take days at least to replace, if they did have to plant a new factory. The more minds speculating on the problem the better.
Sergeant Barn Inger felt just the same, and allowed the fact to direct his thinking and capture most of his attention. He had only the same data as the rest, since he couldn’t see Oceanus’s wings either. He could have looked at parts of the aircraft, since the software omitting it from the full-sphere screen was controllable merely by asking Status, but no one had ever bothered to do such a thing since the aircraft had first flown. Status could see what was happening but had been given no reason to care.
Barn saw no more reason to worry than did Gene, or anyone else. There was a more obvious and presumably more immediate problem.
4
----
SETBACK
It was daylight and would be for several more days at the factory site. Oceanus was on the night side, though Belvew expected to see the fuzzy reddened blob of the Sun—much of the smog was still above him—in another few minutes. Both factory and flier were on the hemisphere away from Saturn; to see the big disc, pierced by the needle of its edge-on rings, would have required relay from the main orbiting station and possibly one other. Even had it been above the horizon, he’d have had to use very carefully chosen sensor frequencies with Oceanus’s cameras or, much better he suddenly realized, shift to cameras in the base above with him. Even this might not work since the station spent over a third of its time in Titan’s Saturn-shadow. Usually no one knew any more exactly where they were in orbit than the average person on Earth knows the current phase of its moon. They had no reason to care; that sort of thing was for Status.
Even by Titan day, visible light was no use for examining the factory from above the atmosphere. Much longer waves were needed, and for these to have really high resolution the readings from at least a few kilometers of orbit travel had to be combined statistically, also by Status, into single “pictures.” Maria could never quite watch her surface images at high resolution in real time. By now it had occurred to everyone in the group how nice it would have been to provide the factory with a camera, but this was another don’t-mention-it. “If onlys” were against military, scientific, and medical discipline as well as common sense, all of which demanded dealing with things as they were. Rule X, in fact.
How things were was slowly becoming more apparent. Before Belvew could see the Sun, Maria announced that the new patch was six centimeters broader on the east-west line and eight on the north-south than it had been when first measured. Half an hour later both amounts had increased by another ten centimeters, and the distance from the centroid of the patch to the factory was smaller by nearly a meter.
“Suggests it’s actually moving, not just growing more one way than the other,” Barn pointed out.
“Suggests I was wrong about the things’ being caused by rain,” was Maria’s less enthusiastic comment.
“Are you sure? Would the factory report rain?” asked Belvew. “No, but my viewers would. Status says it hasn’t rained there since we planted the rig. There isn’t—”
“Not during any of the four-hour or whatever it is intervals between his regular checks?” asked Emil diSabato, doing his best to keep any suggestion of a pouncing cat out of his tone.
“No storm we’ve seen yet has lasted less than seven or eight hours,” Maria answered. “There isn’t any lake close enough to make it likely, either. And I know rain when I see it; there’s been plenty of it here and there on Titan. You ought to know, Gene.”
“I do. It’s always been from verticals either over the lakes or very close to them. The background circulation is so slow that a thunderstorm usually dies before it gets very far from the lake that spawned it, even if it lasts for ten or fifteen hours; and the factory’s over
Sergeant Barn Inger felt just the same, and allowed the fact to direct his thinking and capture most of his attention. He had only the same data as the rest, since he couldn’t see Oceanus’s wings either. He could have looked at parts of the aircraft, since the software omitting it from the full-sphere screen was controllable merely by asking Status, but no one had ever bothered to do such a thing since the aircraft had first flown. Status could see what was happening but had been given no reason to care.
Barn saw no more reason to worry than did Gene, or anyone else. There was a more obvious and presumably more immediate problem.
4
----
SETBACK
It was daylight and would be for several more days at the factory site. Oceanus was on the night side, though Belvew expected to see the fuzzy reddened blob of the Sun—much of the smog was still above him—in another few minutes. Both factory and flier were on the hemisphere away from Saturn; to see the big disc, pierced by the needle of its edge-on rings, would have required relay from the main orbiting station and possibly one other. Even had it been above the horizon, he’d have had to use very carefully chosen sensor frequencies with Oceanus’s cameras or, much better he suddenly realized, shift to cameras in the base above with him. Even this might not work since the station spent over a third of its time in Titan’s Saturn-shadow. Usually no one knew any more exactly where they were in orbit than the average person on Earth knows the current phase of its moon. They had no reason to care; that sort of thing was for Status.
Even by Titan day, visible light was no use for examining the factory from above the atmosphere. Much longer waves were needed, and for these to have really high resolution the readings from at least a few kilometers of orbit travel had to be combined statistically, also by Status, into single “pictures.” Maria could never quite watch her surface images at high resolution in real time. By now it had occurred to everyone in the group how nice it would have been to provide the factory with a camera, but this was another don’t-mention-it. “If onlys” were against military, scientific, and medical discipline as well as common sense, all of which demanded dealing with things as they were. Rule X, in fact.
How things were was slowly becoming more apparent. Before Belvew could see the Sun, Maria announced that the new patch was six centimeters broader on the east-west line and eight on the north-south than it had been when first measured. Half an hour later both amounts had increased by another ten centimeters, and the distance from the centroid of the patch to the factory was smaller by nearly a meter.
“Suggests it’s actually moving, not just growing more one way than the other,” Barn pointed out.
“Suggests I was wrong about the things’ being caused by rain,” was Maria’s less enthusiastic comment.
“Are you sure? Would the factory report rain?” asked Belvew. “No, but my viewers would. Status says it hasn’t rained there since we planted the rig. There isn’t—”
“Not during any of the four-hour or whatever it is intervals between his regular checks?” asked Emil diSabato, doing his best to keep any suggestion of a pouncing cat out of his tone.
“No storm we’ve seen yet has lasted less than seven or eight hours,” Maria answered. “There isn’t any lake close enough to make it likely, either. And I know rain when I see it; there’s been plenty of it here and there on Titan. You ought to know, Gene.”
“I do. It’s always been from verticals either over the lakes or very close to them. The background circulation is so slow that a thunderstorm usually dies before it gets very far from the lake that spawned it, even if it lasts for ten or fifteen hours; and the factory’s over
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