From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: When did the Whorl arrive?
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 09:51:05 

mantis wrote:
> 
> And I quote: "That [60 years of Q onboard] seemed rather short to me--I
> would have imagined that such a rise [for Q within church] would require
> fifteen years or more [and Q would have only seven years]" (OBW, p. 182). 

Right--this, and what follows, is where I got the 68 years from.  Or am
I  missing your point?

> (352 - 100 =) year 252 Horn's highball for being insystem

This I don't see.  I'd have to look up the text again (I don't have it
with me) but my recollection is that the 100-year figure applied only to
the interval between (hypothetical) Whorl-Green conjunctions.  I don't
recall Horn in this passage considering at all the maximum amount of
time the Whorl could have spent in the system.

> We had precious few clues in BOTLS as to how long the Whorl =might= have
> been just hanging around.  Believe It or Not: I wouldn't even factor it
> (idle orbit) into the calculations on the travel of the Whorl.  Now Horn is
> fooling around with it, and it seems rather like he is working in the same
> area as the Hammerstone hint we had before.

If we assume that the Whorl was in the system when Quetzal came on
board,  and that Horn's recollections/extrapolations of Quetzal's career
are accurate, then the minimum of 68 years can be approximately relied
on.  Horn's other numbers are only guesswork, and very shaky at that. 
(I won't comment on the BoTLS stuff, because I don't remember it at all
and I don't have the texts with me.)

--Adam

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