Summer Solstice Part 3

"Is it done, master?"

"One more measurement. I need to know the distance of the dot to the base of the gnomon." He placed the rod at the base of the gnomon and alongside the noon dot. "Hm. Check me here, Bes. What number do you read?"

The scrivener squinted. "It is one and a quarter units, and yet it is a generous quarter.''

"We'll call it one and a quarter." He doesn't ask why, thought Eratosthenes. He doesn't wonder. He doesn't care. Not one hoot of the owl of Athena in Hades. He gets his daily bread, with an occasional extra ration of beer. He has his G.o.ds and his feast-days, and he's happy. A true son of the Nile. Well, why not? It seems to work for him. He said, "Tell the guard of the kitchen I said to give you three puncheons of good brown khes, suitable for Ptolemy's own table. One for you, one for your wife, and one to lay on the altar of Horus, the hawk-G.o.d of the sun, who has favored us today."

Bes bowed low. "The master overwhelms me."

He's not even being sarcastic, thought Eratosthenes. "Go," he said.

And now back to the calculations. The gnomon was ten units high. The leg measurement was one and a quarter. The tangent of the sun angle was therefore one hundred and twenty-five thousandths. What was the angle? It ought to check out pretty close to seven degrees, twelve minutes. He had trigonometric tables in the Library that would give the value. Check. Confirm. Recheck. Pile up the data. It's the only safe way.

Why was he doing this? Who cared whether the earth was a globe? Who cared what size that globe might be? Not Ptolemy Philadelphus, his lord and master, the pharaoh-G.o.d, who had brought him here to run the great Library. In fact, Ptolemy had made veiled references to temple pressures. Hor-ent-yotf, the high priest of Horus, was complaining that these studies were demeaning to the hawk-deity and might even foreshadow a revival of monotheism, as attempted by Ikhnaton a thousand years ago. That misguided pharaoh had proclaimed, "There is but one G.o.d, and he is Aton, the sun. Pull down all other temples." The crazed pharaoh had been slain and his name obliterated from all monuments. Over the years the tombs of all his descendants, direct and collateral, had been searched out and desecrated.

All except one, mused the geometer. The boy pharaoh, who married the third daughter of the heretic. The youth had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, of course, and then properly and secretly buried, along with suitable treasures, in a hillside in the necropolis at Thebes. However, before the Aton-haters could find the grave, the tomb of the fourth Rameses was dug in the cliffside just above, and the boy-king's grave was buried under the quarry chips. Eratosthenes had seen the maps and read the reports, and then he had hidden them away.

And why was he thinking of the tomb of Tut-ankh-amun? Because it was knowledge that might save his life.

He pa.s.sed on into the building and walked through silent halls into the mathematics room. Here he found the scroll of trig tables and ran his finger down the tangent columns. The angle whose tan is one hundred twenty-five thousandths. Here we are. Seven degrees, seven and one-half minutes. I was looking for seven degrees, twelve minutes. Well, not bad. Within experimental error? And how good are these tables? Some day soon, redo the whole thing. Suppose I take the average. Call it seven degrees, ten minutes, or almost exactly 1/50 of a circle. Base line, Syene to Alexandria, 5,000 stadia.

So if the Earth is a sphere, 5,000 stadia is 1/50 of its circ.u.mference, which is, therefore, 250,000 stadia.

Two hundred and fifty thousand stadia.

That's what the numbers said. But was it really so? Such immensity was inconceivable.

He rubbed his chin in perplexity as he walked over to the big table where his map was spread out. His greatest work. Ptolemy himself had praised it and had accorded the ultimate flattery of reproducing the map in mosaic in the floor of his study. Copyists were turning out duplicates at the rate of one every two weeks, and probably making all sorts of errors in their haste. For which he, the author, would be blamed, of course.

He bent over the sheet.

It had been a magnificent effort, drawn mostly from doc.u.ments in the library: travelers' reports (especially Herodotus'); terse military accounts; letters; local descriptions; sea captains' logs; census and tax reports. To the west, it showed the Pillars of Hercules; and even beyond that, Ca.s.siterides, the tin-islands discovered by Himilco the Phoenician. To the east, Persia, conquered by Alexander, and on to India and the Ganges River. And beyond that a mythic land, Seres, where a fine fabric called silk was woven. Then the legend isles of c.i.p.angu (which he didn't even show). But the whole known world, from west to east, was at most 75,000 stadia-less than one-third of the sphere he had just calculated.

And yet he knew his numbers were right.

There was more to the world than he or anyone else had dreamed.

Was the rest simply water? Vast, barren seas? Or, on that other invisible hemisphere, were there balancing land ma.s.ses, with peoples and cities and strange G.o.ds? His heart began to pound. He knew it was futile to speculate like this, but he couldn't help it. Some day...

7. The Light

Khor sniffed the cabin air. Was it going stale? Yes, the CO2 was definitely building. Which meant the absorbers were very nearly saturated. Why hadn't the alarm sounded? And then he noticed. The purifier bell was ringing. And the proper red light was flas.h.i.+ng. Swamped by his other troubles, he just hadn't noticed. Alkali. Did he have any more? No. He re-membered shaking out the last flecks of sodium carbonate from the container. He had tossed the empty box into the disposal.

Was there any chance of finding alkali down there on that watery little planet?

Conserve. Conserve. Breathe slowly, slowly. Khor, you luckless zoologist. Whatever possessed Queva to give you her sleep key? Not very smart of her.

Well, now, Planet III, just what sort of world are you? Is there intelligent life down there, waiting to hand me emergency tape, a barrel of oil (meeting hydraulic spec K-109, of course), and a basket of alkali? And (who knows) maybe they'll hand me a featherless biped as I leave.

How silly can I get?

He watched the 3-D shaper carve out a fist-sized copy of the planet sphere: blue for oceans, brown for continents, white for polar ice. He pulled the ball out of the lathe and studied it. Very, very interesting. How big? No way to tell. All he got was shape and surface. No matter. Maybe he was going to live after all. There had to be something down there. He put the ball in a fold of his s.p.a.ce-jacket.

Back now to the screen.

Looking visually. Night-side. But no city lights? No civilization? Take her around again. Another orbit. Try north-south. Nothing? Not yet. Night side again. Maybe I'm too high. Lower... lower still. Watch out! Water! Slow down. I'm over some kind of sea. Hey-a light! A big one! It's a light house! Better switch on my running lights... what's the convention? Alternating red... green... white... blue. Plus a forward search beam. By Zaff, I see buildings. Spread out... a city. Saved!

Where to put down?

8. Arrival

Eratosthenes wrapped his woolen cloak tighter about him as he stared out to sea. It was the last hour of evening and the first of night. Dark sea was indistinguishable from dark sky. The constant north wind pushed back the dubious perfumes of the delta and the royal harbor, to his rear. He inhaled deeply the crisp salt air blowing in from the reefs.

He stood on the balcony of the great light house, on the Isle of Pharos, that long spit of limestone protecting Alexandria from the encroaching Great Green. He was so high, and the air so pure, that he didn't even have to use mosquito ointment.

Ah, Pharos-isle of strange and diverse fortunes! Menelaus, bound homeward from the Trojan War, blown ash.o.r.e and becalmed by angry Zeus, nearly starved here, with disdainful Helen. So Homer sang. How long ago? Eight centuries, perhaps nine. But then eighty-two years ago the great Alexander came. "A fine island," he said. "It will shelter a new city, over there on the delta." He paced it out, where to put everything. Everything but the final essential building: his tomb. The first Ptolemy had built that and then had brought the body back.

"Eratosthenes." he said to himself, "you're dodging the issue. You're thinking about everything except the problem." Ah, yes. So he had confirmed (in his own mind at least) that the Earth was a sphere, with a circ.u.mference of 250,000 stadia. But it was too much. A globe that size! Incredible. Or was it? There was, of course, a rough check, available to anyone. You didn't have to go to Syene. You didn't have to look down a well at high noon, on the day of the solstice. There was another way. Just an approximation, of course.

He walked a slow circuit of the balcony, pondering vaguely the beauty of the night sea and the twinkling lamps of the city. It was lonely here, and he could think. No one to bother him. The lighthouse keepers knew him as the curator of the great Library, and let him come and go as he pleased. Far below in the courtyard Ne-tiy waited patiently with the chariot.

To the north nothing was visible except the stars and the light shaft thrusting out horizontally from the great concave mirror at the top of the tower. He had come here to think about that light beam. It was supposed to be visible out to sea for 160 stadia. To him, that was one more proof that the Earth was spherical. The light was visible out to sea to the point where the Earth's curvature shut it off. He reviewed the problem in his mind. He saw the diagram again. Circles. Tangents. The height of the Pharos tower, taken with the seaward visibility. That would give an angle-call it alpha- with the horizon. That angle alpha would be identical to the angle-call it beta-at the center of the Earth subtending the 160-stadia chord of the light shaft. The lighthouse was two-thirds of a stadion high. The sine of the angle alpha was therefore two-thirds divided by 160, or 417 hundred thou-sandths. Next, the angle whose sine was 417 hundred thousandths was about 14'/3 minutes, or about 1/1500 part of a circle, and finally, 1500 times 160 gave you 240,000 stadia. Close enough to the Syene measurement of 250,000. So he couldn't be too far wrong. He had done the numerical work already. He knew the result before he came out here tonight. But he still found it hard to believe. The Earth couldn't possibly be that big. Or could it? Had he made an error somewhere? Maybe several errors? Actually, the measurements using the lighthouse were not easy to make. Sighting the Pharos light had to be done at sea from a pitching, bobbing boat. Subtractions had to be made for the height of the perch at the mast top.

He clenched his jaw. He had to believe his numbers. He had to believe his rough check. And he had to believe the only conceivable conclusion that his calculations offered. The Earth was indeed a huge sphere, in circ.u.mference 240,000 to 250,000 stadia, more or less.

The question now was, should he so report to Ptolemy, and possibly get himself discharged from his post at the Library. Or worse?

He was due at the palace by midnight. He would have to decide within hours.

He had just turned back, to descend the outer stairway, when something in the dark northern skies caught his eye. Lights, moving, flas.h.i.+ng. And different colors. Red... green... white... blue... flas.h.i.+ng, on and off. And then that terrific shaft of white light... brighter even than Pharos... coining straight at him!

He threw his arm up over his eyes. There was a roar overhead. The tower shook. And then the thing was gone... no, not entirely. There it was, over the Library quarter... hovering now, stabbing its blinding light beam down. He raced around to the side of the light tower.

What in the name of Zeus!

Was it now over his house, the great manse entrusted to him by Ptolemy Philadelphus? He stared in horrified amazement.

By the wine bags of Dionysus, the thing was... descending into his fenced park.

For a moment he was paralyzed. And then he recovered and started down the stairs. Outside, he awoke the dozing charioteer. "Ne-tiy! Home! Home!"

9. Encounter

Khor read the preliminary data in the a.n.a.lyzer. Oxygen, nitrogen, air density, viscosity, temperature... Nothing obviously toxic. Gravity a little low. No matter. Everything within acceptable limits. He turned off the lights and got out. Fortunately for the s.h.i.+p (not to mention his unwitting host), he had come down in a clearing. There were trees and hedges on all sides. Tiny little things, but they would provide shelter. He had landed within some sort of private estate, and very likely he could complete his repairs without the bother of curious and/or hostile crowds. And what did they look like? If they built cities, they must have hands, and legs to get about, and certainly they were able to communicate with each other. Probably very handy little fellows.

He walked on the cropped turf back to the rear of the s.h.i.+p. Yes, there was the hole. He played the light on it and around it. The outer plate had laminated over nicely. Only the interior would need attention. Well, get with it. Start knocking on doors. "Could I borrow a few hundred xil of adhesive tape? And a load of high-spec hydraulic fluid (you supply the container). Plus a var of sodium carbonate. Just enough to get me to a star some nine light cycles away."

And that raised another problem. What language did these creatures speak? Better get the telepathic head-band. He crawled back up the hatchway and returned with it. Suppose they're unfriendly? Should I bring a weapon? No, I've got to look absolutely peaceful.