Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [121]
On the other side of the sky, a long luminous bar, IC434, stretched away into a glorious haze. Presiding over it was the great dark mass of the Horsehead Nebula.
“It’s a place for artists.” She stood by a window looking out at the vast display. The brilliant rings of the gas giant angled past her field of vision, a glowing bridge to its family of moons, all in their first quarter. She looked again at the blowup of Kane’s mural. It was impossible to know whether this world was the one in Emily’s hand. But she’d have bet on it.
There were two other suns in the system, one too remote to pick out, the other bright enough to provide reading light. The nearer was approximately 1300 AUs from Alnitak. It too was superluminous, though not in the same league with its companion. “People used to think a binary star couldn’t have a planetary system,” she told Solly. “We know better now, but the planets tend to get tossed around a lot, and often thrown out altogether. Especially when both components are massive and there isn’t a lot of space between them.” She eased herself into a chair and gazed steadily at the rings and moons. “It won’t stay in orbit long. It’s just a matter of time before something jerks it loose.”
The planetary disk had an autumnal coloration. The storm was a darker splotch, a circular piece of night. “About one and a half Jupiters,” he said, using the standard measurement for gas giant mass. “I’m beginning to understand why they decided this was the place to stop while Kane did his patchwork.”
“It is spectacular. I looked over the records of Tripley’s previous voyages,” said Kim. “He was here before. Wanted to see the Horsehead.”
Solly stared at the clouds and the world for long minutes, and then turned to her. “What do we do first?”
Good question. “We go into orbit. And then we wait.”
“Kim,” he said, “we were a little critical of Tripley for being unprepared to run a contact scenario. Are we ready? If something happens?”
She drew herself up in her professorial mode. “Be assured,” she said, “nothing will happen.” They both laughed. In fact, Kim had prepared a visual program to transmit in the event there was an encounter. It included pictures of the Valiant and the Hunter, of herself and Solly, of interiors of the Hammersmith. There were pictures of Greenway’s forests and oceans, of people lounging on beaches. There were anatomical charts of humans and several dozen animals and plants. And finally there was an image of three Valiants and three Hammersmiths silhouetted against the rings of the Jovian; and the Jovian itself followed by four hundred lines divided into tens. She showed it to Solly.
“We meet back here when the planet has turned on its axis four hundred times.”
“Good,” he said. A day on the gas giant lasted between seventeen and eighteen hours. So they were talking roughly one year. Enough time to outfit an expedition, work out their strategy, and return. “Kim,” he asked, “how do you want me to program, the sensors? What exactly are we looking for?”
“Set for maximum sweep and range. And we should look for anything that wouldn’t normally be out there. Processed metal. Plastic. Anything that isn’t gas, rock, or ice. Or anything that moves on its own.”
The original survey gave few details for the gas giant. Kim knew it had an equatorial diameter of 187,000 kilometers, and a polar diameter of 173,000 kilometers. Average density was only 1.2 times that of water, indicating a high proportion of the lighter elements, hydrogen and helium. Its axial tilt was 11.1 degrees.
Its most striking feature was the rings, which were coplanar with the equator. They had an overall diameter of 750,000 kilometers, and were divided into three distinct sets. The innermost reached down almost to the cloudtops. They were barely one kilometer thick, so when the Hammersmith passed them edge-on they all but vanished.
Two of the satellites were larger than Green way; one minuscule worldlet at the outermost extremes of