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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: The human explorers of the Barnard Star system and their large, friendly, amoebae-like alien friends, the "flouwen," explore an Europa-like moon about the gas-giant Gargantua. They find two bizarre life forms, one living on the ice, and one living in the ocean under the ice, that are as different and yet as related as butterflies and caterpillars.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: 1994
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2002

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Dr. Robert L. Forward's Rocheworld Series

40 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.2 MB], eReader (PDB) [354 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [369 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [321 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [282 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [339 KB], hiebook (KML) [791 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [356 KB], iSilo (PDB) [306 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [379 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [407 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [492 KB]
Words: 107825
Reading time: 308-431 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 1-59062-452-1

The wind was not blowing as hard now, but it still had enough force to whistle as it widened the grotesque tunnels it had carved in the icy promontory. The bulging mound of compacted snow loomed above the dark waters below, themselves nearly frozen and greasy-looking with irregular sheets of ice. The wind had created the huge lump it was now destroying; shaping and scraping the surface with hard-frozen dust as abrasive as diamonds; undercutting the exposed surfaces at the vulnerable base of the bulge. Finally the critical point was passed. With a horrendous crack, the snowy mound separated along a nearly vertical fissure, and splashed into the cold ocean waters.

In the city, Silver-Rim heard the splash. The icerug had never seen an iceberg form, but it was aware of what had caused the explosive sound. The red-colored sunlight flooding down from the rising Sun-God onto Silver-Rim's acre-sized carpet warmed and invigorated the icerug as its velvet textured cyan-colored body absorbed the weak red sunlight and turned the energy into food.

On the opposite side of the sky from the Sun-God was the strange new moon that had arrived from outer space many seasons ago. Almost as big as the other moons, it was not a sphere, but a flat circle. And instead of orbiting the Night-God like all the other moons, it wandered as it willed. Right now, it seemed to be moving closer to Ice.

With its attention now directed outward, Silver-Rim noticed that it was easy enough to move, this morning. Silver-Rim had been composing a new song, so intently that it had paid no attention to the weather. Now it realized too that the wind was not blowing ice-dust into its eye and that it was able to stand upright on its pedestal without having to lean into the wind. An unusually substantial meal of country-raised flesh added to the icerug's sensation of comfort, and Silver-Rim noted that it was indeed a good day. Silver-Rim glided across its carpet toward the massive stone Grand Portal that led to the Great Meeting Hall; in the distance it could see Clear-Eye making for the same entrance. Clear-Eye's carpet, a brilliant blue, was easy enough to distinguish even at a great distance, and Silver-Rim's large orb was unusually keen, even for an icerug. The two met at the entrance, glided side by side down the glittering hall upon their parallel travel strands, and entered the music room chatting companionably.

"Hear this, now, Clear-Eye, I've been working on this melody all night." Silver-Rim flipped open its dressy cloak, and two of its four tentacles reached for the long, narrow harp with the thick strings. The tentacles stretched and shortened themselves as they plucked the strings, and the deeply rumbling notes of the new melody sounded sweet to both of them.

Six lightyears distant from the Sun, a spacecraft sailed through the sparse "wind" of photons emanating from the red dwarf star Barnard. The most visible portion of the spacecraft was its gigantic circular lightsail, a vast expanse of highly reflective aluminum foil, three hundred kilometers across. As the dim red photons from Barnard bounced off the reflective surface of the sail, they each gave the sail a tiny push. Together, the pushes added up to a significant light pressure force that was able to increase or decrease the orbital speed of the lightsail around the red sun, allowing the spacecraft to move either inward or outward through the Barnard planetary system so that its human crew could visit the multitude of planets and moons that orbited around the star. The crew called the spacecraft Prometheus--the bringer of light--for it had arrived at Barnard traveling on a beam of blue-green laser light--transmitted across the vast interstellar distance between Sol and Barnard by a gigantic sun-pumped laser.

Almost lost in the vast expanse of the lightsail was the habitat that held the exploration crew, a cylinder as big as an apartment building, connected by tension lines to the rigging. On the hydroponics deck of the habitat, Nels Larson--lounging comfortably in his regeneration tank--was giving instructions to his hydroponics deck crew, Cinnamon Byrd, Deirdre O'Connor, and Katrina Kauffmann. Cinnamon had just awakened from her sleep shift and was sipping quietly from her breakfast drink-ball squeezer full of hot pseudo-coffee. Around the circumference of her drink-ball was painted a scene of white snow-capped Alaskan mountain peaks interspersed by valleys filled with glowing blue-green glacier fields. Her personal robotic imp on her shoulder, its multicolored laser lights twinkling among its multibranched green-laser-illuminated metallic "twigs", was carefully plaiting a braid of her dark straight hair below her left ear. When the motile finished braiding, it curled up the two short braids around Cinnamon's ears and settled itself down in a band across the top of her head like a set of twinkling earphones. One tiny twig from the motile, tipped with a deep red laser, reached in behind her ear. From there it could monitor her pulse and vital signs, and using laser reflection spectroscopy, even measure the chemical constituents of the blood flowing through the capillaries just under her light reddish-brown skin. Another twig curved down to one side of her mouth where its tip could pick up her slightest whisper.

Deirdre's imp was in its usual place, in a six-pointed star holding up a mass of dark curls sitting on top of her head. One of its secondary twigs was extended down near her mouth, while another touched her ear. Deirdre's shoulder, which was normally occupied by her pet, Foxx, was empty; but there was a large lump in Deirdre's right breast pocket. She leaned against a stanchion, a quiet, slender figure--unobtrusive in a soft brown coverall and gleaming brown pseudo-leather ankle boots. As she held her own hot coffee close to her nose, her sleeves revealed the glint of gold, from the thin torques which encircled her wrists. These, along with the strange flat stone in one ear-lobe, Deirdre wore always, without thinking of them. She squeezed the drink-ball expertly, to inhale the aroma without actually dispensing any liquid.

Katrina stood nearer the regen tank, her dark-blue eyes warm with compassion and interest. It was seldom the petite biologist was able to look down into another person's face. Nels had been patiently sitting in the strange fluid for some weeks, and planned to spend another eight or ten. It had been the alien flouwen who had taught him how to activate the leg growth genes in his DNA that had been blocked by a chemical accident to his pregnant mother, and had devised the chemical solution that would fool the cells in his leg stumps into thinking they were in a mother's womb. He hopefully expected that the result would be a serviceable pair of human legs, rather than the flippers he had been born with. He'd lived 40 years with the result of that accident to his mother, and he regarded this experiment with scientific interest as well as personal desire. If the regeneration process worked on him, it would work on anyone, and the whole world would benefit for centuries to come from the knowledge that had been gained from the flouwen. Now he spoke to his hydroponics deck crew, enlisting their aid in making sure the small buds from the flouwen were well cared for.