by Barry Kirwan
"Pierre!" Kat pleaded.
He cleared his throat. "There’s… a lot of fundamental disagreement." He hit the control and retreated inside the chimney of data rising around him.
"Which is why we’re here," Blake said, turning back. "Sometimes you need a little faith, Kat."
"And the desert? The one that didn’t exist two years ago? And the message?"
His smile shortened. "We’ll find out soon enough." He stretched his gaze to the horizon east of the mountain range, and found a rust colored fringe. He hadn’t intended landing this close, but a thruster failure had careened them a thousand kilometers off course to this place, with the desert’s heat haze glistening a mere twenty kilometers away. He’d also seen one puzzling screen shot during the approach: a fuzzy picture of a broken-up structure, perhaps the remnants of a crashed spacecraft. Since Prometheus was on another continent, they’d all immediately thought it could be the missing ship, the Heracles. But it didn’t look right, and the Heracles’ telemetry had indicated it exploded near the nebula, five light years out from Eden. As for the message… None of them had any idea what it meant nor who could have sent it, but he refused to take it at face value. He pushed all of this to the back of his mind, unwilling to sour the moment.
He ached to explore the hazy mountains, rendered purplish by the afternoon rays of Eden’s blood orange sun. Yellow clouds the shape of cigars drifted across the sky. He could almost smell the coarse grass, feel it under his ship, beckoning.
Pierre stood up. "Sir, I’ve checked rad levels, atmosphere, temperature, meteo, and a host of other parameters. We’re good to go."
Blake and Pierre suited up and depressurized the outer airlock. The final hiss came, and he twisted the wheel-lock handle and shoved open the heavy outer door that had been sealed for more than three months. Gravity was five per cent less than on Earth, and he used the short auto-ladder to descend to Eden’s surface, two meters below.
He paused at the last rung, and then placed his right foot firmly on the scorched grass beneath. As he put his weight on his foot, the ground sank a little, and he was reminded of the good planting soil on his ancestral farm. He remembered rolling in it while mock-fighting his younger brother, snatched away from him later on by the enemy. He recalled watching his son Robert, just fourteen, grinning and freckled, sitting atop a huge combine harvester.
"Sir? It’s a momentous moment, I know."
Blake jogged his mind back into gear, brought down his other foot, and then took a few steps. Each pace away from the Lander etched its way into history – mankind’s new adventure, its new lease of life. Instantly he thought of his wife Glenda, imagining her waving him on. This planet will save her.
His visor shielded him from the glare of the mid-afternoon sun, a little more distant than Earth’s. He gazed across the plain, and was reminded of Africa’s Serengeti – without the animals or birds. No decent theory had been provided yet as to why Eden was devoid of animal life. Truth told, nobody important back on Earth cared. Kat was right, it was always better moving into an empty new home than having someone else’s furniture to contend with.
"Well, Skipper, what’s it look like from out there?" Zack’s voice boomed across the intercom.
Blake stared at the trees a few hundred meters away. "Pierre, are our visors working okay?"
Pierre looked up from the tripod of equipment he was setting up. "More or less. The onboard computer probably adjusted the colors to fit what it was expecting. There might be some auto-compensation in the helmets, too."
"Huh?" Zack said.
"What he means, Zack, is that the colors out here are stronger – the grass has a blue tinge, and the trees are a very dark shade of green. The sky itself is definitely purple, the clouds a striking yellow." Blake tried to ignore it. It was subtle, in any case, like a normal view through a tinted lens. Probably meant nothing. We’ll just have to get used to it, and even if we don’t our children will. He wanted to lift his visor, to see it with his own eyes.
He felt a slight giddiness, as if he’d just stood up suddenly after lying down. He glanced at his wristcom to verify that the oxygen pressure in his suit was normal. It was. He steadied his feet, feeling nausea wash over him, accompanied by a cold sweat on his palms. He recognized the symptoms right away: Deep Space Affective Disorder, the psychs called it. Pressure cooker syndrome was Zack’s label. The psychologist had warned them during training that arrival could be a powerful emotional event, and could affect their judgment after such a long space trip. Blake hadn’t taken it too seriously; or rather he thought he’d be watching for signs in others, not himself. He usually had his emotions tightly wrapped and under control, but right now he felt as if he was on a cliff edge.
"You okay, Boss?"
"Fine, Zack. Send Kat our here, too. Everything’s fine."
"Sir, I’m still testing," Pierre said.
"Carry on. Kat can join us."
Focus: that was the key, and action. Doing something decisive would chase it away. He knelt down on one knee, dug his gloved hand into the soil, scooped up a handful of Eden’s dirt, and let it run through his fingers, watching it fall, framed by the maroon sky. It seemed too soft, more like ash than hard peat that would yield crops. His middle finger grazed something hard. So, topsoil only. Nothing substantive would grow in this field.
The thought that he had never been able to bury his own son, crackled uninvited into his mind. He knew this should be a moment of exhilaration, an epiphany. But the old farm decimated by a firestorm, what was left of his brother coming back in a body bag, his son in Kurana Bay, all flooded back to him, a dark whirlpool in his mind.
He took some deep breaths, and turned around to stare at the Lander, instead of the landscape that was affecting his mood. He stood up. "We should get started, Pierre."
Pierre busied himself with his scanners and samplers. "I’ll just need a moment to get it calibrated, Sir."
Blake felt his heart beating strong in his carotid artery. Not fast, but like a distant hammer. He tried to calm himself by checking the grey hull of the Lander. It was a trick he’d learned long ago as a scuba diver: to counter the effects of nitrogen narcosis, concentrate on something, engage the brain in analyzing something concrete.
The Lander was in as good a shape as could be expected. He traced his hands along the atmospheric entry scorch marks near the base of the hull, like coal-black scars; bubbled in places, but no cuts in its metallic sheath. Kat joined them outside, jumping down most of the steps, vidding Eden’s landscape.
Zack cut in, the envy in his voice coming across the com system. "Hey, how is it out there, really?"
"Awesome. You’re missing out, big fella." she replied.
Blake was relieved to hear her humor had returned – Zack had quietly informed him of the desert in her dream. If she can be upbeat, then so the hell can I. He felt he should add something. "It’s mighty fine out here, Zack, mighty fine." But the words rang hollow.
Zack came back on-line. "Watch out for any snakes, or for that matter, naked babes bearing fruit. See any of the latter, just send them on in!"
Kat gave a dismissive wave back towards the Lander’s external vidcorder.
Blake smiled, but his creeping unease wouldn’t go away. All the instruments had shown it should be safe to take off their helmets. And God knew they needed to replenish their air supplies very soon. Pierre was still fiddling with the equipment. This was taking too long. They’d checked everything before coming out. The test should be just a final routine confirmation. His breathing sounded loud in his ears, reverberating in his helmet. "What do you say, Pierre?"
"Not yet, Sir," he answered without looking up. "I need another minute."
A minute passed. Five more dripped away. Blake circled the Lander three times. Still Pierre took more readings. Kat and Blake inspected the external transmitter recessed in the hull.
"Not good, Sir. The Trojan triggered an overload in the slipstream crystal diode. No comms with Ea
rth unless we find a new one."
He nodded, and headed back over to Pierre, slight tremors in his right hand. Damn, not now.
"Well Pierre? And don’t ask me to wait another minute."
Pierre stopped hunching over his machine and stood up, visor-to-visor with him.
"Sir, there’s a small variance in the atmosphere I can’t account for. It didn’t show up from inside, but now we’re out here, the equipment is more accurate. There’s something in the biosphere I can’t interpret."
The words hung in the air inside Blake’s helmet and in the cockpit. Blake waited, knowing Zack would double-check Pierre’s readings relayed back to the cockpit.
"Skipper – he’s right. Don’t know what it is. It’s a trace element, less than a millionth, unknown on Earth. Inorganic, the computer reckons, possibly a metal, dense crystalline structure."
Blake’s jaw clenched. "Toxic? Chemically reactive? Inert?"
"Sir," Pierre said, "I don’t know. It seems inert, but the element, or material, doesn’t exist on Earth, so we’ll have to gather it in sufficient amount to study. But with half the computers still off-line, I’m not sure we can be precise about its effects. I’m sorry, Sir, we just don’t have the kit to do this properly. I’d need a mass spectrometer and a cache of software that’s been garbled by the virus. It needs genetic-impact testing."
Blake held up his hand. "What do you propose?"
"I can set up a nano-mesh filtration system after some basic testing here. In a few hours we can replenish our air supplies in safety. But we need to stay suited for the rest of the mission, Sir."
It was like being shot in the back. He stared at Pierre in disbelief, replaying the words, at the same time knowing it was the correct course of action. But he understood the deeper meaning: another mission in two years time to come back and determine what they were here to find out now – whether man could survive on Eden. Lab tests would be carried out back on Earth by scientists, but ever since the nannite virus, public trust of science wasn’t worth a cent. And the politics were desperate, funding for a fourth mission would never happen, the Alicians and Fundies would see to that. He knew all the protocols and procedures by heart, and they worked fine in a rational world, but back on Earth, things were unraveling. He remembered what the General had said. Bring back good news.
"Tests would ultimately need a human subject, right Pierre?"
"Skipper –" interjected Zack, before Pierre could reply.
"What we need right now, is a little experiment," Blake said, raising his hands to the seals on his helmet.
"Blake! No!" Zack shouted.
He released the hermetic band on his helmet, and slowly eased it off.
Kat and Pierre stared, transfixed.
Blake waited for something to happen. He was struck by the colors, now the visor’s auto-compensation was gone – the purple sky, the orange desert, small yellowish clouds, blue-green grass – definitely odd, reminding him of a Van Gogh. But he immediately felt calm. The tremors vanished. The theory was correct – decisive action cleared it like smelling salts.
"Might as well breathe in, Sir," Pierre said.
Blake realized he’d been holding his breath, and laughed, a little shakily, then took a cautious breath.
"Pierre, maybe you do have a sense of humor after all, buried under those equations." He inhaled and exhaled deeply several times. After three months in a tin can, as Zack called the Ulysses, the air tasted fresh. The tension trickled out of him, down into Eden’s soil. He turned to the cockpit vidcorder and gave Zack the thumbs up.
"Well Pierre, care to join me? It actually smells like fresh mown grass, a little sautéed by our engines. I can feel a small breeze on my face, and the warmth of Eden’s sun." He lifted his face toward Kantoka Minor, feeling another star’s rays warm his forehead. A smile flourished across his face. We could live here. This could really become home.
Pierre stepped back behind the testing machinery tripod. "Actually, Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea."
Blake’s sunny smile clouded over. He knew what was coming. Bold actions always had a price tag.
"I’m sorry, Sir. We’ll need to quarantine you outside the ship and see if there’s any reaction."
Blake took another breath. He felt fine, absolutely fine. But he nodded to Pierre. "You’re right. Still, we need to replenish our air supply for the trip home. You work on the nano-filter. You can co-ordinate with Zack." He saw Pierre nod, but look away. "What is it?"
Pierre studied his boots momentarily, and then spat it out. "Sir, it’s the trip home. There’s only one quarantine option. That’s stasis, Sir. The entire trip, barring emergencies."
Blake narrowed his gaze. His science officer was right again. But there was no way he would submit to stasis for the whole trip back.
"We’ll decide that later," he said. "We clearly have a new priority to analyze this element, and develop a filtration system."
He then addressed them all, re-asserting command before any doubt about his judgment could take seed.
"Okay, listen up everyone; this changes things. We now have several priorities. The original task of taking samples and determining the suitability of the biosphere, remains. We now have an important additional problem with this rogue element we’ve never seen before. It needs to be collected and analyzed. We also need to replenish the air stocks and clean out the oxygen strippers. This links to the first problem, because either we filter out this new element, or else we all become guinea pigs. We’ll never be allowed back on earth. They’ll probably divert us to Lunar Station Beta."
He stared beyond Kat and Pierre, to the desert. "The other priority is to identify the source of the message, find out who sent it and why, and use whatever material we find from that crash site to repair our comms system. Last, we need to find out more about this desert, where it’s come from, and whether it’s growing. That’s a challenging set of priorities, and we have four days to achieve them all. Pierre, you’re the best analyst – you stay here, around the ship; keep in line of sight with Zack, open comms at all times."
Pierre nodded to Blake, and then to Zack in the cockpit.
Blake turned to his comms officer. "Kat, I want you to forget all those dreams you’ve had about the desert."
"Zack told…?" She glanced accusingly towards the Lander.
"You and I are taking the skimmer direct to that crash site. The best way to get rid of your demons is to confront them."
Kat straightened, nodding.
"Now, even if I think that Kat’s nightmares are just that, given what has happened to us so far on this trip," he glanced at her, "I want each of us outside the ship armed at all times. Questions?"
He heard the breeze rustling the bushes nearby. It was a welcome relief from the silence. No birds, no animals, and he hadn’t seen any insects so far. He brushed it aside for later.
"Zack, you’re in command. Kat and I are leaving in the twenty minutes it’ll take to rig up the skimmer. We have about five hours of daylight left, and a round trip of three to four hours to the crash site. We’ll be out of comms range, so if we get stuck, or need to stay there for any reason, I’ll launch a green sonic flare at 8pm Ulysses time. Either team has a serious problem, they launch a red flare."
As Blake and Kat unloaded the land skimmer, a jet-powered hover-bike for two, Zack spoke to Blake on single channel.
"Skipper, you okay?"
Blake sighed. "I am now – wasn’t back then. You probably didn’t notice."
"Yeah, right."
Blake really wished Zack was mobile.
"Blake – remember she’s just a kid, okay? Go easy."
"Don’t worry, Zack – out here, we’re all rookies." After a few seconds he heard the line click back to open channel.
***
Kat kept uncharacteristically quiet as Blake, in front of her, threaded the skimmer around the orange dunes at 150 kph. She was no stranger to speed: she’d been an astro-surfer before the War, fa
lling to Earth from twenty kilometers up atop a hover-board. But she kept thinking she saw flecks of silver in the distance, hiding in the seamless orange carpet all around them. The plume of sand behind them would be visible from ten kilometers away, maybe more. She guessed the glints were tricks of her mind. She was reminded of a story her older sister, Angelica, had told her about surfing in Cape Town’s White Shark Alley, famed for its Great Whites, before oceanic poisoning wiped them out. She’d asked Angel, as she called her sister, what she would do if she saw a Great White coming toward her.
"That’s just it," she’d replied, "in the blue you won’t see one until after it’s taken a bite out of you, a leg usually. They detect you long before you see them, and then they come at you from behind or below, or from the side."
Kat stared around and held on. She knew the silver flashes she thought she saw were tricks of the mind because, like the Great White, the creature in her dreams would only be seen when it wanted to be seen. After a while, she closed her eyes, embracing the Skimmer’s vibration and rolling engine-whine. As the Captain leaned slightly to the left or the right to avoid an upcoming boulder, she leaned with him, eyes closed, putting all her trust in the driver.
She remembered being ten years old, riding Pacific breakers on the back of Angel’s long board, as her elder sister pulled them through a tube, Kat’s first time inside the thunderous roll of a crashing wave, stealing a half-second ahead of it to emerge free. Remembering that experience, her fears subsided. Let the sharks come. We’ll stay one step ahead of you. But just as she relaxed, she heard a voice inside her head. It made her tremble, sending a shiver down her spine. It sounded like Angel’s voice, uttering three words, and then it was gone.
"Kat, come quickly."
She held her breath for a moment. Had she really heard it or just imagined it? Angel was long dead, and she had no truck with any metaphysical life-after-death bullshit. But she was convinced that something had just communicated with her. Instinctively she knew it must be the sender of the message they’d received in orbit, warning them not to come. She spoke into the helmet microphone.