New Earth (8 page)

Meek dipped his chin in acknowledgment.

Jordan went on, “All of you have been cross-trained in different specialties.”

Thornberry interrupted, “And we have a squad of robots to help us.”

Nodding, Jordan resumed, “That’s right. The robots are going to be of enormous help.”

“Like the two rovers dozing down on the
surface,” Brandon sneered.

Thornberry shot him a dark scowl.

“Now, about the landing team,” Jordan said, hoping to forestall an argument. “I’ve decided to go myself. Bran, you’re our planetary astronomer: I think you’re an obvious choice. And you, Harmon, you’re our astrobiologist.”

“I could go,” said Paul Longyear, the biologist. “Professor Meek could stay in real-time link with me.”

“No,
no, no,” Meek said, wagging a forefinger vigorously. “I’ll go to the surface myself. You stay here and monitor the biosensors, Paul.”

Longyear looked crestfallen, but said nothing.

Rank hath its privileges, Jordan repeated to himself, a little surprised that Meek was so insistent on going himself. His estimation of the man rose a notch.

“I want to go, too,” said Elyse. She was sitting beside
Brandon, as usual.

Gently, Jordan said, “I’m afraid we won’t need an astrophysicist on this jaunt. Later, once we know more about what’s going on down there, we’ll set up a permanent base and we’ll all go to the surface.”

Elyse was obviously unhappy with Jordan’s decision, but Brandon looked relieved.

Jordan decided to keep Thornberry on the ship; the roboticist had launched two additional
rovers to different points on the planet’s surface, and they were performing perfectly well, sending up reams of data. The two defunct rovers near the laser site remained quite dead, to Thornberry’s exasperated disgust.

“Mitch, you’ll be our mission controller,” Jordan told him. “Our contact with the ship.”

Thornberry’s heavy-jowled face contorted into an apologetic frown. “I hope I can keep
in touch with you better than those two blasted deadbeats.”

“What about me?” Hazzard asked, from the far end of the table. “Why can’t I go with you?”

“We need you to run the ship, Geoff,” Jordan told him. Hazzard nodded acquiescence, but his expression was far from pleased.

He pointed out, “I could fly the plane that’s already down there back to the ship. Maybe recover the rovers while I’m
at it.”

“You can do that from here, remotely,” said Jordan, “once we’ve reactivated the rovers.”

“Guess so,” Hazzard muttered.

“If something should … go wrong down on the surface,” Jordan added, “you’ll be in charge of the ship, Geoff. You’ll have to make the decision about what to do next.”

Dead silence. None of them wanted to face such a possibility.

Pointing to Silvio de Falla, the geologist,
Jordan said, “We’ll need you on the team, Silvio.”

De Falla, short, swarthy, with a trim dark beard tracing his jawline, and large brown eyes, nodded wordlessly. But his smile spoke volumes.

“That’s it, I think,” Jordan said. “The four of us. Any questions? Suggestions?”

There were plenty, and Jordan patiently let everyone have his or her say. Finally, when the comments became patently repetitious,
he concluded, “Very well, then. This afternoon we check out the landing vehicle and tomorrow we go down to the surface.”

*   *   *

His dreams that night were confused, jumbled, yet somehow menacing. Jordan saw himself in the beautiful, deadly Vale of Kashmir once again, but he was all alone, none of the team that should have been with him were there, not even Miriam. He was toiling down a dirt
road that seemed endless, alone, not another soul in sight. Slowly, as gradually as summer wasting into autumn, the air began to thicken. It grew darker and harder to breathe. Jordan was choking, gasping, staggering as he tried to catch his breath, coughing up blood …

He snapped awake and sat up in bed, soaked in cold perspiration.

“Nerves,” he told himself. “You’ll be all right once you get
down to the planet’s surface.” Still, he felt cold despite his compartment’s climate control. His hands were trembling.

He lay back on the bed and tried to think if there might be something he’d forgotten in his preparations for the landing. Four of us, he recounted. Planetary astronomy, astrobiology, and geology. Plus me. Their fearless leader. Four will be enough. If something goes wrong, if
we die down there—he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember a quote from Shakespeare. What was it? From
Henry V
: something about, “If we are marked to die we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

Honor. We’re not going down there for honor. Then for what? He almost laughed. For curiosity. To poke into the unknown.

No, it’s more than
that, he realized. Brandon’s right. Something—or some
body
—is down on that planet and whatever or whoever it is, it apparently wants to meet us. And I want to meet it, whoever or whatever it might be.

There’s nothing down there that could kill us. At least, I don’t think there is. Nothing we know of. The sensors haven’t shown us anything dangerous. But what conked out the rovers? The unknown can
be dangerous, he reminded himself.

Briefly he thought about taking a tranquilizer, but instead turned resolutely on his side and commanded himself to sleep.

He felt dreadfully alone.

DEPARTURE

Put on a good air, Jordan told himself as he showered. Exude confidence. Keep your fears to yourself. They’re unreasonable, anyway. Whenever you have nothing to do, the memories gang up on you. Get out there and get to work. Summon up the action of the tiger.

He gave a cheerful greeting to the handful of people already eating their breakfasts in the wardroom. Brandon was nowhere
in sight. Nor Elyse.

Meek came in, smiling happily. “Good morning, all,” said the astrobiologist. “It’s a good day to go exploring, isn’t it?”

Jordan wondered if Meek was putting on a false optimism, too.

Breakfast finished, Jordan and Meek made their way down to the bowels of the ship, to the hangar deck where the landing vehicles were housed. The feeling of gravity was noticeably lower here,
closer to the ship’s centerline.

Three sleek, silvery, delta-winged rocketplanes stood side by side inside the big, metal-walled hangar space. One side of the hangar was an air lock large enough to accommodate a rocketplane. Jordan saw that one of the four parking spaces was empty, where the plane that had already been sent to the surface had once been.

One of the planes gone, he thought. And
this is only our third day here.

Their footsteps echoed off the metal deck and the bare hangar walls as Meek and Jordan approached the nearest rocketplane. Jordan could see his brother’s face through the windscreen of the vehicle’s cockpit.

Eager as a puppy, Jordan thought. If it were up to Bran, we would have flown down to the surface yesterday or even the night before, ready or not.

Clambering
through the plane’s hatch, Jordan made his way toward the cockpit, hunching slightly because of the low overhead. Meek, gangling right behind him, had to duck even lower. The plane’s interior smelled new, unused. That will change, Jordan told himself.

They squeezed through the cargo bay, where a spring-wheeled excursion buggy big enough to carry six people was stowed, together with a pair of
inert robots. I hope they work better than the rovers, Jordan thought.

The cockpit had six reclinable chairs. Brandon was already ensconced in the pilot’s seat, and the central screen of the control panel showed Geoff Hazzard’s dark, unsmiling face.

“I’ll be standing by at the remote control panel here in the bridge,” Hazzard was saying. “Your vehicle’s programmed to land itself, but I’ll be
right here in case there’s any problems.”

Brandon nodded briskly. “How much of a lag time is there between you and this ship?”

Hazzard’s eyes flickered once, then he answered, “Microseconds. If I have to take over, you won’t even notice a lag.”

“Good.”

“Ready to go?” Jordan asked.

Brandon turned around in the chair and broke into a big smile. “Now that you two are here, Jordy.”

Meek, hunched
over so much that his hands were clasping his knees, asked, “Where’s de Falla?”

“Back in the equipment bay, checking out our biosuits and the other gear. Thornberry’s going over the buggy remotely, from the bridge.”

“Shouldn’t de Falla be here when we take off?” Meek asked.

“He will be,” Brandon said.

As if on cue, Silvio de Falla ducked through the hatch, his dark liquid eyes large and round,
his teeth flashing as he smiled brightly. “Field equipment checks out,” he reported. “Thornberry says the buggy’s ready. We’re good to go.”

“All right, then,” said Brandon. “Everybody sit down and strap in.”

Jordan slipped into the right-hand seat beside his brother. A tiny control yoke poked out from the instrument panel in front of him, and a console studded with levers and switches sat between
the two seats. As he pulled the safety harness over his shoulders he wondered if he should remind Brandon that he shouldn’t touch any of the controls. The ship flies itself, he knew, and Geoff can take over if he has to.

He decided not to mention it. Brandon seemed happy as a kid in a toy store. Why spoil his fun?

Turning slightly in his chair, Jordan saw that Meek and de Falla were in the two
seats behind him, fastening their safety harnesses.

Eagerly, Brandon said to Hazzard’s image on the display screen, “You can start the countdown, Geoff.”

Hazzard nodded gravely, then said, “Jordan, mission protocol says you have to give the word.”

Jordan waved one hand in the air. “By all means, start the countdown.”

“Okay,” said Hazzard, “countdown clock is started. You launch in three minutes.
And counting.”

Jordan sank back into the chair’s padding and squirmed a little to make the safety harness clasping his shoulders more comfortable. He glanced at Brandon, who was staring straight ahead. Pretending to be a spaceship captain, Jordan thought, smiling inwardly. Bran will never grow up, not completely. That’s my department. I’m the sober brother, all grown up and serious; he’s still
something of a boy.

“Pumping out hangar deck,” Hazzard’s voice stated flatly.

Inside the cockpit they barely heard the clatter of the pumps sucking the air out of the hangar. Jordan felt himself tensing, though: excitement, fear, wonder, worry—all of them bubbling inside him.

“Rotating,” said Hazzard.

The rocketplane turned slowly toward the air lock hatch. Out of the corner of his eye, Jordan
saw his brother lick his lips.

“Opening air lock hatch,” Hazzard announced.

The massive hatch slid open silently. Jordan saw the infinite darkness of space, speckled by bright unblinking stars. Where’s the planet? he wondered.

“Launch in fifteen seconds.”

As the synthesized voice of the automated countdown system ticked off the seconds, the rocketplane rolled to the edge of the open hatch.
Despite himself, Jordan tensed in his chair. Then the rocket engine roared to life and Jordan felt a hard, firm push against his back. The rocketplane flung itself out of the hangar and into empty space.

THE MOON

Then mighty Achilles prayed to his mother, Thetis the Silver-Footed, “Mother, my lifetime is destined to be so brief that ever-living Zeus, sky-thunderer, owes me a worthier prize of glory.”

H
OMER,
The Iliad

ANITA HALLECK

Given the choice between long life and glory, Anita Halleck chose long life. She was more than halfway through the second century of her life as she stood beneath the glassteel dome of the observatory atop Mt. Yeager, staring wistfully at the Earth.

The observatory was an empty shell now, a tourist attraction instead of a working astronomical facility, little more than a transparent
dome and a set of plush couches ringing the circumference of the circular chamber, with virtual reality rigs for tourist visitors dotting its floor. Almost all of the astronomical studies undertaken on the Moon were done at the Farside observatory, which Halleck had been briefly involved with many years earlier.

The lunar nation of Selene lay buried beneath the worn, slumped mountains that circled
the giant walled plain of Alphonsus. Above the barren, airless, pockmarked plain hung the glorious blue-and-white globe of Earth, more than half full at the moment, a glowing beacon of life and warmth set in the dark and sterile depths of space.

Halleck sighed inwardly. Nearly a century earlier she had opted to have her body filled with therapeutic nanomachines, virus-sized mechanisms that destroyed
invading bacteria and viruses, cleansed her blood vessels of dangerous plaque, rebuilt damaged cells, acted as a superhumanly efficient immune system to protect and preserve her body.

The result was long life. Despite her years, Halleck was as tall and youthful as she had been a century earlier, slim waisted and long legged with a long sweep of chestnut hair draped dramatically over one shoulder
and falling halfway down to her belt.

But the cost was to be exiled from Earth, never permitted to set foot on the planet of her birth, the world of humankind’s origin. Nanotechnology was totally banned on Earth. No one carrying nanomachines in her body was allowed even to visit.

More than twenty billion people crammed in there, Halleck thought. How many crazies, how many fanatics, how many
idiots who could turn nanomachines into an unstoppable plague that would destroy everyone and everything? No wonder they banned nanotech.

And now the second phase of the greenhouse warming was sweeping across the world, drowning cities, reshaping continents, killing millions and driving still more millions into refugee camps or aimless migrations across what was left of civilization.

“It’s beautiful,
isn’t it?”

Startled, she turned to see Douglas Stavenger smiling at her. Like her, Stavenger’s body was filled with nanomachines. Like her, he appeared strong and youthful, a handsome man of middle years, broad of shoulder and flat in the middle. Unlike her, Stavenger had filled his long life with service to the city-state of Selene, first as head of its governing council, later as the éminence
gris who gently but firmly pulled the strings behind the scenes.