They walked to the edge of the crater, where the Chief called a halt. Regulations defined the blast zone as that area in which the weapon caused one hundred percent mortality and complete incineration of all structures above ground. There were no ruins to obscure their vision on their side of the crater; only sloping ground and rock. Ahead of them was a gently sloping strip covered by rubble no bigger than small stones. It followed the edge of the crater as far as the eye could see to the right and left of them. The crater didn’t appear to be very deep; only about the depth of one person’s height. The Chief recalled from her weapons history that nuclear weapons were often detonated at substantial heights above their targets to maximize destruction at the surface, rather than expending energy digging an inefficient hole in the ground. Inefficiency defined as reducing the number of inhabitants killed and structures destroyed.
The crater was so large in area that it was difficult to see the far side without magnification. It was clear that the crater was circular, but the ruins and rubble made it difficult to recognize that the crater formed the bottom of a huge sphere through the standing ruins. Deep into the crater a circle of fused glass could be seen, forming a glistening surface that ringed a small pond of water in the center of the crater. The Chief surmised that the pond was formed by rain water that followed the slope of the crater down to the center, and had no way to sink into the ground. It looked as if the entire center of the bowl was made of glass formed by the heat of the detonation.
No one spoke for a few moments. The reality of the crater left by the nuclear weapon could not be matched by any simulation.
At last the Chief broke the silence. “The gods did not smile on those who lived here.” It was an immense understatement, but it was the best she could do.
She briefly considered trying to navigate the remainder of the debris field to get a closer look at the barren ground and the fused glass bowl, but her thoughts were interrupted by her second in command.
“Chief, the background level of radiation here is high enough to suggest that there are pockets of radioactive materials in this rubble. We are probably safe in the hazard suits, but I recommend that we take care to limit our stay here.”
The Chief surveyed the scene a bit longer. “Very well, Number One. I see no reason to stay longer.” She turned around and walked back to the hopper, her team trailing behind.
**
A Ship’s cycle later the Chief of the Research Group sat with legs crossed on a mat in her unit’s Contemplation Space with a number of other members of her staff. To all appearances nothing was happening in the room.
Appearances can be deceiving. Some of her staff were merely meditating in the Space. Most, however, were working with data stored in the augmented regions of their brains or in the neural architecture of the Ship’s artificial sentients. While there were areas for community activities ranging from small spaces accommodating just a few people all the way up to the entire crew of the Ship in the Atrium, the Contemplation Spaces were dedicated to personal thought and labor.
In her own realm of silence, the Chief was busily trying to internalize and integrate the experience of her trip to the surface of the planet. It was a difficult task. One of the Ship’s sub-Intelligences had taken the data from her team’s records and formed a multi-dimensional scan of their trip to the blast center. Her mind was dominated by memories of the remains of the creatures who had lived in the city and by the glistening bowl of glass fused out of the heart of the city by the nuclear detonation.
The memory of the skeletons of the young ones was particularly disturbing. These were children who had no opportunity for real lives, the bright lights of their souls snuffed out in mere seconds.
The Chief was not a maternal female. Having been a crèche baby, abandoned to the Community at birth, she knew that somewhere in her biology there was a flaw, inherited from whomever had left her after her birth. She was not one of those females who cooed over and sang to little ones, who tolerated, in fact took some pleasure in their wildness and lack of discipline as they grew. The Community would never force one like her, or the one who abandoned her, to have the flaw corrected. Eugenic alterations were considered profound changes about which decisions were carefully and only voluntarily made. Even psychotherapies were strictly voluntary. In their society it was considered a flaw, nonetheless, to be unwilling to contribute to the future of the Community. The Chief knew that she compensated for her lack of a maternal sense by contributing to the welfare of the Community with her choice of career.
It was one thing not to bear the burden of birth and child rearing for the sake of the Community. It was quite another to bear witness to creatures who destroyed their own young. Even she, who had little if any feeling for the young, found it an offense against nature to do violence to the future in the way that these creatures had. She had no idea what she would have done, could have done, to stop such atrocities if she had encountered them in the act. Fortunately, the Mother of Worlds had her own way to deal with such as these.
Perhaps that was the only real lesson to be taken from the tragedy of species that committed violence against their fellows, or neglected their worlds to the point of self-destruction. The Mother was a hard taskmistress. If you would not learn, you would not live.
So far, the Community had learned those lessons necessary to survive. Violence was rare among individuals, and virtually extinct among communities. The one great question in her mind was what made her species different from so very many failures. Why was she living on a ship that traveled between the stars when only two other cultures out of nearly two hundred in their local region had ever reached interstellar space? Many never made it to space at all. What made her people different?
That one question was what made this planet so very important. Only the intelligent species of this planet had lived recently enough to provide answers about their mistakes. Those answers might help the People understand the decisions that enabled her people to survive when so many had failed.
It was hard to draw conclusions from the remains of peoples that became extinct tens of thousands of years earlier. This world might provide new findings, might help her race continue to survive and evolve into the future. That was the real importance of this planet.
If there was nothing else that she could contribute to the future of her people, she might be able to contribute to the knowledge that enabled her species to survive and grow.
One Year since Planetary Orbit
The leader of the Research Group’s xenobiology team spoke first.
“It’s rather an amazing coincidence that our genetic structure is as close to theirs as it is. We have found similarities on a few other planets, but never quite as close as with the natives here. In the future, we will have to be careful. We may find other species whose genetic structure is as close, which means we may again find diseases on other planets that will affect us.
“Given our genetic similarity, we have to worry a bit about local diseases mutating enough to transfer to us. That won’t happen soon, though. We think most of the original diseases of the species are long gone, or have mutated to inhabit other local fauna. Those diseases will take a while to decide whether we are something they would like to infest. We have evidence of their existence mostly through immune reactions in tissue samples we have been able to extract from a variety of animals and from remains of the natives. It’s rather ironic, though. We probably wouldn’t even be worried about them in the short run if our drones hadn’t found the bad microbes.
“Our problem is that there are a couple of rather virulent little monsters that do not appear to be natural floating around in the atmosphere of the planet. Those are the ones that generated alerts from our drones.
“The naturals will take a while to make the transition to us, and can probably be handled in due time. The two truly dangerous ones are contagious, tough and pervasive. It appears that they are immediately dangerous to us.
“As we mentioned
in our early reports, they mutate rapidly and appear to have been quite deadly to the native species. There is the possibility that the diseases killed almost all of the natives who survived the nuclear war. They don’t seem to be very parasitic on the other animals of the planet, but they appear to have been absolutely devastating to the nervous systems of the extinct species. They have survived for centuries without hosts, in the air, soil, and water of the planet. And they appear to be everywhere. Once we knew what to look for, our drones reported finding the viruses all over the planet.
“For a while we were wondering whether we were going to be able to insulate our people from these little beasts.”
The Chief interrupted. “You seem to have separated the local diseases into natural and other. What do these others have in common? Do you think the ‘others’ are not natural in some way? Were they created by the extinct species?”
The team leader hesitated for a moment. “I suppose I should be more careful with my language. The actual distinction is that the two special ones have survived as long as they have, and have strong mutation capabilities. As for calling them unnatural or artificial, our evidence for that is rather circumstantial. After nearly a year of looking we haven’t found facilities that might have developed these two diseases. That’s not conclusive because we have spent most of our time developing countermeasures. We haven’t devoted much in the way of time and resources to finding their origins. Given how long ago these diseases came to be, we may never find out whether they were created or how they might have evolved.
Probably the best evidence of artificial creation that we are likely to find is that they appeared suddenly around the time that the species became extinct. We have some proof that the organisms came in to being at about that time. But that will take quite a lot of digging to verify.” She smiled ironically. “Literally, a lot of digging.”
“You said that there had been concern that your team might not find a remedy for these diseases. You have found a solution?”
“Yes. We can vaccinate against them in the short run; we have analyzed the structure of the viruses and have arrived at a way to enhance our antibodies appropriately. We must do more than that, though. It’s likely that we will make some modifications to our own genome to make it harder for these viruses to migrate to us. A permanent solution would be less dangerous than simply coming up with new vaccines as the viruses evolve.
“If we keep the population density of local communities low, that will be another step toward eradication of the virus. If we eradicate locally and maintain small communities for the time being, it will be tough for the little monsters to spread.”
The Chief frowned. “Does it make sense to even settle here if we have to go to such extremes?”
Her team leader shrugged. “We know they exist, and we know how to spot them. If we deprive them of new hosts and kill them as we find them, we will be all right. It’s what we do on any planet, with any new disease-causing biological. The only real difference is that we are usually dealing with a mutation of something that we’ve brought with us. In that circumstance, we know more about the history of the disease, but we still have to find a cure or a mitigation strategy.
“We actually have an advantage here. We haven’t had to lose any of our family to discover them. We can attack them before we suffer any losses.”
The Chief of Research was grateful that the issue of the potentially deadly native diseases was being resolved. It had taken a lot of time for the team to find a cure. The diseases alone had set the Habitation Plan back nearly a year. Admittedly her Group had been able to continue its research, but it was much harder and much slower to get the work done in hazard suits while living in isolation from the planet.
Until now there had always been the possibility that her researchers would encounter an obstacle that could not be overcome. And that would have meant that they would have to return to interstellar space to find another planet suitable for habitation. That would have been expensive, time-consuming, and probably a disappointment to many of her researchers. Planet Three was such a treasure trove of knowledge. It would have been tragic if the only way to do research on the extinct culture was to stay in hazard suits and establish isolated off-planet stations. She wasn’t even sure it would be practical; how could they support a few thousand researchers from light years away?
**
One of the cloaked explorer ships that began the investigation of Planet Three had gotten a clean view of the site on its third scan of the planet. Two explorers made incremental orbit changes and took video of every bit of the area beneath their optical systems. A number of cloaked satellites in fixed orbits added to the optical data, so a detailed view of the entire surface of the planet was on all perspective 3-video. The redundancy of orbits included variations in “viewing” angle; along with views from the satellites there was more than enough information to create good three-dimensional images.
One of the Ship’s secondary Intelligences processed all of the video and integrated data streams to create a huge number of three-dimensional videos, covering everything that looked even vaguely interesting. It also cataloged and tagged every frame with an idea of what the video contained. Sometimes a secondary Intelligence made a mistake but for the most part the tags helped the archeologists of Research Group decide whether a particular strip of 3-V had anything worthwhile on it. In the case of this site, the full dimensional view had been tagged and given a priority. There was something at those surface coordinates that should be investigated.
That didn’t mean that the site had been immediately investigated. On this planet there were so many ruins, and different types of ruins, that it took quite a while to get to even the priority sites. There were also a lot of obstacles to overcome for teams investigating various sites.
There were now nearly fifty teams from Research on the planet. Things were going slowly because everyone had to wear hazard suits outside, but the Chief had said if she could do it, so could everyone else. Between the amazing condition of the ruins and the wearing of hazard suits, however, it was all pretty new stuff to all of the research teams. And there were problems everywhere.
The ruins were relatively intact, so the Research Group teams were forced to come up with new ideas for handling the remains of a freshly extinct culture. Bodies and buildings presented issues that might have been considered in the early days of interstellar exploration but had only now become relevant.
The exploration was already behind the initial planning goals. The planet had been declared free of intelligent natives some time ago but the difficulties still shortened the time available to get researchers onto the surface. It had also taken a while to construct airtight living quarters with decontamination facilities to house the teams. At present there were only three research stations for the whole planet. More were planned, but that would take time. The team of exobiologists and epidemiologists assigned to the disease problem had made good progress on the airborne diseases that apparently infected the entire planet, but a program of mitigation and protection for surface investigators was still not ready. Research Group struggled on in hazard suits.
**
The senior Project Coordinator was scanning the list of project targets when he noticed a priority flag on one of the proposals. Somehow the priority flag had escaped his notice before; it was nearly five ship-days old.
He was already in the Control Center so he walked over to the station of a certain Controller Three. The young female was quite attractive, and the attraction seemed to be mutual. He hadn’t yet checked her family status; like most of the team members in Research, he was shy and awkward when it came to relationships. He needed a bit more information; it wouldn’t do, and it would be quite a disappointment, if she was already mated into a full family. There was usually a little wiggle room in the rules, though, so there was hope even then. In the meantime he took every opportunity to keep in touch with this Three, though, and he was pretty sure that an invitation for
something other than work would be accepted. If a connection made sense.
Right now he just needed a solid Controller, and Three was that.
“Morning, Controller. I need a look at a project target. It’s been on the list for a few days. The summary from the Intelligence analysis is a bit cryptic. Can you bring up the proposal list, please?”
She assented warmly. That was a good sign (for him, too). “Yes, Coordinator.” She looked at her physical display for a moment and nodded as the command from her control cap showed briefly. The list popped up and two priority-flagged lines were highlighted.
“It’s that first one. Can you call the video on it?”
“There are four distinct streams associated. Do you have a preference?”
“Let’s start with the earliest one.”
“Yes, Coordinator.”
The layered block of texts and data streams that she had been working on disappeared and a single three-dimensional stream took over the space.
The visual started out with a small white rectangle in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by dense forest on the side of a mountain. The image rapidly magnified until the white rectangle dominated the picture. Angles changed as images from different sources mixed. Still changing rapidly, one side of the white rectangle turned into a complete view of what appeared to be one side of a structure facing down the mountain, as seen from a slight angle that cleared the tops of the surrounding trees. The changing image slowed, as if a hovering craft was recording the V-stream by slowly cruising above the structure.
The image changed rapidly to show one of the narrower sides of the rectangular structure, this time from a higher angle to avoid the tall nearby greenery that grew closer to the side than the forest near the long front of the structure.
The image flipped again to show the opposite side of the structure, once again at a high angle to avoid the surrounding greenery. It looked like there was a single, narrow window embedded in a slanted, rather thick-looking wall.
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