Nan Rosen and Carolyn Mineah

VOYAGE TO CENTAURI (excerpt)

From Chapter 8: Civil Robotics

One month before the Independence was scheduled to arrive at the Centauri system, I was in the huge robotics workshop on Deck 1. This workshop had benches for ten students and at this time was noisy, crowded, and cluttered. On this final day of class, everyone was trying to perfect projects that had been delayed by strange happenings aboard the ship and routine maneuvers to slow our speed on our approach to the Centauri system. Security was tight, which did not help the general mood of final exam anxiety.

My project was a little “snifferbot” that I had conceived while watching the cat and grunts chasing rats in the gardens. I had worked long and hard on this little robot, but I was still not sure it would do its thing in time for the final test. It looked a bit like a large green centipede and was designed to squeeze into tight spaces and sniff out dangerous chemicals.

Like all projects in this class, it was built from spare parts we found in a huge storage room we named The Dump, which contained everything from robotic software and hardware pieces to broken robots that had outlived their usefulness. Here I had found a six-inch length of tough flexible plastic pipe about half an inch in diameter. Twelve pairs of legs were spaced evenly along this tubing and the headpiece was fitted with an artificial nose, two eye sensors, a pincher device for picking up small objects, and an antenna. I had put an auditory sensor and signaling device just behind the “head.” The interior electronics were from spare parts from The Dump. The software and database for running the ‘bot were similar to the handheld sniffing units that the security personnel used. The entire robot, except for the eyes and sensors, was covered in a tough green plastic housing to protect its parts. I included red spots along its body that indicated points that could be opened for repairs.

After completing the ‘bot, I designed a control unit that worked much like a miniature computer. It had a two-inch screen and a keypad with ten buttons for issuing commands silently. The ‘bot would also respond to voice commands and could signal with peeps and whistles if it found something. Its main function was to transmit to the control unit that would display the chemical name and or formula of its find on its screen.

As I was testing the control unit, Harold dropped a small tool and I gave the command to “fetch.” The robot slithered toward the tool under the table and picked it up with its pinchers.

“Give Harold,” I said, and was pleased when the little ‘bot responded to this voice command. It slithered toward Harold and raised its first three segments.

“Thank you, Rover,” Harold said as he took the tool.

“What did you call my robot?”

“I called him Rover because he acts like a sniffing retriever dog and you sound like you are speaking commands to a dog.”

“I have never seen a live, real dog before,” I laughed. “I think he looks a bit like a centipede.”

Doglike, Rover continued to move about the floor sniffing and beeped when he came to a puddle. I glanced at the screen on my wrist and found that the puddle was a solvent used to clean metal. I showed the screen to Harold.

“I guess he’ll pass his exam!” Harold laughed.

We finished up our work for the day and headed back to Deck 2 and the Commons, with a security guard following us at a distance. We noticed that the plants looked dull and dry and leaves crunched under my feet.

* * *

from Chapter 20: Tiramia

We woke early the next morning listening to odd noises. There was a whistling, swishing sound from outside the glass. Rover had crawled out of my pocket and was on the bed making soft warning hoots. I hushed Rover, but he kept his sensors trained on the window. Outside, it was starting to get light, but we could not see the distant city. As it got brighter, we could tell that we were looking at clouds of swirling dust.

“I wonder if this is typical weather on Tiramia,” Harold said as he grabbed his clothes off the end of the bed. We dressed quickly, listening to the wind and the sounds in the house. We could hear our Iramian hosts going down the ramp and knew the rest of the house was waking also. I put Rover in sleep mode and tucked him securely in my tunic pocket. We went downstairs and found Marlon in the kitchen and the brothers setting the table for breakfast. The shimmer pot had been removed and the center of the table now held a big turntable with serving dishes.

Traelon was standing before the glass of the western wall looking out at the storm. It was quite light, and I could see that the dust storm was turning to rain. Traelon and I greeted each other, and I asked, “Are Synthon and Tosh OK in this weather?”

“Oh, yes! They are high in the mountains at the marriage house and probably looking down at the tops of these clouds right now. This is the beginning of Tiramia’s brief rainy season, and it is considered good luck to get married at this time.”

Even as he spoke, driving rain outside the window softened and the wind stopped blowing. The rain became a gentle shower that Traelon said would last most of the morning. “If it dries somewhat by noon, we can go out to the top of the valley and watch Tiramia turn green.”

Breakfast included breads, a bowl of cool leftover soup from the shimmer pot, exploded popnuts, and a bright red fruit cut in slices. Marlon explained that if the popnuts remain on the tree to mature they became this fruit.

I looked back at the tree where the chicks were playing and saw the huge red balls of this fruit and small hard nutlike buds I realized were popnuts. “The children pick the buds and play with them and when they tire of them I gather the nuts up for the next time we have a shimmer pot. If I don’t have enough, I buy more from the market. The trees grow wild around the valley.”

By late morning, the rain had stopped. Traelon gave us each light oxygen masks to wear, saying they would protect us from dust and strange smells. We all hiked up the trail to the rim of the valley. Harold, in his chair, beat us to the top. Even with our masks, Barb, Corey, and I felt a bit winded by the walk. Harold laughed, “Too many popnuts to eat, you are fat! Actually, Tiramia is a big planet and there is not as much oxygen as on Erin. You are working harder.”

The valley before us was a wonder. When we flew over this region on our way to the house, it had been all dry rocks and orange sand. Now it had turned dark green. There were many types of plants coming up, and from a distance they looked soft and pale green. Some, however, had grown enormous overnight and looked like huge green rocks. Around the valley were trees with bare branches that were starting to put out buds and turn green in turn.

“Are those the same as the baby tree inside?” Corey asked.

“Yes,” Marlon said. “By the end of the rainy season in a month or so, these trees will be covered with leaves and the beginning of fruits. We will harvest the fruits and popnuts at the end of the dry summer before the cold starts.”

Corey put her hand on one of the huge green rocks that was perfectly round and taller than she was. “This feels soft like the leaves of a rubber plant on Earth. I know it was not here when we arrived yesterday.”

“We call these bowl rocks,” Traelon said. “During the dry months and cold winter, they are underground. When the rains come, they explode upward and grow to this size overnight. The tops of these plants will spread out and form a bowl that will become quite large and collect water from the rains. At the end of the wet season, they will close up again and pull back underground until the rains come again.”

Harold flew his chair over the rock and cupped his hands. “There is already a bowl forming at the top of this one. It is amazing how fast they grow.”

“This reminds me of a few very hot and dry places like Death Valley on Earth,” Corey said. “Usually, nothing can grow there, but every so often rains come with the spring and plants grow overnight like here. They will bloom and produce their seeds quickly over a few weeks before the valley dries up again and turns hot. It is a marvelous and beautiful thing to watch.”

“When we first came here,” Traelon said, “there was almost no rain and this valley seemed dead. We pumped water and brought more in from space. Tiramia seemed to revert to the old weather patterns it had when there was more moisture on the surface. We planted Iramian plants in the valley. They did very well until one year the bowl rocks and other ancient plants began to grow. Today, plants from both planets grow side by side. The great bowl rocks seem to disappear early in the season and our Iramian crops continue to grow until we harvest our foods just before the dry winter. It works as a harmonious system.”

“How exciting!” Corey exclaimed. “How long were the Tiramian plants dormant with no water?”

“Thousands, perhaps millions of years. It is an exciting process to watch. Tiramia is coming back to life. Your engineer John Sharp is a great help with this process. His pumping system is making it possible for us to spread the vegetation. He tells us a similar system is being used to terraform Mars, but that to date no native plants have appeared there.”

Nan Rosen...