Starborne

“intelligent” up to the year-captain, but making it quite clear that any sort of intrusion on a going civilization is definitely to be avoided.

There are, presumably, enough habitable but uninhabited worlds available within relatively easy reach to make such an intrusion not only morally undesirable but also unnecessary. This may or may not be the case, the travelers realize, but it is a good working assumption with which to begin their galactic odyssey. There are those on board who have already pointed out that policies can always be revised, much farther down the line, if circumstances demand such a revision.

The year-captain is suspicious, of course, of the encouraging data that Marcus and Innelda have brought him. It is inherent in his wary nature that he will believe that it is much too good to be true that the very first planet they have located should conveniently turn out to be suitable for colonization. Unless, of course, every solar system in the galaxy has one or two Earth-type planets in it — but in that case, why have there been no signs thus far of intelligent life anywhere in the galactic neighborhood? If there are millions or even billions of Earth-type worlds in the galaxy, is it at all probable that Earth itself should be the only one of those worlds to evolve a civilization?

So, then: Is Earth, that green and pleasant world, the one-in-a-billion galactic fluke, and, if so, how come they have struck a second such fluke so easily? Or are there planets of this kind all over the place and it is the human race itself that is the improbable statistical anomaly? The year-captain has no idea. Perhaps there will be some answers later on, he thinks. But he is made definitely uneasy by the swiftness with which they have discovered this apparently habitable but evidently uninhabited world.

The action now shifts to Huw’s department. He is the chief explorer; he will mount and launch an unmanned probe to provide them with actual and tangible samplings of the planetary environment that awaits them.

The Wotan carries three robot drones, and has the technological capacity to assemble others if anything happens to these. But constructing replacements for the original three would require a considerable redeployment of the ship’s resources of materiel and energy, and Huw understands very clearly that every effort must be made to bring each drone back successfully from a launching. He runs simulated landings nonstop for three days before he is ready to send one of the little robot vessels forth.

The outing, though, is carried off perfectly. The drone emerges smoothly from the belly of the starship and spirals downward to its target with absolute accuracy. Taking up an orbital position some 20,000 kilometers above the surface of Planet A, it carries out an extensive optical reconnaissance, sending back televised images that continue to provide confirmation for the belief that no higher life-forms are to be found down there.

After circling Planet A for one entire ship’s day — making several orbital adjustments during that time to ensure full visual coverage of the planet’s land surface — the drone enters landing mode and descends to the great rolling savannah in the heart of the biggest and driest of Planet A’s four continental landmasses. There — guided by Huw, who is sitting at a set of proxy controls aboard the Wotan — it adapts itself to surface locomotion by extruding wheels and treads and sets out over a circular route with a radius of a hundred kilometers, gathering at Huw’s command atmospheric samples, soil, water, minerals, bits of vegetation, all manner of interesting odds and ends. Having accomplished this, it goes airborne again and moves on to the opposite hemisphere, where conditions are more or less the same though a trifle less barren, and takes a second set of samples. Then Huw, well satisfied with the robot drone’s accomplishments, keys in the command that summons it back to the Wotan.

For nine working days a team of seven expedition members, garbed head to toe in space gear as a cautionary measure, analyzes the drone’s haul in one of the sterile isolation rooms on the Wotan’s laboratory level. The year-captain, who has allocated the biological research to himself, finds bacteria in the soil samples, various kinds of protozoa in the water, and several heavily armored little ten-legged insectlike creatures in one of the drone’s collecting jars. He stares at these with awe and reverence: they are the first multicelled extraterrestrial beings ever discovered, though he suspects and hopes that they will not be the last.

Biological analysis reveals nothing obviously toxic in the soil samples or in the water. Analysis of the air samples indicates the strong likelihood that the atmosphere of Planet A will be accessible to lungs that have evolved in the air of Earth. The bacteria, when cultured in juxtaposition with microorganisms of terrestrial origin, engage in no interaction with them whatever, neither killing them nor being killed by them. This may or may not be a good sign — it remains to be seen whether the biochemistry of Planet A will be compatible with that of Earth, and the indifference of one set of bacteria to the other would raise the possibility that human settlers will be unable to digest and assimilate the foodstuffs that they find on this world.

Other little troublesome questions necessarily must go unanswered at this point. Are there airborne viruses somewhere down there, carrying fascinating new diseases? A few well-spaced scoops of atmospheric samples won’t necessarily reveal that. What about lethal amino acids in the meat of the Planet A equivalents of sheep and cattle, if there happen to be any such animals? Or murderous alkaloids in the local versions of apples and asparagus? The drone samples can’t tell them any of that. These are matters that can only be discovered the hard way, in the fullness of time, by direct experience.

Huw says, “All that’s left to do now is for us to send down a manned expedition, captain.”

The year-captain is aware of that already. Still, Huw’s words give him a good jab in the solar plexus. He hopes he has not allowed his pain to show. He has, by now, chosen the team that will descend to make the reconnaissance, and, of course, he is not a member of that team. And, Lofoten training or not, he will probably always continue to feel occasional moments of dark regret over the necessity of remaining behind.

“We only want volunteers for this mission, of course,” the year-captain says. “Huw, do I hear you volunteering to be the leader?”

Huw grins broadly. “You have persuaded me to do my duty, old brother.”

“Innelda?” says the year-captain. “What about you?”

Innelda, slim, imperious, almond-eyed, is taken no more unawares by the request than was Huw. Everybody on board has been trained to some degree in the techniques of analyzing alien landscapes — their lives ultimately may depend on the quickness with which they react to unfamiliar conditions — but Innelda’s knowledge in that area isn’t just part of her survival training, it is her scientific specialty.

“And finally,” the year-captain says — there is great suspense involved in this choice; everyone is wondering about it — “we want to know something about the plant and animal life down below. Its biochemistry, primarily. Whether we’re going to be able to make use of anything for food, or will have to set up alternative food-sources using genetic manipulation of the foodstock we’ve brought with us from Earth.” His glance comes to rest on Giovanna. “This falls into your domain, I would think,” he tells her.

The general reaction is one of surprise. Not that he would ask the biochemist Giovanna to make the journey — she is at least as qualified for the third slot as the year-captain himself, and perhaps more so — but that he has chosen two women for the group. Everyone has heard by this time of Paco’s primordial little pronunciamento about the inadvisability of risking useful wombs by letting any women at all go down to Planet A. And here is the year- captain sending not just one woman buttwo, a full 8 percent of the ship’s female complement. Is this some sort of direct rebuke of Paco? Or does the year-captain actually agree with Paco’s thesis, and is this the year-captain’s furious way of telling them all that his only recourse, now that they have prevented him from undertaking the trip, is to send Giovanna?

Nobody knows, and no one is going to ask, and the year-captain plainly is not going to say. Huw, Innelda, and Giovanna it will be, and that is that. Huw and Giovanna, everyone recalls now, were lovers in the earliest days of the journey; they are still good friends; doubtless they will work well together. The choice meets with general approval.

What is actually uppermost in the year-captain’s mind, however, is the simple fact that he is risking three priceless and irreplaceable lives on this enterprise. Men, women: that makes no difference to him. But he doesn’t want to lose anyone, and there is the possibility that he will, and he hates that idea. The trick is to choose a landing party made up of people who will be useful down there yet whose loss, if they should be lost, will not seriously cripple the ship.

The planetary mission is absolutely necessary, of course. So far everything about Planet A’s habitability has checked out admirably, at least from this modest distance, and it is now incumbent on them to send someone down there who can learn at close range what the place is like. And those who are sent may very well not come back. There is always the possibility that ugly and even fatal surprises will be waiting on that alien world for the first human explorers. More to the point, though, there is risk even in the brief journey down from orbit. The drone probe in which the mission is to be made has been designed for maximum simplicity and reliability of operation, and it has