Endless Voyage (v1.0), page 6
“No,” he said, “I haven’t changed my mind, Ramie.”
Her voice sounded a little bitter. She said “Well, I suppose there’s time for that too.”
He made his voice hard. “Don’t count on it.”
She tightened her hand briefly on his. wrist. She said “Gildoran, I swear I won’t be angry or…or make jealous scenes, but…is it Lori you want?”
He flared in real anger “That’s not worthy of you! Lori’s just a baby. What do you think I am?”
“As I remember, she made Class B a few weeks ago shiptime. I seem to remember you and poor Gilmarin being very indignant when someone spoke of our group as children, during that time. And you’ve spent all your time with her for the last year.”
Gildoran pointed out with restraint that he had been teaching Gillori to operate the Communications Desk during duty hours, and was not given to spending his recreation time with little children unless he was on Nursery duty. “You might as well be jealous of Gilmarina—I spend more time with her than I do with Lori, off duty.”
Gilramie sighed. She said ‘It isn’t jealousy, exactly, Doran. It’s just…” she made a helpless gesture, “oh, call it habit, I’m used to you, maybe I simply haven’t the… oh, the inner strength to take up with someone else. Maybe I’m just following the line of least resistence. If I knew, positively, that you cared for someone else maybe it would be easier.”
Gildoran felt intensely sorry for her, but even through his pity there was enough resentment to turn away without answering. Ramie sighed and said “Oh, all right, forget I said anything. Pure self-indulgence on my part. Let’s go along and have a look at the new planet.”
II
There were twelve in the small shuttle ship which always went down first; that was the minimum number to do the basic, preliminary work without leaving the ship short-handed. This was always the one real point of danger, the first penetration of a completely unknown planet. As they dropped through the thick cloud-cover, Gildoran felt his muscles tensing with a curious, cold, strangely bracing fear. It was the first time he’d drawn landing-party duty, but he’d heard plenty about what you could find on a really strange planet. When he was still in the Nursery, four members of a landing-party had gone into an innocent-looking, deserted swamp; within two minutes, all four had been swooped on, and literally chewed up by swift-flying carnivorous birds. There had not even been enough left of them to bury.
Tradition required the Year-Captain to lead every landing party. It was the only way to divide this dangerous duty with absolute fairness; the Year-Captains were chosen by lot, and everyone on shipboard over twenty-one was eligible, unless he or she had been Year-Captain within the past ten years. Gilhart was up front next to old Gildorric, who was navigating; the other members of the landing party had been chosen either because there was a need for the specialty they were filling this year—or because they were junior enough to be” expendable. Gildoran knew he still came into that category, and so did Gillori, who was wedged into the seat beside him, chattering from sheer nervousness. One of the Poohbears was among the crew to check the suitability of the climate for the children; if it was doubtful they would be kept inside the Gypsy Moth, if it was healthful, an outdoor camp would be set up immediately so that the children could get accustomed, again, to gravity and sunlight.
Lori said “What would happen if there was already an Explorer ship down there?”
Gilrae looked back at the girl and said “It’s been known to happen. About thirty years ago we teamed up with the Tinkerbelle, opening a big system with three habitable planets. But none of our signals were answered from space this time, so no Explorers. It’s all ours.” She frowned faintly, and Gilhart, looking over her shoulder at her instruments, said “What’s the matter, Rae? Something not looking quite right?”
She shook her head. “Nothing I can put a finger on. Maybe it looks too good, maybe I’m wondering why no one’s picked this one yet.”
“Law of averages,” said Gilhart with his winning grin. “We’ve got to have some luck. Don’t go psychic on us, darling. If you do feel psychic, save it for…let’s say…a more personal occasion.” He laid a hand on the nape of her neck, and the woman smiled up at him, still bent over her controls, reaching her free hand up to take his.
Gildoran looked away.
The hell of it is, you cant even have the satisfaction of not liking Gilhart. He’s such a damn nice fellow. You can even see what Rae sees in him. Everybody likes him.
It was a relief to hear Lori start chattering again. Lori asked “What happens if we run out of planets some day?”
“We’re in trouble,” Gildoran said lightly, then more seriously “But it’s not possible. That’s a big, big Universe out there, Gillori. Even if only one star in a thousand had planets, and only one planet in a thousand was habitable, we still could go on for a million million years without exhausting the Galaxy, and that’s just this one Galaxy.”
“It’s like the old story of the Marching Chinese.” Gil-hart said, “and don’t ask me what the Chinese were because I never knew, but there used to be an old story that you could never line ’em up and count them because there were so many billions that by the time you came to the end of the line a whole new generation was bom, grown up and having more children. Maybe they were some kind of rabbits. Anyway, by the time we came—theoretically—to the end of all the planets which exist now, more stars and planets would have evolved and cooled down and more spiral nebulae would have been thrown off and so forth. Of course, none of us would live that long—probably not even the oldest Floater still alive in the fleet—but theoretically, at least, the Explorers could go on for eternity.”
“Now who’s getting mystical?” Gilrae laughed. “Dor-ric, do you have the coordinates from meteorology? Where are we going to set down?”
“Off the equator,” the navigator replied, “Southern hemisphere, fairly near the seashore but far enough inland to avoid coastal rainfall belts. I don’t much like the wind patterns in the Northern hemisphere; too much danger of setting down in a hurricane belt, unless we could wait out a full season and observe. I can’t guarantee anything, but this area should have as good a climate as were likely to find.”
“Not too cold, I hope for the children’s sake,” the Poohbear said in her gentle voice.
“I’ll put in a special requisition,” Gilrae said.
Gradually the small landing craft dropped down toward the cloud cover. There was the unfamiliar sensation of weight growing as they came within the gravitational field and slackened speed, so that they were no longer an object in free orbit, but a vehicle with a described, not an orbital path above the planet. The brilliant sunlight dimmed and became vapory and translucent as they went into the thick clouds.
“With this much cloud cover we might get a greenhouse effect,” said the second-string botanist, Gilmerritt, “Once we get this planet opened up it might turn out to be a health resort.”
“Congratulations,” Gilhart said absently, “you have just won the long-distance conclusion-jump award. Planet not even landed on, and you’re building a health resort.”
“I’m not superstitious,” Gilmerritt said with a touch of defensiveness, “We’ve done enough preliminary checking from space to know it’s habitable, and that was an educated guess based on my experience in my own specialty.”
Gilhart swung around to look at her. His face was very grave. He said “There’s only so much checking we can do from space. Even if the last fifteen planets have been perfect—or the last hundred—never forget; there is no single planet in the Universe that’s like any other. Maybe ninety-nine in a hundred that look good enough to land on could be playgrounds, health resorts, what have you. But sooner or later you’re going to land on one that bites back.”
“You really are accentuating negative thinking, aren’t you, Captain?” Merritt said, a little startled.
He shook his head. “Always hope for the best,” he said, “but don’t expect it. Because that’s when Explorers get taken off guard. And, sometimes, when they get killed. Okay, everybody, end of lecture. There are twelve of us landing. I’d like twelve of us to go home again tonight, if you’re all agreeable, so pay attention…Dor-ric; ready to land?”
“Ready, Captain,” he confirmed.
“Cut in the atmospherics, and take us down.”
The atmospheric drives came in with a roar, and conversation became impossible in the landing craft cabin. Gildoran, yawning to ease the build-up of pressure inside his ears, felt the tension, briefly dispelled by the good-natured banter, build up again.
His planet.
He had discovered it. To some extent he would always be identified, in the minds of the crew of the Gypsy Moth, with this world. It was just one of those things. Not in the rules, of course. Legally it was the Captain’s responsibility, and the Science Officer’s, to decide whether or not it was a good world, one they could open and lock into the chain of the Transmitter. In the eyes of the galaxy, the success or failure of this world belonged not to any one man, but to the Explorers as a whole in general, and to the Gypsy Moth in particular.
Legally, and according to ship’s rules, Gildoran would get no credit if the planet turned out well, and no blame if it turned out badly.
But it was one of those things. In the minds of the Gypsy Moth’s crew, it was Gildoran’s world, and if it was a good world it would somehow add to his stature and his reputation. And if it turned out to be a catastrophe-well, legally they couldn’t fault him, they couldn’t penalize him, it was just bad luck, but they wouldn’t forget. Not in thirty years of shiptime, not in a hundred years, they wouldn’t forget.
He raised his head, blinking with the strain of the descent, and stared at the rapidly growing image of the green world below them.
His world.
The whine of the atmospherics grew to a scream; then diminished. Instead of plunging through atmosphere, they were floating quietly, in the landing craft; hovering above what seemed to be a flat mid featureless sea of green.
Gildorric asked “Do we bum off a space to set down, Captain?”
Gilhart shook his head. “Not right away. We will if we have to, but do a skim at a few hundred feet. Find an open space, if you can. Seems a shame to bum up any of that nice forest, and then we have to start controlling the fires right away. Not to mention the damage to any animal life. A burn-off should be a last resort. Not to mention that if we set down in the middle of a jungle, it’s hardly a good spot for a Transmitter.”
Rae chuckled. “I remember once when we had to set a 24-hour guard over our equipment for six weeks while we were building. Turn your back for half a second and the small tools and wire just weren’t there. Things like monkeys in the forest would snatch them up and we’d find them in the mud a few hours later—I think the little beasties used them for toys. It was maddening.”
Gildorric grinned and said “I think you were still in the Nursery, Rae, when we landed on a world where there were insects who grabbed our wire and chewed it up—and digested it, too. Did we ever have fun getting the first Transmitter up on that place!”
Lori asked “But you did get it set up? Do you always get it set up?”
Gilhart shook his head slowly. “No. Like I say, sometimes you hit a world that bites back, and then all you can do is run. If you’ve got anything left to run with”
“Don’t frighten the children,” Gildorric said genially, ‘. ’that doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime. Come here, Hart, and take a look through the viewer. How does this spot at the edge of the lake strike you? We’d have water supply for the camp, and it’s grassy edge—plenty of solid ground.”
Gilhart poised over the great flat table-like screen where a projection of the ground surface was visible. “You mean the spot in the lee of those cliffs?”
“More or less. Out on the grasslands, where there doesn’t seem to be too much underbrush,” Gildorric said. “Those dark masses are some land of plant, but not so big we can’t get through. We can test for bedrock, and if it’s solid enough, set up the Transmitter under the cliff somewhere.”
Gilhart nodded slowly. “I suppose so. And if not, we could camp here while we explore for a better site. All right, take us down to the surface. And try not to landaus in a swamp.”
The landing craft slowly descended; came to rest with a faint jolt Gilhart and a couple of the older crew members were joking with Gildorric about the landing—“You’ve been in space too long, you’ve lost your down-world touch, banging us down like thatl” Gildoran slowly unfastened his seat straps.
He was in a tearing impatience to get out, actually to stand on the surface of the new world, but there was still some time to wait, while Gilmerritt checked test samples and sensors.
“The atmosphere looked fine from a few hundred feet up. But we want to be very sure what’s at the surface.” A few minutes later she nodded. “Plenty of oxygen, and, as you’d expect with all those clouds and all that green stuff, a lot of water vapor in the air. But the temperature is all right, and nothing troublesome in the atmosphere, just the usual inert gasses. Little high in ozone, but not enough to give trouble.”
Gildorric glanced at Gilhart, and the Captain nodded.
“Formal command,” he said. “Unlock doors. Establish landing.”
Raban stood up and moved toward the door. Gildoran felt like crowding behind him. Gilrae met Gildoran’s eyes and smiled. She said “It’s always a thrill. No matter how often you do it. This is it, Gildoran. It’s yours. Enjoy it.”
He wanted to say, Oh Rae, I love you, and kiss her, but he didn’t; he simply grinned at her, feeling foolish. She reached out and touched his shoulder affectionately.
She thinks I’m a child.
“It’s Gildoran’s world. Let him touch down first.”
III
The whine of the doors opening, a rush of cool sharply-scented air; a swift, overpowering impression of greenness. Greenness everywhere; even the sky, under its thick layer of cloud, seemed to reflect pale green light below. Gildoran moved slowly down the steps and took the first hard impression of weight and a curious, yielding texture beneath his feet. It felt strange after years of low weight and super-smooth metalled and plastic floors underfoot Now he stood on spongy green moss or grass, green in a belt of thick lush green of every hue. A green world, a greenish sky, the glimmer of green water in the distance somewhere.
He heard the other coming down the steps behind him. Gilmerritt sniffed audibly and said, “What did I say about greenhouse effect?”
It did smell strange. Was it the smell of the unknown vegetation all around, or was it simply that any air would have smelled strange after the chemically pure recycled air aboard Gypsy Moth?
The small landing craft was backed against a low cliff of scone reddish stone, the only note of relief for the eyes against the green that otherwise was everywhere. The cliff stretched for nearly a mile, and sloped downward toward a small green lake, its surface just ruffled by a light wind. On the far shore of the lake a tall forest grew. Between the landing craft and the near shore of the lake stretched a wide green expanse of grassland, dotted here and there with thick clumps of bush-like growth; the cliff was lined with them, too. The nearer bushes were about five feet tall, with thick greyish branches and broad cupshaped leaves; at the ends of the branches were cupshaped flowers with a sunlit glitter.
It was very quiet except for the soft humming and chirping of insects which hopped in the grass, hovered over the flowers, and over the cup-shaped bushes. But so far there was nothing larger than an inch or so, except for one pale butterfly which seemed to like hovering over the cup-shaped blossoms. Gilmerritt walked toward the bushes; a trained biologist, she did not touch them, and would not until she was wearing thick plastic gloves— every Explorer biologist knew about the planets with fluoride-secreting „ flowers—but looked down at cupshaped flower and butterfly with a pleased smile.
“Judging by looks, it still looks like a good place for a resort,” she said. “Let’s get started checking it out. I can hardly wait to see a luxury hotel here and people coming by Transmitter all across the Galaxy.”
She laughed to show that she wasn’t really jumping to conclusions this time. Gildoran thought nothing they built here could ever be as beautiful as the long expanse of green bush against the red granite and limestone of the cliffs, but he turned to Gilhart for orders.
“First step,” Gilhart said, “put somebody on watch. Raban?”
The stocky older man nodded.
“Take somebody particularly able-bodied—Gilbami, you care to go along?—draw two hand weapons from supplies, and climb up on the cliffs to keep watch for predators. Standing orders apply; don’t shoot unless something obviously unintelligent looks as if it was going to attack anyone working down here. Station one man down by the lake and between you, you can cover the whole landing party.”
“Right” Raban and young Barni stepped back into the landing craft; emerged with hand weapons and gloves, and began to move along the foot of the cliff looking for a good spot to climb.
“Rae, did you say this was glacial moraine?” Gilhart asked.
“That’s right,” Rae said, shading her eyes against the light, “There should be good solid bedrock underneath; it might serve as a location for the first Transmitter setup, although it’s going to take a couple of weeks study to be sure. The first step is to get some core samples—here and down by the lake.”
The Captain nodded. “Gildoran, you and Lori can work the core sampler. Gilmerritt, you take everybody else but Gilrae and start getting soil, water and life samples. Be sure everybody knows about wearing gloves, too. And Gilrae, you work with Poohbear, hunting for a good place for a Nursery camp. You know the kind of terrain we need.”
