Especially since there was a map available. Molly recorded it with pleasure, and began looking it over in detail. It was entirely topographic, with no clue to surface composition; there were fairly large areas that appeared smooth to within the resolving limits of whatever instrument had been used, but whether these might be liquid, seas or lakes, could only be guessed.
She would have to do better than guess. There should be some order to her own planning—where would it be best to take samples for dating? Where would the oldest specimens show? The object was far too small—less than three thousand kilometers in diameter, smaller than Earth’s moon—to have crustal plate motion, but there were irregularities. Volcanoes? Possibly; silicate bodies that large could generate plenty of radioactive heat in the Solar system, and the Eta Carinae region was even richer in heavy elements than Molly’s own part of space.
The map, annoyingly, had a purely arbitrary coordinate system; no one had tied the physical surface shapes in with the rotation axis. Change or no change, the team would have to remap as they approached Enigma, as Jenny had said.
The watch ended with no further data, except for minor changes in the wind patterns that neither woman tried to analyze. Both of them spent the time planning.
“That’s all the wind-tracers I want,” Joe said thankfully, dropping his tendrils from the shop’s console. “Even with Jenny’s very helpful high-altitude Doppler map, there seems no reason to do any more regions simultaneously. Twenty masters started at symmetrically spaced sites, each with five subordinate units covering altitudes from surface up to two hundred kilometers or so, should gather enough air-current information in the time we have. As soon as Molly and Charley finish the radar map they’re doing now and decide where to do their mineral sampling, we’ll be ready for dropoff. The tent has been checked both by us and the regular crew, and will give us work space besides the boat until Classroom gets back. All apparatus except the units we have just finished is on the boat; so is the tent. I think we’re about ready to go.”
“I hope so.” Carol got up from her own board, walking around the shop rather uneasily—her home gravity was nearly as great as Molly’s and about four times Classroom’s real-space acceleration. Only Joe was really comfortable in that respect. “I hope so. The more I think about my own part of the project, the sillier it seems. 1 agree with Molly-Enigma has to be a very young planet, and that may be the only reason it has any air left at all. Still, it’s sort of ideal in temperature and atmosphere for prelife conditions, it seems to me, and there could be some very unusual chemistry contributing to the problem we’ve been handed. The chances, though, when I actually try to evaluate them…”
“You can’t evaluate them, dear,” cut in Jenny. “You know that. I think you did much better chancing a low-probability item to check than Charley did in following Molly blindly—with all due respect to Molly. I agree that the chance of actual life on a world like Enigma is essentially zero, but you’re quite right about the prelife. It’s above the melting point of ammonia at the surface, and the pressure seems high enough to allow liquid. There is certainly a lot of photochemistry in the clouds and above them—no, your only trouble will be deciding where to stop collecting data. 1 rather wish I’d done a Charley with your project—I will help, as much as I have time for, of course.”
“Of course.” Joe had waited for the Rimmore to finish but not long enough for anyone else to start. “The actual work planning will have to be done without regard to who is doing who’s job but entirely on who has time available. There will, we must remember, also be work not directly connected with the research but with keeping us all alive, which will also have to be done. You will note that nothing was said in the final approval form about who would do any task, or about government or leadership. None of us had mentioned this in his or her proposal, and the Faculty is quite capable of leaving us to discover for ourselves the need for such organization. I mention this now, before dropoff, only as a reminder; I am sure we are all ready to cooperate fully in all tasks that we agree to be desirable and necessary.”
Both women looked at the Nethneen thoughtfully.
“I did rather overlook that point,” grated Jenny. “The Human seems to have the most forceful personality, but I am not sure whether all of us ...” She did not complete the sentence.
“I’m a little surprised that Charley overlooked it—if he did,” remarked Carol.
“It’s more surprising still that he hasn’t mentioned it,” returned Jenny.
“I am quite willing to leave the matter open for the time being, once I am sure that everyone has given thought to the necessity.” Joe’s quiet tones resumed. “Should I mention it again when the others join us from their mapping task, or should I wait and speak to them one at a time, or would one of you prefer to handle the matter? I do consider it vital that everyone be aware of the need for cooperation, and I know that there is a wide range of opinion in the School about the best way to assure this.”
There was silence for a moment while the others thought. Then the Shervah spoke. “Either of us can speak to Molly. Maybe you’d better take it up with Charley in private, Joe. I don’t think I understand him as well as I do the Human, and I’m pretty sure Jenny feels the same.” A ripple of agreement flowed along the Rimmore’s body.
“Very well. We have nearly twenty hours before dropoff; I can find an appropriate occasion during that interval, I am sure. Let’s get this last stuff to the boat.”
“And I want some time out of this suit, for a shampoo. Molly’s insulation may be longer, but at least it’s only on her head, not all over,” added Carol.
Drop-off itself was uneventful; unlike the emergency drill, they were given plenty of time to board the boat, complete all checks, and separate from the huge bulk of Classroom. By this time they were only a few thousand kilometers from Enigma, though no attempt had been made to match velocities with the little world. It would be up to the students to do this, or, more accurately, to let their machinery do it for them; they were not student pilots and had only the normal educated grasp of the vector problem involved.
Not even Molly was looking outside directly. She might have been able to view the white half-moon of the planet without injury, but even she wanted nothing to do with the direct output from the O-type supergiant called Arc by the Human students. The other four not only contented themselves with false-color screen images of their surroundings but by common consent let Molly do the “piloting.” Hot stars were her normal environment, they considered, though they would have admitted, if asked, that there was really more difference between Arc and her G-type sun than between the latter and any of theirs. Unfortunately, they had without exception an almost Human tendency to be more impressed by qualitative analogies and symbols than by quantitative reality. Molly was detached enough, at the moment, to be amused.
Velocity matching took some time, mostly because of Joe’s low acceleration tolerance; the Nethneen home world had about eighteen percent of Earth’s surface gravity. It had been decided that there was no real reason to pick one landing spot over another, with one exception; the arctic zone was to be avoided. That polar region was currently having summer, and even shielded by the heavy clouds, the students would require extra protection from Arc’s scattered light. Otherwise, the surface was uniform enough so that any general topography it offered could be found within a few hundred kilometers of any given spot. This greatly simplified landing maneuvers, even with ship’s brain essentially in control.