Marooned on Eden

by Robert L. Forward; Martha Dodson Forward

  "So we can either see, or talk, but not both," I said. "I already know what everybody looks like. I'll take the two-way talk option."

  "Have the Christmas Bush get an acoustic ranger out of stores, and bring it down," said Sam. "Also, please send the shaft elevator to the Living Area Deck, so Thomas and I can use it to haul the penetrator down. We'll meet you near the airlock on the Control Deck."

  "I'll come with you," I said, getting up to follow them.

  We left the lounge and went to the central shaft. When the elevator arrived, we stepped on the donut-shaped platform.

  "Level 14, please," said Sam, and the elevator rose up the long central shaft and came to a stop. Sam palmed open a panel. There was a honeycomb rack half-full of a dozen or so sharp-pointed metal tips. Thomas, having done this many times before, reached out and pulled at a small pointed tip centered in one of the hexagonal holes. Slowly, out came a meter-long metal spike about two centimeters in diameter. As he continued to pull, the tungsten carbide spike became thicker, then rapidly turned into a heavy exponentially tapered horn that was ten centimeters across. The metal spike was faired into the nose of what looked like a missile. The missile had a name painted in script on its side. The name was "Crash."

  As Sam and Thomas took the long missile under their arms, James was filling the miniature memory of the penetrator missile with the optimum trajectory information, and a model of the surface features of the beaches around Crater Lagoon. Once the missile knew what its target was to be, it started looking for it.

  "Where is it!?! I'm gonna CRASH right into it!"

  "Just wait a few minutes, Crash," said the lanky geophysicist. "We have to replace your ranging package first, then get you through the airlock." Just about that time, a portion of the Christmas Bush floated down the long central shaft of Prometheus, flying itself to a halt on the platform by the rapid motion of the thousands of tiny cilia on the ends of its bushed-out branches. It was carrying a cylindrical package that was the same diameter as the end of the missile. One end of the package had a male screw thread and the other end a matching female thread. Inset at four places around the perimeter of the package were four round ultrasonic senders.

  "This screw-in segment replaces the laser ranger segment, the second from the end, between the acoustic sensor segment and the communications package at the rear," said the Christmas Bush.

  With Thomas holding the spike, and I the nose, Sam unscrewed the communications cylinder, replaced the laser ranger with the acoustic ranger, and screwed the whole package back together again. By the time he had finished, the elevator platform had reached the command deck. Sam and Thomas hauled the missile over to the airlock, and Sam cycled the airlock controls. The Christmas Bush carried the harpoon-like penetrator missile through the airlock, and when the outer door opened, tossed it out into space. The missile fell slowly for a while until it was safely away from the habitat, then started its main engine.

  "I've got it!" said Crash. "Here I go!"

  Four hours later, I and the rest of the crew on Prometheus were at our consoles watching and listening as the telemetry signals from Crash sent back a crude video picture of what the missile was seeing with its seeker. The acoustic sensors in the tail returned the sound of a high-pitched scream that grew louder as the air grew thicker, until James was forced to lower the volume.

  "It's found Crater Lagoon . . ." said Caroline. "Now its locked on the remains of the burned-out cross . . ."

  I began to feel the excitement grow within me as this portion of the mission came to a successful conclusion . . .I was soon going to be back in contact with Jinjur and the rest of my crew . . ."It's going to hit right in the center of the X!"

  The video return went black, but the whistling sound collected by the acoustic sensor in the tail of the missile exploded into a crack of thunder that rolled higher and higher in the heavens until it segued into a sonic boom. As the thunder rolled away, the sound of wind, light rain, and lapping water could be heard.

  "The antenna boom has deployed," said Caroline from the communications console. "And James has hooked your imp up with the speakers on the tail."

  My imp had left my shoulder and was now configured as a headset, with two sub-twigs acting as earphones, and another sub-twig out in front of my mouth, splayed to catch any acoustic nuance I might utter.

  "Hello!" I said. "Is anybody there?"

  Instantly I regretted the inane statement. Why hadn't I thought of something memorable to say, like—"Dr. Livingston, I presume?"

  It seemed like an eternity, but it was actually much less than a minute before we heard the pounding of feet and somebody came panting up to the embedded penetrator.

  "Well! You certainly announced your arrival with a bang!" came the voice of Jinjur. We could hear other people coming up around her. "It's great to hear a friendly voice. You'll be glad to know that we're all present and accounted for, including the flouwen. No injuries, but no equipment—except for what the flouwen were able to salvage for us, and that's not much."

  "How's the atmosphere?" I asked. "Any breathing difficulties?"

  "Outside of being thick, and hot, and humid, the air is breathable," replied Jinjur. "It's really not bad, once you get used to it, sort of like the Hawaiian Islands or Tahiti. Rather than being a Hell, it's more like Heaven."

  Another voice intruded. It was Reiki. "Considering the primitive conditions, I would suggest it is more like Eden."

  "How about food?" I asked. "Have you been able to salvage much? You shouldn't be touching the native foods. Never can tell which might be poisonous to humans."

  "We've already had to go past that point," replied Jinjur. "Fortunately, nearly everything has been edible—some of it even tasty—like the pink clams with six legs."

  "Clams got legs?" I splurted incredulously.

  "That's not all," replied Jinjur. "Let me tell you about the snake that almost got Shirley . . .Yes, Eden does have snakes . . .and I'll have to get Reiki tell you about meeting a Jolly Blue-Green Giant . . ."

  ABANDONING

  The tremendous boom of the landing penetrator shattered my sleep. I was on my feet before I was even awake, along with the rest. Jinjur, who had been awake on watch, was pelting down the sand ahead of us.

  What a beautiful, beautiful sight! Plunged almost exactly into the intersection of our two long lines of sand and ashes was the gleaming shaft, its fins pointing at the sky. From the four round speakers in the sides came the wonderful sound of George's voice! Cool, authoritative, tremendously dear, but cracking slightly with urgency.

  "Hello! Is anyone there?"

  I missed the first several moments of excited responses, occupied with straining my eyes upwards, trying to penetrate the clouds as this visitor had done. My eyes are long-sighted, and several times I caught the faint but steady glow of the sail's reflected light. The view kept blurring, however; whether due to the intervening misty clouds or my own tears, I do not know.

  Eagerly, we all clustered around the little missile. The excited voices back and forth went on and on, slowly transferring into the parent computer on Prometheus all that we have learned so painfully about this strange world in the past few weeks. In camp the Jolly waited patiently; our hasty apologies were accepted gravely, and we returned to besiege the listening radio with descriptions, explanations, calculations. Surreptitiously, I once reached out a hand to stroke the gleaming sides of this precious link! And, occasionally, one of us breaks into the narrative to exchange a joyous greeting with a friend aboard the ship. We can almost hear the imps crackling on their shoulders as we talk! Even Deirdre broke her normal silence to send us a greeting—how clear the lilting voice sounded! The Celtic ancestry sings in her words—I longed to see my quiet friend and her equally quiet pet.

  Jinjur, particularly, is enjoying this release from solitary command, and the access to the never-failing resources of James. Soon, a minicamp with a temporary shelter was set up around the finned metallic post stuck nose-dee
p in the sand. Everyone was reluctant to leave, fearing the loss of contact with home, and only left when it was their turn to gather wood or food.

  I brought the Jolly down the sands so it could meet our comrades in the sky. I explained that the talking metal post played the part of a gatherer in passing speech back and forth, and it seemed to comprehend. The translator-intercommunication abilities of James began to bridge the gap between our languages with increasing speed. Interestingly, the Jolly seems to be learning our spoken language almost as fast as James translates; perhaps this will expedite our understanding of the giant plant—certainly we are much slower at learning a new language than it seems to be.

  "I now wish we had found a way to put a camera on board the penetrator, too," George said during a pause in the conversation. "I'd really like to have a picture of that creature to send back to Earth."

  "I have a video camera built into my recorder," I said, taking the versatile computer out of my pocket. "And I already have a number of still frames of the Jolly. If James will set up to receive in facsimile mode, I will program my recorder to transmit the images acoustically. What is the upper limit on the bandwidth of the acoustic sensors on the penetrator, James?"

  "Thirty kilohertz. The ear can't hear as high as that."

  "Then we can use the ultrasonic band for the video transmission, and the conversations between the two crews can continue on underneath." I programmed my recorder to transmit the images of the Jolly and the other flora and fauna on Zuni that I had taken and stored in its memory, and set the precious piece of machinery between the fins on top of the penetrator rocket. Automatically, I was talking with James, and handling the data from him as fluently as I had when we were all together. The contrast between our primitive surroundings, and the cool discussion of high-technology transmissions, was being marveled at, somewhere in my mind, but consciously I was concentrating very hard on the work at hand.

  "Is the reception okay?"

  "The first few scan lines are coming up on my screen now," said George. "No noise, good color, and excellent resolution. Looks like the leaves of a palm tree. Not very interesting."

  "That's just the top fronds of the Jolly, George," I chided. "Wait 'til you see the rest of the picture."

  A few days later, the exploration crew had laboriously finished dictating the last of the meager information they had gathered up through the voice link into the memory banks on Prometheus. The entire contents of my journal had also been transferred to files in James's memory. The personal ones I had encrypted, and left the key with James in case I never returned to claim them.

  The tension is increasing among those on the ground. We have heard no quick assurances of rescue—in fact, we have all talked and thought for days, and inexorably a conclusion has emerged. Even with all the technology at their disposal, neither computer nor human aboard our parent ship can devise a way for us to return—ever. For the rest of our lives, we shall be, at best, pioneers on this strange planet. None of us can really bear that truth yet. The desperate words continue, talking and talking, dealing lengthily with small and minor problems to avoid confronting the central, inescapable fact.

  George then brought up a subject that had been bothering him. "Katrina is worried that, even if the food isn't poisonous and keeps you supplied with calories, it might not contain the right vitamins and minerals."

  "John is worried about that too," said Jinjur. "But there isn't much we can do about it. Neither your team nor mine has been able to come up with any method of getting us off this planet short of waiting twenty-five years for the follow-on expedition. If we suffer from any vitamin or mineral deficiencies, they will certainly have shown up by then."

  "I'm planning on loading up a crawler with as much as it can carry," said George, "then sending it down via aeroshell and parachute as soon as the weather clears and the winds aren't too bad. What do you want me to include?"

  "John has a reasonable supply of antibiotics and other medicines in his bag," said Jinjur. "So there isn't any real urgency. How much can a crawler carry?"

  "Each crawler has a cargo compartment about the size of a small trunk. If the cargo is dense enough, it can carry up to fifty kilos in mass without exceeding the aeroshell mass limits."

  "How many vitamin pills in fifty kilos?" Jinjur wondered out loud, then turned to our small group, quietly listening to our leaders debating our fate. "John?" she asked. "How much does a vitamin pill weigh?" John's brow wrinkled as he tried to come up with an answer.

  "I know how many milligrams of each vitamin is needed, but actual pills are mostly filler."

  The voice of James intruded into the conversation. "Five grams. The fifty kilo mass limit of the crawler would mean it could carry up to ten thousand standard vitamin pills."

  "That's pretty good," said Jinjur. "At ten pills a day, one a day for each of the ten people in my crew, a single crawler load would last a little over two and a half years. Nine or ten crawler loads would easily take us through the entire twenty-five years."

  There was a long and increasingly dismal silence before George replied. "We've got only four crawlers and their aeroshells left. The Christmas Bush might be able to make some more crawlers in its workshop, but I don't think it has the capability of making a large ceramic aeroshell."

  "I do not," came James' voice. "The temperatures required to fire the ceramic are beyond my capabilities."

  "Then we had better be very careful about what we decide each crawler payload will be, to make sure every gram counts," replied Jinjur thoughtfully. There was a short pause, and then she continued on. Her voice now had the somber tone of carefully reasoned command authority, and the words were chilling to those sitting around the small fire burning in front of the makeshift shelter. A stormfront was approaching, and the intermittent rain showers from the scudding clumps of gray clouds were heavy and cold.

  "You will withhold deployment of any crawlers until we have further information," she ordered. "I will have John monitor our health periodically until we can determine exactly which supplements we need. The Christmas Bush can then make smaller pills with just the necessary compounds in them. That way, we should be able to double the number of doses each crawler can carry, so the four landers can suffice for the twenty-five year wait."

  "At five years of supplies per crawler, that's only twenty years," George reminded her.

  "I had taken into account that some of us would very likely die during the long wait," replied Jinjur flatly. "Either by accident or natural causes. Such events are highly probable in a group in this age bracket over a twenty-five year period of time."

  "Oh . . ." replied George quietly. Those of us listening began to appreciate some of the more unpleasant aspects of being in command.

  "So!" said Jinjur, putting a more cheerful tone in her voice, but keeping the tone of command authority. "There's no use in your hanging around here any longer. We have given you the information you need so you can prepare the report to Earth about the results of phase four of the mission. You now need to take Prometheus off and carry out phase five—a survey from space of the rest of the Gargantuan moon system. We'll continue the survey of this planet as we were meant to, only we'll have to use rafts or boats instead of a Dragonfly airplane. Won't be as fast, but we have plenty of time. After about six months, fly Prometheus back here and check up on us. By that time, John should have a good handle on what supplements we need, and you can send us our first crawler load. Then you can go back to your survey work until it's time for the next drop."

  "Are you sure you have everything you need for that length of time?"

  Strange feelings surged through me. George's voice, so familiar and admired—had it always been so cool? Was the detachment I heard in it simply due to the physical distance between us, or had he become somehow different? Had I? Jinjur's voice, replying to him, had been merry with relief on that first day, then had resumed its own cool assurance. Now, however, I could hear so clearly her dismay, anxiety, even f
ear, as she absorbed the finality of what she herself was saying.

  "We are in good health, and are developing facilities and equipment satisfactory for our own use. We have made first contact with an intelligent alien, and plan to explore that intelligence. We have a great deal to do, plenty of time, though very little else . . .not that we won't miss you people . . ." The firm voice broke, and stopped.

  I wanted to protest, but found no words. I could see protest in the faces around me—Arielle's tears were pouring—but none of us said a word.

  "I don't want to abandon you like this . . ." protested George.

  Jinjur took a deep breath. "You have your orders, Colonel Gudunov," came the brusque words.

  "Yes'm," replied George coolly. "See you in three months." His voice changed tone to that of a commander, and we heard him give the order we all dreaded . . .

  "Mr. Roma, set our course for Zouave."

  Slowly, but inexorably, the three-hundred kilometer diameter aluminum foil moon turned from a bright circle to an almost invisible ellipse in the clouding sky. Then Prometheus sailed away into distant space, leaving the ten of us marooned on Eden.

  "They'll be within range for another few days, and even after that, we can always send a voice message by relaying it through the Zuni commsats," reminded Jinjur as she returned through the rain to the shelter and the warming fire, her jaw firmly set in an attempt to keep her welling tears from flowing. "Time for goodbyes before the round-trip delay time makes conversation impossible. You first, Reiki. The rest of us will give you some privacy while you talk. Take your time . . .we have plenty . . ."