Stellaris: People of the Stars

by Robert E. Hampson

“I think so,” she answered. “I’ve run the tests several times on different samples of the native Thorbian vegetation. I reset the machines and had the drones use new reagents and everything. It all comes back with six peaks.”

  This was huge, if we were right. Identifying life forms on another planet that used foundational blocks similar to our own would be the scientific discovery of a lifetime.

  “Run it again, Tara. Sanitize and sterilize everything. We must be certain. Grab new vegetation samples and see if the light traps outside the glass caught any small animals that we can test. Let me know if you find anything else unusual.” I wasn’t much of a morning person, but I was truly awake now. I turned and headed for my office.

  The Virginia Dare—the Starpherra Pharmaceutical Corp. ship that brought us to our new home—had been orbiting Thorbia for the past six local months, running analyses to verify the long-range data that had classified it as Earthlike. Our new home was flush with potentially exciting and profitable discoveries. It was like catnip to a scientist and irresistible to the colony’s financial backers. It didn’t hurt that Thorbia was breathtaking in its splendor with a vast unspoiled alien wilderness.

  My lab was part of the advance survey party which made planetfall while the ship remained in orbit. Captain Eugenia Richardson, skipper of the Ginny D and interim commander of the expedition, joined us on the surface to personally oversee site preparations. While on the ground, our mission was to determine the habitability of Thorbia before the bulk of the colonists were roused from stasis. If everything came back positive, then the ship would begin dropping cargo modules. Each would make a one-way, controlled entry into the atmosphere and land at the site of the new colony. After that, there was no turning back.

  I entered my tiny office and opened my email. There were the usual queries about projects and requests for everyone to wait patiently when requesting materials from Inventory. Thanks to Tara’s news, I would soon need to requisition live lab animals for some of my experiments. Rats and rabbits to start; eventually pigs and then monkeys for full biocompatibility tests.

  Weird DNA notwithstanding, I didn’t want anyone to sicken and die from an unknown alien disease; we were still studying how terrestrial microorganisms interacted with alien biological material. We’d instituted full quarantine protocol: We used autonomous remotes for everything we could and no one went outside The Glass unless they were in Class B protective gear or higher. Even with all these precautions, I feared it would only be a matter of time before someone was exposed.

  A few hours later, an excited Tara poked her head into my office. “Molly, there were some small flying things caught in the light trap that I could use, so I reran everything as you suggested. Those extra bases are real. This will get their attention at the next Captain’s Lunch.”

  “Great work—I knew you were the right person for this stage of the expedition. Get some of the techs analyzing the amino acids and subsequent protein structures. We need to know if or how these differences are going to affect Terran compatibility with Thorbia,” I instructed.

  I pulled up the data on my screen and studied the peaks and valleys. Such small things to have such large implications for our future.

  * * *

  Later that evening I heard a familiar pattern to the knock on the door to my private quarters. Sliding open the door, a towering man engulfed me in a warm bear hug before kissing the top of my head. I felt myself melt into his embrace before releasing him and beaming up at his face.

  “I missed that smile. Have a good day in the lab, my love?” Alan Jukka and I had begun dating before the ship departed from Earth and I was thrilled when he decided to come to Thorbia with me. His intense green eyes initially attracted me, but I fell in love with his heart and sense of humor.

  “I love being on an alien world. There’s so much cool stuff to discover,” I gushed, dragging him further into my quarters. Even as a security lead, Alan only had a bed in the barracks, so whenever possible he came to my quarters for some much-needed privacy and relaxation.

  “What new thing did you discover today?” he asked, smiling.

  “Thorbian life has extra genetic bases,” I burbled excitedly. “This was something they only theorized about on Earth, and here we’ve found it!”

  “Extra genetic bases.” Alan didn’t always understand the details of what I did, but he loved my enthusiasm for it.

  “Okay, so you know how on Earth we have four genetic bases that make up our DNA? A, T, C, and G?” I asked.

  “Uh, sure,” he cautiously answered.

  “Right, so Thorbia has A, T, C, and G, but it also has two completely new bases that for now I’m just calling X and Y.”

  “Is that good? Or bad?”

  “Beats me. I have my people working on what this means for amino acid coding and what effect this will have on the proteins formed, how they fold, and everything that comes from that.” We migrated to my bed and I was now in my favorite spot, nestled into his arms.

  “Amino whatsis? Do you fold proteins like you fold laundry?” he joked.

  “Amino acids. On Earth, three DNA bases in a row like AAA, ATG, CCG, and so on signal for one of about twenty amino acids. A hundred or so of those, and you have a gene—basically a blueprint for what amino acids are required to be linked together in a chain to make a protein. Once the chain is complete, the protein starts to fold into a complex 3-D shape that our body will use. These things are tightly controlled. The wrong-shaped protein can have lethal effects.”

  “I think I get it. So how will these extra bases you found change things?” Alan asked.

  “I don’t know. No one does. I have everyone I can spare in the lab trying to figure it out. Tara was going to stay late to keep working on it, but I told her to take a break and go spend some quality time with her husband. Enough about me, though. How was your day?”

  “I don’t mind, babe. I love your excitement about this.” I felt his light chuckle as it rumbled through his body. “Work was okay, standard patrols to make sure protocols were followed, stepping in to deescalate arguments between people when Inventory tells them they have to wait their turn. For a bunch of smart people, the concept of mission priority seems to be completely beyond their comprehension. There’s this one dude from the Physics section who has a talent for being an ass. Today, he made one of the desk techs cry.”

  “That sounds like something one of Mark’s people would do. I’m sorry you have to deal with grown adults acting like petulant children.” I turned to kiss Alan. If his day sucked, I could at least make his night a little better.

  * * *

  The next few weeks were a blur of countless tests and frantically reprogramming everything to account for the new bases. Part of my lab worked on teasing apart protein structures and blueprints from what was collected outside The Glass, while others started deciphering the amino acid codes that built the proteins.

  Like the landscape of Thorbia itself, what emerged was tantalizingly familiar yet subtly different. Of the twenty-five amino acids we found locally, twenty were identical to the standard Terran ones, but five were unique to Thorbia. Fifteen of the common amino acids showed up in roughly the same proportions on both worlds. It appeared that the unique Thorbian ones had partially taken over those roles. This difference in amino acids created Thorbian proteins that would perform the same functions as proteins on Earth, but they did so using a slightly different structure.

  The time was rapidly approaching when I would need to move from computer modeling to live testing. I pulled up my emails to check on my requisition and was pleasantly surprised to find that it would be ready a few days early.

  “Tara, let’s get the quarantine cages ready for occupation. The rats and rabbits will be ready for pickup in two days.”

  Tara nodded. “Got it, Dr. Morgan. I’ll get someone to run diagnostics on the manipulator arms, too.”

  “Thanks, Tara.” My curiosity and excitement burned inside me. What would Thorbia hold
in store for humanity?

  * * *

  The meeting-room lights were dimmed for this portion of the Captain’s Lunch so everyone could see the results of my lab’s trials.

  I controlled the customary exuberance in my voice as I narrated. “As you can see, ingestion of the native vegetation causes massive anaphylaxis in Terran rabbits.” On the screen, the albino rabbit fell over on its side, heaving as its airways closed, paws twitching in futile panic. I had muted the videos—the images were enough. Adding audio would have been too much for those on the ship unused to the horrible cries of a dying rabbit.

  I continued narrating over the horrified silence. “This same course of ingestion followed by rapid, violent allergic reaction occurred whenever a Terran animal consumed Thorbian flora or fauna. Results were immediately fatal and even having antihistamines ready to administer was no guarantor of recovery or survival.”

  I brought up a slide showing two slightly different globular structures. “This Thorbian protein and the corresponding Terran protein both perform the same function in their respective organisms. Note the slightly different surface conformation; as far as we can determine, our bodies should be able to digest the Thorbian version with minimal issues. The problem seems to be our Terran immune systems treating every Thorbian protein as a major allergen. Since eating Thorbian vegetation floods a body with Thorbian proteins, our Terran immune systems will go into rapid onset anaphylaxis with every meal.” In the dimness, I could see eyes that had been riveted on the screen suddenly focused on me, hoping for a solution.

  “To be thorough, we placed containers of Terran grass beyond The Glass for a period of two weeks.” I brought up a slide of five pots of grass with a robot carefully tending them. “The grass was harvested and brought back inside and randomly split into two treatments. Treatment A was washed repeatedly, then fed to lab rabbits. They exhibited no adverse side effects. Treatment B was not washed and fed directly to the rabbits. They showed a less severe allergic reaction, suggesting that Thorbian pollen…” I paused and flipped to a slide showing the pollen grains in question, “…caused the reaction.

  “We attempted immunotherapy using the most common species of Thorbian grass in the area. Some lab animals could safely eat it if we washed all dirt and pollen from it before feeding. If we attempted to feed any of them unwashed grass, or another species of plant, we triggered another attack of anaphylaxis. At this time, we consider it too dangerous to attempt similar ingestion experiments on humans, though a skin test was performed on a volunteer from our lab under the medical oversight of Dr. Arun Ramakrishnan.” I flicked a rumpled Arun a quick glance.

  The next image showed a human arm from hand to mid-bicep, swollen and mottled red and white with fingers plumped up like sausages. “Typically, a scratch test takes about twenty minutes for allergic symptoms to occur. The above occurred in two minutes. Antihistamines were administered, but it still took over twenty-four hours for the symptoms to completely disappear.”

  I exited my presentation and used my tablet to raise the light levels in the room. “Any questions?”

  Captain Eugenia Richardson let the cacophony go on for a bit, then slammed her palm on the table. “Enough!” The room fell instantly silent, as if it were a lab of rowdy undergraduates being scolded by their professor. “Better.” She turned her attention to me. “Thank you for presenting your findings today, Dr. Morgan. This presents a significant challenge, one that I’ve not heard of in any other colonization effort. What safety equipment would a person require to go outside The Glass?”

  “A minimum of a Biosafety Level Four suit. Full body enclosure, air tanks, everything, with a full decontamination upon returning inside.”

  From my left, a nasally tenor voice broke in. “Are you sure it was anaphylaxis? Maybe you just fed them something poisonous and killed your little bunnies that way.”

  The voice belonged to Dr. Mark Dan, one of the physicists. Lovely. He was an ass both as a person and colleague, constantly doubting the professional knowledge of others.

  “Dr. Dan.” I turned to address him, striving to keep the venom out of my voice. “Computer modeling based on the underlying structure did not indicate that any of the plants used in the experiments produced toxins. The plants in question were observed to be consumed by multiple species of Thorbian herbivores without incident. To the best of our knowledge, the plants used in this experiment were not producing any toxins that would interfere or amplify the allergic response recorded.” I gave him a small, tight smile that didn’t reach my eyes.

  “If you are truly concerned about the rigor with which I conduct my experiments, I invite you to observe the next postmortem of an experimental animal so that you may satisfy for yourself that the technique and diagnostics were performed to accepted professional standards.” He would never do it, but the idea of Dr. Dan getting his hands dirty with what he had loudly proclaimed to be a “soft” science was entertaining.

  “Dr. Morgan.” It was the captain, and there was a slight edge to her voice. “Thank you for your efforts and expertise. This is a serious problem, and one for which we must find a solution. We still have twenty-five hundred colonists in stasis aboard the Virginia Dare and we cannot keep them up there indefinitely.”

  “It would seem that they are safer than we,” interjected Dr. Dan darkly.

  Dr. Ramakrishnan spoke up. “Mortality rates, even in these conditions, wouldn’t lead to the extermination of the colony, Dr. Dan. We will, however, have to adjust our expected population growth rates drastically downwards.”

  Dr. Dan would not be quelled. “If this planet is so dangerous, why can’t we just leave? Put everyone back into stasis, scrub the expedition, and move on. We needn’t confine ourselves to this world.”

  “That is not an acceptable answer, Doctor,” the captain said, her voice cold. “We have all spent two years in stasis to get here, and the rest of the colonists remain that way. We are rapidly approaching the point where the risks of long-term stasis begin to rise dramatically. The next potential site is nine months away. Even if there are no issues with that biosphere, the likelihood of stasis-induced brain damage, immune system disorders, and death exceed acceptable levels. We could lose twenty percent of the colonists just trying to get there and still fail.”

  She looked around the room, as if daring anyone to challenge her logic. “The main colony fleet will be here in three standard years. That’s twenty thousand colonists who have given up everything to reach a new home. We cannot, and will not, abandon them to their fate. Lives depend on us finding solutions. This is why you were all selected for the advance team and why you are being paid so well. We don’t have time for panic or despair. I need you all to put your shoulders to the wheel and bring me solutions.

  “You have sixty local days. Let’s get to work.” Without another word, she rose and left the conference room.

  A few other researchers came to me with questions, but I felt like a deflated balloon. The entire colonization effort was in jeopardy. I didn’t know how to overcome this, or if it would even be possible.

  Later that night, Alan and I lounged on the floor of my quarters eating a meal he brought from the cafeteria. I didn’t feel like having my mealtime interrupted by more questions, so we retreated to my room to eat.

  “So, we’re allergic to an entire planet?” Alan asked.

  “We are. Even if we don’t eat anything, the pollen and other biological matter in the air will cause us to react and die. Unless we figure out a solution, our only options are to remain confined to artificial habitats or scrub the whole expedition. I don’t think staying inside The Glass is viable, either, not in the long run. We’ll be packed in here like cattle…or like a prison. Socially, the colony would be miserable.”

  “Tell you what, babe, I found an awesomely cheesy sci-fi flick in one of the entertainment files. Let’s relax tonight—you be can be busy starting tomorrow.”

  I nodded, relieved to think about something else fo
r a while.

  * * *

  The next morning, Dr. Ramakrishnan waited for me at my lab. He said, “You certainly got your point across yesterday. I noticed more than a few people going green during parts of it.”

  “Hey, you said ‘make sure everyone in the audience understood the scope of the issue we were facing on Thorbia,’” I replied.

  “Based on the reaction to Dr. Dan’s proposal, you may have succeeded too well. Before there was anticipation, now there is fear. We must find a way to turn that into hope.”

  “I’m a bit short on any long-term solutions—much less hope—this morning.” I was truly at a loss for options.

  Arun smiled. “Today we shall let our ideas rattle around in each other’s brains and maybe we will find a solution that way.”

  As we walked through the lab toward my office, I gestured for Tara to join us. Soon we were all settled, or slouched in Arun’s case, while I scribbled notes on the smartboard. With the help of caffeine and camaraderie the ideas began to flow.

  Tara, who up until now had been silent, suddenly perked up and asked, “If the problem is the body’s immune response, then why can’t we genetically alter it to ignore the alien proteins?”

  For the first time ever, I saw Arun sit up straight in his chair. He said, “We’d have to target the genes of the major histocompatibility complex classes of molecules so that they treat the Thorbian proteins like Terrestrial proteins and not trigger anaphylaxis.”

  “Major histocompatibility complex classes? That makes sense, those are the molecules responsible for triggering immune responses.” I wracked my memory. “Aren’t those started in the thymus?”

  “Yes, you will be altering the expression of genes in a critical part of the immune response. Worse, we’ll leave ourselves vulnerable to whatever Thorbian diseases exist,” Arun warned.

  Finally, Tara spoke. “All of us in this office know that there are always trade-offs in a biological setting. Frankly, the possibility of death out there is better than the certainty of death stuck in here.”