“Okay, Sherlock,” he accepted. In the hangar bay light, his blue eyes matched the bluebird pin. “As long as you understand that I’ll do anything I have to do to save this planet for humanity.”
Several bad seconds passed. For this brief period, we didn’t understand each other at all.
I started to turn away while he was still looking at me. After a few steps, though, I turned again and asked, “What did my mother say when PlanCom first told her about the evacuation?”
As if I’d asked him something complicated, he shifted to his other foot. Finally he pressed his lips flat and kind of shrugged.
“Oh . . . not much.”
3
Moonset. A strange word for morning.
In the mist-veiled sky, a single green moon was too large for poetry. This planet’s idea of daylight was grim. The greenish-yellow sun shone with an angry glaze, offering no comfort the way Earth’s sun did. The environment was almost urban. There were so many tall blood-red pillars ranging to the horizon that we might as well have been in a city center with skyscrapers so close together that sunlight couldn’t shine in unless the sun were directly overhead. Gauzy white topgrowth coiled and draped from pillar to pillar, high up at the tops, creating a rain forest effect and a world of patchy permanent shadows beneath. It looked something like the decorations I’d seen in a church during a wedding, as if human hands had carefully placed them, then forgotten them to become shredded and stale with time.
Corners, passages, holes, gullies, caves with no visible ends . . . it was a gory red world, redder than a barn, redder than the Grand Canyon, but not the color of blood. Not that kind of red. This landscape of towers, all diameters imaginable from pencil-thin to big as buildings, were a strange glossy red. When my space-dizziness faded a little and I could blink a clear field of vision, I realized that the columns were not stone at all in the usual sense. In fact they were translucent enough to see through all but the biggest ones. They were like rubies or art glass. The planet was the ultimate in rose-colored glasses.
White veils and red glass towers. No signs of anything alive.
“Where are they?” Pocket asked.
“They’re not answering any hails.”
“They could be hunkered down. Or maybe their coms quit working.”
“They should’ve still heard the ship land, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah . . . ”
While Clark and Gaylord spoke to each other in front of me, I couldn’t find it in myself to speak up in this cathedral of red columns. The environment seemed almost holy in its imposing size and oddness.
We were only about ten feet from the ship, and had paused to take some readings and put out some feelers. Despite knowing that the ship would protect us within a certain perimeter, I couldn’t settle my stomach. Imagine being on a whole different planet than Earth. I was the living inheritor of a stunning scientific advancement. My nerves danced with appreciation.
“Rory, you coming?”
Clark’s imposing form was flanked on one side by MacCormac and on the other by a compact bundle of muscle named Sergeant Berooz. I noted that Clark’s red hair disappeared into the red stone pillar behind him, making him appear to have a face without a head on top.
I felt the path floor with my shoe sole. It was spongy moisture underneath but not on top. I stooped down and brought up a handful of the planet.
“Rory, what’s up?” Clark appeared over me. “We can’t move ahead without you.”
I offered him the sample. “Look at this stuff.”
“Gravel. So what?”
“It’s not gravel. It’s billions of little skeletons.”
He leaned closer to study the remains of some kind of small creature, desiccated to its elements, broken by time and . . . by trampling? What had trampled them?
“It’s the consistency of tree bark mulch,” I said, “but it’s all skeletons.”
“Skulch,” he dubbed. “Yucky.”
“Dead’s dead,” I commented.
He looked around. The surface of the land, everywhere we looked, was frosted with the remains of uncountable trillions of these tiny dead creatures. “Well, don’t take it personally. Earth beach sand is basically the same thing, y’know. Little broken up shells and all.”
I stood up and dropped the handful, then brushed my hand clean. “Yeah, let’s keep telling ourselves that.”
He laughed, but not very convincingly.
I reached out and touched one of the glass pillars. It was so narrow that my fingernails touched the heel of my hand, yet the pillar reached up to the same height as those with the girths of office buildings, and I could see a reflection of myself in its polished face. Too bad I wasn’t more to reflect. I was the average of averages. Nothing special. Lost in a crowd of two. There was not and never had been anything the slightest bit interesting or striking about me. I had an Everyman face and a shadow of a beard I’d never really been able to grow into anything but a shadow. For a while, I’d tried to have a mustache, just to set myself apart, but it came in wimpy and I gave up when my fellow officers started calling me “Fuzz.” If anybody was going to call me “Fuzz,” it would be me, and for the right reasons, dang it.
Oh, well, I guess everybody can’t be Clark Gable. Or Clark Sparren, for that matter. Besides, being the average guy, somebody who could get lost in a crowd of three, had helped me quite a bit during my undercover days.
Fifty-odd feet in the air, the skinny, glossy wand reached as high as the others and provided a support for the hat of gauze. I felt as if I were trapped at the bottom of a pencil box. The sun didn’t shine very well down into the pillared landscape, but was always at some angle, creating a constant prism effect of banded light. There were no corners. Everything was curvy and round, bending down or upward, dipping and swirling in every direction. No angles, except the bands of sunlight stabbing through and being refracted.
“What a place . . . ”
“It’s a PlanCom kind of place. Dust bowls, glaciers, deserts, moons—you name it, we’ll tame it.”
“But you’re right . . . it could be a paradise.”
“Ain’t I, though? You okay? Got legs?”
“I got rags with iron balls on the ends.”
“Welcome to space travel,” he said, and helped me to my feet.
“Hope I don’t have to run.”
Run . . . where? From here I saw about a dozen holes in the bottoms of the thicker glass columns, like cave mouths except that they opened up on other mouths. Then, up against the biggest of the columns were pathways shaped like half-tubes, like endless waterslides rolling senselessly as the eye could follow through the forest of glass.
“What carves a landscape like this?” I asked.
“Water,” Clark said. “Lots of it, about twelve million years ago. Pretty much gone now, except for some subterranean flows. They can only be accessed with sophisticated drilling and plumbing, and the flows have to be purified for human consumption. PlanCom’s subcontracting the job out to a cousin of mine.”
Bottling our nerves, we came down the Vinza’s ramp and the ramp dutifully closed behind us as soon as the last foot was off. They weren’t kidding about security.
I followed the two lead Marines and Clark in that order, and the stocky Polynesian magnetologist, Gaylord, then the bosun, Pocket, right in front of me like usual. Gaylord didn’t seem outwardly smart, but he had to be. He was responsible for all the zillion jobs done by magnets aboard the Vinza, including those pertaining to her complex propulsion system. In front of me bobbed Pocket’s ropy blond ponytail. Pocket was detail-oriented and in a constant state of re-organization, and give or take compulsive gambling, was bright and in charge of his universe. He was also in charge of the details of this evacuation. Didn’t seem like a bad job, all in all, being a bosun. If I’d had the brains, maybe I’d have liked his job. I like jobs that have beginnings, middles, and ends.
As we passed between two very large columns that were very close together, we ha
d to squeeze to single file through a quite claustrophobic passage. When I came out, Sergeant Berooz stood escort for the first half of the line. He dipped his shoulder to make eye contact with the rearguard, a movement which caused me to bend sideways out of his way. My right foot skidded off balance and I started to slide down a dropoff. At the point of almost no return, Berooz caught my arm and put me back in place as if I were a doll falling off a shelf. I laced my hand into his field vest and clung gratefully for a few seconds.
Only when I regained balance did I look down into the grade and discover that I couldn’t see a bottom. “Go down and get my stomach.”
“Don’t want to lose you,” he said. “Looks like some kind of a sinkhole.”
“Thanks . . . ”
“No problem. Payback for when you found my lucky bandanna.” He tilted his weapon so I could see the yellow cowboy bandanna with white swirls, which he had snugly tied around his wrist. “That was great how you helped me to think my way back to it.”
“It had to be somewhere,” I said. “All we had to do was eliminate everywhere else in the universe.”
“Neat trick. You answered my prayer.”
“I thought that was God’s job.”
He grinned and fell in beside me as we moved after the others, more cautiously now.
Behind me came Axell and Mark, the computer specialist and one of the mechanics. Axell was a misplaced forty-year-old egghead with an overbite, who could dismantle half the ship and put it back together without losing a single microbolt, but had trouble using a fork at dinner. Mark was a tousled-haired kid who’d run away from home and joined the space fleet. He delighted in sending communiqués home to his parents and crowing about not having to live with them anymore. Despite a punky, immature attitude, he had a mechanical aptitude that earned him a place on this fairly exclusive ship. At first, I’d rolled my eyes at them, but after watching them work for a while, I quit doing that. Between them, the odd couple knew more technical wizardry than most hundred other people put together.
After them came Bonnie with her medical pack, and two more Marines, Private Carmichael and Corporal Edney. Carmichael seemed out of place to me. He looked as if he’d just entered high school and was wearing the Marine uniform and sensor helmet for Halloween. Even next to Edney, a steroidal female bodybuilder, Carmichael seemed frail. Still, he was a Marine in this elite unit, so there had to be something about him that was qualified for combat.
Their sensor helmets were more caps than helmets, very scaled-down and easier to wear than a full-sized helmet. They weren’t hard hats, but made of strong webbing, only slightly bulkier than baseball caps, with a sun-shading brim over the eyes, and embedded with nanotechnology for communication, warning, and surveillance. I had one myself back home; most cops did, but not as fancy as the ones these commandoes wore. In fact, these Marines’ caps were new issue, colored in the red-black stripes of the landscape around here, as were their uniforms. As they walked ahead of us, weapons poised, they melted into the panorama of columns and caves.
The rest of the crew would stay inside the Vinza, guarded at all times by the other Marines, also bristling with weapons. I envied them. I’d hoped for some nice bright sunlight and maybe a fresh cool breeze, but here I was with indirect light, no breeze at all, dry heat, and the smell of stale bananas. Not a bit of green. Not a leaf, not a spore.
I looked up at the hanging white gauze at the fading green-banded moon.
“What’s the moon got to do with it, Clark?” I asked.
A pace ahead of me, Clark scanned the interior of a suspicious tunnel. “With what?”
“You said something about a planet with a moon. How rare it is.”
“Didn’t know you were listening. Having a moon stabilizes the rotation of a planet. If there’s no moon, a planet wobbles on its axis and the weather goes nutzo. Tides, storms, polar changes . . . real wreck. Life would have a hell of a time surviving. We’ve tried to put colonies on some of those, but it makes for a miserable existence. All kinds of limitations on agriculture, livability, you name it. It’s so hard to live that no progress can be made, so there’s no point trying.” He pointed up at the sky. “Gotta have that moon going for you. Gaylord, how close did we get to our mark?”
“The location of the original drop-off was forty meters north, just through those thicker spires,” Gaylord said. “Good landing, considering.”
“Nice job, Barry,” Clark spoke into his wristcom. “You put us on the dot. Stand by.”
“Standing by, oh Great Red Leader.”
Clark held up a hand. Everybody except the Marine vanguard froze in place, including me, instinctively. “Freeze” I can do. The Marines in front fanned out, their enormous weapons first, clearing the way. Their boots made a crush-crush noise on the slippery footing of dead critters.
“Sparren, Vinza. Any sign of them?” Theo radioed.
“Not so much as a food canister,” Clark reported. “We can see the huts, but there’s no movement. Try them again on the big com.”
“I’ve been trying. No response continent-wide. Dead air.”
“No beacons? Locators? Auto-feeds?”
“Just yours.”
As I moved up behind Clark, he knew I was there. “Why don’t we just go up and knock?” I asked.
“We will, but I just want to do this slowly and carefully, is all.”
“Why aren’t they answering?”
“Maybe they moved,” he said. “Over the mountains or some-place else.”
I didn’t fall for it. “They should still be able to hear us.”
He raised his com unit and spoke into it again. “Attention, Malvaux Research Team. This is Captain Clark Sparren. Any-body picking this up?”
The com emitted a soft buzz, but no voices. There was a sense of a signal’s going out, reaching down through these many slides, into the empty distance.
“They’re dead,” Gaylord murmured very quietly. “This is bad.” Fear glowed from his dark eyes and gave a pasty grayness to his bronze island complexion.
He glanced at me, then purposefully averted his eyes.
Clark digested that comment. “Jury’s still out.”
I don’t know whether he was speaking for my benefit or not. Gaylord had just proclaimed the likely death of the only relatives I had. I think it bothered him more than it bothered me.
Clark stepped away. I reached out, caught his sleeve, and pulled.
“Tell the truth,” I demanded. “When was the last time anybody contacted this outpost? When’s the last time anybody heard my mother’s voice?”
He licked his lips. “Been a while.”
“How long?”
“This isn’t the time for this, Rory. We’re here. They’re not. We have to find them. We have to confirm their status and evac anybody who’s not—”
My face heated up and so did my tone. “Is that why we’re really here? To confirm they’re dead?”
“Nobody said anything like that.”
“It’s the not saying, Clark.”
“Would I have brought you here if I thought they were dead? I could’ve taken anybody with a badge to be the legal officer. I asked for you, remember?”
I had no good answer. During the pause, he pulled away and crunched down the path of skeletal mulch, and I followed. The Marines and crew fell into formation again around us. The Marines carried some kind of new weapon I hadn’t seen before, compact personal firing units with carefully balanced power packs. These things weren’t exactly guns in the conventional sense. I was hoping to see a demonstration eventually.
From here, at the top of a sloping path between the forest of red columns of all imaginable diameters, we could see the humpy bowl shaped huts which to all but human eyes—the designers hoped—blended fluidly into the environment. Actually, except for the shape, they did. They were the only round things in sight, which was all that set them apart. The color pattern, though, went against the bowl shape and actually mimicked the horizontal
stripes of black and yellow on the natural columns. Somebody had done a pretty good job.
“I don’t see anybody,” Bonnie said, her voice very tentative.
“They’re not answering hails,” Pocket confirmed. “I been broadcasting right along.”
Gaylord somehow made his large body smaller as we carefully moved down the slope. “Maybe their coms are down.”
Pocket made an unforgiving huff. “They still should’ve heard the ship land. I’m for blowing this burgh. If we can’t find them electronically, we can’t find them.”
“I’m for that,” Mark echoed. “We should split. We can’t be Superman for everybody.” Mark always wanted to do the least work he could get away with. He had a roadhouse singing voice and entertained the crew with his folk songs, but that was the only thing he was enthusiastic about. Everything else, he did exactly what he had to do and not a lick more. He was out here with us because Clark wanted to make him perform.
“We still have to account for them,” Clark said. “Or satisfy Rory that they’re no longer alive.”
“This place is creepy,” Bonnie said, voicing what we were all feeling.
“It’s only the silence that’s creepy,” I suggested.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” MacCormac said to her. “We’re still well inside the ship’s protection grid.”
Despite his assurances, I sensed that nobody felt secure.
I wasn’t that sure what we were facing. Clark and the Marines hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about details, and I suspected that was because there wasn’t much positive and they didn’t want to be negative. Confidence was a tool. I, for one, believe in full disclosure.
“Sure is hot.” Gaylord wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
Pocket kept his eyes fixed on his hand-held scanners. “Hundred four in the shade. I’ll take bets on how cold it gets in the caves.”
“No you won’t,” Clark warned.
We fell to silence again as we entered the camp of half-round huts, each big enough to house up to five people in fair comfort. For a moment we paused at the outskirts, just looking. The Marines scouted and Pocket scanned, but there was no sign of anything living. No movement, no readings.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 26
