George, our second-in-command, views the water-tank full of colorful flouwen and the panoramic vistas of black space visible from the floor-to-ceiling glass viewport in the lounge, with equal satisfaction. It must be highly contenting to him, after all his years of working to get our mission literally off the ground, to see how successful we have been in making contact with this new universe. The creatures in the tank are very different from anything on earth, and the scene out the viewport in the lounge is both calming and stabilizing. That is reality out there—immense, beautiful, and existing long after we are not.
Richard looks on our small flouwen buds with what has all the appearances of paternal indulgence. In their eagerness to learn, the flouwen are always asking questions and frequently getting in the way. Little Red seems to feel a special affinity for Richard, and learns fastest of all from him as they yell affectionate insults at each other. I heard them at it this morning.
"Move, Little Red, damn it! You keep creeping up, closer and closer, like a damn cat or something, until you're practically in my damn lap!"
"Cat? What is cat?" All senses in the red alien are alert at the new words. " . . .and lap? What is . . ."
"Cat is . . .Oh . . .a pet sort of thing, and lap . . ."
"Pet!" Little Red was shouting at the implied insult. "I not pet! Pets dumb!"
Richard laughed, and said, "Then stay out of my—uh—chair."
"Wait! Before you said, 'lap'! What is that? Dumb too?" The tones were suspicious.
"No, no, no . . ." The man tried to define 'lap' to the alien. I did notice, wryly, that Little Red had had no trouble with the "damn." Even such short acquaintance with humans had familiarized the alien with the regrettable overuse of that and other slipshod adjectives. One of my own obsessions is that of selecting each word with care, rather than resorting to monotonous slang. Sometimes I think I am setting a good example; at other times I despair. A moment's idle gossip invariably sends me speeding off to the fine minds waiting patiently in my library!
Communication between these creatures and ourselves is overseen by Carmen. It is good to see her restored to some health! None of us, except perhaps John, knows what caused her to retreat so far from us, but I think she is back with us at last. I'm glad to see her responding to the occasional inquisitive question with an aloof raising of an eyebrow—I couldn't do better myself! Her introspection has a different look about it now—I feel she is changing, and growing, after so many years of simply being agreeable.
My own feeling toward the flouwen, I find, is very similar to my attitude towards children; kindly, never angry, but quite prepared to do my part in their education. Their self-sufficiency and easy way of life has resulted in their having no manners to speak of, and they communicate with others with the simplicity and directness of children. There is no need for me to concern myself with this, but as we work with them, I hope, by example, to help them understand the simplest of courtesies—if only to lead to increased interaction and friendship between ourselves. The differences between our two species are so vast that without good will and endeavor on both sides we will always remain enigmas to each other.
It is amazing that with all of our adventures and mishaps, only one of our original crew of twenty has died. That came about during those forty years we all spent as very young children in adult bodies, the result of our use of the drug No-Die, which slowed our physical aging by a factor of four so that our forty year journey to Barnard only aged us ten years, but which lowered our IQs by the same factor of four.
I had struggled very hard, at first, to resist the loss of my own excellent mind, only to succumb to the drug as did the rest, to wearisome play, and then the insidious infectious cancer, which struck without warning. We were all so very ill with that cancer—and its violent cure by chemotherapy! But all of us survived, only to find, when we were allowed to return to our adult minds, that the disease had taken our beloved Dr. Wang, who had not taken the chemotherapy in order to be better able to treat us. I'm not sure quite how the others remember him, but I think of him as a saint.
It is late and I have the early shift tomorrow. I finish my wine and before I bring the glass down from my lips, the room imp is there, ready to take the empty glass off to the galley to be cleaned. I climb under the tension sheet on my bed, and before James has dimmed the lights, I am asleep.
PREPARING
Eager for my next shift, I was ready early. I'd chosen one of my favorite sets of lace, which formed a delicate edge to the crisp neckline and sleeve edges of the practical coverall I generally wear. Fragile though it looks, lace is tough and durable, and I have no fear that my own collection, gifts from many thoughtful friends, will not last as long as I. This set in particular is snowy white, in sharp contrast to my dusky skin. I remember an early lover's self-satisfaction with finding a color match; we were sharing a blissful breakfast in Kashmir, and the smiling Hunza woman brought us a bowl of ripe apricots.
"That's it!" he said, holding one up to my cheek. "You're just that color!" Fanciful, but not inappropriate to that happy time. Trimly regulation in the rest of my appearance, I pulled myself smartly around the last handhold on the central shaft and swung into the big control room on the bottom deck. When he saw me, David got up silently from the computer control console, and I took his place.
Two other members of my shift, George and Sam, were already there, settling down at their console screens. George had the Prometheus in hover mode at the L1 point between Gargantua and Zuni, so with little to do, he had switched his pilot console from the normal lightsail navigation display to a science analysis setup. Carmen came in to replace Caroline at the communications console. Neither one looked at the other.
"Carmen. Zouave will be going behind Gargantua in about half an hour," said Caroline through James as she got up and left, talking as she went, with Carmen hearing her clearly through their imp-to-James-to-imp connection. "Tweedledum, the high-pressure exploration balloon, is getting some excellent views of a region of Zouave it and Tweedledee have not visited previously. Before Zouave disappears, you'll want to set up a bounce relay link through the commsat we placed at Zouave's L4 point." She had disappeared up the central shaft long before she finished talking.
"Right," replied Carmen through her imp, as she wrapped her legs around the console chair stand and readjusted the icons around the comm screen to the left-handed arrangement she preferred.
"George?" said Sam. "Nearly all the data on Zuni collected by the crawlers has been closely analyzed by James and the science analysis gang, correlated with the pictures taken from above by the orbiter, and collated into various files. If you'd like, I think I can run a condensed version of the highlights for you. It ought to give a pretty clear picture of what the two crawlers found before they were lost to accidents."
"Great, Sam. It's good to have all that information, like having an encyclopedia, but getting something out of it is like trying to read an encyclopedia!"
I quietly switched my own screen to Sam's so I could watch too.
The reports from the amphibious crawlers Burble and Bubble had indeed been voluminous. For years they had crawled in and out of the oceans and islands on Zuni below, their webbed tracks working as treads on the land, like paddles in the water.
"Plant, similar to that found in image 74698, color similar to shade 173, structure similar to number K91, located . . ."
The descriptions went on and on, and each find had been plotted on the increasingly detailed maps being developed in the archival memory of James. Of course, when most of these reports were actually coming in, we had been busy elsewhere in the Barnard planetary system.
We had learned of the loss of the robot scouts via brief communications from Bruce, the science orbiter which had brought the two crawlers and their aeroshells down close to Zuni so they could land, and who stayed in orbit to act as a communications relay between the crawlers and Prometheus, and to collect what data it could from orbit with its video cameras, m
icrowave, infrared, ultraviolet, and gamma-ray scanners, and various science instruments including a gravity gradient field mapper. Soaring high above Zuni, Bruce's unemotional voice had reached us with the announcement of the loss of the first semi-intelligent robot.
"Burble is experiencing technical difficulties. Burble is submerging rapidly off the southern tip of island 105 east, 35 north. Burble has ceased communication." There was a pause. "All indications are that Burble is no longer operational."
We had all been too busy to respond with much more feeling than Bruce had displayed.
"Right, Bruce, you and Bubble carry on," was, I think, about the extent of it from George at the time. And there was not much more excitement at Bruce's equally laconic statement after the loss of Bubble. One of our many tasks on Zuni's surface will be to see if we can find any part of Burble and Bubble. If they are in any way salvageable, it will be well worth our work to return them to Prometheus where the Christmas Bush can make use of their parts.
If, now, Sam could begin to summarize all this information in a readable way, I would appreciate it as much as anyone. The scenes on the screen began to sharpen, images narrowing down to focus on some detail, then widening out to encompass a whole valley or bay. By now Carmen had switched her screen too, and some members of the previous shift had drifted back down from the dining area on the deck above to see what was going on, some of them going to spare consoles and bringing up replicas of Sam's screen. All of us watched with interest as Sam began to form vivid panoramas of the land below us, switching from overhead views taken by Bruce to the closeups of the same views taken by one of the crawlers.
Zuni looks, with obvious discrepancies, rather like parts of the Earth's South Pacific. It appears to be mostly water, with islands of all shapes and sizes, over ninety-five large ones, and thousands of smaller ones, dotting the surface in such profusion one would think it would be difficult to miss hitting one, landing at random. However, such a move would certainly be disastrous, as the appearance is deceptive, and miles of water separate each morsel of land.
David stopped the display on his console in mid-scene.
"Here's a funny thing! I'm looking at two views of the same small area taken by the orbiter Bruce just a few days apart, but they look different! I'm sure it's the same spot, because of that strangely shaped granite knob in the middle of both images, but the pattern of vegetation has changed, and see the color difference?"
He displayed two pictures which we all pulled to our screens. There was a collection of trees in a complex pattern, and the pattern had changed significantly between the two pictures taken a few days apart, but, frankly, I could see no difference in the colors of the plants.
"Yes, the reports from Bruce do say shade 043 and shade 045, but I don't see any difference! Bruce is as persnickety about color as you are, David!" Jinjur straightened to her full diminutive height and ran exasperated fingers through her crisp black hair.
"The whole place seems to have nothing but those same bushes. Where's any significant difference?"
"What do you mean, no difference? Look there . . .and there!" David's bony fingers prodded sharply at the two images, pointing to the sets of bush-like structures to one side of the granite knob. His touch-sensitive screen produced green circles on our screens.
"Can't you see how much bluer those plants are in the second image?"
"No," snorted Jinjur. There was a general murmur of agreement.
"Wait, I'll make it clearer," David said impatiently, and began to increase the color difference by stretching the spectrum. The onlookers, an opinionated cluster of individuals, began to come as close to argument as they ever did.
"I do believe I can see . . ."
"Obviously it's just a different time of day!"
"They were taken at the same time of the day," David reminded them.
"Much more likely a seasonal variation—that's why the pattern is different too."
"A major change in color and position in just a few days?" David retorted sarcastically.
"To coin a phrase," said Jinjur tartly, "I think you're barking up the wrong tree."
This, of course, set Richard off.
"Ash-ly, I don't want to go out on a limb, but are yew holly qualified to judge, Jinjur? I mean, until we syc'more information, I think we should go with the willo' the poplar majority! It's oak-kay with me to leaf the whole thing to David—he walnut be stumped! And as fir my o-pine-ion . . ." Here, fortunately, George ordered him to shut up.
I shifted my own console back to the original picture, and pulling other views of the same region taken by Bruce in its daily orbit of the planetoid, began to run it through a time-lapse sequence. Fortunately, the region was near the north pole, so that Bruce obtained a picture of the same region practically every day. As the images changed, and time passed, the pattern of plants in the picture slowly began to shift. Of course, that would normally be the case—plants do thrive and then wither. I increased the display rate . . .Suddenly, I stared in shock. As the patterns of vegetation moved and shifted, definite lines of action began to form, almost as if the plants were advancing and retreating! I slowed the pace to a daily rate, and the action became invisible. But sped up, so that weeks were scanning by in a few seconds, it was easy to see—tendrils were moving out from established plants, new growths were beginning, and even more startling, the mass of growth changed with what had all the appearance of deliberate purpose, from the parent plant to the new growth! My gasp of amazement had caught David's attention, and he instantly brought up what I had on my console, roiling in its fast-moving action.
"There's a battle going on!" exclaimed Richard. "The bushes are moving around, and fighting each other!"
"Plants can't move around," said Jinjur. "Don't they always have fixed root systems?"
"Not these plants!" Nels was excited. "Look at that . . .that . . .spider plant there!" He was right, there was a resemblance of this alien plant to those common plants frequently seen barely surviving in some neglected corner of a student's room. "It's just sent out shoots towards that spot where there's more space, and now the little plant on the best spot has shot up to overshadow the neighboring ones! And what's really amazing is that the parent plant is dwindling, obviously sending the offshoot all of its nutrients!"
"You mean the parent plant is sacrificing itself?" It was difficult for me to accept the notion of altruism on the part of a plant.
"No, no, Reiki, it's not sacrificing anything, it's just moving! See, all the other little tendrils are shriveling up too, while that first offshoot is absolutely thriving and becoming the new parent body!"
It was David who spotted the even more aggressive actions of the foliage.
"Watch those little vines! They're trying to strangle each other!" It was true. At this high rate of speed, the sinewy runners looked like furiously battling snakes, coiling viciously around each other, struggling to break their opponent's grip on the soil, trying with obvious intent to crush the life from each other. Amazed, we watched a larger offshoot slide quickly to the top of an apparently established plant and begin to grow strongly, only to be ruthlessly severed from its parent by a branch of the stronger plant.
With quickened interest we focussed our attention on the structure of these peculiar shrubs. The large central portion is very bushy, and almost always there are six tendrils out and about, searching and exploring, setting up new bushy offshoots in a tentative way, until a position is found that permits rapid growth. Then that growth is phenomenal! With the rest of the runners and the parent shrinking into nothing, the successful shoot attains full growth and vigor, and begins to send out little tendrils of its own! The change and warfare seem to be unending. This deliberate slow-motion battling makes us more curious than ever about the planet we hope to explore.
The information we have is tantalizing, to say the least. Although it is totally different from Earth, Zuni has many characteristics to which it is easy to relate. Because its gravity is tw
enty-eight percent of Earth's, walking will feel almost normal, but lifting heavy weights should be simple, as, for instance, fifty kilos will seem like only fourteen. The length of the "day" is a little over thirty hours, due to the fact that Zuni is tidally linked to Gargantua. The light, what there is of it, comes from Barnard, and is cut off from Zuni by the huge mass of Gargantua in an eclipse, every day, for nearly two hours. At nighttime, Gargantua itself is being illuminated by Barnard, providing more than enough light for us to move around safely. The only real darkness comes during the eclipse; I can easily find attractive the idea of an enforced siesta! Our years of relentlessly scheduled shifts have made me, just a little, resentful of their rigidity.
Marooned on Eden Page 5
