Impact! Read online

  The meteorite Syrdian had followed earlier spoke, “I’m lifting off now.” Dex heard the squeal it made when it flew and could tell it was moving up and away. The meteorite on hies back lit its lights. “Okay,” the flying meteorite said, “you can take off now and fly towards me. I’ll move away as you approach. We’ll make a circle and land like I did with Syrdian.”

  Dex felt nervous because hie couldn’t tell where Syrdian and Fagan were. Quietly to them hie said, “Can you see my light okay?”

  They answered affirmatively.

  “You’re in a formation position and ready to take off?”

  Hearing them both say yes, hie took a couple of steps forward and stroked into the air after the meteorite. As Syrdian had said, it was terrifying flying off into the dust when hie couldn’t see. Hie flew towards the sound and faint glow of the meteorite. A moment later hie could better see its glow in the murky dust. Hie could tell it was moving away, because if it hadn’t been hie would have run into it already. It seemed to veer slowly around to the left, although, remembering hies flight through a cloud in the past, hie worried that hie was merely disoriented. After a bit the meteorite spoke to them, “We are approaching the ledge. I am slowing down. We are three body lengths above the ground, two, one. No! Dex, you’re going up. Time to land!”

  Dex had stretched out hies feet and begun beating to a hover. Hie’d thought hie was descending, but evidently hie wasn’t, hies feet weren’t touching anything. Hie forced himrself to beat more softly in order to ease himrself down gently, still stretching toes as far as possible. Hie heard the meteorite say, “One and a half, one, a half, you’re down!”

  With great relief, Dex felt rock under hies talons and settled to the ground. “Syrdian, Fagan, are you okay?”

  Soon Dex, hies spouse, and hies child were embracing one another in great relief. Malnot joined them a few moments later.

  ***

  Ell found herself a little bit at loose ends. Her team was getting ready to send more air filters to the teecees as well as lights to put on their ankles so they could fly formations in the dust. She had commandeered some of the people over at ET resources that worked with parabolics. They were putting up a bunch more solar parabolics for Zage’s idea to light TC3. For that to work, she’d contacted Allosci. Viveka was making some graphene balloons and tether lines they could use to hold the parabolic powered lights up over the TC3 landscape.

  They couldn’t start the teecees eastward migration until they had the ankle lights and filters. She felt a little itch to get back to trying to measure the fifth dimension, but had a meeting with her team again in a little while and didn’t feel like she had enough time to go home and start measuring dimensions either.

  She headed back to her office, “Allan, bring me up whatever interesting video you’ve set aside from Beta Canum Venaticorum.”

  Allan said, “I thought you would be interested in these images of very large herbivores. The specimen here seems to fall into the same category as the sauropods of Earth’s dinosaur age. It even has a very long tail. Like on TC3, rather than an extremely long neck like the brachiosaurs, these animals use extremely long front limbs to harvest vegetation from high in the trees and bring it down to their mouths. You will recall Harald Wheat’s observation that this arrangement obviates the problem of pumping blood at a high enough pressure to reach up to the brain in the head of brachiosaurs.”

  Ell blinked, “I’ve forgotten. Why isn’t it just as much of a problem to pump blood up to the ends of those long limbs?”

  “Because the tissues of the brain must have blood at all times, whereas the tissues in an extremity can go without blood flow for short periods. You’ll notice that this particular animal reaches up first with one arm, then with the other. Neither one is high and without good blood perfusion for very long at a time.”

  “How big is it compared to Brachiosaurus?”

  “Well, if you include those long front arms as part of its length instead of the long neck in Brachiosaurus, it’s about the same. The one you’re looking at in this video would be twenty-eight meters or about ninety-two feet. It’s pulling down vegetation from a height of about ten meters.”

  “My God! How heavy is it?”

  “We don’t have a way to estimate its density,” Allan said. “Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five metric tons depending on whether it has a lot of air sacs in it like the big dinosaurs have been proposed to have had.”

  “Have you run the numbers on the atmospheric density? Is it dense enough to provide support to an animal this large even though the gravity is almost eight tenths of Earth normal?”

  “At 188 atmosphere’s pressure, the density of the air is 222 kilograms per cubic meter, or a little less than one quarter of the density of water. It’s not the same as swimming, but it does support a lot of weight. That plus a slightly lower gravity makes these immense animals physically possible. In this next video clip, you’ll see an enormous flying animal, also made possible by the very dense atmosphere.”

  Ell’s eyes widened as she saw what appeared to be a huge flyer soar overhead. Without perspective she couldn’t be sure just how big it was, but then Allan dropped a scale marker on it showing that it was nine meters, or thirty feet from wing tip to wing tip.

  Allan said, “Emma is asking for you out in the big room. Do you want me to connect you?”

  “No, I’ll just go out there. Go ahead and move the rocket to another continent. Keep an eye out for anything regular that might have been built by an intelligent species.”

  ***

  Phil felt like he was starving. His surgery on his hip was scheduled around noon and of course, they hadn’t given him anything to eat or drink after midnight. A knock came on his door and he and his parents looked up. Maybe they’re coming for me early?

  A strawberry blond head poked its way around the door. “Hey, I thought I’d come by and see you off to have your surgery?”

  A warm feeling came over Phil as Ell stepped into the room. My God she looks good. “You’re welcome, if you brought me a beer and a couple slices of pizza.”

  Ell tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. “That’s about as dumb as the stuff you used to say. Do you think Dr. Bynewicz’s titanium shell and general anesthesia and other meds kept the porting from affecting your intelligence? Or do you think you’re even denser than you used to be?”

  Phil grinned at her, “I have noticed that light seems to be bending around me…”

  Ell laughed and turned to Phil’s parents, “That last answer alone is enough to convince me that going through the port didn’t really do his brain much harm. What do you guys think?”

  Phil’s mother had initially been appalled at the way Donsaii spoke to her son. She’d been around men enough to know how they “trash talked” one another, but she was surprised to hear a young woman dishing it out. I suppose, if she went through a military Academy, Donsaii probably had to learn to talk back to these bozos? Brenda smiled, and said, “They said that the testing they did on Phil showed normal neurologic function.”

  Phil’s dad snorted, “If it showed normal neurologic function in this lunkhead, that’s certainly a big change from before. Though it’s hard to imagine it fixing all the things that were wrong with his brain.”

  Ell turned to Phil again and said, “Seriously though, do you feel it’s caused a problem for you? This will be hugely important to know in the future if someone else needs to be ported.”

  Phil shrugged, “Yeah, as near as I can tell I feel fine. I guess if it affected my intelligence I might not notice it myself, but if someone’s smart enough to see how they cross correlate I’d be happy to take some IQ tests to be compared somehow to test results from the Academy. I’ve even been thinking that once I’m back on my feet, maybe you could drug me up again and shoot me back to Mars?”

  Ell stared at him for a moment. “Wow. I’ve been thinking that I might not feel too bad about sending someone through a port again
in an emergency. I have not been thinking of it as a general means of transportation!”

  “Oh, come on!” Phil grinned at her. “Riding in a spaceship to Mars is dangerous!”

  There was another knock on the door and a young man leaned in and focused on Phil, “Hello, I’m here to pick you up and take you down to the operating room?”

  Ell breathed a sigh of relief, “Saved by the bell!”

  Phil’s nurse came in as well and she and the young man bustled around disconnecting Phil’s bed so he could be wheeled down to the operating room. Once they had him ready and were starting out into the hall, the young man glanced around and said, “If you family members want to tag along I can show you where the waiting room is.”

  Ell said, “I’m just a friend. Can I wait with his parents?”

  The young man looked at her fully for the first time and stopped cold in his tracks. “D-Dr. Donsaii! I-I’m sorry I didn’t, didn’t look at you before. I didn’t… recognize you.”

  “That’s okay,” Ell said, “I like being incognito.”

  “B-but, you’ve always been my hero,” he looked a little cross eyed, “heroine? I’ve always, always wanted to meet you!”

  “Okay,” Ell winked at him, “I’ll tell you what. After we get Phil safely delivered to the operating room, I’ll sign you an autograph. How’s that sound?”

  “Oh!” The young man looked at the bed he was supposed to be moving as if surprised to find it there. He started towing it out of the room again, “Oh! Yes ma’am.” He gave an abashed smile, “I’ll get my work done first. Yes ma’am. Then, I would absolutely love it if you would give me an autograph. Maybe I can get someone to take a vid clip of us together and send it to me.”

  As she watched all of this, Phil’s mother had gone from being amazed that Ell Donsaii was going to sit with them during their son’s surgery, to being pleasantly surprised at how kind she was to the star struck young man.

  Later, as they sat quietly in the waiting room, the young woman obviously got a lot of work done. She murmured almost constantly to her AI as she stared off into a space only she could see in her contacts. Nonetheless, when several young people in the waiting room recognized her and came over to pay their respects, Donsaii was unfailingly polite and gracious, despite the fact that it obviously interrupted the work she’d been doing.

  When the surgeon came out to talk to them after Phil’s operation, he also appeared to be quite startled to recognize Donsaii. “Um, hello Ms., excuse me, Dr. Donsaii.” He said a little wide-eyed, “are you here for Mr. Zabrisk also?”

  Donsaii nodded, “I’m just here to provide a little moral support.”

  The surgeon told them that Phil’s surgery had gone well, but that he would be on crutches for 2 to 3 months and that it would be 6 to 12 months before he recovered as much as he was going to.

  Ed asked, “Will he get back to normal?”

  The surgeon shook his head slightly, “After a severe injury to a joint like this, it’s never completely back to normal, but we hope it’ll be back to pretty good. He’ll probably have at least some mild arthritic symptoms. Sometimes for reasons that aren’t completely clear, the hip rapidly goes on to severe arthritis and requires a joint replacement. As you know we don’t like to replace hips in young people. Hopefully that won’t be the case. Some patients do exceptionally well, playing sports and essentially doing everything they did before. Cross your fingers, say your prayers and we’ll all hope your son will be in that group.”

  ***

  Dex looked curiously down at hies feet. The meteorite’s new bracelet sat around hies ankle with four watery clear spots on it, similar to the ones on the meteorites. Hie checked hies harness again. Hies most important tools and hies allotment of the smoked zornit as well as a few of the sausages were all securely fastened. Little Mata seemed to be solidly attached to Dex’s harness as well.

  “Is everybody ready?” Dex asked the group behind himr on the ledge. Hie heard an affirmative chorus but wasn’t sure that everyone had answered. “Sound off,” hie said, another thing hie had learned from the meteorites. “One.”

  “Two, three, four, five, six,” hie heard trailing off into the wings of the V on each side behind himr. Moments later the count came back to himr, “… four, three, two…”

  “One,” hie said. “Okay,” hie bellowed, “your lights are gonna come on now.” As hie spoke, the lights on hies own ankle bloomed, creating a large glow down around hies feet. As hie looked back to the sides hie could see the glow about the ankles of several of the dalins just behind himr on either limb of the V. “Okay, we’re taking off unless someone shouts out that you’re not ready?”

  Hearing nothing, Dex spoke quietly to the meteorite standing in front of himr. With its typical squealing sound, it lifted into the air. Its lights came on and it drifted out and up away from himr. They had all practiced this a few times now and when it got to be a reasonable distance up and away from himr, Dex beat into the air behind it. Behind himr hie could hear the other dalins of this flight lifting into the air as well. “Sound off. One,” hie shouted. Hie felt like the rocket was drifting to hies left and hie slowly followed it in a big turn that hie knew would lead himr around to the south of the mountain and then off to the east.

  Moments later the count came back to himr, reassuring himr that everything was okay with this particular flight. Hie was more worried about the flights that would be taking off behind them. Each of the six rockets were supposed to lead a flight of dalins with Syrdian at the point of the last flight. The fourth flight worried himr most. Malnot was leading it, and although Dex had come to like Malnot quite a bit, Malnot was not very assertive. In addition, Qes and Fantais had asked Malnot if they could be in hies group and hie had agreed. Although Qes and Fantais had not caused a great deal of trouble since Qes had broken hies arm and Dex had straightened it back out, hie worried that they would cause problems. Worse, if Malnot couldn’t handle it, Syrdian would come up on them and have to deal with the issue.

  Since hie despised Qes, dealing with Qes’ petty problems was particularly difficult for Syrdian. Maybe I should have been in the last flight instead of the first?

  Nothing for it now. Hie could only keep stroking steadily onward in this long, extra migration. Dex hoped the meteorites would be able to bring them in for a landing on reasonable ground before they were all too exhausted. None of them had been flying much recently and hie worried that many of the dalins might not be in good enough condition for migration length flights. The fact that hie was carrying Mata made it unlikely that Dex would fly off and leave weaker members behind. Hie just hoped not to be embarrassed by hies own lack of endurance.

  After they had been flying for a dek or two, Dex was beginning to feel a little bit strained. Although hie was sure hie could push on until noon, hie called out to the rocket hie could hear squealing along in the gloomy murk up ahead of himrself. Just the noise the rockets made to fly had turned out to be easy enough to follow through the dust. Though they had offered to make a louder noise, it turned out to be unnecessary.

  The meteorite responded, “Yes Dex?”

  “If you can find a place to land sometime soon, I would like to check on everyone to be sure they’re okay.”

  “Okay, we’ll start to descend in approximately twelve centideks,” the meteorite said. “We should be on the ground in about twenty-five. Will that be okay?”

  “Yes,” he said but he wondered, how can the meteorite possibly know that there will be a clearing to land in twenty-five centideks from now? It’s a marvel that it can see at all. Even more amazing that it can see the ground below us to keep us from crashing into it! But it stretches all sense of the incredible to think that it can see a clearing that we will reach in another twenty-five centideks! I couldn’t see a clearing that far ahead, even if there wasn’t dust in the air!

  Nonetheless, in what Dex estimated to be about 10 to 15 centideks, the meteorite said it was descending. Dex was able to begin
just gliding behind it as the whistling sound from it diminished slightly and the meteorite dropped slowly downward in front of himr.

  Hie passed the word back to the dalins behind himr that they were landing, “… in a meadow,” the meteorite had said.

  In another10 to 15 centideks the rocket said, “You are about to land… You’re up three body lengths, two body lengths, one body length, time to land!” There was a pause, then the meteorite shouted, “Rossa, you’re going back up! Descend, descend, you’re at one body length, now land!”

  Rossa was the sixth flyer at the right end of the V. If the meteorite hadn’t just proved that it could see a meadow twenty-five centideks of flight time away, Dex would have been astonished that it could tell what Rossa was doing back at the end of the V in this thick dust.

  Dex walked from one end of the formation to the other checking on each of the dalins. Even though they had landed spread out like they flew, finding them in the murk wasn’t difficult because of the glowing lights on their ankles. They all drank some water from the bladders they carried and proclaimed themselves ready to fly onward.

  Dex went to check in with the meteorite. As hie approached, it asked, “Do you think it would be good for each of the other groups to stop here as well? The next group will need to start descending pretty soon if they’re going to land in this same meadow.”

  At first, Dex felt startled once again by the fact that one meteorite seemed to know what another one was doing, no matter how far away it was. But hie had seen this before and they were always correct about what another meteorite was doing. “Yes, I do think that would be a good idea if each of the groups landed here to make sure no one has gotten too tired or is having a problem with their harness. Also, as we fly, if you could keep an eye out for a lake or stream where we could fill our water bladders, that would be very helpful.”