“Chamber Management, equalize pressure. Sensors, deploy the atmospheric probe and exposure samples.”
The force field reconfigured itself to allow the sampler arm through. It didn’t find any immediately lethal particles missed by the scans from orbit.
Oscar waited the designated hour for the exposure and micro-analysis processes to run. “Xenobiology?” he asked eventually.
“Some spores—probably plant life. Small bacterial count in the water vapor. Nothing abnormal, and no adverse reactions to our sample materials.”
“Thank you.” It would take months of laboratory testing to discover if any of the microbial life was dangerous to humans. Until they were given the all-clear, the forward crews would all be in suits anyway. It was the other biological reactions that worried Oscar. A century ago CST had opened a wormhole to a planet where the local fungus ate polymers. Quite how that evolved was still a puzzle for the xenobiologists. Now a whole spectrum of materials was exposed to the planet first. “Astrogration, please take us down to the surface.”
The exit began to move, drifting downward with the same sedate lack of urgency as a hot air balloon. Oscar could even guess the point that astrogration had chosen for contact. A flat patch of ground clear of any trees, with a stream three hundred meters away. Ground search radar confirmed the area was solid. At a hundred meters up, the oval exit began to rotate around its long axis, tilting to the vertical. A light blue sky slid into view, with wispy clouds high above the horizon, glowing pink in the rising sunlight. Astrogration halted the descent when the bottom rim was a couple of centimeters above the fluffy leaves of the cochineal-tinted grass-equivalent.
Oscar let out a breath as he watched the landscape for any sign of movement. If there were any Silfen on this world, now was the moment they appeared. Stupid lanky humanoids ambling up to the opening and waving gamely at all the ground crew behind their consoles. “Welcome,” they sang in their own language. “Welcome to a new world.” He’d seen it once himself, twelve years ago when he was chamber management station head on Augusta. There had been so much amusement in their smooth voices, laughter for the serious humans and their clunky machinery. He’d wanted to pick up a rock and throw it at the smug mystics.
But this time the chilly red and blue terrain could have been a painting it was so still. There were no Silfen here.
He wasn’t the only one waiting, anticipating. A number of sighs were released around the control center.
Oscar went around the loop again, confirming every station was stable. “Forward crew, initiate contact,” he said.
The floor of the confinement chamber rose up into a ramp. Airlock two irised open. McClain Gilbert and the four members of his first contact team were standing just inside. They wore their magenta insulation suits, a close-fitting onepiece with a flexible hood that clung to the skull; a broad transparent visor dominated the front. The backpack was slim, containing a lightweight air recycling unit and the superconductor batteries for the force field armor they wore unseen underneath the fabric. It was a precaution against any newfound native animal that was hostile enough to try to find out what the invaders tasted like.
Cameras mounted on the sides of their hoods relayed images to the big screens above the windows. A quick check showed Oscar that several hundred million people were accessing this moment through the unisphere. They would be exploration addicts, the stay-at-homes who couldn’t get enough of alien worlds and the expanding human frontier.
“Out you go, Mac,” Oscar told the heroic-looking figures as they stood at the bottom of the ramp.
McClain Gilbert nodded briefly, and strode forward. The force field over the gateway exit slipped around him as he stepped through. His booted foot came down on the feathery leaves of the ground cover plant.
“I name this planet Chelva,” McClain Gilbert intoned solemnly, reading from CST’s approved list. “May those who come here find the life they search for.”
“Amen,” Oscar muttered quietly. “Right, people, to work, please.”
Procedure meant they acquired immediate soil and plant samples that were quickly taken back through the gateway. Once that was done, the team began a more elaborate investigation of the area around the wormhole exit.
“The grass-equivalent is spongy,” McClain Gilbert said. “Similar to moss but with much longer leaves, and they’re kind of glossy, like they have a wax coating. From what I can see the ground next to the stream has a high shingle content. Looks like flint, same gray-brown coloration. Possibly good for fossils.”
The forward crew was heading toward the water. Streams, lakes, even seas, always provided a rich variety of native life.
“Okay, we have company,” McClain Gilbert announced.
Oscar glanced up from the console portals. The forward crew were about a hundred meters from the exit, he could only see three of them directly now, and two of them were pointing at something. His eyes flicked up to the screens. The small squirrel-rodent creatures had appeared; helmet-mounted cameras were following them as they hopped around on the flat rocks beside the stream. Now he could see them properly, his first equivalence naming was becoming more and more inaccurate. They were nothing like squirrels. A rounded conical body, thirty centimeters long, was covered in lead-gray scales, with a texture astonishingly similar to stone. There were three powerful limbs at the rear, one directly underneath the body, and two, slightly longer, on either side. Where they connected to the main body they were shaped like chicken thighs, except there was no mid-joint, the lower half was a simple pole. It was as if they walked on miniature stilts, which made their motions fast and jerky. The head was a giant snout, with segmented ring scales allowing it to bend in every direction. Its tip was a triple-pincer claw arranged around a mouth-inlet. Two-thirds of the way along the snout, three black eyes were set deep into folds that creased the scales.
“Ugly-looking critters,” McClain Gilbert said. “They seem, I don’t know, primitive.”
“We think they’re quite evolved,” xenobiology said. “They obviously have a good sense of balance, and the limb arrangement provides a sophisticated locomotive ability.”
They didn’t bound about, Oscar saw, it was more like a kangaroo jump. Watching them, he worried that the forward team were scaring them, they were never still. One of them darted forward, its pincers splashing into the water. When it brought its snout out, the claws were gripping a tuft of lavender foliage. It moved with incredible speed, shoveling the dripping morsel back into its mouth-inlet.
His virtual vision brought up an amber warning over a section of McClain Gilbert’s insulation suit’s telemetry. The cautions were repeated on the other forward crew. “Mac, what are you standing on?”
In unison, the helmet camera images on the screens tipped down. The feathery grass was slowly curling over to embrace their boots. A thin mist was leaking out from the onion-shaped tips of every blade.
“Hell!” McClain Gilbert exclaimed. He quickly lifted one foot. The grass wasn’t strong enough to stop him. Blisters and bubbles were erupting on the top of the boot. The rest of the crew shouted in alarm, and began to pull their own boots clear.
“That’s some kind of acid,” Planetary Science said.
Oscar noticed all the creatures were hopping away from the humans at quite a speed.
“What sort of plant has acid for sap?” McClain Gilbert asked.
“Not a good one,” xenobiology said. “Sir, I recommend bringing them back in.”
“I concur,” emergency defense said. “If nothing else, we need to wash that acid off them before it eats through their soles.”
“I think they’re right, Mac,” Oscar said. “Get back into the environment chamber.”
“We’re coming.”
“Xenobiology, talk to me,” Oscar said.
“Interesting. The plants didn’t move until our team had been standing still for a little while, so I’m guessing they probably operate off a time/pressure trigger. I’m reminded o
f a Venus flytrap, except this is a lot more unpleasant, and the scale is larger. Any small animal that stops moving is likely to be trapped and dissolved.”
Oscar glanced back through the oval gateway. McClain Gilbert and his team had almost reached the rim. Behind them, there was no sign of the small not-squirrel creatures. “Those native animals never stood still,” he murmured.
“No, sir,” xenobiology said. “And their leg structure would be difficult for the grass to capture. I’d love to know what their scales are made of, it looked pretty tough. Anything that evolves here must be relatively acid resistant.”
“How widespread is this plant?” Oscar asked. “And is the rest of the vegetation going to be similar?”
“The images we’re getting from the low-orbit satellites indicate a comprehensive ground plant coverage,” sensors said. “If it’s not this particular grass-equivalent, it’s a close cousin.”
“Damnit,” Oscar hissed.
The forward crew hurried back into the alien environment confinement chamber. At the bottom of the ramp, decontamination shower cubicles had risen up out of the floor. They were designed to wash away spores or dangerous particles. But they’d be just as effective for this. The team members stood underneath the nozzles as the water jetted down.
“All right,” Oscar announced to everyone on the loop. “Our priority is to establish how widespread this grass variety is, and if the other plants are related. Sensors, get a marque 8 samplebot out there. I want to check out the nearest trees, and there are a few other kinds of plants in that grass-stuff. Mac, go through a complete decontamination, and desuit, I don’t think we’ll need you again today.”
Everyone in the control center watched anxiously as the samplebot trundled out across the red grass. It stopped several times to snip sections of leaf from clumps of other plants, then headed for the nearest tree a hundred fifty meters away. As it got closer, they could all see the jagged pattern of the branches as they forked at acute angles. There weren’t many leaves, just a few slender beige triangles clumped around the end of each twig. Black kernels similar to walnuts dangled down from almost every joint on every branch.
The samplebot stopped a meter from the waxy trunk, and gingerly extended an electromuscle arm. Every kernel on that half of the tree popped simultaneously. A torrent of liquid showered down over the surrounding ground and the samplebot. Its casing began to dissolve immediately. Acid started to leak through and the telemetry ended.
Oscar put his head in his hands and groaned. “Shit!”
By twenty-one hundred hours, they’d confirmed the planet’s plants shared a common biochemistry. Oscar had moved the wormhole exit eight times to different regions. Each one had subtle variants in the grass-equivalent, and no variance in their biochemical makeup.
He ordered the exit to be closed, and the gateway mechanism to be powered down to level two. It disheartened everyone, especially for a mission that had started so promisingly. Then there was the administration crap to deal with; the ground crew that was scheduled to take over exploration from prime had to be switched to a prep crew; everybody faced a mountain of reports to file.
The door of the control center closed behind Oscar. “Another day another star,” he murmured to himself. He was tired, disappointed, hungry. No way was he going to start in on the administration tonight. He told his e-butler to have the maidbots start a decent meal and open some wine to breathe. By the time he got home it should be ready.
Just as he started walking down the corridor, a number of people came out of the observation gallery door ahead of him. Dermet Shalar was there, the CST Merredin station director, and the last person Oscar wanted to see right now. He hesitated, putting his head down, hoping Dermet wouldn’t notice him.
“Oscar.”
“Ah, good evening, sir. Not a good day, I’m afraid.”
“No, indeed not. Still, astronomy has a huge list of possible targets. It’s not as if we’re short of new worlds.”
Oscar stopped listening to his boss; he’d just recognized the young-looking man in the expensive suit standing beside him. “Have you been watching today’s operation?”
“Yes,” Wilson Kime said. “I remember that kind of disappointment myself.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“But I was impressed by the way you ran things in there.”
“I see,” which was a dumb thing to say, but Oscar knew there were very few reasons for Kime to be here today. His fatigue suddenly vanished under a deluge of adrenaline. To be head-hunted for this CST exploration mission was the ultimate compliment.
As if he was mind reading, Wilson smiled. “I need somebody like you as my executive officer. Interested?”
Oscar glanced at Dermet Shalar, who kept his face carefully neutral. “Of course.”
“Good. It’s yours if you want it.”
“I want it.”
....
Two days later Oscar arrived at the Anshun starship project complex. He was given an office next to Wilson on the top floor in one of the three central glass towers, complete with a staff of three. Starting with their first official meeting that morning, he and Wilson had to put the crew selection problem at the top of the agenda. It was a hint of what was to come. Nigel Sheldon hadn’t been joking about the number of requests to join the mission. Tens of millions of people from all over the Commonwealth, endorsed by their government or some venerable respected institution, were hammering against CST’s filter programs for a berth on the starship. Right from the beginning, they decided on a policy of filling the science posts from the CST exploratory division wherever possible. The general crew would be assigned on a similar basis. Exceptions would be made for “outstanding achievers.” Both of them acknowledged that would mean geniuses with political clout.
“Anybody you owe a big favor?” Wilson asked. “We might as well get that out of the way to start with.”
“I’m sure there’ll be a whole bunch of people from this life and my first who are suddenly going to remember the five dollars they lent me. And just about everyone at the Merredin station managed to bump into me before I left and tell me how terrific they are. All I can say is, McClain Gilbert is the best forward crew leader I’ve worked with.”
“You want him for that duty on the Second Chance?”
Oscar took a moment. “It’s that easy?”
“We have to start somewhere, and we have to have some rationale for selection. After all, it’s how I chose you, I asked Sheldon who his best Operations Director was.”
Oscar had guessed it had been something like that: but who didn’t like hearing it firsthand? “Okay then, I’d like Mac. What about you? Do you have any preferences for the crew?”
“There’s fifty management types from Farndale I’d like to bring onto the construction side of the project to smooth out the current schedule, and I’ll probably do that. But as for anyone familiar with this kind of mission, no, not anymore.” They’d managed to track down two others from Ulysses. Nancy Kressmire, who had never left Earth again, was now the Ecological Commissioner for Northwest Asia, and hugely committed to the job—after all, she’d held it for a hundred fifty-eight years. She’d said no as soon as he reached her—not even waiting to say hello, or ask why he was calling after all these centuries.
“Are you sure?” Wilson had inquired.
“I can’t leave, Wilson. There’s so much here on this good Earth we still have to put right. How can we face aliens before we’ve cured the ills which beset our own people? Our moral obligation is clear.”
He didn’t argue, though there was much he wanted to say to her, and all her crusading kind for that matter. The Earth that the ultra-conservative Greens wanted had never existed in the past, it was an idealized dream of what Eden might be. Something not too dissimilar to York5, he thought to himself.
The only other old crew member Sheldon’s staff had located was Jane Orchiston. Wilson took one look at her file, and didn’t even bother placing that c
all. Call it prejudice or intuition—he didn’t really care which. He just knew it would be a waste of time. Two centuries ago, Orchiston had moved to Felicity, the women-only planet. Since then she’d been enthusiastically giving birth to daughters at the rate of almost one every three years.
All in all, he reflected, it wasn’t an outstanding record for a crew that was supposed to represent the best of humanity at that time. Three known survivors out of thirty-eight; one plutocrat, one bureaucrat, and one earth-mother.
The second half of the meeting was scheduled as a unisphere conference with James Timothy Halgarth, the director of the Research Institute on Far Away. “I’ll be interested in your opinion on what he has to say about the Marie Celeste and its crew,” Wilson told Oscar. “Tracking down alien knowledge is an aspect of our mission which I’m going to delegate to you.”
“You think it’s that important?”
“Yeah, we need to know what they know. Or don’t know. I’m determined that we cover every angle of approach on the Dyson Pair envelopment, not just the physical voyage. I was in training for the Mars mission for damn near a decade. I wound up knowing more than any college professor about its geology, its features, the geography, and even the books people had written on it—fact and fiction. Everything. I knew the myths as well as the truths. Just in case. We were ready for anything, any eventuality. And a fat lot of good that did us in the end.”
“Sheldon and Ozzie weren’t anything to do with Mars.”
Wilson grinned. “My point exactly. So … after this, arrange to see the Commonwealth xenocultural experts talking to the Silfen. Get out to the High Angel. Interview a Raiel. I simply don’t believe that none of our so-called allies know nothing about the Dyson Pair. Most of them have been around for a hell of a lot longer than us, certainly they all had starflight when it happened.”
“Why would they hold out on us?”
“God knows. But then there’s a great deal about this which doesn’t seem logical.”
“All right, I’ll add it to my list.”
Wilson’s e-butler announced that the wormhole connecting Half Way to Far Away had begun the ten-hour active phase of its cycle. The unisphere established a link to the small data network in Armstrong City. From there, a solitary landline carried the call to the Institute.
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 23