"OK." Hu was flat-voiced, angry. "To continue with the summary of planetography . . ." As she spoke, images illustrating the subject matter entered the minds of her listeners and textual data were superimposed on their vision fields. She wanted to present it fully, to force all the information on them, despite their disinterest. She had no illusion that some of them would retain what she said, or even understand it. But she would make the effort anyway.
"As you can see, the extreme smoothness of the ocellus on III is plain evidence, at least to me, of the enormously slow process of resolidification. This implies that either there was a forced eccentricity in this presently very regular system or else an object impacted on III that was itself a source of heat energy. To account for the paucity of craters we see here, we must posit, in addition to the extreme enhancement of cratering rates on the leading hemisphere relative to the trailing, a very long-lived glacial annealing process.
"Though superficially it looks like the basins on Tethys and Titania, it seems to be a different phenomenon. The data suggest that a small body, fifty kilometers or less in diameter, wrought profound changes in the entire object, melting a fifth of its total volume. You can see how the craters covering the remainder of the moon are lacking in relief. What you see are the remains of old craters at some depth, covered by the neon, argon, and other gases that constituted Ill's atmosphere during this period. . . ." Suddenly, Ariane spoke up. "What does that mean, a body that tiny as source of heat?" Tem said, "Any concentration of radionuclide would do,though it would have to have a relatively short half-life. I wonder what cosmological process would concentrate it?"
"I have already given this matter a great deal of thought," said Jana. "The total disruption of any second-generation macrobody that had completely fractionated would account for it. My report to the IAAU-PD will suggest as much."
"Do you think that this 'body' was part of the Iridean system?" asked John.
"Unlikely since we're dealing with a planetary system that formed out of almost pristine type-2 galactic material. Iris and her satellites show a general depletion ofall radionuclides , as well as a scarcity of transironic elements. It was probably an intruder."
"What about mascons?" asked Krzakwa. "Is there one under the ocellus?"
"There's a slight gravitational anomaly associated with it, but this object sank almost to the center of Ocypete, so it's difficult to resolve it from the silicate core in general.
"Iris itself is very different from the gas giants we're used to. Aside from its small size, hardly half again the diameter of the Earth and only about 0.58e-mass, and slow rotation rate, it's meteorologically bland. Except at the very lowest levels, where there is a slow convective overturning, the atmosphere is quiescent. Iris, or at least the eighty percent of its total mass that is gaseous, has differentiated, giving rise to the Rayleigh -scattering mantle, which is a thick layer of hydrogen and, underneath it, a thinner stratum of helium. The surface of the white ball within is made up of nitrogen cirrus not unlike the obscuring haze of Saturn. I should point out that Iris is losing considerable mass due to solar irradiation. It has only been able to maintain its current mass/diameter ratio because of the extreme cold." Aksinia laughed. "You mean it's evaporating?"
Jana nodded. "If it stayed this distance from Sol, it would dwindle to about a fifth of its present size, at which point its gravitation would be sufficient to permit retention of theremaining gases.....I can see by some of your faces that seems counterintuitive. You think that the smaller it gets the less able it should be to retain anything. Well, that's true—but it's a simple matter of the point at which the velocities in the excited gases attain escape velocity for that particular depth in the gravitational field. There are plenty of elementary texts in the library ..."
Another look about. Too many faces were blank. Some of them didn't know enough for anything to be counterintuitive. Once again, she wondered what the hell they were doing out here. . . . She sighed, and went on. "Anyway, Iris' magnetosphere is very low grade, almost nonexistent, so we won't have to waste energy on a charged-particle shield.
"The Iridean ring is very much like Saturn's, without, of course, the gaps that give Saturn's its unique appearance. Iris' ring is nearly opaque, and it has a greater proportion of millimeter and smaller particles, there not being much in the way of magnetic sweeping here. Aello is an interesting small body which shows no immediately identifiable endogenic asterologic features. It's probably the best chance we'll ever get to examine a nearly pristine, totally undifferentiated body composed of cryogenic volatiles. Podarge is much like the many similar-sized moons in the Solar System, showing resurfaced terrains and an albedo asymmetry due to preferential gardening of the 'front' hemisphere. Considering that the materials making up these satellites are extremely volatile, we've seen few surprises. The colder temperatures have been a powerful force influencing these exotic ices to behave in a familiar fashion.
"As you might guess, my report is much more detailed." Jana concluded by showing them a skilled 3V
collage of Iris and its satellites projected against the tapestry of a deep-space sky. The thing was prettier than any out-the-window view they'd seen since rounding Jupiter. There was a long moment of silence.
"Next business, then." She looked at Cornwell.
The musician nodded, pulling off his circlet, but he waited for a while before he spoke. "Maybe this isn't the correct time to bring this up. I don't know. We've got some big adaptations to make in the near future. The ten of us are going to be building a colony, perhaps not very isolated in the sense that we will still have access to many of the benefits of Comnet ona delayed basis, but isolated in the sense that we're going to have to provide each other with human society." He stopped, sighed heavily, wondering where his prepared words had gone. "The 'quest' is over. Now we have to get into the period of living happily ever after. It's hard not to see how stupidly we've been treating each other. We're all familiar with the emotional difficulties that come from being in the midst of too many people. . . . Some of us are here to escape just that. Well. I'm not sure we've come to grips with the problems of being in a permanent small group. When this adventure first occurred to me, I envisioned us becoming more closely knit, perhaps even experimenting with induction rapport. . . . The opposite is what seems to be happening." He stopped, looking at them all, seeking some kind of response. What he saw was that they were waiting for him to continue, to draw some kind of conclusion. Obviously, when you stated a problem, most people expected you to propose some kind of solution. He sought for something to say, some plea for reasonableness, but it was too late.
Sealock wasn't smiling, not even his usual contemptuous smirk, as he said, "I imagine we all saw this coming. You're dissatisfied with your life. Now you want to tinker with the rest of us. . . ." Taken aback, John started to say something, but another voice interrupted.
"It's just boredom!" said Harmon Prynne.
By this time Aksinia had broken out of whatever trance state was keeping her quiet, and she reacted to the previous remark. "Come on, Brendan. He's right, of course. We're turning into a bunch of jerks. It seems to me that not one of us has come to grips with the reality of this situation."
"Reality?What the hell ..." Sealock grinned at her and shook his head. "I wonder how many of you really understand your own perceptions?" He nodded at Prynne. "It's not boredom, and I refuse to speculate on the nature of someone's reality perception. . . . Sure, there's a lot of friction here. Some of it comes from an unwillingness to recognize that different people have different interests. Sometimes, when I say something, even something I'm supposed to be an expert in, people act like it's some kind of personal reproach."