"'...a planet has been found... The boat is now in surface orbit around it...'" (p. 106)
What is "surface orbit"?
The inhabitants of Shadow Earth have aimed a set of meson-pion bursts "'...directly at the center of the planet where the boat was.'" (p. 107)
The boat was at the center of the planet? The speaker, Commander Nathans, continues that this:
"'...proves an ability to send a particle beam straight through their world. Whether they have a tunnel, or use some induction effect, or whatever, this is something that man cannot do.'" (ibid.)
So the communication is not between the planet and space but through the planet.
We are told that the communication is just beginning but not any of its content. The only issue for the human explorers is whether to stay at Shadow Earth and continue the communication or to return to Earth. The story ends at a beginning.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
This is puzzling, altho a physicist might grasp what Anderson was describing. I'm almost done rereading "Time Lag," next comes "In The Shadow." Sorry, Julian May!
Sean
"What is "surface orbit"?"
As I recall the story, shadow matter & 'normal' matter interact only via gravity. So an orbit that would intersect the ground and result in the destruction of the spacecraft for a normal matter planet works perfectly well in this case. A "surface orbit" in this case is the spacecraft orbiting at a distance from the center of the planet equal to the distance of the surface of the planet from the center.
The later part of your post indicates that the spacecraft at some point moved from being in a "surface orbit" to the center of the shadow matter planet.
Note: the spacecraft can orbit within the shadow matter planet, but since a spherical shell of matter exerts no net gravity on any point within it the spacecraft will 'feel' only the gravity of the matter closer to the center than it is, so orbits below the surface will not be the nice neat ellipses of Kepler.
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