Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You forget how small these are,” Sylvia said.

  “Small? This must mass eight tonnes. Some things I’ve flown…” he shook his head, and unlatched the turbine cover. “I need to preflight this. You can get settled on that side.”

  Sylvia nodded and slid open the copilot’s door.

  Nathaniel just looked at the craft for a long moment, then moved toward the port turbine where he undid the catches.

  “Sir?”

  Nathaniel turned his attention from the uncovered port turbine to the approaching pilot. “Yes, Jersek?”

  Jersek fingered his trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. “Well…I just wanted to tell you. I would have been out here when you came, but the factor and his friend stopped by, wanting to know about heavy lift flitters.” The Port Authority pilot shook his head. “With all this flat land, we need to think about those? Anyway, wanted to tell you I had the tanks topped off this morning. If you’re headed straight out and back, you’ve got enough for that with a good margin. You do sight-seeing around George’s place, and you’ll want to top off there. Use the good stuff—there’s a tank buried by the windsock, and I’d let the pump run a moment before you put any in the tanks.” Jersek paused. “You know about the stub tanks?”

  “Right—they won’t draw if the mains are below thirty.”

  “She’s a good old bird, sir. Seen me through a lot.”

  “And she’ll see you through more.” The Ecolitan forced a grin.

  The Port Authority pilot and maintenance chief nodded, then turned and ambled toward the building that held his office and Walkerson’s.

  Nathaniel methodically scanned the turbine, then fastened the cover, checking the catches. He repeated the process with the starboard turbine, and then used the pull-out steps to get to the rotor deck.

  Sylvia had long since been strapped in by the time Nathaniel returned to the cockpit and began the checklist, murmuring the items to himself as he went through them.

  “Sequencers…check….”

  “Diffusor…check…”

  “Ignitors…check…”

  He slipped on the helmet.

  “Intercom…can you hear me?”

  Sylvia nodded, and her helmet bobbed.

  “The red button there—press it when you want to talk.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Good. Comm freqs…set…”

  Finally, he touched the port ignitor.

  Wuuuffff…eeeeeee…

  Once the port turbine was up and in the green, he started the starboard one, completed the checklist, then released the rotor brake. The flitter swayed as the heavy rotors began to turn.

  “Rotors…engaged.”

  He checked the instruments one last time, then triggered the comm. “Artos main, this is Port Angel two, ready to lift.”

  “Angel two, cleared to the southwest, radian two eight five. Report the river on departure.”

  “Stet. Two here, lifting this time. Will report the river.”

  Nathaniel eased power to the thrusters, and the flitter slipped onto the air cushion. He air-taxied slowly until he had the old Welk clear of the Port Authority hangar. The Ecolitan swallowed back a touch of bile—the unburned exhaust gases weren’t wonderful for his digestion. With spacecraft you smelled ozone and hot metal, but not exhaust fumes.

  From the copilot’s seat Sylvia studied the patched permacrete and the hangar walls that were an alternating pattern of old and new synthetic hydrocarbon building sheets.

  Once past the hangar, Whaler added power to the thrusters and lowered the nose slightly, keeping the flitter on its air cushion as the speed built up. At one hundred fifty klicks, he eased the stick back and let the flitter climb.

  From the air, the shuttle port looked like a permacrete X imposed on different-sized squares of varied green, across which ran the tan lines of the shuttle landing strips. To the east was the gray line of the ocean, a darker gray blot that was Lanceville, and the tiny blue dot that was the Blue Lion.

  “Tower, Angel two, clearing the river this time.”

  “Stet, two. Report the river inbound on return. Same freq.”

  “Stet, tower.” Nathaniel eased the flitter onto the outbound two nine five radial and continued to climb, scanning the instruments. The heads-up display had long since ceased working—as was the case with most of the older Welk-Symmons.

  “How far is the Reeves-Kenn spread?” Sylvia’s voice crackled through the earsets of the helmet.

  “Two hundred fifty kilos, give or take a few—almost due southwest.” He inclined his helmet slightly.

  Once past the river, the ground beneath began to slope upward, and to dry out, showing traces of grayish sand that grew more prominent with every kilo. “The midplateau desert, according to the maps.” His voice sounded scratchy in his own earset, and he hoped it was just the set. “Badlands…mostly.”

  “They didn’t planoform it, so close to Lanceville?”

  “It’s mostly lava of some sort—I don’t know the term, but it’s the stuff that you get on hotcore worlds with no oxygen and no way to reduce it. Give it a few thousand years, and it’ll be fine. Right now it isn’t worth the trouble.”

  “People won’t wait that long.”

  “Probably not, but it takes money, and that’s something in short supply here on Artos.”

  The terrain below had become one of rough stone hills, joined by sweeps of gray sand. Nothing grew in the ocean of stone and sand where the only movement was that of wind-swept silica particles, not anything large enough to see from the flitter cockpit.

  “Desolate,” Sylvia said after a time.

  “Gives an idea of what Artos was like centuries ago.”

  The sky was clear—and empty—like the desert beneath.

  “Do you have any better idea why we’re doing this study?” asked Sylvia after a long silence.

  “No. It’s getting clearer that the government in New Avalon wants something from it, probably for us to reveal something that they can’t afford to disclose and need an impartial source for. Either that or support for some program. They want to be able to say that it was Accord’s—or the Institute’s—idea. That means politics, and trouble. But I don’t know what they want, only that someone doesn’t want us to find it, whatever it may be. I’m hoping this little trip will shed some light.”

  “You don’t sound certain it will.”

  “I’m always a skeptic when you get to politics.”

  His words drew a laugh, and he smiled to himself, even as the silence drew out and as he checked the nav screens.

  “On course…beacon’s clear.”

  After another stretch of silence, he cross-checked the ground beacon readings. Supposedly their destination was less than twenty kilos ahead. With that reminder, he re-checked the main tanks—down twenty percent—and switched the fuel transfer pumps on. Later Welk flitters didn’t have that problem. They had others, generally harder to resolve because they used more microtronics, and higher technology wasn’t always suited to conditions of high mechanical stress. Flitters incorporated high mechanical stress, and always would, at least until antigrav units were finally developed that would work planetside.

  To the southwest, beyond the gray and tan of sand and rock appeared a hazy line of grayish green that grew more distinct.

  Nathaniel kept his scan moving—instruments, horizon, ground ahead—as the flitter carried them toward the green, absently flicking off the transfer pumps when the main tanks registered full. He doubted that the automatic cutoffs worked, or worked well.

  Beyond desert came the first flush of green, interspersed with gray sand, then the river, still flat and wide and smooth, and then more green. A long strip of permacrete road ran northwest from the cluster of hilltop buildings until it intersected a long arrow-straight section of the wide permacrete main road that presumably made its way back to Lanceville.

  “Kenn base, Port Angel two inbound.”

  Sylvia jerked in her seat. Had
she been dozing? Nathaniel didn’t blame her. The flight had been anything but intriguing, and he personally hadn’t been that scintillating. Then, pilots with sparkling personalities in the cockpit, like bold pilots, usually didn’t live to be that old.

  The Ecolitan waited, then triggered the transmitter again. “Kenn base, Port Angel two inbound.”

  “That you, Jersek, still flying that antique?”

  “Negative. Ecolitans Whaler and Ferro-Maine, inbound to see George Reeves-Kenn.”

  “Stet. Do you have the strip and the wind indicator?”

  “That’s affirmative.”

  “Set her down there. See you after touchdown.”

  “Not the most formal place,” Nathaniel said.

  “After last night?” she asked. “That gathering was so formal everyone creaked. And you and all those proverbs…”

  “I’ve got several hundred more…”

  “No…”

  “You see…they’re working.” He eased off power from the turbines and brought the nose back as he eased the flitter into a left-hand turn to bring it into the wind, then past the fluorescent green windsock and onto the cleared claylike strip that ran the length of the low ridge. He settled the craft into a hover and air-taxied toward the spot where a single figure waited by a small shed a hundred meters or so east of a long low stone house.

  “You make that look easy,” said Sylvia.

  “I’ve had some practice,” he admitted.

  When he stepped from the flitter, Nathaniel’s hands were empty, since he’d reluctantly decided to leave his datacase in the Guest House—not that there was any information that wasn’t available one way or another to New Avalonian intelligence, or the Federated Hegemony, or whoever. Sylvia slipped the strap of her case over her shoulder and closed the transparent permaglass door on the copilot’s side of the flitter.

  They walked toward the waiting man.

  “George Reeves-Kenn.” He was rail thin with a tanned and leathery face. The green eyes were hard, and the white-gray hair was short.

  “Nathaniel Whaler.”

  “Sylvia Ferro-Maine.”

  “Welcome to Connaught. Understand you two wanted a look-see at how our operation runs. That’s what old Walk said, anyway.” Reeves-Kenn waited. “Thought economists just looked at numbers and paper.” He frowned. “Can’t say as you look like an economist—more like a trooper. Guess you Ecolitan types are always part military.”

  “We’ve been called that,” Nathaniel said. “I can send you a copy of my latest monograph, if you’d like, The Unrecognized Diseconomies of Decentralized Metals Refining.”

  “In plain talk…what was it?”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “In basic terms, it’s an exposition that quantifies how much more asteroid mining costs than people recognized. But it sounds more impressive to academics if all the title words are long.”

  Reeves-Kenn smiled, briefly, and turned to Sylvia. “And you look more like a dancer…”

  “I was, once, before I found happiness in economics.” She gave the beef grower a warm smile.

  “Best we get started. It’ll all make more sense if you take a ride first.” Reeves-Kenn began to walk toward the corral just below the landing strip. Adjoining the corral was a barn.

  The Ecolitans exchanged glances and followed.

  Reeves-Kenn halted at a fence post made of formed plastic and gestured toward the black horse on the other side of the plastic composite “wire.” “This is Wild Will.”

  Nathaniel looked at the horse. The horse looked at Nathaniel. The Ecolitan glanced toward Sylvia, who seemed to share his reaction.

  “You not familiar with horses?” asked Reeves-Kenn.

  “Not really,” admitted the Ecolitan. “I’ve ridden a few times, but I’m certainly no expert.”

  Sylvia just shook her head.

  “We’ve got gentle mounts.” The rancher gestured toward a figure on the shaded north side of the barn. “Jem?”

  “Sir?” Jem ambled out of the shade of the shed. He was dark-haired, clean-shaven, wearing long trousers and half-calf boots, brown and scarred.

  “Our guests are Ecolitans—they’re economists, not rovers. Professor Whaler and Professor Ferro-Maine.”

  Jem bowed. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Jem here—he’s one of my lead rovers, and he’ll be happy to show you around.” George Reeves-Kenn smiled. “Get them mounts—Happy and Pokey—and give them the short tour, and then we’ll have a late lunch at the house.” The rancher turned to the Ecolitans. “Screen-work and bureaucracy—we still have too much here, and I need to catch up on it.” He nodded, grinned at Jem, and departed with long strides, back toward the house.

  “If you’ll wait here,” said the rover, “I’ll bring out your mounts.”

  “You don’t look happy about the horses,” said Sylvia.

  “I worry about riding something that has its own mind and masses five to ten times what I do.” Nathaniel glanced toward the barn and the wide door, through which Jem led two saddled horses.

  “Five times,” said Sylvia absently.

  “That’s enough.” He grinned. “You think all the time, and she that thinks seldom finds ease.”

  “No more…”

  “Here you go—Happy and Pokey, gentle as you’d ever want.”

  “Do you have a brother who works for the Port Authority?” asked Sylvia.

  “GB? He works for Chief Walkerson.” With deft movements, Jem tied the reins to the sole hitching rail—also heavy plastic—outside the corral gate. “All he rides is a groundcar. I could never stand being cooped up in a pile of metal, or a building, not me. Now, professor, Happy likes ladies better.” He gestured toward the dark chestnut.

  “And I get Pokey?” asked Nathaniel.

  “He’s not that slow. He just doesn’t like to gallop.” The rover hurried back to the barn, returning riding a gray.

  “What’s in the red pack?” asked Sylvia, pointing at the circular object behind her saddle. There was one behind Nathaniel’s saddle as well.

  “That’s a desert kit…survival kit, in case you get stranded. We all carry them.” Jem reined up, waiting. “Artos is still wild in places.” The rover cleared his throat and looked at the two Ecolitans and their mounts.

  Nathaniel got the message and untied Pokey, then climbed into the saddle, and watched as Sylvia did the same—more gracefully, he suspected.

  “We’ll head out to the end of the ridge,” announced Jem, turning the gray to the southeast.

  Sylvia lifted her reins, and lurched in the saddle as Happy slow-trotted after the rover. Nathaniel gingerly flicked the brown horse’s reins, and Pokey lumbered after the other two, losing ground with every step.

  Jem reined up and waited with Sylvia until Nathaniel’s gelding carried the Ecolitan to the end of the rise. Grass-covered hills stretched southward, and a line of trees to the west of the ridge that held the house and buildings outlined the course of the river.

  “The spread runs another two hundred kays south along the river. Most is like this, grass and hills, but we got a couple stands of woods, and a few more set. ’Course, it’ll take another thirty years before they’re much.”

  Horned cattle—nearly a hundred—grazed beside the pond below.

  “What kind of animals are those?” asked Sylvia.

  “Cattle—modified Tee-type longhorns. They did something to their genes—George told me, but I don’t recall. It allows them to digest the grass better. They’re tamer, too. Don’t have big predators here.” Jem started the gray downhill toward the cattle.

  Around the pond, the grass had been churned into a muddy mass, an area that Jem gave a wide berth.

  Nathaniel suppressed a frown. “What feeds the pond?”

  “It’s pumped from the river. We’ve got ponds across the spread. That way, we can rotate where they graze. Got a bunch of herds. Someday, we’ll get natural ponds. Till then…”

  Up close, the cattle were larger than
they had seemed—monsters whose shoulders were level with Nathaniel’s waist on horseback and whose horns spread more than two meters.

  “You’re certain that they’re tame?” the Ecolitan asked, noting the pointed horn tips.

  “So long as you don’t whack their nostrils. Even then, they’d just knock you aside.”

  Just being knocked aside by something that weighed nearly a tonne would be painful, if not worse.

  “We’ll ride out to the river, if you can hang on that long.”

  “As long as we don’t gallop,” said Sylvia.

  “No hurry. This beats riding fences or herding strays out of the sand. Gets hotter out there.”

  Nathaniel felt for the big kerchief, blotting his forehead. “Rather hot here already.”

  “This is cool compared to that.” Jem laughed. “We can’t go too far into the desert anyway.”

  “Is that because of the heat?”

  “The heat’s part of it, but the ground’s unstable, too. George or Terril could explain that better than me. I’m just a dumb rover.”

  The three rode abreast across the flat expanse of grass, leaving the herd behind.

  “No beans—that sort of thing?” asked Whaler.

  “Got to have some hydrocarb source, I guess, but George says that it won’t be on this spread, not ever. Feels strong, he does. Even the maize for fattening the steers comes from the boss’s commercial lands closer to Lanceville.”

  A series of flies buzzed around the horses and riders as they neared the river, but Nathaniel would have bet that the planoforming had left out mosquitoes.

  The river was about a hundred meters wide, smooth-flowing dark gray water, bounded by willowlike trees and taller grasses on either side.

  “Marsh grasses,” said Nathaniel, glad to recognize something that fit ecologically.

  “Yeah…George doesn’t like it much, but he says we got to leave the grass and trees. Dr. Oconnor says we’d have the river ripping up all the grasslands without them. Used to be straighter, I’m told, but it’ll find its own path over time, and there’s no good way to change that.” Jem turned in the saddle. “You’re ecologic folks. That true?”

  “Pretty much,” admitted Whaler. “The optimum is to work with natural flows and not to combat them.” He managed not to wince at the pedantry of the words.