Sci-Fi Series 2
Stan I.S. Law
Published by Inhousepress
Smashwords Edition 2010
ISBN 978-0-9813015-2-5
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/stanislaw
Copyright © Stanislaw Kapuscinski 2000, eBook 2010
Other Smashwords Editions by Stan I.S. Law
Sci-Fi Series 1 (Thirsty Work, the Acorn, Dare)
Wonders Series 1 (Mirror, Flash, Man who couldn’t die)
Sharing (Cats and Dogs Series)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, titles, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Sketches and cover design by Bozena Happach
There was nothing human about the scream.
In near total darkness, where even the stars had forsaken their shimmering sheen, within the hot breath of the steaming, churning volcanic hot springs, Astrid could only imagine the alien features contracted in a spasm of agony. Pain is pain by any other name. It hurts as much, no matter what the species. A shriek, a short silence, then a protracted whimper.
“It makes your blood curl,” Astrid threw over her shoulder, busy adjusting the sensors for a directional response. “Thou shalt not interfere”, she thought momentarily. The Simulator. The same instant she dismissed the conditioned response as inapplicable.
“Did you get the location?” Bram asked, his voice sleepy and definitely tired. Normally, they both slept during the night, like any normal human being should. The sensors would record any unusual sounds for later analyses. After all, they were only conducting the first, cursory scan—a very preliminary survey. Later, teams of scientists, not to mention the robo-satellites, would do their job, methodically, if necessary, over a number of years.
The Navy was hungry for new planets suitable for colonization. Hungry—but not desperate. Also, at Headquarters, they were always thinking ahead. Man finally achieved the dubious distinction of beating rabbits at their game. In spite of the sad Earth experience... The last robosat Census accounted for 57 billion souls on seventeen planets. Three point five billion per G type planet was regarded as optimum for maintaining an ecological balance. Anything over that, and... The safety margin was running out.
“Got it,” she replied proudly.
After all, this was her very first mission. Acting ensign Astrid Dwain finally got her wings. Figuratively speaking, of course. But floating in a silent, near-invisible skimmer over an alien planet was the next best thing to really flying. Like in Outer Space. All the same, she loved it. Still does.
“Shouldn't we leave it till tomorrow?”
Lieutenant Jordan really needed some sleep. The last six days were tough. Six days and nights. Even then, it simply wasn't enough time to gather enough data to decide on the allocation of millions of credits to be expended on further study.
“I dare say, sir. But if you don't mind, I would like to get...” Astrid was exited. This was the last day of the prelimscan. It was also the first time she managed to get hold of the controls. And that only because Bram was too sleepy and tired to do the job himself.
“Whatever you’d like to get, get it quietly,” Bram interrupted, and turned his back on the cabin. His bunk was on the port side. Astrid's on the starboard. The middle was no man's land. Astrid sighed haltingly. She wished it hadn't been. At nineteen, being alone with a lieutenant in a small cabin, for a whole week, meant intimacy. At least to her, it did.
All the same, she was not going to let go of her chance so easily. This guttural shriek deserved a further study. Right now. She adjusted the skimmer to drift slowly towards the source of the distraught noise. Apart from her own pleasure, there was an added advantage to night study. In daytime, they could only scan the terrain from an altitude of a few kilometers. At night, with the cooler temperature creating a protective mist, the skimmer could descent practically to the treetops. Even lower. Not only the minutest details would show up on the screens, but they could also record the sounds. They had to be careful, of course. Very careful.
She was well aware of the eleventh commandment among men of Old Earth, the first among the anthropologists: “Thou shalt not interfere”. For a thousand and one reasons—there could be no extenuating circumstances for breaking this archaic law. In early twenty-second century, three planets had plunged into a genocidal warfare, all thanks to the help received from the concerned, 'advanced' civilization. From the Almighty Man. Later on, that same century, a planet, in the 3rd quadrant of the 24th sector, boiled. Literally boiled, when an aspiring student had magnanimously donated water, in the form of rain, to a large group of indigenous, primitive yet undoubtedly sentient beings, apparently on the verge of dying of thirst. The student had done so before the full geological survey had come in. Later, they had learned that there had been lime, quicklime, masked over large areas by no more than a foot thick layer of soil. And lime mixed with water, had a predictable, if unpleasant effect. It never rained on that planet.
Catastrophes of this magnitude could now be averted. The generosity of the students of anthropology, on occasion, could not. Ever since people on Old Earth got fed up with being restricted to protective shells of domes which filtered the relentless cosmic bombardment. It could be said that the loss of the ozone layer was the single most powerful stimulus for man venturing to the stars. From that moment on, a ‘moment’ spanning some four decades, man developed an insatiable appetite for other type G planets, suitable for colonization. Hence the students. They performed a very necessary, even if, on occasion, slightly overanxious function. Students loved to experiment. Their parents preferred making money.
The latest discs on anthropology had given Astrid strong indications that no mater what the species, the basic steps of evolution invariably followed a similar pattern; regardless of the initial, or for that matter ultimate, shape, type, protective wrapping, bone structure, or the number of arms or legs. Once the genetic chain, the incisive genome, had been activated, the evolution could not be halted. The physiological form of the species had often been the result of geophysical accidents rather than of any particular biological preference. The only criteria which nature appeared to consider valid in advancing the evolution of any one species over another, were traits of adaptability that assured survival. Darwin had once called it the Survival of the Fittest. It still held true. On all the planets. Time took care of the rest. Time and challenges.
“You're not going to follow up on that scream, are you?” Bram interrupted her thoughts, again, his voice sounding as hopeful as it was fatigued.
“I'll call you if I need you, sir. I'll be as quiet as a mouse,” she replied. Were mice that quiet? You should hear mice on Gemini Four. You could hear them for half a mile!
Lieutenant Bram Jordan was her senior. In fact he was not only a lieutenant in the Galactic Navy but he also held a B.Sc. in anthropology. She, Astrid Dwain, was an ensign. An acting ensign and a student. “And if its the last thing I do,” she muttered to herself, “I'll make him notice me, and my work, before this night is out. Dam it, I am nineteen, and I could hardly shake off all the cadets at the Academy, this last year. And this, this... well, he doesn't even know that I am a woman.”
Astrid bit her full lips in stubborn determination and returned to her work. Within seconds she heard the slow, regular breathing of her, let's face it, undeniably attractive if inconsiderate companion. Soon, however, her youthful resilience took over as her mind continued to spin an endemic web of evolution.
In all her previous experience, albeit academic, it had been the challenges, the adversities, which were the single, most prominent factor in the rate of advancement of any particular species. Of the races she’d studied, including Homo sapiens, she detected little, if any, evolutionary progress during times of geological, climatic or social calm. On the other hand, any upheavals, any major difficulties, later even wars, which tested to the utmost the resources of the incipient mind of a primitive, awakening intelligence, resulted in evolutionary leaps of truly inspiring magnitude. This was even true of Man reaching for the stars. He hadn't until he had to.
Hence, the Law of Noninterference. Do not help until asked, and even then be prepared for taking responsibility for your actions. To assure a strict conformance with this Law, the Headquarters had developed a method, whereby they could, and did, subject an errant student of anthropology to the medicine to which he or she had subjected others through his or her indiscretion.
Astrid had known all that when she’d accepted, joyously, her appointment to assist in the preliminary anthropological review of the fourth planet of the DM45 star, in the 27th sector. The planet of the Gharrs. The sound represented by these letters: 'GHARR', was the only sound they had managed to record on the audio-scanners. A deep, throaty, guttural sound. Hence Gharrs. What else could one call them?
After full six days of round the clock scanning, the planet had shown hardly any signs of even embryonic intelligence. Certainly not in the behavioral pattern of the natives. The skimmer had recorded, however, some configurations of terrain that indicated an awareness of rudimentary geometrical forms. No construction, per se, just forms. For the moment, they could not dismiss the evidence. Pity, since type G planets were relatively scarce. Type G's could support human life without any major terra-forming adaptations. The gravity had to be within plus or minus ten percent of the earth. The air had to be breathable, the water potable. The temperature range had been regarded as secondary. Within reason, of course. The rest would take care of itself. Assuming no deadly bacteria, plague causing viruses and such like, such planets represented ready-made gardens of Eden. There remained only the question of any intelligent life indigenous to the planet. That possibility was the sole reason for the vigilant eye being maintained for extended periods over a prospective site for colonization. Man was ever ready to extend his hungry tentacles, to expand his galactic domain. But the Law of Noninterference could not be ignored nor bypassed. In the long run, diversity of life forms was considered the best assurance of man's survival, even if only the solons understood the logic of this statement.
Again her scanners picked up a long, sustained whimper. Following the first scream of agony, once she was sure that Bram was asleep, Astrid had turned up the volume, slightly, on the audio-scanners. She tuned them to record only the sound waves originating from Gharrs. It was not a full-proof method, but it helped to eliminate up to ninety percent of extraneous noises. So far, the most peculiar characteristic of the planet was that, above the level of tiny insects, the Gharrs were the only living species living on this ball of dust. This fact alone made the planet, and the Gharrs, unique.
Astrid calculated that the origin of the distressed cry was no more than four kilometers west/north/west from their present location. She set the skimmer to home in on the source of the last guttural sound emission. Skimmers were very fast along the up and down axis. The nullgravs made sure of that. In the horizontal direction, however, they were really floaters. Silent, near-invisible, and very slow.
No matter how primitive a society, there are those rare, Special Occasions, when group psychosis, or perhaps a certain, inexplicable gestält can be felt, even by outsiders. As Astrid drifted towards her coordinates, this undefined sensation grew stronger.
While the swirling fog offered her craft virtually total protection from being seen by the natives, her infrared viewers afforded her perfect opportunity to study the terrain. In no time at all, the automatic scanners detected a number of natives converging towards a single point, or at least to a single, well defined area. Within ten more minutes it became evident that the point of convergence was a raised plateau which Bram had recorded earlier this week. The center of the mount was, in itself, a source of considerable heat emission. The raised ground was a large, almost perfect circle, about a hundred meters in diameter. In the center of the podium the ground rose another three meters in two stages, creating a stepped, if rather flat, pyramid. It seemed destined to serve some kind of a ceremonial purpose. Judging by a thick layer of cinders, whatever the ritual, it had something to do with fire.
Astrid had to keep the skimmer at a discrete distance from the fire itself. The Law of Noninterference was quite explicit about not being seen. The last anthropological team who had been spotted by the natives at a distant planet, became immortalized by them as gods, thus enriching the indigent lore, but delaying the primitive culture's progress by quite a few centuries. Astrid had no intention of committing such an error. Not during her very first time at the controls. What was more, she felt it in her bones that if she played her cards right, this night's recording would leave Bram in awe of her work. He would notice her, dammit! He bloody well would.
For a moment her thoughts drifted to the main hall, at the Academy. She saw herself, standing to attention, facing rows upon rows of cadets, all admiring, spellbound, while she is decorated for the exemplary excellence of her work, her devotion to duty, her... Then the Admiral Artemis, himself, announces her promotion to Ensign First Class, perhaps a Second Lieutenant, perhaps... She would become an officer. Bram would have to return her salute. She smiled at the thought. She made a mental note to salute him every five minutes.
By the time Astrid settled her skimmer into a hovering mode, a group of some fifty natives already began their throaty, halting chanting. There was no beauty to their song that she could perceive. If anything, she sensed something halfway between anger and supplication. The natives, ever reinforced by new arrivals, now began a slow, rhythmic dance, consisting mainly of stumping their feet, clapping their hands together in front of them, while passing over their scaly heads bits of wood toward the central fire, with their uppermost, spindly appendages. The motion was accompanied by a smooth wave of their semi-stooped bodies, bent at the hips, which had an almost hypnotic quality. Their bodies moved in perfect unison, as though an invisible conductor led this dark, nocturnal orchestra. Although Astrid had absolutely no idea what the creatures were performing on this damp, vaporous night, she felt strangely drawn into their rhythmic oscillations. She felt her body moving in accord with the wavy motion of the growing crowd.
Very slowly, very gradually, Astrid's subjective time seemed to come to a stop. Her motions became lethargic, her eyes fixed on the screen, which drew the strange ceremony into her fascinated awareness. The guttural chanting first recorded, then amplified by the speakers, filled the pure, filtered air within the skimmer with the natives' presence. After a short, undefined while, Astrid felt that she could smell, almost inhale, the thick, sweet, steamy air outside the confines of her micro-environment. The flickering light of the flames, picked up by the infrared scanners, projected from the screens and danced on the walls of the small cabin. Astrid, in all but physical body, took part in the esoteric, incomprehensible ceremony.
“So what happened to him?”
The voice came from the darkness behind her. She almost panicked before realizing that Bram had woken up. No wonder, the speakers were now almost on full volume. Had she turned them on so loud?
“What happened to the poor blighter?” he repeated.
Astrid turned down the speakers. She felt a powerful, evocative need to converge on the top of the mound. The top of the pyramid. All should converge there. All who were within the sound of the chanting.
“Ah, who, what blighter...?”
Her mind refused to give up its mesmeric attraction. She was still, more than just partially, absorbed in the intensity of concentration, focusing all her thoughts at the very centre of the Fire. It was the one Power which could, and did, pierce the convoluting vapors. Yes, that's what it was. The Altar of Fire. It cleansed all that came in contact with it. Even by proxy. Even if only by a piece of wood passed overhead in a sacred, worshiping wave of absolute submission.
“The poor thing that emitted that shrill noise. Before you told me to go to sleep.” Bram sat up on one elbow. “Are you all right, ensign?”
“I am perfectly all right, thank you lieutenant,” Astrid answered in a stilted, over precise tone. What is the matter with him? Doesn't he know my name? Ensign? “I thought you were going to sleep?”
“I was, until your cacophony had woken me up. Take it easy, ensign. I know that this is the last night, but only of this preliminary survey—not of the world.” Bram turned back to face the wall.
That remark, that asinine, insidious remark, removed the rest of her cobwebs. Instantly.
Couldn't he at least have asked me what I had been doing? Not that I want any interruptions, but it would be polite. After all, I too had spent, these last few days, all the waking hours assisting him. And we did collect more data than could possibly have been expected after only a preliminary scantrip. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he didn't get another stripe on his sleeve for all the hours we’d both put in. I wouldn't be at all surprised.
At the time, Astrid did not appreciate how lucky she was that Bram's questions had pulled her out of the mesmeric hold of the throaty chanting below them. For a while, she wondered about her superior officer. She couldn't see his features, but they were firmly etched in her memory. A lean, almost skinny face, hunched down, for interminable hours, over the keyboard controlling the various scanners. His back bent at almost a right angle. Frankly, he was much too tall to work at standard keyboard level. The skimmers were designed for men not exceeding 1.85 meters. Bram had been born on a planet of 0.78 earth gravity. She had learned that much in the Academy. They all learned the vital statistic of all the officers in the survey teams. By the time Bram was twenty, he had shot up to over two meters in his bare feet. With new colonial regulations in place, this could not happen. Plus or minus ten percent Earth gravity, was the present norm. At least, for the last fifteen years. All the same, herself being blond, blue eyed and tiny, she was fascinated by this lanky, wiry dark man, who could walk faster then most people could run.
Then her eyes returned to the dials. She waited until Bram's breathing indicated that he was asleep again. In a way, she was grateful to him. Somehow, she did not feel like sharing with anyone this strange, compelling occasion. She refused to share it with him, yet she felt she had been sharing it with.... by now, some three to four hundred natives. Her slim fingers dialed the keyboard for the census scanner. Four hundred and forty seven life forms. And they were still coming. Droves of them. Perhaps she ought to wake the lieutenant. This gathering was quite unprecedented.
No, I bloody well will not, she rebelled. After all, in his mind, I probably don't really exist!
I wonder what is the peculiar force of the Gharrs' chanting...
She could only guess at the answer to this enigma. There had been no precedent.
Then Astrid remembered of what Bram had reminded her about. Almost against her will, she programmed the skimmer to float towards the spot where she had originally recorded the native emitting the guttural shriek and whimper. The craft floated silently to hover over the coordinates. She examined the ground directly beneath her. It had not been difficult to find the poor, hapless creature.
The infrared scanners displayed on her screen an alien, its hind legs caught in a tapering crevice, between two rocks. In its attempts to free itself, it must have wedged itself even deeper between the harsh, volcanic stone surfaces. The bioscanners indicated a lowered temperature of the creature. Lower than that of the other aliens. The poor blighter, as Bram had called him, must have fainted, or was on the verge of dying. If it was already dead, she could extract its body with the tractor beam. But if it was dead, what would be the point? There was a point. They could dissect it and learn, perhaps a lot, from it.
And if it was not dead, what would the Law have to say about it? The Law of Noninterference applied only to intelligent species. The throaty chanting did not offer any conclusive evidence about the sentience of the creatures. Many animals on Earth, used to produce quite a variety of sounds in their attempts at communication. That alone did not define intelligence. In fact, a precise definition has eluded the scientists for centuries. With intelligent life throughout the galaxy manifesting itself in so many different forms, no one wanted to limit, let alone define, the term 'intelligence'. Except for the psychoscans.
But here, the Gharrs had not raised any buildings, there were no roads or identifiable tracks of overland communications, no towns or villages or any visible signs of any centers of communal living. Just the raised, flat pyramids, which would go practically unnoticed if it hadn't been for today's fire. Even fire itself was no indication of their sentience, since the number of active and semi-active volcanoes could easily have provided the source of fire even as the rivers offered the source of water. What then of the hypnotic chanting?
Astrid decided to grab her opportunity when it presented itself. To study the body of an indigent life form so soon after its death could yield some valid information. By now its body temperature has dropped by eleven degrees. It must have died even as, on other scanners, she watched the distant, ever growing fire. She began to feel guilty. If it had not been a sentient life form, she could have helped it. And if it had been? What of it? What of the Simulator? She would be forced to experience the act of being helped by someone. That could not possibly be that unpleasant. Now the creature was dead. Regardless of its intelligence, or lack of it. Thanks to her. Thanks to her weakness of allowing her to be distracted, and attracted, to the inimitable chanting.
Astrid decided to seize the body of the dark scaled, four armed and two-legged creature for later study. She programmed the tractor beams, lifted the body as gently as possible, so as not to injure it in the process of extricating it from the crevice. She secreted and secured the carcass in the main holding area below the floor of the skimmer. Wiping perspiration from her brow, she floated slowly towards the chanting crowd.
The tribe, the herd, the mob, whatever they would turn out to be, appeared to have stabilized at about six hundred. The olfactory sensors detected a new scent in the steamy, moldy air. Astrid dialed for a sample. She sniffed it gingerly and fought back nausea. It smelled like burned flesh. My God, she thought, some poor blighter must have fallen into the fire! Not a very good sign of rudimentary intelligence. The smell persisted. Intensified. More bodies? Cleansing by Fire? Rites of purification? Primitive, barbaric, but not unheard of. What were these creatures doing? Before Astrid left to pick up the body of the unlucky screamer, she remembered an elusive feeling that the celebrations were, in some way, connected with an act or function of expurgation. But what animals purify themselves by throaty singing? Sentient or not, the creatures presented an enigma.
She glanced at her watch. There was less then an hour left before daylight. It was time to leave the natives to their chanting and drift upwards to a safer altitude. She also needed rest. Since Bram and she were dropped on the planet six days ago, she didn't have a chance to do much sleeping. She tried as hard anyone can to create an impression. Quite true, on Bram Jordan. And why not? He was young, a full lieutenant, already had an academic reputation, and, well, she just loved those long, powerful legs of his. He was known in the whole of the Academy as the best climber in all the seventeen Systems. They said that he took up mountaineering to build up muscles after having been born on a low gravity planet. He sure as hell built them up. And down. Lets face it, the man was darn attractive. And this was their last day together. Unless...
For all she knew, the Headquarters might well decide to wait a few hundred years before the first attempt at colonization. They had to be sure about the natives, and, there was a slight latent radiation in a number of depressed areas of the planet. Particularly areas adjacent to large estuaries. Who knows. It might wear off—in time. Or it could be indigenous to the planet.
The skimmer began rising. She could climb very fast, but the inertia would wake up Bram. She didn't feel like being lectured again. The skimmer rose gently, like a hawk soaring on a rising air current, a chimney under some cirrus cotton wool creampuffs. She stretched herself on the bunk opposite Bram's. There was little she could do now but wait. Tomorrow they would photograph the site of the nocturnal fire. During daytime, with the fog lifting, the film would provide all the data she may have missed. She relaxed with a satisfying feeling of a work well done. Finally, she could give her sore eyes a well-deserved rest. They itched from watching the screen displays as well as from sheer lack of sleep. She stretched out in the Spartan luxury of her resilient bunk.
She slept within seconds.
It seemed, that almost at once, a rhythmic, staccato chanting invaded her inner, chimerical universe. She tossed and turned, getting little rest, in spite of her fatigue. Then, she heard the original shriek of pain. It filled her, saturated her, as though she was in its very centre. As if it was she who had been screaming. She sat up on her bunk, her forehead moist, her teeth clenched. She glanced at the altimeter. Five thousand forty meters, and rising. And then, she heard the agonizing, drawn out, guttural scream again. This time she was wide, very wide awake.