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Blaine and Jarad faced each other. "Congratulations," said Jarad, "It's all over then."
"Not quite," replied Blaine, "The length of your exile has to be determined. We'll have to wait till your cork pops." He smiled wanly.
This seemed too much for Jarad to comprehend; Blaine wondered if the younger man had paid attention at the academy.
"So when does he come down?"
Blaine looked blankly at Jarad, who exclaimed, "The referee. When does he make his appearance?"
"When the competition is finished." Blaine was beginning to get irritated. "Look, I'll give you a tip: Go back to your area. Find a way to increase your temperature rise rate; the longer this takes, the longer you'll be in exile."
Jarad stared at him blankly. Blaine sighed. "Hadn't you worked that out? The time difference between the winner and loser determines the loser's exile duration."
About an hour later, another pop/bang shattered the stillness of the desert. At this signal, the referee stood up, stretched, and signalling to the two men, descended the steps of her watchtower. The men met her at the foot.
She directed them to the storage area, where she and Blaine had to prompt Jarad as between them they manoeuvred the capsule out into the open. With Jarad in his dazed state it was quite easy for the other two to get him suited, sit him in the capsule and to strap him in. consulting her notes, she programmed in the details, including the 78 minutes that had elapsed between Blaine's and Jarad's cork releases. Completing the security settings, she withdrew from the capsule and sealed it. She and Blaine returned to the Explorer.
As the sun sank below the horizon, the capsule came to life as it ran through the final checks. It seemed to shudder slightly, and shimmer in the starlight; then it didn't so much launch itself into the sky as, well, vanish. They looked at one another. They had both seen this happen before and still, despite everything, didn't fully understand how the translocation drive worked.
Blaine didn't ask about Jarad's destination, because he knew she didn't know. They only knew he would be spending 78 orbits of that planet in exile. After that...well, it wasn't clear to anyone outside the Council what happened next.
Jarad, on the other hand, now knew more about exile that his two erstwhile colleagues. After the initial, and obvious, start-up sequence, he wasn't entirely sure what had happened – but he did know that it left him dizzy, disorientated and nauseous. Having landed, two of those feelings were now fading. The third? Well he had 70-odd orbits in which to become orientated! He laughed bitterly at the joke – a joke well and truly on him.
It was night when he landed, as it had been when his journey started. He watched the sky through the porthole of the capsule. By leaning from one side to the other he could see there were two moons lighting the might. As the hours passed, he observed that one moon moved east to west and the other from west to east.
"That ought to narrow down which planet I'm on." He thought. He tried interrogating the on-board computer. It gave him a list of 473 planets charted in the translocation sphere around Earth known to have two moons moving in opposite directions. He stopped. What if they weren't moving in opposite directions? What if they were moving in the same direction, but at speed either side of the geostationary speed for the planet?
His new search showed there were 2476 planets with two moons, irrespective of their movement. Oh well, he thought, 78 orbits of observation, with a computer capable of calculating translocations – at least I'll know where I've been by the time I leave here!
Loosely based on Two Martian Moons
(c) ER Literary Productions
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Re: Episode 7 - A Duality of Heavenly Bodies
