“Well, it’s a long way from here, but I haven’t anything better to do,” Cross noted. “Let’s go see.”
“Moving in-system. I’m going to take a little extra time to leapfrog that nasty inner asteroid belt as much as possible. In the meantime, we’ve all got lots of new information to work with.”
“Any scan of radio or other broadcast signals from in-system?” An Li asked. “Or the remnants of other ships?”
“Hard to say on the ships. There’s nothing recognizable as a ship’s power signature, if that’s what you mean, not in orbit around any of them or in the visible system, but we’ve only seen half of it and haven’t begun to map things yet. There are life signs on both worlds, even the frozen one, but it’s much too far to tell what sort of life we’re talking about. The pretty blue and white one has a few surface energy signatures that could be ships of some kind, but, if they are, they aren’t big suckers. More like the shuttle we use to go from planet to orbit—only there are no evident ships in orbit, if you see what I mean. That says that they could be anything. The cold little desert one has a vast number of really odd energy signatures, no fixed locations, but there is simply nothing in my data that matches any of them. Could be your alien masterminds, but more likely it’s some kind of energy signatures from minerals or deep down interactions below the crust. I have no records of any readings like this before, but, then again, I’ve got hundreds of cases of readings just as bizarre and all turned out to be natural phenomena.”
We’ve all got aliens on the brain, Randi Queson thought to herself. Still, we had no such thoughts the last trip and look what we met up with. That cold little world there, for example, reminds me a little too much of where we’ve already been.
An Li’s “cut” caused by a flying something turned out to be a pretty nasty slash right across her forehead in a jagged and bloody shape. It was easily attended to, and they even had skin repair in the medical unit that would, over time, make it vanish completely. For the moment, she refused the full repairs, much to everyone’s surprise, and accepted only the treatment pack that would seal and heal it in a day or two. It would also leave a pretty nasty scar that would mar her delicate beauty, and if An Li was anything she was quite vain about that.
Randi’s “bruise” turned out to be a fracture, but, again, it was easily set within the medical unit. She would have very limited movement there and have to wear a healing splint for a few days, but, again, there would be no permanent damage. The fracture was clean and rather slight, not a full break but more a chip. As she was left-handed anyway, it wouldn’t crimp her style very much, and it was likely that both would be fine by the time they got close in on the big planet.
At least the monk scout’s information as far as it went was borne out. The pretty little moon was almost certainly what he’d called Balshazzar; the cold and inhospitable but still livable moon was Kaspar; and still among the missing was Melchior, supposedly much larger than the other two and far more active and violent a world. Kaspar was almost two thirds of the way through its cold side transverse, and Balshazzar about midway. It was likely that all three were within sight for at least a good part of their short “years,” so either Melchior had set just before they’d gotten there or it was due to show up any time now.
And show up it did.
Balshazzar was about 30,000 kilometers around, and the smaller Kaspar was a shade over 22,500 kilometers, but Melchior now was impressive in its own right.
Over 50,000 kilometers at the equator, it was certainly the king of moons even in this system. It was also a nearly impossible mixture of nasty and nice. Mostly ocean, it had one huge continent straddling the equator almost three quarters of the way around, but it didn’t look like anyplace you’d want to go for a vacation. The land was riddled with volcanoes, some huge, most active to some degree, and the entire continental mass was slightly on the move, shuddering here and there with volcanic earthquakes and causing huge fissures, some of which ran for hundreds of kilometers, opening up to reveal bright hot lava. It reminded Randi Queson of a giant jigsaw puzzle in which lava seemed to run at every junction of pieces, but there was sufficient motion that sometimes the pieces were so tightly fitted the meeting edges could not be seen.
It was also smoky, with a permanent cloud layer over a good share of the planet. Still, there were enough forces at work both below and in the gravitational effects of the big planet and other passing moons that the atmosphere was constantly in motion and there were often virtually clear spots. In most areas, though, and particularly in the highest volcanic ranges of the continent, it seemed to be raining all the time, often torrentially. There was certainly vegetation, though; the atmospheric mix, minerals in the volcanic soil, and warmth both from the planet and sun and from the near-surface volcanic activities fed a nearly perfect organic stew.
More comfortable but by no means pleasant were the islands of the mid latitudes, some of enormous size. Like the continent, they were primarily volcanic, but whole areas appeared to be either ages dormant, with often only one, or even no, active ones. There were still active volcanic regions in other respects, but their mountain-building days seemed to have slowed to a crawl or stopped.
Still, the place seemed to teem with life. Vast areas of foliage, low broad-leafed trees and enormous vines, and possibly a lot more, and not just on the islands, either. Life always found a way if there was one, and even on the most active areas of the continent there were large areas of vegetation. White steam rising said that hot magma might not be too far below the ground even there.
Sark looked at the pictures of the three on the big screen and commented in his low, perpetually sour voice, “Well, if I got stuck out here I know which one I’d head for and move to.”
“Huh? Oh, you mean Balshazzar?”
“The pretty one. Sure.”
An Li wasn’t as convinced. “I wonder if it isn’t supposed to be that way. Everybody who likes our kind of climate would be naturally attracted to that one, but if there’s any kind of rhyme or reason to this then that’s the one I’d stay away from. You draw the bugs with sugar and then you trap ’em.”
Nagel chuckled. “Ah, the secret hidden alien masterminds again, huh? Why would they want to lay a trap for such as us? And keep such an elaborate and expensive trap open to little bits of us over such a long time? No, I can’t buy it.”
“Three worlds that all could support human life? That’s not suspicious?”
“I don’t think so. Unprecedented, sure, but it’s a big universe. One, two, three, a dozen, what’s the difference? And if not here, then somewhere else.”
“But they are here,” she persisted. “And linked to human regions via a self-renewing wormhole.”
Randi Queson thought a moment, then said, “You might both be right for all that it matters. The point is, Li’s got a point. Look, from the point of view of sheer pragmatism and a knowledge of human nature, let’s look at the three. Want to find remnants of anybody who came before and might still be around? Go for the pretty one. But don’t expect to find much of value there other than refugees. You’d have to have mines and other heavy-duty works to find much of value on it, particularly with that necessary level of erosion and deposition. Now, if you want to hunt for those mysterious artifacts of some long-gone alien civilization, I’d take Kaspar, the little cold one. Anything left there in the sands or probably in the cliffs would eventually be exposed by the wind and such, and the cold would be a good preservative. But if you want your gemstones, I’d take Melchior. It’s far too dynamic for much else, but those kind of internal forces are just the kind that create unique mineral recipes from whatever compounds are beneath the earth. So, what do we want to go hunting for first? Refugees and aliens, maybe, or even alien refugees, or artifacts, or gems?”