its rocky lithosphere and halfway to the center of its nickel-iron core.
Long ago-- before even his time, Kzanol's time-- Jinx had been much closer to Binary. So close that the tides had stopped her spin and pulled her into an egg shape. Later, those same tides had pushed her outward. Not unusual. But, though the atmosphere and ocean assumed a more spherical shape, Jinx did not. The body of the moon was still egg shaped.
Jinx was an Easter egg, banded in different colors by the varying surface pressures.
The ocean was a broad ring of what must be extremely salty water running through the poles of rotation. The regions which the colonists called the Ends, marked by the points nearest to and furthest from Binary, were six hundred miles "higher" than the ocean: six hundred miles further from the moon's center of mass. They stuck right out of the atmosphere. In the photographs masered in from the first expedition, the Ends had shown bone white, with a tracery of sharp black shadows. Further from the Ends the shadows disappeared beneath the atmosphere, and clouds began to appear. The clouds became thicker and thicker, with
brown-and-gray earth showing more and more rarely, until suddenly the clouds were in full control. The ocean was forever hidden beneath a band of permanent fleecy cloud thousands of miles wide. At sea level the air was terrifically dense, with a constant temperature of two hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit.
The colony of Sirius Mater was on the Eastern continent, three thousand miles east of the ocean, a triangle of cultivated land and inflatable buildings at the fork of two rivers. The first colonists had picked a landing place with a high surface pressure, knowing that the denser atmosphere would help protect them from the temperature changes during the long days and nights, and from the ultraviolet scourge of blue-white Sirius A. Sirius Mater now boasted a population of almost two hundred punsters of all ages.
"Good," said Garner. "Then I won't have to explain anything. Can I borrow the phone, Lloyd?"
"Sure." Lloyd hooked a thumb at one wall.
The phone screen was a big one; it covered half the wall. Luke dialed thirteen quick motions of the forefinger. In a moment the screen cleared to reveal a slender young woman with wavy brunette hair.
"Technological Police, Records Office."
"This is Lucas Garner, operative-at-large. Here's my ident." He held a plastic card up to the camera. "I'd like the bandersnatchi sections from the Jinx report of 2106."
"Yes sir." The woman rose and walked off camera.
Kzanol/Greenberg leaned forward to watch. The last report from Jinx had arrived only two months ago, and most of it had not been made public. He remembered seeing stills of the bandersnatchi, but no more. Now, with new eyes eager to compare, he would see whether a bandersnatch was really a whitefood.
It should not have mattered. By all rights he should have felt as he had when Masney's sonic sleeping pill first wore off. Friendless, homeless, disembodied, defeated past all hope. But a prisoner's first duty is always to escape; by collaboration, by treachery, by theft and murder, by any means at all. If he could lull these arrogant slaves into jhinking he would cooperate; would give information freelyAnd he had to know. Later he would decide why the
question seemed so important. Now he only knew that it was. The suggestion that a whitefood might be intelligent had hit him with the force of a deadly insult.
Why? But never mind why. Was it true?
The girl was back, smiling. "Mr. Garner, I'll now turn you over to Mayor Herkimer." She touched something below the edge of her desk.
The picture dissolved and reformed, but now it was ragged, shot with random dots of colored light. A maser beam had crossed nine light years to bring this picture and had been somewhat torn up on the way, by dust and gee fields and crossing light waves.
Mayor Herkimer had brown hair and a bushy brown beard over a square jaw. His
Long ago-- before even his time, Kzanol's time-- Jinx had been much closer to Binary. So close that the tides had stopped her spin and pulled her into an egg shape. Later, those same tides had pushed her outward. Not unusual. But, though the atmosphere and ocean assumed a more spherical shape, Jinx did not. The body of the moon was still egg shaped.
Jinx was an Easter egg, banded in different colors by the varying surface pressures.
The ocean was a broad ring of what must be extremely salty water running through the poles of rotation. The regions which the colonists called the Ends, marked by the points nearest to and furthest from Binary, were six hundred miles "higher" than the ocean: six hundred miles further from the moon's center of mass. They stuck right out of the atmosphere. In the photographs masered in from the first expedition, the Ends had shown bone white, with a tracery of sharp black shadows. Further from the Ends the shadows disappeared beneath the atmosphere, and clouds began to appear. The clouds became thicker and thicker, with
brown-and-gray earth showing more and more rarely, until suddenly the clouds were in full control. The ocean was forever hidden beneath a band of permanent fleecy cloud thousands of miles wide. At sea level the air was terrifically dense, with a constant temperature of two hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit.
The colony of Sirius Mater was on the Eastern continent, three thousand miles east of the ocean, a triangle of cultivated land and inflatable buildings at the fork of two rivers. The first colonists had picked a landing place with a high surface pressure, knowing that the denser atmosphere would help protect them from the temperature changes during the long days and nights, and from the ultraviolet scourge of blue-white Sirius A. Sirius Mater now boasted a population of almost two hundred punsters of all ages.
"Good," said Garner. "Then I won't have to explain anything. Can I borrow the phone, Lloyd?"
"Sure." Lloyd hooked a thumb at one wall.
The phone screen was a big one; it covered half the wall. Luke dialed thirteen quick motions of the forefinger. In a moment the screen cleared to reveal a slender young woman with wavy brunette hair.
"Technological Police, Records Office."
"This is Lucas Garner, operative-at-large. Here's my ident." He held a plastic card up to the camera. "I'd like the bandersnatchi sections from the Jinx report of 2106."
"Yes sir." The woman rose and walked off camera.
Kzanol/Greenberg leaned forward to watch. The last report from Jinx had arrived only two months ago, and most of it had not been made public. He remembered seeing stills of the bandersnatchi, but no more. Now, with new eyes eager to compare, he would see whether a bandersnatch was really a whitefood.
It should not have mattered. By all rights he should have felt as he had when Masney's sonic sleeping pill first wore off. Friendless, homeless, disembodied, defeated past all hope. But a prisoner's first duty is always to escape; by collaboration, by treachery, by theft and murder, by any means at all. If he could lull these arrogant slaves into jhinking he would cooperate; would give information freelyAnd he had to know. Later he would decide why the
question seemed so important. Now he only knew that it was. The suggestion that a whitefood might be intelligent had hit him with the force of a deadly insult.
Why? But never mind why. Was it true?
The girl was back, smiling. "Mr. Garner, I'll now turn you over to Mayor Herkimer." She touched something below the edge of her desk.
The picture dissolved and reformed, but now it was ragged, shot with random dots of colored light. A maser beam had crossed nine light years to bring this picture and had been somewhat torn up on the way, by dust and gee fields and crossing light waves.
Mayor Herkimer had brown hair and a bushy brown beard over a square jaw. His
Similar Books
