Children of the Comet

by Donald Moffitt

  Tatiana called back over her shoulder, “Oh Mother! It’s an easy jump. And I’ll have a thruster with me anyway.”

  Goncalves was relieved to see her go. Having to deal with a young woman at what was supposed to be a serious meeting was an affront to his dignity. Ning had been bad enough, and when she had stopped coming to the meetings, leaving it to Torris, he’d been secretly glad, though she was supposed to be Torris’s consort and the undisputed matriarch of her own Tree. He’d always had a sneaking suspicion that the woman, only an aborigine, was finding fault with him!

  They wound up the meeting with the bare bones of a preliminary trade agreement, a small one. Hunters or herdsmen on the conjoined Trees would supply quantities of butchered meat in return for simple, easily manufactured radios that would allow them to talk to one another in a vacuum over short distances without having to resort to sign language, or what they called “helmet talk.”

  Captain Goncalves excused himself and went off to attend to whatever minor adjustments were needed to keep the delicate gravitational dance of ship and comets in balance. The ship would be returned to full spin after Torris’s departure, but Goncalves had been persuaded early in the game to reduce the pseudogravity by two-thirds—to Martian gravity—whenever Torris was aboard. At first, he’d considered it an unnecessary concession to a difficult aborigine, even more so when Ning visited.

  They followed Torris down the tiled passageways to the airlock that had been assigned to them, trailed by Jonah sloshing along behind in his travel pod. Jonah had ignored Captain Goncalves’s repeated requests to keep the travel pod sealed while traversing the immaculate corridors, and Joorn knew there would be more complaints about puddles of water by the Henrique’s housekeeping staff.

  They crammed themselves into the airlock and helped one another get into their suits, then cycled through, ready to make the jump together. The Tree filled the black sky, less than a hundred miles away, blotting out the stars except for those that twinkled through the branches around the edges.

  Torris did not wait for them. He took a mighty leap, propelled by his powerful legs, and sailed off into space.

  “He’s been talking to Ning on their private circuit, telling her we’re on our way,” Irina said. “He’s too proud to use a thruster in front of us, but we’ll catch up to him, and he’ll be glad to hitch a ride.”

  They joined hands in a circle, except for Nina, who accepted an offer of a lift from Jonah, then stepped off the platform together and drifted a short distance from the ship. A moment later, Joorn fired a burst from his thruster, and the linked quartet jetted off in pursuit of Torris. Nina mounted the dolphin pod and, once firmly seated, gave it a thump to signal Jonah.

  “How much longer will we be stuck with o Senhor Poderoso?” Jonah said in her ear. The Portuguese sobriquet he’d given the captain meant something like Mr. Self-Importance. “We’re about done for now, and Chu and Martin could have us home in a week.”

  “Be a little patient,” she said. “Give him more time to get used to dealing with the Tree people.”

  “He’s had two years. He’ll never be comfortable with them. He thinks they’re some species of ignorant indios.”

  “Torris is way ahead of him,” Nina said with a laugh. “Like the deal he made on the radios.”

  “He’ll wake up about twenty years from now. By then Homo cometes will be city slickers.”

  “That’s what Andrew thinks.”

  “Do you miss him, Nina?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said soberly. “Four years is a long time. From now on, we’ll make these trips together. They’ll only be short jaunts now. At a one-G boost, Mars is about as close to the Kuiper Belt as Dom Joao’s Jovian orbit. We’ve got the advantage. Torris trusts us.”

  “I miss Calypso. And the rest of my pod as well. We’re not used to being apart. From now on, I’m not going to go on these trade missions alone. I’ve already made a little side deal with Torris and Ning.”

  “You? What do you dolphins have to offer?”

  “Fish!” Jonah said triumphantly. “That’s the one commodity Homo cometes doesn’t have. Once you humans have stocked the Martian seas for us, we’ll start a fishing cooperative.”

  Nina laughed again. “Poor Dom Joao!”

  “That’s progress. Keep up with it, or get out of the way. What does Andrew think comes after city life?”

  “A broader urban culture. An industrial civilization. It may take hundreds of generations to spread its way from a nucleus in the Kuiper Belt through the entire Oort cloud, but eventually, with their greater numbers, Homo cometes will be way beyond us planet dwellers. Then, watch out, Universe!”

  They fell silent. They were beginning to catch up to the little chain of people ahead of them. By twisting her head, Nina could see enough of the sky to count easily a dozen comets scattered in the libration group around the center of gravity they shared with the Henrique. Some of them were close enough for her to make out the dumbbell shape of the Trees they nurtured. These were the Trees that Torris had tried to tell Goncalves about, the ones that had come on their own to join the Kuiper-bound caravan.

  Jonah drew level with the linked group and fired a small braking burst to keep the travel pod in tandem with them. The little armada was closing the gap with Torris now. Nina could see him a couple of hundred yards ahead, spinning around to face them. Joorn held out an arm, and Torris reached for his hand and grasped it before the group could pass him. The contact started a slow spin of the entire group, and Joorn damped it with another squirt of his thruster.

  They were halfway to Ning’s Tree now, headed straight for the docking area. With helmet magnification, Nina could see the white bull’s eye painted on the lower trunk where it merged with the exposed root ball, a rough circle about a mile in diameter. There were three tiny figures waiting outside the landing facility, a squarish structure carpentered entirely out of wood. That would be Ning, with Ona and Tatiana.

  Another half hour took them within docking distance, and they separated, using their individual thrusters to slow themselves down. Torris hung on to Joorn and borrowed braking impetus from him. Any leap done with muscle power alone wouldn’t have caused any landing problems, but the momentum Torris had gained by hitching a ride would have knocked the breath out of him—or worse—when he hit the Tree trunk. Nina stayed with Jonah, and he brought her in for a gentle landing.

  Torris and Ning touched helmets for a mutual greeting. They’d had the little radios that Joorn had left with them for over twenty years now and were used to using them over distances, but old habits die hard. The language that Nina and the others heard over their own proximity circuits was entirely in the old helmet talk.

  Ning motioned them inside. The wooden structure had a sturdy carpentered airlock made of wood edged with a gummy gasket, not one of the old barriers of greased animal hides. It was warm inside, not much below the freezing point. A central fire was going, and there was a caged area holding about a dozen stovebeasts for the use of travelers.

  Ning and Ona threw their faceplates back, and the others removed their helmets. “Did the Proud One lord it over you again?” Ning said to Torris.

  “He thinks he did,” Torris said. “But little Nina kept him in check.”

  Everybody laughed.

  Joorn said, “He’ll be coming to trade every so often in the years ahead. Try not to take advantage of him too much. We have a saying: ‘Don’t kill the treehopper that lays the gold egg.’”

  “What is gold?” Ona said. She was a stunning young woman with a glossy black mane, even taller than her mother. She towered over all of Joorn’s people, but she did not slouch to bring herself closer to their eye level as would someone used to gravity.

  “It’s a metal, like the knife blades we provided your people, only softer.”

  “Then it cannot be valuable.”

  “It�
�s not used for knives, Ona.”

  “Then what is it good for?”

  “Trading, for one thing. Captain Goncalves would give you goods for it.”

  Chu exchanged a glance with Irina. “It’s too early for money, Skipper,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” Martin said. He’d become Chu’s chief engineer when Joorn retired, and since Time’s Beginning’s colonists had put down roots on Mars, he’d been doing a lot of in-system work. “Now that the Trees are within striking distance of the asteroid belt, we can teach them asteroid mining, help them become self-sufficient in metals. They’re naturals for airless, low-gravity work, aren’t they?”

  Torris was quick to pick up on what they were saying. “And this Goncalves star dwarf would pay for metals?”

  Jonah must have been scrolling frantically through his human database. “That is gold, which is worth gold,” he said. “An old Portuguese proverb.”

  “We’ll do the prospecting, and they’ll do the mining,” Martin said excitedly. “You can’t have an advanced technical civilization without metals, but they can’t work under a planet’s gravity. This is the only way they’ll get their metals.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Nina said. She turned to Ona with a smile. “You’re doing just fine, building up your meatbeast herd, Ona. This is work for your children. And your children’s children.”

  Tatiana reached out and took Ona’s hand. Despite the extreme difference in height and musculature, Homo sapiens and Homo cometes did not look at all incongruous next to one another.

  “I’ve decided what I want to do, Mother,” she said. “I don’t have a scientific brain like you, but I know I can do useful fieldwork here, help Ona teach her people to begin an agricultural society.”

  “Fieldwork?” Nina said doubtfully. “That sounds daunting. It’s not exactly like accompanying your father occasionally on one of his expeditions and living in a survival shelter with all the comforts. It’s a way of life you’re not adapted for.”

  Ona showed that she had inherited her mother’s acerbity. “I will teach Tati,” she said dryly. “There, I can help.”

  “I’ve already spent a night in the cave without my spacesuit,” Tatiana said. “Shared meals. Helped the women with their communal tasks. Babysat for them.”

  Torris nodded in agreement. “If I could learn to live among you dwarfs, Tati can learn to live among our people.”

  Nina turned to Joorn. “Grandfather …”

  “It’s a start,” Joorn said.

  Just then, the inner door of the airlock opened, and a party of travelers came through, equipped with extra air sacks for a trip to one of the new Trees that had joined the convoy. They were burdened with unwieldy bundles that probably contained trade goods they would try to unload on the new arrivals.

  They recoiled in alarm when they saw Jonah lolling halfway out of his travel tank, but they recovered right away. Everybody knew about the talking beast by now.

  They made proper obeisance to the star travelers, then offered a further gesture of respect to Torris and Ning. They gave the dolphin tank a wide berth on their way to the stovebeast cages, where they exchanged their animals for fresh ones. They bowed again as they went out. They looked too burdened to rely on leg power for their jump, and would probably use the public catapult that Ning had installed.

  “It starts,” Chu said. “After six billion years, the human species has managed to get itself born again.”

  “We’ve made it this far.” Joorn nodded. “And we’re still only halfway to eternity. Karn was right. There’s a long way to go.”

  “Goncalves won’t be the last, you know,” Chu said. “They’ll be coming back for centuries. Maybe till the end of time.”

  Joorn shivered, perhaps from the cold the travelers had brought in with them. Irina and her children drew a little closer to him.

  Outside the crude little shelter, the stars continued to burn out and die one by one, the galaxies to flee out of reach, matter to disappear forever into black holes, the Universe itself to inflate beyond comprehension. But Omega was not yet.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by the Estate of Donald Moffitt

  Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

  978-1-4976-7846-0

  Published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  EARLY BIRD BOOKS

  FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

  BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

  NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

  EBOOKS BY DONALD MOFFITT

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Available wherever ebooks are sold

  Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

  Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases

  Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.

  Sign up now at

  www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters

  FIND OUT MORE AT

  WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

  FOLLOW US:

  @openroadmedia and

  Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia