Chronicles of Pern (First Fall)

by Anne McCaffrey

  A complex series of expressions rippled across the captain’s face. “Far too high for the service they give, and the time it takes them to respond. The colonists would be mortgaged, body, blood, and breath, unto the fourth generation to repay such a debt. Also the message was not sent by Admiral Paul Benden. That’s one man I’d like to pipe aboard the Amherst.”

  “He’d scarcely be alive now,” Ross Benden heard himself saying. “He was in his seventh decade when he started.”

  “A good colonial life can add decades to a man’s span, Benden,” the captain said. “So, I think we can entertain a rescue run to Pern. Lieutenant Zane, plot a course that will take us through the system close enough to this Pern to launch the shuttle. We can give the other planets and satellites a good probe on the swing past. Mister Benden, you’ll command the landing party: a junior officer and, say, four marines. I’ll want your crew recommendations, and calculations on projected journey to rendezvous with the Amherst on her turn back through the system. Allowing, say. . . how long did the EEC survey team take? Ah, yes, five days and a bit. Allowing five days on the surface to make contact with the colonists and establish their current situation.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Benden replied, trying hard to keep elation out of his voice. Lieutenant Zane on the navigation board shot him a malevolent glance, which he ignored, as he did Ensign Nev to his right, who was all but tugging his sleeve to remind Ross that he’d had xeno training.

  “I suggest you talk with Lieutenant Ni Morgana, Mister Benden, when she has completed her survey of the Oort cloud matter. There might just be some connection, and these ancient weapons can produce some awkward surprises.” She awarded Ross Benden a quick nod. “You have the conn, Lieutenant Zane.” With that, the captain slid from the command seat and left the bridge.

  As Saraidh ni Morgana took her seat at the science terminal, she winked at Ross Benden, which he interpreted as her support in his assignment.

  On the 3‑D globe on the Amherst’s bridge, the ship seemed only centimeters from the edge of the nebulosity that was the Oort cloud. As she approached at an angle to sample a core through the thickest part of the cloud, a great net was fired from a forward missile tube on the port side. The net would both collect debris and clear the ship’s path. No ship would barrel through such a cloud, where particles were as close as tens of meters. The biggest particles were about a kilometer apart. The problem was to avoid collision of the net with anything above a tonne, which would tear it and bring the ship’s meteorite defense into play.

  During the next two weeks, while the Amherst passed beyond the cloud, heading into the Rukbat system, the science officer carefully examined the material. First she asked permission to rig an empty cargo pod with remote waldo controls and monitors. A work party towed the pod out to a point far enough that there was no risk to the Amherst and yet close enough to make frequent trips to the net feasible.

  Then, with a work party, she jetted out to the net and selected fragments that might be worth examining. The cargo pod was already divided into sections. At first these were all kept in vacuum status at ‑270 Celsius or 3° absolute. Once back in the Amherst, Ni Morgana activated the monitors and began one of her legendary forty‑hour days.

  “I’ve got a lot of dirty ice” was her initial comment four days later, after she’d had some sleep and a second review of her data. “Most of the stuff has identifiable intrusions, particles of rock and metal, but there are also‑‑” There was a long pause. “‑‑some very unusual particles that I have never encountered before.” As the science officer held five degrees in different disciplines and had landed on three or four dozen alien surfaces, that was an intriguing admission. “Before anyone gets an idea I don’t want to give, there is no evidence of any artifact.”

  The next morning she suited up again and jetted around the netted debris, continuing her investigation. Meanwhile, Captain Fargoe approved Lieutenant Benden’s preliminary flight data, and Ross continued his study of the EEC survey reports and the two cryptic messages that were the only communications from the colony world.

  “If there is a life‑form,” Ni Morgana said tentatively in the week’s officer’s meeting, “its response time is far too slow for us to discern. There have been some anomalies, both in superconductivity and in cryochemistry, that I want to follow up. I shall begin a series of tests, slowly warming some representative samples, and see what occurs.”

  The next week she reported: “At minus two hundred degrees Celsius, some of the larger particles are showing relative movement, but whether this is driven by anomalous internal structure, or reacting to the warmer temperature, I cannot as yet ascertain.”

  “Keep in mind at all times, Lieutenant,” the captain said at her sternest, “what happened to the Roma!”

  “Ma’am, I always do!” The legendary “melting” of the Roma when the science officer brought aboard a metal‑hungry organism was the cautionary example drummed into every science officer.

  The following week Ni Morgana was almost jubilant. “Captain, there is a real life‑form in some of the larger chunks from the cloud. Ovoid shapes, with an exceedingly hard crust of material, they have some liquid, perhaps helium, inside. They’re very strange, but I’m sure they’re not artifacts. I’m bringing one sample up above zero degrees Celsius this week.”

  The captain held up an admonishing finger at her science officer. “Remember the Roma,” she said again.

  “Ma’am, even the situation on the Roma didn’t happen in a day.”

  In the process of leaving the conference room, the captain stopped and stared quizzically at Ni Morgana. “Are you deliberately misquoting something, Lieutenant?”

  “Mister Benden!” The peremptory summons of the science officer over the com unit by his ear jolted Ross Vaclav Benden out of his bunk and to his feet.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Get down to the lab on the double, mister!”

  Benden struggled into his ship suit as he ran down the companionway, stabbing feet into soft ship shoes. It was zero‑dark‑hundred of the dogwatch, and no one was even in Five Deck’s lounge area as he raced across it and to the appropriate grav shaft down to the lab. He skidded to a halt at the door, skinning his forearms on the frame as he braked and fell into the facility. He almost knocked over Lieutenant Ni Morgana. She pointed to the observation chamber.

  “Funkit, what in the name of the holies is that?” he breathed as his eyes fell on the writhing grayish pink and puke‑yellow mass that oozed and roiled on the monitor screen. The mass was, in reality, ten kilometers from the Amherst, but he could understand why everyone was standing well back.

  “If that is what fell on Pern,” Ni Morgana said, “I don’t blame ‘em for shrieking for help!”

  “Let me through!” The captain, clad in a terry‑cloth caftan, had to exert some strength to push past the mesmerized group watching the phenomenon. “Gods above! What have you unleashed, mister?”

  “We’re taping the show, ma’am,” Ni Morgana said. In reassurance, she prominently waved the hand she held over the Destruct button that would activate laser fire. Benden could see her eyes glittering with clinical fascination. “According to the readings I’m getting, this complex organism exhibits some similarity to Terran mycorrhizoids in its linear structure. But it’s enormous! Damn!”

  The organism suddenly collapsed in on itself and became a viscous, inanimate puddle. The science officer tapped out some commands on the waldo keyboard and a unit extruded toward the mass, scooped up a sample in a self‑sealing beaker, and retreated. Lights glittered on the remote testing apparatus as the sample was analyzed.

  “What happened to it?” Captain Fargoe demanded, and Benden admired how firm her voice was. He, himself, had the shakes.

  “I should be able to tell you when the analysis is finished on that sample of the residue, but I’d hazard the guess that; with such rapid expansion, if it found no sustenance in the chamber‑‑and there was none apart from a
very thin atmosphere‑‑it died of starvation. That’s only a guess.”

  “But,” Benden heard himself saying, “if this is the Pernese organism. . .”

  “That’s only a possibility at this point,” Ni Morgana said quickly. “We must first discover how it might have managed to get from the cloud to Pern’s surface.”

  “Good point,” the captain murmured. Her faintly amused tone angered Benden: there was nothing remotely funny about what they had just witnessed.

  “But if it did, and it’s what attacked Pern, I can’t blame ‘em for wanting help,” said Ensign Nev, whose complexion was still slightly green.

  The captain gave him a long look that caused him to flush from neck to a scalp that was visible under his latest space trim.

  “Captain, “ Ni Morgana said as she pressed the Destruct button and destroyed the remains of the sample, “I request permission to join the Pern landing party to pursue my investigation of this phenomenon.”

  “Granted!” Stepping over the lintel of the lab, the captain paused with a wicked grin. “I always prefer volunteers for landing parties.”

  Whoever might have envied Lieutenant Benden the assignment had different feelings once the details of the “organism” became scuttlebutt. A concise report from Lieutenant Ni Morgana was published to quell the more rampant speculations, and her lab team became welcome as experts at any mess.

  Ross Vaclav Benden had nightmares about his uncle: the admiral, unexpectedly garbed in dress whites, great purple sash of the Hero of the Cygnus Campaign, and a full assortment of other prestigious and rare decorations on his chest, struggled against engulfment by the monstrosity of the lab chamber. Determined to do his best by his uncle, Ross studied, to the point of perfect recall, the EEC evaluation of Pern. The terse all‑safe message by Admiral Benden and Governor Boll and Tubberman’s Mayday were easy to memorize, the latter tantalizingly ambiguous. Why had the colony botanist sent the message? Why not Paul Benden or Emily Boll, or one of the senior section heads?

  Although this was not Benden’s first landing party command, he believed in checking and double‑checking every aspect of the assignment. He wanted to be as prepared as possible for any and all hostile conditions, including omnivorous organisms and other enigmas to be solved or avoided, they might encounter on Pern’s surface; also, he judiciously plotted an alternative holding orbit, in case they had to evacuate early, before the escape window opened up for their rendezvous with the Amherst. The landing party had five days, three hours, and fourteen minutes on the surface to conduct its investigations. To his chagrin, Ni Morgana asked for Ensign Nev as the junior officer.

  “He needs some experience, Ross,” Ni Morgana said, blandly ignoring Benden’s disgruntlement, “and he’s had some xeno training. He’s strong, and he obeys orders even as he’s turning green. He’s got to learn sometime. Captain Fargoe thinks this could give him valuable experience.”

  Benden had no option but to accept the inevitable, but he asked for Sergeant Greene to command his marines. That tough, burly man knew more about the hazards that could embroil a landing party than Benden ever would. Having seen the organism Ni Morgana had unleashed, Ross wanted solid experience to offset Nev’s ingenuousness‑‑if that was the proper word for the boy.

  “Just what were you like as an ensign, Lieutenant?” Ni Morgana asked, giving him a sly sideways glance.

  “I was never that gauche,” he replied tartly. True enough, since he’d been reared in a Service family and had absorbed proper behavior along with all the normal nutrients. Then he relented, grinning wryly back at her as he remembered a few incidents. . . “This sounds like a fairly routine mission: find and evaluate.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Saraidh ni Morgana replied earnestly.

  Ross Benden was delighted to be teamed up with the elegant science officer. She was his senior in years but not in Fleet, for she had done her scientific training before applying to the Service. She was also the only woman on board who kept her hair long, though it was generally dressed in intricate arrangements of braids. The effect was somehow regal and very feminine‑‑an effect at variance with her expertise in the various forms of contact sport that were enjoyed in the Amherst’s gym complex. If she had made any liaisons on board, they were not general knowledge; he’d overheard speculation about her tastes, but no boasting or claims of personal experience. He had always found her agreeable company and a competent officer, though they hadn’t shared more than a watch or two until now.

  “Did you see the tape of that thing?” Ross heard the nasal voice of Lieutenant Zane saying later as he passed the wardroom. “There’ll be no one left alive down there. Ni Morgana has proved the Oort cloud generated that life‑form, so it wasn’t Nastie manufacture. There’s no rationale for taking a chance and landing on that planet if any of those things are alive down there! And they could be, with an entire planet to eat up.”

  Benden paused to listen, knowing perfectly well that, despite the dangers involved, Zane would have given a kidney to be in the landing party. Nev was, at least, an improvement on the sour and supercilious Zane. And when the navigation officer added some invidious remarks that Benden had been chosen only because of his relationship to one of the leaders of the colony, Ross passed quickly down the corridor before his temper got the better of his discretion.

  As the Amherst’s majestic passage through the system approached the point where the shuttle could be launched, Benden called for a final briefing session.

  “We’ll spiral down to the planetary surface in a cork‑screw orbit which will allow us to examine the northern hemisphere on our way to the site of record on the southern continent at longitude thirty degrees,” he said, calling up the flight path on the big screen in the conference room. “We’ve landmarks from the original survey of three volcanic cones that ought to be visible from some distance as we make our final approach. Survey report said the soil there would be viable for hardy Earth and Altairian hybrids, so it is reasonable to assume that the colonists started their agrarian venture there. The Tubberman Mayday came in some nine years after landing, so they should have been well entrenched.”

  “Not enough to avoid that organism,” Nev said flatly.

  “Your theory would hold water, Ensign,” Saraidh ni Morgana said mildly, “if I could figure out how the organism transported itself from the Oort cloud to Pern’s surface.”

  “Nasties sowed it in Pern’s atmosphere,” Nev responded with no hesitation.

  “Nasties are more direct in their tactics,” the science officer replied with a diffident shrug.

  “We taught ‘em to be cautious, Lieutenant,” Nev went on. “And devious. And‑‑”

  “Nev!” Benden called the ensign to order.

  Benden kept his expression neutral, but he wondered if Ni Morgana was regretting her choice of the irrepressible Nev and his wild theories. If the science officer hadn’t found a transport vector for the organism, the Nasties were unlikely to have discovered it. Their forte was metallurgy, not biology. Nev subsided and the briefing continued.

  “Once we have made landfall, we may also have answers to that question and others. It is obvious our search must begin at the site of record. We will also have made a good sweep of the entire planetary surface and can deviate if we find traces of human settlements elsewhere. We board the Erica at 0230 tomorrow morning. Any questions?”

  “What do we do if the place is swarming with those things?” Nev asked, swallowing hard.

  “What would you do, Nev?” Benden asked.

  “Leave!”

  “Tut tut, mister,” Ni Morgana said. “How will you ever increase your understanding of xenobiological forms unless you examine closely whatever samples come your way?”

  Ensign Nev’s eyes bugged out. “Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but you’re the science officer.”

  “Indeed I am.” And Ni Morgana rose, the scrape of her chair covering a mutter of gratitude from the end of the table occupied by the four m
arines assigned to the landing party.

  Launched from the Amherst, the gig proceeded at a smart inner‑system speed toward the blue pebble in the sky that was Rukbat’s third planet. It began to dominate the forward screen, serene and clear, beautiful and innocuous. Benden had plotted the gig’s course to intercept the geosynchronous orbit of the three colony ships, to see if the colonists had left a message to be retrieved. But when he opened communications, all he got was the standard identification response, stating the name and designation of the Yokohama.

  “That might not mean anything, “ Saraidh remarked, seeing Benden’s disappointment. “If the colony’s up and running, they won’t have much use for these hulks. Though I find that sight rather sad,” she added as Rukbat suddenly illuminated the deserted vessels.

  “Why?” Nev asked, surprised.

  Saraidh gave a shrug of her slender, elegant shoulders. “Look up their battle records and you might appreciate their present desuetude more.”

  “Their what?” Nev looked blank.

  “Look up that word, too,” she said and, in an almost cloying tone, spelled it for him.

  “Old sailors never die, they just fade away,” Benden murmured, gazing at the three hulks, feeling a constriction in his throat and a slight wetness in his eyes as the gig drifted away from them, leaving them to continue on their ordained path.

  “Soldiers, not sailors,” Saraidh said, “but the quotation is apt.” Then she frowned at a reading on her board. “We’ve got two beacons registering. One at the site of record and another much farther south. Enlarge the southern hemisphere for me, will you, Ross? Along seventy degrees longitude and nearly twelve hundred klicks from the stronger one.” Ross and Saraidh exchanged looks. “Maybe there are survivors! Pretty far south though, over mountain ranges of respectable height. I read altitudes of from twenty‑four hundred rising to more than nine thousand meters above sea level. We’ll land at the site of record first.”