Was he serious? “I don’t believe it,” I said.
“The worm was the first DNA to be mapped. From what we learned, we were able to map the human genome. By studying the worm immune system and how it contributes to immunosenescence—”
“Immuno what?” I interrupted.
He grinned like one would when explaining deep scientific things to a layperson, like me.
Another reason why we shouldn’t be together, I thought. I don’t understand half of what he’s talking about.
“We learned how to extend human life with the help of worms,” Jorg said.
“Really?” I asked. “So what do you expect to learn from Akiane’s worms?”
“That’s the fun part. I don’t know.” He shrugged and his smile broadened.
“But you’re going to find out,” I said.
“They’re amazing little creatures.” He brought his thumb and first finger near each other and said, “They can make themselves short and fat or . . .,” moving his fingers apart, “. . . long and thin.”
I gave him a “Who cares!” look.
He chuckled. “Okay, did you know a worm is either a hermaphrodite or a male?”
“I thought all worms were hermaphrodites.”
“No, one-fourth are born males.”
“Any born females?”
“They are either males or hermaphrodites,” he repeated, “which means they propagate by themselves. Males cannot reproduce unless they mate.”
“If they propagate by themselves, why have males?”
Jorg winked and gave me a wicked smile. “Jessie, a partner is always more pleasurable.”
I shook my head in mock disgust.
With a gentle touch, he pushed a strand of hair off my forehead. Our eyes locked. I quickly looked away, afraid my feelings might betray me.
Jorg shifted his weight, then called, “See anything, Olivia?”
Olivia Zeller stood at the edge of the landing area and stared out over the landscape. The breeze ruffled her short golden-copper curls. It didn’t matter that it was above freezing, just watching her bare head made me feel colder. I pulled my hood tighter and tied it in place.
Rona stood with Olivia, also seemingly oblivious to the cold.
I had no idea what they were looking at. They couldn’t see the ocean it was several kilometers away and we were at the bottom of a crater, caldera.
Olivia walked over to us and stood on the other side of Jorg. “I don’t know why they didn’t just build near the ocean instead of here.”
“I’m sure they had their reasons,” Rona said, standing next to me.
“Maybe they liked the mountains,” I said.
“Or the algae,” Jorg said.
Ignoring my comment, Olivia asked, “Why build near algae?”
“Food. Salads. Lots of vitamin C. Keeps scurvy away,” he said. “But I think they planted the algae near the habitat, not the other way around.”
“There’s plenty of food in the ocean,” Olivia said, “and seaweed can keep scurvy at bay.” She spoke in that irritating know-it-all tone of hers.
“Not if you can’t get to it,” Jorg said.
And they were off on one of their long, drawn-out scientific conversations on probabilities. Over the last year-and-a-half, I’d learned that scientists like to show off their knowledge and compare ideas. They enjoy a good debate. It didn’t matter who won, they just liked hearing themselves talk.
Many of them were so obsessed with their studies, their eyes glassed over if I tried to turn the conversation to something else. There were only a few, like Jorg and Rona, who could talk about something other than their field of study or science in general.
“Olivia says there are two kinds of ice,” Rona said, “land ice and sea ice.”
“There’s going to be a lot of discussion about snow and ice, isn’t there?” I asked.
“Not to worry, Jess. As soon as I give the colonists physical examinations, there will be plenty of discussion on human physiology too,” Rona said.
“Oh joy.”
She grinned at my lack of enthusiasm. “You really are going to be bored, aren’t you?”
“I fear you may be right.”
“We’ll have to find something for you to do.”
“Oh, Rona, I hope to be finished so I can return to the Moon Base with Britannia or this is going to be a very long two years for me,” I sighed. “I don’t even know how to negotiate. Now if WSC was looking for someone to fail, that would be me.”
“Jess, you’re not going to fail,” Rona said.
After almost one-and-a-half years as roommates, she still didn’t know me.
“These colonists just need to meet us, see that we don’t bite, and they’ll change their minds,” she continued. “Think what your father would have done.”
In a moment of weakness, I’d told her how my father had a gift of helping people with their personal relationships. He was the town mediator, marriage counselor, and domestic referee. People came to him because they trusted his judgment. He’d listen to both sides and give a fair assessment of the situation. Now he would have made a perfect negotiator.
“I didn’t sit in on his sessions,” I said.
“But he must have imparted some wisdom to you, Jess.”
“If he did, Rona, I wasn’t paying attention.”
CAPTAIN’S LOG
WSC FALCON
Captain Faris Assetti
Landing on Akiane
Year 2144
Day one on planet
WE HAVE taken on the 31 remaining crewmembers from the Hawk. Of the 2,038 who started this journey, only 852 survived. All other crewmembers and colonists have been lost.
I am the only captain left alive.
I have a negative feeling about this place. The colonists have lost everything. Their building supplies, DNA for future livestock, and seeds for farming: everything was on Eagle. All the colonists have left is the Hawk. Even their power source was lost.
The ship has been severely damaged and battered. She will never fly again. Fortunately it does have the ability to move to a new location. Life support is barely able to keep the surviving crew from freezing.
My preference is to take everyone back, but the colonists on Falcon came to start a new colony. They wish to stay and fulfill their mission.
I think they are foolhardy.
Colonists have chosen a new place to build. After several scans to make sure it was safe, they decided to settle in a caldera created by a super volcano explosion. Probes estimate another explosion, at that magnitude, is not due for more than 100,000 years. Colonists plan to move before then.
The colony is now 15 kilometers from the ocean, close enough for a hovercraft to transport fish, but a safe distance from monster waves the next time they return.
Falcon was a transport ship and was not scheduled to be part of the colony. After the colonists were settled, we were to return to WSC Moon Base.
The crew and I have discussed it. We cannot in good conscience leave the colonists like this. We will stay and use Falcon’s engines for a power source. The colony will settle near hot springs. They plan to use the geothermic energy of the hot springs.
My crew and I will return aboard on the ship coming in two years, 2146. I have sent a message advising WSC of the situation.
We moved Hawk’s main ship to the caldera and have landed Falcon’s main ship next to her. Falcon’s engines now power both of ships. Each ship has its own hydroponics, both of which have been expanded. Produce will not be a problem. We have fresh fish from the ocean. Everyone is helping with the fishing, cleaning of fish, gardening, and cooking and clean up.
There are plans to build a habitat to enclose the area around the ships, which will protect the colonists from the six-year winter and to withstand the type of gravitational storm we encountered when we first landed. The ships will sit on the northernmost wall so there will be room to build their future city inside the habitat, then the shi
ps will be dismantled and removed.
But we are first reorganizing living areas. We have divided into two groups, one group in each ship. We will expand rooms so everyone has plenty of space and no one has to live with another unless they want to.
Personal Log
This is not what I expected. A twenty-four year round trip was plenty long enough. Upon my return to WSC, my entire military career as captain would have been on one ship.
Now it seems I will not even accomplish that. I was a captain until we landed. Now I’m helping a colony to establish itself. On my return trip I will be a passenger on another’s ship.
By the time I return to Earth, what will I have accomplished? Very little.
My dog Harrie seems to enjoy the freedom of the outdoors compared to being cooped up in my cabin. My father gave her to me to keep me company on the long journey. He made sure she was genetically enhanced so she would live for the duration of the roundtrip.
Her name is really Henrietta the Spitz, but by his strange sense of humor, my father called her Harrie. I decided to keep the name. Every time I say it, I remember him.
In some ways Harrie makes me homesick for my family, especially my father. In other ways, she eases the homesickness.
I am thankful for her friendship and salaam, peace.
Chapter 7
Lieutenant Jessica Hewitt
Habitat
SPAGO PASSED his hand admiringly over the tunnel’s wall. The tunnel was made of black lava in meter-wide, hexagon blocks. “Each of these stones has been cut, and made, to fit perfectly together.” One might have thought it was a technical marvel by the way he spoke. “I would guess there are several layers. Each layer overlaps the others. It makes for a very strong wall.”
Jorg and I stopped to look. Indeed, the hexagons did appear to all be exactly the same size and were fitted together seamlessly, as smooth as glass. The wall looked 42 centimeters thick, presumably filled with the layers Spago suggested.
There was a well-trod snow path to a set of steps leading into the tunnel.
Before he took the steps, Spago dug in the snow with his hands on the outside of the entrance. The rest of us stood and watched to learn what he would find.
“See, there is a base that comes up to the middle of the wall and extends downward at a 45-degree angle. They did the same on the inside of the tunnel, but there wasn’t enough room to make a full triangle base so they filled in the floor of the tunnel and built steps to get into it,” he said, approvingly. “I’ll venture to say the entire wall of this habitat is fortified in the same manner. This kind of construction is not only strong, but durable. An earthquake couldn’t bring this place down.”
“Earthquake, on Akiane?” Olivia asked, nervously.
Spago smiled. “Okay, Akianequake.”
“I’m not concerned about technical terms,” Olivia said. “Will there earthquakes?”
“This habitat is built in a caldera. A caldera is a crater created by a super volcanic explosion, and with volcano explosions come earthquakes, or in this case Akiane quakes,” Spago painstakingly explained. “And if they built their habitat to withstand Akiane quakes then I’d say, yes, there is a very good chance that there will be more quakes at some point during our stay here.”
Olivia paled. “Super volcano.”
“Not to worry. I would venture to guess that another explosion like that will not happen for hundreds, or even thousands, of years, but there must be smaller explosions,” Spago said. “These people must be used to quakes. That’s why they’ve built the habitat to withstand strong quakes.”
“But you said the mountains were inactive,” I reminded him. I didn’t like the possibility of being caught in an earthquake any more than Olivia.
“I also said I’d have to take a closer look to be certain. There could be cycles of activity,” Spago said, “which could be years or hundreds of years apart.”
He jumped up the stairs and started down the tunnel. The rest of us stood in stunned silence.
I’m sure all of us were wondering just how often Akiane quakes occurred.
One by one, we slowly followed.
“Wow.” Spago stood staring at the inside of the tunnel wall. “These people combined medieval, 20th, and 21st century technology.”
“Explain,” Jorg said.
“They constructed the triangle base from medieval times, and hexagon blocks from 20th century. Together they create an extremely strong building,” Spago said.
“This we already know,” Olivia said. “What else?”
Spago took out a small hammer from his pocket and tapped the wall with it. Then he hit it as hard as he could.
Everyone gasped.
The hammer created a small indentation that almost immediately disappeared.
“The building material isn’t just lava, as I first thought. This is smart building material. It was first invented for military use in one of the Middle East Wars, I forget which, but at that time it was called battlejacket technology,” Spago said. He was genuinely impressed. “The technology advanced from there. The colony’s engineers infused nanotechnology into the lava to make it smart building material.” He pulled his attention from the tunnel’s interior wall to look at us. “This habitat repairs itself.”
“What?” several of us chimed at the same time.
“If there is a crack because of a quake, the wall will immediately repair itself as if the crack was never there. You know what that means don’t you?” he asked as if he were the proud engineer.
“No,” Olivia said. “What does that mean?”
“In the beginning of this colony, they had one smart engineer,” Spago said.
As we walked through the tunnel, the temperature warmed by several degrees. I pulled my hood back and unzipped my jacket.
The first sign of plant life was long, spindly reddish vines running along the tunnel walls. I guessed they were red from lack of sunlight. Farther in, the vines sparingly produced tiny reddish leaves with green tips. As we drew closer to the inside of the habitat, the vines thickened. The thumbnail leaves became finger length. They were fat at their base and thinned into a point. As the leaves thickened and grew larger, they also became greener. The red receded to the base while the green spread from the point inward.
Soon I smelled the sweet scent of flowers.
Everyone who stepped into the habitat’s entrance abruptly stopped. Jorg, Rona, and I, with Olivia following close behind, pushed our way through to see why.
If the outside was a frozen hell, the inside was heavenly.
Before us was a small pond about a city block long and half as wide. Beyond it was a hill covered with well-manicured lime green, gold and rust colored bushes. It looked like fall on America’s Eastern seaboard.
To the left were two copper-leafed trees that towered over the bushes and one emerald green tree just to the right of center. The branches from those trees gracefully stretched out and up. The way they grew was too perfect, too artistic for nature. They looked purposely shaped for their esthetic beauty like gigantic bonsai trees.
There were many flowering bushes, some with white flowers with large lacy petals and pink centers; others were clusters of scarlet, tiny flowers; and others were jewel-like indigo flowers that grew along the ground.
Rock steps descended from the trees to a path along the water’s edge.
On the hill’s left side, water fell like a ribbon onto flat rocks that were tilted at different angles to direct the water to the next rock before it swept over a group of pebbles, like a brook spilling into the pond.
Smaller plants on this side of the pond’s edge enhanced the scene’s beauty, but didn’t obscure the view. A huge rock slab wrapped around the pond’s left side.
We stood on a walkway made of black crushed lava rocks mixed with bits of pink granite that made the path glisten. The path ambled through the grass and around the pond to a bridge that crossed over a creek, which slipped into the habitat.
“These people have been busy,” Jorg said.
“Well, they’ve had more than 300 years,” I reminded him.
“They certainly have not been sitting around doing nothing,” Rona agreed.
I never imagined anything so exquisite. It was a place of peace and tranquility, where one could sit and quietly contemplate life. But instead of sky there was a glass ceiling and a wall to keep the outside, outside.
No birds flitted about or twittered in the trees. No squirrels chased each other or jumped from one tree branch to another. No fish swam in the water. Not a ripple marred the perfect glass-like effect, not even a reflection of sky or clouds. There were no butterflies, nor bees. No annoying flies. No breeze rustling the leaves.
The trees, flowers, and pond were beautiful, but lifeless.
“Most impressive,” Spago said, but he wasn’t looking at the trees and flowers.
I followed his gaze to the ceiling. The hexagon-stone wall curved inward. Where it stopped, a hexagon metal brace held up a glass ceiling. When the star Kahair was high in the sky, its light would nourish the garden with photosynthesis.
Scattered around this side of the pond, sitting in the grass or on rocks, were the forty scientists who had come in the two shuttles before us. Among them were six white dogs with reddish tufts; one had larger red spots across his sides and half his face, each weighed about forty-five kilos. Two dogs had all white puppies crowding around their feet. All of the dogs received some sort of affection from the lounging scientists.
Great. Dogs. Dogs were my least favorite animal. They are too dependent on their owners. I much preferred independent cats.
“What are you still doing here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be in your new quarters unpacking by now?”
“We’re waiting for the ‘spirit’ to move someone to escort us in,” Mathieu Rutger, one of two medical doctors, said. He was soft spoken, easy-going, and overweight. To look at him, one would have thought that he was an average Joe, but once you got to know him, you realized he was usually the smartest person in the room.
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