Dare to Be Your Life's Hero by Bernardo Mendez

Author:Bernardo Mendez [Mendez, Bernardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Self-Help, Personal Growth
ISBN: 9780741410092
Publisher: INFINITY PUB.COM
Published: 2002-03-01T02:38:22+00:00

BOOK ONE

SEEDING PROGRAM

The spaceship resumed humming around Sweeney without his

noticing the change. When Capt. Meikiejon's voice finally

came again from the wall speaker, Sweeney was still lying

buckled to his bunk in a curious state of .tranquility he had

never known before, and couldn't possibly have described,

even to himself. Though he had a pulse, he might otherwise

have concluded that he was dead. It took him several minutes

to respond.

"Sweeney, do you hear me? Are you all right?"

The brief hesitation in the pilot's breathing made Sweeney

grin. From Meikiejon's point of view, and that of most of the

rest of humanity, Sweeney was all wrong. He was, in fact,

dead.

The heavily insulated cabin, with its own airlock to the out-

side, and no access for Sweeney at all to the rest of the ship,

was a testimonial to his wrongness. So was Meikiejon's tone:

the voice of a man addressing, not another human being, but

something that had to be kept in a vault.

A vault designed to protect the universe outside it not to

protect its contents from the universe. . '

"Sure, I'm all right," Sweeney said, snapping the buckle and

sitting up. He checked the thermometer, which still registered

its undeviating minus 194 F.the mean surface temperature

of Ganymede, moon number III of Jupiter. "I was- dozing,

sort of. What's up?"

"I'm putting the ship into her orbit; we're about a thousand

miles up from the satellite now. I thought you might want to

take a look."

"Sure enough. Thanks, Mickey."

The wall speaker said, "Yeah. Talk to you later." Sweeney

grappled for the guide rail and pulled himself over to the

cabin's single bull'seye port, maneuvering with considerable

precision. For a man to whom 1/6 Earth gravity is normal, free

fall -a situation of no gravity at all-is only an extreme case.

Which was what Sweeney was, too. A human being -but

an extreme case.

He looked out. He knew exactly what he would sec; he had

studied it exhaustively from photos, from teletapes, from

maps, and through telescopes both at home on the Moon and

on Mars. When you approach Ganymede at inferior conjunc-

tion, as Meikiejon was doing, the first thing that hits you in

the eye is the huge oval blot called Neptune's Trident so

named by the earliest Jovian explorers because it was marked

with the Greek letter psi on the old Howe composite map. The

name had turned out to have been well chosen: that blot is a

deep, many-pronged sea, largest at the eastern end, which

runs from about 120 to 165 in longitude, and from about

10 to 33 North latitude. A sea of what? Oh, water, of

course water frozen rock-solid forever, and covered with a

layer of rock-dust about three inches thick.

East of the Trident, and running all the way north to the

pole, is a great triangular marking called the Gouge, a tom-

up, root-entwined, avalanche-shaken valley which continues

right around the pole and back up into the other hemisphere,

fanning out as it goes. ( Up because north to space pilots, as to

astronomers, is down.) There is nothing quite like the Gouge

on any other planet, although at inferior conjunction, when

your ship is coming down on Ganymede at the 180 meridian,

it is likely to remind you of Syrtis Major on Mars.

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