1
Morning was flowing over the red-green planet. "What do we know?" The
delicate brown face of Dorothy Leeds kindled with questions.
"Summarize it."
Edmund Spearman achieved casualness. "Diameter and mass a trifle more
than Earth's, larger orbit around a larger sun. A year of 458 days,
twenty-six hours each. Moderate seasonal changes, axial tilt less than
Earth's, orbit less elliptical. See the smallness of the north polar
ice cap? The equatorial region--much too hot; the rest is subtropical
to temperate. We should go down (if we do) near the 50th
parallel--north, I'd say. Too much desert in the southern hemisphere.
Might be hot winds, sandstorms."
"The red-green _is_ vegetation?" Dr. Christopher Wright teetered on
long legs before the screen, a classroom mannerism unchanged by eleven
years in the wilderness of space. He pinched and pulled the skin on
his Adam's apple, his hawk's-beak, small-chinned head jutting forward
with an awkwardness not aggressive but intent. Paul Mason thought:
_You love him or hate him. In either case he's never quite grotesque._
Wright's too-soft voice insisted: "It _is_, of course?"
"It has to be, Doc," Spearman said, and rubbed his bluish cheeks,
looking older than his thirty-two years. Already he showed frontal
baldness, deeply bracketed mouth corners. On Spearman's big shoulders
was the burden of the ship. Watching him now, Paul Mason was troubled
by a familiar thought: _Captain Jensen should not have died_.... "It
has to be. The instruments show oxygen in Earth proportion, or
somewhat richer, plus nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The camera gives us
tree shadows in these latest photographs with the stronger lens. The
air may make us oxygen-happy--if we go down.... Well, Dorothy--two
continents, two oceans, both smaller than the Atlantic, connected
narrowly at north and south polar regions. Dozens of lakes bigger than
the Caspian. The proportion of land to water surface works out nearly
the same as on Earth. No mountains to match the Himalayas, but some
pretty high ranges. Unlimited forest, prairie, desert." He closed
bloodshot eyes, pressing the lids. Paul Mason thought: _I should never
try to paint Ed. The portrait would always come out as Hercules
Frustrated, and he wouldn't care for it...._ Spearman said, "Even most
of the tallest mountains look smooth--old. If there were glaciers it
was a long time ago."
"Geologically a quiet phase," Sears Oliphant remarked. "As Earth
looked in the Jurassic and may look again." Born fifty years ago in
Tel Aviv, brought up in London, Rio, and New York because his parents
were medical trouble shooters for the Federation, and possessed of a
doctorate in biology (more exactly, taxonomy) from Johns Hopkins,
Sears Oliphant claimed that his original Polish name could not have
been spelled with the aid of two dictionaries and a crowbar. His fat
face blinked at Dorothy with little kind eyes. "I forget, sugar--you
weren't around in the Jurassic, were you?"
"Maybe." Her slow smile was for Paul. "As a very early mammal."
Wright said, "No artifacts.... At first it looked like Venus." His
crinkled asymmetrical face probed at them with a wistful half smile
like a child's. "May we call this planet Lucifer, son of the morning?
And if we land and found a city (or am I being ridiculous?)--let it be
Jensen City, in honor of a more-than-solar myth."