glint, in positions indicating they belonged to a synchronous triad. If
the Merseians had installed no more than that, they had a barebones base
here. It was what you’d expect at the end of this long a communications
line: a watchpost, a depot, a first-stage receiving station for reports
from border-planet agents like Rax.
Aside from their boss, those latter wouldn’t have been told Siekh’s
coordinates, or of its very existence. They’d have courier torpedoes
stashed away in the hinterland, target preset and clues to the target
removed. Given elementary precautions, no Imperial loyalist was likely
to observe the departure of one. Replenishment would be more of a
problem, dependent on smuggling, but not overly difficult when the
Terran service was undermanned and lax. Conveyance of fresh orders to
the agents was no problem at all; who noticed what mail or what visitors
drifted into Rax’s dope shop?
The value of Talwin was obvious. Besides surveillance, it allowed closer
contact with spies than would otherwise be possible. Flandry wondered if
his own corps ran an analogous operation out Roidhunate way. Probably
not. The Merseians were too vigilant, the human government too inert,
its wealthier citizens too opposed to pungling up the cost of positive
action.
Flandry shook himself, as if physically to cast off apprehension and
melancholy, and concentrated on what he saw.
Clearances given and path computed, the destroyer dropped in a spiral
that took her around the planet. Presumably her track was designed to
avoid storms. Cooler air, moving equatorward from the poles, must turn
summer into a “monsoon” season. Considering input energy, atmospheric
pressure (which Tryntaf had mentioned was twenty percent greater than
Terran), and rotation period (a shade over eighteen hours, he had said),
weather surely got more violent here than ever at Home; and a long,
thin, massive object like a destroyer was more vulnerable to wind than
you might think.
Water vapor rose high before condensing into clouds. Passing over
dayside below those upper layers, Flandry got a broad view.
A trifle smaller (equatorial diameter 0.97) and less dense than Terra,
Talwin in this era had but a single continent. Roughly wedge-shaped, it
reached from the north-pole area with its narrow end almost on the
equator. Otherwise the land consisted of islands. While multitudinous,
in the main they were thinly scattered.
Flandry guessed that the formation and melting of huge icecaps in the
course of the twice-Terran year disturbed isostatic balance. Likewise,
the flooding and great rainstorms of summer, the freezing of winter,
would speed erosion and hence the redistribution of mass. Tectony must
proceed at a furious rate; earthquake, vulcanism, the sinking of old
land and the rising of new, must be geologically common occurrences.
He made out one mountain range, running east-west along the
400-kilometer width of the continent near its middle. Those peaks
dwarfed the Himalayas but were snowless, naked rock. Elsewhere,
elevations were generally low, rounded, worn. North of the wall, the
country seemed to be swamp. Whew! That means in winter the icecup grows
down to 45 degrees latitude! The glaciers grind everything flat. The far
southlands were a baked desolation, scoured by hurricanes. Quite
probably, at midsummer lakes and rivers there didn’t simply dry up, they
boiled; and the equatorial ocean became a biological fence. It would be
intriguing to know how evolution had diverged in the two hemispheres.
Beyond the sterile tropics, life not long ago had been outrageously
abundant, jungle choking the central zone, the arctic abloom with
low-growing plants. Now annual drought was taking its toll in many
sections, leaves withering, stems crumbling, fires running wild, bald
black patches of desiccation and decay. But other districts, especially
near the coasts, got enough rain yet. Immense herds of grazers were
visible on open ground; wings filled the air; shoal waters were darkened
by weeds and swimmers. Most islands remained similarly fecund.
The dominant color of vegetation was blue, in a thousand shades–the
photosynthetic molecule was not chlorophyll, then, though likely to be a
close chemical relative–but there were the expected browns, reds,
yellows, the unexpected and stingingly Homelike splashes of green.
Descending, trailing a thunderclap, the ship crossed nightside. Flandry
used photomultiplier and infrared step-up controls to go on with his