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.That meant that most processing had to be done on the Faeries.Even onefull-size image would take a significant time to send.And this was even though they were relaying througha separate satellite, put there by NASA a few years back, which had as its sole purpose being acommunications facilitator.The Faeries were advanced.Still, as they had to be space qualified, small, and mobile, their CPUs didn thave anything even vaguely like the power of current processors.With the transmission limitations, theycouldn t send back too much data to be analyzed.That had to be reserved for truly unique work.Both Tinkerbell and Rane s chemical sensing arrays were showing some water spikes.It was time to trymapping that out and see if he could get some idea as to where the outgassing was coming from.It took another hour or so to figure out the optimal search pattern to cover with all sensors, and toPage 66ascertain the parameters of the low-power ion burns that each Faerie would have to perform in order tofly that pattern.Finally he was satisfied with the layout of search and sent out the directives.That, ofcourse, triggered a slow-motion acknowledge repeat confirm cycle to ensure that all the directionshad gotten through and were properly understood.Another hour later, he sent the final  go confirmation.He was tempted to go back to Elemental Flame, but there was business-related Email to answer andother work to do.And this part of the work would take a while.A few hours later, the alert pinged in his ear, letting him know that he was receiving data from thecompletion of his survey pattern.He stretched and dropped the cubicle.It was later than he d thought.There was hardly anyone left around, except Bernie Hsiung over at theNike construction section, overseeing some of the remote construction work in orbit.NASA had beenassembling the material for Nike slowly but surely over the past year, and the work would continue forsome time.Like him, Bernie often spent much of his time just keeping an eye on otherwise automaticprocesses, but it was still necessary to have someone around who had the capability to respond in anemergency. Let s see what we got.Hmm.the internals are still weird, I m going to have to let the experts argueover this stuff.Water emissions as plotted over time.heating patterns correlations.There s water inthere, no doubt, and possibly quite a bit of it.That ll make it a lot more attractive as a base.Transportingwater is such a pain.Emissions and internal mapping plus heat signatures.Ah-ha! Two possibleemission sources.Ariel, my sprite, come to me! Time for you to earn your living.As Ariel was already closer to Phobos, A.J.would use her as his  point man. Ariel would examine thesurface up close near the areas where water vapor was apparently escaping from.If he got lucky, therewould be a crack or cave in the area.After another hour and a half, with Ariel now conducting its survey of the Phobian surface, A.J.headedoff for a bathroom break.He stopped off for a candy bar and soda and then headed back.By then,Ariel s transmitters were showing the gray, soft-edged surface covered with fluffy regolith powderedstone the consistency of flour up close as it drifted along with a carefully-defined path of examination.The first emission site was a bust.There were some cracks, which clearly were the source of some ofthe outgassing.But they wouldn t have admitted a mouse, let alone a sensor drone the size of a largebreadbox.Ariel continued along her way, approaching the locale of the second outgassing.As it cleared a small crater ridge, A.J.couldn t quite restrain a triumphal  Yes!Even to eyes still accustoming themselves to the sharp-edged perceptions needed in the airless setting,there was a clearly darker streak that couldn t be anything other than a crack in the surface of Phobos.Itseemed to be a crack yawning wide about two meters above the surface in one of the many little cliffridges that meandered across the little moon s surface. That swhy it s not buried in regolith, A.J.muttered to himself. Horizontal entryway instead of vertical.Hope that doesn t mean it s to some shallow deposit in the cliff.As Ariel approached the crack, the automated sensor platform slowed according to prior instructionsand directed illuminators into the chasm.It was wider than Ariel by a good half meter in any dimension.Page 67Ariel hovered, waiting for instructions.It wasn t permitted to proceed into the interior unless A.J.directlyordered it to.There was considerable risk here, of course.The width of the crack was sufficient, but there was noway of knowing how far that ran, and even so the margin of safety was very thin.Piloting would bepurely in the hands of the automatics, as there was no way A.J.could react in time to change anythingthat happened.And an accident could easily destroy Ariel.On the other hand, looking at Ariel s sensor data, there was clearly water outgassing from below.Icehad to be present, possibly in significant quantities.And all of his other Faeries were running perfectly.Speaking cold-bloodedly, he could afford to lose one of them.The call was entirely A.J [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]