“Dr Sullivan, biology?”
“Present.”
“Dr Fulton, geography?”
“Here.”
“And Dr Abrams, climate science?”
“Here.”
“May I ask who these gentlemen are?” Dr Surlethe blinked at the three military men.
“Certainly,” said one of them. “I am Major Jim Schaeder, your liaison with the military. These are my aides – Leftenant John Grissom from the U.K. and Captain Aleksei Stepanovich Panasov of the Russian Army.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Dr Surlethe. “Now, I'm sure you all know this, but it bears saying anyway. The goal of this advance research center is to gather as much data about Hell as possible, as quickly as possible, and start to form a coherent picture of the world that we've entered. We'll be sending the information back to Earth, but, we are the scientific front line.
“Now, let's see where we stand. You have all prepared reports as I requested?” There were nods all around the room. “Dr Jamison, you'll go first.”
Dr Jamison, a slight, pretty redhead, stood up and shuffled some papers on the table in front of her. “We have not done too much. There are no obvious physical differences between Hell and Earth; on a basic level, at least, they're very much the same since we're all standing here.” She smiled, and chuckles drifted around the table. “However, there is some indication that the local gravitational field is maybe as much as 10% weaker than that on Earth; surely you've all noticed it walking.” Nods. “Initially, this will obviously impact friction, vehicle performance, etc. That may be why the air is so dusty as well. Other than that, we're looking to collaborate with geology to get an idea of what's going on under the ground.
“Putting on my astronomer's hat, we've got no idea what's going on above this damnable cloud cover.” Dr Surlethe noted that he might need to split the department soon. “We'd like to get a rocket launch pad -” this was aimed at Grissom – “but we understand we're relatively low priority here.” She turned back to Dr Surlethe. “That's all I've got.”
“Thank you, Dr Jamison. Next, Dr Griswold?”
Dr Griswold stood up. “Geologically speaking, Hell is a very interesting place. It's incredibly geologically active; the soil here, at least, is composed mostly of broken-down volcanic materials. I won't bore you with details, but I'll just say that as recently as two million years ago, this entire plain -” he stretched his hands out, obviously talking about the whole of the prairie that apparently stretched from the Phlegethon just to the north all the way to Dis – “was under a half-mile of lava from that giant caldera to the south. When I say giant, I mean it, We’ve got the first pictures back from the RF-111s, the diameter of that caldera is almost 700 kilometers. It’s circumference is more than 2,000 kilometers. It must have been one hell of a bang when it let go.
“That's about as much as we can say about the geologic history of Hell; we need more data. Hopefully, as the geography grows clearer, we'll be able to say something about the underlying geology and start to construct a picture of the history. And, as Dr Jamison said, we are working to get some geophysical measurements; hopefully, that will start to flesh out our picture some more.” Unceremoniously, Dr Griswold sat down.
“Thank you. Dr Fulton, are you ready?”
“Certainly,” said Dr Fulton, who unfolded himself from his chair and stood up, blinking at the papers in front of him through round spectacles. “This is probably the most pressing field of exploration here, since navigation and knowing what the terrain around us looks like are the most relevant issues to the military. As you all know, the terrain here is decidedly non-Euclidean.” More nods around the table. “We've been taking measurements, but this is actually a math problem and not one that any of us geographers have encountered before. So is there a mathematician in the house?”
“That can be arranged,” said Dr Surlethe.
Dr Fulton continued. “Other than that, we've been putting together a temporary map based on surveillance pictures from the recent reconnaissance flights. Here it is.” He picked up a stack of papers and handed them out one-by-one as he kept talking. “As you can see, we have the Phlegethon just to the north. In the distance, there are some hills; we speculate that they are foothills to a larger mountain range. In the other direction, it's all flat, with no major rivers, to the city of Dis. There's Dis, and then it drops off into the pit.”
The handout wasn't so much a map as a collage of pictures pasted together in photoshop. The pictures seemed oddly distorted, and didn't quite match up together at the edges, but the basic components of the terrain were still visible.
“The pit of hell appears to be arranged into nine concentric rings. It's eerily similar to Dante's description, working hypothesis, a baldrick got hold of Dante’s mind and let him know what he was in for. We don't have much data, but we surmise that the descriptions that have been given to us by the DIMO(N) counterinsurgency department match what is visible here, in the sixth ring.” He tapped an area on the map that looked like nothing more than a dark coffee stain. Through it, a river lazily wandered before apparently plunging off the side into the next level. “We surmise that is where the insurgency is located.”
Dr Jamison raised her hand. “Is this part of Dis, here on the fifth ring?”
Dr Fulton nodded. “You can see that a spur of the city has been built down into the pit itself, down this flat slope.” He indicated on his copy the extension of the demonic capital. “The city then extends for a ways along the fifth ring to the point where the river cuts across the ring. The spur itself acts as a base for walls that separate the rings.
“Anyway, that's pretty much as far as we've gotten geographically. We await more data from reconnaissance flights. We'll take as much as you can give us. Thank you.” He sat down.
“We have Dr Abrams and Dr Sullivan left. Who'd like to go first?”
“I'll go,” said Dr Sullivan, his heavy Oxford English accent being almost amusing given the environment.. “Aside from the baldrick corpses dissected in Iraq, and the biological knowledge that gave us, we've got very little information about the lifeforms and ecosystem here in Hell. Because it's similar to life on Earth, we hypothesize that there are common ancestors involved somewhere – in fact, the data from the dissections and corpse analysis suggests that the most recent human-baldrick ancestor dates from about one point five million years ago. Evolution here has been pretty drastic though and followed a different path from ours.
“But we need more data to test this. We're planning some expeditions out to the surrounding countryside, but if in the military advance there are any dead animals, please have them sent back to us. Thank you.” He sat down.
“Oh, I think we can guarantee you lots of corpses.” Panasov’s voice was almost droll as his mind recalled the long rows of guns awaiting the Baldrick assault.
“And, Dr Abrams,” said Dr Surlethe.
“Thanks,” said Dr Abrams, an older gentleman with a fine Santa Claus beard. “We find that the atmosphere here is relatively similar to that of Earth, which means that there was either gaseous exchange or the life processes here are similar to those on Earth. The high particulate count at this location suggests some volcanic activity in the vicinity, or a hell of a lot – pardon the pun – of volcanic activity somewhere far away. Other than that, we can't really do any meaningful climate science, aside from weather observations, without getting data from the upper atmosphere. We've sent to NASA for some weather balloons to go up; hopefully, they'll get here in the next couple of days, and then we can go from there.” He sat down.
“All right,” said Dr Surlethe. “Is there anything else?” Nobody spoke, so he continued: “Excellent. Let's plan on meeting weekly from here on out and comparing notes. Thanks, everybody!”
As the various scientists were moving out of the room, Dr Surlethe tapped Dr Fulton on the shoulder. “Mind if I have a word with you?”
“Sure,” said the taller man.
“I'm a mathematician by trade. Do you think you could email me the data? I'll see what I can do with it in my spare time.”
“I'd love to. Our department is all geographers; none of us really have the experience or knowledge to deal with this sort of non-spherical geometry.”
“Thanks,” said Dr Surlethe. “I look forward to it.” And he walked out of the room, contemplating just what he was going to tell the president and cabinet at the next meeting, and wondering on top of that what sort of shape could explain the curvature that was obvious here.
