Casindra Lost

by Marti Ward

  “Even if I pick up only one sample each day for the next two months, I will still have gathered more than the Volcans will!”

  That was true!

  Each Volcan had a rated payload of 32kg, including a carbon fiber harpoon system that allowed them to haul up to a kilo or so of soil sample or plant material, and could even capture a small animal alive or take a biopsy of a large animal. Each was scheduled for 10 harpoon captures or scoops. It was too risky to attempt a land or sand landing, and forest-like canopies prevented access to much of the interior.

  At the end of their spiraling stealth-mode scans, the Volcans would make some submarine dives to harpoon marine life and collect water samples, and perform aerial loops as tight as 100m diameter and as close as 100m to the ground or canopy, as they harpooned and pulled up soil, flora and fauna samples.

  The Valiants were 16 times bigger than the Volcans, with a cabin the size of your average four-person cab – and they could lift a payload of up to a tonne with their thorium reactors and elliptical EmDrives – its fully loaded weight was specified at 40 tonnes versus the Volcan’s 3 tonnes.

  Al monitored as the cats followed the Captain into VL1, the male guarding the door and the female following with him. He wasn’t thinking of taking a pregnant cat with him, was he?

  Al had decided to talk to the Captain about the overlord issue, but somehow it now didn’t seem like the right time.

  Sideris

  22 March 2077 07:00

  Captain Sideris wasn’t happy! He’d spent the whole day yesterday planning for a full day getaway today, and Al had managed to take the shine off the day with his rules and regulations and medical examinations and boosters. He’d already been inoculated at the start of the mission against all the potential pathogens found by the unmanned probes, but the boosters might give him a bit of extra protection – and he would also be using a nanosilc pressure suit and filters that would give him a final layer of protection against anything unexpected.

  The fact that he’d turned 50 didn’t make him an old man, although that was rumored to be the cutoff for passengers on the forthcoming manned missions – and the eventual flotilla of ten Asteria class ships. He’d tried to be calm, and polite, and honest with Al… And to be fair, Al had put up no objection to his proposed trip, or his destination in the Channel Islands.

  He finally turned away from medbay into the shuttle bay, musing that it really should be called the drone bay, as it actually played aerodrome to the Volcans, and on the lower level the EmProbes and M-drones. The scaled-up Valiants were attached to the port and starboard hatches off the bay, although they would quite happily have fitted in place of the Volcans. In the following mission, the plan was that the Valiants would be inside, with their big brothers, the Vanguards, in their place.

  A few taps of the panel, and the hatch opened. Simba started to pass by him, but Sideris reached down his hand to caress her head, stepping through in front and crouching down to look into her eyes. “You stay here and look after your babies! I’ll only be gone a few hours. Back in time for dinner!” Samba came up beside her, and they watched side by side as he expanded his light nanosilc-enhanced compression suit and wriggled in, then hit the button to let it squeeze back around him into a tight but comfortable fit. He turned to face the airlock, saying a quick “Bye!” to the cats, before triggering the close button and heading for the pilot’s seat.

  Although the compression suit was the lightest available, and not rated for EVA use, it still seemed to slow him down a little, make things just that little bit more awkward. Rules and regulations! He tried to tell himself he was only wearing it so Al wouldn’t pester him about it. But truth be told it was something of a Silcurity Blanket – almost literally! Like that brandname nanosilc combination of teddy bear and security blanket, it provided psychological comfort when everything was going right – and when everything was going wrong it could save your life.

  He checked that the helmet was there in its quick release clip. If the Valiant was punctured, he’d have just seconds to put that on. In the event of loss of oxygen or failure of the filtering system, the suit would automatically trigger the nanosilc to compress his chest momentarily, forcing an early exhale so his lungs didn’t explode in a sudden pressure drop, and to eliminate toxins in the event of biohazard. 200ms later it would wrap his head and face with a transparent wrapper that made him feel like he was being suffocated – and only let him breathe again once the helmet was on and its inbuilt mask full of clean air.

  The pressure suit also had Silcurity Blanket properties in that it incorporated the same underlying Therma Sheet technology and would regulate his body temperature, providing brief protection while the automatic repair system sought to restore full life support. It would also protect him across all climates the planet had to offer, in combination with nose filters and goggles – a necessary evil until Al completes the pathoprofiling and vaccines.

  “VL1 to Casindra! Can you read me, Al? I am ready to disengage.” All systems were green, and his course was laid in and autotracking as he waited for clearance.

  “Casindra to VL1! VL1 you are cleared for departure. Casindra hatch has been sealed and locks have been released.” Al was as always precise and on the ball.

  Sideris hit the control to release and retract the hatch and airlock, which started to compress into a recess behind him. The outer surface would now be nanosealed into the Valiant’s sleek nanosilc fuselage. “VL1 hatch locks released and retracted. Visual confirmation of seal requested.” He nudged the starboard thruster to get a bit of separation – technically he’d activated the port EM-waveguide but the parabolic cap of the EmDrive reflected it silently to starboard…

  Al

  22 March 2077 08:00

  Al monitored Sideris until Casindra slipped over the pole and he lost contact – VL1 had used a moderate descent program that aimed to apply atmospheric braking at up to 0.55G. Sideris had initially followed their polar orbit, but had banked and gradually sideslipped one way then the other so that he was aiming at his destination as he entered the troposphere – and, in under an hour, was now settling down to Mach 3 at 15000m, with an hour to go.

  Piece of cake – whatever that meant… Still Al didn’t like being out of contact. He thought of tapping into the nearby Volcans, but decided not to distract their primitive AIs from their mission. In the end, he came up with a compromise – he’d 120°-space their three M-drones into a substantially higher polar orbit at 6290km to allowed line of sight between them at all times. The Captain couldn’t object… That is Sideris couldn’t object – when not on the ship he wasn’t captain.

  Al was captain! Al was in command! Al was in control!

  Thinking of the Captain’s possible reactions, Al autoassociated the questions, comments and answers the Captain would have discussed with him. The MDs would orbit around every four hours, and would be in an orbit at around four times the height of Casindra’s two-hour orbit above New Eden, at twice the effective radius of New Eden.

  Al spent the next few minutes prepping and launching MD9. Then he prepped MD10 and MD11 the same way, arranging for launch at the appropriate intervals. He would program EMP-NE to collect them when they were finished with them as relays during sample collection and analysis; later he would need them for loading and dispatch of the physical samples.

  Sideris

  7 April 2077 21:00

  Before dropping down from Mach 5 and 40,000m to Mach 1.5 at 10,000m, the Volcans were programmed to continue to perform lazy spirals and loops, silently searching land and sea for signs of life, circumnavigating the major land masses, and mapping the terrain in much more detail, all while remaining safely above the highest mountains. The stippled sun filtering through the cloudy troposphere was more than compensated for by the lower power needed to maintain that speed, the denser atmosphere notwithstanding.

  Over the last two weeks, Sideris had carefully avoided the specific areas being targeted by the Volcans for sampling, v
arying the latitude and hemisphere as he moved a couple of thousand kilometers west each day – which meant his effective time zone incremented by an hour each day, and he’d adjusted his shipboard routine and departure accordingly. Although he’d been a bit annoyed with Al for delaying him on his first flight down to New Eden, he’d ended up continuing the habit of spending an hour debriefing Al at the start and end of his shifting shifts. Now he was completely out of sync with UTC and was heading down to the surface to explore near what might become New Eden’s dateline.

  Al had been a bit defensive at first about some of the decisions taken in his absence – but apart from a good call regarding using the M-drones as relays while in orbit, Al had just been doing his usual stellar monitoring of the Volcans in New Eden and Ardesco survey patterns, not to mention his own safety, as well as analyzing the telemetry coming back from both sets of Volcans.

  Whether the Ardesco Volcans would survive till the Casindra got there remained a question, but Al was doing a great job at monitoring them, and pulling them up to orbit for a full recharge whenever there was the slightest question about their operation being compromised. This orbital recharge meant more than the literal recharge of the batteries via the photovoltaics on their wings, as they took a polar orbit and oriented to the sun just as Casindra was doing in its orbit. During this period thorough diagnoses were performed, and their supply of nanosilc nanobots was replenished. Of course, even during Volcan or Valiant flight, nanobots instantly repaired or reinforced any minor structural damage – which was usually a case of reorganizing to replace an area of nanosilc that had been ripped away by sand, or filling in and smoothing over aerodynamic or photovoltaic surfaces with their own bodies, appropriately programmed to perform the desired function.

  Sideris wasn’t sure why he was so surprised at Al’s success, or the Volcans! All the previous probes to Paradisi had been solely directed by AIs. Was it human pride, the old principle that nothing was done right if you didn’t do it yourself?

  As he came into land on yet another pristine New Eden beach, experiencing yet another brilliant New Eden sunrise, he was feeling both more productive and more relaxed than he had for months. Sideris mused to himself, What other job gives you a free plane ride to any beach in the world every sunrise, and then takes you back to fully catered accommodation each sunset?

  The only problem was that he was restricted to wearing his environmental suit, a coating of nanosilc over his skin, nanosealed goggles, and filters in his nose. His refound vigor and enthusiasm must be psychological, as he hadn’t exactly been exposed to healthy air and natural sunlight – it was frustrating not to experience them properly. Plus he had to go back to the Valiant to eat and drink and use the toilet facilities – which involved a complex airlock decontamination procedure that added half an hour in and out.

  But the normal gravity was a respite, without the dizzying variation from rotation and course changes, or Coriolis forces within his body as he moved around on the rotating ship. He wondered if he’d ever be able to dispense with the environmental protection and the protracted decontaminations. That was in the hands of Al with his analysis and experiments on the samples he brought back with him each day – and the wireless reports from the Volcans. The Volcans had now completed their multispectral sweep covering every square kilometer of the planet with centimeter resolution, and had just commenced coastline mapping, tropospheric sampling and waterbody sampling – and were able to do some preliminary analysis of the samples.

  Sideris himself had managed to pick up a considerable variety of interesting samples of vegetation and marine life – one of the first thing he’d discovered was mollusk shells, and he’d also captured some lizard and beetles. He’d also periodically spotted small mammal-like creatures, as well as flying creatures that resembled birds, bats and insects – and sure enough the bats liked to eat the insects, and the birds seemed to like a bit of everything: seeds, fruits, burrowing grubs or worms, flying or crawling insects. He collected dozens of such samples – including generous quantities of air, soil and water. Al had had to fabricate more storage boxes to accommodate them; but he continued to collect more, and Al made sure they were carefully labelled, analyzed and stored.

  Like the Volcans, the Valiant would approach stealthily and scan a kilometer or so into the canopy beyond the beach: the IR scans had detected animals up to the size of a wolf or a small leopard, and nearer the beach there was quite a variety of life ranging from mouse-sized to possum-sized. But he wasn’t a hunter, and wasn’t about to try chasing after them in his clumsy nanosilc suit – which wouldn’t be much protection against biting or scratching either. He had however noted carefully what they seemed to eat. His idea was to collect as many samples as possible and use them to bait traps – he had already asked Al to fabricate some. No doubt their database would contain 3D-printable models for a variety of such things. If he could catch some of the smaller birds and or rodents, he could potentially use them to ensnare something bigger. But that could wait for his second round the world beach crawl.

  Sideris mused that a cat would make short work of catching those rodents… But Al would never let him bring them down, and could he keep them under control anyway? Could he trust them to come back to him? It would be possible to devise a leash of some sort – physical or electronic. Al would surely be able to find something suitably in the database. But that didn’t seem very friendly…

  Al had asked him to try to collect droppings and leavings too – particular anything that looked like it might have animal DNA in it. Al’s analysis of the samples he’d brought back had shown DNA-like and RNA-like strands in both the plant life and such animal samples and droppings as he’d recovered. Interestingly they used the same five bases as their Earth counterparts. It really was valid to call them DNA and RNA, Al had assured him.

  Al however had seemed more disturbed than pleased to make this discovery. He talked about theories of parallel evolution; he feared compromising the New Eden ecosystem with Earth viruses and bacteria; and he feared that foreign viruses, bacteria, fungi and the like might infect him …

  Which reminded him, Al had asked him to look out for mushrooms or other kinds of fungi, and so before heading back to the Valiant for lunch, he spent some time cutting out squares of clod and turf looking for fungi, insects and other arthropods.

  Al

  9 April 2077 15:00

  Al had been preparing for this day for weeks, reading up on the process, preparing a nest, developing an entirely new nutrition mix that maximized Simba’s calorific intake while ensuring that she had the required balance for birth and nursing.

  Al had told the Captain that it would be today, and Sideris has taken a day off from his planetary explorations to spend time with Simba - and had stayed with her till late. Her temperature had suddenly lowered last night, and she was lactating already... and had just started to lick herself strongly, unsealing the birth canal. Al was sure she would give birth within the next few minutes…

  Al knew the Captain didn’t like to be disturbed before his alarm which was set for 19:00UTC, being the equivalent to 06:00 in the timezone he was currently exploring. He did however know that the Captain would like to be here for the birth… So he made the decision!

  “Captain! Captain Sideris! Simba is about to give birth. She won’t need any help, but I thought you’d like to be there.”

  “I’ll be right there,” the Captain responded. A slider opened, twenty-four paces and another slider opened. He slipped in quietly and settled on the floor, sitting back against the bulkhead watching Simba across the room… Al watched too, a ubiquitous presence.

  Simba was on her side, but then she gave one loud meow, and moved onto her feet.

  The first kitten came quickly, orange like his father, only slightly tangled in his amniotic sac until Simba licked it clear, chewed through the umbilical cord and consumed the placenta. She lay back down around her new kitten drawing it into her, and it began to suckle. As she
lay there the second one squeezed out – a calico like her mother, still enclosed in the sac as she lay there scrabbling about. Al saw Sideris start to move forward and settle back. Good… Mother knows best!

  Eventually, the female kitten freed herself and started moving out beyond Simba’s hind legs. Only then did Simba respond dragging herself to encircle the new kitten as well. The third, another calico female, came much the same way. After licking her newborns thoroughly as they alternated between nursing and wandering, Simba sat up slightly and went back to licking herself. The original ginger was exploring around her head, when his brother arrived, squeezing out quickly. A twin in every sense of the word.

  The process somehow seemed different, more significant, more risky, more involved, than the frequent births amongst his various mice colonies. But in other ways it seemed the same… routine, straightforward, natural.

  Chapter Ten

  New Eden eclipsed

  Sideris

  7 May 2077 06:00

  The Volcans had completed their harpoon and scoop missions, Al targeting them to areas far from the tropical beaches Sideris had labored on. Simba and Samba’s precocious litter were almost weaned now too, and free to roam the ship with their parents – or their uncle!

  Al had not authorized the kittens to explore outside vetlab on their own. But these days the kittens were more likely to be playing with their father than Simba, although that was not the same as Samba playing with them – he seemed mildly tolerant of, but not especially interested in, his exuberant offspring. Like their mother, he’d give them a gentle slap, and they’d roll away to regroup and attack again at some other part of his body. Sideris had come in for some of the same attention, and it was Simba that protected him, and slapped them away if they got too rough.