Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

of the planet nor an established alti- meter. Low level flying at night in such a state of ignorance will be al- together too chancy for efficient space mariners. Possibly a fairly accurate picture of the planet’s magnetic field could be obtained at any time of night or day from outside its atmosphere where the stars could be kept under constant observation. It is certain any travel on the surface will be meaning- less wanderings unless some means is first prepared by which to know in what direction we are travelling, unless we move only on clear nights, seeing little, or on cloudless days armed with very complete data as to direction and inclination of the sun at all points— and a chronometer set to keep time on a dial related to the particular planet’s own day. We could very well find that large parts of our planet, or even all of it, may lie under permanent cloud, and clouds not necessarily consisting of condensed water vapour. Possibly we shall have in our posses- sion all manner of instruments and much theoretical knowledge at present unknown, which may make some of our navigational methods obsolete, but we shall still need the maps and some sort of grid reference to fix points in our new realms. ~ NOMENCLATURE Early terrestrial geographers had a lot of fun naming’ geographical features. You can go down the east coast of South America and meet places named in order of the occur- rence of successive feast days in the Church calendar and thus know how long it took the first name-givers to make their journey. Possibly we shall get a crop of sturdy space pioneer settlements named to correspond with wild western townships—Rocket- Wreck Ravine for Dead Horse Canyon—H-Blast Hollow for Pistol Creek. Or shall we have become so systematical in our outlook that by then we know all things by serial TWELVE numbers only? A/41/Alpha 35 may stand for the Cape of Good Hope, or maybe the Friendly Islands. The South American Saint’s Day sequence gives anyone who knows the calendar a ready way of knowing which place lies north of which, and the serial number could convey quite a lot of information to one trained in its conventions. More important, it could feed into an electronic brain, and if we _ want romance—why, even our machines already have their nick-names and L have yet to meet an efficiently intel- ligent man of the type likely to pioneer space, given the chance, who is without some kind of nonsense, flippant, whimsical or pseudo grim! In more serious vein, there are many unknown and part-known forces. waiting for us in space. I have tried to limit the points here discussed to the field of the geographer as it is now understood, but already cosmic ray concentration represents a new vari- able in the consideration of the nature of things at various places on the Earth’s surface. We know that Tibet- ans endure more, and indeed thrive best on more, exposure to cosmic particles than a dweller by the Dead Sea gets or would be happy getting. In our space journeys we shall possibly need a vessel that gives us protection against uncushioned cosmic radiation, at least until such time as we may take to develop an immunity against it or even make it a physiological necessity for our maximum well-being. On our new planet we will be interested to know where and how cosmic rays are reflected by the nature of its atmos- phere, possibly even its geology. Finally, every advance in_ the geographical exploration of the Earth added to our knowledge of facts and, therefore, to our theoretical know- ledge; perhaps when we know the magnetic fields of other planets we shall know the true cause of Earth’s magnetism. It is possible that, after one look at another planet, we shall bring back information which will tell us more about our own! —i—— | ——— comichooks.com =