Canticle Blue

48. Encounter

Music - Skimming Rooftops - by Firekites

Estmere and Pa'Keh had first encountered Gilon's Light by allowing it to catch up with them. When they reached a point well ahead of its projected course, they simply folded their main drives and drifted.   Once it had passed them, and they determined that there was no large accompanying debris, they re-deployed their drives and closed with it again.

When they reached the comet, they let their ships be captured and drawn downward by its micro-gravity, mapping its sunlit features with various imagers as they descended, then using their collar drives to recover altitude. In doing so, they were also able to estimate its mass, and from that its density, which was surprisingly low. The nucleus of Gilon's Light was roughly six miles long and one mile in diameter. It lacked just enough in symmetry to allow it to spin and tumble at the same time. Each spin took roughly eight hours and each tumble several days. By its speed and surface features, Gilon's Light continued to give strong indications of being a single-apparition object. While streaking generally sunward, it would be largely undeterred by the sun.

The gently contoured surfaces of the comet seemed almost pristine. They reflected relatively little light, but sporadic outgassing of carbon dioxide revealed only a very thin crust of organic compounds. And, in the ejecta, along with many other useful materials, was a puzzlingly large amount of water ice. It was as if Gilon's Light were made to order, yet with fleeting availability.

Estmere and Pa'Keh sent thousands of high resolution images of the comet to the Terreska, and those on the ship were thrilled to get them. They were taken from so many perspectives that, once rescaled and combined, they were shown in three dimensions on the V-sky. They were also accessible through the C-link to those on the Picarin. Soon the ply-ships were receiving coring site recommendations from both habitat vessels for their lianas.

Once Pa'Keh was directed to the first promising site, he positioned the Castel in such a way that the comet tumbled around his ship and spun beneath it. When he was close enough, he released a liana. After hovering over the comet's surface under its own power and running multiple surface analyses without actually touching down, it landed and deployed a coring tool. It did not work properly. The porosity of the crust and ice was such that each core extraction took little time. But, for lack of gravity, even though the tool penetrated like a hot knife and did not spin, it had to be held in place by the liana as it worked.

Once the tools were fitted with powered screw anchors, core retrieval became something of a game. The cores were extracted so rapidly that they were thrown into space. The liana pilots were immediately amused and challenged by this, speeding to and fro to catch the tumbling cores. Just as much a part of the game was ferrying a core to the Maire Meid and returning in time to catch the next one. Having no idea that they were in a race, the modified coring tools had little trouble winning it. The scattered masses  of surplus cores eventually had to be gathered and stacked. Within less than a day, the Meid's cargo module was full, and Estmere was on her way to the Terreska.

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Because of the Terreska's constant acceleration, it was necessary for the Maire Meid to approach the ship from the stern and match its speed to land. Since the small ship could not fly backwards, and there was no provision for the docking arm to grasp its bow, Estmere was obliged to fly it into the docking bay with only its collar drives deployed. Nevertheless, the turnaround time for the Meid was brief. Once her ship was secured, landing bay teams quickly emptied the module and filled it with additional coring tools and spare parts for the lianas. They then turned the ship around, and Estmere used the collar drives to exit the bay. She was joined by an additional liana and pilot for the return trip.

Elyse was very encouraged by the arrival of the Maire Meid. As material resource teams went to work on the cores, they informed her that water requirements for the ship had at last been met. The surplus water could now be stored in reserve areas, her ring-sea being one of those. The sea was already becoming more than just a system of tide pools, filled and refreshed at regular intervals. Coordinated with the work complex areas beyond the aft bulkhead, it was now used for ecosystem research, plant culture, and teaching.

With the maps and data sent by the ply-ships in hand, Cian was able to calculate the comet's mass and trajectory more accurately. But when the first cores were analyzed, she began to sense that there could be difficulties ahead. She was reminded of an incident five years earlier when a comet of roughly the same size and composition had fragmented and fallen into the gravity well of the gas giant Nantis in the outer solar system. She decided to call Tor Stym on the Picarin.

"Tor, I've estimated Perihelion for Gilon's Light. It will get a bit of a slingshot from the sun but could break up in the process. We may not be able to do anything with it after that."

He asked, "How long have we got until then?"

"Six months and three days."

He responded, "We don't have anything big enough to even think about altering its course, assuming there's even a chance of doing any good at this point."

She added, "Even if we could move it, a huge amount of material is going to be lost in the coma. It's going to put on quite a show, no matter what. Even the Terreska won't have any trouble staying concealed when it arrives."

He replied, "Thanks for the update. I'll get back with you as soon as I talk with the design people here. I have an idea. I'll share your findings with Os too. It would sure be nice if we could get one of the shuttles out there, if only to help with the mining. But things are kind of touch-and-go on Havel at the moment."