Dr. Fortis Plimick hesitated a moment at the doorway of the tent, blinking. There was artificial lighting inside, but it still took a moment for his eyes to adjust. His attention was drawn to the odd luminescence in patches on the inside face of the sloping tent roof.
“Our eyes seldom encounter direct light on Misty, so we are quicker to adjust to to low light conditions. When you feel comfortable, please have a seat.” The shadowy form waited for Fortis to sit first. The chair was some sort of fabric stretched over a hard frame. It gave just enough, and seemed slightly springy, yet altogether comfortable in conforming to his own shape. It held his weight easily, but the frame was obviously very light. His hand touched something rare among places he had visited — natural wood grain. He would have to pay at least a month’s salary for such a chair back home, if it were available at all.
As Elder George Manley eased into a matching seat almost facing him, Fortis saw a man somewhat older than himself. Unlike the almost generic olive-toned skin of blended races he was used to seeing, the lanky robed man was naturally quite pale where his skin was exposed. George composed himself slowly, then turned to face Fortis.
“I suppose your ship can find it’s way out of this cloud envelope?”
Fortis half smiled. “The computers say they can’t see anything, but would have no trouble reversing the last maneuver, which should be safe, since it was above the orbital plane of your star system.”
George’s eyes sparkled merrily in the light spilling through the tent doorway. “Isn’t it strange how we continue to apply the ancient Terran standards of polarity? Technically, we sit at the very bottom of Misty, but it could as easily be the top. Then it would seem our rotation was normal, instead of retrograde.”
Fortis nodded his recognition.
George continued. “I suppose your ship told you something about Misty?”
It took only a few seconds for Fortis to recount the few details, noting it was just a bit more than what he already knew.
George shook his head with what Fortis felt was exaggerated humor. Suddenly, the elder’s face went rather serious, with a wrinkled brow. “I dare say, your automated systems didn’t really read that from the planet itself.” Fortis raised his eyebrows in question. “You are aware at one time it was necessary to plant beacons for interstellar navigation?”
“Yes; my ship noted one just outside your star system,” Fortis replied.
George half-smiled. “Just before the last war started, a military survey ship stopped by, warning us things were heating up. He also told us he would update the beacon’s records of nearby inhabited worlds. In those days it was considered highly encrypted. I suppose, given the nature of things, such encryption has been long broken.”
Fortis wasn’t even aware of any encryption schemes, but noted his ship’s computers had no trouble reading the ancient beacon. He was surprised it still functioned.
“And I suppose you didn’t perform any directed scanning, but simply allowed the automated system to do its work?” George seemed to be on the verge of delivering a punch line for a joke.
“No. I’m not even sure I would know how,” Fortis replied with a shrug.
George nodded sagely. “I’m willing to wager your ship simply told you what it had collated from the beacon.” He waited a moment, then stared directly into the eyes of Fortis. “Aside from the visible light spectrum, nothing penetrates Misty’s clouds. Nothing. Your energy weapon is utterly useless here. Feel free to carry it, but you wouldn’t need it.”
For just a moment, butterflies tickled Fortis’s stomach. But his fascination with the subject pushed them aside. “You can’t even transmit radio waves?”
“We once tested a visible light transmitter system, but it won’t bounce off the clouds. The lack of range, and lack of usefulness, didn’t justify what for us was a high investment in materials we can’t obtain natively.” He allowed that to hang in the air.
Fortis was able to capture a moment with his intuition. “Then you don’t have much metal and petroleum here?”
Gesturing with his hands around the tent, George replied, “What you see here is some of our highest technology. It won’t appear much immediately, but we have several centuries of careful development of what little we do have.” He paused a moment, shifting forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I feel certain your questions will be answered best by the narrative of how we came to colonize Misty.”
George stood, a fluid motion, unhurried, yet somehow quick. “Let me offer you some tea. I have a special blend which seems to please visitors from off planet.”
