Apes and Angels Page 15

“How are you?” she asked.

  Sitting on the edge of his cot in the isolation suite, glad to be out of his suit, Brad replied, “I’m fine. Everything’s going on schedule. How’re you?”

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too, honey.”

  “I wish I could sneak down there and go with you.”

  He laughed shakily. “You could just about fit inside the suit with me. Kinda snug, though.”

  “Snug is good,” Felicia said.

  He saw that she was struggling to keep a happy expression for him.

  “When I get back we’ll spend a solid week alone, just the two of us.”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “I love you, Fil.”

  “I love you, too, Brad.” She hesitated, then added, “Be careful down there. Come back to me safe and sound.”

  “Sure,” he said, trying to appear brave.

  “Sure,” she repeated dolefully.

  They chatted aimlessly until Emcee’s soft voice interrupted, “Curfew time, I’m afraid.”

  Almost glad to end this increasingly painful farewell, Brad said to Felicia, “I’ll call you from down on the surface, as soon as I get a chance.”

  “Good night, Brad.” She was fighting to hold back tears, he realized.

  “Good night, darling.” He almost said good-bye.

  DEPARTURE

  Sitting in the cramped control compartment of the shuttlecraft, Brad recalled from his childhood history lessons that the first astronauts, almost three hundred years ago, were sometimes referred to as “Spam in a can.” They were not actually piloting their spacecraft; they sat squeezed into the tight compartment while men on the ground controlled the flight.

  “Spam in a can,” Brad muttered to himself. He was a passenger, not a flyer. This mission to Gamma’s surface was completely automated. If human piloting was required, the controllers aboard the starship would do it, remotely. He had memorized the functions of the displays on the control panel in front of him, but he had no way of manipulating them, except for the cameras that provided him outside views.

  So he sat strapped firmly into the seat, in his biosuit, its helmet stowed safely in a rack to his left, watching, listening, feeling the little shuttlecraft coming to life.

  “Internal power on,” came the disembodied voice of one of the controllers.

  “Life support on.”

  A gurgling sound. “Pumps on.”

  A low moaning noise, swiftly ratcheting up to a shrill whine. “Propulsion system on.”

  A crisper, more authoritative voice called out, “All systems active.”

  “All systems in the green,” came the response.

  The synthesized voice of the countdown clock, “Separation in five seconds … four…”

  Brad realized he was biting his lip. Deliberately, he opened his mouth and gulped in the cabin’s canned air.

  “… one. Separation sequence initiated.”

  Brad felt a quiver, a shudder. The shuttlecraft was being nudged away from the starship.

  “Good luck, Dr. MacDaniels.”

  He had to swallow twice before he could answer, “Thanks.”

  “Separation successful.”

  “Main propulsion drive engagement in ten seconds.”

  Brad thought he should say something, make some sort of statement; this was an historic moment, after all. At least it was supposed to be.

  Running the tip of his tongue across his lips, he realized what he wanted to say. “Felicia, I’ll see you in six months.”

  Not for history. For her.

  “Main propulsion drive engaged.”

  Brad felt a push against his back: gentle but insistent.

  “You’re on your way, Dr. MacDee!”

  The display screen in the center of the control panel showed the Odysseus moving away. Within seconds Brad could see the entire bulk of the mammoth starship. It was dwindling, faster and faster, getting smaller and smaller.

  “Life support?” one of the controllers asked.

  “All systems green.”

  “Life support, Dr. MacDaniels?”

  “Everything normal,” he reported.

  Silence, except for the hum of the propulsion system. The display screen was peppered with stars now; Odysseus looked like a toy.

  He tapped the external camera control button on the armrest of his chair with a gloved finger.

  Planet Gamma filled the screen: a rich green from pole to pole, except for bony fingers of gray-brown rock mountains and a few glittering seas sprinkled here and there. Clean white clouds seemed to hug the landscape, like oversized sheep grazing in the meadows.

  “Atmospheric entry in one minute,” came the controller’s voice.

  Brad nodded tensely. This was the crucial time. Diving into the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, the shuttlecraft would briefly become a blazing meteor. The magnetic heat shield should hold the blistering ionized air safely away from the craft’s hull. If it failed, the craft would break up, burn up, and plunge to a fiery impact on the surface. With Brad in it.

  * * *

  Felicia watched the shuttlecraft’s flight from the wall screens of the auditorium. More than half the staff was there, some sitting at the tables scattered across the floor, most of them standing.

  The screens showed the big green planet and a tiny thin streak of red racing across it.

  That’s Brad, she told herself. That’s his ship. He’s in the midst of that burning-hot air.

  “He’ll be all right.”

  Felicia whirled around to see Gregory Nyerere standing beside her, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  The overhead speakers were relaying the flight controller’s calm, almost bored recitation. “Approaching maximum temperature. Max temperature. Max pressure. Conditions nominal.”

  “Nominal,” Nyerere murmured. “Looks like the inside of hell to me.”

  * * *

  The shuttlecraft was bouncing and shuddering so badly that Brad’s vision blurred momentarily. The roaring outside the ship’s skin was scary, like a monster trying to get inside and devour him. It wouldn’t stop. Squinting at the clock display on the control panel, Brad saw that this had been going on for less than two minutes. But it seemed like an eternity of jouncing, shaking, bellowing, screeching as the inferno clasped him in its grip.

  He tasted blood in his mouth and realized he had bit the inside of his cheek. Thankful that he was firmly buckled into his seat, Brad squeezed his eyes shut.

  And the torment started to ease away. Opening his eyes, Brad saw the green surface of the planet hurtling up to greet him.

  We’re through entry, he exulted. Going subsonic now.

  Gigantic trees were reaching up to snare him. A winding river flashed past.

  “Initiating landing sequence,” came the laconic voice of the flight controller.

  On the display screen the trees swept past and Brad saw a broad swath of green meadow approaching. The shuttlecraft lurched—retrorockets, Brad knew. A roar of air told him that the landing gear had been extended. Then a bump, a thump, and he could feel the craft bouncing along on the grassy, uneven ground.

  It lurched to a stop. Everything became quiet.

  “We’re down!” he called.

  “Copy you down, Dr. MacDee. Everything looks good from here. All systems nominal.”

  Brad stared at the central display screen. He saw a meadow that looked almost like Earth, although there were no animals grazing on the grass. The sky was blue, with a few whitish puffs of clouds, but the blue seemed different, somehow off-color.

  And there was a moon visible. No, wait, Brad said to himself. Gamma has no moon. That’s Beta. It’s approaching, coming nearer.

  Brad unbuckled his safety harness, whacked his head when he got up from the chair, and—cursing as he rubbed his forehead—started for the hatch.

  He was reaching for the hatch’s handle when he remembered that he didn’t have his helmet on.

  BOOK FOUR


  O brave new world that has such people in’t.

  —William Shakespeare

  The Tempest

  ARRIVAL

  Once he sealed the helmet to his suit’s neck ring, Brad went back through the short, cramped passageway to the hatch, hunched over slightly to keep his helmet from scraping the overhead. As he reached a gloved hand to push the button that opened the hatch, he saw that his hand was trembling slightly.

  “Ready to open hatch,” he said.

  A controller’s voice replied, “Clear to open hatch.”

  Brad leaned on the button and the hatch slid up, almost noiselessly.

  And there it was. Planet Gamma. An alien world that no human had set foot upon. To his staring eyes it looked almost like Earth, but not quite. The green grass waving slightly in the breeze was darker than any grass he had seen before. There were forested hills in the distance, also deeply green, and, far beyond them, craggy gray mountains that seemed to be floating on a bluish haze above the rolling horizon.

  No animals visible. No insects buzzing. The only sounds were the soft sighing of the wind and Brad’s own breath gushing out of him.

  “You are cleared to leave the shuttlecraft,” the controller’s voice prompted.

  “Right,” said Brad. He started down the short aluminum ladder, stepping carefully in his heavy boots. Wouldn’t want to fall on my face the first time a human steps onto an alien planet.

  He immediately remembered that humans had walked on New Earth, the planet of the star system Sirius, but that was an artificial world, constructed by the Predecessors and populated with humanlike creatures. That had been humankind’s first contact with aliens.

  But here, this planet Gamma, this was a real, natural world populated by genuine aliens, creatures who had evolved here naturally.

  And I’m going to make contact with them!

  * * *

  The thrill of landing melted away after half an hour of trudging across the meadow, sweating inside his biosuit despite its internal climate control. Mithra was an angry red dot high in the sky, glaring down at him. The woods that fringed the meadow still seemed kilometers away.

  One boot ahead of the other, Brad told himself as he slogged away. The meadow seemed empty of animal life. Not even a field mouse or an insect. Maybe they’re frightened by my presence, Brad thought. Maybe they can sense that I’m an alien intruder and they’re keeping their distance. More likely the noise and shock of the shuttlecraft’s landing sent them all scuttling into their holes.

  How will the humanoids react to me? he wondered.

  Outwardly, Brad looked much like the bipedal natives of Gamma: tall and lean, the chalky surface of his biosuit spotted with irregular splotches of blue and purple, his head a conical cylinder with bulging eyes on either side.

  It was easy enough to look up from inside his helmet. The one-way plastiglas was transparent. Brad saw the lopsided crescent of Beta halfway up from the horizon. He knew it was his imagination, but the planet seemed larger, closer than when he’d seen it from the shuttlecraft.

  As he approached the woods, he saw that the trees looked different from any he remembered of Earth. Some of them had twisty, sinuous trunks studded with snaky branches and broad, flat leaves. Others were tall and straight, soaring skyward like redwoods, no branches until high above. Instead of leaves they seemed to bear clusters of pods, so deep a green they looked almost black.

  There were bushes between the trees, but they were sparse enough so that they presented no real obstacle to his walking through them.

  The ground was rising gently, Brad saw as he checked his map display, flashed against the inner surface of his helmet. It showed he was on the right track to reach the village they had selected as his objective.

  “Emcee, are you there?” he asked, in a whisper.

  “Yes,” came the familiar voice. “You are two point six kilometers from the center of the village.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You are welcome.”

  Emcee’s politeness seemed almost silly. Brad wormed his arm out of its sleeve and took the water nipple between his index finger and thumb. The drink tasted flat, stale. One of his first tasks would be to test the water in one of the local streams to see if it was drinkable. If not, he’d have to drink water recycled from the suit’s supply.

  Drink my own piss, he thought, with a grimace of distaste.

  Something flashed past, to his left. An animal! Brad thought. Something small and furry had scampered into the bushes that hugged the bases of the big, straight-boled trees.

  Even though he couldn’t see the critter now, Brad felt better, happier. He knew from the earlier uncrewed landing vehicles that the planet teemed with animal life. But actually seeing one lifted his spirits.

  Now that he was in among the trees, he saw bright-colored birds swooping past, most of them high above, but a few lower, closer. Watching the darting flight of the lower ones, Brad thought there must be insects that they were chasing.

  And from twenty meters above him, a small furry animal clung upside down to a tree’s trunk and chittered away at him. Grinning, Brad thought, A one-man welcoming committee. Then he sobered and guessed, More likely he’s scared, defensive.

  The ground’s slope got steeper, and Brad began to realize that his suit’s weight was far from negligible. He was sweating heavily by the time he reached the crest of the rise.

  And there it was: the village, down in the hollow below him. Slowly, awkwardly, Brad sank to his knees in the cumbersome suit, then flattened out onto his belly. He fingered the control pad on his left sleeve, and the electro-optical binoculars built into the helmet slid in front of his eyes.

  THE VILLAGE

  Four, no, nearly five dozen round, domed structures stood in a pair of concentric circles around a cleared area of packed earth. Walkways of similarly cleared ground separated the structures from each other. The buildings’ walls seemed to be smooth, dried mud, flat dun in color. The domed roofs were made of interwoven branches.

  Brad saw wheeled carts and larger wagons, most of them sitting idle in the village center. A few were being pulled by six-legged animals the size of ponies.

  On the other side of the village, cultivated fields stretched outward to the end of the hollow, row after neatly tended row. Brad saw greenish plants, more than a meter tall. People moved among the rows, harvesting the plants by hand with sickles that appeared to have metal blades.

  A stream meandered around the outer edge of the hollow. Several of the aliens were drawing water from it and toting heavy buckets back to the buildings.

  The structures seemed pretty much the same size and the same design: round, domed, single-floored, with one window each. Brad could see only one door in each building.

  Then he recognized that one of the buildings was noticeably larger than the others. It stood on the inner circle, and a half-dozen Gammans seemed to be standing at its front entrance, gesticulating.

  Longhouse, he guessed. With loafers, just like home.

  The sun was lowering toward the distant hills, Brad saw. He no longer thought of the star as Mithra: it was this world’s sun. And the direction in which it was setting was west, by definition.

  Time to hunker down for the night, he told himself.

  He slithered down the slope, away from the village, until he thought it was safe to climb to his feet. They can’t see me from down here, he thought.

  After munching down condensed food tablets, Brad called Emcee.

  “Did you see the village?” he half whispered.

  “I saw everything that you saw,” the computer replied.

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  “If I had emotions, I suppose it would be.”

  Brad chuckled softly.

  “You should report to the controllers,” Emcee reminded him.

  “But they see everything we do, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but they still expect a report from you.”

 
; Brad nodded reluctantly and called the controllers.

  “You found the village, right on schedule,” said the disembodied voice.

  Brad frowned inwardly at the thought of being tied to a schedule.

  A new voice, feminine, announced, “This is Madeira, medical department. We need to go over your physical condition.”

  “You have the readouts, don’t you?” Brad asked.

  “Of course, but we need your input, as well. Protocol.”

  Brad grumbled to himself as he answered the medical technician’s questions. Busywork, he thought. They’ve got all the sensors’ data, everything from my heart and breathing rates to the amount of water I’ve lost from sweating.

  As if she could hear his thoughts, Madeira said, “You’ve lost a bit more water than we expected.”

  “I’ve been sweating. It was a long walk, and it’s hot down here.”

  “It’s going to get a lot colder pretty soon,” she replied.

  “The recycling system is working, isn’t it?”

  A moment’s pause. Then, “Checking the readouts. Yes, the recycler is puttering away, right on the curve.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re due for sleep in another hour.”

  “I’m setting up camp here.”

  “That’s scheduled for tomorrow.”

  Again with the schedule, Brad groused to himself. Then he thought, No sense arguing with her. Or any of them. I’ll hunker down here for the night, then tomorrow morning I’ll walk back to the shuttle and haul out the camping gear.

  On an impulse, he asked, “Have you detected anything dangerous in the atmosphere?”

  Madeira had to switch him over to the controller in charge of checking the environment.

  A man’s voice finally told Brad, “We haven’t detected anything harmful in the air. Of course, the samples we’ve studied didn’t come from precisely your location.”

  “But I could take off this helmet for the night, couldn’t I?”

  He could sense the controller shaking his head. “Against protocol. You wouldn’t want the local bugs nesting in your ears while you sleep.”

  Brad had to admit, “No, I wouldn’t.”

  He slept with the helmet on. It was uncomfortable, but he had no dreams. At least, none he could remember the next morning.