Infinite Stars

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  Within minutes, the three explorers were ready. The doctor carried a sensing device to help them locate and analyze the local vegetation in their search for the oxygen concentrations.

  “The gravity is low,” he warned Mahree as Dhurrrkk’ began cycling the air out of the airlock into storage, where it could be reused. “About half a gee. Be careful.”

  “Does Dhurrrkk’ know that?” she asked. The two humans could talk to each other, but there had been no time to adjust their suit radios to the Simiu wavelength. They could communicate sketchily by touching helmets and shouting, but that form of conversation had obvious limits.

  “Yeah, he knows.”

  The outer doors split apart, then opened wide. Mahree stepped cautiously down the ramp, watching her footing, because the ramp was steep, and her feet had an alarming tendency to slip in the low gravity—gravity which felt doubly light, because she’d spent days now living at one and a half gee.

  Finally she was standing safely on solid ground, free to look around. Mahree caught her breath with excitement, thrilled despite their desperate situation to actually be standing on an alien world. I’m the first human to ever tread here, she realized. One giant step, and all that stuff.

  Slowly, searching for any patches of the vegetation that had so puzzled Rob, she rotated 360 degrees, staring avidly.

  It was a bleak vista that met her eyes—cold, yet washed everywhere with a hellish scarlet illumination from the red dwarf overhead. The ground beneath her feet was hard, black-brown rock, with a thin, damp layer of dark grayish-brown soil overlaying it. A dank red mist lay close along the ground, pooling deeper in any depressions. Mahree could see for a long way in most directions, because the ground, though rock-strewn and broken, was relatively flat.

  She lifted her face to the sun, and her faceplate’s polarizing ability automatically cut in—but the protection was hardly necessary. The light level was dim, about that of a cloudy twilight. Dhurrrkk’’s going to be nearly blind, she realized, and said as much to Rob.

  “We’ll have to keep him right with us,” he agreed. “Will you look at that sun!”

  “I’m looking,” she said, awed. “It doesn’t look small from here, does it?”

  Overhead, the unnamed red dwarf dominated the cloudless sky, appearing five times the diameter of Sol or Jolie’s sun. As it flamed dully in the deep purply red sky, it appeared almost close enough to touch; Mahree and Rob could clearly make out solar prominences lashing outward from its disk.

  “It probably flares every so often,” Mahree said, remembering one of Professor Morrissey’s astronomy lectures. “Let’s hope it doesn’t decide to belch out a heavy concentration of X-rays while we’re here.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Rob agreed fervently.

  After a minute, Dhurrrkk’ touched her arm, and Mahree came out of her reverie with a start. “We’d better go,” she said. “We can’t waste air just standing here gawking.”

  The three set off across the rocky ground, Rob in the lead, Dhurrrkk’ and Mahree close behind him. Once the girl caught the toe of her boot on one of the multitudes of small, jagged outcrops and stumbled badly, but her fall was slow enough that she was able to catch herself on her hands.

  “Easy,” Rob said, pulling her up one-handed in the light gravity. “One of these volcanic ridges could rip your suit. You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, trying not to gasp with reaction to her near disaster. “You’d think walking in gravity this low would be easy, but it’s not; the ground’s so broken.”

  The explorers halted when they reached the little lake they’d charted during the flyby. Crimson mist obscured its surface, reflecting the light of the red sun.

  “How deep is that water? Any vegetation down there?” Mahree asked Rob, stepping cautiously onto the dark rocks of the “shore.”

  He examined his scanning device. “Not very deep. About two meters in the middle. And yes, there’s plant life down there.”

  “Is it giving off oxygen?”

  “Yes, but we can’t use these plants, because the Simiu hydroponics lab, unlike Désirée’s, is set up for land-based vegetation. The tanks are way too shallow. Not to mention that I can’t envision any way of hauling enough of this water aboard to support a significant amount of plant life. Even at one-half gee, water’s heavy.”

  They walked on, frequently having to detour around patches of the mist that were thick enough to obscure their footing, and skirting an occasional head-high upthrust of the black rock.

  Finally, they reached the closest large patch of vegetation. The alien plants filled an entire shallow “basin” in the rocky surface, and were clumped together so closely they resembled thick moss. Each plant stood only a few centimeters above the soil that nourished its roots. The moss-plants were a dull, dark green in color, with tiny, fleshy-thick “leaves.”

  His boots hidden by a knee-high patch of mist, Rob bent over to carefully scan the plants. After a moment, he shook his head. “No O2?” Mahree asked numbly.

  “Some, but not enough. These plants photosynthesize, but… he trailed off, then burst out, “they can’t be the source of those higher O2 levels I was reading!”

  “How many of these moss-plants would we need to keep us going?”

  “Half an acre of them,” Rob said disgustedly. “Forget it.”

  Dhurrrkk’ tugged on Mahree’s arm, and she leaned over to touch helmets. After conveying the bad news, she straightened. “Okay, where’s that higher O2 concentration you mentioned, Rob?”

  He consulted the instrument and pointed. “Thataway.”

  “Let’s get going.”

  They trudged toward the area he had indicated. Mahree checked the homing grid displayed just above eye level in her helmet, and discovered that they were now well over a straight-line kilometer away from Rosinante. The strangely close horizon made estimating distances by eye difficult. She cast a swift, nervous glance at the gauge showing the status of her breathing pack. Just about two hours left. The walking’s so difficult that I’m using more air than I realized.

  The thought made her want to stride faster, but she forced herself to move deliberately, fighting off the sensation of a cold hand slowly tightening around her throat. Fear uses up oxygen, she told herself sternly. Calm down.

  A few minutes later, as though he had read her thoughts, Rob said, “How’s your air holding out?”

  “One hundred and sixteen minutes,” she said. “How about yours?”

  “One hundred and eight,” he said. “As we predicted, I’m burning my O2 supply faster than you are.”

  “That means that Dhurrrkk’ has a little more than ninety minutes left,” Mahree calculated, her mouth going dry. “The Simiu breathing packs hold less than ours do, and Simiu lungs require more oxygen than human lungs. And we can’t share our air with him, because our packs won’t fit his suit couplings!”

  “I know,” Rob agreed bleakly. “Nearly half his air’s gone. Maybe we ought to tell him to go back to the ship and wait for us there, while we continue searching.”

  Mahree shook her head. “Dhurrrkk’ won’t do it. We’d just be wasting time and air trying to convince him. He’d regard leaving us out here as being cowardly and dishonorable. I know that without even asking.”

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to allow enough air for all of us to make it back to Rosinante.”

  She licked her lips, trying unsuccessfully to moisten them. “What for, Rob?” Resisting the urge to slam her gloved hand against the nearest rock in frustration, she managed to keep her voice calm. “What’s the point of that? We’d just be postponing the inevitable for a few hours. I’d rather spend our last minutes out here trying, than lying around the ship watching those final seconds tick by. I don’t think I have enough courage to face that. Do you?”

  Rob did not reply.

  A few minutes later he abruptly halted, announcing, “Right in front of us are the O2 coordinates I pinpointed earlier.”

 
Both of them hurried forward, then Mahree let out a low cry of disappointment. There was nothing to see.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but the bare, upthrust ridges of blackish rock, small, tumbled boulders, pebbles that lay nearly buried in a comparatively deep layer of the soil, and a growth of the fleshy-leaved moss-plants. The ubiquitous mist drifted as their feet displaced it, eddying away from them, then settled again.

  Rob’s voice filled her helmet, harsh with dismay. “But… but these are the right coordinates; I swear I didn’t make a mistake! This is crazy! These are the same plants as before, but there aren’t nearly enough of them to cause the O2 concentration I measured just a couple of hours ago!”

  “Is the oxygen level any higher, here?”

  He consulted the instrument again. “The overall oxygen level is a little higher, but it’s dropped considerably from what I saw earlier. I just don’t understand it!”

  Mahree felt sick with defeat. She bent over, staring intently at the ground. “These plants look funny,” she observed, after a moment. “They’re shinier than the ones we saw earlier, though they appear to be the same species.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “That’s odd.”

  She walked slowly around, peering down at all the plants in the area. “They’re all the same,” she reported. “Could there be some kind of natural process going on that causes the change from dull to shiny, producing oxygen as it does so?”

  Rob shook his head dubiously. “Maybe. That makes as much sense as anything on this crazy planet. But I don’t see any agent that could be the cause of such a change. No other vegetation, nothing. It’s also possible that these plants represent a different variety of the basic species. You know, like long- and short-stemmed roses—one type is naturally shiny, and the other is naturally dull.”

  “I’ve never seen a rose, except on a holo-vid,” Mahree reminded him. And it looks like I’m never going to see one now. Resolutely, she squelched that train of thought. “Look, Rob, we have to discover one of those patches that’s still emitting O2 so we can find out where the oxygen readings are coming from. I think we should search this entire area. Maybe your coordinates were just a little off?”

  “Not a chance,” he replied grimly. “I checked those readings four times, and then Dhurrrkk’ verified them after me. But we might as well do as you suggest—there’s nothing else we can do, except keep trying.”

  Mahree leaned over to touch her helmet to Dhurrrkk’s, and explained what had happened. The Simiu nodded silently.

  “I’ll go first from now on. You watch the scanner, Rob,” she said, beckoning them to follow her. Trying to choose the clearest path, she increased her pace until she was traveling at the fastest walk possible, given the broken ground.

  The three explorers began circling around the area Rob’s coordinates had indicated, searching for any sign of the mysterious higher-oxygen pockets. Dhurrrkk’ gamely followed the two humans’ lead, but Mahree knew that her Simiu friend was nearly blind in the dim light, and thus would be of little help.

  Ninety minutes of air left, she noted, reading from her gauge, and had to clench her jaw against panic.

  They kept going as the minutes slipped by, Mahree in the forefront, picking the smoothest path possible, Rob behind her, scarcely taking his eyes off his sensing device, and Dhurrrkk’ bringing up the rear.

  Eighty-two minutes.

  Grimly, Mahree fought the urge to glance constantly at her air gauge; avoiding obstacles on the rocky ground required all her concentration. But every so often, she just had to look up.

  Seventy-one minutes.

  Rob’s breathing sounded harsh in her ears. Mahree thought of what it would be like to have to helplessly listen to that sound falter and cease, and fought the desire to ask him how much air he had left. You’re better off not knowing, she thought. Keep your mind on your job.

  Fifty-four minutes.

  Now there was no question of trying to head back for Rosinante and the few hours of air remaining aboard the ship. Rob’s taken me at my word, she realized, grimly. We’re going to keep going until we drop in our tracks.

  She swallowed as she realized that Dhurrrkk’ had little more than a half hour of air remaining. Exactly how many minutes? she wondered, mentally comparing the ratio, but losing track of the numbers in her growing panic. She tried to fight the fear, but it was like a live creature writhing inside her, gnawing at her mind, until she wanted to shriek and run away.

  Calm, calm. You have to stay calm! Dhurrrkk’’s life may depend on you not losing your head! Breathe slowly… slowly. In… out… in… out… Gradually, her fear ebbed; she was able to control her breathing.

  Seconds later, Mahree turned a corner around a low outcrop of rock, then halted so abruptly that Rob bumped into her. “Look! What are those things?”

  “Damned if I know,” he said, staring.

  The ground before them was covered with the moss-plants, but lying among them, obscuring them in patches, were five large, thick, phosphorescent shapes. They shone white-violet in the red dimness and were roughly rectangular.

  Each faintly glowing growth was a meter or so long by three-quarters of a meter wide. They were entirely featureless. The moment she saw them, Mahree found herself irresistibly reminded of a fuzzy white baby blanket her brother Steven had dragged around with him until it fell apart—these things were exactly the same size and shape, and even their edges were ragged, just like Steven’s security blanket.

  She turned eagerly to regard Rob as he scanned the patch. “Have we found the O2 emitters?” she asked.

  He shook his head, and even in the vacuum suit she could see his shoulders sag. “Negative,” he said, in a voice that betrayed the fact that he’d experienced a flash of hope, too. “The oxy level’s a little higher here, true enough, just like in the shiny-leaved place, but these things aren’t emitting anything. I scan no photosynthesizing capability at all—which fits. Look at their color.”

  Mahree walked out into the midst of the moss-plants, wisps of red mist swirling around her boots. Feeling a strange reluctance to get too near any of them, she placed her boots with exaggerated care. “Are they plants?”

  “No. More like fungi.” Rob checked his readings again. “Actually, they share some kinship with lichens, too. They must derive nourishment from the moss-plants as they decay.”

  Mahree glanced at her air gauge and squared her shoulders. Forty-nine minutes. “We’d better keep going,” she said.

  Rob raised his hand to halt her. “Wait. I want Dhurrrkk’ to stay here. This place is easily recognizable, and I’ve got its coordinates. You and I can circle around and wind up back here in fifteen or twenty minutes. Tell him to lie down and conserve his air. That’ll increase his time by five minutes or so. Otherwise, he doesn’t have a prayer.”

  “He’ll never agree, Rob!”

  “Try, dammit!” he insisted. “Tell him that if he insists on accompanying us until he drops, we’ll just end up using the last of our air carrying him.”

  “That’s a good point,” she admitted. Kneeling beside the Simiu, Mahree touched her helmet to his, repeating Rob’s plea.

  The Simiu looked uncertain. Then, slowly, he nodded and deliberately lay down in the midst of the plants, also being careful not to touch any of the phosphorescent growths.

  Surprised, because she hadn’t expected him to give in so easily, Mahree peered down into Dhurrrkk’s helmet, trying to make out his features in the dim light. He looks kind of funny, she thought, worried. Abstracted. Glassy-eyed. Could the Simiu equivalent of hypoxia be hitting him already? Or is he praying or something like that?

  Once more, she touched helmets. “Dhurrrkk’, are you okay?”

  “I feel fine, FriendMahree,” the alien said remotely, as though he was listening to her with only part of his mind. “I promise that I will wait for you here.”

  * * *

  As he followed Mahree away from the recumbent Simiu, Robert Gable couldn’t
resist a last glance back at the alien. He’s got about twenty-five minutes to live, he thought, give or take five minutes. And I’ve got twenty-eight minutes and forty seconds.

  “How you fixed for air?” he asked Mahree.

  “Forty-five minutes and thirty seconds. You?”

  “I’m okay,” he replied. “Thirty-nine minutes, here.”

  Her voice was puzzled and suspicious in his radio. “But before, you were eight minutes less than me,” she said. “You gained a couple of minutes?”

  “It takes a lot more effort to lead out here than to follow,” he said, using his most reasonable tone. “You’re burning O2 much faster now that you’re going first.”

  She started to say something else, but Rob snapped, “Watch out! You nearly snagged your leg on that rock!”

  “I did not!” She increased her pace a bit, and Rob struggled to match it without stumbling. “I hope Dhurrrkk’ is okay,” she muttered. “He looked sort of odd.”

  “If there’s something wrong with him, there’s not a damned thing either of us can do about it,” Rob pointed out. “The only chance any of us has, now, is for us to locate the source of the oxygen emissions—pronto.”

  “And if we do?”

  “Then you can take off your helmet, lie down, and wait there, while I use the last air in both our breathing packs to carry Dhurrrkk’ back to the ship. Then he can take off and pilot Rosinante closer to the oxygen emissions source, and I’ll come back and get you—then we’ll both collect the plants.”

  “Why do I have to be the one that stays, while you go rescue Dhurrrkk’? Why not the other way around?” Mahree demanded irritably.

  “Because you need less O2 to breathe, and I’m stronger than you are,” Rob replied calmly, forcing himself not to glance at his air gauge. “Dhurrrkk’s no lightweight, even at a half gee.”