Robert L Forward - Rocheworld (aka. Flight of the Dragonfly)

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Rocheworld [Book 1 of the Rocheworld Series]

by Dr. Robert L. Forward

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Copyright (c)1989 by Robert L. Forward

Fictionwise

www.Fictionwise.com

Science Fiction

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*_For Eve_*

_Who thought it would be fun to ride on a flouwen._

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*ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS*

*Thanks to:*

Edouard Albert Roche (1820-1883)

-- who showed that the world isn't always round,

Charles Sheffield

-- who also thought this system was fun,

Paul L. Blass, Carl Richard Feynman, David K. Lynch, Patrick L. McGuire, Daryl Mallett, Hans P. Moravec, A. Jay Palmer, Zane D. Parzen, Jef Poskanzer, Daniel G. Shapiro, Jacqueline Stafsudd, and Mark Zimmerman, who helped me in several technical areas. My love and special thanks to Martha for her encouragement and literary assistance.

The "Christmas Bush" motile was jointly conceived by Hans P. Moravec and Robert L. Forward, and drawn by Jef Poskanzer using a CAD system.

All final art was expertly prepared by Sam Takata and the rest of the group at Multi-Graphics.

CAVEATS

This book is based on the original 150,000 word manuscript I wrote in 1981. A condensed version of 60,000 words was serialized under the title "Rocheworld" in _Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact_ in 1982. A longer version of about 100,000 words was published in hardcover by Timescape under the title "The Flight of the Dragonfly" in 1984. A slightly longer version of about 110,000 words was published in paperback by Baen Books under the title _The Flight of the Dragonfly_ in 1985. This version of 155,000 words prepared in 1989 combines the best features of all the prior versions -- I hope you enjoy it.

For those readers who care, Robert L. Forward, who writes hard science fiction novels, is not to be confused with his son, Robert D. Forward, who writes hard-hitting detective novels, animation scripts for television, and live action scripts for motion pictures.

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*CHAPTER 1 -- BEGINNING*

The torn shred of aluminum lightsail rippled lightly down through the thin atmosphere and settled onto the calm ocean. The robot probe the sail had once carried continued on its way back into the interstellar blackness, its flyby study of the Barnard planetary system completed. The messages of its discoveries would reach Earth six years later. The microthin film of aluminum sail material was no match for the ammonia-water ocean covering this egg of a planet. It dissolved into a bitter taste of aluminum hydroxide.

Clear^White^Whistle was warming on top of the ocean in the red glare from Hot. Hot suddenly became less. The darkness was not like that from a storm shadow, but much sharper. It was almost as if Sky$Rock had suddenly moved in front of Hot. The darkness came closer, then there was a sharp thin taste of bitterness in the ocean.

Clear^White^Whistle dove under the ocean to escape the bitterness, then came to the surface. The taste was still there. Another dive -- it was there too. A sounding dive a long distance away, it was still there, but the taste was weaker and the sheet of darkness was being eaten by the ocean. Hot peered through the holes.

For a long time Clear^White^Whistle tasted the bitterness and thought about the strange thing that came from nothing but was something. Thoughts came to it about exploring the nothing above, but that was impossible...

^But only carefully contrived mathematical propositions are truly impossible,^ mused Clear^White^Whistle. ^After all, the bitter darkness came from nothing, and I can look into nothing, although poorly. I know from looking that Hot and Warm are sources of light and heat, but though I have tried hard, I cannot see them. If only my looking portions could be focused like my seeing portions... ^

A thought came to the alien, and the large amorphous body of white jelly started to condense. Clear^White^Whistle squeezed the water out of its body, turned into a dense white rock, and sank to the bottom of the ocean. The concentrated whiteness of the fluids that constituted its "brain" now thought at a higher rate.

Equations for a focusing detector based on time differences went through a sophisticated mathematical transformation into the equations for a focusing detector using distance differences. This detector would "look" using light instead of "seeing" using sound. The mathematical solution now obvious, Clear^White^Whistle, the toolless engineer, dissolved and swam up again to the surface as an undulating white cloud.

The thinking had taken a long time. Hot was gone. It had moved behind Sky$Rock, a large object that hovered motionless in the sky above this region of the ocean. Sky$Rock was dark, and no longer gave off its rocklike, reddish-gray light. The sky was not completely dark, however, for Warm had risen and was now a weak flare overhead.

Using the mathematical equations as a guide, Clear^White^Whistle formed a portion of its body into a sphere and concentrated. The white thought substance in the sphere flowed out into the rest of its body to leave the sphere a clear gel. Further concentration, and water dripped from the surface of the sphere until it was a dense clear ball. Through the now crystalline sphere streamed the rays of light from the heavens to come to a crude focus in the opposite side of the sphere. The white flesh next to the clear sphere looked at the tiny spots of light focused on its surface. The light patterns showed Warm as a small disk of mottled red. Around Warm were smaller bright lights with sharp cusps and fuzzy edges.

A slight adjustment of the gelatine sphere into a crude lens and the distorted spots turned into smaller disks. As the lens focused on the moons of the giant red planet, Gargantua, the blackness of the night sky all around the planet blossomed with hundreds of tiny pinpoints of light.

Clear^White^Whistle stared with its newly invented "eye" at the multicolored stars in the sky and wondered.

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*CHAPTER 2 -- PICKING*

Boredom is a Space Marine's worst enemy, but _these_ Marines were not bored.

"Close in! You squinty-eyed offspring of a BASIC program. So what if you've lost your outside video! You've still got radar and ground plots! Close in!"

The words came from deep inside a short, chunky, round-faced woman with dark-black skin, a close-cropped head of curly black hair, and a crisp Marine Officer's uniform seemingly tattooed on her muscular body.

General Virginia Jones punched her supervisory keyboard as her parade-ground voice echoed off the naked beams and taut pressurized walls of the crowded cubicle. Crammed into the compact control room of a Space Marine Lightsail Interceptor, the programmers were short-circuiting the software in the ship's computer to optimize an "unwilling capture" trajectory between their low acceleration twenty-five kilometer-diameter sailcraft and the radar image of a lumbering cargo hauler. The huge heavy-lift vehicle was rising slowly from its launch pad deep in Soviet Russia on its way to resupply one of the Soviet bases in geosynchronous orbit.

"Boarding party!" General Jones roared to the deck below. "You've got ten minutes to do the fifteen-minute suiting drill! Move it!"

There was a bustle as hammocks were stowed to give a little more room in the tiny communal barracks. Suits were lifted from lockers and donned -- rapidly, but carefully. General Jones looked sternly around at the organized pandemonium and took a bite of her energy stick. She looked at it in distaste, thought blissfully of the excellent mess back at the Space Marine Orbital Base, then stoically took another bite of the energy bar. If it was good enough for her Marines, it was good enough for her.