The Long Way Home

by Darrell Bain

  "We'll work on it for you."

  "Thanks.” Turning back to his instruments, he saw that he needed more growth factor in one tray and a catalyst of some kind in another. It took a good half hour before he had that problem figured out. He entered the data in his Reader and forwarded it to Juanita back in the boat. She was handling the fabricator and would have it ready for him as soon as possible.

  A shot from one of the rifles rang out. He looked up even as his hand dropped to the holstered sidearm at his waist. His own rifle was leaning against the table in the slot he had personally carved for it. He had even suggested a change in the field table design to incorporate a rifle prop. Casey and Mister Cantrell had approved it and told him it would be sent to Exploration Headquarters upon their return. But at the moment, he wasn't worried over how to keep a rifle handy while working with survey instruments. He wanted to know where the shot came from.

  The source became evident as he scanned the area. Franika Bzinski was holding her plasma rifle in one hand and pointing her handgun down into the shallow hole she had evacuated to form a firing pit for the heavy weapon. She stepped back and fired again as something wriggled out of the hole. It shuddered and waved a clump of thin, flexible tentacles attached to a bulbous body. Aiming carefully, she put one more bullet into it and then used the barrel of her rifle to nudge it carefully away from her hole.

  "Costa! Come get your specimen!” Casey called.

  He shouldered his rifle and ran forward. As he neared, he saw the tear in the leg of Franika's light environmental suit and the cammies beneath it. It said a lot about the dead creature. Nothing short of a molly knife or a high powered rifle cartridge was supposed to be able to punch through cammie cloth. A pistol bullet could kill a person wearing a cammie, but only by taking a fold of the cloth into the body with it. Before that happened, however, it was almost always deflected by the nanomaterial's microsecond hardening in reaction to shock. He avoided the life form until he got a good look at what her three shots had done to it. By all rights it should be dead.

  "Did it hurt you, Fran?"

  "Just a bruise where it tore the environmental suit and my cammies beneath it. Shit, Jere, have you ever heard of anything that strong? I thought a boa constrictor had hold of me when it came tunneling out of the ground and grabbed me!"

  "I never heard of an animal that could tear cammies, but the hooks on those tentacles look awfully sharp. Hey, what does the air smell like?"

  "Huh?” She looked at the tear again. “You're right. I'm already contaminated. Wait a sec, I may as well go all the way.” She touched the release tab for the hood and face plate of her E-suit, and it collapsed around her shoulders. She pulled it down to her waist, tied the sleeves around her and sniffed the air. She breathed in deeply, blew the breath out, shrugged, and grinned. “Smells like air."

  "You're no help."

  "I got you a specimen, didn't I?"

  "So you did,” he acknowledged. “Thanks, Fran. I'll go run it through the gumball machine."

  She laughed at the comparison, but it was apt. The little tissue analyzer looked like a fist-sized ball melded to the top half of another ball the same size. When it was activated, the internal mechanism did look like tiny gumballs spouting from a little fountain. Nevertheless, he used his molly knife and a good bit of caution while carving off a piece of tentacle and a piece of the body of the thing. He took it back to his camp table and began sectioning part of it and dicing the rest.

  Once the sections were ready, he activated his power scope and examined the preparations under increasing magnifications. At first the tissue looked amorphous, but as he delved deeper into its anatomy he found fine lines of contrasting material running all through the rest of it. Nerves? A distribution system for nutrients? Collectors for a toxin? The possibilities were so numerous all he could do was contrast and compare to previously analyzed anatomy and physiology of creatures from a myriad of worlds that had solved the problem of existence in innumerable odd ways. Each planet where life existed had its own peculiar organization, but they all had a few things in common. Life reproduced. It took in nutrients. It reacted to its environment—sometimes swiftly, other times very slowly indeed. And above all, life was persistent. Where it gained a foothold, it resisted incursions of other life, sometimes violently. Where that wasn't possible, it devised ways to accommodate to it—or feed on it. All this Jeremy knew. His function was to find whether or not the life on this planet was fit for their converter and recycler.

  One common characteristic of life on most planets was protein formation. Chances were about even that the proteins of any particular world would be oriented so that humans could assimilate them after they went through the converter. Some were oriented so differently that even though the constituents of the molecules were the same and in the same order, the body simply couldn't absorb them. When those types were discovered it didn't necessarily make a planet unfit for colonization, because given the proper nutrients, Earth flora would flourish, and where it did, Earth fauna could in turn use it for food. Sometimes the amino acids were so different that it was hard for the converter to build ones humans could utilize to make the proper proteins. Here, he was only interested in the immediate prospects. He had to check for toxins, infective microorganisms and proper protein orientation. So far he had no answers to questions involving any of those parameters.

  "Here you are, Jere,” Juanita Martinez said, handing him a small vial. “Fresh off the griddle."

  "Thanks, ‘Nita. That was quick.” He smiled at her through his face mask before unscrewing the cap and distributing the organic catalyst into isolated batches of growth inducers.

  "I wanted to get out of the ship for a change. Can we breathe the air?"

  "Franika is, thanks to the critter I'm working on right now. It bit through her cammies and E-suit both."

  "Really? Tough little bugger, wasn't it?"

  "Yup, but three bullets in the kisser made it lay down and became a good little monster. Fran has her hood down, but Mister Cantrell will probably make us wait until another hour or so before the rest of us get to strip."

  Juanita glanced toward the central fire team where Franika had indeed stripped down. She had removed her E-suit completely and rolled up the sleeves of her cammies.

  "Lucky girl. It's hot out here."

  "Tell me about it,” he said while shifting his eyes from the readouts of the materials being analyzed to the microscopic view of sectioned tissue and back again.

  "You're busy, so I'll go bother someone else."

  He looked up. “You don't have to go, ‘Nita. Soon as I figure out what this sucker does for a living I can talk."

  "Uh huh, but I see my boss coming."

  "Shinn?"

  "Chief Clare Shinn to me, Jere. I'm working for her today. See you later.” She hurried back toward the ship.

  Besides COB Shinzyki, there were two other spacer petty officers, CPO Shinn and PO John Silks, along with seven other spacer ratings who operated the longboat. He liked CPO Clare Shinn, but he thought PO Silks was a little full of himself, with his tall frame and good looks. Clare didn't mind getting her hands dirty while supervising a detail, but Silks usually stayed aloof and told people what to do. None of the explorers liked working for him when a detail from their ranks was necessary.

  He put thoughts of both of them out of his mind and bent over his table again. He went down to the highest magnification possible for field work and carefully focused the objective.

  "Aha,” he muttered. “There you are. A little symbiote, looks like. Now what could that mean?” Having studied it for a while, he left it where it was and turned to the ion detector when that instrument lit up. His attention was again called to the protein analyzer. Soon he was watching four instruments at once as they carried out their routines. Carefully, he began running the results against known forms, looking for something similar. Before he finished with that, the protein analyzer demanded his attention again. He was busy and
coping happily with various problems and bantering off-handedly with Ivana when a shadow fell over his work table. He looked up, and then came to attention.

  "Afternoon, sir,” he said.

  Brackett smiled at him. “How's it going, Costa, Prosky?"

  "Okay so far, sir,” Jeremy answered. “I should be able to call it one way or another in a couple more hours, but I think Ivana is about finished with the air."

  "Can we dispense with our suits, Ivana?” he asked.

  "It looks clean so far as the atmosphere goes, sir. I can't say anything about microorganisms, though. That's Jeremy's call."

  "It's seems pretty good, sir. The few little bugs that are floating around haven't shown any inclination to grow or invade any of my cell cultures, and I've sent all the structural information I have on the proteins to ‘Nita—uh, to Spacer Martinez,” he amended, using the correct form of the title for her rating.

  Brackett nodded agreeably and Jeremy relaxed.

  "All right—good work, you two. I'll tell Chief Dugan and Mister Cantrell we can dispense with the E-suits. I don't imagine that will bother any of you, will it?"

  "No, sir!” he said and heard Ivana echoing his sentiment.

  "Carry on,” Brackett said and headed toward the heavy weapons fire team.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Six

  Jeremy cleared the animal life for use, even though it took twisting the definition of “animal” in ways that would have given Earth zoologists fits had they seen it. Many of the higher life forms on the planet carried symbiotic “plant” life in their bodies. The planet had been named Corky after one of the martyred scout pilots. Everyone had known him as Corky. Once the planet was declared fit to live on, Jeremy was free to continue studying the minute organisms that were his specialty. An explorer from the Dragons began cataloging and classifying the larger forms of life. When he was finished analyzing the microbes of Corky, he had to take his regular turn at guard duty during the day, and then spend time in the boat studying astrogation. No one was allowed out at night.

  Commander Brackett was being much more cautious than he normally would have been, but Jeremy thought his approach was justified. If he had been in the Commander's place, he thought he would have done exactly the same thing. Along with buttoning up for the night, no more than half the crew was allowed out at any one time. One squad guarded or gathered organics. Half of another squad took care of personal gear while relaxing for a few hours. The squads rotated. Jeremy looked forward eagerly to the times when the Coyotes were out of the boat, because that meant baths! And clean underwear and socks!

  "How did you get so many pairs of socks and shorts?” Siegfrer asked curiously as they washed clothes at the edge of the lake. The water was fresh and clean, and the newly repaired spare fabricator had plenty of material to work with, which meant detergent. And eventually, extra socks and underwear.

  Jeremy glanced up from where he was scrubbing two socks together. Siegfrer was as naked as he was. Nudity taboos were usually worked out of a person's system at the academy, and if not there, then on weeks-long excursions in the longboats away from the mother ships. Nevertheless, he appreciated the view of that part of her body visible above the water, and she didn't seem to mind the attention he and other males paid her.

  "I started keeping some extra clothes in my boat locker,” he explained.

  "What, you were expecting something like this?"

  He shook his head. “No. I overheard Mister Shinzyki telling PO Silks it was a good idea to keep some spare gear in the boat. It sounded like a good idea, so I started doing it."

  "I wish I'd heard it,” she said ruefully. “I always kept my go-bag ready, but it only goes so far."

  "Count yourself lucky. A few of the guys were careless about keeping their bags up to specs. Tiny, for one. I'd give him an extra pair of socks, but none of mine would fit that big ox."

  "Uh huh. You know what I didn't think of? Extra bras. I've just about decided to stop wearing one except when we're down on a planet."

  "I doubt that you'll hear any complaints,” he said with a grin.

  She stuck her tongue out at him and went back to washing her sparse wardrobe.

  "Have you heard anything about when we leave?’ she asked a few minutes later.

  "Mmm, not much,” he said nonchalantly. In fact he knew exactly when they were scheduled to launch, but he wasn't about to let on that Chambers had told him it was the next day. He remembered Commander Brackett's admonition about repeating things he overheard the officers talking about in the control room. He took that to mean things he heard while studying with the astrogator, as well. He had no desire at all to incur the wrath of the Commander which bandying such information about would bring down on him.

  She looked at him disbelievingly but shrugged and changed the subject. The bare-breasted shrug made him long wistfully for another tryst with her. Unfortunately for him, Tiny Smith of the Tiger squad was the subject of her interest at present.

  "I wonder if there're any really big critters in this lake,” she said, staring out over the water. The lake was large enough that the far shore was hidden below the horizon.

  "I suspect there are. Something must eat these floaters besides us.” He pointed to one of the innumerable and aptly named creatures that had been declared safe for consumption a few days ago. They were prolific, and so far as anyone knew, harmless. Each of the squads had managed a beach cookout with floaters as the principal fare. They were circular in shape, with a diameter between twenty and thirty centimeters. They had tentacles hanging into the depths while the body floated on the surface. Curiously, they stayed in shallow water. Part of the body was muscular, but it turned flaky and tender when cooked. It had a flavor reminiscent of seasoned chicken or the delicious crannyfish discovered on Seventh Heaven and imported to Earth in quantity.

  "We haven't seen anything feeding on them."

  "Doesn't mean anything. The Old Man won't let anyone go beyond waist deep. Maybe whatever eats them lives farther out.” The conversation caused him to look toward the beach, where the gear of all the bathers was piled, and then just beyond to where several Coyotes were standing guard.

  "He's probably right. We've already lost too many of us."

  "Yeah.” He remembered all too well. The very first alien world he had set foot on had been a disaster. Everything went fine at first. So well, in fact, that Beauchamp began letting some of the Sam Johnston crew do down. Then, with almost no warning, a swarm of flying carnivores the size of small dogs appeared and attacked in the fashion of wolves. A dozen or more concentrated on one person, harrying with teeth and talons and flapping wings. Before they could be driven off, three explorers and more than a dozen of Sam Johnston's crew had died. Several other explorers had been lost in one mishap or another over the last year. It's always the unexpected that gets you, he thought.

  "And you hardly ever see it coming,” Siegfrer said.

  "From what little I've seen, I'll take your word for it. We're short of people in every squad.” A full explorer squad consisted of eighteen persons, including an officer and a chief. None of the three had more than fifteen, and the Coyotes were down to thirteen. If they lost any more, Casey had said they would pull someone from the Tigers or Dragons—assuming they hadn't lost some of their explorers in the meantime.

  "And a long way to go yet. I bet ... hey! What's that?"

  He heard it, too. A yell ... a call for attention, he thought. He looked in the direction the sound had come from and saw explorers running out of the water. Those who had been waist deep were slower, splashing frantically to get to dry land. At first he could see nothing untoward, but then a wave of what looked like boiling water caught his attention. There was a line of it, with the closest part of the wave near the shore and the rest trailing out to deeper water, but it was all moving toward the shallows. As he watched, the line of frantic bubbling nearest the shore enveloped a man and woman who had been farther out in
the water than they should have. They screamed and disappeared in a froth of blood, mixed with floaters that were somehow jumping from the water as the wave passed over them.

  "Hurry, you idiot! Get to shore!"

  Siegfrer's voice was shrill, commanding. He shook off his shocked paralysis and ran for the sand amidst shouts and the sound of pulser rifles firing on automatic. He was so scared the water felt like a thick gel holding him back as he tried to run. Only when he was well beyond the beach did he look back. The line of bubbling water had settled about ten meters from shore, interrupted only where blobs of plasma from the pulser rifles boiled it into steam. Floaters jumped from the water with wildly flailing tentacles and fell back into the bubbles. The line took on the color of floater blood and tissue, a pale salmon pink.

  "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

  By the time he heard that cry, Jeremy was back amongst the pile of gear with the others. He bent to pick up his cammies and only then noticed that he had hung onto the clothes he had been washing.

  "What was it?” someone asked shakily.

  No one could answer. Nothing visible had appeared above the water.

  "Who's missing? Did it get anyone?” Casey asked.

  "I saw two guys go under,” Jeremy said shakily.

  "Who was it?"

  "One of them was a spacer, I think. I couldn't tell who the other one was. It happened too fast.” He felt bereft, like a child with a toy snatched away by a larger playmate. He was still trembling slightly from adrenalin overload.

  "All right, fall in! Fall in for roll call!” Casey bellowed, an incongruous sound coming from such a petite source.

  It had been the Coyote squad's turn for relaxing, and the Dragons had been guarding or working at bringing in organics. One by one Casey ticked off the names until someone failed to answer.

  "Jenkins! Has anyone seen him?"

  No one had. The roll call continued while he stared out over the now placid water. Two explorers didn't answer to their names. Just that fast, Jeremy thought. One minute busy with washing clothes and bantering with a friend, and the next you're dead. Across from his rank, Sylvia Rothman of the Dragons tried to stifle a sob. She and Jenkins had been lovers.