Arrival (12 page)

* * *

By the time the others had returned from their EVA, the rest of the team had all of the flight seats stowed under the deck plates. They had stored their pressure suits in their lockers, and finished converting the passenger compartment into an access corridor. The path led from the inner airlock compartment directly behind the flight deck, to what would become the habitat bay, once they opened it up and extended the individual bays.

The EVA party stripped out of their foul-weather gear downstairs in the outer-airlock compartment, and secured all equipment in the appropriate lockers. The men joked and laughed as they ascended the ladder behind Lynn, towels hanging around their necks after drying off their heads.

“Don’t worry, Tony,” Mac teased. “I’m sure we can rig up a night-light so you won’t have to be scared of things that go bump in the night!”

“I’m telling you, I heard something out there,” Tony insisted as they entered the corridor.

“What did you hear?” Laura inquired.

“Nothing,” Tony lied.

“He heard some scary creatures in the fog,” Mac jested as he held his hands up like claws.

“Bullshit,” Tony insisted. “Why do you have to be such an ass all the time?”

“See,” Sara interrupted. “It’s not just me! Everyone thinks you’re a jerk.”

Mac just blew Sara a kiss, taking the slander as a compliment.

Laura rephrased her question, “What do you
think
you heard, Tony?”

“Nothing,” Tony insisted, trying to play the incident down. He didn’t want to give Mac any more ammunition. “I just thought I heard something moving, that’s all.” Tony could see the alarm in Laura’s face at his statement. “Probably just the wind.”

“Are you sure?” Laura asked.

“I’m sure,” he insisted, but he could tell it was not enough by the concern on her face. “I scanned the area and there was nothing out there.” Tony pushed Mac down the corridor. “Come on, asshole. Let’s open up the bays so we can get some rest.”

“Rest? Hell! Let’s open them up and get to working out!” Mac argued as they headed to the hatch at the aft end of the bay. “We’re gonna need to be in shape if we’re gonna have to fight off all the ferocious Cetian creatures out there!” Mac laughed as Tony pushed him through the aft hatch.

Lynn leaned against the bulkhead to rest, drying her hair with a towel. Maria noticed how ragged Lynn looked and moved over to her.

“How are you holding up?” Maria asked.

“Do I look that bad?” Lynn asked, already knowing the answer.

“A little drained, maybe.”

“That’s about how I feel. Drained.”

“It
has
been a rough day.”

Although Lynn was comforted by Maria’s concern, she somehow felt it was no longer appropriate. She straightened up and tried to appear more stoic, more commanding. “Yes, it has. But there’s still work to be done.” Lynn turned away and headed for the flight deck. “Let’s get the reactor back online, Frank,” she ordered.

Laura, witnessing the exchange, stepped up. “She sure has grown up rather quickly.”

Maria watched as Lynn left. She was worried that Lynn was trying to take too much in stride. “Yes, maybe.” Maria turned to face Laura. “I think we should give her a little room, to grow into her new shoes, I mean.” Laura nodded, and turned to follow Mac and Tony into the habitat bay.

* * *

Frank appeared at the head of the corridor. “We’ve got full power again,” he announced as he moved aft to join Mac and Tony at the end of the corridor. “Let’s open her up.”

“How’s it looking back there, Tony?” Mac called down the narrow space that ran aft between the retracted habitat bays.

“
All restraints are clear!
” Tony replied from deep within the aft end of the LRV.

Mac began turning the hand crank in the bulkhead. There was a creaking sound, followed by a low rumble as the two forward-most habitat bays struggled to roll outward under the weight of gravity for the first time; the science lab to starboard, and the med-lab to port. Mac continued cranking until the bays stopped moving, then locked them both into their fully-extended positions, after which Tony connected multi-cables that connected each bay’s power and signal wiring into the main habitat’s central bus.

Mac removed the hand crank from its fitting, then turned to the others standing behind him. “Ladies.”

The rest of the crew moved into the first two extended bays and began to unpack and position the equipment and furniture, all of which were stuffed strategically into every nook and cranny of each habitat bay.

The crew worked their way aft, extending and unpacking each bay. The galley, wardroom, and the sleeping berths on either side, just before the laundry and bathroom facilities at the aft end of the habitat section. Working together, they quickly made the habitat fully operational, with all the amenities of home to keep them safe and cozy on this strange new world.

* * *

Frank felt like he was going cross-eyed. He had been staring at status displays for the last hour, checking various systems for damage and running diagnostics on everything that ran on electricity. And although he normally was somewhat reclusive when he worked, he welcomed Lynn’s interruption as an opportunity for a break.

“How does it look?” she asked, trying to cover up her own signs of fatigue.

“Well, we’ve got a lot of little stuff, blown fuses, melted circuits, stuff like that. But all that is easy to repair, just time consuming.” Frank leaned back in his seat, ran his hands through his hair, and sighed. “The worst things are the sensor array and deep-space communications. Those are both fried. I can’t even begin to guess if they’re repairable.”

Lynn sat down and thought about it for a moment. “Well, the Daedalus won’t be entering the system for at least another eleven months, so we can live without communications for awhile. And since we won’t be flying this thing anytime soon, I don’t think that the sensor array is terribly important either.”

Frank looked a little shocked by her remark. “But without the array, we can’t search for Jack,” he reminded her.

“You mean Jack and Will,” Lynn corrected.

“You know what I mean. If they made it down alive, they could be waiting for help right now.”

“Frank, I want them back as much as anyone, believe me. But you know better than anyone that the odds are astronomical.”

Frank looked her straight in the eyes. “We’ve got to try.” After a pause, he added, “even if only to prove that they didn’t survive, we’ve got to be sure.” His tone was almost pleading now.

“Don’t you think you’re grasping at straws, Frank?”

“Look, I played back the telemetry log, and the way the Icarus was breaking up, I think they might’ve had another minute or so to get out after we lost the telemetry signal.”

Lynn took a deep breath, trying to think of what Jack would say at a time like this. “Ok, but we’ve got higher priorities right now, the first of which is survival.”

Frank looked down at the floor. He knew she was right. They were down and safe, yes. But that was a long way from surviving. There were five more cargo pods out there that contained the equipment and supplies they would need. Especially if they were going to search for their lost friends.

“And let’s not forget the mission,” Lynn reminded him. “Even though we are stranded here until the Daedalus arrives, they’ll still be expecting us to at least survey this planet.”

Frank didn’t respond.

The look in Frank’s eyes told Lynn that he knew she was right. “We survive, first.
Then
we see that the survey gets completed. You know better than anybody, Frank. It’s even more important now that they will have no way to survey the other planets before they commit to orbit.” Lynn hated to throw facts in Frank’s face. She knew he only wanted to find his friend. But she feared his loyalty was interfering with his judgment.

“But what if they
are
out there somewhere?” Frank pleaded. “What if they’re injured? Hell, they could be just on the other side of those mountains for all we know!”

“Come on, Frank.” Lynn knew he was really reaching now. “What are the odds?”

“What?”

Lynn decided to take her stance. “What are the odds that Jack and Will escaped the Icarus before she broke up and made it down alive?” She was challenging him to use his intellect and not his heart.

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted. “One hundred to one, maybe?” Frank looked at Lynn for an answer. “A thousand to one?” She still wasn’t buying it. “Alright, so it’s a long shot.”

“And you want to risk our lives, and possibly the lives of everyone else on board the Daedalus,
just
to be
sure
?”

Frank hated being wrong, especially if it meant that Lynn was right.

“Look,” she offered, “if there was any evidence that they really might have made it, I’d be on your side.” Lynn felt badly for him. He was desperate. “You told me once that Jack always knows what he’s doing. So if by some miracle he managed to make it down safely, wouldn’t you agree that the odds are better that he’ll find a way to get back to us?”

Frank had not thought about it that way. She was right, Jack was a survivor, and nobody knew that better than Frank. “Yeah, you’re right.” Frank looked around the flight deck to avoid making eye contact with Lynn.

“So we agree that for
now
, we have to concentrate our efforts on our immediate survival?”

“Agreed,” Frank responded reluctantly, finally looking at her.

“Good.” Lynn hated to give him false hope, but she needed him focused on the matters at hand. “Come on, the others have got the habitat opened up. Let’s get some rest. We can start
surviving
tomorrow.”

Lynn turned and headed through the hatch. Frank was tired, and sleep sounded pretty good right now. And he knew that with their time cycles being so wildly out of sync, sunrise on this planet would come sooner than expected.

* * *

Lynn entered the habitat bay and headed aft. She was ready to sleep. Maria was in the med-lab, checking her equipment for damage. Adia and Laura were already in their berths, and Sara was in the bathroom cleaning bits of vomit out of her hair.

Lynn squeezed past Mac and Tony, who already had the portable gym station out, assembled, and were doing a light workout before bed. On the way to her berth, she noticed that someone had made up both Jack and Will’s bunks, as if they would be coming in late after everyone else had fallen asleep. The sight almost made her cry, and she paused to gaze upon the empty berths longer than she realized, drawing the attention of Mac and Tony.

“You okay, Skipper?” Mac asked.

The moniker surprised her. It was the first time anyone had formally recognized her as the new mission commander. “Yes, fine,” she responded, trying to covertly wipe the tears from her eyes. “You guys finish up and hit the sack.”

“Yes ma’am,” Mac responded, somewhat uncomfortable at witnessing her moment of weakness.

Frank watched from the galley as Lynn climbed into her own bunk and pulled the curtain closed behind her. He also saw the empty berths. They only reminded him of how helpless he felt, and that he couldn’t accept his friend’s death until he was sure of it.

Lynn stretched out on her bunk without even removing her jumpsuit. It felt strange after four months of sleeping in zero gravity to actually lie on a bed again. But she was exhausted by the day’s events, as well as the new responsibilities that had been dropped on her shoulders. She turned out her light and cried softly to herself in her dark little berth, until she fell asleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

The early morning sky was a brilliant azure. The air was clear and crisp, and a light dew covered the surface. Overhead, a long, slender, golden-brown creature with massive, near-transparent wings lazily sailed the currents of the Cetian winds as it eyed the ground below. The subject of its attention was a strange, unfamiliar, silver object. Much larger than the bird itself, the object reflected the morning sunlight, further luring the soaring creature to investigate. After circling several times, it confidently dove, swooping down for a smooth landing atop the strange silver object.

The bird took its perch along a rail that ran around the top of the object. There were many long ropes, twisted like the vines in nearby trees, running from their attachments on the circular rail. They cascaded down the side of the silver object, which was about five meters tall and of conical shape, and equally wide across its base. The ropes led to large red and white sheets of translucent fabric on the ground, occasionally swelling with the breeze and threatening to fly away, had they not been attached to the silver object.

The object itself had once been smooth and perfectly symmetrical, but now was battered and sheared, with black charring from its bottom up along its dented and misshapen sides.

The bird hopped about the top of the conical object with far less grace than it had possessed when airborne. The creature found it difficult to get a good grasp. Its surface did not give, or allow the creature’s talons to get any traction, forcing it to flap its massive wings intermittently to maintain its balance.

Atop the center of the object was a flashing red light, which had a near hypnotic effect on the creature. It pecked at the light several times, but found it inedible, and therefore undeserving of its attention. It moved to the opposite side, which was facing up the hill that the object rested precariously upon. On the uphill side was a small square, about one meter, with a smaller, clear, see-through square located in its center. The ungainly creature found this more interesting, and hopped down to stand on the small square’s indented rim. The black rim was somewhat softer and easier for the creature’s gangly talons to grab.

The curious winged creature peered through the small, clear square, looking inside the silver object. It was hollow inside, with many long, flat, grey and black objects arranged in a semi-circle, their ends meeting at the center of the floor where they were arranged. Many multi-colored vines were hanging down from above, seemingly chaotic and without purpose, and a grey lingering smoke filled the compartment, obscuring the creature’s view.

Suddenly, something moved inside the object, a large creature clad in silver and grey and black that suddenly fell from inside the top, causing the smoke to swirl about. The bird jerked its head back and flapped its wings to keep from falling, startled by the movement. Then, the whole square suddenly swung open and away from the conical object, causing the bird to give flight.

The hatch swung open and clanged against the side of the battered capsule, nearly falling off its weakened hinges in the process. Jack half-fell out of the hatchway, choking from the acrid gray smoke that billowed out of the hatch behind him. He fell to the ground, coughing and sputtering. His head was throbbing unmercifully. His vision was fuzzy at best, and the morning light was so bright that he could barely keep his eyes open.

There was something wet at his temple. Jack reached up and felt the left side of his head. His hair was soaked. He brought his hand back down in front of his face and saw that it was covered with blood, but he didn’t care. He tried to straighten up, fighting back the dizziness that threatened to topple him over. Leaning back against the side of the emergency escape pod to steady himself, he held up his right hand to shade his eyes from the morning sun and scanned the immediate area.

They appeared to be sitting on a small shelf on the side of a large hill, which stretched out about fifty meters above them. The hill was charred and black uphill, apparently from a brush fire caused by their landing. There were trees nearby, most of them located further down the hill.

There was life here as well. Jack could hear it. In fact, there was a large bird-like creature sitting in a tree not ten meters from him, squawking angrily at his presence.

Through determination alone, Jack managed to force his body to cooperate. The situation, the need to survive, caused adrenaline to dump into his bloodstream. The hormone gave him the strength he needed to fight off his dizziness and function with some semblance of normality. He turned to look at the capsule that had carried him to safety. It was charred and dented, and looked like it had flown through an asteroid field. No longer a sophisticated escape capsule, it was now a hunk of junk, burnt and broken. It was amazing the thing was still intact at all. From the looks of the gorge cut into the side of the hill by their impact, Jack was convinced that they must’ve hit very hard. If they hadn’t hit at such an oblique angle and slid—or rolled, he wasn’t sure which—down the side of the hill, they undoubtedly would’ve been crushed by the impact.

Jack rose to his feet and stumbled back to the hatchway, poking his head partway inside. “Will! You alive?” he called out. He could hear coughing from inside. Then Will’s arm fell, dangling from the seat above the hatch, his fingers twitching.

“I’m not sure,” Will responded weakly. “Are you?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I am,” Jack coughed. “Are you okay? Are you injured?” Jack could hear more movement from Will’s position, as he tested out his extremities.

“I don’t think so, wait,” Will groaned. “Oh, my head.”

“Yeah, mine too. Must be from all the smoke. We must’ve been knocked unconscious on impact.” Jack sat down on the edge of the hatch rim. “Must’ve had a pretty good electrical fire as well. At some point, the suppression systems must’ve kicked in and the ventilation fans purged most of the smoke. Otherwise we’d be dead right now.”

“I’m still not convinced we aren’t,” Will responded with a groan.

Jack smiled. It was the first humorous thing he had ever heard from Will.

“My shoulder is killing me,” Will continued, still coughing in between words.

“Well, climb down and come out here, the air is much better.” Jack looked around again, squinting in the bright morning sun. “And the scenery is spectacular!”

Will climbed down out of his seat to the deck below and made his way clumsily to the hatch. With Jack’s assistance, he crawled out and sat on the ground beside the capsule.

“Oh my,” Will exclaimed as he looked about, also with narrowed eyes. “I can’t believe this. It’s so… So
big
.” Will was beside himself with wonder as he looked across the valley below and beyond to the hills on the far side. “I mean,
look
at it all. It’s huge!”

“Yeah, it’s a bit overpowering, isn’t it?”

“Overpowering is a considerable understatement, I’d say.” Will felt his breath quickening, his pulse racing. “It’s frightening. It’s so vast.”

“Are you okay?” Jack asked, noticing Will’s increasing respiratory rate.

“I don’t know,” Will admitted, his breathing becoming faster and deeper. “I feel sort of, panicked, as if, I, I…” Will grasped at his chest. “I can’t, breathe, Jack!”

Jack bent over to help. Will’s face was twisted with terror, his breathing rapid and deep. “Take it easy, Will. You’re hyperventilating. Just try to breathe slow and easy, normal breaths, in and out,” Jack demonstrated, taking a few slow, deep breaths himself. Will tried, but was still panicked.

“What’s wrong…with me?”

“It’s just the wide open space, that’s all,” Jack insisted. “You’re not used to it. None of us are.” Jack was doing his best to be comforting. “You grew up on a spaceship, remember?”

Will’s breathing was beginning to calm down. “So did you.”

“Well, I spent a little extra time in the environmental sims.” Jack lied. The fact was, the mission planners had expected everyone to react differently to being out in the open for the first time. Some people would become anxious, others would hyperventilate. Some might even become psychologically incapacitated by the mere thought of going outside, while others would not be affected in the slightest. There was no way for them to know for sure until they got there and experienced the area for the first time.

Will looked at Jack, knowing he was just trying to make him feel better. “Hey,” Jack defended. “Feel my pulse! I’m not completely unaffected by all this open space!”

Will smiled, appreciating the effort. He knew he was not as stoic as Jack. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his breathing. Soon it was back to normal, although his pulse continued to race for some time. Finally, he was able to open his eyes again without panicking. He looked over at Jack, who was sitting next to him. “Did you know you’re bleeding?” he asked, noticing Jack’s head.

“Oh, yeah. I must’ve banged my head getting out,” Jack said casually as he reached up to touch his wound. “I think the bleeding is slowing down, though.” Jack rose to his feet and extended his hand to Will. “Come on, let’s get out of these suits.”

An hour later, Jack and Will were out of their pressure suits and into the light-blue jumpsuits that were stowed aboard the escape pod. They had pulled out all of the survival gear the escape pod carried, and spread most of it out on the ground in front of them for inventory.

“I think that’s the last of it,” Jack said as he dropped the last bag. Jack took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead, sitting down to rest. His head wound had stopped bleeding long ago, and Will had taped a small bandage to the laceration on his left temple. “I can’t believe I’m so tired already,” Jack exclaimed. “I should’ve spent more time in the gym with Mac and Tony.”

Will sat down as well, grateful that he wasn’t the first to complain about the overwhelming fatigue. He was still dealing with occasional feelings of panic over being in the great outdoors for the first time since birth. And while the human part of him feared the unknown, the scientist in him was fascinated. He knew it was only a matter of time before his fears would subside and the scientist in him would take over. He just hoped it would happen soon.

Jack on the other hand, was already getting comfortable in his new surroundings. Reclining against one of the survival bags, he settled in to enjoy the view of the valley below. “You know, after seeing this firsthand, I can understand why we wanted to get here.”

“Of course, it wasn’t necessarily
here
that we wanted to get to, you know.”

“You know what I mean. Not
here
,” Jack said, pointing at the ground in front of him. “I mean, here,” he continued as he gestured at the entire landscape with both arms. “Land, a planet surface, not the inside of some spaceship hurtling across the galaxy.” Jack took a deep breath of fresh air. “I mean, just look at it! If Earth was
anything
like this, I don’t know how the hell our forefathers ever left.”

“They believed in something, something better than what mankind had on Earth.”

“Of course. I’m just saying that it must’ve been hard to leave it all behind, knowing that you, your children, and your children’s children, would never know anything but the inside of a spaceship.”

Will had no response. He had contemplated this before; all of them had at one time or another. But now that they were here, it was no longer an esoteric thought.

“It’s a shame they can’t see this for themselves,” Jack added.

“Well, a few of them probably will get to see it, Jack. Hal Ishkin is still alive, and so are Annie Gentry and Ray Wilkins. They were all there in the beginning, and they’ll get to see this new world.”

Jack had almost forgotten about them. “That’s right. Well hell, that’s something, isn’t it?” Jack exclaimed, snapping back to reality. “So, let’s see how we’re doing!”

Will straightened up to take stock of their supplies. “We’ve got plenty of food and water, probably enough for months. The capsule was stocked for ten people for two weeks, so we should have enough for say, ten weeks. And we’ve got plenty of water filters too.”

“Yeah, and ten sleep sacks, so we’re not gonna to freeze to death! What about the science kits?”

“Plenty of test kits. And we’ve got a portable video-player and several library disks. Everything from Anthropology to Zoology, along with a complete survival encyclopedia and a set of classic books to pass the time.”

“Good. We’ve also got a tool kit, several medical kits, two solar-recharging kits, a data pad with a multi-purpose scanner head, several handguns and rifles, and about a thousand rounds.” Jack took a long drink of water from his bottle. “All things considered, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape.”

Will also took a sip of water. “So, how far away do you think we are from the landing site?”

Jack frowned a bit. “I’m not really sure. I know they had to have separated before we did. Since we were orbiting west to east, if we separated after them, we should be east of them, along pretty much the same latitude.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, I have all the survey maps from the deep-space probe in my data pad. Between the star charts and the landmarks, I should be able to get a fix on our position. It may take me a few days, though.” Jack took another drink of water. “In the meantime, I think we’d better make camp here for awhile. We’re still pretty weak from living in zero gravity. And if we’re going to have to hike out, we’ll have to get our strength back, first.”

“You think we should hike out?” Will was concerned. “Not wait here for them to rescue us?”

“We don’t know that they
can
rescue us.” Jack didn’t feel it necessary to burden Will with the knowledge that the others probably didn’t even know he and Will had made it out alive. “I’m sure they got down okay, Lynn’s a great pilot. But I doubt it was an easy ride. They probably have troubles of their own to deal with.”

“But surely they’ll be worried about us.”

“Of course, but they have their own survival to worry about, not to mention the mission. Everyone on board the Daedalus is depending on them. And if Lynn is doing her job properly, she’s concentrating on those priorities first.”

“Can’t we contact them?”

“Not without the comm-sat in orbit. Without it, the comm-sets won’t be much better than line-of-sight down here. They could pick up our transponder signal, if we had one. But that electrical fire did a lot of damage, and the transponder is toast.” Jack could see the concern on Will’s face. “Don’t worry, Will. If they can, I’m sure they’ll do something to help us out. But I still think it’s best for us to assume the worst and take care of ourselves.”