Setting up for planetfall at M'slaidia was treacherous. The world
was completely enshrouded in debris of all shapes and sizes, though
most was on the smaller side. The least massive items tended to be
farther from the atmosphere, of course, and there was a general
increase in overall mass and density the lower one went.
Navigating the middle levels was made easier because most of the
umbrellas came open on ascent, for some reason, and thus they tended to
sweep out clear lanes amongst all the orbiting keys and watches and
pens and such. Above those levels it was a mixed bag, as all the permission slips and receipts and work orders and memos
were invisible to radar, but they were of such low mass that one
could pretty much just plow through them. Any bits that snagged on
antennas and docking apparatus would burn up on descent through the
atmosphere anyway.
Eyeglasses, of which there were untold
millions, occasionally caused problems with imaging systems and solar sails when they would align with the system's star just
right and focus the light on sensitive surfaces. There had been studies
on retrieved debris that resulted in formulae for
determining how long an item had been in orbit by counting the surface
scorches from passing glasses.
The apparel layer, which had an indistinct upper boundary with the
umbrellas' domain, was clotted with hats and galoshes, raincoats and
sweaters, windbreakers and scarfs, and a surprising quantity of undergarments. Individual
articles had too little metal to reflect radar scans sufficiently, but
since apparel tended to clump (static electricity) the aggregate
reflections were easily discernable and displayed a tell-tale
signature, so steering around them was mostly automated.
M'slaidian scientists had been studying the 'forgotten items in
space' phenomenon intently in the hundred years since the planet was
terraformed and colonized, but they had made little
progress. The stereotypical tendencies of 'absent
minded scientific types' were exacerbated by their immersion in the
very environment they were studying, and much ground had to be covered
over and over. The concensus was that
the accretion disc of the nearby black hole, which the system's sun
orbited at some 197 AU, gave out weak electromagnetic pulses at a
frequency close to that of the theta
waves of the human brain. The atmosphere of M'sladia still retained a
rarified remnant of the original ultra weak plasma it had before the
terraforming, and the mental stress of those who had temporarily lost
vital accessories resonated with the pulses from the accretion disc,
setting off vorticies in the plasma which would somewhow sweep
up those items and propel them skyward. In the early days of the colony
the effects had been inconsequential, with papers moving across the
room or keys falling from tables, but when the millions had arrived on
the first waves of transports, the combined energy caused the vorticies
to coalesce, like dust devils, punching up higher and
higher, setting up standing waves around the cities and
establishing persistent pathways for all the flotsam to ascend clear
into orbit.
The most perilous were the outermost orbital
levels, those seemingly free of debris. Passengers were strongly
advised to sleep or be sedated during planetary approach or departure, though many
resisted because they wanted to see the spectacular caul around the
planet and the lovely seas and cloud patterns below. The problem was
that those who were conscious had a truly bewildering clamor of stray,
seemingly meaningless thoughts flood their minds. Dates, addresses,
names, numbers from every point on the line would all intrude on their
inner monologues. The theta pulses swept up synaptic patterns
most easily of all. Moreover, facts and figures forgotten by travelers
while in orbit were the strongest and loudest, since they had lost
little energy reaching escape velocity; the seeming
contextual relevance of the factoids was often enough to
trigger full scale panic attacks and set off additional waves of
forgetting.
Quite often travellers who stayed awake for the descent
then found themselves in the arrivals terminal luggage carousel with no
idea which bag, if any, was theirs; from time to time a lone straggler
would wander out to the mag-lev depot with no idea what destination to ask for; these cases were why visitors were
required to submit detailed itineraries before arrival and the
terminals were so well-staffed with compad-toting guides. Transport
crewmembers essential to the landing and ascent processes were the only ones who
weren't sedated, but they were dosed with specialized psychotropics
that rendered them little more than robots for that phase of the
journey.
The rest of the Hegemony seemed to
pay little mind to the problems of this backwater planet, given the
inherently difficult trade and communication problems.
When the M'sladia region was overtaken by the Pakraticon Horde, it was hardly noticed.