Alien Earth

by Megan Lindholm

  It took Evangeline longer to consider this, and Raef knew the answer before she replied. It was getting easier for him to delve into her store of facts and select the answers he needed. Easier, too, for him to make her see as he did, understand the balances of his world.

  [If they are cautious, they can survive.]

  “Hell, that’s as good a chance as anything ever got on that planet. Let’s set them down there.”

  Like gods, they did so.

  And then waited for pain. He could feel her cringing, and ached that she accepted this pain to please him. But the pain did not come. [I do not understand. It is as if he does not know what I did.] And the thought suffused her with wonder.

  John had blacked out. He’d been dying from the terrible pressure, and when his vision began to darken at the edges, he’d dove into death thankfully, wholeheartedly. But he’d only blacked out for a while. Unless this was some trick of his dying brain cells. He tried to focus his awareness. Nothing to be aware of; total stillness. Dark. Little lights in his peripheral vision. Too much trouble to try to turn to see them. Either all motion and sound had stopped or his eardrums and inner ear were destroyed. He choked, became aware of dampness on his mouth and chin. Warm, salty dampness. Nosebleed. The blood was tacky when he shifted his mouth around. He reached up to wipe it away, encountered the bulk of his helmet. He sat stupidly for a few moments, placing himself. Strapped in, suit on. Shielding up over the view window. Cabin lights down. The readouts that still worked said the shuttle was at rest. Landed somewhere. Too much gravity for them to be inside Evangeline. Earth? Had to be. Salt blood in his mouth as he asked, “Connie?”

  There was no reply. He tried to turn to see her, and found that the slightest effort hurt. Unstrapping himself from his seat seemed to take forever. He fought against a growing claustrophobia, forced himself to consider the wisdom of removing his helmet. His logic found only a great weariness, and an insistence that if he wasn’t already dead, then taking off his helmet probably wouldn’t kill him. The catches yielded reluctantly to his gloved fingers. He pulled it up and bowed his head to tip it off, and narrowly avoided dropping it. Instead he wedged it into the seat beside him as he struggled to a vertical position. Lightened of his helmet, the gravity was discouraging rather than crushing. Only one G, he reminded himself. He’d been training for this, he could handle it. Maybe.

  Connie was not in the pilot compartment. He remembered yelling at her to get out and leave him alone if all she could do was cry. Had she obeyed him? He slapped the door panel and it actually cycled open. Warmth came with it. He looked into the next compartment, and froze. Yellow sunlight full of drifting dust motes cracked into the shuttle through an open hatch. No sign of Connie. The restraint belts dangled from the edges of her lounge. An emergency disembarkment chute stuck out the open hatch like a lolling tongue. His glove was rough against his skin as he wiped blood away and tried to think.

  An incredible richness of scents assailed him. He couldn’t identify any of them, and would have wondered if they were potentially lethal if they hadn’t all smelled so good. So real. I’m in shock, he warned himself. I’m doing stupid things. It didn’t seem important. He advanced down the companionway toward the wedge of light as toward a beacon. This compartment was definitely warmer, and when he stepped into the wedge of light, the heat was like a pliable coating. He stepped into the door, resting his hands on the sides of the hatch, and looked out.

  A crumpled figure lay on its side at the bottom of the escape chute. Looking down at her, he could barely hear the oxygen alert buzzer going off inside her helmet.

  There was no other way to get down to her. He tried to slow his descent by clinging to the sides of the chute, but it had been designed to frustrate such efforts. A quick evacuation was its purpose, and he fetched up against Connie with a jolt.

  He dragged her up and laid her back on the chute. Then he had to breathe for a moment, while the nagging buzzer nearly drove him crazy. Removing a helmet from a limp body presented challenges all its own. Her freed helmet went rolling off into the dust and dirt while blood from his gloves smeared unevenly over the stubble on her skull. He tried to rest her back gently on the chute, but the angle was awkward. Her suit seemed undamaged, but that didn’t mean the body inside it was intact. Her skin looked pale and plastic in the bright sunlight, but she was breathing. He leaned close to her, slid his arm under her to lift her head and shoulders slightly. “Connie?”

  Her eyelids lifted a fraction, revealing whites.

  “Connie?” He shook her gently, wondered belatedly if he were sending broken bones slicing through internal organs.

  She came alive abruptly, flopping wildly in his arms. He leaped back from her in alarm, and she jerked herself up to a sitting position. She looked fearfully around herself, then suddenly lifted her hands and clapped them loudly against her face. “My helmet! You took off my helmet!” she shrieked.

  “You were running out of air,” he pointed out, but she ignored him to pounce on her helmet. She dropped it as quickly. “Contaminated! It’s totally contaminated.” The act had gotten dust on her gloves. She glared at it wildly, then slapped her soiled gloves against her suit legs, but only raised another cloud of dust from them. She yelled in alarm and started to lift a hand to cover her nose and mouth, then halted the movement. He saw her screw her mouth shut, sensed how she held her breath as she turned back to the slide and made several frantic but unsuccessful attempts to scale it. Her cheeks were bright red and sweat stood out on her face before she gave in and collapsed at the foot of the slide. Her breath exploded from her in a frantic gasp. She wheezed in some air, and expelled it almost immediately in a rush of words.

  “You idiot! You damn idiot! You’ve killed us both. We’ve both breathed this damn polluted stink! You just had to take my helmet off, didn’t you!” She pointed a shaking finger up the ramp. “And I’ll bet you didn’t take any precautions when you opened the door on the command chamber. I bet the whole interior of the shuttle has been contaminated! You’ve killed us both!”

  As each word she flung at him struck home, the sickening truth of them penetrated. He hadn’t thought. He’d been too stunned initially, and then too worried about her. But instead of explaining, he struck back. “I’m not the damn fool who activated the escape door and slide chute! You’re the one who opened the shuttle to this atmosphere, not me!”

  “The yellow warning lights were flashing for overheat!”

  “And procedure says to wait for the red before initiating the escape system. But I suppose you either didn’t remember, never knew that, or didn’t give a damn!” His words came out cold and separate, with none of her shaky hysteria. He tried not to take satisfaction in that.

  “I just wanted to get out of that damn thing!” She was going to cry again. Already he could tell it, even before the tears spilled over and coursed down her cheeks. Fat lot of good that did them. “I just didn’t want to die!”

  “And you didn’t,” he pointed out coldly. “And neither did I.” He took a breath and lied. “I knew what I was doing. You’re the one who fell apart, Crewman. And I might point out that your actions are responsible for the contamination of the shuttle, and have jeopardized us both. So you might want to get control of yourself and consider how that’s going to look on your record. And how long you’ll have to work for me before you’ve discharged your debt for a contaminated shuttle.”

  It worked. She took an infuriated breath, and then suddenly shut up. Her eyes were huge. It amazed him, how a simple threat always made her get control of herself. He wondered what she thought he could do to her. The maritime court would laugh at him if he’d ever tried to get a judgment against her. They’d never believe that he’d been in complete control of the situation and that her panic was unjustified. But Connie did. He could see the self-accusation growing in her eyes, and decided to act before she could be immobilized by it.

  “Well, if you’ve got control of yourself, I think we’d better
make the best of a bad situation. You go inside, and see what’s operational, what’s damaged, and how badly. See if you can get the inboard computer powered up. There’s enough damn solar energy coming down to charge a school of battery banks. If you can get it operational, retract the escape chute, and seal the crew and command modules. Also, ask it for a complete damage report, and get estimates on how much healing the biologics can do alone.”

  The flood of commands steadied her. She kept bobbing her head, and he could see her making mental notes. She picked up her helmet, managed a “yes, sir,” and began an awkward ascent of the chute. It looked like a lot of effort, and John found himself glad it was her, not him. Halfway up, she paused and looked back. “Aren’t you coming?”

  He shook his head nonchalantly. “External damage inspection, and reconnoiter the area. Get to your duties, Crew.”

  “Yes, sir.” But she didn’t move. She clung doggedly to the sides of the slide and stared down on him.

  “What is it?” he asked irritably.

  “Are you going to go far? I mean, it’s really dangerous down here….”

  He could hear it in her voice, like a child’s whimper. It wasn’t concern for him, it was “If you get killed, I’m all alone.” It chafed his pride. “I’ll be fine. Leave a channel open. Let’s see if we can get any of our communications to work. Oh, and make sure you turn on the rescue beacon if it didn’t go automatic. I’d really love to hear from Tug about now.”

  She nodded curtly and resumed her ascent of the ramp.

  With Connie out of his way and occupied, he had time to assess the situation. As he turned to survey his surroundings, the enormity of it struck him. He didn’t have the foggiest idea of how he’d landed the shuttle here. Didn’t even know where “here” was, not that it mattered. Didn’t even know if they’d live out the day in a hostile place like this.

  And then forgot it all as he looked up into an open sky, his feet on a living planet. Outside. This was what, outside meant. He had expected such total exposure to be terrifying. Instead, he was elated by it.

  The total foreignness of the Earth amazed him. He’d expected it to be like the videos of Castor or Pollux. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even like the holos of the planets that were home to other intelligent species. All the ancient poetry he’d read about the beauty of Earth had not prepared him for this.

  As far as the eye could see, the planet was a wasteland of red soil and grey-green brush. The richness of scents in the air was stronger than taste. From time to time the air stirred softly, but the light movement wasn’t enough to cool his skin. No soft-petaled flowers riotously gay in their colors, no laughing brooks and tall green trees, no fuzzy bunnies with long ears and little white tails hopping through the green grass. Nothing but pebbly red soil, and the dry-looking vegetation and the sun beating down relentlessly. The vegetation was disappointing, growing in no sort of symmetry or order, but sprawling or sticking straight up, or branching out however it pleased. A cautious inspection revealed the different individuals weren’t even of the same variety, but seemed to be a number of different plants growing in baffling proximity to one another. He could not figure out how so many different types of plants could grow in one area. It wasn’t as if he were at a transitional area, where one species gave way to another, as the cinbar trees grew on the hills of Castor right down to the edges of the plain, where the calla grass took over. No, this was all one type of soil and one type of terrain, over-grown with at least three, maybe even five types of plants. He spotted another strange one. Six. Six types of vegetation in one area. All growing practically on top of each other. Dead ones sticking up next to live ones. All competing for the same nutrients, light and water. It was baffling. How could anything survive when all else seemed determined to choke it out? He’d been able to parrot back the principles of competitive evolution and ecology, but had never really grasped what it was.

  It appalled him.

  And right now, it applied to him as much as it did to every leaf of vegetation around him. He was back in the middle of it now, in the harsh competitive environment that had spawned his ancestors. Survival of the fittest, with all that implied, surrounded him here. And could engulf him.

  He jerked his eyes away from the harsh terrain, and turned them back to the shuttle. It was now his only hope and his only care. He set every consideration of Earth Affirmed and their ridiculous errand out of his mind. Their precious time capsule could be anywhere on Earth. Only the most monumental of coincidences would place it anywhere within walking range of the shuttle. And even if it had been right under his feet, he wouldn’t have bothered with it. Not after they had messed up so bad. “A minor malfunction that would serve as an adequate excuse for landing on the planet’s surface.” That was what they had promised him. He looked up at what he had got and swore.

  He made a complete circuit of the shuttle. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he deserved it to be. Of course, it was a damn good shuttle. At least Earth Affirmed had been up-front about that. It had handled the rough terrain of the “landing strip”; maybe a takeoff from, the same terrain was possible. He ran his eyes over his craft again. A lot of obvious scorching on the shielding. He’d have to take a closer look at some spots, but most looked like spray application of heal-stim to the cell meld would handle it. If they had that much heal-stim spray. It was usually regarded as a spot treatment to encourage self-repair, not an overall treatment.

  He lifted a gloved hand to the top of his head, touched his bare scalp. Better cover his head if he was going to be out here much. Not the helmet; that was too heavy, but he’d wear the suit, for maximum protection against whatever he might encounter.

  A shadow swept across the ground. It took him a moment to make the connection, to lift his eyes and track the animal in flight above him. It was small, scarcely a third his size. A real animal. Bird, he decided, from the wings. Most birds had had wings, he remembered. For a second the shock of recognition kept him from doing anything. Then, “Hey!” he called out, hoping he sounded friendly. “Hey, hello there!” But it proceeded in its glide as if it hadn’t even heard him. Understandable that it wouldn’t comprehend him. He knew that animals had never been intelligent enough to use language. But surely anything alive and mobile would be smart enough to realize that the shuttle didn’t belong there, that they must be in some kind of trouble. Maybe it would circle back and try to help.

  But no, it continued on its way. He stood for a moment, watching it go, wondering why it hadn’t even paused. Then the obvious answer came to him. It expected him to follow. He squinted his eyes in that direction. Only red pebbly soil and grey-green plants to the horizon, but there was that indefinable change at the edge of the sky that spoke of a drop-off or sudden descent of some kind. Maybe there was something there.

  He glanced at the shuttle, but justified it to himself as he simply set out. He wouldn’t be gone long. And Connie had her tasks lined out for her, and they were essential. He wasn’t needed there right now, and he was the captain. These decisions were his to make.

  He glanced for his guide, but the animal was already out of sight. It couldn’t be far, then. He quickened his pace to catch up with the tiny creature.

  13

  SHE LIFTED THE HAND she’d had clamped over her own mouth and took a ragged breath. I’m calm now, she told herself, and tried to believe it was true. I can cope with this. She caught herself wishing she could crawl into a womb chamber and not come out until John had taken care of everything. But it wasn’t going to be like that. She had to think and make decisions. Enough crying. She tried to imagine how embarrassing it would be if John discovered her like this. The thought of his scorn gave her control over herself. She took a deep breath and consciously released the tension from her shoulders.

  She checked the clock and felt another wave of panic hit her. Another hour had gone by, and he still hadn’t returned. “Damn you, John! I hope you’re dead then,” she cursed him.

  And instantly regrette
d it. Did the shuttle have a record-all, as some ships were reputed to? Black satisfaction washed over her. Even if the shuttle had one, chances were it wasn’t working. Half the systems were still down. And even if it had one and it was working, her recorded infraction would probably stay right here and rot alongside her. The bleakness brought her a bitter smile and, oddly, a measure of comfort.

  “Okay,” she told herself calmly. “Time to make another decision. You can handle this, Connie.”

  They’d have been smarter to have kept their helmets on, but damn John had seen to that. Now they’d both been exposed to the air, and if one got sick, they probably both would. John’s fault again. He was so stupid, and it made her all the angrier that for a while she had thought he was so smart. And where was he, anyway? She had tried calling him on the radio, until she found the fool’s helmet with its radio sitting on the command lounge. Another example of her captain’s wonderful planning ability.

  She refused to look at the clock again. Tried to think of something constructive to do, but she’d done everything she could think of several hours ago. She’d been so relieved when she was able to get the computer on line, until it had given her a damage report. Nothing major, but the list of minor damage added up to major problems. Biologics would handle a lot of it, reconstructing to cell memory specs. She’d already released them, but the computer estimated seventy-six hours to effect repairs. And there was the nagging worry about the one spot where the skin of the shuttle had been ruptured. She’d already gone outside and sealed it, but there was no knowing what native life-forms had already penetrated, or how they would affect the bio-structures of the ship. She’d ordered its immunity systems stepped up, but there was no knowing about such things.

  The computer blipped inquiringly.

  “Report!” she snapped at it.