Chapter 12: Hopes and Dreams

Aerial reconnaissance over the planet we have named Trojan, is depressing. The glimpses of ruins peeking through jungle, we could see from orbit, on closer inspection, are not ruins. It’s devastation. Obliteration.

The slag heaps of cooled down molten cities is depressing beyond words. Seriously, we see towering buildings with large congealed drops running down their flanks, like melted wax globs on candle sticks. Horrible to imagine living sentient creatures were inside when that destruction rained upon them from above.

We, or I, keep one of our volunteer lookouts in an out-of-body alert status listening, just in case there is a tiny voice to be heard. There is none anywhere within the entire range of psychic hearing. We don’t know the maximum range, but we know from examples, we can hear for a parsec or better. A parsec is slightly more than three and a quarter light-years. Actually, 3.26 light-years.

The only optimistic conclusions we can make from our patrol, is the ground will still support vegetation, abundant vegetation. Samples of the air indicate it’s breathable by Terran life forms and the few samples of surface water we tested is drinkable. Temperatures in the tropic region are comfortable at this stage of the planets orbit. Need to check again at Perigee and Apogee.

We observed no animal or insect life forms, but bacteria obviously survived, we see composting evident under the verdant growth.

Why do we call this planet Trojan? Actually MOM is the Trojan. Our Star-ship is too massive to stay in orbit around the planet. The balance of gravity fields between the star and these three water worlds, in nearly identical orbits is too fragile to withstand the perturbations of our added mass. We unbalance the system and tend to make the “wheel” wobble.

We moved MOM to LaGrange Point Four. There are five Lagrange points in any orbit and two are stable, L4 and L5, points four and five. These points are, in the three hundred sixty degrees circle of the orbit, located sixty degrees ahead of the planet and sixty degrees trailing the planet. In these two locations and only these two, we won’t upset the balance.

Jupiter has clumps of asteroids sharing it’s orbit, called Trojan asteroids, located at Jupiter’s L4 and L5. Since MOM is a Trojan in this planets orbit L4, we named the planet Trojan.

We can survey all three water worlds, from MOM based at L4 of Trojan’s orbit. Why did we choose L4 over L5 as the orbital position for MOM? Good question. I don’t know.

Marshall and Karen explain, L5 is like a junk yard. Lot’s of debris.

A junk yard? One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. I always loved exploring junk yards. A little self indulgent excursion is overdue.

Wrecks. Wrecks of ships, actually wrecks of two entirely different fleets, from the outward appearances. A battle in orbit? Seems more likely one fleet attacked another already stationed in orbit. A surprise attack is my interpretation.

On the surface, jungle completed the destruction the combat began. Here in orbit is a time capsule, a frozen last minute of the battle, after the fires burned out.