Rocheworld by Robert L Forward

Author:Robert L Forward [Forward, Robert L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780671698690
Goodreads: 1587279
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 1984-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12 — FALLING Shirley took the diamond from her coverall pocket and suspended the rock in mid-air. It drifted slightly in the air currents but fell neither toward or away from Roche or Eau. “Zero-gee,” she announced. “Now that the sun is shining on Eau, the ammonia will start to boil out of the water, and the wind will start blowing the other way,” said George. “If we’re going to get any samples or make any measurements we’d better do it soon, before the waves build up.” “We go down?” said Arielle, starting the lift-fans. The aerospace plane gathered speed, and within a few minutes was hovering over the surface of the rounded tip of ocean at the inner point of Eau. The gravity had risen to a half-percent of gee and things once more took on their normal orientation, except now overhead was a conical mountain of rock instead of a conical mountain of water. “Three meter above surface,” said Arielle. “The wind is drooping down.” “Lower the sonar scanner, Jill,” commanded Shirley. There was a bumping noise from beneath the ship as a small dense package of sophisticated sound generating and detecting equipment dropped out of a hatchway on the bottom of the plane and splashed into the water. There was a blip on the screen as Jill fired the first strong burst of sound down into the depths. There was a pause as the trace made its way slowly across the screen. As the green line approached the right side of the screen, there was a blink, and the scale increased ten times. The blip, now moving only one-tenth as fast, continued across the screen, passing one depth marker after another. “It’s really deep,” said Shirley. “The marker is at fifty kilometers and still going.” “That’s five times deeper than the deepest ocean on Earth,” said George. “I wonder what the pressures are like down there.” “Shouldn’t be too bad,” said David. “Don’t forget the reduced gravity.” “I think the signal must have been attenuated by a muddy bottom or something,” said Jill through Shirley’s imp. “I’ll try a longer burst with a chirped frequency and then compress the returns.” “Fine,” said Shirley, then watched as a ten second slowly rising whistle of sound hurtled into the depths. “There it is!” cried Shirley as a return showed up on her screen. “That is a return from the first signal,” said Jill. “I will reconfigure the screen.” Instantly the engineering screen was rewritten with a time display that contained a new length scale, while below it was a two dimensional picture of the bottom surface that grew second by second as the acoustic pulse made the round trip to the bottom at fifteen hundred meters per second. “The bottom is a hundred and fifty kilometers down!” said Shirley. “We’re on the top of a mountain of water a hundred and fifty kilometers high!” “...and it doesn’t fall down,” added David. Shirley watched the screen as the second and third pulses returned with their information and the details on the map cleared up.

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