Alpha Centauri: First Landing (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 1)

by Alastair Mayer

  “Okay. Get your gear while I do a post-flight to make sure it’s all still in one piece.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  They cruised westward at three hundred meters above the valley where the Chandra had landed. Darwin enjoyed the feel of the wind in his face, the whine of the motor. They’d flown a half dozen touch-and-goes and he was happy with the way the plane handled. “I see what you mean about the beach, from here it looks wonderful.” They were high enough to see the beach in the distance, some twelve kilometers away. “Let’s head toward it, but I want to follow the river valley,” he said. The broad shallow valley where Chandrasekhar had landed narrowed to the west and curved south, becoming a narrow “V” that the river had channeled through the hills.

  “Fine with me,” said Sawyer. “Shall we take her down?”

  “Yeah, I want to get a better look. Just keep it out of the trees.”

  “Always.” Sawyer eased back the throttle and nudged the stick forward, gently diving toward the point were the river channeled into the surrounding hills. Strictly speaking, flying higher was safer, it gave you more time to react to a problem and, if you had to, more gliding range to find somewhere to set down. On the other hand, you just couldn’t see as much detail from a higher altitude, and it felt like you were crawling along. It was more fun to follow the river valley, level with or even below the ridges on either side, but she stayed well clear of the treetops. The river was wider here than where the ship had landed, and the valley was wide enough for a tight turn if it came to that, but she could as easily just pull up and fly over the valley walls.

  “Aren’t we flying a little low?” asked Darwin. “I mean, I appreciate the view and I get a better feel for the terrain from down here, but don’t we want more altitude in case of engine trouble or something?”

  “That’s the way you were taught, right? Higher altitude gives you more options.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s true as far as it goes,” she said. “But ‘engine trouble’ is a holdover from combustion engines. Electrics don’t get engine trouble, barring some random mechanical failure. But these are low time motors which have been thoroughly inspected.”

  “So you’re saying ‘don’t worry about it’?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Darwin said. “Let’s go lower. Tree top level.”

  Sawyer turned her head to look at him. He grinned back.

  She sighed. He’d done it again. He had a knack for getting her to do things that made it seem like it was her idea. She loved and hated him for it. “You just suckered me, didn’t you?”

  “Let’s just say I didn’t think you’d do it if I just came out and asked cold.”

  “You’re probably right. All right, down it is.” Sawyer eased back the throttle some more and angled the plane into a gentle dive toward the tree-tops.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The river here was well over thirty meters wide, closer to fifty or sixty. Darwin looked down at the dark blue water. It was hard to say how deep it was, but there were no obvious sandbanks, and the slow-moving river wasn’t muddy. At least three meters deep, maybe five. He thought about putting pontoons on the aircraft. The river looked smooth enough for a landing but he wasn’t sure they’d have enough straightaway for takeoff. It would be a convenient way to check out the river fauna otherwise. He mentioned the possibility to Sawyer.

  “We could do that. But don’t you want to be sure there are no alligator or hippopotamus equivalents in the river first? It’d be embarrassing to hit one on landing or get eaten by gators trying to take off.”

  Darwin hadn’t considered that. Stupid. “You’re right. Hell even a sunken log could ruin our day. Okay, we’ll come back later in the boat and check it out.”

  “Oh we can probably do some low and slow a few meters off the water, it’s not that bad.”

  They followed the curves of the river valley toward the ocean. Every so often Sawyer lifted the plane to climb above the ridge-line so they could see how close they were getting to the river’s mouth. At last they rounded a curve in the valley and saw the ocean spread out ahead as the hills on either side tapered off. Beyond the banks of the river, a broad sandy beach ran up and down the coast as far as they could see. A line of breakers was rolling in.

  “Look at the size of those waves!” It had taken Darwin a moment to realize the scale. They were probably eight or ten meters high. “I don’t think we’re going to be taking the boat out in those.”

  “Wow. No, but a gal could do some serious surfing here.”

  “Did you bring a board?” It wouldn’t have surprised him. Even with the limited volume she might have squeezed something in, and he knew she’d done some competition surfing in her high school days. He certainly would have gone for the opportunity to do something like be the first human to surf an alien ocean.

  “Hah, no. Who brings a surfboard on a starship?”

  Or perhaps not, Darwin thought.

  “But give me a bit of time and the right kind of tree and I could make one,” she finished.

  “Are you serious? Those waves look like killers.”

  “They’re a challenge, but I’ve surfed waves like that before. Hawaii. This place reminds me a bit of that. Oh, a few more of those Cook pines or whatever they are, and few palm trees, but still.”

  She still has the upper body strength for surfing. But: “Hold off on that, we need to check for whatever passes for the local equivalent of shark first.”

  “Absolutely.”

  They were off shore now, having flown out from the beach above the waves. There wasn’t much to be seen through the water, apparently the beach shoaled off gently for some distance. Further west there was nothing but ocean, they’d seen that from orbit, and the size of the waves confirmed it.

  Sawyer banked the plane and turned back toward shore. “Have you seen enough or do want to explore a bit more?” she said.

  Darwin pulled up the satellite photographs on one of the dashboard display screens. “If we’re at the mouth of the river then we’re a bit south of west of the landing field. Let’s fly north up the beach a ways and then turn east over the hills.”

  “Roger that.” Sawyer banked the little plane to the left, bringing it into an easy turn that straightened out over the beach, level with ridge of low hills a few hundred meters further inland.

  Above the tide line the beach was scattered with the usual beach litter: bits of driftwood, small sticks and leaves, strands of something that might be a kind of seaweed. In the distance Darwin thought he could see some flying animals, occasionally they’d swoop down to the water and zoom back up, or land on the sand and walk around a bit. At this distance they could easily be birds, but they were far enough away that Darwin couldn’t be sure.

  The birds, or whatever they were, kept retreating from the airplane, or flying out to sea and circling around behind it. Either the noise, or perhaps more likely the silhouette, was scaring them off. We must resemble some large predator species, thought Darwin, I sure hope it isn’t something that might decide we’re prey. The electroplane was small as planes went. He hoped it was big enough to discourage any local raptor equivalents.

  “Can we land? The damp sand above the waterline should be smooth and firm enough.”

  Sawyer banked the plane, cross-controlling the rudder and putting the plane into a gentle side-slip so she could get a better look at the ground beneath. She nodded. “Yeah, looks like we can.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  “Let me do an inspection pass first to check. Look for wind indicators.” Sawyer wanted some reference—vegetation blowing in the wind, flying creatures floating on a headwind, something to give her a feel for the wind direction at landing.

  “It will probably be on-shore, but I’ll give you a wind indicator.” So saying, Darwin pulled a small object, like an orange golf ball, from a pocket, pulled a tab off it, and tossed it over the side. It trailed a str
eam of orange smoke to the ground, bounced and rolled a few meters, and came to a stop, still smoking. The orange smoke drifted back away from the waterline and slightly northward up the beach. “I’d say the wind is out of the west southwest at eight kph.”

  Sawyer grinned. “Sly dog, I didn’t know you had any of those with you.” She turned the aircraft again, turning south, and glided to a landing roll about five meters up the beach from where the waves ssshhd over the sand.

  “Okay, we’re here,” she said after switching off the motor. “Now what?”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Aboard Krechet, part of Centauri Station

  “Captain Tsibilev, may I have a word?”

  “Da, of course, Ulrika, or is it Doctor Klaar if we are being formal?”

  “Probably this should be informal, Dmitri. The Chandrasekhar has been on the surface for nearly a week now.”

  “Da, we are all knowing this.” Dmitri suspected where she might be going with this, but wanted to hear her words. “What is your point?”

  “I’m a biologist. I didn’t come four light-years to sit in a can in orbit 250 kilometers above all the interesting lifeforms.” She softened that with a grin. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  “But without the Xīng Huā . . .”

  “We could still land near the Chandrasekhar and refuel from their system. It wouldn’t be as interesting as landing elsewhere of course, but Commodore Drake might be willing. Besides, they don’t have a proper zoologist down there.”

  “I would certainly like to land on the planet myself, but I think that Commodore Drake will not think the risk is worth the relatively minor scientific reward from landing in the same area.”

  “But. . ..”

  Dmitri raised a hand to cut her off. “No, let me think on this a while, there may be some other arrangement to be made. If you are serious, you can do the same, but meanwhile work with the ground team as best you can.”

  “I . . . da, Captain. Thank you for your time.” She turned and left, the swirl of her platinum hair emphasizing the chill Dmitri felt as she went.

  He didn’t want her to get her hopes up, much less did he want her saying anything to anyone else which might be taken as grumblings of mutiny. But Klaar wasn’t the only one of the originally scheduled second landing crew to make such comments to him. He just needed a proposal that would win Drake over on the first approach, since he wouldn’t likely get a second chance. He had a duty to present a good option to the Commodore if changing circumstances deserved, but Drake would not take kindly to being pestered about it.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Centauri Beach

  “Let’s head north up the beach a bit. I want to see if I can get closer to those flying things.”

  “The birds?”

  “The alien birds, or whatever they are. They do look a lot like birds from here, but that’s probably because there’s only so many ways a flying animal would work—look at the similarity between birds, pteranodons, and bats, for example.”

  “Right. Wasn’t there a four-winged bird on Earth, same time as the dinosaurs?”

  “You’re probably thinking of Microraptor. Yes it had flight feathers on its legs, although they may not have been true wings. There’s some debate as to how they were used.”

  As they walked north along the shore it was surprisingly easy to imagine that they were on a beach on Earth. There was the same smell of salt in the air, the same waves lapping at the beach and the same roar of the huge waves just offshore. Nothing really screamed alien about the place. Darwin was almost disappointed. No green sky or purple ocean or blue sand. Intellectually he knew that none of those made sense, the physics and chemistry that caused the sky to be blue would hold for any planet with an Earthlike atmosphere, just as similar forces would hold for the ocean and rocks. But the lifeforms, now there was the possibility of the truly weird.

  He’d been keeping an eye on the beach at the water’s edge as he walked, and up ahead in the damp sand there was what looked like a jellyfish, a gelatinous mass, fist-sized, which had just washed up. From the mass, a dozen or so brilliant fluorescent green tentacles sprawled over the sand, and opposite those what looked like a small plastic bag grew out of the mass, partly filled with air. He crouched down to get a better look, Sawyer squatted down too.

  “Careful,” he said, “if this is like terrestrial jellyfish those tentacles could pack a powerful sting, and who knows what effect it might have on us.”

  “What is it?”

  “An alien.”

  “Gee, thanks professor. Can’t you ever give a straight answer?”

  “Okay, it looks a bit like a Portuguese man-o’-war, except they have purple tentacles and just the one sail. The air chamber lets them float at the surface, the wind blows the sail around, and the tentacles trail beneath, stinging potential prey.”

  “Charming.” Sawyer stood up, and looked out to sea, scanning the surface. “Are there likely to be more of those, do they travel in packs, or schools, or flocks, or whatever you’d call it for jellyfish?”

  “A smack.”

  “Really? A smack of jellyfish? So they do travel in groups?”

  “Some species do. Obviously I have no idea if this does.”

  “Guess I won’t be going surfing for a while yet.”

  “You could wear your BIG.”

  She gave him a dirty look. “That kind of defeats the whole purpose of getting wet.”

  “And it doesn’t do a thing for sharkoids, or whatever fills that niche, either.” He pulled a transparent plastic specimen bag from a pocket and opened it up. From another pocket he pulled a handful of plastic gloves, and handed a pair to Sawyer. “Here, put these on and help me get this critter in the bag. No telling when we might find more.”

  They scooped and slithered the jelly into the bag, together with some of the beach sand that adhered to its tentacles. The tentacles proved surprisingly long, given the small size of the rest of the jelly, but they managed to get them stuffed into the specimen bag without getting anything on themselves, except for the gloves. Darwin pulled another bag out of his pocket.

  “Hold out your hands,” he said.

  Sawyer did so. Darwin deftly stripped the gloves off, inside out, and placed them in the bag. Then he stripped his own, careful not to touch the outside of the gloves with his bare skin, and sealed them into the bag too.

  “Playing it quite safe, aren’t you?”

  “There could still be nematocysts—if this thing has them—on the gloves, or even just whatever toxin it might used on its prey,” Darwin explained. “Ever been stung by a jellyfish?”

  “Actually yes.” She winced. “Not something I’m likely to forget. Okay, you make a fair point.” She eyed the bagged jelly, and the bagged gloves, warily.

  “Okay, let’s keep moving on. Those bird things don’t seem spooked by us, we can get closer.”

  They continued further up the beach. Sawyer had borrowed another pair of disposable gloves, just to be safe, and would occasionally reach down and pick up a smooth stone. She’d examine it briefly, then pitch it side-hand out over the water, putting a spin on it so that it would skip when it hit.

  Occasionally one of the flying creatures, attracted by the series of splashes as the stone skipped over the water before sinking, would swoop down and investigate.

  Sawyer watched as one swooped close to shore, then beat its wings to gain altitude and turned away from them. “George, is it just me, or does that thing really look like a seagull?”

  He had been watching the creature too, with a growing unease. “I’m no ornithologist, but if we were on Earth, I’d say no. There are detail differences from any seagull species I know. But damned if it doesn’t look a lot like one. And it looks far to much like a bird to make me happy.”

  “Why not, you said yourself that flying animals only take a few forms.”

  “I did. And part of that is that Earth fliers ultimately all descended from four-limbed vertebrat
es, not counting the insects. But these things have feathers, or what looks like feathers from here. I’d love to get those things under a microscope.”

  “What’s wrong with feathers?”

  “On Earth they’re unique to birds. Pteranodons and bats have stretched-skin wings, totally different origins yet convergent evolution. Only birds and dinosaurs had feathers on Earth, they’re a unique adaptation of scales.”

  “Wait, weren’t pteranodons dinosaurs?”

  “No, they were a side branch. Actually they might have had downy feathers in infancy, I’d have to check the literature, but not flight feathers.”

  “Oh. But so, convergent evolution again, right?”

  “Up to a point. There’s too much of it. Things are just too close to Earth life.”

  “Similar planets, similar conditions, similar geological age. Why wouldn’t that produce similar life forms? Especially if its DNA-based, similar biochemistry. That’s going to constrain the variation, isn’t it?”

  She had a point, but Darwin wasn’t convinced. “Not if you go back to when complex animals started to evolve, back in the Precambrian. It was mostly invertebrates, and they came in all kinds of shapes and sizes and, more particularly, body plans. Five-eyed Opabinia regalis, for example, with a claw on the end of something like a trunk. Even stranger stuff before that. We’re so used to bilateral symmetry that we think it’s inevitable, but—”

  “Maybe it is. Nice and simple, maybe the embryology of DNA-based creatures prefers bilateral symmetry.”

  “Except that it wasn’t ubiquitous originally, and isn’t even now. We’ve got five-fold radial symmetry in starfish and sea urchins, and the Precambrian had other weird shapes. It was probably the development of light sensors, of eyes, that gave just a couple of body plans a huge advantage and they out-competed everything else. But why would that happen here? Couldn’t something with tri-fold symmetry have developed eyes first?”