Read Online Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hal Clement
Tags: SF
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Mesklin’s ‘rim’ in — ah — four fifths of a second.” He demonstrated this time interval with his watch, while the native looked on with interest. „The same ray would take a little over eleven of my years; that’s — about two and a quarter of yours, to get from here to my home.”
„Then your world is too far to see? You never explained these things to me before.”
„I was not sure we had covered the language problem well enough. No, my world cannot be seen, but I will show you my sun when winter is over and we have moved to the right side of yours.” The last phrase passed completely over Barlennan’s head, but he let it go. The only suns he knew were the bright Belne whose coming and going made day and night, and the fainter Esstes, which was visible in the night sky at this moment. In a little less than half a year, at midsummer, the two would be close together in the sky, and the fainter one hard to see; but Barlennan had never bothered his head about the reason for these motions.
Lackland had put down the photograph he was holding, and seemed immersed in-’thought. Much of the floor of the room was already covered with loosely fitted pictures; the region best known to Barlennan was already mapped fairly well. However, there was yet a long, long way to go before the area occupied by the human outpost would be included; and the man was already being troubled by the refusal of the photographs to fit together. Had they been of a spherical or nearly spherical world like Earth or Mars, he could have applied the proper projection correction almost automatically on the smaller map which he was constructing, and which covered a table at one side of the chamber; but Mesklin was not even approximately spherical. As Lackland had long ago recognized, the proportions of the Bowl on the Bree — Barlennan’s equivalent of a terrestrial globe — were approximately right. It was six inches across and one and a quarter deep, and its curvature was smooth but far from uniform.
To add to the difficulty of matching photographs, much of the planet’s surface was relatively smooth, without really distinctive topographic feature; and even where mountains and valleys existed, the different shadowing of adjacent photographs made comparison a hard job. The habit of the brighter sun of crossing from horizon to horizon in less than nine minutes had seriously disarranged normal photographic procedure; successive pictures in the same series were often illuminated from almost opposite directions.
„We’re not getting anywhere with this, Barl,” Lackland said wearily. „It was worth a try as long as there might be short cuts, but you say there are none. You’re a sailor, not a caravan master; that four thousand miles overland right where gravity is greatest is going to stump us.”
„The knowledge that enables you to fly, then, cannot change weight?”
„It cannot.” Lackland smiled. „The instruments which are on that rocket grounded at your south pole should have readings which might teach us just that, in time. That is why the rocket was sent, Barlennan; the poles of your world have the most terrific surface gravity of any spot in the Universe so far accessible to ib. ‘There are a number of other worlds even more massive than yours, and closer to home, but they don’t spin the way Mesklin does; they’re too nearly spherical. We wanted measures in that tremendous gravity field — all sorts of measures. The value of the instruments that were designed and sent on that trip cannot be expressed in numbers we both know; when the rocket failed to respond to its takeoff signal, it rocked the governments of ten planets. We must have that data, even if we have to dig a canal to get the Bree into the other ocean.”
„But what sort of devices were on board this rocket?” Barlennan asked. He regretted the question almost in the same instant; the Flyer might wonder at such specific curiosity, and come to suspect the
„Then your world is too far to see? You never explained these things to me before.”
„I was not sure we had covered the language problem well enough. No, my world cannot be seen, but I will show you my sun when winter is over and we have moved to the right side of yours.” The last phrase passed completely over Barlennan’s head, but he let it go. The only suns he knew were the bright Belne whose coming and going made day and night, and the fainter Esstes, which was visible in the night sky at this moment. In a little less than half a year, at midsummer, the two would be close together in the sky, and the fainter one hard to see; but Barlennan had never bothered his head about the reason for these motions.
Lackland had put down the photograph he was holding, and seemed immersed in-’thought. Much of the floor of the room was already covered with loosely fitted pictures; the region best known to Barlennan was already mapped fairly well. However, there was yet a long, long way to go before the area occupied by the human outpost would be included; and the man was already being troubled by the refusal of the photographs to fit together. Had they been of a spherical or nearly spherical world like Earth or Mars, he could have applied the proper projection correction almost automatically on the smaller map which he was constructing, and which covered a table at one side of the chamber; but Mesklin was not even approximately spherical. As Lackland had long ago recognized, the proportions of the Bowl on the Bree — Barlennan’s equivalent of a terrestrial globe — were approximately right. It was six inches across and one and a quarter deep, and its curvature was smooth but far from uniform.
To add to the difficulty of matching photographs, much of the planet’s surface was relatively smooth, without really distinctive topographic feature; and even where mountains and valleys existed, the different shadowing of adjacent photographs made comparison a hard job. The habit of the brighter sun of crossing from horizon to horizon in less than nine minutes had seriously disarranged normal photographic procedure; successive pictures in the same series were often illuminated from almost opposite directions.
„We’re not getting anywhere with this, Barl,” Lackland said wearily. „It was worth a try as long as there might be short cuts, but you say there are none. You’re a sailor, not a caravan master; that four thousand miles overland right where gravity is greatest is going to stump us.”
„The knowledge that enables you to fly, then, cannot change weight?”
„It cannot.” Lackland smiled. „The instruments which are on that rocket grounded at your south pole should have readings which might teach us just that, in time. That is why the rocket was sent, Barlennan; the poles of your world have the most terrific surface gravity of any spot in the Universe so far accessible to ib. ‘There are a number of other worlds even more massive than yours, and closer to home, but they don’t spin the way Mesklin does; they’re too nearly spherical. We wanted measures in that tremendous gravity field — all sorts of measures. The value of the instruments that were designed and sent on that trip cannot be expressed in numbers we both know; when the rocket failed to respond to its takeoff signal, it rocked the governments of ten planets. We must have that data, even if we have to dig a canal to get the Bree into the other ocean.”
„But what sort of devices were on board this rocket?” Barlennan asked. He regretted the question almost in the same instant; the Flyer might wonder at such specific curiosity, and come to suspect the
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