Wildcatter

[b] to be more specific, the master is not subject to the overriding authority of the mother ship captain, a ship commodore, or a flotilla commodore, as set forth in Sections 04 and 06, above.

General Regulations

2375 edition

Busboy-janitor-gofer Seth tidied away the vacuum cleaner hose, wondering as always if the system vented directly to space. Galley and mess were sparkling clean now, but he wasn’t. He went along to the showers to wash his hands and scowl at his stubbled face and tousled hair.

Normally about this time he laid out dishes for breakfast and loaded the chefs with the correct materials, but he expected everyone to be late appearing today. He also had some questions to put to Control, which never slept, constantly gathering and collating data.

The camel caravan had advanced into the control room under a cloudless blue sky. Going to be fine day-that had been his personal joke for the last year.

“Whittington, I know you own the ship, but this is my seat.” He scooped up the furry squatter and put himself between cat and chair. “Control, show me the hologram of the system again.”

Camel steppe vanished and the planets appeared above the table as before. As sponsor, JC had naming honors, so the gas giant had become Hades, the two ice worlds Niflheimr and Jötunheimr, and Cacafuego’s little satellite was Turd.

“Orbital parameters for the Cacafuego satellite, Turd?”

— Preliminary estimates only, Prospector.

“They’ll do.”

— Mass 1.8 times 10²³ kilograms… Semi-major axis unknown, current distance from planet…

Smaller than Luna but at about the same distance. It would appear as only a very bright star and could not raise significant tides. Then came the data point he had been waiting for:

— Inclination to the ecliptic, between 84º and 85º.

“Stop. Have you estimated Cacafuego’s axial tilt?”

— Observations so far are too brief for an accurate estimate, Prospector.

“Set limits.”

— Between 87º and 92º.

So Cacafuego was a sideways world, tilted over, with its axis in the ecliptic plane. Worlds like that could grow ice caps around the equator, while the poles would have perpetual sunlight for half the year and perpetual darkness for the other half. Life might survive on such a world by hibernation or migration, but conventional theory held that advanced, multi-cellular life forms could not evolve there, meaning that the crew’s dreams of untold wealth were doomed to disappointment. Even primitive slime worlds could provide interesting new compounds, but they rarely repaid their finders’ costs or tempted people to go back for more.

Conventional theory often turned out to be wrong.

Any virgin planet that held life, as Cacafuego obviously did, was worth a visit when you’d invested trillions of dollars in getting to it. So why was Galactic planting warning beacons instead of staking it? Staking fees were nothing to Galactic, and if the initial samples failed to turn up anything interesting, the license could be sold to recoup some or all of the costs to date.

Permanent settlement of Cacafuego was not feasible, and never would be, and no one would ever want to colonize a sideways world anyway. Only the chance of finding exotic organic chemicals unknown on Earth could ever justify the cost of interstellar exploration. Curiosities like starsilk or the Florenian orchids that were the current fad in body decoration could be very profitable, but Golden Hind’s real hope was to take home a few liters of alien muck swarming with strange bacteria, spores, viruses, or whatever might be enough to make it a huge success. The yellow beacon meant danger, but an extreme axial tilt in itself brought no special danger, not in the short term of a wildcatter’s visit. The climate might be a killer, but only over a course of months.

“Show me a blowup of Cacafuego.”

The blue dot swelled, becoming gibbous, until it was about a meter wide, floating above the table like a grotesquely deformed balloon. Golden Hind was still three days out; Seth had not expected so much detail yet. He saw blue, with streaks and swirls of white cloud, shattered fragments of continent in brown and green. There was life there, much life!

The weather looked vicious.

“Climate?”

— Terrestrial categories do not apply. The poles go from super-tropical to total darkness and back again. Islands near the equator appear to carry permanent ice caps.

“Estimated gravity?”