Chapter 19 Chapter Seventeen Ganymede

It was unusual for Frank Poole to oversleep, but he had been awakened by strange dreams the night before.Past and present are entangled, sometimes on the Discovery, sometimes in the African Tower, sometimes back to his childhood, with some friends he thought he had forgotten long ago. Where am I?As he struggled to regain consciousness, he asked himself, struggling like a drowning man.There was a window just above the bed, with curtains not thick enough to block out the light from outside.Poole recalls the mid-20th century when flying machines were so slow that first-class cabins could be called for; he hadn't tried that retro treat (there were travel agencies touting business back then), but he could easily imagine he was Be there.

He opened the curtains and looked out.No, he did not wake up in the sky of the earth. Although the stretch of scenery below cannot be said to be unlike the South Pole, the South Pole has never been bathed in two suns.When the Goliath passed by, it happened to be the spectacle of two suns rising at the same time.The spacecraft was hovering less than 100 kilometers above a vast field covered with light snow.However, it seemed that either the farmer was drunk or the seeker had gone mad, for the furrows meandered in all directions, sometimes intersecting each other, or turning back again.The rock formations are dotted with inconspicuous gray circles, which are eerie caves left by meteor impacts in ancient times.

So this is Ganymede, Poole thought idly.Humanity's most outpost!How could anyone in their right mind want to live here?Well, that's what I asked myself when flying over Greenland and Iceland in winter... Then there was a knock on the door, and a "May I come in?", and before he could reply, Captain Chandler came in by himself. "I thought it would let you sleep until landing! The 'Flying Party' did take a little longer than I expected, but I can't risk bloodshed to end it early." Poole laughed. "Has there ever been bloodshed in space?" "Oh, a lot! Not in my time, though. Now that you're talking about it, you might as well say Hal was the one who started it... Sorry, I probably shouldn't—look, that's Ganymede!"

Emerging on the ground level are streets that appear to cross in a checkerboard pattern, though slightly irregularly.This is a typical result of the slow growth and expansion of colonies without urban planning.It was bisected by a broad river, and Poole remembered Ganymede's equatorial region, warm enough for liquid water to exist, and it reminded him of a woodcut of medieval London he had seen once. He noticed that Chandler was looking at him with interest... The illusion disappeared when he understood this: the scale of "the city." "Ganypa," he said sourly, "must have been big to drive the road five or ten kilometers wide."

"In some places it's up to 20 kilometers wide, isn't it amazing? Actually, it's all caused by the expansion and contraction of the ice. Nature is really amazing... I can show you some more artificial patterns, but not as big as this." "When I was a kid, people made a fuss about a human face on Mars. Of course, it turned out to be a hill carved by a sandstorm...there's a whole bunch of them in the deserts of Earth." "Didn't someone say that history always repeats itself? It's the same in Ganymede City. Some lunatics even claim that it was built by aliens. But I'm afraid it won't last long."

"Why?" asked Poole in surprise. "It's already starting to crumble, because the sun has melted the permafrost. In another 100 years, you won't recognize Ganymede... That's the shore of Lake Gilgamesh - if you look closely - on the right--" "I saw it. What's going on? Even if the air pressure is so low, shouldn't the water be boiling?" "It's an electrolysis plant. I don't know how many billions of trillions of kilograms of oxygen will be produced in a day. Of course the hydrogen will go straight up and then disappear, at least that's what we hope." Chandler whispered more and more, and then used a very unusual Guilty tone resumed: "All those beautiful water resources down there—Garyyne doesn't even need half of it! Don't tell people, but I'm trying to find a way to get some to Venus."

"Easier than pushing a comet?" "In terms of energy, yes, Ganymede's minimum exit speed is only three kilometers per second. And it saves a lot of time. It only takes a few years instead of decades. But there are still some practical difficulty……" "I can feel it. Are you going to shoot water out of a giant rocket?" "Oh, no. I'd use a tall tower that goes through the atmosphere, like the ones on Earth, but much smaller. Pump the water up to the top of the tower, let it cool down to near absolute zero, and use Ganymede's rotation to turn the Ice flung out in the right direction. Some evaporative losses on the way, but most of it gets there—what's the fun?"

"I'm sorry! I'm not laughing at your idea, it sounds quite reasonable. But you brought me back to vivid memories. We used to have a garden sprinkler that just used the power of water to keep it going .You're planning the exact same thing, but on a larger scale...with an entire planet..." Suddenly, another image from the past erases everything.Poole remembers how he and Ricky enjoyed chasing moving clouds in the slow swirling mist of yard sprinklers on hot days in Arizona. Captain Chandler is actually more sensitive than he pretends: he knows when to leave. "Go back to the bridge," he said rudely. "I'll see you when you land in Langshen City."