Chapter 17

“On that matter; while we were coming up the path, Sandra picked up what she thinks is a speck of gold. I am inclined to agree with her, for it would make sense of that guy with a metal detector. Your land is at a higher elevation than his, so any small finds of gold would suggest that the reef they started from is either on your land or even higher up. Is there any sign of a watercourse going down through your land, either at present or sometime in the past?”

“There is, now that you ask. While I was ploughing, I noticed the difference in the soil at one point, and it occurred again and again with each furrow, indicating an old channel going down through the land and leaving evidence in the soil texture.”

Reg nodded.

“That could imply a scene whereby bits of gold, from small particles to nuggets, were being washed downhill aeons ago by a rushing channel in major storm conditions. Occasional less strenuous flooding would help distribute small particles more widely, but still in the general vicinity of the channel. That indicates that the place where the gold was coming from was higher up in elevation. Dad, how high does your land go, and is there ground even higher than your upper land boundary?”

Mr Robson fingered his chin as as he spoke. “The land has its ups and downs. My patch is mostly sloping down. I don’t know of any nearby ground at a higher elevation than my patch, but geologically speaking, land levels may have altered over the aeons. Any decent farmer can tell you if there are some changes in his soil that suggest land changes in the far past.”

“Oh. So the gold reef may have been elsewhere, and we are now seeing what is left of the channel from that reef downwards; at least downwards millions of years ago? The reef may have been higher at that time but is now in a valley? Have I got that right?”

“From a farming point of view, that would be right.”

“So your soil may have some amounts of gold within it; possibly enough to be worth prospecting with a metal detector?”

“I suppose so. Do you still have that metal detector that you used on Earth?”

“I don’t think so; too bulky to bring. What we could bring with us was restricted to what we could carry, like an airline demands of its passengers. A metal detector doesn’t fit that limitation.”

“If I could get one for you, would you like to try going over this farm to see what might be found?”

“Gladly, but I don’t think there are detectors on sale here. The Colony has limited technical assets, mostly geared to agriculture and building; very few machinery products, and metal detectors are a luxury market item.”

“Then where did my neighbour get hold of one?”

“Ah. I may be wrong, in that case. Maybe it was imported specially. Perhaps some new residents are trying to find various metals to start local industries. Available detectors might not have fine tuning such as hobbyists demand for small finds.”

“Let me look into that, Reginald. I can do that any day while my wife is phoning our girls about their children.”

Reg chuckled, “Yes, I think that you may find that. Oh, I should mention that there is a possibility that we may move our home in the near future. We found what you might call a deposit of marble under our land, though it is simply an ancient heat conversion from limestone.

If it proves to be worth exploiting, we will have to leave to get away from all the noise and stone dust. The chances are that we will move some miles farther from the rail line, for I have been asked to manage a new nature park and we will have to live at or very close to it.”

Mr Robson declared, “Congratulations on that appointment. I am glad you said ‘miles’, for my mind hasn’t fully got accustomed to metres and kilometres, despite all the years since we changed. You youngsters automatically think in terms of kilometres, so it is nice when you use miles in my hearing.”

“Glad to help that way, Dad. University taught us all the measurement scales, right back to the Mesopotamian one based on the sixty base. I was astounded to learn that all our sixty measures come from that far back: sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes in the hour, and even 360 degrees in a circle – that is six times sixty, you see, and a year was counted as 360 days, divided into 12 months of 30 days, with the extra five days as holidays – what Americans call vacations. Today’s decimal system is much simpler to use.”

Mr Robson commented, “I have never really thought about how our English measures were derived. It goes back to Mesopotamia?”

“Some of it. The mile we get from the Roman mile that they used for road distances. The term ‘rod’ in the 16th century was 16.5 feet, with the foot defined as the average of the left foot of 16 men lined up toe to heel. Odd, isn’t it?”

“Weird, rather,” said Mr Robson, “I did hear that the acre is the area of ground that could be ploughed in a day by one man with a yoke of oxen pulling a wooden plough.”

Reg nodded. “I had heard that story, but it is an inaccurate one, as the time needed for ploughing that amount will vary according to the ground conditions and how healthy the oxen are, amongst other factors, so a day’s ploughing may or may not be that exact area. Its true origin goes back to the Neolithic period, when people started to measure the times of the day and needed a standard unit to work from. They eventually chose Venus, at its slowest movement in the sky. The period of time it took Venus to move one degree in the sky was measured using a pendulum that would do that measure with 360 swings. The length of the string of the pendulum that they found was needed for that task was chosen to become later known as the megalithic yard, and all other measures were based on that length.

Six Megalithic yards became a Megalithic Rod, and an acre was defined as four by forty megalithic Rods. That is much more accurate than the ploughman tale, sir, delightful though that story is.”

Robson stared at the younger man.

“Good God, man. University certainly stuffed you with facts!”

“Not really, sir. I am the kind of guy who collects information simply because I love to do it. School then university was just a formal way of gathering data into my head. My data gathering unfortunately didn’t cover girls, so it was Frances, Erika and Freda that taught me all I know about the fairer sex and how a man should treat them. That gave me an advantage when we had the opportunity of retraining Hermione and Jemima. We did that so well that they ended up joining our little clan.”

“And I must admit that it all worked out well for you and them, Reginald. Their mother is happy to be a doting grandmother, I can tell you.”

“Thank you, sir. I am happy that you are pleased with the outcome. It was not our original intention, but things just happened along the way. The pair of them are wonderful girls now, as wives and mothers as well as partners in our company back on Earth.”

“I noticed the difference the first time they came home to the farm. They were already starting to change their outlook on life, and I put that down to you, or to you and Frances.”

Yes, Frances had a lot to do with it. She pushes me when she thinks I need to be pushed.”

“That’s it. I have the same situation with my own Charlotte. Talking about names, I’d prefer you called me Charles most of the time, instead of Dad. No objections on that title, it just makes me more comfortable talking to you man to man, with you as Reginald and me as Charles.”

“Okay, Charles. I can live with that. By the way, the girls would love to have you regarded as grandparents by all of our children, not just William and Violet.”

“I’ll see what Charlotte says about that,” Mr Robson said. Just then, the lady herself came rushing over to say, “Darling, all the girls want their children to call us grandma and grandpa! Isn’t that delightful?”

Mr Robson had no choice in his reply. “It is indeed, Charlotte. Reginald was just telling me about it.”

“I am sorting out with the girls what we will eat shortly, apart from the scones and cakes. They are still breastfeeding their babies, so we don’t have to fix anything for the little ones.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Mr Robson. “Reginald and I have to work out how we will approach the intrusion on our land, so give us some time to do that.”

“Naturally, Charles.”

She hurried off again, happily busy.

An idea had come to Reginald, and he now broached it with his father-in-law.

“Charles, you know how lidar is used to survey the ground below trees and bushes?”

“I think so. Is that using laser beams from an aircraft to get a picture of the ground surface levels?”

“That’s it. What suddenly struck me was that we ought to be able to do a similar thing for metal detection under the ground. Detectors push electromagnetic signals at certain frequencies into the ground, and any metals should respond to specific frequencies. For one frequency, materials that have any iron content at all give a response; that includes native gold. You need a different frequency to get deeper into the ground for the same response. A pulse detector unit can employ a couple of relevant frequencies integrated in the control unit to both locate gold and get deeper into the soil for a similar find.

The question that interests me is at what height does the signal have to start from, to get a decent response?

The reason I pose that question is that to cover a large area of ground with a normal detector, you need to spend ages swinging your detector back and forward looking for a signal. Instead of a man with a detector on a long stick, why not use a drone flying a few centimetres above the ground, and recording GPS coordinates for every exact spot where a signal is discovered. That mapped recording could be downloaded and all the hits printed out so that you can go direct to the hit site and dig up what is there. Much better than scanning an entire large farm estate with a hand-held detector, stopping to dig every time you get a hit. If it was a drone scan with all the hits identified, a dozen people could go out and dig out the hits all at the same time.”

Mr Robson muttered, “Good idea, but I don’t think such a drone exists, son. You would have to build it yourself.”

Reg was nodding. “Or get someone else to build it; someone like The Personalia, for instance.”

“Possibly, but why would they bother with a ground-level instrument? They are spaceships, remember.”

“They are also good business folk these days. If it works, they could set up a business on Earth to manufacture the design, and sell it as a more efficient and effective metal detector for large areas. They don’t even have to set up their own business. If they patent the design, they might just sell the design to a business on Earth and let them get on with it.”

Mr Robson mused, “You wouldn’t get in trouble with the Governor? He might want it to be made on this planet.”

“Unlikely, as it requires a lot of technical bits and pieces that we don’t have here. It will be years before the Colony gets to that advanced stage, Charles.”

“Possibly; I would not know. What do we do for now about checking my land for gold or whatever he was looking for?”

“You made a start by posting signs at your boundary. I would suggest a few more of these, so that if you have to complain about a future trespass you can point to a clear violation of your rights. Do you want a hand in making these?”

“Nah.” Charles waved away the offer. “I do them in my spare time. I like to keep busy at the farm, when I don’t have relatives calling on us like today. I’ll do these extra signs to keep you happy, if you will keep my daughters happy.”

Reg laughed. “That I can promise, as it is my intention anyway. I do believe though that you are right about checking first with the Governor.”

He stepped away to make his call, but the Governor was not available, so Reg said he would call again later. Instead, Reg called The Personalia and outlined his idea of a flying drone metal detector pinpointing metal locations with GPS coordinates.

“What is the purpose of this proposed measuring equipment, Reginald Robertson?” asked the alien construct.

“In this case, to locate possible flakes and lumps of gold within the land belong to my father-in-law, Charles Robson.”

“To what end? If you simply want a supply of gold, we should be able to mine that from asteroids within this solar system. It may take some time, but we do asteroid mining for our own construction requirements, so we know where and how to look for specific materials such as gold.”

“Sorry. I should explain that gold has a high monetary value in our society, both here and on Earth. Finding a source of gold may enable us or the Robsons to purchase more land on this planet.”

“We were aware of the monetary value you humans put on it, but that measure is of little interest to us. It is more easily found and processed in space than in a planetary gravity well.”

“That may be so, but we humans have always liked gold due to its lack of tarnish; its aversion to chemical combinations. If we, or rather you, were to manufacture such machines, we think there could be a worthwhile market for these machines on Earth. You could set up a company to make and sell them, or sell the patented design to a company on Earth for that company to manufacture them, with you getting a proportion of the sales as the patent holder. You always seem to like building up your portfolio of financial assets on Earth, as it pays for any of your own needs, such as defensive missiles.”

“Your argument now has some merit, Reginald Robertson. We will proceed with designing the device as you describe, and let you know when we could have a prototype ready for testing by you.”

“Thank you. I will be notifying Governor Kempe in case the Colony has some interest in producing or distributing these machine here on Rehome.”

“That would be a good decision on your part, Reginald Robertson. If the Governor asks, we would of course fit in with his desires as relates to the Colony.”