Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

I thought about it. It was consistent with Mr. Sikmaa’s worry over the “most valuable package a courier ever carried”Äbut there was something phony about it. The old belt-and-suspenders redundantbackups principle was understandableÄbut seven people, full-time, just to see that I did not fall downstairs and break my neck? It did not taste right.

“Mac, I can’t think of anything else to ask you now, and ShizukoÄI mean `Tilly’Äis due back. We’ll talk later.”

“Very well. Miss Friday, why do you call me Mac?”

“That’s the only name I’ve ever heard you called. Socially, I mean. At a gang rape we both attended. I’m reasonably sure that you are not `Howard J. Bullfinch.’ What do you prefer to be called?”

“Oh. Yes, I was Mac on that mission. But I’m usually called Pete.”

“Your name is Peter?”

“Uh, well, not exactly. It’sÄPercival. But I’m not called that.”

I refrained from laughing. “I don’t see why not, Pete. Brave and honorable men have been named Percival. I think that’s Tilly at the door, anxious to bathe me and to dress me. One last word: Do you know why you are still breathing? Not dead?”

“Because you let me pee. Thank you for letting me pee before you handcuffed me to that bed.”

He suddenly looked wry. “I got chewed out for that.”

“You did? Why?”

“The Major intended to force you to wet the bed. He figured that it would help to make you crack.”

“So? The bloody amateur. Pete, that was the point at which I decided that you were not totally beyond hope.”

XXX

Outpost isn’t much. Its sun is a G8 star, which puts it pretty far down the list of Sol-like stars since Sol is a G2. This is markedly cooler than our solar system star. But the star is not that important as long as it is a sol-type (G-type) star. (It may be possible to colonize around other types of stars someday but it seems reasonable to stick to stars with spectral distributions that match the human eye and don’t pass out too much lethal radiationÄI’m quoting Jerry. Anyhow there are over four hundred C-type stars no farther from Earth than is The RealmÄso says Jaime LopezÄwhich could keep us busy for a few years.)

But assume a G-type star. Then you need a planet the right distance from it for it to be warm but not too warm. Then its surface gravity should be strong enough to hold its atmosphere firmly in place. That atmosphere must have had time to cook, in connection with evolving life, long enough to offer air suitable for life-as-weknow-it. (Life-as-we-don’t-know-it is a fascinating subject but has nothing to do with colonization by Earth people. Not this week. Nor are we discussing colonies of living artifacts or cyborgs. This is about colonists from Dallas or Tashkent.)

Outpost just barely qualifies. It’s a poor relation. Its sea-level oxygen is so scanty that one needs to walk slowly, as on top of a high mountain. It sits back so far from its star that it has just two sorts of weather, cool and freezing. Its axis stands almost straight up; it gets

its seasons from an eccentric orbitÄso you don’t go south for the winter because the winter comes to you wherever you are. There is a growing season of sorts about twenty degrees each side of the equator but the winter is much longer than the summerÄof course. That “of course” refers to Kepler’s Laws, the one about radius vectors and equal areas. (I cribbed most of this out of the Daily Forward.) When the prizes were handed out, Outpost was ahint the door.

But I was frantically eager to see it.

Why? Because I had never been farther away from home than LunaÄand Luna almost is home. Outpost is over forty light-years from Earth. Do you know how many kilometers that is? (Neither did I.) Here’s what it is:

300,000 x 40.7 x 31,557,600 = 385,318,296,000,000 kilometers.

Round it off. Four hundred million million kilometers.

Ship’s schedule called for us to achieve stationary orbit (22. 1 hours’ orbital period, that being the length of the day at Outpost) at oh-two-four-seven and for the starboard landing boat to drop away very early in the morning (ship’s time “morning”)Äoh-three hundred sharp. Not many signed up for the rideÄthat’s all it would be since no passenger would set foot on the groundÄas the midwatch isn’t too popular an hour with most of our passengers.