Mutationem

by Phoenix Jericho

  It was the first time that Hope had seen the vehicle. Merc had been very secretive about its development, but word had leaked out, and Hope had been the most persistent member of the colony.

  Running over, Hope traced the outline of the vehicle delicately with her hands. “What is it?”

  “I call it the ’64 Rover,” responded Merc. “It’s an electric vehicle like an old Earth ATV.”

  “What’s an ATV?” asked Hope.

  “Enough with the questions. Do you want to drive it or not?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hope replied excitedly.

  “Okay, crawl inside and sit down. Put that safety strap around your waist and buckle yourself into the vehicle. Now grab the steering wheel with both hands and place them at the ten and two o’clock positions. Notice with your index fingers that there are two triggers mounted behind the wheel. The one on the right is the speed control, and the one mounted on the left is the braking control. The harder you squeeze the right one, the faster you go, and the harder you squeeze the left one, the faster you stop. If you want to reverse the vehicle, simply push the red button at the top of the wheel in the twelve o’clock position. Just remember to stop first. If you are driving forward at any speed and you hit the red button, the vehicle will immediately stop and go into reverse at the same speed. If you aren’t strapped in and you accidentally hit the button while you’re moving, you will be thrown from the vehicle. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be careful,” Hope responded.

  “Let me open the door, and you carefully drive out. I’ll go over some more details outside,” ordered Merc.

  Walking over to Engineering’s outside access door, Merc flipped a switch, and an electric, gear-driven motor silently slid the door open. Hope squeezed the right trigger on the steering wheel all the way down. The Rover lurched forward as the rubber wheels squealed in unison, spinning a black line across the floor.

  It happened so fast that Hope nearly ran into the opposing wall, but before she did, she hit the red button. Abruptly the Rover screeched to a stop, and the wheels howled as they sped into reverse. Hope still had the right trigger squeezed down completely. The electric motors made a high-pitched, whining sound, and white smoke billowed off of the wheels and covered the Rover in a cloud.

  The Rover flashed into view as it exited the smoke cloud to the rear. Spinning the steering wheel as she backed up, Hope repeated the same maneuver, and the Rover leapt forward and went flying out of the doorway.

  Merc had a horrified look on her face as Hope disappeared from view. Hope had completely disobeyed her safety commands and was laughing uncontrollably as she exited the room. Racing outside, Merc watched Hope vanish down the trail that joined the clearings.

  “What have I done?” murmured Merc.

  Walking back into Engineering, Merc opened the door and turned on several massive ceiling fans. The room still was filled with the cloud of burnt rubber, and its offensive smell hung heavily in the air. Fearing that someone would come in and start asking questions made Merc feel even more irritated. This thought was still in her mind as Captain Kriss came strolling in.

  The white smoke had dissipated, but the rubberized stench was strong. It didn’t take Kriss long before she got a funny look on her face. “What’s burning?”

  “A nylon part I was fabricating in the milling machine caught on fire and burnt up. Nothing serious, but it really stunk the place up,” said Merc. “I’m sorry, sir. I was just venting it out when you walked in.”

  Just then, Hope drove the Rover in through Engineering’s open access door. She brought the vehicle to a gentle stop in front of the captain and Merc.

  “Is this what you have been working on late at night?” asked Kriss with a smile.

  “Yes, sir, it is. I call it our ’64 Rover.” Merc’s voice was calm, but she gave Hope a veiled look.

  Slipping out from behind the wheel, Hope said, “Captain, it’s wonderful! Merc did an amazing job designing and building it. I just took it for a simple test run for her and it functioned flawlessly. I better get cleaned up for supper. Mother is probably looking for me.”

  Kriss noticed the double set of freshly etched black marks stenciled across the floor. She traced their route and noted they were the same width as the wheelbase of the Rover.

  In a sly tone, Kriss said, “Make sure you clean up all that burnt nylon in the milling machine.”

  *

  Hope’s disobedience became a common occurrence throughout the colony. Hope was the youngest, and just like her kitten, she was into everything. Nothing was off-limits. Her motto was “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

  The crew had a love/hate relationship with Hope. Initially, they hated her for not being a boy; then they hated her because she was constantly asking questions and getting into everything. But, they also secretly loved her. She was mischievous but innocent at the same time. She also was very intelligent and seemed to have an uncanny way of twisting words around until whoever was upset with her became confused as to what it was they were mad about. And before they could figure out what had just happened, Hope would apologize and then disappear like nothing had ever happened.

  The last thing to make her cry was when she saw Dozer in Med Bay after Leea had tried to kill him. The cat was sedated and had just come out of surgery. He was wrapped from his throat to the base of his tail. Pickle and Libby had done the surgery by hand, since the surgebot was programmed for human anatomy and not that of a feline. Dozer had a ruptured stomach, colon, spleen, and lung. Luckily, no major arteries had been severed by the spears. But one spear tip had lodged itself between two of his cervical vertebrae, damaging his spinal cord. There was a chance he would never walk normally again.

  Seeing him like this, and hearing his list of injuries, finally broke Hope down. This was the first time Hope had witnessed near-death; she had been too young to understand it with Connie. Because of her bond with Dandi, she understood Dozer’s connection with Libby. A childhood pet is a special link that is never lost, and seeing Dozer like this devastated her.

  It was after leaving Med Bay that Hope had her first lesson in death. She watched as the dead body of Leea was dumped into a wheelbarrow used to haul rocks to the crusher, then pushed to the furnace where the dead crew had been incinerated after the ice quake.

  As Leea was hauled to the oven, everyone watched. There were no words spoken, not even by the captain, and as the oven glowed hot, no one cried, not even her lovers. Beautiful Leea, who had enchanted many with her looks and her voice, was now just a gray dust.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  The noise of the wind whipping past her ears was as constant as the whine of the drone’s rotors overhead. Hope dangled beneath it with her feet perched on a T-shaped footrest welded onto a steel pole below the body of the drone. Her arms were wrapped around the pole, and her hands clenched firmly onto it. The wind was fiercely buffeting her body, but it wasn’t strong enough to dislodge her. She had on a pair of goggles reminiscent of what aviators used to wear in open cockpit aircraft from the First World War. Normally someone hanging in this precarious position would be scared, but not Hope.

  The only one expressing fear was her mother. Libby was furious at this reckless behavior exhibited by her daughter, but what made her even angrier was that the captain had allowed it.

  It really was Pickle’s fault. With Connie gone, she had assumed the role as the chief science officer. Pickle had been the one who had discovered a newly formed clearing from another recent ice quake. The crew didn’t even feel the small tremor, but her scientific instruments did, and being diligent, she deployed the drone to map the area. It was twenty-five miles away from the colony, and about a hundred acres in size. Just like the adjacent clearing to the colony, it had been leveled of vegetation, and the soil was violently upheaved.

  At first the initial
drone flights mapping the area showed nothing unusual. But the last unmanned flight had revealed something remarkable on the drone’s monitors: one of the ice quake’s newly formed valleys was filling with a clear liquid that looked like water. In astonishment, Pickle had immediately informed the captain, and an emergency meeting was held with all section commanders.

  No one else was privy to this secret meeting, but of course Hope had found out and listened to the whole thing. She had almost gotten away with it, but got caught at the last minute when Hope’s kitten walked straight up to her hiding place and meowed loudly.

  “What do you think you’re doing, young lady?” demanded Kriss.

  “Nothing,” stammered Hope. “I was just listening.”

  “And what did you hear?”

  “That you need someone to fly on the drone to investigate this new clearing,” replied Hope in a quiet voice.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, Hope gained courage and blurted out, “And I nominate myself!”

  The room exploded with arguing voices. After a lengthy debate, weighing all the pros and cons, Hope got the nod to be the drone’s new aerial flyer. Not because she was experienced or expendable, but because she was the youngest and most able-bodied of all the crew.

  The planet hadn’t taken a physical toll on Hope yet, but it had on everyone else. The women were starting to get a light frosting of gray, wrinkles were forming on many faces, and the extreme gravity of the planet was shrinking the women’s height. Ailments like arthritis were prevalent, and it was depressing for the captain to witness her young crew turn old before her very eyes.

  Libby was furious that she had no say in her daughter’s dangerous mission. Standing beside Sophi, who was wearing the modified telecom helmet that controlled the drone, Libby was so worried about Hope that she wasn’t even aware when Spuds came up beside her.

  A small, warm hand wiggled its way onto Libby’s rigid fingers and gently squeezed. “It will be okay, Libby. Hope is in great hands. Sophi won’t let anything happen to her.”

  The gentle tone of Spuds’s voice and the reassuring pressure of her hand broke Libby’s trance.

  “I’m just so worried about her,” said Libby.

  “I know you are,” said Spuds.

  It took about twenty-five minutes for the drone to reach the edge of the newly discovered clearing. Sophi didn’t want to fly it faster than sixty miles per hour, even though the drone was capable of greater speeds, because she didn’t want to frighten Hope or have her fall off.

  “Captain, I have the clearing in view,” said Sophi.

  “Do a high flyover and make sure it looks safe before we drop the kid off,” replied Kriss.

  “Yes, sir,” Sophi responded. “Everything looks the same, sir. The only thing that looks different is that the valley appears to be more flooded with that clear liquid.”

  “Very well. Can you see a safe landing area?”

  “I’m looking,” said Sophi. “One of the ridges of soil appears stable. I’m flying the drone over it right now.”

  Sophi descended the drone until it was hovering motionless over the outcropping of protruding soil. As she inched the drone lower, Hope jumped off unexpectedly.

  “Well, I was going to let her off a foot above the surface, but our girl had different plans,” said Sophi.

  “Oh no,” moaned Libby.

  “She made it. She’s okay,” Sophi said confidently.

  “Fly the drone up until we can get a signal lock on it. I want to talk to Hope before she does anything foolish,” said the captain.

  Pickle and Merc had installed a radio in the drone, and it acted as a satellite from Hope’s handheld radio to the colony.

  “Hope, can you hear me?” barked Kriss.

  “Fly the drone higher,” said Pickle. “I haven’t locked onto its signal yet.”

  “What is the kid doing?” Kriss asked impatiently.

  “She’s sliding down the slope on her butt, and she’s headed towards the liquid!”

  “I told that damn girl to stay put till we had radio contact,” Kriss said. “She never does what she’s told to. Zoom the camera in on her and get me a signal.”

  “Captain, she is at the edge of the liquid. Looks like she is going to put her finger into it,” said Sophi in disbelief.

  “Dammit, Hope, do you hear me?” yelled Kriss into the drone’s base unit radio mic.

  “She just stuck her finger into the liquid, sir,” said Sophi.

  “What if it’s acid?” wailed Libby.

  “Apparently it’s not. She just stuck her finger into her mouth!” said Sophi.

  “Pickle, you and Libby should be so proud. You have done a splendid job training our future science officer,” Kriss said sarcastically.

  “Captain, we have a radio signal locked with the drone,” said Pickle.

  “Thank God,” said Libby.

  “No, thank Pickle,” snapped Kriss. “Hope, can you hear me?”

  “She is splashing in the liquid! The soil appears to have given way, and she is now completely submerged!” yelled Sophi frantically.

  “Get her out of there now,” boomed Kriss.

  Sophi chopped the drone’s throttle and hovered it several feet above the clear liquid, scanning its surface with the camera.

  “Where is she?” screeched Libby.

  Something went flying by the camera’s lens. It made Sophi snap her head back like something had struck her face.

  “What is it?” asked Kriss.

  “I saw movement. I mean, I just saw it again,” Sophi replied nervously. “There it goes again. Flying rocks.”

  “Flying rocks? Did I hear you right?”

  Panning the camera left and right, Sophi said, “And I have found the source. I think you need to see this for yourself.”

  Pulling off the telecom helmet, Sophi passed it to the captain. “Take a look, sir. You won’t believe it.”

  It took a moment for Kriss’s eyes to adjust, and when they did, she saw Hope standing knee-deep in the liquid, skipping rocks across its surface. Her hair was dripping wet, and she had red mud all over her clothes. Hope seemed oblivious to the drone. Her full concentration was on having fun.

  Hope had only seen a lake in her learning visor, and this was way better in person than she had imagined. The water was icy cold, but she didn’t care. She dove in headfirst and disappeared again. But she quickly learned that she couldn’t breathe underwater here like she could in the moon pond.

  Inhaling suddenly, her lungs flooded with water and she struggled to resurface. She had no air in her lungs to force the trapped water out. Stumbling in the shallows to shore, she collapsed. This action actually saved her life, because when she fell, her chest hit a partially submerged boulder. As her chest collapsed from the impact, her ribs elasticity sprung back, forcing the water out of her lungs. This allowed a desperate inhalation of air, and Hope coughed up the remainder of the trapped water from her lungs.

  Kriss had watched the whole thing and thought she was witnessing Hope’s death. Visibly upset, she removed the telecom helmet and passed it back to Sophi. “Get Hope home now.”

  Hovering the drone over Hope, Sophi lowered it until the welded T-step was right beside the young woman. Ever so gently, she nudged Hope with the hanging pole. It took several bumps before Hope looked up and realized that she was supposed to grab on.

  Hope wasn’t smiling now; instead, she had a scared look on her face. Easing the drone skyward, Sophi began the return flight. This time she flew it slower since Hope was much weaker. Forty minutes later, the black outline of the drone and its hanging human cargo became visible.

  Libby rushed to Hope’s side. When she reached Hope, she grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her violently.

  “What were you thinking, child? You could have drowned or been burned by acid
!”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t think it was dangerous. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” said Hope in a weary voice.

  “Thank God you are okay,” Libby said as she fiercely pulled Hope to her.

  “What were you thinking, young lady?” Kriss boomed. “Apparently, you weren’t thinking at all. If you ever disobey my orders again, I’m going to have Smitty give you a first-class whipping. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” mumbled Hope.

  “You’re quarantined to your room at night and will wheelbarrow rocks to the crusher during the day. All of your privileges are gone for the next two weeks. Hard labor always instills discipline,” snapped Kriss. “Smitty, take her to the quarry.”

  *

  The next two weeks went by slowly for Hope, but just like the captain had said, the newly formed blisters turned to callouses, and she learned a valuable lesson: don’t piss off your commanding officer. But, it wasn’t long before Hope resumed her flights to the new clearing. She was getting a lot of new data for Pickle to put into a computer model she was developing to better understand their new planet so that they could predict future ice quakes and set up a warning system for the colony.

  It was determined that the liquid was water—not just a little, but a lot. It was like some giant underwater fissure had fractured open and was under pressure, forcing it to the surface. Pickle couldn’t explain the fissure, as the deeper you got underneath the planet’s surface, the colder it got. Logically, that meant there should be no water trapped under the surface in liquid form. But, as Pickle was learning, this planet was anything but logical.

  As Hope’s flights progressed, so did the evolution of the drone. Hope convinced Merc to modify the drone so that she could fly it herself. A throttle was added to the suspended pole, so Hope could increase or decrease the speed of the motors and adjust her altitude. The rigid mounting of the pole to the drone’s body was retrofitted so that it pivoted on all axes. By simply leaning her body in the direction she wanted to go, the drone now moved in that direction. After a little modification to the software and a test flight or two, it worked flawlessly.