The Long Way Home

by Darrell Bain

  "Hello, Jeremy,” Chambers greeted him.

  "Good evening, Ma'am,” he said. “Hi, Jana. What's on tap for today?"

  "More of the usual,” Chambers said. “I think computer practice today. You're still a little slow off the mark converting your base calculations for corrections into the established run. Most times, it won't make a difference, but one day speed might be necessary."

  "Yes, ma'am. How about an hour there, followed by an hour with the thrusters and vectors, with Jana and I checking each other's work?"

  "Fine. Then I'll check you both."

  The period spent in hyper proved a good time to practice in the control room. He had made two more successful transits on his own, and Jana had made a rather shaky one that she nevertheless got through with only minimal assistance. He had long since forgotten how many transits they had gone through by now. He did know how long it had been since the Sam Johnston disaster, and how far along the Orion arm they'd come. Progress seemed agonizingly slow until he pulled up the map and saw how far they'd traveled. They were more than a third of the way home now, and he felt better about the number of casualties they would suffer. They had lost only one explorer in the last three months—that one from a particularly fast and aggressive beast on a world where they couldn't go outside without breathing masks.

  As he worked, he found himself almost wanting to whistle, he was so happy. The only part of his life that wasn't entirely satisfactory concerned the lack of close female companionship. The only woman in his own bracket where he wouldn't be violating regulations, or who wasn't already attached, happened to be Explorer Chief Casey Dugan, and he still felt odd around her, so far as personal relationships went. He hoped it would get better. She was quite friendly with him now, but he had been so used to thinking of her as an all-powerful superior that he couldn't relax properly with her yet. Maybe someday, he thought, if she isn't tied up with another man. She reminded him of Trammell, in a way, with her petite figure, although she had blond hair while Trammell's was red.

  In the meantime, the only other solution he could think of was to approach the XO and ask what she would think of his having a relationship with one of the Explorer Fives, such as Franica. She was still free, so far as he knew. The only reason he even considered that solution was because he knew that some fraternization was going on. Besides that, he had inadvertently overheard COB Shinzyki and Lieutenant Commander Chambers discussing their intimate affairs and had almost jumped out of his skin, not only because of the difference in their ranks but because he still couldn't picture the burly, rough-spoken Warrant Officer and the pretty blond astrogator in bed together.

  Apparently, they were, though. He wondered if anyone else knew about it. Probably. He stayed so busy he knew he must miss a lot of goings on in the crew quarters, and of course he knew next to nothing about how the officers lived off duty.

  "Ready, Jere."

  Looking up from his own figures, he punched them in and changed places with Jana. Chambers moved over behind her to supervise, while Jeremy pulled up a simulation of piloting the boat in a star system while simultaneously scanning for planetary masses. In practice, he would do one or the other. If it came down to it, COB Shinzyki could probably drive the boat through hell and back, and he was always present in the control room during transits in or out of hyper.

  He finished the simulation and tapped out. He saw that Chambers had departed the control room while he'd been busy, and the XO had taken her place.

  "Where did Chambers go?” he asked as he moved over to where Jana was.

  "Mister Shinzyki called and said he had some business or other she needed to take care of."

  "Oh. Well, guess we're finished then. XO, we're finished. May we leave?"

  "Certainly. Report to your supervisors."

  "Thank you, ma'am.” For Jana that meant reporting to Tiny Smith, the acting chief of the Tigers. His superior was none other than Lieutenant Commander Joyce Chambers. He doubted that he should bother her at the moment, so he went by the gym and found Juanita there. They put in a good hour of hand-to-hand—enough to send him to his cabin and to bed to catch a few hours sleep.

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  Chapter Nineteen

  "That looks like a good place,” Commander Brackett said with a pleased expression from his chair in the control room.

  The boat was in its second day of orbiting a new planet. Trammell had just dropped an icon over a pleasant-looking scene. The enhanced photo showed a long, narrow lake culminating against a rock-strewn shore at one end. Even with the varying sizes of the rocks, the shore sported a grove of tree analogues, which were individually separated enough that the ground could be seen beneath some of them. The rocky plain continued for over a kilometer before it began disappearing beneath reddish-green vegetation, portending a possible source of organics if none of the larger beasts came near enough to be killed.

  "If you're for it, I'll start the deorbit,” Shinzyki said.

  "How about letting Chief Costa set it up? He says he can do it now,” Chambers said.

  "Oh ho! He does, huh? All right, Costa, get over here and show me your stuff. You make a mistake, you get busted down to PO."

  "Yes, sir!” Jeremy said enthusiastically. He had been waiting for a chance to do more than maneuver the boat in space.

  He quickly found out that there was a difference between driving a boat in space or on the simulator and actually having Hurricane Jack under his control while landing in the atmosphere of a planet. In the end he got it down, albeit not without Shinzyki hovering over him, ready to take control at the first sign of warning lights turning from amber to yellow. Once he almost let him, but his determination to master the craft kept him going, while sweat beaded his forehead and his heart thumped wildly in his chest. When the landing jacks finally touched down and four green lights appeared on the console, he cut the last bit of thrust and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked around to find Shinzyki's weathered face grinning at him.

  "Not too bad for a first try. You need to practice with the simulator thrusters some more, though. You probably scared hell out of the crew. I know you did me."

  "I'm sorry, sir. It's a lot different from the simulator, isn't it?"

  "That it is, son. That it is. Your lesson here is never to let the sims think you've mastered an art. You always have to do it in real life. Now what have you forgotten?"

  'What—oh! Secure the boat for dirtside!"

  "Right you are. Go ahead."

  Having pulled up the schedule, Jeremy thumbed the all-hands com and tapped the pre-recorded announcement into it.

  All hands, boat is now secured to ground. Release tractors and prepare for dirtside routine. Tiger squad is on line, Coyotes second and Dragons reserve.

  "And now you're finished. Good job. Come with me.” Shinzyki left the control room to begin checking the boat. Knowing that that task was always his first duty, Jeremy hurried to follow him.

  "What we look for first is wear on the thruster feeds. I've shown you that enough times. Check with Chief Hidhi. He's got a couple of guys lined up for you."

  It turned out to be Explorers Sylvia Rothman and Marvin Bullock, both originally E2 but now brevetted to E3 by Commander Brackett. He often thought if the voyage took long enough and they had enough casualties, everyone in the boat would be either a chief or an officer.

  * * * *

  With the boat safely down, Brackett ordered Lisa Trammell to take off the evening shift to rest, leaving Lieutenant Wong to stand watch. She lay in bed that night unable to sleep. She twisted and turned and finally dozed off, only to wake up an hour later more restless than ever. Part of it was caused by the erotic dream she'd just had, where Costa had played a role. She lay awake and visualized his young, serious face, and then told herself to quit being so goddamned stupid. Just because she was starving for sex didn't mean she had to think about robbing the cradle, despite what her dreams were insisting.

  This was the fourth
or fifth time Costa had played a role in nighttime erotic adventures while she slept. It made her envy Joyce and Rufus. At least they weren't sleeping alone now, incongruous as their mating seemed. Too bad she didn't have someone she wouldn't have to break regulations to be with. There was no one for an executive officer, though. Her position was almost as sacrosanct as that of Commander Brackett. She was his visible embodiment—his second presence everywhere in the boat. She couldn't possibly be intimate with anyone and not be thought of as playing favorites. Eventually, she took the usual course and masturbated in order to get back to sleep. It was as unsatisfactory as always—a poor second best.

  For a change, Jeremy got to go out the second day. He didn't pause to wonder why. An opportunity to get out of the boat was too welcome to prompt him to ask questions when he was ordered to report to Mister Muser. He hurriedly grabbed his gear and weapons and headed for the airlock.

  Outside, the view was panoramic under a sun similar to Earth and a sky of deep blue.

  "Can I help you, sir?” he asked Mr. Muser, the Assistant Commander of the explorers. He had always respected her. She was dark skinned and of mixed ancestry but had eyes that were a light blue color.

  "I'm not sure.” She shrugged guiltily. “I've just got an itch. When you've been in this business as long as I have, you learn to scratch them. How about going over the initial bio reports and see what you make of them?"

  "I'll be glad to, sir, but Wasserman does good work."

  "I'm aware of that, Chief Costa. I still want you to check it. Then go over to that grove of trees and take a look there."

  "Any thing special I should watch for?"

  "I can't tell you your business. Just do what you normally would, then report back to me."

  "Yes, sir. Will do."

  He set up his kit near the boat's airlock and got to work, after first tapping into the ship's computer and pulling up Judy Wasserman's results on his reader. After going over everything she had done, he could find no flaws in her analysis of the Happystop life. He had to admit that the name given to the planet seemed fitting. It looked great so far. Nothing had threatened other than a few medium-sized carnivores, which were quickly killed and sent to the converter for processing into food. Beyond the bare rocks where the red-green vegetation began, a little herd of grazers, unmindful of the alien presence since they hadn't been evolved to fear humans, had been driven closer than the few that didn't run the other way had been, and slaughtered. In only one day they had harvested nearly enough organics to fill the storage vats, and the water was already aboard. It should be a short stop, given that they now needed only to get the organic material processed. That always took longer than loading water.

  He set out to look at the nearest vegetable life: the grove of trees. Their anatomy had proven to be closer to vegetable than animal life, but Wasserman had no explanation of why they grew in that one spot and almost equilaterally spaced. He remembered Mister Muser's cautionary remark about an itch. He found he had one, too. The problem was figuring out what it meant.

  As he neared the grove, he saw that a number of explorers were taking a break by leaning against the amber-colored trunks while being shaded by an overhead of leaves shaped almost like footprints. When his progress brought him under the first tree, he looked up, thinking there might be a source of danger overhead. That made him uneasy, but nothing came to mind. The leaves were sparse enough that nothing of any size could hide among them. An analysis had determined that if no more fauna came near they could fill out the last of the organics needed.

  A few meters away he saw Lisa Trammell standing by herself as if in thought. She heard his footsteps crunching the myriad insect analogue shells underfoot and turned around.

  "Hello, Jeremy. Did Mister Muser call you out?"

  "Yes, ma'am. He's worried that we're missing something."

  "How about you?"

  "I ... don't know yet. Something doesn't seem right, but I can't put my finger on it."

  Her countenance stiffened. “Do you think we should pull back to the ship?"

  "Frankly, I don't know. Give me just a few more minutes.” He wanted to look around some more before giving her an answer, but she stood waiting expectantly. He gazed around him while turning in a slow circle, crunching more insect shells. He looked down and saw that they formed a solid mass a couple of inches thick in some places. He dug his toe into them and found the newer ones were not decomposed, but the underlayer had begun breaking down into bits and pieces of shells. He looked farther into the grove. It was the same under all of the trees. Something—a bit of lore he had read, a comparison with a half-remembered situation other explorers had run into, perhaps just the workings of his own mind—finally rang a bell.

  "Get everyone out from under the trees. Now!"

  He turned to go back to the boat but stopped halfway there when he heard a shrill hissing noise. He turned around quickly. From the depths of the grove he could see explorers falling to the ground with their bodies twitching. The phenomena progressed like a wave, the nearer ones falling then the ones still nearer collapsed.

  "XO!” he called, not taking the time to use her title. “Hold your breath!"

  He was too late. She had already breathed a bit of whatever poison the trees were exuding in thin jets that quickly dissipated into the air. The XO fell, body twitching. An explorer ran past him.

  "Stop! Use your breathing mask!” He saw that it was Wasserman. She ran on past him, wanting to help. She fell near the XO. He fumbled with his mask in his hurry to get it on. Shit! I bet most of them don't even have their masks in their packs! he thought bitterly. He always carried his, no matter what, but this was the current shift's second time outside and the air had already been declared safe.

  He called loudly for breathing masks and for those without to hold their breaths one more time before securing his to his face and running toward the fallen figures. He blinked as he ran, trying to sort out what was happening beneath the trees. The ground was changing color, and alternate hue was spreading to the helpless explorers.

  He stopped by the XO and was horrified to see hordes of insects scurrying over her body. They were already covering his boots, too. Ignoring them for the moment, he leaned down to grab her recumbent form and heave her onto his shoulders. He ran back toward the ship even as he felt his legs begin to burn from the bites of dozens of the creatures chewing on him. He knew that some of the tiny carnivores must have burrowed beneath his cammies and were attacking him, but their number was minuscule compared to the ones on Trammell's body. As soon as he thought he had put enough distance between the grove of trees, he stopped, dropped her to the ground. Frantically, he brushed the insects from her arms and neck and face and flamed them with his laser while ignoring the ones on his legs. Which told him they would be underneath her clothing, too. The day was hot and humid, and as he had done, she had released the blousing of her pants and pulled her top from her pants to let air circulate beneath.

  Having practically ripped her top off, he began frantically brushing the dozens of bugs off her. They were under her bra, too. Not bothering to roll her over and get to the clasps, he drew his knife, slashed through it, and yanked at her cammie pants and underpants together, bringing them down around her ankles. As he brushed the last of them away from her front, pausing with each swipe to shake his hands and fling away and flame the ones he picked up in the process, he had the wildly incongruous thought of how good she looked undressed, even with bugs crawling on her body. It took long minutes to get her free of the ferocious little crawlers. By then, the pain from the ones working on his legs was so bad that he had to shuck his cammie trousers and scrape the insects off before trying to help anyone else. He burned them and a dozen or two others he had missed after cleaning them off Trammell.

  While he worked on himself, he stopped Shinzyki and Maria Teha, who had come running from the boat to help.

  "Don't go under the trees if you don't have your masks. Someone take the XO i
nside right now and get her blood analyzed for a poison. Call the boat and get ... uh...” He paused, trying frantically to remember who was handling what little medicine was necessary to the Everlife-treated crew. “Get Simpson to run the test on her, just in case her nannites can't handle whatever gas those goddamned trees shot into the air. Send anyone with masks under the trees if they have their lasers handy. Otherwise, wait at the edge to help. I'm going back in now.” He never paused to think that Shinzyki or Teha should be giving the orders. He simply rattled off what his own expertise deemed necessary, and then ran for the trees again.

  So few explorers had masks, and the insects were so numerous and vicious, that they were able to save only a few more of the explorers, and those would be crippled for some time. The ones with masks who ran in under the trees were also bitten and chewed on, and required treatment to help their nannites with the healing process. That included himself, for by the time he got the last person he was assisting out of the trees and cleaned of insects, it was all over except that he had more of the blasted things on his bare legs. He hadn't paused to put his pants back on.

  He didn't know that Jana Waters had been one of the casualties until he was released from the improvised sick bay by Simpson and stopped by the Chiefs’ dayroom.

  It was somber inside. As soon as he saw Juanita he went over to her.

  "How many?” he asked. He didn't have to explain further.

  "Seven, including Mister Muser and Mister Dumas. Mister Muser got gassed and Teha plowed in trying to save the troops. He didn't even have a mask.” She shook her head. “Damn it, she should have been able to see that she couldn't survive there barefaced as a baby. Your friend Waters is dead, too, along with Tiny, Jantzen and Wasserman. There're two others, but their faces are chewed up so bad they haven't got a positive ID on them. I think Chief Hindhi is one of them. He was late and didn't inspect their gear. He's been leaving some of the inspections to Vane since he started fooling around with ... never mind that. He just failed to see to it that everyone had their masks."