Saturn Rukh (42 page)

“Jeeves!” said Rod, switching his voice tone to command. “Recalculate required mission velocity assuming a wind-assisted launch at the equator.”

“The required mission velocity increment from
Sexdent’s
rockets is now estimated at twenty-nine kilometers per second,” announced Jeeves.

“Wonderful!” cheered Sandra. “We can go back home without putting either us or Peregrine at risk.”

“Zero margin,” muttered Rod grimly. “But at least it isn’t a negative margin anymore. I don’t like it, but we’ll have to live with it.” He turned to Chastity, who had come out of her trance. “We’d better both go over all of Jeeves’s calculations and assumptions.”

“They’ll probably hold up,” Chastity said. “Jeeves is no dummy.” She turned and activated her console screen, the single digit at the end of her left arm alternating with the five digits at the end of her right arm. With Dan’s love and emotional support aiding her already strong personality, Chastity had come to terms with her disfiguring injury. Although the fingernails on her right hand were still kept trimmed so they could operate the joyball controller precisely, they were now each brightly painted, this week with miniatures of the five most picturesque planets—Earth, Mars, and Jupiter with their surface features, and Saturn and Uranus with their rings—on a jet black matte background. She had also completely adjusted to the limitations of her left arm and now casually but affectionately referred to its grub-like appendage as her “pinky.” In addition to punching icons on her console, her left-hand pinky was useful in tasks like painting the fingernails on her right hand—using nail polish brushes modified with a close-fitting “thimble” for a handle.

“Then we’d better work on the timing,” said Rod. “The only way we’re going to keep that margin from going negative is to make sure we launch from Saturn at exactly the right time from exactly the right place.”

“It isn’t going to be easy convincing Peregrine to fly us south to the equator,” warned Sandra. “Although you and I know the millistoma is a myth, the monster is real to the rukhs.”

“Convincing Peregrine is
your
job,” said Rod gruffly, turning away from her to face the pilot console. “I’ll tell you where and when, and you make sure Big Bird gets us there.”

Sandra looked dismayed. There was no way that she could make the creature perform to schedule.

“We should have a launch window about every eleven hours,” Chastity said to her reassuringly. “When the launch point is on the opposite side of Saturn from Titan. You just get Peregrine to take us to the region with the highest east wind velocity and fly along it for a few days, and Rod and I can work out the best timing.”

“There’s the little matter of damage to the launch pad,” said Dan. “After getting all this cooperation from our alien friend, it just doesn’t seem like a proper way to say good-bye—frying it with our exhaust when we leave.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said Sandra. “In order to make sure Peregrine didn’t dump us off its back, one of the first words that Seichi and I learned was their word for doing a roll maneuver. I got both Uppereye and Lowereye to promise that they wouldn’t roll us off Peregrine’s back. When the time comes, I’ll ask for the roll and we’ll be launched.”

“Hmmm,” said Rod. “We’ll lose a few hundred meters in altitude before we can start our engines safely. We’ll have to put that in Jeeves’s launch model.”

“We want to start at as high an altitude as possible,” said Chastity. “How high can Peregrine take us?”

“I don’t know,” said Sandra. “I’ll make it a point to ask during my next session with Uppereye.”

“Actually, it’s a combination of both launch altitude and launch velocity that needs to be optimized,” said Rod. “I know that Peregrine can reach over two hundred klours in a dive. That amounts to fifty meters a second. With zero margin, every meter-per-second helps. How fast can Uppereye fly Peregrine when she really puts her mind to it?”

“I’m sure she doesn’t know,” said Sandra. “But if Pete or Doc can rig up a way to measure our velocity with respect to the air, I’ll talk Uppereye into trying bursts of high-speed flying at various altitudes.”

“I’m going to be pretty busy disconnecting the meta factory from the ship,” said Pete.

“I’ll come up with an airspeed indicator,” said Dan. “Probably along the lines of an anemometer. Uppereye or Lowereye can hold it up in the airstream near the prow.”

“They’ll like that,” said Sandra. “Another ‘thing’ for them to keep after we’re gone. Can you make it so they can read the speed? They would love that—probably try harder to fly at top speed to make the indicator read higher.”

“If it’ll inspire them to do that, then I’ll definitely make sure they get a speed indicator. Should it be digital or analog?”

“Something like a thermometer probably would be easiest for them to interpret—the longer the red line on the indicator, the faster they’re going.”

“Thermometer it is!” said Doc. “I’ll just steal the electronic one on the food freezer and replace the thermocouple voltage input with voltage from a jury-rigged anemometer. Hope they don’t mind measuring their flying speed in ‘degrees C’ instead of ‘klours’...” He got up, opened up the door to the galley storage compartment, and started looking at the fastenings for the thermometer on the freezer compartment.

Now that they had a definite plan, everyone cheered up as they went into action, trying hard not to let themselves think too much of the slim margin that they had.

At the language lesson the next night, Sandra talked to Uppereye about their new plan for returning to Earth. Fortunately, having the pictorial capability of the portable console made it easy to explain, especially since Uppereye, being jet powered, knew firsthand about the concept of action and reaction, and being an astronomer, already knew that objects moving in free fall moved along elliptical orbits.

“... then, after we fill
Sexdent
with flame juice, we dive once again around Saturn, use the flame juice to push
Sexdent
so it flies even faster, then we fly off home to Earth.”

“Sandra go home,” said Uppereye. “That make Uppereye sad.”

There was a long pause as the two highly dissimilar creatures thought about how much each would miss the other. Sandra tried to think of something reassuring to say. She expected that one day she would come back to Saturn as part of the Space Unlimited crew assigned to the orbiting space station monitoring the polar meta factories. The monitoring crew would need to have someone knowledgeable assigned to be “liaison” to the rukhs. But all of that was far in the future, and Sandra couldn’t promise that she would return. Even if she did return, it was doubtful that she would ever again come eye-to-eye with her friend. The cost and the risk of visiting the deep gravity well of Saturn were just too high. The best the two could ever hope for would be a video link through a radioisotope-powered transponder parachuted down to the flock once the orbital space station had been set up.

It was Uppereye that broke the poignant silence. “Uppereye more sad if Sandra die. Uppereye happy Sandra go home and not die. Uppereye help Sandra go home.”

Initially it was easy for Uppereye to convince the rest of the flock to head back south again. The hunting was better there and they would be doing that anyway in the not-too-distant future once Saturn had passed its aphelion and the Sun, having reached its farthest point and being its dimmest, started to brighten again. But as the flock drew closer to the equator, the instinctive fear of the millistoma grew ever stronger.

“The flock is slowing down,” Rod complained to Sandra one evening. “We’ve been stuck near ten degrees north for the past three days. Can’t you get them to keep moving south?”

“Uppereye has been doing her best,” said Sandra. “But the elders of the flock are advising caution. Can’t we launch from here? Surely the difference in Saturn’s rotational speed at ten degrees north can’t be that much different from the speed at the equator.”

“It isn’t,” replied Rod. “Only one hundred and fifty meters a second. But what we need is that five hundred meters a second from the equatorial winds. If we don’t have that, we have negative margin.”

Dan spoke up. “Don’t forget we’ve got plenty of food, now that we know we don’t have to stretch it out for two years. As long as the reactor and tether hold up, we can mark time here until the flock feels better about moving farther south.”

“I don’t like it, but I guess I’ll have to live with it,” muttered Rod. He turned to Sandra. “Just keep reminding Uppereye every chance you get.” Sandra didn’t reply. She was glad that Chastity was on watch duty that night instead of Rod. He would have kept reminding her all night to bug Uppereye about heading south. She finished her meal and headed for the airlock door to go outside for the nightly language lesson.

~ * ~

“Dawn comes soon,” said Uppereye as they neared the end of the lesson. “This lighttime flock not hunt. Flock help Kestrel instead. Kestrel be having baby. Sandra ask Uppereye many times about baby rukhs. Would Sandra like to see baby rukh born?”

Sandra, whose eyes had been beginning to blink tiredly as the night drew on, suddenly was wide awake. “Yes!” she cried. “How?”

“Uppereye once pick up Chastity. Chastity heavy, but not too heavy. Chastity hold on to
Sexdent.
Uppereye not carry Chastity away.”

“You’re damn right you didn’t!” murmured Chastity over the radio link from the watch deck.

“Sandra not as big as Chastity ...” continued Uppereye.

“Humph,” muttered Chastity.

“If Sandra not hold on to
Sexdent,
Uppereye can carry Sandra. Uppereye can carry Sandra to Kestrel. Sandra see baby born.”

“Hey! Wait a minute!” yelled Chastity over the radio link. “Sandra! As acting commander I forbid it!”

“Let me get some new oxygen tanks,” Sandra replied to Uppereye, ducking inside the open outer airlock door. Once inside, she switched to radio link and argued with Chastity.

“Chass! It’ll be my
one
chance to see a baby rukh being born. It’ll be the one chance of anyone in the
whole human race
seeing a baby rukh being born. I’ll take
two
safety lines and make sure one of them is always snug around Uppereye’s neck. Sooner or later Uppereye has to come back to Peregrine and I’ll come back with her.”

“Okay …” said Chastity reluctantly, only wishing that Uppereye had the strength to carry two humans so she could go along too.

Initially Uppereye had planned to carry Sandra in her claws, but Sandra had another idea. She had Uppereye bend her eye down next to the airlock door platform. With Uppereye’s help, she looped one safety line around Uppereye’s first neck segment and cinched it tight. She then climbed up on Uppereye’s head and sat down just behind her eye, legs astraddle her neck, holding on to the cinched safety line with one hand like a cowboy riding a bull. For extra security, in case she lost her grip, she hooked her other safety line to the cinched one.

Feeling as if she were riding a dragon, Sandra watched below her feet as the canards inflated from the side of Uppereye’s head, lifting them both high in the air. Once elevated, Uppereye simultaneously air-surfed and crawled across the tops of the feathers, the long neck moving in a sinuous fashion across the feather forest somewhat like a sidewinder snake moving across the desert sands. They soon reached the niche in the keel where Uppereye rested. For the next number of minutes Sandra got to view what it was like being a rukh— master of the air—gazing outward toward the distant horizon. The experience was slightly marred by the occasional splat of a miniature roundfloater on her helmet, but it was exhilarating nevertheless. Fortunately, everything she was seeing was being recorded by the video camera on her helmet, where it was transmitted back to
Sexdent
by her radio link to be stored in Jeeves’s cavernous memory.

Peregrine’s jets pulsed harder and soon the rukh caught up with the rest of the flock, who were gathered in a clump, flying in formation all at the same level. Peregrine’s body rumbled and the flock parted, letting them through. At the center of the flock was Kestrel, whom Sandra recognized by the anomalous single black feather in its otherwise colorful tail.

“Hold line good!” rumbled the warning from the neck sacs below Sandra. “Uppereye fly to back of Kestrel.”

Sandra rechecked her safety line as the canards inflated once again beneath her feet. This time the flight of Uppereye’s head was across the gap between the two cruising birds and Sandra got a chance to look down. This was the view that Lowereye normally had. As Sandra lifted her glance to look ahead to their landing place, she realized that she was quite willing to let Lowereye keep his monopoly on that long scary view downward.

They landed well to the rear of Kestrel’s back. The region where Uppereye brought them down was very similar to an analogous region on Peregrine’s back. In this rear portion of the upper body of a rukh, the “trees” in the feather “forest” grew shorter, finer, and softer, producing a large oval “meadow” of black down. Running down the center of the “meadow” was a single “furrow.” The furrow was Kestrel’s vagina, located on the upper, female side of the rukh body. Normally, the furrow was tightly closed—just a long sharp-cusped shallow depression in the black down meadow. Today, however, it was slightly open and moist. Pushing its way out through the opening was an eye! It was a rukh eye on a rukh neck, but it was only two meters in diameter instead of ten.