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

by Alastair Mayer

  “I guess that’s something you’ll help figure out. Maybe it’s just coincidence, maybe there are some fundamental laws of evolution, that it’s not as random chance as you might think. Emergent properties and all that.”

  Darwin sighed. There might be something to that, but the answers would be so much easier to find if there were clearer differences. But this was only the first extra-Solar planet that they’d explored. It looked like there were many more out there, many with life, a nice big sample size to hang a theory on. His partial namesake, Charles Darwin, hadn’t come up with his theories after looking at just one island, after all.

  “Yeah, you may be right. I was just hoping for something more, you know, alien. Too much science fiction when I was growing up. Where are the flatcats, the tribbles, the jotok, the sandworms?”

  “It’s too wet here for sandworms, I should think. Unless you mean the little critters crawling around in this stuff.” Sawyer gestured at the damp sand at their feet. There were little holes, about the diameter of soda straws, scattered about. Small mounds of fine sand, in some places looking like mud squeezed from a toothpaste tube, were heaped beside some of the holes. A soft looking, wormlike creature poked up through the sand, slithered along the surface for a few centimeters, then plunged back down.

  “Oh!” Darwin squatted down for a better look. He pulled out another sample bag and waited. When next worm poked its head—or whatever body part that was—out of the sand, he quickly scooped it up, along with some surrounding sand and a bit of seawater. “Got you!”

  Sawyer had been staring out to sea again, watching the breakers. She turned and looked up and down the beach. Darwin followed her gaze. They’d walked further than he’d thought, they must be a kilometer or so from the where they’d left the plane. But something looked odd.

  “Wouldn’t it have made sense to park it further up from the water line?” he asked.

  “I thought I did. That’s odd.” A wave surged in and the water lapped over their feet. Sawyer must have realized the problem at the same time he did. She cursed. “Damn it, the tide’s coming in!” She started running back down the beach toward the plane. “Come on, before it floats away!”

  Darwin was right behind her. In the distance ahead, he could make out that the glistening patch of freshly-wet sand was nearly at the plane’s landing gear. As the waves surged in and receded, every third or fourth wave would come a little higher up the beach. Soon the water was starting to splash against the starboard wheel, the one nearest the ocean.

  “Will that damage anything?” Darwin called between panting breaths. They were running as hard as they could, staying to the damp sand where the footing was firmer, but it was still tough going. They hadn’t quite got their full strength back after nearly two weeks in weightlessness, and this planet’s gravity was about three percent higher than Earth’s.

  “Depends. A little water won’t hurt the wheels, but if they get soaked we’ll need to rinse the salt out or we’ll get corrosion. But the plane’s light, if the water gets deeper the wave surge could start pushing the plane around, or undermine the wheels.” She slowed a bit to catch her breath. “And I really don’t want salt water into the electrics.”

  They were closer now, about a hundred meters. The advancing waves reached up under the plane to lap at the wheel furthest from the sea. The water was now up to the hub of the port wheel; even when the waves receded there was still water around it. The side glistened from splash.

  Sawyer reached the plane, splashed out into the incoming surge, and started tugging on the right wing strut. “Help me get it up above the water, this wheel is stuck.”

  Darwin rushed over to join her, and they struggled to pull and lift on the wing strut together, the water washing around their shins.

  “This isn’t working,” said Sawyer, “go around to the other side, pull down on the left wing. That will pivot this wheel up and I’ll push it out.”

  “Okay.” Darwin moved to around the plane. The port wing extended out over still-dry sand. He reached up to the wing tip, heaved down. “Okay, push!”

  The right wheel pulled loose from the wet sand with a squelch, and Sawyer pushed and lifted to pivot the plane around, getting all the wheels up onto dry sand, the tail still extending out over the water. “Okay, let’s check it over and get out of here!” So saying, she did a quick walk—more of a jog—around the plane, checking the wheels and making sure no water had gotten into the battery or electronics areas. “Okay, we’re good, get in.”

  They both climbed into the cockpit and Sawyer started the motor, the prop coming up to speed with a whine. Darwin buckled in. “Let’s roll.”

  Sawyer pushed the throttle all the way in and the plane surged ahead, bumping over the sand. It got up to a fast walking pace and kept bumping along. “Damn it, the sand’s too soft, we can’t get up to speed.”

  “Should I get out and push?”

  “Don’t laugh, it may come to that.” Sawyer pivoted the plane around, aiming back toward the water.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The damp sand is firmer, we can get a better roll.”

  “But the tide is coming in, most of the damp sand is underwater.”

  Sawyer turned her head to him and grinned. “Yep.”

  She pivoted the plane again as they reached the water’s edge, the nose wheel just at the midpoint of the waves’ back and forth surge, the left wheel now high and mostly dry, the right wheel raising a rooster tail of water as they accelerated down the beach.

  “How come I get the wet side?” Darwin asked, shaking splash from his sleeve.

  “Wind direction. Not my fault.”

  They rolled faster now. Darwin watched as Sawyer struggled with the controls to keep a straight path, between the constant drag of the water on the right wheel and the irregular drag of patches of wet and dry sand on the left. But they were gaining speed.

  He felt the vibration smooth and then the plane tilted up, surging forward a little faster as the nose-wheel lifted from the water, then the splashing stopped and the whole plane lifted clear. Sawyer lowered the nose just a bit to build more speed in ground effect, then angled it up to its best climb rate.

  “Whoo ha. Let’s not do that again!” she said as they climbed out above the ridge line.

  Darwin shook his head. “You’ve got that right. First thing we do when we get back is have somebody work up some tide tables.”

  Chapter 13: The Smeerp Problem

  Centauri Station, in orbit

  Drake was in the hub of Centauri Station when Dmitri Tsibliev, commander and pilot of the Krechet, drifted over to him.

  “Commodore Drake, I would like to talk with you,” he said in a low voice.

  “Certainly Dmitri. Go ahead.”

  “I would prefer this private for now.” He gestured toward a hatchway. “Shall we go to different deck?”

  “Fair enough.” Drake pushed away from the panel toward the panel above the hatchway in the floor, grabbed a hand-hold, pivoted, and glided through the hatchway feet first. Tsibliev followed, diving headfirst through the hatch.

  “What’s on your mind, Dmitri?”

  “We have been in orbit nearly two weeks. The Chandra landing party shows that it is safe. The boat and aeroplane are operational.”

  “This is all true.” Drake had a feeling he that he knew where this was going.

  “I would like to take Krechet down too. We can do more science.”

  “But in the same place as the Chandra. What would be the point?”

  “No, elsewhere. We have several landing spots picked out.”

  “‘We’?”

  “The biologist and geologist on my team have already been looking at this. I have made no commitment.”

  “And have you figured out how you’re going to get home without access to a refueling pod?”

  “Da, we have. We can use the planes to transport personnel to Chandra when research at second landing site is complete. They wi
ll return to orbit in Chandra.”

  “And abandon the Krechet on the planet?”

  “The mission plan is to leave a lander in Centauri system anyway, is it not?” They both knew that it was. Quarantine was one reason, in case the landers had picked up something unnoticed. The other was to reduce overall fuel requirements on the return trip—the ships left behind would transfer fuel to those returning.

  “It is, but in orbit, or a controlled reentry, not on the surface. And you want to bring ten people up in the Chandra? The landers aren’t designed to carry that many people.”

  “Respectfully, that is not completely correct. They are designed to carry more people in an emergency.”

  “Three people, yes, not a full landing party in addition to their own full landing party.”

  “That limit would hold for the planet at Centauri A, it is larger and has higher escape velocity. Here at Planet Baker it would work.”

  “Even at Chandra’s latitude?” Chandrasekhar had landed significantly north of the equator, although still a long way from its theoretical limits. Still, those limits were calculated with a standard lift-off weight, not carrying extra passengers.

  Tsibliev looked away.

  “It won’t, will it?” Drake pressed.

  Tsibliev looked back at him. “It will. It is on edge of limit, but within parameters. So long as nobody gets too fat while we are down there. There is mass we can strip out for margin.”

  Drake didn’t like the idea. There was the risk factor of having the two landing parties separated by a significant distance, the risk of not being able to ferry the Krechet’s personnel to the Chandra—if there were an accident with the planes, for example—and the risk of launching Chandra back into space with almost no safety margin in the payload. On the other hand, the second landing team was not doing much up here but using up consumables. He was already hearing some grumbling about taking part in the landing. There wasn’t likely to be an outright mutiny, but he’d have a lot of explaining to do when they returned as to why he didn’t let the science crew do their science.

  “I don’t know if you appreciate the risk.”

  “We know what are the risks. Every member of team is willing to accept these risks for landing opportunity.”

  Drake considered all this. It could also be politically advantageous to let the Russian ship land, helping to make the best of the bad situation of the loss of the Xīng Huā, but only if the Krechet’s landing team returned safely. It could also be a huge disaster.

  “Could you reduce your landing party to four? And, could one of those be Xiaojing Wu?”

  Dmitri narrowed his eyes and wrinkled his nose, then looked back at Drake resignedly. “It will be difficult. The mission would not be as effective. Perhaps Roger Dejois can continue his ecology studies from orbit. But if that is what makes the difference. . . .”

  “I’ll tell you what, Dmitri. Write it up as a formal request and include your preferred landing area. I’ll make a decision based on that.”

  Tsibiliev paused, as if considering, then nodded. “Spasibo, Commodore. Thank you.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Biology Lab, Chandrasekhar, on the surface

  Darwin had a small furry creature in a cage trap.

  “What’s that?” Jennifer Singh asked.

  “A runny babbit,” he replied.

  “You mean bunny rabbit?”

  “No, a runny babbit.”

  At Singh’s questioning look, he continued: “It’s about the size and shape of a rabbit, has the long ears, and probably fills a similar ecological niche. But the hind legs are different, it runs rather than hops. Hence runny babbit.”

  “If you don’t want to call it a rabbit, then why not just make up a name? Call it a smeerp.”

  “A smeerp?”

  “Whatever, why not?.”

  “That sounds more like you’re describing road-kill; a smear with a lump at the end. No, it’s a runny babbit. I’ll let Doctor Klaar come up with a Latin name when we have a better feel for how it fits in to the overall picture.”

  Singh just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “You know,” Darwin continued, “this is pretty exciting. We get to name all the new species—new families and orders and kingdoms (oh my!)—and we can do it methodically, in a way that makes sense, instead of the hodge-podge of species names of terrestrial biology.”

  “That’s a pretty tall order, and we have to describe everything we name. You might just have to settle for naming the families and a few select species. But new kingdoms? We haven’t seen anything to suggest there’s anything but the basic three or five here.” She knew as well as Darwin did that the exact number depended on whose classification system you were using, but general agreement oscillated around those.

  “True so far, but we’ve only begun looking,” he said. “We may yet find microbes that don’t fit into the bacteria or archebacteria families, or something larger that’s neither plant, animal or fungi.”

  “Perhaps. I would be more convinced if what we’d found was not DNA based, then everything could be separately classified. But the plants here aren’t merely DNA based. We don’t have the sequencer, but we can tell that much using basic chemistry, and so far as we can tell they even use the same four nucleotides. Where’s the fun in that?”

  Darwin was inclined to agree. Native Earth life DNA was based on four basic nucleic acids: guanine, adenine, thiamine and cytosine. There were many more potential nucleic acids, but most of them were too big or too oddly shaped to fit into the DNA helical structure, or didn’t have a corresponding base to pair up with to form part of the double helix. Experimental biochemists had, however, found or managed to synthesize some base pairs that would fit as new letters into the DNA helix, or team with other pairs to create DNA helices of a different size or twist. It had been widely expected that extraterrestrial life could as easily have started with a different combination of nucleic acids, and that their genetics and general biochemistry, while similar in principal, would be wildly different from Earth life as humans knew it.

  That it wasn’t—at least, what they’d found here on Alpha Centauri B II, or Baker—was a disappointment for some of the biologists. It meant that Earth life’s particular DNA sequence was less likely a chance occurrence—why GATC rather than some other set of code letters?—and more likely due to some specific selection mechanism at work in the prebiotic oceans and tidal pools where life had arisen. But what was the mechanism? The biologists were both intrigued at the thought that there was a mechanism there to find, and concerned that when the news leaked out, it would trigger yet another round of “intelligent design” creationist nonsense.

  Perhaps the life on the planet orbiting Centauri A would be different, but there was little expectation of that. The astronomers and planetologists had pointed out that the two systems were easily close enough to have cross-contaminated each other with fragments kicked off by giant meteor impacts. The exobiologists reluctantly agreed that hardy lifeforms could survive just beneath the surface of such rocks for the few hundred or even thousands of years it took a wandering piece of impact splash from A-II, Able, to intersect B-II, Baker, or vice versa. We need to come up with some better names for these planets, thought Darwin, momentarily side-tracked. And if the DNA did match, it might be impossible to tell on which planet life arose first.

  The same argument had been raised when the first bacteria-like structures had been found in the Martian meteorite back in the 1990s. If they were “nanofossils” (it was later decided that they probably weren’t), was it life that had independently evolved on Mars? Had life evolved on Mars first (it would have cooled before Earth, after the planets formed) and then traveled to Earth in the same way that meteorite had? Or could an impact on Earth—something like the Sudbury impact of two billion years ago, perhaps—kicked off a piece of Earth with enough velocity to travel through interplanetary space and reach Mars? And if it could, could it have carried primitive lifeforms
that survived the trip, and found Mars habitable? Analysis suggested that the answers to all these questions was “yes, but. . ..” The “but” being that it would be extremely unlikely. In either case, the primitive organisms which Darwin had discovered on Mars had the same genetic biochemistry as Earth life, so the question was still open.

  Darwin realized that Singh was still looking at him expectantly. “Well,” he said, “maybe these planets were contaminated by something that got kicked off of Earth. It’s only four light years.”

  Singh rolled her eyes. “Not likely. I do not think there are enough zeros to express how infinitesimal the chances of that are. Perhaps Fred Hoyle was right.”

  Hoyle was a 20th century astronomer who had become a strong advocate of the theory of panspermia. The theory held that life originated far too quickly after Earth cooled to be explained by the random assemblage of primitive biochemicals into DNA and proteins, so early life must have originated in space, on comets where it might have had billions of years more to develop before encountering the early Earth, and that such life-bearing comets could just as easily seed (or infect) planets in other star systems. While it was true that organic precursors such as amino acids had been found not just in comets but in interstellar gas clouds, most exobiologists felt that it required something warmer and more energetic than a wandering comet’s surface to actually develop life.

  Darwin just snorted. “Anyway, I’m going to examine my little babbit friend here and see what makes it tick. I’ll send my data up to Ulrika so she can examine it too. She’s been itching to get a look at the local fauna. This thing is surprisingly mammalian—fur, warm blooded, endo-skeleton—so it’ll be interesting to see what the differences are at the detail level.”

  Hours later, Darwin and Klaar were still looking for those differences.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Centauri Station, in orbit

  Doctor Ulrika Klaar examined the image on one screen and then again at the notes Darwin had sent up. This didn’t make sense, why would he do this? She opened a comm circuit to him.