“You were injured, too?” She asked, looking over at Ira as she spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She asked of him.
“I’ve only been here five minutes; besides I didn’t want to upset you unnecessarily.” Answered Ira, sounding unnerved by the force of mom’s demand.
“Really it’s nothing,” I reassured her unsuccessfully. “I didn’t even know I been scratched until someone told me.”
“Let’s see,” said Angie, excitedly. “I’ve never known anybody injured in a real battle; now I have two at the same time.”
“Angel Lynn!” Mom barked. “It’s not a joking matter; they almost didn’t come back.” Angel put her hands on her hips and withstood mom’s glare. Mom turned back to me. “You and Ira must be hungry.” It was my mother’s solution in almost any stressful situation; it was her way of coping.
“Not really,” I told her. “We ate while meeting with the Captain no more than an hour ago; but thanks. It will be nice to have dinner at home later on, though.”
“Well, at least have some of your sister’s birthday cake, left over from two days ago.”
I had forgotten her birthday. “I’m sorry; I’ve been so out of touch.” I told her humbly. “I’ve not seen a calendar for ages; I really am sorry to have missed it. Sixteen, right?”
“Seventeen, dum-dum,” she said laughingly. “And I knew you were too busy to even start to think about it; so I’m not hurt.” She turned her nose up in a mock, snub. “Besides; Ira remembered.” She added, displaying the necklace he’d just given her.
“Yeah, but I didn’t have anywhere near the responsibility that was thrown on Eric when Olga got knocked out of the picture,” Ira said graciously. “Eric had command over everything for the rest of the ordeal.”
“Don’t let Ira fool you,” I said with a smile. “We couldn’t have fought our way through those dragons without Ira.”
“And we’re all very proud of you both,” Mom stated. “From the little bit of information we were given, we had no idea what was happening—at least not until they released the list of dead and wounded. Ira was on the list of wounded, but you weren’t.”
“My injury didn’t put me out of commission the way most of them did; I was really lucky.” I told them. “Those dragons weren’t good fighters; they just overwhelmed us with sheer numbers. Fortunately we had a Laze cannon to even the odds some.”
“He’s just being modest,” said Ira. “He fought like mad man; if not for him, they’d have succeeded in sneaking around behind us; we’d have all been killed.”
“I’ll be happy to never see a battle again,” I said. “We all did what we had to; and that was that.”
“What about that creature you brought back with you?” Mom asked. “I thought you were bringing it home with you?”
“Not before everyone on board is inoculated against the potential hazards of the bacteria he was carrying—or that the medics suspect he was carrying. Shots will be available by morning, and everyone will be urged to get one.” I informed them.
“Do you really think the Captain will send us back to Hades to capture one of the dragons?” Asked Ira. Hades was the nickname the hostile continent had earned after our battles there. “I bet it won’t be hard if we spot a loner from the air and stun him; sort of grab and run.”
“You wouldn’t really go back there, would you?” Asked Mom with a hint of dismay. “I mean, you just told us how you were lucky to get away the first time.”
“But we know what’s there now; there’s no chance we’ll let ourselves get surrounded a second time.” I told her reassuringly. “Nothing’s set in stone, and even if they carry out that plan, we may not be part of it.”
“I don’t think they’d send a crew of people who didn’t already know what to expect,” said Ira confidently. I gave him a look to let him know to shut up.
“First things first,” I said to sidetrack the issue. “I know the Captain and several thousand other people want to get the settlement on Olympus started first.” That seemed to curb the subject for the moment.
Stan arrived, walking in without a knock and flushed a little when he saw me there; he and my mother had always kept their visible relationship low key and I guess things had advanced some while I was gone. I did my best to not seem surprised; as a matter of fact, I was delighted.
“There’s a play at the Theater tonight, but I only got three tickets; means someone stays home if I can’t get more,” Stan announced cheerily; but didn’t look quite as relaxed as he tried to sound.
“I’ll call Nettie and see what she’s up to,” I said to break the tension and escape the awkward scene. “Besides, I want to get out of uniform for the first time in weeks,” I added as I headed into my room. It was the absolute truth anyway.
I called Nettie and told her what was up; as it happened, her father had tickets but as Mayor he was going to be tied up in a meeting concerning the upcoming settlement. There was much to do to start the move to the planet surface: Olympus was about to get its first city. The mayor and his wife were both attending the meeting so there were tickets for all of us.
I let everybody know we had it covered when I came out from my room, and Mom was making popcorn in the micro to take with us. I asked what the play was.
“It’s an old Earth play called As You Like It,”said Stan. “Supposed to be pretty funny. It was going to be Julius Caesar; but after recent events, they made a quick change to a comedy.
“Someday we’ll have our own historic plays,” reflected Angie. “Maybe about all the funny and strange things that happened getting here.” She had a far off look in her eyes. “Who knows Eric; it might even be about your heroic adventures on Snaz.” It was the first time I’d heard the abbreviated name for the planet. Angie laughed. “It could be called Eric’s Adventures in the Land of Oz, and include both your good and evil dragons.” She gave me a friendly shove. “Of course, the true hero will be your brilliant, beautiful sister.”
I snorted a laugh and shook my head at her. I was not surprised that the name “dragons” for the Lembroz had stuck, and I’d bet that Snaz would stick as well; it was just easier to say.
We still had an hour before time to head for the show, so we sat around and chatted a while. Nettie arrived about fifteen minutes before we left. I think that was one of the happiest times I’ve ever had; and Nettie had a lot to do with it.
The play was well done, though adapted to fit the world as we knew it; Shakespeare would have had a stroke. On the way home we stopped for an ice cream at the little shop in the commercial sector; the area was open round the clock. The sector served all of the population in three cycles; since all areas rotated which were their days and nights; if not the commercial sector would have to have been much larger. Ice cream was still made from real milk, not synthesized, and it kept the art of making it alive. Soon it was going to be the way we did everything; it would take some getting used to. Our system of economics was set in credits earned by all people together, then divided into hours worked equally for all trades, slightly higher for professionals and equal allowance or pay for handicapped or disabled, though with the sophistication of our medicine and our (until recently) peaceful culture, we had relatively few of either. The most important part of our structure was that it made everyone both productive and consumers. Credits were issued to your account daily and deducted by retinal scan when you purchased or bought through your home synthesizer; food was divided equally from each account of the house present at the time food was ordered, unless otherwise designated by the programmer operating it when ordering. The system would have to change when we were established on the new world.
Nettie left us along the way home, since we went right by her house; I stayed with her until everyone was out of sight, to say a proper goodnight. We would only have a week until time to start unloading the ship, and building homes, etc. was to begin. We chatted for a few minutes, saying absolutely nothing, followed by a long kiss goodnight, with plans forming for g
etting together in the morning.
As I arrived home, Ira was just leaving from a scene looking much the same as the scene I had just left; I had to chuckle a bit. Funny; I guess we’re all pretty much alike when it comes to matters of the heart. Angie didn’t even bother to blush; she just grinned happily and went inside.
The next morning we felt the first of the braking maneuvers begin; it’s a sort of disorienting and un-balancing feeling, almost like a dizzy spell; but it’s only a momentary thing. We had to approach at the right speed to establish orbit over the same area of the planet as if stationary, the area of the first settlement having been selected already. The orbit could of course be adjusted but only if the location selected turned out to be not as it appeared from space. The location was chosen for its relationship to fresh water between the junctions of two rivers, and only a few miles from the ocean; the land was near the mountains in gently rolling hills. We would shortly be in orbit about five thousand miles above so that the orbit would be stable for a long time.
All four of the new ships, including Homer and Virgil, were ready for the first landing; the older shuttles were already loaded with the building material to start the first permanent structures, and one ship set up specifically with a synthesizer large enough to produce most of what we would need to survive. The machine would be set up half way up the largest hill, which would be the source of the raw materials we would use. One mining machine would be sufficient for our immediate needs.
We had been monitoring weather during our approach and found that there were storms from time to time that looked as ferocious as hurricanes, with lightning and strong winds of approximately one hundred miles per hour, though mostly out at sea. On land these storms were generally no more than twenty five or thirty mph winds and rainfall not more than an inch per hour, if that. Over all, the conditions seemed comparable to those on Earth, according to our records.
The first to go down were the Miners, con-struction teams and surveyors; along with a security team and one shuttle for pure exploration. I was lucky enough to pull that duty, having been in that position several times already. As a matter of fact, I was the officer in charge, though in reality the science coordinator on the expedition was as responsible as I. Prof. Corley White was our geologist and Prof. Bernard Starkey was head Botanist and Agronomist; each had a couple of assistants and a ton of test equipment. We would land a group of colonists and continue on to explore the area within a thousand mile radius of the settlement to be sure we were going to be safe there, and to find out as much as possible about the resources available to us. We also had great hopes of finding out how this planet had evolved the way it had; which is to say, with no visible stages of natural evolution.
The first ships headed down to the surface to start the operation in motion; then we were to go down as soon as shelters for more workers and colonists were ready for occupancy. It only took two days to reach that point, so that was when my ship headed down.
It was an amazing sight to see as we descended with our load of colonists. There were eight buildings already standing, two of which were inflatable storage facilities, but the rest were foam insulated plast-steel panel structures; basically apartment buildings. Like the spokes of a wheel, the buildings were being laid out with a large structure in the center; obviously to be a central meeting hall, though it was only a foundation so far. The first colony of man on another world was truly under way and every person on board was feeling the excitement.
Upon landing we were greeted by the head of the planning commission, Sherman Lange, and several of his staff. He made short work of taking the colonists off our hands; they followed his people while gazing around in absolute amazement. I couldn’t help but recall my first experience on-world, and I almost resented the fact that I could never experience that thrill again, personally.
I contacted Capt. Pierce, to inform him that the colonists were safely delivered; he said we should start out exploration as soon as was humanly possible to insure the safety of the colony. We departed immediately searching for anything that stood out as unusual, or to investigate any signs of life forms that we hadn’t seen yet. The more we knew the better. We flew at only about five thousand feet and under two hundred mph to get as good a look at the surroundings as possible. I have to admit it was a bit boring after a short while, until we got to the real mountains.
The terrain was beautiful: waterfalls, rivers and streams running through long winding valleys, and mountain peaks tall enough to have snow caps even in the summer. I don’t think any of us had quite imagined just how big a mountain could be; our whole world was smaller than many of them. We flew right into a storm, and set our craft down, just to see what a storm was like; it was frightening and very exciting. Rain poured out of the clouds, lightning and thunder pounded our ears and eyes; it was the most incredible thing any of us had ever seen! The stream near us began to rise and flow all white and foaming; we were forced to lift off before the water reached us, so we didn’t get to see if there would be a rainbow; maybe next time.
Capt. Pierce was angry at me for having landed in that storm because the static electricity had cut off our transponder signal and for about ten minutes they thought we had crashed. I had to swear an oath to not repeat the stunt again if I wished to stay in command, and though I don’t think he would have really removed me from that position, I made a point of being slightly more cautious.
As the first day of sweeping back and forth over those landscapes was coming to an end, we set down in a clearing as the daylight began to fail us. We would start again in the morning as visibility returned. Outside the ship it was so quiet, you could almost hear the trees growing. I’d never experienced that kind of quiet before, having always had the vibrations of the generators and air handlers, etc. going round the clock; it was most unsettling.
Daylight came slowly in the morning; thick fog lay on the land obscuring almost everything more than a few feet from the ship. There were weird creaking noises in the forest around the ship, but I couldn’t tell what the sounds were. It set our imaginations to work; we decided to raise the ship above the fog layer to see what was out there if possible. Only a few feet off the ground we caught a glimpse of a creature which I recognized as a Yak; with long shaggy brown and white fur, or more like long hair. It was munching the lower branches of a tree near the ship; our presence didn’t seem to disturb it one iota. I was sure it was not much bigger than one of the cows we brought with us on the ship; but it was the first large animal we’d seen on the planet; it made me wonder what else we’d missed.
As a matter of fact, there were at least two dozen of them in the edge of the forest, grazing lazily along the valley within two hundred feet of the ship. I immediately radioed our find to base to get instructions and was told they had our location locked, so a return expedition could capture one for examination. We were to continue our search for possible threats to our settlements; which was now more important than ever because of the threat of predators these creatures may be the support system for.
We began our sweeps again, much lower and slower in this region. If there were any large predators, we suspected they would be nearby. There were a series of caves visible in the cliffs just above the grazing area; we decided to concentrate our immediate search there. We zoomed in for a closer look. There was a path worn in the dirt approaching the cave; something obviously lived there.
Brad began looking for a place to land, in sight of the cave to watch the entrance for a while—though it proved unnecessary. A creature resembling a huge six-legged cat creature, almost black, came out followed by two slightly smaller ones. The large one was at least seven or eight feet long; the smaller about half that. There was no doubt they were carnivorous by their fangs and the bones strewn about near the front of the cave; hopefully they stayed in the more rugged terrain and would not be an immediate problem.
Once again I radioed the information to base just to alert them to the presence of predators on th
e planet; they were no real threat to us as long as we knew they were there. The cattle would be an important resource; we wouldn’t be solely dependent on synthetics for our food for very long.
We flew on for a few more hours scanning from northeast to southwest in zigzag pattern, with nothing particularly interesting except a few more of the cattle herds near the mountains, which seemed to be their main habitat. The cat creatures didn’t show themselves again during our flight that morning, though I had little doubt they were there.
Question: Why would anyone terraforming a planet want to put such a ferocious predator on their new world? Or did these creatures evolve so big because of the abundant food supply, meaning of course the Yak? We saw a number of smaller animals scrambling around in the forest, but with no good place to set down we did our best to get them on camera for later identification. At least we now knew the planet had other life forms.
Brad slowed down, saying; “I just saw some sort of geologic anomaly back a few miles. Looks too symmetric for just a rock formation—more like a foundation or something.
A foundation is exactly what it looked like from up above, so we found the nearest place to set down. We were in a fairly level area with meadows of tall grass and a few basic oak-type trees in clusters; the only thing missing here to make a perfect Earth scene was flowers. We were no more than a hundred feet from the formation we had landed to investigate.
There were twenty of us on the exploration team; I ordered all to carry fully charged weapons as we went out to investigate. Our Head Geologist rushed to the site in his excitement.
“It’s concrete!” He exclaimed. “There really have been others here before us.”
I stationed guards around the site, warning them to keep a sharp eye and not to hesitate to shoot if anything at all moved in our direction. “I’m not in the mood to be dinner,” I told them once again, thinking of those six-legged monsters.
Starborn Odyssey (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 1) Page 13