COTI III: The Mossback
Artwork by Joel Hagen
CONTACT III/85
From "The Evolution of COTI: A Personal Memoir"
by Jim Funaro © 1994
(for full version, press "History of CONTACT"
button on the Home page.)
By CONTACT's third year, we had had a chance to evaluate some of the
problems which had emerged in the previous sessions. One was that there
was just not enough time in three days to create two complete worlds from
scratch; God took seven for only one ....
So we prepared a pre-conference
package. Poul Anderson gave us a planet, Ophelia,
with its primary and solar system. (Over the years we have been presented
with several worlds by science fiction writers; we learned to accept such
divine gifts graciously and eventually even with some aplomb.) We then sent
the planetary specifications to C. J. Cherryh, who suggested the Mossback
and provided us with its basic design. Next, Larry Niven elaborated on this
alien, contributed other species for the ecology and explained the conditions
that the human team would face on this world. Finally, Joel Hagen produced
some sketches of the critters. This "homework" was then distributed
to all the guests several weeks before the conference....
As nearly as I can reconstruct it from memory and records, the group
consisted of: Mischa Adams, Poul and Karen Anderson, Greg Bear, Paul Bohannan,
Paula Butler, C.J. Cherryh, Ctein, Jim Funaro, Joel Hagen, Barbara Joans,
Mary Mason, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Reed Riner, Devayani Smith, and
Bob Tyzzer.
Ophelia and the Mossbacks
Ophelia is not a happy planet for humans. Its F5 sun is larger and brighter
than Sol, but, at 3.28 a.u. away, Ophelia receives only half the irradiation
the Earth does from its sun. So, it's cold. That and heavy gravity (1.3),
dense atmosphere (9.2 bars at sea level), thick fog and cloud cover, high
winds and cyclonic storms, and powerful tectonics all mean that we could
only find tolerable conditions for us on a 12 mile high mountain. Luckily,
there are many. On one of them, the humans landed and set up their Base
One to observe.
The Mossbacks, like any other life forms that can survive on this planet,
are big and tough. Picture a warm blooded, hermaphroditic, tool-using, horny
toad as big as a grizzly bear, with colorful algal symbiotes imbedded in
thick tissue of its naked skin. It sports a beak that would look just right
on a 500-pound eagle and eats about anything it can catch. And it's smart.
That's a Mossback. (see photo)
They live below the clouds, in mud villages. (C. J. Cherryh built a
charming little model of one, which is a prized possession of mine. See
below.) Remote observation by probe had unobtrusively revealed many details
of their socio-cultural behavior. For example, upon greeting, they expose
their backs to one another. This seemed to simultaneously indicate their
non-aggressive intentions and display their individual and family identities,
via the patterns of algae they "cultivate" through mutual grooming
into intricate and distinctive dorsal "gardens," like living,
growing tattoos.
What seemed to be one of their most significant cultural events was
what humans had dubbed "the death quest." The eternal cloud layer
above made the "sky" appear to the Mossbacks as a sort of mirror
which covered their world. As each Mossback felt the end of its life approaching,
it began a one-way migration up a high mountain, whose peak was never visible
because it disappeared into the "other world." These were the
only occasions that they were ever observed to climb the mountains, and
they never returned to their homes afterwards. It was assumed that this
behavior constituted what we would call a final religious experience, a
sort of solitary "last rites." As a matter of fact, Mossback bones
littered the mountain tops, including the one upon which we had landed,
a native "burial grounds."
Mossback Village
Artwork by C. J. Cherryh
Contact!
At last, the final session was convened at noon on Sunday, and all the
folks who had been working for two days on the Mossbacks were suddenly transmogrified
into the human expedition sent to study those same aliens. Packed at one
long table on a raised platform stretching across the front of the meeting
room was the entire stellar cast of almost twenty scientists, writers and
artists, all very bright and mostly very opinionated. As you might imagine,
there emerged interminable discussion about what to do and how to do it,
with arguments usually polarizing between the "scientists," operating
via consensus and usually and infomally represented by Greg Bear, C. J.
Cherryh and Barbara Joans, and the "military," commanded by Jerry
Pournelle. How many people should go? What should be the composition of
the initial team? Should we initiate contact? If so, where? On and on. After
forty-five minutes, all we had agreed upon was that our ship/base had landed
on a mountain peak and our perimeter was guarded by an electric fence, with
enough power to knock out a grizzly bear. Within this barrier, our debate
continued in safety.
At this point, exasperated by the lack of action, Paula Butler, geologist
and present Board member of CONTACT, stood up, screamed and then announced,
"I'm a Mossback! I've just encountered your electrified perimeter on
my death quest and have been rendered unconscious. Now what are you gonna
do?" Bless her heart. Role-playing had just been spontaneously introduced,
out of frustration.
In all previous simulations until this moment, I had always felt a bit
useless in the discussions, somewhat abashed by the prodigious intellects
which surrounded me. But suddenly, an actual situation had arisen in which
I could play the practical role I had been trained for, without any rehearsal.
As an anthropologist confronting a "real" intercultural encounter,
I found I could define interaction contexts, apply field techniques learned
in biological and cultural anthropology and develop an emergency protocol
on the spot.
I approached the stunned alien, stopping short of what I calculated
(on the basis of probe information) to be outside its "flight distance."
When it awoke, I did not want to be discovered suddenly within threatening
proximity. (Remember, the Mossbacks are big and beaked, and had never met
an alien before!) To be on the safe side, I asked Jerry to keep his troops
on alert, but to stay clear and not interfere unless the situation got obviously
out of control. I crouched into a posture which reduced the size of my body
outline, another common way of showing non-aggressive intentions among earth
animals, and waited.
When it regained consciousness and saw me, I utilized known Mossback
greeting behavior, slowly turning my back and displaying a particolored
robe I had just borrowed from a fellow crew member. Such an action might
seem in some human cultures to be rude, though primates commonly use it
in submission or to elicit friendly grooming from others. But here, I'm
using familiar and nonaggressive actions learned from the Mossbacks themselves.
Luckily, the Mossback responded appropriately, and "read" my back.
Still mimicking its own cultural behavior, I reciprocated. No doubt, neither
of us understood the patterns, but we were polite; I found myself relieved
that the robe lent to me did not seem to have, by ill chance, displayed
the markings of a rival or an enemy clan to my quarter-ton companion.
In general, I did not initiate action, especially close up, but confined
myself to reacting, so as to remain as much as possible within the Mossback's
world of expectations. That is, I tried to let it tell me what to do, by
observing its behavior.
One amusing incident. Primates are touchy-feely critters, but I specifically
harnassed my heritage here, not because Mossbacks aren't (they are), but
because we had learned that physical contact between them using their primary
manipulators, which are also their tongues, initiates mating behavior. At
one point, the Mossback did touch me, whereupon I asked rhetorically, "Does
this mean I have to mate with this thing?" Pournelle immediately quipped,
"You're already pregnant."
Another fairly univeral activity seen in human greeting or friendly
"allying" contexts is mutual gift-giving, though results can be
uncertain unless the local value of the offered items is known. I tried
it, anyway, placing an object on the ground between us and stepping back.
It was accepted, and the Mossback offered its own gift (a bone whistle to
be used in its death ceremony, I believe) in return.
A new technique seemed to emerge naturally out of the created situation:
I simulated an interaction, modeling appropriate human behavior for the
alien. Taking advantage of the Mossback's "following" response,
I led it to another human, Mischa Adams, a medical specialist who wanted
to examine the alien for injuries. I shook hands with her, modeling our
greeting behavior, then carefully attempted to shake "paws" with
the Mossback. It allowed this. Then I instigated its hand-shake with Mischa,
and contact was achieved.
Of course, this simulation is artificial and limited. The Mossback was
human and the situation occured on earth. But, like the real intercultural
contacts that anthropologists have been participating in for more than a
century here on our home planet, the interaction was unrehearsed, proceeded
carefully from known behavioral and ethnographic methodologies towards consistent
and ethical choices of action, and provided at least a possible model for
developing a protocol for an extraterrestrial encounter. And the value of
spontaneous role-playing in enhancing the effectiveness of the simulation
was convincingly (however unexpectedly) demonstrated. It has been an essential
part of COTI forever after.
OPHELIA EXPEDITION - CONTACT III
Poul Anderson, C.J. Cherryh and Larry Niven
Copyright 1986 by CONTACT: Cultures of the
Imagination
OPHELIA by POUL ANDERSON
For present purposes, we assume that human explorers have
bestowed their own names on bodies of this system, starting with the sun,
which they call Hamlet. The various planets, satellites, etc., they have
generally named after other figures in the play or historical associations
with it.
Hamlet is a star of spectral class F5. Its mass is 1.75
times that of Sol, its luminosity 5.4 times as great. Seen from the planet
Ophelia, its photosphere subtends as arc of 16', i.e. it appears about 0.5
times as wide as Sol does seen from Earth. The light is brilliant, looking
white with a faint bluish tinge to the human eye, somewhat like a fluorescent
lamp's. However, at its distance Ophelia receives only 0.5 the irradiation
that Earth does; this is proportionately richer in ultraviolet and proportionately
poorer in infrared than Sol's, though the difference is not very great for
practical human purposes. The solar ( or stellar ) wind is stronger, and
occasional bursts on the surface outdo anything on Sol and produce significant
electrical phenomena in the atmosphere of Ophelia.
Hamlet is slightly younger than Sol, but being brighter
is evolving more rapidly, and has only about one billion years before it
goes off the main sequence. Its brightness was, originally, considerably
less than now, and will continue to increase; so Ophelia may actually have
only half a billion years or less remaining before a runaway greenhouse
effect gets started and destroys life upon it.
There are no other lifebearing planets in the system,
as should be evident from a glance at their mean distances from Hamlet,
here given in astronomical units (1 a.u. = Earth's mean distance from Sol
[semi-major axis] = about 149,680,000 kilometers): Osric, 0.24; Claudius,
0.45; Gertrude, 0.63; Horatio, 0.96; Ophelia, 3.28; Polonius, 6.00; Laertes,
12.60; Fortinbras, 24.89 ... add more if you like. Inward from the fifth
planet, Ophelia, all are too hot; outward, all are too cold. The inner planets
are mostly seared, cratered rock with little or no atmosphere, except for
Horatio, which is about the size of Earth and reflects brilliantly off its
veil of Venus-like clouds. Polonius, which approximates Jupiter in size
and composition, can appear equally bright. Laertes and Fortinbras are comparable
to the lesser giants of the Solar System; any thing beyond that is mostly
icy, more like a huge comet than a proper planet.
At its mean distance of 3.28 a.u., Ophelia rounds its
sun in 4.48 Earth years, in as orbit of slight eccentricity. As said, it
receives half as much irradiation as Earth does. (The human eye is adaptable
enough that this illumination does not appear dim; and it is even more dangerouse
to look straight at Hamlet than at Sol.) Its equatorial diameter is 15,077
km., or about 1.18 Earth's, partly due to more self-compression and partly
to a higher content of heavy metals; apparently the whole system formed
out of a cosmic cloud which had shortly before been enriched by a number
of supernovae and red giants, now long dispersed beyond finding. The surface
gravity of Ophelia is 1.30 Earth, so that a 100 kg. man would find himself
weighing an extra 30 kilos. The rotation period is 16 hr 31 m 2.75 s, or
about 0.69 Earth's. The axial tilt is 25 50' 4.9", about two and a
half degrees more than Earth's. As a sidelight, the theoretical horizon
distance for a man standing on a flat plain at sea level is 8.69 km., a
bit more than Earth's 8; but topography and atmosphere hardly ever allow
anybody to see that far.
Ophelia has two moons, Rosemary and Rue. Their characteristics
are tabulated here:
|
Rosemary
|
Rue
|
| |
|
|
Mean orbital radius
|
385,000 km.
|
578,000 km.
|
Sidereal period
|
0.74 Luna
|
2.89 Luna
|
Satellite day
|
1.04 Ophelian
|
1.01 Ophelian
|
Synodic period
|
9.77 Ophelian days
|
120.14 Ophelian days
|
Diameter
|
6720
|
1680
|
Angular Diameter
|
1
|
10'
|
Some notes on these quantities:
The sidereal period is the time it takes to complete an
orbit as measured from the center against the stars. The satellite day is
the time from the rising to rising as observed from the planet; thus Rosemary's
rising or setting is retarded about 40 minutes each Ophelian day, Rue's
slightly less that 10 minutes -- on the average. The synodic period is the
time from new moon to new moon as seen from the plant. Since the Ophelian
year is 2371.48 Ophelian days long, it contains 79.66 Rosemarian and 19.70
Ruan months. The angular diameter is as seen from Ophelia; Rosemary's is
about twice Luna's, Rue's about one-third. Assuming their albedos to be
about the same as Luna's, Rosemary when full gives about twice the light
that Earth gets from its one moon, Rue only about one-eighteenth. Assuming
densities about the same as Luna's, approximate tidal effects on Ophelia
are estimated. Rosemary has about twice the tide-rising force that Luna
exerts on Earth, while Rue's is essentially negligible -- and so is Hamlet's,
at its distance. However, such an estimate gives only a vague general idea
of actual tides, which vary enormously from place to place as they do on
Earth.
The orbits of these two moons have small but different
inclinations to the Ophelian equator; an occultation of Rue by Rosemary
is a rather rare event. However, both are eclipsed fairly often. Only Rosemary
can eclipse Hamlet entirely, but that is total, with the corona and prominences
blocked out as well as the disc, unless the satellite limb just grazes an
edge of the sun. These eclipses occur somewhat oftener than Solar ones do
on Earth.
Returning now to Ophelia itself, the planet would be too
cold for life were it not for the thick atmosphere which its large mass
outgassed and then -- given the gravity, the strong planetary magnetic field,
and the comparatively weak irradiation -- was able to retain. Life arose
by processes analogous to those on Earth, and in the same fashion converted
the atmosphere, which is now chemically very similar to earth's. However,
it is much denser, the sea-level pressure being about 9.2 bars (1 bar =
1 Earth atm.). Such a concentration of gases is toxic for humans to breathe
unless they can reduce it by artificial means. At about 12 km. altitude,
pressure has dropped to approximately one bar. The atmosphere provides a
greenhouse effect strong enough to keep Ophelia habitably warm. It is still
quite cool -- some such temperature as 10 C. would be considered ordinary
at sea-level midday on the equator -- but most of it remains in the liquid-water
zone.
Because of compression, radioactivity (bearing in mind
that there is a noticeably higher heavy metal content in the planet), and
the heat-conserving operation of the square-cube law (Ophelia being larger
than Earth), the core is bigger, denser, and hotter than the Terrestrial.
This, together with the more rapid spin, generates the comparatively strong
magnetic field we have mentioned, several times the strength of Earth's
though even more variable through both space and time. Geological activity
is powerful, with hard-driving continental and oceanic plates, much vulcanism
and orogeny, so that a very few mountains actually do reach heights at which
humans can breathe without artificial help (although they need it to keep
from freezing to death!). Such peaks are, though, geologically young, and
soon worn down, for erosion is fierce. There is the powerful drag of gravity,
which, among other things, makes waves travel faster than on Earth -- 14%
faster on deep water -- as well as hit harder. Winds at lower altitudes
tend to be slow but have much mass behind them; the rapid spin generates
many strong cyclonic storms, temperature differentials bring on high linear
winds. Weather can get even fiercer at higher altitudes. It is worth noting,
because it affects both climate and biology, that the pressure gradient
is steeper on Ophelia than on Earth; a given change of altitude brings a
greater percentage of change of air pressure. The altitude brings a greater
percentage of change of air pressure. The concentration of gases also gives
the chemistry of erosion more power than on Earth.
Perhaps in part because of this, as well as numerous sea
mounts, oceans are generally less deep than on Earth. However, they are
more extensive; only about one-sixth of the Ophelian surface is land, mostly
in the form of islands of varying size, none of the scattered continents
much larger than Australia. To be sure, because the planet is larger, the
total land area is about 90% that of Earth. However, a considerable part
of it is glaciated, not only in the polar regions but in most highlands
and some high-latitude lowlands. The ice-free low areas generally enjoy
adequate rainfall in summer; snow in winter is usual, outside of the tropics.
Yet nowhere is precipitation as abundant as in the wetter parts of Earth,
because water vaporizes less readily; at sea level its boiling point is
about 175 C.
Deserts are few and small. Some are due to topography,
rain shadows or the like, some due to devastation wrought by vulcanism or
erosion; all are geologically transient.
Air at low altitudes is often somewhat hazy because of
mist, smoke (fires can sweep fast over enormous areas), dust, etc. An astronomer
would call the seeing chronically poor, although sun, moons, and the brighter
planets and stars are visible when weather permits. Hardly any of Hamlet's
strong ultraviolet output gets down this far. Sunrises and sunsets are apt
to be colorful, with the disc flattened into a red step pyramid beneath
glowing clouds. Coastal areas tend to be especially hazy because of droplets
flung off the high, hard-moving surf and long suspended in the dense, cool
air. Thereabouts, too, the great tides produce many salt-water swamps.
As noted, these conditions change comparatively fast when
one climbs into the uplands; air gets thinner, clearer, drier, colder, and
moves faster when it blows.
There are thus quite marked biological zones, adapted
to various conditions. On the whole. Ophelia is hospitible to the life forms
it has brought forth.
One feature is especially worth remarking on. At sea-level
pressures and temperatures, the concentration of oxygen dissolved in water
approximates the partial pressure of this gas at sea level on Earth. Hence
aquatic life can become as active as Terrestrial mammals, and even maintain
oxygen-hungry brains like ours, under water.
Otherwise all I have to say about the biology is that
it must have some basic chemical similarities to ours. The existence of
free oxygen implies photosynthesis, which presumably implies some kind of
division into plant and animal kingdoms -- or can we think of an alternative?
Considering the probable course of biochemical evolution on Earth, I should
think it likely that Ophelian life also depends on proteins in water solution
-- but if so, they need not be the same proteins at all, as far as I can
see. ( Ours don't use nearly all the possible amino acids; and then there
are possibilities of isomerism, not only in the proteins but in other classes
of organic compound such as the sugars and lipids.) I'd be wide open to
any plausible suggestions about a really different chemical basis for Ophelian
life.
Likewise, we can have a lot of fun imagining some of the
species that may have evolved here, and their interrelationships. Besides
a greater variety of aquatic animals, we might also have a proliferation
of airborne types; the dense low-level atmosphere offers more support than
the gravity increases weigh. Conceivably plants (?) tend to have a more
energy-storing chemistry in the uplands, where ultraviolet light penetrates,
and an ecological chain extends down from them to the coasts; in that case,
the geologically rapid changes in terrains would doubtless affect the course
of evolution.
If there are intelligent Ophelian natives -- but now I'm
only throwing out random suggestions, and will stop here.
OPHELIA by C. J. CHERRYH
I do not feel comfortable doing all the work on the alien
concept. I wish that you would pass this Round Robin fashion to Poul, Larry,
and Jerry, and see what they come up with.
I ran Poul's planet on my software for which I dead-reckoned
some quite critical not-specified-in-that-form data until I began to get
some results that paralleled Poul's world but not quite. Most notably, the
program does not take density into account, and persists in linking it to
the figures for the curvature. I had to fudge the gravity downward to get
rid of the hydrogen-helium mix.
But the figures on the stellar future come up a lot grimmer.
To get enough time in there for life to have evolved with a star of that
mass I had to push it to 95% of it's life span, which means it (according
to this set of figures) hasn't got a billion years left. It is facing immediate
disaster, in about 50,000,000 years, and if Murphy holds, the star is probably
already going peculiar.
This is a rather violent planet. Tough is going to win
here, and natural selection is going to weed out the unfit rather quickly,
I should think.
I should think also that if life downs come from this
sea, it is going to become rather adept at a fast tidal scramble for safety.
The tidal surge is also going to tend to keep the icepack fractured, and
while the seas may be shallower and tending to freeze more readily ion the
north. and perhaps not to unthaw, and there is some greenhousing which brings
the temperature up a little more if Poul's reckoning of lots of stuff for
forest fires holds true.
Salt marsh and estuary seems the likeliest cradle of landfaring
life---now, if Poul would like a little different ecology, we could imbed
chemosynthetic-photosynthetic cycling algae in the tegument of said critter,
a sort of a symbiosis in which the algae and host are bound together for
certain critical nutrients in a cycle in which algae absorb chemicals from
the tissue of the host as well as from sea-baths, and return its own waste
in the form of oxygen and certain byproducts. Anyone want to touch such
a mossy creature?
I would surmise it is otherwise omnivorous, and probably
livebearing, as otherwise it might surrender too much of its bodymass into
reproduction in too short a timespan. . . unless maybe it infected its oversized
eggsacs with algae which might lie there and fester in a nutrient bath.
But I rather think on such a violent and probably competitive planet, something
would eat the young. Far better to encase the embryonic rascals in a large
and surly host.
It is only a dicethrow, I think, which made earth's genetic
heritage bisexed instead of hermaphroditic. . . possibly sex specialization
turned out to be an advantage in our global climate, but I am not convinced
an everybody-gets-pregnant arrangement like earthworms would not have been
just as advantageous, and in an environment where the offspring may have
a hard time surviving, it is one way of ensuring a high birth rate without
granting too much mass to the offspring, as is the case with litters and
twinning. Take your pick. Maybe they make mating balls, like gartersnakes.
Maybe a lot of the life here does.
I'd guess maybe being shaped like a horned toad would
be a real advantage in handling the swamps and spreading out for warmth,
and riding the tidal surges without getting killed. Also short and stumpy
would do well with the higher gravity.
But the critter would have to be warmblooded, and probably
have an insulating layer of some kind, maybe a king of thick tissue which
contains its parasites/ symbionts. It would also need a very efficient heart
and possibly a couple of booster organs if it is very large and moves very
fast. I would suggest a genetic heritage of mudcrawler in the tropics, that
got finally to a critter which has a better developed front end, with manipulators
(probably but not absolutely) forelimbs which began as digging and gripping
limbs in foodseeking and sex an then became more and more agile. The eyes
are probably large, the skull probably set on a tolerably short neck and
maybe having the important regions of the brain in (again a dice-throw)
a different orientation and alignment and therefore a different skullshape.
The jaws are probably full of cutting and grinding teeth. Likewise it might
well have a vestigial migration-compass dependent on the magnetic field,
well developed in birds and other such, and in fishes, but dominated by
the intellect in the more intelligent critter.
I imagine that it could as well be vocal, since that is
still the most efficient means of communicating in a gaseous and violent
medium; in which case both ears and nostrils are probably seal-able, or
possess vestigial musculature once enabling it.
If it has lived long enough to become well established
on the land, and the tidal creature is to it as the chimpanzee to us, it
is probably by now a drylands creature which is capable of living about
anywhere but the frozen north, and which tends, if it is still hampered
by its mossy back, to go mostly naked. On the other hand, a highly evolved
form has perhaps given up any earlier tegument as we did abundant hair,
allowing it in this case to go impoverished and to contribute in the higher
life forms hardly more than what melanin does for us, a king of natural
sunscreen which tends to flourish where there is bright light and die off
otherwise.
The most difficult environments would be the cold ones
for such a creature. I rather imagine that the arctic and antarctic seas
are the reserve of large and intelligent predators which dominate that food
chain, and that undersea vulcanism has created some warmwater upwellings
that enrich the cold seas and make life varied. Possibly the open-sea predators
are rather like our whales in the food chain, preying on the seal-like flat
critters that come and go by the seasons, so on down to the fish and the
plankton. Perhaps quasi-mammals are well developed throughout the world,
and perhaps the sea-critters are, like our dolphins and whales, of considerable
and quite alien brain.
Perhaps there have been several attempts at intelligence
on several landmasses, isolate from each other and of quite different species.
I reckon that it was an accident of geography and probably the nastiness
of our ancestors that kept us from having competition: perhaps the locals
have fought it down to one species, but then, maybe they haven't crossed
the seas yet. Who knows?
Perhaps this will kick something off. Over to everyone
else and good luck.
OPHELIA by LARRY NIVEN
GROUND RULES: I'm deriving consequences from the notes
of Poul Anderson and Carolyn Cherryh.
The attendees of Contact are anthropologists and SF writers
with a bent for anthropology. The Bateson Project in particular will work
best if Ophelia can evolve one or more species with something to say. The
ides, then, will be to work out a way for our human society (which must
also be described) to talk to them.
THE HUMANS
Note that Ophelia is not comfortable anywhere. In fact,
even ignoring the gap of light-years, Ophelia is harder to reach than Mars.
Higher gravity. Storms. Quakes. What are we doing here?
WHO ARE WE? Some choices--
1) Humankind will be looking for longevity until we've
got it. Humans with an expected lifespan of 10,000 years might well get
involved in a project that might only take a few hundred, even if that's
a few hundred years of discomfort and frustration. The payoff would come
in awards and fame. Movie rights might be important. (Picture a movie that
takes a year to watch.)
2) No longevity. They were ordered to Ophelia by a government
that can get away with that. They don't expect to come home soon, or perhaps
at all. One variant is that families are large and powerful; their families
will gain the honors.
3) Bob Forward's choice. In a population of six to ten
billion, in a settled solar system beginning to explore interstellar space,
can you find a couple of hundred dedicated scientists willing to go to a
world of another star, one-way? Hell, yes! In 1960 it would not have been
difficult to find astronauts willing to travel to the moon one-way.
4) Easy travel. Instantaneousdrive. The Ophelia group
doesn't exactly commute, but they can get leave on Earth: two years here,
one on vacation. (I tend to work within the rules -- no FTL -- but take
your choice. It's just that we must make this choice early.)
Living Conditions
We've got heavy gravity, but it's not so bloody heavy
as to cause much discomfort. Anyone who uses aerobics or Heavy Hands exercises
or a weighted jump rope to keep himself fit on Earth, can do the same with
long walks on Ophelia. Expect cardiovascular problems in the aging. Expect
medical techniques to compensate.
Heavy gravity, dense atmosphere, and serious winds all
act to shorten the mountains. High radioactivity in the core, and high spin
of the planet, act to replace them. There will certainly be a highest mountain.
The peak is BASE ONE.
We hope it's twelve miles high, because that gives us
the right atmospheric pressure. It's still too bloody cold, but with proper
clothing you could walk around.
If the mountain's too short, then we need a pressure lock,
and lower pressure in the base. Going outside (clothed) won't kill you fast.
And we still pick the tallest mountain, because wherever it is, it's too
bloody cold; we'll have to heat the base.
It's big and roomy inside, with plenty of recreation facilities.
News (from Earth, and outdated), games, novels, and interactive novels,
3D movies and interactive movies; restaurants, and kitchens manned by hobbyist
chefs.
Ophelia is not entertaining enough. The view from Base
One is of clouds, though it's spectacular. Anywhere else, it's all fog.
The lure is in the life forms; and they'll be interesting enough, but there
will come a time when what you want is a travelogue of the Great Barrier
Reef or Saturn's rings.
The BASE FOURs are a class of vehicle. They are dirigibles.
They are enormous. They've got big tiltable fans to move them up and down
and sideways, and emergency rockets too, because those storms are likely
to fling a dirigible about like a toy.
They constitute research bases; one or another may stay
anchored in one place for weeks or months.
They're transportation from the surface to Base One. We
put Base One on top of a mountain, and it's hard for a conventional airplane
to land. In Fact, our airfield (harbor might be a better word) is some big
indentation in the mountain rock, permanently shielded from the wind.
They are also escape craft; because the mountain beneath
Base One cannot be considered stable, and neither are any of the Base Twos
and Threes. Any base may have to be evacuated an entire population at a
time.
BASE FIVE is an interstellar spacecraft, assuming the
damn thing doesn't just go home for another load, which it would do only
if we have easy FTL. Even then, something would be left behind: one or more
interplanetary craft, and a compliment of communication satellites.
All of the above is subject to cost evaluation. This is
what we want; but what can we afford? What did we bring, what can we make?
We may need more research facilities; we may need mines and refineries to
build facilities on the spot. The resources, particularly metals, are easily
come by.
We do not give up Base One or the communications satellites.
We might communicate with the surface only through remote devices, giving
up the Base Twos and Threes. The dirigibles might have to be smaller; but
not too damn small. because they need mass to stand up to the winds. They
may be designed to lock together to lift something heavy.
The SURFACE is where the action is. Living conditions
there include killing pressure, hurricanes and tornadoes, hypothetical hostile
action from hypothetical natives, sensory deprivation (from the endless
fog), the shock of an alien environment (when the fog clears), and (as compensation
for all of these evils) the joy of discovery.
Mostly there's pressure.
In the Base Twos and Threes you wear shirtsleeves or less.
The walls are thick; they must hold against the outside pressure, because
the inside is a partial vacuum. At least we don't have to refine our air.
Outdoors you wear armour. By the time of the exploration
of Ophelia, there may be Flash Gordon spacesuits, mere body stockings with
helmets, for use in vacuum. But Ophelia is different. Outside the bases,
your armour is braced against hundred of atmospheres of pressure. You can't
lift it, so it has to be a braced tank or boat or submarine or flying vehicle.
Under the circumstances, your armour may look like anything
you desire. For instance, it may be shaped and painted to resemble Caroline's
horned toad, or any other ETI, as a means of getting its attention.
The Natives
Let me offer some possibilities; and then the Bateson
Project can decide who they want to talk to.
Caroline makes a good argument for hermaphrodites. Let's
go with hermaphrodites; but in that case everything is hermaphroditic.
Some points hold for all natives of Ophelia.
Fish can get as much oxygen out of the water as an air
breather. That's awesome, all right; but we still might not get an intelligent
fish, because of the competition. An air breather gets far more oxygen to
play with. If the fish are as agile as dolphins, what are the air breathers
like?
They need far more food to match their air intake. Predators
are rare compared to herbivores, and the food chain isn't long; only carrion
eaters eat meat eaters, even in the ocean.
Predators move like a bat out of hell. You wouldn't want
to step out of your armor.
We find a great many flying fish. In this atmosphere their
fins make good wings; they fly fast and far, and turn on a dime. Large creatures,
antelope-size predators, may be able to take leave of the crest of a hill
like a flying squirrel.
Intelligent beings will almost certainly be air-breathers,
They burn their food fast; they live fast; probably they breed fast, grow
fast, die fast. If you want to talk to any intelligent Ophelian, you have
to talk fast, and that holds for all of the species that follow.
Land-dwellers will find less use for their sense of smell.
There's too much wind to take away the clues.
I accept Caroline's suggestion that intelligence may have
evolved in various environmental pockets. The oxygen density is a driving
force.
The Moss Back
I like Caroline's evolved horny toad with the mossy symbiote.
Picture the prototype (the ape ancestor) as toadlike, but bigger, with legs
that are thicker and stronger: perhaps an elephant's or rhino's legs. The
way the planetary surface moves around, that thing wants gripping appendages.
We want a tool maker. We'll give it something to grip
with. Give the prototype a mucking great beak, powerful enough to fight
and kill with, or hang onto some support during a quake or flood or hurricane.
Put a soft, mobile mouth inside . . . and that's our early "rat"
prototype.
To make a tool maker, give it an "outside tongue",
a short arm above the beak. Recess in beak into which the arm fits; for
the arm is vulnerable. Now you've got a hand right next to a powerful gripping
appendage.
Caroline suggests they would lose that mossy symbiote.
I'd like to see them keep it. And play with it. Men have had symbiotes,
and they played with them, making new breeds of horses and dogs. What Mossback
does with its symbiote may be viewed as a cross between dog breeding and
styles in coiffure and beards.
In this species the leader of a group becomes the male.
He thus has more progeny than the females, and is never burdened by the
clumsiness of pregnancy. We get a solid drive for leadership, leadership
which would be retained for long periods; and this would have been an evolutionary
plus; for millions of years before Mossback became intelligent. It also
gives us serious problems in talking to Mossback. Mossback is very prone
to dominance games.
Mossback is found across a large part of the world (we'll
decide how large a part.) She's got boats; she uses arrows and lines to
hunt flying fish as she goes.
The Flying Dolphin
It's easy to picture her. She's an air breather. She's
got dolphin proportions; a bird on Earth would be slender, but she has to
stand up to the wind. In the thick air her fins (a little larger than a
Tursiops truncatus's) make adequate wings. She tends to take off into the
wind, veer fast and ride the wind away from a predator. Her senses of balance,
directional hearing, and radar are even more finely tuned than an Earthly
dolphin's, because she needs them to swim and fly. Thus her brain is large
and complex, and thus she attained intelligence. But she doesn't use tools
or fire.
She's a hermaphrodite and a carnivore. She carries no
photosynthesizing symbiote, but there are symbiotes in her gut to help digestion,
and they may be more evolved than our gut-bacteria.
Humanity's first problem will be to recognize that she
is intelligent.
Skitter
Picture a thick-armed spider, heavy as a man. This a highlands
dweller. She's a hermaphrodite, and a fairly adaptable herbivore. She likes
altitudes above the regions the Mossbacks have colonized; though they're
down below, and they know Skitter exists. She can open a fin on her back,
like a sail, for two purposes: (A) to run downwind, or (B) to signal a potential
mate; for the wing is naturally brilliant scarlet. Some Skitters. The Skitters
don't like the dominance games; they won't hold still long enough to talk;
and there's no profit in it.
Few Mossbacks have tried to talk to Skitters. The Skitters
don't like the dominance games; they won't hold still long enough to talk;
and there's no profit in it.
Locale: a rocky New-Guinea-sized island. Water is not
a problem, usually. Wind moving over the mountains tends to drop rain. The
Mossbacks live below. A Base Two situated above the Mossback city (?) has
two shots at making First Contact.
The Skitter is agile. She must outrun or outwit a changing
variety of predators; for new species arrive fairly frequently on the waves
or the winds. Skitter families (small) tend to reinforce natural cover,
a wall or a cave. Their legs make good tool-grippers. They would build more
if the hurricanes didn't keep carrying their work away.
If we like the Skitter, we may want to design the predators
which threaten her. We might get her talking by offering her protection.
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