Alder's World Part One: Mass 17

by Joel Stottlemire

  “Like the simulation?”

  “Exactly like the simulation.”

  Garson looked at the bulkhead lost in thought. “I’m worried about what happens if we survive.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do you know that Mbaka caught some of Tallin’s men printing firearms.”

  “What?”

  “You know. Firearms, sidearms, pistols, whatever they call them.”

  Alder cursed. “Do they have any?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. He said they had some pieces but no powder, whatever that is.”

  Alder didn’t explain. After a few seconds, Garson went on. “I can’t do this Sam. I can’t be fifty years old, pregnant and second in line behind Pilton. Tallen will kill him and me too.”

  “We don’t know that Pilton will kill.”

  “Elana says he did it before.”

  “Yeah. Yeah she did.” Alder rubbed the back of his grubby hand against his equally dirty chin. “Look Treva. We’re all worried, but what are we supposed to do?”

  “You could do it Sam. You could kill them first.”

  “What?”

  “Tallen only has four or five close followers. They have all started staying with him in his cabin. There could be an accident.”

  “Treva…”

  “I’m not kidding Sam. Everyone knows he plans to take over if we survive. I can’t do it Sam. I don’t know how. Pilton won’t even talk to me. He’s been locked in his quarters most of the last week. Someone needs to take charge Sam. It needs to be you.”

  “Killing crew members in cold blood is not what taking charge is about. You’re asking me to act like you’re afraid he’ll act. The crew is still strong. We’ve been through a lot together.” Garson had started crying while he was talking. “Maybe everyone won’t follow Pilton. Maybe Tallen will cause a fuss…” Her body was wracked again, this time with tears of frustration and terror. “There are hundreds of us. We’ll make a decision…” His words trailed off. Her mouth was open and her eyes were shut but no sound was coming out. Grief had overcome her. Ignoring the fact that he was pushing his feet into the vomit, he turned so that he could pull her head into his chest.

  The lights were low and smoke still filled the hallway. He held her silently as the grief rolled through her and told himself that the tears leaking from his own eyes making clean streaks on his face were caused by the sting of the smoke.

  Optimism

  Muuk sat opposite Dr. Alder in the Elana’s strange pool of glass and light. She was squat with a broad face and wide nose. Her mostly grey hair was up in a bun, its lightness making the brown of her skin seem darker.

  “Last visit I guess.” She said conversationally. “Do you think we’ll still have quarterly psych evals once we get on the surface?”

  “I don’t know.” Elana answered honestly. “I guess; if enough of us survive.”

  “Oh we’ll survive.” Muuk said brightly. “That husband of yours is some kind of smart. We’ll whistle right through the atmosphere strange space critters and all. A whole planet, can you imagine?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Every problem humans have comes from some time in the past. Every bad lesson, every mistake, passed on from generation to generation. It seems like humans never get a fresh start. Well, it doesn’t get much fresher than a brand new planet.”

  “You’re thinking we’ll start a new civilization?”

  “We’re the first humans to make it this far. Even when they start sending ships this far out, it’s unlikely that we’ll get spotted anytime soon. How long do you think it will be?” Her dark eyes were twinkling. “A hundred years? A thousand?” We’ve got hundreds of the best sets of genes, custom picked to be friendly and to work cooperatively and hundreds of years alone. It’s going to be a wonderful experiment.” She leaned back. “I just need to be sure and get my DNA into the pool. I’ll have to move quick. I don’t ovulate often, but I haven’t dried completely up yet.” She leaned back forward conspiratorially. “You know, I’ve wondered about Mbaka for years. He says he’s too old for that kind of thing but I’ll bet his leg isn’t the only thing in his pants that’s stiff.”

  Dr. Dryden opened her mouth and closed it. “That a…refreshing attitude.”

  “There are only a few hundred of us but we’re a good genetic mix. We’ll need to get as many combinations out of the original crew as possible. Maybe if I get success with Mbaka early enough, I’ll try Frence in the biodome. He’s a little young but a cutie. She glanced slyly at Elana. “What about you and Sam. Your baby maker still working?”

  “This is a very different set of sentiments than I’ve heard you express before.” Elana countered.

  Muuk laughed. “I’ve been editing and re-editing the same lines of code for more than a decade. A change of pace will do me good. Breeding a new race on an alien world is a great change of pace.”

  The Ceremony

  There wasn’t too much to see but the whole crew seemed to want to make something of it. Wei from systems, Van Weer an engineer, and the pilot Gibson, were standing by on top of the hab module with a cutting torch and a remote control, waiting for instructions to set it loose. The science bay was already gone and there was less than forty-eight hours of work left on the shielding before they would be ready to land.

  The Ceremony, as everyone was calling it, was the last significant event before the descent. The atomic was ready, the hull re-enforced, and a thousand other small details attended too. Most of the crew were gathered on the port side of the ring that ran the full circle around the ship. They would only be able to see the last cut on monitors but they would be able to see the module as it disappeared into the thick soup around the ship. The whole process would have been invisible but they’d set up a vibration in the shields that was holding the cloud back a few hundred meters. It cost them in terms of heat in the shield generators but the math said they’d be leaving at least ten days before the first possibility of an overheat.

  Sam and Elana stood side by side gazing out the window. For once, Sam wasn’t needed for anything in particular. It was almost over. The buzz that had run through the ship for eight weeks was quieting down. One by one, tasks were being finished. There were no more parts to be salvaged from science or hab, no more code to write, no more items to be cataloged. The few crews still working on the shielding were busy and there was some last minute work going on in the biodome ,but more people were spending more and more time talking with friends or touring the ship half looking for work, half taking a final look around.

  Some of Tallen’s men had shown up though not Tallen himself. They had taken to wearing the same blue security uniforms regardless of their actual job title. Rumor was, they were planning to wait until after the landing before moving to ‘remove’ the increasingly reclusive Pilton. He was there too dressed in his white dress uniform and speaking formally to anyone who would speak to him as if it were a banquet or formal event. Mostly he was ignored.

  A buzz went around that everything was ready and the ring fell silent. Pilton, who was wearing a microphone, began to speak and his words echoed around the ship. Someone booed when they heard it.

  “There is no effort more noble that exploration. If humans have survived this long, they have done so because of their unending quest to find homes for themselves where there is no home, to find safe passage to peace and prosperity in lands beyond the horizon…”

  Behind his voice, the radio was chattering with the instructions to release the last lines. Van Weer was given the instruction to make the final cut and Gibson powered on the ion engines. Like the science bay, the hab module had only been given enough pads to push it out of the Duster’s way. It, like the science bay, would stay eternally in orbit, a part of the tiny moon that they had accidentally created.

  “…Not every ship returns home. Not every journey ends in glory but, as we commit our beloved habitation module to her long slumber in space, we know that she is giving
herself so that the human journey may go on…”

  On the screens, the plasma torch flashed blue as the last beam cut through. Slowly, the hab module began sliding to the port and down, away from the ship. The crew turned their backs on Pilton and the screens, crowding up against the plate glass.

  “…This ship is not the metal and glass, it is the people…”

  Below them, the hab module slid into view. It looked like a great, mechanical turnip, grey with dust, sliding under the ship’s lights and out into the dark. The three crew standing on the top in environment suits were tiny pools of light. They saluted as they approached the edge of vision.

  “I got to tell you.” Wei’s voice came over the comm, walking over Pilton, who fell quiet. “You guys look great from here. I’d forgotten how beautiful a ship in space is. With the modules gone, the bottom of engineering looks like a sea ships keel, very smooth, very strong.”

  There was some clapping and a few cheers.

  “Well, I guess that’s it.” Elana said as the last glimmer of the lights on the hab module faded into the murk.

  “That’s it.” Sam agreed.

  “So, we’ve got the best odds possible.” Elana, glanced at Sam out of the corner of her eye.

  “A lot better than we had a few weeks ago. We’ve got more than a 70% chance that at least some of us will survive.”

  The three crew members on the hab module had re-appeared from the dust and were powering toward the ship using thrusters built into their suits. The crowd was breaking up into chatting knots. “You think we’ll lose people even if we survive?”

  “Oh yeah.” Alder sounded nonchalant. “The shields will keep us together on impact but, even with the gravity well generators running, we’ll feel about 11 g’s. People will get hurt; lots of broken bones, probably some fatalities. If we get structural failures…”

  “Stop.” Elana interrupted then sighed. “You know Sam. It’s getting hard for me to keep positive. I keep having this bad feeling.”

  “Yeah. A lot of folks are pretty worried.”

  “Are you?”

  Sam scowled. “I don’t know. The numbers are a lot better than they were.”

  “But your gut, Sam, what does your gut say?”

  “Aw, El, I don’t know. The numbers are okay. If I see anything else I can do to keep us safe. I promise.”

  “I know you will.” Elana paused. “I’m off duty for the next twenty hours. Will you come spend at least part of it with me in the biodome?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot…”

  “Please, Sam. I know you don’t get scared, but I do and the whole, cowardly captain, brewing revolution, imminent death combination has really gotten to me. I could really use some time.”

  Alder nodded and rubbed her back. “Okay. Mbaka’s expecting me. Let me tell him I’m going to be away for a while.”

  Face of the Future

  Gibson , Dr. Shirimi from Science, and Mbaka, crowded around one of the consoles in Mbaka’s pod. Gibson, who had come straight from the ceremony, was speaking, her voice hushed.

  “Shirimi wanted me to get as close as I could, but I was worried about the health of the probe, so I dropped a couple of camera buoys on my way in to make sure we’d see it if anything went wrong. You can see me dropping the second one about ten kilometers out.”

  The holographic display in front of them shivered slightly as the one kilogram camera and sensor module was released. For a second the view changed to that of the buoy. It showed the probe as a black outline of wires, lattice, and sensors moving toward the shifting auroras over the north pole of the planet. The planetary crust had cooled to all black and the sun was on the far side of the planet, casting a ring of blue fire over which danced the glowing lights.

  As the view switched back to that of the probe, an object could be seen in the aurora. From ten kilometers out, it appeared to be a knot in the shroud of light, as if the aurora itself were some kind of fabric or blanket twisted in the middle. As the probe dropped closer, an object could be seen at the heart of the twisting glow. It was indistinct at first but grew steadily clearer as the distance diminished. It had long tendrils that seemed to wrap the aurora around them and also strange grilles or lattices that spread out like wings from a solid center. All in all it gave the impression of a new species of insect or maybe spider though it also bore some similarities to a vining plant.

  “How big is it?” Mbaka asked.

  “The scale is a little hard to track without any other objects nearby. The center section is maybe a hundred meters across, the tendrils stretch out maybe two thirds of a kilometer.” Gibson answered. “I can run the rate of change versus the horizon and give you a better number if you want.”

  Mbaka waved his good hand. “Not important. What is it doing?”

  “A lot of things.” Shirimi joined in, her voice a soft as Gibson’s. “It’s making ammonia; stabilizing carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide; there’s a lot of methyl alcohol and aromatic ester in the aurora as well. We don’t know if it’s making them or not.”

  “Why make aromatics?” Mbaka mused.

  “We don’t even know why it’s in the air. There’s no propulsion at all that I can see.” Gibson said, fiddling with the controls. “There is one thing I want you to see before we get to the big finish.” The screen focused in on the bottom of the center section of the enigma before them. “This thing looks like the glowey part of a firefly. I think it’s about ten meters across maybe. Can you see that it’s pulsing?”

  “Yeah.” Mbaka agreed. “It almost looks like it’s breathing.”

  “Exactly.” Gibson said. “The rest of the object is rigid or seems to flex on logical pivot points. This thing is different. You can see that it has some sort of rigid attachment to the rest of the structure but it’s actually pretty flexible.”

  The three fell silent for a few seconds, watching the strange glowing bulb on the bottom of the structure.

  “The heart?” Shirimi asked.

  “Or the crew module maybe?” Gibson fed back.

  Mbaka harrumphed. “Or maybe just the battery. That glow looks like plasma to me. Maybe they use some kind of pressurized plasma and that’s the pump.”

  “Could be.” Shirimi agreed.

  “Whatever it is, they sure protected it. Watch this.” Gibson switched to the following camera. The scout looked like an insect moving up next to the strange thing in space. “I was trying to get close to the bulb. I’m moving almost straight down relative to this perspective. I was maybe twenty meters away when this happened.

  Almost too fast to see, two of the tendrils looped suddenly back in from aurora and wrapped firmly around the probe. Almost before the watchers could process what was happening, they flipped the probe up to the side of the structure opposite the bulb. They pressed it against the dark hull for a few seconds and the blue light of a plasma torch flashed. Less than a minute later, the probe, now in two pieces, was flung off into space by the tendrils.

  “What happened?” Mbaka asked.

  “They cut the battery out.” Gibson answered. “One of those pieces is most of the superstructure, the other is the equipment. What didn’t come back is the battery pack. They ate it.”

  “Ate it?”

  Gibson shrugged. “I guess. I’ve got the whole thing in great resolution. The torch is built into the side of the ship. They move the probe three or four times while cutting. I don’t see the batteries get picked up, but they don’t come back. Weird thing is; that’s the whole reaction. It didn’t slow down or do any scanning. It didn’t come for the trailing cameras. It just ate the battery and went right on with what it was doing. Both of those cameras are still on station.”

  Shirimi whistled. “Has Alder seen this?”

  Mbaka shook his head. “No. He’s with Elana right now.”

  “Okay.” Shirimi turned to Mbaka. “I say we don’t say anything to the crew yet. There’s more than a thousand of these things around the north pole al
one. I think we’ve got enough to worry about with the landing. Maybe they won’t even be on the ground.”

  “Maybe.” Mbaka concurred. “But you don’t build planets because you want to live in space.”

  “True. I’ll show Alder when he’s back on duty.” Shirimi stood. “In the meantime, I don’t think we need to panic anyone over things we can’t do anything about.”

  There was a moment’s silence. They all understood that they were also agreeing not to tell Pilton.

  “Agreed.” It was Mbaka.

  Human Nature

  For years, Sam and Elana had worked together in the biodome when their schedules would allow it. There was still some noisy last minute work being done to re-enforce the hydroponic racks, so they steered themselves into the open section directly under the false suns. Rows of a three foot tall corn hybrid were ripening in the warm Earth. Silently, they took plastic tubs and started down adjacent rows. Crop rotation and a carefully controlled environment ensured that there were always vegetables in harvest. Social engineering insisted that the crew do the work. Sam didn’t mind the sharp edges of the corn that sometimes cut Elana’s hands. What was harder for him was the squash and ground hugging vegetables that made unfortunate demands on his knees as he bent to prune or pick them.

  There was only a light, artificially created breeze so the only sound, other than the eternal hum of the machines that ran the facility and an upset chicken over by the pens, was the sound their clothes made as they pushed between the rows.

  Sam understood that one of the reason Elana was so attracted to him was because, while she was responsible for caring for the emotions of the crew on the ship, he was rather “pure” as she put it, and un-emotive. When she did need to be comforted, he always felt at a loss and unsure what to do. Over the years, he had learned that just his presence seemed to give her what she needed while she worked out whatever she was working on so he worked in silence on his row, watching her forearm out of the corner of his eye for signs it was still troubling her. It was scheduled to rain in about two hours. While Alder hoped they would go into one of the greenhouses when it did, he knew Elana well enough to know that she would stay out in it. With the deep loyalty that was native to his being, he knew that he would stay in it with her. At least it was a warm rain.