New Earth (19 page)

“I see,” Jordan replied, trying not to smile at her. “Of course.” And he thought, I want to be close to Aditi; she wants to be close to Bran. From the look on Brandon’s face, he saw that his brother wanted to be close to Elyse, as well.

“I want to go,” Thornberry said. “There’s
a lot for us to learn, there is.”

“I’ll go, too,” Longyear added, although he didn’t look very happy about it. “You’ll need a biologist, and I want to figure out how their DNA can be so much like ours.”

“Five of us, then,” said Jordan.

Meek wagged his head from side to side. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I tell you, you’re putting yourselves into the lions’ den.”

“Perhaps so, Harmon,”
Jordan replied. “But I seem to recall an old adage, ‘Behold the lowly turtle: he only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.’”

The others around the table laughed feebly. Meek made a sour face.

IN THE CITY

As soon as the meeting broke up, Jordan and the four others headed for the city. It was nearly sunset when they left the base camp. The shadows of twilight lengthened as they marched along the forest trail. Jordan realized he didn’t know how to contact Adri with his pocketphone, yet he had the feeling that Adri knew perfectly well that he was coming.

Sure enough, the alien was
standing at the edge of the city, on the stone walk that circled the buildings, practically beaming at the five approaching humans.

But Aditi was not with him.

“Welcome, my friends,” said Adri, extending both arms to them.

“We’re here to begin the process of learning to get along together,” Jordan said. In his own ears, the pronouncement sounded slightly pompous.

But Adri’s aged face smiled
at him. “Very good. But let’s have dinner first.”

Aditi joined them for dinner, and Jordan felt happy and relaxed at last.

Jordan woke up the next morning feeling truly rested. His bedroom in the city was almost like home to him: he felt comfortable in it, at ease. The room wasn’t spacious, yet it felt pleasantly airy. Its only window looked out on a charming courtyard, colorful with blossoming
shrubbery and a stately tree at its center. Even the hummingbird buzzing overhead seemed familiar, friendly.

He hoped that Brandon felt the same way, then wondered if Bran were in his own room or down the hall with Elyse.

Staring up at the high ceiling, he thought of Aditi. Except for that one quick kiss in the rain a few days earlier, Jordan had not made any romantic moves on her. He wanted
to, the physical urge was definitely there, but thoughts of Miriam rose in his mind. Her ghost separated them.

For her part, Aditi had seemed pleasant enough through dinner, a warm, happy young woman who laughed easily and sparkled with intelligence. Yet she seemed content to be a friend, a companion, and nothing more. There was a limit to her friendliness, he could feel it, like an electric
fence.

While the dessert was being served, Jordan asked her about her people’s customs regarding marriage and family.

“I’ve never been married,” she said, as if surprised by his question.

“But your people do marry,” he pressed.

She glanced at Adri, seated beside her. “Yes,” she said slowly, almost reluctantly. “Marriage is rare among us, though. Our birth rate is so low that there is little
need for marriage and child rearing.”

“But you do marry.”

She finally understood. “Yes,” Aditi answered with an amused smile. “But marriage isn’t necessary for a couple to have a sexual relationship.”

And suddenly Jordan felt tongue-tied. He turned his attention to his dessert and hoped none of the others noticed his burning cheeks.

Lying in his bed, Jordan remembered the moment and his embarrassment.
Like a pimple-faced teenaged bumpkin, he said to himself. Like a foolish—

His phone chirped, interrupting his musings. He sat up and reached for it on the bedside table.

Geoffrey Hazzard’s face filled the little screen, dark, unsmiling.

“Good morning, Geoff,” Jordan said. “You’re up pretty early, aren’t you?”

Hazzard broke into a sardonic little smile. “You’ve slept pretty late, haven’t you?”

The clock readout at the bottom of the phone’s screen showed it was precisely 8
A.M
. New Earth’s spin rate was almost exactly the same as Earth’s, to within a few milliseconds. Another coincidence that seemed too good to be true. But there it was, coincidence or not.

“I’m getting lazy, I admit it,” Jordan said, suppressing a yawn. “How’s everything aboard the ship?”

“That’s what I’m calling
about.”

Jordan felt a pang of alarm. “Something wrong?”

“Not with the ship,” said Hazzard. “All systems check out solidly in the green. Nothing wrong with the fusion drive.”

“Then why are you calling?”

“Half an hour ago our sensors detected a major flare on the Pup. It’s putting out a lot of energy. Looks like we’re going to be hit by a major radiation storm.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Could be.
I’ve stepped up the power for our magnetic shielding. It’ll stop the protons, they’re the biggest danger, but a lot of gamma and X-ray radiation’s going to zip right through the magnetic field.”

“You’ll have to spend a few hours in the storm cellar, then.”

Hazzard frowned slightly. “More like a couple of days.”

“I see.”

“I was thinking maybe we could come down to the surface for a day or so,
stay at the base camp.”

“And be protected by the planet’s atmosphere.”

“Beats sitting in the damned coffin for hours on end.”

“What about the ship’s systems? Will they be damaged?”

“They’re hardened. Should be okay. If there’s damage we could repair it afterward.”

Jordan thought swiftly. “All right, come on down, then. I’ll alert Thornberry and the others.”

The astronaut broke into a big,
bright smile. “Thanks, Jordan. I’ll tell Trish and Demetrios.”

Hazzard’s image winked out. Jordan put in a conference call to the others in the city and asked them to meet him in his quarters immediately.

*   *   *

“A solar storm?” Elyse said, suddenly excited. “I’ll have to get to the observatory! I can observe the planet’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the plasma cloud. This is wonderful!”

She and Brandon were in the sitting room that connected Jordan’s bedroom with his brother’s. It was obvious that she had spent the night with Brandon.

Thornberry, slumped on one of the armchairs, was less excited about the impending storm. “Could be trouble for the ship’s electronic systems,” he muttered, rubbing his stubbled chin.

“What about the propulsion engines?” Jordan asked.

Thornberry
made an elaborate shrug. “Might fry the electronic controls, but it shouldn’t hurt the engines themselves. They see plenty of radiation when the fusion reactor’s burning, they do.”

Longyear looked thoughtful as he sat in the other armchair, leaning his chin on his fists. “Hazzard and the others ought to be safe enough in the storm cellar,” he mused.

“He’s asked to come down to the base camp,”
said Jordan. “And I agreed.”

“Then there’ll be nobody in the ship?” Thornberry asked.

“For a day or two,” Jordan said.

Thornberry chuckled. “I can just hear Meek shrieking when he finds out about that.”

“What would Meek have to complain about?” Brandon asked.

“He’ll say this flare was caused by Adri, to get us to abandon the ship, so he can have all of us in his grip here on the ground.”

The others laughed, weakly. Jordan wondered if Meek would be right.

SHIELDING

The little meeting broke up. Elyse—with Brandon at her side—left to go to the astronomical observatory on the other side of the city. Thornberry and Longyear hurried out to the buggy that the roboticist had parked at the city’s edge and headed back to the base camp, to inform Meek and the others that Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker, and Demetrios Zadar were on their way to join them.

Standing alone in his suddenly emptied sitting room, Jordan decided he’d better talk to Adri and see what he knew about the upcoming solar storm.

He called out to the room’s communications system, “Contact Adri, please.”

Almost instantaneously the wall screen showed Adri. He looked up from where he was sitting, apparently slightly surprised. Adri appeared to be in conference with a half-dozen
younger men and women, sitting on the chairs and couches scattered about his spacious room.

“Oh, yes, the radiation storm,” Adri said, nodding slightly. “I was just informed of it by our astronomers.”

“So they’re aware of it.”

“Of course.” Adri hesitated a moment, then went on, “Why don’t you come to my quarters, where we can discuss the situation?”

“I’ll be there directly,” said Jordan.

The airy penthouse room was empty when Jordan got there, except for Adri himself. The people who had been there before were gone.

“Welcome, friend Jordan,” said Adri, rising slowly from the couch where he’d been sitting. “Have you had breakfast?”

Jordan crossed the big room swiftly and grasped both of Adri’s outstretched hands in his own.

Without preamble, Jordan said, “The three people who
were aboard our ship in orbit are coming down to the base camp, for the duration of the storm.”

“A wise precaution,” said Adri. “This is going to be a severe storm, from what I’m told, and they will be much safer beneath our protective blanket of air than aboard your ship in orbit.”

Adri sat back on the couch; Jordan took one of the armchairs facing him. Somehow Adri looked older than ever before,
weary, bent with age. Off in a corner of the room, the alien’s furball pet seemed to be curled up, asleep.

“I was just about to order breakfast for myself,” Adri said. “Would you care for something?”

Jordan shrugged. “Some buttered toast, perhaps. And tea.”

“Of course.” Adri called to one of the wall screens and ordered breakfast for two.

“So it will be a very severe storm,” Jordan said.

Looking quite serious, Adri replied, “Very. The Pup throws off flares every now and then, but this one is among the largest we’ve ever recorded.”

“Will it cause much damage?”

“Here on the ground? No, no: the atmosphere protects us to a great degree, and our energy shields will absorb whatever radiation reaches the ground.”

“But our ship in orbit?”

“It may suffer some damage, I’m afraid.”

“I see,” Jordan said.

“We could provide an energy shield for your camp,” Adri suggested. “It would be the prudent thing to do.”

Thinking how Meek would react to that, Jordan still said, “Thank you. I’ll ask Dr. Thornberry to work with your people to set it up.”

“Very good,” said Adri. “I’ll tell Aditi to direct the installation.” With a knowing smile, he added, “She’ll be glad of an excuse to
be near you again.”

Jordan forced himself to concentrate on business. “Could you provide an energy shield for our ship, as well?”

Adri looked away for a moment. At last he said, “That might be feasible, but we won’t have time to do so before the radiation storm strikes.”

“But if you can set up a shield for our base camp, why not the ship?”

“It would have to be lifted to your ship.”

“We can
do that easily enough.”

“And then integrated with your ship’s systems,” Adri went on, “to make certain it would not interfere with their operation. That would take a day or so of testing and adjustments, I fear.”

“Oh. I see.” But despite himself Jordan wondered if Adri was telling him the truth.

*   *   *

As Jordan prepared to leave the city and return to the camp, he was surprised to see
Brandon enter their sitting room, looking downcast.

“I thought you were staying with Elyse,” he said to his brother.

Dejectedly, Brandon replied, “She’s talking technobabble with the astronomers. I’m just in the way.”

“Feeling left out?”

“Totally.”

“Your first lovers’ quarrel,” Jordan teased.

“No quarrel,” said Brandon. “She wasn’t paying enough attention to me to have a quarrel.”

Suppressing
a chuckle, Jordan offered, “Well, you can come back with us to the camp.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I’ll have to do.”

Jordan couldn’t help telling him, “Aditi’s coming with us.”

Brandon looked surprised. Quickly recovering, he said only, “Good for you, Jordy.”

As they trudged through the woods toward the cluster of hemispherical shelters that comprised the base camp Jordan stayed alongside
Aditi. Behind them, a minihorse carried an electronics black box the size of a shipping crate, the generator for the energy dome. Brandon and the others walked up ahead.

“Does the Pup burp out flares very often?” Jordan asked Aditi.

She looked puzzled. “Burp?”

Jordan rummaged in his mind for a definition. “Like when you’ve gobbled down your food too fast.” And he pantomimed a burp.

“Ah!” Laughing,
Aditi said, “You mean ‘expel forcibly, belch, erupt, explode.’”

“You sound like a dictionary.”

“I’m quoting from a dictionary.”

Surprised, Jordon blurted, “You have a dictionary memorized?”

Again she laughed brightly. “No, but I can call one up when I need to.”

He understood. “You have a communications system? Built in?”

Aditi tapped her short-cropped red hair. “Inside the skull. We all
do. It’s installed in childhood.”

Impressed, Jordan muttered, “That beats carrying a phone around, I suppose.”

When they reached the base camp, Meek eyed the minihorse and the equipment it was carrying with unconcealed hostility.

“I don’t like this,” he told Jordan. “I don’t like this at all.”

Taking the astrobiologist by the arm and leading him away from Aditi and the stolid beast, Jordan
said, “Harmon, it’s for your own protection.”

“How do we know that?”

“The city is protected by an energy dome.”

Undeterred, Meek insisted, “We have no idea of how it works or what it actually does. I’m against—”

“What it does,” Jordan interrupted, “is protect you from any excess radiation caused by the storm.”