X00 The Blue Planet Table of content

X01 The Blue Planet
X02 Spoonraker
X03 Space Ships
X04 The Error
X05 After Recovery
X06 Stories from Another World
X07 His Plan
X08 The Colony

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L06X01 The Blue Planet

JC knew he was beginning to recover because he couldn't sleep a much as before and he was tongue lashing himself mentally. He had to stop, he needed to save every bit of strength he had or he would slow his recovery. He knew the only way to stop was divert himself. He tried several times and it didn't work.
He was mad at himself and the others for being so stupid, but being angry took more energy, he had to calm down. He tried reviewing what went wrong and that increased his anger. He tried reviewing the mission, but that led back to what had gone wrong and so that failed also.
He tried once more to divert himself by reviewing his family history, he could feel his pulse rate decline and his body relax. Many family members were story tellers and he enjoyed their stories.
Five thousand generations of his family had been entrepreneurs or scientists. He was the first maverick, a historian and a cryptanalyst, his knowledge of history aided in deciphering the languages of other civilizations.
His ancestors were the reason he was on this mission. Two thousand years ago, one of his ancestors explored this planetary system. He and his crew disappeared leaving only a transmission to the space ship, a brief automatic transmission that all exploration crews sent before they descended to a new planet, giving their location, time, and a brief description of the planetary system and the planet they choose to explore.
It was the first planet with water to be discovered in more than thirty years. Their choice of words indicated their excitement, referring to it as The Blue Planet, Third From The Yellow Star. They also called it Earth Two because it was almost identical to earth, it even had a large moon. The planetary system was very similar to the solar system, including an asteroid belt. The star was of the same spectral type and nearly the same size, but it was much younger than the sun. The Blue planet did not receive much attention because the first report indicated barren land, little or no vegetation. Also, it was located in a region of very few stars.
While the first full scale exploration was being planned, another more promising group of planetary systems was found and the mission was canceled, but it was re-instated many years later. The second mission was granted because it could be easily accomplished while exploring another promising group. The third mission was granted for the same reason.
By the time of the third mission, the Milky Way had been charted in much greater detail and by using a massive star to change direction, the third mission could be made from the space ship with very little energy. What energy was stored on board the explorer would be used to rendezvous with the space ship on its return to earth. This mission was carefully planned, like all missions were.
A thousand years after the first mission, another ancestor returned, trying to learn the first crew's fate. They didn't return either, but they sent a transmission each day reporting what they had seen and done. Equipped much better than the first crew, they transmitted volumes of technical data about the planet and planetary system, very useful in preparing for the third mission. Most of the data was transmitted by automatic sensors via computer on board the lander to the orbiter to the explorer and then to earth.
After six months, irregularities began to appear in the reports. By the end of the year, it was almost impossible to decipher them. The last intelligible report stated they had discovered the first crew's hover vehicle at the bottom of a lake and they were going to try to recover it. The following reports were all gobbledygook.
Unsuccessfully, he read and reread the reports, in an attempt to glean more information from them. He couldn't find anything more than anyone else, that's why he was so mad at himself, he and everyone else had missed the obvious clues. All three crews had made the same error.
Now he was getting to close to what had gone wrong and therefore; to close to his previous mental state, he changed his thoughts to conserve energy. He reviewed history in a very superficial manner, he did this often. He laughed at what each generation thought was important.
The ancients recorded the conquests of kings and then of generals. Then came wars over religion, followed by discoveries of new lands. Next came the conflict over political and economic ideas, followed by new scientific discoveries. Then came the problems of the environment, to many people, to much pollution, not enough resources. What was important to the ancients historians disappeared from the written record. Armed conflict disappeared and ideological conflict had all but disappeared. Concern over biodiversity had arisen many times, but no solution was adequate.
The population growth rate was out of control. Family planning was largely ignored, any form of birth control was still taboo for religious reasons. Venereal disease was endemic. Pollution was still increasing at a fast rate. Nuclear and coal fired power plants were still being delayed because of the disagreement over pollution and waste disposal. Droughts were common. The green house effect was getting worse.
Only small dents were made in the 'Throw Away' life style. These minor changes were made in a half hearted attempt to prevent the world temperature from increasing rapidly. Many people recycled and most use public transportation, electric cars were common among the wealthy. Solar and wind energy began to supply many homes with heat and electricity. Some were stand alone systems, other were completely integrated with the utilities.
A new generation of personal computers reduced the cost so low and the size so small that almost every person carried their own computer. The new generation was based on an octal technology rather than tertiary or binary. Storage capacity increased by another order of magnitude so disc and tape storage was not necessary. Printed output was eliminated by a visor display which was later replaced by the so called 'sun glasses' display. Since everything was solid state the reliability was greatly increased.
Major changes were forced on the people because of their extravagances. Droughts now occurred in the temperate zones. Many forests disappeared, so did all large wild animals. Lumber and paper was very limited. Magazines disappeared first, then books, and then newspapers. Home construction had to change, inflation increased.
No one seemed to notice the losses, people continued to ignore the problem, very few took responsibility for their actions. As long as water came out of the tap and the lights came on, very few planned for the future. If a problem arose, they thought the government would take care of it or a new technology would solve the problem. The government appointed another committee to study the problem and a new technology was not developed.
Fortunately, networking advances replaced paper with video, via the telephone system. Large volumes of data were transmitted by fiber optic cable or satellite. Around the world people were connected to one another electronically. People read electronically and traveled by simulation.
A significant voluntary change occurred in the electronic village. Networking had expanded so much that the communication system could not handle the load. So the electronic village began to use radio to transmit messages. The old radio and TV band was used, since all radio and TV had moved to the communication system thirty years before. R-mail became so popular, it replaced the telephone for personal communication. Every neighborhood had its own antenna and booster transmitter.
The next events happened much more rapidly than predicted. The loss of trees plus the increasing green house effect changed the rain fall and cloud patterns around the world. People continued to ignore the problem. They ignored the fact that trees need water, too. As more trees died from dehydration, exacerbated by disease and pollution the droughts increased, crops failed in self sustaining countries. Famines occurred in all food dependent countries.
Reservoirs and wells went dry, Oil and natural gas consumption rose dramatically to desalinate water to provide drinking and irrigation water. Construction could not keep up with demand as rivers and lakes dried up.
The regulations on coal fired and nuclear power plants were removed, but it was to late, construction would take ten years working around the clock. Gasoline was limited to government agencies such as the military, fire, police, and other emergency services. All private travel was banned. Trucks, trains, and buses were being converted to natural gas, to haul food and water and to transport people to work, but it couldn't be done fast enough.
The Ross ice shelf collapsed and glaciers around the world melted at a faster pace, the sea level began to rise. With in a year all major oil ship terminals were under water, the construction industry could not build dikes fast enough. All off shore and coastal oil wells were plugged. Oil shipments by water ceased, inflation began to sky rocket. Natural gas consumption increased, pipe lines could not meet the demand. Brown outs occurred almost every day. The droughts got worse. Crops turned to dust in the fields. The food distribution system could not meet schedules. Food supplies were deplete.
Less than a week after very strict water rationing was in effect, all economic activity came to a complete halt as people spent all their time and resources in a futile attempt to get food and water. Rationale went out the window, panic ensued, it rippled around the world. Countries dropped neutron bombs on their own populace in an attempt to stop the food and water riots. Mass dehydration and famine occurred. People were reduced to barbarians. The small arms ammunition supply of the entire world was consumed before the end of the next week.
The population fell from twenty billion to four billion by the third week. Those who still had any strength left were fighting with knives, stones, and clubs. Large wild animals had long been extinct, including most fish, now horses, beef cattle, and most dairy cattle were wiped out.
Some people and animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, goats, and hogs survived. Mainly in remote rural areas, those more than five days walk away from the mobs, they were to dehydrated by that time to be a threat to anyone. They didn't have enough strength to carry very much water, if they had any.
The Great Drought happened very rapidly, instead of thirty to forty years that was predicted, it was complete in three years. The population crashed two more times before it reached a new sustainable level. The survivors knew they had to replace the trees. Two centuries later trees began to increase and some land was recovered from the drought. Obviously, this period was another dark age. The standard of living fell precipitously. Learning and technology were stagnant and even fell, but it did recover.
Prior to the Great Drought, some people had predicted what was going to happen. They were called the doom and gloom people by the majority. A few took them seriously and they prepared as best they could for what was to come. Some actually moved to areas where they thought they had the best chance to survive. Others created summer homes in similar areas and some managed to move before the travel restrictions were imposed.
While the rest of the population was moving to the sun belt, there was this small but extremely important counter migration to the then harsh climates. Some business groups choose to move to these remote locations. Groups that did not require very many resources and could conduct their business by communicating in some manner, they didn't need to be in physical contact with the rest of the corporation. They were mainly think tank groups, such as research and development. One such group was the research and development segment of the computer industry, a group that was crucial to the recovery.
Their homes were underground, or dug into the side of a hill. These people had a tremendous advantage over the refugees, because they had the time to test their new mode of life and to refine it while they could still get help from other sources. They had the proper equipment. Their wells and latrines were already dug. Their storage cellars were full. They had a few animals to supply meat and cloth and most importantly, seeds to plant the next crop.
Most of these enclaves survived and they provided a strong nucleus for the new society. A few were destroyed by the mobs and a few were forced to move because the drought came unpredicted to their area. Most of these people were well educated and or highly skilled. They put a premium on education and did their best to maintain it. Local education was supplemented by using the electronic village.
They knew what had to be done and did it, whether they liked it or not. They knew if any changes were to be made, now was the time to make them. They changed the number system to octal. The numeral nine replaced the numeral one and the numeral eight replaced the numeral zero. Weights and measures were changed. The language was made phonetic, irregular verbs were eliminated. The alphabet was changed and reduced. Enough redundancy was kept in all the characters to prevent confusion between any of them. Grammar and punctuation was simplified. Words were contracted. You became U, are became R, see became C and so on. All pronounceable two, three, an four letter combinations of vowels and consonants were used. This reduced the time needed to key and transmit alphabetic data.
They changed the economic system. Private property and money disappeared. All resources were owned by the world community. Every person was considered to be a part owner of the world community and shared in any benefits.
Anyone could use any resource owned by the community. Any person could file a claim to use a given resource via R-mail, stating how the resource was going to be used. If standard procedures were followed for private use, R-mail approval was received the same day. If procedures were non standard, the request would be relayed to the appropriate committee and generally an answer was received within a week. Any disputes were resolved by those interested, usually the local village.
Anyone could research the data base to learn how to use a resource and what rules had to be followed in using the resource. The rules were designed to protect the environment and were updated as new research indicated a change was necessary. Each person using the resource received a message stating the reason why the change should be considered and they were invited to participate. After the change was agreed upon, the new change was sent to everyone using the resource.
Everyone followed the rules. The Great Drought was still fresh in their memories and everyone knew it was caused by not following the rules of the ecosystem. Later everyone followed the rules because it became a way of life. The rules were not that restrictive and they could be changed. Simple errors could be corrected within a week, minor changes could be made in a month, and major changes could be made within a year. This was certainly faster than any of the old systems.
They changed the calendar. They kept the old months, but reduced the number of days per week to six, with five weeks per month. The last month had six weeks except during skip year, when the last week was dropped to bring the calendar back into line with the equinox.
The Great Drought finally convinced people, they had to disagree agreeably and they had to cooperate, a free market can't solve all problems. This period in history fascinated JC, the people did make an effort not to repeat their previous mistakes. The biggest changes occurred in government and religion.
Contrary to what anyone predicted, instead of many conflicting ideologies, only one emerged, based on ecology. Obviously none of the old ideologies had prevented the Great Drought. The people of the world were finally united, one government, one language, and no religion.
Because of the gruesome death by dehydration and starvation during the Great Drought, voluntary and involuntary euthanasia was an every day occurrence. If you didn't work, you didn't drink or eat and if you became to weak to do any type of work, you were killed. No one was going to waste their resources on you and they didn't want to watch you die, slowly. Obviously the survivors were workers.
The death rate increased dramatically because of pneumonia and other hypothermia related diseases, even so, birth control was practiced as best as it could be. Since most religions prohibited euthanasia and birth control, the people agreed to abandon all religion, there was no point in being hypocritical. Another seldom mentioned reason was that no one had resources to waste on religion.
Solar voltaic cells and wind generators provided enough power to keep the electronic village running, plus a few lights and a few refrigerators, used to store the remaining pharmaceuticals. Batteries were prized, to store electricity. The surviving electronic data bases became the new libraries of the world. Ideas and solutions to problems were shared around the world. Problems were discussed and agreement was reached on a solution. The solution was put into effect by those closest to the problem.
Radio was used for all communication except for very short distances. Hence one language and one government. Governing was done by R-mail. Anyone who wanted to participate could. Everyone could vote. Another old illusion was eliminated, everyone knew the majority did not rule, it was the majority of the minority who participated who ruled. Human nature had not changed, ninety per cent of the new order did not participate, just like the old order.
All the trappings of the old society were gone. Staying alive was now the most important task. There was no need to keep up with the Jones. No one tried to accumulate wealth, that stupid illusion was dead. The bigger is better philosophy was gone. There was no need for expansion. Bureaucracy was not needed, not even government bureaucracy.
Immediately following The Great Drought everyone worked everyday all day to get food, but a century later people did slow down and only worked four days a week or less, everyone enjoyed the extra weekends. Most people had two jobs, some had three, the primary one was raising food, done the first thing in the morning while it was still cool. The second job was done in the shade. Everyone worked part time doing what had to be done for the community.
Once again it was an agrarian society. Rise with the sun and go to bed with the sun. Everyone had to be self sustaining. Very few electric solar power tools were used, everyone labored in the gardens and fields. Gardens were every where, every square inch was used. Side walks were gone and streets were narrow, homes were small, so not to use any more land than was necessary. People once again, walked in their neighborhoods, talked and played cards with their neighbors. People shared, greed was gone, conspicuous consumption was gone because there was very little to consume.
Education had a new importance. People had to solve many problems quickly and the wise use of resources was the key to survival. They intentionally kept their villages small and dispersed to limit the spread of diseases. The population was tightly controlled. People did it willingly. Pollution was held in check as best they could and was improved with each new technological recovery. Nothing was wasted, everything was reused, recycled, or composted, there were no trash dumps. Every new product had to have planned disposal or it could not be produced.
Recycling on a grand scale began as the abandon old industrial complex was salvaged to form the new industrial complex. When possible, scavenging trips were made to recover the batteries from electric cars, and for other essential items that were no longer in production. Most of these scavenging trips were made by water and limited to a few miles from shore. The rising sea level allowed different areas to be scavenged each trip. The sea level stopped rising five hundred feet above the old sea level.
Only a few villages with their industries intact survived from the old order. Those near hydro or nuclear power in remote locations and that were self staining. Most of these villages and industries were mining related, a few were fishing villages.
Coal became the major source of power, because the natural gas pipe lines still in operation did not extend to where the new centers of population were. Slowly, industry revived, but this time it was need directed and not want directed. An ancient source of power was redeveloped, steam. The industrial revolution was beginning anew. Solar power, battery, and fiber glass insulation were among the first industries to be redeveloped.
Between coal and steam, the steel industry revived to a new low level of production. The steel was used to make farm equipment and boilers. Next came the cement, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries. The number of hospitals dramatically increased.
Even though these industries didn't have to be reinvented, travel was so limited and labor so scarce that progress was extremely slow. The distribution system was gone. Walking, bicycles, and small boats were the only modes of transportation.
The strict limit on the use of wood added to the slowness of the recovery. The only lumber available was that produced by forest management since growing trees were vital to the reduction of carbon dioxide very few were cut for lumber or fire wood.
Then another ancient industry returned, the railroad, with steam turbine electric locomotives. Soon followed by steam ships and steam generated electricity. As the transportation system improved, trade increased and the standard of living improved dramatically. As the standard of living increased, some of the old practices of specialization and mass production were reintroduced, mainly because these old practices were more economical.
The people remained vigilant. They didn't want the old excesses to reappear. Two more centuries passed before the new industrial revolution was complete, oil and natural gas replaced coal once again. As each small village received community supplied electricity, community water and sewerage soon followed. Next came refrigeration, central heating, indoor plumbing, and washing machines.
Pneumonia deaths dropped to the old lows. The population began to increase, but the people were vigilant and it soon returned to zero growth. The population was allowed to increase as new farm land was recovered from the drought and the sea. The glaciers began to grow and the sea level slowly fell.
Since capital is a resource and all resources were owned by the community, any economic gain was distributed to everyone, not just the people involved. Because the gain to any one person was small, the incentive to be entrepreneurial was reduced. It discouraged people from working hard, but at the same time selfishness and greed were reduced. No one worked harder or longer than they had to, but everyone worked. The emphasis was on getting the job done well and efficiently, not on trying to accumulate wealth.
A little know fact was now widely understood, when people work over time, very little is accomplished. During the first two weeks, productivity increases, then declines. So much so that by the end of the first month, the amount of work done in ten hours is lower than what had been done before in eight. The error and waste rate increased to the point that by the sixth week the productivity was below the normal rate. Now the only time anyone worked over time was during an emergency.
Working hard was the myth of the old system. The only people who worked hard before the Great Drought were workaholics and they had a mental problem. Everyone else only worked hard at getting out of work and taking credit for someone else's work. Now, people were much more likely to share ideas than under the old system. Whose idea it was didn't matter, no one would benefit until it was put into action. All involved would receive credit and everyone would benefit by a small amount. Instead of receiving an increase in pay as under the old system, everyone received a small reduction in required work time.
In ancient times, this was called communism. What made it different was, everyone knew what was happening. Anyone could query the data base and learn every detail of any project. First, the project had to be approved and received a priority. All priorities, reached by consensus, were based on the conservation of resources, not by special interest groups or anything else. The progress of all community projects was reported to the world, not just to the local community. If your project was on the priority list, you could check the progress of the higher priority projects and know when work would begin on your project.
The efficiency of a local project team could be compared to other similar teams. If a mistake was made or someone bungled a job the whole world knew. The embarrassment was tremendous. By the same token, efficient project teams were treated like heroes. This publicity encouraged good work and discouraged anyone from doing anything that would delay a higher priority project.
The barter system was supplemented by an electronic exchange system that recorded all the transfers of goods and services between people. The transactions of each village were summarized and transmitted to the world data base. Everyone could know the current exchange rate for any commodity. From that data, an average excess production factor was computed for each person each year. If someone's production was above average, they would be invited to explain to the community how they were able to produce more than the average.
In this manner, new methods were transferred around the world. New ideas and new methods became the property of the community. The ego gratification from this procedure was so great that everyone was willing to participate, the inventor, the developer, and the implementers were recognized world wide, instantly.
If an increase in production was the result of a persons skill, they could trade their skill with someone else and there by reduce the work hours of both workers. If an increase in production was the result of geography, that advantage was used as soon as transportation was available. Since transportation was very limited, once local needs were met, there was no incentive to produce an excess. People turned to producing something else, until their needs were met. Every village had a warehouse to store little used items. Anyone could borrow an item and return it when no longer needed.
During the centuries following the new industrial revolution tremendous advances in science and space exploration were made. Mental retardation and genetic diseases were eliminated. Everyone graduated from college. Space colonies were established. Many failed, fungi and bacteria were a major problem, to many or not enough, their level was difficult to control. Space travel was routine. The exploration of the first planetary system was a mile stone. The first contact with another civilization was the next milestone, but the distances were so great that two centuries passed before the two civilization actually met.
By then, contact with several other civilizations had been made and cooperation on an intra galactic scale was established. Evolution created very similar creatures on all the planets discovered. The geological history of each of the planets was very similar and so was the history of their civilizations. The ancient science fiction writer was correct, all surviving civilizations had become peaceful. The remains of a few who were not, had been found, their planets were no longer habitable. Planets like earth were few and far between, what a tremendous loss.
During the review JC was careful not to recall additional details about the weather because that would have brought him back to the error all three crews made and he didn't want to become angry again. Now that the review was finished he was fighting to prevent the error from returning to his thoughts. In desperation, he tried to recall family stories, none returned. Then without effort and to his surprise one of the least recalled stories returned.

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L06X02 Spoonraker

At first I didn't realize where I was, I had never dozed off in the student union before. I looked at the clock and knew I was going to be late for a class, but which one.
"What day is it?", I asked a student walking past the couch as I tried to get up.
"Monday."
I looked around but couldn't find any books, "That's strange, I had never forgotten my books in three years, why now?"
I looked at the clock again. I was going to be late for ROTC drill. I tried to walk but my feet wouldn't move. I tried again, they moved but I couldn't walk in a straight line. A passing student offered his elbow, "Had one to many the first thing in the morning?"
"No, but I don't know what's wrong."
At the door I told him I was OK and he went his way. I was walking better and I felt fine. I kept increasing my speed until I was running. The drill field was nearly a mile away and I had to run if I was going to be on time. A feeling of euphoria swept over me.
"Gee, it's great to be alive."
The leaves rustled around my feet, the sky was bright blue, a chill was in the air, and I was running as well as I could remember. "What's going on?"
I didn't think about it the rest of the way. I arrived at the assembly area as the platoon leaders were marching their platoons into company formation. I took my position, but before I could utter a command, an elderly couple shook my arm, "What do you think you are doing?"
"I'm going to march my company across the street to the drill field."
"What are you talking about?"
I ignored them and turned to the company. "You will march across the street when I give the command, won't you."
The company replied in unison, "Yes sir."
"COMPANY RIGHT FACE. ROAD GUARDS OUT. FORWARD MARCH."
Before I reached the other side of the street the old couple stopped me, "You must be sick."
Suddenly, I felt sick. "ROAD GUARDS IN. BY THE LEFT FLANK MARCH.
EXEC."
"YES, SIR."
"TAKE COMMAND."
I ran into the ice arena, into the toilet, and heaved my guts out. After several episodes of the dry heaves, the sick feeling left as fast as it came. I rose from my knees as if nothing was wrong and ran back toward the drill field. I stopped behind a row of pine trees to check my uniform. I looked at my shoes, "Tennis shoes?" I looked at my trousers,
"Blue jeans? Oh my God, I can't go back to the drill field this way, I'm out of uniform.
I looked at both shoulders. I was wearing my overcoat with the proper rank on each shoulder. Wait a minute. I looked again, I had captains bars on my shoulders not ROTC diamonds. I removed my hat, it was correct.
"What's going on?"
I turned around and walked away from the drill field, staying behind the pine trees until I was out of sight and returned to the student union. I drank some water and went into a lounge. Within five minutes I was sick again. I ran to the toilet and when I quit, I rinsed my mouth, drank a small amount of water, and returned to the lounge. I flopped on a couch and tried to figure out what was happening. I leaned my head back and fell asleep.
Voices woke me. Someone said, "There you are, we've been looking all over for you."
They continued to talk, slowly I opened my eyes. An elderly couple was sitting on the opposite couch next to a student in a suit. They were talking to a young woman sitting next to me and a stout man sitting next to her. Two middle aged ladies were sitting in chairs at each end between the couches and several men were standing behind the chairs.
The stout man asked as he looked at the elderly couple, "Which speech are you going to give to night, the one about 'Know, Love, and Serve Him' or the one about 'Doing God's Work'?"
Without thinking I said, "That's the epitome of egotism to even think we are doing God's work, let alone say we are. How can a small infinitesimal being like us know the infinite or do the work of the infinite."
Everyone looked at me in disbelief.
"That's an odd remark from a man of your stature," the student said.
"Well, wouldn't it be wiser to say we are doing what we were called to do or something to that effect. We might do God's work by accident but not by our volition.
Wait a minute, what do you mean a man of my stature, I'm only a senior?"
Several mouths fell open and all were silent, until the elderly man said, "I told you he was sick, I told you I followed him into the toilet. I left to tell my wife and when I returned he was gone."
The woman in the chair next to me said, "You're right he is very pale."
The woman in the opposite chair said, "I didn't know you had returned to school Reverend Spoonraker. Although,
shouldn't be surprised, you are a very active sixty year old."
As I stood, "I apologize for intruding on your conversation," and started to walk between the couch and the chair, but one of the men blocked my path. He didn't block it intentionally he did so out of disbelief. After a pause he said, "You can't leave, now. How would we ever get another speaker this late? The banquet will begin in one hour and you need to change your clothes soon."
"You've got to be kidding?"
Only then did I realize that I was the focus of their conversation and not an unintended participant.
"I'm not Reverend Spoonraker, I'm JC Smith, I'm only twenty two."
The man in front of me pulled a hand bill from his pocket and held it for me to read. The picture on the hand bill was me, forty years older. I fell back on the couch.
"What is going on?"
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I couldn't recall, my memory was gone. I knew I had lost a weekend and had slept most of the day.
"What time is it?"
"Almost five."
"I'm sick."
Two men pulled me to my feet and took me to the men's room. Only clear water came out, followed by the dry heaves. They helped me to the sink. I cupped my hands, let them fill with water, and rinsed my mouth.
When I looked in the mirror, part of my memory returned, some grease paint was still on my face. Friday night I went to dress rehearsal, "My God, I haven't had anything to eat for three days!"
I only had a bit part, but the makeup crew wouldn't let me do my bit without makeup. They said, "You don't have to change just put your hat and coat on, do your part, and you can go."
They knew I had to go to the airport.
"Why was I going to the airport?"
My sole purpose in the play was to walk the star of the show to the center of the stage and exit after she said, "Good bye, father."
That simple entrance established that she was a military brat, the daughter of an unsuccessful, not to smart father, one who was near retirement and still a captain.
"That explains why I had my ROTC hat and coat on and why you mistook me for Reverend Spoonraker."
The two men didn't understand what I said and watched in disbelief as I washed the rest of the makeup from my face and removed the powder from my hair. I splashed cold water on my face and grabbed a paper towel. As I dried my face more of my memory returned. I bolted from the men's room, stopping for a candy bar at a vending machine and crammed half in my mouth, I was starving. The two men caught up with me before my mouth was empty.
"Does some one have a car?"
"Yes."
"Quick, we maybe to late. Someone call the campus police and an ambulance, have them meet us at the old bridge. I grabbed the one who said, 'Yes' and dragged him out the door.
"Give me the keys. Where is it?"
He was running in front of me, he didn't know why, but he was. He reached for a car door. I ran to the drivers side and by the time I closed the door, he had the key in the ignition. I started the car and peeled away from the curb. I put my hand on the horn and was going sixty by the time we reached the first corner. The tires squealed and the car skid against the curb.
"Your Reverend Spookraker was poisoned and dumped into the river."
His mouth fell open, his face blanched. I shoved the rest of the candy bar into my mouth and drove like hell. I crossed the bridge, turned the corner, bounced over the curb, across the side walk right up to the river bank, slammed on the brakes, slid to a stop, jumped out of the car, and ran down the bank right into the river.
I looked in both directions, I couldn't remember and could barely see, the sun had set, "Was he near the bridge or was he away from the bridge?" The man tripped as he came over the bank and rolled to the bottom about twenty feet away.
"He's over here."
I ran to him. The Reverend Spoonraker was an arms length from where the man had stopped rolling. He was under the roots of a leaning tree, still alive. I pulled him from under the roots and stuck my finger down his throat to make him vomit. When he stopped, I shoved his head into the river and commanded, "Drink as much as you can."
When he stopped, I pulled him up right and was going to stick my finger in his throat, but he didn't need help this time. When he stopped, I pushed his head back into the river. By the third time, sirens, red lights, and search lights were all around. When nothing but river water came out I stopped. Two paramedics grabbed him and pulled him up the bank, I collapsed.
On the way up the bank the man told them what I had told him. The ambulance left, siren wailing. The man and a police officer returned and dragged me up the bank, into a police car, and we followed the ambulance. I tried to tell the doctor I was all right but he insisted, "You need a complete physical."
When I told him I had lost my memory, he checked my head.
"Ouch."
"You have a nasty lump on your head. Do you remember how you got it?"
"NO!"
Then he got serious. Two hours later, after many samples and probes, I was wheeled into a semiprivate room. I climbed into the bed and as soon as I was comfortable I fell asleep. Hunger woke me the next morning and I walked to the nurses station. "I'm starving."
"You're not supposed to be out of bed. Return to your room and we'll bring you a tray shortly."
An aide escorted me back to my room. I noticed a quarantine sign on the door as we entered. She shut the door as she left.
My roommate was sawing lumber, not just a little bit but a whole cord. I opened the curtains I wanted to see who was snoring so loud. I looked at my sixty year old twin. I closed the curtain and walked to the window and looked at the street. After a while a tray arrived. "Bring another, this one will be empty before you reach the door." As I finished the second tray my twin woke. He was hungry but could not eat. He asked the aide to open the curtain as she left with his tray.
"How are you JC."
"Fine.
How do you know my name?"
"Do you know who I am?"
"Yes. You're Reverend Spoonraker, a well known out spoken TV preacher."
"Then you should know how I know who you are."
"Your staff told you."
"Right.
I know a lot about you and in case you are wondering where all the reporters and TV crews are, we are in an isolation ward at my request. It was the only way I could get any rest and I thought you would appreciate the peace and quiet also. You will have to face them soon, so be prepared."
"Why would they talk to me, wouldn't you get all the attention."
"Well, I had to tell them something last night or they would have broken the doors down."
"What did you tell them?"
"I thank JC for saving my life."
"Isn't that a little overboard?"
"Maybe, but you did take a blow on the head that was meant for me and you did drink half of the poison meant for me, unwillingly of course. Don't you remember?"
"No. I remember I let my friend talk me into picking you up at the airport so he could go home with his roommates."
"Yes, my last speaking engagement was canceled because of a problem with the air conditioning system and all the other auditoriums were booked, so I came here on Friday instead of Monday."
"Isn't Monday an odd day for a famous speaker?"
"Not really. First, it was the only opening in my schedule and fittingly I was going to speak informally to the Monday Morning Club. Since originally I couldn't arrive until afternoon, they arranged a banquet."
"I didn't know my friend had any interest in football."
"No, no, not that kind of club. Small groups of two or three members of the club went to different churches and told the others about the sermon they heard when they met on Monday morning. When the sponsors canceled my speaking engagement, I decided to come early, unannounced to hear a sermon so we would have something in common. That's why I dressed as I did, I didn't want to attract a crowd."
"I didn't have any problem recognizing you. You were the only person walking out the gate with hat pulled down, a scarf around your face, jacket collar turned up, and wearing sun glasses."
"I did look rather odd, but it worked. I was thankful your friend offered his room for the weekend. That way I didn't have to register at a motel until Monday. Sorry it didn't workout as planned and you were involved."
"I remember giving you my coat to cover your legs so you could nap in the back seat on the way to the dorm and taking your suitcases into his room, but I don't remember anything after I returned to wake you.
Now, I remember another thing. As I came out the door someone said, 'That's him'. That's the last thing I remember about Friday night."
"I can't help you because they woke me when they put you in the passenger seat. When I sat up one of them shined a flashlight into my face and said, 'Oh no, we have twins. What'd we do now.' The other said, 'Git in the back seat with him, I'll drive.'
They drove to the parking lot near the river. The one next to me pulled a pistol and told me to help the other drag you to the river bank and lean you against a tree. The other removed a small bottle from his pocket. You were starting to revive. He tilted your head back and poured half of the contents into your mouth and made you swallow it. He pushed you over the bank and let you roll to the bottom.
He turned to me, 'It's your turn pops.' He grabbed my throat, the other grabbed my nose, pulled it up and back, and forced my jaws open. He poured the rest of the bottle in my mouth and stroked my throat until I swallowed it. The vile tasting stuff barely entered my stomach and I heaved. He said, 'Damn it' and hit me in the stomach so hard I was launched over the bank. My head hit something as I fell.
When I came to, I couldn't see. I crawled a short distance, I know not where, heaved again, crawled some more, and passed out. The next thing I remember was someone poking their finger into my throat and pushing my face into the river. That was you."
"When I washed the rest of the grease paint off my face, I remembered."
A doctor walked into the room, "Glad to see both of you awake and feeling better. I have good news. You will be released tomorrow morning unless something unexpected happens. Make sure you drink plenty of fluids and eat as much fruit as you can."
"Don't worry about me, Doc. I've eaten and drunk enough for three days."
"I'll make sure you get more and how are you doing Reverend?"
"I don't have an appetite."
"Drink orange juice. You need additional acid to stimulate your stomach. Didn't the aide tell you?"
"Yes, but I didn't follow instructions. It's my fault."
"The reason for the acid is the good news. The people who poisoned you didn't know what they were doing. They used a very ineffective poison, one that requires a strong acidic solution in order to work. The poison inhibits the stomach and since neither of you had eaten for more that four hours when they gave you the poison, your stomachs were not acidic enough to let the poison pass into your intestines where it could be absorbed. If they had used orange juice or soda pop with the poison you would be dead."
"Why are we so sleepy?"
"We don't know. Your bodies eliminated what ever else they mixed with the poison. It must have been something very quickly absorbed in the mouth and esophagus. You have scrapes and bruises and will be sore for a while, but other than that, you are both fine.
The police and the media would like to talk with both of you and your staff would like to talk with you Reverend."
"I'll call my secretary and arrange to meet with the media in two days. If it is OK with JC, we can talk to the police now, but I would like some more peace and quiet. Can you keep the others at bay?" I nodded agreement and the doctor said, "I can keep them at bay as long as you like."
"One more day, please. I'm enjoying a good rest, thank you."
The police entered a few minutes later. During the interview all my memory returned. I remembered crawling up the bank at dawn and staggering to my car. I climbed in the back seat and used my coat for a blanket and went to sleep. Saturday was an away football game and it wasn't until the Monday morning commuters began arriving that I woke again.
Someone's trunk wouldn't latch and the repeated bam bam as they kept slamming it shut aroused my foggy brain. Without thinking I put on my hat and coat and went to the student union because I was hungry and thirsty, but I could not stay awake.
The police left when they couldn't learn any more and an aide brought fruit juice and fruit.
"Why would anyone want to poison you?"
"It's to depressing, I'd rather not talk about it."
"The 'good' Christians are still crucifying Jesus."
"Well put JC, they are because He did not preach what they want to believe, but enough."
We chatted for a while and during the chatter he said, "Please. Call me 'Spoon'."
"You're the most unorthodox preacher I've ever met."
"Why do you say that?"
"You behave like one of the boys and haven't mentioned religion once since we met."
"Can I assume that you have not met very many preachers."
"Not many. I stopped going to church when I was twelve, I stayed home on Sunday morning and listened to grandfather's stories."
"Why?"
"A few years before, I learned that children were not delivered by a stork from God."
"Tell me more."
"As I learned more, I knew adults were not telling me the truth or at least not the whole truth."
"What does that have to do with going to church?"
"I finished reading the bible from cover to cover before I was twelve and I knew my Sunday school teachers were not teaching what the bible said, they were teaching what they believed.
The bible was not consistent and what they believed was even worse. The more I learned the more antagonistic I became. I attacked religion anytime someone spoke about it. During my freshman year my attack became so venomous that during a student discussion I caused several students to cry. I stopped discussing religion, if anyone brought up the subject I walked away."
"Have you mellowed a little since then?"
"A little, but my blood boils when ever the 'Kid Glove Crusaders' march and wave their flags."
"What disturbs you so strongly?"
"Self righteousness.
People will not take responsibility for their actions and they use self righteousness to justify their actions. I got into an argument with a 'Kid Glove Crusader' and he said, 'All I'm doing is following Dr. King's example, I don't understand how you can object to that'. I blew my stack. 'You stupid jerk. Dr. King was trying to change an unjust society under very hostile conditions.
You want to pass laws and you call your self a Christian. You're trying to impose your view point on everyone else and you are creating the hostility. No one threatens you, you threaten everyone else. You are not following Dr. King's example, you completely missed his message.
You bloody hypocrite, you say you are, to deceive yourself, to justify your actions.' I will not repeat what I said after that because I'm ashamed of what I said and did. He continued to argue his point and I nearly destroyed him, he was near a nervous break down when I left."
"What caused you to change?"
"My family. The following summer, I reflected on my problem with religion and the things my family taught me. The family stories I heard over the years finally started to make sense. I tried to recall everything I could. I asked my family to retell and to add to the stories. I'm still learning."
"Can you summarize what your family taught you?"
"Yes.
In the womb all our needs are met. After birth and until puberty our parents satisfy most of our needs and we cry if they are not. After puberty we are forced to satisfy some of our needs and we become angry when we are not successful. As young adults we meet more of our needs because we want independence. When we finally become adults, if ever, we meet most of our needs and begin to help those around us meet their needs and become frustrated by our remaining unmet needs. As we grow older we become fatigued and begin to reduce our willingness to help those around us meet their needs and become anxious about our remaining unmet needs.
In the womb we are completely helpless, as babies we can cry, as toddlers we can lash out, as children we can be mischievous, as teen-agers delinquent, as young adults dropouts or addicts. Some of us become adults and learn that in the womb we had everything our own way and we have to spend the rest of our lives learning that the world was not created for us to have our own way.
Some people are aware of this, but only a few are aware of the corollary. In the womb we cannot change anything, as babies very little. The ability to make changes increases as we learn. Some time after puberty we may gain confidence in our ability to make changes, for those who do, they gain power, for those who don't they spend the rest of their lives crying in their beer.
We can make changes. We can make a difference. If we learn. We must learn to take responsibility for our actions and learn from the results of those actions. I'm quite sure you know how delicate this learning process is and if it is interrupted at any point and the individual is not strong enough to continue on their own they will be forever frozen at that level of maturity for the rest of their lives. They become dysfunctional and drop out of the main stream of society.
Not accepting responsibility for our actions is one of the most important mistakes we make. We want to return to the womb and have everything our way. Since we can't, we seek to escape, we want to be entertained, we hoard material things as a substitute. To paraphrase a historian, 'When the freedom desired most is the freedom from responsibility, all freedom will be lost.' Every society that reached that point collapsed.
We are ignoring our responsibility for our children and we are abandoning them at ever earlier ages, we are letting someone else or TV take care of them. Most will never become adults, many will be on welfare or in prison most of their lives. The result will be economic stagnation or collapse. What a sad ending to a proud nation, a nation that has very little to be proud about. We have so much and have done very little in proportion to what we have. We give lip service to the words democracy, freedom, and work. We talk about having less government as being desirable. That's not what is important. What is important is to insure that our bureaucracies work for us, if not, we should change them.
We fail to understand the most important aspect of our society. With our form of government we can change our society. It doesn't matter what name we call our form of government, what matters is that we can change it without death and destruction. Freedom is contentious with peace, we can never have both, we must always balance freedom and peace.
Work, what a laugh, we praise hard work and do everything possible to avoid it. Why not recognize that all nature conserves energy, why shouldn't we. If we would accept this fact about ourselves maybe we could progress to the next level. We should only work hard at reducing the need to work hard. Let's drop the phony baloney and stop kidding ourselves. Let's use our time and energy on something more useful than maintaining a facade.
Is that enough?"
"Yes."
"Did your staff tell you my grandfather financed your first preaching tour?"
"Yes. If you know, would you tell me why?"
"A friend of grandfather heard you preach. He told grandfather he had heard a voice in the wilderness that should be heard by more than one congregation. After a long discussion, grandfather told him to arrange it."
"My tour manager is a friend of your grandfather?
Thank you, that answers many questions. Now I know why the collection plates were always full even when the audience was small."
"They didn't stay small for long."
"Did your family have any thing to do with that?"
"No. That was all you."
"Then you know all about me."
"No. I know of you and a little about you from the reports made at the family meetings."
"Have you heard me preach?"
"Tape replay."
"How many?
"Only one, I like your style and what you are trying to accomplish, but I don't like the dogma encapsulating it."
"Sorry about that JC, you see, even I can't shake the brain washing I received as a child. That's why I'm against so called Sunday school or religious education, children should be in church with their parents. To often Sunday school is not Christian education, but brain washing, the same is true for most religious education.
Its a very serious problem because God can not communicate with a mental slave any more than He can communicate with some one who ignores Him.
And for me, the question becomes, 'How do you educate someone who doesn't want to be educated?'.
Your family is something else. They support many diverse activities, many are counter to their beliefs and because of their privacy they can support the diversity without becoming embroiled in controversy.
Tell me your favorite family story."
I told him several. Spoon kept asking questions and kept me talking until I couldn't keep my eyes open. "I need sleep, aren't you tired?"
"NO, I'm learning."
"You're something else. Now I know why you're so popular with the people who know you. You're NOT like any preacher I've met. You haven't preached to me for one second and you have guided the conversation so I've done most of the talking.
During the last three years I've come to agree with grandfather. The easiest and the least painful way to learn is to observe and listen to other people and don't make their mistakes."
"It's difficult to learn when you are talking."
"Grandfather says, 'If you must speak, learn to learn even while you are talking. Listen carefully to what you say, listen for errors in your thinking, in the manner of your speaking, and what you say. Correct those errors as soon as possible. Once those errors have been corrected, then progress to how can you improve, was my message received, did I waste time, etc.'
Your questions have given me a chance to correct my impression of many things.
Thank you."
"You are a very lucky young man JC. You have received wise consul. Make sure you listen carefully. Good night JC."
"Good night Spoon."
JC mused over his namesake ancestor's story. "Why did that particular story return?
Probably the responsibility theme." He turned to reviewing space travel.

Return to Blue Planet Table of Content

L06X03 Space Ships

Another thing that amused JC was the ancient science fiction writers descriptions and drawing of space ships. Most of them were small and streamlined which meant the writers imagination may have left earth, but their space ships didn't. The winds of space were nothing like the winds of earth, not even close and he wondered how they expected a small ship to travel the vast voids of space.
He smiled at the use of the words 'space exploration' in describing the first solar missions. Even the most ambitious mission was only one light hour. He nearly burst out laughing. He drank some water from the watering tube and removed a food pelt from the dispenser with his tongue. The fact that he felt like laughing indicated he was recovering and his mood improved.
Five centuries after the Great Drought, people were trying to explore space again. Half of the land was recovered from the drought, the green house effect was declining, the ice packs were growing, the sea level was going down, the new industrial revolution had eclipsed the old, and people were ready for a new challenge.
Their goal, to find another planet to call home before the sun began to change into a red giant. That was a long way off, but it might take that long to find a new home. The new goal was met with enthusiasm, the spirit of cooperation was renewed. Progress was steady and exhilarating. New launching and propulsion systems were developed along with new composite materials. The first step was to establish a geosynchronous work station, completed in ten years, in addition a large telescope was stationed at each La Grange point, forming a very long base array telescope to study the universe.
The next step was to build a colony at the trailing La Grange point. A century later a second colony was established at the leading La Grange point. Each colony contained many segments of four rings of one hundred and eight blocks, four hundred square feet (inside dimension), three stories high, held together by super conducting magnets and the force fields.
The segments rotated in opposite directions at about a half mile per second creating an artificial gravity with the opposite orientation of earth. Up or top was toward the center and down or bottom was away from the center. Each segment was a separate self sustaining community and each block was a self contained unit. The doors between the blocks in the same segment were always closed. All other openings, such as air ducts, would be automatically sealed in the event of pressure loss.
The bottom floor was the garden, a chicken and pig farm, and a recycling unit. The second floor was the living quarters and the third floor was the working and storage area. Each segment was divided into quadrants, each a different sleep cycle. Almost every piece of equipment was used and almost every job was performed continuously.
The plants and animals were the result of genetic engineering. The pigs were miniature, long and lean, the chickens were little changed. All plants grew on a conveyor trellis or in a waste water slurry. The trellis plants looked like leaf lettuce with small berries. The chickens ate the berries and the young leaves as the trellis moved past their cages and the pigs ate what the chickens and the people didn't as the trellis moved the plants within their reach on the opposite side. The water plants made the water look like pea soup and after drying, the plants made an excellent flour. The flour, eggs, chicken, pork and three flavors of leaves supplemented the synthetic food diet. They supplied the nutrients and fiber missing in the synthetic food.
Along the axis of the colony was an unshielded reactor. Force fields directed the solar wind and cosmic debris into the reactor in addition to material from storage. Plasma created in the reactor orbited along the axis and around the colony in eight symmetrical storage rings, four in each direction, held in place by the force fields. The energy radiating from the reactor and the sun was collected on the inside and outside surfaces of a cylinder scaffolding surrounding the colony.
The desired wavelengths were selected for light and the other forms of energy and the rest was reflected back to the reactor and the sun by an ultra thin reflecting polymer. Mirrors and light tubes transferred the light to every area of the colony. Wires and guide tubes conducted the other forms of energy. Hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen were collected from the reactor to replace losses from the colony.
The first colony had to much redundancy. Accidents didn't happen as often as feared, people rarely left the pressurized areas, micro meteorite damage and high energy particle erosion were controlled more effectively with each improvement.
The colonists were very careful as you might expect, their lives depended on almost everything they did. Computers and people monitored telescopes at all times ever watchful for dark particles to large for the force fields to control. The one fear that was in the back of everyone's mind was a collision with a massive particle, a fear that never materialized. The particle, the colony, or both were moved to prevent a collision.
Almost all manual labor was performed by robots, under the supervision of computers and people, and people only worked one sixth of a day. Boredom was a problem, everyone had to remain disciplined. A positive attitude was essential. Exercise and activity helped, each designed to take place in a small area. Learning and experimenting with ecology, physics, and math was encouraged, along with discussions and brain storming sessions on how to improve the colony. Everyone was encourage to have a goal, to work toward their goal, and to measure their progress toward it.
During this time major changes occurred in health and life span. Barring accidents most people lived to one hundred fifty with little or no illness and died quickly, usually less than one month. Slow mutating pathogens were eliminated and fast mutating ones were made amicable. The common cold was still common, so was cancer, but bioengineering of a persons B and T cells followed by reinjection eliminated each individual cancer.
The Great Drought eliminated tobacco, coffee, tea, and most hallucinogens, narcotics, and stimulants and they were never replaced. An ancient style of unfiltered beer was served at every meal, a very effective way to store calories and protein for the winter. Grapes returned at an exceedingly slow pace and wine became a meal time drink much later. Hard liquor was never made again. People remained disciplined and only drank one glass per person per meal, alcoholism was avoided.
Other life style changes occurred as well. Most people continued formal education until fifty and then left earth for one of the colonies or space exploration. Most couples were married during their twenties and all children were planned, unwanted pregnancies were a thing of the past. Very few couples divorced before fifty and after fifty about half remained together. Every woman could have two children if she chose, she could have more if additional replacements were needed, the population on earth was maintained at one billion. Contrary to ancient predictions, most pregnancies and deliveries were natural and most children were breast fed. Modern methods were only used when complications arose or in cases of infertility.
The first space ship and all following ships were built the same way, with new developments incorporated as they were proven. A scaffolding, shaped like a straight trumpet, was extended from each end of the scaffolding surrounding a new colony containing thirty thousand people, until the ship was twenty seven miles long. The force field controllers and mirrors were added as the new scaffolding was extended. This design allowed the ship to move in opposite directions without turning around.
The large bell at each end allowed vector trusting to change directions and to gather as much space dust, particles, and radiant energy as possible, in the direction of motion while protecting the segments from damage. The space dust, particles, and radiant energy were focused by the force fields into the reactor then into the plasma storage rings from one direction while relativistic ions of the iron series, the main propulsion system, were allowed to escape out the other. The mirrors focused radiant energy back into the reactor and into eight twenty mile long single pass lasers to provide auxiliary propulsion.
Slowly, the massive space ship drifted away from the La Grange point using the solar wind and the gravity fields of the solar system. Time was not conserved energy was. The propulsion systems were activated when the exhaust would not damage the other colonies or the earth. Obviously the course chosen contained as much small space debris as possible and zero large objects.
Like so many things people do, the first mission was just to go to another star, it was an ego trip. The mission was never completed, but at least it didn't end in disaster and it did bring very sober thinking to all following missions.
The captain canceled the mission when failure became obvious. The propulsion system never developed enough power for the ship to reach its intended speed of 0.2 sol. Even at two tenth the speed of light, the mission required forty five years. If the mission had continued the crew would have died of old age and the ship would have been lost, the investment in both was to great to loose on an ego trip.
The trip was not a total loss. Data was continuously transmitted to earth and the colonies. Many teams surveyed the data and the error was discovered before the ship returned to port thirty years later. The ship's telescope data was combined with the very very long base array telescope data and three potential planetary systems were discovered.
New features were added to the ship, a new crew, no one under fifty and no one over sixty, replaced the old crew, and it departed for the potential planetary systems. Space exploration was the domain of the elderly, the physical rigors of ancient space exploration were gone and the sedentary life style and limited activity demanded of the crews did not match well with youth.
The updated propulsion system worked better than expected and after three years the ship reached 0.2 sol and two years later it passed 0.5 sol. The main propulsion system was shut down when it could no long accelerate the ship by one per cent. The auxiliary propulsion system maintained speed as the force fields continued to collect and store space debris in the plasma rings to be used later. New theories and a new propulsion system would be needed to go faster.
Data from the telescopes were analyzed everyday, the crew was ecstatic when planets were confirmed and later dejected when water could not be detected. The crew settled back into its routine when someone reminded them that more than thirty years would pass before earth could acknowledge their discovery.
Again their spirits soared when water was detected on one planet in the most remote planetary system and depressed again when a brown dwarf was discovered very close to their course. Data and calculations were checked and rechecked. A new course was determined and the main propulsion system reactivated. Again the data from the telescopes were checked and rechecked to make sure no obstacles were left undetected.
Their mood improved when a navigation satellite placed in orbit around the brown dwarf relayed the earth navigation signals to the space ship and even more when they left the brown dwarf behind without incident. One telescope remained lock on to the brown dwarf navigational satellite and the other telescopes checked periodically. The navigational satellite remained lock on to the earth navigational signals and to the space ship. Everyone was excited, the new course allowed the telescopes to find another planetary system with water, near their original destination.
One at a time the explorer ships left the space ship in different directions to carry out their separate missions while the space ship began to reverse directions. The explorer ships were similar in design to the space ship only much smaller. The scaffold was only five miles long and a mile in diameter with two rings for the crew, one on each side rotating in opposite directions and parallel to the scaffold. Their propulsion system was not designed for power or speed, but for maneuverability and endurance. Docking points for the explorers with their orbiters with their landers were on the outside of the scaffolding so the outside edge of a segment aligned with the outside edge of the inside explorer ring. A transporter could move easily from one ring to the other as the blocks rotated into alignment.
Their mission was to approach the planetary system from above or below and maneuver through Oort cloud and dock at a La Grange point of each planet to be explored. If further exploration was indicated an orbiter was launched into geosynchronous orbit around the planet from which a lander was dispatched to the planet. When the exploration was complete the process was reversed.
The passage through the Oort cloud was the most dangerous part of any mission and a very anxious moment for everyone. The dark comets, meteors, and other remnants of a planetary system were difficult to detect and to track, these objects didn't stay in the plane of the ecliptic. Unlike the space ship when it went through the Oort cloud around the solar system, the explorers had a very limited number of people, computers, and telescopes to discover and track each object.
As the space ship slowed and reversed directions, all telescopes recorded as much of the sky as possible. Forty years after the mission began the space ship was moving toward earth again. The explorers returned before the space ship reached 0.1 sol. The crew turned from gathering data to analyzing data especially the data from the explorers even though all the planets were barren and not suitable for human habitation.
The whole crew was a buzz with excitement and each person eagerly awaited their turn to participate. Even if they were bored with their required work, the anticipation of their turn at a console and the following discussions made their boredom evaporate. The next forty years passed very rapidly. Their return was greeted with a month long celebration. The communication system could barely handle all the messages between the ship, the colonies and earth.
The return trip was uneventful. Outside of the brown dwarf and the planetary systems, they didn't encounter any objects larger than micro meteorites. All other stars were more than four light years away and all other objects were to small, to dim, or to far away to be detected.
The data they gathered was analyzed and reanalyzed many times. After cross checking with the data received by earth and the colonies, the summarized data were stored and all redundant and trivial data discarded.
Several possible planetary systems were discovered in the telescope data, some even more distant than the ones just visited and some nearly the same distance but in a different direction from earth. The crew was eager to help plan the possible new missions and to learn about new developments made on earth and the colonies during their absence.
Another space ship was near completion and of course with all the new improvements. The old ship was scheduled for refitting as soon as the new ship left port. All crew members retired to one of the colonies after a vacation on earth, everyone wanted to visit their grandchildren and great grandchildren, etc.
The electromagnetic launchers and rockets continued to propel freighters and buses to the geosynchronous work stations directly over head where robot transporters directed them to the colonies. The launchers were built in deep canyons and were directed almost straight up. The rockets kicked in once they cleared the launcher. The return trip was a combination of ballistic reentry, reverse thrusting, and capture and electromagnetic deceleration at a landing pad near the launchers. Each shipment was matched to the work schedule of the colonies, rarely was either the work or the shipment delayed by either one being behind schedule. The scaffolds and blocks fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each piece was prefabricated as much as possible on earth.
Later the asteroids were harvested to supply most of the massive amounts of material needed to construct the colonies and the space ships. Large solar furnaces, refineries, and manufacturing plants, in space operated by robots, converted the asteroids into useable materials or reactor fuel.
Thirty years later the new ship left port to explore the newly found potential planetary systems. Three years into the mission the ship passed 0.6 sol and the crew experienced an odd feeling, no one could explain it. Immediately the captain slowed the ship and the feeling went away.
Everything was checked and rechecked, everything checked out nothing was wrong, except for one thing, the ship reached a new speed limit. During the few seconds required to slow the ship, the speed recordings reached a plateau even though the new propulsion system should reach 0.7 sol. The recordings should have shown a steady increase and then a steady decrease, not a plateau.
The red shift of the navigation signals and the blue shift of the target star and the equipment used to make the measurements were checked and rechecked again, nothing was wrong. The speed was slowly increased until it was within a fraction of the new speed limit and maintained. The feeling did not return.
A crew member was toying with the new speed limit, she tried ratios and inversions with other numbers for recreation. One such number intrigued her and when she formed the inverse, she was surprised. She recognized the number immediately, it was e.
"What on earth did e have to do with the new speed limit?"
She checked and recheck the instructions she gave the computer to see if she had made a mistake, there was no mistake. Her excitement soon infected the entire crew as each one learned that the speed of light squared divided by their new speed limit squared was a very close approximation of e.
Everyone's imagination was in high gear trying to create new ideas about this new discovery and how to test it. A consensus was reached, an orbiter from one of the explorers was launched with instructions to activate its propulsion system for five seconds, stop, decelerate back to the same speed as the space ship, and to transmit status data to the space ship.
Everyone watched a console as the orbiter drifted away and disappeared. Quickly the telescopes scanned all around. The stunned feeling was replaced by relief when the orbiter was discovered on a parallel course a short distance in front of the ship.
The data from the tracking telescopes was replayed in very slow motion, the first attempts didn't show the orbiter disappear in an ever decreasing sphere, the last try did. The status data indicated that everything was normal, but the speed indicator never went above the new speed limit.
The orbiter was instructed to repeat the previous experiment ten times and each time it disappeared and reappeared further in front of the ship. The orbiter was instructed to return. Before it reached dock many people wanted to go on board and execute the instructions again.
A crew was chosen and the experiment repeated. Their debriefing revealed that the strange feeling returned, all communication with the space ship was lost, but strangely the navigation signals and the light from the target star was uninterrupted, and to them the space ship seemed to disappear in a sphere when they replayed the data from their tracking telescopes and reappeared behind them when they stopped accelerating. The same data was replayed to the astonishment of the entire crew.
Many theories were presented, but only one was plausible, at the speed limit, motion could now take place along another dimension. How could that motion be measured? No one knew, but everyone wanted to repeat the experiment for longer periods of time and therefore presumably at a higher over all speed.
The orbiter was refueled, released and accelerated until half its fuel was used. Again the funny feeling returned and all communication between the ships was lost, but this time the orbiter was so far ahead of the space ship it couldn't be seen on the telescopes until a light signal was sent by the orbiter crew. The orbiter needed all its remaining fuel to slow down so the space ship could catch up and then to speed up and to pull into dock.
After checking all status data, many people were convinced that the orbiter had indeed moved in another dimension. Below the speed limit the ships followed the same geodesic as light. As the orbiter accelerated above the e limit the rest of the force was now causing the ship to move on another path, maybe a cord to the geodesic. Again many people wanted to continue the experiment, but after some thought everyone realized that neither an orbiter nor an explorer could accelerate long enough to make another experiment meaningful.
The captain did not ask the question because he didn't want to risk the ship and crew in the unknown. He didn't have to tell the crew that if another experiment was to be done the space ship had to do it at some time during the mission or it would not be done until after their return to earth. The crew answered the unasked question and they wanted to do it immediately. The last experiment indicated a large time savings might be possible, maybe as large as half the anticipate mission time.
The crew suggested the remaining distance to the brown dwarf be the first experiment. Agreement was quickly reached and a new course was calculated to insure ample clearance in case they passed it before the experiment ended. An estimate of the time of flight was made from the orbiter data. Redundant messages were sent to earth explaining the new discovery and the experiment they were about to undertake.
The captain didn't have to tell anyone that everyone one had to be alert and make note of anything and everything that was different during the experiment and to report any signs of danger as rapidly as possible. As soon as the final check was made, the main propulsion system was set to full power. Two telescopes and consoles locked on to the brown dwarf and the rest monitored the sky in all directions. All computers and people were on alert keeping a close watch on all systems.
The first change was the strange feeling, everyone wondered if it would go away like sailors getting their sea legs and that's what happened. Next, all light received at right angles to the direction of flight was lost and as time passed the cylinder of darkness expanded. The angle to each end of the cylinder continued to expand by about six arc seconds with each hour, obviously this was a possible measure of speed in the unknown. The red and blue shift of the navigational signal and the target star remained steady as if the ship were still moving on a light geodesic at constant speed.
When nothing else happened the crew slowly returned to a normal routine, as normal as possible when traveling in the unknown. Everything was checked and double checked and recorded even the thoughts and feeling of the crew, everyone had an eerie feeling of traveling in an unknown tunnel, but no new changes were observed.
When the estimated time of flight was reached the computers shut down the main propulsion system. Immediately the cylinder of darkness began to shrink at the same rate it expanded, no reverse thrusting was necessary.
Nearly two and a half years later the cylinder of darkness disappeared, stars were visible all around. The parallax between the line of flight and the brown dwarf was so small the tracking telescopes never lost contact and it served as a check against the time of flight estimate. Also the timing signals from the navigational satellite agreed with the estimate. The ship arrived at the brown dwarf about a half year sooner than the original flight plan. Before they left the brown dwarf behind, a robot transporter replaced the old navigational satellite with a new one.
Encouraged by a disaster free experiment, a new course was set for the most remote planetary system discovered on the previous mission, a course known to be free of obstacles. At that point they slowed and surveyed the path to their new destination and proceeded with caution until reversal time was reached.
No one was surprised when the cylinder of darkness stopped expanding at forty five degrees, an angle predicted by calculations of the data from the previous experiment. The angle indicated their speed had reached the e limit in the new dimension.
No one understood what was happening, all anyone knew was either less energy was needed to move in the new dimension or the propulsion system was generating more power in the new dimension. Hopefully new methods of measuring would be discovered so people could understand, but for now it was 'Dam the torpedoes full speed ahead'.
They reached the point of reversal of the previous mission in a little less than half the previous time. A search of the path ahead didn't indicate any obstacles. A new reversal point was chosen midway between the potential new planetary systems and the speed maintained just below the e limit. A new sky survey was made during the transit.
Again the emotions of the crew was on an elevator, two of the potential systems were in fact planetary, but later measurements could not detect water. The explorers departed to survey each system in detail, the space ship reversed, the explorers returned, and the return trip to earth began. Nothing disastrous happened during the entire mission, only anticipated wear and tear maintenance and recovery from normal mistakes, routine except for one other exciting discovery besides the new dimension.
As the explorers returned, each one reported that part of the scaffold was missing at the end of each horn, no one thought to check the space ship as they departed, they were to intent on their missions. Inspection robots confirmed the reports. The scaffold was cut nearly a mile deep at eight places at both ends, exactly in line with the plasma trajectories.
Maintenance robots enlarged the cuts and fluted the scaffolding in order to retain structural integrity, a very fortuitous modification. On completion, the inspection robots inspected every inch of the ship. When nothing else was found, the return trip began, the propulsion system was set to full power. The time to reach the e limit was the same as before, but the e limit in the unknown dimension was reached very quickly and could be maintained at half power. The time at half power was extended and as anticipated the slow down occurred at the same rate as the acceleration.
At the reversal point of the previous mission, the inspection robots inspected the scaffolding, again the scaffolding was cut and again each flute was enlarged. The course was set for the brown dwarf and the same events were repeated. The power pack on the navigational satellite was replaced and after the repairs were completed on the horns, the final leg of the mission began. The mission was completed in sixty years instead of eighty and the home coming events were repeated.
The old space ship had departed twenty years before and a new space ship was under construction. The scaffold of both ships was modified, instead of looking like two trumpets connected at their mouth pieces, they looked like two Easter lilies joined at their bases. Their departure on new missions was the real beginning of space exploration.
Each new direction was explored at slow speed until it was proven to be free of unseen objects, subsequent missions traveled the same flight paths at high speed. Generally, if light reached the tracking telescopes from the target star, the path was clear, but if any dark objects were to close for comfort, a new path was chosen.
The new shape allowed the propulsion system to generate more power and two more dimensions were found. At the e limit in each dimension the ships could travel at an effective over all speed very near to the speed of light. Obviously, the strange feeling, the dark objects, the increase in power of the propulsion system, and the new dimensions required new theories. Several centuries passed before satisfactory new theories were formulated.
At this point JC was sleepy. He drank some water and ate another food pellet and went to sleep.

Return to Blue Planet Table of Content

L06X04 The Error

Dawn awoke JC from his first full night of sleep since his ordeal began. He knew his red blood cell count was increasing, his next task was to recover his muscle tone. He drank some water and ate a food pellet. He exercised his fingers and toes gently until he could feel fatigue and quit before he was to tired. He continued to amuse himself by recalling stories about his family until he dozed off. Each time he woke, he repeated the exercises and added new exercises as his muscle tone improved.
He could remember time now, he could count the days by remembering the stories he had recalled. He could say a few words out loud, raise his head, or move his arms and legs a little before his energy left him. He removed the IV from his hand. His world was very limited, he couldn't raise his head high enough to see over the edge of the hammock and all he could see above him was a water tube, the food dispenser, the empty bags, the water bottles, and the tent roof. He had no idea how long he had laid in the hammock, but the bed sores told him it had been along time. He couldn't wait any longer, he had to try to communicate with the crew.
He drank some water and said in a commanding tone, "MICROPHONE ON."
After a pause a familiar voice said, "JC are you all right?"
"I'm recovering, but very weak."
"I assumed you were moving around when your brain monitor went blank."
"The probe fell off when I was doing neck exercises and I couldn't reach it."
"Do you want us to come and get you?"
"NO."
"You're a stubborn man. You'd risk your life to help someone else, but you don't want anyone to take even the smallest risk to help you."
"I can't help it, it's what I want."
"I know, you've told me many times."
"And you have helped me."
"How?"
"Your voice, it's good to hear your voice."
"A lot of help that is."
"I hope you never have to understand what it means."
"Me, too."
"I'm tired. I'll call later. BYE."
He fell asleep. When he woke he drank some water, ate another food pellet, did his exercises, recalled another story, and fell asleep again. He repeated the cycle many time until sunset, again he slept the whole night and each day added to the previous day's routine. Each morning he talked with Eric and now and then with some of the other crew members just to pass the time. Each day he could do more before he tired.
Five days later he sat up and looked around, nothing had changed since he laid down. He quickly looked at the ocean to avoid recalling the error, but as he looked he knew he was ready to recall. He changed his mind, he wanted to walk more than anything else, he could recall when he was resting. He swung his legs over the edge of the hammock and sat while they adjusted to the blood pressure. Grasping the tent pole he stood. He walked, faltering, to the next pole and then to the next after resting. He was tired, but he couldn't wait to walk to the next pole. He fell on the hammock when he reached the other side, drank, ate, and went to sleep.
When he woke, he ate, drank, rose slowly and went to the table, he was glad he had prepared so thoroughly before he lost his strength, everything was ready. He washed, shaved, and put salve on his sores. The sores were small and few, the hammock was specifically designed to prevent bed sores and it worked very well.
It was a superb feeling to walk and to sit in a chair again. As he looked at the ocean, he could not prevent the recall from coming, so he directed his thoughts to the beginning of the mission so as to delay dealing with the error. He remembered the selection committee listening to the reasons why he should not be allowed to go to the Blue Planet. They readily approved his application to move to one of the colonies because he was allergic to dirt, the conditioned air would help until the doctors could find and eliminate his problem, but how could he even think about going to the Blue Planet, it was very dusty.
Several hours later he persuaded the committee to let him go. He knew all the details of the next space mission, he knew he could reach the Blue Planet without interfering with the main mission. His wife had been killed in a freak accident and their children were busy with their families and education. He had only one burning obsession left, to find out what happened to his ancestors. He knew all the pertinent information by heart. They finally understood how much the mission meant to him and agreed to his mission under the condition that he wear a dust mask while on the planet if his allergy had not been corrected before then. He agreed quickly, he wanted to leave before they could change their minds.
At age fifty, he was like a school boy waiting for his turn to leave for the colonies. He was hoping to arrive at the Blue Planet on the anniversary of his ancestors, but it was not to be. At every critical point the mission was delayed, first the test crew didn't return from the shake down cruise on schedule and then the changes took longer than anticipated. He was about to climb the walls when he was finally allowed to board an explorer attached to the new space ship.
Because his mission was not in the original plan, he had to use an old slow explorer, with a very small crew, thirty two, and he couldn't choose them until after all the other crews were chosen. His two close friends, Eric and Tom, agreed to go with him, they would command the explorer, one in each ring, they had no desire to go to the planet. He had met the rest of the crew, but he didn't know them. They became close friends, once on board.
The new ship was fast and almost made it possible for him to meet the anniversary date. They reached his departure time way ahead of schedule, but the old explorer made sure he would be late, it was slower than he thought, it didn't meet half the speed he used in his estimate. In hind sight, the delays were the luckiest thing that was to happen on the mission and shortly after their arrival at the planet, everyone thought the delays were a good omen.
He remembered his first sight of the Blue Planet, it was awesome, a beautiful blue, just like earth, the emotion that swept over the crew was something else. When they were on shift, everyone stared as the planet grew larger and larger on their screens. Slowly the explorer looped into position to approach the trailing La Grange point. They approached from the top using the right hand rule, fingers in the direction of rotation and the thumb points north.
The scream of warning horns and the numbing sensation of warning lights nearly petrified the crew. Before the crew could move, the computer automatically put the explorer into reverse and displayed the danger on their screens. More than twelve meteors were approaching at very high speed. The next display was read very quickly by everyone, these meteors were not in the data base and they were at the threshold of detection, three more readings were needed before their orbit could be calculated.
The next hour was like an eternity, no one could think. The computer displayed updates as each new reading was obtained. With each one the crew relaxed a little more, they were not in danger. They would have been if they had continued even one more minute. The preliminary orbit passed right through the trailing La Grange point.
They were stuck until the meteors passed, then they could move slowly into position, any other course of action would not save time. The tracking telescopes would follow the meteors as they went around the star, their orbit could be calculated with certainty when they passed the orbit of the planet again. They were larger than first estimated and faster than any meteors in the data base.
"How could his ancestors have missed these dangerous meteors, why weren't they in the data base?"
JC asked the computer to calculate their orbit back in time. His hunch was confirmed. The explorer ships of his ancestors would have been near the La Grange point at the crossing time, but why didn't they move out of the way? A thought crossed his mind and he asked the computer to display known meteor showers for the previous two months. Only one, a very large cloud of very small particles. The cloud passed while they were looping into position.
He asked the computer to display the orbits of the cloud and the new meteors and as he thought, if both crews had moved slowly toward the planet for some reason, the cloud would have masked the meteors and after they had detected the cloud, the telescopes would have been covered or turned away to protect them. By the time the cloud passed it would have been to late to get out of the way. If they accelerated rapidly toward the planet they would not have enough power to escape the planets gravity and they would have become a 'shooting star'. Any other direction and a collision could not be avoided.
He requested a data base search, starting with the last report, he couldn't remember any mention of the cloud in the reports, his memory was correct. He requested a search of each explorers status log, starting with the last transmission. He read in reverse order, telescope recalibration, covers removed, an estimate of the time of arrival, a routine laser telescope report of the cloud, and a slow position change toward the planet. The energy released from the collision must have disrupted the last status log transmissions. Now he had a plausible explanation.
Now attention focused on reaching the planet's surface. The orbiter was launched and the new data gathered confirmed the old data, so they proceeded with their plan. They used the same landing site, an island a few miles south of a large northern continent. The site was originally chosen because it was far enough away to avoid the large dust storms that swept across all large land masses not in the polar regions.
From space the storms appeared very dark, but on the planet they were barely noticeable. The dust particles were very small and JC was the only one who knew the dust was present. The wind was not a reliable guide because the wind was always blowing across what can only be described as a world of bad lands, deserts, and mountains. It rarely rained, but when it did it was a down pour. The average temperature was higher than earth and the day was shorter, but other than that it was an earth twin. JC's first impression when he put his feet on the ground was, "We recovered from the drought, we can reclaim this planet."
Once the base camp was established, they turned to exploring the lakes near by, hoping to rediscover the lander. JC went with a different crew each day, three crews of four left in different directions in hover vehicles. Most of the lakes were dry and could be surveyed very quickly, they stopped in the middle and each crew member searched a quadrant. Each night they returned with out success.
From the old data he had reason to believe that his ancestor's hover craft would be found near the base camp, but after a few months of searching doubt began to erode that belief. At the end of each month one hover crew rotated. JC stayed on the planet. Eric, Tom, the doctor, and the farmer stayed on the explorer. All the others rotated from the explorer to the orbiter to the planet to the explorer.
When the exploration trips became longer, the crews made a temporary camp each night and only returned at month end. JC remained at base camp, he reviewed the old and the new data hoping to glean a clue. No luck. The original excitement was replaced by dull tedious explorations, every rotation welcomed their turn to return to the explorer, everyone complained about feeling dusty while on the planet.
JC didn't mind staying on the planet, the temperature was pleasant, the sky and water blue, he could easily pass the time looking at the waves. The walls of the tent were removed to let the wind blow through, he rarely wore more than shorts, and he took short naps during the heat of the day. He was very content with the life on the planet, not so with the progress of the exploration. He was very disappointed and at times became so tense, he had to sit and watch the waves to relax.
While the hover crews were doing the preliminary work the orbiter changed to an inclined orbit to make a radar map to the planet. They guided the hover crews to locations of interest near their present location, but what ever the radar saw was buried and was left until the preliminary survey was complete.
The first discovery came following a down pour. As the last of the water disappeared from a muddy river bed, a crew left the shelter of their hover craft to find the foundation of an ancient building exposed. Their excitement infected everyone. The other crews converged on their discovery. One crew pick up JC on the way.
The preliminary survey was abandoned until the tediousness of the dig dulled their excitement. One crew and JC remained at the site and the others finished the survey without finding anything else of interest. An archaeological dig began and as artifacts were recovered the specialists retired to the explorer to study them. After six months only three hover crews and JC were working on the planet. The crews rotated to the orbiter from the explorer, but not to the planet. Those on the planet didn't mind, they would rather dig and discover than study, they could study on the way home.
Several times sudden dust storms forced them to stay in their vehicles for hours and once a storm came up so quick it caught all of them out in the open. JC wore his dust mask every time he left the island, the others put on dust masks, but not before they inhaled a fair amount of dust. Most of them coughed for the next three weeks, but know one thought anything of it.
The storm was stronger than usual and caused considerable wind erosion. Now the dig was the strongest radar signal on the planet and the analysis of the signal indicated it to be a city on the edge of an ancient lake. It was very large and each crew worked a different area. They returned to a common point each night for the usual evening camaraderie and a radio conversation with the orbiter and explorer. They rarely chose the same point each night and therefore didn't travel the same route.
Several weeks later one crew notice a rectangular shadow on top a small hill as they returned. They made note of it and told the others they would explore it the next day. It gave them something new to talk about. The others teased them saying, "Only block heads would notice a rectangle," and that started a slap happy conversation.
The shadow turn out to be anything but routine. It was caused by the corner stone of an ancient building. The returning crew recognized it before they landed and radioed the others. Everyone dropped what they were doing and hurried to their location. If what they said was true, it had to be the find of the dig and the find of the mission so far.
It was true, they remove a time capsule before the others got there. They were careful not to destroy any more of the block than was necessary. The two facing sides with their inscriptions were carefully left intact. JC was nearly beside himself, it was a historians dream.
"This calls for a celebration. Lets take a break, we need to rest." Not another word was spoken, they packed and returned to base camp. They couldn't wait to swim, to get the dust off their bodies. After a nap and food, they played cards, listened to music, and danced. Everyone had a good time, the first real break during an otherwise boringly routine dig.
JC stayed at the base camp when the others returned to the dig. He wanted to find out what was inside the capsule. He had surprised himself because he had waited so long and he chuckled to himself about his patience. He took the capsule into the small lab on board the lander and opened it in an oxygen free environment. Can you imagine his disappointment when the capsule was empty, only a large amount of specks and dust in the bottom. He returned to the beach, collapsed in a chair, and watched the water.
A call from Eric broke his melancholy, "JC, Tom has come up with an interesting analysis of the meteor data, we're going to move to the leading Lagrange point."
"What did he come up with?"
"He was playing 'what if' with the data and asked, 'what if the collision merely slowed down some of the meteors and did not destroy them?' His analysis indicated that most of them would eventually be captured by the star, but a small number would remain in a delayed orbit similar to the others."
"You better relocate and keep a sharp look out for any stragglers."
"We are, but in the mean time you guys be careful, the move will not be completed for awhile and our response time to any emergency will be much slower."
"We will."
"By the way, some of the crew have complained about fatigue, anyone there?"
"Not that I know of, we've been working long hours, we're always tired."
"OK, talk with you later."
"OK, bye."
This was the second clue that he and all the others missed. The first occurred during the slap happy night at the dig. The coordination of some of the crew was a little off. The changes were so slight they were hard to detect, but he was still mad at himself for missing them.
The call from Eric jogged his brain. The 'what if' made himself ask 'what if'. What if he was not giving the creatures who made the time capsule enough credit, maybe they were more advanced than he thought. He ran back to the lab and put one of the specks under a microscope. He hadn't given them enough credit. He became so excited he could barely adjust the scope, they were micro dots. He returned to the beach to calm down and plan.
Later he returned to the lab to copy the dots to the explorer data base, he could browse through them later. He carefully put each dot on a slide in a rectilinear pattern and sealed the slide. He carefully stored each slide after putting them under the microscope. The computer controlled stage moved each dot underneath the scope, adjusted the fine focus, and transmitted the data to the data base. He worked twelve hours a day, there were many more dots than he thought. He neglected himself and when he finished two weeks later he was very tired. He forced himself to take a break. He called the dig crew and told them to take a break, they said they would as soon as they finished their current task.
While he was waiting for them, he scanned the data just to get a feel for the shape of the characters. His first task was to find away to put the dots in order. Surely such an advanced civilization would not leave anything to chance, they would include a pictogram to aide in decoding. He invoked the translation system. The first program instructed the computer to search for a numerical sequence of dots, lines or any other character with a single character near them, and to sound an alarm if it found any, he left for the beach.
He stood to greet the crew as they came across the water and the alarm sounded. He ran to the lab and didn't see them get out of the hover vehicles. One fell like a drunken sailor, but when he heard the story, they made him out to be a klutz from fatigue and everyone laughed. If he had seen it, it may have alerted him to their danger, but after they had a swim and a short nap, he didn't notice the slight hesitation in their speech or the short lapses in memory or orientation.
As he expected, the computer system found many pictograms with an increasing number of characters along the left side. He scanned a few before he found the one he wanted. It had a series of small squares down the left side, the first was empty, the next one dot, and increasing to seven dots. The next column contained a binary code, the next an octal, and the next their alphabet. The left hand squares were blank after the first eight, but the other codes continued until their alphabet and other symbols stopped. Quickly he told the computer how to create a cross reference list so he could display the mirco dots in order and left to join the others.
They kidded one another about how they could become accustom to a life of leisure, but after five pleasant days together, each one was ready to go back to work. They returned with a treasure trove and after resting they were eager to find more. Before they left, they checked with the orbiter crew. After a few minutes of joshing around the orbiter crew said, "Hey you guys, while you were lounging around, a huge dust storm passed over your dig."
"Ya, so what?"
"Well I accidentally pushed the remote reply button and we received a signal from an ancient hover vehicle. It slowly faded out as if its solar batteries were low."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. The reply was automatically recorded and we had the computer check the ID code."
"We're on our way."
JC climbed aboard and three vehicles raced to the dig. Without saying anything they spread out as they approached the dry ancient lake bed. Within seconds one of them spotted the solar panels partly covered with sand and dust. Minutes later thirteen pairs of hands had uncovered the ancient craft, perfectly preserved and completely empty, not one item was found. Because of their excitement they forgot to wear their dust masks.
JC sat down with a thud, he quickly reviewed his memory of the records. He had assumed the second crew was going to try to recover the craft from water. They didn't mention water nor did they mention a dry lake filled with sand. Obviously the second crew found the craft exactly like they had. Some questions were answered. He never could understand how the craft could be at the bottom of a lake unless it was completely out of power. The first crew must have abandoned their vehicle. Even this clue didn't trigger his memory. He remained seated, completely baffled. "I'll take you back JC."
"OK, but transmit the log if and when the solar batteries recharge."
"Will do," and they did, but it did not contain anything more than they already knew.
JC ran the facts through his mind over and over until they arrived at camp where his thoughts quickly returned to the micro dots. He laid out his plan mentally and began to help the computer translate the data. His depression of the morning evaporated as he thought about how he was going to spend his time on the return trip to earth. He could wait for the larger computer on board the space ship, he had a lot of preliminary work to do. He barely noticed the coming and goings of the dig crew as they returned to the island to wash, swim, and take of break from the dig. Only after they left did their words finally break through his new obsession. He pushed the talk button, "Did you guys say you wouldn't be back for six months?"
"Yes."
"Where are you going?"
"Didn't you hear one word we said?"
"I guess not."
"After a dust storm the orbiter crew said, 'We've received a very strong signal from a site that previously gave only a very weak signal.' They were confident that the wind had uncovered something important. We have finished the easy work here and decided to check the other site before we did any hard work here."
"Why so long?"
"It's half way around the planet and the signal indicates a large complex."
"OK. Be careful."
"Yes. We know."
The orbiter went into geosynchronous orbit half way between the base camp and the new site. The dig crew called JC every evening. Minor discrepancies crept into their speech, but JC didn't notice until the orbiter crew called his attention to it and it finally shook JC's memory.
"Was it beginning again?" That evening he asked if they were OK and they responded, "Sure, why do you ask? Maybe a little tired, we're in a rut, you'll never believe what we're finding and we have difficulty stopping to rest."
"Well take a break. Go to the ocean and rest."
"OK."
They didn't call the next night and JC didn't think anything about it, but when they didn't answer his call the next night, he asked the orbiter crew to check their location. He relaxed when they said the hover vehicles were at the beach. They called when they returned to the dig, they were going to work over time so they might not call every night. They called every other night and their speech became more illogical with each call. JC told them to take another break.
The next morning the message light was on. When he responded, Eric said, "We didn't want to wake you, but we thought you should know we are tracking what we think are the laggard meteors. We still can't explain why they have a comet like orbit or how they can maintain their orbit without crashing into the star. Must be some kind of harmonic interaction out there. To be on the safe side we're calling the orbiter back and we are moving out of the orbit plane. We will keep you posted."
"Did you tell the dig crew?"
"Yes, but I'm concerned, they didn't sound quite right, maybe you should call them in."
"Thanks, I'll do that."
They didn't respond and JC left a message. They called that night and convinced JC to let them continue until the orbiter returned. He returned to the translation. The routine changed from calling to leaving messages and the tone of the messages changed. Statements such as 'Don't call us, we'll call you,' began to appear. JC sent a command, something he had never done. "Return to base immediately."
They responded with a message, "Gone to the beach," and didn't respond to JC's, messages.
"We have a problem. Are you going to go and get them?"
"You've been listening then, Eric?"
"Sure and they don't answer our calls either."
"I have to do something, but I don't know what."
"Well wait a couple of days. We're almost back in position and so is the orbiter."
JC couldn't concentrate on the translation so he reviewed the dig crew's reports and logs. "It was happening all over again. What did I miss. What's wrong?" A chill ran down his spine. 'Wrong', caused him to review his own actions. He had been sleeping longer and tired quickly and he couldn't explain some of his actions. He ran to the lab and placed a sample of blood under the microscope. One look was enough.
"Eric, we do have a problem. Test everyone and see if their red blood cell count is low."
"Hey, you sound scared."
"I am scared."
"We'll do it right away. Do you want us to come and get you?"
"No. Don't come down until I ask, it maybe a pathogen. Don't risk further exposure. You know my wishes."
"You know I will respect your wishes."
They left unspoken their mutual concern, if the crew became to small the life support system on board the explorer would be in jeopardy if an emergency arose during the return to the space ship.
JC issued another command to the dig crew and told them he was anemic. They responded with a message over the transcriber, "We're at beach. We pack up pick up equipment at dig return." He received the message in fits and starts.
"We are in trouble."
Without realizing what he was doing, he put up the hammock, hung a large food dispenser and many water bottles in parallel just of above it. Next he put a port-a-potty underneath the hole in the hammock and wired a speaker phone and brain monitor next to the pillow. Instinctively he moved about completing the preparations. In the back of his mind he knew what was going to happen. He knew his chances were very good, but he didn't think the dig crew had a chance, they had inhaled and swallowed a lot more dust than he had. He took a bag of artificial blood from the lab and went to the hammock and gave himself an infusion.
"We do have a problem."
"What did you find, Eric."
"Everyone who spent time on the planet is anemic and the degree is in direct proportion to the length of time spent on the planet. We're busy doing additional tests. As a precaution you and the dig crew should inject artificial blood."
"I'm already doing it, but I can't raise the dig crew. They don't answer. I'm afraid it's already to late."
"We can't raise them either and a very violent dust storm is heading right at them. The orbiter crew activated the warning system in their vehicles and on their beepers and still no response."
"Damn it."
"What is it, JC?"
"It just hit me like a ton of bricks. Check for lead, heavy metals."
"How can that be, every analysis has indicated all heavy metals are way below the danger level."
"I don't know, but an ancient story just returned to me, the one about a polar expedition and our actions and those of both previous expeditions to this planet sound the same. Subconsciously I've been preparing to recover from lead poisoning. I didn't realize what I was doing until now."
"If your guess is correct, you need to calm down and rest, immediately, to avoid brain oxygen depletion. You will need all your strength to create new red blood cells and to eliminate the heavy metals."
"I know. Call me when you know something."
JC returned to the lab after the IV bag was empty, took a double dose of chelating agents to help eliminate heavy metals from his body, and took all the artificial blood and three bags of glucose solution. He hung the bags, connected like bags in parallel and then connected them to a common drip container, removed his shorts, got into the hammock, connected the container to his IV, adjusted the flow of both, and called Eric. "I've hook up the brain monitor, you know what to do."
"Yes."
JC lost all concept of time, he just laid still and listened to the wind and tried not to think.

Return to Blue Planet Table of Content

L06X05 After Recovery

Each day JC walked further and more often. His new obsession deserted him. Aimlessly he moved things from one place to another. He checked his red blood cell count each day. When it was normal he stopped checking it, but he still didn't feel right, something was still wrong. He couldn't think, his brain refused to function. He shuffled to the beach and slumped into his chair. Watching the waves usually had a calming effect on him, not this time. Tears trickled down his cheeks and slowly increased to a flood. He hurt. Only the decrease in light as twilight came stimulated him to move, hunger was absent. He returned to the hammock and couldn't sleep.
Dawn prompted him to move, he drank and ate a little and returned to the beach. As he looked over the unending waves, he recognized his feeling, it was loneliness. His brain began to function and he knew he was grieving for his friends. At his acknowledgment, his pain increased. He didn't fight it, he let it run its course. At noon his appetite returned. He ate and drank a little, returned to the hammock and fell asleep. He awoke reinvigorated. After breakfast he removed the bottles, bags, and the rest of the survival gear and put them away. With the task finished, he remembered he had not talked with Eric or Tom for several days.
"Hello up there."
"We were waiting for you to call," several voices responded.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better. I think I'm all most ready."
"Almost ready to do what has to be done?"
"Yes. I've been grieving."
"Join the crowd. We're mostly recovered, but you had more to do, that's why we didn't say anything. We didn't want to add to your burden by telling you what we have learned."
"Thanks I appreciate that, but I think I'm ready , so tell me."
"The dig crews who retired to the explorer will survive and they confessed that when you were not with them they did not wear their dust masks. The dig crew on the planet never had a chance. We know our data is skimpy, but the extrapolation based on time spent on the planet indicated their bodies couldn't eliminate the heavy metals fast enough and we weren't sure about you."
"That's encouraging news. I'm glad you didn't tell me."
"You were right about the heavy metals. Some of the artifacts contained enough dirt and dust for us to do experiments and a complete analysis. We learned something we should have known. A gentle stirring of the dirt selectively increases the amount of heavy metal dust in the air without reaching the threshold of awareness. The crew was slowly poisoning themselves without realizing what they were doing."
"Damn it."
"Calm down JC. You're not any more to blame than any of the rest of us, including them. Are you OK? Can I continue?"
"Yes."
"We found many heavy metals, each one well below the danger level, but together and over a long period of time they are dangerous. The cumulative effect is what everyone of us over looked."
"I just wish I could have recalled before it was to late."
"Don't we all. When you're up to it, we would like a sample of hair from you and the others to confirm our analysis and I think some of the metals will surprise you."
"Which ones. I'm certain about lead."
"Many could only be the end isotopes of nuclear explosions."
"You're kidding. That has tremendous implications on the rate of evolution on this planet."
"Yes, it must have reached a very high level very quickly because the residual radiation is only a little above what we would consider normal background radiation."
"Wow. Do you want more samples then?"
"Yes. Do you know what kind of samples we want and where to find them?"
"Yes. Thanks for the task. It will help detract from what I have to do. I'll get ready and keep you posted."
After lunch he keyed his plan into the computer and set about getting ready. The orbiter relayed his instructions to the hover vehicles. The activity lock out had expired long ago and he could activate the autopilot remotely. The hover vehicles returned to base, guided by the orbiter. The crew had filled them with artifacts, but had removed all personal belongings so he couldn't learn anything more about their fate. Each day he listened to part of one of the hover vehicle logs, updated his plan, talked with the crew above, and listened to music while he worked, his mood improved. When everything was ready, he was also psychologically ready for what he had to do.
The orbiter moved with him across the planet, always staying half way between him and base camp so he could maintain communications with his data base. They kept him informed about local dust storms and carried on a cheerful conversation. He followed the same route the crew had selected, to stay over land as much as possible. The ten day journey was uneventful. He arrived at dusk and didn't have time to look around, "Just as well," he thought, "I would rather do it rested than tired." The other vehicles came to rest along side and automatically shut down. He called Tom to say good night and went to sleep in the vehicle.
Before breakfast he dug the sand out of the latrine, he never left the vehicle without a dust mask in place. Using a vehicle, after breakfast, he toured the site. It was very large and the crew was right, he would not have believed what they found unless he saw it himself. The wind had filled in much of they had uncovered, but enough remained exposed so he had little trouble identifying a ballistic missile launch site with a camp nearby and a village more distant.
Satisfied with his tour, he slowly dug a long trench in a sand free area near the top of a small hill over looking the site. When it was long enough he requested a signal from a personal beeper of a crew member and followed the signal in a hover vehicle. He placed a marker, cut a lock of hair and placed it in the proper sample envelope, removed all personal belongings and stored them in pre marked boxes, and moved the body with the hover vehicle. He placed the wife along side her husband and extended the trench, throwing the dirt over them.
His pace was very slow. He did fairly well with the men, but he had great difficulty with the women. He went to the top of the hill to recover after he laid each woman to rest. He looked away from the trench and tried to think about anything but what he was doing. After recovering, he mechanically continued, he didn't talk to the others or listen to music. He couldn't even distract himself by thinking about the samples he said he would collect. He used a hover vehicle to place rocks on top of the trench and the surrounding area.
The day after he finished he call Eric. "I'll bet you're glad that task is finished."
"I hope it's a once in a life time event."
"What's next."
"I'm going to try to find the hover craft of the second mission."
"Tell me how you plan to do that?"
"Alice was still clutching her diary when I pulled her body from the sand. Her hand writing and sentence content was very poor, but I could understand most of it. I spent yesterday reading from the back to the front. Many questions were answered."
"Why didn't they respond to the warning signal?"
"She was in a hover vehicle writing the last entry, they found an ancient vehicle as they returned from the beach. Her last entry was, 'I'm leaving to warn the others.' She suffocated with the rest of them in the storm."
"Why didn't she acknowledge? Why didn't anyone answer their pagers?"
"She didn't write anything about that, but she did write earlier, they though you and I were conspiring to stop them from exploring and they agreed not to answer any of our calls directly."
"O brother. That explains the very brief reports in the vehicle logs, they recorded just enough to keep control of the craft."
"From the location of the bodies, I would say they were so disorientated they couldn't find the ancient craft after they landed and were so focused on finding it they didn't see the storm until it was to late."
"Did you get some hair?"
"Yes and another thing, they ate shellfish at the beach. I'll collect a sample on the way back."
"Good. I'll bet I know what we will find."
"Me, too. Talk to you later."
"OK."
"Orbiter, would you press the automatic reply button and guide me to the vehicles."
"Sorry JC, no reply. They must have been seeing things."
"Or maybe the wind reburied them."
"Could be. I'll watch for another storm and try again."
"Thanks."
JC spent several weeks surveying the site and gathering samples, discovering caches of artifacts left by the crew while doing so. He packaged and stored the samples and artifacts in a hover vehicle. He returned to points of interest and continued their work. Duplicate artifacts he left undisturbed. He abandon an area when he could no longer find some thing different or when the work became to strenuous. His mood improved, he listened to music or carried on a running conversation with one of the crew while he worked.
"Don't you get tired of looking for artifacts?"
"Yes, I get tired of looking for artifacts, but I'm looking for history, I never get tired of that."
He was disappointed though, he couldn't find the dig crew's log book and he didn't find very much history. The nuclear holocaust and time left very little for him to find. He decided to go to the beach when the orbiter crew warned of an approaching storm.
He parked two vehicles and surveyed the beach with the other. He searched endless sand for an hour in both directions. He returned and waited for low tide, gathered some shellfish, talked to Tom, and retired for the day. At day break he scanned the horizon and the beach in both directions, the sameness was mind numbing. The water, sand, and mountains seemed to continue forever.
"You better find something to do, JC. That storm is a doesy."
"Well, give me some ideas, my well has gone dry."
"About four hours east is an intermittent river delta. Our scanners indicate chlorophyll."
"I'm on my way."
The delta was huge and it was covered with alga and primitive sea weed, most of it would be under water at high tide. He used a vehicle to collect samples, the delta would not support his weight. He circled the low water mark and flew high above it. He soon tired of it and traveled up the dry river bed. Again the same lifeless terrain numbed his brain, he turned around and returned to the other vehicles, bored. He didn't need to rest, he had remained disciplined and didn't over do anything.
"Orbiter, I'm going back to base camp."
"You might want to wait another day, the dust storm has passed and a thunder storm is following right behind it. I think you should find a more sheltered area."
"OK. Where do you suggest?"
"About an hour and a half west, it looks like a small valley."
"I'll try it."
JC arrived at dusk, it was a small valley. He went up the valley and parked the vehicles in a saddle between to hills. A wise choice because water flooded the lower part of the valley before day break. The bulk of the storm stayed north of him, but the wind and rain kept him inside the hover craft for two days. He read the diary several times. JC was glad when the rain stopped, his legs were cramped. He walked in ever widening circles around the vehicles, on the damp ground, ending at a rock atop one of the hills. He sat and surveyed the valley.
Again the mind numbing sameness greeted him. He looked at the sea in an attempt to keep his mind functioning. He scanned the valley several more times and each time returned to looking at the sea. He walked to the top of the other hill to have a change of scenery. Again he scanned the valley, a rock pile caught his eye. He couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like it may have been constructed. His mood changed from boredom to excitement as he ran to the pile, compared to the sameness this was exciting.
It was constructed, the rocks were stacked to carefully to be natural. Quickly he removed the top rocks uncovering a small vault, its entrance now apparent. On the floor was the dig crew's log book, on the ledges clay storage jars and rectangular piles of dust, the possible remains of books. A few jars had been cracked by falling ceiling rocks, their contents destroyed by oxygen, but the rest were still sealed. He cleaned out the entrance and carried the jars one at a time to the vehicles. With each trip his excitement increased, he could hardly wait to get back to the lab to open them. He wanted to leave right away, but knew he had to wait till morning. He called Tom and told him about the jars and his change of plans.
He let the orbiter crew guide the vehicles while he read the log. On the third day the orbiter crew said, "JC, we think you should return to the site. We're receiving a signal from an ancient hover craft."
Now JC's excitement rose to a fever pitch. "Turn me around and guide me to it. Check the status of the solar batteries, if they have enough charge, remote transmit the report and status logs to the explorer data base."
"Already done."
The next two days were the longest days in JC's life. He read and reread the same paragraph so many times he stopped reading. He couldn't remember a single sentence for more than a minute, his mind was else where.
The crew occupied his time, "JC you won't believe it, the second crew witnessed the collision. They were eating dinner and thought they saw the largest meteor explosion of their lives until they asked their explorer crew if they had seen it. The excitement in the report voice changed rapidly to fear when the other crew did not answer and they realized what they had seen.
Boy, talk about an eerie feeling. Everyone of us said our blood turned to ice water upon hearing the change in tone. It took several hours before we felt warm again.
The next report was two weeks later and the sound of resignation and futility was very evident. One even said, 'I don't know why I'm doing this, it must be habit.' Later they reported living on shellfish and seaweed. All following reports were unintelligible."
"Were the first reports illogical like the ones we studied?"
"Yes, we had difficulty extracting the meaning from what they were saying."
"OK. At least I will be mentally prepared for what I will find when I get there. Thanks."
Later, after he had completed the second once in a life time task, JC said to himself, "Stop kidding yourself, how can anyone be mentally prepared for what I had to do." The only compensation was he had more than he could read on the return trip, he would have to enlist the help of many people, an under statement as he would learn later.
Again JC arrived at the site at dusk and waited until morning to begin. The orbiter crew led him directly to the craft. It was parked on what now was a ledge in a shallow narrow canyon. The water and wind had removed all of the fill and then some. The different levels could be easily seen in the strata. The other vehicles were still buried in the lee of the first vehicle. He entered the craft and activated its power system. He rocked it from side to side and end to end until it was able to lift from the sand. He parked it on the rock rim of the canyon some twenty feet above.
He removed the data cell, all personal items, logs, and samples and stored them in his vehicles. He sorted artifacts and returned duplicates to the old vehicle. When he returned for the next vehicle the wind had nearly uncovered it. "Why not let the wind do the work," and he left to find the bodies, he knew where to look. With the a hover craft he searched down stream, he found them one by one.
He returned to the hill, removed some rock, and dug a second trench next to the first. JC was fine until he found the first dehydrated body, from then until he finished he worked like a robot. He didn't remove anything from the bodies and followed the same procedure as before punctuated by moving the next old craft liberated from the sand by the wind. He replaced the rocks and parked the old vehicles on top of the rocks, sealed them shut, and anchored them. He recovered quickly this time, the emotional strain was more subdued, but it was still present. The weird feeling of burying his ancestor and his crew returned many times during the rest of his life. The bodies of the first crew were never found.
After a brief rest at the beach, he inventoried the material removed from the old vehicles. He was pleasantly surprised to find all the items they had recovered from the first mission's vehicle. He knew he could spend hours listening to the report and status logs from each of the vehicles, something he could do when he tired of translating the dots. He connected each data cell to confirm the data integrity and was reassured by the test program. He checked his record of samples gathered and collected missing samples at the beach and returned to the site.
He repeated the sample check at the site and then checked all areas of the site for any loose ends. He paid special attention to new areas exposed by the water and wind. In one such area, an ancient road was exposed every now and then, but frequent enough to lead him to a military control center built underneath a mountain. The flood had under cut the debris from an avalanche allowing the rest to fall exposing the entrance. The massive protecting door had been moved like a mastiff before a glacier.
He made a cursory tour of the complex, wearing a life support system. It was so large one person could spend a life time and never examine all of the rooms in detail. Much could be learned about a civilization that failed. He spent ten days sealing the inner doors to protect the artifacts from further degradation. Except for a layer of dust, the still intact artifacts were as if they had been used the day before.
After he completed his check for loose ends, he used a vehicle to make one last check. Being satisfied, he left for the base camp the next morning, collecting samples on the way. On his return he packaged and transferred all the items except the data cells from the ancient vehicles to the lander. He took each vehicle to the beach and filled their water tanks with drinking water and stowed all but one on the lander. He asked the orbiter crew to guide him around the planet to collect the remaining samples.
He talked with the crew, listened to music and the report and status logs, to prevent the sameness of the terrain from numbing his brain. The story between the lines for all three crews was identical to the ancient arctic exploration crew. This time he was aware that he didn't become angry at himself for not recognizing the error. An unusual calm came over him, he did not understand. On completion of the sampling tour, he asked Tom, "How much time do I have before departure."
"Until your food runs out."
"I won't cut it that close, I like a margin of safety."
"Why, what are you thinking of doing?"
"I want to revisit the polar regions and pay attention this time."
"OK, but go to the summer pole first."
"Well, I wasn't planning on going during the winter, I want to see as much land as possible."
He stowed as much as he could of the base camp until spring reached fifty degrees north and then he circled the planet following spring to the arctic sea. He was encouraged to find here and there plants similar to earth's tundra plants emerging from the winter freeze. He collected samples and made note of land features until summer began to fade and left on a direct route for the base camp. He worked on the dots until he could repeat the same procedure at the southern pole. On his return, he called Tom, "I've had enough, I'm returning." That statement set in to motion all of the activities necessary for his return to the explorer.

Return to Blue Planet Table of Content

L06X06 Stories from Another World

The return of the orbiter was accomplished without difficulty and at a leisurely pace. They docked first at one ring and then at the other. The artifacts and samples were divided between the rings according to the specialty of the people residing in each ring. Once the data was in the data base it was shared with all, not just the people on the explorer, but with the space ship and earth. Redundant messages were sent to anyone who might be listening, on a predetermined schedule. The messages contained the status and report logs, any data gathered, and any analysis done by the crew. The messages insured that not all was lost in the event of a catastrophe such as happened to the first and second missions to the Blue Planet.
JC left very little behind, but another explorer would know someone had explored the planet even if they did not find the marker and data cell at the base camp, they would certainly find the hover vehicles and marker on the hill top. The next explorer was not a concern for JC, he followed standard procedure, he was already forming his plans to colonized the planet. The other crew members knew what he was thinking long before he announced his plans.
JC didn't open the clay jars until after the translation of the micro dots was well underway, they had more than enough work for everyone, there was no need to start another project. The translation proceeded very rapidly, the pictograms were designed for that very purpose and as soon as JC assigned the appropriate word for each of their words on the pictograms the translating programs could determine the rest of the words from syntax for the rest of the micro dots that followed each set of pictograms. The computer was waiting for JC to finish his assignments until the last dozen or so sets, more computer time was required as the syntax became more complex. Any words that were to ambiguous for the program were left until all the pictogram words were assigned. JC did not understand the meaning of some words even after many hours of reading. Some words in any language have no counter part in another, the only hope was that some understanding would be achieved after years of work.
JC was glad he waited to open the jars because each jar contained a scroll of mirco dots. He only opened one and had only translated a quarter of the dots before rendezvous with the space ship. After a short briefing on the results of the other missions, the results of their mission electrified the entire space ship crew. Almost everyone wanted to help. The rest of the jars were transported to the space ship and the dots scanned to the space ship data base. The current dictionary and grammar rules were copied from the explorer to the space ship data base and soon more than ten thousand people were assisting in the translation. Updates were shared by all.
The story of the Blue Planet was very familiar, one that would be heard again and again as other civilizations or their remains were discovered. The similar theme was as if evolution encountered the same problems everywhere and came to nearly the same solution, only some creatures could not come to the right solution soon enough to prevent a catastrophe that stopped evolution or delayed it for millions of years on their planets.
The pace of the translation slowed as the crew began to read the translations of interest. When the translation was partially complete, many of the crew knew more about the Blue Planet than about earth. Many stories were so similar if the reader had not known the source they would have sworn they came from earth. One such story so piqued JC, he had to tell everyone to read it. He created a condensed version because the original was to wordy for most people.
As best JC could tell, the story was told by the wisest old couple in the kingdom, who supposedly lived in the small valley where JC found the jars. According to the story the vault was their tomb, but JC didn't find any remains and doubted the story.
The old couple were forced by their king to tutor his children, an arrogant and unruly lot. He attempted to teach the boys and his wife the girls, neither were successful. The oldest son was the least intelligent and the most prideful of the children and refused to attend any lessons by the old man. At twelve, he told the old man he was going to learn something important and asked his father to begin his military training.
His request was granted and the only time he came to the old man's class was to harass him and the other children and to show off how good he had become. He was especially abusive of women, they were the lowest life form of all.
His skill wasn't one tenth of what he boasted because all involved with his training were afraid for their lives if they criticized him to strongly or made his errors to apparent. The only one who rode rough shod over him was the captain of the calvary.
The prince threatened him one day and he answered, "I'm a dead man, threats of death are meaningless to a dead man." The prince looked at him stupidly. "Some day your actions are going to be the death of me, so it may as well come sooner rather than later."
The prince walked quickly away and retired to his apartments for several days. It was the first time in his life that the actions of another person had shook him to his core. His cockiness didn't return for two more weeks, those around him thought he was sick, but when it returned he was much worse than before. By the time he was sixteen he was unbearable and unfortunately, many men in the city adopted his arrogant manner. The only person he deferred to was his father, in whose presents, the prince was someone unknown at any other time. He knew his father would not tolerate his behavior, not for one second, even though he spoiled him and the other children, terribly.
Each year a feast was held to celebrate the harvest and as was the custom, the two neighbor kings alternated years hosting the event. The two kingdoms shared a long wide mountain valley, one on each side of a large river. The mountains surrounding the valley cut them off from the rest of the warring world. In between eating and drinking, contests of skill occupied their time. The rivalry was very congenial, no one was concerned with winning, they enjoyed the sport of each event. In fact the winner was razzed about taking it to seriously. No one alive could remember even a mild dispute between the two kingdoms, that is until the prince was old enough to participate.
To avoid embarrassment all contestants were required to wear a mask or a helmet that covered their faces and could not wear any identifying clothing or insignia other than the colors of their kingdom, red or black. In addition the contestants could not talk to one another. Obviously, members of the same kingdom could recognize one another by their horses or manner of gait, but they were honor bound not to say anything.
All contests were between kingdoms, but by having winner contest winner and loser against loser a ranking for all contestants was obtained, except for those who dropped out and many did after a couple of losses. The contestants could move between the contests and eating and drinking without some much as a break in any stride or a hesitation in any conversation, no one thought anything of it, except the prince.
Even the bumps and bruises and fatigue of the contests didn't dampen his rage upon loosing. He lost every contest, even to the worst of the worst of the black kingdom. His first out burst shattered the congenial atmosphere, everyone was silent as they stared at his unmannerly display. His following displays of anger were ignored, then hissed, and finally booed. After he lost the last match of the day, the chorus of boos lasted until he walked off the far end of the contest field.
Each year his rancor became worse, if that was possible, and to make matters worse, a new knight won all the events as a rookie and every year after. Not even the contestants of the black kingdom knew the identity of the black knight. He was as tall as the others but slender and rode a small black horse. He barely won the contests of strength, but easily won all the rest. What he lacked in power was more than off set with speed and agility.
The other contestants had to refrain from laughing when he prepared for his first run in the joust. He was definitely not the image of a winner with his slender build, a short lance, a small shield, and on a small horse. But their amusement disappeared quickly, his horse was as fast and as agile as he was. It was one with his rider, he avoided the opponents lance and quickly repositioned the black knight to unseat the horseman on the other side of the rail.
The prince seized every opportunity to create bad feelings between the kingdoms. The old couple tried to counter every move he made without success. He insulted their ambassadors and emissaries when ever his father was absent. He arranged raiding parties to steal and loot in the black kingdom. The mood of the Fall Feast changed from festive to sullen to strained by his nineteenth year. The black knight set the tone. By lot he was the first to shoot in the archery contest. He hit a bulls eye on his first shot at a distance none of the others were willing to try. He then dispatched every contestant from the red kingdom in all other events.
By chance the last event of the day featured the black knight against the prince in the first joust. The prince was unseated so unceremoniously that it provided the only laughter of the day. The laughter soon turned into a gasp as the prince removed his helmet and charged the black knight on foot. At every turn the black knight made the prince a laughing stock. The audience became tense and separated into two camps. The confrontation ended with the prince face down in the dirt to tired to move, not one of his blows reached its target. The black knight rode from the field followed by all members of the black kingdom as if on cue.
By the following fall, the climate between the two kingdoms was so bad each was preparing for war. The black kingdom made the first move. Their army marched along the river up the valley to the first ford, giving the red army more than enough time to prepare. But the prince had convinced his father to let him lead the army and he violated every rule of warfare. He let the enemy chose the time and place even though he was on the defensive. The black knight led his army to the top of a small hill, made camp and waited for the red army.
The prince was so boastful about his coming success, he didn't reconnoiter nor did he send out scouts, he knew all the land in his kingdom. His arrogance was so twisted that he led the old couple to a bluff over looking the battlefield and told them, "After I annihilate the black army, I'll return and kill you, I want you to see that I've learned what is important, not that drivel you tried to teach me."
The old couple began to weep as he rode off to lead his army to its destruction. His plan was sheer suicide. The captain of the calvary argued at every turn and finally conceded when the prince was about to remove him from command. The captain knew the prince was planning on killing him and was hoping that he would die in battle so he would not have a fight with his father over his death.
His battle plan called for the calvary to lead the charge. Their goal was to open hole in the heavy infantry ranks at the center of the enemy defense. Then the light infantry was to secure the hole while the heavy infantry over ran the enemy from the center.
The prince rode in front, with the army in three ranks spread from one side of the small hill to the other. The calvary was in the first rank, followed by the light infantry in the second rank, and the heavy infantry in the third. The enemy spread out to match his formation, their numbers were smaller than he thought, the prince smiled as he savored victory. At the base of the small hill the calvary moved past him and began its charge and closed into four files in the shape of an arrow head. The light infantry closed ranks into four tight files forming the shaft of the arrow and the heavy infantry walked behind them in four spread files forming the feathers of the arrow. The prince was pleased, the enemy would not have time to close ranks and his arrow of destruction would pierce their ranks and he would destroy them.
His smug feeling was short lived. A short distance from the enemy lines the calvary veered sharply to the right and circled toward the castle at a full charge. The prince cursed the captain as he rode away, "Come back here, you coward."
It was to late, the infantry was in no mans land, they could only go forward. Half of the light infantry fell during the first volley of arrows. The prince stopped and stupidly said, "Where did they come from?", while another fourth fell in the second volley. The rest were killed by the enemy heavy infantry.
Blindly the red army heavy infantry continued forward to engage the enemy heavy infantry, only to be decimated by the enemy light infantry which quickly moved around their flanks and surrounded them. In less than an hour the battle was over, except for the prince who was swinging his sword at a circle of soldiers keeping out of his reach. The black knight galloped into the circle and knocked him from his saddle. When he raised is sword, the black knight knocked it from his hand. The soldiers pounced on him and put him in irons.
The black knight led him by the neck to the top of the bluff, dragging him at times behind his horse when the prince refused to walk. As they approached the old couple, the black knight was saying, "I've never met anyone as stupid as you."
"Well, if it hadn't been for that coward of a captain, we would have won."
"Shut up you idiot and listen," and slapped the prince across his face with the flat of his sword, drawing some blood. "If your calvary had continued our lances would have killed their horses and the men with their light shields and short swords would have had little chance against the heavy infantry with their heavy shields and long heavy swords. The rest of the battle would have happened just as it did, you stupid fool."
A courier rode to the black knight, whispered, and rode away.
"That coward as you called him died courageously trying to save his king. He knew I had split my forces and did the best he could against the odds.
He listened to the peasants as they came in from the fields to defend the castle."
"I'm glad you killed him because I would've."
"Shut up," and slapped him again, drawing blood from the other cheek. "Don't you ever listen," and the knight pointed toward the castle with his sword. Smoke was rising from a wide area. The prince fell to his knees, stared in disbelief, and wailed, "You've killed them all."
"Only the peasants and their cottages will be spared. Your castle will be a pile of stone, your city ashes."
The black knight raised his sword above the kneeling prince and asked the old couple, "Would you like his head for a mantle piece?"
The old man replied, "Of what good is it? The best revenge is to lead a happy life. Let him live his miserable life."
"A wise response old man, but I can improve upon it. I will make sure he lives as long as possible and as miserable as possible. I will personally remind him of his stupidity and make him suffer his worse humiliation. Every day I will spank his face with my sword and ask him, 'How could you have been so stupid to be defeated and imprisoned by a woman,' and she removed her helmet and let long golden tresses fall upon her shoulders and down her back. At another time and place she would have been a beautiful sight, the long gold hair contrasting with the shiny black armor and the black horse, but not now.
"Take him to the dungeon." As if appearing from nowhere a man ran to take him away. She turned to the old couple, "My father would welcome you at his court, what is your choice?"
The old woman responded, "We would prefer to retire to our small cottage at the mouth of the river."
"So be it. I will send a farmer and a shepherd with a wagon and some sheep to take you there."
Before she left the old man turned to with tears in his eyes and looked at the dead and dying on the small hill.

East of hear, north of tongue,
lies the land of the ever rising sun.
Wisdom reigns, peace begun,
people can agree, thought has won.
Voices are heard, songs are sung,
parochial not, the people are one.
Night receding, dawn has come,
in the land of the ever rising sun.
Music heard, bells are rung,
in the land of the ever rising sun.
Varied still, prejudice hung,
stagnate not, as many solutions come.
Agreement reached, consensus wrung,
everyone works until project done.
East of hear, north of tongue,
lies the land of the every rising sun.

JC stopped reading the story at that point because the ancient authors of the Blue Planet were similar to the ancient authors of earth, they wrote books to be read out loud with a lot of description, way to much for JC. He instructed his search program to bypass any paragraph containing any of their favorite subjects of description, it was a very long list. He then read the remaining passages. Some of the passages intrigued him because they were so similar to passages from earth. One writer in particular, wrote the following.
For a nation which has so much, and we want more, we have produced very little in proportion. Our greatest weakness is we promote idiocy.
The thirty second sound bite is not new, it is a part of culture, an ancient example is 'those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.' Another example, 'trends do not a future make.' Trends do make the future unless we change, heaven forbid, change, not us. If we just remember history we are doomed to repeat it. Certainly remembering bitterness and pain will not prevent history from repeating, we must learn and change as well as remember.
He wrote almost verbatim a passage written by an ancestor of JC about the error of allness. He wrote, we are finite beings, we can't possibly say all there is to say and we certainly can't listen to all there is to be said. Politicians take full advantage of the error of allness, they commonly say, 'All we have to do is .... and all our problems will be solved, so vote for me. Such solutions are doomed to failure no matter how noble, grand, or glorious.
'The purpose of an education is to prepare our minds so we can have a pleasant place to spend our idle moments,' I agree, pleasant thoughts are enjoyable, but since we spend more time working than thinking, using education to prepare us for an occupation we enjoy is far more important and then we will spend many more enjoyable hours. Also, well educated people tend to have more diverse interests, to be more athletic, and tend to be more active. Variety tends to increase our enjoyment.
The author continued, people are truly educated when they can enjoy life, be wise stewards, be effective citizens, and be good parents. Notice I did not say happy, happiness is a state of mind, we can choose to be happy or sad. Happiness is having our own way. Enjoyment is our feeling about an activity or object. You don't have to have your own way to enjoy.
To be an effective citizen a person needs to be able to work well with other people. This requires a long list of capabilities such as a broad background, good judgment, etc. One thing that is usually missing from such a list and is not taught very well if at all, is the ability to disagree agreeably.
To be a good steward and a good parent it is helpful to have all the tools an education can provide, so we can use our resources wisely. One area I think we are very poor stewards and parents is the human brain. We waste so many, especially children, they are abandon for fun and games and never get the chance to develop.
Another area of waste most people are aware of but do nothing to prevent, is that of indolence. Our culture promotes the idea that the people on the top lead a life of leisure, sitting beside a pool, smoking, drinking, and eating, living in a big house and driving a big car, doing nothing constructive. This promoted life style is a bunch of hog wash and fortunately not true, but why do we continue to promote such stupidity.
For a vacation it's fine, but after five days most people have to do something. People want to work, people need to work, people need to do something they feel is worth while, important, meaningful. So why don't we recognize this fact and promote it instead of stupidity. What a waste, we promote stupidity and ridicule intelligence.
We commonly make fun of book learning, we point out mistakes in books and make fun of people who use knowledge incorrectly. Why don't we rewrite the books and retrain the people rather than allow the errors to continue. More time wasted. Another common activity is quote stupid statements or to quote inaccurately or incompletely.
These writings so mirrored the writings JC had read as a young man that he contemplated for several days on the similarities of the two worlds. Another very different story remained in JC's thoughts for a long time before he moved on to his next obsession. It was a story about a middle aged couple living a very routine life until an escaped convict burst into their home as they were preparing dinner. He slammed the door shut and waved a weapon at them. Neither stopped what they were doing, the wife was at the stove and the husband was setting the table.
"Your late, where have you been?"
"What?"
The convict hesitated a moment before his panic again took control of him. "I'll kill you if you don't do as I ask."
"No you won't, you need us."
The convict slammed his hand on the table and the wife jumped. "See, I scared you."
"No you didn't scare me, the loud sound scared me. Don't sudden loud sounds scare you or is that all there is to you, a loud sound?"
"Nothing scares me."
"Then why are you running?"
A car door was closed next door and the convict ducked away from the door and window.
"I see. Loud sounds don't scare you, only quiet ones."
Slowly the convict stood and looked out the window. When no danger was obvious his panic returned and he threw his weapon against the wall.
"If you continue to make noise, you will attract the attention of our neighbors and they will call the police. Is that what you want?"
He drew a knife, "I'm going to cut you into small pieces, if you don't shut up and do as I say."
"No you won't. You have no choice, you have to trust us, you have to sleep sooner or later and if you hurt us you know you couldn't trust us. Besides, I know you don't want to do the house work."
The convict pulled a chair from the table and slumped on to it.
"Hey. How did you know I was coming? There are three places set."
"The One who sent you, told us," replied the husband, "Have you done something you can't undo?"
"What do you mean?"
"We were told you did."
The convict said to himself, "What have I walked into?"
"If you have, we pity you."
"Pity," the convict said with a snarl. Both husband and wife stopped and listened.
"What do you hear? I didn't hear anything."
"You have done something you can't undo. Oh, I feel sorry for you."
"What are you talking about? What did you hear?"
"We heard the hounds of your hell coming. You will hear them shortly."
"You two are crazy."
"Quick, put the food on the table, mother, he will need every bit of energy he can muster."
"What are you two old coots talking about?"
"Be silent and eat."
"When you do something you can't undo, you release the hounds of your own hell on yourself and no one can help you, not even yourself. Only UhUnOhUUR can help you and you must meet Him as soon as possible,before the hounds arrive."
The convict stood. "Who is UhUnOhUUR?"
"The One who sent you."
Angrily the convict tipped the table over.
"You shouldn't have done that, you've wasted valuable time," and both began to clean up the mess only to stop and listen.
"Turn up the heat it's cold in here."
"It's not cold in here. Admit it, you heard them this time didn't you."
"NO."
"Denial won't help."
Together they cleaned up the mess and reset the table.
"Eat quickly and as much as you can."
"I'm not hungry."
"You must eat, you have to have energy to do what you must do."
"Do you have a sweater I could borrow?"
The husband left the room and the convict began to eat. The husband returned with a sweater,
"There's a small amount of hope you."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because you asked instead of demanding."
"You two are getting to me and I'm tired."
All heard a plaintive howl in the distance.
"You don't have time to rest. You must leave at once."
"Where am I going?"
"You know where."
Another howl sounded nearby.
"It's to late."
"Maybe not," replied the husband.
"Yes, it is."
The convict ran to the door. He didn't move or speak.
"Look at its eyes. What color are they." The convict crept back to the chair.
"It was just an ordinary dog."
"What color was its eyes?"
"Blue, why?"
"Hounds have brown eyes." The convict shivered. The hound's howl was answered.
"I've got to get out of here."
"Not now. You might as well eat a piece of pie. You can't leave until the hound leaves."
"How can I eat. My hand is shaking so much I can't keep anything on my fork."
Both put their hands on his shoulders and his shaking stopped. He ate the pie and returned to the door. Several hounds were milling around as if not knowing where to go or what to do.
"Stay away from the hounds, don't even let their breath touch you. The breath of the red eyed one will burn you, he's their leader. The breath of the blue eyed ones will freeze you."
"What are you talking about they're just ...." The convict stopped talking when the red eyed one looked straight into his eyes. He leaned against the door and looked away. When his strength returned, he looked out the window and watch the hounds take off on a dead run. He bolted from the house and ran the other way.
The two held each other and said in unison, "We can only pray."
It was not to be. The top story on the news the next night was, "The escaped murder was found dead in the city park. His cause of death has city officials stumped. He had burns around his head and face, most of his eyebrows were gone and some of his hair, but he froze to death in the middle of summer."

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L06X07 His Plan

The transition from one obsession to another was so slow and imperceptible that JC was not aware of the change until it was firmly established. He was amused as he reflected on it. The first changes were the normal progression of translation, from assisting the expert translation programs to reading the new translations to enlisting the aide of others and answering their questions followed by the search for historical documents and writings, then searches on very specific topics as interest in each area began to wane.
The routine varied very little during the twenty year trip to earth. After the usual routine of exercise, eating, and talking with Eric, he worked with the translation and talked with all the other crew members during breaks and closed the day by eating dinner, talking with Tom, and preparing for sleep.
During the first five years of the return trip, he spent most of his time assisting the people he had enlisted to help with the translation and reading selected translations. After the morning wake up routine, he checked his messages, responded to those that may delay someone's work, and talked to the other explorer crew members before lunch. After lunch he responded to as many of the other messages as possible until dinner time. He joined the after dinner discussion groups until bed time.
As the experience level of the translation workers increased, the number of messages decreased and he spent more time reading translations. The messages changed from requesting assistance to alerting him to translations he might be interested in reading. The number of messages dwindled to only a few and he became a very selective reader. In addition to his usual break time conversations, he queried the data base on land recovery procedures, how to eliminate heavy metals from an environment, and which plants could tolerate high concentrations of heavy metals. He joined the after dinner discussion groups on those same topics as well.
One day JC absent mindedly wrote a brief outline of his plan. It only contained six headings, Prepare for departure, Complete preparations during the journey, Establish a space colony to support the recovery, Establish a recovery station on the planet, Recover the planet, and Establish a new civilization.
Only JC was surprised by his self revelation, those he routinely talked and worked with already knew the direction he was taking and were eager to join him. Many had their initial contributions ready before he asked. The number of responses to his first query overwhelmed him and his new obsession was launched with much enthusiasm. He wanted to have a plan to recover and to colonize the Blue Planet to present to the world council by the time they returned.
His goal was achieved with ease, in fact three comprehensive reviews were completed before they returned. His plan was approved very quickly. Several weeks passed before JC could recover from the whorl wind speed of all the committee meetings and final review. The world council was impressed with the level of detail in the plan, so was JC. The plan was so large that JC could read only a small portion of it and the more he read the more he was impressed with the quality of the work done by the crew, but not only that, ten thousand people were lobbying the world council on behalf of the plan.
Once approved the crew turned, without a request from JC, to enlisting the younger generation to the project. Their enthusiasm was so great it was over subscribed. JC could not believe the force he started, it washed over him and swamped him. The project now had a life of its own. Many people were contributing to the project. It was no longer his plan, it was our plan and it was detailed right down to the number of people, villages, and the infrastructure they would need.
The bioengineering of a hardy bean plant was completed before a spaceship was outfitted for the project. The plant produced four two foot high leaf covered stalks with a single lima bean size bean maturing about an inch apart between the leaves starting about six inches above the ground. As the beans matured they turned from a pale green color to the same red as the trellis berries. The spaceship chickens were easily adapted to eating the red beans.
Every root cell of the plant produced many cell surface molecules, on contact each would transport a specific heavy metal into the cell. The cell would then produce a heavy metal complex and transport the complex out of the cell and into the sap. As the sap move up the stems the first unsaturated bean encountered would convert the complex into an insoluble compound and store it until it became saturated. As the heavy metals accumulated in each bean its color changed from light green to darker and darker shades of green until it was completely black upon saturation.
All cells of the plant were bioengineered to produce a mild toxin that was only destroyed in a bean just before it turned red. During the journey to the Blue Planet the spaceship chickens were trained to pick the black beans and deposit them in a collection system. For each black bean the chicken received a red bean. If a chicken ate any bean except a red one or any other part of the plant it would become sick and regurgitate, once was usually enough.
When the recovery began on the Blue Planet, the crews started in the tropics and planted the beans at all locations with sufficient moisture and moved toward the polar region as spring advanced, then returned to the tropics and followed the spring planting to the other pole.
Then chickens were transported to the maturing bean plants. The heavy metals were extracted from the beans and converted into reactor fuel. The extracted beans and the plants were composted. When a colony on the planet was established, irrigation, composting, and soil building became the main tasks.
Two decades later some bean plants were producing red beans, when the plants produced only red beans over a large area new plants were introduced according to the climate and terrain. As the recovery progressed the weather patterns slowly changed allowing the recovery of more land.
The first spaceship became a space colony at one of the Lagrange points. While the space colony was being established a small crew established a geosynchronous space station above the location of the first recovery colony and then began construction of the first recovery colony. The recovery procedure began as soon as sufficient infrastructure was in place.
The second spaceship arrived ten years later and established a space colony at the other Lagrange point. Their mission was to mine the asteroids and build a space factory to build additional robots and to furnish the materials to continue the recovery of the planet. Additional spaceships were requested by the recovery colony as more land was recovered.
JC died seven years into the journey. He knew he would not live to see his plan completed, but he had hoped to see the Blue Planet one more time. He was one hundred forty three when his brain lost to many vital connections. He just slumped over at his console. Everyone knew his wishes, he wanted to be buried with his ancestors on the Blue Planet. His ashes were placed in one of the micro dot jars and sealed.
The refitted spaceship was faster and the route was direct. The journey was completed in fourteen years. If JC had lived to the normal life expectancy he would have seen the Blue Planet one more time. As it was the project team carried out his dream.
The first phase of the project was way ahead of schedule so the crew re-analyzed the geography and weather patterns of the planet. JC's low level survey of the planet combined with the space station data was invaluable and resulted in an improved recovery plan. Three recovery colonies were established. One on the island and one near each pole. Each location was less contaminated than the rest of the planet and allowed some work to be done without dust masks and the end of day decontamination, the result was a large savings of time.
Life in the recovery colonies was very similar to living in the space colonies. People would spend almost all of their time in their quarters. They maintained contact with each other and the robots via their consoles. Their diet was monotonous, but with good flavor, their entertainment was as broad as the number of data cubes in their possession, virtual travel was a common diversion. Education was on going and at the speed of the person. Dialogue between people and groups of people was encouraged, the sharing of ideas was of paramount importance and most people spent at least an hour a day in this activity. The number of people involved in each group was only limited by transmission time. Rmail was use when it was longer than thirty seconds.
Every step of the recovery was completed sooner than expected. The speed of accomplishment of one step seemed to shorten the time of the next.

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L06X08 The Colony

"We hope you have enjoyed the presentations this week, exploring Corpse Canyon, the area around Mt. Stupidity, and the ancient nuclear defense center. We hope you will visit the Valley of Jars before you return home, if you haven't done so already. It's only a short trip from here, the scenery is excellent, and it's the final resting place of our planet's founding father. His ashes are stored in the vault of the valley next to the tomb of his ancestors, plus you can connect to an interesting data cube presentation of his exploration of the coast and the valley. Thank you for being an excellent audience, good bye and good luck."
I reflected on the changes since our founding father began the recovery project as we traveled to the Valley of Jars. Every change was well documented to provide a base from which to make corrective changes, if necessary, and like any large scale project, there were many false starts, many retracing of steps, and many new discoveries.
It was difficult to imagine the conditions the first colonist had to endure, but the final result was incredible. It was even more difficult to imagine this beautiful planet as a waste land. I wondered how the first colonist could cope with the mind numbing bleakness of the landscape. Fifteen minutes of virtual travel with the first full scale survey of the planet was more than enough for me, I had to switch to another data cube.
The presentations we had just witnessed help to put everything I learned into perspective. Like my ancient ancestor, JC, I was a historian and the story of the reclamation had always intrigued me. I was very appreciative of the constant reminder from the planet council to keep our ecology in balance. Everyone needs to be reminded about what was once lost and not to lose it again. How could any civilized society destroy their own planet. How could they let such small inane inconsequential disputes escalate into a nuclear holocaust. I just couldn't imagine it.
The children, Jimmy and Jane, focused my attention on the scenery by pointing out everything of interest to them. It was their first major trip and they enjoyed everything about it. Like little sponges they absorbed everything around them. I hoped they would never lose their curiosity, their desire to learn. I never could understand how someone could lose either, but many did. I vowed to do my best to keep that spirit alive in my children.
The children were disappointed in the Valley of the Jars because it was not the same as in the data cube presentations. We parked our hover vehicle on the beach and walked along a tree lined path next to the river between tree covered hills to the vault and tomb. We watched the data cube presentation and walked to the top of the hills JC had used to shelter his vehicles and to look out over the valley and ocean, but we could not see what JC saw, the trees blocked our view. The mountains and the beach were much the same but the rest was alive with growing grass, flowers, bushes, and trees. The desolate view that JC had had disappeared long ago.
As we returned to the hover vehicle I thought, 'human nature has changed very little. We still want to walk where another has walked, we want to stand where another stood, and we want to see what another saw.'
When everyone was buckled in I said, "AUTOPILOT HOME." We watched the scenery in silence. What a beautiful planet, one without mosquitoes, grasshoppers, locus, or cockroaches. A carpet of green punctuated by water, rock, and sand, but mostly green from our low level. The farms with their orderly fields and the orderly lines of the small villages pleased the eye, but the disorder of the forest and mountain was even more pleasing. The disorder was broken very sparingly by railroads needed to carry heavy freight. Highways and large cities were a thing of the ancient past.
The children soon tired and fell asleep, I found their comment, before they dosed off, interesting, "Daddy, why is real travel more tiring than virtual travel?" I could not think of a good answer until they were asleep. "Why do answers come when you can no longer use them?" The answer was obvious once it came and I probably would forget by the time they woke. Virtual travel can be stopped at anytime, real travel must continue until your destination is reached.
Again my thoughts returned to the reclamation. The first colony was established at East of Hear, next to a larger river on the southern shores of Cape Hope on the northwest coast of Smith continent. The site was chosen with great care. At sixty degrees north latitude, it had a very moderate temperature because of a warm off shore ocean current. Glaciers in the mountains north of the cape fed the river with nearly heavy metal free water. The area received very little rain and no dust storms. The heavy rain fall occurred much further east and south of the site and the dust storms never came across the mountains from the south east or the ocean to the west.
Northwest of the site was a large plateau. Steep cliffs on the west side provided support for the electromagnetic elevators and the flat top provided excellent landing sites for the landers, trucks, and busses from the space ships and space colonies. The gentle slope from the top to the river and the level shore allowed easy access to both from East of Hear. The top was fog free, but the shore and the river valley had frequent morning and evening fog.
After the landing, the soil and water was sampled to confirm that the conditions of the cape had not degraded since JC last stood on the cape. Assured that the site was usable, the planned occupation was signaled to begin. One after another landers, trucks, and busses left the space colony for the site. The first lander contained the material and crew to build the first landing pad. The first truck contained a reactor and the following vehicles contained the material for the electromagnetic elevators and additional landing pads.
When the reactor, the landing pads, and the elevators were operational, a canal was built from the river at the base of the foot hills to provide irrigation and then the first farms were established. The people lived in the landers and other vehicles until additional supplies were delivered. All activities were scheduled to save energy not time.
When operations at East of Hear was routine, the next colony was established at North of Tongue in the southern hemisphere. The location was similar in geography to East of Hear, a warm ocean current to keep the temperature mild, a river that was relatively heavy metal free, a large expanse of ocean to the windward to prevent dust from polluting the site, and mountains to keep the dust storms at a distance in the other direction. After North of Tongue was operational the island site was established.
The recovery crews took a break to lay JC's remains to rest. Because violent storms still raged through Corpse Canyon, the council decided to remove his ancestor and crew, cremate them, and place their ashes in micro dot jars and place the jars in the vault in the Valley of the Jars. The reconditioned vault and a newly built tomb became a national shrine. When this work was finished the recovery began.
The decision turned out to be a very wise one, people had a permanent place to go to pay their respects and give thanks very early in the recovery so resources were used on the recovery rather than the restoration of the earlier grave. Five centuries passed before the difficult restoration of the area around Mt. Stupidity began.
Five years after the recovery began, several small, but ever expanding rings of green were flourishing. All the plants were nitrogen fixing, so the colonist only had to ensure a supply of water, potassium, and phosphorous to keep the green ring expanding. Hardy grasses led the expansion, after the beans had removed most of the heavy metals, their roots held the soil in place while their stems and leaves slowed the wind at the surface. Another five years later the grasses were mingling with the tundra plants and both moved windward and the grasses moved toward the equator.
Fields of bean plants led the expanding green. They extracted the heavy metals from the soil better than the bioengineers had hoped, the roots of next generation of bean plants went even deeper. The grasses held the soil in place until green composting and irrigation rebuilt the top soil. The grasses were followed by food crops, pigs, and chickens on land suitable for farming and bushes and trees on the rest of the heavy metal free land. A necklace of bean plants surrounded almost all mountains and other rough terrain and the trained chickens still maintained their vigil.
Fresh water fish from the two rivers were edible, but migratory salt water fish were not. The same was true for local shell fish compared to those further away. Bioengineer microscopic plants and animals were introduced into all off shore waters receiving heavy metal runoff. The animals incorporated large amounts of heavy metal into their skeletons from the plant they ate, the remains of those not eaten by larger animals removed the heavy metals from the water as a new limestone layer was formed on the ocean floor.
A large celebration followed the first harvest, the colonists had new variety in their diet. The next big celebration occurred when a whole year passed without a giant dust storm. Now villages could be built anywhere on the planet and the speed of recovery accelerated as additional colonists arrived and new plants, animals, and insects were introduced. The first plants were all wind pollinated. The added diversity accelerated the recovery faster than anyone had predicted. Two centuries later everyone agreed that the project was a success far beyond anyone's imagination.
Of course, the completion of each small step was reported to everyone, everywhere. As each report was received optimism increased to the point that other recovery projects were being planned. The successes and failures were shared around the galaxy. A new feeling of satisfaction pervaded all people everywhere, we had finally reached a new level of cooperation with ourselves and with the biospheres in which we lived. Waste was converted into another usable form, it was never dumped into any biosphere. Everyone felt satisfied as never before, everyone knew a major new goal had been achieved, a new way of thinking was ingrained in everyone.
When the autopilot shut down the children's energy switch turned on. Fortunately their mother had rested with them so I could take a nap. They ran around the yard and played badminton before they were ready to discuss the trip with their mother. She tried to answer their questions or referred them to the appropriate data cube. One of Jane's questions surprised her and one of Jimmy's statements disappointed her.
"Mom, when did belief in God return?"
"Religion and belief in God disappeared, but not faith in God."
"OK, I see, I was confusing the two."
"How could anyone be that stupid?"
"What do you mean?"
"The creatures on this planet. How could they destroy their own planet? People would never do anything that stupid. We're better than them."
"Get that parochial idea out of your head right now. You have been ignoring your history lessons haven't you?"
"Aw, mom."
"Young man sit down and study this data cube until your thinking is straight. We are not better than any other living thing, we have different capabilities and therefore different responsibilities, but we are not better. We all share in the two greatest miracles, we are something not nothing and we are living, only a few share in the third greatest miracle. We have been blessed, we can create non material resources. This capability does not make us better, it makes us unique.
The creatures on this planet were no different than us, they made an error and they could not find a solution to their problem. A fatal error to be sure, but still an error, one that could have been avoided if they had been able to have more than one way of thinking. They became prisoners of their intellectual blind spots, something you must avoid."
Jimmy connected the data cube and as was his wont, he randomly selected where to begin. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open as the first few pages flashed before him and he began a virtual tour of the NORAD defense command center. He quickly returned to the introductory pages to recheck the time and place. "THE NORTH AMERICAN AIR DEFENSE COMMAND CENTER" and on the next page was a picture of the entrance with the caption underneath, "Colorado Springs 1976". As he continued he yelled, "Hey mom, it's just like Mount Stupidity."

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