Wildcatter

Day 410

Jordan convened yet another meeting, this time to consider whether to continue surveying Cacafuego or set course for Armada. This was the showdown, and Seth knew that his decision would be crucial, although he might well be overruled in the end. Everyone knew the stakes. He kept catching sideways glances, appraising him, wondering which way he was going to jump. He wasn’t sure of that himself.

The big change showed in the way they sat around the control room table. Although their positions were still the same, the balance of power had shifted, from the three at the far end who had brought them here: commodore, captain, navigator, to the three whose job had now begun: biologist, planetologist, prospector.

Large-scale maps of the planet filled the control room walls, showing the daylight hemisphere and the ever-moving ship’s icon. No sign of the Galactic fleet had been detected. Its quarantine beacon flew a high orbit that should be stable for centuries.

“First,” Jordan said, “a quick recap of what we know, so that we’re all on the same page. Maria?”

“Cacafuego’s high gravity is actually helping us now. It compresses the atmosphere, so Golden Hind can orbit close in without experiencing significant drag. We have five ferrets in orbit, and they’re mapping on a low-detail scale. Of course we would need months to analyze all the scattered land masses, but we can examine narrow strips in very fine detail. Certainly there is life down there, as Reese will tell you—advanced, multicellular life. We’ve seen forests and savannahs, and marine fauna as large as whales. No large terrestrial animals yet, which suggests that the year-long cycle of day and night inhibits their development.”

“Elephants don’t hibernate well,” Reese said.

“Or migrate across oceans.”

JC said, “Maria, run through this sideways climate scenario again for me. It drives me schizo.”

“Don’t you mean bipolar?”

A blend of groans and laughter broke the tension.

“Kill her,” Reese said.

“Ok, ok, I’m sorry. Imagine you live at the north pole. At the summer solstice, what we’d call roughly the end of June, the sun stood directly overhead all day, meaning about nineteen terrestrial hours. The heat is super-tropical, too hot for any terrestrial life other than some extremophile bacteria. Now the sun is descending in a spiral. If you’re exactly at the pole, the spiral will be symmetrical. By the equinox, the end of September, it will make a daily run around the horizon. A couple of days later it will sink out of sight for half a year and the temperature will drop far below zero.

“Now suppose Hanna lives at the equator. She sees something very different. At summer solstice the sun is due north, motionless at the horizon, or a fraction above it because of atmospheric diffraction. In this perpetual dusk, the weather is bitterly cold—arctic by our standards. Slowly the sun begins to move in increasing circles, gradually tilting so that each day it rises higher. The circles grow until, at the equinox, it rises due east of you and sets due west, passing directly overhead at noon. Then the days shrink again. Got it now?” Maria glanced around the table.

Heads nodded.

“In the spring, the sun does the reverse, except that it rises in the west and sets in the east.”

“She’s making this up,” Seth said.

“I am not!”

“I know you’re not. Tell us about the weather.”

“Loads and loads of weather! Right now the air in the northern hemisphere has spent half a year above a super-tropical ocean, which must get dangerously close to boiling near the pole. The air is hot and saturated, hurricanes are two-a-penny. In fact some of them may be close to permanent, whirling around the globe. The southern hemisphere air is super-arctic cold, and at this time of year the two bodies of air are starting to mix as the sun rises over the equator. The temperature difference could easily top a hundred degrees Celsius. You wonder there are storms?”

“And what about tides?”

“Tides? Um, I haven’t thought much about tides yet,” Maria admitted.

Seth had. “Turd is too small to raise much of a tide, but the sun must. And it must pull a lot of water to the poles at the solstices, big stationery bulges. By equinox the tidal bulges will be sweeping around the equator. So getting from one state to the other must be quite exciting at times.”

Everyone looked at the maps. Cacafuego had at least eight mini-continents and many smaller islands. Some places must see huge tidal surges at those times.

Maria said, “Control, estimate tidal range at Sombrero.”

—Zero to approximately ten meters, depending on season and not allowing for storm surges.

Seth had already asked Control that, so he was not surprised. The others obviously were. It was another factor to take into account.

“Any more questions on the climate?” Jordan asked. “Control, show us Sombrero again. There. Thirty-one degrees north latitude, about the latitude of Jackson, Mississippi. It fits Commodore Duddridge’s description, although I’d call it a small continent.”

Whichever it was, Sombrero had a central plateau and a couple of curved coastal ranges. With some imagination it could be seen as a very battered and lopsided Mexican Hat. Jordan ordered a blow-up, but yesterday everyone had been shown what was coming next. The world maps faded and Sombrero swelled to fill the walls. Most of the image was grainy, but a few strips of better detail happened to have caught the evidence Golden Hind needed. A flashing circle highlighted one pathetically small white shape.

Jordan said, “Control has identified this as a crashed shuttle, to a confidence level of ninety-six percent. It is too large to be a robot drone, but we cannot be certain yet that it is Galactic’s manned effort. It could be the unmanned rescue attempt that crashed ‘about a kilometer away’ but we cannot find a second wreck. This is the site they called Apple. Maria, do you want to comment on the location?”

Maria did, but at first she said little that Seth had not worked out for himself, or obtained from Control. The Galactic landing was a few kilometers from the sea, on an expanse of sandbanks and green islands that looked like a wide flood plain. The river itself was broad, flowing eastward from the central highlands. JC had already named it the Tsukuba, after the master of the crashed shuttle.

“Apple was a good choice for first touchdown,” Maria said. “The climate is bearable at this time of year. At midsummer it had permanent daylight, but not too hot, with the sun staying about thirty degrees above the horizon. Now it rises a few degrees higher than that at noon—higher every day—and dips very close to the horizon at midnight.

“It has river, swamp, and grazing land, whether grass or not. No forest, but several environments to sample. And some odd-looking rocks. According to Control’s estimate, based on their shadows, they’re about ten meters high, roughly conical, with truncated tops, possibly open, although we can’t be sure of that.”

The crashed shuttle was so close to the rocks that they must have been the primary objective. They were not the same features that Seth had seen that first morning, but similar, just a smaller collection. A village, not a city?

“Rocks?” Maria said. “Or cooling towers? Termite mounds? Or fumarole cones? Giant white cacti? Anyone got any other suggestions? They’re not in rows, but they do seem curiously regular, don’t they?”

The careful silence was shattered by JC’s booming laugh. “Houses? Huts? That’s what we’re all thinking, isn’t it? A fine location by a river, good for hunting and fishing. Mid-latitude so the climate isn’t too extreme. Sentients… Not high-tech, because there are no fields or boats. Also they haven’t worked out yet that doors in the roof let the rain in. Maybe they need houses because they hibernate a third of the year. Maybe the trauma that killed the Galactic woman was a spear? Those huts are why Duddridge chose that site. He never mentioned videos, but he didn’t say the shuttle was too badly wrecked to maintain transmissions to the flotilla, now did he?”

“So why a yellow beacon, not purple, for sentience?” Hanna asked, her expression more skeptical than her voice.

Nothing was going to shake JC’s jubilation. “Because of us, First, because of us! We shipped out before the end of the month. Galactic had ships in refit, but either they weren’t quite ready, or the bosses wouldn’t pay like I did for a preview of the data. We got away first, and when the monthly ISLA bulletin came out they knew exactly where we’d gone: a niner world! So they cut corners to get here first. They found this settlement on the river and started sending probes to investigate sentience, which GenRegs allow them to do. That didn’t work, so they tried a shuttle. Finally they decided they needed heavier equipment to deal with the weather and went home to get it.”

Everyone else was willing to leave the battle to Hanna.

“That still doesn’t explain a yellow flag instead of a purple.”

“Yes it does,” JC insisted, “because if there are sentients, there are no profits. ISLA won’t let you stake the world. There’s fame and a billion-dollar bonus, but what are those to Galactic? Whoever the house builders are, without evidence of technology there’s still room to argue whether or not they’re truly sentient. Gorillas built nests, remember. Birds do. Duddridge probably wanted to consult the company higher-ups. He couldn’t stake, but he certainly wanted to keep our fingers out of his pot. Yellow flag to scare us off.”

“Stromatolites,” Reese said airily.

JC glowered like a gorilla defending its nest. “What?”

“Stromatolites. I’m saying that your house builders are algae, or something similar. Stromatolites made some of the oldest fossils on Earth, but they still grow in a few places, especially in some highly saline tidal bays in Australia. They’re stony mounds build by algae, like primitive reefs. Maria, is that a flood plain or an estuary?”

Maria consulted Control, which hedged and hawed, but eventually agreed with her that tides could come that far inland at some times of year and under certain weather conditions.

“Pretty damp houses, JC,” Maria said. “But my guess is that the other shuttle went out to sea on the tide. The missing people may have done so, too. Control, show us some file pictures of stromatolites.”

Stromatolites evidently came in groups of thousands on tidal flats, like swarms of stony beehives, all much the same height. The Cacafuego mounds seemed larger than terrestrial examples, but the similarity was close enough. Life never repeated itself exactly. On Shangri the tigers had six legs and spiders five. Without admitting defeat, JC subsided into a sulk.

“Why don’t we call them ‘chimneys’ for now?” Jordan said with professional tact. “Until we know what they are. Any more questions or discussion?”

Seth said, “I’d like to ask Reese about chirality. But please dumb it down to my level.”

“You’re not dumb, Broderick,” Reese said, “You’re just crazy. Tell us what you know. That’ll be quicker.”

“I know that our bodies are mostly made of proteins, which are made up of chemicals called amino acids, and amino acids are asymmetric molecules. Like gloves.”

“Top of the class. Life on Earth and almost all the thousands of life-bearing worlds we know of uses left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars, but we’re not certain why.”

“Not just life,” Maria said. “Amino acids in meteorites are biased also, just not so much. It starts with the magnetic fields around black holes.”

Reese did not enjoy being interrupted. “That’s still controversial. The only exceptions I know of are two exoplanets, Toyama and Verdant. Their amino acids are right-handed.”

“And people died on Toyama from breathing the air?” Seth asked.

Reese frowned. “I don’t know about breathing the air, but you certainly couldn’t survive on a Verdant or Toyama diet. Your enzymes wouldn’t fit the molecules, and some optical isomer pairs have very different properties. You’d starve if you weren’t poisoned first.”

“Poison is what I’m wondering about. According to the beacon’s story, the Galactic prospectors died very suddenly. Could they have been poisoned by amino acids with the wrong handedness?”

There was silence while Reese cogitated. Control would refuse to speculate on such questions.

Eventually she said, “I don’t see why isomer poisoning would be speedier than any other. If you go downside here you’re going to be heading into the jaws of death anyway, with your life dependent on maintaining asepsis and avoiding all types of biohazards. Isomers aren’t likely to be any more deadly than microbes or virus particles or allergens or heavy metals or poison gases or of the other things you studied in training. I suspect that radioactive dust may be a problem, because of Cacafuego’s very high density, but you’ll check on that. Optical isomerism is an interesting point, and I shall certainly check the samples for it when you provide some.”

“Thanks,” Seth said. “I hope to try.”

Now he had the ball. Everyone was looking at him.

“Control tells me that you’ve put yourself on a course of anti-narcosis pills,” Jordan prompted, looking grim.

“Yes, sir. Just a precautionary measure. The high partial pressure of nitrogen shouldn’t be a problem in the short term.” The long term would undoubtedly be fatal for all kinds of reasons.

“You’ve been having very mixed success with your simulated landings.”

Of course the captain had been asking Control what Seth had been up to, and probably everyone else had too. But none of them had asked what parameters he had been changing. He knew that much because Control had told him so and, while Control might refuse to answer a question, it would never tell a lie.

“No eye-popping flash of genius,” Seth said. “Just caution.”

“Caution as in two-handed Russian roulette?” Reese said.

Seth ignored that. “The original mission plan called for two descents, with four or five touchdowns on each flight. We have to forget that, because the additional gravity we didn’t expect will gobble up fuel on the ascent and those winds will eat even more. Even for a single touchdown, shuttle fuel will be a concern. Secondly, Control is starting to get a feel for the weather. I need it to forecast calm periods a few hours in advance with reasonable confidence, and in a day or so it should be able to do that. Then I make a fast descent, using power to shed orbital velocity fast. That takes up even more fuel, but gets me down before the weather patterns change.

“So fuel is a major problem. Two flights, with one touchdown apiece, are all we can reasonably hope for. Control’s standard algorithm for a landing simulation presumes a minimum of one hour on the ground and takes weather into consideration when calculating the outcome. It turns out that landing is not the problem. The simulations I’ve run show that almost all landings are successful.” He noted JC’s smile. No one else seemed very convinced.

“The problem is the one-hour layover. Calms that long don’t happen very often on Cacafuego. Wind gusts are unpredictable, even on fine days. We have no way to tie our shuttle down. We know what happened to De Soto’s, which is at least a three-seater. When I change Control’s parameters to limit downtime to fifteen minutes, then the odds of a successful landing and takeoff are better than nine in ten.”

“Fifteen minutes?” Jordan said. “You can’t even exit the shuttle for the first ten minutes because its skin is too hot from the descent. You think you can disembark, plant a flag for the cameras, load a sample into the hopper, and get back aboard in five minutes? In 1.62 gees? That’s ridiculous.”

“Yes, sir. Any longer than that and my chances of survival drop very quickly.” Seth answered the captain’s question, but he was looking at JC. “I guess you’re right. It just isn’t worth it.”

The look was the message, and the big man heard it like a fire-alarm; haggling over money was his business. He sprang to his feet, flushed and furious. “If you will allow us a five-minute adjournment, Captain, I need a private word with the prospector.”

Seth rose also, holding a poker face, and followed in silence as the commodore stormed through the mess and galley until they reached the elevator. A ship’s myth held that the elevator was the only place aboard not bugged by Control, so conversations there were private. Seth had never believed that, but if JC did, then it was probably true. JC, after all, had begun his career as an IT engineer. He would know Control inside and out.

The moment they were both inside and the door closed, Seth said, “Elevator to simulated Cacafuego gravity and make it snappy.”

The elevator dropped rimwards, halting with a jolt that made even him gasp, while JC looked as if he just sustained a double hernia. His knees buckled and he had to grab the walls to save himself from falling.

“What the flaming shit did you do that for, boy?”

“We’re at 1.62 gee, sir. A demonstration. Start by touching toes.” He bent over and laid his palms on the floor. That had always been easy for him, and an extra fifty kilos on his shoulders make it easier than ever. Straightening up was more of a challenge.

Give him his due, JC did bend until his fingers were below his knees. He even managed to straighten again from there. “So?”

“So this is what you’d be sending me into, sir.”

“It’s what you’re here for. I chose four people for brains and you for brawn. No fucking brains required.”

“Brawn won’t help me deal with hurricanes and Ebola fever.”

“The day I hired you, boy, I warned you about the odds of surviving a first landing on a virgin world. But Galactic’s team have paid that price, so you’re on a second visit. Now we’re forewarned, the odds should be better.”

“Those odds, sir, are based on visits that all looked a lot safer than that before the sucker pressed the START button. This one looks like suicide already.”

Veins showed in JC’s forehead. “Sonny, I’ve been around a long time and I know how to read people. I am certain that Galactic found something that got Commodore Duddridge all fired up like a cat in a carwash. He gave up the hunt for the missing prospectors awful easy, didn’t he?”

Seth agreed with a show of reluctance. “Yes sir. I did notice that.”

“Weren’t the landing team wearing monitors? He must have known exactly where they were, what their heart rate and blood pressure were. He didn’t tell us they were dead, did he? He gave up on his own missing people and went after bigger game.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know yet. Big, obviously. Very big, because ISLA will eat his ass out for it when he gets home. They’ll pull his license. He may face a civil suit for manslaughter. Galactic should fire him and cancel his bonus. So he’s obviously gambling that it won’t. He thinks he’s found the treasure map, but he doesn’t say what spot the X is marking. Now tell me how much more you want.”

“More?”

“Don’t play idiot. You just want more.” JC took a menacing step closer, which would have been amusing even if his extra weight hadn’t made him stagger.

Seth obligingly caught his arm to steady him. “Let’s think about the same share as the captain, three percent?”

“Flaming shit, boy! You’re dreaming in ten dimensions.”

“I have one life only.”

JC tried the long stare technique. He should have remembered that it didn’t work on Seth Broderick. He was trapped by the unexpected 1.6 gravity. On any other expedition, the biologist or planetologist could take over the prospector’s duties for at least the preliminary sampling mission. Here no one else but Seth, and possibly not even he, could function..

He pulled loose of Seth’s grip. “For what? One dirt sample and a shitty picture? That’s all you’re offering?”

Seth shook his head. “Two hours, maybe three. I doubt I’ll be able to stand upright any longer than that. As many samples and pictures as I can get in that time.”

The commodore frowned. “You can deliver that?”

“Two hours or no deal.”

“Two percent, total.”

“No. Three or no go.”

The commodore snarled. “You realize that you’re asking for a bigger share than I’d get, because the extra would have to come out of my pocket?”

Seth shrugged, which felt like lifting a barbell. “Whose ass are we discussing here?” His knees ached already.

Another hard stare, not so long. “That’s a firm offer? If we promise you a danger bonus of an extra two and half percent above contract, you volunteer to go downside to Cacafuego, waiving any and all claims against the company and its officers? And you will spend not less than two hours gathering samples and taking pictures?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No matter what else we may learn in the next few days? This must be a one-time discussion. No racking the price higher later.”

“It’s a deal, sir. I swear I will voluntarily fly the shuttle down to land on Cacafuego, no matter what else we see down there.”

“And return! This extra is not payable to your heirs and successors.”

Mean bastard! Luckily Seth had no dependents or heirs to worry about. “Agreed. I must return alive to Golden Hind with the samples to qualify for the bonus.”

JC said, “Control, record this agreement between Mighty Mite Ltd. and Prospector Broderick as an addendum to his contract, to be valid as soon as he and I attach our personal sigs.”

—Done, Commodore, said Control’s disembodied voice.

JC smiled a gotcha smile: the elevator was bugged like everywhere else.

Seth grinned and offered a hand. “Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”

“A man after my own heart.” JC accepted the shake.

And screamed.

Seth had been waiting fifteen months to repay that squeeze in La Paz, with a little interest, but he was pretty sure that in winning the handshake he had lost the battle. He’d been outwitted somehow. Just like Commodore Duddridge, JC had given up too easily.

Still massaging his knuckles, JC led the way back into the control room and four expectant stares.

“Boy Wonder believes he has found an answer to the landing problem. In return for an agreed sum of danger money, he will attempt a trip downside, while releasing the corporation from any and all liability. Does that satisfy you, Captain?”

Jordan had lost his cherubic grin. “I’m tempted to certify him insane. Let’s hear the plan, Broderick.”

Seth leaned back and tried to look relaxed. He didn’t feel it. He had just committed to the most dangerous thing he had ever contemplated, by far, and he was fizzing. Walking on another world was his lifelong dream, and he would probably have agreed to go if his odds of returning were one in a thousand.

“To start with, we deploy more of the ferrets in orbit, to act as passive relays, so we have complete over-the-horizon connection between ship and shuttle.” Even a brief gap in communications could be fatal. He got a nod from Maria, whose babies the probes were.

“Then we choose some landing sites. I’d like to keep Galactic’s Apple as primary choice, because shots of their smashed shuttle could be valuable if we ever meet them in court. It’s a good site anyway. But we’d better have backups, in case Apple socks in on my way down. As I said, I start with a fast descent, while Control keeps a weather-eye open. After we choose, I’ll make the final approach very slow. That will waste even more fuel, but a few extra minutes in the lower atmosphere—and with luck a rainstorm—will cool off the skin, so I won’t have to wait for that to happen. I’ll be wearing my K333 suit even on the descent. Two minutes after set-down I jump out, plant a flag where the cameras can see me, and throw a sample of dirt in the hopper.”

“And then leave?” Jordan asked suspiciously.

JC was frowning.

“No,” Seth said. “I pull out my overnight bag and Control brings the shuttle back up to the ship to refuel.”

He had to wait for the protests to die down, but JC was smiling again.

“I forbid this as too dangerous,” Jordan said, blue eyes icy.

“I don’t think you can, Captain,” JC said with venomous politeness. “A landing is written into the original contract. Prospector Broderick has assessed the risk and freely volunteered to perform this duty, while holding his employer and the ship’s officers free of liability for the consequences. He will not endanger the ship, only himself. You cannot reasonably stop him.”

“I forbid it!” Jordan had flushed.

Now JC did. “Letting your love life overrule your duty, Spears? First Officer Finn, what do you say?”

Hanna bit her lip, looked down at her hands, and said, “I think I agree with the commodore, Captain. A landing is in the contract. He agrees.”

Silence. Jordan did not answer. After a moment, Seth resumed his presentation.

“I estimate about three hours’ turnaround for the shuttle, depending on where the ship is relative to Apple. As soon as it’s ready and the weather looks reasonable, Control brings it down and picks me up.”

“Which may not be for a week!” Jordan said. “This is suicide.”

“Why, sir? I said we had no way of staking down the shuttle, but I can stake me down if the wind gets obstreperous. On that open ground I can lie flat and wait out winds that would utterly trash the shuttle. There should be no flying chimney pots or tree branches out there on the flats. Or I can shelter in Galactic’s shuttle, which has been there a couple of weeks now, and must be well lodged. The EVA suit will keep me aseptic, if not comfortable, for a full Earth day in any climate. Even if I can’t remove my mask to eat, I can drink from my water bottles, and a few days without food won’t kill me. I can handle the atmosphere, as long as I’m careful with decompression later. I’ll have my blazer along to deal with predators, if any. What is such a big deal?”

Jordan shook his head in despair. “Don’t you ever get scared, man?”

“Sometimes,” Seth said.

As often as possible. Danger he loved. Every mind housed at least one dragon, and that was his.