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Introduction:

Polygamy, romance, and landing on a new home world.

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En Route to Ptolemy-1

Astronomer and Geographer Charlie Andersen

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As I climbed out of my tube from cold-sleep, I saw a gorgeous blonde about to get in a tube down the row from mine. Her face was so comely and body so shapely, it was distressing to see her magnificence and know I'd never be lucky enough to win her affection. The sensation was intense enough to cause me physical pain.

I decided I should at least be friendly. I walked over and held out my hand in greeting, "Hi, I don't think we've met. I'm Charlie Andersen."

"Hi Charlie! I've been wanting to meet you! I'm Erica Keller! We're in the same family!"

OHMIGAWD! This beauty was Erica! I hadn't met her before, so I didn't request her at family ***********ion, otherwise I surely would have!

"I'm a big fan of your work! Your paper about close-pass-induced planetary quakes on tidally-locked worlds was ground-breaking!" She was one of the ten people in the whole human race who cared about my hobby? WOW!

"You're far too kind, Erica! Have a good sleep!"

She briefly kissed my lips and said, "Thanks! Have a good shift!" As the window started to fog over, I could see she was smiling and blushing. I'd been awake less than fifteen minutes, and it was a great day already!

I talked with my co-husband Ross, and he didn't know who Erica was. Our three other wives didn't know her either, none of us had picked her.

As I ate breakfast, I realized she must have picked one of us as her preferred ***********ion! Could it be me? Was she THAT interested in my work? I put my food tray in the cleaner and remembered her beautiful blonde hair, her green eyes, her slender waist and nice, round ....

The wall speaker blared; "ACK! ACK! ACK! ACK! ..." ... I tried to remember ... OH NO! RADIATION ALARM!

I ran for my emergency station and remembered the radiation safety protocol. I moved all the items I could to the outside of the compartment, helping the other five people in the room. We sat on the floor and nervously chatted about what could be happening. We waited for the all-clear or instructions. After what seemed like a long time, the all-clear sounded.

At lunch, I learned more about the incident. The ship had passed near the beam from a gamma ray burst. The pilot tried to turn the shielded side of the ship toward the beam and move us away from it, but the thrusters wouldn't fire.

An engineer, Oskar Schmidt, had gone outside on an EVA to repair the thruster wiring. He broke off the ice from one of the leaking water tanks and quickly finished the repair.

If the pilot waited twelve minutes to fire the thrusters, when Oskar would be safely inside the airlock, we would have passed into the beam. Everybody aboard would have received at least twenty times the lethal dose of cosmic and gamma rays. Imagine sitting on the Chernobyl reactor as the accident happened.

Oskar realized we couldn't wait twelve minutes. He bravely said, "Tell Molly and Enka I love them! Fire the thrusters!" As the rockets ignited, they incinerated Oskar and flung his charred remains into space. He was a true hero. He gave his life to save us all.

We had a ceremony to honor him and took a day off for people to recover from the loss. There would be some confusion caused by four of the first boys born on the planet all being named "Oskar", including my oldest son.

The incident inspired me to put more effort into my own work. I couldn't heroically save the mission, but I was determined to make sure we would have safe landing spots, near the resources we needed.

We orbited several of the planets for a few days each and sent scout drones to investigate. I double-checked our information, before sending my initial report to the Commander.

"Star Ptolemy-1 is a blue dwarf 39 light years from Earth, with ten planets, A through K.

A is a Mercury-like world, very close to the star. It rains molten antimony, lead, and arsenic. Its ocean is molten iron and nickel, with an atmosphere of mainly lead vapor. The surface temperature about 1,900 C.

B is Venus-like, with a temperature near 500 degrees, due to a runaway greenhouse effect.

C is rocky, with no water or atmosphere, and a temperature of 200 degrees.

The three planets in the habitable zone are D, E, and F.

E and F are both rocky and cold, like Norway or Alaska on Earth. Life on E or F would be possible, but difficult.

Ptolemy-1 D has been named New Enceladus, in honor of the colony that produced most of our fuel, and the hundreds of tons of Osmium used in our reactor shielding. The Ptolemy-1 D year is 4.5 earth days long. It has no moons and is tidally locked, so it does not rotate. It has no light / dark cycle. The North pole faces the star and is hot, 60 degrees C, with constant daylight. Planetary gravity is 0.6g, with an average surface temperature 3 degrees cooler than Earth. The Chemistry department has advised us the atmosphere is breathable, with more oxygen than Earth, but lower air pressure. It has a single shallow ocean on the North / light side, with salinity 1/10 of Earth's oceans. It’s not quite drinkable, but could easily be filtered.

There are many freshwater lakes and thick vegetation near equator, and a large number of rivers and streams carry rainwater to the ocean. There is a large mountain range with several volcanoes on a small continent in the north, which is very hot and dry.

The South pole is always dark and nearly as cold as Antarctica. It's a flat, frozen desert, getting less than ten centimeters of snow per Earth year. Most storms and precipitation occur near the equator.

The Chemistry department has noticed signs there may be intelligent life, but no radio signals have been detected. If there are intelligent lifeforms on the planet, their technology level could be anything from stone age to early industrial. We need more information about them, before finalizing our landing sites.

Ptolemy B and E can be seen with the naked eye on occasion from the dark side of D.

Every 11 days, C is close enough to D to be visible for hours, and nearly as bright as the star for several minutes. It warms D by 2 to 4 degrees for a short time. The close approaches may also cause seismic activity due to tidal forces.

Ptolemy G is an ice world, with a deep ocean under a thick ice crust.

H and J are gas giants, and K is Pluto-like, a relatively small frozen rock."

I listed the ten best landing sites on D, or New Enceladus, and again mentioned they may change when we discovered new information. Since lander two was destroyed, we would only need 3 locations.

I finished my busy month by staring at Erica's beauty through the window of her tube a moment. We were nearly to our new home and wouldn’t be using cold-sleep anymore. She’d come out of hibernation the next morning, and we’d enjoy our first full day together. I could hardly wait!

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August 2271

Ptolemy-1 D High Orbit

Mission Commander Rito Mori

I read and studied the pre-landing reports from all the department heads. The most frightening thing in the reports was surprisingly from Geology: "There is evidence that sixty to eighty thousand Earth years ago, snow and ice had piled up many kilometers thick near the South pole, until the mass was heavy enough to crack the planetary crust. The resulting super volcano created a cloud of ash and dust in the atmosphere that blocked out light from the star, and caused a two Earth-year long ice age, wiping out a large number of species. This may happen again, probably several million Earth years in the future."

The most immediate danger seemed to be the natives: "The native intelligent species are amphibian in nature, somewhat similar to large frogs on Earth, but the adults have eight legs. They start as eggs laid in shallow fresh water, then tadpoles. We have chosen to call them "Tads", due to this resemblance.

Next they grow to two-legged tadpole-like creatures weighing around half a kilogram, continuing to live and grow exclusively in the water. Their next life stage has a long tadpole-like tail, two large rear legs for jumping, and two front legs with three claws on each front foot, used for grabbing prey in the shallows and muddy shore near the water.

When Tads reach about ten kilos, they grow a third set of short appendages near the head, having three fingers with five knuckle joints each. These are capable of fine manipulation, nearly as dexterous as human hands. At this stage, they live almost exclusively on land, and have approximately the intelligence level of some monkey species on Earth. The fourth and adult stages are both omnivorous, and consume large amounts of plant material in addition to hunting or ranching food animals. The adults do not provide any care or protection for the young. They join the society when their fourth pair of appendages are fully grown, and they become adults.

Their adult stage is reached at about five Earth years and forty to one hundred kilos. They grow a fourth set of appendages with one hooked claw and two fingers, between the fine manipulator hands, and the feet with 3 claws. Females are typically larger, and may grow to over two hundred kilos. Adults appear to be intelligent, and use a wide variety of tools.

Tads have many clans, typically 1 to 3 per lake or river near the ocean. The clans fight each other when resources are scarce. The ocean temperature of 40c is perfect for them. They swim in the ocean and hunt food there, but cannot reproduce in it. Every twelve close passes with planet C, the adults move to fresh water and lay several eggs in the shallows, typically six to ten per female. Being cold-blooded, they slow down and cannot survive long near the equator, where temperatures are typically about 20 degrees C. They also have trouble maintaining bodily moisture, and need to drink or sit in water frequently. We can probably avoid contact with them if we stay near the equator, or south of it.

Their tech level is similar to Europe in the year 50 BCE, the early Roman Empire. They have bronze tools and weapons, and a few larger tribes have early iron technology. They have tools as advanced as small cranes and catapults, and many clans have a stone fort in their village protecting their community’s pond. The adults produce food mainly by farming and ranching. A few of the largest clans have castles, very heavily built due to ground tremors. They frequently throw bronze-tipped spears when hunting or fighting each other. They also use wooden shields edged with bronze, and catapults for inter-clan warfare.

The tribes that live away from the ocean build and spend large amounts of time in artificial ponds, which they heat by burning wood. Some of our scientists find it humorous that their most important invention so far seems to be the hot tub, which triples the area they can survive in.

The Tads have relatively low technology, but a large group of them with catapults, spears, and shields are still a serious danger. Note that due to low gravity and thinner atmosphere, thrown spears or rocks travel roughly twice as far as on Earth."

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I chose three of the recommended landing sites about 30 kilometers apart, at least 100 km farther South than the natives traveled. There would be constant partial sun, due to the planet being tidally locked. The position of our new 'sun' would always appear to be two hours after dawn on Earth. The Botany and Agriculture teams assured me this would be enough light for adequate food production.

Our first two landings went perfectly. Landers one and three touched down softly, within ten meters of their aim points. Our main ship, the Conestoga, wasn't capable of entering an atmosphere safely, but it had resources we could use. As planned, I set the autopilot on the Conestoga to crash it as softly as possible, 100 km east of the lander four site six hours after we landed. A lot of the ship would burn up on entry, but we could at least recycle any metal parts that made it to the ground. I made a final inspection to be sure everybody and everything important was in the final lander. I was the last person off the ship, as I climbed into lander 4 and sealed the hatch.

Lander four came down safely, but inconveniently, in a pond. Apparently, the floating plants resembled flat ground covered with moss. Nobody was injured, and no damage was done. Unfortunately, we had to jump in the cold, waist-deep water, and carry things thirty meters to dry land. The builders were finishing a walkway to it as we saw the fireball of the Conestoga coming down.

The fireball was beautiful, but briefly filled me with dread. Whatever happened, we were stuck. There was no going back. I was in charge, but that also meant I was responsible for anything that went wrong. I put on a brave face to inspire the others.

I shouted to everyone, "We'll build a forge and workshop on top the hill over there. It'll be the first building in New Dallas. Let the Conestoga's fireball mark today in your memory! This is our first day on our new home! Let's work together and make it a happy one!"

Our first priorities were water, then tools to let us produce everything else. Next would be food and shelter.

Each lander already had a water treatment system, which only took an hour to set up. They also had a small reactor, which could supply a few hundred people with electric power for a decade. We'd need to come up with another power supply by then, or make do without.

We cleared and planted enough farmland in the first three weeks to feed us once our crops matured. Everyone who wasn't making tools or building homes helped out with the farming, even scientists and engineers. Each settlement had two small electric tractors, which made things much easier than they could have been.

The lander had space in it for a third of us to sleep at a time, so we slept in shifts the first week, until several homes had been built. We had all the necessities constructed and prepared after two months. A barn and chicken coops were built, and pastures were fenced in. The lander was converted into a medical clinic.

We gathered our first chicken eggs after three months, and they and the native fish we learned were edible were a nice protein addition. After five months, we were able to add chicken to one of our meals each day.

I wanted to hold off on allowing pregnancies until we had milk and pork in production, but people weren't willing to wait. By the fifth month, we already had six 'purples' due to disallowed pregnancies, and one woman had even given birth. The Agriculture department assured me we would have goat milk in three months and pork production in two more, so I made the big announcement.

"Today is a great day in New Dallas. Currently none of us are allowed to produce any children, and all our families are on this list. I’ll be removing two families from the list every week, so that Medical will be able to keep up with all the births. The families that have a Purple will be removed from the list last. Our first eight embryo children will be produced by Emma Sanders, Alaki Manu, and the other ladies in their families. Congratulations!"

When we had thirty children over age three in the colony, we constructed a school and playground. Once we had plenty of grain coming in, I had a chemist set up a small brewery to produce beer. It was too cold for growing grapes, so wine wasn't an option. Anything stronger than beer was banned, for safety's sake. The bar at the ‘Party Palace’ tavern and hotel was the only place drinking alcohol was allowed, and I figured plain old horniness would prevent anybody from staying at the bar long enough to drink too much. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked out well.

We came up with a good method for avoiding jealousy when people had encounters with those outside their family. Each adult would spend one night a week at the Party Palace, with the rest of their family staying home. Everybody got a turn, and people didn't have to see their loved ones with others. It wasn't just allowed. For the sake of genetic diversity, it was required. There was a dance floor near the entrance, and a dozen small suites. A lot of people called it the 'Love Shack', after an old song.

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