Ell Donsaii 12: Impact! (19 page)

Assuming that Syrdian would be near the meteorite, Dex rushed towards its voice. As hie approached, hie heard Syrdian say, “I’m okay, but flying like that is
terrifying
!”

Hearing that, Dex turned towards Syrdian’s voice and moments later almost collided with himr in the murky air. Throwing hies arms around Syrdian, Dex whispered, “I was terrified for you too.” After a few moments tightly holding hies mate, hie considered what had just happened. “Speaking to the meteorite and anyone else who might be able to hear, Dex said, “Just walking, I almost ran into Syrdian! If more than one of us is flying out here behind the meteorite, we could run into each other even if following the meteorite keeps us from running into a tree!”

The meteorite said, “Oh. Yeah, that could be a
bad
problem.”

Dex felt shocked. Hie had been angry that the meteorite hadn’t told them how they would keep from running into one another, but had not considered the possibility that the meteorite might not know how to keep it from happening! “What… what will we do?” hie said uncertainly.

Dex heard the squeal that meant the meteorite was lifting up into the air. Its sound receded a little. Then its voice said, “I’ve just turned on one of my lights. Can you see the glow?”

Dex could indeed see the dust glowing in the direction the voice had come from. “Yes, how far away are you?”

“Three body lengths. I’m moving farther away. Can you see the glow still? I’m five body lengths away now.”

“I can still faintly see you, but it’s difficult.”

“When you are migrating,” the rocket said, “you usually maintain a distance of one to one and a half body lengths from one another in your formations. I’m now one and a half body lengths away. Do you think you could keep formation on another dalin if it was carrying a light like this one?”

The glow of the rocket’s light had brightened quite a bit and was relatively easy to see, even though details were lacking. It was more like the sun behind the clouds. Dex could easily imagine keeping formation on it though. When they flew in formation, they had a leader with others trailing out to the sides. The trailing dalins could “feel” when they were in the right position because it was easier to fly in that spot just a little behind and to the side. Dex thought that with the light,
and
the “feel” of the position they should be able to fly in formation. “I think we could, but we should try it with just three dalins before we risk a big group.”

“Can you carry a meteorite, like you did climbing the mountain when we first met? Then that meteorite could turn on a light and two other dalins can try to fly in formation on you.”

Dex went back in to get a different harness that had straps with which hie could carry a meteorite on hies back. Shortly, hie had hies old meteorite strapped to himr. Hie knew it wasn’t one of the new meteorites because it didn’t have a large fin sticking off of it. Hie strapped it on upside down so that the end of it which had lights would be nearer to hies trailing formation flyers. Syrdian and Fagan volunteered to fly in formation with himr. For a moment hie considered protesting having so many members of hies own family at risk, but hie didn’t want to get back into another argument like they had before. Dex told the meteorite that they were ready.

The meteorite Syrdian had followed earlier spoke, “I’m lifting off now.” Dex heard the squeal it made when it flew and could tell it was moving up and away. The meteorite on hies back lit its lights. “Okay,” the flying meteorite said, “you can take off now and fly towards me. I’ll move away as you approach. We’ll make a circle and land like I did with Syrdian.”

Dex felt nervous because hie couldn’t tell where Syrdian and Fagan were. Quietly to them hie said, “Can you see my light okay?”

They answered affirmatively.

“You’re in a formation position and ready to take off?”

Hearing them both say yes, hie took a couple of steps forward and stroked into the air after the meteorite. As Syrdian had said, it was terrifying flying off into the dust when hie couldn’t see. Hie flew towards the sound and faint glow of the meteorite. A moment later hie could better see its glow in the murky dust. Hie could tell it was moving away, because if it hadn’t been hie would have run into it already. It seemed to veer slowly around to the left, although, remembering hies flight through a cloud in the past, hie worried that hie was merely disoriented. After a bit the meteorite spoke to them, “We are approaching the ledge. I am slowing down. We are three body lengths above the ground, two, one. No! Dex, you’re going up. Time to land!”

Dex had stretched out hies feet and begun beating to a hover. Hie’d thought hie was descending, but evidently hie wasn’t, hies feet weren’t touching anything. Hie forced himrself to beat more softly in order to ease himrself down gently, still stretching toes as far as possible. Hie heard the meteorite say, “One and a half, one, a half, you’re down!”

With great relief, Dex felt rock under hies talons and settled to the ground. “Syrdian, Fagan, are you okay?”

Soon Dex, hies spouse, and hies child were embracing one another in great relief. Malnot joined them a few moments later.

***

Ell found herself a little bit at loose ends. Her team was getting ready to send more air filters to the teecees as well as lights to put on their ankles so they could fly formations in the dust. She had commandeered some of the people over at ET resources that worked with parabolics. They were putting up a bunch more solar parabolics for Zage’s idea to light TC3. For that to work, she’d contacted Allosci. Viveka was making some graphene balloons and tether lines they could use to hold the parabolic powered lights up over the TC3 landscape.

They couldn’t start the teecees eastward migration until they had the ankle lights and filters. She felt a little itch to get back to trying to measure the fifth dimension, but had a meeting with her team again in a little while and didn’t feel like she had enough time to go home and start measuring dimensions either.

She headed back to her office, “Allan, bring me up whatever interesting video you’ve set aside from Beta Canum Venaticorum.”

Allan said, “I thought you would be interested in these images of very large herbivores. The specimen here seems to fall into the same category as the sauropods of Earth’s dinosaur age. It even has a very long tail. Like on TC3, rather than an extremely long neck like the brachiosaurs, these animals use extremely long front limbs to harvest vegetation from high in the trees and bring it down to their mouths. You will recall Harald Wheat’s observation that this arrangement obviates the problem of pumping blood at a high enough pressure to reach up to the brain in the head of brachiosaurs.”

Ell blinked, “I’ve forgotten. Why isn’t it just as much of a problem to pump blood up to the ends of those long limbs?”

“Because the tissues of the brain must have blood at all times, whereas the tissues in an extremity can go without blood flow for short periods. You’ll notice that this particular animal reaches up first with one arm, then with the other. Neither one is high and without good blood perfusion for very long at a time.”

“How big is it compared to Brachiosaurus?”

“Well, if you include those long front arms as part of its length instead of the long neck in Brachiosaurus, it’s about the same. The one you’re looking at in this video would be twenty-eight meters or about ninety-two feet. It’s pulling down vegetation from a height of about ten meters.”

“My God! How heavy is it?”

“We don’t have a way to estimate its density,” Allan said. “Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five metric tons depending on whether it has a lot of air sacs in it like the big dinosaurs have been proposed to have had.”

“Have you run the numbers on the atmospheric density? Is it dense enough to provide support to an animal this large even though the gravity is almost eight tenths of Earth normal?”

“At 188 atmosphere’s pressure, the density of the air is 222 kilograms per cubic meter, or a little less than one quarter of the density of water. It’s not the same as swimming, but it does support a lot of weight. That plus a slightly lower gravity makes these immense animals physically possible. In this next video clip, you’ll see an enormous flying animal, also made possible by the very dense atmosphere.”

Ell’s eyes widened as she saw what appeared to be a huge flyer soar overhead. Without perspective she couldn’t be sure just how big it was, but then Allan dropped a scale marker on it showing that it was nine meters, or thirty feet from wing tip to wing tip.

Allan said, “Emma is asking for you out in the big room. Do you want me to connect you?”

“No, I’ll just go out there. Go ahead and move the rocket to another continent. Keep an eye out for anything regular that might have been built by an intelligent species.”

***

Phil felt like he was starving. His surgery on his hip was scheduled around noon and of course, they hadn’t given him anything to eat or drink after midnight. A knock came on his door and he and his parents looked up.
Maybe they’re coming for me early?

A strawberry blond head poked its way around the door. “Hey, I thought I’d come by and see you off to have your surgery?”

A warm feeling came over Phil as Ell stepped into the room.
My God she looks good.
“You’re welcome,
if
you brought me a beer and a couple slices of pizza.”

Ell tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. “That’s about as dumb as the stuff you used to say. Do you think Dr. Bynewicz’s titanium shell and general anesthesia and other meds kept the porting from affecting your intelligence? Or do you think you’re even denser than you used to be?”

Phil grinned at her, “I
have
noticed that light seems to be bending around me…”

Ell laughed and turned to Phil’s parents, “That last answer alone is enough to convince me that going through the port didn’t really do his brain much harm. What do you guys think?”

Phil’s mother had initially been appalled at the way Donsaii spoke to her son. She’d been around men enough to know how they “trash talked” one another, but she was surprised to hear a young
woman
dishing it out.
I suppose, if she went through a military Academy, Donsaii probably had to learn to talk back to these bozos?
Brenda smiled, and said, “They said that the testing they did on Phil showed normal neurologic function.”

Phil’s dad snorted, “If it showed normal neurologic function in this lunkhead,
that’s
certainly a big change from before. Though it’s hard to imagine it
fixing
all the things that were wrong with his brain.”

Ell turned to Phil again and said, “Seriously though, do you feel it’s caused a problem for you? This will be hugely important to know in the future if someone else needs to be ported.”

Phil shrugged, “Yeah, as near as I can tell I feel fine. I guess if it affected my intelligence I might not notice it myself, but if someone’s smart enough to see how they cross correlate I’d be happy to take some IQ tests to be compared somehow to test results from the Academy. I’ve even been thinking that once I’m back on my feet, maybe you could drug me up again and shoot me back to Mars?”

Ell stared at him for a moment. “Wow. I’ve been thinking that I might not feel too bad about sending someone through a port again in an emergency. I have
not
been thinking of it as a general means of transportation!”

“Oh, come on!” Phil grinned at her. “Riding in a spaceship to Mars is
dangerous
!”

There was another knock on the door and a young man leaned in and focused on Phil, “Hello, I’m here to pick you up and take you down to the operating room?”

Ell breathed a sigh of relief, “Saved by the bell!”

Phil’s nurse came in as well and she and the young man bustled around disconnecting Phil’s bed so he could be wheeled down to the operating room. Once they had him ready and were starting out into the hall, the young man glanced around and said, “If you family members want to tag along I can show you where the waiting room is.”

Ell said, “I’m just a friend. Can I wait with his parents?”

The young man looked at her fully for the first time and stopped cold in his tracks. “D-Dr. Donsaii! I-I’m sorry I didn’t, didn’t look at you before. I didn’t… recognize you.”

“That’s okay,” Ell said, “I
like
being incognito.”

“B-but, you’ve always been my hero,” he looked a little cross eyed, “heroine? I’ve always, always wanted to meet you!”

“Okay,” Ell winked at him, “I’ll tell you what. After we get Phil safely delivered to the operating room, I’ll sign you an autograph. How’s that sound?”

“Oh!” The young man looked at the bed he was supposed to be moving as if surprised to find it there. He started towing it out of the room again, “Oh! Yes ma’am.” He gave an abashed smile, “I’ll get my work done first. Yes ma’am. Then, I would absolutely love it if you would give me an autograph. Maybe I can get someone to take a vid clip of us together and send it to me.”