On the ground, Star 475A
Mission time: 3.5 planet days and counting
In which M. Jela Granthor’s Guard goes for a walk.
Here, for a change, we are introduced to a character who will be back again tomorrow: M. Jela Granthor’s Guard, Generalist, who is stuck on a desolated planet after his ship was holed in a space battle, and “being a generalist — and an M” has decided that while he’s waiting for rescue he might as well do some exploring.
It is not explained precisely what a generalist is, although one gets the idea that it’s whatever is the opposite of a specialist. (The idea of a Generalist goes at least as far back as a short story titled “The Solution” that Steve Miller wrote in the days before he and Sharon Lee began collaborating.)
Come to that, it’s not explained in this chapter what any of the rest of it means. From memory, “Jela” is his personal name, and “M.” is his Strain (“like R. Daneel Olivaw”, was the thought that flitted through my head). I don’t recall precisely about “Granthor’s Guard”, whether it was his first posting or is his current posting or what, but I expect that will be cleared up sooner or later.
What is explained is a lot of backstory about the sheriekas and the present state of the galaxy, which will no doubt be important going forward.
The chapter ends with Jela making a Discovery. I am nobly resisting the urge to peek at the next chapter and see what the discovery is. (Admittedly, this would be more noble if I weren’t pretty sure I remember what it is from the first time I read this.)
Okay, it’s the shadow – the “dubious shade of a boulder at the top of the rise” – “dubious” here meaning not very much, yes? And yet, overhead and behind him the sky is going form day-blue to dusk-purple, and the sun is only a few degrees above the horizon. Not only that, “behind him, his shadow was flung back across a day’s walk or more as he strode across the ridge.” Sun nearing the horizon, even a half-man-height boulder is going to throw a relatively long shadow.
My thought was that the “dubious” meant that the shade, though existing in sufficient quantity or size, did not accomplish much in providing a lower temperature to deal with.
So…if the “tallest” trunk, i.e., diameter of a downed tree, was (estimated to be) 6-7 times Jela’s height, what diameter would that be? Do we have a reliable reference for Jela’s height? And then he also estimates that the healthiest trees he’s seeing, i,e., the tallest, would have been above the height of the canyon, do we have any thoughts on what that height might be? If someone has a good estimate, then we might also make a wild guess at the distance Jela covers from the mouth of the canyon to the last living Tree. He counted 3,275 trees. Of course the trees got shorter and shorter and some…and we’re not told how many…had fallen across the river rather than along its banks, so I suppose that’s where our distance calculation would totally break down.
Since Jela is small and a forefather of Liadens I would guess him to be about 1.4 m, a little less than 5 feet. That would put the diameter of the trunk at about 9 m to 10 m (that would be 30 – 33 feet).
Comparison Red Wood Trees: “Some variants reach heights of over 350 ft. Those over 350 ft will have a diameter of over 20 ft. These trees can live for over 2,000 years.” and “The coast redwood can reach 115 m (377 ft) tall with a trunk diameter of 9 m (30 ft)”and “Hyperion: Height 115.85 m = 380.1 feet and Diameter 4.84 m = 15.9 feet, Redwood National and State Parks (RNP)” also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superlative_trees.
One of the things I find astonishing about the Tree is that it must have low branches for the kids to be still climbable. Those redwood trees I mentioned have no low branches. So a tree with low branches would have to have a wider girth to keep its stability, compared to height as those redwoods. Therefor my estimate would be a girth of 10 m might mean a height of about a 150 m. Since I’m no botanical expert I could be quite wrong about that. But let’s keep estimating for the fun of it.
With averaging the first 3000 Trees to be still high I could guess 150 m times 3,000 tress = 450,000 m. The next 200 trees would have been considerably smaller, let’s say only 100 m. And the next 50 trees would be considerably smaller still, let’s say average 50 m, and the last 25 trees 10 m average. Then you could get a distance of 450,000 m + 20,000 m + 2,500 m + 250 m = 472,750 m; 473 km or 1,551,017 feet; 294 miles. That’ll be quite a distance if you’ll have to walk them.
My brain works more slowly these days . . .
Can somebody tell me who or what the “attacking enemy” was that Jela drew off, away from his mothership Trident? He was surprised that the attacking ship was (apparently) actually crewed rather than autonomous. But this does not sound like a sheriekas attack does it? Or did the sheriekas have a particular interest in this planet AND in preventing it from being found and searched, and therefore had assigned some kind of “temporary” allies to be sure the Tree remained undiscovered?
Are these questions ever answered along the way?
To the best of my recollection, we never do get specific answers about the nature and purpose of the attacking ship, though it seems a reasonable assumption that it’s some kind of ally or agent of the sheriekas.
Beginning this story for the 3rd time before coming back to these comments, I concluded that yes, the shriekas did indeed “have a particular interest in this planet AND in preventing it from being found and searched.” Perhaps they had some degree of prescience, and knew that to allow the last Tree to be found would mean to leave themselves open to a sure and final defeat, rather than just a temporary setback.
@ Ed8r I got the impression that the attacking ship was pursuing them from another location, not necessarily interested in the planet itself. (Kind of like Leia’s ship in the first Star Wars movie.). The fact that it caused Jela to land on a world containing the Tree which will eventually defeat the sheriekas can be attributed to the Luck.
Mmmmm . . maybe. But we do know that the sheriekas had been actively trying to destroy—since that’s what they do—all life on this planet, and would not have wanted that life to be found. But sure, I’ll go with the Luck in the sense that it was Jela who was driven to land there.