Resurgence

And now came something new and strange. As the big planet vanished from view, his suit, with its antennas constantly scanning the surface below, picked up a curious burst of radio sound. It did not seem like something intended as a structured radio transmission. More like the random cross-chat of a group of people all wearing suits and talking to each other at once.

He picked up another source, then another—and then scores and hundreds more of them, as his suit tuned in to the exact range of transmission frequencies.

Thousands and thousands of people down on the surface, all talking to each other in tight little groups while wearing suits? That did not rank high on E.C.’s level of probabilities, but he had no other explanation.

The radio bursts remained frequent as he moved over the cold side of the planet. He waited, until at last his orbit carried him around to a place where the gas-giant appeared again over the horizon. The clusters of radio noise disappeared. He looked down. He was over the night side of the world. He sought the lights of towns and cities, but saw nothing. He also detected no highly structured radiation, consistent with a civilization sending evidence of its existence out into space.

Tally visualized the cycle of events on the world around which he moved. It was tidally locked to the gas-giant; therefore, all parts shared the same sequence of days and nights, with day length dictated by the period of revolution around the gas-giant. He computed that to be 39.36 hours, rather more than one and a half standard days. This was the length of the day/night cycle, with light provided by the distant primary star. E.C. did not yet have enough data to estimate the length of the other year, the period of revolution of the gas-giant about the star.

The star formed the source of light for the whole planet. At the same time, only one side of the world enjoyed a supply of heat. The other received nothing but the feeble warmth of radiation from the distant parent star. Presumably it stood locked into a permanent Ice Age. Yet the evidence of life—assuming that those radio bursts were such evidence—came from the frozen hemisphere.

What could it possibly be like down there, on a planet where heat and light derived from two totally different sources? E.C. ran his atmospheric convective models using a variety of different initial conditions and assumed atmospheres, and found his results inconclusive. There was only one way to obtain answers that were undeniably correct. He would have to head down, and see for himself.

But not quite yet. Slow and easy.

There was one other peculiarity about the world below. E.C. had visited dozens of planets, and he held stored in his data bases information about thousands more. This was like none of them, and it failed to conform to any theoretical models. The magnetic field that he measured was huge, orders of magnitude higher than seemed possible for such a planet.

Tally could imagine only one explanation. At the center of the planet must be a rapidly spinning metal core, whose dynamo effect generated the magnetic field. But then, that core must somehow be physically decoupled from the planetary mantle and surface, since the inside was turning hundreds of times as fast as the outside. E.C. filed that oddity away, for future analysis.

At the moment he faced a more immediate issue. He would probably not gain more useful information from orbit. It was time to consider a descent.

He analyzed the problem. Simple re-entry was easy. The suits on the Pride of Orion were designed to permit a descent with no help from a ship. Once down, however, he would be stuck there—the suits, sophisticated as they were, lacked the power needed for an ascent to orbit.

He would worry about a return when the time came. For the moment, the question was, what insert parameters should he use to land as close as possible to one of the bursts of radio signal?

He was hampered by a lack of knowledge of atmospheric parameters. He could estimate the gaseous mix, but the density profile was much more difficult. E.C. was forced to adopt a fatalistic attitude. He would make his best estimates, and fly in. If he was grossly off, not even this suit could fully protect him. It would burn away with the heat of re-entry. His human embodiment would survive only a few seconds longer. It was conceivable that what would finally reach the ground would be only E.C. Tally’s grapefruit-sized brain. It would be in perfect working order, but lack a means of sending information to or receiving information from the outside world.

Well, thank heaven for his stand-by mode. If he had to, he would switch off and wait—wait, either for his awakening in a new embodiment or for the end of the universe, whichever came first.