uninhabited planet
Lennie says "G-Gilgamesh was lost three hundred years ago!" "The flaw in that statement," says Cray after a pause, "is that this may be another ship of the same name." "No," says the colonel. "Explorer Class cruiser. They went out of service two hundred eighty years back." The Space Force, I remember, does not re-use names of lost ships: some says Very Proper Feeling some say Superstitious Rot. B says, "When was she found again?"
Lennie says it was j-just thirty-seven revolutions of his native planet which means f-f-fifty-three Terrestrial years ago, she was found by an Interplanetary scout called Crusoe. Judging by the colonel's expression this data is Classified; he does not know that Lennie's family come from one of the oldest settled planets and are space-goers to a man, woman, and juvenile; they pick up ship gossip the way others hear about the relations of people next door.
Lennie goes on to say that the Explorer Class were the first official exploration ships sent out from Earth when the Terries decided to find out what happened to the colonies formed during the Exodus. Gilgamesh was the first to re-make contact with Garuda, Legba, Lister, Cor-bis and Antelope; she vanished on her third voyage. "Where was she found?" asks Eru. "Near the p-p-pole of an uninhabited planet—maybe I shouldn't say where because that may be secret, but the rest's History if you know where to look."
Maybe the colonel approves this discretion; anyway his face thaws very slightly unless I am Imagining it.
"Gilgamesh crashed," he says. "Near as we can make out from the log, she visited Seleucis system. That's a swarmer sun. Fifty-seven planets, three settled; and any number of fragments. The navigator calculated that after a few more revolutions one of the fragments was going to crash on an inhabited planet. Might have done a lot of damage. They decided to tow it out of the way.
"Grappling-beams hadn't been invented. They thought they could use Mass-Time on it a kind of reverse thrust—throw it off course. "Mass-Time wasn't so well understood then. Bit off more than they could chew. Set up a topological relation that drained all the free energy out of the system. Drive, heating system—everything.
"She had emergency circuits. When the engines came on again they took over—landed the ship, more or less, on the nearest planet. Too late, of course. Heating system never came on—there was a safety switch that had to be thrown by hand. She was embedded in ice when she was found. Hull breached at one point—no other serious damage."
"And the ... the crew?" Dillie ought to know better than that. "Lost with all hands," says the colonel. "How about weapons?"
We are all startled. Cray is looking whitish like the rest of us but maintains his normal manner, i.e. offensive affection while pointing out that Gilgamesh can hardly be taken for a Menace unless she has some means of aggression about her.
Lennie says The Explorer Class were all armed— Fine, says Cray, presumably the weapons will be thoroughly obsolete and recognizable only to a Historian—
Lennie says the construction of no weapon developed by the Space Department has ever been released; making it plain that anyone but a Nitwit knows that already.
Eru and Kirsty have been busy for some time writing notes to each other and she now gives a small sharp cough and having collected our attention utters the following Address. "There is a point we seem to have missed. If I may recapitulate, the idea is to take this ship Gilgamesh to Incognita and make it appear as though she had crashed there while attempting to land. I understand that the ship has been buried in the polar cap; though she must have been melted out if the people on Crusoe examined the engines. Of course the cold—All the same there may have been ... well ... changes. Or when ... when we thaw the ship out again—"
