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be a bit scorched in spots near the equator. Subtropical over most of the
latitudes north and south of there, though. The kind of readings I m getting,
sir, say it s a greenhouse, but one that is optimum for plants and maybe
people.
Correlation?
Well, sir, it s hard to say for sure, but I d say that, checking against the
Three Kings data and legends, the pretty blue one is Balshazzar, the cold one
is Kaspar, and the large cloud-obscured hot one is Melchior.
Not as romantic to look at as the legends, but otherwise things match up.
Those are the only planet-sized do moons capable of supporting life, and they
are in remarkably stable orbits considering that monster of a planet and the
chaos it causes all around. Those just about have to be the Three Kings.
They also fit the old scout s alternate names according to the legends. A
little paradise of a world, a world cold and inhospitable but livable where
one might work things off in a kind of Purgatory, and a hot and cloudy place
that was Inferno.
One and one only. Choose wisely.
It would be pretty easy from this early data to choose, and there would be
popular sentiment only for the garden, but the Doctor wondered about the other
part of that scout legend, where the monk warned to look beyond the obvious.
Why hadn t he used his original Dante-inspired names? Why had he thought they
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would be misleading?
How long can we maintain ourselves in
Olivet alone? he asked the captain.
Well, sir, we ve fewer people than before, but
Olivet was never designed to take the whole company anywhere. The food
generators and waste cycling, water demands, all that will put an enormous
strain on it.
We can , although it s going to be a bit tricky with all those gravitational
forces and with all the debris fly bound to be in between those rings
Just cut to the chase! the Doctor snapped.
Well, sir, I think I don t want to maintain it in that space for very long in
any event, particularly not under these conditions. With so much power to the
shields, I d recommend putting down on one of them and using the small scouts
to take a look at the others. If a piece of rock penetrates the shields, then
instead of having just one ship we ll have no ship. I know how you hate this
sort of thing, and no more than I do, but we re going to have to pretty well
choose where we want to go in the next few days, and we re going to have to
head there as straightaway as possible in
Olivet after we do. And that s assuming that
Sinai can
hold together enough to get us reasonably close. You ve really got a choice on
Olivet between shields on the one hand and food, heat, and toilets on the
other. You see what I mean, sir?
Woodward did. This should be a matter of careful exploration and good science,
but in this case faith would have to be enough.
The obvious choice to everyone else was not the obvious choice to him, though.
The pretty blue and white world with the subtropical climate and
spectrographic analysis that it would accept the seeds of key fruits,
vegetables, and the like allowing for a stable food supply from the
Mountain
s supplies seemed obvious, but it also seemed too easy. There would be little
to challenge or test the people; it looked like an invitation to grow soft and
fat.
Three Kings . . . Gold, frankincense, myrrh . . . The blue world was certainly
one of the spices, the cold world represented gold and might well be where the
curious gems and other artifacts from the Three Kings had been found. The
clouded, volcanic world had to be another spice or scent; he wished he could
see below and know if it really was a place where they could survive. Was the
atmosphere toxic, or did the clouds cause some sort of greenhouse effect? Most
of his experts doubted the latter; if it had been a planet in orbit around the
star, certainly, but the composition and the position around the gas giant
would allow for sufficient cooling. As to the toxicity, though, they couldn t
guess without probes.
All three were supposedly places where humans could live, but that was legend.
Two at least bore this out; if so, there was some reason to believe that the
harsh and violent surface of Melchior was livable as well.
But what about the water quality, the soil, the other essentials that would
make sustaining life possible?
Did he dare commit all of them to that level of unknown?
Please, Lord! Show me what to do!
Ship! somebody shouted. There s another ship just shot out of the wormhole
and if looks are any indication it s worse beat up than us!
It looked to be a small Talcan raider, a fast and heavily armed single unit
vessel related to the much larger class of ships Sapenza had commanded. These
had been built as local warships that could also be used for official business
by the more prosperous colonial worlds, and to give them some autonomy from
the interstellar naval forces that might not have their best interests at
heart nor be under their command.
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Many had gone pirate or mercenary, or been turned to it, over the years since
the Great Silence. This had to be one such, probably from some colonial trace
in the neighborhood of Marchellus who d picked up the rumor. The captain had
to be pretty good; it seemed to be the only one they hadn t shaken.
That, however, appeared to have been a decidedly mixed blessing to the ship,
which was desperately trying to right itself, stop its merciless spin, and
which was, rather clearly, trailing parts of spacecraft.
The small ship managed a measure of stability and turned itself in-system, but
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