Contact across the Solar System

Outward to Eris

The Durnakhemi orbited the Earth for a day, with the travelers returning video of themselves and also video of their homelands through the ship's portholes. Then it was off to the Moon. The Earth shrank in angular size as the ship departed for the Moon, and after a few hours, the ship did a flyby of the Moon. Then it was off to Eris. The ship accelerated to a Sun-relative cruising speed of nearly 1200 km/s, and the Earth shrank to a pale blue dot in four hours, with the Moon a fainter white dot near it.

It nevertheless took nearly five months to reach Eris. The ship crossed Mars's orbit after two days, then Jupiter's in less than week, then Saturn's in a week, then Uranus's in two weeks, then Neptune's in a bit over two weeks, then Pluto's current distance in a week. Another week, and it reached the distance where the Voyager 1 spacecraft took its famous "Pale Blue Dot" picture of the Earth.

One of the tour guides noted that event, and then compared Voyager 1 to their ship. Voyager 1 could easily fit inside the lounge that the tour guides and travelers were in, at least if some of its longer parts were folded up. Its Titan IIIE booster rocket was much bigger, but still much smaller than the ship. It took 13 years to make the trip, as opposed to the ship's two months.

The travelers took it in stride, but some people back home were annoyed.

"Do the mall rats have to rub it in? The SSC's superiority complex is so annoying."

"I don't like how they continually talk down to us about how we are a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers and racists and sexists and everything bad. Oh sure, they put on a big show of friendliness and courtesy and whatnot, but you can see what they really think lurking beneath the surface."

The ship's pilots also showed off some of the ship's navigation data. They did not want to reveal too much about the ship's propulsion mechanisms, so they confined themselves to celestial-navigation data. After the first few days of traveling, the Sun's redshift settled down to around 1/250, easily noticeable with the ship's instruments.

The tour guides kept the travelers busy with a variety of activities, and several of the travelers learned some things that they'd always wanted to, but that they couldn't find much time to do or much money to pay for instruction in. The tour guides also gave courses on SSC society, culture, history, and language, trying out some instructional materials that SSC people eventually wanted to use more broadly. The materials had some rough edges here and there, but that was to be expected.

Zhiling and Boris were sometimes a bit too insistent about trying to get details of how the ship's systems work, and their hosts read their minds about it. They were to report to their nations' intelligence agencies about what they found. This included details of dealings with the Americans. Zhiling and Boris were, however, willing to talk about how some Chinese and Russian politicians thought that the SSC snubbed them the first time around by only taking Americans. This included how Zhiling almost didn't go because of that.

Most of the travelers were content to play various sports and physical-object games and computer games much of the time, but several of them had other interests. Isabel and Ingrid took up dancing, and they became each other's favorite dance partners among the travelers, though they got Cesar and Jishnu a little bit interested. Cesar once made himself annoying by flirting with some of the crewwomen. Jenny took up guitar, and her hosts made gloves for her so she wouldn't hurt her fingers. Joanne got rather bored, but she eventually took up computer-graphics painting, and a crewwoman instructed her in it despite their using autotranslators and very broken versions of each other's languages. One time she sent back a nice painting of her instructor in a beautiful patterned oversized shirt atop loose pants and metallic-looking sandals, with a jeweled belt on top of the shirt.

Meanwhile, back on the Earth, the furor over the SSC's allegedly favoring Russia had faded, and Senator Ferguson and his supporters grumbled about how everybody is ignoring this very serious issue. On a public-affairs TV show, Senator Goldstein reminded him of when everybody objected that the SSC was favoring the US, and Senator Ferguson responded that that's different, that America is the greatest nation in the world, and Russia isn't. Look at all the people who try to get into it, he said. "Even the Solar System people."

In the Russian Academy of Sciences, materials scientists and chemists were trying to follow the recipes that the SSC had given them. One of them ended up announcing that he had good news and bad news.

"The good news is that these materials don't need rare elements like platinum."

"The bad news is that these materials are a real headache to make."

But the Russians were gradually improving, and they were soon making impressive materials, like electrically conducting plastics almost as conductive as metals. They soon followed up with all-plastic printed-circuit boards with conductive plastic "wires".

After five months of traveling, the Durnakhemi's pilots showed off a picture of Eris through a ship's telescope. It looked like a faint star, but it was a "star" that was not normally there. "We are now slowing down, and we should be there in about two days," a pilot announced.

About six hours before arrival, Eris became visible to the unaided eye, and after a few hours more, it was bigger in apparent size than the Moon from the Earth. A pilot announced that the ship was cleared to land, and in a few hours more it was close to the world's surface. It was rather mountainous, but covered with frost. "Nitrogen and methane -- it's solid out here, but it boils off when Eris gets nearer the Sun," a pilot explained and Reznan translated. Despite the distance, the Sun was still bright, but nevertheless safe to look at. Likewise, Eris's surface was easily visible after one's eyes adjusted for darkness.

The ship went inside Eridian capital city Narmowangi's spaceport and docked, and the travelers came out with their luggage. They were met by some Eridian dignitaries in an airport lounge, and they quizzed each other about their homeworlds.

An Eridian official welcomed them. "Thank you for being willing to come out all this distance. We don't get many people from the inner worlds."

"Inner worlds?" asked Cesar.

"Venus and Mars. In your case, the Earth."

"It took a long time for us -- half a year, er, Earth year."

The questioning continued.

"Do you really live out in the open?" asked one Eridian.

"We live in houses and buildings," Ingrid responded.

Then Hugo suggested that this was referring to whether we live in enclosed cities. "Outside our buildings, it's only atmosphere above us."

"How do you survive?" asked another Eridian.

"We have a nice atmosphere. The right temperature, breathable, you name it," responded Hugo.

"The only planet with that," said Hank.

For the travelers, it was nice to be off of that ship, and they stayed in Narmowangi for nearly two weeks. In addition to the usual sorts of sights and experiences, they went up into the city's observation deck. One of its telescopes had a coronagraph for observing the inner planets, and the travelers got an eyeful of their homeworld with it. It looked like a faint blue-white star, a pale blue dot. The other inner planets were also near the blocked-out Sun: Mercury, Venus, and Mars. The ship crewmembers also used the telescopes to see their homeworlds -- it was far away from home for them also.

The travelers' arrival at Eris became big news, as did some pictures of the Earth from Eris. It looked like a faint blue-white star near the Sun, with the Moon being a much fainter star nearby. "Mall Rats Beat Carl Sagan," according to one headline writer. "Even for the Solar System Community, it's far. So far that light takes 13 hours to get there," noted another journalist.