The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [106]
His eyes shone. “By removing Beta from the equation entirely, we’ll have an unprecedented opportunity to observe how a well-developed ring system responds to a major upheaval. Once Beta is out of the picture, we’ll observe how the ring material redistributes itself and see how Beta’s absence affects the ring’s edge definition. It’s even possible that a ‘replacement Bell’ will gradually accrete, if the system decides it really needs a shepherd in that location.”
“You almost make it sound as though the rings have a mind of their own,” Picard remarked. “I didn’t realize that changes could take place quickly enough to observe in a short time frame.”
“A new accretion would take a long time,” Aaron conceded. “But over the next few years we should see enough signs to be able to predict what will happen. You’d be surprised, Captain. Back when Earth’s early probes observed Saturn, they recorded significant changes in the rings between the Voyager flybys and the Cassini observations, and they were only about twenty years apart. And those changes happened without any external interference.”
“Hadn’t you already started the shepherding process?” Picard asked. “What happened?”
Aaron switched the viewscreen to an animated diagram. “The plan was to land several dozen remote thruster units on Beta to propel it up and away from the ring plane in a perpendicular direction, disturbing the surrounding ring fragments as little as possible,” he said, pointing. “Once it was clear, we began a slow thrust to move Beta toward Ennis and planned to reverse the thrusters to decelerate Beta on this end. But even though our sensors say the probes were working, Beta has veered off the expected trajectory several times. We’ve tried to correct by reprogramming the thrusters remotely, but Beta is still acting up and we’re losing valuable time. We don’t know if the thrusters are at fault, or if there are gravitational factors in this system that we haven’t accounted for.”
“We really should have replaced the thruster units, just in case,” Maher said in apology. “But this is a bare-bones operation in terms of resources. Some of the colonists on Chandra feel that we shouldn’t have tackled this project before the settlement was more fully established.”
Riker spoke up for the first time. “What can we do to help?”
“I’d like to start over with our gravimetric mapping of Beta and then work outward to the rest of Heaven’s ring-moon system if necessary,” said Aaron. “From what I understand, your sensors are more sensitive than ours. Then we can adjust our propulsion strategy based on the results.”
Maher broke in again. “Also, Captain, if it’s not too much of an imposition, I wonder if you might be able to smooth things over with the colony administrators. Would you consider making a side trip to Chandra? And maybe mention just how important you consider this pursuit of scientific knowledge to be.”
Picard smiled at Maher in understanding, then turned to Riker, who seemed to read his thoughts.
“What about using a runabout for the survey?” Riker said. “It could get a lot closer to Beta than the Enterprise could. We could send a small team with Doctor Aaron on the Colorado and take the Enterprise to Chandra.”
“It’s a nice little settlement,” Maher put in, his tone hopeful. “Some of your crew might enjoy a short visit, Captain. And on your way back, perhaps you could bring some supplies from the colony that have been delayed.”
“A short shore leave certainly sounds tempting,” said Picard. “Why don’t we take Doctor Aaron back to the Enterprise with us this afternoon? He and Mister La Forge can look over the sensor equipment on the runabout and make any necessary modifications. Doctor, you’re welcome to stay onboard as our guest tonight.