Doctor How and the Rings of Uranus Read Free Page A

continued disappointment and underwhelm is a continuous disappointment to me. Ah, for the days when my assistants would marvel at something as simple as a nail.”
    “I mean, the view sucks. Like, there isn’t one. Well, unless you count the little screen on that desk over there.”
    “ Please , Kevin. You know I’m somewhat of a connoisseur of views myself. I’ve not seen this one in God knows how long. You see,” said the Doctor, concentrating on the control panel, “when you mothball something you don’t just leave it out in the wet, so to speak. Like a car, you put a cover over it. Ah, here we are.”
    The Doctor flipped a switch and the entire ceiling disappeared. Kevin grabbed a chair that was bolted to the floor and clung onto it for dear life, waiting for the air to whoosh past him on the way to oblivion.
    “Fooled you, eh?” The Doctor swept his hand at the hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the entire Uranus system from a point between the rings.
    Kevin felt his jaw drop. The phrase ‘panoramic view’ didn’t do it justice. The ship was in the middle of Uranus’s ring system. The pale blue planet was half in light and half in darkness, and was on the horizon of their view from the bridge. There were pastel-shaded rings between them and the planet, with a few fainter ones further out. His eyes hadn’t been deceiving him earlier – he could definitely see some larger and brighter specs within them. A couple of the larger moons were in different phases – one crescent, another full. Beyond Uranus’s system an insanity-inducing number of stars burned. He recognised the Pleiades cluster, looking like a puff of steam lit from within by bright blue neon lights. The purplish red of the Horsehead Nebula touched something deep within him. He felt small, insignificant, and utterly lost.
    “That bright light over there . Is that –”
    “The sun. Yes. About a quarter of a percent of the brightness you get from Earth, so forget sunbathing. Erm, not that you’d want to with your skin colour. Sorry, insensitive of me. You can’t really see the Ea rth, in case you were wondering. Which, of course, you were. It’s closer in and it’s just presenting a crescent to us at the moment. Yet more disappointments, eh?”
    “No, man. This was worth the trip. I mean, thanks for letting me see it.”
    “ Imagine how much better it’ll look with a nice red ring, eh? D’you know, I wish I’d brought dear old Vincent van Gough here. He’d have appreciated the colours.” The Doctor thought a moment. “On second thoughts, he’d have been more a Jupiter or Saturn man – big, bold, brash, with plenty of yellow and orange. Perhaps J.M.W. Turner would be a better choice. There’s an idea…”
    “Can I have a look around?”
    “Be my guest. Ship’s regulations state that I have to make sure nothing’s left stirring on here before I blow it. We’ve got a couple of days before Herschel has to see the red ring, and Voyager 2 doesn’t swing past for a couple of centuries yet.”
     
    “And, last but not least, this is the distillery,” said the Doctor. A door slid open and they stepped into a viewing gallery overlooking an impossibly large and complex series of gigantic pipes, which stretched from one end of the horizon to the other.
    “ Distillery ?”
    “Yes. Distillery. That’s effectively what an oil refinery is. Except that it isn’t, because you use catalytic cracking to produce smaller molecules from larger ones. Okay, let’s say it’s more like a whisky distillery. We’re distilling off helium-3 and helium-4 at different temperatures.”
    “How much? I mean, how low?”
    “About four degrees Kelvin, give or take.”
    “So that’s like four degrees above absolute zero?”
    “Yes. You need a lot of cooling power for that. Hence the massive size of the vessel. Oh, and hence it being remote from the fusion plant.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “Towed away years ago. Can’t leave stuff like that