Analog Science Fiction and Fact 03/01/11

by Dell Magazines

“We have to clear the grass,” she said, startling her crew, the alien, and herself.

  “What?” Ari said.

  “I think I understand now. I saw smoke, and when I saw what they were doing... The aliens are burning off the grass around their home. We need to clear the grass here too.”

  The captain and the astronomer-specialist looked at each other. Dragging out the single syllable, Ari said, “Why?”

  Youngha couldn’t break away from the alien’s gaze. “I don’t know. It’s just... it’s the one idea they’ve tried to communicate to us, over and over again, since we got here. Not ‘who are you?’ or ‘where did you come from?’ but ‘clear the area around your home.’ It must be important.”

  “If they were human,” Thom said.

  “They aren’t human. They aren’t stupid, though. I think they’re counting on us to not be stupid too.”

  Thom said, “Well, we can’t burn it off. It’s too dry. One stray spark and the whole prairie will go up.”

  “We can use the corer,” Ari said. Thom opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. He settled on glaring at Youngha.

  “On its widest, shallowest setting?” Youngha said. Ari nodded and they got to work.

  The alien watched as they reset the coring device and began to clear the top layer of grass and soil around the lander, one meter-wide circle at a time. It started at the machine’s first ground-shaking whump, but didn’t run. It stayed to watch all through the day.

  When the sun was a rippling red orb on the horizon, the alien whistled a short song and bounded away, vanishing into the grass. Youngha wiped sweat off her nose and wished, again, that she had some way to know what the aliens were saying.

  The next day dawned hot. Fingers of white cloud reached into the edge of the southern sky. Youngha set the imager on her knee and sighed. The little burrowing creatures she’d been stalking were simply too fast for her. She was considering putting a scope down one of their burrows when her comm buzzed.

  “Yes?” she asked it, thumbing it to transmit.

  Ari’s voice came over the radio, clipped and calm. Youngha’s stomach twisted. With him, that was a bad sign. “Back to the lander as fast as you can,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” she said, getting to her feet.

  “Wildfire,” Ari said. Youngha swore and ran.

  Her crewmates were hastily packing tools and samples when she arrived. Youngha stopped a moment to catch her breath. Smoke hazed the horizon. Youngha saw Thom wipe his sleeve across his forehead and felt sweat rolling down the small of her back. She glanced at the morning sun as she got to work, swearing under her breath. It was too early in the day for this heat.

  Youngha tightened the dogs on the last storage hatch and let herself take a deep breath. Thom retreated into the lander. Then the wind changed, and the fire swept toward them, roaring. The sound of it... “Get inside!” Ari yelled. Youngha swung up the ladder, gave Ari a hand up, then slammed the hatch behind them. The lander’s lights flicked on, and its air recycler labored against the smoke and heat. The survey team stood in the airlock, staring at each other’s smoke-marred faces.

  “Built to withstand reentry,” Ari said after a little while.

  “We might lose the ladder,” Thom said. “It’s aluminum.”

  Youngha shook her head. “Maybe. I think we’ll be fine. There’s nothing around the lander that will burn.” Thanks to the aliens.

  Ari spun the inner hatch open. The lander had already powered up its lights and the screen nearest the door. Ari took the first console. He put the external temperature readouts—air, hull surface, ground—on the main screen. Thom grabbed a console for his own queries, while Youngha pulled up the external cameras.

  Brown haze obscured the horizon. The sky and the prairie were gone. Youngha folded her hands in her lap and watched flecks of gray ash sift down out of the smoke. Her crewmates’ bickering and the hum of the lander’s systems faded into the distance.

  Thom called her name. “What’s it look like out there? My God,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “You really think the aliens did that on purpose?”

  “I... yes. I think so.”

  “Huh. Maybe they’re not as intelligent as you thought.”

  Youngha’s training failed her. She couldn’t speak. She only shrugged, and the astronomer-specialist walked away unenlightened.

  No one slept soundly that night. Youngha grabbed moments of sleep in front of the camera feeds, sliding in and out of nightmares filled with blackened bones and charred, flaking flesh. Some interminable time later, she heard the familiar rasp of Thom’s snoring. She checked the clock and blinked. It should be dawn. But it’s no lighter outside than it’s been all night. A distant explosion growled through the walls of the lander. Youngha jumped, and by the clatter of a stylus on the decking, she knew she wasn’t the only one. Reentry? She thought, imagining another seed ship tearing through the upper atmosphere. Then something—a horde of tiny somethings—tapped on the hull, and Youngha smiled at the picture on her screen.

  “What the hell was that?” Ari said.

  “Thunder,” Youngha said. “It’s raining.”

  The survey team stood inside their lander’s airlock, staring out at the rain.

  “You’re both sure this is safe?” Ari said.

  Thom just shrugged. Youngha said, “It’s rain. Just falling water. I saw this once, on Cassiopeia Colony.” She put her hand outside. Cool water fell onto her outstretched palm. The impact stung her skin. She pulled her hand in and pushed the water around on her palm with her finger like it was some exotic, amoebic creature. Her crewmates stood behind her, looking out at the world. Rain fell in silver curtains, and everywhere the prairie was green.

  So sudden, she thought. Like it was waiting for this. “Can we go out in that?” Thom asked.

  Youngha caught more raindrops on her hand, then licked her fingers. “We could dig out the hazmats,” she said. “They’re waterproof.”

  “No,” Ari said, after a long pause. “We’ll wait for it to stop.”

  “It might not stop. Not this season.”

  “Give it till tomorrow, then.”

  Ari made good on his promise, but only after the last chemical analysis of the rain had come in clean. Youngha inhaled deeply as she stepped off the ladder into new green grass. Her hazmat boots squelched as she walked. No problem getting water to refill the tanks, then. Around her, plants that had been nothing but desiccated skeletons were in bloom. A new chorus of insects sang from their hiding places in the grass. She laughed. Thom’s head came up from his pile of gear, and their eyes met. She saw him fight against a smile and lose.

  Ari checked the lander, muttered darkly about atmospheric data, and then retreated inside. Youngha followed him.

  “I’m going to grab an imager and head over to the alien camp,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Ari said. Youngha mentally rallied her arguments, but he kept talking. “Go take a look at the seed ship first and report back.”

  It was a compromise, and she knew it. “Yeah, all right.”

  Whether the walk was easier because the fire had cleared away the tall grass, because the air was humid and sweet, or because the newly awakened prairie offered her the scent of a new flower every time the wind blew, Youngha couldn’t say. Still, she dragged her feet on the last rise. Finally she let herself reach the top and look down. She was glad no one was around to hear her sigh of relief.

  Youngha looked down at the wreckage and wondered where the seed ship’s heat shield had gone. Had its machines consumed the shield to build some other thing? How hot did that fire get? And what would’ve happened to the lander if we hadn’t cleared the fuel away? The seed ship lay in a scorched patch all on its own. Nothing grew near it. Sodden gray ash covered the ground. Rivulets of exotic metal shone silver where they’d melted, run, and frozen again. Its solar collectors had burned away. Starved of energy, its nanofactories would die. If any of the bi
ologicals—the seeds of a human population, destined to live in the city the ship built—had survived the trip through deep space, they were certainly gone now.

  The captain’s face was unreadable when she told him the news. “Thom,” he said. “What was the last word on the biological library?

  Thom shook his head. “Never got a clear reading off the thing. You know how bad the radiation shielding is on those, though. I’d lay odds it was sterile before it landed.”

  “Well,” Ari said. “The next launch window is in three days.”

  Youngha frowned. “But there’s so much more...”

  “Nothing anyone back home is going to be interested in,” Ari said firmly. “Once we leave, there will be nothing human on this world. That means nothing relevant to the Survey.” His expression softened. “It’s a beautiful planet. I’d stay, if I could. Are you going to be all right?”

  Youngha turned away from her crew to face into the wind. The wind picked up, bearing the scent of ozone and ash. An alien stood on a nearby hill, its eyes shining gold against the darkening sky. Something terrible just passed over you. Do you understand that? The wind blew Youngha’s hair into her eyes. She raised her hand to brush it away. The alien raised a hand in return, then turned and bounded out of sight. I hope you never do. “I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s get inside. It’s going to rain.”

  Copyright © 2010 Sarah Frost

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  SHORT STORIES

  Hiding From Nobel

  by Brad Aiken

  The years rolled by in my mind as I pulled through the gates of Hidden Meadows, an upscale development in northern Maryland. It hardly felt like twenty-five years had passed, yet what had happened that day seemed like an eternity ago. I drove through the now unfamiliar landscape, winding my way toward the crest of Girls Hill. At least that’s what we called it back then. It was there under the shade of the uppermost tree in a row of pines that lined the edge of the hill that we had made our pact.

  Benny Solomon swiped at the beads of sweat dripping off his short-cropped wavy black hair. “Hard to believe another summer’s gone,” he said, extending an index finger to readjust the horn-rimmed glasses that had slid down the bridge of his nose.

  “Ah, c’mon, Solly.” Zeke scratched at the fine hairs of a nascent adolescent beard that hadn’t changed all summer. “We got two more whole weeks. Quit your whining.”

  “At least you guys get to start high school,” Jeffrey said. “I got another whole stinkin’ year of junior high.” He aimed a puff of air at the strand of straight blond hair that always seemed to be dangling in front of his eyes.

  “Yeah,” I huffed through the best sigh I could muster up. “Hard to believe this is it. Next year we’re gonna be too old to be campers. At least most of us,” I grinned at Jeffrey.

  For the past five summers we had been coming to Camp Ramblewood. I was just ten years old when I started. That was Solly and Zeke’s first year too. Everyone else in Bunk 9 knew each other from prior years, so the three of us had a common bond. We became pretty tight that summer, but when camp ended we lost touch. There was no Internet back then, at least not for kids; long-distance phone calls were too expensive; and boys are too lazy to write letters. But when summer rolled around again each year, it was like we’d never been apart.

  By the third summer, we had taken Jeffrey under our wings. We were twelve and girls were starting to look pretty good to us. He may have been a year younger, but his longish blond hair and blue eyes were like dangling bait at the Saturday night socials.

  We grew closer each year and by the summer of 1985 we were inseparable.

  “Let’s make a pact,” I said. “Twenty-five years from today, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, we meet right back here on this very spot.”

  “Let me check my calendar,” Solly said.

  Zeke shot him a dirty look.

  “That’s like forever, guys.” Jeffrey was wide-eyed at the proposition. “Very cool.” He put his hand out and made a fist, thumb side up.

  We each followed suit, stacking our fists up in a column.

  “August 1, 2010, at high noon,” I said.

  We broke the column and reassembled our balled-up hands knuckles to knuckles.

  “At high noon,” we all repeated in unison, and then tapped our fists together twice before breaking ranks.

  We were all so innocent then.

  Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I wondered if they’d recognize me. I winced at the budding crow’s feet around my eyes and the streaks of gray beginning to cut through my thick black hair.

  “Hell, they probably won’t even show up,” I said to my reflection. It had been my idea, this pact. A boyhood fantasy, a moment of adolescent bonding surely forgotten by three grown men.

  As I approached the spot where history was to be repeated, my heart sank. What was once nature’s paradise was now suburbia. It took a few minutes to get my bearings, but the lay of the land began to bring back memories. I pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine. Somehow it didn’t seem right to drive over what was once the grassy crest of Girls Hill. About fifty yards up and to the left was the spot where we’d made our pact twenty-five years earlier. The pine tree that shaded us that day was long gone, as was the whole row of trees leading down the hill to the pool and L-shaped dining hall framing a part of it. What had once been a soft bed of pine needles nestled under filtered shade and sunlight was now an asphalt road.

  I locked my car and walked past the meeting spot along the ridge of the hill. Cabins that had once housed the female campers had been replaced by a row of two-story red brick homes, which continued around the corner and followed the contour of the gentle slope down to its base, once the center of camp activity.

  The pristine land that had made up Girls Hill and Boys Hill, with the dining hall in the valley between them, had been preserved as a neighborhood park. Pausing by the roadside, I closed my eyes and listened to the chirping of the birds; for a brief moment I was back in 1985.

  To my left, the row of pines stood serenely against time, leading down to the dining hall and then back up to the cabins on the crest of opposite hill. Those wooden shacks where I’d spent much of my youth were lined up like dominos, housing five-year-olds in the left-most building and progressing along the ridge, ending with the hormonally charged teens of Bunk 14 at the edge of the woods to the right. The dense green forest making up those woods formed a boundary that stretched down toward the pool and then back up again to the girls’ cabins, which lined the land behind where I now stood, enclosing the rectangle of camp life as they connected the woods to the pine trees on this side of heaven.

  And then, as they inevitably do, the memories led to that moment, and I winced in pain.

  “C’mon squirt,” Zeke said to Jeffrey. “You chicken?”

  Jeffrey grimaced. “I ain’t scared of nothing,” he snapped.

  “Then come with us tonight.”

  We’d been planning this raid all summer. It was tradition. The senior boys’ bunk would pull a night raid, sneaking up through the woods to Girls Hill long after the counselors had fallen asleep. Armed with shaving cream and toilet paper, they would decorate the cabin of the senior girls’ bunk, then steal back to Boys Hill under cover of night.

  “My counselor will kill me. He told us there would be hell to pay if you guys pull the raid this year.”

  “So, what, are you gonna turn us in?” I said.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then come with us. You’re almost a senior camper now, anyhow.”

  “I don’t know...”

  We all knew at that moment that Jeffrey was going with us.

  I surveyed the top of Ramblewood Lane, the street that they had paved over Girls Hill. There was no bench, no pine trees, but a young oak at the top of the hill provided a bit of shade. I could swear they had planted it in the very spot that we had made our pact. I plopped down onto the
ground and leaned back against it, then glanced around hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. A group of kids rode by on their bikes and looked back at me dubiously. I couldn’t blame them. A thirty-nine-year-old stranger sitting in the grass at a lonely suburban intersection was a strange sight. I expected to see the police shortly.

  I closed my eyes and the memories washed over me once again.

  “You ready?” Solly tapped me on the shoulder. He was our alarm clock. Solly had an uncanny ability to program his body to awaken at any preordained time.

  “Hmm?” I mumbled. “Is it one already?”

  “Yeah. Get a move on,” he whispered. “You get Jeffrey and I’ll get Zeke. We’ll meet by the edge of the woods.”

  I nodded and dragged myself out of bed. Ten minutes later, Jeffrey and I were walking behind the cabins toward our traditional meeting spot behind Bunk 14, near the edge of the woods that would provide cover for our clandestine mission. Zeke and Solly were waiting.

  “What took you guys so long?” Zeke snapped.

  “Hey, we’re here, aren’t we?”

  It was dark, but there was a quarter moon that night, and I could see that everybody had their gear. We each carried a small satchel of supplies that we had readied the day before—shaving cream, a roll of toilet paper, and a flashlight, which we would use only in case of emergency.

  It was just the four of us. The rest of our bunkmates had decided not to chance the wrath of the camp owners who had issued the edict banning this summer’s senior raid. Solly, Zeke, and I had pretended to agree with them, but there was no way we were going to pass up an opportunity that we’d waited five long summers for.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Zeke led the way down the hill, sticking close by the tree-line, concealing himself in the moon shadows. Solly and I were right behind. Jeffrey’s legs were shorter, and much to his chagrin, his timidity got the better of him in the darkness of the night. He lagged a dozen yards behind, urging himself on and trying to keep up.

  I glanced back a few times. “Wait up,” I called ahead.

  Zeke looked over his shoulder and snickered. “If the squirt can’t keep up, that’s his problem. It’ll make a man of him.” He increased his pace.