by Ginger Booth
Eli chuckled. “It’s an oil crop, Darren. Protein, too. They taste great. Are you sure, Porter?”
“Positive! Those ear comms we got in Killingfield. I worked my way through crop maps for North America, but they didn’t have data for the other continents –”
“I’m very tired,” Darren cut in.
“They grow sunflowers here!” Porter growled. “Open air, without greenhouses. I want a soil sample! And the seeds! And seeds for any other field crops!”
Darren appealed to the botanist. “This makes sense?”
Eli’s eyes were wide. “Absolutely. Yes. We must secure soil and seed samples. Could we move the ship and quickly…?”
“No,” Darren completed his thought for him. “We couldn’t.”
“I’ll talk to their scientists tomorrow,” Porter wheedled. “And arrange a sample trade. No, I’ll call them tonight and ask them to prepare it! A sample from the sunflower fields, and any open field seeds they can give me. In exchange… Eli, we can give them something. Maybe this grapefruit tree.” He looked up, appraising the practicality of moving the 5-meter tree.
Eli scowled and slapped him down. “Not Sass’s favorite tree! But I could give them one of my seed printer kits. I brought half a dozen. They’re gift-wrapped with supplies to make a thousand seeds, plus a nice sample of my –”
“I really, really want to go to bed.”
Eli’s expression hardened. “They place our soil sample under the ship, and clear out. You extend the ESD field, we swap that for our gift, and…hover upward.” He flapped his hand upward to clarify.
“No, Eli. Just no.”
“Yes, Darren. Absolutely yes!” Porter crossed his arms mulishly. “Plants breathe oxygen in the root zone. I know you don’t care about agronomy. You think my field is a joke. Fine, I do your scut work and odd jobs. But I risked my life to come here for a reason. I need that soil sample!” The accusing finger stabbed toward the blank bulkhead again.
Darren squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Fine. No one – NO ONE! – stands inside the ring of spaceships when we descend to make the swap. They come, they place their offering, they depart. We touch down for two minutes, no more! And you swap the boxes. And if you break bio-containment, Porter, so help me!”
“You won’t regret it, Darren. Thank you!” The kid’s eyes shone. He clapped his hands in scientific greed and hustled to the office to call Remi.
Eli consoled the engineer, “He is right. If that soil can support open-air crops here, its microbial suite could revolutionize agriculture on…everywhere.”
“But trees grow here. There are plants all over the place.”
Eli shook his head. “Not the same. I’d explain it, but you sure look tired. Sleep sweet, Darren.” He smiled crookedly. The scientist team won this round.
The engineer sighed loudly, and trudged up to bed. It was only 19:00 hours in Baikonur, 22:00 in Hakone. Sass and Clay should be safe in bed, too. He’d get a solid ten hours sleep and an early start to the day. Right?
42
The first wave to the colony worlds were terraformers, recruited from Earth. Their job was to find the fastest way to make their new worlds livable. This would take a century or so.
Ben didn’t cry a river when he received Sass’s sentimental farewell, hidden in Enka’s backups. He wasn’t in Schuyler with his family, either, though his emu-in-law Floki stood before him. It was Floki who mined Enka’s memories for details for him.
Ben stood abruptly and yelled, “Fuck you!” at Sass’s image.
Floki politely paused the replay for him, tears standing in his enormous artificial eyes. Then he sidestepped to get out of the commandant’s way as he paced unbelieving.
“I’ve worked all day –” at this point it was close to 03:00 Mahina ship’s time “– to extract her. And she ditches herself into the Pacific Ocean – ditches her own crew! To go off playing with these boat people!”
Floki squatted lower, his neck flattened. Tears rolled down his feathered cheeks. His beak trembled.
Ben was about to say Sass and Clay might live forever, but did they have to drag his grand-mink along for this stupidity? One look at Enka’s parent, and he stopped himself in time. He looped his arms around Floki’s shoulders, and the long sensual neck clasped around him in turn. He squeezed his eyes shut in a grimace. “It’ll be OK, Floki. Somehow. And we’ve got her backups.”
“There’s more.” Floki’s voice quavered. “She says good-bye to all the crew, and me. And she promises to take good care of Enka. It’s just –”
“Shh, I know.” He stroked the robotic neck.
“Should I show this to the others? Sass’s farewell?” That last broke on a sob.
“No. Absolutely not.” Ben stood back, and added a final comforting caress. “I’m sorry I had to do that to you. I had to know. You too, and Nico, and Lenka and Angus. Everyone else can wait.”
Until what? How could he retrieve a woman bound and determined to lose herself? Without her cooperation, he was stuck retrieving the crew she stranded there, damn her to hell! He shoved his office seat, then collapsed into it. “They can wait til we leave this system.” He might even hold it in reserve as ammo against holdouts. “You’ll give me the video clip of this?”
Floki nodded his beak. “I should c-call Nico…”
“Wait on that too,” Ben said softly. “I need the ansible now. To save our people. But Lenka…”
“He knows. Enka said good-bye to us directly. Such a sweet little girl. And so brave.”
Ben rose to encompass him in a hug again, but this time herded him out of the office. A quick comm call woke Hugo to keep the emu company. Remi gazed up from where he sat cross-legged against the bulkhead in the corridor, working his tablet. Ben evicted him from the office when Corky called in panic because she received Sass’s order to run. The commandant needed to talk her down and persuade her to upload the data to him, and not wake Darren in the meantime. With the light-speed lag on the data, that was 40 minutes ago, and Thrive’s engineer needed the extra sleep.
Remi levered himself off the corridor floor and joined him in the office. “Bad?”
“Sass stole a shuttle and ditched herself in the biggest rego ocean on Earth.”
“And did she think this through?”
Ben sighed and fought through his rage for fairness. “She thought she was trapped in Hakone. Her guide offered her an in with the boat people instead of these Northern League bozos. Said they’re still trying to save the planet.”
“Ah, a noble cause too good to pass up.” Remi took his seat at the desk. “My friend, you will forgive her someday. This is who she is. You’re angry now…”
“We’re supposed to check in on Mars periodically. She’ll leave a message when she wants me to pick her up.”
Remi considered that briefly, soberly, then cracked up laughing. “Oh, come on! You have to admit this is funny!”
“I admit nothing.” Ben fiercely suppressed his temptation to chuckle too. “We’ve got people on the line, chief. How’s it coming?”
“You want me to tell you all is well? Or the truth?”
Ben slumped into the chair across from him – the visitor’s chair, as Remi had claimed the commandant’s seat to use the ansible. “What else?”
“Porter the agronomist is excited. The Russian scientists will bring him a present in… At 08:00 Baikonur time.”
The commandant grimaced and pulled out his tablet. “Nine hours. Porter will be disappointed – Oh, hell. Porter is the one doing your mods.”
The engineer chuckled agreement.
Ben reviewed. It was conceivable – not likely, but possible – that Voronin did not yet know that Sass had evaded his grasp again. The chance of him not knowing within the next nine hours were infinitesimal. The chances of Sass getting blown to hell before getting fished out of an ocean, he rather fancied if only she didn’t have Clay and the mink with her. Besides, she and Clay wouldn’t die. They’d wash up on a beach
somewhere and resume their careers as his problem. Minus the mink, damn her.
“So we pretend we still believe Sass is on her way,” he concluded. “Or persuade Porter to skip this science exchange.”
“He’s asked so little,” Remi shared, eyes laughing. “Just one soil sample and a few seeds. And Eli agrees. Soil has…important things in it. Myco-bacterio-fungispores?”
“Hunh. His crewmates lives lie in the balance.”
“Eli is propped on the park bench just outside medical. Liam went to bed. Leaving Zelda in charge. And Eli. Who wants the seeds bad. And the soil sample.”
“And if any of them were critical, Liam would be awake. And Corky will listen to them instead of us. Damn.” Ben opened his fuel spreadsheet on his desk, and worried a thumbnail with his teeth. “Open three gateways, to Earth, back to Mars, then Mahina. It’s tight. Better a one-way trip to Earth, then out to Mahina.”
“No,” Remi stated categorically. “I did not make an airlock, a CO2 scrubber, computer power sources, a –”
Ben cut off the flow of objections with a raised hand and a crooked grin. “You’re the same as the geek squad.” Hugo and Teke and Rover would react the same way.
“I am not. Twelve thousand lives on Mars. The job we chose to do! And you build that equipment with me!”
Ben closed the spreadsheet. No, they couldn’t install all that on Mars and retrieve their research data in the next nine hours, let alone complete their diplomacy. “We’ll double-jump. Go in, grab Thrive One, come straight back before the gate collapses. And finish our work here.”
“The locals tell Luna all about it.”
“I’ll call Groot. You make Porter busy.”
“And leave Darren asleep,” the Sag agreed. “To disobey Sass’s direct order. Merde.”
Ben rose and headed out of the office. Before he could escape, Remi asked, “Is there really no chance to collect Sass? She’s annoying. But we care for her. And Clay and Enka.”
“I don’t see it. But keep a happy thought.” He rapped the door on his way out.
Darren stood at the engineering podium, head inches from Porter’s as they waited. His precious package ran late, the living-giving soil and crop seeds that could produce in Earth’s cruel new atmosphere. The Russians promised to have it there by 08:00, and it was nearly 09:00.
Local time seemed completely divorced from reality. Darren woke naturally, finished sleeping, half a shift ago. Yet Baikonur’s clock decreed dawn at 08:30. Until the appointed delivery hour, the few able-bodied hustled to prep for takeoff. Ben in Mars orbit took his own turn sleeping, while his mate Judge offered Darren a checklist. Getting everyone into suits was typical for planetary takeoff, and sealing pressure doors. But officers normally handled the details.
The trees in the hold stood shrouded in bubble wrap. Corky and Liam had rendered the med bay spotless. Its emergency airlock was retrieved from stores and stood by the trees, out of the way but ready to install if needed. Hopefully never, as that contingency only came into play for a second casualty, not the first. And they only had five able-bodied crew remaining. Sealed away, Liam held vigil alone in med bay. His creased face gray with fatigue, the doctor was thirty years younger than Darren, but today looked forty years his senior.
The injured were relocated to a crew cabin. Kaol and Three-Eight couldn’t be pressure-suited, so they needed life-support balloon bags, firmly belted to their bunks. Zelda kept them company, in a normal pressure easing freedom of motion. Eli eschewed the balloon treatment. Pulling on the bottom half of his suit was agony, but he left the top dangling around his waist, and sat propped on pillows. At this point he compared notes with his peers on Earth, as though he had all the time in the world.
Darren trusted Eli to pull that off. Senior faculty at Mahina University, the man could listen for hours to tunnel-visioned researchers declaim on how their specialty, microscopic in scope, glacial in progress, was the key to everything. And he could smile coolly while he did it, and leave the student or professor emeritus feeling that he’d truly been heard and appreciated. The engineer appreciated the social skills required. He’d never had the patience himself.
“Coming.” Porter stabbed at the display with his finger. Another armored bus approached the Stonehenge of rocket ships ringing them. Darren saw them, but let the comment slide. A lot hung on Porter in the next few hours. He resolved not to say a word the young scientist might construe as criticism.
The low-slung rolling armadillo passed into their inner circle. Darren lifted the ship up, at dead slow, to give the bus an extra 75 meters clearance. Not that the delivery required it to stay out of his ESD shields. But if they happened to be carrying, say, a bomb, he preferred a little more room.
Baikonur Control squawked to inquire what he thought he was doing, and ordered him not to alter his altitude. He smiled warmly into the camera feed. The top half of his suit, too, hung from his waist so he could pretend this was another lazy morning.
“Just giving them a little margin for comfort, Control. We’ll descend the moment they’re back out of the sentry circle. Thrive out.”
He ignored the traffic controller’s continued squawks that he’d given an order. Because the armored shuttle hadn’t halted. It rolled onward to halt directly beneath Thrive. The pair watched through the belly cameras as a quartet exited the bus. All wore the same black armor their attackers wore yesterday. Three of them took a knee and aimed rifles upward.
But the fourth bore a box half the size of his torso. He carried it a few steps forward, and gingerly set it down. First he, then the other three, withdrew into the rolling fort, and it rumbled away.
Porter made a move toward the trap lock, but Darren stayed him with a touch. “Watch what they’re doing for me.” He split his side of the screen for an extreme closeup of the delivery crate, in stereo 3D from two cameras. This proved more ornate than he expected, with glowing readout panels and assorted vents and protuberances. He scanned it with what little radiation he dared, since these were living samples. It certainly bore life signs among its packaging. Unless the box itself, made of an unfamiliar plastic, was explosive, it didn’t appear to be a bomb. More than that, he couldn’t tell.
“Eli, take a look at this.” He sent a picture to Eli’s comm. Porter had been looking all along, dividing his attention. “What we expected?”
Eli broke from his flattery and bullshit marathon only long enough to tell Porter, “Sealed as we asked. Unpack and reseal it anyway.” He closed the channel.
“I knew that,” Porter griped. “They stopped outside the rockets.”
“Last chance,” Darren said softly. “You don’t have to retrieve it and bring out our gifts.”
“Just get me down there.” Porter unclamped his helmet from his shoulder rack and sealed it to his suit. Today he’d use the trapdoor as its architect intended. He irised open the inner door, picked up his return gift, nested in its sealable oversized box, and shoehorned himself into the awkward lock.
Darren missed him sealing the door over his head, because he was lowering Thrive beside the waiting gift below. Ten meters up, he paused and abruptly reconfigured the shields to ground, an evolution that didn’t include an instant of vulnerability. Though their delivery team seemed to be playing nice.
No one from the Russian side happened to mention this morning that they’d lost track of Sass. This fact soothed his conscience. We’re all lying today.
Except for one earnest young agronomist, intent on executing the most meaningful exchange of knowledge of their mission.
Darren blew out. He so didn’t want to risk this. But he couldn’t fault the young man for guts and idealism.
Light as a dust mote, he brought Thrive down to hover just above the pavement. Full stop. “Porter, you are a go. Careful.”
43
Of the original ten extrasolar colonies, none got more than 50 years before being inundated with untrained settlers.
Darren watched on the cameras as the agro
nomist floated down on his gravity generator light as a feather. He came to rest on bended knees, damping the trampoline recoil of the webbing. He quickly scuttled out the short and wide cross-corridor, away from the shuttle bus. He unsnapped the flap door, hesitated, then hopped down the rest of the way, only a few steps from his prize. He set his own box down. He lifted out his own offering of life, and set it aside. Then he turned the Earthling box to study it.
“Darren, there’s a lot of interesting tech on this box. Couldn’t I just bring it in whole?”
“Follow the plan. We have other things to do today.”
“That’s a shame.” But Porter found the latch and opened the box, at arm’s length as though he half-expected it to blow up in his face. And he lifted out its contents to tuck tenderly into their own cheap plastic pressure box, devoid of nifty gear. But trusted. The Earthling science team did him proud, with dozens of soil samples and even more envelopes of field-grade crop seed.
He hesitated, and traced a finger along the seals and widgets of the original box.
“Are we done yet?” Darren prompted softly.
“Yeah.” Porter dropped his hand and turned to seal his cheap printed pressure box, and took to his feet. He clambered back onto the webbing, taking two tries to hop in. Darren had to remind him to return and snap the flap closed. Then he centered himself between the containers, and sprang upward at the same leisurely fractional g. He grabbed hold on his first jump this time, and clambered inside the trapdoor. Darren waited while he cycled the lock and irised himself into the hold. He tucked the precious container out of the way under the stairs.
“Your station awaits, acting engineer,” he prompted. “You done good, Porter.”
“Acting engineer is scary. Soil samples are the reward.” The agronomist racked his helmet out of the way and claimed Darren’s podium stool, strapping his legs in.