“And now?”
“See for yourself. Her face is too big and her skull is too small and too flat. And I don’t like the jaw, or the thin lips.” Doc rubbed his eyes wearily. “And there’s the hair. That much hair isn’t unheard of at that age, but taken with everything else…you can see why I was worried.”
“And all the kids look just like her. Even Jase Junior.”
“Even Jerry. And Jill’s stillbirth.”
In the ship’s library there was a silence as of mourning.
Jase said, “We’ll have to tell Earth. The colony is a failure.”
Doc shook his head. “We’d better see how it develops first.”
“We can’t have normal children, Doc.”
“I’m not ready to give up, Jase. And if it’s true, we can’t go back to Earth, either.”
“What? Why?”
“This thing isn’t a mutation. Not in us, it can’t be. What it could be is a virus replacing some of the genes. A virus is a lot like a free-floating chromosome anyway. If we’ve got a disease that keeps us from having normal children—”
“That’s stupid. A virus here, waiting for us, where there’s nothing for it to live on but plankton? You—”
“No, no, no. It had to come with us. Something like the common cold could have mutated aboard ship. There was enough radiation outside the shielding. Someone sneezes in the airlock before he puts his helmet on. A year later someone else inhales the mutant.”
Jase thought it through. “We can’t take it back to Earth.”
“Right. So what’s the hurry? It’d be twenty-four years before they could answer a cry for help. Let’s take our time and find out what we’ve really got.”
“Doc, in God’s name, what can we tell the others?”
“Nothing yet. When the time comes I’ll tell them.”
Those few months were a busy time for Ridgeback’s doctor. Then they were over. The children were growing, and most of the women were pregnant, including Angie and Jill, who had both had miscarriages. Never again would all the women of Ridgeback be having children in one ear-shattering population explosion.
Now there was little work for Doc. He spoke to Jase, who put him on the labor routines. Most of the work was agricultural, with the heavy jobs handled by machines. Robot trucks, trailing plows, scored rectangular patterns across the land.
The fenced bay was rich in Earthborn plankton, and now there were larger forms to eat the plankton. Occasionally Greg opened the filter to let discolored water spread out into the world, contaminating the ocean.
At night the colonists watched news from Earth, 11.9 years in transit, and up to a year older before Roy boarded the starship to beam it down. They strung the program out over the year in hour segments to make it last longer. There were no wars in progress, to speak of; the Procyon colony project had been abandoned; Macrostructures Inc. was still trying to build an interstellar ramjet. It all seemed very distant.
Jase came whistling into Doc’s lab, but backed out swiftly when he saw that he had interrupted a counselling session with Cynnie and Roy. Doc was the closest thing the colony had to a marriage therapist. Jase waited outside until the pair had left, then trotted in.
“Rough day?”
“Yeah. Jase, Roy and Cynnie don’t fight, do they?”
“They never did. They’re like twins. Married people do get to be like each other, but those two overdo it sometimes.”
“I knew it. There’s something wrong, but it’s not between them.” Doc rubbed his eyes on his sleeve. “They were sounding me out, trying to get me talking about the children without admitting they’re scared. Anyway…what’s up?”
Jase brought his hands from behind his back. He had two bamboo poles rigged for fishing. “What say we exercise our manly prerogatives?”
“Ye gods! In our private spawning ground?”
“Why not? It’s big enough. There are enough fish. And we can’t let the surplus go; they’d starve. It’s a big ocean.”
By now the cultivated strip of topsoil led tens of miles north and south along the continent. Jill claimed that life would spread faster that way, outward from the edges of the strip. The colony was raising its own chicken eggs and fruit and vegetables. On Landing Day they’d been the first in generations to taste moa meat, whose rich flavor had come that close to making the New Zealand bird extinct. Why shouldn’t they catch their own fish?
They made a full weekend of it. They hauled a prefab with them on the flyer and set it up on the barren shore. For three days they fished with the springy bamboo poles. The fish were eager and trusting. They ate some of their catch, and stored the rest for later.
On the last day Jase said, “I kept waiting to see you lose some of that uptight look. You finally have, a little, I think.”
“Yeah. I’m glad this happened, Jase.”
“Okay. What about the children?”
He didn’t need to elaborate. Doc said, “They’ll never be normal.”
“Then what are they?”
“I dunno. How do you tell people who came twelve light years to build a world that their heirs will be…” he groped for words. “Whatever. Changed. Animals.”
“Christ. What a mess.”
“Give me time to tell Elise…if she hasn’t guessed by now. Maybe she has.”
“How long?”
“A week, maybe. Give us time to be off with Jerry. Might make it easier if we’re with him.”
“Or harder.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” He cast his line out again. “Anyway, she’ll keep the secret, and she’d never forgive me if I didn’t tell her first. And you’d better tell June the night before I make the big announcement.” The words seemed to catch in his throat and he hung his head, miserable.
Tentatively Jase said, “It’s absolutely nobody’s fault.”
“Oh, sure. I was just thinking about the last really big announcement I helped to make. Years ago. Seems funny now,
