Alien Earth (28 page)

All or nothing, he told himself, and opened wide to Evangeline, the whole spectrum of his feelings. Not just what he felt, the hungering for heroism, for Human companion
ship, but what he hoped she’d feel. “They’re depending on us, Mom.”

It was like being turned inside out. He’d never appreciated before how much his mind operated from within his body until he was suddenly torn out of it and flung out to the stars. He was stretched wide over unimaginable vastness, felt like his individual cells were separated and swiftly scattered to an incomprehensible thinness of being, as if his cognizance were being evenly distributed throughout the universe. Then, just as the last shred of self was torn away, he snapped back into being.

[There it is. We found it.]

“What?”

[The shuttle. It has entered the atmosphere. See it glow.]

She focused him at it, made him almost unbearably aware of it, dimensions, speed, temperature, construction, radiation emanations…. Temperature!

“Oh, God, they’ll burn up! Bring them back, Evange—Mom. Save them!”

[They are not burning. The shielding glows as it disperses the heat. But I cannot bring them back. The mechanism to power them out of such a descent is impaired.]

“Can’t you save them?”

[Save?]

“Keep them alive. Help them land somewhere safe.”

There was an indefinable change in his sense of the shuttle. From an object he was regarding, it became an extension of self.

[They have lost ability to manipulate their position. The links they use to command the mechanisms to alter the vehicle’s flight have failed. But I can command the mechanisms from here.]

“You can do that?”

Hesitation. [This is forbidden. A Beast must not do this unless a Master directs it. To do so brings swift punishment.]

“But they’ll die if you don’t.”

[This concerns you?]

“Greatly. Evangeline. Mom. Please. I’m begging you.”

[The pain will be great, but I will do it to please you.]

Before he could consider her words, she had acted. So simply done. Like a child reaching out to set a foundering toy
afloat again. A change in attitude. So easy, and then the shuttle was suddenly more pleasing to him, more harmonious. Raef felt the same relief he might feel at having an annoying light shaded from his eyes, or at turning off a fluorescent fixture that buzzed. A discordant detail had been set aright.

[Where shall we put them?]

There were choices and she showed them to him. A dry seabed, a windswept plain of glacial ice, a flat stone plateau several miles above sea level, a stretch of prairie, a riverbed miles wide, its waters dwindled to a trickle circumventing the delta it had once created on its way to the sea….

“That one, that last one,” Raef decided. It was the best. Flat ground, fresh water, the ocean nearby for food. They should be able to survive there, unless …“Is it very toxic there?”

[Toxic? All of Earth is toxic to something.]

“No, not like that.” He saw his planet as she did. Ocean killed the river fish, river killed the ocean fish. Tropics killed the polar beasts, arctic froze the tropic birds. It was a patchwork of deadly zones, all inimitable to strangers. “Toxic to Humans,” Raef specified.

[Certainly.]

Raef sensed a vast chemical sounding, a catalog of all that might kill Humans within that zone.

“No, not like that. I mean, can they survive there? Can they breathe the atmosphere and not die from it, can they drink the river water and not die of that, are there plants and animals they can safely eat in the area?”

It took Evangeline longer to consider this, and Raef knew the answer before she replied. It was getting easier for him to delve into her store of facts and select the answers he needed. Easier, too, for him to make her see as he did, understand the balances of his world.

[If they are cautious, they can survive.]

“Hell, that’s as good a chance as anything ever got on that planet. Let’s set them down there.”

Like gods, they did so.

And then waited for pain. He could feel her cringing, and ached that she accepted this pain to please him. But the pain did not come. [I do not understand. It is as if he does not know what I did.] And the thought suffused her with wonder.

John had blacked out
.
He’d been dying from the terrible pressure, and when his vision began to darken at the edges, he’d dove into death thankfully, wholeheartedly. But he’d only blacked out for a while. Unless this was some trick of his dying brain cells. He tried to focus his awareness. Nothing to be aware of; total stillness. Dark. Little lights in his peripheral vision. Too much trouble to try to turn to see them. Either all motion and sound had stopped or his eardrums and inner ear were destroyed. He choked, became aware of dampness on his mouth and chin. Warm, salty dampness. Nosebleed. The blood was tacky when he shifted his mouth around. He reached up to wipe it away, encountered the bulk of his helmet. He sat stupidly for a few moments, placing himself. Strapped in, suit on. Shielding up over the view window. Cabin lights down. The readouts that still worked said the shuttle was at rest. Landed somewhere. Too much gravity for them to be inside Evangeline. Earth? Had to be. Salt blood in his mouth as he asked, “Connie?”

There was no reply. He tried to turn to see her, and found that the slightest effort hurt. Unstrapping himself from his seat seemed to take forever. He fought against a growing claustrophobia, forced himself to consider the wisdom of removing his helmet. His logic found only a great weariness, and an insistence that if he wasn’t already dead, then taking off his helmet probably wouldn’t kill him. The catches yielded reluctantly to his gloved fingers. He pulled it up and bowed his head to tip it off, and narrowly avoided dropping it. Instead he wedged it into the seat beside him as he struggled to a vertical position. Lightened of his helmet, the gravity was discouraging rather than crushing. Only one G, he reminded himself. He’d been training for this, he could handle it. Maybe.

Connie was not in the pilot compartment. He remembered yelling at her to get out and leave him alone if all she could do was cry. Had she obeyed him? He slapped the door panel and it actually cycled open. Warmth came with it. He looked into the next compartment, and froze. Yellow sunlight full of drifting dust motes cracked into the shuttle through an open hatch. No sign of Connie. The restraint belts dangled from the edges of her lounge. An emergency disembarkment
chute stuck out the open hatch like a lolling tongue. His glove was rough against his skin as he wiped blood away and tried to think.

An incredible richness of scents assailed him. He couldn’t identify any of them, and would have wondered if they were potentially lethal if they hadn’t all smelled so good. So real. I’m in shock, he warned himself. I’m doing stupid things. It didn’t seem important. He advanced down the companionway toward the wedge of light as toward a beacon. This compartment was definitely warmer, and when he stepped into the wedge of light, the heat was like a pliable coating. He stepped into the door, resting his hands on the sides of the hatch, and looked out.

A crumpled figure lay on its side at the bottom of the escape chute. Looking down at her, he could barely hear the oxygen alert buzzer going off inside her helmet.

There was no other way to get down to her. He tried to slow his descent by clinging to the sides of the chute, but it had been designed to frustrate such efforts. A quick evacuation was its purpose, and he fetched up against Connie with a jolt.

He dragged her up and laid her back on the chute. Then he had to breathe for a moment, while the nagging buzzer nearly drove him crazy. Removing a helmet from a limp body presented challenges all its own. Her freed helmet went rolling off into the dust and dirt while blood from his gloves smeared unevenly over the stubble on her skull. He tried to rest her back gently on the chute, but the angle was awkward. Her suit seemed undamaged, but that didn’t mean the body inside it was intact. Her skin looked pale and plastic in the bright sunlight, but she was breathing. He leaned close to her, slid his arm under her to lift her head and shoulders slightly. “Connie?”

Her eyelids lifted a fraction, revealing whites.

“Connie?” He shook her gently, wondered belatedly if he were sending broken bones slicing through internal organs.

She came alive abruptly, flopping wildly in his arms. He leaped back from her in alarm, and she jerked herself up to a sitting position. She looked fearfully around herself, then suddenly lifted her hands and clapped them loudly against her face. “My helmet! You took off my helmet!” she shrieked.

“You were running out of air,” he pointed out, but she ignored him to pounce on her helmet. She dropped it as quickly. “Contaminated! It’s totally contaminated.” The act had gotten dust on her gloves. She glared at it wildly, then slapped her soiled gloves against her suit legs, but only raised another cloud of dust from them. She yelled in alarm and started to lift a hand to cover her nose and mouth, then halted the movement. He saw her screw her mouth shut, sensed how she held her breath as she turned back to the slide and made several frantic but unsuccessful attempts to scale it. Her cheeks were bright red and sweat stood out on her face before she gave in and collapsed at the foot of the slide. Her breath exploded from her in a frantic gasp. She wheezed in some air, and expelled it almost immediately in a rush of words.

“You idiot! You damn idiot! You’ve killed us both. We’ve both breathed this damn polluted stink! You just had to take my helmet off, didn’t you!” She pointed a shaking finger up the ramp. “And I’ll bet you didn’t take any precautions when you opened the door on the command chamber. I bet the whole interior of the shuttle has been contaminated! You’ve killed us both!”

As each word she flung at him struck home, the sickening truth of them penetrated. He hadn’t thought. He’d been too stunned initially, and then too worried about her. But instead of explaining, he struck back. “I’m not the damn fool who activated the escape door and slide chute! You’re the one who opened the shuttle to this atmosphere, not me!”

“The yellow warning lights were flashing for overheat!”

“And procedure says to wait for the red before initiating the escape system. But I suppose you either didn’t remember, never knew that, or didn’t give a damn!” His words came out cold and separate, with none of her shaky hysteria. He tried not to take satisfaction in that.

“I just wanted to get out of that damn thing!” She was going to cry again. Already he could tell it, even before the tears spilled over and coursed down her cheeks. Fat lot of good that did them. “I just didn’t want to die!”

“And you didn’t,” he pointed out coldly. “And neither did I.” He took a breath and lied. “I knew what I was doing. You’re the one who fell apart, Crewman. And I might point out that your actions are responsible for the contamination of
the shuttle, and have jeopardized us both. So you might want to get control of yourself and consider how that’s going to look on your record. And how long you’ll have to work for me before you’ve discharged your debt for a contaminated shuttle.”

It worked. She took an infuriated breath, and then suddenly shut up. Her eyes were huge. It amazed him, how a simple threat always made her get control of herself. He wondered what she thought he could do to her. The maritime court would laugh at him if he’d ever tried to get a judgment against her. They’d never believe that he’d been in complete control of the situation and that her panic was unjustified. But Connie did. He could see the self-accusation growing in her eyes, and decided to act before she could be immobilized by it.

“Well, if you’ve got control of yourself, I think we’d better make the best of a bad situation. You go inside, and see what’s operational, what’s damaged, and how badly. See if you can get the inboard computer powered up. There’s enough damn solar energy coming down to charge a school of battery banks. If you can get it operational, retract the escape chute, and seal the crew and command modules. Also, ask it for a complete damage report, and get estimates on how much healing the biologics can do alone.”

The flood of commands steadied her. She kept bobbing her head, and he could see her making mental notes. She picked up her helmet, managed a “yes, sir,” and began an awkward ascent of the chute. It looked like a lot of effort, and John found himself glad it was her, not him. Halfway up, she paused and looked back. “Aren’t you coming?”

He shook his head nonchalantly. “External damage inspection, and reconnoiter the area. Get to your duties, Crew.”

“Yes, sir.” But she didn’t move. She clung doggedly to the sides of the slide and stared down on him.

“What is it?” he asked irritably.

“Are you going to go far? I mean, it’s really dangerous down here….”

He could hear it in her voice, like a child’s whimper. It wasn’t concern for him, it was “If you get killed, I’m all alone.” It chafed his pride. “I’ll be fine. Leave a channel open. Let’s see if we can get any of our communications to
work. Oh, and make sure you turn on the rescue beacon if it didn’t go automatic. I’d really love to hear from Tug about now.”

She nodded curtly and resumed her ascent of the ramp.

With Connie out of his way and occupied, he had time to assess the situation. As he turned to survey his surroundings, the enormity of it struck him. He didn’t have the foggiest idea of how he’d landed the shuttle here. Didn’t even know where “here” was, not that it mattered. Didn’t even know if they’d live out the day in a hostile place like this.

And then forgot it all as he looked up into an open sky, his feet on a living planet. Outside. This was what, outside meant. He had expected such total exposure to be terrifying. Instead, he was elated by it.

The total foreignness of the Earth amazed him. He’d expected it to be like the videos of Castor or Pollux. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even like the holos of the planets that were home to other intelligent species. All the ancient poetry he’d read about the beauty of Earth had not prepared him for this.

As far as the eye could see, the planet was a wasteland of red soil and grey-green brush. The richness of scents in the air was stronger than taste. From time to time the air stirred softly, but the light movement wasn’t enough to cool his skin. No soft-petaled flowers riotously gay in their colors, no laughing brooks and tall green trees, no fuzzy bunnies with long ears and little white tails hopping through the green grass. Nothing but pebbly red soil, and the dry-looking vegetation and the sun beating down relentlessly. The vegetation was disappointing, growing in no sort of symmetry or order, but sprawling or sticking straight up, or branching out however it pleased. A cautious inspection revealed the different individuals weren’t even of the same variety, but seemed to be a number of different plants growing in baffling proximity to one another. He could not figure out how so many different types of plants could grow in one area. It wasn’t as if he were at a transitional area, where one species gave way to another, as the cinbar trees grew on the hills of Castor right down to the edges of the plain, where the calla grass took over. No, this was all one type of soil and one type of terrain, over-grown with at least three, maybe even five types of plants. He spotted another strange one. Six. Six types of vegetation in
one area. All growing practically on top of each other. Dead ones sticking up next to live ones. All competing for the same nutrients, light and water. It was baffling. How could anything survive when all else seemed determined to choke it out? He’d been able to parrot back the principles of competitive evolution and ecology, but had never really grasped what it was.