced all the public scorn I had run from. How could I separate them? My only wish was that he be happy."

Carmen was silent. She could have gotten pregnant during high school. She knew many who did, and, now that she could view the past without the blinders of teenage self-preoccupation, there were a lot of "Autumn Babies" then. Would she have given up her education to raise a son? Would she have given up the chance to come to the stars? Did she have any right to long for a child when she hadn't the generosity a child demanded?

"Did you never tell him that you were his mother? That you carried him in your womb for nine months?"

"Tomjon knows that I love him, and that carried him, but in the scheme of his life, those nine months aren't all that important to him."

"But what about you? You sacrificed your youth, studying so that you could provide a life for him. You are his mother!" she protested.

"Me? I am the mother of all my engineering designs." Caroline was surprised that Carmen seemed so affected by her ancient tragedy. She no longer even thought of it as tragic; her father's wife had been an excellent mother, willing to devote all of her average intellect toward the raising of the active boy. Shy from her early burn, Caroline had had little interest in the social life at college, and sometimes wondered if she had only used Tomjon as an excuse to bury herself in the abstract beauty of her engineering studies. Certainly, the final break from her daydream of raising Tomjon did nothing to slow her down. She went from being a "studyholic" to being a "workaholic" without missing a beat. And when one of her designs was finally visible in finished, working hardware, she did feel more of a sense of accomplishment than she had felt so long ago when she had pushed Tomjon into the world.

"Here comes John now!" Caroline said, eager to change the subject. They got to their feet as the steaming cloud rose out of the sea and walked toward them.

"The flouwen have gone for a while. Let's hook up the laser transmitter and telescope so the touchscreen will be ready as soon as we get power. Why don't you go see what's keeping them?" he asked Carmen.

Carmen didn't mind tackling the slope again after her rest. Also, she wanted some time alone with her thoughts. Maybe James was right about her not having enough energy to do her job. She tried to think of food, but the idea sickened her. Maybe she just needed more sleep.

 

On the other side of the ridge, the emplacement of the nuclear minireactor went quickly. Shirley and Richard took turns on the core driller and vied with each other to see how fast they could drive a meter length of coring tube through the wet sand. They easily made it through the necessary ten meters of ground and carefully lowered the reactor and its long stack of cooling fins down into the water-filled well lined with porous core tubing. When they finished, Richard went back and got the end of the power cable that Carmen had unrolled and brought it back to Shirley.

"Here's the plug," he said. "Where's the socket?"

"Right here," said Shirley, holding up the controller for the power supply. "It's all set and ready to activate, but it will be a few minutes before we have power." She activated the controller using its internal power supply and went through a long check list.

"All the photoelectric converters check out, and the radiators are indicating adequate cooling at this power level," she reported. "Now we switch to high power." She raised a safety cover and activated the red button underneath. Deep below ground, control rods were removed from the compact cylindrical nuclear reactor, and shortly later the cylinder was glowing red hot. Surrounding the reactor were special mirrors that passed a broad band of usable infrared and visible light to photocells that converted the light into electricity. The light outside the useable band was reflected back onto the hot reactor core, where the light was reabsorbed and turned back into heat, to be recycled once again. With optimized photocells, the whole process was nearly fifty percent efficient at converting heat into electricity. The rest of the heat was dissipated into the water by the stack of heat-pipe radiators.

Shirley watched intently as the display screen on the console showed the stack of radiators glowing hotter and hotter as the reactor heated up. Finally the picture stabilized.

"Good!" she finally said. "All of the radiators are in the safe yellow range. No orange vanes and especially no red ones." She turned to Richard. "Let me have that plug. I want to see how it does under load." Richard connected the end of the power cable to the controller and up on the hill a brilliant green beam of laser light flashed from the end of the telescope, sparkling in the blowing mist from the pounding ocean waves beyond. The display on the controller shifted slightly, then settled down once again. Shirley made a few more adjustments.

"A steady one point three kilowatts. Just about enough to run a toaster, and more than enough laser power to punch a high resolution video message across six light years from Rocheworld to the light buckets on the backside of Luna. I have to stay here and monitor the power supply for a while yet, but why don't you go up and join the others at the transmitter?"

 

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Framed