Soft Planet

by Mitchell Christian

  Soft Planet

  By

  Mitchell Christian

  Cover art

  Ignat Komitov

  http://loopywanderer.deviantart.com/

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 1

  Xander felt a tug at his shirt. He looked down to see the younger boy's face peering up at him, eager with anticipation. With one hand Armondo clutched a red, rubbery ball. He pushed up to his toes and then, as if in slow motion, softly landed back on his heels.

  "Oh, alright," Xander said with a grin. "We'll play just one round. But that's it, ok?"

  The black haired boy nodded before heading towards the indoor court nearby. His light frame glided between each step, as if moving through water. Just inside the doorway he stopped abruptly, then turned around. Above him the gymnasium was filled with pink-tinged morning sunlight, streaming through the transparent dome over the court. A glittering of dust rose on currents warmed by the sun's rays. Off to the side a sagging metal cage held dozens of solid-colored balls, similar to the one that Armondo had in his grasp.

  "So, will it be tournament rules or free-for-all?" Xander asked as he entered the room.

  "Free-for-all with no time limit!"

  "Woa, now. We need a time limit, little dude. Let's make it ten minutes. That way we won't be late for lunch."

  Armondo pivoted, pushing one leg against the cushioned mat covering the floor, and headed straight for the center of three goal posts jutting from the metal wall several meters up. Xander jumped after him, their bodies making long arcs as they rose from the ground. In another leap forward they both reached out as Armondo tossed the ball into the target area.

  Caroline entered just as Armondo scored the first point. She watched Xander playfully shove the smaller boy into the spongy netting between the goal posts. When Xander landed, he turned to look at Armondo bobbing gently up and down in his temporary nest. Then he noticed Caroline standing near the doorway, leaning against a padded support column and shaking her head in mock disapproval of their antics.

  "Have you ever even played this sport before?"

  "Sure, lotsa times," Xander responded. "They don't call me the Splunk Kid for nothin', you know!"

  "Let me show you how it's done." Caroline removed a utility belt strapped around her upper thigh, then set it on the floor. She grabbed a yellow ball from the pile in the cage before launching herself towards the boys, pushing forward with both legs. Her body headed at high speed straight for Xander, who took a step back, but just as she got close she twisted up and away from him in mid-air. While upside-down, she deftly tossed the ball over his head just out of reach, and it arced into the webbing at the uppermost part of the goal. It rolled down and collided with the other ball lying next to Armondo, sticking to its pliable surface. Still in the air, Caroline did a quick reverse flip and made a solid landing. Her auburn hair took on an orange hue as sunlight peeked through it. Crossing her arms, she peered at Xander with a slight tilt of her head.

  "Splunk kid, huh?”

  "Show off," he replied with a good-natured smile.

  Caroline had learned the game of Splunk while growing up on Earth. She was happy to see that its popularity was quickly spreading through the Martian colonies, where players could perform acrobatic maneuvers that were impossible in heavier gravity. The Splunk balls themselves were made of stiffened, rubbery gelatin in solid colors. Thrown with enough force they would fuse together, and if thrown too hard they would disintegrate in the hand of the thrower. With aggressive play thus discouraged the sport promoted strategy, as well as grace of body movements.

  Armondo scrambled out of the netting, holding the connected mass of red and yellow in one hand. He drifted to the floor, then ran up to the much taller woman.

  "Wow, that was really somethin'! Do it again!" He absentmindedly played with the glob, kneading it with both hands, his gaze fixed solidly on her face.

  "Sorry, kiddos, but I gotta get back to work," Caroline stated reluctantly. She picked up her utility belt, strapped it back around her thigh, and ruffled Armondo's hair on her way out of the play area. His black locks stuck straight out while he stared back in awe.

  Once in the corridor Caroline, pulled a square data collection device from her belt to begin pouring over the density and growth readings gathered the previous day. The screen of the scanner glowed pale green in the dim hallway, reflecting off the gray, burnished metal that covered the interior walls of the pre-fabricated building.

  Around the next corner she entered her small, somewhat cramped office and switched on an overhead light. On the floor in the corner she noticed some reddish sediment had managed to get through the air filters and settle into a thin layer of light brown. She gave herself a mental note to notify the maintenance crew of the problem. Walking over to her desk, she sat down and placed the scanner in its cradle so that it would download into the town's DNA-based storage system. She couldn't help but think of the underground vat of organic memory as a kind of brain, connected to storage systems in other communities through bundles of above-ground fiber optical cables, like a web of spinal cords laced across the Martian terrain. Watching the data transfer, she noticed that recent measurements from the wind storms, which occasionally raged in the unclaimed desert areas, indicated that they were still too intense to warrant construction of the network hubs that were needed before the global wireless communications grid could be established.

  Out of habit she reached up towards the air in front of her to input some notes to the grid, but pulled her hand short when she remembered where she was. With a sigh she grabbed an electro-pen off the desktop and tapped the surface of the collection device to insert her comments. The lack of a direct connection to a wireless network had been difficult for Caroline to get used to. Most citizens on Earth were given the necessary implants shortly after birth, but she had not received them until the age of six. After a short period of adjustment her ability to verbally communicate developed rapidly until there was little trace left of her mutism. She quickly caught up to her peers academically, and as a teenager often outpaced them in athletic ability. Now, without the use of the grid and the intimate access to a universe of information that it provided, her daily reality seemed mundane in comparison to her previous life.

  "Dr. Nurinne?" someone called out from the corridor. Caroline hesitated, still unaccustomed to the title which had always been her mother's while she was growing up. Her thoughts quickly went to her adoptive parents who still lived in Shore, the capital city of the continent-state of Chiyan. Her mother, Dr. Tanielle Nurinne, was widely known for her work in disease prevention, as well as for being the originator of the mathematics that allowed the harnessing of power from dark matter, used primarily for large-scale needs. Her father was known for his work as a sculptor, and his pieces were displayed in galleries throughout the city.

  "I'll be there in a sec," she shouted back, still concentrating on her work. She mentally calculated the rate of expansion of fresh vegetation around the immediate area and compared it to last week's results, noting that the progression had slowed slightly from her predictions. A curious development, but it will have to wait for further analysis. She detached the portable device from its desktop base, and reattaching it to her belt, left her office to see what was happening outside.

  In the hallway a commotion was taking place between some of the other scientists. Larkin Rand, a mineralogist, was arguing with Jules Thorkoff, an evolutionary ecologist. Others watched in mild amusement, enjoying the diversion from the routine of their daily work schedules.

  "You can't extract niobium from the
upper layer of the floral substrate without the procedure impacting the nutrient value of the soil!" Jules stated adamantly.

  "But we need it for the expansion of the elevator system," Larkin came back, somewhat more calmly than his colleague.

  Maybe that would explain the decelerated plant growth, Caroline thought. During her twelve Earth months on Mars, just half the Martian year, the construction of the space elevators had begun, allowing supply craft from Earth to dock at the upper nodes of the hollow shafts and send supplies and passengers planetside. Cargo, as well as those leaving the surface, were shot up the elevators using magnetic propulsion, requiring only modest amounts of energy because of the low friction of the superconducting material coating the inner surface of the conduits.

  "Besides," Jules continued, "it's available in the unclaimed areas. Why disturb the biome when you can send your infernal machines out into the desert?"

  "The harsh conditions in the outlying areas eat up our equipment in no time. You know that, Jules," Larkin said with a touch of irritability.

  With a pleading look the ecologist turned to Caroline. "Carol, please talk some sense into Larry. The man is being completely obstinate."

  "Well, in the unclaimed areas you could run the extractors at night, when the storms are minimal," she said, "and during the day you can continue in the green zones where you can use nitrogen and organic phosphate injections to bolster root growth."

  "You see, I knew you could move your activities away from the areas of life," Jules said as he turned back to Larkin, who replied, "She was supporting me, not you!"

  Caroline shook her head and walked away while the two still bickered. She would wait a day or two, and if the disagreement was not yet resolved, would then weigh in with a decision. Right now, a rumbling in her stomach told her it was time to head down the corridor towards the kitchen.

  "Leave it to Carol to be the voice of moderation." The female voice came from behind her.

  "Oh, hey Roe, I didn't see you back there." Caroline turned, and stopped to talk to her friend. The light-haired woman caught up to Caroline and they walked together towards the food dispensers.

  "Men! Do they ever accomplish anything?" Roe asked as she rolled her eyes. A biologist by training, the younger scientist had applied to join the team on a whim after working for a year in the high altitudes of the Himalayas. Now she worked as the group's entomologist, a spot needed only after the unintentional introduction of insects to this planet. The creatures had hitched a ride on the earliest space craft that brought the materials for the construction of the gas production factories, making the bugs the Earth's first macroscopic residents of an alien world.

  “Well,” Caroline responded, "the male of the species can be useful in other ways, you know." The two shared a laugh as they took their meals and sat down at an unoccupied table. Caroline had come to value her one close friend more than anyone she had known on Earth, besides her family. They shared a passion for the life sciences, and while Caroline's experience and background made her the lead member of her group, she valued Roe's insight and would often confer with her before making a decision.

  Roe looked intently across the table. "So how are things going with Garrett?"

  "Well, I don't think it's going anywhere, really," Caroline eyes were downcast as she played with her food.

  "Oh...I see." The two ate in silence for a few moments.

  The discussion turned a little more serious as Roe asked, "When are we scheduled for the team excursion?" She seemed eager but somewhat apprehensive at the thought of her first trip into the depths of the unclaimed areas.

  "No definite time table yet," was Caroline's reply, "but soon, I think. We need to get that information before too long or we'll never be able to sustain our presence here." There were just a few hundred populated areas on Mars, with no more that several thousand residents each, and all were clustered together in a particularly wet and fertile region about a thousand kilometers in diameter. Surrounded by the extremes of Martian weather, this inhabited zone was in constant danger of being taken back by the encroachment of the lifeless environment which still covered most of the planet's surface.

  "It's too bad the satellites have trouble retrieving uncorrupted data from that close to the surface. And I know we can't afford to try sending more bots to the factories," Roe said. "It's hard to believe that even the laser equipment got destroyed by the sand storms when Matt's team tried to install one." All attempts to retrieve the atmospheric data, collected by sensors placed on the tops of the factories nearest to the towns, had ended in disaster. It didn't make sense at first, but eventually the scientists on Caroline's team had determined that instead of diminishing, as their models suggested, the conditions in the upper atmosphere were actually getting worse as the areas of inhabited land spread. It was a kind of kickback by the environment against the expanding bubble of life, like pushing on a coiled spring, making its rebound even stronger.

  "Our only option is to manually gather the data collectors from the factories," Caroline explained. "A copter can fly us there as long as we avoid the storms."

  She paused to take another bite of food. "Think you're up for it?"

  Roe raised her eyebrows, then let her breath out slowly. "If you think we can do it, Carol, then yes, I'm up for it."

  Caroline smiled in return, grateful for her friend's confidence in her. The two continued their meals with relaxed conversation, finally finishing up and heading their separate ways.

  The outing could be a taxing affair, Caroline thought as she headed towards her quarters. The sandstorms were more frequent than before the colonists arrived, and although they were more localized than the mega-storms of the past, they still brought tornado force winds with them.

  As she approached her room’s doorway, Caroline noticed a yellow flashing light brightening up the hallway, which meant that an incoming call from Earth had been made on her video phone. Once in her living space she walked over to the screen, attached to the wall at eye level. With the press of a button it displayed the source of the signal. She could see that the call had come from her parents. As much as she missed them, the unexpected request caused her some concern. Her mother had experienced a minor health problem a few years back, but it was thought to be under control. Caroline could only hope that the nerve degeneration had not flared up again. She anxiously sent back an acceptance message for the video link-up.

  Communications between the two worlds was an infrequent affair. She had only been able to speak to her parents a few times over the last Earth year. The directed laser beams that carried the image and audio feeds needed to be finely tuned at the source due to the slight spread of the signal over millions of kilometers. Slight miscalculations of positioning, as well as adverse weather conditions, could cause a significant loss of quality. On Mars the signals were routed through fiber optics lines which were often heavily loaded with scientific data, potentially causing more degradation. There was also the matter of the time delay, with a pause lasing up to nearly 15 minutes each way. It made for a cumbersome way to talk.

  Using her visual memory of the current positions of Earth and Mars along their orbits Caroline determined that they were at one of their closest approaches, but she knew that it would still take several minutes before she got a reply back from Earth, if it came back at all. In the meantime she kept herself occupied by doing some tidying up of personal items around her room, and with organizing some of her equipment. The room furnishings provided for each scientist were minimal, but they still took up a fair amount of space in the tight quarters. It paid to keep her belongings neatly arranged.

  Eventually a click from the wall phone told her that someone was returning her invitation. An image appeared on the small screen of the device.

  "Hey, sweetheart, it's me." The stuttering frames from the weak signal revealed the distorted, smiling face of her father, accompanied by his familiar voice which helped Caroline relax a little. She had a strong urge to reply
, but restrained herself as his message, broken by crackles and pops, continued.

  "They tell me I don't have a lot of time to talk, so this may be a one-sided conversation. Your mother's had a slight relapse, but don't worry too much as it's nothing very serious. And you know her! She's already started to track down a solution herself."

  Although reassured by her father's statements, Caroline couldn't keep her imagination from picturing a world without her mother. It was a future which she had always avoided thinking about, but before she could dwell on it her father continued.

  "They say I need to finish up quickly since the signal power is dropping fast. I know you're probably a little nervous right now, honey, but don't worry yourself too much. We've been through worse and your mother is too smart and too strong a woman to let this get the best of her. We'll let you know as soon as-"

  The connection cut off. Caroline could feel her heart pounding in her chest as her mind raced to consider the available options. Once every day a feed was piped through carrying the day’s news, along with any social media communications for each of the town's residents. Perhaps her father would send additional word to her that way. Then there was the dedicated audio channel, but that was reserved for emergency use only. For now, at least, this was not a life or death situation. Maybe I can try again later, when the signal is stronger. She made a mental note to check back periodically, then left the room, heading towards her office to finish up the day's work.

  Chapter 2

  "You're going to miss your Uncle Jarrod's 100th birthday next month."

  Tanielle stood facing her daughter, her hands gently grasping Caroline’s shoulders. The smile on the stately woman's face belied the sadness in her voice. Tears stood at the outer corners of eyes, threatening to run down her cheeks at the slightest prodding. Caroline smiled back, returning her mother's touch by placing her palms against the taller woman's upper arms.