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THE CLOUDS OFSATURN
A Novel By
Michael McCollum
Sci Fi - Arizona, Inc.
Third Millennium Publishing
An Online Cooperative of Writers and Resources
Prologue
The sun is a variable star. Changes in solar output have sent glaciers marching toward the
equator every fifty thousand years or so. The last such episode took place in late prehistoric times
and coincided with the displacement of Neanderthal Man by the Cro-Magnons. Nor has Modern
Man been immune to the effects of the sun’s variability. During the Little Ice Age of the Sixteenth
through Nineteenth Century, a minor reduction in solar output caused the harbors of Iceland and
Greenland to be blocked by ice for 6 months out of every year. At least one Viking colony starved
to death because of the climatic change.
It was not until the first decade of the Twenty Second Century, however, that humanity realized the true
extent of Sol’s variability. Beginning in 2102, the sun was wracked by a series of solar flares. As such,
outbursts grew more frequent and violent; astronomers began to reexamine their long held beliefs about
the nature of the sun. It was with understandable horror that they realized Sol was about to enter a period
of long term instability. Projections called for the sun’s output to increase gradually for several hundred
years. While minor on the scale of the universe, the change would render Earth uninhabitable within a
century. If nothing were done to stop it, the Mother of Men would become a twin to Venus -- a
hothouse planet on which liquid water no longer existed.
Faced with extinction, the human race directed its considerable resources toward saving the
home world. No possibility was overlooked. Many research efforts were launched in a period that
became known as the Golden Age of Pure Science. Despite their best efforts, the scientists could
find no practical method for bringing the errant star to heel. After decades of study, Earth’s
leaders reluctantly concluded that humankind would have to abandon its ancestral home. They
began to search the Solar System for a place of refuge.
The haven they chose was not one many would have guessed.
 
Chapter 1: The Battle of New Philadelphia
Larson Sands lay in his acceleration couch and watched the dawn as SparrowHawk raced eastward at a
thousand kilometers per hour. Dawn on Saturn was always spectacular, but never more so than on a
battle morning. As the sun climbed the sky, it quickly transformed the world from a black and silver
etching to a blue-white panorama of air and cloud. Lars watched as the rays of the sun chased azure
shadows from the deep cloud canyons, and turned The Arch overhead into a pale ghost of its former self.
“Message coming in from Delphi .”
Sands glanced toward his copilot. Halley Trevanon was a brunette in her early twenties (Standard
Calendar). Halley possessed a wide mouth, full lips, green eyes, and a scar that bisected her left
eyebrow. She was scanning the sensor readouts that told them what ships were in their vicinity.
“Patch him through,” Lars said.
The communications screen on the instrument panel lit to show Dane Sands’s smiling face. Dane was
Lars’s younger brother, and Halley’s fiancé.
“Hello, SparrowHawk ,” Dane said. “Get enough sleep last night?”
“You know damned well we didn’t!” Lars muttered back. Dane was serving aboard the New
Philadelphia flagship, Delphi , some two hundred kilometers to their west. It was his task to act as liaison
between SparrowHawk and her New Philadelphia employers. Like them, he had been at his post since
just after Second Midnight when the first sighting reports had come in.
Five thousand kilometers to the east, a New Philadelphia scout had reported an unknown aircraft moving
west at high speed. Although there had been no positive identification, the commodore commanding the
New Philadelphia fleet had ordered his heavier-than-hydrogen craft launched. In the three hours since,
SparrowHawk and the other ships of the fleet had been on guard for an approaching enemy. Despite
their efforts, they had detected nothing.
“I’ve got some news for you,” Dane answered. “It looks like last night was a false alarm. Dakota may
have suffered a sensor glitch caused by atmospheric conditions.”
Lars nodded. Saturn’s thick atmosphere of closely packed hydrogen atoms did strange things to radar
performance. Eddy currents and vertical convection cells created ghosts that looked like the wake of a
fast moving aircraft. Such mistakes were common.
“What are our orders?”
Dane glanced at something out of camera range. “I show you two hundred kilometers east of Delphi .”
“Correct.”
 
“Why don’t you work your way back in this direction? If nothing has shown up by the time you arrive,
we will take you back aboard. You should be here in time for breakfast.”
“Understood,” Lars said. “We’re turning now.”
He pulled his control to the left and back slightly, sending SparrowHawk into a gentle turn. As he did so,
Dane Sands asked, “How’s my girl?”
“Excited, and a little scared,” Halley responded. Like Lars, she was encased in an environment suit, with
her helmet visor up. Should the ship be holed, she could seal her suit in a matter of seconds. The other
four crewmen aboard SparrowHawk were similarly attired.
“Don’t wear yourself out,” Dane said. “The high command here is still hoping our show of strength will
cause the Alliance to back off. We know their fleet left Cloudcroft three days ago, but we still have no
evidence that they are coming here.”
“Do you really think that, my love?”
Dane flashed her his most lopsided grin. “That’s the way we’ve been betting all along, isn’t it?”
Larson Sands said nothing. Over the past few weeks, he had started to wonder if their bet had been a
wise one. The Delphis were expert geneticists who had long pursued the dream of engineering a life form
that could live in the upper Saturnian atmosphere. Rumors that they had developed a viable organism had
reached the Northern Alliance, causing it to invite New Philadelphia to join them. The invitation had been
couched in terms that caused the Delphis to look to their defenses.
As was the case with most independent cities, New Philadelphia could not afford a full time navy to
challenge the larger, more powerful Saturnian “nations.” Rather, they maintained the core of a fighting
force that could be rapidly expanded in time of trouble. In addition to a few customs ships, they had
turned one of their large air freighters into a powerful flagship and mobile base. To supplement this fleet,
they had sent recruiters throughout the northern hemisphere looking for privateer ships and crews.
The Sands brothers and Halley Trevanon had met the Delphi recruiters in a bar aboard Pendragon City.
Lars still remembered the plump songstress who belted out The Ballad of Lost Earth while the Delphi
recruiters made their pitch. Afterward, Dane Sands had argued in favor of taking the job. He had thought
it easy money, a simple show of force to convince the Alliance that their gain would not be worth the
cost.
It was an argument that had the benefit of history on its side. For if there was one thing all the cloud cities
of Saturn shared, it was their vulnerability to attack. When a single fanatic with a bomb could send an
entire population plummeting into the crushing pressure of the lower atmosphere, those who ruled thought
long and hard before challenging their neighbors. If faced with a large enough opposition force, the
Alliance would forego its claim on New Philadelphia lest they place their own cities at risk.
Larson Sands and Halley Trevanon had been less certain about the job, but neither had voiced a strong
objection to wearing the New Philadelphia livery. At the time, SparrowHawk ’s fusion reactors had been
more than a standard year past recommended overhaul. Worse, the ship’s half-dozen crewmen had not
been paid in months. They had needed the money too badly to say no.
That had been three months ago. For some time after their arrival aboard the Delphis’ capital city, it had
appeared the diplomats would resolve the dispute. A week earlier, however, the Alliance ambassador
had broken off negotiations. The New Philadelphia high command had also received reports that the
Alliance fleet had sortied.
 
New Philadelphia responded by launching their own fleet. They had sent ships east along the North
Temperate Belt flyway to interpose themselves between New Philadelphia’s three cities and the Alliance.
Their presence there was both a challenge and a warning. While it would be a simple matter for the
Alliance to bypass the Delphi flagship and her covey of fusion powered aircraft, to do so would leave
their own cities open to attack. If they were serious about annexing New Philadelphia, they would first
have to seek out the New Philadelphia fleet and destroy it. The Delphis hoped to inflict enough damage
that the Alliance would lose interest and go home.
As SparrowHawk came westward, it did not take long for New Philadelphia’s massive flagship to
materialize out of the blue haze of distance. Delphi was an anachronism, a machine from out of another
time and place. It was a dirigible, a giant gasbag half-a-kilometer in length whose whale shape traced its
ancestry back to the earliest flying machines. Large stabilizers sprouted from the airship’s stern, while the
bow was a blunt curve that sliced the wind with minimum resistance. Behind the great dirigible roiled a
long streamer of disturbed air that marked the flagship’s exhaust. Where cargo hatches had once been,
there were now weapons locks, long-range sensors, and sally ports.
Heavier than hydrogen craft like SparrowHawk had their uses, but eventually, they had to land. The giant
lighter-than-hydrogen dirigibles like Delphi provided them with a place to set down. Like the ancient
aircraft carriers of Earth, they were the roving bases from which the smaller craft launched their attacks.
However, like those earlier behemoths, the flagship was a fragile construct. It depended on its squadrons
for protection.
“Attention, All Ships! Enemy craft sighted. Fifteen hundred kilometers at ninety degrees. All craft
form up on Avadon . Prepare to attack!”
Lars glanced once at Halley. The voice was that of Commodore Kraken, the Delphi commander. A
flurry of orders came over the command circuit from Dane as the battle center of the flagship came alive.
Lars looped SparrowHawk well behind Delphi in order to take his place in the defensive line. There were
twenty-one New Philadelphia craft in all. Eighteen of these were assigned to intercept the intruders and to
drive them back.
“Everyone tied down?” he asked over his intercom.
SparrowHawk ’s four crewmen checked in. Ross Crandall was attending the ship’s fire control
computer. Brent Garvich and Hume Bailey were at weapons stations, while Kelvor Reese monitored the
ship’s auxiliary systems.
When the squadron defending Delphi had formed up, they accelerated to two thousand kilometers per
hour. Even at that speed, they had not exceeded sonic velocity in Saturn’s hydrogen-helium atmosphere.
The two fleets closed to maximum range and began their first cautious probings of one another’s
formations. In the thick atmosphere, lasers were limited to short range. Thus, the sky was filled with
missiles as ships launched at their distant adversaries. Within seconds, individual sparks of light began to
appear as enemy missiles came within laser range and were blotted from the sky.
The two dozen Alliance ships bored in to engage the mixed privateer/Delphi force. The two fleets
interpenetrated. Within seconds, the sky was filled with twisting, turning ships that stabbed at one another
in a deadly dance.
The Alliance drew first blood as they blasted the wing off one of the Delphi customs craft. Sands
watched as the small vessel healed over and began its long dive toward the invisible hydrogen sea two
thousand kilometers below. There was no fire because there is no oxygen in Saturn’s atmosphere to
support combustion. While he watched, a small object separated from the single seat fighter and grew
 
into a silver balloon with a tiny figure suspended beneath it.
Assured that the pilot had gotten out, Lars went back to the battle. The next two craft to take hits
belonged to the Alliance. One of their prowlers was struck amidships by a missile that exploded it. The
rain of parts was such that Sands doubted anyone had survived. The second ship, a larger destroyer,
took a missile in its reactor spaces. The results were less spectacular, but sufficient to cause it to
withdraw.
“We’re winning!” Halley exclaimed after she launched a missile that was destroyed by laser fire scant
meters from its target. Even though vaporized, the cloud of molten drops splattered across the wing
surfaces of its target, causing it to follow its wounded companion east.
“They’re not as strong as we were led to believe,” Lars said through gritted teeth.
Another Delphi ship died within the next few seconds, along with one of the larger Alliance craft. By now
the dogfight was spread across so much sky that SparrowHawk appeared alone. The only nearby ship
was a single seat Alliance fighter. Sands bore in as his opponent attempted to flee. His concentration was
broken by a sudden cry for help.
“Attention All Ships! This is Delphi . We are under attack. The group you have engaged is a
diversion. The main fleet is here. All ships to us!
“Damn!” Sands exclaimed. A high gee turn transformed the curse into an unintelligible grunt. Once lined
up to the west, he advanced his throttles to emergency maximum and felt SparrowHawk leap forward.
“What’s your situation, Dane?” he asked over his private command circuit.
Dane’s face was wide eyed as he came on the screen. Lars did not know when he had seen his brother
so frightened.
“They came out of the cloud wall, Lars! Nearly thirty of them. They are boring in on the flagship. Our
combat air patrol has gone out to meet them. We are running west as fast as we can. I don’t think we’re
going to make it.”
“We’re on our way.”
“Hurry, damn it!”
“How many others are with us?” Lars asked Halley.
She made a quick sensor survey of the sky. She noted six other craft with the green New Philadelphia
icon. There were a dozen enemy vessels behind them. The rest of the Delphi fleet was still engaged and
unable to break free.
“We should have known something was wrong. No one sends a two dozen ships to attack a city.”
“Do you think Dane’s in danger?” Halley asked, horror suddenly creeping into her voice.
“I think we’re all in danger,” he replied grimly.
As they rocketed through the sky, Halley put up the long-range scanner display. What they saw sent a
chill through Sands. A swarm of red icons was being opposed by three green while the flagship symbol
attempted to flee. The defending New Philadelphia craft lasted only a few seconds before fluttering into
the depths. They left twenty-eight intact Alliance craft free to swarm around Delphi .
 

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