Chapter 14

The morning brought the usual mild confusion, as scientists in various stages of wakefulness meandered around the pavilion and to and from the sequestered toilet and shower sections. As she and Igwanda, the latter with Meier slung over his shoulder, headed for the communal coffee pot Meiersdottir noticed Zo sitting by himself at a table with a slightly bemused expression.

"Good morning, Lingy," she said with amusement, detouring slightly to pass near him.

Startled he looked up and, seeing her, turned scarlet. "Um, Amanda, can I ask you..." He jerked his head meaningfully skyward.

She grinned. "Not a word, Sergeant. You don't need to ask." His color subsiding a bit (though not completely), he nodded thankfully at her and then suddenly diverted his attention as Hill approached, somehow managing to handle not only two cups of coffee but two breakfast trays as well. The big smile, Meiersdottir recognized, was not for her.

Wow, she thought, I don't remember Rory serving 'em breakfast back on the ship. She murmured a "good morning" to Hill as well as she resumed her trek to the coffee pot. Hill seemed not even to notice, her sparkling eyes fixed firmly on the sergeant.

With a mostly new planetside contingent it took somewhat longer than Meiersdottir and Igwanda remembered from their previous visit for everyone to complete their morning rituals, and there were a few aborted communicator discussions from the previous night that had to be concluded, but fairly soon the humans were ready and the colonel waved his arm to motion the Edenites forward. And the first full day of the humans' second sojourn on the planet began.

The first blip in the day's events took little time to appear. Igwanda had taken Mantegna aside before the landing to urge him to press immediately forward with initial development of electrical power for the Edenites. "They went to extraordinary lengths to seek out the copper that will be needed for generation and transmission," he'd told the physicist, referring to the natives' pioneering step shortly before the humans' previous departure of forming an exploratory party to seek out deposits of the metal, which weren't available locally. "Assuming they were successful, it would be very helpful if they were able to realize quick results."

Now, as the colonel resumed his former practice of drifting from one discussion to another, making sure all was proceeding smoothly before moving on to the next, he saw Mantegna motioning him to come over.

"Yes, Jack?" he said, as he responded to the beckon.

"Carlos, I'm afraid electricity is an idea whose time hasn't yet quite come to Eden," the scientist told him.

"No copper yet?" asked Igwanda in mild surprise; in more than a year he would have expected at least some results from the Edenites' foray.

Mantegna shook his head. "That's not it. They don't have a lot, but there's some, and they've even been able to spin out something that'll do for wiring. But we're stuck there for the moment, it's something else, something we all should have seen before. I just had a blind spot, and I guess so did Shen"—Shen Bulgarin, Mantegna's senior on the prior visit, who had taken the lead in touting the virtues of electric power to the natives—"and you, too."

"What?"

"You know how a Faraday-type generator works?"

"Of course."

"Take a coil of some kind of conductor, like copper, slap it around a magnet and wiggle the magnet back and forth inside, right?" the physicist persisted. Igwanda nodded impatiently. "Well, that's where we hit a snag."

The colonel was still baffled. "How is that a problem?" he asked. "There are obviously no electromagnets on Eden, but there is ample iron. Can you find no lodestone?"—permanently magnetized iron deposits, usually found on Earth near the surface where lightning strikes have created natural magnetic poles.

"Oh, there's plenty of lodestone, it's as thick on the ground here as horseshit used to be on cobblestone streets. They hate the damn stuff, but they know right where it is, that's not the problem."

"Then what?" demanded Igwanda.

"Think it through," Mantegna told him. "Amanda's goal, hell, the goal for all of us, is to help them become self-sufficient, isn't it?"

"I still don't... ," began Igwanda, suddenly trailing off.

The physicist nodded. "You've got it. We all lost sight of the situation. They can find the lodestone just fine, but how can they work with it?"

"Uh," Igwanda grunted.

"You can't just stick a magnet right there upside an old-timey radio that has to work twenty-four-seven," Mantegna said, referring to the aliens' radio-wave-based telepathic linkage. "Be like taking somebody who's allergic to, say, peanuts and putting him to work in the fields picking them. The Edenites are deathly allergic to magnetism. And it gets worse, I think. You know electric current generates magnetic fields, weak but they're there."

"Well, that does not trouble them when they are next to our power-packs," Igwanda protested. But it was lame, and he knew it.

"Micro-currents, except when our suits are activated," the physicist reminded him; he meant the electrification of the humans' outerwear, used as a self-defense mechanism. "You never had us turn our suits on except twice, and one time they were stupid anyway from the thunderstorm and the other I think they were mostly a ways away after a minute or two, weren't they? It's real short-range, but the effect exists."

"Are you sure?"

Mantegna nodded his head emphatically. "I tried it, after warning them. Had three of them stand at different distances. Seems to be less than a meter. The one closest to me went stupid right off, lost his link completely, but the other two weren't affected. Same with the lodestone, they can walk around it no problem, but they can't even pick up a decent chunk, and that's the raw ore, not refined."

"Then electricity is unattainable for them?"

"I wouldn't go that far. Shielded wiring would work OK, I think, I mean radios back home ran on electricity. But the most routine maintenance of normal generation equipment would be impossible, too strong and too close. Even static generation won't solve that. We're going to need some means of non-mechanical production. Maybe biological."