Apes and Angels Page 24

  Littlejohn countered, “He saved the Gammans from extermination. He couldn’t stand by and let those big cats kill them all. He might have been killed himself.”

  Unruffled, Chang insisted, “Still, he has violated the most basic rule of alien contact: noninterference.”

  Pedersen objected, “So what was he supposed to do? Stand by and let the aliens be killed to the last man? That’s inhuman.”

  “They are all going to die anyway,” said Steiner. “They can’t survive the deep freeze that the planet’s climate is heading for.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Littlejohn countered. “With our help they might be able to get through it. Or perhaps hibernate through the winter.”

  “More interference,” said Chang.

  “What’s done is done,” Kosoff said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We can’t undo it. The question is, where do we go from here?”

  Silence. The men and women looked at each other, each one waiting for someone else to reply.

  “And something else,” Kosoff added. “Something of far greater import.”

  Quentin Abbott nodded vigorously. “What—or who—created this situation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Hunching his shoulders slightly and leaning forward, as though preparing to push a great weight, Kosoff said, “This planetary system’s current condition is not natural. Something—” He nodded toward Abbott. “—or someone created the situation we see today.”

  Abbott took up the theme. “We’ve done dozens of simulation runs regarding the orbits of this system’s planets. Alpha is a gas giant that’s losing its ocean and atmosphere at an alarming rate because it orbits so close to Mithra. Beta and Gamma are in these long, looping orbits that lock them into ice ages for most of their years.”

  “And the cats transfer from Beta to Gamma when the two planets are closest,” Kosoff said. “That is not natural. Definitely not.”

  “Something happened to this planetary system,” Abbott said. “Something catastrophic. Something that pushed Alpha almost into Mithra itself and locked Beta and Gamma into their extremely eccentric orbits. Probably knocked one or more other planets out of the system altogether.”

  “Something?” Pedersen demanded. “What?”

  “Emcee can show you the re-creation my people have put together,” Abbott said. “It boils down to this: roughly a hundred to two hundred thousand Earth years ago, this planetary system went through a cataclysmic event.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Chang. “But that doesn’t mean the event wasn’t natural. Another star could have passed near enough to scramble the planets’ orbits.”

  Kosoff called to Steiner. “Ursula, you’re a biologist. How do you account for having a predator arise on one planet and its prey on a different planet? How do you account for the predators flying to their prey in vehicles that are part incubators and part spacecraft?”

  Steiner blinked at him.

  “It can’t be natural,” Kosoff insisted. “Some intelligence designed all this and set it in motion.”

  No one contradicted him.

  JUDGMENTS

  Brad hurried eagerly across the muddy grass toward the shuttlecraft.

  It’s there, he said to himself, feeling exultant. It’s all in one piece. The storms haven’t smashed it up.

  Then he saw that the craft was canted to one side, as if pushed over by a giant hand. The delta-shaped wing on that side was crumpled against the ground.

  I won’t be flying out of here, Brad realized. Strangely, he didn’t feel disappointed. The decision’s been made, he thought. I’m staying here on Gamma.

  He walked up to the crippled spacecraft and saw that its entry hatch was on the undamaged side, just in front of the delta wing that angled up into the air.

  Too high for me to reach. Pecking at his wrist keyboard, he saw the hatch slide noiselessly open and its metal ladder unfold. It poked uselessly into the empty air.

  As he stared at the rungs of the ladder, Brad almost broke into laughter. This is biblical, like some ancient mythological tale about punishment and irony. The craft is here, everything I need to survive is in it, and I can’t reach the final few meters to get inside.

  Instead of laughing, though, Brad stared at the open hatch, wondering what to do. The sun was nearing the sawtooth ridge of the distant mountains. Soon it would begin to get dark.

  * * *

  Kosoff had never seen Ursula Steiner look distressed before. She still sat straight and elegant in her chair, but her hands were fluttering like a trapped bird.

  “Not natural?” she said. “Of course it’s natural. Just because we haven’t found the cause for this scenario doesn’t mean that some evil extraterrestrial villains deliberately tampered with this planetary system.”

  “Occam’s razor,” Kosoff replied. “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

  Abbott chuckled slightly as he said, “I tend to agree with you, Professor—although I wouldn’t call a malevolent extraterrestrial invader the simplest explanation.”

  “Can you provide a natural explanation for the condition of this solar system?” Kosoff demanded.

  Pursing his lips, Abbott replied, “Not at this moment, no. But Dr. Chang suggested one possibility: a rogue star swept by close enough to scramble the planets’ orbits. Or perhaps it was a mini black hole.”

  “A hundred thousand years ago?” Kosoff challenged. “Then we should be able to see that star and backtrack its trajectory. Even a mini black hole should produce gravitational distortions that would be detectable.”

  Abbott nodded. “I’ll have my people get on it right away.” Then he rubbed his chin and added, “You know, our own solar system was visited by a passing red dwarf some seventy thousand years ago. It’s about twenty light-years from Earth at present.”

  “Did it perturb the planetary orbits?” Steiner asked, suddenly hopeful.

  “Apparently not. At least, not enough for us to trace today. Probably kicked up a fuss in the Oort Cloud, ejecting cometary bodies and that sort of thing, I should presume.”

  “So what do we do about MacDaniels and his messiah complex?” Steiner demanded.

  It was Kosoff’s turn to go silent. Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, at last he repeated, “What’s done is done. I don’t see that we have any alternative but to help the Gammans survive their winter.”

  Abbott agreed. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  Steiner looked aghast. “But our mission protocol forbids—”

  “Those regulations were written on Earth by people who are still on Earth,” Kosoff said sternly. “We’re out here, on the scene, facing life-or-death decisions.”

  Elizabeth Chang smiled slightly. “When in doubt, choose life.”

  Littlejohn summed up, “Brad’s made a shambles of the mission protocols. That may have been a mistake, but now we have no choice except to push ahead in the direction he’s taken.”

  Kosoff nodded his agreement, but he was thinking, MacDaniels has become the de facto leader here. He pulls the strings and we dance to his tune.

  * * *

  When handed a lemon, Brad was thinking, make lemonade.

  The shuttlecraft’s entry hatch was too high above him for him to reach it. Its frail-looking metal ladder poked out uselessly into the empty air, as if it were daring Brad to figure out how to reach it.

  Okay, he said to himself. That’s what I’ll have to do.

  The shadows of late afternoon were lengthening across the field where the shuttle rested.

  You’ve got to act quickly, Brad realized. Before it gets dark.

  The ground was littered with twigs and branches and other debris torn from the forest by the storm winds. All I need, Brad thought, is a tree branch long enough to reach the hatch, and strong enough to hold my weight.

  He started searching through the litter and soon spotted a long, fairly straight branch. Lifting one end of it, he wa
s surprised at how heavy it was.

  Okay, that’s good, he thought. It’s solid. It won’t break under my weight. He started to drag it back to the shuttle. He had to strain hard to tug it along.

  Now comes the hard part, he realized. Judging the angle by eye, Brad laid the branch on the ground so that, when raised on one end, its other end would nestle in the open hatch, nearly ten meters above his head.

  It wasn’t easy. He tugged the end of the branch off the ground and started walking down its length, each step lifting it higher, each step making it heavier against the shoulder of his suit. Twice the branch slipped from his gloved hands and crashed to the ground, forcing him to start all over again.

  It was getting dark. Brad stood at the end of the branch, bent over, hands on his knees, sweaty and puffing with exertion. How can the Gammans work their farms without real tools? he wondered. They’ve got nothing but a few cutting blades and their own muscle power. Not even levers or pulleys.

  Finally he muttered, “Okay. Third time’s the charm.”

  He lifted and trudged slowly, doggedly until at last the branch’s far end clonked dully against the corner of the open hatch. Then he slumped to the ground to catch his breath. Every muscle in his body ached.

  But he’d done it.

  Almost.

  With a blood-curdling screech, the branch began to skitter against the shuttle’s metal skin, teetering uncertainly. Brad saw that it would crash down to the ground again unless he could stop its slide.

  Jumping to his feet, Brad put his shoulder to the branch, pushing with all his might until its upper end lodged itself firmly inside a corner of the open hatch.

  Stepping back, Brad waited, puffing and sweating, for more than a full minute. The branch did not move. It was firmly wedged in place.

  He hoped.

  Peering up the length of the branch, Brad realized that it would be far easier for him to climb its rough bark if he were out of his suit. The field was mostly in shadow now, the sky overhead a deep reddish violet.

  “I’ll never make it in this suit,” he muttered to himself. Briefly he thought about the chance he was taking, but quickly decided the odds were worth risking. It’s either get out of the suit or fall on your face trying to climb up the hatch.

  He unlocked the helmet and lifted it off his head. The evening air smelled strange, alien. But not unpleasant, he thought. Just different.

  He sucked in a double lungful of the alien air, thinking, If I die, I die. Then he quickly stripped off his gloves and boots and got to his feet.

  In the deepening shadows, the branch looked like a stairway to heaven. Brad scrambled up its rough surface, glad that he was descended from apes and monkeys.

  He reached the hatch and stood exultantly in the outer air lock compartment.

  I’ve made it! he thought. Then he raised his fists over his head and shouted into the gathering darkness, “I made it!”

  COMMUNICATIONS

  Felicia sat on the bed in her quarters. It was early evening; she had spent the whole afternoon worrying about Kosoff’s words. “For you,” he had said. He’s made it a personal favor to me to send a communications satellite to Gamma. And he’s going to want something in return.

  She wondered what she should do, if anything. Automatically, she went to the kitchen and pulled a prepackaged dinner from the freezer. I’d better stay away from the restaurants, she told herself. I’d better be antisocial until Brad returns.

  If he returns, she corrected. And burst into tears.

  Unbidden, Emcee’s figure took shape in the holotank on the far side of the sitting room.

  His calm face smiling slightly, the avatar said, “Please pardon the intrusion. I have an urgent and strictly private call for you from Dr. MacDaniels.”

  “Brad?” Felicia dropped the dinner package. “Put him on!”

  And there he was, in his skivvies, sitting in what looked like the cockpit of the shuttlecraft.

  “Brad! You’re alive!”

  She studied his face during the three-minute transmission delay. He looked thin and grimy and exhausted and altogether wonderful.

  At last Brad dipped his chin and smiled tiredly. “Alive and well. I’m in the shuttlecraft, as you can see.”

  “You’re coming back?”

  Again the delay. Felicia realized that she must look a wreck, eyes teary, makeup smeared.

  “I can’t get back,” he said. “The shuttle’s been damaged by the storms. But its interior is intact and it makes a good shelter for me until you get back here to Gamma and pick me up.”

  “Brad, I love you.”

  She watched his face as her words sped to him. He seemed subtly different than she remembered: leaner, more intent.

  A grin spreading slowly across his face, he replied, “I love you too, Fil. I’ve missed you.”

  For the next twenty minutes there was no one in Felicia’s world except Brad. As they chatted, she kept repeating to herself, He’s alive. He’s not hurt. He’s alive and he’s not hurt.

  * * *

  Kosoff’s meeting of the department heads ended with nothing much accomplished, except a confirmation that Captain Desai would haul Odysseus back to Gamma the next day. In the meantime, the starship would launch a satellite on a high-velocity trajectory into orbit around the ravaged planet, to assess the conditions on its surface and set up a communications link with Brad MacDaniels—assuming he was still alive.

  Kosoff sat alone in the emptied conference room, berating himself for hoping MacDaniels had died in the storms. That’s not worthy of you, he fumed. MacDaniels is a pain in the butt, yes, but he gets things done. The Gammans would have been wiped out if it weren’t for Brad.

  Of course, if he has happened to die, I’ll have the chance to console his widow. Despite himself, Kosoff smiled at the thought.

  The holographic display at the far end of the table lit up. Emcee’s patient, impassive face announced, “Dr. MacDaniels calling you from planet Gamma, sir.”

  “MacDaniels?” Kosoff shot out of his chair. “Put him through!”

  To his credit, all his thoughts of the lovely Felicia fled from Kosoff’s mind as Brad’s weary, grubby face took three-dimensional shape. Almost all his thoughts.

  * * *

  “Just about everybody in the village has survived,” Brad was telling Kosoff. “And the cats from Beta are dying off, all by themselves. It’s like they were programmed to kill the Gammans, then die off themselves.”

  “Strange.” With a shake of his head Kosoff said, “This can’t be natural.”

  Brad’s eyes widened slightly, but he said, “I think you’re right. We’ve got to get our top engineering people to examine those eggs the cats flew in on.”

  “And the biologists, of course,” Kosoff added.

  Three minutes later Brad replied, “Right.”

  “And you? You’re all right?”

  Again the maddening communications lag. Kosoff hated sitting there, unable to do anything except wait.

  At last Brad answered, “Tired. Pretty cruddy after all this time in the biosuit. But I’m all in one piece.”

  “Good. We’re leaving Alpha tomorrow morning. Should be establishing orbit around Gamma again in two more days.”

  “Fine,” said Brad. “I can use the time to clean up and get some rest.”

  “You’ve earned it.”

  As he cut the communications link with Kosoff, though, Brad found himself wondering how quickly he could get back to the village. Winter’s coming, he knew. We don’t have much time to waste.

  * * *

  Moving the starship, a lenticular-shaped spacecraft as large as a moderate-sized town, was not a simple maneuver. The distance between planets Alpha and Gamma was too short to allow the ship to accelerate to near light-speed. As Captain Desai put it, “We go in low gear.”

  Brad remained inside the shuttlecraft most of the time that Odysseus was in transit toward Gamma. He popped out of the shuttle’s hatch, wearing only re
gular coveralls, and retrieved the helmet, boots, and gloves of his biosuit.

  When his medical readouts showed nothing dangerous or even unusual in his condition, except a slight indication of malnutrition, Brad went outside again without the biosuit and enjoyed a leisurely walk across the meadow in which the shuttle rested.

  Inwardly struggling between anticipation and reluctance, Brad finally decided he had to return to the village. Mnnx and the others must think I’ve abandoned them. Or maybe that the cats got me.

  That evening he thoroughly cleansed the biosuit in the craft’s capacious sterilizer, where ultrasonic vibrations removed dirt and killed bacteria. The various parts of the suit even smelled clean when he removed them from the machine.

  The following morning he pulled on the suit, all except the helmet and boots, then clambered down the tree branch to the grassy ground. As he lifted the helmet to his head, he looked to make certain that the air lock’s inner hatch was sealed. Keep the shuttlecraft’s interior as free from contamination as possible, he told himself.

  Yet once he had put on his boots and helmet and started off for the village, he felt that his fears of contamination were probably exaggerated. I’ve breathed the local air. Maybe only for a few minutes at a time, but it hasn’t seemed to hurt me.

  The local bugs aren’t interested in me, he thought. I’m foreign material to them. It’ll take ’em a while to develop a taste for Earthly cells. How long? Years? Centuries? Months?

  After half an hour of walking through the meadow toward the low hills that ringed the village, Brad finally put through a call to Littlejohn. Mission protocol: clear all decisions with your department head before taking action. Actual protocol: take your action first and then inform your department head, when it’s too late for him to stop you.

  RETURN

  Littlejohn sank back in his desk chair, feeling somewhere between surprised and deflated.

  “You’re returning to the village?” he asked, annoyed at the squeak of his own tone. As he waited for Brad’s reply, he berated himself for letting his surprise and frustration show. Brad’s going too far, he thought. He decides what he wants to do and then does it. Leaves it to me to clear it with Kosoff. Makes me his errand boy.