For my last novel, “The Clorox Contract”, I needed an alien race. I didn’t want them to look like humans in makeup, but they still need to be understandable to the readers. So, meet the Ard’uinath.
I went with an avian species, raptors who are obligate carnivores. I wanted them to be about as large as humans, but still able to fly. This needs to be credible, so I’ve got some work to do.
In an Earth atmosphere with Earth gravity, a bird the weight of human being literally won’t fly. So, I need to either reduce the gravity or increase the density of the atmosphere, or both. A side order of increased oxygen content won’t hurt either.
Luckily, I’ve got a card up my sleeve. The Ard’uinath don’t live on a planet. They live on a Bishop Ring. It’s an open roofed space station with an area about the size of India. Its design will be driven by the needs of the Ard’uinath. The Ard’uinath didn’t build the Ring. Who did is left as a mystery for the reader.
I can set the gravity for whatever I want. So, it spins for half an Earth gee. Running the numbers says that the sidewalls need to be 200 kilometers high to contain the atmosphere. For half a gee, it will spin once every 45 minutes.
At this point, I’m questioning an assumption. The existing designs for a Bishop Ring go to considerable lengths to simulate the 24 hour cycle of daylight and darkness. The designers of these Rings consider this to be a necessity for human beings. First of all, the Ard’uinath aren’t human. They’ve evolved, or perhaps been created to live on, the Ring. A forty-five minute day/night cycle can be perfectly normal to them. Second, human beings are a little more flexible in such matters than some people give them credit for.
A sidebar from my own personal experience here. I spent some time in Inuvik, NWT, back in the day. The Land of the Midnight Sun doesn’t operate on the 24 hour cycle of the rest of the planet. In summer, you sleep by the clock, with thick black curtains on the windows. In winter, it’s all artificial lights. People live there for years without any problems. It didn’t take me long to adjust, either. Human beings are adaptable.
In a future world that included the construction of such Rings, the thrifty might well decide that thick curtains on their bedroom windows are a lot cheaper than the initial cost and continuing upkeep of an elaborate mirror array. End of sidebar.
The Ard’uinath still need a little more help. Their atmosphere has to be quite a bit denser than Earth’s to allow them to fly. The atmosphere has to have 25% oxygen to allow for a hotter metabolism. There needs to be some nitrogen here, to support a nitrate cycle similar to Earth’s. 25% will do for that. The rest has to be a gas that’s denser than nitrogen, but not biologically active. 49% of the atmosphere as argon does nicely. The usual traces for for the last one percent, and that’s the air.
Human visitors to the Ring will actually be able to breathe the air. Argon at high pressures and concentrations has been tested on laboratory animals without any problems. The oxygen content is a little high but not out of human tolerance.
The Ard’uinath are obligate carnivores, so they won’t do agriculture as humans know it. They’ll feed off herds of herbivores, like bison herds. This immediately raises a problem. If the Ard’uinath live off those herds, most of the land area of the Ring will be needed for grazing. Where do they live? Well, the sidewalls are two hundred kilometers high. If they live in perches along that sidewall, that will do for living space. Humans live in cities, and the population density of the Wall will be similar to human cities. Herders and hunters will be needed to manage and harvest the herds, of course.
The Ard’uinath are raptors who have evolved a communal social structure. It’s very hierarchical, and they don’t do democracy in any sense that humans would recognise. A lot of flocks still practice the old custom of challenge for place, but they are moving away from that because it’s wasteful of talent and experience. It’s a time of social and technological change.
The analogue of a human nation is the Flock, whose unit is the family. An individual’s place in the Flock matters, a lot. In fact, the individual’s identity, his name, is his place in the Flock, which usually includes his occupation. Generally speaking, the higher the status, the shorter the name. Flock Chief of Stanath Flock is a lot shorter than Third Netter of Fishing Vessel Windsong of the Fishing Fleet of the Flock of Fylan. They use short names the way humans use first names. To be cast out of the Flock, made Nameless, is the worst punishment they know.
Politically, the Ring is united under the rule of Ringlord. That didn’t come easily. The Great War which forged Ringlord’s Peace was a turning point in their history, so much so that their calendar is dated from its end.
So, Ringlord perches outside his Eyrie on the Wall looking out on the broad grazing lands of the First Flock with the arch of the Ring above him, and it begins …
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