To all of which questions, Dr. Oswald Mayer Sheffield knew no answer.
Eight
The men at the controls were the lucky ones. They and, of course, Cimon, who, as astrophysicist and director of the expedition, joined them by special dispensation. The others of the crew had their separate duties, while the remaining scientific personnel preferred the relative comfort of their hydraulic seats during the spiral around and down to Junior.
It was while Junior was still far enough away to be seen as a whole that the scene was at its grandest.
North and south, a third of the way to the equator, lay the icecaps, still at the start of their millennial retreat. Since the Triple G. was spiraling on a north-south great circle (deliberately chosen for the sake of viewing the polar regions, as Cimon, at the cost of less than maximum safety, insisted), each cap in turn was laid out below them.
Each burned equally with sunlight, the consequence of Junior’s untilted axis. And each cap was in sectors, cut like a pie with a rainbowed knife.
The sunward third of each was illuminated by both suns simultaneously into a brilliant white that slowly yellowed westward, and as slowly greened eastward. To the east of the white sector lay another, half as wide, which was reached by the light of Lagrange I only, and the snow there blazed a response of sapphire beauity. To the west, another half sector, exposed to Lagrange II alone, shone in the warn orange red of an Earthly sunset. The three colors graded into one another bandwise, and the similarity to a rainbow was increased thereby.
The final third was dark in contrast, but if one looked carefully enough, it, too, was in parts-unequal parts. The smaller portion was black indeed, but the larger portion had a faint milkiness about it.
Cimon muttered to himself, “Moonlight. Of course,” then looked about hastily to see if he had been overheard. He did not like people to observe the actual process by which conclusions were brought to fruition in his mind. Rather they were to be presented to his students and listeners, to all about him in short, in a polished perfection that showed neither birth nor growth.
But there were only spacemen about and they did not hear him. Despite all their space-hardening, they were fixing whatever concentration they could spare from their duties and instruments upon the wonder before them.
The spiral curved, veered away from north-south to northeast-southwest, finally to the east-west, in which a safe landing was most feasible. The dull thunder of atmosphere carried into the pilot room, thin and shrill at first, but gathering body and volume as the minutes passed.
Until now, in the interest of scientific observation (and to the considerable uneasiness of the Captain) the spiral had been tight, deceleration slight, and the planetary circumnavigations numerous. As they bit into Junior’s air covering, however, deceleration pitched high and die surface rose to meet them.
The icecaps vanished on either side and there began an equal alternation of land and water. A continent, mountainous on either seacoast and flat in between, like a soup plate with two ice-topped rims, flashed below at lengthening intervals. It spread halfway around Junior and the rest was water.
Most of the ocean at the moment was in the dark sector, and what was not lay in the red-orange light of Lagrange II. In the light of that sun, the waters were a dusky purple with a sprinkling of ruddy specks that thickened north and south. Icebergs!
The land was distributed at the moment between the red-orange half sector and the full white light. Only the eastern sea-coast was in the blue green. The eastern mountain range was a startling sight, with its western slopes red and its eastern slopes green.
The ship was slowing rapidly now; the final trip over ocean was done.
Next-landing!
Nine
The first steps were cautious enough. Slow enough, too. Cimon inspected his photochromes of Junior as taken from space with minute care. Under protest, he passed them among the others of the expedition, and more than a few groaned inwardly at the thought of having placed comfort before a chance to see the original of that.
Boris Vernadsky bent over his gas analyzer interminably, a symphony in loud clothes and soft grunts.
“We’re about at sea level, I should judge,” he said, “going by the value of g.”
Then, because he was explaining himself to the rest of the group, he added negligently. “The gravitational constant, that is,” which didn’t help most of them.
He said, “The atmospheric pressure is just about eight hundred millimeters of mercury, which is about 5 per cent higher than on earth. And two hundred forty millimeters of that is oxygen as compared to only one hundred fifty on Earth. Not bad.”
He seemed to be waiting for approval, but scientists found it best to comment as little as possible on data in another man’s specialty.
He went on, “Nitrogen, of course. Dull, isn’t it, the way nature repeats itself like a three-year-old who knows three lessons, period. Takes the fun away when it turns out that a water world always has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Makes the whole thing yawn-worthy.”
“What else in the atmosphere?” asked Cimon irritably. “So far all we have is oxygen, nitrogen, and homely philosophy from kindly Uncle Boris.”
Vernadsky hooked his arm over his seat and said, amiably enough, “What are you? Director or something?”
Cimon, to whom the directorship meant little more than the annoyance of preparing composite reports for the Bureau, flushed and said grimly, “What else in the atmosphere, Dr. Vernadsky?”
Vernadsky said, without looking at his notes, ”Under 1 per cent and over a hundredth of 1 per cent: hydrogen, helium, and carbon dioxide in that order. Under a hundredth of 1 per cent and over a ten thousandth of 1 per cent: methane, argon, and neon in that order. Under a ten thousandth of 1 per cent and over a millionth of a per cent: radon, krypton, and xenon in that order.
“The figures aren’t very informative. About all I can get out of them is that Junior is going to be a happy hunting ground for uranium, that it’s low in potassium, and that it’s no wonder it’s such a lovely little double icecap of a world.”
He did that deliberately, so that someone could ask him how he knew, and someone, with gratifying wonder, inevitably did.
Vernadsky smiled blandly and said, ”Atmospheric radon is ten to a hundred times as high here as on Earth. So is helium. Both radon and helium are produced as by-products of the radioactive breakdown of uranium and thorium. Conclusion: Uranium and thorium minerals are ten to a hundred times as copious in Junior’s crust as in Earth’s.
“Argon, on the other hand, is over a hundred times as low as on Earth. Chances are Junior has none of the argon it originally started with. A planet of this type has only the argon which forms from the breakdown of K40, one of the potassium isotopes. Low argon; low potassium. Simple, kids.”
One of the assembled groups asked. “What about the icecaps?”
Cimon, who knew the answer to that, asked, before Vernadsky could answer the other, “What’s the carbon dioxide content exactly?”
“Zero point zero one six em em,” said Vernadsky.
Cimon nodded, and vouchsafed nothing more.
“Well?” asked the inquirer impatiently.
“Carbon dioxide is only about half what it is on Earth, and it’s the carbon dioxide that gives the hothouse effect. It lets the short waves of sunlight pass through to the planet’s surface, but doesn’t allow the long waves of planetary heat to radiate off. When carbon dioxide concentration goes up as a result of volcanic action, the planet heats up a bit and you have a carboniferous age, with oceans high and land surface at a minimum. When carbon dioxide goes down as a result of vegetation refusing to let a good thing alone, fattening up on the good old CO2 and losing its head about it, temperature drops, ice forms, a vicious cycle of glaciation starts, and voila-”