Saturn Rukh (43 page)

“We arrived at right time,” said Uppereye. “Baby is coming.”

Sandra looked around. She and Uppereye were not the only ones watching. A number of the flock had flown eyes over to Kestrel’s back to witness the event. Both of Kestrel’s own eyes were watching too. All of the rukh eyes were keeping a good distance away, watching from positions near the edge of the meadow. All around her, Sandra could hear rumbling through the air as the rukhs talked to each other.

“What are members of flock saying?” Sandra asked.

Uppereye paused before replying. “Members of flock not singing logical thoughts. Singing feelings like:
Baby nice. Eye of baby pretty color. Baby strong.“

“Baby talk, in other words,” said Chastity over the radio link.

The single small eye was joined by another, and both started to crawl forward through the meadow using the claws along the bottom of their necks. The wind over the back of their parent was quite strong, but the baby eyes held tight to the roots of the down “bushes,” the claws along the emerging neck instinctively grabbing and releasing their hold on the roots as they moved along. The neck sacs behind the two baby eyes were not inflated as they normally were in an adult. This puzzled Sandra a little, but rather than trying to interrupt Uppereye with a query about that, she decided to just wait, watch, and learn. The two eyes initially made good progress across the meadow, their two-meter-diameter necks moving along side-by-side through the short down. All this time, the adult eyes maintained their distance while continuing their rumbling comments. The rumbling increased in volume as the base of the baby’s necks came in view, dragging behind them a long wrinkled mass of moist downy flesh.

“So that’s what a deflated rukh looks like,” said Chastity over the radio link.

Soon the hundred-meter-long body was out on the meadow and dragging through the down “bushes.” The going now got harder for the two necks. The constant wind soon dried out the down feathers on the body, which increased the drag. The ends of the long deflated wings started flapping in the gusty wind, making the task of the two baby necks even more difficult. Still the adults kept their distance and let the baby continue the struggle unaided.

“Notice…” said Sandra, adding comments to the video feed being transmitted through the radio link. “The tips of the wings on the baby rukh have tiny hooks on the end. There are no such hooks on an adult rukh. This must be a juvenile organ like the ‘egg tooth’ on the beak of some reptiles.”

The formation of rukhs around Kestrel shifted slightly, changing the wind patterns across the meadow. One of the eyes of the baby, buffeted by a turbulent gust of wind, lost its grip. Its head end was blown into the air, causing the neck to be “unzipped” from its grip on the meadow and to go flying to the rear. The other eye was able to maintain its grip and the windblown neck came crashing down on its back, its claws waving ineffectually in the air. The shock caused the deflated main body to lift, allowing the wind to get under it and lift it up. The other eye started to lose its grip. Despite the baby’s obvious plight, the adults did nothing, although the rumbling talk of the adults changed in tone and decreased in volume.

“Why doesn’t somebody
do
something!” yelled Sandra. She slid down off Uppereye’s neck, slowing her ten-meter fall by letting her safety line slide through her gloved hands. She hit Kestrel’s inflated back with a thud, bounced up, and started leaping across the meadow toward the base of the baby neck that still had a grip. The neck of the baby rukh was bigger around than she was, but she knew that she was much more dense. If she could just grab a couple of the loose neck claws and add her weight to the effort, the two of them could maintain a hold until the other neck could right itself and get its claws gripping again. She had almost reached the baby when she was grabbed in mid-leap by four strong foreclaws.

“NO!”
said Uppereye in the loudest and most emphatic tone Sandra had ever heard the neck sacs utter. Sandra found herself carried swiftly back to the edge of the meadow, where she and Uppereye rejoined the waiting, watching ring of adult eyes.

“Sandra not help baby. No person help baby. Baby must be strong. Only strong babies are good babies.”

Sandra was ashamed of herself. She had allowed her emotions to overcome her scientific detachment. Fortunately, Uppereye had gotten to her before she had interfered too much. The grip of Uppereye’s foreclaws hurt where they pinched her waist and limbs, but Sandra decided now was not the time to complain.

Fortunately, the overturned baby rukh head was able to regain its grip on the meadow and together the two heads resumed their crawl toward the front of its parent. The only help the adults gave the baby was that Kestrel’s two eyes parted a path through the larger feathers as the two eyes left the down “bushes” of the meadow and entered the forest of feather trees. Sandra could see the need for that. If one baby eye went on one side of a large feather root while the other eye took the other side, the baby would get stuck where the two necks joined at the keel of the still-deflated body. Once inside the protection of the forest, the wind abated and the two necks made good time. It only took a few hours for the baby to make its way across the kilometer of distance from the meadow to Kestrel’s prow. There, Kestrel’s upper eye had arranged a nest for the baby, right at the front, where it would be constantly under the eye of the female half of its parent. Once the baby was settled in its niche, it opened its two maws for the first time. The onrushing wind filled the maws with air and the baby started to fill its body sacs. Soon its wings were inflated. They stretched out widely from the sides of Kestrel’s keel and could be a problem in turbulent weather. It was then that Sandra found out why the baby rukh had hooks on the end of its wing. Kestrel’s upper eye reached down on each side of its keel, selected a strong feather, and slipped the feather into the hook at the tip of each of baby’s wings. Baby was now securely fastened to Kestrel’s keel. Both eyes of the parents started visiting the gullets in the maws on each side of Kestrel’s keel, picking out little tidbits with their foreclaws and feeding them to the hungry little one, who was emitting high-pitched hungry sounds from its newly inflated body sacs. One after another, the “aunts” and “uncles” of the other members of the flock took turns visiting the new baby and feeding it bites gleaned from their gullets. Uppereye didn’t get to join in. Her foreclaws were burdened with Sandra.

“Sandra see enough?”

“Yes,” replied Sandra. “Thank you.”

Uppereye tilted its canards and flew back to
Sexdent,
with Sandra trying to apologize all the way back.

~ * ~

The day finally came that they had all been dreading. The reactor control system malfunctioned. The reactor started to heat up past safe limits, but the safety rods quickly shut the reactor down before a meltdown started.

“That’s it,” said Pete, after checking the reactor status at the scottyboard. “We’ve got a choice of two states: either we leave the safety rods in and the reactor is cold, or we pull the safety rods out and the reactor heats up until it melts. We’re now on the meta-heated backup power generator. I’ve cut the power consumption as much as I dare, but we’re still burning about twenty kilos of meta a day.”

“We can’t afford to do that very long,” said Rod grimly. He turned to Sandra. “It’s time to put pressure on the rukhs to fly us south to the equator.”

That night, Sandra had a long discussion with Uppereye, who in turn had long discussions with the rest of the flock, especially the elders. Condor, the eldest of the elders, advised continued caution about approaching the equator, for the time when the Sun was dimmest was still many days away and the risk of the millistoma rising from the depths was still strong. The flock, accustomed to following the advice of their elders, decided to stay where they were.

The sun rose and Lowereye awoke to join the discussion. Although Lowereye was less interested in the welfare of the humans than Uppereye, not having spent as much time with them as Uppereye had, he was very much in favor of getting rid of the weight of
Sexdent,
and the weight and drag of the reactor and its long tether. Their burden really spoiled his prowess as a hunter. Peregrine was a relatively young member of the flock. But because of Peregrine’s lowered mobility during the hunting dive, Lowereye had found himself relegated by the other young members of the flock to the “Elders ring” surrounding the central feeding portion of the hunting cone. Those holding that position during the hunt would always get plenty of food to eat without having to exert themselves too much. Thus, despite their fear of the millistoma, Uppereye and Lowereye jointly decided to help the humans by leaving the flock and taking them to the equator. Uppereye informed Sandra of their decision.

“Peregrine not want Sandra to die. Peregrine fly to equator so Sandra can go home. Peregrine fly fast. Fly to equator and fly back before millistoma come.”

“Before we leave,” replied Sandra, “we must say good-bye to the flock and give everyone some presents to remind them of us after we are gone.”

“Uppereye not understand word. What is ‘presents’?”

“Things,” said Sandra. “Pretty things.”

“Uppereye like things.”

“You will get the most things and the prettiest things,” promised Sandra, who had already decided that she didn’t really
need
to wear underpants under her coveralls.

~ * ~

Now that a definite course of action had been decided on, the crew got ready to leave. Farewell presents were prepared for all the members of the flock. Pete went outside and removed the rest of the evaporated-gold-covered high-temp polymer multilayer film from the outer walls of the meta factory, where it had insulated the walls from the heat and flame of the rockets during their landing. The sheets of film were turned into large golden bow ties that flashed brightly in the sunlight. Sandra taught Uppereye how to tie a number of different bow patterns, and soon every neck in the flock was sporting a decoration, with designs varying from long flowing single sashes that fluttered in the wind, to tight neck rings of multiple tiny rosettes.

Dan and Pete solved the problem of maintaining future communication with the flock by turning
Sexdent’s
three mech-bots into semi-intelligent video transponders. There were three laser communicators on
Sexdent
that had been used out in space for high-speed data links back to Earth. Soon all three cat-sized mechbots assigned to
Sexdent
had the thirty-centimeter-diameter parabolic optical dishes from the communicators installed on their backs while the laser transmitter and receiver modules were connected into the mechbot’s computer. The eyes of the mechbots served as the video input to the communicator, while the video output was produced on small displays salvaged from monitor consoles in the meta factory which were attached to the top of the mechbot’s head, just above the eyes. Although the display was minuscule in size, during prototype testing Uppereye assured them that its large eye had no problem seeing Sandra’s image in the display. Uppereye was especially pleased with the quality of the sound system. Pete had arranged for the optical surface of the dish to be protected from weather and roundfloater strikes by an inflated “radome” of tough clear plastic that also doubled as a bass speaker.

The real problem was power. The mechbots had rechargeable batteries, but they had no prime power source. They had depended upon
Sexdent
for periodic recharging. Pete solved that problem by using the optical dishes to collect sunlight during the daylight periods. At Earth, the light flux from the Sun is fourteen hundred watts per square meter. A thirty-centimeter-diameter dish near Earth would collect almost one hundred watts, which would be enough to burn out the communicator’s photodetector, so the photodetector had a narrow-band optical filter in front of it that kept out the sunlight, but let in the narrow-band laser signal. On Saturn, ten AU from the Sun, the light levels were lower by a factor of one hundred or more, depending upon the cloud cover that day, so there was no danger of burnout. Thus, by removing the narrow-band filter, Pete could use the communicator’s photodetector as a solar cell to convert the collected sunlight into a half-watt or so of electrical power to recharge the batteries in the mechbot. After five hours of collecting sunlight, the batteries would have enough energy stored for a few minutes of video communication.

Because of the multiple cloud layers on Saturn, the communication sessions would have to wait until just before dawn, after the flock had finished their nightly climb to altitude and were well above the water cloud layer. The mechbot would adjust its position on the prow of its rukh host until the dish could establish a laser link with one of the orbiters around Saturn. The orbiter would dump the latest message it had received from Earth, then pass back the rukh’s reply. Soon Uppereye was communicating with many new friends on Earth. With Uppereye able to show them how, two other members of the flock were assigned mechbots and started taking long-distance language lessons. Fortunately, the scientists back on Earth had learned a lot about the rukh “language” from listening in on Sandra’s and Seichi’s language lessons. After Seichi’s death, Sandra, who had to work in real time and didn’t have a method of reproducing rukh chords, had been reduced to conversing with Uppereye in pidgin English. The Earth scientists had the luxury of time, sound-generating equipment, and computer help, so the language lessons with the new rukhs progressed rapidly despite the fact that the two alien races could only communicate for a few minutes every ten-hour Saturnian day.