by Ginger Booth
“I like Tarana’s criteria,” Cope noted. “Fail fast.”
The captain thumped her fist on the table. “Succeed fast is today’s motto, Cope. Am I understood?” She looked down both sides of the table, catching everyone by the eye. “Failure is when we run out of routes to success. Today bears infinite possibilities.”
She’d meant to invite each of them to talk about their accomplishments and challenges and plans. But she abruptly chose a pep talk instead. “Eli? I’m walking out with you today. This is a gorgeous planet. I can’t wait another minute to get out there and experience it myself. I might even take it with a rebreather and see how it goes.” She grinned at Tarana. “I’m pretty sure my nanites are up to the challenge.”
Tikka Gena raised her brows and nodded. “Your nanites can fix anything.”
“And Yang-Yangs?” Sass prompted. “We have the capacity.” The new nanites devised by Kassidy Yang’s father on Denali, brought home 20 years ago by Thrive, couldn’t rebuild a person from the dead like Sass and Clay’s experimental nanite-AI hybrids. But they could heal practically anything short of death.
“Denali do not wish to adopt Yang-Yangs,” the physiologist argued.
“I’d love to,” Tikki Cook contradicted her. “Zan and Teke have them. I just can’t afford it. Because my earnings get vacuumed into a black hole named Sylvan.”
Silence fell around the table at this pronouncement, Tikki Cook’s most strident yet. Unlike him, Tikka Gena headed for the rings on the dream of the Denali relocating to a beautiful Sylvan. Then again, Tikka Gena could adopt Yang-Yang nanites any day she chose. Thrive carried the facilities.
Sass murmured softly, “Tikki, Kaol, we can provide you nanites. Let’s talk. Not today.” Their eyes went round, and they shot each other an eager grin.
The physiologist pursed her lips. “I should test someone with Yang-Yangs. They must carry a pressure suit out with them this time, to put on immediately when they experience difficulty.”
Nico raised his hand immediately. “I volunteer. I mean, after I’m done helping Dad for the day.”
“You still can’t breathe Sylvan air!” Tikka stressed. “Ever.”
Nico shrugged. “I could try.”
Tikka dug her fingers into her naturally bald scalp. “Argh! Permission to explain this again, captain?” Sass chuckled and waved for her to go ahead.
“Oxygen is an extremely reactive chemical. Fire. Rust. All the processes of life. These are chemical reactions. You understand that you breathe water all the time, right? Moisture in the air. But if you breathe in too much water, in liquid form, you drown. Too much oxygen is worse. You breathe it in fine. And every breath essentially rusts out your lungs. And the excessive oxygen leaches into your bloodstream and corrodes everything from your DNA on out. Every cell process, every metabolic reaction, every neuron in your brain, scrambled by whimsical side reactions. Oxygen is a potent poison!”
“OK!” Sass placated, still chuckling. “I’ll be good! Nico, you’ll behave too. That’s an order.”
“Aye, sar,” he replied with a grin.
Tikka Gena was too aggravated to let it go immediately. “And we learned yesterday that the oxygen does, in fact, diffuse into your system through your skin, just more slowly than through your lungs. If you wear a breath mask, you reduce the damage rate. Maybe Yang-Yangs can keep up, maybe they can’t.” She blew out and sat back with finality.
“Got it,” Sass agreed. “Be careful out there everyone! And hopefully tonight our guests will sleep outside in their own lodgings?” She forced a toothy grin and batted her eyelashes at her engineers.
“Should manage that,” Darren allowed, with a smile.
Cope rocked his head, less committal. “We’ll see what Murphy has to say.”
“Murphy?” Kaol asked Tikki, who shrugged he didn’t know.
“Murphy’s Law,” Cope explained. “If something can go wrong, it will. That whole ‘fail fast’ rule. If the housing is deadly, figure that out before you go to sleep.”
Sass allowed, “Yeah, in that sense, fail lots today.”
“Aye, cap.”
Zan added, “Let hunters deal with vicious smurfs.”
Sass was already rising from her seat. She’d forgotten about that. Zan was to evaluate the animal threats from the shuttle. “How’s the wildlife?”
“Small.”
She nodded, reassured. Only later did she wonder if he meant ‘small’ by Denali dinosaur-scale standards.
6
Sass gazed around the scenery, freshly enthralled, as Eli and Porter chose a location for their test plots to commence soil studies. She listened with half an ear. She’d served a twenty-year sentence as a farmer on Mahina, starting from bare regolith. For decades before that, she flitted around as a cop while all the farms on the moon were painstakingly cracked from rock. She followed the agronomy discussion far better than the physicist Teke at her side.
But her heart sang for the forests, the mountains, the purplish blue sky with puffy white clouds, the mysterious massive wall of ice to the north. She longed to visit the vast glacier lake, and canoe across its turquoise depths, scale those peaks, build a cabin in the woods with a wrap-around porch.
She wondered if Sylvan had flowers.
The view was so reminiscent of Earth it was uncanny. But an idealized Earth as she never knew it, pristine and pure, unsullied by industry, overpopulation, and filth. Denali was wondrously beautiful, but uncomfortably hot and perilous, its wildlife vicious. Sylvan’s natural beauty brought her sheer joy. She couldn’t wait to share it with Clay.
Perhaps Teke missed the gaudier grandeur of Denali. “Sass, I wanted to speak with you about Denali politics.”
“Not on this channel,” Eli voted. “You two go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
Sass sighed, and switched them to another circuit. “You need to burst my bubble, do you?”
“Mine burst,” Teke agreed. “I was gung-ho for this project. At first.”
“It’s outrageous, audacious. To think a few hundred could tame even a foothold on a wild planet. But doesn’t it look as though you could just pitch a tent and live here forever?”
Teke pointed to Cope’s team, chopping out tree trunks to level a spot to erect the first tent. “Cope’s not just pitching a tent.”
No. Geodesic life support tents for forty to start, with decontamination, nitrox air feed, water and sanitation – a major installation. “You know what I mean.”
Teke shook his head. “The thing is, Sass. Well, first, you understand the two fundamental factions of Denali, right? Hunter and academic, versus cosmo and farmer.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “No, I didn’t notice two factions.”
“That’s because Mahinans are naturally cosmos. And your base was Waterfalls, the cosmo capital. I’m from Denali Prime, where academics reign.”
“Hermitage?” Sass asked. There were only the three towns left on Denali. She’d been astonished when they resurrected Denali Prime, nestled in volcanic ash. But they’d been forced to abandon the wondrous undersea city of Neptune when the warming ocean damaged its dome.
“Farmers,” Teke supplied. “Zero academics in Hermitage. Can’t stand the place. Point is, academics and hunters complement each other. I truly enjoyed bringing Denali academics to Mahina University. We’ve got terrific scientists waiting up on Sardine. Once this beach-head is tamed. And that’s how academics and hunters cooperate.”
“OK.”
“What I hadn’t realized,” Teke continued, “is how my people performed in the rings. These hunters failed in orbit. What Tikki was trying to tell you is right. By Mahina standards, these people are smart, but not educated in school subjects past fourth grade. They couldn’t sit still, adored fighting, hated math, wanted to play outside.”
“I didn’t realize they were quite that bad. Zan isn’t.”
“Zan is brighter than average. But mostly he looks smart because he keeps his mouth shut. Kaol is the same wa
y. They’ll sit there while your instructions fly over their heads. Then they seek out someone to ask questions privately. Ben and I serve as Zan’s brain trust. Kaol relies on Tikki. Hadron is too arrogant to ask.”
Sass stopped walking and considered this. The particular shade of violet on the snowy peak of the mountain before her was divine. This conversation was a shame. “But Hadron will obey? Me, you, Zan? The engineering and science teams?”
“To a point. But he believes that he’s in charge. And he won’t understand, won’t ask questions, hates being lectured.”
“Tough to learn anything that way.”
“Refer to item one. He’s a hunter because he hated school. And he leads people chosen from the disaffected in orbit. What I’m trying to say, Sass, is that Tikki told you something important. And the academics on Sardine? They studied on Mahina with me. These hunters won’t listen to them either, and don’t respect cosmos and farmers at all.”
“And the academics barely know how to wear a pressure suit?”
“Amateur hour,” Teke confirmed. “That’s why they’re not down here now.”
“OK. Suggestions?”
“Not yet,” Teke allowed. “I just flip-flopped during that meeting. I no longer believe in this colony. With the resources we have, the personnel, trying to break in a new planet is insane. Denali will destroy itself.”
“That’s a pretty radical change of heart, based on a comment from my cook.”
They walked the next third of the perimeter in companionable silence, absorbing the view. A creature braved the open stump field, ran into the barrier, and fell back twitching. They stepped closer to study it. Something in the ecological niche of a chipmunk, Sass fancied, shorter than her shin. Fur hadn’t evolved here, more along the lines of blubber-and-skin. This specimen wore mottled grey, the color of the tree trunks, with white and black markings around the eyes adding drama to make them look bigger.
It had teeth, and air slits across its shoulders. Cute little critter.
Suddenly Teke seized her upper arm and began running. “Smurf!” He switched to the general work channel and repeated the warning. Whereupon half the hunters within the perimeter dropped their engineering tasks and drew their weapons.
I’m not a porcelain doll, Teke! Sass shrugged out of his grasp, and turned around, hand to her own blaster. The smurf astonished her. Four-footed, it ran with only three of them, reminding her of an ape, but sized like a black bear and blubbery-smooth like the little critter. Her brow lowered at its facial markings, so similar to the ‘chipmunk.’
When it reached the fence, the smurf screeched defiance. It stood on its back legs and swiped at the air. Then it picked up the fallen creature and cradled it in one arm to run back to the trees. It stopped a couple more times along the way to scream and swat toward them again.
The hunters didn’t shoot. The smurf vanished back into the trees unmolested. The Denali had discipline, she was glad to see. She clicked back to Eli’s channel, and brought Teke along with her. “Eli, did you see that? Mama bear smurf with cub.”
“Bear and cub?” Eli returned. “These are Earth mammals?”
“Yes. Look up ‘black bear.’ A cub is a baby bear. I think we just witnessed a smurf retrieving her curious cub hurt by the fence. But Eli, that smurf is intelligent.”
“Most predators are,” Teke commented.
“Do Denali predators protect their young?” She wouldn’t be surprised if Denali wildlife ate their children.
“Yes. Pseudo-pterodactyls carry their young until they can fly on their own. Then chase them off.”
“Huh. Please explain to Hadron for me?” Because if she understood Teke and Tikki correctly, she should go through one of them to explain something to the leader. “The smurfs are intelligent and dangerous. But don’t hurt them unless absolutely necessary.”
Teke did as requested, in Denali storytelling form. He hailed the smurfs as an honored adversary, blooded on a wildcatter starship captain. He asked them to respect smurfs, who guarded their young like people and the pterry scourge of Denali skies.
When he was done, Sass asked, “Can Tikki and Kaol do that for me, too? And Zan? Translate my wishes to the hunters?”
“Zan yes. Tikka Gena maybe. Tikki Cook no. The hunters despise him. And because Kaol partners with a geisha, they despise him, too.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Despise is a strong word.”
He shrugged. But Eli joined them and she dropped the matter. “How’s the soil?”
“Interesting. Fibrous with roots from all the trees. Lots of pea-sized nodules. It’s going to take me a while to isolate the local DNA analogue to distinguish species. But I’m guessing the nodules are formed by microbial symbiotes and parasites. Could be wrong. Also some worm-like organisms, or larva.”
“The soil’s alive,” Sass summarized.
Eli chuckled. “Very much so. Difficult to sift out the Sylvan life to try growing some Earth plants in it. Everything is root-bound.”
She glanced over to his site. “Porter is in pig heaven.” The agronomist’s enclosure remained only half staked out. He sat on the ground poking at the dirt, eyes glued to a tablet for magnification. “How long to learn anything?”
“Anything? He’s learning every minute. To plant an Earth crop? That’ll require a farming dome with reduced oxygen. You want one of those now?”
“Not today,” Sass agreed. “So what are you learning?”
“Ah, in general? We are puzzled by the atmospheric composition. The carbon dioxide levels are high, plenty to support forest growth. But we haven’t found a source. We assumed soil decomposers were outgassing it. But no. Burning the trees released a lot. And forest fire could be common. But wrong order of magnitude. And I don’t see much burning on the satellite images.”
“Questions remain.” Sass chuckled. “On our second day. Color me astonished.”
She steered them toward Cope’s project, as Darren appeared deep into erecting some equipment at the moment. Cope sat on a tree stump and supervised minions hacking out other stumps. She added him to their channel. “How goes it?”
“Nice strong building wood,” the engineer shared dryly. “Probably run two hours over plan.”
“Par for the course,” the captain encouraged. “Will they sleep off my ship tonight?”
“Keep a happy thought.”
“Did you try burning the stumps?”
“Yeah. The water table is still really high. So burning creates a half-meter deep hole to fill. Nico led a test to compare effort. This method is marginally quicker.”
“I wonder if building a foundation might make more sense,” Sass mused. “You know, a platform.”
“How’s that work?”
Sass sighed. On Earth, people had devised a multitude of solutions to the build-a-house problem. But her brilliant engineers were oblivious to that history. Denali and Mahina posed different challenges.
“Rather than level the ground, you build a level floor on pylons. Make it bigger than the building, for a nice porch. Can you cut flat boards for a floor?”
“We could make a board saw,” Cope mused. “But they’re half done for tonight. Thanks, I’ll look into it. Plenty more housing to go before Sardine can land.”
“Teke and I were discussing the hunter labor,” the captain noted. “Any trouble?”
“They learned less than I expected in the rings,” Cope allowed. “But I’ve supervised dumb before, Sass. Nico’s real patient with them. He keeps them busy so I can focus. Darren’s getting frustrated. Maybe I should loan him Nico.”
“No,” Sass murmured. “Let Darren ask for what he wants.”
Eli asked, “After housing for forty, can I get a research tent? I wonder how much domed crop area they need. What is it, a quarter hectare per person for food?”
“Eli,” Cope growled.
Sass soothed, “S-E-P, Cope. Someone Else’s Problem. They brought food for two years. All we need in the short term is test plots. Bu
t you don’t need to supervise, do you?”
“Hope not. That’s true. Set up camp today. Then they can do it again, while Darren and I handle the one-offs. Like a sawmill, hydroponic chemical plant, whatever.”
“You’re giving them a huge leg up, Cope,” Sass encouraged. “I’ll make sure Tarana appreciates it when I report in. Isn’t it gorgeous here?”
They gazed into the surrounding forest again, drinking in the peace.
“Alright, I’ve disrupted you guys long enough!” Sass announced. “Time to see how I do without a pressure suit.” She switched channels to warn Hadron. “Please warn your people that they cannot do what I’m about to do. This is a test.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see.”
Teke followed up with an explanation in hunter-ese.
Sass readied her nitrox-fed faceplate, and yanked off her helmet. The air stung her eyes and seared her throat for the moment of exposure. But the momentary discomfort vanished as her canned air began flowing in the faceplate. She blinked a few times to rehydrate her eyes. The frisky wind ruffling her hair felt divine, a crisp spring-like near-60 Fahrenheit – 14 C to the Mahinans. A lingering scent remained from her face’s brief exposure.
“Eli, it smells like autumn in New England. A mixed wood, falling maple leaves and standing evergreens, overlain with clean fresh spring water. And smoke from the fire.”
“Outstanding!” Eli breathed. “That’s promising! How does your skin feel? You turned red.”
She scratched her neck, and flakes peeled off. She sighed. She still longed to ditch the pressure suit and run to the bio-lock. But that was reckless. Someone might need to carry her if she passed out. If Clay were here, she wouldn’t hesitate. Or rather, he’d already be stripping out of his suit and challenging her to a race.
“I’m useless today,” Teke announced. “Nico’s busy. I’ll do the Yang-Yang test.”
Cope urged, “Get closer to the bio-lock first. Eli, come help me carry these jokers in.”
Laughing, they trotted within 15 meters of the bio-lock. Sass’s skin was beginning to seriously itch, and her muscles felt oddly fizzy. “You’ll feel sick, Teke.”