Hans could imagine. The embodied computer would hum and mutter and hedge his bets until you were ready to scream. Luckily it was Julian Graves who had to sit and listen, rather than Hans himself. Did that mean E.C. Tally was still aboard the Pride of Orion? He should have been on his way days ago.
Graves’s second answer was a bit better. At an absolute minimum, with limiting values of all variables, E.C. Tally indicates that radiative cooling would require twenty thousand years. A more likely value, including the gravitational energy provided by stellar shrinkage, would be between eight and eighteen million years. Any shorter value than twenty thousand years would prove that some external agent was employed to expedite cooling. One observational indicator is the ice fracture patterns, if any, on the planet’s surface. They will tell you if the cooling was rapid or slow. Here are the characteristic appearances associated with particular rates of cooling.
Hans examined the images sent from E.C. Tally, and then those of the surface of the world that they were approaching. Ben Blesh’s comment was correct. There were visible cracks and fissures, but all were coated with a surface of white. The fusion process in the central star had not simply ceased, to be followed by a slow decline in stellar temperature. The sun had gone out, and its surface had cooled from around seven thousand degrees to a few hundred degrees in a very short period—a few decades, or even a few hours.
What would that mean to any unfortunate creatures living on worlds circling the star? One final, rapid sunset, followed by endless night. The land animals would die off first, as rock and soil and sand lost heat in less than a day to the cold of space. Life would linger longest in the oceans, heat sinks protected by their own thermal inertia and by thickening shields of ice. It was not impossible that some living organisms would survive there even now, drawing chemical energy from hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean floor. But the experience of every known world said that intelligence had no chance of evolving in such locations.
“Well? Did you hear me? What can we possibly gain by going all the way down to the surface?”
Ben Blesh’s repeated question brought Hans out of his reverie. He should be asking himself the same thing, when the instruments were able to tell them almost everything.
What was happening to him? A troubleshooter who indulged in the luxury of idle introspection was heading for real trouble.
“If I could tell you what we would learn, Ben, we wouldn’t need to go down. I’m convinced that this world has something to tell us, but it won’t speak to us while we’re in orbit.”
His answer sounded weak, and he knew it. He meant that the world would not speak to him until he set foot on the surface. There was a question to be answered of paramount importance, but it would not form itself clearly within his brain. What he had given Blesh was the instinctive reply of a ground hog, someone who needed to feel a planet’s ambience vibrating in his bones.
It might be, of course, that instinct was wrong.
Until the ship touches down on Iceworld, I make the decisions.
Hans clung to that thought as the shuttle plunged into the outer edges of the atmosphere. He couldn’t wait for the high-acceleration phase of descent, when for a few blessed minutes the others would be too weighed down in their seats to complain.
It had been a tough half day, with even Darya turned against him. “Hans, you haven’t given us any real idea what you hope to learn. Why bother with this?”
She was saying exactly what Ben Blesh had said. Everyone had asked the same question in a dozen different ways. “Because I’m right,” wouldn’t do for an answer. The entry from orbit came as a positive relief.
Air was beginning to whistle and scream past the ship, while the gee forces within rose steadily. Hans had at his fingertips ample drive power to make their entry easier. One touch, and the autopilot would take over. They would ride easy and be feathered in to a gentle landing.
He decided to do it the hard way. It was time to see if the “survival team” specialists were as tough and well prepared as they imagined.
Apparently they were.
Hans was rustier than he had realized. There was never a moment of danger since the autopilot would take over in an emergency, but the landing was nothing to boast about. He had picked the final site with great care after inspection of hundreds of images, without discussing it with the others. Now he was within visual range, coming down too fast and overshooting. He corrected, but at a price. During the final two thousand meters the deceleration was enough to weld Hans to his seat.
As the ship whomped down onto the icy surface, he felt his innards drive down into the bowl of his pelvis. Darya, sitting next to him, gasped in surprise or pain. It should have taken a minute or two before anyone was ready to move but while the ship was still skidding forward across the ice, Lara Quistner and Ben Blesh released their harnesses and stood up.
Blesh said, quite casually, “Hull integrity maintained. Check monitors and confirm exit station.”
“Check.” Lara Quistner was already by the main hatch and staring outside. “Clean landing and no external obstacles. All clear for exit.”
Not a word from either of them about a botched landing, or why a manual landing had been performed. Hans moved his head from side to side—his cervical vertebrae would never be the same again—and struggled out of his harness. Next to him, Darya said feebly, “Check monitors? To see what? Before we left orbit you told us you were sure that the surface of this world was too cold for anything to survive.”
“I did, and it is.”
Even so, Blesh and Quistner were right. On a new planet you took nothing for granted. Darya was sprawled in her chair, breathing harshly. He made the effort and rose to his feet. He felt awkward and lumbering. Higher gravity, or poor physical condition? Maybe three weeks chained to an iron chair produced permanent effects. Whatever the reason, the heavy thermal suit needed to venture out onto the surface of this world would make him feel worse. The two survival specialists were slipping into theirs with an ease and efficiency that Hans would never match.
“No exit for anyone until all the ship’s sensors report in.” His voice sounded hoarse and strained.
“Of course not.” Ben’s perky tone, rather than his words, added what do you think we are? “There’s plenty of other things to do before we’re ready to go outside. Lara?”
Fully suited, she moved again to the hatch and stared out. “I’m turning on external lights so we can add visuals to the sensor reports. When we go outside we can confirm the surface composition using chemical and physical tests.”
“That’s good, but it’s not just our immediate surroundings that I’m interested in.” Hans was still climbing into his own thermal suit, and making hard work of it. “We’ll be heading for a place about four kilometers away, directly ahead of the ship. Does the surface seem as smooth as it did from orbit?”
“Smooth, and firm enough to support our weight.” Lara Quistner was manipulating an external probe. “We can walk there if we want to.”
“Quite feasible, from the look of it.” Ben Blesh was crouched at a bank of instruments duplicating those at the pilot’s console. “It’s level for a couple of kilometers, until it rises into some kind of low hills. It’s too cold for sleds, so if we don’t walk we’ll need a vehicle with wheels. The ship is provided with at least two, for all-purpose surface work. Want me to go ahead and give the instructions to prepare one?”