Bug Fixes

So we have a few problems with the story concept up to now. First and foremost, we have a problem with our day/night cycle. A while back, I’d decided that the exomoon was tidally locked to its mother planet. Therefore, with the exception of the occasional eclipse, it will always be daytime, or at the very darkest twilight (lit only by the light reflected by the mother planet), on the planet-side surface where our Garums live. So in that case, we will not have to worry about ice forming on the surface. Either starlight, or reflective light will be caressing the exomoon’s surface keeping the seas warm.

So our Garums exploring the lights above the water in the sky would have to be during a solar eclipse. That does bring up the point that most likely they (they being the original explorers who first braved the waters’ surface) would have not only looked at the stars, but would also have looked directly at the corona of the star during the eclipse. I’m not going to claim any über 1337ness for the Garums’ eyes, so they would go blind in the process. That brings us to a set of blind Garums (we’ll set it at thirteen total) claiming to have seen multiple dots of light in the sky, and then being struck blind and trying to make this claim from memory. A mythology would grow around the claim, as well as a general debunking of any lights other than the planet proper, and the star. I’ll tackle those concepts later.

Now, I have a big problem to take care of. An aquatic race beneath the seas will obviously not have access to fire. I thought at first it would just affect their propulsion system, but I was wrong. But on to the lack of fire...

Oh, sure—they might have the occasional lava flow under the sea, and a few mineral chimneys spewing forth. But they would not have fire. Ergo they would not have the ability to smelt ore. So we’re not going to have iron, steel, not even bronze. So how are we going to build our space ship? Will our illustrious froggies be stuck in the stone age, with the arts and philosophies their only advances to look forward to?

What if we had a mollusk that secreted a mucus that would harden to a steel-like substance that could be used to make plates? In addition to that, we have a mussel-like mollusk that creates a byssus that is also as hard as steel, that is woven in to the mucus so we come up with almost a Kevlar-ish plate. The mucus secreting mollusk has been selectively bred so it will deliver this mucus on demand, and is used in an industrial setting and the plates are welded together with the mucus. Mmm! Sea snot! Just what I want to travel to the stars in! Meh. But it is what they had to work with.

On to the next bug. Electricity. Oh, sure—they probably had an electric eel type of critter swimmin’ around down there with them. But with a lack of fire, we did not have copper to extrude for wiring. But then back in the day, one of the Garum noticed the electric eel rubbing up against this particular seaweed and zapping a fish that was way up at the top of the weed. They found out on further investigation that the weed conducted electricity. But how to keep the current from bleeding off into the surrounding salt water? Our mucus secreting mollusk comes to the rescue again. His snot does not conduct electricity, and will coat the weed-wire quite effectively. But we cannot build an electric motor, can we? Do we just lift with a farm of electric eels in the back of the ship, and when we need more juice, poke ‘em with a stick?

“Cap’n! She canna take an’a more o’dis! She done ate muh stick!”

Ahem. Sorry.

So we still have the electrical motor bug to fix. Will have to ponder more on this.

Now, a friend (who we’ll call Deuce) had a couple thoughts on my last entry. He was curious as to the Garums’ scientific advancements—particularly in the area of chemistry. Save the Cartel humor. Not that kind of chemistry. He wondered if perhaps they had learned that by mixing certain compounds under water would produce violent chemical reactions that would produce buoyant gas bubbles to assist in bringing a ship to the surface of the sea. I had thought of that as a way for the first stage of their space flight—perhaps even for their version of the Bell X-1 to break the surface as the first step in their exploration. Deuce went on to ponder the possibilities of this gas being used to break the ice cap and launch the ship through. Since we don’t have ice to worry about any more, that might be something that the Garums would use if they ever began to explore the dark side of the exomoon in earnest. He did suggest that the nosecone would have to be set up like an ice breaker. That would get us some heavy use of the byssus encased mucus on the nose cone. But I think it could be done.

So now I just have to think about how to fix my electrical motor problem…