Freedom's Choice

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Seventy-six,” Kris said. “And how fast will the Tub go underwater?”

  “Not as fast as on land,” he replied. “Half the speed.”

  “That’s far from slow,” said Joe, impressed, and peered at the sloping shoreline. “Shallow?” he wondered.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Mitford said. “All aboard,” and he called in Astrid, Bjorn, and Jan, who had been searching for clams on the pebbly beach.

  They had no sooner reached the flotation point for the Tub when a quick ping began to echo from Joe’s panel. “Sonar?” he asked, and then saw the gauge that was lighting up. “Or something like it. Are you taking us down, Skipper?”

  Zainal shook his head. “Distance to bottom.”

  Water was reaching the slit windows now and covering two thirds of the main one and the slight movement of the waters could be seen.

  “I forgot to ask,” Mitford said, “does anyone on board get seasick…besides me?”

  “Sarge? You can’t,” Kris said in mock alarm.

  Leila, always attentive, rose from her seat and went aft. She returned with a large basin, which she offered to Mitford. He gave her such a disgusted look that she started to apologize. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

  “He’s teasing you, Leila,” Kris said.

  “Maybe I’m not.” Mitford said, staring down at the basin.

  “Are you claustrophobic?” Kris murmured.

  He nodded.

  “Oh,” she said in as sympathetic a tone as she could manage. No wonder he hadn’t been so keen to fly in Baby.

  “The way the Tub is moving, Sarge,” Joe said in a very cheerful tone, “we’ll be there in no time at all. No time at all!”

  “Just think of it, Chuck…”

  Mitford put a hasty hand on Kris’ shoulder. “Don’t…use that particular word, will you?”

  “Ooops, but you are first to cross this channel, or strait, or whatever it is. Can we name it after you?”

  “Huh?” and the sergeant regarded her with startled eyes. Then he realized she was trying to divert him and managed a grin. “I’ll be all right. There’s still some view left…” But the waves washed up over the windscreen and he hastily looked away from their activity.

  The crossing was completed in just under two Catteni-style hours as marked by the timepiece set in the control panel. The Tub trundled out onto a sandy beach, dotted with the same sort of shrubs that grew on its neighbor.

  “Clams, too,” Astrid said, pointing to the air holes as they all emerged from the Tub, once again flushing out the newness smells. “We get some?” she asked Mitford.

  “There’s plenty of time,” he said, shading his eyes to glance up the slope that led inland. Then he glanced down at the map he had taken from his pocket and unfolded it. “We’re about here,” he said, pointing and then cocking his finger due west. “Should be higher ground this way. Zainal, Kris, Astrid, Bjorn, Whitby, let’s have bit of a recon,” and he strode forward. “Joe, you’re in charge of the Tub,” he added.

  When they reached the first height and had an overview, there were green-covered stretches in either direction and right back to the distant hills.

  “Like loo-cow pastures,” Bjorn said, pausing to dig a toe through the vegetation to the soil beneath. Little many-legged things burrowed deeper, away from the air. “Good dirt,” he added, pinching some between his fingers and letting it sift back down. Neatly, he stepped on the divot he had made.

  “Think the Farmers’d notice if we rustled some of their steers?” Kris asked, wondering what else was hidden in the soil here.

  “No such insects in loo-cow pastures,” Bjorn added. “Maybe no night crawlers, too.”

  Kris looked around her. “We should be so lucky.” She tried to remember what she’d learned in geography about terrain. “This looks exactly like the landscape over there,” and she pointed over her shoulder at the distant mainland. “Could there have been some sort of subsidence to separate the two…or maybe the gap just hasn’t closed as it did on Earth in prehistoric days. Continents didn’t used to be the way they are now, you know. Maybe this is a young land…”

  “No, this is an old planet,” Whitby said. “No volcanoes on those space maps at all and a lot of the hills are worn down. But this place does look just like the same sort of terrain that we left.”

  “Then why it is not farmed?” Astrid asked, her usually serene expression marred by a frown.

  Mitford shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat. “Who knows, but we’ll keep in mind that, if it looks alike, it could be alike and we might have night crawlers here, too. We’ll bunk in the Tub tonight.” Then he swung his arm in a wide arc. “Let’s move out and see if we can find a good place to park.”

  * * *

  In the four hours they searched, they caught only a glimpse or two of small aerial life-forms, but no rocksquats.

  “They wouldn’t be down here where there’s no rocks, for starters,” Mitford said when Astrid grew worried about their absence. “Not even any trees for the avians either. Just bushes. Let’s split up into two groups. You head north, Zainal, with Kris, Coo, and Bjorn. You, Slav, and the rest, we’ll go south.”

  Several times, Bjorn stopped to check the soil again. It was good, black and moist, but not too moist, full of small creatures to keep it loose. “Plenty good for farms.”

  “Then why aren’t there Farms here?” Kris asked, almost aggrieved.

  “We will find the reason,” Zainal reassured her, touching her elbow briefly.

  “They farm well enough on the main continent. Don’t need this one,” Bjorn said, but he didn’t sound all that convinced.

  “And the closed valleys?” Kris asked. “They’re even more enigmatic.”

  “Perhaps,” and Bjorn considered his words, “they used them to keep animals in. Safe from the night crawlers.”

  “Where are the animals now, then?” Kris demanded.

  “Eaten?” Bjorn asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “We will ask that question, also,” Zainal said.

  They had gone north and now swung wide on their return to the Tub. Zainal had seen low foothills at a good day’s travel to the north but otherwise this coastal plain was covered in low vegetation and bush. Good smells wafted on the evening breeze as they neared the Tub’s position.

  Joe had wasted no time in digging for clams; Leila and Oskar had caught several varieties of fish and, having tested them in the Tub’s small but efficient laboratory unit, found them safe for humans to eat. Sarah contributed some familiar edible roots and greens she found near a stream. Among the Tub’s supplies were small cooking units, which were occupied by boiling pots of clams. A grill had been laid across stones for the fish and there was bread from Narrow among their supplies, so when Mitford broke out the beer, everyone was in an expansive mood.

  * * *

  The report of the unusual orbiting device was forwarded to the Eosi Mentat Ix, who had registered an interest in everything to do with the colony planet.

  Ix snarled each time it replayed the record of the object, for the speed alone suggested a technology worryingly more advanced than the Eosi’s. Ix demanded all records, especially those made by its new entity, for within the entity’s fading mind was a memory of a visit to the planet. Ix drew forth all the relevant facts, including the presence of the Catteni it had chosen from the bloodline of its present, but not selected, entity. It examined what the entity had dismissed, the gadget that had been presented for inspection as proof that the planet perhaps had been or was occupied by another species.

  Ix worried over all the little memories, having them repeated and repeated until every nuance was dragged out for inspection. The Mentat was pleased that Catteni had set up a second, more flexible satellite around the subject planet. Unfortunately this satellite only emphasized the incredibly fast global search that had been conducted by the alien orb, and the anger of Ix increased at the implications of technical superiority over the Eosi
.

  Logic suggested that the original discoverers of that planet were reevaluating the world. What had it been programmed to discover? And why had this object, too, disappeared just beyond the heliopause of this solar system?

  Ix summoned a meeting of those of its fellow Mentats who were sufficiently cognizant of their responsibilities to be useful in formulating a course of action. In lightning exchanges of information—as unlike the torturous communications with their subject Catteni as the orbiting object of the Unknown was unlike their own satellite units—it was decided the matter must be investigated in greater detail. All further shipments to the colony planet were suspended and the great number of recalcitrant Earth people would be sent to the secondary colonial venture.

  Since it was the Ix Mentat’s idea that the matter must be investigated, its peers decided that it must undertake the onerous journey, forgoing its usual pleasures and routines. Fortunately it could pass the tedium of the voyage in a suspended state but that amenity required some alterations to the newest and fastest Catteni warship. The delay annoyed the Ix still further and it amused itself thinking of ways to punish those beings which had been instrumental in causing its discommodation.

  The Ix Mentat had just been awakened by the high-ranking naval commander of this jewel of the Catteni fleet when proximity alarms jangled fiercely all over the ship, which went into attack alert. The mass approaching the Catteni vessel was so large it could not be contained on the detection screen. Suddenly waves of force rocked the XZ as if it were a pod in a pond. The Ix, in a manner inconsonant with its dignity and size, grabbed for support until the buffeting subsided.

  “Report!” it said in its cold and vicious verbal communication form.

  “Most High Eosi, an unknown vessel has appeared…”

  “You keep no watch?”

  “It appeared on screen just as we passed the heliopause,” the commander said, not daring to raise his eyes to the towering Eosi, “where other such devices have been seen to disappear.” The commander had been well briefed on the problems of, and connected with, this colony planet, not to mention the extraordinary fact that the Mentat had not received its chosen of record but another in the bloodline.

  “What is it?” the Ix demanded. “Can you not show it?”

  The commander hastily called up on the nearest screen what had stunned his entire bridge crew. The monstrous ship was ten times the size of the AAI, which itself was three times the size of the next largest spaceship in the Catteni navy. The immense ship was obviously headed inward and at a rate of speed which would bring it to its destination thirty time units before the AAI, for all its vaunted improved propulsion system and cruising speed.

  “Can you not attach a tracer to its hull before it gets out of range?”

  Even as it spoke, Ix realized that the ship was probably out of range.

  “It is already out of range for such an attachment, Great Eosi.”

  Ix fumed that the commander would waste its time stating the obvious. How could another species have developed such technology without the Eosi being aware of their existence? The Eosi had not bothered lately with anything more complicated than the improvement in propulsion and cruising range, their present navy having been deemed sufficient for all practical purposes. Such an attitude of complacence was no longer permissible.

  “Watch it and record it. Do not fail for an instant.”

  “No, Most High Eosi, not for an instant,” and the commander, relieved to have escaped with his life, strode as quickly as courtesy permitted away from the Eosi to the relative safety of his own bridge.

  No one commented on his arrival or moved an eye muscle from whatever panel their duties bound them to.

  Several hours later, the captain was awakened from an inadvertent doze by a stir and excitement, palpable on the bridge.

  “Sir, the ship is…”

  Wide awake, and staring at the view screen, the commander watched, awed, as the strange ship, magnified many times to keep it on the slower warship’s screens, dipped briefly into the atmosphere of the subject planet, then bobbed up again and continued on its way to the other side of the solar system. Where, upon reaching the heliopause, it disappeared from even the most sensitive instrumentation.

  The commander reported to the Eosi, who was ensconced on a huge chair in the cargo compartment which had been altered to provide it with the maximum comfort. The huge chair faced a large screen which had already shown the Ix everything the captain would have to report.

  “The planet is of no importance in the face of this.” The Eosi paused. “Return to Catten. At all possible speed,” and its tone was contemptuous of such a torpid rate now that it had seen a velocity that transcended the best of Eosi capabilities. “This must be reported—and countered.”

  As the AAI passed through the heliopause of the system, a faint shock, like a low voltage of electricity, was felt by those awake. Only a nanosecond blip registered the shock on the bridge and it was dismissed as an anomaly.

  * * *

  Deski ears felt the noise in the air long before the huge vessel was visible. But, while frightened people ran for the nearest cover in the caves they still occupied and the valleys they were exploring, the noise did not increase. To those with binoculars the ship was visible more as a scintillating lozenge very high overhead. On the view screens of the bridges, the monster seemed to do no more than skim the very top of the stratosphere, skipping like a flat stone across a calm lake, before altering its course and flying off into space, taking its skull-shattering noise with it.

  Scott blinked, cleared his throat, and managed to unclench his fists. He had been in the KDL’s bridge, his eyes glued to the incredible astronautic event shown on the detection screen.

  No one cared to break the silence, for no one quite believed what they had just seen, until a comunit beeped, an almost impudent noise considering the enormity of the recent event.

  “That’s about the size of the first one, Admiral,” said Su. “I think we’re lucky it was so high up…. What’s that? ’Scuse me, sir…” and the connection was broken.

  Dick Aarens came running full clip down the passageway to the bridge, catching himself on the doorframe to stop, his face ashen and the expression in his eyes as close to awe as he was ever likely to come.

  “They did it, Scott. They did it. They’ve replaced every last fri—”

  “Watch your language on my bridge, Aarens,” Scott recovered enough to reprimand him. “What has been replaced?”

  “All the Mech Makers’ stuff, the farm machinery we disassembled. It’s all back. Back in the abattoir and everywhere…”

  Peter Easley, who had been just as flabbergasted as everyone else on the bridge, absorbed that news before Ray Scott or John Beverly did. “Good thing we got the main garage cleaned out then, isn’t it?”

  “It would have been very messy if we hadn’t,” Beverly remarked, and then he and Peter burst out laughing.

  “Yes, but did they take the parts back?” Scott demanded.

  “The parts?” Aarens was confused.

  “I don’t think so, Ray,” Beverly said, holding up the comunit usually attached to his belt.

  Aarens ran to the hatch but sauntered back to the bridge, a smug grin on his face. “The air-cushion’s still there. Maybe the Farmer didn’t recognize what I’d done to their material.”

  The newly devised com board of the KDL lit up with other incoming calls from Shutdown, Bella Vista, and the other three garage sites that had so recently been cleared of human occupation. Then the caves and the valleys that were now human habitations.

  “They don’t know we’re here, then,” was Worrell’s reaction.

  “And couldn’t care less,” said Jay Greene. “Hope the satellite caught that visitation!”

  “You do?” Worry began to fret over what trouble that could cause back in Barevi or Catten or wherever the Eosi hung out.

  * * *

  The machinery was back, gleaming new mo
dels of every single unit that had been disassembled by the colonists, in pristine condition and arranged in the appropriate order in each garage, barn, or building. The solar panels that had been taken down and installed elsewhere for the camps’ needs were also replaced and seemingly operational.

  “Why aren’t the machines moving?”

  “It isn’t spring yet. Not the time to farm.”

  “Weren’t we lucky to have moved out in time!”

  “No messages with the unpacking?”

  “As if we could have read them?”

  “Was Kilroy here or his ET counterpart?”

  “What do we do now?”

  Chuck Mitford, having seen the huge spaceship on the Tub’s screen as they made their way back to the headquarters at New Narrow Valley to report, had one answer to that when John Beverly informed him of the arrival of complete replacements.

  “Get into those garages and remove the anesthetic darts from the launchers before those machines are fully charged.”

  “Won’t such interference be noticed?” Beverly asked.

  “I sure hope not. We took the first ones out when they were down, but you’d want to do it before they get fully operational. Fill the reservoirs with water. That anesthesia damned near put paid to a lot of us on the First Drop. Lenny Doyle or Pess’ll show you how. They’ve done it before.”

  “Any other suggestions, sergeant?” Beverly asked at his most respectful.

  “Watch out for the avian predators. Those machines can call them down on anything that moves where it shouldn’t.”

  “Anything else?”

  “If I think of something, I’ll let you know. But check with Cumber, Esker, the Doyle brothers, Mack Su, any of the First Drop who scouted for me.”

  Mitford had been sending back daily reports on their explorations. Now he turned back to his team.

  “I thought for sure we’d have more than three weeks before anything happened,” he said, scratching his head in a measure of anxiety. “Can we make a bit more speed on this thing, Sarah?” he asked, since she was the driver.

  “Sure, but it’s about to get bumpy again.”