The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [110]
“This is my favorite part, Commander,” Aaron said. “When you fly toward a ring, there’s a moment that I’ve always wanted to catch—the moment when it stops being solid and becomes a necklace. One second it’s whole and the next it’s in pieces, and it happens while you blink. I’m not sure which is more beautiful.”
Deanna glanced at the scientist’s profile and could see his rapt expression even from that angle. She turned back to the viewport and gasped with delight. It was true—the ring had transitioned, instantly it seemed, from a continuous plane to a lovely jumble. For a moment she was disoriented—she was flying not over a planetary structure but rather into a microscopic fractal that rushed to meet her. The distant but direct sunlight, coupled with that reflected from Heaven’s atmosphere, made itself apparent in the form of a billion pinpricks of light, seemingly caught by and then released from every single ice crystal inhabiting the rings.
Doctor Aaron radiated joy. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?” he said. Deanna could only nod, her eyes still feasting on the panorama before her. Then he turned to her and grinned. “And now we get to do it all over again with Ring D.”
After another visual feast, this one with hues of orange and rust-streaked amber, Deanna reluctantly focused her attention on the work ahead of them. “Doctor Aaron, how would you like to proceed?” she said.
“I’d like to duplicate the path that Beta took, including the deviations, and measure the gravitational overlaps of the planet, the rings, and all of Heaven’s moons, even the most distant ones that we assume have no significant gravitational impact on the rings. Shall we say one-quarter impulse? It will be slow, but we have the time and we can take multiple readings as we go.”
Deanna nodded to Taurik, who turned to lay in the course. A moment later, the Colorado pulled slowly away from its position over the gap that Beta had left.
A little under two hours later, Taurik “parked” the runabout above Beta and addressed Doctor Aaron. “Sir, what do you consider the ideal altitude for the gravimetric scans?”
“I’d like to get as close as possible,” Aaron replied. “Beta’s shape is slightly irregular, and we don’t know how uniform its internal composition is, so it’s possible that small localized differences could affect its gravitational fields. Something has been causing problems, and I haven’t seen anything yet that seems to account for it.”
Data nodded. “I concur. The closer we are, the higher the sensor resolution will be. Even if we cannot determine what went wrong previously, high-resolution scans will allow us to better recalculate the thrust vectors. Doctor, will ten meters be sufficient?”
Aaron assented, and Deanna ordered Taurik to maintain that relative altitude, compensating for elevational changes in the topography.
“Course laid in, Commander,” said Taurik.
“Let’s begin,” said Deanna. A soft, steady ping filled the cabin for a few seconds, until Data muted it with a keyed command. On one of the side monitors, the computer began to construct a three-dimensional representation of the surface below them.
“How long will this take, Data?” asked Deanna.
“This particular swath will take approximately two hours to complete,” said the android. “We will need to map two more swaths around the long axis and then take measurements around the short axis. I estimate we will be finished in eight hours and forty-seven minutes.”
“Commander,” said Taurik from the pilot’s seat, “Captain Picard is hailing us.”
“On screen,” said Deanna, and moved to the space behind the two command stations.
Picard’s expectant face filled the portside comm screen. “Commander,” he said. “We’ve just arrived at Chandra. I trust things are going smoothly so far?”
“Yes, Captain. We just started the detailed mapping, and we plan to retrieve one of the thruster units for analysis.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you,” said Picard. “I’ll check in with you in the morning, and we’ll rendezvous back at Ennis no later than twenty-one hundred tomorrow.