She glanced at, Cirocco, showing more excitement than usual for her. Cirocco held her eye for a moment, then looked down. Against a field of pinpoint stars, six tiny lights were arranged in a perfect hexagon..
Cirocco looked at it for a long time.
"It's the damdest thing 1 ever saw on a starplate," she conceded. "What is it?,,
Gaby was strapped to a chair on the other side of the compartment, sucking coffee from a plastic bulb.
"It's the latest exposure of Themis," she said. "I took it over the last hour with my most sensitive equipment and a computer program to justify the rotation."
"I guess that answers my question," Cirocco said. "But what isit?"
Gaby waited a long time before replying, taking another sip.
"It is possible," she said, sounding detached and dreamy, "for several bodies to orbit around a common center of gravity. Theoretically. No one's ever seen it. The configuration is called a rosette."
Cirocco waited patiently. When no one said anything, she snorted.
"in the middle of Saturn's satellite system? For about five minutes, maybe. The other moons would perturb them."
"There's that," Gaby agreed.
"And how would it happen in the first place? The chances against it are tremendous."
"There's that, too."
April and Calvin had entered the room. Now Calvin looked up.
"Isn't anyone going to say it? This isn't a natural arrangement.
Somebody made this."
Gaby rubbed her forehead.
"You haven't heard it all. 1 bounced radar signals off it. They came back telling me Themis was over 1300 kilometers in diameter. Density figures all cockeyed, too, making it less dense than water by quite a bit. 1 thought 1 was getting screwed-up readings because 1 was working at the limits of my equipment. Then 1 got the picture."
"Six bodies or one?" Cirocco asked.
"I can't tell for sure. But everything points to one." "Describe it. What you think you know."
Gaby consulted her printout sheets, but obviously did not need them. The figures were clear in her mind.
"Themis is 1300 klicks across. That makes it Saturn's third
largest moon, about the size of Rhea. It must be flat black all over, except those six points. This is by far the lowest albedo of any body in the solar system, if that interests you. It's also the least dense. There's a strong possibility it's hollow, and a good chance it's not spherical. Possibly disc-shaped, or toroidal, like a donut. Either way, it seems to turn like a plate rolling along its edge, once every hour. That's enough spin so nothing could stay on its surface; the centripetal force would overpower the force of gravity."
"But if it's hollow, and you were on the inside .
Cirocco kept her eyes on Gaby.
"Inside, if it's hollow, it would be equivalent to a force of one- quarter gee. "
Cirocco looked her next question, and Gaby couldn't meet her eyes.
"We're getting closer every day. The seeing can only get better. But I can't promise you when I could he sure about any of this."
Cirocco headed for the door. "I'll have to send what you have."
"But no theories, okay?" Gaby shouted after her. It was the first time Cirocco had seen her less than happy with what she'd seen through a telescope. "At least don't attribute them to me."
"No theories," Cirocco acknowledged. "The facts ought to be plenty."
CHAPTER TWO
INFORMATIONAL DISPATCH #0931
(REPLY TO HOUSTON TRANSMISSION #5455,5-20-25) 5-21-25
DSV RINGMASTER (NASA 447D, L5/1, HOUSTON-COPER- NICUS GCR BASELINE)
JONFS, CIROCCO, MISCOM
SECURITY INTERLOCK *ON* CODE PREFIX DELTADELTA BEGINS.
1. Concur your analysis of Themis as interstellar space vehicle of the generation type. Don't forget we suggested it first.
2. Latest photo follows. Note increased resolution of bright areas. Still no luck finding docking facilities at hub; will keep looking.
3. Concur your mid-course scheduled 5122.
4. Request updated tracking as new orbital insertion is approached, beginning 5125 and continuing until insertion commences, then upgraded. I don't care if this means shifting in another computer 1 don't think our on-board will handle this volume.
5. Turnaround 5122,0400 UT, after the mid-course bum. 22
WORMA'EONALENDS PERSONAL (CIRCULATION LIMITED TO RINGMASTER MISSION CONTROL COMMN-TEE) BEGINS:
Re the Contact Committee which has been bending my car: 'buzz off!' I don't care WHO'S on the damn thing. I've been get- ting contradictory instructions that sound like they have the
force of direct orders. Maybe you don't like my ideas of how to handle this, maybe you do. The fact is it's going to have to be my show. Time-lag alone is enough to make that necessary. You gave me the ship and the responsibility, so 'GET OFF MY BACK!'*
ENDS
Cirocco hit the ENCODE button, then TRANSMIT, and leaned back in her chair. She rubbed her eyes. A few days ago there had been too little to do. Now she was snowed under with the status cheek to ready Ringmaster for orbital insertion.
Everything was changed, and all by those six tiny points of light in Gaby's telescope. There seemed little sense in exploring the other Saturnian moons now. They were committed to an early rendezvous with Themis.
She called up the schedule of things still to be done, then the duty roster, saw it had been rearranged again. She was to join April and Calvin outside. She hurried to the lock.
Her suit was bulky and tight. it murmured at her while the radio hissed quietly. it smelled comfortably like herself, and like hospital plastic and fresh oxygen.
Ringmaster was an elongated structure consisting of two main sections joined by a hollow tube three meters in diameter and a hundred meters long. Structural strength for the tube was provided by three composite girders on the outside, each of which transmitted the thrust of one engine to the life system balanced on top of the tube.
At the far end were the engines and a cluster of detachable fuel tanks, hidden from sight by the broad plate of the radiation shield which ringed the central tube like the rat guard on the mooring line of an ocean-going freighter. The other side of that shield was an unhealthy place to be.
On the other end of the tube was the life system, consisting of the science module, the control module, and the carousel.
Control was at the extreme front end, a cone-shaped protuberance rising from the big coffee can that was SCIMOD. It had the only windows on the ship, more for tradition than practicality.
The Science Module was almost hidden behind a thicket of instrumentation. The high-gain antenna rose above it all, perched on the end of a long stalk and trained on Earth. There were two radar dishes and five telescopes, including Gaby's 120-centimeter Newtonian.
Just behind it was the carouseclass="underline" a fat, white flywheel. It rotated slowly around the rest of the ship, with four spokes leading up from the rim.
Strapped to the central stem were other items, including the hydroponics cylinders and the several components of the lander: life system, tug engine, two descent stages and the ascent engine.
The lander had been intended for exploring the Saturn moons, in particular Iapetus and Rhea. After Titan-which had an atmosphere and was therefore unsuited for exploration this trip-Iapetus was the most interesting body in the neighborhood. Until the 1980's, it had been significantly brighter in one hemisphere, but it had changed over a twenty-year period until its albedo was nearly uniform. Two troughs in the graph of luminosity now occurred at opposite points on its orbit. The lander had been designed to discover what caused it.
Now that trip had been scrapped in the face of the much more compelling object called Themis.
Ringmaster resembled another spaceship: the fictional Discovery, the Jupiter probe from the classic movie 2001.. A Space Odyssey. It was not surprising that it should. Both ships had been designed from similar parameters, though one sailed only on celluloid. Cirocco was EVA to remove the last of the solar reflection panels which wrapped the life system of Ringmaster. The problem in a space vehicle is usually one of disposing of excess heat, but they were now far enough from the sun that it paid to soak up what they could get.