Watson, Ian - Novel 06 by God's World (v1.1) Page A

orbiting at
400,000 kilometres.” He smiles. “And it has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.”
                “Still no technological signs,”
warns Kendrick, who has been watching it too, with his instruments. “If the gas
giant was masking them before, I should still be getting readings now. But I’m
not. Just the same burst of static ...”
                 The
child of the giant floats in the open now.
                 “What
we have here,” explains Salman, “is a planet-sized moon nearly as large as
Earth, rotation-locked to its primary, as one would expect. Depending on the
ratio of heavy elements in its make-up, the gravity will be somewhere between
0.75 and 0.9 of Earth’s. Personally I’d put the figure at the higher end on
account of the atmosphere—and the traces of methane are good life indicators.”
                 “Yeah,
farting cows,” comments Kendrick. “So it’s metal-rich without any detectable
technology. Paradox. There’s been no reaction to our signals.”
                 “We
heard you. Now, the moon orbits its primary about once every two and a half
Earth days. Rather a long day and night cycle from our point of view! Still,
the inclination seems to be only about 11 degrees, so we should expect a fairly
equable climate with minor seasonal variations since the eccentricity of the
gas giant is so small. The side facing away from the primary seems to be
largely water-covered. There’ll be very slight irregular tides caused by the
other moons.”
                 “Which
may be a poor prognosis for life evolving rapidly or to any complexity,” says Rene.
“With no tidal intermix to haul life on to land.”
                 “Not
necessarily. The rotation-locking could have taken a long time to finalise . .
. Anyhow, the main visible consequence of the primary’s own pull has been to
draw the planet into a distinct pear shape. There’s high land on the side
facing the primary, as the radar profile shows us. That side’s basically
highland desert and mountains, with thin air. The other side is ocean with much
denser air. Islands , too—plenty of those, possibly volcanic in
origin.”
                 “The
point is,” says Kamasarin, “dare we go into orbit around it for a closer look
with no absolute guarantee of return? On the other hand, dare we not —when there’s no guarantee we can
return to Earth through High Space?”
                 “Perhaps
we ought to—” Zoe falters. “Perhaps we should, well, ask the pyramid?”
                 “You
mean pray to it?” Wu curls her lip.
                 “No,
what I mean is, if we all concentrate upon it with this question in mind—well,
perhaps the psychometer or something will react? It does respond to our consciousness, even if we don’t understand how!
It costs nothing to try. It has to be in some sort of resonance with its point
of origin, doesn’t it? Maybe it can . . . well, key us in, now that we’re so
close.”
                “Denby has a point,” nods Kamasarin.
“Maybe we can gain some contact, or insight.”
                 Heinz
snaps his fingers. “Another possible pointer. Let’s take a look at the
pyramid-on-world panel—” He clicks away, pursued by most of us.
                 “Ach,
it’s still showing the pyramid isolated in darkness.” He reaches out and
presses his palm against the panel. “Damn us all for fools! Look! ”
                 Already
the symbol pattern is changing. The pyramid shrinks to a point of light. A
golden disc appears. A green blip comes from behind it, and tracks across the
‘globe’ to disappear behind it. A few moments later it reappears. Then the
point of light floats up towards the blip and fuses with it. And the sequence
recommences.
                 “It’s
telling us, in case we’re so dumb,” smiles Ritchie,