by Dietmar Wehr
“Highly unlikely, Troy. Check the storage compartment under the air-jeep seats. You may find something useful there.”
Ronson looked and found a grapple attached to what seemed like a dozen meters of some kind of flexible cable. On a hunch, he leaned over the edge of the air-jeep and nodded when he saw what he was looking for. The air-jeep had metal loops at the corners of the chassis where something could be tied on. He tied the end of the cable to the front left loop and then hooked the grapple on the door. As he slowly backed the air-jeep away from the door, he let the cable slack slide through his other hand until the line was taunt. The air-jeep stopped moving. Ronson used the restraint system to secure himself in case the air-jeep flipped over and then applied more power to the thrusters set in reverse mode. The door refused to slip open, but it did sound as though metal was pushing hard on metal. He heard a loud bang and saw the door slide open all the way. Whatever was blocking it must have broken. After retrieving and storing the grapple and cable, Ronson piloted the air-jeep through the top of the opening. As expected, the interior was mostly dark. He took the air-jeep up until it was only a meter below the very high ceiling.
“The air-jeep has infrared sensors too, Troy. The night-cats are warm-blooded and will show up on the sensors.”
Ronson didn’t want to generate any more noise than absolutely necessary, so he didn’t reply, but by activating the sensors, Val Ky Ree would know that he heard her. The sensors showed nothing at first. That didn’t mean there were no night-cats in the warehouse, only that they weren’t on top of the storage brackets at the moment. He moved the air-jeep slowly along one wall, intending to make a circuit of the entire warehouse from the sides. When he was halfway down the wall that was opposite the side with the door, the sensors picked up a slow moving, relatively hot object moving between two rows of brackets about 55 meters away. The night-cat was moving towards the air-jeep. Ronson brought the air-jeep to a hover. Because he was in the part of the warehouse that was farthest away from the open door, there was so little light that he couldn’t actually see his rifle anymore. He slowly reached for where he thought it was on the seat next to him. Movement out of the corner of his eye brought his attention back to the screen showing the heat image of the night-cat. It was now moving very fast towards him. The fact that the creature was on the floor and his air-jeep was almost ten meters up didn’t give him any comfort. The damn night-cat acted as if it had seen him and was behaving as if it thought it could get at him. He continued searching with his right hand for the rifle and found it. As he brought it up into a firing position, he heard the sound of scratching. The night-cat was attempting to climb up the side of the storage bracket on the left! Ronson quickly thumbed the selector switch to lethal with a wide angle beam and clicked the safety off. As he fired, the blue beam cast strange shadows ahead and to the sides. He watched in paralyzed fascination as the night-cat reached the top of the storage bracket and moved into the path of the beam. It hesitated for half a second and then gathered itself for a leap. Just as it began its leap, it twitched which caused it to miss the air-jeep and fall to the floor.
Ronson pointed the still firing rifle over the edge of the air-jeep at the floor and the black heap that was not moving. Satisfied that the creature was at the very least paralyzed, he let go of the trigger and turned on the air-jeeps headlights. After moving the vehicle back along the wall a few meters, he made it drop down very slowly until it was about three meters off the ground. The night-cat was clearly visible now in the powerful headlight beams. It wasn’t moving at all. As a precaution, he finished the infrared sweep of the rest of the warehouse without finding any more night-cats. Reassured that the warehouse was now safe, he activated the air-jeep’s auto-pilot with the program created by Val Ky Ree. Over the next hour, the air-jeep flew slowly down each row while its onboard video camera recorded the Aesirian labels on every container. Those labels would give him a pretty good idea of what was in this warehouse in case he couldn’t get the data center operational again. The portable power units he brought along should in theory be enough to allow access to the center’s memory, assuming there was no physical damage. With the warehouse scan now complete and the internal corridors wide enough to allow the air-jeep to move down them, Ronson piloted it to the data center and followed Val Ky Ree’s instructions on how to connect the power units to the data system. The fact that the computer system stayed dead even with the new power units was frustrating for both Ronson and Val Ky Ree. He was hoping that the data center would contain manufacturing instructions that Vesta’s new repair system could use to build useful types of Aesirian technology, and Val Ky Ree had hoped to learn what happened between her last battle and the Ascension.
By mutual consent, they agreed that there was nothing more to be gained by further exploration. With the air-jeep available, Ronson went back to the weapons stockpile and loaded the air-jeep with as many pistols and rifles as there was room for. The trip back to Spearthrower and then to the ship was done in silence. Each of them was dealing with their own thoughts. As the ship streaked out of the atmosphere at supersonic speeds, Ronson watched Gunnir recede in the distance. It was not the paradise that he had hoped for, but even with the risk of dangerous micro-organisms and the night-cats, he was still convinced that humanity could benefit from colonizing it. It would just need to be done very carefully.
Chapter Nine:
To say that the Committee was impressed with the list of items in the warehouse was an understatement. Many of the articles were not of immediate use to humans but might be very valuable as trade items to some of the Compact races. While the generators might not be easy to copy, a lot of potentially tradeable Aesirian equipment would be, so it made sense for them to trade as much of that kind of equipment as possible before someone copied it and flooded the market with them. With the second Spearthrower vessel still 18 days away from completion, the Committee decided to send Corwell and Franklin in Spearthrower to Gunnir to pick up a load of tradeable items and then head for Citanor Station to trade them. That suited Ronson just fine. He was ready for a break from travelling, and Val Ky Ree didn’t have anywhere else she needed to be and was therefore willing to orbit Vesta for a while in order to get to know other humans better.
Several days later, when Ronson was listening to some Aesirian music in his quarters on board the ship, Val Ky Ree stopped the music to ask a question.
“Troy, your home world is in this star system, and yet no one on Vesta seems to be interested in it at all now. I find that puzzling. Maybe if you told me more about the asteroid strike and its effects, I’d have a better understanding of your people’s attitude.”
“Well, what you have to understand first is that prior to the strike, Earth was overcrowded to a dangerous degree. There was a lot of excitement after establishing relations with the Compact over the possibility of relieving that population pressure via colonization of other planets. The strike, when it happened, could not have been worse. The asteroid itself wasn’t all that big relatively speaking, but it came in fast, far faster than an asteroid had any right to. That high velocity made the kinetic energy upon impact the equivalent of a much larger asteroid hitting at a more modest velocity. The angle of its path was also very unusual. Instead of coming in from the system ecliptic where all the asteroids are orbiting, this one came from below the ecliptic. It hit the South Pole and almost instantly converted hundreds of millions of tons of ice into steam. Plus there was all the dust kicked up from hitting the ground under the ice. Because of the unusual approach angle and the very high speed, we had almost no warning. Just before the strike, a few hundred people, mostly women, were flown up to the station until it was incapable of taking any more. Anyone not killed outright by the magnitude 12 earthquake either burned to death from the concussion wave of superheated steam, drowned later when all that water vapor fell as rain and caused ocean levels to rise by 21 meters, or froze to death when the dust in the upper atmosphere cut off 89% of the light and h
eat from the sun and temperatures plunged to below zero. We had so little space transport capacity and life support capacity on the station, the moon, Mars and Vesta, that we were only able to rescue another 610 people after the strike. I was lucky in that I was already here on Vesta when the strike hit. When the Emergency Committee took control, their first impulse was to expand our Mars base and make it the main human settlement, but when we learned that the same thing had happened to all the Compact races and that it was a deliberately engineered strike not a random occurrence, they decided that the risk of another engineered strike on Mars was unacceptably high. So Vesta became our new home. I think our attitude about Earth now is the result of the trauma of the strike and its aftermath. Talking about Earth so soon after the strike is just too painful for us.”
“How awful that must have been,” said Val Ky Ree. “I can not imagine how I would feel if something similar happened to Aesir. I take it that your people here on Vesta are convinced that there are no survivors left anywhere on Earth now?”
Ronson nodded slowly. “The station in orbit carefully monitored radio frequencies. By the time we had more room on the station, there were no more transmissions from the ground. There was speculation that some may have survived in underground shelters that were built in the previous century as preparation for a nuclear war that never happened. Some of them were quite large and well stocked, but we haven’t been able to contact any of the known underground complexes. The earthquake caused by the strike was so powerful that they might have been crushed by collapsing rock from above.”
“Is the station still listening for transmissions?”
“The station in orbit has a skeleton crew to keep it operating for when we’ll be able to use it as a base for reclaiming the planet. They’re supposed to monitor the emergency frequencies, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’re not doing it anymore.”
There was a pause as neither one spoke for a while. Val Ky Ree finally broke the silence. “I’m not needed here in orbit around Vesta at the moment, Troy. I’d like to go to Earth and observe the planet firsthand. You’re welcome to come with me, but I will understand if you prefer not to see your home planet as it is now.”
Ronson’s first impulse was to decline the offer, but after further consideration, he agreed. When the Committee was told of Val Ky Ree’s plans, they asked her to ferry some supplies to the station, and because the station wasn’t capable of letting Val Ky Ree’s ship dock directly, it was decided that the Busted Flush would be taken aboard her ship, and it would be used to take the supplies to the station once the ship dropped into Earth orbit. With the relatively short hyperspace jump, organizing and loading the supplies aboard the Busted Flush and then flying up to Val Ky Ree’s ship and hangar bay took longer than the actual trip to Earth orbit. McKnight was piloting the Flush again, and Ronson was relieved to learn that she was no longer suspicious of Val Ky Ree. They might not be friends just yet, but at least McKnight was polite to Val Ky Ree.
McKnight wasted no time in getting the supplies over to the station. The Flush was already on its way there when Ronson entered Val Ky Ree’s Bridge. He gasped when he saw the ship’s external view of Earth.
“Oh God”.
Val Ky Ree noticed the voice tremors and the change in his breathing pattern. He was clearly upset by what he saw. Ronson felt tears form in his eyes as he watched a ball of ice, partially obscured by clouds of grey dust, slowly rotate across his field of vision. He understood just enough physics to realize that most of whatever light and heat was getting through the dust clouds would be reflected back out into space by the ice cover. There was no bare ground or ocean water to absorb the sun’s heat so that it could warm up the air and cause the ice to melt. Once that process started, it would reinforce itself and push the ice back faster and faster, but right now the reverse was true. With less and less heat energy warming the atmosphere, average temperatures would continue to fall until the amount of heat energy absorbed by the ice equalled the amount lost in each day/night cycle. The Committee talked about reclaiming Earth in a few decades. Ronson now thought that was foolishly optimistic. He doubted that Earth would be able to support any kind of human colony in less than a century.
“I do not wish to intrude on your thoughts, Troy, but do you happen to know what frequencies the station used to monitor?”
“As a matter of act, I do.” He told her the frequencies and there was another period of silence.
“I’ve scanned those emergency frequencies and much of the wider radio spectrum but have not heard any transmissions other than those between the Busted Flush and the station. I’m sorry that I don’t have any good news for you, Troy. It’s unfortunate that all of your planet’s plant and animal life has been destroyed. Reclaiming the surface when the ice recedes will be difficult without them. Transplanting Gunnir plants and animals would not only be difficult, it could also be dangerous due to the risk of mutated bacteria and viruses.”
Ronson sighed. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Yes, you’re right. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. God damn the race that did this! If the asteroid had hit anywhere else, even the north pole, the result wouldn’t have been as…” Val Ky Ree saw his expression suddenly become enthusiastic. “Son of a bitch,” said Ronson softly. “The seed vault. I just remembered about the seed vault on an island off Norway. It’s an underground storage facility to safeguard samples of every plant species on Earth, and if I remember correctly, they added frozen sperm and eggs from a variety of animal life a few years before the strike!” His enthusiasm suddenly faded. “Damn, those animal sperm and egg samples won’t do us any good without at least one living animal of each type to use as an incubator.”
“There may be a way around that problem, Troy. Aesirian technology had advanced to the point where artificial incubators were developed that could, in theory, incubate any animal to maturity. I do not have that technology in my memory, but I’m sure it exists at the Command Base. That structure was not only intended to support space fleet operations but also was to be a central repository of all Aesirian knowledge. The challenge will be to install enough power units to reactivate the base’s central core. That section of the base is quite large and will require a lot of power to bring it up to minimum operating parameters. With enough time and effort, I’m sure it could be done. Once we download the manufacturing data for the incubators, Vesta’s repair system can build them. A fertilized egg for a female of each desired species could be brought to maturity and then be used to incubate others.”
“That’s all very intriguing, Val Ky Ree, but there’s no guarantee that the contents of the seed vault survived the earthquake.”
“Then there’s only one way to eliminate that uncertainty, and that is to go down there and check, Troy.”
“Damn right,” said Ronson, shaking his head for missing the obvious. “I’d like to talk to the station, please.”
“Go ahead, Troy.”
“Ronson to station?”
“Station here. We’re in the middle of docking the Flush. Can you wait a bit?”
“Just a quick question. Have you got any cold weather gear?”
“Ah…yeah, we do. Plenty in fact, left over from the post-strike evac. Why, is the heating system on that ship breaking down?”
Ronson snorted. “Very funny. No, Val Ky Ree and I are going down to the surface, and I plan on doing some walking around down there.”
“Are you freakin’ nuts? What the hell for?”
Ronson laughed. “I’ll tell you if and when I find it. Just make sure that McKnight brings back a complete set of gear, including boots and gloves for me, okay? Ronson out.”
McKnight took so long in getting Busted Flush back to the ship that Ronson was about to call her and raise hell. While he didn’t have any official authority over her, as Val Ky Ree’s liaison with humans, it was generally understood by everyone that if Ronson became pissed off about something, Val Ky Ree would probably back him up. And while
the Busted Flush was perfectly capable of making its own way back to Vesta, the only way that Ronson could get the cold weather gear was if McKnight brought her ship onboard Val Ky Ree’s ship and transferred the gear. The only reason the Busted Flush was carried by the larger ship to Earth was due to Val Ky Ree’s higher acceleration and therefore shorter travel time.
When the Flush finally settled down in Val Ky Ree’s spacious hangar bay and opened her cargo hold, Ronson tried on the cold weather gear as quickly as he could. The fit was far from ideal, but it was manageable. As he took the gear off, his eye caught site of the air-jeep that had been unloaded from Spearthrower before it left for the trading run.
“I’d like to use the Flush to take me down to the seed vault, Saren. You willing to do that?” asked Ronson.
McKnight’s expression showed that she clearly wasn’t thrilled with the idea. “Why not just let Val Ky Ree take you down there?”
“As a last resort, that’s doable, but she would have to hover over the area, and I’d have to take the air-jeep down the rest of the way. Val Ky Ree? Can we find out what conditions are like down there now in terms of wind speed, visibility, that kind of thing?”
