Chapter 7

July 2241
En Route to Ptolemy-1
Astronomer and Geographer Charlie Andersen

As I climbed out of my tube from cold-sleep, I saw a gorgeous blonde about to get in a tube down the row from mine. Her face was so comely and body so shapely, it was distressing to see her magnificence and know I’d never be lucky enough to win her affection. The sensation was intense enough to cause me physical pain.

I decided I should at least be friendly. I walked over and held out my hand in greeting, “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Charlie Andersen.”

“Hi Charlie! I’ve been wanting to meet you! I’m Erica Keller! We’re in the same family!”

OHMIGAWD! This beauty was Erica! I hadn’t met her before, so I didn’t request her at family selection, otherwise I surely would have!

“I’m a big fan of your work! Your paper about close-pass-induced planetary quakes on tidally-locked worlds was ground-breaking!” She was one of the ten people in the whole human race who cared about my hobby? WOW!

“You’re far too kind, Erica! Have a good sleep!”

She briefly kissed my lips and said, “Thanks! Have a good shift!” As the window started to fog over, I could see she was smiling and blushing. I’d been awake less than fifteen minutes, and it was a great day already!

I talked with my co-husband Ross, and he didn’t know who Erica was. Our three other wives didn’t know her either, none of us had picked her.

As I ate breakfast, I realized she must have picked one of us as her preferred selection! Could it be me? Was she THAT interested in my work? I put my food tray in the cleaner and remembered her beautiful blonde hair, her green eyes, her slender waist and nice, round...

The wall speaker blared; “ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK!...” ... I tried to remember ... OH NO! RADIATION ALARM!

I ran for my emergency station and remembered the radiation safety protocol. I moved all the items I could to the outside of the compartment, helping the other five people in the room. We sat on the floor and nervously chatted about what could be happening. We waited for the all-clear or instructions. After what seemed like a long time, the all-clear sounded.

At lunch, I learned more about the incident. The ship had passed near the beam from a gamma ray burst. The pilot tried to turn the shielded side of the ship toward the beam and move us away from it, but the thrusters wouldn’t fire.

An engineer, Oskar Schmidt, had gone outside on an EVA to repair the thruster wiring. He broke off the ice from one of the leaking water tanks and quickly finished the repair.

If the pilot waited twelve minutes to fire the thrusters, when Oskar would be safely inside the airlock, we would have passed into the beam. Everybody aboard would have received at least twenty times the lethal dose of cosmic and gamma rays. Imagine sitting on the Chernobyl reactor as the accident happened.

Oskar realized we couldn’t wait twelve minutes. He bravely said, “Tell Molly and Enka I love them! Fire the thrusters!” As the rockets ignited, they incinerated Oskar and flung his charred remains into space. He was a true hero. He gave his life to save us all.

We had a ceremony to honor him and took a day off for people to recover from the loss. There would be some confusion caused by four of the first boys born on the planet all being named “Oskar”, including my oldest son.

The incident inspired me to put more effort into my own work. I couldn’t heroically save the mission, but I was determined to make sure we would have safe landing spots, near the resources we needed.

We orbited several of the planets for a few days each and sent scout drones to investigate. I double-checked our information, before sending my initial report to the Commander.

“Star Ptolemy-1 is a blue dwarf 39 light years from Earth, with ten planets, A through K.

A is a Mercury-like world, very close to the star. It rains molten antimony, lead, and arsenic. Its ocean is molten iron and nickel, with an atmosphere of mainly lead vapor. The surface temperature about 1,900 C.

B is Venus-like, with a temperature near 500 degrees, due to a runaway greenhouse effect.

C is rocky, with no water or atmosphere, and a temperature of 200 degrees.

The three planets in the habitable zone are D, E, and F.

E and F are both rocky and cold, like Norway or Alaska on Earth. Life on E or F would be possible, but difficult.

Ptolemy-1 D has been named New Enceladus, in honor of the colony that produced most of our fuel, and the hundreds of tons of Osmium used in our reactor shielding. The Ptolemy-1 D year is 4.5 earth days long. It has no moons and is tidally locked, so it does not rotate. It has no light / dark cycle. The North pole faces the star and is hot, 60 degrees C, with constant daylight. Planetary gravity is 0.6g, with an average surface temperature 3 degrees cooler than Earth. The Chemistry department has advised us the atmosphere is breathable, with more oxygen than Earth, but lower air pressure. It has a single shallow ocean on the North / light side, with salinity 1/10 of Earth’s oceans. It’s not quite drinkable, but could easily be filtered.

There are many freshwater lakes and thick vegetation near equator, and a large number of rivers and streams carry rainwater to the ocean. There is a large mountain range with several volcanoes on a small continent in the north, which is very hot and dry.

The South pole is always dark and nearly as cold as Antarctica. It’s a flat, frozen desert, getting less than ten centimeters of snow per Earth year. Most storms and precipitation occur near the equator.

The Chemistry department has noticed signs there may be intelligent life, but no radio signals have been detected. If there are intelligent lifeforms on the planet, their technology level could be anything from stone age to early industrial. We need more information about them, before finalizing our landing sites.

Ptolemy B and E can be seen with the naked eye on occasion from the dark side of D.

Every 11 days, C is close enough to D to be visible for hours, and nearly as bright as the star for several minutes. It warms D by 2 to 4 degrees for a short time. The close approaches may also cause seismic activity due to tidal forces.

Ptolemy G is an ice world, with a deep ocean under a thick ice crust.

H and J are gas giants, and K is Pluto-like, a relatively small frozen rock.”

I listed the ten best landing sites on D, or New Enceladus, and again mentioned they may change when we discovered new information. Since lander two was destroyed, we would only need 3 locations.

I finished my busy month by staring at Erica’s beauty through the window of her tube a moment. We were nearly to our new home and wouldn’t be using cold-sleep anymore. She’d come out of hibernation the next morning, and we’d enjoy our first full day together. I could hardly wait!

August 2271
Ptolemy-1 D High Orbit
Mission Commander Rito Mori

I read and studied the pre-landing reports from all the department heads.The most frightening thing in the reports was surprisingly from Geology: “There is evidence that sixty to eighty thousand Earth years ago, snow and ice had piled up many kilometers thick near the South pole, until the mass was heavy enough to crack the planetary crust. The resulting super volcano created a cloud of ash and dust in the atmosphere that blocked out light from the star, and caused a two Earth-year long ice age, wiping out a large number of species. This may happen again, probably several million Earth years in the future.”

The most immediate danger seemed to be the natives: “The native intelligent species are amphibian in nature, somewhat similar to large frogs on Earth, but the adults have eight legs. They start as eggs laid in shallow fresh water, then tadpoles. We have chosen to call them “Tads”, due to this resemblance.

Next they grow to two-legged tadpole-like creatures weighing around half a kilogram, continuing to live and grow exclusively in the water. Their next life stage has a long tadpole-like tail, two large rear legs for jumping, and two front legs with three claws on each front foot, used for grabbing prey in the shallows and muddy shore near the water.