I took a minute to enjoy the sun on my face and listen to the surf. I suppose I might eventually get tired of this scene, but not any time soon. It made me regret that I’d never taken the time for this kind of vacation when I was alive.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped past Guppy and back into the hut. The holotank showed the layout of the star system with about 95% confidence at this point. There might be a few smaller bodies floating around that we’d missed, but I doubted they’d be major players.
The companion star, Eta Cassiopeiae B, had a closest approach of 36 AU at periastron, which meant planets were unlikely outside of about 9 AU of EC-A. It also meant that the Oort and Kuiper objects had been disturbed many times. Any planets in this system would have taken more than one good pelting. The good news was there was probably very little left out there to send inward.
“That one,” I pointed to the third planet. “Is right smack in the Comfort Zone. Any indication of size?”
[No. But spectroscopic analysis is showing oxygen and water lines]
“Oh, that’s excellent.”
[There is also indication of a wobble, which would indicate a satellite]
“Better and better. Okay, Guppy, plot a course to planet three.”
[Deploy mining and survey drones?]
“Naw, let’s see if this system is worth hanging around in, first.”
Guppy somehow managed to look disappointed, although if pressed, I couldn’t for the life of me describe what a disappointed fish looked like.
I stared in thought at the image floating in front of me. We’d detected four other rocky planets, two inside and two outside the Comfort Zone, but no Jovian planets. That worried me a little, as Jovians tended to keep the inner system relatively safe by perturbing anything coming straight in from the outer system.
Of more concern was the lack of a significant asteroid belt. The general plan for the HEAVEN project was to use the mineral wealth of asteroid belts to build the space station and future Bobs. No asteroid belt could spell trouble.
Meh. One thing at a time.
It took a few days to get there. I spent that time doing fine scans of the system for any sparse asteroid belts that I might have missed. No such luck. This system really had been swept clean. I had five planets, and whatever moons they might have, to work with. Planetary mining would require a lot of re-think.
I also got a bead on the moons of planet three. There were two bigger ones, one about half the size of Earth’s moon, and one about a fifth the size; and two smaller ones, closer in, really not much more than big rocks. The planet itself was a little smaller than Earth, with a .87 surface gravity and a 26-hour rotation. The atmosphere was delightfully Earth-like, maybe a little more oxygen-rich.
I inserted myself into a polar orbit and started deep scans. The planet had a lot of cloud, just like Earth. That was good, since it indicated robust weather patterns. It also had a lot of water. In fact, so far, all I’d seen was water.
“Have we detected land, yet?”
[Negative]
“Well, that’s… irritating. Alert me as soon as we find something.”
[Aye]
*
[Scans are complete]
“But you were supposed to alert me—oh.”
I examined the scans and started to laugh. Honest to God, a good belly laugh still feels good, even in VR.
The planet had water, all right. Oh, did it have water! What didn’t it have? Land. None. Nada. Not so much as an atoll. This was just one big ball of ocean. Not even any freakin’ ice caps to stand on.
Which raised the question of what exactly was creating the oxygen. On Earth, that would be green plants. But plants, not to put too fine a point on it, tended to require dirt. Excuse me, soil.
“Guppy, are you sure about the chlorophyll?”
[Affirmative]
Huh. Weird. I was obviously missing something. This would require a closer look.
I’d gotten a message from Bill with plans for planetary exploration drones while I was still incoming, but with no raw materials to work with, I was pretty much S.O.L.
I sighed theatrically and turned to Guppy, who was standing at parade rest, as usual. “I guess we’d better survey the system. Set a course to take us past each planet. Let’s start with a flyby of this planet’s moons.”
[Aye]
It took a couple of weeks to hit all the other planets and their satellites. While I was buzzing around, I did manage to catalog a couple of asteroids with relatively eccentric orbits. I sat back in my beach chair, with a coffee in my hands, and reviewed the reports. There was lots of metal in this system. It appeared to be a little richer than Sol, in fact. But everything was planetside. It looked like the space junk that normally infests a system had virtually all become an impactor at some point. I could only guess that the effect of the binary partner, combined with the lack of a Jovian, had resulted in some weird chain of events that cleared the system. I’m sure an astrophysicist would have an explanation at the ready, and I promised myself I’d give that a think when I had the time.
I flew out to the fourth planet, the second moon of which had good ore deposits close to the surface. I set up the autofactory in orbit and fed several of my drones and roamers into it to use as construction material. A week later, the autofactory had built a couple of small cargo vessels. I loaded them up with mining drones and sent the whole crew down to the moon’s surface.
While I waited, I re-examined the scans of planet three and pondered. I remembered reading that all of Earth’s water could have been supplied by a single icy comet about 1000 km in diameter. Given the amount of material in Sol’s Oort cloud, that was barely a sneeze. Since this system seemed to have had its cloud cleared, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that the planets got pounded early on.
While the mining drones slaved away, I pondered the question of whether this world was even worth reporting as a colonization candidate. Oh, it had oxygen, and it had water, but the amount of effort required to build any kind of base would be incredible. I knew from the libraries that Earth in the twenty-second century had started building and populating floating cities, but they operated only with the support of land-bound industries.
Well, not my decision. I would just send in a report and let the powers that be hash it out. If there still were any powers that be, that is. The war could have wiped out humanity entirely, for all I knew, which would make this whole exercise moot.
Still, eventually, Riker would report back to Bill, and Bill would transmit the news in one of his regular blogs. Until I heard different, I was going to continue to play Von Neumann probe. I owed that to Dr. Landers.
*
[Construction AMI controller is now online]
“Cool, thanks, Guppy. Order it to start on a couple of Bobs, then the space station.”
[Aye]