017

Reflections in the Sea

It took a few days to get back to Willow Hollow, but to Jeh, Rina, and Rona it felt like almost no time at all passed. While the three of them had been shaken slightly from the encounter with the wraith, the trip back had been largely pleasant. It was true that the three of them were far from normal, but this did nothing to stop them from playing as children all the way back with lots of laughs, jokes, and shared experiences.

When they finally returned, they noted that a small crowd had gathered around the middle of town.

“Oh, what excellent timing!” one of the twins said.

“It looks like they just finished the launchpad!” the other finished.

Jeh grinned. “Ah, looks like I’ll be going back to space soon! …The next experiment is to try to do it underwater, I think…”

“It’s even better than that!” one said.

The other nodded. “Crowds get hungry.”

“And the bakery has been closed since we’ve been gone.”

“A ripe opportunity for profit!” They took their backpacks off and took out some of the bread they had baked for the journey and not eaten. While not fresh, it was still high quality and that would be enough to get people to buy it. The twins waved to Jeh and quickly distributed themselves into the crowd, offering bread for a “low low price” to everyone they could. They readily got a few takers, their success only heightened by the fact that most people were paying attention to the launchpad and not how much money they were spending on bread.

Jeh made her way through the crowd to the center. As she got closer, she could make out Lila giving what sounded like the end of a speech.

“…and with this new launchpad we will be able to explore further into the depths of space, and everyone will be able to watch! The Skyseed shall rise to the occasion, uncovering the great secrets of the beyond while also bringing more income to this little town of ours. We are doing something no one has ever done before, and I want to thank you all for accepting the Wizard Space Program. Without your support, this launchpad would not be made.”

Jeh managed to push out of the minor sea of people to see Lila beaming down at all the citizens surrounding the launchpad. The structure itself was very simple: just a large slab of stone raised above the ground and sanded down to a smooth, flat surface. The Skyseed currently sat in the middle of the launchpad. To Lila’s side was the rest of the Wizard Space Program, most of whom were giving great big smiles to the crowd as well. Big G wasn’t, but he didn’t smile all that much to begin with, so it wasn’t surprising.

“We currently do not know when our next launch will be,” Lila continued. “But we are getting requests for pictures every couple of days now, and as soon as our pilot returns we—“

“Helloooo!” Jeh waved from the front of the crowd.

Lila looked down from the launchpad at Jeh in surprise. “Oh! It looks like our pilot has returned, everyone! Come on up here, Jeh!”

Jeh was just tall enough to climb onto the launchpad without any assistance, though it took a bit of grunting to pull herself up. She stood up and put her hands on her hips, turning to the small crowd with a big smile. “Hey everyone! Who’s excited about space!?”

While there were a few excited cheers from the crowd, it wasn’t as much as Jeh had been expecting. Maybe not everyone was on board as she thought? Or maybe people were just quiet.

Lila continued speaking. “With Jeh’s return, we will likely launch again within a few days. The next major experiment will be to fill the Skyseed with water and fish to figure out how aquatic species will fare in space. We are currently waiting on a diving helmet for Jeh to use, but the moment we get it, you’ll all know about it. Then we’ll meet right here for the countdown.”

She paused, flicking her ears to let it all sink in. “Now, I know some of you have concerns about this project—while you support it, you wonder if we are ‘striving for greatness’ a bit too much. I want to say that I am glad to hear such concerns voiced. Yes, we are doing things no one else has done before, so far as we know. And it will be quite impressive. There is a real danger in becoming too proud of our accomplishments. However, because I hear these concerns, I’m not too worried about it—it means we are aware of the danger. In the end, we are not doing this for the money or the fame. We’re doing it because it’s something worthwhile to do. Dia gave us this universe to explore and uncover; why wouldn’t we enjoy it to our fullest?”

Many faces in the crowd nodded in agreement. A few shoulders relaxed.

“I will talk more about this at meditation tomorrow, but this is not the place for a sermon.” She chuckled to herself, getting a few chuckles out of the crowd as well. “This is a moment of celebration. The launchpad is complete and it’s time to go forward to the next project! Once again, I want to thank you for your support. This is all a little crazy, but it’s working.” Her ears perked up and she bowed at the small crowd, prompting them to erupt in applause.

Since that was the signal that the speech was over, most of the people started to disperse, though a few stayed behind to talk to Lila, conversations which she readily accepted. However, Jeh was soon too distracted to pay attention to her conversations, because Blue was pulling her into a hug.

“Welcome back!”

Jeh grinned. “Glad to be back!”

Blue examined Jeh’s clothes. “Your clothes are a mess.”

“Well, there were a lot of traps in the temple-thing. It was fun!”

Blue examined the massive hole in the fabric near Jeh’s midsection. “…Yeesh, that’s some trap…”

“I know, right?”

“Why don’t we go back to the cabin and you can tell me all about it?”

Jeh nodded eagerly. “Absolutely! And you can tell me what weird science you’ve been doing!”

“Well…”

“Mirrors!” Krays shouted. “It’s mirrors.” She held her hand to her eyes and looked up at the sky. “Looks like the weather’s stopped being a wet blanket.”

“It wasn’t raining…?” Mary said.

“Ah, but there’s no pathetic malnourished clouds, so we can cart the mirror up the mountain today!” She clapped her hands. “Who wants to go get uncomfortably close to Joira’s lawn and make her shout angry words at us?”

“Me!” Jeh shouted.

“Let’s try to avoid a conflict?” Suro suggested.

Krays crossed her arms. “I promise to take not purposefully bother Joira. I’m just putting my money on the idea that she’s going to bother us.”

“That will be later tonight, though,” Blue said. “We don’t want to test how far we can see in the day, we want the night.”

“Still need to set everything up,” Krays said. “We have the mountain mirror, the tarp… everyone needs to get to the observation locations…”

Jeh clapped her hands excitedly. “What are we waiting for? Let’s start doing the science!”

“…No break?” Blue asked.

“Nope! Science time!”

“Well, all right then…”

~~~

“Ma’am?”

Joira didn’t take her gaze off the unusual sight of a Red wizard and an excitable blue gari climbing up the very obvious mountain path.

With a giant mirror and lots of folded black cloth.

“Ma’am?”

“What on Ikyu are they doing…?” Joira wondered aloud.

“Er… something with mirrors.”

“Obviously. But why? And why are they taking it up to us?”

As she said these words, Vaughan and the gari Joira didn’t know the name of stopped in their tracks and set the mirror down on top of a rocky outcropping. The gari angled the mirror so it intercepted the light of the setting sun and flashed it into Vaughan’s eyes, after which she laughed loudly enough to be clearly heard from Joira’s elevated vantage point.

“Perhaps they just need a high vantage point?” the Red Seeker suggested.

Joira frowned. “It’s never that simple…” The mirror they set up was a rectangular one, but even from her distance, she could tell that cloth had been wrapped around it in such a way that only a large circle was visible. Vaughan took some kind of Purple-heavy arcane device out of his robes but didn’t use it. Then… the two of them just sat down on a nearby rock.

Almost like they were waiting for something.

“…This is ridiculous,” Joira muttered.

“They… haven’t trespassed,” the Red Seeker pointed out.

“They’re like an army pulling up to a border. No treaties have been broken, but it’s sure aggressive.”

“…Well, what are we going to do then?”

“Hey!” Joira shouted at the top of her lungs. “What are you doing down there!?”

The first response Joira heard was a laugh from the gari, followed by her slapping Vaughan on the back playfully but powerfully. Joira felt her rage build up within her, but the gari managed to shoot off a response before she burst.

“We’re doing science, paranoid fire hag!”

“Hag!?”

“Ignore her!” Vaughan shouted back, pushing the gari behind him. “Krays is just a bit colorful, is all!” He put his hands behind his back. “We are merely waiting for night so we can test the reflective properties of this mirror! Several teams are waiting further down to see if they can see our reflections!”

“Then what’s the device for, huh!? Answer that!”

“It’s a solar beam! Shines a light at the intensity of the sun!”

“Then why are you waiting for night to come!?”

“Because we’re trying to figure out how big to make our spherical mirror so we can see it when we launch it into space!”

“…That’s absurd!” Joira pointed an accusatory finger. “This entire thing is absurd!”

“Are we not the kind of people to do absurd things!?”

Krays butted in again. “You’re talking to a wizard who flew all the way up your mountain on a haphazard metal mushroom just to get the kid back! And has done many other questionably absurd things! Like, let’s see…”

Vaughan nudged Krays, trying to get her to shut up.

She didn’t. “He doesn’t want you to know about the time I found him trying to wax the arcane furnace with fruit juice just to ‘see what would happen!’ This is the guy setting up a mirror on the mountain!“

Vaughan said something at a volume nowhere near loud enough for Joira to hear.

“The floppity-hat man thinks you get the point! But I don’t! So sit back, granny, and let Krays tell you the story of the magnet incident! I—“

“Enough!” Joira called down at her. “I grow tired of your words!”

“Aww, thanks! Yours fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling! Especially when you’re annoyed for no good reason!”

Joira twitched. “I have every right to be infuriated at insults given to my face!”

“You’re a bit too far away for me to see your face!”

“Do you want me to come down there!?”

Krays shrugged. “It would stop all this needless shouting! My throat feels like a volcano that was just fed a porcupine that was slightly too large!”

The Red Seeker coughed from behind Joira. “We don’t have time for this….”

“Why not?”

“Nobody can find Ukelele.”

Joira let out a sharp hiss and a swear. “Don’t try anything funny!” Joira shouted down at Vaughan and Krays.

“I’ll be as boring as the day I was born!” Krays called up.

Joira wasn’t stupid, she knew that sentence probably meant something other than what it sounded like, but she really didn’t have time. She tried not to think about how much she had wasted with this shouting match.

Decidedly angrily, she stormed her way back up the mountain to the Seekers’ settlement. Someone was going to be in for a world of hurt when she got up there…

The Red Seeker dutifully trailed along behind her.

~~~

“Sooo…” Jeh said, tilting her head to the side. “How exactly is this going to work?” She gestured at the wooden pole with fireworks stacked around it that Blue had just set up in Vaughan’s backyard.

“The pole is just a marker,” Blue said. “We know how far this pole—and the others, one in town, one out in the forest—is from the point Vaughan and Krays are setting up on Mt. Cascade. When it gets dark enough, Vaughan will start reflecting the light off the big mirror with different areas of it covered. When we see it, we are to release one of the fireworks.”

“Wouldn’t that be loud?”

Blue shook her head. “Seskii got some flares when she went out, they’re relatively silent but quite bright—enough for our purposes.”

“So that’s it? We just… watch for light from the mountain?”

“For us? Yes. Mary and Suro are going out into the forest and will set up a little Magenta beacon so Vaughan knows where to point the mirror, but he can already see ours.” She gestured up at the top of Vaughan’s cabin, where the Magenta loop continually cycled.

Jeh nodded. “Watch. Got it. Then we know exactly how big to make the thing, right?”

“Well…” Blue let out a soft wince. “Suro and Vaughan pointed out two big problems with doing that directly. And…” Blue glanced at the sun— it was in the process of setting. It wouldn’t be dark for quite some time. “…Hey, instead of me telling you, would you like to see?”

“See?”

“Yes! We set up a dark room in the cabin to play with light, come on!” With a slight skip in her step, Blue trotted into the cabin and led Jeh to one of the cabin’s many rarely-used rooms. Over the last few days they had sealed up the windows and pressed dense fabric into the door’s cracks. It made it supremely awkward to open and close the door, but Blue’s telekinesis allowed her to refit all the loose folds of fabric back into place so as to block all light.

She shut the door and it became pitch black.

“…Spooky,” Jeh commented.

“We had to make it really dark. Here, Jeh…” Blue’s levitation aura cast a slight bluish light over the room, revealing numerous tables with Purple crystals, flat sheets of metal with holes in them, and a few small oddly-shaped mirrors—some of which were broken and in bad shape, but were nonetheless useful for quick experiments. Blue placed a small Purple crystal with a few Magenta components into Jeh’s hand. “That will create roughly the amount of ambient light from starlight into this room. I need you to maintain it for me, okay?”

Jeh activated the arcane device, casting a very faint glow onto everything around them. “Got it.”

“Good. Now, stay still there…” Blue trotted to Jeh’s side and stood with her head stooped down so her eyes would be at the same level. With her telekinesis, she placed a metal sheet with a tiny hole in it on top of a table, and then she lit a very small candle. For a moment, it illuminated the room, but she quickly covered it in a box with an open side so the only light from the candle came through the tiny hole in the metal. “Now, obviously, you can see that.”

“Mhm!”

“Now, watch…” Blue placed a sheet of clouded glass between the candle and the metal sheet, dimming the light. “Harder to see?”

“Yeah, but still easy.”

“Let me know when you can’t see it anymore.” Blue kept adding more and more sheets of clouded glass between the candle and the hole.

“Stop, can’t see it anymore,” Jeh said.

“I can,” Blue said with a smirk. “That’s the first problem. My eyes are far more sensitive than yours.”

“It’s because they’re so big, isn’t it?”

“Probably, but Ripashi’s eyes are better, even though they’re smaller. Each of the different races has different eyes with different abilities to see.”

“Oh, is that why the book I read that counted the stars mentioned that it only counted those visible to the human eye?”

Blue nodded. “It is common tradition to treat human eyes as the baseline. Human anything, really. By the way, your eyes are the ‘completely standard’ variety, you saw through the same amount of glass panes as Mary and Big G.”

Jeh tilted her head. “…So I’m normal in some way, at least. Weird.”

“Anyway, this is why we need human eyes at every checkpoint, to make sure our data is consistent,” Blue said. “I had completely forgotten about this. Suro had not. But this was a relatively obvious issue that we would have probably figured out anyway. The other issue…” Blue levitated a small pocket mirror and a spherical mirror of the same diameter. She turned the box that shrouded the candle around, allowing it to cast light onto the back wall. She carefully levitated the pocket mirror and reflected it into Jeh’s eyes.

“Bright,” Jeh observed.

“Painfully so, to most people,” Blue said. “But watch when I put a sphere of the same size at the same place…” She put the spherical mirror in the same place as the flat one, then turned to Jeh.

“…It’s not as bright,” Jeh realized.

“Exactly,” Blue said. “The flat mirror is able to redirect all light hitting it in one direction. The spherical mirror, however, spreads the light out in all directions. When Vaughan pointed this out I felt like it was hopeless—to test the various mirrors we’d have to build a spherical mirror of every size! But, no, apparently in the higher classes at the Academy they teach ‘detailed optics’ and from that you can calculate relative brightness of a spherical mirror opposed to a flat one.”

“Uh…”

“I won’t bore you with the details since… well I don’t have them, Vaughan did those calculations.” Blue laughed nervously. “But the intensity of light of a spherical mirror depends on what angle you’re looking at it from. Directly at the front is the most intense, while it drops to zero at a ninety-degree angle. We did some small-scale experiments in this room with these two mirrors to confirm the correlation. The end result is that, since we had a small mirror, we can now scale up to a large mirror without actually building the giant ball.”

Jeh blinked. “I… think I get it. Save work by doing a small experiment before the big one?”

“Exactly. With the data we have, we could have, in theory, scaled the relation up to larger distances. However, jumping from small-scale to large-scale would have issues. We don’t know how much of an effect the atmosphere has—it has to have some, as we’ve seen from your pictures—and there may be some confounding factor we aren’t aware of. But with this mountain test, we should be able to confirm… and then figure out how big we need to make our satellite.”

Jeh started jumping up and down. “Yesssssss…”

“You might be disappointed, there’ll be a lot of standing out in the cold night air staring at nothing. Then after we’re done we go to sleep and I have to run calculations in the morning to find the size we need. The results won’t be automatic and there’ll be a lot of numbers and redundancy…”

Jeh frowned. “Well… it’ll be fun to do science with you, at least! Right?”

“I sure hope so…”

~~~

“You sure we’ll be able to see the brightest setting?” Mary asked Suro as she held a hand over her eyes and looked at the shadow of Mt. Cascade in the distance.

“Absolutely,” Suro said. “The mirror’s huge.”

Mary hugged her coat to herself and looked around at the trees around them—all cast in shadow since they didn’t want to use any lights to ruin their night vision. She could barely see the pole with all the flares. “It’s just, it’s getting later than expected…”

“We’re the furthest group out, so we’re the last one he’s going to shine the light at. Don’t worry.” Suro flicked a tail. “It might have just taken some time to get everything set up and maybe there were some technical difficulties.”

“Maybe we missed it…”

“A new star lighting up on top of the mountain we’re staring at that lasts for several seconds is not going to be missed, Mary.” He placed a paw on her leg. “It’ll be fine.”

Mary nodded. “Right…”

“I’d offer to let you take a rest, but your eyes are the ones we need.”

“Oh, no, I said I’d do this, I’m doing this.” She tightened her jaw and stared with determination at the mountain. “I will see what needs to be seen.”

Suro padded over to the flares, checking to make sure their fuses were exposed and pointed in the right direction for the seventeenth time that night. A simple application of Red and up they’d go. They had seen some flares go up from the other groups, but from their angle, it was hard to tell if it was the group from the cabin or the town itself. There hadn’t been any flares for a while. Up a nearby tree they had a glowing Magenta beacon—not providing much light, but it did send it out in every direction so it should have been easy to pick out from the dark background. But maybe it was slightly too dim?

“You used to all-nighters, Suro?” Mary asked.

Suro nodded. “I regularly work without… checking the time at all. Larger projects consume me.”

“I’m amazed you don’t fall asleep.”

“You tired?”

Mary nodded. “A bit. I can handle a night every now and then—sometimes the farm just needs more work than the day allows. But I have been staying up a lot more than usual now that I’m on this program…” She rubbed the back of her head. “At least it’s not every day?”

“True.” Suro thought about this for a moment. “I may have an advantage. When I was young and traveling, there were many times it was simply… safer to travel during the night. Had to learn to adjust my sleep schedule back and forth by force.”

“You all have such interesting stories…”

“Come again?”

Mary put a hand to her chest. “Well, compared to me, anyway. I’m just the girl who likes to grow weird things. I’ve lived my whole life in this town, never seen anything outside of it, always farmed. You? You, Lila, and Vaughan traveled the world. Krays has all sorts of strange connections. Big G runs the mines, Blue’s a genius, Seskii’s just got a way with people, and then Jeh. Don’t get me started on Jeh…”

Suro nodded slowly. “We… do seem to have a rather unusual gathering of people. That does not make you any less important of a person.”

“I know, I know. I still feel out of place at times.” She chuckled. “Maybe that’s what makes me unique, I’m the normal one. How silly.”

“No one is normal. But… my wife has said many times that to be interesting is not a blessing.” He paused. “She would know. Your ‘normalcy’ might keep you grounded, or give you the ability to keep others grounded or… or any number of other things.”

“Everything we have, pleasant or otherwise, is a gift to shape us,” Mary said. “…Yes, I’m quoting her.”

“She is very quotable. Especially when she’s quoting things.”

Mary locked her hands behind her back and let out a yawn. “You’re probably right. The little voice in the back of my head saying I’m ‘too normal’ is probably not worth listening to. A—“ A light burst from the top of Mt. Cascade—a shimmering white speck. “I see it!”

“Right!” Suro used one of his tools to pull out some Red and light a flare, sending it up into the sky. Both Suro and Mary covered their eyes to preserve their night vision as the red light burst into the air, signaling success.

“Okay, he’ll do another one shortly,” Suro said. “Let’s look f—“

There was a loud rustle in a nearby bush. Before any of them knew what was happening, the dark form of a short creature with many reflective eyes ran through the space they occupied, almost slamming into the pile of flares. There was the sound of ripping fabric, a panicked buzzing yell, and then the creature was out of their sight.

“What in…?” Mary asked.

Suro picked up a piece of fabric off the ground. “…I think this is from the robe of a Red Seeker. Was… was that Ukelele?”

“Who?”

“One of the Red Seekers. He was a sho—“

Mt. Cascade lit up again with another light. Mary let out an “Eep!” and pointed at it.

“Looks like this mystery will have to wait…” Suro said, launching another flare.

“Was he running from something?” Mary asked.

“If he was, it’s a silent hunter, or it stopped chasing him.” Suro swiveled his ears around. “I’ll keep listening, though. You keep watching. They are depending on us.”

Mary nodded, fixing her gaze back on the mountain. She was readily able to call out when she saw the light for the rest of the experiment. However, the unease at their interruption never quite went away, not even when she got back to her bed and laid down to sleep that night.

It was all just a big unknown. She discovered that night that she really didn’t like unknowns.

~~~

Jeh’s eyes were sore the following morning.

Like all pain she experienced, this was little more than a nuisance, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t feel it. She had stayed up most of the night with Blue staring at the lights on the mountain from Vaughan and Krays. She’d fallen asleep on the couch before they had made it back down the mountain.

With a yawn, she stretched her arms and legs out—then proceeded to rub her eyes really, really hard to try to get rid of the sore feeling, to the point at which she caused more pain than she’d originally had. Her eyes quickly regenerated from her rubbing beating, but the soreness was still there.

The obvious conclusion was that her eyes were just fine and the soreness wasn’t even real. This sort of thing had happened to her several times over the course of her memory, though only now did she have the awareness to question it.

Why does it work this way? She wondered, shaking her head. Blue doesn’t know, Ashen hasn’t the foggiest… She opened her eyes and walked to the dining room, looking for a snack. Blue was there, performing the calculations on last night’s measurements, but everyone else was absent. Breakfast must have been a while ago.

“Morning,” Blue said with a big yawn of her own as she continued to tally numbers.

Jeh glanced at the numbers, frowning. All these experiments show patterns in reality. What is my pattern?

“You look deep in thought,” Suro observed as he hopped onto the table. He had a small bowl of unusual fruits—probably from Mary’s farm—in one of his paw tools. He set it down in front of Jeh.

“Thanks,” Jeh said, taking the food. “And yeah. Just realizing how little sense I make.”

“In words or deeds?”

“Second one. I hope.” Jeh grinned. “Unless I word bad thing yes do?”

Suro chuckled. “Well, I don’t have any answers for you on the second one. Maybe one day we’ll find out, or you’ll find out on your own.”

Jeh nodded. “I’m wondering if I can devise any experiments…”

“Might be dangerous. If you test far enough and find something that can hurt you permanently…”

Jeh frowned. “But…”

“There are some cases where answers are not worth it,” Suro emphasized.

Jeh squirmed a little in her seat. She was so used to not considering her safety at all. But… there could be a thing that actually hurt her somewhere out there. And there were definitely things she couldn’t escape from. There had been that pit trap in the wraith’s ruins. If she were launched into space and started orbiting…

“…You look like you just had a really unpleasant thought.”

“I could be lost in space forever,” Jeh said, eyes widening.

“Hmm?” This prompted Blue to finally look up from her numbers.

“If… if something happens and I get launched into an orbit…” Jeh took in a sharp breath. “That wouldn’t be good.”

“We’d find a way to come get you,” Blue assured her. “It’d just take some time. For you, it’d be like… a winter, except in space.”

“But then you’d be putting yourselves in danger!”

“Why wouldn’t we do that for you?” Blue asked. “You’d do the same for us. You picked up that sword and stared the plast dragon down, didn’t you? And you tried to climb a mountain to resolve the Red Seeker problem even though you had no idea what it was about.” Blue patted her on the head. “We’re a team, Jeh.”

Jeh brightened visibly. “Yeah! A team! A team that’s going to the moon! Ye—“

There was a loud thump from somewhere in the backyard.

Suro let out a short, thoughtful purr. “Sounds like Alex just landed. I’ll go let him in.”

A moment later the blue dragon had squeezed into the dining room—having to snake his way through one limb at a time. Had he been much older, he simply would not have fit. “My size is starting to become more and more of a hindrance…”

“It only gets worse from here!” Jeh offered. “Dragons never stop growing!”

“Basic knowledge,” Alexandrite said dismissively. He reached into a pack on his back and produced a round, brass object with reinforced glass pressed into it on multiple sides. “I have procured a diving helmet for you, Jeh.”

“Diving helme—oh, right, the water experiment.” Jeh ran up to the diving helmet and picked it up, finding it to be unimaginably heavy. “Egh! How on Ikyu am I supposed to wear this?”

“It will be much less cumbersome underwater,” Alex explained. “However, it does need to be modified with an air restorer. Suro, as the resident jeweler, I believe that task falls to you?”

“It won’t be difficult to engineer,” Suro said. “But I will need Vaughan to get a more precise spell stored for the restoring. A day or two, at most.” Suro turned to Jeh. “The contact point will be on your neck, so you won’t have to use your hands to operate the restorer.”

“Neat!” Jeh put the helmet on, the weight making her wobble considerably. “Wooooah…”

“Careful,” Alexandrite chided, taking the helmet off of her. He did not struggle whatsoever with its girth. “It may be durable, but drop it the wrong way and it’ll no longer be watertight.”

“Got it,” Jeh said, nodding. “So, you and your boss are the customers, what are the mission parameters?” She really liked saying “mission parameters.” Made her feel important and official.

Alexandrite raised one of his eye-ridges. “The proposed experiment is rather simple. Fill the Skyseed with water and fish and go up into space. Then stay there for several hours, observing the fish for any unusual behaviors.”

“Oooh, stay in place! Haven’t tried to do that for very long before, this should be fun!”

“We’re also going to make the bottom of the Skyseed extra shiny,” Blue said, gesturing at her work at the table. “It’s not exactly pretty or neat and there are large error bars, but it’s looking like a sphere about sixty centimeters wide would do the trick. The bottom of the Skyseed is rounded at a much shallower angle and is much larger than that. If it wasn’t brass, we probably would have been able to see it just fine so long as it had light to reflect.”

“Water and mirrors.” Jeh nodded. “And fish.” She rubbed her hands together excitedly. “This is going to be a fun trip…”

“It’ll be the first one from the launchpad, too!” Seskii said, popping in from a nearby doorway. “I’m going to see if I can get the crowd to count down with me!”

Alexandrite shrugged with his wings. “Their activity is of little interest to Gronge. What is most important is the data.” He lowered his head to Jeh’s level and narrowed his eyes somewhat menacingly. “Be sure to pay attention, little one.”

Jeh twitched. “This is not my first time recording data, Alex. I know what I’m doing.” She crossed her arms and huffed.

“Then consider this a test to prove yourself.”

“You’re on.”

Suro chuckled. “It seems you have awoken her competitive spirit.”

Alexandrite pulled his head back from her. “If that shall improve her performance, so be it.”

“I’ll get the best data ever!”

“How are you going to write it down?” Blue asked. “Paper’s not waterproof.”

Jeh blinked. “I’ll have to… remember…” Jeh paled. “Oh no.”

“I have plenty of kelp paper* on me,” Alexandrite pointed out. “Comes with working for Gronge. Waterproof records are very much required.”

*The aquatic races have it somewhat difficult in terms of recording things, as water is a giver of life but also a great destroyer of information. Standard paper disintegrates and even stone wears away. The anglers used to rely on using plastics harvested from plasts to coat what they wrote so it wouldn’t degrade underwater. This was an annoying process and the discovery of certain chemical properties of neon kelp that allowed it to retain writing for long periods of time was a very welcome one. Neon kelp itself naturally glows with pinkish lines in the deep sea, and it was only a matter of time before the anglers learned how to make the pink lines serve their will. Over several years the glow does fade, but it will still leave a faint outline that can be restored, so long as nothing eats the processed kelp for nutrients. Which, to be fair, is a bit of a problem, but there are creatures that eat plastic as well, so it was still an improvement.

“Oh, good.”

“I hear humans don’t like the smell, though…”

~~~

“…And that’s what I’ll be doing,” Jeh told Ashen, putting her hands proudly on her hips.

“You’ll be swimming in space.”

“Yes! Well. Sorta.” She shook her head. “Close enough.”

Ashen’s facets rippled with a series of minor flashes. “My prediction is that the fish won’t change all that much.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know much about how water behaves up there.” Jeh shrugged.

“It occurs to me that the helmet may allow you to step outside the Skyseed as well.”

“Hmm…” Jeh tapped her chin. “I don’t think my arms need air… might be worth trying later. Once we have something with a functional airlock.”

“There is no rush.”

“Well, not for that, but I do need to get going.” Jeh jumped up and cracked her knuckles. “See you later!”

“And you as well, Jeh.”

Jeh ran out of the clearing, leaving Ashen alone with the tree she had fused herself to. It was now hard to tell where Ashen ended and the tree began—the roots and branches of the tree were interspersed with veins of Red crystal. The tree was definitely healthy enough to survive without Ashen now, but she had little desire to leave it—she had grown attached to the plant as a constant of her life.

Although, her life had taken a little bit of an odd turn recently…

“She is gone. You may come out.”

A short creature in tattered red robes emerged from the nearby foliage, his many eyes taking in the surroundings with clear nervousness.

“Ukelele, she is no danger to you.”

Ukelele nodded but said nothing.

“I know you can speak. Your experiences were part of what I was formed of.”

Ukelele refused to say anything. He simply sat down on the rock, motionless.

“You fear for your life, yet refuse to give me any information. Whatever it is must not be able to deal with me, so why are you still afraid?”

Ukelele did nothing more than breathe.

“Then I suppose we are at a standstill once again.”

There was silence in the clearing.

“…I will still protect you from whatever it is.”

Ukelele nodded in gratitude.

“Hmm…” Ashen sent her perceptions out, trying to see through the eyes of anything she could grab. There was Ukelele, of course, and Jeh, who had not gotten far enough to be out of Ashen’s range just yet. But there was nothing else. If there really was something watching and hunting Ukelele, it was either a simple animal… or it knew to stay out of Ashen’s range.

Which meant it knew where she was.

Ashen had considered telling Jeh, but Ukelele had seemed to not want to be known about in any way, and since Ashen had her own secrets she wanted to be kept, she figured she’d better not reveal anyone else’s. So here she was, protecting a little bug creature thing she didn’t know the species of and couldn’t ask without being suspicious.

At least it gave her something to ponder while Jeh wasn’t here.

~~~

And so the day of the first “official” launch arrived. Lila had scheduled it to take place just before sunset, so everyone in town could come and see things while also allowing it to quickly become dark so they could try to see the sunlight reflecting off the Skyseed’s recently polished bottom. A decently large number of people arrived to observe the launch. They talked amongst themselves like this were just some kind of town gathering similar to a banquet or bonfire—gathering together to watch the Skyseed. Some people had set up little cooking fires near the launchpad so they could provide food to everyone. Seskii, naturally, was one of these people—she had an entire stand set up where she gave out things to anyone who asked.

The Skyseed itself had been moved to the launchpad earlier that day by Jeh. She’d flown the thing the relatively short distance from Vaughan’s cabin to the launchpad without a hitch. It had been extremely easy compared to the flights to space, but it had not yet been filled with water.

That responsibility fell to Alexandrite. As he strode up to the launchpad, the townsfolk parted to let him through. No matter how much people knew dragons generally didn’t want to tear the flesh off their bones, the sight of a reptilian predator larger than anyone else in town was enough to make most wary enough to get out of the way.

Blue unscrewed the top of the Skyseed. “She’s all yours, Alex.”

Alex placed a claw on top of the Skyseed’s rim to balance himself while he carefully positioned his head above the opening. He took in a sharp breath and tapped into his attribute. As he breathed out, an immense torrent of water erupted from his jaws, blasting into the Skyseed with violent froth not unlike a stormy sea. The highly pressurized water jet carried enough force to knock people over and heavily bruise them, but the Skyseed was stable enough to capture the water without breaking. It was less than thirty seconds before the entire Skyseed was filled to the brim.

Lila nodded to Alexandrite. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Alex just nodded at her.

“Ripashi, I hear you have some fish for us?”

Ripashi put his feathered limb to his head. “You bet I do!” He stepped up and handed Vaughan a bag filled with a dozen live trout he’d fished from the river earlier. The fish were rather frantically flopping around their enclosed container, but relaxed considerably once Vaughan released them into the Skyseed and they had room to swim around.

“And the last ingredient…”

Jeh jumped up and down. “Me! With a helmet!” She placed her hands around the diving helmet and, with a grunt, put it over her head. She twisted a small valve on at the base of the neck that sealed the air inside while also bringing her in contact with the air restorer. Immediately, she activated it, giving her face a somewhat ominous green glow that everyone could see through the reinforced glass. “Heavy…”

“I’ll help you in,” Blue said, moving to levitate Jeh.

“Wait!” Jeh called, her voice echoing through the helmet. “My bear furs won’t do well underwater.” She quickly started removing them. For a moment, Blue was afraid she was just going to strip right there in front of everyone—but her fears were quickly proven wrong. Under her furs, Jeh had on a pair of knee-high shorts and a sleeveless shirt that exposed her midsection.

Blue’s relief quickly turned to mild confusion. Those clothes were made out of a material she didn’t recognize and were very smooth and shiny, almost form-fitting. A pale bluish-green stripe ran down the left side of both articles of clothing.

When did she get those…?

“Right!” Jeh picked up her kelp-paper notebook, underwater writing implements, arcane imaging device, and personal pack of Colored crystals. “Ready! Take me in!”

Blue pushed the questions out of her mind—they had an audience, after all, best to get on with it. She levitated Jeh into the Skyseed. The helmet made up about half of Jeh’s weight, but Blue managed it well enough. Water poured out the top of the Skyseed as Jeh was lowered into it, prompting a single fish to flop out. Vaughan caught the escapee in his Orange and tossed it back into the Skyseed once the water had settled.

To top it all off, Blue screwed the lid back on the Skyseed. “You good?” She called to Jeh.

Jeh must have said something that was muffled by the water and the helmet, but she gave a thumbs up.

“She’ll need to hear us counting down!” Seskii called, jumping onto the launchpad. “So everyone needs to count down from ten with me as loud as you can! Do you understand?”

Several faces in the crowd nodded.

“Let’s begin! Ten!” No one said that with her because she’d moved a little too quickly, but when she went to “nine!” more than half of everyone was shouting the number—enough for Jeh to hear it clearly. When they said “eight!” she held up eight fingers.

When they reached five, she used her free hand to grab hold of the drive. She set it to a higher setting than normal since the water was going to be unimaginably heavy. She prepared to push her will into it.

“Three!”

Blue obsessively checked the Skyseed one last time for any sign of damage, leaks, or anything. She found none.

“Two!”

The fish seemed to know something was about to happen because they started swimming around faster.

“One!”

Jeh activated the drive.

“Liftoff!” Seskii called.

The Skyseed didn’t go anywhere.

Jeh gave the crowd an awkward shrug and put the drive on the next highest setting before pushing her will into it again. Two seconds after the countdown ended, the Skyseed started to lift into the sky. It wobbled a little bit, but with her Orange Jeh was able to quickly balance it, gaining control of the new weight distribution. Slowly—very slowly, much slower than she’d ever lifted into the air before—the Skyseed drifted upward. So slowly that the fish basically weren’t affected.

There were a few cheers and whistles from the crowd as the Skyseed floated higher and higher into the sky.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lila announced. “We have a successful launch!” She held her paw up to the Skyseed and grinned. “See you soon, Jeh!”

Everyone knew there was no way Jeh heard that, but they knew what the gesture meant.

“Take a look at the bottom of the Skyseed,” Blue said, drawing everyone’s attention to it. “It has a hole in the center, but it is also much shinier than usual. Later tonight, we hope to be able to see it in the sky, twinkling like one of the stars. If any of you are still up, you’re welcome to join us to look!”

At this, the crowd started talking amongst themselves. A few returned to their homes, while others stayed to watch the Skyseed as it continued to rise, hoping to remain until they could see it no longer. Dozens of conversations broke out, even among those who hadn’t exactly been sold on the whole Wizard Space Program idea.

After all, even if it may not have been the most efficient use of community time and resources in their minds, it was certainly spectacular to watch and be a part of.

~~~

Getting up to space was much more difficult this time around. Curiously, this wasn’t because the wind blew the ship around left and right—the heavier weight made the wind have less of an effect. No, it was the fact that the Skyseed’s response was sluggish. Jeh relied a lot on her active balancing to keep her ship stable, and her balancing took more time to get the ship into the right orientation with that much water to move around. It was no small strain on her focus and will to manually adjust the balance with all the sloshing water.

For once, she hardly increased the speed of the Skyseed at all, she was too focused on the balancing act as the Skyseed cut through the atmosphere. It took, in her mind, an agonizingly long time before she got high enough that there was so little atmosphere that balance was no longer really important.

The fish hardly responded to what was going on. They were in the water and could more or less swim where they wanted. They oriented themselves upright, seemingly immune to the changes in velocity.

Strange.

As Jeh went up, her fingers and toes kept getting more and more pruney. Everyone had expected this, this was not actually her first time staying in a body of water for an extended period of time. She’d sat in the river when she was bored many times before.

Absent-mindedly, she took some brown nuts out of her crystal pack and tried to rub them through her hair. The helmet prevented her from making contact.

Oh, right, not taking a bath. Whoops…

She resolved to just wait until she thought she was at a suitable height. Curiously, her rate of ascension almost matched the motion of the sun; she could see it setting, continually, even as she saw the shadow of night pass over the part of Ikyu that was Willow Hollow.

Weird, Jeh thought, chuckling to herself.

Eventually, she got to the point where she could see the curvature of Ikyu. She decided this was high enough and set the drive to “hover.”

Now she just had to wait a few hours up here and watch the fish.

The fish, for their part, were still rather unfazed by all this. While in hover mode, they still felt the downward pull just like Jeh—it was only in freefall where weightlessness occurred, and they were not falling. They just sat there, in space, doing nothing.

Jeh was bored. The fish were bored.

A whole lot of nothing happened.

Jeh realized she really wished she’d brought a book. Surely there was some way to make it waterproof, right? The kelp-paper existed. But books on the surface probably weren’t written using it…

Now that she was staying still, the sun started moving once more. From Jeh’s vantage point, it no longer seemed like the “sun was setting” but, rather, that it was moving behind Ikyu. She snapped a picture of it with the arcane device. It recorded what she saw, but as she was looking through two panes of glass and a lot of water, the image was rather distorted.

When Jeh could no longer see the light of day on Ikyu, it would be time to come down, since that would have been a few hours and at that point, there’d be no sunlight to reflect back down for the others to see.

Jeh let out a bored sigh. She wrote a sentence in the kelp-paper about the fish behaving normally, and then started humming a tune. She didn’t remember where it was from, which was the case with most of the tunes she hummed.

Growing tired of this, she started playing with the fish. They were used to her presence at this point, but still tried to swim away from her touch, so what followed was a rather awkward and cramped chase around the interior of the Skyseed where she fumbled around the edge of the jar and the fish swam away from her. They were small enough to move easily. She, for once, wasn’t.

For the first time since she could remember, she found herself thinking that maybe being smaller wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Even though the water made it easier for her to hold the helmet up, it was still heavy and hard to move through the water, so she tired out from the exertion. She pushed herself harder than she probably should have, only stopping the chase when she slipped and rammed her helmet into the Skyseed wall, giving her a treatment not all that unlike sticking one’s head inside a tower bell. Unwilling to accept defeat in terms of boredom, she started running checks on the Skyseed. The glass was still in one piece, the seals were holding the water in, and… the drive had a fair number of shattered spikes. Apparently, the massive amount of water and extended use was taxing it.

Luckily going back down did not require anywhere near as much power, so Jeh wasn’t worried. Besides, even if the drive did give out, she wasn’t in orbit. She’d just fall back down and… deal with the consequences, however annoying they might be.

Suddenly, there was a cracking sound, followed immediately by a trail of bubbles that formed at a small hole that had formed in the edge of the Skyseed. The fish all scrambled to the far end of the Skyseed, as though the bubbles were some kind of predator. Jeh, knowing what this probably was, immediately brought out some Green and prepared to treat the hole. However, she paused, as she noticed something odd—the water wasn’t leaving the hole very quickly. Rather, it was forming a lot of bubbles near the hole, as though the water were boiling. She ran her hand through it, finding that it wasn’t any hotter than usual, but felt exactly like water did when it was boiling.

Yes, she had in fact stuck her hand into boiling water before just to see what it felt like. “Frothy” was her best description.

Wonder what Blue will make of this… Jeh used the Green to seal up the hole. Then she turned to the small rock that had made the hole. Unlike the first one that had crashed into the Skyseed, this one hadn’t needed to hit anything to stop—the water had brought it to a halt very quickly. It had clearly broken in a few places, but she couldn’t find the smaller pieces. With a shrug, she pocketed it. More space rocks for investigation were good.

Jeh looked around the Skyseed. All the bubbles that had formed from the ‘boiling’ had floated to the top, but were slowly dissipating as they turned back into water, until… there was no air left.

Wait a second. I had to have lost some water to space, how is the Skyseed still full!?

She quickly wrote down everything she’d just experienced on the kelp-paper in excruciating detail since she wanted to prove to grumpy Alex that she knew how to take proper notes and do science. She was a good pilot!

But, in the end, even that task was eventually done, and she was left with boredom once more. The need to wait and watch fish.

With an inward groan, she looked down at Ikyu. The sun hadn’t gone all the way behind it yet, so she still needed to stay up here. Examining the lights of the various cities and forms of the landmasses, she found that she wasn’t above Kroan anymore. At first this confused her, but then she realized—Ikyu was turning beneath her. Of course it would move.

Not an issue, since she knew how to navigate back down, but she was glad she noticed it now rather than later so she could make plans for it. Just a couple more hours, then the sun would vanish, and she could come down…

It was at this moment she realized she needed to pee.

On previous missions, she’d just held it. She could do this for a long time, several hours wasn’t a big deal, she just needed to exert some will over the situation.

But it wasn’t time to come down yet.

Uh-oh.

~~~

Vaughan, Blue, and Seskii were the only ones who stayed at the Launchpad the whole night.

“Can you still see her?” Vaughan asked.

Blue shook her head. “I think the sun set below her version of the horizon a while ago. But we were able to see her, so the mission was a success.”

Vaughan nodded. “She was very faint…”

“I could pick her out easily enough, though she did just look like another star. If we didn’t have the charts I wouldn’t have been sure what to look for.”

“Mmm…” Vaughan put the telescope to his eye and looked up at the stars. “Maybe she’s coming back down…”

“Seems about right,” Seskii said. “Who knows? She might be back in the next few minutes.”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “Think she’s bored?”

“Definitely.”

Blue let out a yawn. “All of our sleep has been completely ruined by this project.”

Vaughan chuckled. “We work on our own schedule. We could start setting all meetings for nighttime, become semi-nocturnal…”

“Like that wouldn’t cause problems,” Blue muttered.

“Nocturnal races have to adjust to daytime cycles at the Academy. Many cat cultures live by the nighttime cycle rather than the day…”

Blue tried to let out a snort, but her body wanted to yawn at the same time, so she ended up making an extremely strange harrumph noise that devolved into coughing.

“…You okay?”

“Just… fine.” Blue shook her head. “I’ve been running some basic calculations in my head. I think, with Gronge’s extra funding, we should be able to build the satellite cannon device. With Jeh’s large supply of will, she should be able to power it. I think Krays’ idea for a ‘spin’ design will work best.”

“One meter radius will be enough, you think?”

“As long as we can distribute the force evenly and precisely as it moves,” Blue said. “It’ll require some precise engineering, bu—“ She suddenly pointed a hoof at the sky. “Orange glow, she’s coming down.”

Sure enough, the Skyseed was soon easily visible, slowly coming down to the launchpad. It wobbled a bit to the left and right before angling itself directly above the launchpad—finding its way in the dark easily due to the various Magenta lamps ringing the area. It came to a stop rather uneventfully.

Blue unscrewed the lid. “How was it?”

Jeh poked her head out of the Skyseed and removed her helmet. “Okay, so, near the end the fish started moving slower, I think they might have gotten too hot. They also weren’t fans of the weightless sensation that came with falling. And, uh…” She glanced to the left and right awkwardly. “You… might want to design a bathroom into the Moonshot.”

“A b—“ Blue’s pupils shrunk to pinpricks and her face flushed hard enough that it was visible through her coat. “Oh my. Oh. Um. Uh. Oh. Er. Uh. S-sorry I didn’t even think about…”

Jeh crawled out onto the launchpad and started shaking herself off. “Yeah… anyway, uh, here’s my notes.” She set the kelp paper down on the ground. “You’ll find a lot of it! Alex will have to accept me now! Also, uh, the drive is kind of…”

Vaughan lit up the interior of the ship with some Purple, noting the rather beat-up drive. “Hmm. Yes, let’s definitely not take it up again filled with water. Just from looking at it, though, I think it’s still good for a few more normal trips.”

“We have to make sure it has enough for the satellite,” Blue said.

“Yes, yes, of course…”

“I’m going to go find a river,” Jeh said. “I… I need a bath.”

Vaughan frowned. “You know you can use m—“

“I’m going to find a river. With lots of flowing water.” She leaned down and picked up her bear furs, but didn’t put them on. “Probably won’t see you until the morning. Or afternoon. Or whatever time we wake up.”

“S-sorry again,” Blue said, trying to get her embarrassed fluster under control.

Jeh gave her an odd look. “You… all right, there?”

Blue laughed nervously. “I… I’m fine if you’re fine.”

“I will be after the bath. Which I’m going to go take. Bye!” She scampered off a little faster than usual.

Blue glanced at the Skyseed. “We’re going to need to… clean this thing.”

Vaughan raised an eyebrow. “We would have had to anyway. The fish—“

“I don’t wanna think about it!” Blue interjected.

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Today’s science segment seeks to answer a simple question:

Can you see a spherical mirror in orbit around the Earth?

This is not a trivial problem, so bear with me a while.

First of all, we don’t know how big the sphere is or how far it is from the surface of the Earth. We can represent these unknown quantities with variables: let the sphere’s radius be R and the distance from the Earth’s surface be D. Our goal is, given an R and a D, find out if you can see the sphere or not. Thus we desire a mathematical function that can take in R and D and give us how bright the object appears—a quantity known in astronomy as the Apparent Magnitude.

Apparent Magnitude is an odd scale. Smaller values are brighter. The sun has an Apparent Magnitude of -26.7, Sirius is -1.5, and the faintest things visible with the naked eye on a pitch-black night are 6.5. For our purposes we will use magnitude 6 as the faintest visible object since very very rarely is the night sky perfect and light pollution absolutely zero.

Apparent Magnitude is a little awkward to work with because it only cares how objects appear, not how much energy objects release. That values is given by the concept known as Absolute Magnitude. Absolute Magnitude is the same no matter how far away you are from an object; if an object emits a continuous amount of light, it will have that Absolute Magnitude no matter where you are.

The relationship between the two magnitudes are known, but it’s a bit of an awkward formula: M = m – 5log(D/10). Yikes, a logarithm, scary. M is the Absolute Magnitude here, while m is the Apparent Magnitude. We note that our distance D here is in parsecs, so we have to be careful with unit conversion. If we re-arrange this, we get what we want in terms of Apparent Magnitude: m = 5log(D/10) + M.

So, can we find a formula for the Absolute Magnitude of a spherical mirror in space? Yes, but we have to do some jumping to get to it. The Absolute Magnitude is tied directly to the amount of energy something emits in visible-light photons per second—a property known as the Luminosity. Fortunately for us, our hypothetical spherical mirror is perfect, so we know exactly how much energy it is emitting: however much sunlight hits it.

Sunlight intensity is a value we can look up. When it reaches the earth, solar radiation has an intensity of 1380 watts per square meter. However, this includes photons that are not visible light, only about 42-43% of solar radiation is actually visible light. Since I like the number 42, and to be sure it is actually visible, we’ll go with 42% for our calculations here, which means the intensity of sunlight is 579.6 watts per square meter.

Note that the intensity is given in units of “per square meter.” That’s because how much of the sunlight hits something is entirely dependent on the cross-sectional-area of the object being hit. The best way to think of what the cross-sectional area is is to ask “what shape of shadow will this cast?” (Or imagine the object being flattened to the size of a piece of paper.) In the case of our spherical mirror, this is a circle of radius R. Everyone should remember the area of a circle from high school: π(R^2). If you multiply this by 579.6, you’ll get the exact number of watts that hit the mirror—which, for a perfect mirror, is the same as the watts it reflects. These watts are the luminosity.

So now we have to figure out how to convert from Absolute Magnitude to Luminosity. The conversion here is direct, unlike between the two Magnitudes, but it is a little awkward. M = -2.5log(L/L0). L is our Luminosity in watts, and L0 is the “zero point Luminosity” which is just a fancy term we use for “a reference value Luminosity.” L0 is just a number, specifically 3.0128*10^28 watts. Yes this number is big but we’re using equations usually used to measure stars. (I will write it as 3.0128e28 now to make it easier to type and see) We know our luminosity L is 579.6π(R^2). So we can actually create our equation now!

m = 5log(D/10) - 2.5log(579.6π(R^2)/3.0128e28).

So, let us now use the Sputnik’s parameters to see if our equation is anything close to reasonable. Granted, the Sputnik had a variable distance D and it wasn’t perfectly shiny, but it was just barely visible. If we get an Apparent Magnitude near 6.5 it means our back-of-the-envelope estimate is decent enough to be used for a fictional universe.

For the sputnik, D was on average 588 kilometers, and the spherical portion had an R of 29 centimeters. Remember we have to be careful with our units: that’s 1.9056e-11 parsecs and 0.29 meters, respectively. Now we can plug these numbers in and get a result!

m = 5log(1.9056e-11/10) - 2.5log(579.6π(0.29)^2/3.0128e28).

m = 5log(1.9056e-12) - 2.5log(5.0828e-27).

m = 5(-11.72) - 2.5(-26.29).

m = -58.60 + 65.735

m = 7.135

And that, as they say, is “close enough for government work.” Our calculation says that Sputnik shouldn’t have been visible at its average orbit, but as previously mentioned Sputnik had a very irregular orbit and came much closer than that, as well as much further. But its surface also wasn’t perfectly reflective, and there’s also the angle the sunlight hits the object we haven’t even considered yet.

Even so, the magnitude is close enough that we can be relatively sure our equation works. So, how big of a spherical mirror does our little Wizard Spare Program need? Let’s say we want a comfortable magnitude 6. They’re thinking about releasing it at a distance somewhere near that of the ISS, so their D is about 400 km. I won’t show all the steps again, but this eventually gives us an R of 0.33 m, or 33cm. Which is a little larger than the Sputnik.

So, essentially, they need to make something of comparable size to the Sputnik.

It probably would have been a lot easier to just assume that, but sometimes you just want to run the calculation, especially if you’re not sure exactly how the science behind it works.

Note, of course, that this is assuming many things. First of all, this is assuming the spherical mirror is sending all its light out equally in every direction. It is not; only one side is being illuminated—what we calculated was the average luminosity of a spherical mirror being illuminated by the sun. Curiously, this means we underestimated the brightness of the object, since when Earth experiences night the satellites tend to reflect a large chunk of the sunlight back at the earth, as the dark side is pointed away from the sun and the Earth. So this gives us some room for error.

However, this only works if the satellite is not in the Earth’s shadow. Which, depending on the time of night and current location of the satellite, it might be. It all depends on the angles of the celestial bodies if it’s visible or not.

You could also run this calculation with moonlight, just replace the intensity of sunlight with that of moonlight, and presto. Things are much dimmer though, and the light of the moon tends to reflect back at the moon, not to Earth.

A final note: why are our measurements of the Absolute and Apparent Magnitudes so unusual? What’s with all the logs? Well, this is entirely because of the fact that we tried to label the brightness of stars with our eyes before we could accurately measure things, and so we assigned things “magnitude 1” if they were bright and “magnitude 2” if they were not. We kept this scale but applied real measurements to it and found that it worked “best” on what is known as a logarithmic scale. Specifically, a magnitude 6 star is 100 times dimmer than a magnitude 1 using the real apparent luminosity. (Other logarithmic scales are different, such as magnitudes of earthquakes, which increase by a factor of 10 between 1 and 2, for instance.) This is why we have so many “logs” in the equations. And the numbers and units are so weird because, as mentioned, we usually use these units to measure how stars appear to us.

Blue is currently in an era of history where the “magnitudes” of stars are still declared by how they appear, as measuring luminosity directly is not possible. As such, she has no way to do the calculation we just did. Which is why they had to do the experiment to find out how big they needed to make it.

This problem was not trivial, however the main difficulty was not so much the mathematics—logarithms are far from basic math but they aren’t immensely complicated either. The difficulties were making sure to understand the various units and measurements, how to convert between them, and seemingly “little” details like the energy output of the sun not equaling the output of visible light. When doing a physics problem from scratch you’ve got to be careful that you understand what you’re doing from all angles.

And that, my friends, is some actual serious physics calculation.

Good gravy I just did what is basically a homework problem willingly…

And on a minor note, yes, water does boil when exposed to the vacuum of space. Why? Well, the reason water exists in liquid on Earth’s surface is twofold: the Earth is the right temperature, and the atmosphere exerts the right pressure on the water. The atmospheric pressure forces the water molecules closer together so they interact in such a way as to form a liquid, which is a lightly-bonded state. This is different from a gas, where the particles hardly interact with each other whatsoever and zip around all over the place.

Lowering the pressure has a similar effect to increasing the temperature of a substance. (This correlation is not exact, and the full relation depends on pressure, temperature, volume, and the number of particles in addition to intermolecular forces when needed). Thus, remove the pressure, and suddenly your water boils.

If you took off your helmet in space the water on your eyes would boil. This would not burn you, but it would be decidedly uncomfortable. However, the strange sensations of having your eye fluids boil would be a minor footnote to all the other, far more concerning and esoteric pains you would be experiencing.

PS: 3.028*10^28 is 30,280,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. You can see why we don’t like writing these big numbers out.