Saturn Rukh (32 page)

“The reactor is not in good condition. I am sorry to report that the impacts from the larger prey of the rukh have finally damaged it. Another of the secondary cooling loops has lost pressure. It must have a leak somewhere. I can bring the reactor back up using the last remaining cooling loop, but I’ll have to cut the power level to compensate in order to keep the reactor temperature within its thermal limit.”

Rod was relieved that it wasn’t more serious. “Do it,” he said. “As long as we can keep making meta, we still have a chance.”

Seichi carefully took Jeeves through the procedure of completely closing down the reactor, taking it from its emergency shutdown state to its dormant startup state, with the emergency shutdown rods removed and back in their primed position. Once that was done, he used Tabby’s camera eyes to explore the damage to the failed cooling loop and to check out the condition of the remaining loop. The coolant had leaked from a crack at the base of a cooling fin. The fin had been bent sharply back by a strike from a large animal hitting it at high speed. What was worse was that further inspection showed that the remaining cooling loop pipe had dozens of similarly damaged fins, many with cracks. None of them was leaking—yet.

Two hours later, Seichi had the reactor back on-line with Rod, Pete, and Chastity anxiously looking over his shoulder. The lights flickered again as Seichi switched from the internal backup system that burned meta to the reactor prime power system that generated excess electricity to make meta.

“We’re back up at one-third design power,” Seichi said finally.

“I’d best go down into the meta factory and shut down some more meta lines,” said Pete, heading for the ladder leading below. “The individual production lines are slightly more efficient if they are operating at peak power instead of reduced power. That’ll give me a chance to clean the optics on the resting ones. Every percentage point in efficiency is another liter of meta.”

“Concerning percentage points …” remarked Seichi. Pete stopped on the ladder and looked up at him. “You should shut down all but thirty percent of the meta lines—not thirty-three percent. Since the power to operate the crew capsule comes first, the amount left over for making meta dropped to less than a third.”

“Oh,” said Pete, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “Right, thirty percent it is.” His head dropped below the grating floor as he headed for the airlock—stopping off at the toilet first. It would be a long day.

“I’ll cycle you out,” said Chastity, following Pete down the ladder.

“Well, at least we’re still producing meta,” said Rod to Seichi, trying to put a positive note on things. “It’ll just take us a little longer to get home. Fortunately, we have plenty of food.”

“I didn’t want to tell the others, since it is useless to worry about things you cannot control,” said Seichi in a quiet voice so that those down below would not hear. “But as commander, there is something you must know, even though it increases the burden you must carry.”

“What is it?” said Rod, not really wanting to know.

“The failure was probably caused by hydrogen embrittlement widening and deepening the stress crack until it leaked. The stainless steel tubing normally isn’t affected by hydrogen, but stress cracks, especially in welded portions of the tube, allow the hydrogen to get inside the metal and cause it to fail. The cooling fins were designed to operate under a floating balloon, not a high-speed flying wing. The remaining cooling loop has many similar cracks. It won’t be long before it fails also, especially if it experiences additional strikes from prey animals.”

“I see,” said Rod. “Any time estimate?”

“With only one data point, it is difficult to estimate,” replied Seichi. “But this loss took place in two months. The next one will likely be in weeks rather than months.”

“And we need four more months of meta production to fill the tanks. It’s going to be close.”

“Nearly six months,” Seichi reminded him. “The factory is now operating at only thirty percent capacity.”

“Right,” said Rod, lips firm. “But, as you said, it is useless to worry, about things you cannot control.” He paused, then turned back to look at Seichi with a quizzical expression.
“Is
there any way you can control it? Can we somehow plug those cracks?”

“If we could drain the cooling lines and take them apart, then it is possible to weld the weak points in the heat pipes, reassemble the line, and recharge it with coolant,” said Seichi. “But that complex task cannot be done with Tabby. Its crude manipulators were not designed for such delicate work, and its small size means it cannot handle large pieces of equipment in the gravity field of Saturn. It requires a much stronger and more sophisticated robot—or a human being.”

“Which is out of the question,” said Rod. “A human wouldn’t last an hour in that radiation environment, rad-drugs or not.” He sighed. “You’re right. We’ll not tell the others. We two will do the worrying for them.”

Rod did, however, report Seichi’s finding back to the Space Unlimited Mission Control Center. They started working on contingency plans. Unfortunately, there weren’t many options available since the problem was occurring so far away from Earth.

~ * ~

The language lessons with Uppereye continued during each nighttime altitude climb. Sandra and the rest of the crew now had outside bass “speakers” built into their backpacks so each could talk directly with Peregrine’s eyes, while Uppereye was learning to speak a crude form of pidgin English using sounds generated by its neck sac orifices. Seichi had learned enough of the rukh chordal language to communicate with not only Uppereye, but Lowereye and the other rukhs who occasionally came by to visit the humans during the socializing periods that occurred at morning and evening when both eyes were awake. Seichi’s range of tonal ability was limited to the seven octaves of the keyboard, whereas a rukh’s multibladder voice covered twenty octaves, from whole-body breathing modes that generated notes that took many tens of seconds to complete one cycle to a “falsetto” generated by the neck sacs that was too high for the human ear to hear. Still, Seichi could generate the names of everyone in the flock, adding to the name chord the chordal patterns that meant “Hello,” “Good-bye,” “Please come and talk to me,” “How are you feeling?”, and “Did you have a good hunt?”, as appropriate to the situation.

As the giant winged body of the latest visitor, Eagle, lifted upward, its body booming out deep tones and Seichi responding with his own keyboarded chords, Sandra waved good-bye and turned to Seichi.

“It is really amazing how well you can converse with the rukhs in their own language, Seichi,” she said.

“It is a little like the art of writing hiragana, but you do it with chordal patterns instead of strokes of the brush,” Seichi explained. “You start with the chord that represents the basic root concept and add other chords in other octaves that represent additional concepts, adjusting all the concept chords so they blend rather than conflict, then modify that combined chord with either changed notes or additional notes that signify the context and tense of the meaning you are after. The rukhs carry it much further, however. A typical single Japanese hiragana character can be either a word or a long phrase, while the rukhs speak the equivalent of sentences or paragraphs with each chord. I am sure my feeble attempts at speaking their language sound to the rukhs like ‘Me Seichi say hello to you Uppereye’ spoken in baby babble.”

“Still, they must understand you,” replied Sandra as she watched Eagle bank away. “The others in the flock do so like to come and talk with you.”

“I would suspect they find me amusing,” replied Seichi. “I notice that each time I try to generate a new phrase by combining chords that I have never combined before, the visitors and Uppereye repeat the chord back and forth to each other, their heads bobbing up and down in amusement, before Uppereye takes the time to pronounce the chord correctly for me a couple of times until I get all the nuances correct. I can’t complain. With their willing help, I am rapidly becoming proficient in the language.”

“I notice that you now know the name of practically every bird in the flock,” said Sandra.

“What I find interesting is that every name chord has a common deep bass subchord,” said Seichi. “I believe it is a root chord meaning either ‘rukh’ or the ‘family name’ of the flock. I will have to try it out when the elder of the flock, ‘Condor,’ finally gets around to visiting me. I’ll chord ‘hello’ and the root chord with the family name, with the little high-pitched twittering bit that means the chord is a question, and see what response I get.”

Sandra noticed that Uppereye’s eye was blinking sleepily, the nictitating sheet sliding downward over the surface of the lens, wiping away bits of flying food creatures that had been blown into the clearing by the wind gusts and splattered against the high-pressure balloon optics. She had learned from experience that Uppereye was almost addicted to using the portable console to bring up new pictures of life on Earth and the other planets and would stay at the console all day if Sandra permitted it. Sandra turned off the console power at the airlock junction panel.

“Now is time for Uppereye to sleep,” she said firmly.

“Sandra turn on console? Again? Please?” said Uppereye, its neck sac orifices putting a querying rising tone and pause after each of the last three words.

“No,” replied Sandra, being firm. She had once let Uppereye stay up all day playing on the console, and the next night the language lesson had to be canceled because Uppereye could barely stay awake enough to keep Peregrine flying upward.

“Sandra goes to sleep. Uppereye goes to sleep,” she said as she took the dark console from Uppereye’s lower set of foreclaws. “Sandra see Uppereye when darkness comes again. Good-bye, Uppereye.”

“Good-bye, Sandra. Good-bye, Seichi,” said Uppereye, raising its head canards and lifting off in the constant wind that passed overhead to fly back to its sleeping notch at the top of Peregrine’s keel.

As Sandra and Seichi gathered together their equipment preparatory to climbing up the side of
Sexdent
to the airlock door, they could feel the living surface beneath their boots tilt slightly, as the body of Peregrine started the long downward hunting dive with the rest of the flock. Simultaneously, the surface rumbled as Lowereye had Peregrine’s body join in song with the others.

“I wish I knew what that all meant,” said Sandra as they both stopped to experience the song, for they found themselves feeling it with their bodies more than hearing it with their ears. Seichi let the multitone chord flow into the section of his memory where he stored the language of the rukhs. He had taught himself the trick of not thinking of the chords as words, or even phrases, but as “feelings” and “inclinations” and “impressions.”

“It is about going down,” he finally concluded, “but a swooping pleasurable exciting daring down.”

They climbed up the rungs to the airlock where they traded places with Rod and Pete. Pete went to check out the meta factory, while Rod took advantage of the daylight to resume his vermin removal patrols.

~ * ~

Still groggy from having only three hours’ sleep during the previous five-hour “day,” Sandra yawned behind her visor as she waited in the clearing outside the airlock door for Uppereye Peregrine to arrive. There was still plenty of daylight, for it was summer in the northern hemisphere of Saturn, but darkness would be on them soon.

“That’s strange,” Sandra remarked to Seichi as she finished her yawn. “Usually, Uppereye is already here when we come out, eager to start the next language session.”

“There is something else strange,” said Seichi, who was adjusting the low-frequency sound detector. “Body Peregrine is singing a new chord that I have never heard before. It isn’t too complex. Basic in chordal pattern ... almost primitive in nature ... more like a ‘feeling’ rather than a ‘thought.’ “

“I noticed,” said Sandra. “It’s been going on for a long time.” She looked upward to the holoviewport at the top of
Sexdent
that looked out over the clearing. Pete was in the window, keeping a security watch on the two outside, finger always ready above the nose jet icon in case Sandra or Seichi inadvertently said something that would rile Uppereye into attacking. From the higher viewpoint, Pete could see a relatively long way across the top of the feather forest that surrounded them.

“Pete,” she called. “Do you see Uppereye coming?”

“No sign of Uppereye,” replied Pete through the radio link. “But there’s something strange going on. Maybe that explains why Uppereye is late.”

“What kind of strange?” replied Sandra, annoyed at being kept in the dark.

“Normally about this time the flock is circling about in a big horizontal ring, head to tail, the heads of one bird grooming the tail section of the one in front. Now they are circling in a big vertical ring.” Sandra and Seichi looked up at the formation of rukhs that were flying along with Peregrine. Pete was right. Peregrine was flying along leisurely but was slowly sinking in altitude. Right above Peregrine was Hawk, who was also sinking downward, keeping a roughly constant distance from Peregrine. Above and going off to the right were Eagle, Buzzard, and other members of the flock, keeping pace with Peregrine, but at different distances. Altogether they formed a giant arc that “set” in the forest canopy to the “west” over where Peregrine’s right wing would be.

“I now see what might be the reason for the vertical ring,” said Pete, as Peregrine flew lower and started moving to the right, bringing more of the upper part of the ring into the narrow view cone Sandra and Seichi had at the bottom of the clearing. “In a minute or so, Peregrine will be at the bottom of the vertical ring and you’ll see two rukhs at the center of the ring. I don’t know exactly what they are doing, but it looks naughty to me!”