Exiled to the Stars

by Zellmann, William

  “Hey, Susan’s already working around the clock. Give the poor girl a break!”

  Cesar shook his head. “I wish I could, Vlad. But you know the situation. We have to get a lot of work done before we get rained out. I need you to remind her that we really have no choice. We will have to leave the ship to establish a colony, and we will have to do it very soon. And as you noted, we can’t expect men to do heavy work in space suits. All Susan can do is try to identify and minimize the threats we will inevitably face. Sooner or later, though, we will have to take our chances, and I’m afraid it will be sooner. At the moment we can use the threat of native disease to keep people aboard; but that will not last very long. So, we need a ‘quick and dirty’ survey, as the saying goes. We cannot afford a detailed study.

  “We are between the proverbial rock and hard place,” he continued. “We need to get the workers out of those spacesuits if they are to get the dam built by the next rain, and as soon as we do that, people will begin demanding to move off the ship, and that will draw men and resources away from the dam project. And I do not see any simple solutions.”

  Fortunately, Vince was able to report to the Council only a week later.

  “It’s doable with our equipment and untrained workers,” he reported. “But it’s not going to be easy, especially in spacesuits.”

  Cesar sighed. “How long?”

  Vince grinned. “How long before we can start, or how long to finish?” He waved a dismissal. “Never mind, just teasing. The first job is a major recruiting drive. We need anyone with any experience in construction. Sheol, we need anyone with experience in working outdoors. But the limiting factor will be the limited number of suits. I’m told we have seventy space suits and a couple of dozen isolation suits of various types. Those isolation suits have a risk of puncture, so they can only be used for people like equipment operators, technicians, and foremen. That means seventy laborers at a time, at most. And even with the equipment we have, that means months.”

  He shrugged. “Get us out of the suits, and I think we can build a fifteen-meter earthen dam using our equipment in a few weeks, less if I can use more men. By the way, I’ll need anyone you can find with construction foreman experience.”

  Cesar and Vlad exchanged significant glances, and Vlad nodded soberly.

  Cesar went on the shipwide again, requesting volunteers for the dam project. Despite the computer and its limitless training resources, one of the main sources of problems aboard the crippled ship was boredom. Vince had his choice of hundreds of volunteers.

  Susan and her staff, supplemented by Koumanides’ medical techs, were working nearly twenty-three hours a day, snatching quick naps and wolfing down sandwiches brought to them. Even so, it was nearly another three weeks before she scowlingly admitted to Cesar that she had exhausted her samples, and found no indications of creatures or diseases inimical to humans.

  “But you know very well, Cesar, that my research is incomplete.” She sighed deeply. “And I know that we can’t delay any longer. I guess we’ll just have to confront the planet and take our chances.”

  Susan’s release caused a sensation aboard the crowded derelict, and touched off another round of demands for permission to leave the ship. The end of Dorm 10’s quarantine reopened Dorm 9 for occupation, and Cesar tried to use it to delay the inevitable.

  By now, conditions aboard the wreck had seriously deteriorated. The stench of decaying bodies permeated the entire vessel, and the crowding had produced its own range of problems. The Council’s control was slipping every day, though Doug Ryles’ influence was steadily growing.

  Even working in spacesuits, the workers had managed to nearly complete the ramp to transport the equipment and supplies to ground level by the time of the release. Alarms had been placed in ‘the gouge’, and Tara and Boyet had moved the armed guards up to ground level. A few prefabricated sheds had been built, and supplemented by shelters improvised from wreckage from the ship.

  Once the crews were cleared to unsuit, the work spurted ahead. The ramp was complete, and an endless parade of vehicles laden with essential supplies was proceeding up it.

  But it only increased the already strong pressure to move out of the crowded ship. The work crews luxuriated in the warm sunlight, and returned to the ship only for meals and other necessities. Evenings were balmy and pleasant, especially after almost four years aboard a ship that was becoming increasingly unpleasant, and more and more of the workers were using crash debris to build ugly squatter shacks near the top of the ramp.

  Council meetings had become contentious. A small majority wanted to wait until the dam was complete before planning or building housing for the colony, but an increasingly vocal minority argued for simultaneous construction of housing and food preparation facilities.

  A third group, headed by Doug Ryles and Abdul Arheed, demanded that the first construction be defenses with armed guard posts and that the militia be formalized into a colony defense force, and tasked with security patrols and exploration.

  Ryles and Arheed were becoming a serious problem for Cesar. They nearly always united in opposition to nearly anything he supported, and they seemed focused on organizing a sizable armed force, which raised Cesar’s suspicions. But Ryles, at least, was an eloquent and charismatic man, and seemed to be gaining support.

  Still, a large earthen dam was coming into existence under Vince’s capable direction. It was nearly fifteen meters thick at its base, and would taper to three meters at its top, which would feature a maintenance road. It was located some nine meters from the ship, leaving space for maintenance on the damaged ship and movement of vehicles and supplies. Crash debris had been mounted to the ship’s bulging hull as a sort of rain roof, and pumps would take care of any water that reached the ground.

  But even with the machinery, the job was slow, and the peoples’ impatience was approaching critical. This was complicated by Doug Ryles’ rabble-rousing, blaming the council in general, and Cesar in particular, for ‘denying the people their freedom’ to leave the ship.

  More and more squatter shacks were appearing, and the Council was getting desperate when Crewman Cordes came up with the solution.

  He had heard Cesar and Vlad bemoaning the situation of the squatters. The Council was working on a design for the layout of the new colony, centered around the ship, of course. But everyone quickly realized that the squatters would soon come to identify their shanties as “home”, and would resist efforts to destroy them for some theoretical layout. And the more shacks that arose, the worse the problem became.

  “I’ve been wondering why people are building those things,” Cordes put in. “I mean, if we really need housing that badly, let’s crack into the emergency supplies and set up the domes.”

  “What domes?” Cesar asked.

  “Oh!” Cordes replied, “I didn’t realize you didn’t know. They’re emergency housing in case the ship became uninhabitable for some reason. We have a bunch of inflatable forms in several sizes, and prefabbed plumbing and wiring sets. You lay out your circle, set up the plumbing and wiring set, lay a plascrete floor, inflate the form, and then spray it with releaser followed by more plascrete. Once the plascrete sets, you deflate the form and move to the next spot. One crew can do two a day, and we’ve got equipment for four crews.”

  Cesar had snapped to attention. “Do these crews need to be skilled or trained?”

  Cordes shook his head. “No, sir. As I said, they’re emergency supplies, and are designed to be set up by ill or injured people. Women, and even older children could do it.”

  Doug Ryles wanted to limit use of the domes to public buildings and Council members, but was loudly shouted down. He then proposed that the colony sell the domes to the colonists, and use the proceeds for a ‘colony budget’. That too was rejected. The Council quickly approved the use of the domes, and hurried to finalize the colony design layout they had been wrangling over.

  When Cesar announced that evacuation of the ship
would begin as soon as volunteers could be found to erect housing, it set off a ship-wide party that lasted long into the night. By the next morning, they had almost a thousand volunteers for the forty crew positions available. They scheduled two shifts, and by the next day, domes had begun springing up like weeds. They were issued by lot according to family size, and since there were enough kits to supply the ship’s full complement of 5,300, there was plenty of capacity for future growth. Within two months, over a thousand domes dotted the landscape around the ship. They were a uniform brown plascrete; EarthGov did not waste valuable hold space on paint.

  Still, People are people. One enterprising woman began weaving the local grasses into mats featuring geometric designs, and colored with plant juices. She became fairly wealthy selling her mats, and soon had dozens of imitators.

  The plant juices did not prove totally satisfactory as a coloring agent, and dozens of entrepreneurs were busily stripping the neighborhood of anything they thought might yield a durable pigment.

  The colony was laid out with a central, ‘village’ area centered on the ship, surrounded by farms. At a lengthy, contentious Council meeting, it was finally decided to drastically limit the village area, and to encourage colonists to select and lay out farms instead.

  Most of the colonists were urban, with little farming experience, but with too little basic education to contribute much to the colony in a non-farming way. Those with what the Council considered ‘valuable skills’ were rewarded with the domes closest to the ship’s amenities. Those without such skills were located farther away from the source of food and education, encouraged to gain ‘valuable skills’ of their own in order to get a dome closer to the ship – and to get off the mandatory farm labor gang.

  Farmers and volunteer ‘farmers’ were rewarded with plots as large as they thought they could handle. The Council, of course, reminded them that the total area that the colony militia could protect was limited, and that the even smaller ‘scout corps’ was going to be hard-pressed to survey larger farms for dangerous local life forms.

  Tara Creding was relieved of her responsibility for the 'scout corps' so she could concentrate on teaching farming techniques, and Boyet assumed command of the scouts until a permanent leader could be found.

  Of course, there was a never-ending stream of problems and complaints to and even from the Council. Those with little or no farming experience predictably overestimated the size of the farms they claimed. The experienced Asian farmers, used to manual farming, tended to underestimate how large a farm they could handle. The Council spent day after weary day in session.

  For Cesar, the best part of the news was that it was not necessary to pull men from the dam-building to erect the domes. It had, of course, rained several times since they’d crashed. But none of the storms had been the heavy rains the colonists feared, and the ground had been able to absorb the water. Needless to say, Vince and Cesar were monitoring the situation closely.

  It turned out that “Emergency Kits, Colony Housing, For use as” included not just the shell of a dome, but a complete living unit, with cooking and refrigeration equipment, and even pots and pans. The Council found itself suddenly quite popular in some quarters and unpopular in others.

  The evacuation wasn’t that simple, of course. Only one of the squatters refused to trade his shack for a dome. Vlad wanted to send Boyet’s militia to evict him, but Cesar just shrugged. “Leave him alone. I’ll bet a beer ration he’ll be back in less than two weeks.”

  It took less than one for the man to compare his ugly, scrap shanty with the neat, well-designed domes of his friends, and to seek out Cesar with an offer to trade his shack for a dome.

  But that was just one minor blip. Both Cesar and Boyet were faced with an endless stream of emergencies and complaints.

  ******

  Simon Jerlson looked out over the grassland that stretched for klicks in every direction and sighed. Except for the odd shade of the grasses, it resembled nothing so much as the African savannah. He could almost see a pride of lions lazing under a small, stunted tree

  Like Tara Creding, Simon had chosen to carry an old-fashioned rifle instead of a laser. In his case, though, it was a Krieghoff double-barreled rifle in .375 Holland and Holland Magnum. A classic African big game hunters' weapon.

  That was appropriate, since Simon had spent years as a hunter and guide in Africa. He had hunted almost every game animal on the continent, but he never tired of it. Actually, he told himself, he was hunting a 'boojum'. "Boojum" was his term for the unknown. The new breed of dangerous game. A new, unpredictable opponent with which to match wits.

  Oh, in Africa he hadn't seriously expected to encounter a "boojum", but the search had kept him alert and observant, and had saved his life more than once.

  But here! Here there would be a lot of boojums. And as a Scout, he could hunt them, and even had his preferred dangerous game rifle for the purpose! A slow smile spread over his face as he rose and resumed patrolling for threats.

  It was a disturbance of the grass that saved his life. He saw it from the corner of his eye, and spun, his rifle flying to his shoulder.

  Simon didn't have time to tell much about the creature, except that it was very fast! Crack! Crack! The Kreighoff slammed his shoulder twice in quick succession. Simon's eyes locked on the beast as he quickly opened the action and ejected the two spent shells, replacing them with the two fresh ones he always carried between the fingers of his left hand when on duty.

  He snapped the action closed and kept the rifle at the ready and his eyes scanning as he examined his kill. He didn't have far to go. The animal had reached to within two meters of him. Even with his trained reflexes, it had almost got him. Adrenaline was flooding his system now, and he had to clamp down on his excitement. Yes! He'd got a Boojum!

  The creature was large. The body was a meter and a half long, and the tail doubled that. Overall, the thing resembled nothing so much as a large monitor lizard. But this one had eight legs, each ending in a sharp, curved, 7-cem claw. To Simon, it was the legs that took this animal from the ranks of the slow, cold-blooded ambush hunters and placed it firmly among the big cats, even though it didn't look like one. The legs were widely set on the sides of the thing's body, as in a lizard, but these legs were long and slim, more closely resembling those of a tarantula. This gave it an appearance like a huge, tailed spider. It had a thin, stiff fur, dappled to resemble the grassland it inhabited.

  Replaying his mental image of the attack, he realized that the thing had crept close with its body low, but the long legs had permitted it to suddenly raise its body more than a meter off the ground during its final rush. Interestingly, during its charge, the two front legs had been extended in front of itself, ready to slash prey with those wicked claws.

  Though the body was that of a lizard, and the legs those of a spider, the head most closely resembled that of an oversized terrestrial wolf. The jaws looked to be about fifteen cems long, and the teeth revealed by the thing's dying snarl were nearly as long as its claws. A worthy opponent, indeed!

  ******

  For Cesar, one of the most vexing was the problem of the Dorm 25 survivors. It was the Council’s policy (at his suggestion), to award domes without regard for the recipient’s residence dorm on the ship. “We do not want to start a new culture on a new planet by creating ‘neighborhoods’ of all Koreans, or all Filipinos, or all Egyptians,” he said. “Here, these are meaningless distinctions. This is our opportunity to break the bonds of old Earth and become a single, cohesive group, not tied to some identity we’ll never share again!”

  Complaints were many, but the Council was steadfast. Except in the case of Dorm 25, of course.

  Helen Shourd again pleaded her case, this time reinforced by the Council’s own policy, and Cesar’s support.

  There was much less opposition this time, except for Abdul Arheed and Doug Ryles. “Are we supposed to take murderous, suicidal fanatics into our very midst?” Ryles shouted
, “These women who may at this very moment be plotting the Prophet’s revenge? She claims to be no threat, but we have only her word for that. Cesar supports her, but is it because he thinks she’s harmless, or because she’s seduced him? They’ve been spending time together for months, ever since the crash!”

  Cesar grinned. “Why, Messer Ryles! A compliment? You really think I’m so desirable that Mistress Shourd would pursue me?”

  Ryles grimaced. “I think she would pursue a baboon if she thought it would help her get free.” A sardonic smile flitted briefly across his face. “I guess she found one. But I, for one, do not want to be murdered in my bed just because you’re interested in her.”

  “You were quick enough to quarantine us unnecessarily,” Arheed added. “I say leave ‘em on the ship. Lock ‘em up in an empty dorm and forget ‘em. They’ll have everything they need. They just won’t be able to slaughter us!”

  Helen scowled. “So, your idea of justice is life imprisonment in solitary? Are you sure you weren’t a judge for EarthGov? That sounds like EarthGov justice to me. All right. If that’s your standard, can you prove that I or any of the other survivors committed any crime? Can you prove that any one of these women murdered anyone?” she waved a dismissing hand. “Don’t tell me about what others did. Tell me about what these women, and these children did. Just who did I kill, Messer Arheed, Messer Ryles?”

  Arheed subsided, scowling, but Ryles wasn’t finished. “I still say it’s wrong to put all our lives at risk just because an old man gets horny!”

  Helen bowed. “Messer Ryles,” she said archly, “I am flattered by your belief that I am such a sexy vixen that I can make old men horny.”

  Ryles reddened at the general laughter, but remained silent.

  Helen turned back to the Council. “This Council has already adopted a policy of breaking up groups,” she said. “I suggest you do the same with the Dorm 25 survivors. I also suggest we stop being identified as such. Spread the 32 of us out among the 3500 colonists, and we will simply disappear. Keep grouping us together, and giving us a separate identity, and you brand us for life.”