Alien Earth (29 page)

It appalled him.

And right now, it applied to him as much as it did to every leaf of vegetation around him. He was back in the middle of it now, in the harsh competitive environment that had spawned his ancestors. Survival of the fittest, with all that implied, surrounded him here. And could engulf him.

He jerked his eyes away from the harsh terrain, and turned them back to the shuttle. It was now his only hope and his only care. He set every consideration of Earth Affirmed and their ridiculous errand out of his mind. Their precious time capsule could be anywhere on Earth. Only the most monumental of coincidences would place it anywhere within walking range of the shuttle. And even if it had been right under his feet, he wouldn’t have bothered with it. Not after they had messed up so bad. “A minor malfunction that would serve as an adequate excuse for landing on the planet’s surface.” That was what they had promised him. He looked up at what he had got and swore.

He made a complete circuit of the shuttle. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he deserved it to be. Of course, it was a damn good shuttle. At least Earth Affirmed had been up-front about that. It had handled the rough terrain of the “landing strip”; maybe a takeoff from, the same terrain was possible. He ran his eyes over his craft again. A lot of obvious scorching on the shielding. He’d have to take a closer look at some spots, but most looked like spray application of heal-stim to the cell meld would handle it. If they had that much heal-stim spray. It was usually regarded as a spot treatment to encourage self-repair, not an overall treatment.

He lifted a gloved hand to the top of his head, touched his bare scalp. Better cover his head if he was going to be out here much. Not the helmet; that was too heavy, but he’d wear the suit, for maximum protection against whatever he might encounter.

A shadow swept across the ground. It took him a moment to make the connection, to lift his eyes and track the animal in flight above him. It was small, scarcely a third his size. A real animal. Bird, he decided, from the wings. Most birds had had wings, he remembered. For a second the shock of recognition kept him from doing anything. Then, “Hey!” he called out, hoping he sounded friendly. “Hey, hello there!” But it proceeded in its glide as if it hadn’t even heard him. Understandable that it wouldn’t comprehend him. He knew that animals had never been intelligent enough to use language. But surely anything alive and mobile would be smart enough to realize that the shuttle didn’t belong there, that they must be in some kind of trouble. Maybe it would circle back and try to help.

But no, it continued on its way. He stood for a moment, watching it go, wondering why it hadn’t even paused. Then the obvious answer came to him. It expected him to follow. He squinted his eyes in that direction. Only red pebbly soil and grey-green plants to the horizon, but there was that indefinable change at the edge of the sky that spoke of a drop-off or sudden descent of some kind. Maybe there was something there.

He glanced at the shuttle, but justified it to himself as he simply set out. He wouldn’t be gone long. And Connie had her tasks lined out for her, and they were essential. He wasn’t needed there right now, and he was the captain. These decisions were his to make.

He glanced for his guide, but the animal was already out of sight. It couldn’t be far, then. He quickened his pace to catch up with the tiny creature.

S
HE LIFTED THE HAND
she’d had clamped over her own mouth and took a ragged breath. I’m calm now, she told herself, and tried to believe it was true. I can cope with this. She caught herself wishing she could crawl into a womb chamber and not come out until John had taken care of everything. But it wasn’t going to be like that. She had to think and make decisions. Enough crying. She tried to imagine how embarrassing it would be if John discovered her like this. The thought of his scorn gave her control over herself. She took a deep breath and consciously released the tension from her shoulders.

She checked the clock and felt another wave of panic hit her. Another hour had gone by, and he still hadn’t returned. “Damn you, John! I hope you’re dead then,” she cursed him.

And instantly regretted it. Did the shuttle have a record-all, as some ships were reputed to? Black satisfaction washed over her. Even if the shuttle had one, chances were it wasn’t working. Half the systems were still down. And even if it had one and it was working, her recorded infraction would probably stay right here and rot alongside her. The bleakness brought her a bitter smile and, oddly, a measure of comfort.

“Okay,” she told herself calmly. “Time to make another decision. You can handle this, Connie.”

They’d have been smarter to have kept their helmets on, but damn John had seen to that. Now they’d both been ex
posed to the air, and if one got sick, they probably both would. John’s fault again. He was so stupid, and it made her all the angrier that for a while she had thought he was so smart. And where was he, anyway? She had tried calling him on the radio, until she found the fool’s helmet with its radio sitting on the command lounge. Another example of her captain’s wonderful planning ability.

She refused to look at the clock again. Tried to think of something constructive to do, but she’d done everything she could think of several hours ago. She’d been so relieved when she was able to get the computer on line, until it had given her a damage report. Nothing major, but the list of minor damage added up to major problems. Biologics would handle a lot of it, reconstructing to cell memory specs. She’d already released them, but the computer estimated seventy-six hours to effect repairs. And there was the nagging worry about the one spot where the skin of the shuttle had been ruptured. She’d already gone outside and sealed it, but there was no knowing what native life-forms had already penetrated, or how they would affect the bio-structures of the ship. She’d ordered its immunity systems stepped up, but there was no knowing about such things.

The computer blipped inquiringly.

“Report!” she snapped at it.

“Complete or summary?” it inquired.

Did she want to listen to a long string of numerical readouts on every system in the ship? No. “Uh, in regard to query only, unless there are priority ones to report. Any priority ones new since last report?”

It considered. There was another worry, the computer was taking perceptibly longer to respond. “None,” it said at last.

“Any foreign biologics detectable within system?”

Another even longer pause. “None detectable yet, but alert still in effect.”

“Continue alert. Is the check of ship-to-ship communication system completed?”

“Four tests remaining.”

Damn. Those tests should have been completed by now if the computer was functioning at full capacity. “Any detected malfunctions yet?”

“None.”

She was getting sick of its flat voice. She wished Tug were here to interface with it and make its information into a concise report for her. She longed to hear his voice. She pushed down her growing suspicion that nothing had been wrong with the shuttle’s radios. But that would mean that something was wrong on Evangeline’s end, and Connie didn’t want to consider that. Better to plod on with the computer’s report.

“Outside temperature?”

“Twenty-seven point three degrees.”

It was dropping. That was a comfort. At last report it was twenty-nine. Since she had retracted the emergency slide and shut the hatch, the shuttle had maintained a warm but not uncomfortable interior temperature. She’d been outside three times to look for John. Each time, the solar radiation had driven her back. Solar radiation. That’s how she thought of it. It was far too intense compared with the friendly warmth of the sun that nurtured Castor for her to think of it as sunlight.

And John was out there in it. And she didn’t know where, or why. Had some animal attacked and dragged him off? It was the only reason she could think of for his disappearance.

Each time she had gone out, she had forced herself to make a complete circuit of the shuttle, scanning to the horizon in all directions. There had been no sign of him. On such a barren piece of terrain, she’d have seen him if he’d been within walking distance. The soft undulations of the dry red land couldn’t conceal a standing man. Could they? But there had been only the faint wind with its distasteful odor that reminded her of spoiled protein blocks, and the ugly plants that caught at her boots and the endless red soil.

She shut her eyes against the mental images, and swallowed. Finally, she understood it. Now she did. For every condition on this planet that fostered life, there were those that opposed it. Harsh conditions shaped whatever survived. With every step she took out there, she wondered what toxins smeared her boots. Stepping on living plants was unavoidable; they grew in disorderly profusion. She had tried to ignore the soft crunchings as their structures gave way to her weight. Even more disconcerting was that some sprang up
again when she stepped off them, heedless of her abuse. In the wake of the shuttle, the crushed bushes gave off a pungent odor. She had seen no sign of animals, but had wondered if she would recognize them if she did. There had been a noise, a persistent, sourceless chirring noise that had increased with the heat, but she had decided it was the wind over some geographical formations. Nothing alive could make a sound so consistently annoying and omnipresent.

The Conservancy had been correct. The Earth was a dead planet now, save for those scrubby grey-green bushes. Animal life in thousands of forms had once swarmed over this planet. Now it was empty, just red rocks and wind. Surely if any sizable animals had survived, she would have seen some of them on the flat plain. Not much emphasis had been given to the natural history of the Earth in her education. Why study something that no longer existed? But she could recall something about immense flocks of large beasts congregating on plains such as this. Well, there was nothing like that now. She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed.

But if there were no animals left alive, what had happened to John?

She was sick of her mind chasing itself in the same circles. Sick, too, of the secret guiltiness that haunted her. She should go look for him; perhaps he had ventured out of sight, for some idiotic reason, and then been overcome by solar radiation. Perhaps he was lying out there in a depression of the earth somewhere, dehydrated, his skin burning, unconscious…. But, dammit, there was no way for her to tell in what direction to search. All she could do was go out and get burned and dehydrated herself.

To busy her mind, she went to the communications panel, flipped the activation switches. The sight of John’s helmet on his lounger renewed her irritation. Stupid man. Probably a direct result of his entering puberty. “No amount of adult-level experience can prevent an adolescence of the attitudes when hormones begin to stir….” She remembered that line from a play, a farce about two generation mates entering puberty together. Farcical or not, it described John’s behavior perfectly. Irresponsible, unreliable adolescent. Forget about him for now, she’d just do what she could. “This is the Shut
tle Arcadia calling Beastship Evangeline…. This is the Shuttle Arcadia calling anyone. Will anyone within range please reply?”

She listened to the silence. Stupid. The emergency beacon had been activated for hours, and no one had contacted them. Not that Earth was near any of the trade routes. In fact, she could think of no good reason that anyone would be out here, unless they had some stupid mission like checking out a long dead planet. She leaned over and shut off the transmission channel.

Af the first thud, her whole body convulsed. She leaped clear of her lounge and then stood perfectly still, listening. It came again, a muffled thud at the access hatch. Her heart pounded as she headed back to it and worked the interior catches. As the hatch retracted, John fell in.

His skin was a uniform and virulent red. He had taken his tunic off and tied it around his head, probably as sun protection, but it hadn’t done much good. Tiny swollen areas stood out on his back and around his bare ankles. She stepped back from him, afraid to touch him.

With a tremendous effort, he pulled himself up to his knees, crawled a little farther into the shuttle. In a daze Connie worked the hatch behind him. He had dropped to his side on the floor. He rolled to his back, whimpering slightly as his skin made contact with the floor panels. As he looked up at her, his eyes seemed very pale in his reddened face. There were tiny blisters on his nose and the tops of his cheeks.

“Water,” he said.

She brought him a bubble of it, working the straw loose for him as she carried it over. When she saw that he was going to drink the entire liter, she brought out another one. He sighed as he set down the empty one, then took the full one and proceeded to drench his tunic with it. He hissed with pain as he touched it to his body, then sighed as he spread the cool wet cloth over his back. He leaned down to scratch the swollen lumps at his ankles. He scratched hard, until blood came. “Don’t,” Connie begged him softly, finally finding her tongue. She snatched up a medical kit and knelt beside him, but found she could only hand it to him. She’d never been good with injuries.

John broke open a dispenser of anti-inflammatory and
began to apply it to each little bump. “There were these tiny little animals,” he said suddenly, in an almost-normal voice. “They could fly. And they kept flying up to me and landing on me. I thought they were just curious about me. But they left these bumps. I think their feet must secrete an acid or something.”

“That’s disgusting,” Connie said faintly.

“So tiny,” John said, his voice musing softer. “But alive. Their legs were as thin as hair, and light shone through their wings, as through the finest bio-film. Connie, animals are so strange. Not at all what I thought they’d be. I’m still not sure I understand how they function. But they’re not at all like plants or Humans. I guess I should have known that, but somehow, until you actually see it …”

His eyes were unfocused and he swayed softly where he sat.

“Where did you go and why?” she asked, not really expecting a sensible answer. He was out of his head.

“I followed a bird,” he said. He turned to her and smiled beatifically. “I followed it to where the ground fell away, and there it was, waiting for me. The ocean. I slid or fell most of the way down to it. Oh, the smell of it, like the biggest chemistry lab that ever was. You can smell life happening. The water is so many colors, and moving. All of it, at once. Moving in a way the pictures can’t show. Connie, it’s alive.”

He smiled again, and in dismay Connie saw his eyes brim with tears. Then he lay down, very slowly and gently, and fell asleep.

The Lone Ranger
and Tonto crested the rise and looked down into the wide valley that spread out below them. There, just as Black Bart had confessed to them when they’d captured him, was Mabel, the rancher’s daughter, tied to the railroad tracks. They pulled their horses to a halt and looked down at her in horror. The black smoke of the oncoming locomotive could already be seen against the blue sky. The sun beat down on them, and the dust was dry in their noses and mouths. The horses, big and warm and muscular, moved uneasily beneath them. The drop-off was almost sheer; there was no easy way down.

The Lone Ranger looked at Tonto. “We have to save Mabel,” he told her.

[There is no good way down. We may be injured.]

“It doesn’t matter. We have to risk anything, everything, to save her. It’s what we do.”

[Why?]

“We are heroes.”

It seemed to satisfy her. The Lone Ranger breathed a sigh of relief and wished she’d never learned to ask the question “why?” It was all she seemed to say lately.

He gave his big stallion a nudge with his heels. (No spurs. Tonto had been very distressed at the idea of spurs.) and they began the sliding, bumping descent to the valley below. Dust rose up around them and choked them, and small rocks that Tonto’s horse dislodged rattled past The Lone Ranger. In the distance, the train itself was now visible, chugging along the shining track. The horses scrambled awkwardly down the rest of the way, and suddenly they were on the valley floor.

“We have to hurry!” The Lone Ranger cried, and again he kicked …

[nudged]

nudged his horse, and the mighty stallion sprang forth, with Tonto and Scout right behind them. They galloped wildly over the uneven valley floor, jumping sagebrushes and swerving to avoid gopher holes. Foam flew from the corners of the horses’ mouths …

[Why?]

Uh, because horses can’t spit.

Ahead of them, they could see Mabel struggling against the ropes that wicked Black Bart had used to tie her to the tracks. Her pale blue dress fluttered slightly in the breeze. They were getting closer, but so was the engine. Over the sound of its chugging, The Lone Ranger and Tonto could hear Mabel’s frantic cries for help. “Faster, boy!” The Lone Ranger called to his horse. Behind him, he heard Tonto encouraging Scout.

[Maximize effort, my horse!]

The horses’ hooves barely touched the ground as they raced along. But the engine was getting closer and closer. Would they be in time to save her? They didn’t know. They
only knew they must be willing to try anything, do anything to save her.

[Why?]

“Because we are heroes!”

[Tonto stopped her horse.]