Nods around the coffee table confirmed the statement.
“Then by definition, risk of equipment loss is less critical. So, we examined a number of alternatives, and this is the least risky.”
“Was is the risk of damaging the topopolis itself, if we screw up?” I asked.
“Negligible,” Bill replied before Gandalf could. “You have to think of the relative masses. If you’re jogging and you run into a mosquito, how much damage do you take?”
“I hate mosquitoes.”
“As do we all, even out to 20th generation,” Bill replied. “I doubt that'll ever change, as mosquitoes have no redeeming features. But to my point, the drone and Manny would get slapped onto the inner surface of the outer shell hard enough to leave a crater and not much else. That inner shell though, is tough. It has to be.”
“You've tested it?”
“We originally reconstructed the material from scans. There's some truly ingenious layering involved. It's about 50% stronger, pound-for-pound, than our hull material. And that stuff is wicked strong.” Bill nodded emphatically to reinforce his statement.
“Huh. Okay.” I thought for a moment. “Can we bring in a spare Manny?”
“Expedition needs to be four,” Bridget said. “That's the most typical number for young Quinlans going on a sabbatical.”
“Yeah, I'm not clear on that part,” Will said. “Sabbatical?”
“It's not the right English word, but it's the closest we can come. Young Quinlans just around adulthood often leave their home city, usually in a group of four, called a sabbat, to see the world and possibly find a new place to settle. Then they’d start a new town, or they might just join an existing one. My guess is that the behavior evolved to keep the gene pool diverse. It's generally mostly males that do this, although females are common enough that no one would be surprised if one of the group is female.”
“So, no one will be curious about a female alone with three males?”
Bridget's smirked at Garfield. “Quinlan females are slightly larger than males, and have the same teeth and claws, so unwelcome advances would not work out well. Anyway, their mating is seasonal, so it isn't even a question most of the time.”
“Got it, but what about having a fifth Manny ready, just in case we trash one of the four?”
“Okay, Bob,” Bridget shrugged. “As Harold always says, you can't be too paranoid.”
“Fine. Now, Hugh: language and culture.”
“We've made progress, but no real revelations. Our level of language comprehension is good enough to not be suspicious. There's regional variability, and we haven't cataloged a lot of the colloquialisms sufficiently yet, but thanks to the sabbatical thing, it will probably even out. So, you'll probably always be able to understand the locals. There are some things we haven't been able to get a handle on. Maybe you'll find out more on your travels.”
Gandalf was waving his hand.
“You had more?” I asked.
“Yes. We won't go in through the cargo bay, we’re going to dig a tunnel.”
“Yeah, it's been discussed, and it seems reasonable, given the Mannies are bigger than spy drones. Why do you bring it up?”
“Well, we have to start now.”
“So you'll need minors and roamers immediately.”
“Yep.”
I shook my head. “The TO-DO… it burns!”
15. Functional Testing
Bob
May 2334
Quinn
The cargo drone settled carefully onto the very dead lawn – or, lawn-like Flora, anyway. Whatever the plant once was, it had been used by the Quinlans as a lawn-equivalent.
I glanced sideways at Bridget's Manny, an action made easy by the Quinlan form’s very mobile and independently movable eyes. The resulting double image was hard for human minds to handle, but I was figuring out how to pay attention to one eye and ignore the other. It was something the Quinlans did easily and routinely, so it would probably be noticeable if the people in our group never did it. Like a human who never moved his eyes but only swiveled his head.
Bridget turned and smiled at me as the cargo bay doors started to open. Actually, she performed a beak rubbing motion, which was the Quinlan equivalent. As had been standard procedure since my days on Eden, the Manny operating system converted human expressions into native equivalents, so that we never had to worry about the actual action. Language was handled in a similar manner so we spoke and heard English, including colloquialisms. The OS also chose English name equivalents for local proper names and kept track of which substitutions were used.
The cargo doors finished opening and we stepped out onto the surface of Quinn. Bridget did a slow and probably unnecessary 360, carefully examining the environment.
“No obvious damage in this area. Any deaths here would've had to be from less obvious methods. Radiation possibly, or biological. I don't know if there will be anything to dissect.” She glanced at the drone hovering by her shoulder. Part scout, part beast of burden, part courier, it currently held her medical tools in its small hold.
The city, for city it was, had been built on the shore of a large slow flowing river. Instead of a maze of streets, the metropolis was crisscrossed by canals. The infrastructure had been set up so that the river flow turned over the contents of the canals, but with a mild current. That also meant that a design based on right angles would be suboptimal. The actual shape was more like slightly rounded diamonds, with the long axis along the direction of flow. Even if nothing else had been different, it would've made for a more elegant less utilitarian design than the typical Earth city.
But in addition, the Quinlans seem to enjoy embellishment for its own sake. Buildings were rarely just simple solid rectangles. We saw cantilevered terraces, elevated walkways between buildings, and even buildings with deliberately engineered gaps through their middles, like the dragon gates in some Hong Kong skyscrapers - although I doubted
