“It’s the keel,” John said. He and Al were their competitors from GeoGlobal. They’d arrived a few days before, along with the third crew that would participate in the race. “A sailboat would be just like a balloon if it didn’t have a keel.”
“Oh, I see. That’s why the Jupiter ships have that long ribbon under them,” the pilot remarked. “But how does that help them move against the wind? And isn’t it impossible to go faster than the wind?”
“Good question,” Pascal said, glad of the distraction. “A sailboat goes faster into the wind, not slower. The slowest speed of all is when you run with the wind directly behind you.”
Pascal let the kid think about that for a moment before he continued. “A sail is an airfoil. One side forms a pocket of relatively dead air. The opposite side is bent out so that the wind has a longer distance to travel. The pressure differential pulls the sailboat along.”
“A foresail funnels the air across the main and accentuates the effect,” Al injected. “The closer you haul to the direction of the wind the faster you go.”
John spoke up, “It’s just a matter of physics: the angle of force on the sail and the keel produces a vector of force that moves the boat forward. The steeper the angle the greater the forward thrust. The trick is to balance the force of the wind and the sails, adjusting your angle of attack to obtain the greatest forward momentum possible, maximizing the transfer of static air pressure to dynamic motive force.”
“Oh, I understand,” the operator said, screwing his face up in concentration. “It’s like continuously solving a set of differential equations. ” He smiled at them as if he were proud of learning the lesson so well.
“Don’t bust a gut trying to do that if you’re ever in a sailboat, kid,” Louella said. “It’s all scientific bullshit.”
Louella glared at the three of them; a fierce set to her eyes and mouth that brooked no interruption. “These guys want you to think that sailing’s a science—that it’s all application of mathematical rules and physics. Listening to them, you’d think that you’re constantly thinking, calculating, and plotting. Well, that’s all a pile of crap—sailing isn’t some branch of engineering.”
She leaned forward to look straight into the operator’s eyes, her expression softening as she did so. “Sailing’s a love affair between you, the boat, the water, and the wind. Every one of them has to be balanced, held in check; let any one of them dominate and you’ve lost it. A good sailor has to be conscious of wind and water and responsive to the boat’s needs. You have to understand the language of wind and sea and ship—you have to feel that edge that means you’re running a tight line with every nerve of your body. The boat’ll tell you how she wants to behave; she’ll fight you when you’re wrong, and support you when you’re right.”
She brushed at her cheek, as if something had gotten in her eye, before she continued. “The point I’m trying so damn hard to get across to you is that sailing is an art, not a bloody damn science. That means you have to sail with your heart, as well as your mind. When you’re on the sea, managing the sails and the wheel, the rest of the Universe could disappear, for all that you care. When everything works right, there’s a rhythm, a reverie that transforms you, that makes you one with the Universe. If you put everything you have into it, mind and body, your ego disappears—its just you, the boat, the wind, and the water.”
She turned back to stare out the viewport at the advancing planet and slumped into her seat. “If it was just science, JBI wouldn’t be paying the big bucks to haul my ass all the way out here. No, they’d get some double-dome Ph. and D. to build a little machine to do it, and the hell with the beauty of a good line and a strong wind.
“But the fact that I am here to sail on Jupiter’s orange seas says that there’s still a human element to sailing that’s better than the most refined engineering approach. It says that a human being can still stand on a ship’s deck and dare the wind and the seas to do their worst. It tells me that even some damn overgrown pig of a planet can’t tame the human spirit!”
The silence prevailed for long minutes. “Well,” said Al, apropos of nothing. “Well.”
Louella said nothing for the rest of the trip down into the thick atmosphere. Pascal tried to ignore the view as sunrise raced across Jupiter’s face, too far below.
Rams’s destination was floating along at twenty-odd meters per second to the east of his present position. Her track was so reliably managed that the station’s precise location could be calculated to within a kilometer.
Somewhere on the other side of CS-42 a whirling hurricane was advancing. Given the right spin and direction these storms could grow beyond reasonable bounds, turning into blows that made Earth’s hurricanes look like a faint puff of air. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred Jupiter’s hurricanes dissipated quickly, within two or three of his ten-hour rotations. If Rams was lucky, this one would do the same.
Rams was dismayed to discover that Primrose fell even farther westward off of her planned track whenever he turned to the north. That meant two things: the winds were continuing to shift, and the storm was deeper than expected. It looked as if he’d hit the edges of a major storm.
For the thousandth time he wished that Jupiter wasn’t so electronically active. The ambient white noise on the radio bands was so intense that even pulse-code modulation couldn’t punch a signal through. Just one crummy satellite picture, one quick radar image, one short broadcast was all he’d need to find out what was happening with the storm.
Instead, all he knew about the storm was its rough starting position, Weather’s predicted track, and the data the station master provided about prevailing winds. He also had the data from his own inertial system. From those weak components he had to navigate through a dark eight thousand kilometers, face unknown winds, and find the tiny station that was his destination.
“A little bit cramped, isn’t it?” Pascal remarked as they inspected Thorn, their tiny, nine-hundred ton, double-masted barque. He sat with one leg extended into the cockpit and the other in the “stateroom,” which also served as kitchen, bath, and bedroom. A single bunk stretched for two meters across the overhead with a single small seat below, which, when lifted, revealed the toilet. A tiny shelf with a built-in microwave oven and a recessed sink—hidden under the working surface—ran along the second bulkhead, to the right. Their food and medical supplies were stored in hanging bags, Velcroed to the bulkhead above the microwave.
On the opposite bulkhead was a fold-down table whose opened edge would be in the lap of whoever was sitting on the seat. The navigation instruments, computer, and the storage for charts and instruments were revealed when the table was down. Rams could reach out with his left arm and just about touch the edge of the helmsman’s seat, it was that close. For a big boat Thorn had mighty small crew quarters.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have picked a cargo hauler—it’s a little cramped, isn’t it?” Louella remarked as she ducked her head to peek into the compartment. “Place looked a lot roomier in the plans. I guess the crew wasn’t supposed to stay aboard for more than a day or two.”
Pascal looked around. “Why couldn’t they convert some of that cargo hold? This is pretty tight. I don’t relish spending a couple of weeks in here.” “Too much trouble just to give us a little bit of comfort. I don’t think the expense would be worth it—might upset the boat’s balance.”