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  Shearer’s first morning was spent going through bureaucratic procedures that involved various insurances, waivers, and releases, tying up the contractual conditions between himself, Interworlds, and various other interests that had connections with the forthcoming mission, and setting out the limits of liabilities involving the Occidenan government. The afternoon saw a grilling security interview with an unnerving character called Callen, apparently destined to be going with the mission too, who asked some pointed questions about Evan Wade. After that there was a group overview of the Interworlds organization and its operations. The next day began with classroom sessions on general off-planet mission familiarization and essential emergency procedures. After that things grew more interesting. They got down to specifics and began learning something about Cyrene itself.

  Ever since the possibility of joining Wade had first raised itself, Shearer had consulted the scientific journals and Interworld’s own published reports to discover more about the planet, but apart from general data, the information he’d managed to find was surprisingly sparse. Compared with the publicity and fanfares to attract new investors that accompanied news from other worlds, it seemed odd. It was also odd that despite the much-publicized “miracle breakthrough” of Heim-physics-based communications that enabled round-trip message exchanges with the new colonies to be measured in hours rather than years, he had not managed to contact Wade for almost a month now, even though the regular net was supposed to access the interstellar system.

  After Wade’s arrival there six months previously with the manned mission sent following Cyrene’s discovery, he had found some moments in what was clearly a busy life to send back a few initial impressions of the new world. In fact, in response to requests from Wade, Shearer had even arranged for some items of equipment that Wade said he needed to be sent with a later robot supply freighter. To Shearer’s mild surprise these had included a prototype A-wave adtenna, along with ancillary circuitry and spare parts, which seemed to indicate that Wade intended carrying on with his research pursuits there. However, Shearer’s subsequent messages expressing curiosity had produced no reply. When he used the opportunity of being inside Interworld to inquire further about this, he encountered what felt like evasiveness. But with all the new course material to absorb, he was too busy to ponder upon the matter unduly or pursue it further. He would be there soon enough, he told himself.

  Cyrene was one of three widely spaced planets orbiting the star Ra Alpha, which formed a loose binary system with a smaller, redder, companion star called Ra Beta. A peculiarity about Cyrene was its orbit. Accompanied by its single moon, Calypso, it moved in a highly elliptical path about Ra Alpha, in the same plane as Ra Alpha and Ra Beta orbited each other — or more precisely, the center of mass between them, which because of Ra Beta’s lesser mass lay slightly displaced from the mid-point in the direction of Ra Alpha. Cyrene turned on its axis in a little under 28 terrestrial hours, and took 680 of these days to complete one orbit about its primary. The path it traced was such as to carry it almost three times as far from Ra Alpha at apogee — the farthest extremity of the ellipse — than its closest approach at perigee. The result, compounded by ten-degree tilt of its axis, was an extreme of variation between summer and winter conditions that life on Cyrene had adapted to in some remarkable ways.

  One of the consequences of an inverse square law of gravity is that bodies in an elliptical orbit travel faster as they plunge inward to approach perigee, and slow down again as they move back out to apogee. This meant that Cyrene did not cover equal distances along its orbital path in equal times. Just 54 days, or 8 percent of the 680-day total orbital period, occurred within the quarter of the ellipse closest to perigee; 150 days, or 22 percent were inside that half of the ellipse; and the remaining 530 days were spent in the half remote from the parent star, the greater proportion of them far out around the apogee point. Winters on Cyrene, therefore, were long — drawn — out affairs, and the summers short, fiery, and with the daily conditions changing rapidly.

  Point on% Distance% time Days

  Semi-Orbit A to F A to F From A

  A 0 0 0

  B 25 8 28

  C 50 22 75

  D 75 50 170

  E 87.5 69 235

  F 100 100 340

  Figure1. Orbit of Cyrene about Ra Alpha.

  Total period =680 days. 1day =28 Earth hours.

  It didn’t stop there. Ra Alpha also orbited Ra Beta (or at least, could be thought of in that way) with a period of 6,118 days, close to nine of Cyrene’s lopsided years. Since the ellipse that Cyrene traced around Ra Alpha preserved an effectively fixed direction in space (theory required a slow precession measured in thousands of years, but enough time had not accumulated yet for observational confirmation), the relative movement of Ra Beta superposed a longer 9-year cycle upon the basic 680-day summer-winter pattern, the intensity of which varied depending on where Cyrene was in its orbit about Ra Alpha when the three bodies came into alignment.

  According to terms borrowed from Yocalan, the Cyrenean language that had been studied the most, the “Interior Point” occurred when Cyrene was directly between the two stars, and the “Exterior Point” when it again lay on the line connecting them, but on the far side of Ra Alpha. Because of the difference in periods, the place along Cyrene’s ellipse where these Points occurred progressed from one orbit to the next as Ra Alpha advanced in its slower path around Ra Beta.

  Although perigee was recognized as unique and marked the beginning of a new year for most Cyrenean cultures, the Interior Point, although shifting from year to year, was universally celebrated as more socially and celestially significant. In Yocala it was known as “Longday.” This was the day in the year when Ra Alpha began to rise on one horizon just as Ra Beta set on the opposite one, giving two full days with no darkness at all at some point in the transitions between summer and winter, and back again.

  When Longday occurred at or near perigee, summers were at their fiercest, with Cyrene close to Ra Alpha and long periods of daylight resulting from two suns on opposite sides of the sky. As Cyrene moved away from perigee, the two suns would gradually be seen to move closer together from day to day, the darkness growing longer, until Ra Beta disappeared in the glare of Ra Alpha, to re-emerge after winter, when Cyrene would again be accelerating inward and warming again. There was thus no correspondingly spectacular point to mark the antipode of Longday, when Ra Beta was in line with Ra Alpha but on the far side. However, generations of Cyrenean astronomers had fixed it from the apparent movement of Ra Alpha with respect to the background stars. It was known as “Henkyl’s Day.” Henkyl and Goruno were the Yocalan names for Ra Alpha and Ra Beta, after two rival mythical figures from ancient legends, who battle each other endlessly for control of the heavens. Henkyl’s Day occurred when Goruno was eclipsed completely and Henkyl ruled alone for a day.

  (1) Cyrene at perigree. Day of no darkness. Ra Alpha rises as Ra Beta sets. Time of maximum warmth.

  (2) Cyrene at quarter orbital period. Cooling. Day by day, Ra Alpha and Ra Beta are seen to move closer together from opposite sides of the sky.

  (3) Cyrene at apogee, halfway into orbital period.

  (4) Cyrene at three quarters of orbital period. Ra Beta has closed visually to Ra Alpha sufficiently to be invisible in its glare.

  (5) Cyrene completes one orbit. Ra Alpha has advanced 1/9 of its orbit relative to Ra Beta. The next darkness-free day will occur when Cyrene is some distance into its second orbit.

  Figure 2. Motion of Ra Alpha relative to Ra Beta for one orbit of Cyrene. Cyrenes’s orbit selected arbitrarily to commence from the point where perigree falls on the line connecting the two stars.

  When Ra Alpha had made its four-and-a-half year semi orbit around Ra Beta, Longdays would have shifted to occur in the period centered on apogee. The cold resulting from Cyrene’s greater distance from Ra Alpha would then be partly offset by the presence of Ra Beta in the winter skies, giving times of both milder winte
rs and less extreme summers, due to their experiencing longer nights. Thus an additional climatic influence existed above Cyrene’s 680-day year, which produced periods of blazing summers and harsh winters, alternating with milder versions of each over a nine-year cycle. It was known as the “novennial,” and its resulting seasons as carbayis and doroyis, which translated roughly as “hard years” and “soft years.”

  Figure 3. Cycle of Ra Alpha relative to Ra Beta. Period =9.1 orbits of Cyrene about Ra Alpha, i.e. 6118 Cyrenean days. Figures give the number of 680-day orbits of Cyrene, plus additional days of the following part-orbit. Thus, Frame 2 shows Ra Alpha 1/8 of the way into its cycle about Ra Beta, which is reached after 1 orbit of Cyrene around Ra Alpha plus a further 85 days.

  ***

  Shearer collected the plastic pack of insipid-looking cafeteria food from the dispenser, added cutlery and a cup of synthetic coffee substitute to his tray — the real thing had been withdrawn following a health scare and legal battle — and moved on to the payment machine. As he slowed to select a chipped card from his billfold, the man behind lunged past, waved a hand at the reader, and marched through the gate haughtily when the green light flashed. Implants seemed to give people an air of existing on some higher plane above the lowly herd. Shearer cleared the transaction and emerged into the eating area, with its ceiling-to-floor wall of glass on the far side looking out across the lower end of the Bay. The booths by the window were all taken. He slowed again, looking for a table, causing the bearded man bounding through after him to swerve, almost spilling his tray. “Makeupyamindwhichwayyergoin’can’tcha?” the man snarled, catching his bottle of soda as it tipped.

  “Pardon me,” Shearer said. The man looked at him as if he had spoken a foreign language and walked away.

  “That’s the wrong way, Marc,” a more friendly voice said. “Don’t you know you have to be assertive?”

  He turned to find Jeff Lang, who was in the same class, holding a tray with some kind of salad and a carton of milk. “Oh, is that what it is? I thought it was just that some people don’t know there’s a difference between manliness and rudeness.”

  Jeff grinned. “You just don’t read the right how-to books.”

  “I guess not.”

  They were fellow oddballs in the group, which was what had drawn them together. Jeff was about Shearer’s own age, sandy-haired, with a boyish, freckled face and an obliging, easygoing nature that guaranteed social scorn and professional obscurity. He worked as some kind of freelance researcher and had been commissioned by an encyclopedia publisher to put together the bones of an entry on Cyrenean history. He looked around and inclined his head in the direction of the wall nearby. “There’s an empty table that way.”

  “Sure.”

  They moved over and sat down. Jeff peeled the lid off his salad, poured a measure of milk into a cup, and opened the pack containing cutlery and napkin. “So, how long does it take Cyrene and the two Ras to come back into the same relative positions?” he asked. “Figured it out yet?”

  Shearer groaned. “Jeff, gimme a break. It’s lunchtime. My head’s still aching from it all.”

  “Cramming it in all right, aren’t they?” Jeff agreed.

  “All right. So carbayis and doroyis.” Shearer challenged. “Which is which?

  “Carbayis is the hard years,” Jeff replied. “Blazing summers. Ice-age winters.”

  “You sure?” Shearer realized that he wasn’t himself.

  “Make up a memory aid,” Jeff suggested. “Carb is hard. Carborundum. Get it?”

  “Good one. So what about dor, doroy?...”

  Jeff shrugged. “I don’t have one. It just has to be the other. But thankfully we won’t be showing up in the middle of either.” Cyrene was currently some months out from perigee, and by the time the Tacoma arrived would be comfortably into the intermediate part of its year, with the two stars positioned such as to produce moderate extremes. He looked down at his salad as he prepared to eat. “No egg. I always used to like a hard-boiled egg with salad. How long has it been since everyone stopped doing them?”

  “I’m not sure. Not that long. I can remember having them at the university with breakfast. You can still get the powder mix they make into scrambled.”

  Jeff pulled a face. “Ugh! Wallpaper paste. Health departments. How long before I’m not allowed to cook myself an egg at home in my own kitchen?” He rolled some lettuce leaf around the end of his fork and speared a piece of tomato. “Yes, see, you smile, Marc. But can your remember the things we smiled at twenty years ago that have happened and nobody thinks twice about now? And there’s a whole generation of kids out there who’ve never known any different and think it’s the way things have always been. I mean, where does it all end?”

  Shearer chewed in silence for a few seconds, then decided that Jeff was someone he could risk a joke with. “Well, you’re the historian, Jeff. Line ’em all up against a wall and shoot ’em, and start all over again. Isn’t that how people who’ve had enough have always fixed it in the end? It lasts for a while, anyway.”

  Jeff snorted in an offhand kind of way. “That might have worked when both sides had muskets and barricades, and you were in with some kind of a chance. But nowadays the firepower’s too unequal. How can ordinary guys stand up against tactical nukes and databases that know everything you do? A couple of days ago a whole family in Carson City got blown away for not stopping at a checkpoint. A checkpoint!...” He stopped and gave Shearer a sidelong look. “Hell, what am I saying? I don’t know you. I could end up in a camp for just talking like this.”

  “True,” Shearer agreed. “So go on, you tell me. Why are you talking like this?”

  Jeff shook his head with a long sigh. “I don’t know. Sometimes you just have to let it out. I suppose... you seemed like an okay kind of person.” He checked himself with a mock frown. “You are, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, you don’t have to worry,” Shearer said. He eyed Jeff curiously for a second or two. “You’re not from here, are you?”

  “You mean Occidena?”

  Shearer shrugged.

  “No, you’re right. Minneapolis,” Jeff said.

  New America, where they said they were trying to get back to the constitution. That could explain a lot. However, Shearer had learned that talking politics with strangers was generally not a good idea, and so he didn’t pursue the subject. Instead, he just smiled distantly and looked away. The cafeteria had filled for the midday break. He recognized some faces from their class, and one or two others that he had met while going through the administrative chores on the first day.

  “Looking for someone?” Jeff inquired after a short silence.

  “Oh, not really.... There are some of our people over there. Thomas, and Forrest is with him. What happened to Jerri today?”

  “Jerri?”

  “Isn’t that her name? Tall, slim. Dark hair, sort of reddish, and a kind of pointy face and pouty mouth — not exactly what you’d call glamorous; but sexy.”

  “Oh, you noticed her too, eh?” Jeff grinned knowingly. “That’s right. She wasn’t in this morning. I think she’s from across the other side of the Bay — up in the mountains somewhere. I’m not sure what she does.”

  “You don’t know? What happened to the memory aids?”

  Jeff made a conciliatory gesture with his fork. “You’ve got me.”

  Shearer looked back toward the window forming the far wall. A dredger flanked by a couple of barges had moved into view, heading up the Bay. “I thought I caught hints of an irreverent streak yesterday, when that guy was talking about our sacred mission to export the benefits of our way of life across the galaxy,” he said. “If you asked me, Jeff, I’d say she’s another one of us.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The tone announcing a call sounded from the concealed speakers in the study of Myles Callen’s residence west of Los Gatos, in the hills midway between San Jose and the coast. He touched a stud on the wristband of his watch to activate the
house system and shifted his attention from the list of items to be attended to before his departure for Cyrene. “Accept to current screen,” he instructed. On the desk display that he was using, a window opened to frame the peak-capped face and blue-shirted shoulders of a guard at one of the gates into the community. “Yes?” No doubt it was to advise that Krieg had arrived. The time was about right.

  “Good evening Mr. Callen. I have a Mr. Jerome Krieg at the gate, asking for you. His ID checks okay.” While the guard was speaking, the view in the frame changed to a shot of Krieg’s craggy, close-cropped head scowling from the driver’s window of an automobile.

  “Yes, that’s all right. He’s expected,” Callen said.

  “Thank you. Goodnight, Mr. Callen.” The frame on the screen vanished.

  Callen tidied up the loose ends of what he had been doing, saved the encrypted updates, then cleared the screen and got up from the desk. He picked up a sealed envelope that he had prepared, left the study with its functional lines and decor of chrome and black leather echoing the theme of his office at Milicorp, and went through to the central living area. Its mood was equally a hymn to masculine opulence, with upholstery of brushed gray suede, shag rugs, and a preponderance of metal in the ornaments and fittings, making no concessions to softness or warmth. The centerpiece above the mantel was by a renowned military artist and showed an aircraft approaching for a night landing on an early-twenty-first-century nuclear carrier. Female visitors told Callen that the place mirrored his soul. The comparison pleased him. He had tried marriage once, primarily as a social maneuver when it seemed required to complete the executive image, but found it to be incompatible with a first loyalty toward the corporation. And besides, monogamy was never a realistic expectation, and he had been surprised to find that was taken seriously. His psyche needed the gratification of repeated conquest as much as Milicorp’s business health needed a world of perpetual conflict.