That crossing was easier. The channel was narrow. But the snow kept getting thicker. It covered the raft and the bowhorn and Nia. Even the paddle was covered with snow. When she lifted it and swung it, pieces of snow fell off. They made noises when they hit the water.
A poem came to Nia. She didn’t know if she’d learned it as a child or made it up right here in the middle of the river.
She reached the western shore and led the bowhorn off, praising it for good manners. It snorted and flicked its ears.
“I know. I know. You wanted to make trouble. But you held yourself in check. That’s worth praising. It’s over now.” She looked at the river: the gray water and the falling snow. “We’ll pull the raft up onto land, and then we will go and find your companions. And in the morning we’ll go south.”
Appendix A
A note on pronunciation
I was raised on the Wade-Giles system of transliterating Chinese, but have converted to Pinyin in this novel.
Lixia is pronounced Lee-sha.
Yunqi is pronounced Yoon-chee.
The word zi, which means “sage,” is pronounced zee.
Zhuang Zi (Chuang-tzu in the old system) is pronounced Juang-zee.
The rest of the Chinese names are pronounced approximately the way they look.
The native i, like the Pinyin i, is long.
The native a is usually pronounced ah as in father.
Nia is pronounced Nee-ah.
In is pronounced inn.
Ar is pronounced as in car and far.
Inzara is pronounced Innzarah.
Ai is pronounced as in hay.
U is pronounced oo.
Nahusai is pronounced Nahoosay.
E is usually the vowel sound in air or care.
Gersu is pronounced Gairsoo.
O is the sound in Oh and Oklahoma.
Yohai is pronounced Yohay.
The sound spelled kh in the language of the Copper People is pronounced like the ch in Bach.
The natives all speak the language of gifts, but their pronunciation varies.
Nia can say g but not k. This is why her version of Derek’s name is Deragu. There is no sh in her language. Lixia becomes Li-sa. The oracle can say k and sh, but not p. The native animal that Nia calls osupa is osuba to him.
All the native languages are accented. Usually the accent falls on the first syllable.
There are three native gestures that could be translated as “yes.”
One is the gesture of affirmation, which means “yes, that is so.”
Another is the gesture of agreement, which means “yes, I agree with you.”
The third is the gesture of assent, which means “yes, that should, can, or will be done.”
Appendix B
Starship Design by Albert W. Kuhfeld, Ph.D.
For a reaction drive to push a ship near light-speed, the reaction mass itself must travel at relativistic velocities in a jet so hot no material substance can withstand it. Only a force field can handle the job.
Magnetic fields are the best-trained force fields we know: They’re used in laboratories everywhere to control the paths of charged particles. Nuclear fusion is nature’s way of making hot ions. A magnetic-mirror fusion reactor, with a leaky mirror to the aft, would create a rocketlike nuclear exhaust.
The reaction Li7+ H1= 2 He4 releases 17.3 MeV, with no neutral particles to carry off energy in random and uncontrollable directions. It’s one of the more enthusiastic reactions of starbirth—any technology with fusion power should be able to handle it.{Harwit, Martin, Astrophysical Concepts (New York: John Wiley Sons, 1973) pp. 335–43.}
Lithium hydride has a specific gravity of 0.78 and a melting point of 689 Celsius. Living quarters built inside a large chunk of this solid fuel are protected by sheer mass against most of the interstellar dust and gases. Hydrogen atoms make good shielding against neutrons, while magnetic fields steer away interstellar ions.
17.3 MeVe, evenly divided between the two product nuclei, works out to about 22% of the speed of light. The (nonrelativistic) equation for ship velocity is m dV + vedm = 0, which integrates out to V = ve ln(mo/m).
To reach 10% of light-speed, the ship would have to burn 37% of its mass; for 20% c, 61% of the mass. If you then slow back to zero, you will burn 61% and 85% of the mass respectively. 15% of light-speed would be a reasonable compromise. At 100% efficiency, accelerating to 15% of light-speed and then decelerating to rest, the ship would arrive with 25% of its starting mass, having used 75% as fuel and reaction mass. (Errors introduced by ignoring relativity are minor compared to those caused by assuming complete efficiency. Time dilation effects are only about 1%.) It takes less than two months at one gravity to reach 15% of light-speed. Even at a fraction of a g, the majority of the trip could be spent coasting.
(The rocket exhaust is powerful alpha radiation. This is an ideal vehicle for leaving your enemies behind, but be careful where you point the thing if you hope for a welcome upon your return.)
A ship traveling the 18.2 light-years to Sigma Draconis at 0.15 c would take 122 years, one way. It has to refuel (hope for a planet with a water ocean to supply lithium and hydrogen!) before returning. The round trip could barely be made in 250 years; with study time, more would be probable.
Most of the ship is fuel, a giant lithium-hydride cigar—white when pure, but who knows what impurities will creep in (or be found useful)? The long axis points in the direction of travel, to minimize cross-section and put as much mass as possible between the crew and anything they collide with. (At 0.15 c, cosmic gases become low-energy cosmic rays: grains of dust make large craters where they hit.)
Well ahead of the cigar is a repairable “umbrella” shield—very little mass, but enough to vaporize cosmic dust, spreading it out so it’ll cause less damage to the main body of the ship. The living quarters are inside the “cigar,” protected from the hazards of travel. Spiral tunnels wind forward and aft to the end caps; since radiation travels in straight lines, a spiral tunnel blocks it effectively.
A fusion rocket is behind the cigar, built of magnetic fields controlled and confined by superconducting magnets. There are many magnetic mirrors in series, so a particle leaking through one mirror finds itself confined in the next chamber. The fields move the ionized gases along in a manner similar to peristalsis with regions of high and low magnetic field sweeping aft. Ionized particles are held in the regions of low magnetic field by the stronger fields before and behind, compressed to greater and greater densities until they fuse. At this point the magnetic fields to the rear open up into a rocket nozzle of forces.