"I have received a report on your state of health from the ship's computer, but I would like to calibrate my medical sensors if I may," it requested.
"Sure," said George. The robot placed its right hand on the side of his neck, its thumb resting on his jugular. As the hand approached, he could see each finger was a complex maze of tiny sensors. He was surprised to feel that the hand was warm, despite its cold-looking appearance.
Nice bedside manner, thought George as he felt an ultrasonic hum pass through his body, while at the same time a tiny section of the robots chest plate emitted a multicolored display of lights that explored the front portion of his body. After a second, the robot moved both its hands to place them at opposite sides of George's head, then dropped them at its side.
"Thank you," it said, then backed away.
George cycled the lock to let the next visitor in. A spacesuited figure stepped through; the spacesuit had a single silver star on the shoulders and helmet. The plasticoid was very efficient and soon the spacesuit was off the human. Instead of the uniform George had been expecting, the young man was dressed in "civvies": a plain black jumpsuit. Obviously, he was stressing the nonmilitary humanitarian rescue aspect of the mission.
"Hello, there," said George with a twisted smile. "Welcome to Barnard."
The visitor looked at the ancient astronaut. George was dressed in a neatly pressed coverall, but that couldn't hide the angular structure of a computer-controlled motile exoskeleton activating his arm and leg on the left side. The visitor estimated it must have required about one-third of the Christmas Bush. As he looked, his computer implant fed him the background information that had been picked up from James and the recent examination by the medic. George had suffered a massive stroke just eighteen months ago and had only barely survived to greet them. He was getting better, though, and probably had a good many years left.
"Hello, George," said the young man. His method of talking was slow-paced and carefully enunciated, as if he were repeating a well-rehearsed speech. "I bear a proclamation from the President and Congress of the Greater United States, and a personal message from my great-grandfather."
"Your great-grandfather?" asked George in bewilderment.
"I am cursed with the jawbreaking name of Beauregard Darlington Winthrop the Sixth," the young man replied with a faint smile. "But just call me 'Win'. My great-grandfather was Senator Winthrop, formerly General Winthrop, one of your old friends in the Air Force."
George clouded up. Far from being his friend, General Winthrop had been George's personal nemesis when Winthrop had served as Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before switching to politics. He had blocked George's promotion to General and had nearly kept him from going on this mission.
"Winthrop?" he said. "What was his message?"
"I don't know," said Win, "it's here in this envelope. Since he was the person in Congress that knew you best, they asked him to write you a personal note to go along with their formal commendation."
He handed over a yellowing ancient envelope with the embossed imprint of Senator Beauregard Darlington Winthrop III in the upper left corner. George tore the envelope open and pulled out a folded sheet of Senate office stationery. There in fading black ink was a short note dated July 4, 2056.
Your goddamn friends in the goddamn Congress finally finagled you a goddamn star. May you be dead and frozen in Hell before it gets to you!
There was no signature.
George smiled quietly, folded the letter carefully, his motile-assisted left arm acting in near-perfect coordination with his good right one, and put the letter into his breast pocket. There was no need for this puppy-dog of a young man to know the contents of the message.
"What did it say?" asked Win, eager to know the family secret. As a child he had become fascinated with the time-spanning history of the piece of paper, and he had worked until he was chosen for the follow-on mission to Barnard so he could deliver it personally.
"He mentioned a star," said George.
"Oh, yes!" said Win. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a small box.
"In recognition of your services to the country," he parroted, "the President and Congress of the Greater United States hereby promotes you to the rank of Brigadier General of the Air Force." He handed him the box and George opened it. He took out one of the silver stars inside, snapped the box shut and looked at it contemplatively.
He hobbled over to one of the viewing ports in the side of the command deck and stared out at the dull red ball off to one side. He turned to face the two robots and the human, and said, "James, send the Christmas Bush over here next to me."
The computer obeyed and soon the scraggly looking motile was floating in front of him. He reached up and stuck the shining silver star into the branches at the apex of the Christmas Bush, where the cilia automatically gripped it. George leaned back against the viewport and looked at the greenly glowing Christmas Bush, its colored lights blinking on and on in its never-ending communication with the main computer. The five-pointed silver star stuck in the top branches glittered brightly as it reflected the reddish rays streaming in the viewport window from Barnard.
"I think you're the one that deserves a General's star, James, so why don't you keep this one?" Stiffly, he turned his back on the group and looked out the window at the dull red globe that was six lightyears away from the home to which he had thought he would never return.
"I already have my star."
SOLARIANS
"CAL'N ED'N, dju'earme?Thiz Gen'l Beau'gard Dar'ton Wint'up t'Sixth, uvth' Succor, cal'n crash s'vivrs 'n Zuni. Djurea'me?"
Maria sat back on her heels, stunned. The sounds coming from the communicator resembled human speech, but were so slurred together as to be almost indistinguishable as separate words. She looked about at the people gathered around the communicator that occupied one end of her ridgetop dwelling. Reiki nodded to her to respond, so she pressed the "talk" button and spoke.
When her reply was broadcast aboard Succor, Win and the others looked at each other in puzzlement. The slow rhythm of Maria's reply was like a dreamy song in their ears.
"Hellooow, theah. This is Maria, talking to you. We are all waiting heah, and wanting to speak with you directly, but Ah'm ver-ry sorry to have to tell you, that there is a sur-prising amount of garble in your transmission channel, and we cannot understand your message."
Win blinked. Did the word "s'prisin' " really have two "r's" in it?
He spoke again, slowing down and trying to enunciate carefully. "Le'me speak to Comoff of landin' party, mejitly." There was a long pause. On Eden, the humans exchanged puzzled looks.
"Perhaps our speech patterns have slowed down somewhat," said Reiki. "Because of our more relaxed living style, or altered, because of our new circumstances. And, if that was English he was speaking, it certainly is different!" Moving to the radio, Reiki tried to recall the terms and expressions they had all used on Prometheus. "This is Ranking Officer of the Landing Party, Reiki LeRoux. We can comprehend your words when you speak them clearly, therefore the transmission channel is not the problem. Can you understand me?"
Win, impatient with the delay, had been about to bark a brusque order to his comm robot, but Reiki's cool tone made him pause. With an effort, he slowed his speech even more. "Ma'am, we are entrin' into orbit about Zuni. We require information on safe landin' sites. Our mission to rescue you will go much smoother if you will respond promptly to my commands."
Unconsciously, every human gathered around the little radio stiffened. Reiki replied with chilly calm.
"Are you requesting permission to land?"
This brief message seemed to please the people aboard the orbiting spacecraft.
"Yes! Course w'are, tha'swhy we've come. Wha' dju-thinkwe wanted?"
This was rattled off almost too fast for the listening Edenites. Again there was a pause. This time, Reiki used carefully enunciated proper Solarian English phrases, but spoke them at the leisurely pace
of Eden.
"We shall consider your requirements, most carefully, and shall let you know in good time of the most suitable landing site for your vehicle. We have managed to maintain ourselves quite satisfactorily for some time, and it is imperative that we not be exposed to bacteria, viruses, or fungi which you may have unwittingly brought with you. Therefore, you must understand the necessity of strict quarantine, including the wearing at all times, on your part, of environmental isolation suits which will not permit contamination of our health. If that is understood, we shall proceed to survey possible landing sites for you. I suggest that we resume radio communication at eighteen hundred, Zuni time, which will give us sufficient time to prepare for your arrival. Do not call us. We will call you."
The Solarians had no difficulty understanding the words, slow and flowing though they were, but they were somewhat puzzled by the tone.
"Not the welcome I expected, dju?" remarked Win to Orson.
"Chilly ... on all fronts," agreed Orson. "Wha's this nonsense about wearing isosuits? After all this time in space we're 'clean-room clean', are'nwe?"
"D'know," said Laura grudgingly, "they've a point. I had the Yugocold a week ago, 'member? And, their immunity's prolly way down, wha'wi sufferin' years of malnutrition and stress."
"Ovr'n'out," barked Win brusquely. He moved to terminate the transmission, but Reiki's voice stopped him.
"I beg your pardon? That last phrase. Did that signify a yes or no, or something different entirely?"
Win shook his head.
"It signified som'thn difrn't ... that is ... diff-er-ent. We unnastand, and will comp ... comply." He clicked off the channel and swore irritably. "Damnation, this is going to take some work."
Down below, the Edenites looked thoughtfully at each other, and Cinnamon chuckled.
"You said 'eighteen hundred, Zuni Time', Reiki! Just when is that?"
Reiki grinned back at her.
"Oh, sometime after dinner, more or less! But we have things to talk about before that. Now, what do you think ..."
THAT EVENING, after a long dinner and discussion, they all went to Maria's hut and contacted the rescue ship through the communicator. In the interval, the ships computer had used its implant connection to Win's brain to run through some language training lessons in old English vocabulary and pronunciation. After Maria opened up the channel, Win spoke.
"Rescue is finally here, survivors. We'd like to meet with you immediately to assess the general situation, then get you out of there and back to civilization. Have you identified a good landin' site? We'll want level ground so that our robogangs can unload our equipment easily."
The Edenites smiled and listened with pleasure to Reiki's response. The slow lilt of Eden's speech did not disguise the firmness of her directions.
"We shall all be most happy to welcome you to our home, and we all will do our best to make you comfortable for the duration of your stay. I must remind you that it's imperative for our safety, as you will be the first to acknowledge, that you remain in your environmental isolation suits at all times. I'm sure we are most interested in observing the wonderful new materials of which they are constructed! Of course, your robots must be sterilized also. As for landing, the best procedure will be for you to bring your rocket down over the enclosed bay on the island we call Crater Lagoon—you will readily observe it upon your maps. The exhaust flames emitted during your deceleration phase will be less likely to cause forest fires from there. After bringing the lander to a hover some meters above the surface of the water, you can translate across the water and land among the dunes. We will be waiting, a safe distance away, to greet you in person."
"Oh, hell," muttered Win privately to Orson. "Sterilizin' the robots will take a while. That's a beefin' nuisance. But, for now, anyway, we gotta do it their way, at least till we actually meet 'em."
"Sterilizin'," reminded Orson. "That does make some sense. They already warned us about that, and we agreed."
The various representatives of the United Species of Eden were gathered on the shores of Crater Lagoon to await the arrival of the Solarians. The incoming aerospace rocketplane announced itself with a double-crack boom as it entered the upper atmosphere of Eden. Having heard the noise before at the time of the aeroshell drops from Prometheus bringing supplies to the humans, it didn't bother the waiting Jollys and flouwen, but the weresharks basking in the shallow waters of the lagoon were perturbed by the noise and all their eyefish scurried into their sockets and closed their eyes in fright.
Cinnamon, having discussed with Laura the safety perimeter needed for the landing of the small rocketplane, had the multicultured collection of Edenites placed about a half-kilometer down the beach from where the rocketplane would touch down. The winged vehicle flew in from the west on its stubby wings, and with bluish-purple jet bursts flickering from its wings, sides, and tail, it assumed a nose-up attitude and lowered itself down, landing tail first on an almost invisible blue-purple flame.
"The exhaust is throwing up lots of sand, but no smoke," remarked Richard. "Wonder what it uses for fuel?" As he was speaking, a strong wind arose from the direction of the rocketplane and his voice shifted upward in register between sentences. He turned in surprise to Cinnamon when he heard the way he now talked.
"Helium!" he exclaimed, continuing in his weird high-pitched voice. "I remember it from sucking balloons as a kid."
"According to Laura," said Cinnamon, also speaking strangely, "it's liquid polynitrometahelium—a polymer made of excited helium molecules stabilized with nitrogen. Its a simple monopropellant that outperforms lox-hydrogen by six times, while its exhaust fumes are about as nontoxic as you can get—pure helium, with a little bit of nitrogen."
A door opened at the base of the rocketplane and a gang of robotic androids exited down a ramp to inspect the five landing pads. After assuring themselves that all was safe, they turned to the task of escorting the three humans down the short ramp to the sandy beach. The humans then started their long walk around the lagoon to where the Eden contingent was waiting. As the Solarians approached the mixed group of Edenites, the two groups got a chance to inspect each other.
"That Win fellow looks like Buck Rogers to me, straight from the twenty-fifth century," giggled Maria, patting her curls. "He's cute."
"And that Laura looks like she's right off the cover of an ancient science fiction pulp magazine," remarked Richard. Laura was dressed in the short skirt, bare midriff fashion of the climate-controlled enclosed cities of Luna. Her skin, rarely exposed to the damaging light of the Sun, was as soft and smooth as a baby's, and her long willowy frame left plenty of it visible between the colorful wisps of her costume. She, like the other two humans, was wearing a helmet and a backpack air exchanger, while their bodies were covered from neck to toe by a monolayer isolation film. But, while the men had chosen brightly colored film, hers was transparent.
The tall amazon strode closer. It was now obvious that when she arrived, her head would tower high over Richard's nearly two-meter height.
"What do you think of her now?" whispered Reiki from beside Richard's elbow.
"Impressive!" he gulped.
"O'M'GAHD! They're all aliens!" chatlinked Orson through his implant to the others. "Even the humans are alien."
Win understood immediately. Instead of a bedraggled band of desperate stranded astronauts in tattered remnants of spacesuits, they were instead confronted by a quiet group of calm, but odd-looking people; well-fed, healthy, immaculately clean, and dressed in exotic but lovely brightly colored costumes that looked like those on the android dancers at Polynesia-Land. But they were too short and compact, and their arms and legs bulged strangely with muscle. With all the physical labor in the Solar system done by robots, only those of the lowest castes ever developed more muscle than was needed for optimum health. The skin of these people seemed too thick, and all of them, even the blonds, had the same golden brown skin. Probably there had been more inbreeding than they wanted to adm
it. But the oddest thing was the elders. Win had been amazed at how little time had affected George Gudunov up on Prometheus. He looked remarkably young. Here in the gravity well of the planet, however, the skin of the four original survivors hung in loose folds under their eyes and necks and gathered into deep wrinkles as they smiled at the new arrivals. Win had to swallow his revulsion and look away. Thankfully some of the younger females were really very attractive, although in an alien sort of way. One girl was smiling at him boldly and patting her thick black curls into place. The last time Win had seen fat-laden curves like that was in a holoporn.
The humans were waiting on the shoreline of the lagoon, with the waves occasionally washing up around their bare feet, while some of the younger ones in the deeper portions of the water seemed to be "sitting" in the water. Standing further up on the beach, well out of reach of the waves, were a half-dozen tall trees, about four meters tall, with a crown of blue-green fronds and six massive curved roots that looked like brown elephant trunks. From nests in the fronds of the trees there came owl-like birds with a single large eye that flew around the party of Solarians and their escort of robots and then flew back again.
Further up on the beach was a strange metallic-looking object sticking up out of the sand. It looked like a cross between a totem pole and the tail of a rocket. It had four fins, and below each fin was a circular grid that looked like a ventilation grating or a loudspeaker grill. The surface of the almost metallic-looking structure had the patina of age, and Win wondered whether the "totem" was a human artifact left over from the crash, or something the alien trees had erected on this shore for religious purposes.
In the shallow water along the shoreline, the Solarians could now see large blobs of colored jelly, each blob a distinctive color—red, purple, milky, pink, and blue. The younger human children were sitting on these blobs. Beside each child a small colored pseudopod rose out of the colored body. On the ends of the pseudopod there was a clear lens, which also looked like it was made of jelly.
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