GROUND / CH. 8: GETTING READY

SPACE

“Well, James, there it is,” Maggie said, ten hectic months after she and Rachel had returned to Mars.

“Urm, what am I looking at?”

“The lab. Home sweet home for the next few years,”

“No, I mean, what am I looking at. All I can see is stars.”

She glanced at his screen, “Oh, you're still looking backwards.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. Press the button on the left of the screen. So... my running commentary over the last quarter of an hour has been of approximately zero educational value, hasn't it?”

“It was extremely informative. I learned lots and lots.”

“What about?”

“Your digressions, your tone of voice, the warmth you feel for this ship, very very educational. And I just learned that I press this button I get another view.”

“That's up now,” she said, checking.

“Up. OK, 'Up' meaning what exactly?”

“Above our heads.”

“How can you tell so quickly?”

“That star there? That's Polaris.”

“I believe you. There's no indication on the screen at all?”

“Twist the button a bit. It gives you a zoom control, and at the bottom it says which way you're looking.”

“Oh wow, it's written in Mer!” James said.

“Of course. Sorry, not of course, but all ship controls are in Mer.”

“Hold on. Are you saying this works just like the display on a boat?”

“Ooops. Yes. It's a boat display. Most of the controls work like a boat. Oh, me stupid, I can put the radar on normal, can't I? Sorry. I'm so used to having land-folk co-pilots.” She flicked a switch.

“Hey, now that makes sense to my ears!” James said, grinning, as his ears suddenly got all the reference signals they expected. Realising he was in far more familiar territory than he'd thought, he was quickly able to switch the display forwards and zoomed in. “There she is, all right.” James said, “I'm hearing that as a hundred meters away, what is it really?”

“Ten kilometers. The hull is a hundred meter diameter globe, made of crystal. Assume it to be arranged like a small Atlantis.”

“Complete with boat bays?”

“Well, there's no water, but yes, they're underneath. The flight desk is where the council chamber would be.”

“No Turnbull ring, I presume.”

“Not as far as I know. This is my first visit too.”

“But it being modelled on Atlantis... there are towers?”

“Just two towers, apparently. One for offices and labs, another for accommodation. In true Mars fashion, there's space for root-crops and rabbits for special-occasion meat, but mostly we'll be eating from hydroponics if we're not eating local. Did you hear that for once there's absolutely nothing toxic in the crop plants we tested, by the way? Back to the lab, most of the below-ground stuff is supposed to be research labs, fabricating, and the like.”

“Fabricating?”

“For simple stuff, so we don't need to constantly call for spares from Atlantis. If for example one of those dog-things attacks again. Oh, and personal forcefields all round, for going down, just in case.”

“Did you have one, when you went to the rescue?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Good.”

“I just forgot to turn it on. Rachel wasn't very impressed at that. Especially when she realised she might have had to fly home alone if I had got eaten.”

“But she could pilot, in an emergency?”

“Yes, she could. But not while writing her PhD.”

“And she's coming with us?”

“Yes, she's coming, my second in command. We have me, her and three more general biologists, you and two more linguists, three anthropologists, five botanists, one marine biologist, one specialist in funghi, two specialists in pathogens, two specialists in animal behaviour, one applied-theologian-cum linguist — he'll be with you linguists most of the time, one doctor-cum-paramedic, one regrowth therapist who my grandmother said we'd definitely need, which is a bit scary, he's happy to teach and cook, too, which is good. Two nurse-cum-teachers, a psych-counsellor, a physicist, an astronomer, an electronics engineer and we managed to persuade a fully fledged member of the fabricator's guild to join us, too. Oh, and there are three kids so far; somehow I expect there'll be more. The expectation is that we'll add more staff later on, and probably lose some too.”

“As in going home, I hope.”

“I hope so. Oh, I expect most friction to come from the anthropologists. They're already up in arms that we dared to make contact with the people, not to mention squirt bits of semi-intelligent pseudo-canine back at its pack-mates.”

“And the pseudo-canines are actually on the civ-scale?”

“Tribal markings made with a particular kind of tree sap, potentially some language skills. On the negative-side; opportunistic cannibalism, even within a tribe, and far more interest in trying to bite the coloured spot on the ground than interest in the geometrical patterns it was drawing.”

“OK. What's the plan when we get to the ship?”

“Once everyone's unloaded, and the room assignments are settled, then I give a 'make sure everyone knows what the plan is' speech, do a final check, and then we drop out of normal space, and sit down for a formal meal.”

“And then we go straight to the destination?”

“No, it's too far, there's not enough photons to be safe.”

“I'm sure you can explain that.”

“So am I, but it's part of the speech,” Maggie said.

“Oh, OK.”

“At this speed, we'll be docking in five minutes, James.” Maggie hinted.

“And you're busy.”

“Not for the next four minutes. After that, I'm probably going to be busy for weeks.”

“Maggie, are you hinting you'd like a hug?”

“That too. Some prayer time and maybe even some second-hand peace wouldn't come amiss either.”

“Of course! And Maggie?”

“Yes?”

“I know I have been assuming we'll get married since your grandmother said she'd be at your wedding, and Mick too. And I know it's not really the right time to ask, so soon after your grandfather's funeral. But like you say, we're going to be busy, and so we probably can't be spontaneous. I love you and I'd be very happy to be engaged to you, land-folk style, if you agreed.”

“I love you too, James, and I've always expected a land-folk style engagement.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes, James. I will. Shall we ask grandma when she can come, say in six months? I got the impression she's feeling a bit lost, after grandpa's death.”

“Unless she wants to come now?” James suggested.

“That... that has a nice feel to it. Can you connect me?”

“Of course.”

[Gran? It's Maggie.]

[Hello, Maggie. You're off already?]

[Not quite. We're just about to dock at your lab. And I was wondering if you wanted to take a risk.]

[What are you thinking, Magdalena?]

[James has just asked me to marry him, Gran, and unsurprisingly I said yes.]

[Congratulations.]

[And I was thinking that we needed to set a date. But I also had a thought about how nice it would be to have some tips from an experienced pilot in flying the behemoth I see in front of me, and of course, how much easier looking for Mick would be if we had a seer with us. And it would feel right, at least to me, if you were involved in meeting Jakav's people.]

[You think, young Maggie, that I'd be prepared to just drop everything, leap aboard some kind of guillemot and expose my poor old bones to a constant G of acceleration for a week?]

[Urm, you're in a constant G at the moment Gran.]

[Oh, that's why they're hurting, is it?]

[But actually I was thinking I could drop James off and bring you by this little scout ship my beloved Grandma designed.]

[And you think it'd be fit and proper for me to dump everything in your aunt's hands, do you?]

[I think she'd be expecting you to, Grandma. Well, not dump but... have handed over things already.]

[I have, don't worry. She was almost princess-regent for the last few years, anyway, Matthew wanted it that way. So... invitation to see a strange new world, eh? One of the worst things about having this gift, is you get tempted to use it too much and get so few surprises.]

[You're saying you knew you'd be coming?]

[No, dear, it's really a surprise. But I know my travel bag looked useful. Let me talk to her Majesty.]

[No problem, Gran.]

[What role were you thinking of for me longer term?]

[Hmm, take your pick. Scientist, interspecies diplomat, wise adviser, honorary great grand-mother to the little ones.]

[Blurter of well-kept secrets?]

[If you like, Gran.]

[Well, call back in about an hour if that's OK with your schedule?]

[That'd be fine, Gran.]

[You can give her a kiss now, James. She's a kind grand-daughter.]

----------------------------------------

SPACEFOLDING RESEARCH LAB.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, sorry, boy and girls, as you may know, this marvelous crystal ball was given to Queen Heather, now queen-mother of the Restored Kingdom, as a joint wedding present, by a rich industrialist, Sarah Williams and the Queen of the Mer, Karella Farspeaker. It is Queen Heather's private property but she is graciously allowing us to use it. It will, God willing, be our home for the next few years.

This talk will start with a basic introduction to how we're getting to where we're going, why we're taking the route we're taking, and then what we're going to do when we get there, just so everyone knows, and no one gets any nasty surprises.

“So, later on, we will engage the bubble field and bend space-time. Our bubble of space-time will only be connected to this universe by a spot, well, actually a ball, but never mind wrapping your minds round that, a couple of wavelengths of light across.

“Henry, wave please! Thank you. That's Henry, he's a physicist, and he can very happily answer all you want to know about how a ball a few wavelengths of light compared to the mass of this ship means that we are not in any way making a black hole for ourselves. I could too tell you too, of course, but Henry likes that stuff. So, we're not going to be in a black hole, we're not going to tear holes in the fabric of space. We will, on the other hand look like something a bit denser than a chunk of neutron star to the outside universe. So we don't want to crash into anything, or it would make a mess. Not of us, we're not going to suddenly slam to a halt or anything like that, in that respect we're safe in our bubble. But if we drove through a big rock, it would also mean a lot of wasted energy, and we'd get more atoms and sub-atomic particles coming through our little spy-hole into the universe than we'd like. I seem to remember learning that the radiation levels in the bubble would be roughly like being outside in a storm on Mars, probably survivable, but nasty. So, we don't want to do that.

"Fortunately, the researchers who developed the bubble drive invented a very simple way to make sure we don't crash into anything. We pick a star, fix a telescope on it, and head towards it. If the brightness dips then we know there's something in our way, and the computer stops us. At the speed we're going to be going, warp ten, it'll measure the star's brightness about every five hundred metres. Henry can show you the maths, but that basically means we can see anything bigger than a snowball in our path and stop in time to avoid it. It's a strange concept, but because we're going to be so small, if there was a snowball in our way, we'd miss almost all of it. So, us running into a snowball is about as dangerous as someone running into a snowflake, that's to say, we don't need to worry about snowballs. And because, according to the laws of the universe, we're not actually moving, thus we don't have any momentum. Stopping us is easy.

“You might think that there is a risk of something crashing into us on the side. Well, at the speed it is going to be moving at compared to us, that's a bit like a sleep-walking snail with a painful foot crashing into the side of a supersonic bullet. Only the reality is even more extreme than that. Warp ten is a hundred and ninety thousand times light speed. We won't be able to see many photons hitting our sides. We won't see any hitting us from behind, of course.

“You've seen science fiction films of people watching the stars shoot past. Sorry, that's just film-maker's imagination. The sky at high warp speeds is entirely black, except for the light from the star we're heading towards. At warp zero — the speed of light, even at warp minus nine, which is less than orbital velocity, we can't see much, because the bit of real space we're inside is so small most photons miss us. On my way here, I looked for the sun when I was next to the Earth. I could see where it was, but only because I knew where to look. In theory, we could stop every minute or so and return to normal space to have a look around. Sadly, that wouldn't be a good idea. It takes a lot of energy to make the bubble. We get most of it back, as long as we don't crash into anything big, but even then, nothing is a hundred percent, and if we stopped every minute then we wouldn't be able to get back home. Even once an hour would be wasteful of energy we might need.

“If we have to stop because of an unexpected rock, then we'll almost certainly have a look around. Because the place we're going to is so far away and it's two suns aren't very bright, we'll need to stop and swap navigation stars a couple of times. So, expect three scheduled stops, twice when we'll stop and admire a different star from fairly close and look at a different sky, and there's also a patch of patch of space we need to go though where there's a failed star with some rocks around it. We'll be stopping there for a while — probably about a day — since it's both a navigation hazard we'd like to know more about and also somewhere rather interesting for astronomy. Otherwise... sorry to disappoint, but this is one type of space journey where watching the stars is not going to keep anyone occupied most of the time.

“You'll notice I've not been very precise about how long we're stopping for, or even how long the journey will take. There's a reason for both of those things. I don't want us to rush on if there's something interesting, we are here for a long trip, and I hope none of us will begrudge any astronomers an extra hour or six if they need them to take better measurements. You'd better be very convincing if you want us to wait for more than a day though. As for journey time... warp ten has been defined as a precisely calculated amount of space warping. Again, ask our friendly physicist for the equations if you're interested. But the warp factor is adjusted by very small differences in the signals and the calibration of any bubble-ship's controls to an actual warp factor is never exact. The higher the warp factor, the less precise it gets. In other words, when we tell this vessel to go at warp ten, it might be going the same speed as the scout ship Rachel and I went on, or it might be going at a speed that ship's controls would reach when set to ten point two, or nine point eight. But, in case you're worried at going past warp ten, I can tell you something I only learned recently. This vessel has travelled at what its controls called warp eleven, and it did so entirely safely, with queen Heather as pilot. Warp twelve has been determined theoretically unsafe, but warp eleven in this ship has been determined as being safe. We'll travel at warp ten — about a third that speed — to be entirely safe and so our navigation telescope can see clearly, unless there is some medical emergency where we need to take risks to get home as quickly as humanly possible, or when there is some reason to think there are far more rocks around than normal, in which case we'll go at warp eight so we can avoid even snowball-sized things. We don't want to go too slowly, because that's needless, boring, and actually increases the risk of things moving into our path. Here ends part one of this lecture. Are there any questions about travel? If not, I'll be moving on to talk about food and research phases.”

One of the mothers asked “You say you're being vague about the travel time, and I guess I missed it in what we read beforehand, but I'm afraid I've no idea if our journey's going to be days, weeks or even months.”

“When Rachel and I came back from there it took us a week. We were in the bubble for all but four hours of that, and spent half a day at warp zero, getting an idea of how many rocks are in the rocky bit. But you don't travel at warp ten when the pilot and co-pilot are asleep, that's needlessly risky. So, of that week, we spent four and a half days at nominal warp ten. It ought to have been four point four days, so Interstellar Bubble Ship Nine's nominal warp ten is actually warp nine point nine eight.”

Kyle, the astronomer raised his hand, looking puzzled, “You've talked about photons missing us, which I sort of understand, though I admit to having some questions, but what about red-shift and blue-shift? Shouldn't we be blue-shifting the microwave background into visible light or something like that?”

“OK, Kyle, for a full mathematical proof you need to talk to Henry, but the quick and imprecise answer is that as we move through the universe stretching space-time in front of us and squishing it behind us, that cancels out redshift. We get more photons from the direction we're going in, but we're not moving in our bubble, hence no red-shift, no time-dilation, and no relativistic mass gain. I spoke earlier about crashing into things, but officially we're not colliding, we're ripping atoms apart with a very steep gravitational field gradient. In terms of interacting with photons from the side, which I expect is your other question, you shouldn't think of us appearing to approaching photons as a moving two-wavelength disc-shaped detector. You need to remember that we've got shape, and photons have an interaction time just like anything else, and we're going past thousands of times faster than any photon. If we hit them with the front half of our ball, we theoretically see them, but we might not because of the interaction time. And if we did then we've got problems because we want to navigate. If they almost hit the back half, we're long gone. If they manage to just hit us on the exact rim, well, we're just not in the vicinity long enough to interact with them. That problem with navigating is a real one, by the way. We cannot navigate at high warp numbers with a brighter star behind us than the one we're going towards, otherwise we constantly run into its photons, and not the ones from the star we're going towards. Nor can we go fast close to any star, for the same reason.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“From what you've said, it sounds like you're saying we'll be navigating by dead-reckoning a lot of the time,” Kyle said, shocked.

“I hope you don't have a big problem with that,” Maggie said. “I don't. We know exactly the direction we're travelling in, we know roughly how fast we're going. We can slow down and take bearings if we need to get a more exact fix. And space is big.”

A little boy raised his hand. “Which way is our bow?”

Maggie smiled. “If this square was the central plaza of Atlantis, do you know where it would it be?”

The little boy looked around, saw the tower he'd been telling his father looked just like the High Council's tower and unerringly pointed the other way.

“Well done. That's our bow. And you can go and press your nose against the dome there if you want to. I know I loved doing that when I was little. Just remember to wipe the dome before and after. Anyone concerned about radiation might want to know that there's a forcefield just inside the dome, but that in the viewing areas there's an extra layer of crystal for all-age nose-pressing, just like on Atlantis. Any other questions? I see a conversation at the back?”

“We've just realised neither of us asked,” the husband of the disputing couple said, “and I hope it's not too late... childhood vaccinations?”

“Important, I agree. Medical people? Don't be afraid if the answer's no, I'm three-quarters expecting to make a dash back to Earth in the scout ship before we leave anyway; we might be having a surprise extra crew member.”

Pete, the paramedic stood, “The answer from me is I'm not sure. It didn't occur to me, sorry. We have a full stock of known antibiotics, including things that aren't any use any more on Earth, just in case, and we have antivirals, anti-tetanus, lots of anti-inflammatories, along with blood pressure regulators, and the normal space medicine pharmacopoeia. So we're well equipped in case of accidents or encountering strange new diseases, but... I think we forgot about the children.”

“And looking at the ages of the children and their parents,” one of the nurses said, “I would feel happier if we had a fully-trained midwife along too, for antenatal checkups if nothing else.”

“Right,” Maggie agreed, “We do have a trained midwife who was due to join us, but she's part-way through regrowth after a nasty injury right now, and she said she'd be happy to come out in a few months rather than be in the way. Is the feeling of everyone here that that's OK? Or is the regrowth ward up and running and ready for a patient right away? And if so, would it would be better to ask her to change plans again?”

Rodger, the regrowth therapist stood. “The ward is mostly up. What's her injury?”

“Shark bite. Rachel, can you fill Rodger in?” Maggie asked. She didn't want to detail all of the woman's injuries in front of the children. Addressing everyone she said, “If Rodger thinks it's possible, can I see a show of hands who thinks she ought to come with us today or tomorrow, so she's as much part of our little community as she can be, right from the start, if she's willing? Thank you, I'll let her know so she can take that into consideration. Does anyone want to risk general disapproval for taking an alternative view?”

One person stood, “I'm all in favour of her coming, but I know from my own experience that interrupting regrowth is a really bad thing. So, I'd want to make sure all the medics agree to exactly what's happening and any of them can veto it.”

“Another question,” Maggie said, “is whether having a patient right from the start is going to mean other things don't get done which ought to be done. I know I told some people there'd be at least a week of flight-time before we got there.”

“Accident clinic is all ready,” Pete said. “I've got good helpers.”

“Regrowth clinic is ready for her class of injuries,” Rodger said, “and one patient won't stop me getting the rest of it set up. So I'd say let's get her on board assuming my counterparts agree. Shame about the delay. It'll take hours to even ask her.”

“Believe it or not, Rodger,” Maggie said, “communication delay is not a big problem for us.”

[Is it time for me to tell everyone I have the gift, Maggie?] James thought to her.

[Wait, James, Rodger's got a blind spot.]

“You're going to move the lab to Earth?”

“No, Rodger. There's plenty of good reasons we're still parked out here at Pluto. I'm aware it's not exactly been convenient, but for reasons of hull integrity, which I'm sure we're all in favour of, when the bubble drive was put in, a lot of the more conventional so-called antigravity drive units had to be removed. Therefore, the lab moves quite slowly, barely faster than a reaction-engined ship, unless we use the bubble drive. Even if we were prepared to I've also been warned that if we suddenly turned up in Earth orbit we might set off someone's missile defence system.”

“Then?”

“Then, please cast your mind forward six or twelve months and tell me how you're going to request new supplies.”

“I'm going to hand a long list to the ship's captain,” Rodger said.

“Are you? What am I supposed to do with it? Stick it in a bottle and throw it towards Earth? As has been explained Doctor, the delivery flights will be coming out with personnel and supplies and returning after a two-week change-over and acclimatisation period.”

“Captain, we've had this conversation before, I believe,” Rodger said.

“I know,” Maggie said gently. “and I am very glad you are with us on this trip, doctor. But your earlier observations and questions suggest that you're still not happy to acknowledge instantaneous mind-to-mind communication as a simple fact, without any religious overtones. And that useful fact is something that — in an emergency situation where information is critical — people's lives might depend on. So, I'm taking this opportunity to remind you, and everyone on board, that I and a number of other people on board hear thoughts, and so can be on the receiving end of such instantaneous communication. Therefore, if we got called, we could ask for things on a list as well as we are able to understand it. But the best method I can think of for getting your list of required supplies to Earth or Mars, without problems of miscommunication, would be for someone on board with the ability to initiate such a communication to get in touch with a pharmacist or regrowth therapist thought-hearer and allow them to hear the sound of your words and talk the words they say back to you, don't you agree?”

“Well, if there were such a mythical person on board, then yes, I suppose so, it would certainly avoid the problem of so-called Chinese whispers.”

“I'm glad we agree. I don't particularly think he's very mythical though. Do myths pick their noses?”

[Thank you, Maggie.] James thought to her.

Maggie grinned, “Perhaps I ought to add that the last time I saw him picking his nose he was about fifteen, so maybe he's got better self control now. I think this is maybe the right time for you to say something, James.”

“Hello, if you don't know me, I'm James. I'm happy to say that when she was fifteen and spotty, Maggie picked her nose too. But I'm even happier that she's not spotty now, or fifteen, and if you're wondering why it took us so long to dock, part of that is that she'd just agreed to marry me sometime we get to the planet we're going to and things settle down. The other part is that we were deep in conversation with our mystery extra passenger. I've just called her again, and she will be coming.

“So, If someone ever has an urgent message for home, feel free to knock on my door or whatever. The truthsayer associations are quite happy to deliver messages for us. But I warn you, they do charge for the service these days. Now, doctor, as I speak there's a thought-hearing nurse in the regrowth clinic telling the consultant there that the reason she's so able to judge levels of pain in clients is that she is a registered truthsayer, and she's asking his opinion of moving his patient out here. Can you and I please go somewhere more private so you can answer any questions he might have? Like how well equipped the facilities we have are on the Ansgarp-scale, whatever that is, assuming I pronounced it right. I don't think I did.”

“Anskark scale,” the doctor corrected. “We're currently ready to operate at level seven, but that's just because it's a new facility and the equipment needs flushing and calibrating properly. By the end of today I fully expect to be at Anskark eight; nine if I could borrow one of the nurses to help?”

“All of them, if it'll help,” the surgeon said, “We've no patients to look after anyway.”

“Thank you. We've equipment and all relevant supplies that that I fully expect we will be at Anskark fifteen within a week,” he added proudly.

“Apparently the reply is 'All right, all right, no need to show off.' Next question is who's the therapist in charge.” James passed on as they walked into a side-room.

After passing on what Rodger had said, James said, “Reply is 'And before that, Mars?'” At Rodger's nod, James said “Apparently you're communicating with a Dr Bill Chalmers, on Mars.”

“Oh! What a small universe! Old class-mate.”

“I'm hearing the same. He asks 'What are you doing talking through mind reader? I didn't think you believed in such things.'”

“I don't but the patient's needs come first.”

“Bill says you're a brave man, and you're welcome to free up a bed for him. Magdalena answers that the journey ought to be less than an hour from Mars, He will make sure her dressings and everything are ready for three hours just in case, and the nurse can dictate exact concentrations and the like once the patient is on the move.”

“Thank him for the compliment.”

“I will.” James said, deciding that, in the circumstances, Rodger didn't need to be told who the midwife was. After all, the patient's needs came first. He called to her.

[Barbara?]

[Hello, James, long time no chat. Are you off?]

[Not yet. Two more crew members to pick up. You being one of them if you want to come.]

[Do I want to come? Of course!]

[Maybe not. I've just learned that the regrowth therapist is called Rodger Braithwaite, of Chicago, but before that of Mars.]

[You're going to put me under Rodger Braithwaite's charge? Do you want to give him a nervous breakdown?]

[He has just declared that the patient's needs come first. It is the same guy you were constantly witnessing to at university, isn't it?]

[I'm sure. Reacted to the doc here, I presume?]

[Yes, declared him to be an old class-mate. And your doc declared him a brave man. I think Rodger thought that was referring to coming out with us, not for accepting you as a patient.]

[He doesn't know, does he? That I'm to be his patient.]

[No.]

[That's not fair James. You can't get him to treat me without warning like that.]

[You don't think he'll be happy to see you?]

[Half-eaten by a Martian shark? Come off it, we were almost engaged before I turned to Christ and ended it.]

[I didn't realise you were that involved.]

[How are you and Maggie?]

[Maggie said 'yes'. Wedding date to be decided.]

[Congratulations! But go and tell Rodger that I will say I'm bottling out if he doesn't want to treat me. I'm not sure it's a good idea. Please.]

[OK, cousin. Do I tell him you recognised his name and play all ignorant?]

[No. What you do is claim me as cousin, and say you weren't sure until you checked with me. And if you really want to earn my eternal thanks, you sneakily invade his privacy and see if he still feels romantic towards me or hates my guts.]

[I've taken an oath, Barb.]

[Oh, I forgot that. Go tell him.]

“Dr Braithwaite, I thought your name sounded familiar, and I've just been thinking to my cousin Barbara. She urm, tells me you were almost engaged once, at university, and if you'd feel uncomfortable treating her then she's not sure it's a good idea either, and while she'd love to come, she doesn't want to put you in a difficult position.”

“Your cousin Barbara,” Rodger repeated.

“Yes.”

“You are the definitive proof of God that she kept going on about?”

“Urm, I guess so. She said she had a cousin with the gift?”

“Yes. Who told her end the relationship.”

“Barbara is Mer, Dr Braithwaite. She has some non-mer blood, of course, lots of us do, but she's Mer. And Mer take oaths very very seriously.”

“So do I. The needs of the patient come first.”

“I understand. What best meets Barbara's needs? A doctor who can see her as a patient, or one who will be thinking about ten year old might-have-beens?”

“She said that?”

“No, I said that. She forgot I'd taken an oath and asked me to tell her if you hated her guts, or whatever.”

“Hate her? I can't hate Barbara.”

“I understand that she rather rammed God down your throat until you were sick of the topic and then some.”

“Sick of the whole lot of you, in fact. Especially impossible cousins who can talk from planet to planet.” Rodger shook his head. “There's a psych-counsellor on board, isn't there?”

“Yes.”

“If Barbara can avoid talking about God, I will treat her, and talk to the psych-counsellor.”

“And if she can't? If she really wants to convince you about God because that's how she expresses her love for people?”

“She still loves me?”

“I don't know. She didn't say.”

“Can you talk to her for me? Now?”

“Of course. She's listening.”

“I hear you're to be my patient, Barbara.”

“She says if that's what you want.”

“Of course it's not what I want!” Rodger snapped, “I want ten years back. I want her back! But I'm not going to get that, am I?”

“She says, 'not if denying God is really so important for you.'”

“Tell her that her God is destroying my life, piece by piece. I left Mars to get away from memories of her, I signed up to on this trip because the centre in Chicago was a dead end, and the alternative was back to Mars. I'm running out of options!”

“She says, 'you can't run away from God and end up in a good place.' But she's not chasing you, she'll stay on Earth.”

“This ship needs a midwife.”

“What, the ship's pregnant?”

“The paramedic-trained G.P. and the surgeon forgot about childhood vaccinations. I don't know what else they forgot, it's never been something I've studied. I'm a sculptor who happens to work in cells. The nurses are theatre nurses, not health-clinic nurses. The whole medical staff are geared up for emergency response, me included, not keeping people healthy. Barbara, we need a community health-worker, like you trained to be before you became a midwife. The crew of this ship needs you. Probably a dentist too, I don't think we've got one.”

“The dentist dropped out last week,” James said. “He declared that since there was the possibility of getting back in a week, it would be better to plan for medical evacuation than waste his time serving such a small community.”

“He's got a point, I suppose. And annual check-ups could happen with someone doing a three-week round-trip, I suppose.”

“That's the new plan. And if someone gets an abscess then we do have the dental equipment. Maybe the good surgeon can lean some emergency dentistry.”

“Hmm. Thank you for not suggesting me. Tell Barbara I want to see her here, and I want to see her well, and I will feel privileged if she allows me to treat her.”

“Barbara says she is happy to come.”

“I wonder if she will be my only patient the entire time.”

“I suspect not. Have you seen the canine-like creatures? They are more intelligent than dogs, and the males are the size of bears and persistent to the point of being suicidal. There will be landing parties, and sadly I expect someone will forget their personal forcefield or a personal forcefield will be found ineffectual against precision positioning of teeth, or something like that.”

“What do the natives do, faced with that threat?”

“Magdalena has a nice video to show what first aid looks like for them. She asks that we rejoin them.”

----------------------------------------

Maggie was part way into her speech about planet-side safety when they got there. “so, I've said this before and I'll say it again. The people in a small village out in the back of beyond have canons as a way for dealing with predator attacks, know Pythagoras' theorem, have valve radios and something like Morse code for long distance communication. In other words they are probably within fifty to a hundred years of discovering nuclear fission. Their eyesight is superior to ours; the one I rescued had spotted the probe when I thought it would be out of sight, and did a first-contact routine on us.

"So, what we're doing is contacting a well-developed very alien civilisation, and we've no idea if soap is the equivalent of a nerve agent to them, or human hair would cause a fatal allergic reaction. If you go on-planet, and some of us will, then if we take plant samples we do so under the assumption that it gives off a plastic-eating nerve toxin when picked or cut until we've proven otherwise, and we leave absolutely nothing. Total decontamination before you go and when you come back. I can tell you that is not pleasant. So far, we've not found anything that'll kill us, but the plants they harvest are nutritious to us, and the samples of predator flesh suggest that the muscle-proteins of multicellular organisms are very similar to ours, even if their blood is different. Put that together and it probably means that we are nutritious to something there.

“I said multicellular organisms. If our genetic ancestry goes back to proto-fish and earthworms, and the predators have something similar, that of the people there goes back to slime-moulds, collections of individual organisms who cooperate for the common good. They can change shape, grow wings or armour at will, as long as they're well fed, and they can apparently digest meat within a couple of minutes. They have books, they breast-feed their young, but they also breast-feed their injured too. They don't need hospitals, infusions and the like, just a sterile knife to cut away infection, and food for their cells — I should say their organisms — to rearrange themselves.

"They have social rules we know nothing about, they have language, they worship God, have religions symbols and they give vaccinations against diseases. We don't know anything about how long they live for.”

“So, phase one: We get there, and we observe. We don't send probes to the big city where we might cause panic, we try to limit our contact to the isolated village where I've already been, and where we have some hope of friendly relations. We try to work out their language and we study their environment. The pictures I saw in a book there gave me the impression they are at home in the water as well as on land, but I might have misinterpreted that. There's just the one land-locked ocean, and we didn't see many creatures on the edges. Maybe that just means they're all underwater, or maybe the sea is the home of scary predators, or it's just that all ocean life is microscopic. We don't know if the people have clans, tribes or countries. We believe the population is relatively restricted to the narrow zone where their crops grow. Perhaps the fact that clothes would interfere with their shape-shifting means that they don't cope well with varying climates. Or, perhaps the problem is the predators. As I hope you realise, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but in any case, north of the city, there's dense forest where there are a few clearings with crops and fairly well fortified villages which become rarer the further you go. South, there are crops and also grassland where there a lot of very similar looking animals. We've seen some aliens watching them, whether that's curiosity, a hunting party or if they're farmers, or cowboys, we don't know. South of the grassland, there's range of reasonably sized hills, then a semi-forest, interspersed with crops, and fortified villages, and then scrubland which has some smaller animals on it, at least, we assume they're animals, and then you get to desert pretty quickly. The grassland tapers out to the east, and the hills and semi-forest and scrubland come up and meet the Northern forest, by which time the Northern forest is has becoming more sparse. Further east at the same latitude there is more desert, which turns into arctic scrub and tundra when you go north. There are grazers up there, and the dog-like predators, but no people we've seen. In other words we seem to have a water-poor world, with prevailing winds which produce a very fertile area, roughly bounded by a range of hills though actually extending a bit past them, I guess thanks to run-off, and that area is where the alien population are, and that inner plain is almost entirely predator free. We can guess they've pushed the predators out of it, but the predators control far more more territory. So, compared to the planet, it looks far more like the Merfolk clustered near Atlantis, than land-folk spreading out everywhere. Is that because they are afraid of the predators, or because they don't feel the need to expand further? No idea. Of course, the fact that they're shape-shifters might mean we saw some of them but didn't recognise them. The anthropologists will want me to mention that there are roads, street-lights in towns and villages, and they have wheeled transport, but it seemed to be moved by muscle power when we were there.

“But in any case, we dare not risk introducing an infection into their only city, and if, heaven forbid, the village that I visited appears deserted, or there is sign of fear when the probe visits it, then we don't risk going down at all until we find out what happened to the people I interacted with most closely. Unless there are well-founded objections, we'll base ourselves above the plains, to the South-East of the city, where we can see just about the whole occupied area.

“I talked about different phases of research. Phase one we'll be watching interactions, sampling plants and the linguists will be trying to study their language, via remote observation and picture drawing. Phase two will begin when we are able to communicate to a reasonable degree, and we might be able to get permission to follow individuals, which I'm sure the anthropologists will enjoy. If we observe repeated patterns of trade, we might be able to trade for the same things, which would give us samples. We probably won't be buying enough to feed us, both because of the toxicity issues and we don't know if they've planted enough food to feed us.

“Phase three interaction will start when we know about diseases and what's toxic and dangerous there, and at that point we'll know if the kids can go down there and play in the open air, if we can maybe grow some their plants for our needs and so on. Of course, biosecurity rules mean we won't be planting Earth crops on another planet. That might be a total disaster for the entire ecosystem. Anyone going down will of course have to understand things like irate farmers shouting 'oi, get off my cabbages', or perhaps even better, ask politely if walking there would cause any harm.

"Phase four will not start until we are able to ask them about what's allowed and what's taboo, and what they don't want us to do. Other than the predators, there will be no sampling of any animal's blood or other tissues until we're well into phase four. The shape shifting aspect means that what we think is just an animal life-form might be some of them, and we also need to extend our concept of animal. For all we know, they may have some part of their life-cycle when they appear more like a pool of slime to us. As far as I was able to tell, from the 'facts of life' book I got shown, they divide biological phyla into plants, multicellular organisms and multi-organism creatures such as themselves. They probably consider multicellular organisms as a lower life-form, and for all we know it's taboo to disrupt a slime-mould colony, or maybe what we think is just a slime-mould colony is actually Uncle Fred having a rest after a busy year. We certainly don't know how they would react to the idea of even one of the organisms that make them up being analysed.

“Regarding that, we think we have a hint in the film I'm about to show, which shows a bit of field first-aid. Parents, it's possibly unsuitable for your children. Rachel has analysed it to death in her thesis, and I've seen it before. So we're happy to look after the children while you watch it through first. The first clip shows a medical procedure. After that we'll be showing a longer film which gives the context for that first aid, which again might not be suitable. Mer parents, think a defence against a shark attack, with one injury, and no fatalities among the people.”

“Any questions before we start the film?”

“Will there be a phase five?”

“If there is, then it'll look like us going in person to one of their weddings, them coming to one of ours, standing shoulder to shoulder fighting off predators, that sort of thing. And then there might be the tricky issue of technology transfer. Again we'll need to be very careful about that.”

“You haven't spoken about when any theological discussions might start.”

“They opened the discussion, trying to draw some symbolic theology indicating the Godhead as triune. They count the week as seven days. As part of the first-contact cave drawings, we felt it entirely right to leave them with line drawings of the creation, the fall, the virgin birth, the cross and the ascension. Needless to say, we were struggling to represent them. Then James was allowed to hold a Gift-enabled discussion with two of them. At least some of them believe in a triune God and were eagerly awaiting news of what awesome thing God has done, James told them about the cross. We know that they have been waiting for that news for a couple of hundred years. If you work back, that means they heard God had done something wonderful roughly when the light-cone reached here from the time of Jesus. We don't know the exact timing, but... it's bound to provide many theologians with an interesting few centuries of discussion.”

“And our names will live forever in infamy in anthropological circles, no doubt,” James added.

“My duty to God is more important to me than proving anthropological theories right,” Maggie said. “And I had no idea how long it would take for us to get back there, or even if we would. I'm happy with that decision, and more importantly, Aza and Jakav, the two aliens we talked to were too.”