Starborne

The time has arrived now to emerge from nospace and set about reaching a decision about whether to attempt a landing on the world that Zed Hesper has labeled Planet A. Now is the moment when they will discover whether the Wotan can indeed jump in and out of nospace in any controllable way; and once that test is behind them, they will be able to learn whether the information that Zed Hesper’s instruments have brought them — all that impossibly detailed data about stars and planets and atmospheric composition and polar ice-caps — constitutes a genuine report on real components of the real universe, or is merely a set of imaginary constructs having no more connection with reality than the chants and potions of a prehistoric sorcerer.

Julia has the responsibility for the first part of the business, bringing the starship out of nospace. Accomplishing that is mostly a matter of giving the drive intelligence the appropriate orders in the appropriate command sequence, and then giving the command — in the presence of the year-captain, and with him supplying the proper official countersign — that activates the whole series of orders. And then waiting to see whether what happens next is anything like what is supposed to happen.

So is it done, step by step. And it comes to pass that the maneuver is successful.

It seems at first as if nothing has happened. There had been no perceptible sensation when they originally shunted into nospace, and there is none coming out, either. No sense of being turned inside-out (or outside-in), no banshee wails in the corridors, no flashing of gaudy colors up and down the visual spectrum and perhaps a little way beyond.

Indeed, there is no indication whatever that anything has changed aboard the Wotan. Except that — suddenly, astoundingly, miraculously — the throbbing gray nothingness of interlacing energy fields which was all that any of them had had to look at for the past year is gone from the viewplate, and the voyagers find themselves staring at jet-black sky, a dazzling golden sun not very much different from the one under which they had been born, and a bright scattering of planets. One, two, three, four, five, six planets, so it seems.

That is a stunning sight, after a fall year of staring at the majestic but featureless woolly wrapper of nospace that has surrounded the ship like a second skin. The voyagers who stand by the viewplate break into cheers, applause, giddy laughter, even a few sobs.

The year-captain is on the phone to Zed Hesper, who remains holed up in his scanning room down below. “What do you say, Hesper?” the year-captain asks. “Is this the place, or is this the place?”

This is the place, Hesper opines. They have accurately navigated the murky seas of nospace — Paco must be congratulated — and are sitting right in the middle of the solar system that contains his Planet A. Planet A itself is the fourth of the six worlds of this G2 sun, Hesper reminds him.

But it is not so easy to tell, at least not merely by glancing into the viewplate, which of the six planets is the fourth from its primary. If the Wotan ’s position in relation to this solar system were optimally inclined to the plane of its ecliptic at a nice ninety-degree angle, one could perhaps casually line the planets up in their actual order of distance from the sun just by peering at the screen. But the Wotan is not so conveniently positioned. At the place where they have emerged from nospace the voyagers have a skimming, edge-on, rim-shot kind of view of this solar system. And each of the six worlds is chugging along in its own orbit, naturally, some of them at perihelion at the moment and others at aphelion, and from the point of view of the Wotan, confronting the whole system on the skew as it is, they are strewn randomly around the sky.

Hesper knows which of the six is Planet A, though. Hesper knows all manner of things of this sort. He tells the year-captain, and the year-captain brings the eye of the viewplate to focus on the world they hope to explore.

It looks like a world.

It looks likethe world. The world of their dreams; their home away from home; the New Earth that they have crossed this immense gulf to find.

All of Hesper’s data-analogies and equivalencies have turned out to be smack-on-the-nose accurate. It is a miracle, the information that the sharp-nosed little man has managed to conjure out of the scrambled nospace numbers with which he works. Planet A seems to be exactly what he said it would be, an Earth-size world, more or less, with what appear to be blue oceans and patches of green vegetation and brown soil. There is a sprawling tentacular ice cap at the northern pole and a smaller, more compact cap at the southern one. There seem to be thin clouds scudding through what seems to be an atmosphere.

“Break out the champagne!” Paco yells. “We’re home!”

But there is no champagne, the supply that they brought from Earth having been exhausted the night of the six-month anniversary party and the newly synthesized batch still undergoing its second fermentation; nor are they “home,” however much this place may superficially resemble Earth; nor is there any guarantee that they will be able to settle here. Far from it. The year-captain can’t help thinking that the odds against their finding the right planet on the first attempt are about the same as those of four poker players being handed royal flushes on the same deal.

Still, all the early signs are promising. And the year-captain is neither surprised nor greatly displeased by Paco’s boisterousness. Boisterousness is one of Paco’s specialties. Besides, they have at least managed successfully to find their way to this place. That calk for a little jubilation, whether or not the planet turns out to be one they can use.

Julia has some more work to do now: braking the starship in such a way that it will glide down into orbit around Planet A. Because nospace travel takes place outside the classical Newtonian conceptual framework of the laws of motion, the “acceleration” that the stardrive imparted to the Wotan during its journey and the “velocity” that the ship thereby attained bear no relation to the starship’s movements now that it has departed from nospace. It is traveling, in fact, at the same speed it had been making at the instant it shunted from realspace to nospace in its departure from Earth. Since it had been positioned at that time in orbit not far above the surface of Earth, it is still moving now at its former orbital velocity. The starship is essentially still in orbit around Earth. But Earth is no longer nearby.

So Julia must make the necessary adjustments. The Wotan is not equipped for extended travel through realspace, but the braking motor with which the starship is equipped will be sufficient for a maneuver of this sort. It is a simple operation; Julia copes with it with ease.

Meanwhile Marcus and Innelda, whose main areas of expertise are in planetary survey work, are doing an instrument analysis of the world that they hope to explore. There is no sense expending the reaction mass needed to launch a drone probe, let alone sending a manned expedition down there, if Hesper’s readings of Planet A’s atmospheric makeup and gravitational force and other significant characteristics are incorrect.

But Hesper’s figures continue to be right on the mark. The gravity is reasonable, even alluring: .093 Earth- norm. A handy nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, a little shorter on oxygen and heavier on nitrogen than might be ideal, but probably breathable. Traces of carbon dioxide, argon, neon, helium, none of these deployed in perfect Earthlike proportions but basically close enough to be okay. No sign of free atmospheric hydrogen, which would be a bad thing, indicating disagreeably low temperatures. Definite and heartening presence of water vapor in the air, not a lot, but enough. A dry place, mostly, this planet, but dry like Arizona, not dry like Mars. And there is just a touch of methane, too, precisely as Hesper had predicted — indicating a strong likelihood that the processes of life are going on down there. Not a certainty — the methane could be bubbling up out of subterranean vents, perhaps — but nevertheless there’s a decent probability that living things are growing and eating and digesting and farting, maybe, and dying and decaying, all of which are methane-producing processes, on the cheerful turf of Planet A.

Innelda and Marcus turn in a positive report. Everything their instruments have told them leads to the conclusion that Planet A is a good bet for colonization. There is water at least in moderation; there is air that is recognizable as air; the gravity is okay; at least in a general way the place appears to be capable of sustaining life, Earth-type life. But on the other hand, it is not possible to detect the presence of higher life-forms already in possession of the place. There are no cities visible from up here, no roads, no construction of any sort. No radio emission comes from Planet A, or anything else in any part of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. No artificial satellites are in orbit around it. All this is to the good. It is not the intention of the voyagers to move in on thriving alien civilizations and conquer them, or even to wheedle permission with gifts of beads and mirrors to settle among them. The Articles of the Voyage specifically state that the Wotan is to refrain from making landings on any world that is seen to be inhabited by apparently intelligent beings, leaving the definition of