The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (25 page)

“Humph. Idealists, were they? Isolating themselves and then screaming for help at the slightest sign of trouble.”

Ross Benden gritted his teeth, searching for some polite way to assert that Admiral Benden would not have “screamed for help” and bloody well hadn’t sent that craven message.

Fortunately, after a moment’s thought, the captain went on. “Not Admiral Benden’s style to send a distress message of any kind. So, who’s this Theodore Tubberman, Botanist, who affixed his name to the plea? A Mayday should have been authorized by the colony leaders.”

“It wasn’t a
standard
capsule,” Benden replied, having noted that emendation. “But expertly contrapted. It was also sent to Federation headquarters.”

“Federation headquarters?” Fargoe sat forward, frowning. “Why HQ? Why not the Colonial Authority? Or the Fleet? No, if it wasn’t signed by Admiral Benden, the Fleet would have shifted it to the CA.” Then she sat, chin on one hand, studying the report, scrolling it forward from her armrest keypad. “A nonstandard homing device sent to Federation HQ indicating that the colony was under attack . . . hmm. And nine years after a successful landing, forty-nine years ago.

“How far are we from the Rukbat system, Mister Benden?”

“Point-oh-four-five from the heliopause, ma’am. Science Officer Ni Morgana wanted a closer look at that Oort cloud. She’s interested in cometary reservoirs. That’s when I noticed the orange flag on the system.”

“They wanted squadrons then?” The captain gave a short bark of laughter. “Nearly fifty years ago? Hmmm. No Nastie activity was noticed that soon after the War. This Tubberman fellow doesn’t specify. Maybe that’s what he intended. Big unknown alien life-form attack might have stirred Federation.” She gave a dubious sniff. “What sort of resources does this Pern have, Mister Benden?”

Benden had anticipated that request and inserted a smaller window on the main screen with the initial survey report. “Pern evidently only had minimal resources, enough to supply the needs of a low-tech colony.”

“No, that sort of ore and mineral potential wouldn’t have interested any of the syndicates,” the captain mused. “Too costly to use an orbiting refinery or to transport the ores to the nearest facility. Nine years after touchdown? Long enough for those agrarian types to settle in and accumulate reserves. And the EEC doesn’t list any predators.” She paused in her review of the data and made a slight grimace. “Have Lieutenant Ni Morgana report to the bridge,” she ordered the communications officer.

The captain tapped her fingers on her armrest. “Doesn’t compute that Paul Benden would send any distress message,” she went on. “So where was he when this Tubberman sent off his contraption? Had the menace from outer space done for everyone in authority?”

“Internal conflict?” Benden suggested, not able to believe his resourceful uncle would have been destroyed by a mere organism after surviving all that the Nastie fleet had thrown at him. That would be ironic. The EEC report listed no hostile organism on the planet. Of course, no one could completely rule out the admittedly bizarre possibility of an attack by a remnant weapon system. Sections of the galaxy were strewn with the unexploded minefields from ancient wars—and not necessarily of Nastie origin.

The grav shaft whooshed open and Lieutenant Ni Morgana entered, stood to attention, and snapped off a salute. “Captain?” She tilted her head, awaiting her orders.

“Ah, Lieutenant, there is not only an Oort cloud surrounding the Rukbat system, but it appears to be an orange-tagged, distress message,” the captain said, gesturing for Ni Morgana to read the data covering several windows on the big screen.

“Coming on a bit thick, weren’t they? Alien invasion!” Ni Morgana gave a snort of disgust after a quick perusal. “Although . . .” She paused, pursing her mouth. “It’s just possible that the ‘unknown organism’ has been seeded into the cometary cloud to camouflage it.”

“What are the chances of it containing some engineered organism that attacked the planet fifty years ago?” Captain Fargoe was clearly skeptical.

“I am hoping that we can obtain samples of the cloud as we pass it, ma’am,” Ni Morgana replied. “It is unusually close in to the system for an Oort cloud.”

“Have Oort clouds ever been found to harbor natural viruses or an organism that could threaten a planet?”

“I know of several cases where it’s always been assumed that inimical mechanisms have been launched from one stellar system to another—’berserkers,’ they were called.”

“Could the organism this Tubberman mentions be a Nastie softening agent? Destroying all organic matter seems like a weapon of some kind, doesn’t it?”

“We’ve learned not to underestimate the Nasties, Captain. Though their methods, so far, have been much more direct.” Ni Morgana’s smile was tight, understandable when one knew that the science officer was the only survivor of her family, solely because she had been at the Academy when the enemy had attacked her home world. “However, since the Nasties have been trying to establish bases far from well-traveled space, it becomes a possibility out here.”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” the captain said thoughtfully and then grimaced. It was the ambition of every member of Fleet and EEC, from the lowliest long-distance single scout to the commander of the heaviest battle cruiser, to discover the Nasties’ home world, and Captain Fargoe was scarcely an exception.

“Whatever the attack on Pern was, they would not have sent for help unless their situation was desperate,” Ni Morgana added. “You are aware that the Colonial Authority exacts punitive payments for such assistance?”

A complex series of expressions rippled across the captain’s face. “Far too high for the service they give, and the time it takes them to respond. The colonists would be mortgaged, body, blood, and breath, unto the fourth generation to repay such a debt. Also the message was not sent by Admiral Paul Benden. That’s one man I’d like to pipe aboard the
Amherst
.”

“He’d scarcely be alive now,” Ross Benden heard himself saying. “He was in his seventh decade when he started.”

“A good colonial life can add decades to a man’s span, Benden,” the captain said. “So, I think we can entertain a rescue run to Pern. Lieutenant Zane, plot a course that will take us through the system close enough to this Pern to launch the shuttle. We can give the other planets and satellites a good probe on the swing past. Mister Benden, you’ll command the landing party: a junior officer and, say, four marines. I’ll want your crew recommendations, and calculations on projected journey to rendezvous with the
Amherst
on her turn back through the system. Allowing, say . . . how long did the EEC survey team take? Ah, yes, five days and a bit. Allowing five days on the surface to make contact with the colonists and establish their current situation.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Benden replied, trying hard to keep elation out of his voice. Lieutenant Zane on the navigation board shot him a malevolent glance, which he ignored, as he did Ensign Nev to his right, who was all but tugging his sleeve to remind Ross that he’d had xeno training.

“I suggest you talk with Lieutenant Ni Morgana, Mister Benden, when she has completed her survey of the Oort cloud matter. There might just be some connection, and these ancient weapons can produce some awkward surprises.” She awarded Ross Benden a quick nod. “You have the com, Lieutenant Zane.” With that, the captain slid from the command seat and left the bridge.

As Saraidh Ni Morgana took her seat at the science terminal, she winked at Ross Benden, which he interpreted as her support in his assignment.

On the 3-D globe on the
Amherst’s
bridge, the ship seemed only centimeters from the edge of the nebulosity that was the Oort cloud. As she approached at an angle to sample a core through the thickest part of the cloud, a great net was fired from a forward missile tube on the port side. The net would both collect debris and clear the ship’s path. No ship would barrel through such a cloud, where particles were as close as tens of meters. The biggest particles were about a kilometer apart. The problem was to avoid collision of the net with anything above a tonne, which would tear it and bring the ship’s meteorite defense into play.

During the next two weeks, while the
Amherst
passed beyond the cloud, heading into the Rukbat system, the science officer carefully examined the material. First she asked permission to rig an empty cargo pod with remote waldo controls and monitors. A work party towed the pod out to a point far enough that there was no risk to the
Amherst
and yet close enough to make frequent trips to the net feasible.

Then, with a work party, she jetted out to the net and selected fragments that might be worth examining. The cargo pod was already divided into sections. At first these were all kept in vacuum status at -270 Celsius or 3° absolute. Once back in the
Amherst,
Ni Morgana activated the monitors and began one of her legendary forty-hour days.

“I’ve got a lot of dirty ice” was her initial comment four days later, after she’d had some sleep and a second review of her data. “Most of the stuff has identifiable intrusions, particles of rock and metal, but there are also—” There was a long pause. “—some very unusual particles that I have never encountered before.” As the science officer held five degrees in different disciplines and had landed on three or four dozen alien surfaces, that was an intriguing admission. “Before anyone gets an idea I don’t want to give, there is no evidence of any artifact.”

The next morning she suited up again and jetted around the netted debris, continuing her investigation. Meanwhile, Captain Fargoe approved Lieutenant Benden’s preliminary flight data, and Ross continued his study of the EEC survey reports and the two cryptic messages that were the only communications from the colony world.

“If there is a life-form,” Ni Morgana said tentatively in the week’s officer’s meeting, “its response time is far too slow for us to discern. There have been some anomalies, both in superconductivity and in cryochemistry, that I want to follow up. I shall begin a series of tests, slowly warming some representative samples, and see what occurs.”

The next week she reported: “At minus two hundred degrees Celsius, some of the larger particles are showing relative movement, but whether this is driven by anomalous internal structure, or reacting to the warmer temperature, I cannot as yet ascertain.”

“Keep in mind at all times, Lieutenant,” the captain said at her sternest, “what happened to the
Roma
!”

“Ma’am, I always do!” The legendary “melting” of the
Roma
when the science officer brought aboard a metal-hungry organism was the cautionary example drummed into every science officer.

The following week Ni Morgana was almost jubilant. “Captain, there is a real life-form in some of the larger chunks from the cloud. Ovoid shapes, with an exceedingly hard crust of material, they have some liquid, perhaps helium, inside. They’re very strange, but I’m sure they’re not artifacts. I’m bringing one sample up above zero degrees Celsius this week.”

The captain held up an admonishing finger at her science officer. “Remember the
Roma,”
she said again.

“Ma’am, even the situation on the
Roma
didn’t happen in a day.”

In the process of leaving the conference room, the captain stopped and stared quizzically at Ni Morgana. “Are you deliberately misquoting something, Lieutenant?”

“Mister Benden!” The peremptory summons of the science officer over the comunit by his ear jolted Ross Vaclav Benden out of his bunk and to his feet.

“Ma’am?”

“Get down to the lab on the double, mister!”

Benden struggled into his shipsuit as he ran down the companionway, stabbing feet into soft shipshoes. It was zero-dark-hundred of the dogwatch, and no one was even in Five Deck’s lounge area as he raced across it and to the appropriate gray shaft down to the lab. He skidded to a halt at the door, skinning his forearms on the frame as he braked and fell into the facility. He almost knocked over Lieutenant Ni Morgana. She pointed to the observation chamber.

“Funkit, what in the name of the holies is that?” he breathed as his eyes fell on the writhing grayish pink and puke-yellow mass that oozed and roiled on the monitor screen. The mass was, in reality, ten kilometers from the
Amherst,
but he could understand why everyone was standing well back.

“If that is what fell on Pern,” Ni Morgana said, “I don’t blame ’em for shrieking for help!”

“Let me through!” The captain, clad in a terry-cloth caftan, had to exert some strength to push past the mesmerized group watching the phenomenon. “Gods above! What have you unleashed, mister?”

“We’re taping the show, ma’am,” Ni Morgana said. In reassurance, she prominently waved the hand she held over the Destruct button that would activate laser fire. Benden could see her eyes glittering with clinical fascination. “According to the readings I’m getting, this complex organism exhibits some similarity to Terran mycorrhizoids in its linear structure. But it’s enormous! Damn!”

The organism suddenly collapsed in on itself and became a viscous, inanimate puddle. The science officer tapped out some commands on the waldo keyboard and a unit extruded toward the mass, scooped up a sample in a self-sealing beaker, and retreated. Lights glittered on the remote testing apparatus as the sample was analyzed.

“What happened to it?” Captain Fargoe demanded, and Benden admired how firm her voice was. He, himself, had the shakes.

“I should be able to tell you when the analysis is finished on that sample of the residue, but I’d hazard the guess that, with such rapid expansion, if it found no sustenance in the chamber—and there was none apart from a very thin atmosphere—it died of starvation. That’s only a guess.”

“But,” Benden heard himself saying, “if this is the Pernese organism . . .”

“That’s only a possibility at this point,” Ni Morgana said quickly. “We must first discover how it might have managed to get from the cloud to Pern’s surface.”