comparable to our own.”
“Seems reasonable,” Caldwell said, looking around the table.
Various heads were nodding assent. “Where do we go from there?”
“Okay,” Hunt resumed. “Assuming it rotates and the day is its
natural unit of time-if this complete table represents one full
orbit around its sun, there are seventeen hundred days in its year,
one entry for each.”
“Pretty long,” someone hazarded.
“To us, yes: at least, the year-to-day ratio is big. It could mean
the orbit is large, the rotational period short, or perhaps a bit
of both. Now look at the major number groups-the ones tagged with
the heavy alphabetic labels. There are forty-seven of them. Most
contain thirty-six numbers, but nine of them have thirty-seven-the
first, sixth, twelfth, eighteenth, twenty-fourth, thirtieth,
thirtysixth, forty-second, and forty-seventh. That seems a bit odd
at first sight, but so would our system to someone unfamiliar with
it. It suggests that maybe somebody had to do a bit of fiddling
with it to make it work.”
“Mmm. . . like with our months.”
“Exactly. This is just the sort of juggling you have to do to get a
sensible fit of our months into our year. It happens because
there’s no simple relationship between the orbital periods of
planet and satellite; there’s no reason why there should be. I’m
guessing that if this is a calendar that relates to some other
planet,
then the reason for this odd mix of thirty-sixes and thirty-sevens
is the same as the one that causes problems with our calendar: That
planet had a moon.”
“So these groups are months,” Caldwell stated.
“If it’s a calendar-yes. Each group is divided into three
subgroups-weeks, if you like. Normally there are twelve days in
each, but there are nine long months, in which the middle week has
thirteen days.”
Danchekker looked for a long time at the sheet of paper, an
expression of pained disbelief spreading slowly across his face.
“Are you proposing this as a serious scientific theory?” he queried
in a strained voice.
“Of course not,” Hunt replied. “This is all pure speculation. But
it does indicate some of the avenues that could be explored. These
alphabetic groups, for example, might correspond to references that
the language people might dig from other sources-such as dates on
documents, or date stamps on pieces of clothing or other equipment.
Also, you might be able to find some independent way of arriving at
the number of days in the year; if it turned out to be seventeen
hundred, that would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
“Anything else?” Caldwell asked.
“Yes. Computer correlation analysis of this number pattern may show
hidden superposed periodicities; for all we know, there could have
been more than one moon. Also, it should be possible to compute
families of curves giving possible relationships between
planet-to-satellite mass ratios against mean orbital radii. Later
on you might know enough more to be able to isolate one of the
curves. It might describe the Earth-Luna system; then again, it
might not.”
“Preposterous!” Danchekker exploded.
“Unbiased?” Hunt suggested.
“There is something else that may be worth trying,” Schorn
interrupted. “Your calendar, if that’s what it is, has so far been
described in relative terms only-days per month, months per year,
and so on. There is nothing that gives us any absolute values. Now
-and this is a long shot-from detailed chemical analysis we are
making some progress in building a quantitative model of Charlie’s
cell-metabolism cycles and enzyme processes. We may be able to
calculate the rate of accumulation of waste materials and
toxins in the blood and tissues, and from these results form an
estimate of his natural periods of sleep and wakefulness. If, in
this way, I could provide a figure for the length tf the day, the
other quantities would follow immediately.”
“If we knew that, then we’d know the planet’s orbital period,” said
somebody else. “But could we get an estimate of its mass?”
“One way might be by doing a structural analysis of Charlie’s bone
and muscle formations and then working out the power- weight
ratios,” another chipped in.
“That would give us the planet’s mean distance from its sun,” said
a third.