by Sam Smith
“Could recycle it.”
“We do,” Drin aired his college-fresh knowledge. “But not all of it’s repulped. And you lose so much in the process.”
“Don’t need a planetful of people to grow a few trees though.”
“Fruit as well. Fruit from trees. Trees don’t grow well on platforms. Nor does cotton.”
“Still don’t see how it’s worth it. You brought up on a planet?” Alger questioned Drin’s loyalty.
“No,” Drin said. “On Torc.” Torc has no inhabitable planets within its department, as Alger well knew.
One other contribution the planets make to civilisation, not mentioned by Drin, nor rarely acknowledged elsewhere, is that the inhabitants of planets have four times the number of children that those living in Space have, despite the financial inducements offered to women in Space to become mothers.
As has already been said the majority of planet-born children come into Space. Some sociologists believe that this steady influx is where Space gets its dynamism from, why it has not, like previous planet-bound empires, become moribund. Space is being seen ever afresh by young eager eyes. This constant migration into Space, the sociologists claim, this perpetual repetition of our pioneering ancestors, leads to a continual spiritual rebirth. Because, in championing their choice, in justifying the desertion of their planetary parents, these immigrants campaign relentlessly to eradicate any blemishes in the visage of their beloved, of their chosen one. They seek to cure its flaws and bad habits, and to make Space worthy of their own high ideals. A phenomenon referred to by sociologists as The Constant Renascence.
As to why women on planets should have more children than those living in Space, many reasons have been forwarded. The foremost being that it is due to another planetary peculiarity, their monogamy.
The sexual moralists would have us believe that, from the supposed security of a stable relationship, a woman feels better able to breed. Such could be the case, though most favour the standard of living thesis — that shows that those who have the higher standard of living have the least children. So, conversely, the inducement for Space women to breed may be to artificially lower the standard of living of all fecund Space women. But then, if all our children were to be Space born, would Space stultify?
Sergeant Alger Deaver did not concern himself with such hypothetical questions. Indeed, under the misapprehension that the planets import food from Space, Alger was claiming that the trade in timber and fruit was more trouble than it was worth. Drin respectfully informed him that colonised planets grow all their own food, that trade their way is in machines only.
“OK, so the farmers are worth their while. What about the rest?”
“All gardeners, so far as I can make out. Grow enough for their own needs, no matter what else they do. Doctors, technicians, traders, administrators, or even if they’ve retired there, they’re all of them gardeners. That’s why they go there.”
“What fun can anyone get out of putting their fingers into dirt?”
Happiness, like all colonised planets, has its own police force. The planetary police have planet ships only, no space ships. Consequently neither Alger Deaver nor Drin Ligure had been to a planet before. Constable Drin Ligure because he had only just embarked on active duty; Sergeant Alger Deaver because, in the course of his career, there had never arisen any need for him to go to a planet.
Since leaving XE2, when Alger hadn’t been grumbling, he had been apprehensively boning up on planetary navigation — orbits, entry paths, hazards, etcetera. Aware of his increasing anxiety, and having only recently undergone a course of simulated planet landings, Drin volunteered to pilot the ship on their approach. Alger, however, had quoted the rule book at him — to the effect that, unless otherwise incapacitated, manual control should always be undertaken by the senior officer aboard ship.
Happiness was now visible on their screens.
“So what,” Alger asked in his Sergeant’s voice, “do we know about this planet?” Police work, Alger had told Drin, relies on information. Drin placidly submitted to once more being put through his paces.
“Diameter,” Drin read off the data he had called up, “13,000 kilometres. Circumference 40,000 kilometres. Friendly atmosphere, goes without saying. Maximum thickness total atmosphere 650 kilometres above land surface. Gravity 0.9G. Rotation 22.6 hours. Ah,” Drin smiled at Alger, “they live longer than us.”
“That’s what they think.” Alger was not going to be amused.
A fact, not widely disseminated by planets in their advertising, is that settlers, because of the physical effort expended in defying the greater gravity, live an average of 25 years, a fifth, less than do those of us who live in Space.
“Population 3 million,” Drin continued reading off the data, “Sea 51.8% surface area. Land 47.1%”
“What about its moon? Should be getting near its orbit now.”
“Apogee 420,000 kilometres. Perigee 360,000 kilometres. Diameter 3,800 kilometres. Circumference 11,900 kilometres. Size of a small substation. Should be easy enough to see. About a minute.”
On their screens the planet was growing larger by the second: a partial shaded ball of blue and green with white twists of clouds like in the films.
“Manual.” Alger took the control column, “We’ll make two longitudinal orbits, one equatorial. If the moon’s here we’re bound to see it. We slow enough for radar?”
“Plenty.”
“Right. Radar scan out here and check for any transmissions from down there.”
Drin, happy at last to be doing some real police work, bent to the instrument panel. Alger, frowning at this venture out of the ordinary, piloted the ship.
They completed the three orbits.
“Anything?” Alger asked Drin.
“No moon. A couple of small satellites further out. Radio I should think.”
“Planetary transmissions?”
“None.”
“Have to be manual then. Got the co-ords of that Spokesman?”
Drin gave the ship the co-ordinates of the Spokesman’s farm, and Alger began a slow cautious descent through the ionosphere. They entered the stratosphere.
“We’ve got transmissions!” Drin shouted. “And we’re locked on the Spokesman’s beacon. If you want?”
“Right.” Alger gave the console its instructions, released the control column and sat back with a sigh, “I thought we were going to find everyone dead.” He wiped his palms on his tunic, “Between me and you I didn’t much fancy landing manually either.” He blew out his relief, “Must be some local interference blocking their transmissions.”
“What about the moon?” Drin asked him.
“Search me. Look at that,” He sat up to peer down at a wrinkled blue sea far below, “Pretty colours eh?”
The beacon took them to the Spokesman’s yellow grain farm. The grain was for planetary use, not for export. Even so the yellow grain extended for many kilometres and it was several minutes before the police ship came in sight of the farm buildings. From a distance those buildings looked like a stack of dull grey crystals attached to a flat white landing apron.
“Is it a town?” Alger betrayed his ignorance and puzzlement. Drin tapped up the relevant data,
“No. Just seven people live here.” Drin too was disconcerted by the unexpected size of the buildings, “Closest dwelling is another thirty kilometres.”
Their bafflement was nothing unusual. It is axiomatic to say that in Space space is at a premium. We are acclimatised to our cloistered life, therefore the unlimited living space on planets, the abandon of their building, is always a shock to us. The angularity of the structure also troubled Alger and Drin. Because, again, here in Space we come to accept the roundness of our environment as the natural order. On that cultivated planet though, in both the buildings and the growing plants surrounding them, straight lines intersected straight lines at apparent random.
The Spokesman’s farm was in North Eight’s constituency. Th
e Senate Member for North Eight was that day visiting the Spokesman. His small planetary ship was parked beside the Spokesman’s on the apron. Planetary ships are called planes. When the two Senate Members became aware of the descending space ship they ran out through the dust to greet it.
Seeing the two men flapping towards them over the apron Alger asked Drin,
“You had your jabs?”
“Before I left college. You?”
“Years ago though,” Alger nodded to the rising ochre dust, “Look at all that dirt.” He rubbed worriedly at his upper arm, “Dammit I hope they’re still working.”
Alger’s anxious nervousness amused Drin. His own nervousness took the aspect of high excitement. He was still young enough to be thrilled by the new, no matter how unsavoury.
The ship’s engines stopped, the interface locked in. The planet’s machines would now be updated by the police ship, the police ship by the planet.
* * * * *
As the unfolding of these events depends on what is known when and where, here is a suitable point to digress in order to briefly explain, simply if possible, for the benefit of those of you who may have never paused to consider how our communication system works, its extremely complicated process.
Because of the distances travelled at the speeds travelled, what is known when and where depends on the passage of ships, because all ships, whether privately or publicly owned, carry information. Every freighter that plugs in at every station and at every planet puts information in, takes it out. In light of that information the station’s, or the planet’s, machines amend itineraries, check loads, pass on supply requests, send messages by various other ships to various other stations.
Say a trader on XE2 needs more slippers. He informs XE2’s machines, which inform the next freighter. That freighter takes the request to the next station. Its machines know what ships are due for XE2. So it works out a route to take a message by a variety of ships to intercept the next freighter bound for XE2, which will also be calling somewhere en route where it will be capable of picking up a load of slippers. Once the slippers are collected from the supplier the request is noted as fulfilled. Thus any delayed requests, received via other ships and stations, are ignored. But only when the slippers are delivered to XE2 is a message sent out from XE2 cancelling the original request.
At least two freighters a day call at most large stations, so at least twice daily their machine memories are updated, twice daily letters are delivered. Of course police information carried on any ship will be covered by a police tag, Service information by a Service tag, and personal messages by their own confidential tag, for personal or business use only and not for public dissemination. The system looks after itself. Until something goes missing; and then people have to get involved.
One of the early side effects of this communication system, incidentally, was Space Time. Imagine the confusion that ensued from faster than light travel coupled with different places using not only different clocks but different calendars for different years. The budding communication system had to incorporate into its every calculation the differences in local time, a plethora of different freighter datums, and it consequently became overweighted with extraneous information. Hence the introduction of Space Time. Now, in Space, if it is five minutes to noon in one galaxy, it is exactly the same time of the same day in all the other galaxies. Not so, however, on the inhabited planets in those galaxies. Hence the resentment of the imposition of Space Time by planet dwellers.
Because, unlike us whose days and nights are regulated by machine, they have an idiosyncratic planetary rotation governing the division of their days and nights. For them strict adherence to Space Time leads only to confusion. On one side of the planet day can be from eleven in the morning to midnight; while elsewhere on the same planet day is from lam to 2pm. Consequently most planets maintain a dual system, though Space Time remains the constant, and where different hours are kept they are referred to as being so many hours behind or ahead of Space Time.
Therefore Drin was incorrect when, because of their shorter days, he assumed that the inhabitants of Happiness would believe they lived a greater number of years. They do have their own calendar for their own years, but their age is measured in Space Time. Although some statistic-happy inhabitants of Happiness, with regard to both calendars, do refer to a particular birthday year as being their year of two summers or two winters, whichever the case may be. Local folklore as to whether such bodes good or ill have grown around this planetary peculiarity.
Alger, however, ignorant of this numerical phenomena, was studying the two men who were jabbering animatedly to one another on the apron below.
“They look unstable to me,” he said. One of the men was round and pink, the other tall and gauntly yellow. The tall one’s arms were waving about in nervous gesticulation. The shorter man was attempting to placate him.
“Better arm ourselves,” Alger told Drin. “And get a recorder.”
Drin tapped the recorder within the tunic at his breast. He buckled on the gun Alger handed him.
“Check it’s on stun,” Both examined their guns.
“Check.”
“Out we go then.” Alger took a deep wavering breath, “Open door.”
No sooner were they on the ramp than the taller man shouted up to them,
“Where’s our moon?”
Alger raised an eyebrow to Drin and, pulling back his shoulders, sucking in his stomach, raising his chin and authoritatively lowering his eyelids, he began his stately descent of the ramp, a figure of police imperturbability.
“Where’s our moon?” the Senate Member for North Eight again screamed at Alger.
“It’s not there,” Alger calmly replied.
“We know that!” the man snapped at him. “Where is it?”
“I’ve no idea,” Alger said; and, reaching the bottom of the ramp, he formally introduced himself and Constable Drin Ligure.
Drin was now used to Alger’s abrupt transformation to the formal and ponderous Sergeant Deaver. He too was becoming adept, the moment he stepped beyond the ship, at switching to the buttoned up Constable Ligure. Nor did he any longer feel foolish in acting this part, for he’d had proved to him on one substation how their apparent calmness had caused others to be conscious of their own hysteria, and so calm themselves. Their impassive formality now had its effect on the Spokesman.
“Excuse our bad manners,” he said. “You must understand that we’ve been very very worried.”
The Spokesman introduced himself and the Senate Member for North Eight, his near neighbour. Drin noticed that tiny grains of dust had settled on the two planetary men’s hair and skin. They seemed unaware of it. Drin imagined several itches on his own body.
“You’ve no idea what’s happened to our moon?” the Spokesman said.
“We were told that it was missing. No more than that. We returned from patrol two days ago, were immediately told to come here.” That still niggled Alger: he wanted these men to know of the trouble he’d been put to. “We had a look for your moon before landing. We couldn’t find it. It didn’t crash into your planet?”
“No earthquakes anywhere. No exceptional seismic activity. And such a crash would have been seen, let alone registered.”
“Did you go and look for it when it first went missing?” Alger asked him.
An embarrassed shrug from the Spokesman, and an averting of the head by the Senate Member for North Eight, said that none there, so planet-bound were they in their thinking, had considered that most obvious course of action.
“It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t there Sergeant,” the Spokesman said.
“I see,” Alger’s expression said that he thought he was dealing with fools. “I think we can put your minds to rest about why your transmissions aren’t reaching us — some local distortion in your ionosphere.”
Without the discipline of the Senate orb the Senate Member for North Eight shouted over the Spokesman’s head,
“What ships Sir?”
The Spokesman, raising a restraining hand to the Member for North Eight, told Sergeant Alger Deaver of the six ships that they had dispatched to XE2,
“The first, which left alone and was piloted by Halk Fint, failed to return. Of the other five, which left here together, two were seen to be shot down, one returned, and the other two are missing. The details you’ll have on there,” the Spokesman indicated the interface.
“The ships were seen to be shot down?”
“A girl, Belid Keal, saw it, and returned.”
Alger gazed beyond them to a large tree beside the grey farm buildings. Its dark green leaves twinkled to silver in the light breeze. Sitting in among the dusty green leaves, on one of the lower branches, was a young brown-skinned boy. He was watching them.
“We’d better see this girl,” Alger told Drin. “Where can we find her?” he asked the Spokesman.
“She’s at home now with her parents. You’ll have the co-ordinates.”
“Thank you Sir,” Alger turned back to the ramp.
“On record Sergeant!” the Spokesman called after Alger, “When you return to XE2...”
“If you return,” the Member for North Eight uncharitably amended.
“When you return to XE2 I want you to personally inform the Departmental Director that his presence is urgently required on Happiness — to answer the questions and to allay the fears of the populace. Your ship carries a more formal request, with all due authority. But you impress upon him that I want him here. In person.”
“I will pass on your message Sir.”
Drin followed Alger up the ramp. At the top he lightly tapped Alger in the back.
“Listen,” he whispered.
A sibilant breeze was soughing through the rippling grain. Birds were cheeping, insects buzzing.
“Weird,” Alger said, and he stepped before Drin into the ship.
