Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

Alice held out a vial and Emery tipped the tiny fleck in. “What is it?” she asked.

  Spixworth laughed and shrugged. Alice held it up to her helmet, tapping her feed to magnify it. “I think it’s a plant.”

  “Like a dandelion seed,” said Blick. “But its shape is odd. Save it for me.”

  Something fluttered in Rebecca’s peripheral vision. She turned her head to see a small bug hovering a few feet from them above the tall grasses. She nudged Spixworth and pointed. He leaned over the grass to reach it, but it lazily floated away. “Does he really expect us to sit here and wait?” he asked, watching it land on a stalk.

  “Yes, I do, Spixworth,” said Stratton.

  “But Captain, we waited a millennium and a half to find this place—”

  “And it will still be there in ten more minutes. Rushing is how we make mistakes or miss things. Relax, think up some new names for the species you’re going to find. Take a temperature reading or whatever it is you guys do that doesn’t involve touching.”

  “I’m going to call this Spixworth’s Steppe.”

  Blick laughed as he reached them. “How do you know it doesn’t already have a name?”

  Spixworth spun around as if he were looking for something. “Uh, because we’re the first people to ever reach this place?”

  “We’re the first humans to be here, but we may not be the first people here. For all we know, there’s some kind of village over the next ridge,” said Rebecca.

  “Oh, right,” said Martham, “Where all your little gray men are hiding. Where’s the welcome committee then? The Wolfinger must have been visible for miles and we’ve been here for hours. You’d think they’d—”

  “That’s enough,” said Stratton, “Blick and Emery have a point. Until we’ve determined otherwise, we are guests at best. Try to keep it in mind. If this turns out to be a habitable planet, I don’t want to go back to the Keseburg and tell them we can’t stay because we started some kind of war with the natives.”

  The feed went silent and Rebecca stood still, watching the coppery glow of the sun flicker and shift over the field. Spixworth sighed and sat down on a nearby rock.

  “Beck,” said Alice softly, “don’t move. It’s okay— everything’s okay, just don’t move for a second.”

  “What is it?” Rebecca felt a spike of adrenaline tingle through her. “Where is it?”

  Spixworth stood up again and inched toward her. Blick handed Alice a collection net. “I’ll get it, Beck, don’t worry.” Alice’s voice was sickly sweet, blatantly false, and Rebecca’s heart began to pound.

  “Where ?” she hissed again.

  Leroux’s voice was smooth over the feed. “Emery, your pulse and pressure are spiking. Take a few deep breaths and close your eyes.”

  “I’m not closing my eyes out here. Get it, Alice, whatever it is, get it off before I panic.”

  Alice inched her way into a crouch, stopping every few seconds. Rebecca tried to look down but the rim of her helmet blocked the view of her feet. She couldn’t see without moving, couldn’t even switch to Alice’s video and stay still. Spixworth leaned forward.

  “Careful, now,” whispered Blick.

  She could feel prickles of heat chase each other down her back and her hair was damp and sticking to her forehead. She wanted to hold her breath just to stop the sound of its harshness in the hard dome of the helmet. Alice lunged and Rebecca flinched. A rapid dry clacking erupted near her feet.

  “Got it, open the box, Blick!” shouted Alice.

  Blick pushed her carefully aside, kneeling to scoop the specimen crate under Alice’s net. Rebecca stepped back farther, bending to look at the thrashing thing as Alice gently tipped the net and slid it into the crate. Its sharpened spines rattled and flashed the same gray and green of the plain’s vegetation.

  “You getting this, Martham?” asked Blick.

  “We see. I told you not to do anything,” sighed the Captain.

  “I couldn’t just let it— let it bite or scratch or shoot those spikes into Rebecca,” protested Alice.

  “Emery, check your suit for punctures.” Stratton’s voice sank to a low mutter. “God damn it. This is a clusterf—”

  Dr. Cardiff broke in. “Captain, we’ve discussed this. Emery is fine, the specimen is contained, this is a good event. It’s evidence that we can survive here.”

  “Save the celebrations, doctor. Just because something survives here doesn’t mean we will.”

  “Or that whatever is here will survive us,” mumbled Alice staring at the small, scrabbling quadruped as its spikes drooped and then clacked straight in small waves. Rebecca crouched over her thick boots and checked for any tears. The buggy rumbled over the hill, halting with a slight jerk. Stratton leaped out.

  “Well, Emery?”

  “The suit readouts are normal and I don’t see any holes.”

  He wasn’t satisfied and bent down to inspect her leggings. The others began unloading the equipment, leaving Blick nervously holding the creature.

  “We should probably see if we can figure out what it eats,” said Blick. “Wouldn’t want it to die while we’re studying it.”

  “I’ll take that,” scowled Martham. “Unless you wanted to discuss religious symbolism with it, Emery.”

  “That’s enough!” said the Captain, standing up. “If you have a problem with Emery’s inclusion in this mission, you can take it up with me. Let her do her work.”

  Martham made a show of looking around, her helmet twisting first one way and then another. “What work? You see any people? Any cities? Any structures at all? There’s nothing here. No trace of electrical use, no monuments or ruins, not even any roads for trade or travel.”

  “That doesn’t mean there is nobody here, just that we aren’t seeing what we’d expect. Perhaps there are pre-industrial communities or nomadic societies,” said Rebecca.

  “I haven’t got time for hypotheticals. I’m here to do actual research,” said Martham, turning away.

  Stratton ignored the biologist. “You’re with me, Emery. I want to survey the sector while the others set up the lab.” He climbed back into the buggy.

  She hesitated. “The buggy— it’s got a much wider footprint. We could walk.” Alice and Blick turned to watch.

  Stratton leaned back in his seat. “I know,” he admitted. “And I understand. We discussed it, at length, in the planning meetings. If this is the place, if we found it— we aren’t going to be able to live here without changing things. We’re going to unbalance things like Oxwell said. We’re going to drive some species out maybe. It’s going to happen.”

  “It doesn’t have to happen yet ,” said Blick.

  Stratton nodded. “You’re right. And we’re going to be careful. But our landing zone would take hours to survey on foot. Not to mention all the equipment we’d have to set up and take down repeatedly. We’d lose time for other studies. And possibly endanger ourselves. These suits were a best guess at what we’d find. They aren’t perfect. We’ve got one real shot at this. Keseburg won’t invest more resources if we don’t bring enough data back to show them it’s worth it. Do we go slowly, do things like surveys by foot and risk leaving this place behind? I don’t want to cut corners. And we’ll avoid unnecessary waste, but you can’t fish without getting your feet wet.”

  “What?” asked Spixworth.

  “I don’t know. It’s something my grandmother used to say. Means we have to be a little uncomfortable to get what we need. Look, I don’t want to make it an order. I’m not a scientist. But my job is to make sure we’re safe and we get what the Keseburg needs. Fair?”

  Rebecca nodded and slid into the buggy, flipping on the radar imagers as he pulled away from the expanding structure of the field lab.

  Chapter Seven

  “What do we do with it?” asked Blick, staring at the small, sharp-nosed rodent as it scuttled around the glass box.

  “We watch,” said Martham, unpacking the field lab equipment with a mere glance at t
he animal.

  “But what if it needs to eat? Or water? Or what if it’s calling its buddies with that rattly noise?”

  The animal shook its spines and they clacked and shivered.

  “Then we will soon have more specimens to study,” said Martham flatly. “As for the rest, don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt our little friend. We’re going to attach a small feed to it and release it again.”

  “Um, Beatrice?” Alice was reluctant to question the older woman. While they were technically equals, Martham acted the part of her superior and Alice was generally content to follow. But she was uneasy with the plan. Uneasy with the entire thing. Microbes, she’d expected. They all had. Some faint glimmering of hope, something that indicated the Keseburg’s residents might survive with time and technology helping them along. Existing complex ecosystems were something else entirely. “Do you think that’s wise? A feed might carry some kind of contamination from us back to its nest or burrow.”

  “Everything’s been sterilized, Oxwell. It’s part of protocol.”

  “Yes, I know. But it’s all been handled since then, on the Wolfinger. If anyone slipped, forgot a glove or a mask—”

  “We can’t go doubting all our equipment. We don’t have the time or facilities to check and resterilize everything. You know this, it’s never been a hesitation before.”

  “I didn’t expect complex organisms before. And I didn’t expect any contamination to travel beyond our immediate vicinity, but we don’t even know if this animal is migratory. We could be talking hundreds of miles.”

  Martham shrugged. “You heard the captain. If we’re going to live here, we’re all going to have to get used to altering things. Bacterial or otherwise.”

  “And if not?” Blick asked quietly. “If we leave a swathe of alien bacteria to sweep through the planet for no purpose? What if we wipe them out? This creature may be a crucial part of this planet. We don’t know. It could change the entire system if—”

  Martham sighed loudly, interrupting. “Will you two listen to yourselves? This planet’s natural evolution is not our concern. We’re here to do one job. Save our families. Save our children. Or have you forgotten? Titov and Al Jahi would agree with me. This is what happens when places are colonized. Happened on Earth too. People bring diseases. And parasites. And competitive species. You think a little camera is going to change things? What was your plan when you start planting crops, Blick? Are we going to do that in glass domes? No. We’d come somewhere we knew was fertile, like this valley.” She waved a hand down toward the plain. “We’d burn what was here, plow up the ground, and introduce our own plants. Maybe even use pesticides and fertilizers if it helps us survive. And then there’s the zoo. Why’d we carry all of those tissue samples for so many years? For so many thousands of miles? Why do we keep cloning them in the animal labs? It’s not just to feed the Keseburg, I’ll tell you that.”

  “But you’re talking about an extinction level event—”

  Martham laughed. “Stars, Oxwell, how did you get so melodramatic? We may not affect them at all. And if we did, if it really meant wiping out several species here— well, sad as it may be, that’s how it works. Them or us. My interest in the life here is how it can help our people survive. Of course, we’ll do what we can to ensure as much survives as possible, but when it comes down to it, this is the first possible home we’ve found in centuries. The Keseburg isn’t going to last until we find another. The kids aren’t going to last either. Are you ready to sacrifice the people you love for some rodents and a field of alien grass? Truly? Your parents? Your wife, Blick? Any children you might have in the future, Alice?”

  Blick looked away, ashamed. Alice fell silent, but she was uneasy. Unsure. She watched the creature as it finally calmed and settled to the bottom of the glass box, staring out at its home beyond.

  “How can you think that way?” she asked at last. “With all your training— how can you be such a competent scientist and still be so blind to our effects?”

  Martham sighed and folded her arms. “Because I’m a scientist, Oxwell. We’re animals, just like any other. We’re driven to compete for resources, to find ways to survive, to procreate, to pass on healthy genes to our offspring. Not Spindling ones. You want to attribute this— this morality to what we’re doing, but you’re a biologist just like me. Would you consider a pathogen evil because it causes death? Even extinction?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why are we different? We do what we must to survive. Waste or greed, using more than we need, sure, I can agree that it is wrong, even evil, if you like. But this is not waste. We aren’t holding this specimen to torture it or for our amusement. We aren’t here to despoil the planet and then leave— we’re trying to survive just like everything else.”

  Alice shook her head. “We already had our chance. We failed. Doing the same to another place— I feel like we’re cheating.”

  “We aren’t cheating. We’re evolving. There’s no cheating in nature, only survival or death. If you want to yap about ethics, go find Emery. The rest of us have work to do.” Martham flicked through her feed to find the programs she needed and proceeded to ignore Alice. Blick shook his head and turned away from them both.

  Martham had been sarcastic, but it really was Rebecca’s own hesitations that made Alice restless and anxious. As dire as her opinion had been, she knew Rebecca’s idea of survival rates had been extremely optimistic. It was understandable. Her concern was human adaptability, it was her field. But settling on a new planet was more than just learning how to successfully farm in new soil or how to deal with gravity and agoraphobia. Alice tried to brush her doubts aside. The existing organisms might be completely different, not vulnerable to anything the Keseburg carried and unable to infect humans. It was no use worrying over it when the answers were all around her. Alice began to set up her equipment. The obsessing could wait.

  Blick stood at the edge of the field, where the plants gradually unraveled into the dust of the landing zone. He meant to take samples, analyze and diagram the field grasses, see if they contained chlorophyll, if they grew in frequencies friendly to earth plants. He could see, already, that the light was different. The color of the grass was strange. But he considered that it was only one variety. So far he had only seen the sheltered valley. He couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness . That rodent, the grass, the magnitude and emptiness of it all. He’d been too old for this mission. He’d known it. But when the Hardcoop’s data packet came back with significant patches of green— it was almost a done deal. It could have been Agatha, but she knew the ship rotations better than he. She cared for their garden as if it were the child they’d never had. Lionel had always been the researcher, the experimenter. So he’d been sent. You didn’t say “no” to the Admiral.

  Deep in his heart, Blick had never believed they’d find a planet. It wasn’t that he thought there wasn’t one out there, that space was empty— he just believed they would be rescued. Earth was generations behind them. Centuries lost. But he dreamed. All of the stories, all of the legends returned home. Returned to Earth. Faster than light engines and magical teleportation machines and miraculous terraforming devices— the Keseburg’s imagination was crammed with them. And Earth— Earth had civilizations, technology, a base to create them. Surely, they’d invented at least one of them by now, hadn’t they?

  Blick folded the edges of an isolated tuft of grass, tucking them gently into a glass chamber. The sampler plunged into the dirt and pulsed sonic waves into it. He knew that the logs said Earth was in bad shape when the Keseburg left orbit, but surely, some of the ships must have turned back. There had to be some small knots of stragglers left behind, didn’t there? People too unfortunate to obtain passage or who refused to believe that things were as dire as predicted. In sixteen hundred years they must have rebuilt. And they’d want their people back. The sampler beeped and Blick lifted the glass chamber. A few stubborn clods of dirt stuck to the root system, but
the plant was loose enough to remove it without damage. He laid it aside as he prepared the hydrogel tray.

  Earth was probably just having trouble tracking their position. It was a long way, and space was enormous. Still, he woke up every morning expecting an announcement from the Admiral. “Going Home” blinking over the feed. He went to bed every night hoping the next day would be the one. He adjusted the hydrogel tray’s temperature to match the soil and waited for it to warm up.

  It wasn’t the new planet so much, he thought, staring off at the hills on the edge of the field. It was the emptiness. The lack of people. No cities, no authorities, no one to save you when you were in trouble. At least in the Keseburg, they were all together. Help was only a deck away at the most. Here, they would spread out. Eventually. Be pioneers. That was frightening. And the people from Earth would never find them. Not for another several centuries, if ever. The Keseburg’s people would have to find a way to communicate through the interference of the planet first. If they were in space, there was still hope. Still a chance to be rescued.

  Here… Blick settled the grass into the gel, picking up the tray to make certain he’d gotten the roots all the way in place despite his clumsy gloves. Here was the end of that dream. Here was not Earth. It meant a new plan. It meant a fragile beginning. Maybe— maybe they weren’t coming. Maybe they’d forgotten all about the Keseburg, or written it off as lost. Maybe Earth hadn’t recovered and the Keseburg was truly alone. A solitary seed blowing over alien soil, its viability fading even as it dropped into place. Blick shuddered at the thought and tried to concentrate on his work.

  Chapter Eight

  The buggy had almost completed an initial circuit of the immediate landing area when the radar readouts began lurching and dipping. Rebecca didn’t notice immediately, too entranced by the wide vista and the deep blue of a nearby river. She wished she could smell it. Feel the plants brushing by her skin. She wanted to believe they could make it here, she wanted to trust that there was a plan and that this planet would be home.