While Freuchen accelerated sunward, the first observer probes shot forth from her and began transmitting their readings and images. When a synthesis of the sights was ready, everyone aboard crowded into the wardroom to see it on the big screen. Excitement swiftly became awe.
In itself the star was nothing unusual, a type G dwarf. It had formed from the primordial cloud only about a billion years ago, and as yet shone with only about 65% the luminosity of Sol or half that of Alpha Centauri A—fierce enough! Though not naked-eye visible, material was still raining into it in vast quantities. Optical programs, selectively and suitably taming fieriness, showed it wildly turbulent. Spots swirled in flocks, flares and prominences fountained, corona shimmered as far as a million kilometers outward.
Six planets went about it in eccentric orbits. The inmost would not survive much longer.
It had formed at a distance where the growth of a gas giant was possible, and it became one in truth, a mass of ten Jupiters. But already the unbalanced gravitational forces of an irregularly distributed proto-system had been spiraling it inward. Its pull on itself remained so strong that it lost little or nothing as it neared the sun and temperatures soared. The atmosphere distended, though, until now an ovoid 280,000 kilometers long glowed furnace hot, chaotic with storms that could have swallowed Earth or Wunderland whole. Friction with the thick interplanetary medium had almost circularized its path, and worked together with resonances to make this ever shorter. Stripped of moons, it raced through the coronal fringes a million kilometers from the stellar photosphere, around in eleven and a half hours, each time faster and faster. Rotation had been slowed by the huge tidal bulges until cloud whorls needed fifteen hours to face out to the dark again.
Such were the facts and figures. The reality was roiling, seething, terrible magnificence. It was as if the bloodbeat in the ears of humans struck dumb by the sight faintly echoed those surfs, eruptions, hurricanes, and violences.
After many minutes of silence, Raden said very quietly, "Yes, our luck has held, barely. I got the latest computation earlier this watch. The planet's practically at the Roche limit. It's due to start breaking up."
"When?" asked Captain Worning.
"Not quite certain. Maybe as soon as two weeks, maybe as much as five or six. What will happen then and how—we don't have an adequate model to predict. We need more data, endless data."
"What we also need is names for those . . . bodies," said Lili Deutsch. "Catalogue numbers are too unhandy and hard to remember."
"Yes," agreed Toyo Takata. "And they are a mockery of this." She shivered. "It is not well to mock the elemental powers."
She's not superstitious, thought Tyra. She's right.
"Some of us have been talking about that," put in Ernesto Padilla. "What of Hell for the star and Lucifer for the planet?"
"No," replied Maria Kivi. "Lucifer brought his fate on himself."
Words, words, a shield against the overwhelming mightiness yonder. Tyra raised a hand. Eyes turned toward her; she seemed to feel the touch of Raden's. "I have been thinking too," she ventured. "I—I suggest Pele and Kumukahi."
"Who the devil would they be?" barked Marcus Hauptmann.
"From Hawaii on Earth," Tyra told them. "A myth they remember there. Pele was the volcano goddess. Kumukahi was a young chief who unwittingly insulted her. She destroyed him."
Kamehameha Ryan had related it, back in Saxtorph's Rover. She had tried to keep him out of her mind. Through no fault of his own, memories of him hurt. Maybe that was why this came back to her in a sleepless nightwatch two daycycles ago.
"Splendid!" Raden exclaimed. "Perfect! You'll know names for the other planets too, won't you? Thanks a thousandfold."
"I don't remember much more. Not enough to go around, certainly."
Takata said, "But I can supply some. I have family in Hawaii, and works on folklore they sent me are in my personal database."
"M-m, well, all right by me, but not official," Worning rumbled.
"Leave that to the officials. I'll undertake to overbear them if they get stuffy." Raden carried the rest along on the tide of his enthusiasm.
As if this really mattered, Tyra thought. Oh, it does, in a way, but that much? To him?
Because it came from me?
Congratulations surrounded her. Raden beamed and waved above the heads. "We'll have a drink on that, Tyra, as soon as may be," he called.
I'm forgiven, she thought. Not that I suppose he was ever angry with me, just with my attitude. . . . The anger was mainly mine, and unreasonable.
He's not going to let me stand aside from him if he can help it.
The knowledge was at once a gladness and an alarm signal.
Raden turned to the captain. "I'll take the boat out for a closer, personal look tomorrow."
"What?" protested Worning. "We won't be in our orbit yet."
"She has delta vee to burn. Not that I'll waste any."
"She's our one auxiliary until the hyperwave gang rejoin us."
"Samurai will be close, with several, in case of emergency. Which is ridiculously improbable. And you know I'm a qualified pilot."
"Why, however, when our probes are not even all deployed?" the captain asked.
"Precisely for that reason. A live brain, a trained eye, alert for the unforeseeable. Which, at present, is virtually everything in and around Kumukahi. I'll wager you a month's pay we'll be rewriting the robots' programs immediately after my first excursion."
Worning scowled. "I do not take the bet, because I will not allow this. It is reckless."
Affability and persuasiveness flooded over him. "Captain, with due and considerable respect, I beg leave to prove to you that it isn't. Instead, it's the best investment we can make. Time is short. We can't afford to miss a single chance of learning something. It'll never come again."
He'll win, Tyra knew, and go cometing off, laughing for sheer joy. He will return like a knight of old from a joust with giants.
She could well-nigh see plume and pennon flying in the wind of his gallop.