by Chad Spencer
“Hmf,” Jeff muttered, “dogbugs from outer space. Weird. Arvix, keep an eye on those animals. If any of them come back down toward this ledge, tell me right away.”
“Yes, Master Jeff.”
Pulling a pair of binoculars out of the shuttle, Jeff turned his attention to the scene below. He adjusted the scanner that was built into the binoculars to scan at a very wide angle. The trees below were hundreds of feet tall, much taller than any trees on Earth had ever been.
Immediately, the device picked up traces of vast numbers of life forms and showed the information on the binoculars’ display. A group of animals was moving slowly toward the field. He watched excitedly as the herd came into view. Jeff was stunned. They weren’t just large, they were gigantic. According to the datacrown he was wearing, these creatures were bigger than the largest dinosaurs ever known on Earth. “The only life forms of similar size that live on land,” the crown informed him, “are the slugvipers of Albion in the Omicron Theta 16 system.”
Jeff zoomed the binoculars in. The animals below appeared to be very much like giant beetles. They had four legs on a bulb-like body. Their heads were vaguely similar to that of a triceratops, but their eyes resembled the eyes of bugs. “Giant triceratops bugs. Wow!” Jeff murmured.
Jeff yawned, realizing he’d been awake a long time. He retrieved some food from the shuttle pod and silently ate, watching the scene below unfold while he did. Group after group of animals slipped from the forest to get water from the river.
“Everything down here is huge,” Jeff said. “I’m like a mouse on this planet. How can I find a place that’s safe to live in?”
Again, the datacrown provided the answer. “Many islands are devoid of predators. Wildlife that reaches such islands can often reproduce with no fear of predation. Examples: The Hawaiian Island chain on the planet Earth, the Sandros Islands on the planet Fonvar, the Gunnison Islands on the planet Denver … “
‘Enough already!’ thought Jeff.
“Datastream terminated,” the datacrown responded.
“An island … “ Jeff murmured. “Where am I going to find an island without predators?”
“Insufficient data,” the datacrown answered.
Jeff yawned again. In this place’s local time, it was about midday. But Jeff felt like he’d been up all night. Entering the shuttle, he plopped into the pilot’s seat and quickly fell asleep.
“Master Jeff.”
Blearily, Jeff opened his eyes. “Huh?”
“Master Jeff,” Arvix repeated. “You told me to notify you if any of the creatures approached. Several of them are descending the cliff.”
Jeff stood immediately and peeked out the shuttle’s window. ‘I wonder how long I was asleep?’ he thought.
“One hour, eight minutes, six point six seconds,” the datacrown told him.
Watching the cliffside, he saw the dogbugs creep downward. ‘Is there a way to make a noise that would scare them off?’ he wondered. The datacrown supplied the answer immediately.
Turning on the shuttle’s external speakers, Jeff made the comm system blare out a high-pitched tone. The dogbugs scurried away.
Jeff went outside for one last look before he left. Scanning the scene below, he saw a herd of mantis-like creatures along the shore of the river. All of them were looking up at him.
“Oops,” Jeff said. “I guess I shouldn’t have made all of that noise.”
Something at the edge of the forest caught Jeff’s attention. He zoomed his binoculars in. Shock. Pure shock.
A small group of aliens stared intently at Jeff from the underbrush. None of them moved for quite a while. Then, very cautiously, one of them skittered out of the forest and into the field. It was tall–more than seven feet tall according the scanner in his binoculars. The creature’s upper half was vaguely like a human. It had a hairless head with two large, bug-like eyes. Its face had no nose, just two breathing slits where the nose should be. The mouth was wide, much wider than a human’s. Its upper body was essentially the same shape as a human’s and it had two arms. Jeff could see that the creature had five fingers on each hand like a human, but two of them were thumbs. The thumbs were on opposite sides of the hand.
“It’s holding a spear,” Jeff observed. “And it has a belt with a knife in it. Look at that!”
As the alien walked, Jeff saw that it had four legs that resembled a crab’s. The legs stuck out from the bottom of the creature’s torso. They were set at right angles to each other, but at 45-degree angles from the alien’s front and back. The alien stopped moving and stared at Jeff again.
“You’re intelligent, my friend,” Jeff mumbled softly. “You use tools and you hunt. And you’re trying to figure out what I am. Wow. You’d be the star of every planetary network in Alliance space if I could send a picture of you to someone.”
A shadow passed over Jeff. He quickly looked up to see a huge animal with leathery wings and the head of a dragon swooping straight down at him. Jeff exploded into motion, trying to get to the shuttle. The dragon-thing dropped quickly down between him and his ship. It snapped its voracious jaws at him. Diving desperately to the ground, Jeff rolled to one side. The dragon-thing screeched, and then pounced toward him. Jeff scampered into a hole in the side of the cliff and jammed himself as far back as he could.
Tearing at the mouth of the small cave, the dragon-thing tried to wedge its large head into the little opening, shrieking hideously. Frantically, Jeff dug at the back of the cave, trying to make it deeper. It was useless. The rear wall was solid rock. He clawed frantically at it anyway with bleeding fingers. The dragon-thing dug its way closer to him, gnashing its dagger-like teeth.
Near hysteria, Jeff kicked a small round object at the thing. It rolled out of the mouth of the cave. The dragon-thing reacted by eating the object, wolfing it down in a single gulp. Jeff realized that the small cave was a nest. Eggs about the size of softballs were all around him. Jeff threw the dragon-thing another egg, which it instantly gulped with a single, blood-chilling snap. It turned its head to the side and peered into the cave with a single, slit-like yellow eye. Jeff shook uncontrollably.
Whump.
The dragon-thing disappeared. Out of the cave’s opening, Jeff saw a single, massive foot. It lifted into the sky with the accompanying beat of equally massive wings. The low-pitched thudding of the creature’s wings gradually faded away. Jeff cowered at the back of the cave, curled up in a ball and still shaking as he stared at where the dragon-thing had been.
‘Eaten,’ he thought after a while. ‘It was eaten by that bigger animal.’
After what seemed like eternity, Jeff’s heart stopped thundering. Slowly his breathing returned to normal, but he didn’t move. A small cracking sounded through the tiny cave. Jeff flung himself backward, frozen against the cave wall.
Little by little, an egg hatched. The dogbug that emerged was about the size of a small puppy. The shape of its jaw gave it a permanent smile. It saw Jeff and whimpered its way toward him, flailing as it moved.
Jeff back away. The dogbug cried pitifully and struggled toward him. “Don’t follow me!” he screamed. “Why is that thing following me?”
The datacrown answered, “Many life forms imprint on the first living thing they see. After imprinting, such a life form considers that life form its parent and will follow it wherever it goes.”
“No, no,” Jeff yelled. “I’m not your mother! Get back.”
Hastily, Jeff looked outside to see if the coast was clear. Nothing. He bolted for the shuttle and slammed the hatch shut. Powering up the engines, Jeff could see that the baby dogbug was still thrashing toward him. He paused. ‘If I just leave that thing,’ he thought, ‘I wonder what will happen.’
“Based on known animal behaviors, the likelihood is 83.333% that it will not imprint on any other life forms,” the datacrown told him. “In that event, death is the most likely outcome at a likelihood of 99.997%.”
Jeff’s heart sank. The dogbug gave up tryin
g to drag itself toward him. It lay on the ground, quivering. Jeff opened the shuttle’s hatch, walked over to the small animal, and scooped it up. Carrying it into the shuttle, he pulled a soft towel out of one of the containers and wrapped the dogbug in it to keep it warm. He handed it to Arvix. “Hold this. And be careful with it.”
The dogbug wined and tried again to thrash toward Jeff. Rolling his eyes, Jeff picked it up and placed it on his lap. The dogbug snuggled contentedly into the towel it was wrapped in.
Under Jeff’s guidance, the shuttle lifted into the sky. Linking his datacrown with the shuttle’s communication system, Jeff connected to the computer in Engineering. It had the planetary scans he had downloaded from the Ellsworth’s main computer. He copied it to his datacrown.
“Where’s an island with no predators?” he asked out loud.
The datacrown quickly sifted through the data and came up with a likely candidate. Jeff set his course for a large island far to the southwest. He put the ship on autopilot. The shuttle pod rapidly swept out over the ocean. A peace fell over the inside of the shuttle as it hummed contentedly above the clouds. Jeff used the datacrown to teach him everything it knew about the planet he was on. It wasn’t much.
“But I know it’s got dragons,” he told himself. “And crab men that carry spears. Too bad Akio isn’t here,” he mused. “He’d love this place.”
An idea occurred to Jeff. “Akio,” he said. “I’ll name this planet Akio.” He smiled, pleased with himself, and leaned back in his seat. Before he knew it, he fell sound asleep.
5
Jeff awoke to the persistent beeping of the autopilot. The shuttle was approaching the island, so he turned the autopilot off and took control. The magnificent blue ocean rolled underneath him as the shuttle sped toward its destination. The sky was clear and welcoming.
Swooping in over a large, open field, Jeff scanned the landscape below. Like his previous landing spot, there was a wide meadow with river running through it. A low hill split the expanse down the middle. On the far side of the hill, another branch of the river meandered its way to the sea, the sun shimmering off it like a shining ribbon of life.
Gliding in to a landing, Jeff settled the shuttle near the southern branch of the river. He opened the shuttle’s hatch and stepped out into a field of lush grass that nearly came up to his armpits. The vegetation was filled with moisture. His legs and feet quickly got soaked as he pushed through the grassland. The tropical island was warm and sunny. A gentle breeze caressed the huge field, causing the grass to sway and dance gently. There were no trees in sight. Jeff wondered why.
As he shoved through the thick grass, a cloud of small insects erupted into the air. Jeff managed to snatch one to get a look. The shape of its jaw made it appear to have a permanent smile on its face. “Like a flying mini version of the dogbugs,” he murmured.
The tiny creature's hard, segmented body looked like it was hand-carved. Jeff knew that he had once seen green jewelry the same color as the insect’s body segments, but he couldn’t remember what the stone was called. The datacrown put the name “emerald” in his mind.
“Emeraldbugs,” Jeff muttered.
The insect’s rainbow wings vibrated sporadically with nervousness, their semi-transparent surfaces gleaming in the peaceful afternoon glow. Jeff smiled at the creature’s perfectness and opened his hand. The emeraldbug flew away.
Walking to the back end of the pod, Jeff used the datacrown to command the shuttle to open its rear cargo doors. “Arvix!” he shouted. “Start unloading the supplies.”
“Yes, Master Jeff.”
Discharging the contents of the shuttle took a couple of hours, even with both of them working. When they were done, Jeff stood looking at the pile of containers. ‘How am I going to build a house?’ he wondered.
The datacrown responded, “The manifest of the Ellsworth indicates that there are several housing units in cargo bay 2. The self-assembling dwelling units are composed of multiple modules that could fit in the cargo shuttle pod if broken into small groups. The fixtures and other hardware could also be brought down a few at a time.”
Jeff thought about this. “How many trips would I have to make to get everything down?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three trips!” he moaned. “How long would that take?”
“Approximately ten days of continuous labor, including breaks for food and rest.”
Still feeling tired, Jeff stated, “I’ll start tomorrow. Right now I’m going to look around.”
Pushing his way though the grass, Jeff walked to the top of the hill. He surveyed the broad plain. Gazing out over the rich, green vista, Jeff was almost overwhelmed by the sheer onslaught of color. Having lived all of his life indoors, the vibrant greens and yellows of the valley were almost overpowering to his eyes. Even the AR programs weren’t this vivid. He could hardly take it in.
‘It’s like I’ve stepped into the real world for the first time in my life,’ he thought as the island reached out and caressed him with a gentle breath of wind. He inhaled deeply, smelling the sweetness of the grasses around him. “Yeah,” Jeff told himself, “this is real life.”
Turing toward the interior of the island, Jeff could see the split in the river. With his eyes he could follow the north and south branches that wandered through the expanses of grass on either side of the hill to the clear blue sea. The sun danced off the gentle waves. The border where the land met the sea was ribboned with a beach of golden sand.
Jeff raised the binoculars he was carrying and looked out over the ocean. About halfway to the horizon, a movement caught his attention. He zoomed in to see a gargantuan serpentine sea creature. “Sea monsters,” he breathed. “There’s even sea monsters. Akio really would love this place.” He decided he’d stay out of the water until he could do a thorough scan for predators. He also figured he’d better bring a plasma rifle down from the Ellsworth.
Descending the hill, Jeff went inside the shuttle. His dogbug was awake and crying for him. Jeff picked it up and said, “I’ve got to think of a name for you.” Since it was an alien bug, he tried to think of something really spacey and futuristic, like Zortag or Alaflaxatorius. But he couldn’t think of any spacey and futuristic names he liked. And since Zortag was the name of a character for a little kid’s game and since Alaflaxatorius was just dumb, he gave up and named it Bob.
Jeff took Bob outside to do his business. Bob got the idea right away and took care of things. Carrying Bob back into the shuttle, Jeff settled in to sleep while Arvix recharged. When he awoke, it was deep in the night. ‘I’ve got to get myself used to the local time,’ he thought.
He had a meal of synthpase under the night sky. The sea of stars above shone with incredible brightness. “There’s so many stars. I must be a lot closer to the center of the galaxy than anyone has been before,” Jeff observed as he ate. “I’ll bet I’m the first person to ever see these stars.” Sitting under the flood of alien suns, he suddenly felt very alone and very small.
Pushing all other thoughts out of his mind, Jeff stood up and went back to the shuttle. He carried Bob outside and left the dogbug with a bowl of water he got from the river. Jeff also put down a bowl of synthpaste for him.
Jeff returned to the shuttle, plunked himself down in the pilot’s seat, and powered up the engines. He paused a moment. “Man, I hope this trip goes better,” he said. In spite of his nervousness after his last re-entry experience, he lifted off and set course for the Ellsworth. The ascent was easy. Docking with the large freighter was a little tricky, but he managed it without too much of a problem. Jeff made his way to main Engineering.
Floating in front of the control panel for the power system, Jeff could see that power was only flowing to the rear third of the ship. Section by section, Jeff was able to restore power to the most important parts of the ship. He couldn’t get the electricity routed to the passenger section because of the big gash in its side. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going back
there anyway.
Using the engineering diagnostics, Jeff was able to determine that the main communications array was still working. Now that power was restored, the main computer was also functioning. However, there was no way he was ever going to get the ship’s artificial gravity field working again. It was just too badly damaged.
Jeff went back to the shuttle and cast off. He piloted it to the docking ports at the front of the ship. Before the ship had been abandoned, these ports were where the large cargo shuttles were docked. Jeff felt the anger rising inside of him at the memory of the passengers and crew leaving in the cargo shuttles. The thought of being abandoned by them still galled him as he exited the shuttle pod.
“No,” he told himself, “If I’m going to survive, I need to stay focused on what I’m doing.” He started toward cargo bay 2 with Arvix close behind.
It was fairly straightforward to find the housing units. The datacrown was right, the large modules could only be moved a few at a time. Cutting the bindings on a stack of housing unit panels, Jeff and Arvix pulled a group of them away from the rest of the stack. Jeff gave the robot instructions on how to move them through the cargo bay’s large outside doors, along the outside of the ship, and into the doors at the back of the shuttle pod. Staying inside the ship, Jeff let Arvix fill the shuttle pod with the first load of panels. When the work was finished, Jeff and Arvix started down to the planet again.
It was a bumpy ride, but Jeff handled it much better. He set down on the island not far from where he left his supplies. Bob was there whining for him.
Jeff and Arvix unloaded the panels as the first rays of the dawn slipped their way over the ocean. Working steadily, he was able to make a few more trips that day. Each time, re-entry into the planet’s atmosphere got easier.