Storm World of the Dragon: Dragon World, #3

By Joseph G. Whelan

Bolon had a familiar problem: he needed money and he needed it fast.  As a newly hired management consultant for a company that had just lost a big contract, he was expected to find replacement revenue somewhere, somehow.  Unfortunately, the more he studied the problem the more it seemed that a miracle was required.

 

Fortunately Bolon lived in a miraculous age.  That age was sixty-five million years ago near the end of the Mesozoic Era and he and his kind were intelligent dinosaurs.  They were about the size of humans, with hands like ours and big brains.  They called themselves dragons.  At the time, one of the most powerful nation-states—or Great Nests as they were known—had sent an expensive robot to Titan, a moon of Saturn.  The dragons were fascinated by Titan because it was the only moon in the known universe with a dense Earthlike atmosphere and possibly liquid on the surface, although it was ten times farther from the Sun than the Earth and very cold.  But one day the robot stopped working.  The Great Nest that sent it posted a sizable reward for anyone who could fix it for a reasonable cost.  No one could because sending a second robot would double the expense and a crewed mission to the outer solar system would cost many times more.

 

No one could, that is, until Bolon had a bizarre idea….

 

Bolon was not a rocket scientist but like a bolt out of the blue he figured out how to send a crew of dragons to Saturn for less cost than a robotic mission.  Back then no one believed him and even today NASA has never tried his approach.

 

Bolon's idea—strange as it was—turned out to make a crazy kind of sense and in the end no one could shoot it down.  The mission was launched and Bolon waited for the results.  His tail twitched with excitement because the reward money was practically in his clawed hands.

 

Or was it?  The experts of the day were sure that the faraway moon was a tranquil place because it received too little heat from the distant Sun to generate wind or weather. But experts can be wrong and when the rescuers got to Titan they found that it was really the Storm World of the Dragon!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triplanetary Press
• Release date: May 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393153412

Book preview

Storm World of the Dragon

By

Joseph G. Whelan

Copyright © 2012 by Joseph G. Whelan

All rights reserved.

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me

As they rove around the girth

Of our lovely mother planet

Of the cool, green hills of Earth.

—Robert A. Heinlein

The Green Hills of Earth

Table of Contents

The Dragon World—An Overview

1: The Probe

2: The Doctor

3: The Dealer

4: The Enforcer

5: The Chef

6: The Preacher

7: The Loss of Signal

8: The Evidentiary Matter

9: The Executive Committee Meeting

10: The Morning Walk

11: The Big Idea

12: The Due Diligence

13: The Resource

14: The Perfect Equations

15: The Doctor Makes a House Call

16: The Interesting Fauna

17: The Crew

18: The Project

19: The Reprieve

20: The Mission Profile

21: The Witnessing

22: The Late Night Doubts

23: The Engineering Change Order

24: The Mountains of the Moon

25: The Matter of Respect

26: The Doomed

27: The Generator

28: The Very Important Dragons

29: The Preparations

30: The Managerial Interference

31: The Condemned Speak

32: The Farewell

33: The Green Hills of Earth

34: The Power of an Idea

35: The First to Die

36: The Project Update

37: The Awakening

38: The Alien Air

39: The Fishbowl

40: The History in the Making

41: The One Small Step

42: The Science

43: The Dream of Flight

44: The Swamp

45: The Storm World

46: The Dreamscape

47: The Ocean

48: The Coldest Equations

49: The Accomplished Mission

50: The Change of Heart

51: The Sacrifice

52: The Forgiveness of Sin

53: The Executive Decision

99: More to Explore

The Dragon World—An Overview

About sixty-five million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era, there lived a species of intelligent dinosaur.  This creature was about as big as we are.  It stood on two legs and a tail.  Its arms ended in hands with opposable digits.  Its body was covered partly in scales and partly in feathers.

They called themselves dragons.  They became the preeminent species of life on Earth.  They were omnivorous.  They had sharp teeth.  Adult females were usually slightly larger than males and this had ramifications, often unperceived, throughout society.

The world was divided into wild places, tribal areas, lesser countries, and advanced technological nation-states of which some were space-faring.  The dragons often called their nations great-nests.  The word nest was freighted with many meanings and sometimes high emotion.  It could designate the physical nest where eggs were laid and baby dragons hatched.  It could refer to the home of a solitary adult.  It could mean an extended family group, a neighborhood, a workplace, or a distant outpost in the solar system.  There were times when dragons were willing to die for their nests.

The word nest also could refer to a military unit or base.  The dragons were as contentious as humans.  They had need of military units and bases.

This was the Age of Dinosaurs and in the wild places, monsters roamed.

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The events in Storm World of the Dragon occurred at a time when the dragon civilization was approaching its pinnacle.  The world was coalescing around two great-nests, the Amber Feather Empire and the Emerald Feather Empire.  Expansionism and technology were making military conflicts deadlier and more terrible.  However, most dragons went about their lives peaceably just as most people do today.  Many great-nests steered paths independent of the Empires, or tried to.

The dragons were the only intelligent species on Earth.

The Amber and Emerald Empires took their names from the principal coloration of the majority of their citizens but the appearance of individuals varied widely throughout both Empires as well as the other great-nests around the world.  The names of the Empires signified political hegemony and allegiance, not necessarily the look of any particular dragon.

The Amber Empire started out more monolithic and hierarchical.  The Emerald Empire began as a looser alliance of great-nests.  As time passed and pressure from the Ambers increased, the Emerald Empire began to take on more of the aspects of the Amber system.

In the far distant past the positions of the continents differed greatly from modern times.  However, by sixty-five million years ago, the dragon world looked much like our world.  The names of the landmasses and the oceans were different but the general appearance of the Earth was remarkably similar to what it is today, although with some local variations.

Mammals lived in that ancient age.  Beyond mere survival, they did not compete well with the dinosaurs.  They stayed small and many of them hid underground.  Some of them were our ancestors.

Birds are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are birds.  The saurian species that disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous are properly known as non-avian dinosaurs.  Anyone who has listened to the vocalizations of birds should not be surprised that the dragons developed rich and nuanced languages.  Those languages were different from ours.  For convenience and to minimize the use of new words, most of the principal dragon language has been rendered as the closest English equivalent.  There were queens and colonels and committees and employees, but it should be kept in mind that these are functional, not perfect, translations.  Perfect translations are probably not possible across species.

As examples of functional translations in Storm World of the Dragon, there was a business which had its headquarters in the great-nest of Tabora.  Tabora was a nation located on the northern shore of the Central Sea, which we would recognize as the Mediterranean.  Terms like business and headquarters and nation are approximations to our familiar words.  Often the approximations are good but occasionally the relationship is vague.  Between our world and the dragon world there is always a vast gulf of time and sometimes a vaster gulf of psychology.

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Dramatis Dracones

(Dragons of the Drama)

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The dragons lived in a world—several worlds counting their outposts throughout the solar system—no less complicated than our own.  The following list summarizes the actors in Storm World of the Dragon.  The spellings of the names are best attempts to translate a nonhuman language produced by reptilian physiology into English.

There are other stories in the Dragon World series that take place before and after Storm World of the Dragon.  Each may be read alone or together with the others.

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Paradonia was the dragon name for a great-nest located in what is today central Europe.

Tabora was the dragon name for the great-nest located on what is today the Italian peninsula.

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Central Sea was the dragon name for the Mediterranean.

WesternLandsNorth was the dragon name for North America.

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Goddess World was the dragon name for the planet Jupiter.

Orange Moon and Storm World were dragon names for Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Ringed Planet was one of the dragon names for the planet Saturn.

Sea of Ladenor was the dragon name for the Kraken Mare, a lake or a sea of ethane or methane on Titan.

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Apoli – (female): The head of the prison complex in the Great Nest of Paradonia.

Bakli – (female): The Family’s head of security.

Bilerian – (male): A child of the imperial family-nest ruling the Amber Empire.

Bolon – (male): A newly hired executive at a large Taboran business enterprise known to its owners and executives as the Family.

Dreamsmoke – (chemical): The hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine.

Family – (business): The informal dragon name of the Taboran-based enterprise that hired Bolon.

Gobarius – (male): A priest who preached a heretic creed of a male God instead of the almost universally worshiped female Goddess.

Ladenor – (male): A chemist who manufactured dreamsmoke, an illegal drug.

Lucapraly – (male): The accounting controller for the Family.

Motari – (female): The chief officer of the Family’s executive committee.

Qwayve – (female): The head of marketing for the Family.

Rekatil – (male): A chef in the Great Nest of Paradonia.

Topela – (female): Motari’s executive assistant.

Turolek – (male): A gangster in the Great Nest of Paradonia.

Vaxir – (male): The head of the Amber Empire’s space agency.

Zhangor – (male): A surgeon in the Great Nest of Paradonia.

1: The Probe

Sixty-Five Million Years Ago

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Almost a billion miles from the central star, unseen by any living being, a new light flared briefly in the infinite darkness.  The light-producing robot sensed the passage of time in its unique way and somewhere inside the microscopic components of what served for its brain decided that the light should cease, and it did cease.  By the time the light was quenched, reaction mass had been traded for precise changes in velocity and the formerly free-flying machine had become a willing gravitational captive of the sixth planet from the Sun.  Pursuant to an instruction set written for it years before, the robot reoriented a large parabolic antenna such that it now pointed close to, but not directly at, the central star.  A silent stream of radio waves raced toward the third planet carrying a report to the machine’s creators informing them of everything it knew about itself and its new home.

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There were living creatures on the third planet and they waited eagerly for word from their machine, now so very far away.  That word came somewhat over an hour later—the creatures did not think of time in that measurement system—and it affirmed their highest hopes.  Cries of excitement filled the air along with birdlike whistles and warbles.  Prognathous, reptilian mouths gaped, displaying double rows of small, pointy white teeth.  Heads turned this way and that and numerous pairs of golden eyes shone with the excitement of success culminating long years of unstinting effort.

Machines talked to machines and a glowing light appeared in the center of the large, computer-filled room high above the heads of the scientists and technicians.  Someone noticed the light and shouted: Look up there!  A picture is coming in!  The noise level increased with the realization of this further success.  When the robotic explorer whipped around the sixth planet, it captured a series of close-up images.  Inside the control room, a computer commenced constructing a glowing three-dimensional picture as more data streamed earthward.  Starting near the high ceiling and steadily working down, a striking image of the distant planet, alien and beautiful, appeared before their wondering eyes.  With no warning more lights suddenly appeared off to the sides.

What’s happening to the picture?

The rings!  It’s starting to draw the rings!

I forgot about the rings!

How could anyone forget about the rings?

Don’t ask me how, but I did!  The speaker laughed happily and ran a triplet of clawed fingers and thumb through the feathers on the back of his head, smoothing them down in nervous excitement.

Transfixed by the vision appearing above them, one by one the watchers grew silent.  Their faithful robot had captured the giant Ringed Planet from a perspective never seen from Earth and now they were witness to something new and overwhelmingly beautiful: The backlit planet cast its gigantic shadow on the intricate ring system and the dreamlike image taking shape rendered even the most eloquent among the observers speechless.  The applause stopped.  The conversations died away.  And then the room was very quiet for a long time.  Finally a voice called out, unnaturally loud after the extended silence:

Sweet, holy Egg of the Goddess, will you look at that?

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Time passed while the probe busied itself collecting data from numerous sensors.  Periodically it sent back additional streams of data, unburdening itself of its treasure trove of discoveries whenever the great ringed world did not block transmission to the third planet.  The robot continued to keep track of time and eventually it realized that soon it would be required to transform itself once again.  Originally an idea, than a room full of parts, then a traveler to the outer solar system, and now an orbiter of the Sixth Planet, it was almost ready to become a moon of a moon.  In preparation for the transformation, it loaded a functional block of instructions into active memory and began an internal countdown.  As always, it reported the change to its builders on Earth.  With the stolid patience of a machine, it waited for an incoming radio message to approve, disapprove, or modify the instructions awaiting execution.  Should no message be received, a master executive program would carry out the directives by itself as best it could.

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Vaxir coughed nervously into a fist formed by the two finger-claws and the thumb-claw of his left hand.  With the longer finger-claw of his right hand he made a slight waving motion in the air, causing the holographic image hovering above the table in front of him to flip to the next page.  He stared at the glowing data with unseeing eyes, having already gone through every report numerous times.  It was his job as the mission manager to turn data into information; specifically, his next responsibility was to approve or disapprove a change order to the probe’s default instructions.  A room filled with experts in many disciplines waited for his decision.

Our dilemma, if it makes sense to use that term, is to decide whether to go with the default instructions already loaded into the probe’s working memory and which are acceptable, or to upload a slightly improved version along with a small risk that the upload itself will cause a problem.  Vaxir looked around the oval conference table at his assistants.  Since he was merely restating what they already knew, no one responded.

So far, the mission has been almost unbelievably successful.  Do we want to risk what we have achieved so far by making a small change that should result in a small improvement or do we want to be a little conservative and keep what we have?  As before, there was no response.

Vaxir waved his hand again and the display returned to the summary report of the scientist sitting to his left, the head of the flight dynamics and celestial mechanics group.  A further small movement of his hand displayed the same report to everyone sitting around the table.  You haven’t changed your mind? he asked, inclining his head to the left.

A modified burn is a better burn.  The trajectory expert was at least as nervous as Vaxir and refused to look up.  His answer was mumbled and hard to hear.  He was young and wore his feathers in unkempt disarray.

The other attendees were accustomed to Vaxir stalling for time by repeating the obvious and waited for him to decide.  Nothing would happen until he made up his mind—or had it made up for him by the only individual in the room who possessed the authority to override him.  Vaxir looked at that individual now, a female sitting across the table.  She was larger than he was—the egg-laying sex generally was larger—an attribute that had many advantages for females.  He unsuccessfully searched her impassive face for guidance.

We are all well aware of the magnitude of the resources the central government has poured into this project over the last thirteen years or so; as a representative of that government, do you wish to express an opinion one way or the other?

This is a technical matter, Vaxir; it is your decision.  The female representative of the nation-state’s ruling council known as the High Thirteen stared steadily and impassively into his eyes.  Her slightly larger physical stature allowed her to look down on him, accentuating the authority she wielded, authority which could advance his career to the next level or unhinge it completely.

Vaxir looked into the female’s fathomless eyes for a long time.  Unnerved, he broke contact first.  He made another fist and coughed into it again and then smoothed down the feathers on the back of his head with both hands.  The others recognized the pair of nervous gestures as an indication of high stress.

It understands that It is paid to make decisions, Vaxir said, carefully speaking in the True Talk formalism of the educated classes.

Then you understand erroneously, the female spoke in a flat voice.  "You are paid to make correct decisions."

Vaxir nodded without speaking.

Everyone around the table continued to wait, unable to proceed without a decision.

Very well, then, Vaxir said suddenly in a loud, clear voice.  My decision is to proceed with the modified burn.  We will accept the small risk to achieve the additional small gain.  Success builds on success.  We did not get where we are today by being cautious.

Now that there was something that could be done, the sounds of whispered voices and shuffling bodies filled the room again.

Well, my friend, Vaxir said, speaking to the flight dynamics expert, my reputation is in your competent claws once again.  You have never let me down before but if it all comes apart this time, maybe we’ll still be able to work together somewhere else, perhaps at a zoo sweeping up three-horn dung.

The nervous reptile to his left was unable to appreciate the weak joke and merely nodded his head slightly, still looking down at the glowing figures on his flight-dynamics report, the same report which had triggered the meeting now ending.

Vaxir returned his gaze to the female authority figure.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he said confidently, smiling the practiced smile of an experienced manager.

She did not return his smile but continued to stare at him expressionlessly with her large, unblinking eyes.

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The robotic spacecraft received a message from Earth.  Most of the message contained slightly modified instructions for the upcoming trans-satellite injection burn.  The new instructions were copied into a block of unused memory.  Then the new instructions were read from memory and sent back to Earth.  On Earth, someone working for Vaxir in the communications group compared the received instructions with the transmitted instructions; they were the same.  A second message was transmitted to the outer solar system confirming that the spacecraft had received a perfect copy of the modified instructions.  Upon receiving confirmation, the spacecraft’s executive program overwrote the original instructions with the modified instructions.  Then it waited until its internal clock reported that it was time to begin the burn sequence.

After the spacecraft had allowed itself to be captured by the ringed world’s powerful gravitational field, its new orbit became an eccentric ellipse resembling a comet’s.  The spacecraft was actually multiple vehicles.  Near apoapsis a second executive program initialized and began running using instructions from the first, followed by the separation of the master vehicle into two parts.  The separating force was gentle and the two machines gradually drifted apart.  By the time the planet loomed massive and huge near periapsis, the distance between the two spacecraft was such that it was safe to fire the main engine of the second vehicle.  All the while the first spacecraft continued to record increasingly stunning images of the banded and Ringed Planet rushing ever closer.

At periapsis the main engine of the second vehicle fired, executing the modified instructions from the celestial mechanicians on Earth.  Unlike the planetary-injection burn which looked like a temporary star, to most observers this second burn would have been lost in the glare of the huge planet rushing past below.  The original vehicle continued its mission of observing the planet as it looped around repeatedly in its highly elliptical orbit.  Soon the two spacecraft were far apart never to meet again.

When the species to which Vaxir belonged was new, its members had looked heavenward and seen a single moon in the sky.  Thousands of years passed.  Stone tools gave way to copper and then steel and then strange, exotic alloys.  Eyes were enhanced by manufactured optics and brains by synthetic thinking devices.  The time came when they realized there was more than one moon in the sky: the Fourth Planet had two and the outer ones had many more.  But of all these moons, only one had an appreciable atmosphere.  This anomalous satellite circled the Ringed Planet, and its obscuring orange atmosphere, denser even than the Earth’s, hid all trace of the surface.  Tantalized and intrigued, the earthbound seekers longed for the day when they might begin to know the secrets of the Orange Moon.

That day had come.

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After the second vehicle completed the engine burn, it ended up in an elliptical orbit around the moon.  Another burn circularized the orbit, leaving the vehicle looping around the poles.  Just as the original spacecraft had split into two components, now the moon orbiter also separated into two components.  The orbiter gave birth to a lander, another executive program began running, and now there were three independent robots.  After pushing apart from the parent orbiter, the lander slowly drifted away to a distance sufficiently great to allow its engine to ignite without harming the orbiter.  Invisible radio messages flashed between the three distant explorers and the Earth.

Two days passed on Earth; Vaxir met with his team repeatedly; more messages were exchanged between the Third and Sixth Planets; finally the lander prepared itself for atmospheric entry.  The third spacecraft’s main engine ignited.  The second spacecraft, the moon orbiter, captured a video sequence of the event, transmitted it to the original vehicle orbiting the planet, which in turn relayed everything back to Earth.  Meanwhile, the lander lost speed relative to the moon and began falling toward its mysterious target.  The purpose of the burn accomplished, the engine cut off and the gravitational field of the moon pulled the machine ever closer.  Before the lander made a complete orbit, internal accelerometers recorded indication of a force other than gravity coming into play: the first evidence of the atmosphere had manifested itself.  The ride became increasingly bumpy and unexpectedly violent as the surrounding aeroshell heated up in response to increasing atmospheric friction.  The executive program switched into a failsafe mode and stopped transmitting to the orbiter now high above it, concentrating instead on surviving the passage to the hypothesized but unknown surface still hidden far below.  Should it survive the landing, there would be time later to uplink the story of the atmospheric transit back to the orbiter for eventual relay to Earth.

The aeroshell, now glowing dull red, had accomplished its purpose and was jettisoned to disappear into the orange haze below.  The violent vibration ceased.  The lander fell vertically, having canceled the horizontal component of velocity.  Downward-looking radar switched on, seeking the surface through the haze.  It found it, reported the distance and closing velocity to the executive program, and provided continual updates.  At a predetermined altitude a parachute deployed and the lander swung gently from side to side before stabilizing in the cold, still air.

A video camera switched on.  Details began to emerge in the murk below.  The parachute was released.  The lander accelerated and dropped straight down; shortly before impacting, the main engine fired briefly to cancel most of the speed.  Then the video reported evidence of a possible boulder field directly below, causing side thrusters to actuate and the vehicle to slant away from the hazard; suddenly the video suggested the presence of liquid underneath the vehicle.  Liquid was not unexpected and the executive program maintained the horizontal flight path over the suspected fluid while seeking a safe place to land; none was found and the thrusters rocked the vehicle so the sensors could see to the sides.  Propellant began to run low.

A sensor in one of the propellant tanks warned of imminent fuel outage; the executive program paused briefly to transmit stored data to the orbiter on the assumption that the lander was about to be destroyed and then it continued seeking a safe landing area; radar reported possible ground to the left and immediately the vehicle veered in that direction.  It overflew a shore, a range of hills, a rubbly plain, and then a large plateau.  The side thrusters ceased and the vertical descent recommenced; blurry video images sharpened; an unknown substance was blown sideways by the blast of the descent engine.  The engine stopped and the vehicle dropped gently onto the surface of a cold, strange world.

It had taken four-and-a-half billion years, but the atoms of the inner and outer solar system, once mixed together in the primordial nebula but then separated for a third of the age of the universe, were in physical contact once again.

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It’s a zoo out there, the powerful female observed.

Yes, a happy zoo, Vaxir agreed.  In the next room several thirteens of scientists, technicians, and dignitaries noisily celebrated the ongoing success of the mission to the Sixth Planet and its Orange Moon.

They have earned the right to celebrate.

It is glad that you see it that way, Vaxir said, relieved.

Competence is recognized.  Listen: It has just returned from Nest Zero and has not had time to learn of any status changes.  Where does the mission stand?

"Right now—and by right now I mean several thousand heartbeats ago to take into account the delay in radio transmissions—there are four robotic spacecraft functioning independently in the gravitational system of the Sixth Planet.  The first one, which we are calling Orbiter One, continues to go around the planet itself in the original highly elliptical orbit.  The second one, Orbiter Two, is now in a low, nearly circular pole-to-pole orbit around the moon; the polar orbit guarantees periodic opportunities to communicate with the lander.  The third one, which we are calling Lander One, remains where it set down about one Earth day ago.  Lander One has deployed a number of video and meteorological sensors.  Most importantly, Lander One has successfully deployed Lander Two, which some of us have also started referring to as Dimetrodon, because its large dish antenna looks vaguely sail-like, similar to the ancient, extinct beast with that name."

"The crawler—Dimetrodon—is on the surface?  It has left the ‘garage’ you referred to earlier?"

"Yes, it has left the ‘garage.’  Dimetrodon’s systems are being checked out even as we speak.  The two machines are still adjacent to one another; in fact, they each have photographed the other and sent back pictures already.  Assuming we can get through the checklist without running into any serious problems, we may be ready to order Dimetrodon to start exploring as early as tomorrow morning.  I am referring to our local time, although we chose to land at a place on the Orange Moon that corresponds to early morning there as well, maximizing the time of whatever dim sunlight is available."

"Has the general plan of exploration for ... Dimetrodon ... changed?"

"No.  We still plan to explore in two stages.  The first stage will be guided entirely from Earth, despite the very long transmission delays.  For example, we will tell Dimetrodon to advance to a rock but to stop before it gets too close.  Then we will wait for that to happen and for it to send confirmation back to Earth.  By the way, all four of the spacecraft are capable of communicating directly with Earth, assuming an open line of sight, but the preferred transmission path is from the surface to Orbiter Two, then to Orbiter One, then back to Earth.  Orbiter Two will be behind the satellite much of the time whereas Orbiter One’s looping elliptical orbit enables it to see the Earth almost continuously."

The female nodded.  Yes, I remember your explanation of the communication link.  But back to the stage-one exploration: won’t that scheme result in very slow exploration?  You will hardly have time to visit one rock a day.

"Yes, it will be very slow, but it will also be very safe.  The safety of Dimetrodon is paramount and until we garner more knowledge about the environment and more confidence in Dimetrodon’s systems, all control over its movements will remain here on Earth.  But at some point—which at this moment is unknown and undefined—we will move onto the second stage.  In the second stage, Dimetrodon’s executive program will be unleashed and it will begin exploring the surface on its own.  At that point we will know approximately what it will do but not exactly what it will do until it actually does it and then radios back to Earth.  Of course, things have to continue to go well between now and then."

"Do you foresee Dimetrodon losing sight of and dropping the radio link to Lander One?"

"Yes, eventually, but that situation will be handled by storing data until Orbiter Two is above the local horizon, at which point a complete data dump will ensure that the latest findings make their way back to Earth.  Also, linking to Orbiter One may be possible, although it will be much farther away."

And what about the return samples?  They have high priority.

"Of course they do and we will never forget that.  In fact, Lander One has already stored a small quantity of the regolith so that if necessary we could launch from the surface now and ensure that at least some physical material is returned to Earth.  Naturally, we would like to complete the full mission profile and have Dimetrodon retrieve multiple samples from numerous sites before we do that.  Once we launch Lander One from the surface, there will be no going back."

And the liquid samples?

The liquid samples have the highest priority of all.  We are well aware that there is no other place in the explored universe where liquid is known to exist other than here on Earth.  Obviously whatever liquid is on the satellite—and at this point we have suggestive evidence only, not certain proof of liquid—cannot be water because of the extremely low temperature, but whatever it is we want some of it to analyze the Egg out of back here on Earth.  Ideally, we would like to return solids, liquids, and atmospheric gases.  But of course the hope of returning liquid samples was the driving idea behind the entire project.

Of course.  The female looked up from her seated position at Vaxir, who continued to stand.

Silence filled the antechamber.  Vaxir looked down at the powerful political representative with what he hoped was his best manager’s smile while exuberant shouts and whistles continued to filter in from the adjoining control room.  Nothing that the female in front of him had ever said worried him more than her penchant for staring without speaking as she was then doing.

Is there anything else It can explain for you? Vaxir asked politely, after the silence became unbearable.  Of course, now that you are back from Nest Zero, you are certainly welcome to continue attending any meetings you wish.

Of course, the female responded.  Listen, Vaxir: Do you have any idea why It returned to Nest Zero?

It hath not the slightest clue, Vaxir said, truthfully.

It was summoned to speak to a personage of great importance, not unlike how It summoned you to speak to Itself just now.

Is that so?

Yes, it is so.  Can you guess who that personage might have been?

It cannot.

It might have been the QueenMother.

Indeed, Vaxir said noncommittally, although mention of the ruler of almost half the world caught his attention like a moth by the light of a flame.

Indeed, the female repeated.  "In fact, It was summoned before QueenMother."

Vaxir bowed slightly.  He suspected that the female was a member of the royal family; most high-ranking political representatives were, although in the beginning this one’s name had not meant anything to him.  It is honored to be standing before someone who was herself so honored.

It had met QueenMother on other occasions.

No doubt, Vaxir said smoothly.  It hopes that your audience with our beloved Queen went well.

It did, thanks to you.

Oh?

Yes.  Were you aware that QueenMother has taken a great interest in this mission to the Orange Moon?

Well, a certain level of interest was assumed owing to the high cost, if nothing else.

Yes, but now her royal interest has been piqued beyond the interests of economics.

That is wonderful, but why?  How does she find the time for astronomy when she already has to bear the burdens of the military situation and international statecraft?

"The pictures Lander One took as it overflew the methane ocean