Green Comet

Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license – (CC-BY-SA).

Tallgrass and Seagrass at the Academy.

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rjb

Chapter Thirty-Three – The View

It took twelve years. Professor Trueway was the driving force behind the campaign, and Tallgrass worked hard as his number one supporter. Sage and Professor Tailor led the way with the science to back it up. The artifacts added a bit of exotic mystery, but it was the possibility of something big lurking out there in space that was the main impetus for the people and their governments.

Although everyone tended to disregard the legends as superstitious remnants of their ignorant past, most of them had some lingering doubts. Since the legends were so widespread and so similar in their details, there was always the possibility that they were based on something real. In fact, an entire industry sprang up based on the legends. Most of it was just the usual attempts to use people’s hopes and fears to get money out of them, but some of it involved people’s beliefs.

In some cases, people with strong beliefs gathered masses of followers just through the charismatic power of their feelings. In other cases, people used their charisma and the power of other people’s beliefs to amass large followings. Some of them were driven by simple greed and vanity and were no danger to anyone other than themselves and their followers. Some of them had more grandiose ambitions, driven by their sense that they had destinies that were far larger and more important than such petty concerns as space exploration, or civilization. Most of these tried to realize their fantasies too quickly, and just as quickly came crashing down, leaving behind a disorganized rabble of believers. A very select few of them were able to build and sustain viable movements.

The result was that, while most people supported the space program more or less enthusiastically, some loudly opposed it, and some were dangerously inimical to it. The program found itself the target of attacks, some serious enough to take lives. That’s what caused the delay and made it take twelve years instead of ten. The program was a convenient and very visible scapegoat for the anti-spacers, and a clear and simple target for the fanatics.

Sage worried about Tallgrass. He was an integral part of the program, and his public profile was exaggerated by his relationship to her. She worried that it made him a natural target for those opposed to the program. She warned him to be careful, and he assured her that he would, but in truth he was more preoccupied by the intricacies of his daily life than by some vague possibility of danger. And he was reassured by his daily experience with the security measures in place to protect the facilities and personnel. Seagrass was also a member of the team, and neither of them had any life-threatening experiences in the years they worked to establish a manned space program.

Their education became a very practical affair. While they were learning about what went into getting things into space, they were also applying it in real projects. Most of the students specialized in one or two fields, but Tallgrass was able to gain a working knowledge of most of them. Rocketry, telemetry, electronics, celestial mechanics, even the finer points of the life support systems they would need. If he encountered it in his work, then he dug into it until he felt he understood it. He didn’t know he was making himself indispensable, but he was. And right along with him came Seagrass, driving himself to the point of exhaustion to make sure he stayed useful to his friend.

Even before they graduated from the Academy, they were vital members of the team, but they stayed on and graduated because everyone insisted on it. Their parents, who wanted them to have something they could fall back on. The Academy, which wanted to ensure its own relevance. The program itself, which wanted to be able to show the world their qualifications. And themselves. Tallgrass wasn’t the only one who thought he should finish what he started, but he was among the few who felt they should take everything the academy could offer them, to make themselves as useful as possible to the program.

So Tallgrass and Seagrass took the full four year standard course of studies, plus the two years of supplementary education, before finally joining the program full time, while most of their peers made the jump earlier.

Tallgrass thought that he would be involved in the design of the hardware and systems of the project, and he was. Because of his broad general knowledge, he was able to fit in on most aspects of it. Every group he joined benefited from it, and soon the managers of the groups recognized that. He became a desirable commodity. Each time a new group formed, they wanted him in it. Every time a project ran into problems, they asked for him. To simplify matters they stopped assigning him to specific groups and created a new job category for him. He became the member-at-large, roving about the whole enterprise helping where required. Seagrass was with him, of course, as his partner, although everyone else thought of him as an assistant.

A lot of work had been done already by the time they graduated and joined the project full time. You can get a lot done in six years, especially when everyone is working together with a sense of urgency. The rockets they would be using to get material and personnel into orbit were already tried and tested. The electronics and computers were being finalized, and would soon be locked in. They were still making improvements to the life support and habitat systems, since they were the first of their kind. They had launched satellites and successfully put them on their correct orbits, but this would be the first time they had sent people up. Much was done already, but there was still plenty for them to do when they joined the team for good.

After two years of that, Deputy Director Trueway called Tallgrass and Seagrass to his office. He wanted to see them first thing in the week, bright and early, so there they were clopping down the hallway toward his office on the fortieth floor of the Space Administration building, with the rising Sun reflecting hard off the ocean out the windows.

“What do you think he wants?” asked Seagrass, not for the first time since they got the summons.

“I don’t know,” said Tallgrass. “I can’t think of anything we screwed up. There was that weight-and-balance problem that came up last week, but I thought we handled that okay.”

“Yeah,” said Seagrass. “That was hardly anything. Certainly nothing to justify this.”

They arrived at the door and Tallgrass reached out to knock. “Well, we’ll soon find out,” he said.

“Come in,” came the call from within. “The door’s open.”

Tallgrass opened the door and led the way in, then stopped immediately, forcing Seagrass to avoid bumping into him. What stopped him was the view. This was a corner office with windows on both sides. Deputy Director Trueway was at the window on the ocean side, silhouetted against the glare. “Come over here,” he said, gesturing. As they approached, he said, “I love this view. Especially first thing in the morning. And it’s almost always the same. I can practically set the clock by when the Sun comes up.”

“Right,” said Tallgrass. “Because we have negligible axial tilt and orbital obliquity, so the Sun appears to rise at nearly the same time and place all year.”

“Yes,” said Trueway with a chuckle. “Although I must admit, that’s not what I’m thinking of when I’m looking at this view.” He turned back to the window, where the sea looked like beaten copper.

“Sorry, Deputy Director,” said Tallgrass. “I can’t help it.”

“Please,” said Trueway, “none of the ‘Deputy Director’ stuff here. Just between us, it feels weird. I’d prefer, in private like this, if you could call me ‘Professor.’“

“Of course, Professor,” said Tallgrass.

“That’s better,” said Trueway. “I didn’t have enough time to get used to being a professor before this.” He waved to indicate his office, in all meanings of the word.

Tallgrass nodded. “I understand,” he said. They all looked at the view in easy silence, then he said, “But you didn’t bring us here to look at the view.”

“No,” said Trueway, leading them to a table with food and drink. “I brought you here to offer you the opportunity to enjoy an even better view.”

Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license – (CC-BY-SA).

Tallgrass’s mom discovers something in space..

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rjb

Chapter Thirty-Two – Harmonics

Tallgrass’s mother, Sage, and his father, Professor Tailor, finally had a major breakthrough in their study of the artifacts. It had to do with the vibrations. They had studied the vibrations exhaustively and found nothing. There were no hidden patterns there. No secret code to discover. The only thing they could say with any certainty was that there was a correlation between the length of time a person spoke and the length of the ensuing vibration. But that was all. Every path from there led to a dead end.

The other vibrations, the ones triggered by the proximity of the two artifacts, were a different matter. Once again, on their own, there was nothing there. They just vibrated as long as they were within two meters of each other. That might have been it if the Professor hadn’t had a pupil who was majoring in mathematics as well as physics, with a minor in music. One day she was in the lab assisting with an experiment, when she said, “Professor, can you hear the harmonics?”

“The what?” asked the Professor.

“The harmonics,” said the young woman, who happened to have perfect pitch. “From the way these vibrations interact with each other.”

The Professor bent close. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“No, sorry,” she said. “Of course not. I can’t hear it either. It’s not audible.”

“Then what?” said the Professor.

“You can feel it,” she said, putting her hands on both gliders.

He put his hands beside hers and cocked his head. Then he looked at her and shrugged.

“Can’t you feel it?” she asked.

He started to shake his head, then stiffened. “After you spoke,” he said. “Nothing before, but after …” He stopped and looked at her with wide eyes. “And again after I spoke.”

She was nodding vigorously. “It gets stronger when we talk.” she said. “Are you sure you couldn’t feel it before?”

“Positive,” he said. “Only after we talked.”

“Hm,” she said. “I guess it’s a little weak, but I can definitely feel it.” Then she sang a sustained note of clear pitch, and they felt the harmonic form like a standing wave. She slid the note up and down, and they felt the response follow. He sang a note, not nearly as pure as hers, and they felt another harmonic. Then they both made notes and moved them around, and felt the vibrations from the two artifacts. They played for a while, then they happened to catch each other’s eye and their singing broke down into laughter. For a few minutes they were helpless to do anything. Imagining what would have happened if someone had walked in on them made them laugh so hard that they had to sit on the floor.

When they got hold of themselves, they got busy setting up the apparatus for a proper experiment. They still needed to sing, because the gliders wouldn’t respond to artificially produced tones, only to voices. They did find, though, that they could use recordings of voices, which allowed the Professor’s pupil to get on with her other studies.

The experiments produced tangible results which could be reported to the journals and published. They weren’t able to draw any concrete conclusions from it, other than that two artifacts in close proximity would produce interesting harmonics with their mingled vibrations. It was frustrating. Here they were finally getting somewhere, and the results were so clear and tantalizingly suggestive, but ultimately inconclusive. The Professor lost a lot of sleep, wracking his brain to no good purpose. He spent many hours with Sage, going around and around with it, and coming up with nothing useful.

The published papers got a response from the scientific community, both from independent researchers and from the other people who also held artifacts. With much discussion, and months of painstaking protocol, they arranged to bring the artifacts together and see what would happen. The three held by universities and museums were easier, while the three in private hands were more difficult. The private owners naturally wanted to profit from it, in the form of wealth and prestige rather than scientific knowledge. When they were told that wouldn’t happen, that five gliders would be enough, two of them agreed to join anyway. They must have seen some advantage to being part of something that was catching the imagination of the world, rather than holding out. The third one refused, probably out of spite, and was quickly forgotten, other than in a few news stories on the theme of miserliness.

That wasn’t the only news. Sage also discovered something through her astronomical studies. Her latest area of interest was the Lagrangian points, where the gravity of the bodies in the solar system interacted and formed areas of relative stability. She had been studying them long enough that she had a feel for how they should behave.

Professor Trueway called Tallgrass to his office, saying that he had some important news regarding his mother. Tallgrass hurried there as quickly as he could, trying to keep the worry and anxiety at bay. When he burst into the office, his face betraying his feelings, he saw a smile fade from the Professor’s.

“What is it?” he asked breathlessly. “What’s happened to my mom?”

The Professor’s smile fell completely away. He hastened to reassure Tallgrass. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing has happened to her. It’s nothing like that.”

“Then what?” said Tallgrass, slowing down and getting control of his breath. “What’s this about?”

“It’s okay,” said the Professor. “I’m sorry I worried you.” He frowned. “I should have thought.”

By now Tallgrass was calm. He was relieved, but still curious “That’s okay, Professor,” he said. “Just tell me.”

“Oh, of course,” said the Professor. “Well, not to beat around the bush, your mother has made a discovery. In astronomy. She’s discovered something exciting.”

“Exciting? How?” asked Tallgrass. “And how did you find out before I did? She always sends me a notice when she publishes a paper.”

“She hasn’t published it yet. I found out about it because I’m on the mailing list for her newsletter.”

“She has a newsletter?” Tallgrass felt strange learning something about his mother from someone she didn’t even know.

“Yes,” said Trueway. “That’s common practice these days.” He shrugged modestly. “I even have one.” He waved that away. “Besides, even if I wasn’t on her mailing list, we’ve been keeping in touch anyway.”

“About me, I suppose,” said Tallgrass.

“Well, yes, of course.”

Tallgrass frowned. “I hope she hasn’t been …”

“What? Oh, no! No. She never interfered. She just wanted to, I guess, keep track of you. I think she misses you quite a bit, Tallgrass.”

Tallgrass’s frown slowly went away. Of course she missed him. He missed her. If she wanted to “keep track” of him, how could he complain about that? How many times had he caught himself wishing she was near when he had something on his mind? They were a quarter of a world apart for the first time in their lives. Apart from the person who was the biggest part of their lives. He smiled and nodded his head. “Of course she does,” he said. It still felt strange to be learning something about her from someone she’d never met, but he could see that it made sense. He felt his view of the world expanding. He nodded again and said, “So, what did she discover?”

“Ah, yes,” said Trueway. “It’s quite exciting. At least it is to me. I have a strong interest in the field.” He saw exaggerated patience forming on Tallgrass’s face, and hurried on. “You know that she has been working on Lagrangian points, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Tallgrass. “She’s explained them to me.”

“Good. Do you know which one is L1?”

“Yes. That’s the one between here and the Sun.”

“That’s right. Well, that’s where she made her discovery. She noticed that there’s something wrong with the bodies trapped in the L1 Lagrangian point.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yes. She says there don’t seem to be as many as there should be. And there seems to be a large body there. Larger than it should be. Something that large shouldn’t have got trapped there.” Trueway rubbed his hands together, and said, “I can’t wait for the paper to come out.”

“Something that’s too large to be there?” said Tallgrass. “Then how did it get there?”

“Exactly,” said Trueway. “How did it get there?”

“If it couldn’t be there naturally …” began Tallgrass.

“Then did someone put it there?” finished Trueway. “Yes.”

“You don’t think …” Tallgrass stopped. “Who could have put it there?”

“If someone put it there, then it was either us or it was someone else, obviously. Either way, it looks like some of the old legends might be true after all.”

“Where we used to have a grand civilization, and we flew up into space,” said Tallgrass.

“Much as we are doing now,” said Trueway. “Or there’s the other legend,” he said quietly. “The one where someone came here from another world and sent destruction down from the sky.”

They were both quiet for a while before Tallgrass said, “If that’s true, then they’ll notice us, and what’s to stop them from doing it again?”

“True,” said Trueway. “But they should have noticed by now. If they were watching, they would have seen that we’re building up. And then there’s all the radio we’re using.”

“Radio!” said Tallgrass. “Right. The worst taboo. At least among the villages.”

“So,” said Trueway, “if they knocked us down because we got too big, and for using radio, then where are they?”

“You’re right,” said Tallgrass. “If the legends are true, and something did come from the sky and destroy us, then why isn’t it happening again? And if that legend isn’t true, then who put that big thing in my mom’s Lagrangian point?”

“Well, maybe that legend isn’t true. Or maybe it is true and those people have died out, or gone away. Or maybe we did put it there during our high civilization. Or it could be something we haven’t thought of. It’s even possible that it’s completely natural and there’s just something about gravity that we don’t understand yet.”

Tallgrass thought about all that, then said, “Is there any way to find out for sure? Can we look at it with better telescopes? What about that one they’re talking about putting in orbit?”

“That’s still in the talking phase,” said Trueway. “You’ve seen the satellites we’re putting up now. We’re nowhere near doing something like that yet.”

“What about a better ground-based telescope, then?”

“Your mother is working on that. With her reputation, she can get time on any telescope she wants, so she has used most of them. There’s one more that she thinks might get her better data, but it will be a few months before she can get on it.”

“Couldn’t she get on it earlier if she wanted?”

“Probably, but the other astronomers are also doing important work, and she respects that. Besides, with the object being between us and the Sun, she wants to get just the right position on our orbit so they’re not in a direct line. Then she can mask the Sun with the horizon and get a better look. Even so, it’s a good thing the telescope is at such a high elevation, so the sky’s not as bright.”

“Oh, right,” said Tallgrass. “I didn’t even think of that.” He stared out the window of the Professor’s office, thinking, then said, “How about flying a telescope up really high in an airplane? Up where the sky is really dark. Or, wait, a balloon.”

“Both good ideas, and both with their problems, as you can imagine.”

“Of course,” said Tallgrass. “You can’t put a very big telescope on an airplane, and the balloon project would take time.”

“That’s right. So all things considered, we’re not going to get the answer any time soon.” Trueway caught Tallgrass’s eye and held it. “That’s why we’re working on something else.”

“Oh?” said Tallgrass, his interest piqued.

“Yes,” said Trueway. “Something that will take more than a few months, but something we’re going to have to do eventually, no matter what kind of telescopes we have.”

Tallgrass didn’t get it right away, but then the light went on. “Are you talking about a manned expedition?”

“I am. First we’ll have to convince everyone, but once we do that, I think we can be ready in about ten years.”

Continuing the serial release of The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license – (CC-BY-SA).

Tallgrass and Seagrass take on the challenges.

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rjb

Chapter Thirty-One – Polo

Talking to Professor Trueway kept them going for a long time. Sleep banished, they had something to eat in one of the terminal’s restaurants, and listened to the Professor’s stories about the Academy.

“It hasn’t officially started yet,” he told them. “We’ve spent the last year preparing for the arrival of the first cohort.” He smiled at them. “I guess that would be you, wouldn’t it?”

“So there haven’t been any classes taught at all yet?” said Tallgrass. He contemplated taking another bite from his dry, tasteless biscuit, then put it down.

“Some,” said Trueway. “Some of the staff received instruction to bring them to the required levels. Some of us attended lectures out of interest or curiosity, or in some cases, to upgrade our qualifications. It was a great opportunity.”

“Is that what you did, Professor?” asked Tallgrass. “You said you had just become a professor.”

“Yes,” he said. “It was perfect timing for me. And I was giving lectures and tutorials at the same time, where I was qualified.”

“That must have been exciting,” said Seagrass. “To be in on the beginning of something like that, I mean.”

“It was,” said the Professor. His eyes unfocussed as his mind went elsewhere. Then he snapped back and said, “But now the real excitement begins. Preparing the first batch of students. That’s what all the preparation was for. Getting the bugs out. Streamlining procedures. Finding the kinks. It was so we could give the best possible education to the first class of space professionals.”

“Well,” said Tallgrass, “let’s hope we’re up to it.” He looked at his biscuit again, and pushed the plate away.

“Let’s hope so,” said the Professor, “because if not, we’ll just send you home and call up the next person on the list.” He smiled a wicked smile. “There are always plenty more waiting for someone to fail so they can get their chance.”

The youngsters looked at each other with big eyes.

Professor Trueway’s prophecy came true soon, and often. There were as many ways to fail as there were students who failed. Every time another one went down, Tallgrass remembered his rejected biscuit in the airport restaurant, and soon that became the idiom for it. The person who failed and was sent home was said to have “bitten the biscuit.”

Tallgrass and Seagrass never bit the biscuit, although they lived in constant fear of it. There was probably a connection there. The fear and self-doubt probably drove them to study hard. Between them they ensured that they both completely understood each new concept as they learned it. And because of Tallgrass’s lifelong habit of supplementing his learning at the library, they also had a good picture of where each new concept fit into everything else.

Tallgrass was driven by his need to succeed, but at least equally by his ferocious curiosity and love of learning. Seagrass was driven mainly by his need to keep up with Tallgrass. He didn’t want to be left behind by his friend, but there was more to it than that. Tallgrass liked to talk about things, especially the new things he’d just learned. He liked to hold them up and look at them from all angles. He liked to see where they fit in with everything else he knew. And he especially liked to speculate about the new ways they made him think about things.

Seagrass was always there for him to talk to. He knew he could rely on his friend to know what he was talking about. To see the implications of it, even if he couldn’t articulate them clearly. And once, years before, Seagrass had seen what happened if he let his friend down. When Tallgrass had no one to share his ideas with, he became frustrated and fretful, and Seagrass didn’t like that. Not only did he feel the duty of friendship, he also sensed that his friend was special somehow. He also felt a kind of duty to … what was it? The world? Knowledge? That kind of thinking made him feel uncomfortable, but he knew it was something. He knew that Tallgrass was important, and he felt honored to realize that he could play a role in it. All he had to do was try to keep up with him, at least enough that he would be worth talking to.

The Academy wasn’t all studying, though. It included field trips to places associated with the space industry. They toured the plants where they fabricated the parts for the rockets, and the one where they assembled them. They visited the labs where the electronics and computing gear were developed. Tallgrass was especially interested in the shops that designed and built the satellites. He thought once he was through the generalized education of his first couple of years, he might specialize in satellite technology and take it up as a career when he graduated.

Such was academic life at the Space Academy, but it wasn’t all dedicated to developing their young brains. Their educational philosophy included their bodies as well. All the students had to participate in at least one physical activity from the authorized list. They could choose sailing, where the only power available was muscle power. They organized back country expeditions, which interested Tallgrass very much. He liked the prospect of getting more familiar with the conditions his mother faced on her trek to the city. What he chose, though, was polo.

There were enough students interested that they could form two full teams of seven players each, with plenty of spares. What Tallgrass liked most about it was running flat out on a big grassy field, as he had done when he was little. The mallet and the ball and the goals were just the details that could justify a bunch of youngsters running around like that. Tallgrass wouldn’t mind just running on the grass, but the other students, and especially the school, seemed to feel that it needed some structure and purpose.

It was on the polo pitch that he encountered the bully again. He was not accompanied by accomplices this time, but he still carried the same attitude of aggrieved discontent that he could only seem to alleviate through aggression. It was more subtle, though, as he slowly approached maturity. He no longer accosted helpless people smaller than himself and stole their stuff. He’d learned that a lot of people didn’t approve of that and it could get him in trouble. He couldn’t understand why so many people were opposed to his right to take what he could. What about survival of the fittest? Whatever. He knew he couldn’t get away with that any more as long as the bleeding hearts were running things, so he adjusted his approach. His assaults were no longer so crude. Now he was refining his attacks on his victims feelings.

“Hey, Runny,” he said with his familiar fat-faced sneer.

“Oh,” said Tallgrass, startled and lost for words.

“What’s the matter, Runny? Nothing to say?”

“No,” said Tallgrass. “I mean yes. I mean, what are you doing here?”

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” asked the bully, whose name was Blunt. “Do you think I’m not good enough to be here?”

“No, of course not, Blunt. You just never struck me as the intellectual type.”

“Intellectual?” said Blunt. “You think you’re smarter than me, don’t you? I’ve seen your type before. You think you’re better than me.”

Tallgrass had also matured. Even though this encounter was bringing back all the feelings of the earlier bullying, he was able to keep them from overwhelming his mind. He said, “I think it’s more a case of you thinking that everyone is better than you, and I think that’s the whole problem.”

Anger flared in Blunt’s eyes, and he said, “Oh yeah?” He pushed closer to Tallgrass and said, “Now you think you can tell me what I’m thinking, eh? You’re just as big a jerk as you always were.” He smirked. “I guess I’m going to have to straighten you out, and this time your mommy’s not here to save you.”

Tallgrass sighed as he saw his ideal of the academic life wash away. He was trying to think of a way he could salvage something out of it when the coach called the teams in for instructions.

He was saved from the immediate conflict, but it didn’t save him from Blunt’s attentions. In the confusion of play, far out in the middle of the elongated two hectare field, Blunt pretended to be striking at the ball when he hit Tallgrass square on the leg. It didn’t break a bone, but it hurt severely and Tallgrass fell to the pitch. Some of his teammates had seen what happened and they turned on Blunt, whose own teammates rallied to him. It looked like trouble, and the coach was running out onto the field to intervene when Tallgrass struggled to his feet and spoke.

“I’m all right,” he said, looking at Blunt’s triumphant smirk. “No harm done.” He limped forward and reached to shake Blunt’s hand. “It was a good polo play.”

Most of the other players on both teams knew the truth, and the rest guessed. By now the coach had twigged to what happened, too. He clapped Tallgrass on the shoulder and said, “Good man.” Then he looked at Blunt and said, “Shake hands so we can get back to it.”

Blunt reluctantly complied, his eyes burning with resentment, and they went and finished the game. From that day forward, the reputations of the two young men were firmly set in the minds of their peers.