She was right, of course. The only choice they had was whether to wait until the Untrans were dead to burn the village, or to do it while some still lived, and save them the suffering of the virus. It was also a possibility that, as with the plague on Earth during the Dark Ages, some people might try to escape the disease by leaving, and might get far enough to spread it to the next village. This left only one true option.
Shana forced herself to look up at the camp on the screen above her. Oosah has moved, and was now leaning against the wall of the hut closest to the fire, panting, eyes rolled back. The fire had gone out, and a pitiful gray smoke rose listlessly from the ground. Oosah’s color was already starting to green like the corpse; she was dying even as they watched helplessly.
“We’ve got to take off,” Gemma said.
Shana nodded and the crew moved to their stations. The Wanderer lifted into the air, and Gemma announced, “I’m firing cannons now.” She did. A boiling roll of fire exploded over the temporary camp, engulfing it instantly. In less than a minute, all that remained of the camp was a large clump of ash. They headed for the village.
The village was a mess with bodies in the street and a few people wandering through in what was definitely a confused state. Some, already turning green themselves, leaned over the bodies of others, rocking and wailing. Shana had to look away. Gemma fired for a solid minute, until there was nothing left of the little village or surrounding forest at all, just a patch of scorched, cursed earth.
“I wonder if this is how the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah started?” Questioned Elton.
“Let’s do a final scan,” said Gemma. They did a big loop around the village. Kelsan noticed them first: two Untrans walking, about a mile from the Village, one of whom was clearly not feeling well. Probably going to seek help. Gemma fired the cannon and the two were incinerated. For good measure, she scorched the road they had traveled, back to the village. The devastation was shocking.
The ship left the atmosphere before Shana could even wipe her tears away.
Gemma was silent, waiting for them to recover from the trauma of the last hour.
Finally, Shana said, sorrowfully, “It was a near perfect world. And they were good people. I’m sorry we came here.”
Elton nodded, unable or unwilling to speak.
“We’ll never make the same mistake again,” Shana pledged, forcing herself to sit up straight.
They were in orbit five thousand miles above Untra: “So where are we going?” Asked Gemma. “Should we return to the third planet?”
They exchanged questioning looks. “If we were traveling the way Prometheus is I would say yes, but I think we should leave this system and never risk running into the dominant genetic structure again. We know that we can never safely mingle with the inhabitants here so best to leave and never look back,” said Shana. “As soon as Pixie is able to jump, I recommend that’s what we do.” She looked at the others to see if they supported her opinion and could tell that they were feeling pretty much the same way.
There was an immediate jolt and they found themselves awakening from the jump.
Recoveries
“Give us some warning next time,” complained Elton, who had been standing before the jump and had fallen. “I hit my head on something, the floor I guess.”
“Sorry,” Gemma said lightly. “Anyone want to see what a Nebula looks like close up? We have one only a couple of light years away, and this close I can’t tell if it’s one we know or not.”
Everyone looked at the screen. “It isn’t that spectacular this close,” said Zak. “It’s so pale when you get this close, and it fills the whole screen so it has no shape.”
The glowing gases didn’t have much color either; it just looked like a slight haze in the blackness of space.
Shana was the first to ask the big question. “Where are we? I mean, are there any planets nearby? I don’t see a star but I can only see in one direction. Give us a scan of our location.”
As the screen began to show other directions a blue star came in to view. It wasn’t likely that they could live in that system with the radiation the blue star was giving off so they prepared for another jump.
“Ready,” said Gemma in warning. They felt the immediate pain of a jump and once again found themselves waking after the loss of consciousness.
“I’d sure like to find a way to jump without the pain,” said Shana rubbing her eyes the way people do when they have severe eye strain.
It took seven more jumps before they found a star with a planetary system that looked like it might have some promise. It had actually been only about an hour, their time, since they’d left Untra, but it seemed a lot longer. The pain in the jumps seemed to be a considerable drain on their energy.
Pixie’s blood filtering was complete and she was sleeping the peaceful sleep of a new born child. Zak was sitting beside her cot watching her lovingly; it was actually sort of cute.
“She’s going to be fine,” Gemma announced. “She’ll probably be very hungry when she awakens.”
Elton and Kelsan went to analyze their current location, while the others stayed with Pixie. “The star in our viewer looks slightly more orange than a straight G-type star,” said Elton, over the Link so he didn’t have to shout to be heard from the bunk room.
“Yes,” replied Gemma. “It’s only just under temperature from a full G-type but shouldn’t pose any serious threat to us. If anything, it’s probably healthier due to slightly less radiation. It’s also about half again the diameter of Sol; which is to say, about one and a half million miles in diameter. I scan six planets, two of which are in a habitable zone. We’re about a week from the nearest one to the sun and we’re lucky enough that both are on this side of the star so we can easily veer slightly on the way and check the more distant first.”
Pixie chose that moment to wake up. “I’m hungry,” she said drowsily, to laughter. Greater first words were never spoken. “When are we going to the camp?” She asked as she sat up and looked around. “Why are you all stating at me?”
“You’ve been really ill,” replied Zak “We had to filter your blood to remove alien organisms.”
“Oh, I remember feeling strange just before I fell asleep, so are we going to stay and build shelters and all that?”
“We had to leave that world,” said Shana. “Zak can fill you in.” Shana couldn’t face being the one to tell her.
Zak gave a much abbreviated, cursory version of the tale. Pixie just sat there looking blank. “We killed them all? Even Krenek? He was just a boy!” Shana could see that Pixie was remembering how attentive Krenek had been to her.
Tanya brought her some soup from the Synth. “I’ve lost my appetite,” Pixie said with the expected tears in her eyes, her voice sounding weak and shaky.
“You have to force some down,” ordered Gemma. “You need to replenish your energy after the blood filtering. You’re still not completely recovered and we can’t risk you or any other member of this tiny crew.”
Pixie took a sip of the soup. It was her favorite, mushroom soup, and her face brightened a little. “I guess we learned an expensive lesson, unfortunately at their expense,” she shook her head sadly. “It’s too bad we didn’t think about it before. Imagine—it could just as easily have been the end of us, as well or even instead of the Untrans.”
Gemma said, “If it helps, I have some Untran tissue samples and plan to do some testing so we will have a better idea of what to do if we ever come across that species again. I believe that in time I’ll know how to treat them.”
“But there just wasn’t any time to work miracles this time,” Pixie concluded. Gemma nodded sadly.
Pixie took a deep breath. “If we had died instead of them, Krenek’s tribe would have inherited our technology. Gemma, you and Cap would have been there on Untra without us.” This seemed to settle it for her. “As awful as that was, I’m glad we’re alive and still together.” She reached out and squeezed Shana’s hand
, clearly able to discern how miserable Shana was.
Pixie was always a good one for having the ability to put things in focus and Shana was cheered somewhat by Pixie’s buoyancy. Pixie started eating her soup in earnest and cheered up considerably with food in her system.
“So do we head for the first planet? It’s about a week away,” said Gemma. “We’re just drifting at the moment.”
“Head for the first planet in range, Gemma,” ordered Shana.
The next week was relatively uneventful and the trauma of their stay on Untra became less painful as time progressed. They did busy work and Gemma and the Captain were busily revamping two of the spare mining robots to give themselves more useful bodies. The bodies had six legs and looked like spiders, but they added a stem in the center with arms and faces. The faces, though not fully functional, were made to resemble their own faces, which gave the mining robots a strangely eerie sense of life. They could imitate a variety of expressions such as surprise or just a smile of sorts, and could walk and talk as Gemma or Cap. It was a little creepy at first, but overall, the group liked having them around.
On the day before their arrival at the first planet to be checked, Gemma called their attention to the smaller of the two moons which was only about sixty miles in diameter.
“That little moon has a tremendously elliptical orbit, suggesting it was a capture rather than a leftover from the formation of the solar system,” said Gemma. “The reason I’m drawing your attention to it, is that it reads as if it has both crystals and the strange metal that usually accompanies them.”
They all yelped in surprise at the news; they were sure they’d have trouble finding a source to replenish their ever-reducing supply. They had been concerned in large part because they were going to have to use some of what little they had for the mini-saucer exploration craft they had promised to Gemma and the Captain, so that they could go off and try to learn how to navigate in non-space. They all agreed that that was a top priority, and being able to fuel a mini ship without reducing their own stores was a relief.
The tiny moon wasn’t really round like a real moon but it was definitely loaded with crystals both large and small. The metal was in large outcroppings and required some serious labor to cut. It was extremely hard to cut which they’d learned when Prometheus’s crew had first extracted it from the cave where they’d found a large meteor embedded in a planet.
After a whole day of work, using the mining robots and space suits and hand tools, they’d collected all they could store and were ready to check out the planet below, which showed signs of being at least somewhat habitable. It had oceans and showed oxygen levels possibly high enough to support human life.
It definitely had plant life and very large polar caps, possibly in the tail end of an ice age. The planet in general was about ten thousand miles in diameter and had one real moon, which looked as bleak as Earth’s moon, Luna.
“There’s bound to be some sort of life there with that amount of vegetation showing,” said Gemma, and the thought of it made Shana’s stomach sink with anxiety. Elton reached out without saying anything and held her hand, knowing exactly how she felt.
“It’s just about ninety eight million miles from the sun but I can’t tell how much fluctuation there is to its orbit; we need more time to observe it. If it’s not in the tail end of an ice age then the planet has too thin an atmosphere to maintain the humidity to keep the temperature up; you know, cold nights. Based on its rotation speed, it does have a twenty seven hour day so the longer nights may be a problem anywhere but near the equator. I fear the second planet at only sixty million miles plus distance from the sun may be too warm. It’s considerably smaller too. Diameter’s only about four thousand miles and it has a nineteen hour day, so not real promising there.”
“Well, nothing to do but go down and see what it’s really like,” said Shana, forcing herself to think practically, and pushing the image of Oosah’s angry face from her mind.
Gemma started the engines and they lifted off from the moon and headed for a low orbit to study the new world from above. “It has life, at least plant life, so likely life up to the level of small mammals, like rodents. No trees yet, so human life is hardly likely. That’s a good sign if the oxygen content is high enough for you to breathe, but I can’t get a completely accurate measurement until we enter the atmosphere. Under maximum magnification I see what I believe are huge formations of stomatolites along the coastlines. That is an extremely good sign,” Gemma concluded. “I suggest that we go down in an area of plant life and check the genetic structure to see if evolution is following a path anything like our own.”
There was general agreement from all and they began their descent, looking for an appropriate landing site close enough to fresh water and the sea both so the mini sub could see what was in the water. The lessons learned on Narcissus were enough to make them extremely cautious of what the waters could hide; the dangers of things like the scorpions were fresh in their minds. It was clear that there was adequate or possibly more than adequate tectonic activity and there was a more than adequate magnetosphere. As a matter of fact it was stronger than that of either Earth’s or New Reesh’s. So far, so good; it should give the planet surface plenty of protection from radiation and small meteor bombardment.
Before beginning their descent, they launched a small probe toward the other possibly habitable planet in hopes of saving a trip there in the event that things were less hospitable than where they were. If there was one thing they were learning, it was that where conditions for life existed at all, life of some form was already there—but it didn’t mean that it would be good for humans. The first and second planets—the two under consideration for colonization—were considerably closer to each other than they’d seen in any of the other systems they’d been in; it would be important to keep an eye on the orbital fluctuation to make sure there wasn’t a possibility of a distant-future collision. Nobody wanted to see a repeat of what had happened on Reesh, which had come too close to its neighbor under very similar circumstances and been destroyed, stranding a small colony of escapees on what became New Reesh in a more primitive state until the Earth ship arrived and brought them back to an advanced civilization again.
They began their drop through the atmosphere, aiming for an area about a thousand miles south of the equator where a mighty river emptied into the ocean. The plant life signs were abundant in that region so it seemed the perfect place to test the genetics of the planet in general.
They landed in a level area about four miles from the base of the foothills, though there were bigger mountains in the distance. The stream was about half a mile south and the coast only about two miles though there was a bay between the actual ocean and the real land mass. The isle along the coast appeared to be little more than a sand bar with a lot of stomatolites growing; that pretty much explained the high oxygen content of the atmosphere.
They had counted eight active volcanoes on their way down and there were probably more that weren’t smoking at the time so it was a very tectonically active planet; perhaps too much so but time would tell.
“I think we should send the mining robots out to pull a couple of plants before anyone leaves the ship,” suggested Gemma. “I know you don’t want to repeat any past mistakes and it will prevent possible disaster to the eco-system even if there are no advanced life forms.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Shana to approval all around. “Let’s see what we have here.”
It took only a few minutes for the diggers to return with a few leaves in carefully sealed bags, much to the relief of the rapidly recovering Pixie. Nobody wanted contamination, as they’d been freshly reminded that it could end their journey in a heartbeat.
Five minutes later Gemma made her announcement. “Everything here so far is identical genetic material to yours, though the plants are extremely primitive. I will be very surprised if there are any critters or even large denizens in the water! It’s like Eart
h or Reesh might have been almost a third to a half billion years ago. The down side of this obviously younger planet is that I’ve detected quite a bit of distant seismic activity, which helps support that conclusion but could be problematic. It shouldn’t be a deal breaker, but we’ll have to be careful where we make our first settlement. The average major shifts on a planet this size shouldn’t be more frequent than every twenty thousand years and if I’m reading things correctly and I’m pretty sure it is fairly settled at the moment. This may be one of the best locations on the planet,” she added with a smile.
“The oxygen content is about eight percent higher than we’re used to and the methane levels are only minutely higher. About the only thing you may notice is that if you light a fire, it will probably burn with a little more intensity; a little brighter on the plus side. Do you want a water sample brought in before you go out?”
“Do you recommend it, or do you think we’re fairly safe?,” asked Shana.
“Well, on the premise that the plants survive with the water here, I’d say you don’t have anything to worry about as far as the chemical composition is concerned, but you don’t want to drink it without testing it first. I don’t believe there will be any bacteria in the water that will be beyond our ability to deal with; it’s way too much like our own.” she concluded.
“I’m game to go out,” said Pixie. “I’m anxious to get outside and walk around a bit.”
“Though we don’t see it as likely, I want to keep our eyes open for things that bite or sting,” said Shana. “Just don’t get lax—we’ve had enough drama in our journey already.”
Everyone agreed. Zak said, “If there are no large life forms here yet, and we speed up evolution on our own, then we’ll have a planet with no large fossils for archeologist to find. That’s sort of odd to think about, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Shana agreed.
“Before we release any of our bio stock on this planet, let’s make sure this is where we’re going to stay,” said Kelsan. “Remember, we thought Untra was going to be perfect, too.”
Starborn Odyssey: Voyage of the Lost (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 3) Page 12