New Earth

by Ben Bova

  “The area’ll be in daylight in another six hours,” Wanamaker responded. “We’ll be able to see it a lot better then.”

  “I’m going to dinner,” Meek said. “I never got to finish my tea, you know. I’ll be back in two hours.”

  Jordan watched him go, bemused slightly by Meek’s cool insistence on feeding. The rest of them stayed in the command center, swapping theories and speculations until the region where the laser was slid into the daylit side of the planet. Meek rejoined them, but kept silently aloof from the guessing games.

  The area turned out to be a high plateau, heavily wooded. None of the surveillance satellite’s sensors could make out a building or roads or any signs of civilization or even a rough camp.

  “Nothing but that damned spot of light,” Brandon muttered.

  Thornberry shook his head, scowling at the displays. “I’ve already set up a scouting team: a pair of rovers that can get through wooded terrain. They’ll be ready to go in an hour or so.”

  Jordan glanced at his wristwatch. “Wait. I suggest we have dinner and then retire for the night. We can continue this in the morning, when we’re fresh, and the area is in daylight.”

  “Go to bed?” Brandon yelped. “How do you expect any of us to sleep with that going on?”

  “It’s getting late,” Jordan said calmly. “We’re all tired. I know I am. You make mistakes when you’re tired.”

  “But—”

  “That light will still be there in the morning.” Before Brandon or anyone else could object, Jordan added, “And even if it’s not, we know its exact location and we can investigate the area thoroughly.”

  “I vote we stay at it and launch the rovers without delay,” Brandon said.

  Jordan smiled at him. “I didn’t ask for a vote, Bran. Get some dinner and then go to bed. We’ll all feel sharper, stronger, after a good night’s sleep.”

  “We’ve been sleeping for eighty years,” Hazzard said mildly, an ironic curve to his lips.

  “I’m tired,” Jordan said. “I assume the rest of you are, too.”

  “Not me!” Brandon snapped.

  A flash of memory raced through Jordan’s mind: six-year-old Brandon kicking and struggling as their father carried him upstairs to bed, yowling that he wasn’t tired, that he didn’t want to go to bed, that he wasn’t the least bit sleepy—then falling asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

  “All of us,” Jordan said gently. “The planet will still be there when we wake up tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re right,” said Thornberry. “By the time the rovers are ready to land down there, it’ll be dark again. I’m not happy with the idea of landing me rovers in the dark, night-vision sensors or no.” He went to the hatch and stepped through.

  “I’ve set the sensors on the minisat,” Wanamaker said, pushing her blocky body up from the console chair. “If anything changes the system will alert us.”

  Hazzard shrugged. “Might’s well eat and then catch some zees. The ship can take care of itself without us.”

  Elyse glanced at Brandon, then wordlessly followed the others through the hatch. Brandon gave Jordan a resentful glare, then he too went to the hatch.

  Jordan stood there alone in the control center for a few silent moments, listening to the electrical hum of the instruments, the hushed whisper of the air circulation fans, staring at the display screen that showed the laser’s sharp-peaked spectrum.

  It can’t be a laser, he said to himself. Even though he knew that it couldn’t be anything else.

  * * *

  Jordan’s quarters were identical to all the other living spaces aboard the ship: a fairly spacious compartment partitioned into a bedroom/lavatory and a sitting room that held a desk, a sofa, and two armchairs with an oval coffee table between them, and wall screens that were glowing with a faint pearly luster. There was a minikitchen in one corner, stocked with a refrigerator, freezer, and microwave oven. The bachelor’s friend, Jordan thought as he eyed the microwave. Then he went past the shoulder-high partition, sat on the bed, and began pulling off his shoes.

  The wall screens were blank, although they could be programmed to show anything from the art collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to the latest entertainment or game vids. Or any of the ship’s sensor displays, as well.

  Jordan felt very tired. Strange for a man who’s only been awake for a few hours and done nothing more strenuous than lifting a salad fork. But emotional stress can be just as exhausting as physical, and he recognized the demands that his body was making. Or is it a form of fear, he wondered, fear of the unknown. Fear of what we’re going to find down there.

  Fear of what’s going on in your own body, a voice in his head reminded him. Fear that the virus lying dormant in your gut will wake up and begin to slowly, painfully kill you.

  He pulled the bedcovers over him, expecting to stare wide-eyed into the darkness after all the excitement of the day. Instead he quickly fell asleep. His last waking thought was that it couldn’t be a laser down there. It couldn’t be.

  EXCURSION

  Well before 7 A.M., with nothing more than a quick cup of coffee in him, Jordan strode from his quarters toward the command center. As he expected, Brandon was already there, standing behind Thornberry, who was seated at the same console as the evening before.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Brandon greeted.

  “Good to see you at work so early,” Jordan replied. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Hardly at all.”

  Over his shoulder, Thornberry said, “I slept like a rock, I did. A trick I learned when I served with the disaster teams in Africa. Never stand when you can sit, never stay awake when you can sleep, and never pass a latrine without using it.”

  Jordan laughed politely. Brandon made a face behind Thornberry’s back.

  The command chair was empty; Hazzard had not risen yet, Jordan surmised. Still, he stepped past the chair to stand beside his brother.

  “I presume the light is still shining,” he said.

  Brandon nodded tightly. “Bright and steady.”

  “Are you ready to launch your rovers?” Jordan asked the roboticist.

  Thornberry pointed to the center screen of his console and explained, “Got them loaded into a rocketplane and found a good landing spot for them, an open glade less than five klicks from the spot where the light’s emanating from. Be ready to launch in half an hour, we will.”

  “Good.”

  Slowly the command center began to fill with people. Hazzard slid into the command chair. Elyse came in and stood silently beside Brandon. Meek and Wanamaker and all the others jammed into the compartment, buzzing with low, tense conversations.

  We should have made this area bigger, Jordan thought. Perhaps we can enlarge it. Then he told himself, No, that probably won’t be necessary. After all, we’re going to spend most of our time here down on the surface of the planet. At least, that’s what the mission plan calls for.

  “Launch in thirty seconds,” Thornberry announced.

  The digital clock in the corner of his console counted down: twenty seconds, ten, five …

  “Launch,” said Thornberry.

  Jordan felt the ship shudder slightly. Launching the minisat had been no big deal, he realized, but launching a rocketplane bearing two sizable rover vehicles makes a noticeable jolt.

  Thornberry turned in his console chair. “They’re away. It’ll take nearly an hour for them to enter the atmosphere.” Then he smiled and added, “I’m going to grab some breakfast while I’ve got the chance.”

  Jordan and most of the others headed for the wardroom. Brandon, Elyse, and Hazzard remained in the command center.

  “Call me if anything … happens,” Jordan said to his brother. He realized he was going to say, if anything goes wrong. He had caught himself just in time.

  In the wardroom, while Jordan and Thornberry both took merely juice and coffee, Trish Wanamaker loaded her breakfast tray with muffins, reconstituted
eggs, faux bacon, juice, and hot tea.

  Harmon Meek was already sitting at one of the oblong tables, his breakfast of cereal, toast, and tea neatly arrayed before him. Jordan led Wanamaker and Thornberry to the same table. Once they were all seated, Jordan marveled at how Trish could stow away so much food so quickly. Her chubby little hands were moving like a concert pianist’s.

  “What d’you think that light might be?” Thornberry asked, between sips of juice.

  “Laser,” said Trish, despite her mouth being stuffed with food.

  Shaking his head, Thornberry argued, “How could a laser be there? There’s nobody down there, no signs of any people—”

  “No signs we recognize as human,” said Meek, with a slightly superior air. “But then whoever put that laser down there wouldn’t be human, would he? Or it, I mean.”

  “But there’s no sign of anything artificial,” Thornberry insisted. “Nothing down there but trees and rocks.”

  “No sign that we can detect,” Meek countered. “That’s why we’re sending your rovers down there, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Thornberry admitted grudgingly. “Right.”

  “Somebody’s down there,” Meek said firmly. “That laser didn’t get there by itself.”

  Trish looked up from her half-demolished breakfast and asked, “But who could it be? I mean, who put that laser down there in the middle of the forest? And why?”

  Jordan murmured, “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes?”

  “I believe it was Holmes who said that it was useless to speculate in the absence of facts.”

  “Hah,” said Meek. “Excellent point. We’re just wasting our time until the rovers start to transmit some useful information to us.”

  “Which they should be doing in another hour or so,” Thornberry said, with a glance at his wristwatch. “The rocketplane ought to be hitting the atmosphere in a couple of minutes.” He pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

  Jordan rose, too. Trish kept gobbling her breakfast and Meek pointed to the wall screen. “You’ll pipe the imagery here, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Jordan said. Then he and Thornberry headed for the command center.

  Brandon and Elyse were still standing close enough to touch, Jordan saw. Is there a romance going on? he wondered. Brandon’s always been a fast worker, but even for him this would be something of a record. Then he recalled, Of course, they knew each other all through the training period and embarkation, before we went into cryosleep.

  Hazzard had put the imagery from Thornberry’s console onto the command center’s main screen, but all it showed was hash.

  “Blackout,” Hazzard said. “Atmospheric entry plasma sheath blocks transmissions.” Then he added, “Temporarily.”

  The screen suddenly cleared and Jordan saw a world of jagged peaks and thickly leafed trees scudding past as the rocketplane skimmed above a heavily forested chain of mountains. Thornberry hurried to his console chair, then turned back with an almost apologetic expression on his fleshy face.

  “Entry and landing’s automated,” he said.

  From his command chair, Hazzard said, “I’ve set up the override program. If we need to, I can fly the bird.”

  Thornberry nodded.

  “It’ll be fine,” Jordan assured him.

  Still, they were all tense as they watched the ground rushing up toward the camera. The rocketplane’s speed slowed noticeably, but still there was nothing to see but an endless forest stretching to the horizon in every direction.

  “The sky is blue,” Elyse said, in a half whisper.

  “Those trees are damned tall,” said Brandon.

  “Final retroburn,” muttered Thornberry. The rocketplane seemed to hover in midair momentarily.

  “There’s the clearing,” Hazzard called out, pointing.

  “Ah, she’s gliding in like a blessed angel,” said Thornberry.

  Jordan watched as the open, grassy glade expanded to fill the display screen, tilted slightly, then straightened out and rushed up. The ground looked smooth, covered with green grass. The view bumped once, twice, then all motion stopped.

  “She’s down,” Thornberry sighed, as if a gigantic weight had just been taken off his shoulders.

  Hazzard flexed his fingers, then recited, “Log entry: oh-eight-forty-two hours, this date, spacecraft one landed on Sirius C. Fill in geographical coordinates.”

  Jordan let out a gust of breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She’s down, he told himself. The craft has landed safely.

  The camera atop the landing craft slowly revolved, showing a broad grassy glade surrounded by tall, straight-boled trees, darkly green. Mountains in the distance, their peaks bare rock. The glade was flat and smooth, not a rock or boulder in sight, as if the area had been specifically cleared for the rover’s touchdown. The sky above was turquoise blue, dotted with puffy white clouds.

  The first view from the surface of New Earth, Jordan thought.

  “Send this view to Earth right away,” he said to Hazzard.

  “Won’t get there for more’n eight years,” Hazzard replied.

  “Yes, but send it. Send it now.”

  “Right.”

  For the next three-quarters of an hour they watched as the rocketplane automatically checked all its internal systems and activated its sensors. Meek and the others filtered into the command center and watched with Jordan as the numbers scrolled along the bottom of the main display screen: atmospheric pressure, temperature, composition—all were well within the limits that had already been recorded for New Earth by the earlier robotic probes.

  We can breathe that air, Jordan told himself. Then he added, If it’s not full of dangerous microbes.

  “Activating rovers,” Thornberry said, in the flat, almost mechanical tone of a mission controller. The command center fell completely silent, but Jordan could sense the excitement vibrating among the onlookers. He felt it himself.

  The view switched to show the shadowy interior of the rocketplane. One side swung open and down, turning into a ramp. Brilliant, glaring sunlight streamed in.

  “Rovers check out,” Thornberry reported tersely. “Out you go, lads.”

  His console’s main screen split to show two views, from the cameras mounted atop the two rovers. Hazzard flicked his fingers across the keyboard built into his chair’s armrests and two of the wall screens above the consoles lit up to show the view from each of the two rovers. The machines trundled down the ramps and out onto the smooth grassy ground.

  “Over the river and through the woods…” somebody singsonged. Brandon, Jordan thought.

  “There’s no river.” Elyse’s voice, clearly.

  The rovers plunged into the forest, at ten kilometers per hour. Jordan watched, fascinated, as the thick-boled trees glided past. There was precious little foliage between the trees, hardly any bushes at all. The woods looked almost like a well-tended park.

  “Look,” said Brandon. “There’s a little stream.”

  “A babbling brook.”

  “Look out for animal life,” said Meek. “The equivalent of squirrels or other arboreal forms.”

  His biologist, Paul Longyear, hurried to one of the unused consoles, muttering, “The sensors should be taking bio samples of the air.”

  Longyear was a young Native American with a complexion the color of dried tobacco leaf, dark hair braided halfway down his back, and deep onyx eyes.

  “Can’t those pushcarts go any faster?” Brandon demanded.

  Thornberry shot him a grim look over his shoulder as he replied, “Sure they can. But not over territory we haven’t mapped yet. I don’t want these darlings bumping into trouble.”

  “Maybe there’s tiger traps down there,” somebody snickered.

  “We don’t have any idea of what’s down there,” Jordan said, loudly enough to stop the chatter. The terrain had been mapped from orbit, of course, but the forest covered the ground too thickly to see details
smaller than a few meters.

  Onward the rovers trundled, among the sturdy trees, maneuvering around rocks and boulders, some of them big as houses.

  “Should be getting to the spot where the laser is,” Thornberry muttered. “Any minute now.”

  And at that precise moment, all the screens went blank.

  FRUSTRATION

  “What the hell?” Thornberry exclaimed.

  Jordan stared at the suddenly dark screens. What’s gone wrong? he asked himself.

  While Thornberry growled into his microphone, Longyear announced from his console, “Bio sensors have crapped out, too.”

  “Everything’s down,” Thornberry said, bewildered. Then he added a heartfelt, “Damn!”

  “What’s the problem?” Brandon wondered.

  “Run the diagnostics program,” Hazzard suggested.

  “I’m trying,” said Thornberry. “No response. They’re dead as doornails. Both of ’em.”

  “Can’t you do something about it?”

  Shaking his head, Thornberry said, “The down side of making machines smart enough to operate on their own is that they operate on their own. They’re clever enough so that when they sense something down there that’s out of their database, they protect themselves by going into hibernation mode until we can restart ’em.”

  “So restart them.”

  “I’m trying, dammitall!” Thornberry roared. “But the little toothaches don’t respond.”

  “Some anomaly down there.”

  “A black hole, maybe.”

  “Be serious!”

  Jordan said to himself, Very well, you’re supposed to be the leader of this group. Show some leadership.

  “Mitch, would you keep on trying to reestablish contact? Geoff, lend him whatever help you can.” Turning to the others, Jordan said, “The rest of us should clear out and let Mitchell and Geoff try to sort this out.”

  They reluctantly began to shuffle out of the command center. Brandon took Elyse’s arm and led her toward the hatch.

  Jordan looked back at Thornberry. The roboticist was poking away at his console’s touchscreen, muttering darkly. But his console’s displays remained stubbornly blank.