Tau Ceti

by Laurence Dahners

  As Dex rose over the verge and out over the forest a fireball popped through the clouds above, moving slower than any fireball Dex had ever seen. It dropped down, appearing to be sinking toward the meadow Dex had just left. Dex could swear that it was, as bizarre as it seemed, moving slower and slower as it dropped toward the meadow.

  Dex banked back toward the meadow. To hies utter astonishment the fireball came to a halt, just above the grass of the meadow. The flames shooting out of the bottom of it started a fire in the grass; good thing the grass was really green. The meteorite gradually sank to the ground and then stopped, the fire going out.

  Dex curved around to circle it, beating gently with hind wings only. It seemed to be a long slender object, mostly silvery in color. It had little legs sticking out of the sides near the bottom and keeping it upright! It looks nothing like the meteorites I’ve seen before! Meteorites were considered powerful omens, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. Dex found them fascinating. However, every meteorite Dex had ever seen—ones that others had found after they came down and one that Dex had seen crash into the ground himrself—were black and lumpy. Actually they were hot right after they landed and glowing infrared. They frequently started fires like this one had, but eventually they cooled into irregular lumpy black things. When they landed, they landed hard, usually making a hole in the ground. No one had ever described anything like what Dex had just witnessed! A silvery narrow meteorite, shaped like a short, thick stick, which came down slowly, and landed gently! With legs!

  Dex banked around it, spiraling down to land about 6 paces away from it. Hie didn’t feel heat radiating from it like hie had the one other time hie’d witnessed a meteorite landing. The bottom part of it was pretty bright infrared though. Hie crouched down to watch it for a while.

  ***

  Norris walked into D5R resisting the impulse to trot. He’d taught his 11 AM class and had arranged for a grad student to teach his afternoon class. Donsaii and the others had probably already started the rocket’s descent to TC3 and he hoped he wasn’t going to miss the touchdown. The rocket they’d designed to be sterile had been put through the Tau Ceti port and flown to the planet, arriving during the night last night. The landing site they’d chosen based on glimpses through the clouds was on the side of an enormous mountain and it would be just past sun rise there about now. Or Tau Ceti rise?

  He strode into the big room down near the end where Donsaii and the others did most of their work, but no one was there! He looked around, hoping no one thought he looked frantic, though that was the way he felt. One of the machinists walked by and he said, “Hey, any idea where the Quantum Research folks are today?”

  The guy frowned, “Yeah, they’re all down in the little conference room. Not sure why.” He pointed and Norris turned to head down there in a very disappointed mood. Has something gone wrong? Are they just having a post mortem? He knocked on the door and tried the knob. It’s locked?

  Emma opened the door, “Dr. Norris! Come on in! You’re just in time; we should be coming out of the clouds any time now.” She spoke quietly as if she didn’t want to disturb anyone.

  He frowned, “Why are you in here?” Donsaii, Emmerit, Garcia, Daster and Kenner were the only people in there. He’d kind of expected a lot of people and a party atmosphere.

  “Ah, we decided we didn’t want everyone to be able to see the screens. So far, if folks walk by and see TC3 on the screens, they just think they’re seeing a cloudy Earth or Venus or something. But today, we hope we’ll be seeing things that anyone would recognize came from somewhere else and we don’t want anyone getting freaked out.”

  Norris tilted his head in puzzlement, wondering what they thought people might “get freaked out” about, but then excitement took over and he headed around to look at the screens himself. At present all six screens showed unremitting pale gray. “I assume everything’s gray because we’re still in the clouds?”

  “Yep,” Donsaii said. She pointed to the screens which were arranged in a row of four with a large one in the middle. There was a lone screen above and another below the row. She pointed to the top one, “View looking up,” she pointed to the bottom one, “down,” and she swept across the middle row, “four cameras pointing each direction.”

  Norris had already noticed a reddish orange glow on the side of the bottom image, presumably exhaust from the rocket that was slowing the descent. Suddenly the gray cleared away to show brilliant green everywhere. Immediately the middle row cleared to show green on the bottom of their images and grey on top. A little cheer burst out.

  “OK, where do we land?” Donsaii asked.

  Roger said, “I think the darker areas are something like trees. Probably problematic landing in them. We should shoot for one of the lighter areas, they’re probably clearings.”

  Norris said, “Look at that spot there, it’s light and it looks like it has some kind of rocks sticking up through it to one side there.” His eyebrows rose as he realized that everywhere else was unremitting green. “It’d be good to land near those rocks since it looks like we can’t see rocks anywhere else. After all, we set up the laser in this rocket so it could do spectro on some rocks and that’s the only likely site I see.”

  Ell spoke to Allan and the meadow Norris had chosen slowly rose to meet their rocket as they stared in awe at their first view of this new world. The meadow was a ragged oval and had the odd row of rocks or boulders strung partway across it, somewhat nearer to the northern side. Emma said, “Look! On the right screen! Over by the rocks, it looks like smoke!”

  Sure enough, there did seem to be some tendrils of smoke rising from just in front of the boulders. Norris wondered what in the world could cause that. If it were volcanic you’d think there would be some lava or something. The rocks were rounded as if they’d been exposed for a long time. They didn’t look like lava. Well, didn’t look like Earth lava anyway.

  Emmerit said, “Holy jeez, the atmosphere is dense! We’re registering 695 kPa or about seven times as dense as Earth’s atmosphere! Oh, and it’s 36% oxygen!” He paused, then, “Ah, crap we really couldn’t live there; it’d be like deep sea diving. We’d get oxygen toxicity and nitrogen narcosis.”

  Ell laughed, “Roger, I can’t believe you were hoping to go build a house on the first extra-solar planet we visited!”

  He put a hand to his chest, “Hey, a young man can dream can’t he?”

  Norris wondered how Roger thought he’d get there through a four inch port. Or can they make bigger ports and just haven’t told me—or the rest of the world—about it?

  The view rocked a little and settled at a slight cant. Donsaii said, “We’re down.” Norris noticed that the very bottom screen showed something that looked, for all the world, like a blade of grass! As he watched, it curled and blackened.

  A loud pop sounded and Manuel stood up suddenly. There was champagne foaming out of a bottle he held out over the cooler he’d pulled it out of. He set the bottle down and passed out some plastic champagne flutes.

  While Norris held his flute waiting for some of the champagne he continued staring in wonder at the screens. The meadow was surrounded by what appeared to be a rainforest. Very tall, though skinny tree boles were visible through the forest verge, shooting up to a high canopy with darkness underneath. “Whoa! Look at that huge… bird?” Everyone else’s head snapped back to the screens. He wasn’t seeing feathers. Maybe it was more like a bat?

  Emma said, “The wings look way too small, how does it fly?”

  Donsaii mused, “Really dense air should help. High oxygen means that its metabolism can run really hot. But that would just help it launch and fly fast. What’s the gravity Allan?”

  Allan, Ell’s AI answered the question in all of their earphones, “0.27G.”

  Ell said, “Low gravity would make it easier to fly too.” Looking past the large flier she realized that there were lots of small fliers flitting around the meadow on small wings moving so fast they were hard to
see.

  Emma said, “Wait a minute, if the gravity is so low, why is the atmosphere so dense?”

  Norris said, “Gravity doesn’t necessarily correlate with atmospheric density. Venus has about the same gravity as Earth but the atmosphere is 90 times denser. Remember that Tau Ceti has that huge ring of cometary debris. If this planet has been getting pelted with a lot of comets they may well result in more water and atmosphere…” He sipped his champagne as he watched the flyer circling the rocket. He had the impression it was big, though he couldn’t really tell how far away it was. To his surprise it seemed to be flying by gliding on its wings while beating its tail like a dolphin pushes itself through the water, mostly with its tail. It spiraled in closer, then landed nearby on long slender lower limbs like a bird’s. In fact they even seemed to have forward and backward pointing toes with claws like a bird’s feet.

  They all stared in awe. It had upper limbs too with… with… claws that were something like bird’s feet but looked very flexible… like hands… and it wore a harness made of leather straps!

  ***

  Syrdian startled Dex by appearing back-up-right in hies back-eyes and whispering, “What is it?”

  Dex looked guiltily back-up-right at Syrdian, whom hie’d completely forgotten about. Hie shrugged hies wings and said, “I don’t know. Some strange kind of meteorite, I guess.”

  After a long pause Syrdian said quietly, “Where were you going? Before… you know… before the meteorite landed?”

  Dex thought about lying. Trying to sugar coat it somehow. But hie was sick of Syrdian’s attitude. Hie shrugged hies wings again and said, “I was leaving. You don’t seem to want—or appreciate—my help.” Hie heard a gasp of indrawn breath back-up-right. Dex rose and took a step closer to the meteorite, then crouched to watch some more. It didn’t seem to be doing anything.

  Syrdian whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  Dex shrugged hies wings, still intent on the meteorite.

  “I… I know I’ve… been rude. And I haven’t even thanked you for what you’ve done for me. I’ve been scared that I’m… dyatso. But I guess I’ll be able to fly with the ‘leatherwork’ you did on my wing… once it stops hurting so bad?” Syrdian paused, and when Dex said nothing, Syrdian finished in a near whisper, “Thank you Dex.”

  Dex looked back-up-right at Syrdian. “You’re welcome. But I’m not thinking that the leatherwork will be forever. I’m just hoping that your wing will heal if the gap is held shut. Like wings can heal little rips.”

  “Really?” Syrdian said, raising hies right wing and looking at the stitching again. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Why did you do it then?”

  “Didn’t seem like it could make your wing worse.” Dex shrugged a wing. “And if it works, it’ll make your wing a lot better.” Hie took another step closer to the meteorite. Nothing bad had happened yet.

  “How long will it take to heal?”

  Dex looked back-up-right with widened eyes. “How would I know? I assume about four eight-days, the same as little rips.”

  Syrdian’s eyes widened, “But the migration! It’s today!”

  Dex blinked, “I know.”

  “But how will I go?”

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to.”

  Syrdian’s eyes were opened wide in full panic mode now. “But the summer heat… I won’t… I won’t live through that.” After a pause, hie continued in a juddery voice, “That’s why Qes called me dyatso isn’t it?” Syrdian slowly sank down until hies chest nearly touched the ground. Hie sobbed softly.

  Dex sighed. “I had some ideas about that too. But I don’t know if they’d work or not.” Hie turned back to the meteorite. It was just sitting there. Not even crackling or hissing like the first one hie’d seen come down to land on the ground. Well, the first one had been partly in the ground. Hie thought this one looked… beautiful! Like the finest made object from the very finest craft person. Very symmetrical, and smooth, it seemed polished, with a number of fine glassy beads near the top. Though it still looked brightly infrared at the very bottom, the infrared coloring had faded just above the bottom. Dex wondered if hie could touch it without being harmed.

  In a choked voice Syrdian asked, “What are your ideas?”

  Dex shrugged hies wings, “They probably wouldn’t work.”

  “What are they?” Syrdian asked plaintively.

  “Go up the mountain, not south. The higher you go, the cooler it is. I think that a lot of the non-flyers climb up higher in the summer.”

  “But it’s hard to fly up there!”

  Dex turned to look balefully back-down-right at the crouching Syrdian.

  “Oh, right,” Syrdian whispered, “I can’t fly anyway.”

  Dex turned back around and stepped another step closer to the meteorite. It continued to sit there, becoming less infrared but otherwise unchanged. Tempted to reach out and touch it, hie decided to wait a little longer in case something bad happened.

  Syrdian whispered hoarsely, “I’d have to walk through the forest to get out of this meadow?”

  Dex nodded and reached out to touch the meteorite. It felt cool. Nothing happened so hie stroked a finger over it. It felt hard, and smoother that hie could believe. Smoother than a polished stone out of a stream. Smoother than the beak of a great predator. Like the feel of a recently flaked flint surface but without the ripples. Hie gripped it and lifted it off the ground. Hies eyes widened, it was lighter than hie’d expected! Most meteorites that reached the ground were heavier than rock. Some weren’t but they were porous. This one seemed to have holes in it but only a few. Looking at the regular spacing of its features, its smoothness, its symmetry, hie couldn’t help but think that someone had made it. Maybe it was hollow? Could there be a tribe somewhere that could make something like this? Could one of them have dropped it out of the clouds above and even now be watching and laughing as Dex make a fool out of himrself? Hie looked balefully up at the clouds but saw no one flying in and out of the lower layers to watch.

  Syrdian querulously asked, “Will you stay with me?”

  Dex set down the meteorite and turned hies head to look back over hies shoulder, “Will you carry dried meat?”

  “Yes, yes, whatever you say.” Syrdian said eagerly.

  “OK.” Dex turned back to the meteorite. “I’ll stay with you.” Hie wanted to take the meteorite with himr but hie wouldn’t want to have to hold it in a hand all the time. Hie tried to think how hie could attach it to hies harness. “Let’s start up the mountain. You get the staves and the rest of the dried meat. I’ll meet you at the verge.” Dex beat up into the air carrying the meteorite in one hand.

  “Wait!” Syrdian plaintively called behind himr but Dex ignored the cry, reaching height and coasting to the verge, beating gently with hies hind wings while carefully examining the verge for large splotches of infrared.

  ***

  Norris stared in awe at the creature. It appeared to be staring back at him out of the screen. Actually he had an impression of its eyes moving up and down and around as if it were examining the entire rocket. He assumed they were eyes anyway. Shiny, smooth and yellow with a black pupil, mounted in a pair on the head. A head that was too small to hold much of a brain, even though the creature’s approach and harness suggested intelligence. He wondered briefly if their nervous tissue was more efficient than Earth animals, allowing intelligence even with a smaller brain? The eyes seemed to be closer to the bottom of the head than the top and it looked like there might be a cleft above the eyes, as if there was a mouth located above the eyes. No nostrils though, only the cleft and the eyes. Covered with fine golden brown fur, or something like fur, the creature looked… pretty, graceful, and… dangerous. He thought it stood about twice as tall as the three foot rocket.

  Another creature, apparently the same type as the first one, but walking not flying, approached from behind the one examining the roc
ket. Its coloration seemed more silvery yellow as opposed to the golden brown of the first one. Friendly? Or coming up from behind to attack? Norris saw that the second one also had a harness, though its leatherwork appeared to be much simpler than the harness on the first one.

  The golden one’s head turned to look at the silvery one. When its head turned Norris was astonished to see more eyes on the back of the head. Smaller and wider set, the posterior eyes looked somehow less important than the main ones. He realized they must be either nonfunctional or have less acuity or the golden alien wouldn’t have turned its head to look at the silver one with its frontal eyes. Behind the front eyes and in front of the back eyes were little trumpet shaped holes, the front ones facing forward and the back ones backwards. He immediately thought of them as ears though he was trying to resist the temptation to assign familiar functions that belonged to earth organisms.

  Norris looked at the others who were all gawping at the screens as well.

  Emma said, “Do you get the impression they’re communicating with each other?”

  Norris said, “Yeah, they keep looking at one another then back at the rocket.”

  The creature moved closer to the rocket again. Roger said, “How are they communicating? Their mouths aren’t moving and they aren’t making any sound.”

  Ell laughed, “We didn’t put a microphone in the rocket. They could be speaking English for all we know.”

  Roger snorted, “Duh. You’re right. Well, we should be able to use reflections off the laser window to pick up acoustic vibrations like the spies do.”

  “Good idea, any ideas on where we’d go to pick one up?

  Emma said, “Hey, I’m the instrument lady, remember? I’ll get one ordered in a minute, just let me watch a little longer.”

  Norris said, “Don’t forget they might communicate with something other than audio?”

  Ell said, “They don’t seem to be making signs. I don’t see any visual changes in their surfaces, they aren’t emitting light. I’m not sure what other physical methods they might communicate with? You aren’t thinking telepathy, are you?”