Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (54 page)

“Now we must consider our immediate tasks.”

Jesus god, Aaron thinks, the old bastard. The old fox, he’s got it all back, he took the initiative right out from under them while I thought he was dead out. Fantastic. But how the hell? Running those lasers up is a job. Aaron looks around, catches a hooded gleam from Bustamente. Ol’ Black George was cooking in his electronic jungle, he and Yellaston. Aaron grins to himself. He is happy, so happy that he ignores the inner murmur:
at a price.

“The biologic examination of the planetary life-form returned to us by Commander Kuh will start at about sixteen hundred this afternoon. It will be conducted in Corridor Gamma One under decontaminant seal, but the entire operation will be displayed on your viewers.” Yellaston smiles. “You will probably see it better than I will. Next, and concurrently, the Drive section will prepare to initiate change of course toward the Alpha planet. Each of you will secure your areas for acceleration and course-change as speedily as possible. The vector loadings will be posted tomorrow. Advise Don and Tim of any problems in their respective sections. First Engineer Singh will deal with Gamma section in the absence of Commander Kuh. And finally, we must commence the work of adapting and refining our general colonization plan to the planetary data now at hand. Our first objective is a planetary atlas incorporating every indicator that your specialties can extract from the
Gamma
tapes. On this we can build our plans. I remind you that this is a task requiring imagination and careful thought of every contingency and parameter. Gentlemen, ladies: the die is cast. We have only two years to prepare for the greatest adventure our race has known.”

Aaron starts to smile at the archaism, finds he has a fullness in the throat. The hush around him holds for a minute; Yellaston nods to Don and Tim, and they get up and exit with him. Perfect, Aaron thinks. We’ll make it, we’re okay. Screw Coby. Daddy lives. Everyone is jabbering now, Aaron makes his way through them past the great flowering wonder of Lory’s—of the Alpha planet. Our future home. Yellaston will get us there, he’s pulled it out.

But at a price, the gloomy corner of his forebrain repeats. The big green light is on its way to Earth. Not only we but all the people of Earth are committed, committed to that world. That planet
has
to be all right now.

He goes to assemble his equipment, irrationally resolved to double his emergency decontaminant array.

log 124 586 sd 4100 x 1200 notice to all personnel

corridor gamma one will be under space hazard seal starting 1545 this day for the purpose of bioanalysis of alien life specimen/ /attendance will be limited to: [1] centaur command cadre alpha (2] designated xenobiosurvey/medical personnel [3] eva team charlie [4] safety/survival staff assigned to corridor access locks/ /the foregoing personnel will be suited at all times until the unsealing of the corridor/ /because of the unknown risk factor in this operation additional guards will also be stationed on the inboard side of all access ports: see special-duty roster attached/ /unauthorized personnel will not, repeat not, enter gamma one starting as of now/ /video cover of the entire operation from the closest feasible points will be available on all screens on ship channel one, starting approximately 1515 hours

yellaston, cmdg

In Corridor Gamma One, the major risk-factor is wires. Aaron leans on a bulkhead amid his tangle of equipment, holding his bulky suit and watching Jan Ing wrangle with Electronics. The Xenobiology chief wants a complete computer capability in the corridor; there is no way of passing the cable through the lock seals. The EVA team is appealed to, but they refuse to give up any of their service terminals. Finally the issue is resolved by sacrificing an access-lock indicator panel. Engineer Gomulka, who will double as a guard, starts cutting it out to bring the computer leads in.

Wires are snaking all over the deck. XB has brought in half their laboratory, and he can see at least eight other waldo-type devices in addition to the biomonitor extension equipment. On top of it all the camera crew is setting up. One camera is opposite the small hatch that will open into
China Flower
’s personnel section, two by the big cargo hatch behind which the alien thing will be, plus a couple of overhead views. They are also mounting some ceiling slave screens for the corridor, Aaron. is glad to find. He is too far back to see the hatches. The Safety team is trying to get the cables cleared into bundles along the wall, but the mess is bound to get worse when the suit umbilicals come into use. Mercifully, general suiting-up will not take place until the EVA team has winched
China Flower
up to her berth.

Aaron’s station is the farthest one away at the stern end of the corridor. In front of him is an open space with the EVA floor lock, and then starts the long Xenobiology clutter. Beyond XB is the big cargo hatch and then the small hatch, and finally in the distance is the corridor command station. Command Cadre Alpha means Yellaston and Tim Bron. Aaron can just make out Tim’s eye-patch, he’s talking with Don Purcell who will go back to man
Centaur
’s bridge. In case of trouble . . . Aaron peers at his racks of decontaminant aerosols mounted opposite the hatches. They have wires, too, running to a switch beside his hand. He had trouble with XB about those cans; Jan Ing would rather be eaten alive than risk damaging their precious specimen of alien life.

A hand falls on his shoulder—Captain Yellaston, coming in the long way round, his observant face giving no hint of what must be the chemical conditions in his bloodstream.

“The die is cast,” Aaron observes.

Yellaston nods. “A gamble,” he says quietly. “The mission . . . I may have done a fearful thing, Aaron. They were bound to come, on the strength of the other two.”

“The only thing you could have done, sir.”

“No.” Aaron looks up. Yellaston isn’t talking to him; his eyes are on some cold cosmic scoreboard. “No. I should have sent code yellow and announced I had sent the green. Ray would have kept silent. That would have held back the UN ships at least. It was the correct move. I failed to think it through in time.”

He moves on down the corridor, leaving Aaron stunned. Sent the yellow and lied to us for two years?
Captain Yellaston?
But yes, Aaron sees slowly, that would have saved something, in case the planet is no good. It would have been better. What he did was good, but it wasn’t the best. Because he was drunk. . . . My fault. My stupid susceptibilities, my—

People are jostling past him, it’s the EVA team, suited and ready to go out. Chief George Brokeshoulder’s suit is a work of art, painted with blazing Amerind symbols. The last man by punches Aaron’s arm—Bruce Jang, giving him a mean wink through his gold-washed faceplate. Aaron watches them file down into the EVA blister lock, remembering the same thing three weeks ago when they had gone out to bring in
China Flower
with Lory unconscious inside. This time all they have to do is reel up the tether. Risky enough. The rotational mechanics could send a man into space, Aaron thinks; he is always awed by skills he doesn’t have.

A videoscreen comes to life, showing spinning stars. A space suit occults them; when it passes, three small yellow lights are moving toward a blackness—the helmet lights of the team going down to
China Flower
far below. Aaron’s gut jumps; an
alien
is out there, he is about to meet an
alien
. He blinks, begins to sort and assemble the extensor mounts on which his sensors will be intruded into the scouter’s cargo hold. As he does so, he notices faces peering at him through the vitrex of the nearest access lock. He waves. The faces, perceiving that the scenario has not yet started, go away. It will be, Aaron realizes, a long afternoon.

By the time he and Ing have lined up their equipment, all nonoperational people except the suit team have left the corridor. The hull has been groaning softly;
China Flower
is rising to them on her winch. Suddenly the wall beside him clanks, grinds reverberatingly—the port probes engage, the grinding stops. Aaron shivers involuntarily: the alien is here.

As the EVA lock cycle begins flashing, Tim Bron’s voice says on the audio, “All hands will now suit up.”

The EVA team is coming back inside. The suit men work down the corridor, checking and paying out the umbilicals as neatly as they can. It’s going to be cramped working. The suit team reach him last. As he seals in he sees more faces at the side lock. The videoscreens are all on now, giving a much better view, but still the faces remain. Aaron chuckles to himself; the old ape impulse to see with the living eye.

“All nonoperational personnel will now clear the area.”

The EVA team is lined up along the wall opposite
China Flower
’s personnel hatch. The plan is to open this first in order to retrieve the scout ship’s automatic records of the alien’s life-processes. Is it still alive in there? Aaron has no mystic intuitions now, only a great and growing tension in his gut. He makes himself breathe normally.

“Guards, secure the area.”

The last corridor entrances are dogged tight. Aaron sees a faceplate turned toward him three stations up the XB line. The face belongs to Lory. He flinches slightly; he had forgotten she would be here. He lifts his gloved hand, wishing he was between her and that cargo port.

The area is secure, the guards stationed. George Brokeshoulder and two other EVA men move up to open the lock coupled to
China Flower
’s personnel port. Aaron watches the close-up on the overhead screen. Metal clinks, the lock hatch slides sideways. The EVA men go in carrying vapor analyzers, the hatch rolls shut. Another wait. Aaron sees the XB people tuning their suit radios, realizes the EVA men are reporting. He gets the channel: “Nominal . . . Atmosphere nominal (crackle, crackle) . . .” The hatch is sliding back again, the men come out accompanied by a barely perceptible fogginess. Lory looks back at him again; he understands. This is the air she had breathed for nearly a year.

The ship’s tapes are being handed out. The alien is, it appears, alive.

“Metabolic trace regular to preliminary inspection, envelope unchanged,” Jan Ing’s voice comes on the audio. “Intermittent bioluminescence, two to eighty candlepower.” Eighty candlepower, that’s
bright
. So Lory hadn’t lied about that, anyway. “A strong peak coinciding with the original docking with
Centaur
. . . a second peak occurred, yes, about the time the scout ship was removed from its berth.”

That would be about when Tighe did—or didn’t—open the container, Aaron thinks. Or maybe it was stimulated by moving the ship.

“One of the fans which circulate its atmosphere is not operating,” the XB chief goes on, “but the remaining fans seem to have provided sufficient movement for adequate gas exchange. Its surface atmosphere requires continuous renewal, since it is adapted to constant planetary wind. It also exhibits pulselike internal pressure changes—”

Aaron’s mind is momentarily distracted by the vision of himself stepping out into planetary wind, a stream of wild unrecycled air. That creature in there dwells on wind. A podlike mass about four meters long, Lory had described it. Like a big bag of fruit. Squatting in there for a year, metabolizing, pulsing, luminescing—what else has it been doing? The functions of life: assimilation, excitation, reproduction. Has it been reproducing? Is the hold full of Coby’s tiny monsters waiting to pounce out? Or ooze out, swallowing us all? Aaron notices he has drifted away from his decontaminant switches; he moves back.

“The mass is constant, activity vectors stable,” Jan concludes.

So it hasn’t been multiplying. Just squatting there. Thinking, maybe? Aaron wonders if those bioluminescence peaks would correlate with any phenomena on
Centaur
. What phenomena? Tighe-sightings, maybe, or nightmares? Don’t be an idiot, he tells himself; the imp in his ear replies that those New England colonists didn’t correlate ocean currents and winter temperatures, either. . . . Absently he has been following the EVA team’s debate on whether to cut open the viewport to the alien that Lory welded shut. It is decided not to try this but to proceed directly to the main cargo lock.

The team comes out, and the men assigned to the extension probes pick up their equipment, cables writhing in a slow snake dance. Bruce and the EVA chief undog the heavy cargo hatch. This is the port through which the scout ship’s groundside equipment, their vehicles and flier and generator, were loaded in. The hatch rolls silently aside, the two men go into the lock. Aaron can see them on the videoscreen, unsealing the scouter’s port. It opens; no vapor comes out because the hold is unpressurized. Beyond the suited figures Aaron can see the shiny side of the cargo module in which the alien is confined. The sensor men advance, angling their probes into the lock like long-necked beasts. Aaron glances up at another screen which shows the corridor as a whole and experiences an odd oceanic awareness.

Here we are, he thinks, tiny blobs of life millions and millions of miles from the speck that spawned us, hanging out here in the dark wastes, preparing with such complex pains to encounter a different mode of life. All of us, peculiar, wretchedly imperfect-somehow we have done this thing. Incredible, really, the ludicrous tangle of equipment, the awkward suited men, the precautions, the labor, the solemnity—Jan, Bruce, Yellaston, Tim Bron, Bustamente, Alice Berryman, Coby, Kawabata, my saintly sister, poor Frank Foy, stupid Aaron Kaye—a stream of faces pours through his mind, hostile or smiling, suffering each in his separate flawed reality: all of us. Somehow we have brought ourselves to this amazement. Perhaps we really are saving our race, he thinks, perhaps there really is a new earth and heaven ahead. . . .

The moment passes; he watches the backs of the men inside
China
, still struggling with the module port. The sensor men have closed in, blocked the view. Aaron glances up at the bow end of the corridor where Yellaston and Tim Bron stand. Yellaston’s arm is extended stiffly to the top of his console. That must be the evacuation control; if he pulls it the air ducts will open, the corridor will depressurize in a couple of minutes. So will the alien’s module if it’s open. Good; Aaron feels reassured. He checks his own canister-release switch, finds he has again strayed forward and moves back.