Alpha Centauri: Sawyer's World (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 2)

by Alastair Mayer

  “So, which way we headed?”

  “Inland. Coastal plains are boring.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Besides,” Tyrell joked, “if we do have to walk back, it’ll be downhill.”

  Finley turned to him and deadpanned, “Maybe I’ll get the next flight.”

  Tyrell chuckled. “Too late, buddy, we’re rolling.” And with that, he pushed the throttle forward, released the toe-brakes and the little aircraft began bouncing down the field, building up speed. A minute later, they were climbing to a comfortable cruising altitude, Alpha Centauri A rising a few degrees above the plain behind them as he slightly banked toward the hills visible through the distant haze to the west.

  In truth, he was a little nervous about this flight. The largely tree-covered ground below them meant that there were precious few places to set down in an emergency. If they lost power they’d be in the trees, never good for an aircraft of any kind. Still, loss of power was unlikely. The batteries were charged, the wing panels—he checked the instruments—were supplementing them nicely, and the electric motor could run continuously for years as long as it had power. It had been a broken prop that had downed him and Ulrika, not power loss, and there were few birds in sight. Certainly, no sky-darkening flocks like they’d run into on Kakuloa.

  And yet, he’d feel more comfortable if the clearings were larger and more frequent.

  Tyrell got his wish as they continued westward, the ground below becoming less low flatland, now showing the occasional river valley and more rolling hills. The hills were cut here and there with ravines and with increasingly wider clearings. Something about the rainfall, or the temperature, or the soil made it more hostile to trees and more favorable to grasses.

  They crossed a distinct line of low craggy peaks jutting up from the surrounding terrain. The straightness and angularity told him it was likely a volcanic dike.

  “What do you make of that?” Tyrell asked Finley, gesturing at the ridge.

  “It’s no esker, certainly. The surrounding area isn’t flat enough to have been glaciated,” Finley replied. “Eroded volcanic dike, most likely, although it seems awfully long. Want to follow it?”

  There were plenty of clear, flat areas on either side of the dike, plenty of places to land. “Sure. Which way?” The dike ran roughly south-south-east to north-north-west, it was a question of turning one way or the other.

  “That away, I think,” Finley gestured north-north-west. “Toward the higher ground, that’s probably the origin. Maybe a laccolith.”

  “Well, let’s go take a look.” Tyrell banked the plane gently to the right, coming out parallel to the line of the dike. They were perhaps 500 meters above it. There were gaps in the rock at intervals along the length, reminding Tyrell of the plates on the back of a stegosaurus, or perhaps an immense, long dead and buried dragon.

  “That’s a pretty formation,” Finley said. He pulled out his omni and began taking pictures. “The others will want to see this. I wonder if there are any interesting environmental micro-niches in and around that.”

  “It would certainly tend to limit the migration of large herds, despite the gaps. But I suppose the trees would too.”

  “Maybe that’s why there aren’t more clearings on the east side, with fewer large animals to trample or eat the trees.”

  “Or the west side just gets more rain, although I doubt this ridge is high enough to affect it that much.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Further north, the trees on both sides of the ridge thinned even more, until on the west side the terrain was open grassland with scattered clumps of trees rather than the reverse. An occasional sinuous line of trees marked the edges of a stream valley.

  In the distance, around one scattered stand of trees, a small herd of animals could be seen, apparently browsing on the leaves. The trees must be smaller there, more like tall bushes.

  Tyrell elbowed Finley to get his attention. “Let’s go check out those animals. It’s the first herd of anything we’ve seen.” He banked the plane left, flying westward toward them.

  As they drew nearer, he realized that he’d been mistaken about what the animals were eating. Those weren’t bushes at all, they were the same kind of trees they’d been flying over all along.

  “Will you look at the size of those creatures!” Finley said, looking down at them. “They’ve got to be twice as big as elephants!”

  The creatures, grey-skinned with thick long legs, an immense body, and a neck that gave them something of the look of giraffes, but not so gracile, stood about five meters at the shoulder. The one nearest them, grazing in the leaves of one of the large trees dotting the plain, had a head easily eight meters from the ground. Finley thought that if it had a thick tail to match the neck, rather than the ropy thing it did have, it would resemble a brontosaurus or some similar dinosaur. He watched it flick flies away with the tail. On the other hand, no dinosaur could do that.

  “Heck, three times maybe. That’s one species we’re not going to be raising as livestock.”

  Finley shot Tyrell a look. “Yeah, I’d like to see you build a pen that would hold it. No, even better, I’d like to see you try milking one.”

  Tyrell shook his head. “Not livestock, I said.”

  “So, any idea what it is? I’m guessing not a dinosaur.”

  “No. It looks something like a paraceratherium. It might have a common ancestor.”

  “A paracer what?” Finley asked.

  “Paraceratherium, a kind of giant rhinoceros from about 20 to 40 million years ago on Earth.”

  “Rhino? It doesn’t have any horns.”

  “Many rhino-like mammals didn’t. That thing is a tree grazer, why would it need horns?”

  Finley just grunted. He knew a little paleontology, that was required of a geologist, but his mental classification of animals like this was just big, avoid.

  “Fine, let’s just call them giraffe-rhinos.”

  “So, these things eat trees,” Finley said. “We’re looking for things that eat grass, right?”

  “Yes, they’ll be smaller, built lower to the ground. Maybe something more like deer or antelope.”

  “And its grassy, so here’s where they’ll play.”

  “Well, more out away from the trees, if there are cat-like predators,” said Tyrell, missing the joke.

  “Okay, lets head out that way and take a look.” Finley banked the plane away from the paraceratherium, or whatever it was, and headed for the open grass. “I’m glad we’re not on foot.”

  “It would be a long hike,” Tyrell agreed.

  “Me, I just wouldn’t want to step in a turd from one of those things.”

  Tyrell winced at the image. “All right, we’re not going to land here. Turds aside, one of those things could crush this plane easily. We’ll have to find somewhere where we can park the plane safely then hike back,” he said.

  “Let’s leave that for another day. I’d rather cover a lot of ground by air and note the interesting sites. We can come back another time to do ground observations. Besides, I’m sure the biologists will want to see this, especially Ulrika.”

  “There is that,” Tyrell said.

  They flew a couple of circuits around the paraceratherium herd, staying high enough to not spook them. Tyrell didn’t know if their presence might spook them but he didn’t want to see what a herd of stampeding giraffe-sized rhinos might be capable of.

  “Okay, enough of this.” Tyrell had been scanning the surrounding area while they orbited the herd. “Let’s head for those hills.” In the distance, about twenty kilometers away, the ground rose further and a line of trees marked what was the edge of river valley that had cut into them.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  As they drew closer it was clear that the river valley was
more of a gorge, with steep-banked sides cutting through the layers of rock on either side. In fact, the valley extended into the plain on this side of the hills, although its path became more difficult to follow as it wound into the forested area. A dip in the tree canopy was all that showed.

  “That’s significantly eroded. The river must have had a much higher flow at one point.”

  “Do you suppose it’s seasonal? Spring runoff from the mountains?”

  The low peaks were just visible in the distance to the west. There were no obvious snow-caps now, but there could be in winter. Still.... “That’s a long way, I wouldn’t think it would maintain the momentum this far.”

  “Maybe the ground sloped more in the past. Once the stream bed was established it would keep to it.”

  “Perhaps.” That was certainly possible. “Either way, that cut through the hills should tell us a story. Let’s see if we can find somewhere to land near the gorge and see if we can get down.”

  “Not worried about giraffe-rhinos anymore?”

  “We seem to have left them behind. Not surprising, I don’t think animals that big would enjoy climbing hills, even gentle ones.”

  “Fair enough.”

  As they reached the hills, Tyrell turned the aircraft to follow the edge of river valley. It was big for a ravine, small for a gorge, but it was deep enough to be interesting, and in many places the sides were clear of vegetation.

  “Nice layering, looks like alternating bands of shale and something softer. Sandstone? That’s an odd mix.”

  “So we’re probably looking at a lake bottom rather than a sea-bed. Keep an eye out for a possible landing spot, I’d like to get down there.”

  Chapter 9: Long Term Planning

  Anderson Landing Site

  “Sawyer, what are we going to do for water?” Naomi Maclaren asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, as far as drinking water goes, we’ve got the ship’s reserves and recycling system, but that’s not going to last forever. There’s always loss, especially with folks outside the ship sweating and peeing and so on, that never gets back to the recyclers. There’s also the question of how much wear and tear we want to put on them. That’s why you had the guys dig a latrine pit, right? I’d rather conserve power for critical systems too.”

  “Absolutely, but there’s water here. The river’s only five hundred meters away.”

  “Exactly. Five hundred meters away, downhill. Now, I understand after Kakuloa you didn’t want to be anywhere likely to flood, so fair’s fair. But nobody wants to do a kilometer hike every time they’re thirsty. Carrying buckets up from the river is going to get old fast.”

  “Did you have something in mind?” Before the landing, Sawyer had thought about drilling a well, but she was interested to hear what Maclaren came up with.

  “I can pull a pump from the ship’s life support system and modify it to give enough pressure head to pump the water up hill.”

  “I thought you wanted to avoid wear and tear on the system?”

  “The pump’s dead simple. We have spares for the valve gaskets and whatnot, and what we don’t I can make with the fabber. It was designed that way. Worst case, if we do need the ship to return to orbit, we can hold out for a couple of days in space without it until we dock with the Heinlein or whatever ship they send back. The pump’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  “I don’t have five hundred meters of pipe or hose to run a line from the river to here.”

  “Can you fab that?”

  “That’s a lot of material. It wouldn’t leave anything for anything else, if we even had enough. I’m not sure we do.”

  “Singh said there were grasses here. What if we found something like bamboo to make pipes with?”

  “That’d work, sure. That’s a lot of bamboo, and a lot of work to make it into a pipe, but yeah. Has she found bamboo?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll ask her and Dejois to come up with the best places to look. Any alternatives to that?”

  Maclaren thought for a bit. “We do have trees. If we can’t find bamboo, we could use hollowed out trunks. That would be a pain the arse even more than bamboo. Hang on, if we can cut them into planks, or even just split them and hollow them like a dugout canoe, we could make a flume.”

  “A what?” To Sawyer, a flume was a narrow, rocky ravine for a mountain stream. She didn’t think that was what Maclaren meant.

  “A flume. Basically an oversized gutter, U-shaped hollowed logs or boards fasten as three sides of a square. An aqueduct.”

  “Ah, okay. So we pump the water up to the head of the flume, maybe a holding tank or something, then it flows downhill from there.” That would take some building. Sawyer didn’t know if anyone on the team had that kind of construction experience, but there would be plenty of information in the ship’s library. They’d packed everything in there.

  “Exactly. It’ll be a bit of a project, but if you think we’re going to be here for a while....”

  “It’s good to have plans in our back pocket. I think the long-lead items on that are either finding a bamboo equivalent, or building the tools we’d need to make trees into boards.”

  “Never thought I’d be planning a lumber mill on an alien planet when I went into engineering,” Maclaren said, amused. “Although the challenge does have a certain appeal to it.”

  “If our stay is extended, it could be damned useful too. We can’t be relying on the fabber for everything.”

  “Too right.”

  “The other thing we’ll want is a good topographic survey of the terrain around here. We’ll want that anyway, and it will help planning the route of an aqueduct if we build it. I’ll get Finley and Tyrell to do that when they bring the plane back.”

  “Right. Just out of curiosity, did you have something in mind for water when you agreed to this landing site?”

  “That’s one reason we landed near the river. Yes, it could have been closer. But we’ve also got the geology drill. As long as we’re not on top of granite or something like that, we could drill a well.”

  “Oh. Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “You came up with an engineering solution. I came up with a geologist’s solution. And a well is no guaranteed thing. We can try it, of course. I’ll want the core samples anyway. But I do like the idea of a lumber mill.”

  “Right. I’ll do a little digging online and see what I can come up with.”

  “Online?”

  “You know what I mean. The ship’s library.”

  “Right. Thanks. Oh, and Naomi?”

  She had turned to leave, but turned back. “Yes?”

  “If you think of anything else we might need long term, anything at all, please bring it up. I don’t want to lose out just because I didn’t think of something.”

  “No worries. I’m not shy.” Maclaren grinned and departed with a gesture that was half wave, half salute.

  Sawyer watched her go. Suddenly she felt a lot more confident in the outcome of the mission.

  Chapter 10: An Unexpected Find

  EP03, West of the Landing Site

  “There, set her down there,” Finley said, pointing to a clear area above the ravine they’d been following. The low scrub along the plateau was scattered, but mostly too close together to allow a good landing strip. Here though, the vegetation was sparser.

  “All righty.” Tyrell banked the electroplane to the left, and dropped altitude, circling around to inspect the proposed landing area. “How does it look on your side?”

  The ground was dry, with a few low tufts of brown grass. Finley didn’t see any large rocks or tree roots or animal holes. “It looks good, you can land on the next pass.”

  “Not quite yet.” Tyrell fished a golf-ball sized orange sphere from a pocket and handed it to Fi
nley. “Here, check the winds.”

  “Got it.” Finley pulled a tab on the smoke pellet and tossed it over the side. As it cleared the plane it began trailing orange smoke, then bounced twice on the ground before settling. The smoke drifted up and lazily dispersed across the field.

  Tyrell kept one eye on the smoke as he pulled the plane into a gentle climb. “Okay, only blowing at a couple of klicks and very slightly crosswind. Now we can land.”

  He set the plane up on the downwind leg of an imaginary circuit of the field. He turned base, then final, all the while keeping an eye on the landing area, watching for animals that might dart into the field, or birds that might startle in front of him. It stayed clear, and he eased the plane onto the ground. They rolled to a stop about forty meters from the ravine.

  “Nice landing,” said Finley. “But like they say, ‘any one you can walk away from’.”

  “I have a bone to pick with ‘them’ about that.”

  Finley knew the story. On Kakuloa, a bird had struck and damaged the prop of Tyrell’s plane, forcing an emergency landing that had wrecked the plane and given Tyrell a concussion. He and Klaar had then hiked a hundred kilometers back to the Chandra. Technically it was a landing that they walked away from, but Finley could see how Tyrell might disagree with whoever had come up with that expression about good landings. “Yes, you might at that. How is the head, by the way?”

  “Oh, no worries. Long since healed.” They climbed out of the low cockpit and Tyrell reached behind his seat to grab a pair of large corkscrew-like stakes. He tossed one to Finley. “Here, let’s tie the plane down. We don’t want it going anywhere without us.” So saying, he twisted his into the ground beneath the port wingtip, then tied it to a ring bolt in the wing. That would keep things in place if the wind picked up while they checked the ravine.

  He walked around the plane to where Finley had just finished tying down the wing on his side of the plane. “Ready to go?”