Stellaris: People of the Stars

by Robert E. Hampson

  “Understood,” Captain Johnson said. “Next question: You mentioned a proposed change in our mission timeline. Could you elaborate on that?”

  “Of course, sir,” Mo said. This was the part she’d been dreading. Captain Johnson had been chosen to lead the scout-colony team during the last five years of their journey, plus the landfall and initial setup phases of the mission. Until the colony held its first planet-side elections, he was responsible for their success or failure. Naturally he’d want to know why she was proposing to change things around.

  “Our current timeline calls for the first generation to be born planet-side approximately ten Earth years—or eight local years—after landfall. The plan is to give the team time to meet scouting objectives and ensure that the colony is securely established before bringing new humans into the mix.”

  “Two objectives which are still necessary to meet, don’t you think, Dr. Fitzberger?” the captain asked, looking at her with his eyebrows raised behind his rimless spectacles. He folded his arms and waited for her reply. Not a good sign, as far as Mo was concerned.

  “Yes sir,” she said. “No question. But the colony’s ultimate objective is to exist, right? I mean, if you’ll forgive the misquote, we’re under orders to ‘multiply and replenish’ as well. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? The colony will fail if we aren’t diligent in seeing to that first biological duty.”

  “You propose that we prioritize breeding over the other necessary tasks involved in creating a livable habitat for ourselves?”

  “Not at all, sir,” Mo said quickly. She liked and respected Captain Johnson, but a spark of irritation flared inside her, steadying her nerves. “But let’s look at the data in front of us. All indications are that my implant failed in part because of the fertility-extending cocktail I’ve been taking. That we’ve all been taking. Chances are that as we go on, other implants will fail as well. My baby won’t be the last happy accident we’re going to see. Especially since the male implants are known to have a failure rate of over twenty percent. If our fertility extensions have weakened the female implants, too…

  “I’m not arguing that we don’t need to proceed with caution. We will still need to engage in scouting and establishment procedures. But, I would argue that instead of holding the majority of our crew members in stasis while these procedures are carried out, we can begin awakening them on an accelerated timetable. We can double our workforce, and the women who are so inclined can have their implants deactivated and begin the work of creating the first generation immediately.”

  “And how do you propose to feed double the workforce, plus pregnant mothers?”

  Mo smiled.

  “Captain, I’m a genetic engineer. You give me a food source and a few months, and I’ll have a caloric surplus of food for you in short order.”

  “And this is all so that your child can have peers to interact with? Don’t you think that’s spectacularly selfish?” Mo turned to look at the voice of the woman who spoke, and didn’t recognize her. She sat in the back of the room, arms and legs crossed, her face set in lines of disapproval and her eyes radiating scorn.

  Mo drew in a deep breath and looked around the room at the other faces watching her. She met Doc’s eyes, and he gave her a little smile and a nod. So, she squared her shoulders, and turned back to address the man who commanded the ship.

  Okay, Mo, she told herself. Time to sell it.

  “Captain, I just found out that I’m to be a mother rather sooner than expected. Apparently, it’s a survival instinct of our species that mothers will do anything to assure the welfare of their children. So yes, I do believe that my baby needs other children to interact with, and yes, that was the reason I started coming up with this plan…but the truth is, if you look at it…it’s good for the colony, too. Starting the next generation early, especially if we manipulate their genomes for maximum adaptability, will only ensure a stronger, deeper foothold on Bonfils. That, sir, is the very definition of a win-win situation.”

  “Captain.”

  Another woman in the back of the room stood up, breaking Mo’s concentration. She turned to look at this new voice—one she recognized, this time—as her knees began once more to tremble.

  “I’d volunteer to be one of the early mothers,” the woman said. “My secondary specialty is in early childhood development, and so I could help with setting up appropriate curricula as soon as we have structures built on the surface.”

  “But what of your primary specialty, Rita?” the captain asked with a frown.

  Rita grinned. “Food services. I’m a chef, Captain. So, when Dr. Fitzberger engineers her superfood, I’ll figure out twenty different ways to serve it to increase palatability.”

  “While raising the colony’s first generation of children?”

  “To a degree, yes,” Rita said.

  “Captain.” That was Doc, who stepped away from the wall. “May I add something?”

  “Medic Joel. By all means,” the captain said, waving a hand.

  “Dr. Fitzberger’s plan is solid, especially if we accelerate the revival timetable for our team members currently in stasis, matching it against our available and increasing food supplies. If they’re all awake shortly after landfall, then we have a labor force ready to go with more than enough hands to take shifts…thus allowing those who want to participate in the doctor’s breeding program to do so.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a ‘breeding program,’” Mo said, nerves bubbling out of her in a laugh that rippled through the crowd, too. “I’m not pairing individuals up or anything like that. I’d just advocate that those who feel inclined to start early be allowed to do so…and I’ll create the genetic enhancements that will ease adaptation for this first generation.”

  “What adaptations?” the captain asked.

  “I’ve listed a few of them on the slide here,” Mo said, as she flicked her wrist and a display screen came to life behind her head. “Slight changes to the red blood cells to compensate for Bonfils’s lower oh-two saturation; more melanocytes to deal with the stronger UV radiation we’ve seen; increased size and sensitivity of gravitoreceptors to enhance adaptability to microgravity; increased bone density to compensate for slightly higher gravity…things like that. We’ll know more about our specific requirements as we continue to get more and better data from the advanced probes.”

  The captain paused and looked around the room. Mo took a moment to do the same, and what she saw warmed her. People were nodding and smiling; a few couples were talking animatedly in close whispers. Most seemed in favor of her idea. She felt herself smile, and something eased in her chest.

  “Well,” the captain said. “I will take this under advisement. Let’s recess this meeting for now. I’ll give you all my decision tomorrow.”

  Though they weren’t a military ship, per se, some customs and courtesies had wormed their way into the scout colony’s culture. The rest of the room came to their feet as Captain Johnson turned and left the conference room. The moment the hatch closed behind him, the room broke out into the animated babble of too many conversations at once.

  “Good job,” Doc said as he pushed through the crowd to approach Mo. “I think you’ve convinced him. Especially the bit about your adaptations. That was always going to be the danger with having babies out here.”

  “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before,” Mo said.

  “Who says we didn’t? You said it yourself…we didn’t really have the real-time info we need. Now we do. Or we will, as soon as we start intercepting the data packets from the recon drones that were launched well before we took off.”

  “Speaking of which, I heard we’re expecting to intercept the first burst of information in a day or two,” Mo said. “We’ll have that info and more as we get closer and perform more intercepts.”

  “Well, I suppose you’d better get ready to get to work, then!”

  * * *

  The information contained in the first recon pro
be data burst was encouraging. Bonfils showed a marked resemblance to Earth in the chemical composition of its air and soil, so no breathing masks would be needed after all. The plant life collected by the probe’s bots showed higher traces of boron than Terran plants, as well as a few other interesting minerals.

  Perhaps the most interesting thing wasn’t totally news at all. The original remote surveys of Bonfils had noted some interesting coloration patterns on both flora and fauna that weren’t visible to the normal human eye. However, they were clearly visible in the near-IR spectrum. The probe’s data confirmed this trend and indicated that the near-IR coloration patterns were even more widespread than originally suspected.

  “You should make her see in the dark,” Doc said at one point, about five days after the probe’s information returned.

  “What do you mean?” Mo asked.

  “I mean, you should give your baby the ability to see in the near-IR spectrum at night. Modify her rod cells. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Sure, but why? I mean, we’ve talked about doing it for military applications, but adult gene therapies don’t have as high a success rate. If you’re going to modify DNA, it’s best to do it while the patient is young…and not a lot of infants are showing interest in becoming high-speed tactical operator types.”

  “Because of this coloration trend,” Doc said. He swiveled his display and magnified it so that Mo could clearly see the paragraph discussing the prevalence of near-IR fluorescent pigments on the surface. “It looks like most of the native life has it. That means it probably serves as camouflage or as a warning function. In either case, don’t you think she’d find it useful to see?”

  “Hmmm…you know, that’s not a terrible idea,” Mo said. “Problem is, if I do that, she’ll never be able to turn her ‘night vision’ off.”

  “Well, sure she will. Near-IR is just light like the rest of it, right? She’ll just need a tighter dark room if she wants total darkness.”

  “Have you got any idea how hard that will be to manage?”

  “No,” Doc said, “but I do know how easy it is to adapt to sleeping in the middle of the day. Had to do it all the time in the Army. It’s your call, obviously, but it seems to me that this is a perfect example of using a mechanical adaptation—NVGs—when a genetic one would be better.”

  Mo pursed her lips and considered the question.

  “Let me run some initial calculations and see just how we’d create the protocol,” she said, “and we’ll go from there.”

  In the end, she included the retinal modification as well. Because Doc was right. That sort of adaptation was exactly what she had in mind. Homo sapiens wasn’t native to Bonfils. Homo stellaris would be.

  * * *

  As the ship drew closer to their new home, Mo found herself suddenly very popular among the other female members of the shift. One of the selection requirements for the scout-colony personnel had been a stated willingness to contribute to the next generation in the form of children. Most of the women had at least a little bit of curiosity about the process, and so they sought Mo out and questioned her closely as her body grew rounder and rounder.

  “I swear,” Mo joked to Rita as she lowered herself into a seat in the galley. “If I’m not careful, Captain Johnson’s going to launch probes at me.”

  Rita laughed and plunked a cutting board with a handful of hydroponically grown zucchini down on the small prep counter in front of Mo. Chef Rita’s rules were clear: You sit in her galley, you helped prep meals. Mo didn’t mind. It gave her something to do with the restlessness that never seemed to go away.

  “At least you’re not losing your lunch on the hour anymore,” Rita said. “I was starting to feel insulted.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me,” Mo replied, picking up the knife. “Thinking about it still isn’t a good idea.”

  “Fair enough. How close now?”

  “Maybe another thirty days?”

  “Are you ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” Mo said. “I just want to be able to move without feeling like I have a bigger turn radius than this ship.”

  “I didn’t think this ship had much of a turn radius,” Rita said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Is Pretty Boy excited?” the Rita asked. “I heard some of the crew got him good and wasted at the ship’s baby shower we threw for you guys.”

  “I think he is,” Mo said. “I don’t think we’re going to be compatible for a long-term relationship, but he seems to be pretty committed to co-parenting. He’s been in on all of the gene therapy decisions we’ve made.”

  “And what have those been, if you don’t mind me asking?” Rita looked up from where she was tying some kind of vat-grown roast together, interest sharp in her eyes.

  “Not at all,” Mo replied as she lined up the vegetables and began cutting. “I’m giving her near-IR night vision, in order to help her see the local flora and fauna cues that the probes found. I’ve made the gravitoreceptors in her inner ear larger, so that she’ll be more sensitive to changes in gravity, and better able to orient herself in micrograv. I’ve changed her digestion slightly, so that she’ll be better able to metabolize the boron-heavy food sources available. That’s most of it, honestly…oh! And I went ahead and shifted her fertility to later in her life. I always thought it ridiculous that we women are capable of bearing children when we’re still mentally and emotionally children ourselves. So she’ll experience menarche sometime between sixteen and eighteen, and remain fertile until menopause at sixty.”

  “Oh, that’s smart,” Rita said.

  “I hope so,” Mo said. “There were some very good evolutionary reasons for humans to be able to bear children young…but my hope is that we’re able to compensate for those reasons in other ways.”

  “Technology?”

  “Mostly.”

  “You’re saying it’s a gamble,” Rita said.

  “This whole thing is a gamble,” Mo pointed out.

  “True enough—these adaptations will also be applied to our babies? Those of us who will start bearing on the surface?”

  “Only if you want,” Mo said. “If not enough couples choose them for their children, they’ll be bred out of the genome. But if it turns out that they’re useful…well…then they’ll be naturally selected.”

  “It sounds cold when you say it like that.”

  “I know,” Mo said with a sigh. “But it’s true.”

  “Well, fair enough. Here, let me have that zucchini.”

  * * *

  At thirty-eight weeks, Mo’s blood pressure began to climb.

  “I don’t like this,” Doc said as he looked over the display of her vitals. “Your hypertension is trending upward. I think we might want to think about getting the kid out.”

  “You mean inducing?” Mo said with a grimace as she lay on the exam table in the ship’s sickbay. “I really don’t want to do that.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to have much choice,” Doc said. “Rita’s been watching your diet like a hawk, and still your BP numbers are up. Make the smart call, doctor.”

  “You’re right,” Mo said, sighing. “I just…damn. I hate Pitocin. It’s criminal that modern medicine still hasn’t found a better method of labor induction than to pump mothers full of that nasty stuff.”

  Doc bit his lip, looked at the display, and then over to Mo.

  “There’s another option,” he said softly, sounding tentative. Mo blinked and looked sharply at his face. “Tentative” wasn’t Doc’s usual style.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could do a laser C-section,” he said. “We were trained on it for emergencies, and I’ve been studying up…just in case.”

  Mo drew in a deep breath. She hadn’t considered the possibility of a C-section. Normally, a surgical procedure like that would be beyond a medic’s scope, except for emergencies. But the ship’s sickbay had automated anesthesia capabilities, to include spinal blocks, so she could supervise a
nd direct. She hadn’t done a C-section since she was a resident…but it was actually a pretty simple procedure, when it came right down to it.

  “Are you up for that?” she asked. “I don’t want to push you too far outside of your comfort zone, but it would eliminate a lot of variables in the birthing process.”

  “I am,” Doc said, “if you trust me, and if you’re willing to oversee it.”

  “Doc,” Mo said, “I trust you with my life, and my baby’s life. If that’s not clear by now, you’re the dumbest SOB I’ve ever met.”

  Doc let out a laugh, and just like that, his habitual confidence returned. Mo was glad to see it.

  “All right,” he said. “When do you want to do this?”

  “Now,” Mo said. Certainty settled over her mind as a sudden surge of energy rippled down her nerves. She pushed up to a seated position on the exam table. “Right now.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Why not? You said it yourself. My BP is only climbing. I’m at thirty-eight weeks, so she’s close to full term. There’s no real reason to delay. You go set up the anesthesia automation and I’ll get hold of Haskins. He wants to be here when his daughter is born.”

  “Wow, you are serious. Okay…okay,” Doc said, and stood up. He looked around wildly, and then sat back down at his display console while he collected himself.

  “Relax, Doc,” Mo said as she carefully stepped down from the exam table. “It’s going to be fine. Just set up the anesthesia. I’ll be right back.”

  Ten minutes later, Mo lay back on that same exam table as the anesthesia spread a cooling numbness from just below her breasts down to her feet.