Robert L. Forward - Rocheworld 01 - Rocheworld

Rocheworld

Book 1 of the Rocheworld Series

Dr. Robert L. Forward

Rocheworld

Powered by a revolutionary laser-driven stardrive, the first interstellar

spaceship would reach the double planet that circled Barnard's Star in a mere twenty years. Some of the

world's finest scientists were aboard that ship, and they would arrive prepared for adventure, danger

and--to them, most important of all--the thrill of scientific discovery. But what they would find, both in

terms of danger and discovery, would surpass all their expectations.

Unlike so much "far out" science fiction this novel is based on solid scientific reasoning by a world-class

physicist. The weird intelligences ofRocheworld are imaginary, but we could start work on Forward's

laser-driven starprobe tomorrow.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:Sometimes it takes a big book to bring life to a big concept; a much shorter,

substantially different version of this novel was published in hardcover in 1982 (paperback from Baen),

but that version was rushed to publication before the author was ready. Now, with an additional50

thousand words -longer than most novels!-Robert Forward offers us the novel thatFlight of the

Dragonfly should have been: ROCHEWORLD! If you likedFlight of the Dragonfly you'll love

Rocheworld

Cover art by David Mattingly

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, April 1990

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of theAmericas

New York ,NY10020

Printed in theUnited States of America

ISBN: 0-671-69869-9

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale,NY10471

www.baen.com

Production by Windhaven Press

Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights

http://www.webwrights.com

For Eve

Who thought it would be fun to ride on a flouwen.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to:

Edouard Albert Roche (1820-1883)

—who showed that the world isn't always round,

Charles Sheffield

—who also thought this system was fun,

Paul L. Blass, Carl Richard Feynman, David K. Lynch, Patrick L. McGuire, Daryl Mallett, Hans P.

Moravec, A. Jay Palmer, Zane D. Parzen, Jef Poskanzer, Daniel G. Shapiro, Jacqueline Stafsudd, and

Mark Zimmerman, who helped me in several technical areas. My love and special thanks to Martha for

her encouragement and literary assistance.

The "Christmas Bush" motile was jointly conceived by Hans P. Moravec and Robert L. Forward, and

drawn by Jef Poskanzer using a CAD system.

All final art was expertly prepared by Sam Takata and the rest of the group at Multi-Graphics.

Rocheworld

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 - BEGINNING

CHAPTER 2 - PICKING

CHAPTER 3 - CHOOSING

CHAPTER 4 - TRAINING

CHAPTER 5 - LEAVING

CHAPTER 6 - TRAVELING

CHAPTER 7 - HEALING

CHAPTER 8 - STOPPING

CHAPTER 9 - EXPLORING

CHAPTER 10 - LANDING

CHAPTER 11 - FLYING

CHAPTER 12 - FALLING

CHAPTER 13 - CRASHING

CHAPTER 14 - MEETING

CHAPTER 15 - MATING

CHAPTER 16 - TALKING

CHAPTER 17 - FLOATING

CHAPTER 18 - DIVING

CHAPTER 19 - SURFING

CHAPTER 20 - REPORTING

CHAPTER 21 - ENDING

CHAPTER 22 - HEARING

CHAPTER 23 - CASTING

CAVEATS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1—BEGINNING

toc

The torn shred of aluminum lightsail rippled lightly down through the thin atmosphere and settled onto the

calm ocean. The robot probe the sail had once carried continued on its way back into the interstellar

blackness, its flyby study of the Barnard planetary system completed. The messages of its discoveries

would reach Earth six years later. The microthin film of aluminum sail material was no match for the

ammonia-water ocean covering this egg of a planet. It dissolved into a bitter taste of aluminum hydroxide.

Clear«»White«»Whistle was warming on top of the ocean in the red glare from Hot. Hot suddenly

became less. The darkness was not like that from a storm shadow, but much sharper. It was almost as if

Sky¤Rock had suddenly moved in front of Hot. The darkness came closer, then there was a sharp thin

taste of bitterness in the ocean.

Clear«»White«»Whistle dove under the ocean to escape the bitterness, then came to the surface. The

taste was still there. Another dive—it was there too. A sounding dive a long distance away, it was still

there, but the taste was weaker and the sheet of darkness was being eaten by the ocean. Hot peered

through the holes.

For a long time Clear«»White«»Whistle tasted the bitterness and thought about the strange thing that

came from nothing but was something. Thoughts came to it about exploring the nothing above, but that

was impossible...

«But only carefully contrived mathematical propositions are truly impossible,» mused

Clear«»White«»Whistle. «After all, the bitter darkness came from nothing, and I can look into nothing,

although poorly. I know from looking that Hot and Warm are sources of light and heat, but though I have

tried hard, I cannot see them. If only my looking portions could be focused like my seeing portions...»

A thought came to the alien, and the large amorphous body of white jelly started to condense.

Clear«»White«»Whistle squeezed the water out of its body, turned into a dense white rock, and sank to

the bottom of the ocean. The concentrated whiteness of the fluids that constituted its "brain" now thought

at a higher rate.

Equations for a focusing detector based on time differences went through a sophisticated mathematical

transformation into the equations for a focusing detector using distance differences. This detector would

"look" using light instead of "seeing" using sound. The mathematical solution now obvious,

Clear«»White«»Whistle, the toolless engineer, dissolved and swam up again to the surface as an

undulating white cloud.

The thinking had taken a long time. Hot was gone. It had moved behind Sky¤Rock, a large object that

hovered motionless in the sky above this region of the ocean. Sky¤Rock was dark, and no longer gave

off its rocklike, reddish-gray light. The sky was not completely dark, however, for Warm had risen and

was now a weak flare overhead.

Using the mathematical equations as a guide, Clear«»White«»Whistle formed a portion of its body into a

sphere and concentrated. The white thought substance in the sphere flowed out into the rest of its body

to leave the sphere a clear gel. Further concentration, and water dripped from the surface of the sphere

until it was a dense clear ball. Through the now crystalline sphere streamed the rays of light from the

heavens to come to a crude focus in the opposite side of the sphere. The white flesh next to the clear

sphere looked at the tiny spots of light focused on its surface. The light patterns showed Warm as a small

disk of mottled red. Around Warm were smaller bright lights with sharp cusps and fuzzy edges.

A slight adjustment of the gelatine sphere into a crude lens and the distorted spots turned into smaller

disks. As the lens focused on the moons of the giant red planet, Gargantua, the blackness of the night sky

all around the planet blossomed with hundreds of tiny pinpoints of light.

Clear«»White«»Whistle stared with its newly invented "eye" at the multicolored stars in the sky and

wondered.

CHAPTER 2—PICKING

toc

Boredom is a Space Marine's worst enemy, butthese Marines were not bored.

"Close in! You squinty-eyed offspring of a BASIC program. So what if you've lost your outside video!

You've still got radar and ground plots! Close in!"

The words came from deep inside a short, chunky, round-faced woman with dark-black skin, a

close-cropped head of curly black hair, and a crisp Marine Officer's uniform seemingly tattooed on her

muscular body.

General Virginia Jones punched her supervisory keyboard as her parade-ground voice echoed off the

naked beams and taut pressurized walls of the crowded cubicle. Crammed into the compact control

room of a Space Marine Lightsail Interceptor, the programmers were short-circuiting the software in the

ship's computer to optimize an "unwilling capture" trajectory between their low acceleration twenty-five

kilometer-diameter sailcraft and the radar image of a lumbering cargo hauler. The huge heavy-lift vehicle

was rising slowly from its launch pad deep in Soviet Russia on its way to resupply one of the Soviet

bases in geosynchronous orbit.

"Boarding party!" General Jones roared to the deck below. "You've got ten minutes to do the

fifteen-minute suiting drill! Move it!"

There was a bustle as hammocks were stowed to give a little more room in the tiny communal barracks.

Suits were lifted from lockers and donned—rapidly, but carefully. General Jones looked sternly around

at the organized pandemonium and took a bite of her energy stick. She looked at it in distaste, thought

blissfully of the excellent mess back at the Space Marine Orbital Base, then stoically took another bite of

the energy bar. If it was good enough for her Marines, it was good enough for her.

Like the PT boats in World War II almost a century ago, the Interceptors had to be fast. With only the

light pressure from the Sun to push them, that meant keeping weight down. It was battle rations every

meal when the Space Marines were on Interceptor duty.

General Jones carefully watched the captain of the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly

around. Captain Anthony Roma was short and handsome, with dark flashing eyes and a youthful wave of

hair over his forehead that had Jinjur's mind wandering slightly. Captain Roma was the best lightsail pilot

in space (with the possible exception of Jinjur herself).

The lightsail scooped, dumping its cross-orbit excess speed in the upper atmosphere by using its huge

expanse of sail like a sea anchor. It tilted to maximize the solar photon pressure and rose again in a

pursuit trajectory of the bogey. Ten minutes later General Jones called a halt to the hunt of the phantom

fox.

"Freeze program," she said, then turned and tapped a code word into her command console. The

computer memory of the practice pursuit was locked until she released it. The primary purpose of this

exercise had been to test the reconfiguration skills of the human element of her computer-operated

spaceship—the programmers. By reconfiguring the software in the computer to take into account its loss

of components and capabilities, the programmers could hopefully tune the program to obtain its optimum

response time. She wished the Interceptors could have the latest in self-reprogramming computers, or at

least the touch-screen input terminals, but that was many fiscal-budget cycles away.

The study of the programmer responses could take place later. General Jones lifted herself up in the

weak acceleration, coiled her short, powerful legs under her compact body, hooked the toes of her

corridor boots under the command console, and launched herself toward the "sortie" port. There was

more to a Space Marine Interceptor than sail, computer, and programmers, and she was the preventive

maintenance technician for that fourth component.

The Space Marines were still frozen at attention in the sortie port, their 'stiction boots firmly attached to

the deck. Their commander swam in free-fall among them, the lieutenant of the boarding party close

behind her.

She approached the first Marine, punched a code into his chest-pack and read the result.

"Fine, Pete," she said. "Shuck the suit and take a break." She moved to the next one.

"Hi, Amalita." She punched the Marine's chest-pack and read out the performance index.

"Good timing!" she said. Her eyes grinned up at the proud Marine. "Seven minutes, thirteen seconds,

and no suit flags! I'm proud of you!"

She moved on to the next. The readout had no flags, but her instincts knew something was wrong. She

stared at the face of the Marine through the visor. His bewildered eyes indicated something unknown was

bothering him. She grabbed him by both arms, planted herself on the deck, lifted him bodily, and turned

him around. He felt oddly out of balance. She examined the tell-tales on his support pack. They were

fine—both tanks full of air. She stopped and raised a sharp pale-brown knuckle and gave the rounded

ends of the two air tanks a rap. One tinked like a fiber-wound titanium balloon stretched to its utmost.

The other tonked.

In her rage, she smashed the offending tell-tale with her fist and jerked the poor Marine around until he

was facing her. Tears welled from her dark brown eyes.

"Everlasting elephants, Mike!! If it doesn't feel right, don't put it on!!! Even if the blazzflaggin' thing says

it's OK! I want you alive!!"

She jammed the stricken Marine back down to the floor where his 'stiction boots took hold again. Then

pushing against him, she rose up and grabbed a handhold in the ceiling of the crowded port.

"I want youALL alive!" she roared, looking around at the ranks of cowed killers.

"The next time one of you blue-nosed monkeys puts on a bad suit, I'll personally kick you from here to

PLUTO!"

She turned, and sucking the back of her hand, swam out the lock, leaving a thoughtful lieutenant to finish

the inspection. General Jones had not yet mentioned his responsibilities in this infraction, but he expected

to hear about it as soon as they were where the troops couldn't overhear. He wasn't looking forward to

it, for General "Jinjur" had not gotten her nickname by being lenient with officers that allowed her troops

to get into danger.

General Jones was half-way through the analysis of the interception exercise when a message came

through from the Space Marine Orbital Base. The Russians had announced a launch to resupply one of

their geosynchronous-orbit manned space stations. The Interceptor that Jinjur was inspecting was in the

best position, and was assigned the job of monitoring the launch. She carefully watched the Captain of

the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly around. The sunlight hit the sail, the acceleration

built up to a few percent of Earth's gravity, and the floating objects in the room drifted downward. The

Captain called on one of the orbiting space forts above him for more power, and there was a blinding

flash in the video monitor as a powerful laser beam struck the sail with a light beam five times brighter

than the Sun. The acceleration rose to one-tenth gee and they skimmed rapidly above the Earth's

atmosphere, gaining speed by the minute.

Soon the sailcraft's trackers had the Russian booster on their screens. Jinjur watched as the massive

payload pushed its way slowly up out of the sea of air, rising vertically to over two thousand kilometers.

As it reached the peak of its trajectory, the tiny image began to grow wings. The wings became larger

and larger until they dwarfed the twenty-five kilometer diameter sail of the Interceptor. Jinjur admired the

deployment speed of the lightsail. The pilot must be Ledenov or Petrov with a new deployment program.

The huge sailship caught the Sun's rays and started its climbing spiral outward to the distant space station

thirty-six thousand kilometers overhead. Unlike the Interceptor, which was built for speed, this was a tug.

It would take almost a month to haul its heavy load into the heavens.

The Interceptor Captain glanced at Jinjur and she nodded approval. He reached for a microphone and

made a call to the U.N. Space Peacekeeping Authority. UNSPA had no forces. They used those of the

spacefaring nations instead. TheUnited States had put Jinjur's sailcraft in a position where it could carry

out an interception to check and make sure that no unauthorized weapons were in the enemy cargo. But

not all ships were searched, only a random sample. The keeper of the random number generator was

UNSPA.

"This is Captain Anthony Roma of the Greater United States Space Marine Interceptor Iwo Jima calling

United Nations Space Peacekeeping Authority. I have intercepted a cargo light-tug of theUnion of Soviet

Socialist Republics . Request permission to board for Space-Peacekeeping inspection," he asked.

There was a pause as the UNSPA operator consulted a UN official. The official pushed a button on a

carefully guarded machine.

"Permission granted," came the reply.

"GONG!" shouted Jinjur. "We've hit the jackpot!"

"Attention all hands!" said Captain Roma. "Prepare for an authorized inspection of a foreign spacecraft."

There was a bustle as the control room filled up, while down below, spacesuits recently stored away in

lockers were removed again, checked over carefully, then just as carefully donned.

Jinjur watched through the next hour as Captain Roma closed in on the Russian sail. They zoomed in

with their video camera and explored the outside of the payload section. It was nearly lost in the immense

sea of shining aluminum film.

"Looks like a perfectly ordinary cargo hauler to me," said Jinjur to the Captain. "But the way to keep

those Ruskies honest is to give them a good shakedown whenever we get permission. I want one of the

crew to take a remote flyer over every square centimeter of that sail, and I want computer backup, so

that no little package stuck out in some rigging tens of kilometers from here is missed."

"The communications operator has established contact with the Russian ship, General," the Captain said.

"Do you wish to talk to them yourself?"

"If you don't mind," said Jinjur. "I think I know the Captain."

The call was transferred to her console and the face of a handsome middle-aged Russian filled the

screen.

"I thought it was you, Petrov," she said. "I compliment you on your sail deployment. You're going to be a

formidable opponent at the next Space Olympics in the light-sail races."

"Jost practice, Jinjur," said Captain Petrov. "I hear from our UN friends that you will be paying us a

visit."

"Yes. I apologize for having to bother you, but it's part of the job."

"I understand," he said. "But with you coming it will be a pleasure instead of a bother. I look forward to

seeing you again. It has been almost three years since we worked on the Space Weapons panel for the

last disarmament talks."

"See you soon," said Jinjur, turning off the console and heading for the locker that held her personal

space-suit.

* * * *

Within an hour, the small boarding crew was floating on tethers outside the Interceptor. Captain Roma

kept his sail trimmed to match the speed of his light-weight Interceptor with the larger tug. Both ships

were still accelerating in the sunlight, however, so they all held on to keep from drifting away. A small jet

scooter was unlashed from the rigging. It had a number of handholds along the side, and soon, looking

like a cluster of white grapes, the scooter and boarding party jetted the few kilometers that separated the

two tiny payload capsules.

Jinjur, being just a visiting General, kept out of the way as the boarding party searched the outside of the

cargo ship. There were a few unusual cylinders found, but a flash x-ray and a scan with a Forward Mass

Detector showed that they only contained the usual emergency gear in a new package shape. They

boarded, and while the crew proceeded with their hours-long methodical inspection, Jinjur met with

Petrov in his cabin.

"This is certainly a lot nicer than an Interceptor," said Jinjur as she admired the view of her distant ship

out the large glass port.

"Running a cargo ship does have its amenities," replied Petrov. "By the way. While you were removing

your suit, we received a call from your ship requesting to speak with you."

Jinjur looked puzzled, then asked, "May I use your console?"

Petrov padded over to the console, pushed a few buttons, then backed off to let her use it. Captain

Roma was on the screen.

"You have a message from the Marine Commandant," he said. "It's encoded and marked 'Personal'"

"It'll have to wait till I get back," she said. "We can't be discussing codes over the air."

She signed off, and turned to Petrov. He was holding a small sheet of paper.

"Permit me to be of service," Petrov said. "Here is your message. Congratulations! I only wish I were

going in your place."

Jinjur frowned as she took the piece of paper. A concerned look grew on her face as she realized that

the Russians had intercepted her message and broken the code in the time it took for her to get out of her

suit. She began to wonder if she would be allowed to get back to report the fact.

"Relax," said Petrov with a smile. "From the latest intelligence briefing I received about you when I

learned you were on the Interceptor, I was pretty sure what was in the message, so I asked one of our

people to feed it to our computer. With the hints I gave it on content, it only took five minutes of

computer time to unscramble it. Too bad you change your codes randomly for every message, it might

have proved useful."

Relieved that there was no permanent breech in communications security, Jinjur allowed herself to read

the message.

"I'm Commander of the Barnard expedition!!" she cried.

"As I said: Congratulations!" said Petrov. "Could you use a good deck-hand?"

"I'm already stuck with somebody for my second-in-command, a Lieutenant Colonel George G.

Gudunov. Sounds Russian. Do you know him?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Gudunov is the one who pioneered the idea of laser-driven sailcraft for interstellar

travel," said Petrov.

"I was in high school when the first interstellar probes went out," said Jinjur. "I remember thinking how I

wished that I were riding on them. Now it looks as though I'm going to get my wish." She paused and

shook her head in puzzlement. "But, thiscan't be the same Gudunov, if he were still in the service he

would be a general by now. I guess this George is his son, or one of his relatives. The last thing I need on

this trip is a political appointee."

"I have been thoroughly briefed," said Petrov, his massive iron-grey brows furling. "Your George

Gudunov is not a general, and will probably never see his star. Heis the one that sent out the probes

twenty-five years ago."

"But that would mean that he was in his early twenties at the time, and at most a captain," said Jinjur. "He

wouldn't have been able to order such a major undertaking. There must be some mistake."

Robert L. Forward - Rocheworld 01 - Rocheworld

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: