An announcement has just gone out saying there’s some delay in putting us into the SA chambers. I could have done without the wait, and not just because of the lack of space. I must admit I’m uneasy with the idea. Ellen keeps assuring me that suspended animation is safe, and biology is her field, not mine, but I’d still rather get it over and done with.
I spent a long while looking down on Earth, thinking about Mom and Dad down there. It’s a shame they won’t get to see their grandchildren while they are babies, but I know they understand what getting the place on the colony ship meant to Ellen and me. If all goes well, we’ll be able to come back for a visit in a dozen years or so.
16-May-2254: We’ve just watched the Maia and Alcyone slip into X-space. Amazing to watch something so large just ripple and disappear. I’m pleased I saw it. It’s been the one benefit from the delay on the SA chambers, but at last they seem to have sorted out the problem and are starting to put people under. Ellen and I are due to go within the hour. I suppose a second benefit is that, after having tried to get a couple of hours’ sleep on a chair in the observation lounge, I’m now almost looking forward to being put under.
After giving up on trying to sleep, I spent some time searching the ship’s data files for Greek mythology, trying to work out if there’s any significance in the allocation of engineering discipline to goddess: Celaeno with biology, Taygete with geology, and so on, but I guess not. In fact, I’ll bet that even the names of the Pleiades were only chosen because of the number of ships and someone high up liked the sound of them, nothing to do with mythology, or even destination. Trust the admin at the UN space agency to be strong on romanticism and weak on literature.
Time is a strange thing. When they wake us up, we will be only a few hours older, whereas 18 months will have passed on Earth, and the Celaeno will have spent over 300 years in X-space, traveling on auto systems, though I know that referring to time in X-space is a bit of an anomaly. I’ve seen the equations the physicists churn out, but the only way I can get my head around it is to think of time going more quickly there. Except it doesn’t, since the only way people can survive in X-space is in SA, where time doesn’t go at all.
I know this isn’t making sense. I’m tired.
That’s it. Ellen and I have just been called to the SA chambers. My next entry in this diary will be 18 months in the future and 21.5 light years from here.
??-???-????: I keep rereading the last words I wrote. I feel it’s a joke, but I can’t work out who is playing it on whom. It hasn’t quite sunk in. I’m going to try and write down what’s happened. Maybe putting it in words will make it seem more real.
Somehow, the guidance computer malfunctioned. It didn’t know when to tell the ship to stop. The systems are so over-engineered that the Celaeno kept plowing on and on through X-space, until at last, one of the mechanisms entered a critical condition and the emergency override snapped in. Although even the definition of emergency is extremely cautious. One of the engineers told me the ship is still good for decades.
Under the emergency procedures, the Celaeno selected the nearest large planetary system, came out of X-space, and woke the crew. And as a final gesture, it sent a distress signal to Earth. But the procedure is based on the assumption that you’re more or less where you’re supposed to be, that Earth is close enough for a rescue vessel to be with you in months, and that any large planetary system will probably have some sort of installation there already. Whereas, where we are, is god knows where. The best guess I’ve had from the crew is 3000 light years from Earth.
The distance is hard to grasp, but it’s the time that I can’t take. While we’ve been in SA, over 200 years have passed on Earth—or so the crew thinks. We are way beyond normal comms range, and even if the SOS message reaches them, will anyone still be listening for us? And unless there have been some major leaps in technology, it will take further centuries for a rescue to get here.
Ellen’s still in SA. I’m writing this sitting on the floor of the gangway beside her chamber. It’s cold and the lighting is bad, but I need to be near her. I wish I could talk things over with her. Apparently, the crew woke me as the most senior geologist on board—possibly the only geologist on board. There’s going to be a meeting later when they’ve finished waking the select few. God knows what they are going to say. What options have we got?
1 day after waking: We’ve had our meeting and time to think things over. Apart from the ship’s crew, there are 35 other colonists awake, representing all the available expertise on board. We have three options to consider. One is to park the Celaeno in stable orbit and for us all to go back into SA and hope a rescue gets to us before the systems break down completely. Two is to patch up the ship and try and get back to Earth. The third option is to give up on any hope of ever getting home. The only stroke of luck we’ve had is that one of the planets in this solar system looks as if it might be habitable. Its mass is 97% of Earth’s. It has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and a developed biosphere. In fact, at first glance, it appears a big improvement on the world we were supposed to be colonizing. That’s why the crew has woken us up. Before we can make a decision, we have to be certain that this planet is really viable.
It will still be a hard choice. Common sense says that both of the first two options mean putting our faith in machinery way past its planned working life, and we have nothing to go back to Earth for. All our families will be long dead, society and technology will have moved on, our skills will be outdated. But to give up on the rest of the human race is a big, big step to take.
I wish I could talk to Ellen.
40 days after waking: The reports are in, though I feel my own contribution was the next best thing to useless. All the geological survey equipment was on the Taygete, but maybe it made people happier for me to say that I think there are mineable mineral deposits down there. Everything else has confirmed that the planet is habitable.
Now we have to vote. The worst part is making a decision on behalf of all the others, but the living quarters aren’t large enough to have more than a fraction of the passengers awake at the same time. I guess most of us must feel the same pressure, but it’s worse for me as I’m really a very junior member of the colony team, way down the hierarchy. Unlike Dr. Himoti, who is Principal Geneticist, and gives the impression that she thinks the Celaeno is her own private property.
However, I think the vote is a foregone conclusion. Trying to get back to Earth is a non-starter. With the error on the navigation computer, the engineers aren’t even certain which way Earth is. And the same counts against the idea of waiting in SA for rescue. The Celaeno’s SOS message was probably focused in the wrong direction, giving absolutely no chance of it being picked up. We’d be gambling on the remote chance of someone stumbling across us by accident before the SA chambers became inoperable, and I can tell no one is keen on the idea. Especially after Douglas told us what would happen if the cryogenic cooling system broke down with us inside.
I’ve taken to talking to Ellen’s SA chamber. Silly, but it helps me adjust my thoughts, like writing this diary. If the vote goes the way I think, we’ll be waking the others up soon and ferrying down to the planet. It will be easier to face things with Ellen. Maybe part of the reason for me voting for the planet is that I have to be sure I’m going to see her again.
41 days after waking: It was a unanimous vote in favor of the planet. The site for landfall has been chosen on the main continent in the northern hemisphere, by the banks of a large river. The soil is fertile, and the river will provide good transport. All the resources we could identify are near at hand. The landing site is in lowlands, surrounded by mountains on three sides and the sea to the south. According to the surveys, its climate should be moderate at all times of the year. I’ve been studying the maps. I managed to restrain myself from showing them to Ellen’s SA chamber. She’ll be seeing the actual site itself soon.
49 days after waking: Ellen and I have made landfall. Ellen is still
a little dazed by the news. I’ve spent so long talking to her SA chamber, I tend to forget she hasn’t had much time to come to terms with things. But for me, after a month and a half on the Celaeno, it’s wonderful to stand on green stuff that looks like grass with a blue sky over my head—even though it’s cold. It is so nice to be able to stick your arms out straight without clouting somebody else around the ear.
57 days after waking: A third of the crew and colonists are down here. The shuttles are going up and down continuously. The landing site is a mess. We have the facilities to make a first-class genetics lab, yet don’t really have the right machinery to build houses. They were on the Alcyone. But I’m sure we’ll adapt. The northern hemisphere was chosen as it’s mid-spring here at the moment, so we have plenty of time to get sorted before winter.
86 days after waking: Ellen and I have just gotten back from the vote. Even the skeleton crew on the Celaeno came down to take part in person. It was the first time all 2,000 of us had been together. And it was nice to be able to vote just for myself, instead of on behalf of others, particularly with all the implications.
Dr. Himoti formally proposed the motion to try and found a permanent ongoing colony, while Jaminda Uti led the opposition of those who think we should simply make things as comfortable as possible for ourselves, live out the rest of our natural lives, and leave the planet unchanged.
I think Jaminda knew she was arguing a lost cause. Her mood seemed one of frustrated despair, though she had a few good points to make. We don’t have the resources to create a high-tech society. The factories and heavy machinery were on the other ships. Maybe Jaminda is simply the best historian, and the rest of us have rose-tinted glasses when it comes to a pre-industrial world. But I’m sure life wouldn’t be quite as grim as she painted it. Life expectancy might be shorter than on Earth, but we do have true medical knowledge to pass on to our children, rather than the superstition people relied on in the past. And we ought to be able to reach the technology level of the old Roman Empire at the very least.
Anyway, the outcome of the vote was never in question. We all chose to become colonists because of a dream for the future. None of us could consider becoming a dead end in history. On the way back from the count, Ellen and I started planning names for our first child.
90 days after waking or 08-May-01: The date I’ve given is a bit of a compromise. I would have liked to have made day one of the new calendar the date of the first landfall, but the general feeling was to backdate the year to start on mid-winter’s day. Which means that the colony on this planet officially began on 23-March-01. The days are a bit longer than on earth, a fraction over 25 hours, but there are only 337 days in a year, so the year still works out a touch shorter than on Earth. It has been decided to stick with 12 months, though they’ll only have 28 days. The odd day over will be mid-winter’s day, hanging about on its own. Then they’ll be leap years, exceptions, and so on. Someone has worked it out with the aid of the Celaeno’s computers.
For time, we’re following the standard UNSA practice of botching a compromise between decimalization and divisions that feel right. There will be 20 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, and 50 seconds in a minute. Frequency counters in the lab equipment will keep to GMT, which gives 45 point something seconds in a new planetary minute. Ellen’s threatening to scream if she hears another joke about working long hours.
So far, no one has come up with a generally acceptable name for the planet. I guess our children will just call it the Earth.
19-May-01: Already Ellen is up to her neck in work at the genetics lab. There’s enough stored food on the Celaeno to keep us going for years, but eventually we’ll have to start producing our own. I’ve joined Cedric Martin on a project to smelt steel. I just hope I’ll be able to recognize iron ore when I see it. It’s brought home to me Jaminda’s point about taking technology for granted—not that I’d change the way I voted.
27-August-01: Cedric and I got back to Landfall today, from surveying upriver. I brought back some samples that I think contain iron ore. Maybe. Most of the time I’m torn between frustration and amusement. Four years studying geology and I’m reduced to guesswork. I’m re-teaching myself the junior level stuff, how to spot metamorphic rock and all. If only I had a handheld T.T. scope, like one of the 90 or so they put on the Taygete. If it wasn’t for the knowledge base of the Celaeno computers, we wouldn’t know where to start with smelting steel.
At least Ellen has all the equipment she needs. She has been analyzing the native fauna, trying to see if any of it is potentially useful. But the answer seems to be that it isn’t, certainly not as a source of food. It is just as well the Celaeno was stocked with genetic samples of every species known on Earth, from aardvarks to zebras. The indigenous animals have fat molecules that are incompatible with ours, to the point that we’re mutually indigestible. They also have a cyanide-like chemical in their blood, and apparently we’re nearly as poisonous to them—they can’t take too much iron. Unfortunately, some of the bigger carnivores look as if they might bite our heads off before they learn this.
Some of Ellen’s colleagues have been looking at the vegetation. They think the grass-like stuff will support Earth herbivores as long as they can engineer a gene for an enzyme to break down the cellular coating. Dr. Himoti is working on it, and once she’s finished, they’ll put six experimental sheep in the artificial wombs. On a related subject, Ellen isn’t pregnant yet, but we’re working on it.
03-September-01: One of Ellen’s friends, Simon, was telling me that we have been really fortunate with the flora. Iron is poisonous to the native animals, and recently (in evolutionary terms) one family of plants has exploited this by concentrating iron in its leaves. The result is that these plants, with nothing to eat them, have run riot and triggered a mass extinction event in the fauna. The animal evolution was starting to catch up, but there is still a great big hole in the ecosphere ideally suited to iron-loving Earth herbivores.
15-October-01: The first attempt at smelting was not a complete success. Three of us burned our hands, and the steel was so weak it snapped when you tapped it. But we all stood around grinning like idiots and slapping each other on the backs. At least we are going forward.
At home, I think Ellen is starting to get a little worried. She’s still not pregnant. But I know it can take a bit of time for things to get working after you reactivate hormonal cycles. We should give it a couple more months before going for a medical check. Anyway, Ellen has a lot of important work on at the lab. She doesn’t need distractions. She’s now working directly with Dr. Himoti.
01-December-01: The weather is getting much colder. We’re OK inside the buildings, but when we go outside, the low temperatures are actually painful on the skin. It’s frightening to feel so vulnerable. I almost wonder if Jaminda Uti might have been right. The emergency power sources should last for our lifetime and keep the heating going, but how will our children survive once the fuel runs out? Someone told me it’s going to get a lot colder still in a month or so. You see the old pictures of people playing in snow, and it all looks like fun. I start to suspect that the truth was a little different. The daytime temperature at the moment is well above freezing, and it still feels as if the cold could kill you. What will it be like when it’s low enough for snow to settle on the ground?
I was saying this to Natasha Krowe, who used to work as a ranger in a wildlife preserve on Earth. She cracked up laughing. She couldn’t believe that I’ve never been exposed to sub-zero temperatures before, whereas she’s quite used to living without the cushion of technology—tramping through the wilds and all. She’s challenged me to what she called a snowball fight after the first snowfall, but I don’t think I’ll be taking her up on it.
03-January-02: It’s not just Ellen. No one is pregnant. Ellen told me yesterday that a group at the lab has been formed to look into it. It was supposed to be on the quiet, but half the colony seems to know, although no one is voicing their worries al
oud.
Despite the cold, the smelting group are throwing themselves into the work, keeping the furnace going. Perhaps it’s for the warmth, or perhaps we just need to demonstrate our faith in the future.
09-January-02: More bad news. Two plant biologists out surveying in the mountains to the north were killed by large cat-like animals. The rescue team found the partly eaten remains. It’s no comfort to know the cats will have had massive indigestion and most of their fur will have dropped out from iron poisoning.
A few of the colonists are service personnel who had originally been intended to form the colony’s security team. Natasha Krowe is going to train them to work as rangers, patrolling the outskirts of the valley. Hopefully, they’ll be able to prevent a similar cat-attack from happening again, or at least be able to warn people of where to stay away from.
02-February-02: We all knew something was wrong, though we tried to dismiss the doubts, but after eight months, someone should have gotten pregnant. Now the report from the lab is common knowledge, and it’s worse than anyone guessed.
The plants on this planet produce pollen that plays hell with male hormones. The stuff is in the air, in the water, in us. Ellen has told me it acts a bit like estrogen, but with a whole set of extra complications. Most women aren’t too badly affected, but every man has a sperm count of absolute zero. I feel as if I want to wear a mask over my face. Not that it would help. It explains why quite a lot of men have been complaining about feeling nauseous in the mornings.
The Temple at Landfall Page 29