Greetings peace loving readers. Thanks for being here.
The Death Watch for Harappa continues. Harappa is the world I grew up on. I knew nothing of any other worlds as a young man. I only knew Harappa. Humans survived there for over two hundred and fifty years and would have been there much longer if John Trenton Keller had not irresponsibilly fired his starship’s energy beam weapon at Harappan freedom fighter Paladin Thain. That action started a series of events that are leading to the demise of that world. That’s history, we all know that story but how great a planet was Harappa in the first place?
Not very. There were only a few livable places on the planet that were not too hot or too high in altitude. It is estimated that the planet could not support more than a half a million people at best. The algea in the oceans was a great food source and that was what allowed the number to be so high.
There were issues about the orbit of Harappa. When Marcus Johnson and his followers first heaadded there they were concerned about a strange wobble the planet had. We now know that was the effect of the Blue Moon, a small gas giant attached to Harappa because of the heavy gravitational pull of the mineral, illumaphane.
The Blue Moon protected Harappa from the asteroids in that system, essentially sweeping a clear path for the world. The connection between Harappa and the Blue Moon was tenuous and since we did not completly understand illumaphane and its effects the SID might have gone past Harappa as a potential terraformation project. They would have seen too much of a risk that the two world dance could someday dissolve and Harappa would be unsafe. Much like we are seeing there now.
There was an old expression on Harappa “The Founder’s Luck”. Turns out that Marcus Johnson was indeed a very lucky man. His journey on the Arc of the Millenium with his two thousand followers could have very easily been a suicide mission.
Never mix red wine and Oodo.
Philip Normer
Kushan Year 88
Earth Year 2480
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