Blighted Star

by Tom Parkinson

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  The departure of the Amish ushered in a new mood for the people still in the camp and for the rest of the day the area round the ship hummed with the bustle of final preparations being made. It was as if the remaining folks felt that if the Amish could do it…

  In fact they had not fallen behind in their schedule at all since their arrival. As Chan had remarked to Athena, everything was “Five by Five.” But now everything was done with a new crispness; baggage was waiting neatly stacked against the time one of the shuttles would be ready to take it. Long before the tired pilot was ready to take off again, the belongings would be aboard the craft and the settlers would be stood round waiting impatiently to depart, final goodbyes all said.

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  By nightfall almost all the outlivers had left for their final destinations, and as the last shuttle whispered down, and kissing the ground cancelled its antigrav. A strange feeling of jollity started to prevail among the people who would make their homes around Cassini for the time being. Someone lit a bonfire of discarded packaging. Someone else produced a fiddle which was quickly joined by a guitar and a piccolo. And the four hundred left danced and partied into the night.

  Chapter 2

  Jim was standing at the lab bench scrutinising a sample through a portable nanoscope when Athena finally found him. The workers at the quarry had directed her first to where the sheets and tubes of finished steel were waiting stacked for dispatch, then to the other end of the facility where the mining head drove its beam shaft clear down to the mantle. In the end she had noticed a light on in one of the cabins and had recognised Jim’s outline through the frosted glass. As she opened the door, he looked up abstracted for a moment, then a broad grin split his chubby features.

  “Athena! Good to see you!” he took her hand briefly.

  “Hello Jim. How are things? You looked a little worried when I first came in.”

  “Not worried as such, more puzzled.” At her quizzically raised eyebrow he went on. “You see the assumption always was that Goldilocks, sorry, Saunder’s World was at a very early stage of evolution. That, in fact, only plants and a few very simple multicelled creatures had evolved. Few worms, jellyfish, that sort of thing. A bit like early Earth. And now, well, just look at all the fossils we’ve been finding.” Jim indicated the rows of rock samples on the workbench. Athena picked up one on which was the unmistakable imprint of a fin.

  “Wow.”

  “Wow is right. The water teemed with life, and the land was populated with amphibians that only had to return to the shore to spawn. There were hard shell insect – analogues, some larger animals, even some adapted to make short flights. A whole eco system.” he held up a sample with a swirling form on it which Athena’s untrained eyes could not make out.

  “What does it all mean? Where have they all gone?”

  “Well that’s where the mystery gets even deeper. Everything went extinct about twenty thousand years ago. Everything except the plants. They did just fine. In fact they did slightly better if anything. Not surprising with nothing eating them.”

  “But it does mean no catastrophe.” Athena smiled, Jim looked slightly miffed as if he had been getting ready to reveal this last fact with a flourish, and she had stolen his punch-line.

  “Well, yes. No volcanism. No sudden rise in sea level. No Ice Age. No planet killing asteroid. Nothing we’ve ever seen. All the animals just died.”

  “Oh.”

  “The only thing I can think of …“ Jim went over and shut the door “and if it is what happened then we’re going to be very famous because until now it’s only been postulated as a theory, is a Gamma pulse.” Jim looked extremely pleased, in fact his eyes sparkled.

  “A Gamma pulse?”

  “Every so often, somewhere in the universe, a star collapses or something happens of sufficient magnitude to create a beam of gamma radiation. This pulses across the cosmos like a torch beam, but a torch beam of pure death. If a planet were to get in the way of this beam, then everything on the surface of that planet facing the beam would die. If the planet were exposed for a whole rotation, everything throughout the globe would die. The planet would be effectively sterilised.”

  “But what about the plants? They didn’t go extinct.”

  Jim’s face clouded. “No, I know. Perhaps the seeds were resistant. Perhaps a few small patches survived and quickly re-colonised the whole surface. Right now it’s just a theory. But if it turns out to be true then this place will draw scientists from all over to study it.”

  “How likely is it Jim? Scale of one to ten?”

  “I would say at this stage a good seven. Something killed all these creatures Athena. And I’ve covered all the conventional explanations.” He leaned a little closer, conspiratorially. “You won’t mention this to anyone will you? I mean, if it is a Gamma Pulse then I’d like to get the whole thing straight before going public. If it turns out to be something mundane then I’d rather not look a fool. Except to you of course.”

  Athena laughed “Jim, you could never look a fool to me. But yes, of course I’ll keep your secret. On condition that you keep me posted.”

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  Lana lifted the front of her smock, her belly feeling cold and vulnerable. Dr Clark put a warm hand there for a moment. Made a “Hmm” noise then bustled off into the corner to search inside a cupboard.

  “Wasn’t expecting to need this for a little longer…” he held a small flat device cupped in his palm which he held gently against her lower abdomen. It hummed for a moment then gave a soft beep. He glanced at the readout “Yes, I thought as much. You’re six weeks pregnant.”

  Lana’s world seemed to halt. She had had some idea, that was after all why she was here, but now it was something which wasn’t just in her mind, it was a real, true fact. She was going to have a baby!

  “Of course there are many options open to you at this point. Should you decide to proceed you might consider delaying the birth or accelerating it. Another option might be to gestate the foetus in an incubator…”

  He continued to outline the possibilities in detail, but she wasn’t really listening any more. She was going to have a baby! A baby! Grad’s child! She longed to be home. Looking out of the window she could see the class of children playing out on the green under the supervision of their mechaniod teacher. The six foot human shaped robot was projecting three dimensional fairy-tale creatures with which the class was constructing an imaginative narrative. Lana smiled, remembering her own teacher, Ms Sparx. She wondered what Ms Sparx was doing right now. Probably still teaching about Old Australia; teaching robots often got a little fixed in their ways as they got older, it was some function of them having a capacity to empathise with their young charges. Some odd ones got so much personality that they became even a little eccentric, but those were the ones that everyone liked best. By the time her baby was ready for school, the teacher outside would have been in service for three more years, still not really time enough to have developed a style of its own. Lana smiled to herself, her baby would have a brand new world to grow up in, those children playing out there so happily would be his or her friends and fellow citizens.

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  Over twenty kilometres away in the settlement of Crescent Waters, Grad was unloading the last of the farmbots from the shuttle. As each was taken from the hatch it was placed on the ground in front of Christel Robbins, one of the farming consultants of the colony. Christel was good fun to be with in a flirtatious sort of way, and Grad could not help but acknowledge in himself an awareness of her physically. If it weren’t for Lana…

  A sudden commotion at the other end of Crescent’s main street of close mown grass made them both glance that way, and there, flanked by the settlement’s three hundred or so occupants, was the small Amish group. As they proceeded up the wide road with their menagerie following their cart, they looked something like a circus visiting an old Earth town.

  “Bloody savages!” The whole subject of
the Amish was one which Grad was learning to avoid with Christel. Her usually tolerant and easy-going attitude completely altered whenever the Amish were mentioned. She found their way of life; raising and killing animals for their flesh, totally unacceptable. And their belief in a supreme being mystifying. For his part, Grad agreed with her; why couldn’t they eat vat meat like civilised people? On the other hand, live and let live. As long as they didn’t ask him to eat any of the vile stuff…

  Whatever the townsfolk thought of the eating habits of the Amish, they were certainly giving them a rousing welcome now. When the little procession finally headed out of the town and continued on the last short leg of its journey, it was with the all of the children and many of the adults too. And Grad was sure he’d seen a look of surprised amusement on the bearded face of the senior Amish. Clearly, they were not going to have the problems other religious groups often encountered from their neighbours on other settled worlds.

  “C’mon. I’m all done here.” Christel straightened her back and stretched her arms after leaning over for so long. The farmbot scuttled off towards its first assignment, and they both watched it go, flashing in the sunlight. Grad held out his hand and Christel took it, hauling herself in through the hatch. Grad couldn’t help but notice that she held on to his hand for a good deal longer than was strictly necessary, and even when she let go she did not stop looking right into his eyes. He looked away in confusion When he glanced back at her face, she was looking at him with a quirky, wry twist to her lips. He grinned back.

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  When Athena got back to her office, she barely had time to sit down behind her desk when there was an agitated knocking at the door. It was Lieutenant Jackson.

  “Ma’am, we have a potentially serious breach of security.”

  She looked up sharply, “Go on.”

  “Ma’am, the satellite tracking system has been in place for three days now. We had teething problems, but everyone’s safely accounted for except one. It highlighted a trace which hadn’t moved for more than forty hours so we went to investigate. The trace was coming from a cubicle on Cassini, and when we forced open the door this is what we found.” he opened a box and held it out to her. Inside was a tiny pellet of plastic and metal like a multi coloured grain of rice, and several surgical swabs of the kind found all over the colony in first aid boxes. The decreasing amounts of blood on the swabs spoke eloquently of the wound incurred when the tracking pellet had been dug out of the individual’s arm, and how it had quickly dried with the application of the haemostat-spray whose light blue stains were still visible. Athena could think of several explanations, and didn’t like any of them.

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “A settler called Gunnar Olafson.”

  “Ah yes, Gunnar.” Athena felt a little lightening of her worries. She could recall with perfect clarity Gunnar’s background file and did not even need to access Cassini’s computer via her comms. It painted the picture of an outsider, a loner, even a misfit. At first sight not the sort you would want to bring on a mission such as this, but in fact, a type of person that contributed in all sorts of ways to a society’s wellbeing. Indeed, history had shown all too clearly what happened to the cultures which turned on their own mavericks. None of those stories ended happily… All the same, they could be a royal pain in the neck if you happened to be in charge, and here was a good example.

  “Have we any idea which way he went?”

  “Not yet Ma’am, shall I send out a probe?”

  “Do so, it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate him. He’ll be the biggest lifeform after all.”

  “What then ma’am? Do I bring him in?”

  “God, no! Just leave him to it. I’ll shuttle out myself and have a word with him.” she could see that Jackson wasn’t happy.

  “What steps will be taken to restrain him?”

  “That will depend rather on his reasons for going off like this. But probably none.” she watched Jackson’s posture stiffen as he considered openly confronting her over this, then he relaxed ever so slightly.

  “Yes ma’am.” he still stood, waiting. A model soldier, who wasn’t about to challenge an order which he though was stupid.

  “Dismiss.” she pulled a face at his retreating back. Go and write that into a report. she thought. Jackass.

  Jackson left the office, shaking his head a little once the door was closed. On the whole he respected Athena Johnson and trusted her judgement on most things, but the tracer system was there for everyone’s safety, and there had already been too many exceptions made. Everyone should wear a trace, then he would know at all times where everyone was. That was the whole point. What if there was an emergency? How would he do his job? The damned Amish were one thing, for them not being tagged was some kind of religious thing, not one he could understand, but he just had to accept it. But if everyone went off the system… Jackson called up the tracer readout on the comms set feeding into his visual cortex and immediately the corridor in front of him was overlaid by a thousand tiny green dots. He thought about Christel, and her dot was highlighted for him by the system. She was moving between Heartlake and Crescent Waters, cruising at forty kilometres an hour, rather slow for the shuttle. Beside her dot was another one, the pilot of the shuttle. He quizzed the system and the green dot briefly bore the name Grad Hutchinson. Not the attractive woman pilot then…The thought of Lana called his attention automatically to where she was; her dot was embedded in the large cluster around Cassini. Zooming in brought a greater resolution, she was nearby, two floors down, just leaving the sickbay.

  Jackson was coming to the end of the corridor, and he logged off the tracer system, at once the dots disappeared and his view of the crowded internal canteen of Cassini was unobscured. Near the serving counter were six of his troops. Jackson got his food and went to sit with them. He noted the slight widening of the eyes as they gave each other signals of despair, but he also knew that this forced intimacy was just something they all had had to learn to live with. It would be great to have a separate mess for officers, but as he was the only one in this tiny command that would seem to be something of a waste of resources. One of the troops, A red headed New Argentinian called Williams broke the uncomfortable silence.

  “What we doin’ this afternoon Lieutenant?” She scratched her tattooed arm with her fork.

  “We’ll patrol out along the route the road will take as far as Crescent Waters.” Jackson was a little surprised at the answer himself; up until now he had meant to take up the afternoon with simple drill and kit cleaning but something had prompted him…Oh yes, he had seen Williams tearfully kissing a boy who was leaving for Crescent Waters a couple of days before. she certainly looked pleased now.

  “We all going Lieutenant?” One of the two Slavonicans with the platoon, Petric, looked slightly less happy, Jackson wondered what the man had had planned for the evening. Probably staring morosely at the other Slavonican, Orlov. That seemed to be their main pastime, both men were known to hate each other, yet were compelled by some tribal instinct to spend many of their evenings in joyless drinking competitions, Hard alcohol pouring into their bloodstreams to battle with the nano immune system’s enhanced defences.

  “No, us.” he circled his knife pointing to all around the table. “We’ll stay out there overnight, Sergeant Raoul will hold the fort with the others while we’re away.” He settled into his meal. The decision he had made was possibly a bad one, after all, soldiers thrive on routine, not sudden whims. But really there couldn’t be any harm in it, and it would give them more of a chance to acclimatise to local conditions, like the weird lightness of gravity. At the back of his mind too was the feeling that Christel and he needed a break from each other. Their relationship had changed since they had made planetfall, and he wasn’t sure about the direction it had gone in. Perhaps if he absented himself overnight she might have time to appreciate him, to stop at least from finding his presence the great irritant she seemed to find it at the m
oment. He shovelled another mouthful of the vat grown food into his mouth without enthusiasm.

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  Williams always felt self-conscious out of uniform. She had never been a particularly good dresser, unlike her older sister who had had an innate sense of style. Juliette had always known when something was just at the point of being really fashionable, and just as importantly had always known when to abandon a style and to move on. Williams had never had this gift, and to make things worse, had had too much pride to copy her older sibling, so she had lost out doubly, and had, she was sure, never once hit the cusp of a fashion. On New Argentina this had been a problem; the whole planet was a fashion power house to which scores of other planets looked for coming trends. If you couldn’t strut it on N.A. you were nothing, totally invisible.

  Joining the Marines had got her away from all that, and it had opened up new worlds to Williams. In her combat fatigues she felt just as invisible as she had been standing next to her gorgeous, immaculately dressed older sister, but in her line of work now, invisibility was a good thing, and the various camouflage patterns her combats adopted were all purposeful, interesting, and chosen automatically so she didn’t have to worry.