within the dense redness of it, like wings of gauze. He gave a complex shiver as he sat, resting his head against the recess behind it and feeling the featherlight pressure against the scar on his neck, then a slight sting. Exterior reality vanished. A murmur as of distant hive insects seemed to fill his skull, but it was nomere vibration of the air. An inexpressible sensation of draining, as his recent memories joined those of all his life, and of the Lineage of the Crimson Dynasty and their consorts since the beginning.
Visions: death, birth, love, hate, accomplishment and cruelty, glory and despair. The bowed heads of ancient kings kneeling before the First Emperor; the feel of his own blood pouring out over the crystal, and the knives in the hands of kin. The temptation to lose himself in that endless sea was strong and bitter, as strong as the taste of tokmar ; he knew that, for a memory of it was here—not his, many generations removed, but as real as the weary weight of his own bones.
“For a moment,” he whispered. “Only for a moment I will see you again, my Vowin, so beautiful and so fierce. Then I will fight for the child of our union, until we are united once more.”
CHAPTER TWO
Encyclopedia Britannica, 20th Edition
University of Chicago Press, 1998
MARS —History of Observation
The lack of the consistent layer of high cloud which rendered Earth-based telescopic investigation of Venus so difficult was partially offset by the smaller size of Mars and the rarity of close approaches. By the early nineteenth century, astronomers such as Herschel and Schroeter had determined the size, axial inclination, and seasons of the red planet. The presence of polar icecaps and the distinct yearly changes in their dimensions argued for a basically Earthlike world. However, the small size and poor definition of available refractors long delayed further definitive conclusions as to the surface features of Mars, although in the 1830s Beer and Mädler accurately located the Sinus Meridiani and determined a rotational period close to the true one.
Over the next two generations, several other features were discovered, among them the Hourglass Sea, and the seasonalfluctuations in ice cover on the North Polar Sea. The Jesuit scholar Angelo Secchi, director of the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome, conclusively proved the existence of continents and seas during the opposition of 1858, a result confirmed by the British astronomer William Rutter Davies in 1864. The investigations of Giovanni Schiaparelli in the next thirty years discovered and began the mapping of the Martian canals.
These were extended and refined by the American Percival Lowell, beginning with his Arizona expedition for the opposition of 1894, and confirmed by E. M. Antoniadi in the same period. Lowell also made the first relatively accurate calculation of the density of the Martian atmosphere; the first positive though still ambiguous and disputed evidence of oxygen and water vapor was discovered by Walter S. Adams and Theodore Dunham, who attached a spectroscope to the 100-inch reflector at Mt. Wilson Observatory in the 1930s.
Conclusive proof that Mars had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere similar to Earth’s, though somewhat less massive, was produced by Gerard Peter Kuiper at the McDonald Observatory in Texas in 1947. Since it was now widely appreciated that free oxygen can only be a by-product of biological action, this evidence removed the last serious objections to Lowell’s theory that the canals were a product of intelligent design, and created intense worldwide interest . . .
Mars, City of Zar-tu-Kan
May 1, 2000 AD
Jeremy Wainman grinned to himself as they followed the two Martians toward the Alliance consulate. Most people his age knew what a Martian city looked like, but . . .
Or they think they do. They haven’t lived it. I hadn’t, until now. They haven’t felt it or smelled it .
He’d been born near Los Alamos, New Mexico, and
Visions: death, birth, love, hate, accomplishment and cruelty, glory and despair. The bowed heads of ancient kings kneeling before the First Emperor; the feel of his own blood pouring out over the crystal, and the knives in the hands of kin. The temptation to lose himself in that endless sea was strong and bitter, as strong as the taste of tokmar ; he knew that, for a memory of it was here—not his, many generations removed, but as real as the weary weight of his own bones.
“For a moment,” he whispered. “Only for a moment I will see you again, my Vowin, so beautiful and so fierce. Then I will fight for the child of our union, until we are united once more.”
CHAPTER TWO
Encyclopedia Britannica, 20th Edition
University of Chicago Press, 1998
MARS —History of Observation
The lack of the consistent layer of high cloud which rendered Earth-based telescopic investigation of Venus so difficult was partially offset by the smaller size of Mars and the rarity of close approaches. By the early nineteenth century, astronomers such as Herschel and Schroeter had determined the size, axial inclination, and seasons of the red planet. The presence of polar icecaps and the distinct yearly changes in their dimensions argued for a basically Earthlike world. However, the small size and poor definition of available refractors long delayed further definitive conclusions as to the surface features of Mars, although in the 1830s Beer and Mädler accurately located the Sinus Meridiani and determined a rotational period close to the true one.
Over the next two generations, several other features were discovered, among them the Hourglass Sea, and the seasonalfluctuations in ice cover on the North Polar Sea. The Jesuit scholar Angelo Secchi, director of the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome, conclusively proved the existence of continents and seas during the opposition of 1858, a result confirmed by the British astronomer William Rutter Davies in 1864. The investigations of Giovanni Schiaparelli in the next thirty years discovered and began the mapping of the Martian canals.
These were extended and refined by the American Percival Lowell, beginning with his Arizona expedition for the opposition of 1894, and confirmed by E. M. Antoniadi in the same period. Lowell also made the first relatively accurate calculation of the density of the Martian atmosphere; the first positive though still ambiguous and disputed evidence of oxygen and water vapor was discovered by Walter S. Adams and Theodore Dunham, who attached a spectroscope to the 100-inch reflector at Mt. Wilson Observatory in the 1930s.
Conclusive proof that Mars had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere similar to Earth’s, though somewhat less massive, was produced by Gerard Peter Kuiper at the McDonald Observatory in Texas in 1947. Since it was now widely appreciated that free oxygen can only be a by-product of biological action, this evidence removed the last serious objections to Lowell’s theory that the canals were a product of intelligent design, and created intense worldwide interest . . .
Mars, City of Zar-tu-Kan
May 1, 2000 AD
Jeremy Wainman grinned to himself as they followed the two Martians toward the Alliance consulate. Most people his age knew what a Martian city looked like, but . . .
Or they think they do. They haven’t lived it. I hadn’t, until now. They haven’t felt it or smelled it .
He’d been born near Los Alamos, New Mexico, and
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