Saturn Rukh (48 page)

Voices came out of the darkness around her from the rest of the flock. “Look up there!” “Did you see that?” “Is it a meteor?” “Strange color for a meteor.” “What is it?”

“That light is from the flyer of the humans,” Petra boomed out to the others around her. Seeing the humans leave, she felt a sense of loss, similar to what she felt when one of the flock entered into the death dive.

“Where are they going?” asked Hakra from below.

For a third time, the bright reddish-purple light glowed, then faded again. Petra was now able to determine the direction of travel of the pulsating light. It was headed in the direction of Parent-and-Child.

“They are going home.”

~ * ~

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND FOR VIDEO GAME

“
CLIMBING SATURN
’
S RINGS
”

by

Pete Stewart

~ * ~

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. W. Allen,
Astrophysical Quantities
(Athlone Press, London, 1976), pp. 140, 141.

Tom Gehrels and Mildred Shapley Matthews, eds.,
Saturn
(University of Arizona

Press, Tucson, 1984). Saturn data, p. 942. Satellite data, pp. 653, 655, 673. Ring data, pp. 473, 477,497, 523.

Patrick Moore and Garry Hunt,
Rand-McNally Atlas of the Solar System,
2nded.

(Rand-McNally, 1984).

Carl Sagan and E. E. Salpeter, “Particles, Environments, and Possible Ecologies in

the Jovian Atmosphere,”
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series,
Vol. 32, pp. 737-755 (December 1976).

E. C. Stone and E. D. Miner,
“Voyager 1
Encounter with the Saturnian System,”

Science,
Vol. 212, pp. 159-163 (10 April 1981), and following articles.

E. C. Stone and E. D. Miner,
“Voyager 2
Encounter with the Saturnian System,”

Science,
Vol. 215, pp. 499-504 (29 January 1982), and following articles.

~ * ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Robert L. Forward writes science fiction novels and short stories, as well as science fact books and magazine articles. Through his scientific consulting company, Forward Unlimited, he also engages in contracted research on advanced space propulsion and exotic physical phenomena. Dr. Forward obtained his Ph.D. in gravitational physics from the University of Maryland. For his thesis he constructed and operated the world’s first bar antenna for the detection of gravitational radiation. The antenna is now in the Smithsonian Museum.

For thirty-one years, from 1956 until 1987, when he left in order to spend more time writing, Dr. Forward worked at the Hughes Aircraft Company Corporate Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, in positions of increasing responsibility, culminating with the position of senior scientist on the staff of the director. During that time he constructed and operated the world’s first laser gravitational radiation detector, invented the rotating gravitational mass sensor, published over sixty-five scientific publications, and was awarded eighteen patents.

From 1983 to the present, Dr. Forward has had a series of contracts from the U.S. Air Force and NASA to explore the forefront of physics and engineering in order to find breakthrough concepts in space power and propulsion. He has published journal papers and contract reports on antiproton annihilation propulsion, laser beam and microwave beam interstellar propulsion, negative matter propulsion, space tethers, space warps, and a method for extracting electrical energy from vacuum fluctuations, and was awarded a patent for a Statite: a sunlight-levitated solar-sail direct-broadcast spacecraft that does not orbit the Earth, but “hovers” over the North Pole.

In addition to his professional publications, Dr. Forward has written over eighty popular science articles for publications such as the
Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook, Omni, New Scientist, Focus, Aerospace America, Science Digest, Science 80, Analog,
and
Galaxy.
His science fact books are
Future Magic, Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics
(with Joel Davis), and
Indistinguishable from Magic.
His science fiction novels are
Dragon’s Egg
and its sequel
Starquake; Rocheworld
and its four sequels,
Return to Rocheworld
and
Rescued from Paradise
(with his daughter, Julie Forward Fuller), and
Ocean Under the Ice
and
Marooned on Eden
(with his wife, Martha Dodson Forward);
Martian Rainbow, Timemaster, Camelot 30K,
and now
Saturn Rukh.
The novels are of the “hard” science fiction category, in which the science is as accurate as possible.

Dr. Forward is a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and former editor of the interstellar studies issues of its journal, associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Space Society, the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Author’s Guild.